Meaning versus semantics: a representational perspective Elsheikh

44

MEANI NG VERSUS SEMANTI CS: A REPRESENTATI ONAL PERSPECTI VE
*


ENAS ELSHEIKH


Abstract

Pragmatics has been traditionally considered to be an add-on to semantics in the sense that
it makes it possible to understand how communicators use language in ways which cannot
be predicted from linguistic knowledge alone (Aitchison 1995: 93). In this setting, there
have been attempts to draw a distinction between semantics, i.e. the purely linguistic
knowledge of meaning, which is traditionally thought to provide the propositional content of
a sentence, and pragmatics, which operates over and above this propositional content to
generate implicatures. However, this (essentially Gricean) picture has been challenged by
Relevance Theory. Relevance Theory defends the thesis that the encoded linguistic meaning
underdetermines the proposition explicitly communicated by the utterance of a sentence (or
indeed any proposition) and that pragmatics is necessarily required in order to arrive at the
latter. It is this thesis, referred to as the linguistic underdeterminacy thesis, which is the focus
of this paper. I argue that Relevance Theorys retention of a conventional core of linguistic
meaning, unaffected by inferential processes, is problematic, and possibly self-contradictory.
I claim that these problems could only be resolved by denying that natural language sentences
have (encode) a logical form. This requires me to make a fundamental distinction between
meaning and semantics. This position follows from Burton-Roberts Representational
Hypothesis, which is the framework I endorse.

1. Relevance Theory and radical linguistic underdeterminacy

Relevance Theory (henceforth RT) is concerned with providing a cognitive account of
the inferential processes involved in understanding utterances. RT takes a unitary account of
pragmatic inference (Carston 2002: 101) arguing that the nature of the inferential processes
involved in the derivation of the proposition explicitly expressed (the truth-conditional
content of the utterance) are the same as those involved in the derivation of conversational
implicatures. This perspective on the role of inferential pragmatics in the derivation of the
proposition expressed constitutes a crucial departure from Grice. Grice distinguishes between
what is said and what is implicated. What is said is intended to be closely related to the
conventional meaning of the words (the sentence)uttered (Grice 1989: 25). Implicatures,
on the other hand, are carried not by what is said but only by the saying of what is said, or by
putting it that way (Grice 1989: 39). It follows that, for Grice, what is said is fully
determined by encoded meaning (plus disambiguation and reference assignment), whereas
the only role of inference in utterance comprehension is to recover what is implicated.
RT departs significantly from Grice, arguing that the gap between encoded meaning
(linguistic semantics, for RT) and the proposition explicitly communicated by the utterance
of a sentence is far wider than Grice suggests. The claim that there is such a gap is referred to
as the linguistic underdeterminacy thesis. Sentences such as those in (1)-(4) are generally
given as examples of such underdeterminacy:


*
Many thanks to Noel Burton-Roberts for many insightful discussions and helpful suggestions and comments
on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also grateful to an anonymous reviewer of NWPL, whose comments have
helped improve the paper.
Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 16 (2010) Elsheikh

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(1) Mother (to child crying over a cut on his knee):
Youre not going to die.

(2) Jim: Would you like some supper?
Sue: Ive eaten.

(3) It will take some time to repair your watch.

(4) Its raining.

What is explicitly communicated by an utterance of any of (1)-(4) goes beyond what
is linguistically encoded by the sentences uttered. In (1) what is linguistically encoded is that
the crying child is immortal, which is blatantly false, whereas what is explicitly
communicated is that he is not going to die from this cut. In (2) what is linguistically encoded
is that the speaker has eaten at some point in her life, but the speaker may have explicitly
communicated that she has had supper within the last few hours. The speaker of (3) should be
interpreted as conveying not the truism that the job in question will take some time, but that it
will take an amount of time it would be relevant to remark on: i.e. longer than would
otherwise be expected. In an appropriate context, an utterance of (4) will be understood as
explicitly communicating the proposition that it is raining in a certain location and the context
provides the missing constituent.
This view of the role of pragmatics contrasts with the conventional perspective
whereby inference provides a limited amount of embellishment to the encoding and decoding
of propositional meanings. As Carston (2002: 205) argues

