Relationship Between Semantics and other Levels of Linguistics and Branches of Linguistics

According to O’Grady, (2005), Semantics is the study of meaning in human language.

Clearly semantics is a vast subject. “Meaning”, however, is a very vague term. In ordinary English, the word meaning is used to refer to such different things as the idea or intention lying behind a piece of language (Riemer, 2010:2). The study of meaning was very largely neglected. This was because meaning was felt to be inherently subjective and at least temporarily beyond the scope of scientific investigation.

Semantics is one of the levels of linguistics; linguistics refers to scientific study of language (Todd, 1987).

Semantics however, has relationship with other levels of linguistics which are Phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics; and branches of linguistics which are sociolinguistics, psycho-linguistics, computational linguistics, applied linguistics, anthropological linguistics, stylistics, philosophical linguistics and historical linguistics.

1. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SEMANTICS AND ALL OTHER LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

Semantics has relationship with other levels of linguistics as described below.

1. Semantics and phonetics

Phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are produced, what their physical properties are, and how they are interpreted, (Tserdanelis, 2004). There are two ways of approaching phonetics. One approach studies the psychological mechanisms of speech production. This is known as articulatory phonetics. The other is known as acoustic phonetics, which is concerned with measuring and analysing the physical properties of the sound waves produced when we speak. Both approaches are indispensable to an understanding of speech. The relationship between semantics and phonetics can be seen in:

1. Languages’ pitch

In many languages, the pitch at which the syllable in a word are pronounced, make a difference in word’s meaning. Such languages are called tone languages. Tone languages fall into two categories, registered tone languages and contour tone languages. Many languages of Sub-Saharan Africa are registered tone languages and make use of tone to distinguish various words or to indicate grammatical distinctions. For example in the Bantu language “Kerewe,” some words are distinguished by different tones.

	Kerewe word	Tone pattern	Gloss
i.	KÙsàlà KÙsálà	Low-low-low Low-high-low	To be insane To cut off meat
ii.	KÙsῐngà KÙsÌngà	Low-rise-low Low-low-low	To defeat, win To rub, apply ointment
iii.	KÙzÚmà KÙzÙmà	Low-high-low Low-low-low	To insult, scold To rumble, be startled

1. The use of stress and intonation.

Every sentence of English, if it is produced as a spoken, utterance must be uttered with one of a limited set of stress patterns and intonation patterns. These patterns play an essential part in the interpretation of spoken utterances in all languages. For example,

1. ˈKalebi killed a lion.
2. Kalebi killed a ˈlion.

Though the two sentences above (i) and (ii) are written the same, they have different meaning with regard to stress applied. The first sentence focused on the doer of action (subject) while the second sentence focuses on the receiver of an action (object).

2) Semantic and Phonology

According to Ackmajian, et al (2006), Phonology is used to refer to the principles that govern the distribution of sounds in a given language. It studies the distribution of sounds in a language and the interactions between those different sounds.

In English we can hear the sound [s] and [ʃ] where for example a word [slæʃ] slash contains both. The two phones can distinguish meaning, as shown by words like [ʃɔr] shore and [sɔr] sore, where alternating between [ʃ] and [s] affects the meaning of the utterance.  In this sense, it is evident that the occurrence of these two sounds is unpredictable, since one cannot look at the rest of the word and determine which sound will occur. Therefore, knowing the word in English ends in [ɔr] one cannot predict whether a word will start with [s] or [ʃ] since both sore and shore are different but possible words. On the other hand, if a learner of English were to make the same substitution, then the meaning of the word is likely to change. One can imagine confusing [s] and [ʃ] and saying,

“I have to [ʃeIv] more money each month.”

Knowledge on the restriction on sound systems among languages also helps to get the meaning intended. Some languages have fewer or more phoneme or allophones than English does, this can be detected when a non-native speaker of English pronounce English words. For example, French speakers, often pronounce English this [ðIs] as [zIs] and thin [Ɵ] as [sın]. The reason for this mispronunciation is that the phonemic inventory of French does not contain /ð/ or /Ɵ/, so French speakers substitute the nearest equivalent sounds, the fricative /z/ and /s/, available in their phonetic inventory.

• Semantics and Morphology

Morphology is the study of word-making and word-marking (Tserdanelis, 2004). There are many reasons as to why a word-formation rule does not give rise to words that it might be expected to permit. This is due to some restrictions on word-formation rules (Haspelmath, 2002).

