MEANING, THOUGHT AND REALITY

Created by:

Group 1

Ahmad Setiawan
Dessy Fitriyani
Emilia

Lecturer: Hendri Saputra, M.Pd

STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF RADEN FATAH

PALEMBANG

ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2018/2019

CHAPTER SUMMARY

2 Meaning, Thought and Reality

2.1 Introduction
In this chapter we look at the basic question of how it is that we can use
language to describe the world. All languages allow speakers to describe aspects
of what they perceive. For example:

- I saw Michael Jackson on television last night.

- We’ve just flown back from Paris

Where Michael Jackson and Paris are names allowing us to do this. In semantic
this action of picking out or identifying with words is often called referring or
denoting. Thus one can use the word Paris to refer to or denote the city. The
entity referred to, in this case the city, is usually called referent. In the other hand
referring is done primarily by people. Words and sentences refer only in so far
as people use them to do so, and therefore often differently on different occasions
(Michael Proudfoot and A. R. Lacey, 2009).

John Lyons separate the terms refer and denote. Refer is speaker picking out
entities in the world. What entity somebody refers to depends on the context.
While, denote is stable relationship, not dependent on any use of a word, between
a linguistic expression and the world, properties of words.

For example: A Sparrow flew into the room.

A sparrow refers to a certain entity in the world, while sparrow denotes a class.

Two of these are particularly important in current semantic theories: we can

call them the referential (or denotational) approach and the representational
approach.

Referential or denotational approach is the action to put words into

relationship with the world is meaning, and provide a semantic description of the
world. We can give the meaning of words and sentences my showing how they
relate to situations. Words denote entities, while sentences denote actions.

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For example:

- There is a casino in Grafton Street.

- There isn’t a casino in Grafton Street

Two sentences describe different situations spoken at the same time and about
the same street, this approach shows that they’re incompatible.

For semanticists adopting the representational approach our ability to talk

about the world depends on our mental model of it. A language represents a
theory about the world; speaker chooses to view the same situation in different
ways.

For example:

- English: You have a cold

- Irish: A cold is on you

In English, the situation is possession in Irish location. So, different language

conceptualizations influence the description of the real-world situation.
Emphasis on the way that our reports about reality are influenced by the
conceptual structures in our language.

We can see these two approaches as focusing on different aspects of the

same process: talking about the world. In referential theory, meaning derives
from language being attached to the world. In representational theory, meaning
derives from language being a reflection of our conceptual structures.

2.2 Reference
2.2.1 Types of reference
Referring and non-referring expressions, we can apply this distinction in
two ways. Firstly there are linguistic expressions which can never be used to
refer, for example the words so, very, maybe, if, not, all. These words do of
course contribute meaning to the sentence they occur in and thus help sentences
denote, but they don’t themselves identify entities in the world. We will say that

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these are intrinsically non-referring items. By contrast, a noun like cat in “That
cat looks vicious” is a referring expression, it’s an identity.
The second use of the distinction referring/non-referring concerns
potentially referring elements like nouns: it distinguishes between instances
when speakers use them to refer and instances when they don’t. For example,
“They performed a cholecystectomy this morning”. Referring expression since it
refers to an individual operation. But, “A cholecystectomy is a serious procedure”
is non-referring since the nominal has a generic interpretation.
Constant versus variable reference, some expressions have the same
referent “the Eiffel Tower” some others depend on context. E.g. we need to know
who is speaking to whom to identify the referent in “I wrote to you” or “She put
it in my office”. Expressions like the Eiffel Tower are sometimes described as
having constant reference, while expressions like I, you, she, etc. are said to
have variable reference.
Referents and extensions, referent of an expression used for the thing picked
out by saying the expression in a certain context, for example the referent of a
toad in I’ve just stepped on toad would be the unfortunate animal on the bottom
of my shoe. While, extension is the set of thing which could possibly be the
referent of that expression. e.g. “’I’ve just stepped on a toad” the referent is
“toad”. “toad”, can be the set of all “toads”.

