Introduction Do words have meaning? Can we define mean absolutely?

These are controversial rather a philosophical kind of problem among the linguists. According to Wittgenstein there is no such thing as meaning. He stated that do not look for the meaning rather knowing about its use. The major problem is that there are a number of other uses of mean in which mean means give different explanations and become controversial when one relate them with ones sense/concept such as actions & events (he was so mean to me), referring expression (keep of the grass), a linguistic expression (Lucky Strike) indication for other (that look on his face mean trouble). There are different theories of mean like referential, ideational, behavioral and so on. Here is the explanation of these three above mentioned theories of meaning. Referential/Denotational Theory According to this theory referent of a word is its meaning. The meaning of an expression is the thing that refers to or denote. Meaning and reference. There are two forms of the theory; firstly, same referent but different meaning of two expressions like Russells example of Sir Walter Scott and the author of Waverley. However, according to researchers problems lie in this theory because it is not always such that an expression refers to a certain object that gives it the particular meaning it has like the John F. Kennedy can be reffered as the president of U.S.A in 1962 and the U. S. A president assassinated in Dallas. Second form is the converse phenomenon of the first one; can be defined as different referent but same meaning but not for different expression rather different utterances of the same expression. For example I, you, here,

this etc., which systematically change their references with changes in the conditions their utterances. Do all meaningful expressions refer to something? It is argued that is there any relation between of the word and an individual which make the one mean the other. Do the reference and meaning always vary together it cannot be easily disposed of because no sort of referential theory will be adequate as a general account of meaning unless it is true that all meaningful linguistic expression do refer to something as the matter of conjunctions and other components of language (and, if, is, whereas etc.) whether they refer to anything and it seems not. However, referential theorists usually reply to this objection by denying that syncategorematic terms like these have menaing in isolation as nouns like pencil, adjectives like courageous and verbs like run refer to something or other. But a pencil can be referred to any pencil whatsoever. That is why, it is argued that we have had to bring in entities of a rather abstract sortclasses and quantities for the explanation of the tern otherwise the word pencil simply will not do the job of referring to the class of pencils so the same point can be made for the classes of adjectives and verbs. Denotation and connotation. Connotative meaning is all about the association of words attached to a word, which overlaps from the conceptual meaning. Associative meaning attached to a word like needle which lead us to think of painful. However, is it the case that there is someone semantically important relation that each meaningful linguistic unit has to something or other? Just like pencil and courageous do not strictly refer to anything but stands in relations that are crucial for their

meaning. If it denoted another class, for example, the class of chairs, it would not have the same meaning and vice versa. Thus, it would seem that many expressions that do not refer to anything, nevertheless, do denote and/or connote something. However, it is not at all clear that every non-referring expression has a denotation and a connotation just like consider the preposition into, at and by etc. Thus, there seems to be no space from the conclusion that such expression as conjunctions stand in no semantically interesting relations to extra linguistic entities. The end result of this argumentation is that we cannot give a generally sufficient idea of what it is for a linguistic expression to have a certain meaning by explaining this in terms of referring, or in terms of any relations or set of relations like referring. Meaning as a kind of entity. The basic question behind the meaning as a kind of entity is that what kind of entity stands for a meaning and how does an entity of this sort have to be related to a linguistic expression in order to be the meaning of that expression. There is something fundamentally wrong with this way of conceiving the problem. This can be pointed out that we run into absurdities as soon as we take seriously the idea of identifying a meaning with anything otherwise specified. The findings of all this discussion is that it is a basic mistake to suppose that meaning are entities of a sort that are otherwise specifiable. Ideational/Mentalist Theory Ideational theory refers to idea/concept associated with its expression. Here a word is taken as an idea/concept and it denotes that total meaning consist of concept and reference.

This theory explains the relationship between a linguistic expression and an idea. An idea gives a certain meaning to a linguistic expression. The ideas with which we do our thinking have an existence and a function that is independent of language. It simply means we already have ideas in our mind for each distinguishable sense of linguistic expression. However, logically there is a question over this relationship of linguistic expression and an idea for producing a meaning and the situation is not satisfied. An important question against this theory is that can anyone separate an ideas of when in course becomes etc? If you dont have any word how can you make an idea? Can we identify and produce it? Idea in this sense is derivative from such notions as meaning and understanding and so can provide no basis for an explication of meaning. The ideational theory even not work for words that have an noticeable connection with mental images, for example, dog, stove and book because there is no firm evidence that we use the word same as we have an idea in our mind. Behavioral/Stimulus Response Theory In behavioral/stimulus response meaning of an expression is taken as a stimulus or response or both. The behavioral theory of meaning also focuses on use of language in communication as in ideational theory concept we have examine but it differs from the ideational theory in respect of observable aspects of the communication situation as the social scientist particularly psychologists talk about the effects of outer behavior with our learning. However, it was also broken down because if everything is behavior then what about the ones individual mental abilities.

Meaning as a function of behavioral disposition. Psychologist and psychologically oriented philosophers claimed that we generate meaning by taking meaning as a function of behavioral disposition but they are unable to give the obvious remarks about the situation of utterance as a determinant of meaning. So, it can be concluded that it is to asserts a certain hypothetical proposition of himif C, then R. Unfortunately, we can assume same inconsistencies in this theory as we have attacked the first one. There are several reasons why it breaks down. Conclusion After all the discussion, it can be concluded that all the theories related to explaining meanings are controversial theories. The objections on the theories show that we are required to do more work to define theories of meanings. John Lyons stated that there is a long list of theories but all theories do not explain meaning. Similarly, John Leech argued that best way to define meaning is to discuss its types.

DIFFERENT THEORIES OF MEANING AND THEIR PROBLEMS

Submitted To

Dr. Pro. Shehzad

Submitted By

Muhammad Imran S-13/3301

M.Phil 1st Semester

LAHORE LEADS UNIVERSITY, LAHORE.