Meaning and Defenition

SEMANTICS PRAGMATICS

SEMANTICS PRAGMATICS

“ MEANING AND DEFINITION “

MEMBERS OF GROUP :

VIVI AZHARA (2317059)

FARDILA YOLANDA (2317070)

RONA DIALESTARI (2317072)

NURTIS SOLIHAT (2317073)

FATMAWATI (2317076)

INTAN RATU FADILLA (2317081)

LECTURE :

DR. IRWANDI NASHIR M.PD

STATE ISLAMIC INSTITUTE OF BUKITTINGGI

FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TEACHER TRAINING

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

2019M/1441H

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.         Background

            Meaning and Defenition, focuses on defenition and the part it playsin how we understand and describe meaning. Riemerfirst  discuses the differencess between different conceptions of defeintions, such as those found insemanticsvs those found in lexicography. He also introduces the concept of themental lexicography. He also intoduces the concept of themental lexicon. He then goes no to introduce basic units of meaning :word,morphemes, and also onomatopoeia and idioms. After discussing the effect of context on meaning and the idea of compositionality, this paper into the meatof the discussion and looks at deifferent ways to define meanings: real andnominaldefenitions, and defenition by ostension, context, exemplars, and genus. He also discussion substitutability as a measure of accuracy for defenitions, aswell as problems with defeitions and the influence of usage on definitions.

B.    Problem

Based on the problems describe in the background. So it can be formulated problems in this study are as follows:

-       What is meaning and definition

-       What other aspects of the meaning and use of pour are not made explicit by the quote definition?

-       Would it be possible to eliminate these uncertainties purely ostensively? If so, how? If not, why?

-       Can you think of other words for which a GD definition seems difficult? What cause the difficulty?

C.    Purpose

The purpose of writing this paper is :

1.     Explained about meaning and the dictionary

2.     Explained about the units of meaning

3.     Explained about different ways of defining meanings

BAB II

DISCUSSION

1. Meaning and Dictionary

The conceptof a word`s meaning is closely linked to the concept of definition, which was first made explicit in Greek philosophy by Aristotle. Defenitions have been particuarly important for conceptual theories of meaning. A result, an understanding of definition is necessary for any attempt to develop a conceptual theory of word meaning. Furthermore, when people think of a word`s maning, they are inclined to think of something like its definition in a dictionary.

1.     Semantics and Lexicography

Semantics is the linguistic and philosophical studyof meaning in language, programming languages, formal logics and semiotic. It is concerned with the relationship between signifiers-like words, phrases,signs,and symbols and what they stand for reality, their denotation.

Lexicography is the process of writing,editing,and/or compiling a dictionary.

In process of matchng a meaning with a word is analogous to that involved in consulting a dictionary. Just as language-learner discovers the meaning of an unknown word by looking it up in dictionary, yhe production and understanding of ordinary speech is conceived of as a process of matching between stored word-forms and the stored meaning representations associated with them in long-term memory. Like dictionary definitions, these meaning representations are imagined as discrete and relatively fixed. And just as dictionaries aim for a maximum degree of concision, it has been assumed that the mental lexicon also seeks the most efficient, least redundant listing of lexemes` meaning.

Example: shall I pour

1. a)  I was pouring the tea when the phone rang.

b) They were pouring the concrete when the phone rang

2. a)   I was pouring the rainwater when the phone rang.

b)     I was pouring the mud when the phone rang.

3. a)   I was pouring the raintwater over the ground when the phone

b)     I was pouring the mud down the hole when the phone rang

Furthermore, the dictionary is silent about the conditions under which pour in sense one is usually followed by a preposition or prepositional phrase. Whereas 1a and 1b are quite acceptable without  any following propositional phrase, 2a and 2b seem more questionable, whereas 3a and 3b are perfectly acceptable.

Word-based and meaning-based approaches to definition

The definitions found in dictionaries are the result of a word-based, or semasiological approach to meaning. This sort of approach starts with a language’s individual lexemes, and tries to specify the meaning of each one. This is not the only possibility, however, for the analysis of meaning in linguistics. The other approach, the onomasiological one, has the opposite logic: start with a particular meaning, and list the various forms available in the language for its expression. Thus, whereas a semasiological analysis would start with a list of verbs, say scare, frighten, terrify, startle, spook, and panic, and specify a slightly different meaning for each (startle, for instance,referring to a considerably weaker form of alarm than panic), an onomasiological analysis would start with a general concept, FRIGHTEN, and list all of these verbs as its possible realizations. The difference between the two approaches corresponds to the difference between a dictionary and a thesaurus. As a semasiological tool, a dictionary is a list of words, and one accesses meanings through words. A thesaurus, on the other hand, is a list of concepts: for a particular concept, the thesaurus gives access to the different words through which the concept could be expressed.Semasiological and onomasiological analysis are in no way exclusive: the semasiological approach emphasizes differences between lexemes, the onomasiological one similarities. Furthermore, both are necessary to a full description of the processes underlying communication. A complete description of linguistic performance will show how a speaker achieves the mapping between the concept or meaning she wishes to express and the word forms actually chosen: given the need to express the concept or meaning FRIGHTEN, for example, what are the onomasiological principles according to which one of the possible verbs listed above is chosen? For the hearer, however, a semasiological approach is called for. Hearing or reading the word frightenin a particular context, what is the meaning which the hearer will assign to this verb?

2. The Units Of Meaning

                          I.          Words and Morphemes

What is the word? Ferdinan de Saussure said that a word is like a coin because it has two sides to it that can never be separated. One side of this metaphorical coin is the form of a word: the sounds (or letters) that combine to make the spoken or written word. The other side of the coin is the meaning of the word: the image or concept we have in our mind when we use the word. So a word is something that a given form with a given meaning.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unitin a language. A morpheme is not identical to a word. The main difference between them is that a morphem sometimes does not stand alone, but a word, by definition, always stands alone.

Ex:

·       “Unbreakable” is composed of three morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme signifying “not”), -break- (the root, a free morpheme), and –able (a free morpheme signifing “can be done’)

·       Allomorphs of the plural morpheme for regular nouns: /s/ (e.g. in cats /kæts/), /ɪz, əz/ (e.g. in dishes /dɪʃɪz/), and /z/ (e.g. in dogs /dɒɡz/).

Meaning Below the Morpheme : Sound Symbolism

            The question of what level of grammatical sructure a meaning should be attributed to may often be problematic, and boundary cases, where meanings seem to straddle several different grammatical units, occur quite frequently. One such boundary case is sound symbolis, ( also known as ideophony or onomatopoeia ). This is existence of semi-systematic corespondences between of the individual morpheme, such as English clas, clang, clatter, etc.  Such associations may sometimes have a clear imitative basis, as with English click, thwack,meow, etc. Sond symbolism is by no means limited to English, of course. In Ilocano (Cordilleran, Philippines), for instance,a high front vowel is often used in words denoing high pitched sounds, like :

           

            singgit ‘high pitched voice’ : sing-i ‘sobbing (of a child)’ ; sultip ‘whistle’; riri ‘whimper’ (Rubino 2001:304).