2.2.2 Names
The simplest case of nominal which have reference might seem to be names.
Names after all are labels for people, place, etc. and often seem to have little
other meaning. Names are definite in that they carry the speaker’s assumption
that her audience can identify the referent. For example, He looks just like Eddie
Murphy. Means that the speaker assuming you can identify the American
Comedian.
One important approach can be termed the description theory, a name is the
label or shorthand for knowledge about the referent. For example, Christopher
Marlow. The writer of the play Dr Faustus. Understanding a name and

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identifying the referent depend on associating the name with right description.
This theory stresses the role of identifying knowledge.
Casual theory is another important approach, names are socially inherited.
E.g. name is given to a person. People use this name depending on the fate of the
named person and this original group; the name may be passed on to other
groups. Users of the name form a kind of chain back to an original naming or
grounding. Other authors argue a name doesn’t get attached by a single
grounding, it needs a period of repeated uses. Sometimes there are competing
names and one wins, or there’re mistakes and public fixed them by practice. This
theory stresses a social knowledge. Both can be extended to natural kinds,
referring classes in nature like “giraffe”.

2.2.3 Nouns and noun phrases

Nouns and noun phrases can be used to refer indefinite and definite NPs can
operate like names to pick out an individual, e.g. “I spoke to a woman about the
noise” or “I spoke to the woman about the noise”.
Definite NPs form definite descriptions. For example “she has a crush on
the captain of the hockey team”. The referent is whoever fits the description, or
where there are no cases to fit the description or the referent isn’t real. “The king
of France is bald”, “The wizard of Oz”.
NPs refer to a group of individuals, distributively, focus on the individual
member of the group. “The people in the lift avoided each other’s eyes”, or
collectively, focus on the aggregate. “The people in the lift proved too heavy for
the lift motor”. Nominals can refer to substances like “I like coffee”, actions like
“Sleeping is his hobby”, abstract ideas like “She has a passion for justice”.
Nominal can be tricky in its denotational behavior, for example “No student
enjoyed the lecture”. Complex denotational is characteristic of quantifiers. They
allow flexibility to predicate something of a whole class of entities. For example,
“Every Frenchman would recognize his face”, “A few Frenchmen voted for him”.

2.3 Reference as a Theory of Meaning

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 Meaning is constructed through the interaction of unconscious and
conscious mental process (Viktor De Munck, 2000). In simplest theory claim
that reference is to give meaning of a word shows what it denotes, picks out
elements in the real world. There are a number of problems with this simplest
version as a theory of semantics. The first problem is predict many words no
meaning and referent like so, not, very, but, of. A second is some nominal don’t
have or don’t exist. E.g. “She paints a unicorn”, World War Three might be about
to start”. We’d say that these expressions are meaningless if meaning is the
relation between words and items in the real world. The third problem is
same individual can be referred to in different ways. E.g. “In 1981 Anwar El
Sadat was assassinated”, an individual referred by a name and “In 1981 the
president of Egypt was assassinated” referred by a definite description. Share
same referent but have two different meanings. So, there’s more to meaning than
reference. E.g. woman who lives next door can be referred as my neighbour,
Pat’s mother, the head of science, all refer to the same individual but differ in
meaning. E.g. “the morning star and the evening star” both refer to Venus but
speaker doesn’t know that and refer to them as two different things, for him,
then, the expression “Venus is Venus” is not tautology. There’s more to meaning
than reference.

2.4 Mental Representations

2.4.1 Introduction
Sense places a new level between words and the world: a level of mental
representation. Thus, a noun is said to gain its ability to denote because it is
associated with something in the speaker/hearer’s mind. This gets us out of the
problem of insisting everything we talk about exists in reality, but it raises the
question of what these mental representation are. Mental entities are images,
relationship between this image and the world entity would be one of
resemblance, Kempson (Saeed, 1997). It has problems with common nouns due
to variation in images different speakers have of word like car or house since
they depend on their experience. E.g. “triangle” one might have an equilateral,
or isosceles or scalene as image.

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 The most usual modification of image theory is to hypothesize that sense of
some words, while mental, isn’t visual but a more abstract element: a concept.
This has the advantage that it contains non-visual features which makes a dog a
dog, democracy democracy, or feel confident to describe a triangle. Another
advantage for linguistic is that some concepts simple and related to perceptual
stimuli, “sun”, and other complex “marriage” involve whole theories or cultural
complexes.