Phonological restrictions on the domain of word-formation rule are particularly common with derivational suffixes, much less so with prefixes and compounding. A straight forward reason for the restriction is that certain complex words are impossible because they would create difficulties for phonetic processing, that is, pronunciation or perception. A common restriction rules out the repetition of identical features. For example, the repetition of the vowel [i:] in English reduces the domain of the suffix -ee                                                                 a) draw - drawee                         b) free - *freeee                                                                           pay - payee                              accompany - *accompanyee

The derived words in (a) are possible and therefore are meaningful in English, while those in (b) are impossible.

 Somewhat similar is the requirement that the derived word must have an alternating rhythm (strong-weak-strong). As a result, the English suffix –ize freely attaches to bases with a strong-weak rhythm, but does not attach to bases that end in a strong (stressed) syllable.                       Examples: (a) prίvate ί ὶ ό ό ύ ὺ - prίvatὶze                 (b) corύrpt - *        corύrptὶze                                glόbal - glόbalίze                           secύre - *secύrὶze

The derivatives in (a) are meaningful while those in (b) are impossible hence are meaningless.

With semantics restrictions, in many cases, the meaning of an affix automatically restricts the domain of a word-formation rule, because some base- affix combinations simply make no sense. For example, it would be nonsensical to add the German female noun suffix –in to a noun like Baum ‘tree’ (*Baum-in), because it is not conceived of trees as having gender distinctions.

Similarly, the English reversive prefix de- as in de-escalate, or decolonize can be only combined with verbal bases that denote a potentially reversible process. Combinations such as deassassinate or deincinerate are hard to interpret, except perhaps in a science-fiction context.

Synonymy blocking is also one of the restrictions. Very often an otherwise productive derivational rule does not apply because it is pre-empted by an existing word that has the meaning of the potential neologism. For example, there is no agent noun in –er for the verb steal (*staeler), because the word thief exists which means the same as stealer would mean if it existed. The rule is blocked under such circumstances. Some other English examples are:

base	Blocked word	Blocking word	Related pair
broom	*To broom	To sweep	Hammer/ to hammer
To type	*Typer	Typist	To write/ writer
linguistics	*Linguistician	Linguist	Statistics/statistician
Good	*Goodly	Well	Bad/ badly
Bad	*Badder	Worse	Big/ bigger

However, an open fact is that blocking has many exceptions. For instance, English has synonymous pairs like curiosity/curiousness and accuracy/accurateness.

• Semantics and Pragmatics

Pragmatics is concerned with study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (writer) and interpreted by a listener or reader, (Yule, 1996). It has consequently more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances that what the word or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves. Meaning often crucially relies on context. Consider for example the following sentence:

“She is there now”.

The above sentence, heard or read out of context, is hard to interpret since it contains many deictic or place+holder words with no inherent content. Some aspect of the inherent semantics of these types of words can help up to a point. We know that she refers to a female  person, there refers to a place, and now refers to a time but these meanings are still vague since we have no idea about the precise information that these words in this particular sentence convey when heard or read out of context.

Who does she refer to?

Where is there and when is now?

The words there, now and she refer to different places, times and people in different context. They can be filled in by additional information provided what has preceded in the conversation:

Stella:    I didn’t see Salma earlier at the office.

Chacha:  She was out to lunch.

                            She is there now.

The preceding utterances narrow down the possible meanings of she, here, and now.

More information given by another context is still needed to interpret with confidence the above sentence, rather than only linguistic context. This other kind of context is called situational context and it has to do with knowledge about people and how the world works. Who is grace for example? Where is her office? When do people usually eat lunch?  This additional information is extracted from shared knowledge between speakers and listeners, their beliefs, the physical context, the time of the day, and the date.

The above exchange of utterances could refer to first lady Salma Kikwete and White House in Dar es Salaam or to one’s girlfriend Salma and her home in Mwanza. Thus we see that many non-linguistic factors can affect the precise interpretation of meaning. Therefore contexts, both linguistic and situational, can fill in the crucial details in sentences lacking explicitness. Another example is as shown below:

1. Peter means “child”
2. When Mrs Rumba said Suzy! Peter! She meant by this remarks that Suzy was to attend Peter in the room so that he cannot fall off the bed.