            Here the choice of vowel imitates the characteristic timbre of the sound referred to. Similarly, the alveolar fricative is often found nword representing rustling sounds or the sound of water:

-       Karasaka ‘rustling sound of leaves’

-       Saraisi ‘sound of rippling water’

-       Barasabas ‘sound of heavy rain’

            A possible connection might be discerned here between theacoustic quality of the fricative and irregular, sound of the refeent. But theimitative basis of such associations is often lessobvious,at east to English speakers. For example,docments the fact that many words indicating ‘smallness’ contain kp in Emain 9 Niger-congo, Nigeria):

            Kpuku‘pointed’ :small,compact and round, short

            Kpdo‘round’ : small, circular and supple, proportional

            Kpeke ‘petit’: small,thin, short.

            In all cases we have a sound-meaning correspondence which existsbelowthe level of the individual mopheme. Neither the high front vowel nor the alveolar fricative in Ilocano, nor kp in Emacan, formally, be considered as individual morphemes,since once cannot remove them from the ideophonic words in the (examples) and retain possible roots to which other morphemes could attach.

Meanings Above the Word Level : Idioms

            Idioms constitute another boundary case where it is not clear what the correct level is for the chracterization of meaning. we defined idioms asnon-compositional phrases-phrases like throw in the towel whose overall meaning is not the same as the combined meaning of the individual parts. However, it is often possible to advance an interpretation of the individual words of an idiom which removes its idiomatic or non-comositionalcharacer.

            For example, the english idiom “to scoop the pool”, which means something like ‘to winor gain everything’ with the entire unit scoop the pool, without trying to break the phrase down further. Neverthless, if we imagine scoop as having a meaning like ‘quickly gather up a large quantity ofsomething in a single movement’, and pool as meaning ‘the entire set o available items’. Then the arbitrarines and non-compositionality of the expressionis reduced, and the interpretation ‘win or gain everything’can follow unproblemaically from the combined meanings of the expression’s elements. The fact that a variety of possible interpretations is availabe for each component of theidiom, with consequent defferences in the overall interpretation of the expresion,only adds to the ambiguity. Thus, other speakers of English might associate scoop with a scoop in jounalism (a news story abtained exclusively by a single journalist), while others might analyse pool as in some way referring to a body of water.

            As we have been using the term, an idiom is non-compositional combination of words. But if we define an idiom as a non-compositional combination of morpheme, then idiom can also exist on the sublexical level. In following xample from Lakota (Siouan, Mississippi Valley; Rankin et al.2002: 181-182), a noun stem ‘heart’ is compounded with the verb stem meaning ‘be good’; the meaning of the resulting compound, ‘I made him/her angry”, is in no way simply the combination of individual meanings of its component morphemes :  Heart-be, good = I made him/her angry.

Contextual Modulation Of Meaning

The examples of noun-incorporation we have just seen show the meaning of words and other morphemes varying according to their collocation, the immediate linguistic context in which they occur. This sort of variation is found throughout language. We can see a similar phenomenon in English, where the meanings of verbs seem to vary slightly depending on the noun which they govern. If I cut my foot, for example, I am doing something that is rather different from what I am doing when I cut the grass, or when I cut a cake, cut someone’s hair, cut the wood, cut a diamond, cut a deck ofcards, cut a disc or cut a notch. The nature of the event, the means by which it is accomplished, its typical object, and the extent to which it is deliberate may all vary in these different uses. The degree of semantic ‘distance’ gets even greater if we consider more ‘extended’ meanings, like cut a deal, cut corners,

cut a paragraph or cut prices.

The following two possibilities gives the best semantic description of English:

·       One which lists the meanings of cut, foot, grass, cake, hair, etc., and sees the specific meanings of the collocations cut one’s foot, cut the grass, cut a cake, etc. as derived compositionally from the meanings of the parts; or

·       One which just lists all the different collocations in which cut appears, and specifies a different meaning for the entire collocation?

First Possibility: Compositionality

The first possibility is that the meanings of cut one’s foot, cut the grass, cut a Cake, etc. result compositionally from the meaning of the verb cut and themeanings of its noun objects. The meaning of cut the grass just is the meaningof cut combined with the meaning of grass. This might work in one ofTwo ways.

·       The general meaning hypothesis: Cut might have the same vagueor General meaning in all its different collocations: it refers to some act of accomplishing a material breach in a surface, with the particular details of each type of breach being inferred by the listener, rather than being built into the meaning of the verb itself.

Alternatively,

·       The multiple meaning hypothesis: Cut might have a separate meaning In each collocation: the cut in cut one’s foot has its own entry in the Mental lexicon.

Problems with the general meaning hypothesis The problem with the first option is that describing this common core of general meaning supposedly present in all cases of cut is not necessarily an easy matter. The Concise Oxford 2004 edition gives ‘make an opening, incision,

or wound with a sharp tool or object’ as its definition, but this is not involved when someone cuts butter, for example, nor when a whip cuts someone’s flesh :

The cutting object in these situations need not be sharp. Perhaps, then, we need to dismiss these uses as in some way special or extended and therefore absolve them from the scope of the vague definition:

Perhaps ‘make an opening, incision, or wound with a sharp tool or object’ will work for all the others. Even if it does, though, we still have a problem: the definition does not adequately distinguish cut from chop, slit, stab or unpick: to chop a sausage, slit a letter, stab someone’s side or unpick a seam is equally to ‘make an opening, incision, or wound with a sharp tool or object’, but we could not also describe these actions as cutting.

Problems with the multiple meaning hypothesisThe second option is to propose multiple meanings for cut, a separate one for each collocation. In cut one’s foot, for example, cut could be described as meaning something like ‘partially breach a surface with a sharp instrument, typically accidentally :

when one cuts one’s foot, one typically does not detach one’s foot from the rest of the body. In cut the grass, and cut someone’s hair, on the other hand, the verb conveys the meaning of more than just a partial breach in the surface of the object: the meaning of these collocations is that one part of the object is completely detached from the rest. Now consider cut a notch: here the object is brought into being by the action of the verb: if I cut a notch into a stick, the notch did not exist before I created it. As a result, the meaning of cut in cut a notch could be paraphrased as ‘create by breaching with a sharp instrument’, an entirely different meaning from that found in the other collocations, which all presuppose the prior existence of the object being cut. Again, when we talk of a whip cutting someone’s skin, we have the meaning of breach to a surface, as in cutting one’s foot, but without the usual element of ‘sharp object’: being made of leather, whips are not normally considered as sharp.

List of different meanings of cut:

·       Partially breach surface with a sharp instrument, typically accidentally

·       Create by partially breaching the surface with a sharp instrument

·       Detach one part of object from another with one’s hands

·       Detach one part of object from another with a sharp instrument etc.