2.4.2 Concepts
Adopt hypothesis that meaning of a word is a combination of its denotation
and a conceptual form. Two basic questions about the conceptual element are:
1. What form can we assign to concepts?
2. How do children acquire them, along with their linguistic labels?
We will focus on concepts that correspond to a single word, i.e. that are
lexicalized. For example, on the shopping channel, I saw a tool for compacting
dead leaves into garden statuary. The reason why some concept are lexicalized
and other not is utility. If we refer to something enough it will become
lexicalized. Utility-based lexicalization of concepts, for example describing
something that for a while was given the two-word label microwave-oven, but
now usually called just a microwave.
Children acquiring concepts may differ from the concepts of adults. Work
in developmental psychology has shown that children may operate with concepts
that are quite different: underextending concepts, as when for a child dog can
only use for their pet, not the one next door; and overextending concepts, where
a child uses daddy for every male adult, or kitty for lions and tigers.

2.4.3 Necessary and sufficient conditions

One traditional approach to describing concepts is to define them by using
sets of necessary and sufficient conditions. This approach comes from thinking
about concepts as follows. If we have a concept like woman, it must contain the
information necessary to decide when something in the world is a woman or not.
For example:

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x is a woman if and only if L
Where L is a list of attributes, like:
x is human;
x is adult;
x is a female, etc.
2.4.4 Prototypes
This is a model of concepts which views them as structured so that there are
central or typical members of a category, such as bird or furniture, but then a
shading off into less typical or peripheral members. So chair is a more central
member of the category furniture than lamp, for example.
This approach allows for borderline uncertainty: an item in the world might
bear some resemblance to two different prototypes. For example, whale is a
mammal, some characteristics of fish. In the prototype theory of concepts, this
might be explained by the fact that whales are not typical of the category
mammal, being far from the central prototype. At the same time, whales resemble
prototypical fish in some characteristic features: they live underwater in the
oceans, have fins, etc.
Some authors say central prototypes are an abstraction with a set of
characteristic features that describe a kind of average thing but not a particular
specie. E.g. Bird: small, with wings, feathers, ability to fly.
Researchers organize categories by exemplars, memories of actual typical birds
and compare an item with them to say it is a bird. Another approach that sheds
light on the relationship between linguistic knowledge and encyclopedia one.
Fillmore and Lakkof (Saeed, 1997): speakers have folk theories about the world
based on experienced and rooted in their culture called frames and idealized
cognitive models (ICM). They’re a collection cultural views not scientific
theories. Fillmore and Lakoff: e.g. division of knowledge about the world
bachelor, dictionary-type like unmarried man, which is linguistic knowledge.
And encyclopedia-type, the cultural and general knowledge of bachelorhood and
marriage – the frame or ICM. We only apply bachelor within a typical marriage

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ICM. This idealized model restrains us from using other meaning like bachelor
as a celibate person.

2.4.5 Relations between concepts

Relational nature of conceptual knowledge is words are in a network of
semantic links with other words and so are concepts. Crucial element is not the
amount but the integration into existing knowledge. E.g. knowing peccary is a
pig, together with what you know about pigs, is enough, to understand a sentence
with it and start gaining extra knowledge.
Such relationship between concepts have been used to motivate models of
conceptual hierarchies in the cognitive psychology literature. Conceptual
hierarchies (see figure 2.1) is model based on defining attributes represented by
nodes in a network to which attributes are attached and between which there are
links. The links are inclusions so that a subordinate node inherits attributes from
the other nodes. E.g. Canary inherits the attributes of Bird and Animal. It’s got
the ability to block inheritance, e.g. Ostrich doesn’t inherit can fly from birds.

Figure 2.1

Hierarchies contain three levels of generality that differs in usefulness and

informativeness. E.g. superordinate level. Furniture: few characteristics. Basic
level: Chair, more features. Subordinate level: armchair, dining chair, more

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features, more specific. Basic level is cognitively important, everyday life,
acquired first, in experiments they’re recognized more quickly. It depends on the
person knowledge, more knowledge more subordinate level.

2.4.6 Acquiring concepts

We do acquiring concepts by ostensive definition. We acquire knowledge
by being directed to examples. E.g. walking with a child, you say look at the
doggie, the child learns it.
Ostension is proposed indirectly in language. E.g. walking with someone
whose language you don’t know and when a rammit runs past says “gavagai”.
You don’t know if it’s a warning or an instruction. To understand you need to
know something amout the language. For example, in English the frame “it’s”
tells you this. Point: even ostensive definition depends on prior knowledge of
some word meanings.

