The relations between linguistics expressions and what they refer to in the real world and in evaluating the truth value of linguistic expressions
Psychologists
the workings of the human mind through language
Semantics
the meaning of words,phrases,and sentences
Some views concerning the study of meaning
The naming theory(Plato)
Words are just names or labels for things
Problems with the naming theory
The theory seems applicable to nouns only(V/ADJ/ADV× ，think,hard,slowly)
There are nouns denoting things that do not exist in the real world at all(ghost,dragon,unicorn)
There are nouns that do not refer to physical objects but abstract notions(joy,sadness,impluse)
Some words may have different meanings in different contexts(like 喜欢；像）
The same reference may have different names（Morning star VS Evening star)
The conceptualist view(Ogden& Richards)
Its model（triangle of significance)
Symbol/Form ( words/phrases) "dog"
Thought/Reference(a common animal with four legs,fur, and a tail)
Referent( concrete objects in the world）
A problem with Conceptualist view
It can not refer to abstract concepts
Contextualism(J.R Firth)
观点
Two kinds of context
situational context
the speaker & the hearer, the actions they are performing at the time , the various objects and events in the situation
linguistic context
a word's co-ocurrence or collocation with another word
Black hair /black coffee
the part of text that precedes and follows a particular utterance
Behaviorism(Bloomfield)
model
S----r.....s------R
S=Jill sees an apple
r=Jill says "I am thirsty"
s=Jack hears Jill says "I am thristy"
R=Jack picks an apple for Jill
Problems
What if the listener does not cooperate or pretends that she/he couldn't understand it？
Meaning can not be equal to reactions
difference actions to the same utterance
the same reaction to different utterances
No response or reaction to utterances
The perception of the meaning of the utterance has to precede the relavant reaction
Lexical meaning
Sense and reference
Sense:the inherent meaning of a linguistic form ,the collection of all its feature ;abstract and decontextualized(dictionary compliers)
reference:what a linguistic form refers to in the real physical world; the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience.