These will all have highly specific Collocation restrictions:

The meaning ‘partially breach surface with a sharp instrument, typically accidentally, for example, will be a very likely sense of cut in collocation with foot, but not with cake: cutting a cake is usually an entirely deliberate action.

The first is the sheer number of the different senses to be attributed to cut. Since the action of cutting in each of the examples in question is slightly different, we seem to need a very large range of different senses. While it is clearly impossible to define the meaning of cut in just a single paraphrase extended meanings like cut text, cut a disc, etc.

The second problem is related: given this variety of different possible meanings of cut, how does the correct specific meaning get chosen in a given case? How does a hearer know that the appropriate interpretation of cut in cut a deck of cards is ‘detach one part of object from another with one’s hands’ and not ‘create by partially breaching the integrity of a surface with a sharp instrument’? The second option would clearly be wrong, and our theory of the meaning of the expressions needs some way to exclude it.

Second possibility: non-compositionality

This avoids several of the problems of the compositional solution:

·       We do not have to advance a general definition of cut that will work in every context, as we do in the general-meaning version of the compositional solution

·       We do not have the problem of word-sense disambiguation, since each collocation carries its own definition.

Here is another consideration in favour of non-compositionality. It is not just cut whose meaning is determined by its collocation environment: the collocation also determines what reading is operative for cut’s object. Thus, English speakers know that cutting the grass refers to the grown grass blades, whereas planting the grass refers to grass seeds or shoots, and smoking grass refers to the leaves of a completely different plant.

Figure 2.1:Options for analyzing collocations

cut a cake                                           

cut someone’s hair                                                                 cut has the same vague/general

cut the wood               compositional meaning                      meaning in every collocation

 

cut a diamond                                    

cut a deck of cards                                                                 cut has a different meaning in

cut a disc                    non-compositional                             every collocation                   

meaning

cut a notch,

etc.

These arguments are obviously shaped by many assumptions about the nature and limits of linguistic competence. In the absence of a clear understanding of how the brain actually doesprocess and store language, linguists have assumed that their description of assumed linguistic

competence should reflect the same criteria of economy and non-redundancy that operate in real paper dictionaries. Thus, much linguistic research has assumed that the mental lexicon does not contain a huge number of independently listed entries, but that it extracts the maximum number of generalizations about the meaning of a verb like cut across all its collocation contexts, in order to present the most economical, least redundant entry. As a result, it has been the topmost solution in Figure 2.1 that has traditionally been considered preferable.

Differents ways of defining meaning

1.     Real and nominal definition.

posterior analytics, a treatise devoted to the explanation of the structure of scientific knowledge. A definition can therefore be considered either as a sort of summation of the essence or inherent nature of a thing (real definition latinres’thing) or as a description of the meaning of the word (nominal definition latinnomen’name,noun’).

The situation which promp people to utter speech, include every object and happening in their universe. In order to give a scientifically accurate definition of meaning for every form of a language, we should have to have a scientifically accurate knowledge of everything in the speakers’world.  We can define the names of minerals, for example, in terms of chemistry and mineralogy, as when we say that the ordinary meaning of the English word salt is ‘sodium chloride’ (NaCI).

            Linguistics should appeal to technical scientific disciplines in formulating definitions, the true meaning of natural language word. according to bloomfield, it to be identified with yhe scientific ‘definition’ or best possible teory of its denotation. As a result, whenever a scientifically establisheddefinition of a denotation is missing,there is simply, nothing that linguistics can say with any certainly about the word’s meaning. Many actual definitions aspire to fulfill both these function simultaneously. The two functions are, however, rather different, and they should be kept apart..in order to differentiate between them, let us call the first type of definition extensional definition, and the second type cognitive definition.

2.     Definition by ostension.

The most obvious way to define many words is, simply, by ostension, or by pointing out the objects which they denotate. In soite of the apparent obviousness of this method, it is beset by difficulties. None of these  question can, in fact, be settled by obstensive definition: every attempt to make the devinition more precise ostensivelly would give rise to a new set of question.

The only way to overcome the problems of ostensive definition would seem to be to use language itself as the medium in which definitions can be phrased.

3.     Definition by synonym.

to define words by providing synonyms, in either the same language as the world being defined or in a different one. Thus , one could give mad and furious as English definition of angry, and kulu as a walpri one. The problem with this strategy is that it is usually possible to challenge the identity between the difiniens and the definiendum.s

Definition by context or typical exemplar

Another way to define a word is to situate it in a system of wider relations through which the specificity of the definiendum can be seen.

This is an example of definition by context: the definition identifies the event of scratching by placing it in relation to another event, being itchy, whose meaning is assumed to be already known, and which is taken as a typical context for the definiendum.

Definition by typical exemplar is another example of this relational strategy: here, the definition is a list of typical examples or instances of the definiendum. If, given the German definiendum Vogel, I supply a list like ‘swans, robins, geese, hens, magpies, etc.’

Definition by genus and differentia

The two preceding types of definition are essentially relational, defining a word’s meaning through its connections with other words. They may often be workable as cognitive definitional strategies, but they are unlikely to be successful as extensional definitions.

According to Aristotle, definition involves specifying the broader class to which the definiendum belongs (often called the definiendum’s genus), and then showing the distinguishing feature of the definiendum (the differentia) which distinguishes it from the other members of this broader class.

A different kind of problem affects cognitive and extensional GD definitions equally, in those cases where it is not clear that the definiendum does belong to any broader class. Self and time are two possible examples.

Definition and substitutability

For most semantic theories, substitution of the definiens for the definiendum should be truth preserving in all contexts.

Substituting ‘keep in equilibrium’ into these sentences will change their register, and the resulting utterances will often sound considerably less idiomatic and more technical

(e.g. Now, children, you have to keep the egg inequilibrium on the spoon).

Preservation of truth is not the only possible criterion for the regulation of definitions. Instead, the criterion of preservation of meaning (in an infor-mal sense of this term) is also conceivable. On this view, a defnition is accepted if it can be substituted for the definiendum ‘with sense intact’ (salvosensu): if, that is, it involves neither addition nor loss of meaning with respect to the meaning of the definiendum. This suggestion raises an important problem, however: since it is the definitionitself that is supposed to reveal an expression’s meaning, the best way to determine that two words have the same meaning is to compare their definitions. Preservation of meaning as a criterion of definitional adequacy is therefore circular.

Semantic primitives

Impossible to give a definition of every word in a language using other words of the same language at some point the chain of definition must come to an end. Since the vocabulary of any language is limited, the metalanguage will eventually have to include object language definienda, thereby leaving some of the letter without independent definition. This is a problem for any attempt, such as thatade in linguistic semantic theories, to specify the meaning of every lexeme in language.