We may note about meaning (b) that:

1. It involves the speaker’s intention to convey a certain meaning which may or may not be evident from the message itself.
2. Consequently, interpretation by the hearer of this meaning is likely to depend on context; and

• Meaning in this sense is something which is performed rather than something that exists in static way. It involves action (the speaker producing an effect on the hearer) and interaction (the meaning being “negotiated” between speaker and hearer on the basis of their mutual knowledge).

• Semantics and Syntax

Syntax is the study of how words combine to form phrases and ultimately sentences in languages (Tserdanelis, 2004). One of the key properties that makes a string of words a sentence is that the words must be related to one another in particular ways.

The order of words in a sentence or phrases is connected to its literary meaning. Let us consider the following sentence:

1. John is in the house

The factors that go into determining the meaning of the sentence are: the choice of words and their linear arrangement. It is not every order expresses some kind of meaning. As we can see, rearranging the words used in (a) can give the order that is meaningless:

*John house is in the

*In the John house is

*In John house is the

*The is John house in

*Is John house in the

 Strings of words that form possible sentences of a language are grammatical. They conform to the rules of that language. Sentences that are impossible because the words are in the wrong order with respect to one another are ungrammatical.

Also syntactic structure is relevant to the meaning in a variety of ways. Therefore, aspects of its contribution to the interpretation of sentences:  constructional meaning, representation of structural ambiguity, the assignment of thematic roles and the interpretation of pronoun.

1. Constructional meaning

Structural patterns are themselves capable of caring meaning above and beyond the meaning of their component parts. Example of constructional meaning can be seen in the following example:

1. Rumba pushed the cat off the table
2. John pulled the bag into the room.

As the examples above, the caused-motion construction consist of a structural pattern (NP, V, NP, PP ) that is used to express the meaning X cause Y to go somewhere. Thus, the first sentence describes the situation in which Rumba causes the cat to go off the table by pushing it: the second sentence is used for situations in which John causes the bag to go into the room.

    The caused-motion construction.

Form:       NP    V    NP   PP            Meaning:   X cause   Y to go somewhere.

1. Structural ambiguity

The second factor in determining what a sentence means is structural ambiguity. This is because it depends on how the words are arranged, that is to say, some sentences are structurally ambiguous in that their component words can be combined in more than one way. The following are examples.

1. Kind students and teachers

In the above sentence kind can be seen as a property of both the students and the teachers or just the students alone. The two interpretations (or readings) of an ambiguous phrase can be depicted diagrammatically as follows:

The structure (i) indicates that, both the students and the teachers are kind; the structure (ii) indicates that only the students are kind. Figure (i) correspond to the reading in which kind modifies both students and teachers. This is shown by having the adjective combined with a category that includes both nouns. In figure (ii), on the other hand, the adjective combines only with the noun students. This structure corresponds to the reading in which kind applies only to students.

Another case of structural ambiguity can also be found in the following sentence:

 We need more industrious teachers

On the first meaning of more industrious teachers, more is grouped with industrious to form the phrase more industrious. On the second meaning, industrious is grouped with teachers to form the phrase industrious teachers. One way to represent the difference in structure is to bracket together the two words that form a phrase.

1. [More industrious] teachers.
2. More [industrious teachers].

                                                         

• The assignment of thematic roles

Another aspect of semantic interpretation involves determining the role that referents of NPs play in the situations described by sentences. Thematic roles are therefore used to categorize the relations between the sentence’s parts and event that it describes. In most linguistic analysis, at least the following thematic roles are recognised.

            Agent   - the entity that performs the action.                                                                          Theme - the entity undergoing an action or a movement.                                                 Source - the starting point for a movement    .                                                            Goal    - the end point for a movement.                                                                                 Location - the place where the action occurs.

The examples of thematic roles can be seen as in the sentences such as the one below;

            Musa bought a shirt at the supermarket.

The sentence above contains an agent and a theme. This is because the verb buy has the type of meaning that implies an entity that does the buying (an agent) and an entity that gets bought (a theme). Similarly, the supermarket is taken to denote the location of the action because of the meaning of the preposition at.

1. B) RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SEMANTICS AND BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS

Semantics has the relationship with branches of linguistics as can be described below:

1. Semantics and sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is the study of the language in social context that focuses on the relationship between linguistics behaviour and social situation, roles, and functions (O’Grady, 2005). Rather than concentrating on individuals, sociolinguistics is centered on the speech community defined as any group of people who share some set of social conversions, or sociolinguistic norms regarding language use. In sociolinguistics meaning is limited according to social context as follows:

Jargon for example is a register characterized by specific vocabulary that are connected to a particular profession or activity. It is generally developed to facilitate communication within a group and can also be used to indicate membership in the group and even work to exclude non-member. For example, the word masticate used by doctor may not be easily understood by other people who are not experienced in such field, the word simply means to chew.