With the advent of inferential pragmatics there came a complete methodological turn
around. The questions that linguistic semantics should be trying to answer changed
significantly. ... From the recognition that language users bring a rich body of
contextual assumptions to communication, and that they have specifically
communicative inferential capacities, enabling them to augment considerably and
easily the clues provided by linguistically encoded content, there follows a strategy
which is the diametric opposite of that pursued in generative semantics: go for as lean
a linguistic semantics as is possible.
(Carston 2002: 205)

The balance has tipped from encoded meaning with a few inferential additions when
necessary, to pro-active pragmatic inferencing constrained by bits of encoding.
(ibid: 206)

Given the RT position on the pervasiveness of context-dependence and the role of
inference in determining the proposition explicitly communicated by the utterance of a
sentence, logical forms of the sentences uttered are rarely, if ever, propositional. Indeed,
Carston advocates a radical version of the linguistic underdeterminacy thesis according to
which linguistically encoded meaning never fully determines the intended proposition
expressed (Carston 2002: 49, original emphasis). It follows that there would be no fully
propositional representation until all the processes required to complete the encoded logical
form took place (Carston 2002: 25). Given that, for relevance theory, the truth-conditional
content of an utterance turns out to be thoroughly affected by speakers intentions, the
possibility of a truth-conditional semantics for natural language sentences is undermined. So
Relevance Theory claims that natural language sentences do not have truth-conditional
Meaning versus semantics: a representational perspective Elsheikh
46

semantic content; instead, they invoke a distinction between two types of semantics:
linguistic semantics and truth-conditional semantics. Natural language sentences have
linguistic semantics, whereas the domain of the latter is exclusively constituted by the
Language of Thought. Thus Carston (1988: 176) writes

...we must distinguish two kinds of semantics, linguistic and truth-conditional, the
former naturally figuring in a theory of utterance meaning, the latter taking as its
domain propositional forms, whether of utterances or unspoken thoughts. Linguistic
semantics is autonomous with respect to pragmatics; it provides the input to pragmatic
processes and the two together make propositional forms which are the input to a
truth-conditional semantics.
(Carston 1988: 176)

Thus the semantics-pragmatics distinction is viable only if by semantics we mean linguistic
semantics and not truth-conditional semantics, since the latter is not immune to pragmatic
contributions. The boundary between semantics and pragmatics is thus redrawn between a
context-invariant, non-truth-conditional, linguistically encoded meaning (LEM) and
communicated meaning. The distinction as such is believed to cause no encroachment on the
semantic side (Carston 2006/7: 7) and thus preserves semantics as stable, autonomous,
uninfected by variable speaker intentions (ibid: 32). For Carston, it is

...a distinction between the information/meaning that comes from (is encoded by) the
linguistic form used by the speaker (LEM) and the non-linguistic information/
meaning required for a complete understanding of the speakers meaning.
Alternatively to, or parallel with, this informational construal, it can be seen as a
distinction between psychological processes: the decoding processes by which an
addressee recovers LEM and the inferential processes by which he extends and
adjusts it in order to recover what the speaker meant.
(Carston 1988: 6)


2. RT and the distinction between linguistic semantics and real truth-theoretic
semantics

Although relevance theorists are committed to denying that expressions of particular
languages have truth-conditional (referential) semantic content independently of speakers
intentions, they consistently attribute truth-conditional semantic properties to them. In fact,
linguistic semantics has been variously characterized in RT as an assumption schema
(Sperber & Wilson 1986a/ 1995b), a kind of template or schema for a range of possible
propositions and emphatically not itself a particular proposition (Carston 2002: 57). Here
are some representative views of RT:

The decoding process is performed by an autonomous linguistic system, the parser or
language perception module. Having identified a particular acoustic (or visual)
stimulus as linguistic, this system executes a series of deterministic grammatical
computations, or mappings, resulting in an output representation, which is the
semantic representation, or logical form, of the sentence or phrase employed in the
utterance. It is a structured string of concepts, with certain logical and causal
properties, but it is seldom, if ever, fully propositional. It is a kind of template or
Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 16 (2010) Elsheikh

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schema for a range of possible propositions, rather than itself being a particular
proposition (Carston 2002: 57).

If sentences do not encode thoughts, what do they encode? What are the meanings of
sentences? Sentence meanings are sets of semantic representations, as many semantic
representations as there are ways in which the sentence is ambiguous. Semantic
representations are incomplete logical forms, i.e., at best fragmentary representations
of thoughts (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95: 193).

