Meanings of words.doc

Meanings of words -reference and senseShi Zhangxian史章铣Class 6, Grade 2008No.200805440614The School of Foreign LanguagesChina West Normal UniversityA Paper for word meaning2011-11-18Meanings of words -reference and senseAbstract:It is agreed that a word is the combination of word-form and its meaning. Form refers to both its pronunciation and spelling. Meaning is what the form stands for. But the term is not as simple as it seems to be. There are some related concepts which need further clarification. In linguistics, meaning is what is expressed by the writer or speaker, and what is conveyed to the reader or listener, provided that they talk about the same thing (law of identity) 1. In other words, the object and the name of the object and the concepts in their head are the same. A terms reference is the object that the term refers to, and the terms sense is the way that the term refers to that object.Key words: word meaning, reference, sense, semantics, linguistics I. Reference and SenseA. ReferenceReference is used in every sphere of human knowledge, adopting shades of meaning particular to the contexts in which it is used.References can take on many forms, including: a thought, a sensory perception that is audible (onomatopoeia), visual (text), olfactory, or tactile, emotional state, relationship with other, space-time coordinate, symbolic or alpha-numeric, a physical object or an energy projection;In semantics, reference is generally construed as the relationships between nouns or pronouns and objects that are named by them. Hence, the word John refers to John. The word it refers to some previously specified object. The object referred to is called the referent of the word. Sometimes the word-object relation is called denotation; the word denotes the object. The converse relation, the relation from object to word, is called exemplification; the object exemplifies what the word denotes. In syntactic analysis, if a word refers to a previous word, the previous word is called the antecedent.Words are but symbols, many of which have meaning only when they have acquired reference. Reference is the relationship between language and the word. By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world are being talked about. In other words, only when a connection has been established between the linguistic sign and a referent, i.e., an object, a phenomenon, a person, etc. does the sign become meaningful. The reference of a word to a thing outside the language is arbitrary and conventional. This connection is the result of generalization and abstraction. Although reference is a kind of abstraction, yet with the help of context, it can refer to something definite. Also, the same thing can have different referring expressions without causing any confusion.B. SenseThe sense is the cognitive significance or mode of presentation of the referent. Generally speaking, the meaning of meaning is perhaps what is termed sense in lexicology. Unlike reference, sense denotes the relationships inside the language. The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language. It is also an abstraction that can be entertained in the mind of a language user. And, every word that has meaning has sense but not every word has reference. For example, probable, nearly, and, if, but, yes, none of which refer to anything in the world, all have some sense.C. The distinction of reference and senseBroadly speaking, the reference (or referent) of a proper name is the object it denotes or indicates. The sense of a proper name is whatever meaning it has, when there is no object to be indicated. In other words, a terms reference is the object that the term refers to, while the terms sense is the way that the term refers to that object. What this article has called sense and reference, respectively, are what Frege calls Sinn and Bedeutung, in the original German. Sometimes the pair of terms is translated as sense and meaning or as sense and nominatum. II. Sense without reference One application Frege saw for the distinction concerns what are called empty expressions. These expressions do not have a reference, such as “the greatest integer2. Since there is not a greatest integer, the expression doesnt refer to anything. But it seems perfectly meaningful, since we seem to understand claims like The greatest integer is larger than one million. Employing the sense-reference distinction, we can say that the expression has a sense but lacks a reference. Although the term the greatest integer has no reference in the conventional arithmetic, it has a reference because one of the axioms of this arithmetic is that there is the greatest integer. So, in one universe, an expression can have sense without reference, while in another universe, the same expression can have both sense and reference. Another example is Hamlet. Since he is a fictional character, the name Hamlet does not appear to mean anyone at all; yet sentences like “Hamlet was set down at house are meaningful, in that they can be true or false. If a sentences meaning is a function of the meanings of its parts, then parts of the sentence, such as Hamlet, seemingly do have meaning. Whether this solution works, and whether it was even seriously intended by Frege, is disputed. In order for it to work, it must be possible for a term to have a sense without a reference, and this requires that sense cannot be defined simply as the mode of presentation of the reference, since sometimes there is no reference being presented. Thus the view that the sense-reference distinction solves the problem of empty names encourages the view that a sense is an individuating description. This makes a sense equivalent to a Russellian description, and makes Freges position descriptivist, leaving it preys to a number of difficulties rose against that view. Other philosophers have argued that Frege is not a descriptivist, and hence that the sense-reference distinction does not solve the problem of fictional names. Proponents of this view often claim that sentences using empty names do not in fact express propositions, hence are not literally meaningful, despite appearances. III. Conclusion Reference is what words refer to in the outside. It is arbitrary and conventional. When we say some words, we always relate them with some objects automatically.