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MEANING, THOUGHT AND REALITY

Created by: Group 1 Ahmad Setiawan Dessy Fitriyani Emilia Lecturer: Hendri Saputra, M.Pd

STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF RADEN FATAH PALEMBANG ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2018/2019

CHAPTER SUMMARY 2 Meaning, Thought and Reality 2.1 Introduction In this chapter we look at the basic question of how it is that we can use language to describe the world. All languages allow speakers to describe aspects of what they perceive. For example: -

I saw Michael Jackson on television last night.

-

We’ve just flown back from Paris

Where Michael Jackson and Paris are names allowing us to do this. In semantic this action of picking out or identifying with words is often called referring or denoting. Thus one can use the word Paris to refer to or denote the city. The entity referred to, in this case the city, is usually called referent. In the other hand referring is done primarily by people. Words and sentences refer only in so far as people use them to do so, and therefore often differently on different occasions (Michael Proudfoot and A. R. Lacey, 2009). John Lyons separate the terms refer and denote. Refer is speaker picking out entities in the world. What entity somebody refers to depends on the context. While, denote is stable relationship, not dependent on any use of a word, between a linguistic expression and the world, properties of words. For example: A Sparrow flew into the room. A sparrow refers to a certain entity in the world, while sparrow denotes a class. Two of these are particularly important in current semantic theories: we can call them the referential (or denotational) approach and the representational approach. Referential or denotational approach is the action to put words into relationship with the world is meaning, and provide a semantic description of the world. We can give the meaning of words and sentences my showing how they relate to situations. Words denote entities, while sentences denote actions.

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For example: -

There is a casino in Grafton Street.

-

There isn’t a casino in Grafton Street

Two sentences describe different situations spoken at the same time and about the same street, this approach shows that they’re incompatible. For semanticists adopting the representational approach our ability to talk about the world depends on our mental model of it. A language represents a theory about the world; speaker chooses to view the same situation in different ways. For example: -

English: You have a cold

-

Irish: A cold is on you

In English, the situation is possession in Irish location. So, different language conceptualizations influence the description of the real-world situation. Emphasis on the way that our reports about reality are influenced by the conceptual structures in our language. We can see these two approaches as focusing on different aspects of the same process: talking about the world. In referential theory, meaning derives from language being attached to the world. In representational theory, meaning derives from language being a reflection of our conceptual structures. 2.2 Reference 2.2.1 Types of reference Referring and non-referring expressions, we can apply this distinction in two ways. Firstly there are linguistic expressions which can never be used to refer, for example the words so, very, maybe, if, not, all. These words do of course contribute meaning to the sentence they occur in and thus help sentences denote, but they don’t themselves identify entities in the world. We will say that

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these are intrinsically non-referring items. By contrast, a noun like cat in “That cat looks vicious” is a referring expression, it’s an identity. The second use of the distinction referring/non-referring concerns potentially referring elements like nouns: it distinguishes between instances when speakers use them to refer and instances when they don’t. For example, “They performed a cholecystectomy this morning”. Referring expression since it refers to an individual operation. But, “A cholecystectomy is a serious procedure” is non-referring since the nominal has a generic interpretation. Constant versus variable reference, some expressions have the same referent “the Eiffel Tower” some others depend on context. E.g. we need to know who is speaking to whom to identify the referent in “I wrote to you” or “She put it in my office”. Expressions like the Eiffel Tower are sometimes described as having constant reference, while expressions like I, you, she, etc. are said to have variable reference. Referents and extensions, referent of an expression used for the thing picked out by saying the expression in a certain context, for example the referent of a toad in I’ve just stepped on toad would be the unfortunate animal on the bottom of my shoe. While, extension is the set of thing which could possibly be the referent of that expression. e.g. “’I’ve just stepped on a toad” the referent is “toad”. “toad”, can be the set of all “toads”. 2.2.2 Names The simplest case of nominal which have reference might seem to be names. Names after all are labels for people, place, etc. and often seem to have little other meaning. Names are definite in that they carry the speaker’s assumption that her audience can identify the referent. For example, He looks just like Eddie Murphy. Means that the speaker assuming you can identify the American Comedian. One important approach can be termed the description theory, a name is the label or shorthand for knowledge about the referent. For example, Christopher Marlow. The writer of the play Dr Faustus. Understanding a name and