...that is, given that they [some natural language expressions] map on to parts of
propositional thought representations they can be thought of as having the truth-
conditional (referential) content that those parts of the thought representations have.
For instance, assuming the word cat maps to the concept CAT and the concept CAT
refers to (is true of) cats, then cat inherits this referential semantics from CAT
(Carston 2002: 58).

Carston (2002) herself concedes that at least some natural language expressions
have a real world truth-conditional semantics by inheritance. Of course, she states that this
will standardly amount to considerably less than a full set of truth conditions given that
linguistic expressions map only to parts of the thought representations, and that there is a
range of elements which do not encode conceptual truth-conditional content. But the
difficulty with this argument is that if one concedes that those sentences do encode something
proposition-like, i.e. have conceptual and logical properties, as proposed by RT, it becomes
very difficult to maintain that they do not in fact encode propositions. Sperber and Wilson
(1986/95) claim that natural language sentences have logical properties and are capable of
entering into logical relations with other conceptual representations (e.g. implication,
contradiction, entailment) and of undergoing logical operations. So while Sperber and Wilson
(ibid: 72) acknowledge that there is a relationship between truth and logic, they claim that
for a conceptual representation to be amenable to logical processing it does not need to be
capable of being true or false, all that is necessary is for it to be well-formed. For example,
they claim that (5) below has a semantically incomplete logical form given that she and it
do not correspond to definite concepts, but merely mark an unoccupied place where a
concept might go and, therefore, is neither true nor false:
1


(5) She carried it in her hand.

Nevertheless, they claim that

In spite of its non-propositionality, (5) has logical properties. For instance, it implies
(5a), which is equally non-propositional, and it contradicts (5b), which is, or can be
understood as, propositional:
(5a) She held something in her hand.
(5b) No one ever carried anything.
(Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995: 72-3)

1
Sperber & Wilson (1986/1995: 84) write: Logical implication is a syntactic relation in that it holds purely in
virtue of the formal properties of assumptions, and involves no reference to their semantic properties. Yet, they
state that There is a necessary connection between logical implication and entailment in at least the following
sense: the notion of a deductive rule itself cannot be properly explicated without appeal to the semantic notion
of entailment.
Meaning versus semantics: a representational perspective Elsheikh
48

But this cant be right for the very reason Sperber and Wilson themselves
acknowledge namely, that there is a relationship between truth and logic, and, therefore,
only a conceptual representation which is capable of being true or false can have a logical
form (ibid: 72). We have not been given any reason why we should disregard the relation
between truth and logic. To say that (5) logically implies (5a) is to say that (5a) is true iff (if
and only if) (5) is true and is false iff (5) is false. But this is only possible if (at least part of)
what is encoded in (5) is a truth-evaluable proposition that is true when (5a) is true. It is also
perplexing how the non-propositional (5) contradicts (5b), which, for Sperber and Wilson, is,
or can be understood, as propositional (note that Sperber and Wilson here concede that there
are sentences that actually are or can be understood as propositional).
Following Blakemores (1987, 1988, 1992) distinction between conceptual and
procedural semantics, Wilson and Sperber (1993) claim that what is encoded in (5) over and
above its conceptual content is procedural. Thus the encoded meaning of the pronouns she
and it does not contribute concepts to the encoded logical form but is instead a procedure or
instruction to the pragmatic processor to find a referent. What follows from this is that the
search for referents is constrained by the proposition schema encoded in (5). The referent
for she, for example, should be a single female and a single non-human/inanimate object
for it. So we get something like (6) below:

(6) SOME FEMALE ENTITY
i
AT SOME POINT IN THE PAST CARRIED SOMETHING IN
HER
i
HAND.

Thus the encoded schema places constraints on what could possibly be explicated by
an utterance of (5). That is, whatever the proposition explicated, it has to be consistent with
(6). If we suppose that the hearer decides that she refers to, say, Robyn Carston and it to the
book written by Noam Chomsky. Once the hearer has accessed the referents, the procedural
features disappear, having served their purpose, and we get something like:

(7) ROBYN CARSTON
i
CARRIED THE BOOK WRITTEN BY NOAM CHOMSKY IN
ROBYN CARSTON
i
S HAND.