Also the use of slang which refer to the use of faddish or lexical item which lead to demarking group membership. Those not belonging to a group cannot understand what is said when slangs are used. As it is sensitive to current style it changes rapidly . For example,

Slang term                               Definition

Hot (English)                           attractive

Tight (English)                        fantastic, wonderful, superlative

Piga chini (Kiswahili)               to ignore something or somebody

Jero (Kiswahili)                        five hundred shillings           

The last two Swahili slags are used by the youth in Tanzania.

1. Semantics and Computational linguistics

Computational linguistics deals with the application of computers to work with language. There are a number of things that human do with language that can be automated to degree on a computer-translating from one language to another, recognizing the word in speech, pronouncing these words, understanding sentence and large texts, and producing text that conveys meaning or information  (Yule, 1996).

As in computational linguistics, computers work with language aspects such as translation of languages from one language to another. Therefore, in order for the computer to translate words, sentences and large text to another language correctly, they should firstly be semantically as well as grammatically meaningful so as words or sentences into the second language would also be meaningful. The wrongly constructed words, sentences, or large text in the first language leads to wrong translation in the second (target) language.

• Semantics and psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics is the field that attempts to answer questions about how language is represented and processed in the brain and what areas of the brain are used for language processing, (Tserdanelis, 2004). Any damage to brain results into loss of language ability known as aphasia.

Reading and writing skills involve a complex array of perceptual and motor skills. The impairment of reading skills is called acquired dyslexia. The impairment of writing skills is called acquired dysgraphia. Acquired dyslexia is divided into two as follows.

Phonological dyslexia is a type of acquired dyslexia in which the patient seems to have lost the ability to use spelling – to – sounds rules. Phonological dyslexics can only read words that they have seen before. Asked to read a word such as blug aloud, they either say nothing or produce a known word that is visually similar to the target, example blue or bug.

Surface dyslexia is the opposite of phonological dyslexia. Surface dyslexics seem unable to recognize words as wholes. Instated, they must process all words through the set of spelling -to-sounds rules. This is shown by the kinds of errors they make. Surface dyslexics do not have difficulty reading words such as bat that are regularly spelt. They read irregularly spelt words such as yatch, however, by applying regular rules and thus producing /jætʃt/. The most interesting aspects of the surface dyslexics’ reading ability is that they understand what they produce, not what they see. For examples, as the surface dyslexic would be likely to read the words worm as /wɔrm/ and not /wərm/. When asked what the word means, the patient would answer; the opposite of cold. (O’Grady, 2005).

It has been found that Broca’s area is responsible for speech production. Damage in this area can lead to production of meaningless speech. Also Wernicke’s area is primarily responsible for language comprehension. Hence the damage in the area leads to inability in language comprehension.

1. iv) Applied Linguistics and Semantics

Applied linguistics is the application of language in teaching and learning. It is applied to language teaching and learning courses in English for special purpose (SPE) which are based on the knowledge that native speakers use language differently depending on subject matter and audience. For example, therefore a scientist who needs English will not need to know how to discuss. Dickens or diplomacy but will have to learn all the technical terms associated with his profession and the preferred structures that scientists use. Applied linguistics concerned with the application of linguistics theories, methods and findings to the elucidation of language problems which have arisen in other areas of experience. The most well developed branch of applied linguistics is the teaching and learning of the foreign languages and sometimes the term is used as if this were the only field involved.

The major relationship between applied linguistics and semantics is on teaching and learning foreign languages. A person who is not well experienced in a particular foreign language is likely to utter semantically meaningless utterances unless he/she is exposed to teaching and learning such languages where now he/she can utter semantically meaningful sentences by the use of linguistic theories such as phrase structure rules, Transformation Generative Grammar (TGG) as well as syntax in which the arrangement of words in a sentence may bring different meanings.

1. v) Semantics and Historical Linguistics

Historical linguistics is the subfield of linguistics that studies language in its historical aspects. It is sometimes called Diachronic Linguistics; which is the way of referring to the study of language(s) at various point of time and at various historical stages, (Nida, 1978).