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identifying the referent depend on associating the name with right description. This theory stresses the role of identifying knowledge. Casual theory is another important approach, names are socially inherited. E.g. name is given to a person. People use this name depending on the fate of the named person and this original group; the name may be passed on to other groups. Users of the name form a kind of chain back to an original naming or grounding. Other authors argue a name doesn’t get attached by a single grounding, it needs a period of repeated uses. Sometimes there are competing names and one wins, or there’re mistakes and public fixed them by practice. This theory stresses a social knowledge. Both can be extended to natural kinds, referring classes in nature like “giraffe”. 2.2.3 Nouns and noun phrases Nouns and noun phrases can be used to refer indefinite and definite NPs can operate like names to pick out an individual, e.g. “I spoke to a woman about the noise” or “I spoke to the woman about the noise”. Definite NPs form definite descriptions. For example “she has a crush on the captain of the hockey team”. The referent is whoever fits the description, or where there are no cases to fit the description or the referent isn’t real. “The king of France is bald”, “The wizard of Oz”. NPs refer to a group of individuals, distributively, focus on the individual member of the group. “The people in the lift avoided each other’s eyes”, or collectively, focus on the aggregate. “The people in the lift proved too heavy for the lift motor”. Nominals can refer to substances like “I like coffee”, actions like “Sleeping is his hobby”, abstract ideas like “She has a passion for justice”. Nominal can be tricky in its denotational behavior, for example “No student enjoyed the lecture”. Complex denotational is characteristic of quantifiers. They allow flexibility to predicate something of a whole class of entities. For example, “Every Frenchman would recognize his face”, “A few Frenchmen voted for him”. 2.3 Reference as a Theory of Meaning

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Meaning is constructed through the interaction of unconscious and conscious mental process (Viktor De Munck, 2000). In simplest theory claim that reference is to give meaning of a word shows what it denotes, picks out elements in the real world. There are a number of problems with this simplest version as a theory of semantics. The first problem is predict many words no meaning and referent like so, not, very, but, of. A second is some nominal don’t have or don’t exist. E.g. “She paints a unicorn”, World War Three might be about to start”. We’d say that these expressions are meaningless if meaning is the relation between words and items in the real world.

The third problem is

same individual can be referred to in different ways. E.g. “In 1981 Anwar El Sadat was assassinated”, an individual referred by a name and “In 1981 the president of Egypt was assassinated” referred by a definite description. Share same referent but have two different meanings. So, there’s more to meaning than reference. E.g. woman who lives next door can be referred as my neighbour, Pat’s mother, the head of science, all refer to the same individual but differ in meaning. E.g. “the morning star and the evening star” both refer to Venus but speaker doesn’t know that and refer to them as two different things, for him, then, the expression “Venus is Venus” is not tautology. There’s more to meaning than reference. 2.4 Mental Representations 2.4.1 Introduction Sense places a new level between words and the world: a level of mental representation. Thus, a noun is said to gain its ability to denote because it is associated with something in the speaker/hearer’s mind. This gets us out of the problem of insisting everything we talk about exists in reality, but it raises the question of what these mental representation are. Mental entities are images, relationship between this image and the world entity would be one of resemblance, Kempson (Saeed, 1997). It has problems with common nouns due to variation in images different speakers have of word like car or house since they depend on their experience. E.g. “triangle” one might have an equilateral, or isosceles or scalene as image. 5