The proposition in (7) is the proposition derived by assignments of reference and
explicated by an utterance of (5). To the extent that this is true, it means that at least part of
what is encoded in (6) is true when (7) is true. An argument along those lines has been
advanced by Burton-Roberts (2005, 2007). Burton-Roberts argument actually goes like this:
(a) IF we allow that sentences of particular languages do have logico-conceptual properties,
then we are led to assume that they encode propositions; (b) a proposition (or assumption)
schema must itself be propositional because a genuinely inferential process must proceed
from one propositional form to another. Burton-Roberts argues further that the idea that a
proposition schema must itself be a proposition, albeit a general one, is not inconsistent with
RT and Carstons own assumptions that what is encoded is a kind of template or schema for
a range of possible propositions, rather than itself being a particular proposition (Carston
2002: 57).

Although she intends not being a particular proposition as no particular
proposition, it is in fact consistent with its being a GENERAL proposition which is
precisely what I take a propositional template or schema to be.
(Burton Roberts 2005: 396)

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49

The same could be said about Sperber and Wilsons (1986/1995: 72-3) statement that the
pronouns she and it in (5) do not correspond to definite concepts, but merely mark an
unoccupied place where a concept might go. Chng (1999: 97) rightly points out an internal
inconsistency in this statement. The argument goes as follows:

The first part do not correspond to definite concepts appears to presuppose that
the semantic constituents do correspond to concepts, but only to concepts which are
not definite. But merely mark an unoccupied place where a concept might go
implies that the pronouns in She carried it in her hand, for instance, do not correspond
to concepts definite or indefinite at all, but merely slots in which certain
concepts may be inserted My argument, therefore, is that the only sense in which
[THIRD PERSON (FEMALE)] might be indefinite or semantically incomplete is
that it falls short of what the speaker intended it to convey.

The point of Burton-Roberts, Chngs and, indeed, my argument is not, as it might
appear, to advocate the view that sentences of particular languages do in fact encode
propositional logical forms. On the contrary, all three would argue that indeed sentences
emphatically do not encode propositions. Our argument (which is directed at RTs
assumptions) is that if one concedes that those sentences do encode something proposition-
like, i.e. have conceptual and logical properties, as proposed by RT, it becomes very difficult
to maintain that they do not in fact encode propositions.
In fact, Carston allows that there are natural language sentences which are fully
propositional without pragmatic input. These cases are illustrated by the following
examples:

(8) Something has happened.

(9) Theres nothing on telly tonight.

Given reference fixing, (8) expresses a trivial obvious truth: at any moment in time
something or other has happened. Carston's point is that such a truism is virtually never what
a speaker has intended to express, since there is hardly any context in which they will be
relevant. So a process of pragmatic enrichment is necessary in order to arrive at the speaker's
intended meaning: perhaps,something bad has happened on the day of utterance [to x].
Similarly, for Carston, (9) expresses a proposition (given reference fixing for tonight) but
one which would be standardly false (theres always something on telly, however dire). In
order to arrive at the proposition intended by the speaker, the domain over which nothing
operates has to be narrowed down to something like programmes worth watching, and then
it may well be true. Thus Carston writes:

If these assessments of the proposition expressed (what is said) by the speaker of
these examples are correct, then we have another group of cases where pragmatic
inference must augment linguistic encoding, even though it is not strictly necessary
for the derivation of a fully propositional form (Carston 2002: 27).

These cases entail the denial of (or, at best, undermine) the claim that the linguistic
semantics of sentences is semantically incomplete and, therefore, non-truth-evaluable since
some sentences are assumed to deliver complete (truth-evaluable) propositions prior to
pragmatic input. Obviously, if some sentences are fully propositional and truth-evaluable,
surely sentences, across the board, are.
Meaning versus semantics: a representational perspective Elsheikh
50