I give you hundred crowns, to be received from Titus, Titus will send you to Caius, Caius to Maevius, but if you prepetually sent on in this way you will never be said to have received anything. (Parkinson, 1973)

One of these was the conceptual theory of meaning, which identified meanings with concepts. Given such an identification, we can imagine several different possibilities for the relation between lexemes and concepts. The two concepts are, that is, semantic primitives, in spite of appearances, they cannot be completely broken down into anything conceptually simpler. Something approaching this view has been advocated by fodor, who argues for a lexicon where each lexical item is a semantic primitive or atom no internal definitional structure.

...I take semantic facts with full ontological, and I can't think of a better way to say what 'keep' means than to say that it meand keep. If as I suppose, the concept KEEP is an atom, it's hardly surprising that there's no better way to say what 'keep' means than to say it means 'keep'. I know of no reason, emprical or a priori, to suppose that the expressive power of English can be captured in a language whose stock of morphologically primitive expressions is interestingly smaller than the lexicon of english. (Fodor, 1998:55)

These semantic primitives are the basic building blocks of meaning out of which all other meanings can be constructed.

The belief that responsible semantic analysis must be grounded in a level of elementary, primitive units is implicity or explicity held bymany semantics (Filmore 1971, Jeckendoff 1983, Allan 2001). Example of theory semantics primitives in modern linguistics is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory of Wierzbicka and Goddard. List of semantic primitives which the NSM approach uses for the definition of meaning :

I, you, someone, people, something/thing, body; this, the same, other; one, two, some, all, much/many; good, bad; big, small; think know, want, feel, see, hear, say, words, true; do, happen, move; there is, have; live, die; when/time, now, before, after a long lime, a short time, for some time; where/place, here, above, below, far, near, side, inside; not, maybe, can, because, if; very, more; kind of, part of; like. (Goddard 2002: 4)

The semantic primitives can be used to define other members of the vocabulary of a language, the primitives themselves are immpossible to define in terms of anything simpler.

NSM theory claims that the indefinable nature of its primitives derives from their status as conceptual primitives, the primitives are hyphothesized in other words, to express the set of fundamental human concepts (Wierzbicka 1996: 13) considered to be both innate and universal. What this means is that every natural language prosseses an identical semantic core of primitive concepta from which all the other lexicalized concepts of the language can be built up.

Problemas with definition

One of the most frequent criticism of definitional theories of semantics is that no satisfying definition of a word has ever actually been formulated. The scepticism about the existence of definition is so widespread. In fact, that many researchers in disciplines closly related to linguistics, such as cognitive science and artificial inteligence, have completely abandoned the idea that definitions even exist the emphasis on definitions in linguistics  strikes many from these other disciplines as misguided. Many of the derive fromthe problems involved in a psychologistic interpretation of definition as concepts, in which  the structure of definition reflects the structure of the undelying concept. For example, the concept BACHELOR could be said to be the combination of the concept UNMERRIED and MAN in just the same way as the definition of bachelor might be thought to be 'unmerried man'.

A classic case of definition inadequency is the proposed 'definition' we have mentioned of bachelor as 'unmerried man' this is the type of definition found in many popular dictionaries. One problem here is there are many types of unmerried male, such as widowers, the pope and tarzan, whom we would not describe as bachelors. As result, 'unmerried male' is not substituble for bachelor salva veritate, and definition therefore fails. If a definer tries hard enough, satisfactory definitions can be achieved, it is just that no one has yet taken the time to do so. This is exactly the point made by Wierzbicka (1996). According to her, the true definitions of most ordinary words are significantly longer than the brief statements we are used to reading in dictionaries. Example imperfect first approximation definition of paint:

X painted Y with Z =

(a) X did something to Y

(b) like people do

(c) when they want something to look good

(d) when X did it

(e) X put some stuff Z on all parts of Y that one could see

(f) if someone looked at Z at that time

(g) this person could say what colour Z was

(h) at the same time, this person could think that part of Z was water

(i) X wanted Z to be like part of Y

(j) after X did it, Z was like part of Y. (Wierzbicka 1996)

As Wierzbicka points out, this definition is both longer, and structurally different from the type of definition familiar from dictionaries. It is essentially a definition by context, specifying 'a fairly complex scenario, with a number of temporal and causal links between the components'.

The proper ground rule to be that one expression defines another only if the two expressions are synonymous and take it to be a necessary condition for their synonymy that whatever one expression applies to, the other does too.

Under this view, a definition has to be substitutable for the definiendum in every single context. The infinite variety of language use, it would seem that any word can be used in any context as a result, a comprehensive definition would seem unattainable.

Definition, understanding and use

What is the point of defining meaning? In some domains of human activity, definition fuction as the guarantors of the consistency of language. This is particularly so in science and technology. I can define the meaning of 'water' extansionally as H2O, but if the addressee of the definition has no knowledge of chemistry this definitio will not be effective in bringing about an understanding of the word's meaning.

But definitions do take on a central role in language use if we take concepts are or to be essentially definition in nature, and assume that concepts are or enter into the meanings of words. If concepts correspond to word meanings, and word meanings can be captured in definition, then it is the definition which is in some sense actived during language use. To claim that definitions are involved in language use in this way is not to claim that they are involved 'consciously'. We may be quite able to use a word appropriately, without being able to phrase a satisfactory definition of it.

CHAPTER III

CLOSSING

CONCLUSION

The concept of a word’s meaning is closely linked to the concept of definition. Many linguists identify the task of linguistic semantics with the task of describing the entries stored in the mental lexicon, a stock of words and meanings stored in long-term memory: the definition of a word is part of its entry in the mental lexicon, and the process of matching a meaning with a word-form is assumed to be analogous to that involved in consulting a dictionary. In order to serve the purposes of serious linguistic description, the definitions in the lexicon must be much more detailed than is usual in ordinary dictionaries.

What units need to receive definition?

Any attempt to analyze the meanings of language must specify what the meaning-bearing units are. Individual lexemes are the central examples of units with individually describable meanings. Morphemes also have meanings, as do phrasal verbs and compounds. Ambiguities about the level of grammatical structure to which meaning is correctly attributed are not infrequent: sound symbolism and idioms exemplify cases where the correct level for the analysis of a meaning may not be clear.

Definition of the essence of a thing (real definition), or definition of the meaning of a word (nominal definition). Most linguists take nominal definition to be the type that is of interest to linguistic semantic research.  Cognitive and extensional definition A nominal definition may be of two types: Cognitive (aimed to inculcate an understanding of the word’s correct use), or Extensional (aimed at delimiting the denotation of the word).

Modes of definition Cognitive nominal definition can take a number of forms. It may beDefinition by ostension, Definition by synonymy,Definition by context or typical exemplar, orDefinition by genus and differentia.Often, definitions combine these means. Definitions are typically required to be truth-preserving under substitution for their defineendum.

REFERENCE

Allan, Keith. 1986. Linguistic meaning. London:Routledge and Kegan Paul

Carnap, R. 1942. Introduction to semantics, Cambridge, MA

Ullmann, Stephen. 1972. A basic kukatja to English dictionary.

