Makalah Semantic And Pragmantic About Approaches To Study Of Semantic

THE PAPER OF SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC
ABOUT APPROACHES TO STUDY OF SEMANTIC

Lecturer : Ms. Sri Suci Suryawati, M.Pd







Compiled by :
ARNILAH 1611040223
FATIMAH 1611040204
M LIZAIPI 1611040239
REFATIA MARSELA 1611040229

Group 2
6/D


ENGLISH EDUCATION PROGRAM
THE FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TEACHER TRAINING
THE STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF RADEN INTAN LAMPUNG
THE YEAR 2019/2020

PREFACE 

Alhamdulillahirrobilalamiin, Praise be to the Almighty Allah SWT who has given His blesss to the writers for finishing the English paper assignment entitled “Approaches To Study Of Semantic”. We bestow to our prophet Muhammad SAW who brings us from darkness into lightness days.

The purpose in writing this paper is to fulfill the assignment that given by Ms. Sri Suci Suryawati, M.Pd as lecturer in Semantic/Pragmatic.

The writers also wish to express their deep and sincere gratitude for those who have guided in completing this paper. The English paper is written in the hopes that studying English as a second language may be more easily to get knowledge from the materials given.

Bandar Lampung, March 17st, 2019



Writers

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER
PREFACE........................................................................................................... i
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................... ii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Background............................................................................................... 1
B. The Formula of Problem............................................................................ 2
C. Writing Purpose......................................................................................... 2

CHAPTER II DISCUSSION
A. Traditional Approach to Meaning............................................................. 3
B. Classical Approach in Semantic................................................................ 5
C. Generative Approach to Semantic............................................................ 10
D. Behaviourism Approach to Semantic........................................................ 11

CHAPTER III CLOSING
A. Conclusion................................................................................................. 14

REFERENCES

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background

Semantics, the area of linguistic study that concerns itself with the study of meaning is a complex aspect in language study. It studies meaning and up till now, no one has been able to come up with satisfactory definitions of “the meaning of meaning”. There are other complexities that surround the study of semantics but for this study, we will critically examine the approaches to the study of Semantics. This will be done with a view of enlightening readers on these approaches.

It has been duly noted that the study of meaning in language has interested not only the linguists but the philosophers, psychologists, scientists, anthropologists and sociologists. Scholars have long puzzle dover what words mean or what they represent, or how they are related to reality. They have at times wondered whether words are more real than objects, and they have striven to find the essential meanings of words. It has also being debated that meaning can be approached from different angles. Indeed knowledge about semantics has been cumulative, developing from the earliest times to the modern period. This means that the study of semantics can be carried out on a historical basis.

The approach leads to the introduction of extended interpretations which are more expressive than Herbrand interpretations. The semantics in terms of extended interpretations can be obtained as a result of both an operational (top-down) and a fixpoint (bottom-up) construction. It can also be characterized from the model-theoretic viewpoint, by defining a set of extende models which contains standard Herbrand models. We discuss the original construction modeling computed answer substitutions, its compositional version, and various semantics modeling more concrete observables. We then show how the approach can be applied to several extensions of positive logic programs. We finally consider some applications, mainly in the area of semantics-based program transformation and analysis.

B. Formula of Problem

1. What is Traditional Approach to Meaning ?
2. What is Classical Approach in Semantic ?
3. What is Generative Approach to Semantic ?
4. What is Behaviourism Approach to Semantic ?

C. Purpose

1. To know what is Traditional Approach to Meaning ?
2. To know what is Classical Approach in Semantic ?
3. To know what is Generative Approach to Semantic ?
4. To know what is Behaviourism Approach to Semantic ?

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A. Traditional Approaches to Meaning
Semantics is the study of (‘grammatical’) meaning in language. In studying semantics, we can draw a distinction between the meaning(s) attributed to the individual word and that/those in or of larger syntactic units.

