Kinds of Meaning in Semantics

KINDS OF MEANINGS

Meanings are considered included in the structure of the language, and it is an important part of language, was never or rarely considered worth study. Only recently is semantics regarded as a branch of linguistics.

There are many classified of meaning based on different points of view.

1.      Meaning can be classified into these categories based on the units of language that can carry meaning.

a.       Word meaning relates to the semantic value that is conventionally associated with individual lexical items, which is to say word. Word meaning that is meaning carried by a word.

e.g.

“Boy” means a child who will grow up to be a man (in dictionary)

      “Woman” means an adult female human being

Lexical semantics is the branch of semantics that deal with the meaning of word. Lexical meaning is concerned with the relationship among meanings of words.

b.      Sentence Meaning is an important component of a general account of linguistic meaning. The branch of semantic that deals with sentence meaning is called sentence semantics. Sentence semantic aims to uncover the basic relationship that exists between noun phrase and the verb of the sentence.

e.g. the man opened the door. (the noun phrase ‘the man’ serves as a an agent of the verb ‘opened’)

the door opened easily. (the noun phrase ‘the door’ serves as a patience of the verb ‘opened’)

c.       Utterance meaning is the meaning of an utterance. The meaning of an utterance depends of the context of the utterance. Utterance meaning is studied in a branch of linguistics called pragmatics. Pragmatics is not included in the study of semantics. Therefore semantics only deals with word meaning and sentence meaning.

e.g.

Today, Mira is absent, because she is sick. Our teacher knows that.

(the word ‘that’ caries the meaning the previous utterance)

Final examination will face by the third grade of students in Senior and Junior High School. They are so nervous. The teacher realizes this.

(the word ‘this’ caries the meaning the previous utterance)

2.      The second category in which meanings are classified in based on the patterns or arrangement of linguistics units.

a.       Lexical meaning are the meanings of the word themselves which are not related to other words in a grammatical construction. (as stated in dictionaries).

e.g.

Ø  The first is called denotational meaning or referential meaning that is object, notion or state of affairs described by a word.

e.g. 

“rabbit” means small furry animal with a long ears.

“apple” means round fruit with shiny red or green skin and white flesh

Ø  The second is called connotational meaning. It includes social meaning and affective meaning. Social meaning is the level of meaning that depends on certain social characteristics of the speakers and the situation of the character of the language used. Affective meaning is the emotional connotation that is attached to words or utterances.

e.g.

“rabbit” means the playboy (social meaning)

“handsome” means ugly, spoken in a mocking manner (affective meaning)

Ø  The third is called metaphorical meaning. It deals with metaphors. They are words having non-literal meanings extended from the lexical ones.

e.g. chicken boy à means someone who losers, not really a boy likes chicken.

b.      Grammatical meanings generally refer to the relations between words and the things words denote. They also refer to the relationship of words in a phrase, a clause or a sentence.

e.g. look at the following two sentences

1. that boy likes his neighbor

2. maria’s face likes her mother

“like” means “interest” as it functions as (sentence 1), but it means

c.       The third is called linguistic meanings or total meanings that are combination between lexical and grammatical meanings.

e.g

1.   Monica is a smart girl

(smart has dennotational meaning, that monica is really a smart girl, “smart” means “clever”)

2.      You are a diligent boy!

Spoken in a high tone, “diligent” means the opposite of “diligent”, so it is has a connotational meaning, since the meaning includes emotion.

3.      This anniversary is running well.

(the anniversary do not run, so the expression “running” is said to have metaphorical meaning)

Therefore, to understand the meaning of words we should not only look up in the dictionary, but also look at the contexts in which words are used, which are also related to speaker’s attitude or emotion. They are also related to the situation where and when the words are used by the speakers.