Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University English Studies

Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Semester 6 / Linguistics

Dhar El Mehraz / Department of English Module: Semantics
Academic year: 2019-2020 Prof. Abderrahim El Karfa

Week 2/ Lecture 2 / Video 2

Introduction to Semantics:
Traditional Views on Meaning and Historical Semantics

Introduction

I. TRADITIONAL VIEWS ON MEANING

Traditionally, meaning was analyzed mainly by logicians within the discipline of philosophy, the
mother of all sciences. Philosophers focused on the investigation of the relation between words of a
language and persons, animals, things, objects, and events in the world to which these words refer.
This basic problem on the nature and relationship between a word in a language and the object in the
real world to which it refers divided ancient Greek philosophers and logicians into three major
positions on meaning and naming, which are well documented in the literature on ancient Greek
philosophy and logic: the naturalist, the conventionalist, and the conceptualist schools. These views
on naming gave rise to two important schools in traditional analysis of meaning: the school of
naturalists or realists and the school of conventionalists. Proponents of each school supported their
views with a considerable number of arguments.
1. The Naturalist View
Ancient Greek philosophers who advocated this position viewed naming as a natural relationship
between the signs and what these signs signified. They thought that the form of words was thus
related to their meaning. This relationship was said to emanate from rigidly fixed inviolable principles
on which man had no control.
The existence of a number of onomatopoeic words in natural languages, that is, words whose
phonetic form is an imitation of the original sound they refer to such as cuckoo, splash, crush, and
hoot in English, backed up the view held by the naturalist school.
However, the overwhelming majority of words are not onomatopoeic and; therefore, do not lend
themselves to an analysis whereby their form and meaning could be associated in any significant way.
This view is opposed to the conventionalist explanation briefly defined below.
2. The Conventionalist View
Greek philosophers who argued for the conventionalist explanation viewed the relationship of
naming as a matter of pure convention; in other words, the meaning of a word was not related or
relatable to its form but rather was thought to derive from man-made decisions which were imposed
by a given community.
As such, these decisions were considered as norms not to be violated. The rather limited number
onomatopoeic words gave support to the view held by the conventionalists.
There is no natural relation between objects in the real and the names that are attributed to them.
This view is opposed to the older belief held by naturalist that names are naturally related to their
corresponding objects.
In brief, conventional meaning refers to the fact that a sequence of sounds expresses meaning in
virtue of a tacit agreement among speakers at a certain time and place, rather than because of any
necessary link between the sounds and the meaning thereby expressed.

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3. The Conceptualist View
A more advanced view was introduced which relates words and things through the mediation of
concepts of the mind; hence, the conceptualist view of meaning. This view has been held by some
philosophers and linguists from ancient times right up to the present day.
Proponents of this explanation distinguish between the meaning conveyed by a word and the thing or
things named by this word. In different terms, the forms that words had signified thing on the basis
of the fact that these forms were thought to be associated with concepts in the minds of the speakers
of a given language. As such, concepts constituted the meanings of words.
Within the framework of this view, words were considered as signs with form and meaning.
Therefore, the study of meaning focused on the tripartite relationship between words, their form, and
their meaning. Hence, the classic triangle of meaning relationships is diagrammed as follows:

This perspective on meaning holds that the relationship that there is no direct link between words
and what or who they refer to in the real world, between a word and its referent, and between
language and the real world. This view of meaning holds that the link is via thought or reference, the
concepts of our minds. A word like table, for instance, was taken to be a sign with a form (its
orthographic shape or phonetic form) and meaning (the fact that it conveys a specific object in our
minds).
4. Concluding remarks
It is important to note that within the three perspectives words, not sentences, are the basic unit of
any analysis of meaning.
It is also important to highlight that in the both the naturalist and conventionalist are based on the
direct connection between words and things to which they refer to in the real world, by the relation
of naming.
However, these views remain vague and imprecise from a scientific point of view. Meaning, like all
aspects of language, was not studied as an end in itself or, at least, in relation to language, but as part
of philosophy.
Thus, meaning, a crucial aspect of natural languages, was subject to rigid philosophical analyses which
sometimes resulted in total confusion. The abstract nature of meaning did not help in this respect;
hence, for example, the form of a word was sometimes made to signify both the concept it conveyed
and the thing or things to which it referred.
Furthermore, the terminology used in traditional analyses of meaning was far from precise. The words
concept and meaning were not clearly demarcated.
Overall, the study of meaning was an important component of philosophy, especially logic, and
reflected the greatest divide in Greek philosophy: the division between Rationalism and Empiricism.
It is only fair to say that traditional views on meaning show great depth in thinking; they paved the
way for more advanced thought on meaning and modern semantics. These lines of thought continued

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their dominance in the field of meaning from ancient Greek times onward to the nineteenth century,
when historical semantics was introduced as an emerging field concerned with the study of meaning.