1. Analysis of Meaning
The study of word meaning constitutes the more traditional approach to semantics which can be traced back to Aristotle and assumes that it is possible to categorise words (or concepts) according to sets of necessary and sufficient features. It is essentially ‘paradigmatic’ in nature, as it contrasts the semantic content of individual words in terms of their individual meaning components, as we shall see further below. For that purpose, it applies a technique known as componential analysis, which attempts to identify salient features of meaning (in analogy to the features we’ll later encounter when we talk about phonology).
In contrast to this, the analysis of meaning in context can be seen as more ‘syntagmatic’. Here, sometimes a further distinction is made between ‘sentence meaning’ and ‘utterance meaning’, where the former refers to the literal meaning of the words as they are uttered and the latter to their meaning in context, i.e. how they are meant to be interpreted in this particular context. However, the second type may also be seen as belonging to the realm of pragmatics, rather than semantics. We’ll largely focus on the analysis of word meaning in our discussions, although we’ll also look at some issues in contextual meaning. 

2.    Hyponymy
This relation is important for describing nouns, but it also figures in the description of verbs (see Chapter 4) and, to a lesser extent, adjectives. It is concerned with the labelling of sub-categories of a word’s denotation. For example, a house is one kind of building, and a factory and a church are other kinds of building; buildings are one kind of structure; dams are another kind of structure. The sentence with the hyponym entails the corresponding sentence with the superordinate replacing it, but the entailment goes one way only – not from the sentence containing the superordinate. This generalisation is not watertight. There are some other conditions that would have to be stated, for instance the sentences must not be negative. If we knew that it was true that there isn’t a building next to the gate, then we could be sure that (talking about the same gate at the same time) there isn’t a house next to the gate. Because of the negative, n’t, the entailment goes the other way round: from the sentence with the superodinate to the corresponding one with the hyponym. Incidentally, this highlights the fact that there being a building by the gate is a necessary condition for there to be a house by the gate. If there is no building at the gate, then there cannot be a house there. Intuitively it is reasonable to say that ‘building’ is a component of the meaning of house: a house is a ‘building for living in’. Prototypicality has to be brought into consideration for the hasrelation, but is not needed for hyponymy.

3. Synonymy
Synonymy is an instance of mutual entailment, and synonyms are instances of mutual hyponymy. Large is a hyponym of big, for example, and big is a hyponym of large.
If we join two of these sentences with and,

• The rock is large and (it is) big.

we create a tautology. If we combine two of them but have them differ in polarity,

• The train traveled fast but (it did) not (travel) rapidly.

the result is a contradiction.
Two sentences which are paraphrases may differ this way:

• Mr Jenkins is our postman.
• Mr Jenkins is the person who delivers our mail.

Here the complex term person who delivers (our) mail is a paraphrase of the simpler term (our) postman, but we do not call it a synonym. Synonyms are typically single lexemes of the same weight. The longer term explains the simpler term, but not the other way around. As we learn a language, we often acquire simple terms like postman through some sort of paraphrase.
Dictionaries typically provide a number of synonyms for at least some of the lexemes they define, and in fact there are whole dictionaries of synonyms. But synonymy is not a simple matter, for two lexemes never have the same range of syntactic occurrences, and even where they share occurrences and make predications about the same class of referring expressions, they are likely to differ in what they suggest. It would be wasteful for a language to have two terms that occur in exactly the same contexts and with exactly the same sense.