Taylor, John. 2002. Cognitive grammar, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Nick Riemer, Introducing semantic, Cambridge

“ MEANING AND DEFINITION “

MEMBERS OF GROUP :

VIVI AZHARA (2317059)

FARDILA YOLANDA (2317070)

RONA DIALESTARI (2317072)

NURTIS SOLIHAT (2317073)

FATMAWATI (2317076)

INTAN RATU FADILLA (2317081)

LECTURE :

DR. IRWANDI NASHIR M.PD

STATE ISLAMIC INSTITUTE OF BUKITTINGGI

FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TEACHER TRAINING

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

2019M/1441H

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.         Background

            Meaning and Defenition, focuses on defenition and the part it playsin how we understand and describe meaning. Riemerfirst  discuses the differencess between different conceptions of defeintions, such as those found insemanticsvs those found in lexicography. He also introduces the concept of themental lexicography. He also intoduces the concept of themental lexicon. He then goes no to introduce basic units of meaning :word,morphemes, and also onomatopoeia and idioms. After discussing the effect of context on meaning and the idea of compositionality, this paper into the meatof the discussion and looks at deifferent ways to define meanings: real andnominaldefenitions, and defenition by ostension, context, exemplars, and genus. He also discussion substitutability as a measure of accuracy for defenitions, aswell as problems with defeitions and the influence of usage on definitions.

B.    Problem

Based on the problems describe in the background. So it can be formulated problems in this study are as follows:

-       What is meaning and definition

-       What other aspects of the meaning and use of pour are not made explicit by the quote definition?

-       Would it be possible to eliminate these uncertainties purely ostensively? If so, how? If not, why?

-       Can you think of other words for which a GD definition seems difficult? What cause the difficulty?

C.    Purpose

The purpose of writing this paper is :

1.     Explained about meaning and the dictionary

2.     Explained about the units of meaning

3.     Explained about different ways of defining meanings

BAB II

DISCUSSION

1. Meaning and Dictionary

The conceptof a word`s meaning is closely linked to the concept of definition, which was first made explicit in Greek philosophy by Aristotle. Defenitions have been particuarly important for conceptual theories of meaning. A result, an understanding of definition is necessary for any attempt to develop a conceptual theory of word meaning. Furthermore, when people think of a word`s maning, they are inclined to think of something like its definition in a dictionary.

1.     Semantics and Lexicography

Semantics is the linguistic and philosophical studyof meaning in language, programming languages, formal logics and semiotic. It is concerned with the relationship between signifiers-like words, phrases,signs,and symbols and what they stand for reality, their denotation.

Lexicography is the process of writing,editing,and/or compiling a dictionary.

In process of matchng a meaning with a word is analogous to that involved in consulting a dictionary. Just as language-learner discovers the meaning of an unknown word by looking it up in dictionary, yhe production and understanding of ordinary speech is conceived of as a process of matching between stored word-forms and the stored meaning representations associated with them in long-term memory. Like dictionary definitions, these meaning representations are imagined as discrete and relatively fixed. And just as dictionaries aim for a maximum degree of concision, it has been assumed that the mental lexicon also seeks the most efficient, least redundant listing of lexemes` meaning.

Example: shall I pour

1. a)  I was pouring the tea when the phone rang.

b) They were pouring the concrete when the phone rang

2. a)   I was pouring the rainwater when the phone rang.

b)     I was pouring the mud when the phone rang.

3. a)   I was pouring the raintwater over the ground when the phone

b)     I was pouring the mud down the hole when the phone rang

Furthermore, the dictionary is silent about the conditions under which pour in sense one is usually followed by a preposition or prepositional phrase. Whereas 1a and 1b are quite acceptable without  any following propositional phrase, 2a and 2b seem more questionable, whereas 3a and 3b are perfectly acceptable.

Word-based and meaning-based approaches to definition

The definitions found in dictionaries are the result of a word-based, or semasiological approach to meaning. This sort of approach starts with a language’s individual lexemes, and tries to specify the meaning of each one. This is not the only possibility, however, for the analysis of meaning in linguistics. The other approach, the onomasiological one, has the opposite logic: start with a particular meaning, and list the various forms available in the language for its expression. Thus, whereas a semasiological analysis would start with a list of verbs, say scare, frighten, terrify, startle, spook, and panic, and specify a slightly different meaning for each (startle, for instance,referring to a considerably weaker form of alarm than panic), an onomasiological analysis would start with a general concept, FRIGHTEN, and list all of these verbs as its possible realizations. The difference between the two approaches corresponds to the difference between a dictionary and a thesaurus. As a semasiological tool, a dictionary is a list of words, and one accesses meanings through words. A thesaurus, on the other hand, is a list of concepts: for a particular concept, the thesaurus gives access to the different words through which the concept could be expressed.Semasiological and onomasiological analysis are in no way exclusive: the semasiological approach emphasizes differences between lexemes, the onomasiological one similarities. Furthermore, both are necessary to a full description of the processes underlying communication. A complete description of linguistic performance will show how a speaker achieves the mapping between the concept or meaning she wishes to express and the word forms actually chosen: given the need to express the concept or meaning FRIGHTEN, for example, what are the onomasiological principles according to which one of the possible verbs listed above is chosen? For the hearer, however, a semasiological approach is called for. Hearing or reading the word frightenin a particular context, what is the meaning which the hearer will assign to this verb?

2. The Units Of Meaning

                          I.          Words and Morphemes

What is the word? Ferdinan de Saussure said that a word is like a coin because it has two sides to it that can never be separated. One side of this metaphorical coin is the form of a word: the sounds (or letters) that combine to make the spoken or written word. The other side of the coin is the meaning of the word: the image or concept we have in our mind when we use the word. So a word is something that a given form with a given meaning.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unitin a language. A morpheme is not identical to a word. The main difference between them is that a morphem sometimes does not stand alone, but a word, by definition, always stands alone.

Ex:

·       “Unbreakable” is composed of three morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme signifying “not”), -break- (the root, a free morpheme), and –able (a free morpheme signifing “can be done’)

·       Allomorphs of the plural morpheme for regular nouns: /s/ (e.g. in cats /kæts/), /ɪz, əz/ (e.g. in dishes /dɪʃɪz/), and /z/ (e.g. in dogs /dɒɡz/).

Meaning Below the Morpheme : Sound Symbolism

            The question of what level of grammatical sructure a meaning should be attributed to may often be problematic, and boundary cases, where meanings seem to straddle several different grammatical units, occur quite frequently. One such boundary case is sound symbolis, ( also known as ideophony or onomatopoeia ). This is existence of semi-systematic corespondences between of the individual morpheme, such as English clas, clang, clatter, etc.  Such associations may sometimes have a clear imitative basis, as with English click, thwack,meow, etc. Sond symbolism is by no means limited to English, of course. In Ilocano (Cordilleran, Philippines), for instance,a high front vowel is often used in words denoing high pitched sounds, like :

           

            singgit ‘high pitched voice’ : sing-i ‘sobbing (of a child)’ ; sultip ‘whistle’; riri ‘whimper’ (Rubino 2001:304).