The most usual modification of image theory is to hypothesize that sense of some words, while mental, isn’t visual but a more abstract element: a concept. This has the advantage that it contains non-visual features which makes a dog a dog, democracy democracy, or feel confident to describe a triangle. Another advantage for linguistic is that some concepts simple and related to perceptual stimuli, “sun”, and other complex “marriage” involve whole theories or cultural complexes. 2.4.2 Concepts Adopt hypothesis that meaning of a word is a combination of its denotation and a conceptual form. Two basic questions about the conceptual element are: 1. What form can we assign to concepts? 2. How do children acquire them, along with their linguistic labels? We will focus on concepts that correspond to a single word, i.e. that are lexicalized. For example, on the shopping channel, I saw a tool for compacting dead leaves into garden statuary. The reason why some concept are lexicalized and other not is utility. If we refer to something enough it will become lexicalized. Utility-based lexicalization of concepts, for example describing something that for a while was given the two-word label microwave-oven, but now usually called just a microwave. Children acquiring concepts may differ from the concepts of adults. Work in developmental psychology has shown that children may operate with concepts that are quite different: underextending concepts, as when for a child dog can only use for their pet, not the one next door; and overextending concepts, where a child uses daddy for every male adult, or kitty for lions and tigers. 2.4.3 Necessary and sufficient conditions One traditional approach to describing concepts is to define them by using sets of necessary and sufficient conditions. This approach comes from thinking about concepts as follows. If we have a concept like woman, it must contain the information necessary to decide when something in the world is a woman or not. For example:

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x is a woman if and only if L Where L is a list of attributes, like: x is human; x is adult; x is a female, etc. 2.4.4 Prototypes This is a model of concepts which views them as structured so that there are central or typical members of a category, such as bird or furniture, but then a shading off into less typical or peripheral members. So chair is a more central member of the category furniture than lamp, for example. This approach allows for borderline uncertainty: an item in the world might bear some resemblance to two different prototypes. For example, whale is a mammal, some characteristics of fish. In the prototype theory of concepts, this might be explained by the fact that whales are not typical of the category mammal, being far from the central prototype. At the same time, whales resemble prototypical fish in some characteristic features: they live underwater in the oceans, have fins, etc. Some authors say central prototypes are an abstraction with a set of characteristic features that describe a kind of average thing but not a particular specie.

E.g.

Bird:

small,

with

wings,

feathers,

ability

to

fly.

Researchers organize categories by exemplars, memories of actual typical birds and compare an item with them to say it is a bird. Another approach that sheds light on the relationship between linguistic knowledge and encyclopedia one. Fillmore and Lakkof (Saeed, 1997): speakers have folk theories about the world based on experienced and rooted in their culture called frames and idealized cognitive models (ICM). They’re a collection cultural views not scientific theories. Fillmore and Lakoff: e.g. division of knowledge about the world bachelor, dictionary-type like unmarried man, which is linguistic knowledge. And encyclopedia-type, the cultural and general knowledge of bachelorhood and marriage – the frame or ICM. We only apply bachelor within a typical marriage

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ICM. This idealized model restrains us from using other meaning like bachelor as a celibate person. 2.4.5 Relations between concepts Relational nature of conceptual knowledge is words are in a network of semantic links with other words and so are concepts. Crucial element is not the amount but the integration into existing knowledge. E.g. knowing peccary is a pig, together with what you know about pigs, is enough, to understand a sentence with it and start gaining extra knowledge. Such relationship between concepts have been used to motivate models of conceptual hierarchies in the cognitive psychology literature. Conceptual hierarchies (see figure 2.1) is model based on defining attributes represented by nodes in a network to which attributes are attached and between which there are links. The links are inclusions so that a subordinate node inherits attributes from the other nodes. E.g. Canary inherits the attributes of Bird and Animal. It’s got the ability to block inheritance, e.g. Ostrich doesn’t inherit can fly from birds.