B. The classical approach in semantics
In dealing with syntactic and semantic categories, many linguists have adopted a feature approach which parallels in many respects the assumptions, and even the notation and terminology, of the phonologists. (For instance, a notational convention, taken over from phonology, is the practice of writing features in small capitals and enclosing them between square brackets.) At work here is what has been called, in a different context, the 'structural analogy assumption.
This is simply the assumption, familiar from much post-Saussurian work, that wc should expect that the same structural properties recur at different levels. Structural properties which arc postulated as being unique to a particular level arc unexpected and suspicious if unsupported by firm evidence of their unique appropriateness in that particular instance. (Anderson and Durand 1986: 3). If the categories of phonology can be represented by features which arc binary, primitive, universal, abstract, and innate, then it is only to be expected that the categories of syntax (e.g. lexical categories like NOUN, VERB, ADJECTIVE) and semantics (i.e. in the main, word meanings) can also be represented by features which are likewise binary, primitive, universal, abstract, and innate. Indeed, it is not unusual for a linguist to model a feature approach in syntax and semantics explicitly on principles already worked out in phonology. Characteristically, Chomsky (1965: 81) introduces his account of syntactic features by a brief review of the role of features in phonology.
We shall postpone to later chapters a discussion of syntax, and focus here on semantic categories, i.e. on word meanings. An analysis of semantic categories on lines already familiar to us from phonology has been pursued within the transformational-generative paradigm by scholars such as Katz (e.g. Katz and Fodor 1963; Katz and Postal 1964) and Bierwisch (1967, 1970); also (under the name 'componential analysis') by non-generativists such as Nida (1975) and Leech (1981). Let us illustrate with a well-known example—the word bachelor in the sense "man who has never married". Katz and Postal (1964: 13 f.) represent the meaning of this word in terms of four semantic features/ namely [HUMAN], [MALE], [ADULT], and [NEVER MARRIED]. These four features together define the essence of bachelorhood. In line with (1), any entity in the world which exhibits these four features can be correctly designated by the word bachelor; if any (or all) of the four features is missing, or has the wrong value—if an entity is [FEMALE] or [-ADULT]—then the entity does not qualify for bachelorhood.
The 'empirical' justification of a feature approach to semantic categories appeals essentially to the same kinds of argument that were used in phonology, namely, the fact that features enable the linguist to make economical and insightful statements about the structure of a language. There are three ways in which a feature approach pays off. Firstly, one is able to state the proportional relations which exist within the lexicon. The words bachelor and spinster are obviously related, just as, in a different way, the phonemes /f/ and /v/ are related. Furthermore, the relationship between bachelor and spinster parallels the way the other pairs of words are related, e.g. boy and girl, husband and wife, uncle and aunt, and so on. These word pairs contrast in that one member of the pair has the feature [MALE], while the other is [FEMALE]. Otherwise, the feature specifications for the two words are identical. With a feature analysis we can capture other kinds of relations between words, e.g. relations of inclusion and hyponymy. The meaning of the word man, with the features [HUMAN], [ADULT], and [MALE], is included in the meaning of bachelor. Man is superordinate to bachelor, bachelor is a hyponym, i.e. is subordinate to man.
The second advantage is that features make it possible to define natural classes of items. Thus [HUMAN] defines the class of human nouns, while [-ANIMATE] defines the class of inanimate nouns. Classes such as these are involved in the statement of selection restrictions, i.e. restrictions on the way words may be combined together into phrases. Not any noun, for instance, can be made the subject (or object) of a given verb. The semantic specification of a verb needs to state the class of nouns which may function as its subject. We cannot say 'Sincerity admires John, since admire requires as its subject a noun which is [+HUMAN]. Similarly, for adjective-noun combinations, there must be a congruence between the feature specifications of the words in the construction. We cannot speak of an * infant bachelor, since infant, with the feature [-ADULT], contradicts bachelor, which has the feature [+ADULT]. A third justification of features is that they throw light on certain kinds of sentence meaning, and on the meaning relationships that exist among sentences. To consider the first issue. Of the three sentences (9)
(a) This man is a bachelor
(b) This bachelor is a man
(c) This bachelor is my sister
the first is said to be synthetic, the second analytic, while the third is contradictory. The truth of (9) (a) requires %'erification from facts holding in the world, i.e. the sentence is true just in case the referent of this man is indeed a bachelor. An analytic sentence like (9) (b), on the other hand, is true independent of any states of affairs in the world; its truth is guaranteed by the meanings of the words bachelor and man. Similarly, (9) (c) is necessarily false, not because of any facts in the world, but because of the incompatibility of the feature [FEMALE] of sister and [MALE] of bachelor. Furthermore, features make it possible to account for certain kinds of semantic relationship between sentences, e.g. the relationship of entailment in (10) (a), of mutual entailment (or synonymy) in (10) (b), and of contradiction in (10) (c):
(10) (a) John is a bachelor
Entails
John is a man
(b) John is a bachelor
entails and is entailed by (i.e. is synonymous with)
John is a man who has never married
(c) John is a bachelor
Contradicts
John is married
Other aspects of sentence meaning can be explained with the help of features. Thus the interplay of feature specifications can help account for the effects of conjoining sentences with because and but:
(11) (a) This man can't be a bachelor, because he's been married before
(b) ?This man is a bachelor, but he's never been married before
Kempson (1977: 3 f.) has written that an essential requirement of an adequate semantic theory is that it should provide general principles by which to account for (a) relationships between word meanings, i.e. relationships of synonymy, hyponymy, contradiction, and (b) relationships between sentence meanings, e.g. entailment, inclusion, contradiction, etc. To its adherents, it looked as if a feature theory of meaning was able to do both these things. (We should note, however, that the data on which feature semanticists worked rarely surpassed the bachelor examples in sophistication.) But we can push the analogy with phonological features even further. Just as phonological features have been regarded as the minimal particles of phonology, so it has been claimed that semantic features are the ultimate, atomic constituents of which word meanings are composed, cf. (5). Katz and Postal state that a 'full analysis' of the meaning of a word involves decomposing the meaning 'into its most elementary components' (1964: 13). Bicrwisch expresses a similar view, adding that the elementary components have the status of universals, cf. (6), i.e. word meanings in a particular language are composed of 'basic elements, that are true candidates for the universal set of semantic markers'5 (Bierwisch 1967: 35). Chomsky, too, has made claims for the universality of semantic features. Just as the set of universal phonological features defines the sound-producing capabilities of man, so the set of universal semantic features defines his cognitive capabilities:
It is important to determine the universal, language-independent constraints on semantic features—in traditional terms, the system of possible concepts. The very notion "lexical entry' presupposes some sort of fixed, universal vocabulary in terms of which these objects arc characterized, just as the notion 'phonetic representation" presupposes some sort of universal phonetic theory. It is surely our ignorance of the relevant psychological and physiological facts that makes possible the widely held belief that there is little or no a priori structure to the system of "attainable concepts'. (Chomsky 1965: 160).
The postulation of universal semantic primitives is not, of course, an innovation of generative linguists. Leibniz, in the seventeenth century, set himself the task of discovering the 'alphabet of human thought'—a set of basic conceptual building blocks, not susceptible to further decomposition, whose combination might underlie all possible concepts in a language (cf. Wierzbicka 19806: 4). Some present-day linguists working outside the generative paradigm, including Wierzbicka herself, have subscribed to a similar programme. But while the parallels between phonological and semantic features arc compelling, there is a fairly obvious, qualitative difference between the alleged universal phonological primitives and the putative 'building blocks of human thought'. In analysing the sound system of a language, the number of phoneme categories that need to be identified is quite small (forty-five or so in English, depending on the dialect analysed, and on one's method of analysis); the number of universal phonological features that are required is also quite manageable (about twenty are suggested by Chomsky and Halle). In contrast, the number of semantic categories in any one language is not only immense, it is also (as shown by the constant coining of new terms) extendible, and it would seem at first sight unrealistic to expect to be able to reduce all possible word meanings in all human languages to a manageable, finite set of universal primitives.

