Historical Approaches to the Study of Word Meaning
Ancient Greece – Nature vs. Convention
In ancient Greece and Rome the study of language was a part of philosophy. The ancient Greeks first tackled the study of language. The difference between the Greek and the Roman approach was that the Greeks never took things for granted and were more educated in all areas, while the Romans took over the methods and reinterpreted them. The matter in the study of language that the Greeks were most interested in was the relation between words and the meaning of the words (word - world). Even today semanticists wander about the meaning. The origin of meaning was never accurately defined. Plato was the first one to wander about the meaning and the study of language. He was a naturalist. The major issue was the conflict between nature and conventions therefore there were two streams in the science and they were naturalism and conventionalism.
For the naturalists the major term was onomatopoeia, imitation of sounds. They believed that the word meaning should be derived from the imitation of sounds, derived from the world naturally by imitation - sound symbolism. Whenever we name an object there is something in the sound that imitates, implies the referent. There is a sound link between the referent and word. In those days the number of words that imitate nature was great, but today the number has fallen to a 2% of the vocabulary.
Phonaesthetic - There is something in the pronunciation of the word which relates certain aesthetic value and associates to a certain meaning so that the words are motivated. This was the theory of Plato, the first naturalist who believed that nature is the leading principle in life. Through the course of time the connection between the words and the sounds started to fade and nowadays there is no relation between them although the connection might have started by a way of imitation.
The conventionalists based their theory of word meaning on a convention or an agreement. The meaning for them was arbitrary. There is no link between the words and nature; i.e. the words are unmotivated. Empirically speak-
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ing there are more words that lack relation with the nature than there are onomatopoeic words. The conflict between the naturalists and the conventionalists persisted until the present days. De Saussure thought that there is no doubt what so ever that the word meaning is conventional.
Referential Theory of Meaning
The major thesis of this theory was that the word meaning is the actual referent. The meaning of a tree is the actual referent that occurs or the object in the world. This approach encounters some serious difficulties. What about those words that lack reference such as: a dragon, a unicorn, Pegasus, etc. Philosophy would say that we cannot observe unicorns but we can have a mental picture about them. Extension is a part of meaning that includes all the possible occurrences of the referent. Intention is the sense part of the word and it evokes different associations. Since reference is not enough, what is the sense of the words? Semanticists say that the word meaning should correspond to some mental images, word meaning is the image of the referent. This is the Image Theory of Meaning. There are some words such as: hello, but or and that cannot create an image and also have different images about things, e.g. dog - it is difficult for all the speakers to have one general image of a dog. That is why the approach of direct linking between the word and the referent is abandoned. The word meaning should be presented by a mediator medium, which means mentally represented reference in our mind.
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Conceptual Theory of Meaning - De Saussure
Concepts are not individual occurrences but a whole set of occurrences. The concept is in our mind and it is not an image. First we conceptualise. Then we need to lexicalise the concept, then to grammaticalise it and then use it in a conversation. We should take into consideration the whole extension, which means the more data we process in the act of conceptualisation the better the concept in our mind. The problem with this theory is that it may work with words but not with units larger than words such as: phrases, clauses or sentences that also have meaning. Linguists were disappointed by the theories that have developed so far. Then there came the Chomski's theory in the sixties which was part of the generative semantics (transformational approach). Their goal was to split up the word meaning, to go beyond the smallest meaningful unit. They split the word meaning not formally into morphemes but they analysed the morphemes into further smaller units of meaning. Those units were called semantic markers (primitives, features or components). The whole theory is semantic decomposition or componential analysis. This componential analysis works fine with words that have some lexical relation such as: boy, son, woman, daughter or brother, e.g. boy - + animate; - adult; +male;
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+human. But how can we describe the red colour using this theory, red -+colour. Such examples ruin the whole theory. Also the words which are used to describe other words such as: +male or +human for a boy are lexical words themselves and according to the theory can be divided into smaller units. In order to abridge the difficulties, the semanticists created semantic distinguish-ers that are semantic markers of a first, second and third degree whose role is to describe the words semantically.
Use Theory of Meaning
This theory was set by the philosopher Widgenstern that says if you want to find a meaning of a word, you should find its use or describe it by its use. What he meant to say is that the meaning is in its usage and there are as many meanings as there are uses. A word does not necessarily have one meaning. This was the beginning of pragmatics. The actual meaning gets real in real life, in actual communication or in a specific situation. We have different meaning in different contexts.
(From: Macedonian Lectures on Lexicology)
Grammatical Meaning
The branch of lexicology that is devoted to the study of meaning is known as semasiology.
Meaning is one of the most difficult problems in the theory of language and it has been the topic of interminable discussions. There is no universally accepted definition of meaning. All the linguists agree that word-meaning is not homogeneous but it is made up of various components. They are usually described as types of meaning- grammatical and lexical.
We notice that the words worked, ended, played, etc., those denoting different actions, have a common element - the grammatical meaning of past tense.
The words girls, tables, plates have the common element of plurality.
In the word-forms sister's, worker's, etc. the common element is the case meaning.
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Thus, grammatical meaning may be defined as the component of meaning which is always seen in identical sets of individual forms of different words.
Modern linguists acknowledge that some elements of grammatical meaning can be revealed by definite position of the linguistic unit in relation to other linguistic units, i.e. by its distribution. So, word-forms reads, plays, asks, etc. have one and the same grammatical meaning as they can all be found in identical distribution, e.g., only after the pronouns he, she, it and before adverbs like well, usually, today , etc.
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The distribution of other word-forms reveals another grammatical meaning: took, repeated, asked are always found not only after the pronouns he, she, it, but also after I, you, we, they, and before the adverbs yesterday, last week, a year ago, etc.
Lexical Meaning
Besides grammatical meaning words have lexical meaning. The words go, goes, went, going, gone, having different grammatical meanings, have one and the same semantic component denoting the process of movement. This is the lexical meaning of the words. The lexical meaning may be described as the component of meaning proper to the word as a linguistic unit in all its forms and distributions.
The irrelation of the lexical and the grammatical meaning and the role played by each varies in different word-classes and even in different groups of words within one and the same class. In some parts of speech the prevailing component is the grammatical type of meaning. In linking verbs and auxiliary verbs (to be, to have, to turn, to grow, to do) the grammatical meaning prevails.
He is a teacher. - He will be a teacher.
He has a good voice. - He has done it well.
He turned his head. - He turned pale.
He grew a clever boy. - He grew red at those words.
He did it himself. - He did not read this book.
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