            Here the choice of vowel imitates the characteristic timbre of the sound referred to. Similarly, the alveolar fricative is often found nword representing rustling sounds or the sound of water:

-       Karasaka ‘rustling sound of leaves’

-       Saraisi ‘sound of rippling water’

-       Barasabas ‘sound of heavy rain’

            A possible connection might be discerned here between theacoustic quality of the fricative and irregular, sound of the refeent. But theimitative basis of such associations is often lessobvious,at east to English speakers. For example,docments the fact that many words indicating ‘smallness’ contain kp in Emain 9 Niger-congo, Nigeria):

            Kpuku‘pointed’ :small,compact and round, short

            Kpdo‘round’ : small, circular and supple, proportional

            Kpeke ‘petit’: small,thin, short.

            In all cases we have a sound-meaning correspondence which existsbelowthe level of the individual mopheme. Neither the high front vowel nor the alveolar fricative in Ilocano, nor kp in Emacan, formally, be considered as individual morphemes,since once cannot remove them from the ideophonic words in the (examples) and retain possible roots to which other morphemes could attach.

Meanings Above the Word Level : Idioms

            Idioms constitute another boundary case where it is not clear what the correct level is for the chracterization of meaning. we defined idioms asnon-compositional phrases-phrases like throw in the towel whose overall meaning is not the same as the combined meaning of the individual parts. However, it is often possible to advance an interpretation of the individual words of an idiom which removes its idiomatic or non-comositionalcharacer.

            For example, the english idiom “to scoop the pool”, which means something like ‘to winor gain everything’ with the entire unit scoop the pool, without trying to break the phrase down further. Neverthless, if we imagine scoop as having a meaning like ‘quickly gather up a large quantity ofsomething in a single movement’, and pool as meaning ‘the entire set o available items’. Then the arbitrarines and non-compositionality of the expressionis reduced, and the interpretation ‘win or gain everything’can follow unproblemaically from the combined meanings of the expression’s elements. The fact that a variety of possible interpretations is availabe for each component of theidiom, with consequent defferences in the overall interpretation of the expresion,only adds to the ambiguity. Thus, other speakers of English might associate scoop with a scoop in jounalism (a news story abtained exclusively by a single journalist), while others might analyse pool as in some way referring to a body of water.

            As we have been using the term, an idiom is non-compositional combination of words. But if we define an idiom as a non-compositional combination of morpheme, then idiom can also exist on the sublexical level. In following xample from Lakota (Siouan, Mississippi Valley; Rankin et al.2002: 181-182), a noun stem ‘heart’ is compounded with the verb stem meaning ‘be good’; the meaning of the resulting compound, ‘I made him/her angry”, is in no way simply the combination of individual meanings of its component morphemes :  Heart-be, good = I made him/her angry.

Contextual Modulation Of Meaning

The examples of noun-incorporation we have just seen show the meaning of words and other morphemes varying according to their collocation, the immediate linguistic context in which they occur. This sort of variation is found throughout language. We can see a similar phenomenon in English, where the meanings of verbs seem to vary slightly depending on the noun which they govern. If I cut my foot, for example, I am doing something that is rather different from what I am doing when I cut the grass, or when I cut a cake, cut someone’s hair, cut the wood, cut a diamond, cut a deck ofcards, cut a disc or cut a notch. The nature of the event, the means by which it is accomplished, its typical object, and the extent to which it is deliberate may all vary in these different uses. The degree of semantic ‘distance’ gets even greater if we consider more ‘extended’ meanings, like cut a deal, cut corners,

cut a paragraph or cut prices.

The following two possibilities gives the best semantic description of English:

·       One which lists the meanings of cut, foot, grass, cake, hair, etc., and sees the specific meanings of the collocations cut one’s foot, cut the grass, cut a cake, etc. as derived compositionally from the meanings of the parts; or

·       One which just lists all the different collocations in which cut appears, and specifies a different meaning for the entire collocation?

First Possibility: Compositionality

The first possibility is that the meanings of cut one’s foot, cut the grass, cut a Cake, etc. result compositionally from the meaning of the verb cut and themeanings of its noun objects. The meaning of cut the grass just is the meaningof cut combined with the meaning of grass. This might work in one ofTwo ways.

·       The general meaning hypothesis: Cut might have the same vagueor General meaning in all its different collocations: it refers to some act of accomplishing a material breach in a surface, with the particular details of each type of breach being inferred by the listener, rather than being built into the meaning of the verb itself.

Alternatively,

·       The multiple meaning hypothesis: Cut might have a separate meaning In each collocation: the cut in cut one’s foot has its own entry in the Mental lexicon.

Problems with the general meaning hypothesis The problem with the first option is that describing this common core of general meaning supposedly present in all cases of cut is not necessarily an easy matter. The Concise Oxford 2004 edition gives ‘make an opening, incision,

or wound with a sharp tool or object’ as its definition, but this is not involved when someone cuts butter, for example, nor when a whip cuts someone’s flesh :

The cutting object in these situations need not be sharp. Perhaps, then, we need to dismiss these uses as in some way special or extended and therefore absolve them from the scope of the vague definition:

Perhaps ‘make an opening, incision, or wound with a sharp tool or object’ will work for all the others. Even if it does, though, we still have a problem: the definition does not adequately distinguish cut from chop, slit, stab or unpick: to chop a sausage, slit a letter, stab someone’s side or unpick a seam is equally to ‘make an opening, incision, or wound with a sharp tool or object’, but we could not also describe these actions as cutting.

Problems with the multiple meaning hypothesisThe second option is to propose multiple meanings for cut, a separate one for each collocation. In cut one’s foot, for example, cut could be described as meaning something like ‘partially breach a surface with a sharp instrument, typically accidentally :

when one cuts one’s foot, one typically does not detach one’s foot from the rest of the body. In cut the grass, and cut someone’s hair, on the other hand, the verb conveys the meaning of more than just a partial breach in the surface of the object: the meaning of these collocations is that one part of the object is completely detached from the rest. Now consider cut a notch: here the object is brought into being by the action of the verb: if I cut a notch into a stick, the notch did not exist before I created it. As a result, the meaning of cut in cut a notch could be paraphrased as ‘create by breaching with a sharp instrument’, an entirely different meaning from that found in the other collocations, which all presuppose the prior existence of the object being cut. Again, when we talk of a whip cutting someone’s skin, we have the meaning of breach to a surface, as in cutting one’s foot, but without the usual element of ‘sharp object’: being made of leather, whips are not normally considered as sharp.

List of different meanings of cut:

·       Partially breach surface with a sharp instrument, typically accidentally

·       Create by partially breaching the surface with a sharp instrument

·       Detach one part of object from another with one’s hands

·       Detach one part of object from another with a sharp instrument etc.

