UC 00902:MEANING IN COMMUNICATION CONTEXT

LESSON 1:What is Meaning?

WHAT IS MEANING?

Language without meaning is

meaningless (Roman Jakobson).

WHAT IS MEANING?

A noise that you make when you speak or a scribble that you produce whenyou write words in English/Malay or a sign-language gesture you make are physical objects that convey meanings, they are about something

WHAT IS MEANING?

We use language to communicate, to talk about: things in the world, people and their properties, relations between people, events, in short about the way the world is,

should be, could have been …

WHAT IS MEANING?

The property of ‘aboutness’ of linguistic signs (or symbols) is one of the defining properties of natural languages, it is what a

semantic theory of natural languages tries to capture

WHAT IS MEANING?

Meanings are in people Communication does not consist of the

transmission of meanings, but of the transmission of messages

Meanings are not in the message; they are in the message-users

Words do not mean at all; only people mean

WHAT IS MEANING?

People can have similar meanings only to the extent that they have had, or can anticipate having, similar experiences

Meanings are never fixed; as experience changes, so meanings change

No two people can have exactly the same meaning for anything (David Berlo)

WHAT IS STUDY OF MEANING?

Semantics is the scientific study of meaning communicated through language.

Semantics is the study of the relation between form and meaning

Semantics is the study of the relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent.

WHAT IS SEMANTICS?

Semantics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the study of meaning, changes in meaning, and the principles that govern the relationship between sentences or words and their meanings.

WHAT IS SEMANTICS?

An understanding of semantics is essential to the study of language acquisition (how language users acquire a sense of meaning, as speakers and writers, listeners and readers).

It is also essential to the study of language change (how meanings alter over time).

WHAT IS SEMANTICS?

It is important for understanding language in social contexts, as these are likely to affect meaning, and for understanding varieties of language and effects of style.

The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified, negotiated, contradicted, and paraphrased.

Some important areas of semantic theory or related subjects include these: Symbol and referent Conceptions of meaning Words and lexemes Denotation, connotation, implication Pragmatics Ambiguity Metaphor, simile and symbol Semantic fields

Synonym, antonym and hyponym Collocation, fixed expression and idiom Semantic change and etymology Polysemy Homonymy, homophones and homographs Lexicology and lexicography Thesauruses, libraries and Web portals Epistemology Colour

In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, as borne on the syntactic levels of words, phrases, sentences, and sometimes larger units of discourse, generically referred to as texts.

To understand language we need to know the meaning of words and the morphemes that compose them. We also must know how the meanings of words combine into phrases and sentence meanings. Finally, we must consider context when determining meaning.

Phonetics studies the physical side of linguistic utterances—the

articulation and perception of speech sounds (articulatory, acoustic and

auditory). How to make the sound

of /k/ , /g/, /b/, /p/

Phonology is the study of the sound patterns of human language.

How the sound of /b/ and /p/ make a difference inEnglish [bad] and [pad],

How the sound of /p/ and /d/ make a difference inMalay [apa] and [ada],

[katak] and [kotak]

Morphology is the study of the structure of words and the smallest meaning bearing units and how they combine into words.

Malay MengasihimeN + kasih + ITermakan (ter+makan)

meN,teR,di dll English

apples (apple + s) writes (write + s)

Syntax is the study of the formation of sentences, how words are combined to larger units than words, to phrases and sentences that are well-formed strings in a given language

Malay: Ayam makan jagungJagung makan ayamJagung dimakan ayam English: A letter written by

John John writes letter

Semantic is the study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences

English:This room is hot. It is taking about the high

temperature in the room

Pragmatics is the study of how context affects meaning.

English: This room is hot In other words: -please open the windows-please on the fan-who switch off the air-con?

QUESTION 1

What’s meaning?

QUESTION 2 2 examples of phonological differences in

Malay and English 2 examples of morphological differences in

Malay and English 2 examples of syntax differences in Malay and

English