The meaning or semantic representation of words may change, becoming broader, narrow, or shifted. For example, the Middle English word “dogge” meant a specified breed of dog, but it was eventually broadened to encompass all members of the species of canis families.

A ‘companion’ used to mean a person with whom you share bread, but today it is a person who accompanies you. Also a speaker of 17^th century English meat which meant food and flesh meant meat. Since that time, semantic change has narrowed the meaning of meat to what it is modern English. Also semantic change can be seen as the meaning shift, for example, bead originally meant prayer, the meaning of the bead shifted from prayer to the visible sign of the prayer.

1. vi) Semantics and Philosophical Linguistics

Philosophical Linguistics is the branch of linguistics which studies on the one hand the role of language in relation to the understanding and elucidation of philosophical concepts and, on the other hand, the philosophical status of linguistic theories, methods and observation, (David, 1987).

Logic as the study of the organization of rational thought (especially laws) of valid of inference philosophers. In the present century this age, old study has evolved allied to mathematics, now it seems, linguistics is invading the territory. A semantic representation is also a logical representation.

Until the sixties linguists largely concentrated their attention on the surface structure of linguistic expressions (phonology and syntax) rather than the structure of meaning underlying these. Since then the same sort of consideration which led philosophers to be dissatisfied with syntactic structures as the guide to logical relations has also led linguists to search for a deeper structure as semantic or logical representation to explain the meaning of a sentence and their relation to its form, (Leech, 1974).

For example, someone, anyone, everyone and similar quantifier expressions do not behave in the same way as words like John, Bill and Daphne, though they have the same grammatical functions as noun acting as subject and object. Examples;

• Daphne is beautiful. (Subject).
• You will marry Daphne. (Object).

Therefore, you will marry someone beautiful.

• Someone is beautiful. (Subject).
• You will marry someone. (Object).

Therefore, you will marry someone beautiful.

vii) Semantics and Stylistics

Stylistics is a branch of linguistics which studies the features of situation distinctive uses (varieties) of language and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made up by individual and social group and their uses of language.

All languages show variations. Actual usage varies from group to group and speaker to speaker in terms of the pronunciation of language, the choice of those words and even the use of syntactic constructions.

Each speaker of any language has mastered a number of language styles. We use a formal and an informal style on different occasions. The following are the examples to illustrate how meanings differ in the variation in language use from speaker to speaker (with regard to status).

Let us imagine Peter initiating a conversation with a woman by asking, “How about joining me for a cup of coffee?” The informational part of this message or content dimension, refers to what Peter expects of her namely, that he wants her to join him for coffee. The relationship aspect of the message or relationship dimension is the meaning behind the words that says something about his relationship to her.

The relationship dimension tells her how to deal with the message. She recognizes, for example, that this is not a command but friendly invitation that implies no status difference between the two of them. If she made the same suggestion to him and she happened to be one of his teachers, the relationship aspect would be quite different. Suppose she commanded, “Come, have a cup of coffee with me”. The relationship implied here is one of unequal status known as a complimentary relationship. When the status is equal, the relationship can be labelled symmetrical.

Generally, all branches and levels of linguistics are in mutual relationship with semantics for presentations of meaning in languages. The study of semantics therefore, it is concerned with a broad range of phenomenon, including the nature of meaning, the rule of syntactic structure, and the effect of pragmatics on understanding of utterances.

 

REFERENCES

Akmajian, A. et at. (2006). Linguistics,5^th Edition. New Delhi:Prentice Hall of India.

David, C. (1987). A Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Basil Blackwell Ltd.

Haspelmath, M. (2002). Understanding Morphology. London: Arnold Publisher.

Kempson, M. R. (1977). Semantic Theory. New York, USA. Cambridge University Press.

Leech, G. (1974). Semantics. Middlessex: Penguin Books Ltd.

Nida, A. E. (1978). Morphology, the Descriptive Analysis of Words 2^nd Edition. The University of Michigan Press.

O’Grady, W., Archibald, Aronoff, M. & Miller, J. (2005).Contemporary Linguistics. An Introduction. Harlow:Longman.

Riemer, N. (2010). Introducing Semantics. Arizona: Cambridge University Press.

Todd, L. (1987). Introduction to Linguistics. Singapore: Longman York Press.

Tserdanelis, G. (2004). Language Files, 9^th Edition: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press.

Yule, G. (1996). The Study of Language, 2^nd Edition. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.