C. Generative Semantics
Generative semantics accounts for meaning directly, not through syntactic structure. In generative semantics, a descriptive grammar begins with a deep structure that is semantic and, to some extent, pragmatic. This deep structure consists of combinations of semantic features, semantic relations, performatives, and presuppositions. Deep structures are then subject to lexical insertions and transformations to ultimately yield surface structures, which then serve as the structures to which the rules of the phonological component apply.
 In a generative semantic account of a language, all meaning is present in this deep structure. Furthermore, since this deep structure is purely semantic, generative semantics appears to be a clever means for describing paraphrase and ambiguity. This is particularly clear when we consider that some paraphrase relations hold between a single lexical item and a phrase with syntactic structure.
Consider the following sentences:
1.    In the old westerns, the hero would always kill his opponent in a gunfight.
2.    In the old westerns, the hero would always cause his opponent to die in a gunfight.
Although they, are stylistically distinct, (1) and (2) can be understood as paraphrases of one another. Yet, these two surface structures are very different syntactically. (1) contains the single lexical item kill, while the corresponding portion of (2), cause to die, is a phrase. In interpretive semantics, the rules of semantic interpretation can be stated in such a way as to provide the same interpretation for kill and cause to die. In generative semantics, however, the issue can be handled more directly – the corresponding elements simply have the same deep semantic structure, a possible solution since deep structure in generative semantics does not include any syntactic information.