2.5 Words, Concepts and Thinking

2.5.1 Linguistic relativity
The notion of linguistic relativity, associated with Edward Sapir and
Benjamin Lee Whorf, is an idea that has spread far outside the fields of
anthropology and linguistics where it began. Lexicalized concepts impose
restrictions on possible ways of thinking. Provides explanation for a common
experience when dealing with different languages. Translators say that there’s a
lack of fit between words in two languages. E.g. English “put on” no distinction
between which part, Japanese does. Boas.
The idea of Language as a mirror of culture developed into a stronger one:
people’s thoughts are determined by the categories available to them in their
language. Languages, reflecting speaker’s cultural practises, embody different
conceptual classifications of the world. As an example of the manner in which
terms that we express by independent words are grouped together under one
concept, the Dakota language may be selected. The terms naxta’ka TO KICK,
paxta’ka TO-BIND IN BUNDLES, yaxta’ka TO BITE, ic’a’xtaka TO BE
NEAR TO, boxta’ka TO POUND, are all derived from the common element

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xtaka TO GRIP, which holds them together, while we use distinct words for
expressions the various idea.
Linguistic relativity is the way we think about the world is determined by
our cultural and linguistic background. It’s not restricted to word meaning,
meaning is derived from grammatical systems, e.g. the notion of number or
aspects and tense in verbs, which are even stronger and unavailable to conscious
reflection.
2.5.2 The language of thought hypothesis
Thinking and speaking related but involve distinct levels of representation.
Linguistic relativity rejected by cognitive science, the study of intelligence based
cognitive psychology, computer science and linguistics. We can identify two
main types of argument used to support this view. The first is that there’s
evidence of thinking without language. Evidence that thinking and language are
not the same. Babies and primates remember and reason and they have no
language. Artists and scientist claim that their creativity derives from
nonlinguistic images. So, cognitive processes make use of a separate
computational system in the mind: the language of thought. The second is
language underspecifies meaning. Meaning is richer than language in the
communication process. Speakers compress their thoughts and imply rather than
state meaning, hearers fill out their own version of the intended from the
language presented.
Mentalese is language of thought. When we speak we translate from
mentalese to whatever language. The language of thought is universal. Humans
being have the same cognitive architecture and mental processes even though
they speak different languages.

2.5.3 Thought and reality

Semanticist must consider the relationship between thought and reality.
Reality exist because of the working of human mind and is immaterial: idealism.
Reality is attainable and comes from conceptualizing and categorizing the world:
objectivism. We can never perceive the world as it really is: reality is only

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graspable through the conceptual filters derived from biological and cultural
evolution: mental constructivism.
Linguistics leave these theories and concentrate on the meaning relations
between expressions within a language, or try to compare meaning across
languages. This turning to language is called linguistic solipsism.

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CONCLUSION
We can use language to describe something in this world. We can convey
information about events that occur to listeners. Clearly, all languages allow the
speaker to describe an aspect or something that is felt.
Reference has three types: 1) Referring and non-referring expressions, 2)
Constant versus variable reference, 3) Referents and extensions. Names, nouns and
noun phrases also included in reference.
Many nominal expressions are used by speakers who do not have references
that exist or have never existed, for example unicorn, world war three, and christmas
father have no meaning, because the meaning taken has nothing to do between
words and things in the real world.
A sense of meaning that places a new level between word and world: the
level of mental representation. Nouns are said to gain their ability to show because
they are related to something in the mind of the speaker / listener.
People talk in different ways because they think differently. They think in
different ways because their language offers a way of expressing (meaning) the
outside world around them in different ways. Beside that, there is also a connection
between thought and reality, where the reality of life that we experience will be
further processed into a thought.

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 REFERENCE

Munck, V. d. (2000). Culture, Set, and Meaning. USA: Waveland Press.

Proudfoot, M., & Lacey, A. R. (2009). The routledge dictionary of philosophy:

fourth edition. New York: Routledge.

Saeed, J. I. (2003). Semantics. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.

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