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Meaning – Betekenis

The study of meaning is an interesting part of studying language, and slightly more philosophical than the areas of language study we’ve looked at so far. It seems clear that studying meaning should be part of the study of language. When you use language it isn’t (just) to form grammatical and phonologically correct sentences and words, it is mostly because you want to say something, you want to express an idea or a thought. Of course you hope that your choice of words and how you put them together will communicate a thought or idea to someone else. That means that your words have a >meaning that is clear to both you, the speaker, and the listener. This meaning is part of the language, and so studying meaning is part of studying language.

The study of meaning can be divided into >semantics and >pragmatics. The line between the two isn’t always clear-cut, but generally you can say that >semantics concerns word or sentence meaning whereas >pragmatics is about speaker meaning. The difference becomes clear in the following example:

Het is koud in de huiskamer.
It is cold in the living-room.

What this sentence means is that there is a room, the living-room, and it has a certain temperature (which is low).

Now imagine what this sentence could mean if someone visits you, walks into the kitchen from the living room and says “Het is koud in de huiskamer”. This person is probably trying to tell you that you should close the window, or turn the heating up. This is >pragmatic or >speaker meaning. What the speaker >means by saying “Het is koud in de huiskamer” is that you should do something to make it warmer.

Pragmatic meaning thus depends on the context. For example, if on a hot summer day you would say “I can’t take this heat anymore” and someone would say “It’s cool in the living room” he or she probably doesn’t mean you should turn the heating up there, but rather that you could go to the living-room to cool down a little. So the speaker meaning changes if the context changes. The >semantic or >sentence meaning is still that the living room has a certain temperature, it hasn’t changed with context.

What we have done above is make a distinction between a sentence on its own and the utterance of that sentence by someone in a particular context. We can say that the study of >sentence meaning is the domain of >semantics, and the study of >utterance meaning is the domain of pragmatics.Now that we have made this broad distinction it is time to look into both aspects of meaning in a little more detail.

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(semantics)



Dutch Linguistics Home Welcome Outline of course Terminology Syntax Sound structure Meaning Semantics Pragmatics Glossary References Further reading Feedback form Copyright Close Studypack	Meaning – Betekenis The study of meaning is an interesting part of studying language, and slightly more philosophical than the areas of language study we’ve looked at so far. It seems clear that studying meaning should be part of the study of language. When you use language it isn’t (just) to form grammatical and phonologically correct sentences and words, it is mostly because you want to say something, you want to express an idea or a thought. Of course you hope that your choice of words and how you put them together will communicate a thought or idea to someone else. That means that your words have a >meaning that is clear to both you, the speaker, and the listener. This meaning is part of the language, and so studying meaning is part of studying language. The study of meaning can be divided into >semantics and >pragmatics. The line between the two isn’t always clear-cut, but generally you can say that >semantics concerns word or sentence meaning whereas >pragmatics is about speaker meaning. The difference becomes clear in the following example: Het is koud in de huiskamer. It is cold in the living-room. What this sentence means is that there is a room, the living-room, and it has a certain temperature (which is low). Now imagine what this sentence could mean if someone visits you, walks into the kitchen from the living room and says “Het is koud in de huiskamer”. This person is probably trying to tell you that you should close the window, or turn the heating up. This is >pragmatic or >speaker meaning. What the speaker >means by saying “Het is koud in de huiskamer” is that you should do something to make it warmer. Pragmatic meaning thus depends on the context. For example, if on a hot summer day you would say “I can’t take this heat anymore” and someone would say “It’s cool in the living room” he or she probably doesn’t mean you should turn the heating up there, but rather that you could go to the living-room to cool down a little. So the speaker meaning changes if the context changes. The >semantic or >sentence meaning is still that the living room has a certain temperature, it hasn’t changed with context. What we have done above is make a distinction between a sentence on its own and the utterance of that sentence by someone in a particular context. We can say that the study of >sentence meaning is the domain of >semantics, and the study of >utterance meaning is the domain of pragmatics.Now that we have made this broad distinction it is time to look into both aspects of meaning in a little more detail. next (semantics)