D. Behaviourism
Malinowski and firth believed that the description of a language cuould not be complete without some reference to the context of situation in which the language operated. A more extreme view sees the meaning of the linguistics elements as TOTALLY accounted for in terms of the situation in which it is used, the situation, moreover, is wholly definable in empirical or physical terms.
This is BEHAVIOURISM, associated first in linguistic with Bloomfield. Bloomfield’s starting point was not so much his observation of language events as his belief in the ‘scientific’ nature of his subject and he maintained that the only useful generalisations about language are ‘inductive’ generalisation. He defined the meaning of a linguistics from as ‘the sitiation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer’. This is going much further than either Malinowski or Firth. They made statements of meaning in terms of the situation. Bloomfield is, essentially, defining meaning as the situation.
Bloomfield illustrated his views with a now famous account of Jack and Jill. Jill is hungry, sees an apple and with the use of language gets Jack to fetch it for her. If she had been alone (or if she had not been human) she would have first received a STIMULUS (S) which would have produced a REACTION (R) (the term RESPONSE is more usual) – she would have made a move to get the apple. This can be diagrammed
S  R
Since, however, Jack was with her, the stimulus produced not the reaction R, but a linguistic reaction, that of speaking to Jack, which we many symbolise r. The sound waves resulting from this in turn create a stimulus for Jack, a  linguistic stimulus (s), which result in his non-linguistic reaction R for getting the apple. We now have a more complied picture
S  r    s  R
Meaning, according to Bloomfield, consists in the relation between speech which is shown by r…. s and the practical events (S) and (R) that precede and follow it.
One important point for the theory is that the stimulus and the reaction are physical events. For Jill it is a matter of light waves stringking her eyes, of her muscles constracting and of fluids being secreted in her stomach. Jack’s action is no less physical.
Bloomfield was  at great pains to contrast his ‘mechanistic’ theory with the ‘mechanistic’ theories that posit non-physical processes such as thoughts, concepts, images, feeling, etc. heh did not deny that we have such images, feeling, etc. but explained them as popular terms for bodily movements, events that the speaker alone is aware of (as in I’m hungry), private experiences (obscure internal stimuli), or soundless movements of the vocal organs. Moreover, he included  in the situation all the relationships that hold between Jack and Jill. Jill might not have acted in the same way if she had been bashful, and Jack mght not have fetched the apple if he had been illdisposed towards her. This means that the speech and the practical events depend upon ‘predisposing factors’ which consist of ‘the entire life history of the speaker and hearer’.
Now it may well be that ultimately all activity is, in principle, explainable in terms of physical entities and events, the chemistry, electro-magnetism, etc. Involved in the cells of the human brain. But this is, in the light of prsent human knowledge, no more than an act of faith, a simple belief in the physical nature of al human activity. For linguistics, however, the theory has not value. The facts, especially those concerning predisposing factors, are totally unknowable and no more open to obeservation than the tought, image, etc.

CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A. Conclusion
Semantics is the study of (‘grammatical’) meaning in language. In studying semantics, we can draw a distinction between the meaning(s) attributed to the individual word and that/those in or of larger syntactic units. There are : Analysis of Meaning, Hyponymy, and Synonymy.
The classical approach in semantics in dealing with syntactic and semantic categories, many linguists have adopted a feature approach which parallels in many respects the assumptions, and even the notation and terminology, of the phonologists. (For instance, a notational convention, taken over from phonology, is the practice of writing features in small capitals and enclosing them between square brackets.) At work here is what has been called, in a different context, the 'structural analogy assumption.
Generative semantics accounts for meaning directly, not through syntactic structure. In generative semantics, a descriptive grammar begins with a deep structure that is semantic and, to some extent, pragmatic. This deep structure consists of combinations of semantic features, semantic relations, performatives, and presuppositions. Deep structures are then subject to lexical insertions and transformations to ultimately yield surface structures, which then serve as the structures to which the rules of the phonological component apply. Consider the following sentences: In the old westerns, the hero would always kill his opponent in a gunfight and in the old westerns, the hero would always cause his opponent to die in a gunfight.
This is BEHAVIOURISM, associated first in linguistic with Bloomfield. Bloomfield’s starting point was not so much his observation of language events as his belief in the ‘scientific’ nature of his subject and he maintained that the only useful generalisations about language are ‘inductive’ generalisation. He defined the meaning of a linguistics from as ‘the sitiation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer’.

REFERENCES

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Griffiths, Patrick. An Introduction to English Semantic and Pragmatics. Edinburgh Unyversity Press. 2006.
W. Kreidler, Charles. Introduction English Semantics. London and New York : Routladge Taylor and Francis Group.2002.
R. Taylor, Jhon. Linguistic Categorization,(2nd). Oxford: Clarendon Press.1995
F.R Palmer, Semantic (2nd ed) (USA: Cambridge University Press, 1976)