These will all have highly specific Collocation restrictions:

The meaning ‘partially breach surface with a sharp instrument, typically accidentally, for example, will be a very likely sense of cut in collocation with foot, but not with cake: cutting a cake is usually an entirely deliberate action.

The first is the sheer number of the different senses to be attributed to cut. Since the action of cutting in each of the examples in question is slightly different, we seem to need a very large range of different senses. While it is clearly impossible to define the meaning of cut in just a single paraphrase extended meanings like cut text, cut a disc, etc.

The second problem is related: given this variety of different possible meanings of cut, how does the correct specific meaning get chosen in a given case? How does a hearer know that the appropriate interpretation of cut in cut a deck of cards is ‘detach one part of object from another with one’s hands’ and not ‘create by partially breaching the integrity of a surface with a sharp instrument’? The second option would clearly be wrong, and our theory of the meaning of the expressions needs some way to exclude it.

Second possibility: non-compositionality

This avoids several of the problems of the compositional solution:

·       We do not have to advance a general definition of cut that will work in every context, as we do in the general-meaning version of the compositional solution

·       We do not have the problem of word-sense disambiguation, since each collocation carries its own definition.

Here is another consideration in favour of non-compositionality. It is not just cut whose meaning is determined by its collocation environment: the collocation also determines what reading is operative for cut’s object. Thus, English speakers know that cutting the grass refers to the grown grass blades, whereas planting the grass refers to grass seeds or shoots, and smoking grass refers to the leaves of a completely different plant.

Figure 2.1:Options for analyzing collocations

cut a cake                                           

cut someone’s hair                                                                 cut has the same vague/general

cut the wood               compositional meaning                      meaning in every collocation

 

cut a diamond                                    

cut a deck of cards                                                                 cut has a different meaning in

cut a disc                    non-compositional                             every collocation                   

meaning

cut a notch,

etc.

These arguments are obviously shaped by many assumptions about the nature and limits of linguistic competence. In the absence of a clear understanding of how the brain actually doesprocess and store language, linguists have assumed that their description of assumed linguistic

competence should reflect the same criteria of economy and non-redundancy that operate in real paper dictionaries. Thus, much linguistic research has assumed that the mental lexicon does not contain a huge number of independently listed entries, but that it extracts the maximum number of generalizations about the meaning of a verb like cut across all its collocation contexts, in order to present the most economical, least redundant entry. As a result, it has been the topmost solution in Figure 2.1 that has traditionally been considered preferable.

Differents ways of defining meaning

1.     Real and nominal definition.

posterior analytics, a treatise devoted to the explanation of the structure of scientific knowledge. A definition can therefore be considered either as a sort of summation of the essence or inherent nature of a thing (real definition latinres’thing) or as a description of the meaning of the word (nominal definition latinnomen’name,noun’).

The situation which promp people to utter speech, include every object and happening in their universe. In order to give a scientifically accurate definition of meaning for every form of a language, we should have to have a scientifically accurate knowledge of everything in the speakers’world.  We can define the names of minerals, for example, in terms of chemistry and mineralogy, as when we say that the ordinary meaning of the English word salt is ‘sodium chloride’ (NaCI).

            Linguistics should appeal to technical scientific disciplines in formulating definitions, the true meaning of natural language word. according to bloomfield, it to be identified with yhe scientific ‘definition’ or best possible teory of its denotation. As a result, whenever a scientifically establisheddefinition of a denotation is missing,there is simply, nothing that linguistics can say with any certainly about the word’s meaning. Many actual definitions aspire to fulfill both these function simultaneously. The two functions are, however, rather different, and they should be kept apart..in order to differentiate between them, let us call the first type of definition extensional definition, and the second type cognitive definition.

2.     Definition by ostension.

The most obvious way to define many words is, simply, by ostension, or by pointing out the objects which they denotate. In soite of the apparent obviousness of this method, it is beset by difficulties. None of these  question can, in fact, be settled by obstensive definition: every attempt to make the devinition more precise ostensivelly would give rise to a new set of question.

The only way to overcome the problems of ostensive definition would seem to be to use language itself as the medium in which definitions can be phrased.

3.     Definition by synonym.

to define words by providing synonyms, in either the same language as the world being defined or in a different one. Thus , one could give mad and furious as English definition of angry, and kulu as a walpri one. The problem with this strategy is that it is usually possible to challenge the identity between the difiniens and the definiendum.s

Definition by context or typical exemplar

Another way to define a word is to situate it in a system of wider relations through which the specificity of the definiendum can be seen.

This is an example of definition by context: the definition identifies the event of scratching by placing it in relation to another event, being itchy, whose meaning is assumed to be already known, and which is taken as a typical context for the definiendum.

Definition by typical exemplar is another example of this relational strategy: here, the definition is a list of typical examples or instances of the definiendum. If, given the German definiendum Vogel, I supply a list like ‘swans, robins, geese, hens, magpies, etc.’

Definition by genus and differentia

The two preceding types of definition are essentially relational, defining a word’s meaning through its connections with other words. They may often be workable as cognitive definitional strategies, but they are unlikely to be successful as extensional definitions.

According to Aristotle, definition involves specifying the broader class to which the definiendum belongs (often called the definiendum’s genus), and then showing the distinguishing feature of the definiendum (the differentia) which distinguishes it from the other members of this broader class.

A different kind of problem affects cognitive and extensional GD definitions equally, in those cases where it is not clear that the definiendum does belong to any broader class. Self and time are two possible examples.

Definition and substitutability

For most semantic theories, substitution of the definiens for the definiendum should be truth preserving in all contexts.

Substituting ‘keep in equilibrium’ into these sentences will change their register, and the resulting utterances will often sound considerably less idiomatic and more technical

(e.g. Now, children, you have to keep the egg inequilibrium on the spoon).

Preservation of truth is not the only possible criterion for the regulation of definitions. Instead, the criterion of preservation of meaning (in an infor-mal sense of this term) is also conceivable. On this view, a defnition is accepted if it can be substituted for the definiendum ‘with sense intact’ (salvosensu): if, that is, it involves neither addition nor loss of meaning with respect to the meaning of the definiendum. This suggestion raises an important problem, however: since it is the definitionitself that is supposed to reveal an expression’s meaning, the best way to determine that two words have the same meaning is to compare their definitions. Preservation of meaning as a criterion of definitional adequacy is therefore circular.

Semantic primitives

Impossible to give a definition of every word in a language using other words of the same language at some point the chain of definition must come to an end. Since the vocabulary of any language is limited, the metalanguage will eventually have to include object language definienda, thereby leaving some of the letter without independent definition. This is a problem for any attempt, such as thatade in linguistic semantic theories, to specify the meaning of every lexeme in language.