Figure 2.1

Hierarchies contain three levels of generality that differs in usefulness and informativeness. E.g. superordinate level. Furniture: few characteristics. Basic level: Chair, more features. Subordinate level: armchair, dining chair, more

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features, more specific. Basic level is cognitively important, everyday life, acquired first, in experiments they’re recognized more quickly. It depends on the person knowledge, more knowledge more subordinate level. 2.4.6 Acquiring concepts We do acquiring concepts by ostensive definition. We acquire knowledge by being directed to examples. E.g. walking with a child, you say look at the doggie, the child learns it. Ostension is proposed indirectly in language. E.g. walking with someone whose language you don’t know and when a rammit runs past says “gavagai”. You don’t know if it’s a warning or an instruction. To understand you need to know something amout the language. For example, in English the frame “it’s” tells you this. Point: even ostensive definition depends on prior knowledge of some word meanings. 2.5 Words, Concepts and Thinking 2.5.1 Linguistic relativity The notion of linguistic relativity, associated with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, is an idea that has spread far outside the fields of anthropology and linguistics where it began. Lexicalized concepts impose restrictions on possible ways of thinking. Provides explanation for a common experience when dealing with different languages. Translators say that there’s a lack of fit between words in two languages. E.g. English “put on” no distinction between which part, Japanese does. Boas. The idea of Language as a mirror of culture developed into a stronger one: people’s thoughts are determined by the categories available to them in their language. Languages, reflecting speaker’s cultural practises, embody different conceptual classifications of the world. As an example of the manner in which terms that we express by independent words are grouped together under one concept, the Dakota language may be selected. The terms naxta’ka TO KICK, paxta’ka TO-BIND IN BUNDLES, yaxta’ka TO BITE, ic’a’xtaka TO BE NEAR TO, boxta’ka TO POUND, are all derived from the common element

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xtaka TO GRIP, which holds them together, while we use distinct words for expressions the various idea. Linguistic relativity is the way we think about the world is determined by our cultural and linguistic background. It’s not restricted to word meaning, meaning is derived from grammatical systems, e.g. the notion of number or aspects and tense in verbs, which are even stronger and unavailable to conscious reflection. 2.5.2 The language of thought hypothesis Thinking and speaking related but involve distinct levels of representation. Linguistic relativity rejected by cognitive science, the study of intelligence based cognitive psychology, computer science and linguistics. We can identify two main types of argument used to support this view. The first is that there’s evidence of thinking without language. Evidence that thinking and language are not the same. Babies and primates remember and reason and they have no language. Artists and scientist claim that their creativity derives from nonlinguistic images. So, cognitive processes make use of a separate computational system in the mind: the language of thought. The second is language underspecifies meaning. Meaning is richer than language in the communication process. Speakers compress their thoughts and imply rather than state meaning, hearers fill out their own version of the intended from the language presented. Mentalese is language of thought. When we speak we translate from mentalese to whatever language. The language of thought is universal. Humans being have the same cognitive architecture and mental processes even though they speak different languages. 2.5.3 Thought and reality Semanticist must consider the relationship between thought and reality. Reality exist because of the working of human mind and is immaterial: idealism. Reality is attainable and comes from conceptualizing and categorizing the world: objectivism. We can never perceive the world as it really is: reality is only

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graspable through the conceptual filters derived from biological and cultural evolution: mental constructivism. Linguistics leave these theories and concentrate on the meaning relations between expressions within a language, or try to compare meaning across languages. This turning to language is called linguistic solipsism.

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CONCLUSION We can use language to describe something in this world. We can convey information about events that occur to listeners. Clearly, all languages allow the speaker to describe an aspect or something that is felt. Reference has three types: 1) Referring and non-referring expressions, 2) Constant versus variable reference, 3) Referents and extensions. Names, nouns and noun phrases also included in reference. Many nominal expressions are used by speakers who do not have references that exist or have never existed, for example unicorn, world war three, and christmas father have no meaning, because the meaning taken has nothing to do between words and things in the real world. A sense of meaning that places a new level between word and world: the level of mental representation. Nouns are said to gain their ability to show because they are related to something in the mind of the speaker / listener. People talk in different ways because they think differently. They think in different ways because their language offers a way of expressing (meaning) the outside world around them in different ways. Beside that, there is also a connection between thought and reality, where the reality of life that we experience will be further processed into a thought.

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REFERENCE Munck, V. d. (2000). Culture, Set, and Meaning. USA: Waveland Press. Proudfoot, M., & Lacey, A. R. (2009). The routledge dictionary of philosophy: fourth edition. New York: Routledge. Saeed, J. I. (2003). Semantics. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.

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