II. Historical Semantics: semantic change and development

Semantics is the branch of linguistics which studies meaning. The study of meaning has something of a
chequered history in linguistics. People have since ancient times been interested in questions of
meaning, but very little progress was made before the late nineteenth century, and semantics did not
really exist as a distinct field.
"Semantics" as a word did not exist until the nineteenth century. In the 1987, the French linguist
Michel Bréal coined the term ‘semantics’ from the Greek ‘semaino’, meaning’, to signify or mean. So,
sémantique for the Greek verb for to mean was a ‘science des signification’ (Bréal, 1897: 8).
The term ‘Semantics’ appeared in English Language In 1900 as the title of the translation of Michel
Bréal Essai de sémantique by Lady Welby, who referred to Breal’s Essai de sémantique in her article
on "Significs" in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Welby points out that
'Semantics' is a branch of study which was formally introduced and expounded in 1897 by Michel
Bréal, the distinguished French philologist, in his Essai de sémantique."
The term semantics was first used to refer to the development and change of meaning, and until the
beginning of the twentieth century, linguistics was based on the historical approach to the study of
meaning and semantics. Hence, historical semantics is the study of the change of meaning in time,
and a great deal of work that has been done on semantics has been of a historical kind.
The French linguist Michel Bréal made a serious and largely successful attempt to connect semantics
with linguistics and introduce semantics into European linguistic work. In 1897, Michel Bréal
published his Essai de sémantique, in which he writes:
"My intention was to give a general outline, to sketch a general division and, as it were, a
provisional plan of a domain that has not been studied so far and which should be the result
of work for many generations of linguists. The reader is therefore requested to consider this
book a simple introduction to the science which I propose to call semantics".
In this quote, Michel Bréal demarcates semantics as an emerging science, concerned with the study of
meaning defines the subject matter of this emerging independent field of study, and sets a broad
research agenda by detailing appropriate research that ought to be undertaken. The linguists first of
all ask themselves what meaning is and answers to that question vary. Some of them are quoted
below by way of example.To this end, Bréal writes:
"In that second part we propose to investigate how it happens that words, once created and
endowed with a certain meaning, extend that meaning or contract it, transfer it from one
group of notions on to another, raise its value or lower it, in a word - bring about changes.
It is this second part that constitutes semantics, i.e. science of meaning"
This definition shows that, for Bréal, semantics was the science the subject matter of which was study
of the cause and structure of the processes of changes in meanings of words: expansion and
contraction of meanings, transfer of meanings, elevation and degradation of their value, etc. here, it is
important to note that the focus is on words as basic units in the study of meaning and their historical
development.
This developmental perspective on word meanings is also adopted by Darmesteter, who conceives of
the science of the meaning of words, i.e. semantics, as a branch of the history of psychology and an
investigation of the history of meanings and the causes of their changes. In the same line of argument,
Vendryes postulates that semantics should be based on data concerning changes in meanings in all
languages.

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These definitions back up the traditional historical meaning of semantics. In his book, Introduction to
Linguistics, Bulakhovsky defines semantics as one of the important branches of linguistics. He writes:
"Semantics as a branch of linguistics is concerned with the meaning and the changes in meaning of
words and expressions". For him, the essence of meaning is the causes of changes in meanings and
concrete forms of such changes.
In the same line of thought, Doroszewski argues that semantics should be understood as a part of
linguistics, that is, as a science of the meanings of words and the history of such meanings”. For him,
the linguist should approach the meanings of words from the social and historical point of view.
Similarly, Bulakhovsky interpreted meaning as the content of the word, revealed by connections with
reality. He argues that the proper meaning of a word is shaped by the history of its connections with
reality.
Michel Bréal, the founder of semantics, explains that "We must realize the extent to which it is
necessary that our knowledge of language be based on history and that only history can impart to
words that degree of precision which we need in order to understand them well". The definition
presented so far, including Breal’s lead to the conclusion that semantics belongs to historical
disciplines.
Certainly, the study of the change of meaning can be fascinating. The starting point in this connection
is to classify the kind of change that occurs. Here, I quote the generalization attempted by Vendryes,
who explains that:
"The various changes in meanings to which words are subject are sometimes reduced to
three basic types: contraction, expansion, shifting. Contraction occurs when there is a
transition from a general to a specific meaning; expansion, when, on the contrary, there is a
transition from a specific to a general meaning; shifting, when both meanings either are
equal in scope or in that respect indifferent to one another.
Within the same historical perspective, Campbell (2013) overviews and explains different kinds of
semantic changes and groups them into 12 essential and overlapping categories: Widening:
(generalization, extension, broadening), Narrowing (specialization, restriction), Metaphor, Metonymy,
Synecdoche, Displacement (ellipsis), Degeneration (pejoration), Elevation (amelioration), Taboo
replacement and avoidance of obscenity, Hyperbole, Litotes, and Semantic shift due to contact.
These are some major problems and issues which define the scope of historical semantics. Drawing on
this brief overview of historical semantics, it becomes clear that the subject matter of semantics in
this perspective is the meanings of words, changes in meanings, and causes of such changes. In other
words, the specific trait of linguistic semantics consists in the study of the history of meanings and the
historical approach to language.
Historical semantics is also interested in explaining how and why these changes take place in the ways
they do. Semantic change and lexical change require appeal to and coordination with other branches
of linguistics and social history because socio-cultural historical facts are often relevant to explain
semantic change. To conclude this overview of historical semantics as an introductory lecture to
modern semantics, it worth noting that the study of meaning within this perspective is developmental
and diachronic in essence.
However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, linguists have generally come to accept the
distinction made explicit by de Saussure (1916: 117/ 1959: 81) between diachronic and synchronic
linguistics, and since then, linguists have concentrated on the synchronic study of language.
Moreover, it can be argued that synchronic study must logically precede the diachronic study, for we
cannot study change in language until we have first establish what the language was like at the time
during which it changed.
So too in semantics we cannot deal with change of meaning until we know what meaning is. Some
scholars interested in historical change have indulged in vague statements. Therefore, it is sufficiently

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reasonable to concentrate on synchronic matters. For these reasons, proponents of structuralism
maintained that how Bréal saw the discipline of semantics and the study of meaning need not
concern them, in a strong reaction and opposition to the diachronic nature characterising historical
semantics and linguistics. For a structuralist a language is a system in which determinate forms are
related to meanings that are also determinate. They hold that 'Structural semantics' is accordingly
concerned with meanings as terms in such systems.