I give you hundred crowns, to be received from Titus, Titus will send you to Caius, Caius to Maevius, but if you prepetually sent on in this way you will never be said to have received anything. (Parkinson, 1973)

One of these was the conceptual theory of meaning, which identified meanings with concepts. Given such an identification, we can imagine several different possibilities for the relation between lexemes and concepts. The two concepts are, that is, semantic primitives, in spite of appearances, they cannot be completely broken down into anything conceptually simpler. Something approaching this view has been advocated by fodor, who argues for a lexicon where each lexical item is a semantic primitive or atom no internal definitional structure.

...I take semantic facts with full ontological, and I can't think of a better way to say what 'keep' means than to say that it meand keep. If as I suppose, the concept KEEP is an atom, it's hardly surprising that there's no better way to say what 'keep' means than to say it means 'keep'. I know of no reason, emprical or a priori, to suppose that the expressive power of English can be captured in a language whose stock of morphologically primitive expressions is interestingly smaller than the lexicon of english. (Fodor, 1998:55)

These semantic primitives are the basic building blocks of meaning out of which all other meanings can be constructed.

The belief that responsible semantic analysis must be grounded in a level of elementary, primitive units is implicity or explicity held bymany semantics (Filmore 1971, Jeckendoff 1983, Allan 2001). Example of theory semantics primitives in modern linguistics is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory of Wierzbicka and Goddard. List of semantic primitives which the NSM approach uses for the definition of meaning :

I, you, someone, people, something/thing, body; this, the same, other; one, two, some, all, much/many; good, bad; big, small; think know, want, feel, see, hear, say, words, true; do, happen, move; there is, have; live, die; when/time, now, before, after a long lime, a short time, for some time; where/place, here, above, below, far, near, side, inside; not, maybe, can, because, if; very, more; kind of, part of; like. (Goddard 2002: 4)

The semantic primitives can be used to define other members of the vocabulary of a language, the primitives themselves are immpossible to define in terms of anything simpler.

NSM theory claims that the indefinable nature of its primitives derives from their status as conceptual primitives, the primitives are hyphothesized in other words, to express the set of fundamental human concepts (Wierzbicka 1996: 13) considered to be both innate and universal. What this means is that every natural language prosseses an identical semantic core of primitive concepta from which all the other lexicalized concepts of the language can be built up.

Problemas with definition

One of the most frequent criticism of definitional theories of semantics is that no satisfying definition of a word has ever actually been formulated. The scepticism about the existence of definition is so widespread. In fact, that many researchers in disciplines closly related to linguistics, such as cognitive science and artificial inteligence, have completely abandoned the idea that definitions even exist the emphasis on definitions in linguistics  strikes many from these other disciplines as misguided. Many of the derive fromthe problems involved in a psychologistic interpretation of definition as concepts, in which  the structure of definition reflects the structure of the undelying concept. For example, the concept BACHELOR could be said to be the combination of the concept UNMERRIED and MAN in just the same way as the definition of bachelor might be thought to be 'unmerried man'.

A classic case of definition inadequency is the proposed 'definition' we have mentioned of bachelor as 'unmerried man' this is the type of definition found in many popular dictionaries. One problem here is there are many types of unmerried male, such as widowers, the pope and tarzan, whom we would not describe as bachelors. As result, 'unmerried male' is not substituble for bachelor salva veritate, and definition therefore fails. If a definer tries hard enough, satisfactory definitions can be achieved, it is just that no one has yet taken the time to do so. This is exactly the point made by Wierzbicka (1996). According to her, the true definitions of most ordinary words are significantly longer than the brief statements we are used to reading in dictionaries. Example imperfect first approximation definition of paint:

X painted Y with Z =

(a) X did something to Y

(b) like people do

(c) when they want something to look good

(d) when X did it

(e) X put some stuff Z on all parts of Y that one could see

(f) if someone looked at Z at that time

(g) this person could say what colour Z was

(h) at the same time, this person could think that part of Z was water

(i) X wanted Z to be like part of Y

(j) after X did it, Z was like part of Y. (Wierzbicka 1996)

As Wierzbicka points out, this definition is both longer, and structurally different from the type of definition familiar from dictionaries. It is essentially a definition by context, specifying 'a fairly complex scenario, with a number of temporal and causal links between the components'.

The proper ground rule to be that one expression defines another only if the two expressions are synonymous and take it to be a necessary condition for their synonymy that whatever one expression applies to, the other does too.

Under this view, a definition has to be substitutable for the definiendum in every single context. The infinite variety of language use, it would seem that any word can be used in any context as a result, a comprehensive definition would seem unattainable.

Definition, understanding and use

What is the point of defining meaning? In some domains of human activity, definition fuction as the guarantors of the consistency of language. This is particularly so in science and technology. I can define the meaning of 'water' extansionally as H2O, but if the addressee of the definition has no knowledge of chemistry this definitio will not be effective in bringing about an understanding of the word's meaning.

But definitions do take on a central role in language use if we take concepts are or to be essentially definition in nature, and assume that concepts are or enter into the meanings of words. If concepts correspond to word meanings, and word meanings can be captured in definition, then it is the definition which is in some sense actived during language use. To claim that definitions are involved in language use in this way is not to claim that they are involved 'consciously'. We may be quite able to use a word appropriately, without being able to phrase a satisfactory definition of it.

CHAPTER III

CLOSSING

CONCLUSION

The concept of a word’s meaning is closely linked to the concept of definition. Many linguists identify the task of linguistic semantics with the task of describing the entries stored in the mental lexicon, a stock of words and meanings stored in long-term memory: the definition of a word is part of its entry in the mental lexicon, and the process of matching a meaning with a word-form is assumed to be analogous to that involved in consulting a dictionary. In order to serve the purposes of serious linguistic description, the definitions in the lexicon must be much more detailed than is usual in ordinary dictionaries.

What units need to receive definition?

Any attempt to analyze the meanings of language must specify what the meaning-bearing units are. Individual lexemes are the central examples of units with individually describable meanings. Morphemes also have meanings, as do phrasal verbs and compounds. Ambiguities about the level of grammatical structure to which meaning is correctly attributed are not infrequent: sound symbolism and idioms exemplify cases where the correct level for the analysis of a meaning may not be clear.

Definition of the essence of a thing (real definition), or definition of the meaning of a word (nominal definition). Most linguists take nominal definition to be the type that is of interest to linguistic semantic research.  Cognitive and extensional definition A nominal definition may be of two types: Cognitive (aimed to inculcate an understanding of the word’s correct use), or Extensional (aimed at delimiting the denotation of the word).

Modes of definition Cognitive nominal definition can take a number of forms. It may beDefinition by ostension, Definition by synonymy,Definition by context or typical exemplar, orDefinition by genus and differentia.Often, definitions combine these means. Definitions are typically required to be truth-preserving under substitution for their defineendum.

REFERENCE

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Carnap, R. 1942. Introduction to semantics, Cambridge, MA

Ullmann, Stephen. 1972. A basic kukatja to English dictionary.

Taylor, John. 2002. Cognitive grammar, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Nick Riemer, Introducing semantic, Cambridge