What I have attempted to show so far is that there is an internal inconsistency in RT.
RTs attribution of conceptual and logical properties to natural language sentences is
inconsistent with and therefore undermines the claim that truth-conditional semantic
properties reside in and only in thoughts. There seems to be tension here with respect to the
locus of semantic properties. Do semantic properties reside in (a) thoughts or in (b)
expressions of particular languages or in (c) both? Furthermore, I argue that RTs account of
what is linguistically encoded in conceptual terms is problematic and, therefore, untenable.
My argument is that one cannot attribute conceptual and logical properties to natural
language sentences and sustain the claim that they do not encode propositions. That would,
undoubtedly, constitute a retreat to the traditional conception of sentence semantics as truth-
conditional.
Wedgwood (2007: 35) makes a similar point when he suggests that RTs
contextualism is not radical enough. He argues that RT, in making the move away from the
moderate contextualism of Gricean approaches, constitutes a break from conventional
perspectives on semantics, with both theoretical and methodological implications and urges
relevance theorists not to be afraid to see through the implications of this (Wedgwood:
2007: 36). He argues that if the nature of encoded meaning cannot be understood without
active consideration of inferential contributions to meaning, as RT suggests, then the nature
of encoded meaning becomes an entirely open question (ibid). The conclusion to be drawn
from Wedgwoods and my arguments is that RT, for the sake of its consistency, has to reject
the idea that natural language sentences encode conceptual properties.
In fact, Carston (2002: chapter 5) has come close to entertaining a similar position
when she suggests that natural language expressions might not encode concepts, but are
pointers to a conceptual space, on the basis of which, on every occasion of their use, an
actual concept (an ingredient of a thought) is pragmatically inferred (ibid: 360). As a mere
pointer to a concept, an expression does not itself have any conceptual properties. What is
emerging here is a tension with respect to the nature of what is linguistically encoded: is it a
concept or is it a pointer to a concept? The idea that natural language expressions are
pointers to a range of concepts is very appealing and worth pursuing. However, Carston
opts instead for what she calls a conservative position that is, one on which words encode
something, albeit something very schematic, which simply sends the system off to a
particular region in long-term memory (ibid: 375). But, as Burton-Roberts (2005: 405)
suggests, Carston is reluctant to explore these and further implications of her own proposal.
Carstons reluctance has to do with the assumption that attributing conceptual properties to
expressions of particular languages is conceptually necessary for those expressions to have
semantics/meaning and that therefore pragmatics, including RT, is but an adjunct to standard
linguistic (including semantic) theory. This is a fundamental assumption in standard
generative grammar according to which natural language expressions are constituted by
semantic properties (separate, though drawn, from conceptual resources). This is assumed to
be conceptually necessary if we wish to model language as sound with a meaning as
suggested by Chomsky (1995: 2).
In what follows, I adopt a framework which provides a perspective from which it is
incorrect and conceptually unnecessary to attribute conceptual properties to expressions of
particular languages. This is Burton-Roberts Representational Hypothesis. I briefly introduce
its basic ideas. I claim that the Representational Hypothesis, by not committing itself to
attributing semantic properties to expressions of particular languages, is more compatible
with RT and, indeed, implied by it.



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3. The Representational Hypothesis

The Representational Hypothesis, developed by Burton-Roberts and others (e.g.
Burton-Roberts 1994, 2000; Burton-Roberts & Carr 1999; Chng 1999; Young 2006) is the
proposal that speakers produce mind-external phonetic phenomena in aid of conventionally
representing formulae in the LOT. The notion of representation appealed to in the RH is
crucially relational. Burton-Roberts refers to it as M-representation, where M stands for
Magritte, a reminder of his painting in which the image of a smokers pipe is accompanied by
the warning Ceci nest pas une pipe. The Magrittian point of the warning is to alert us to the
fact that the painting does not in fact include a pipe, but is just a representation of a pipe. The
distinction between representation and what-it-is-a-representation-of is crucial to the RH.
If X is an M-representation of Y, X is separate from Y. Moreover, X does not in virtue of its
(M-representational) relation to Y partake any of Ys properties. The distinction between a
representation and what it represents constitutes a radical departure from the Saussurian-
Chomskian double interface model of the linguistic sign, where the sign (signifiant) is
partly constituted by what it is a sign of (signifi). In so doing, Burton-Roberts takes
seriously Charles Saunders Peirces view of the sign as something that is other than its object.
The Representational Hypothesis is an alternative to the standard Chomskian view of
linguistic expressions as constituted by both phonological and semantic properties.
Chomskys claim is that this double-interface view of linguistic expressions is conceptually
necessary for the modeling of the idea that language is sound with a meaning. The idea is
explicitly articulated in the introduction of his Minimalist Program. If language is sound
with a meaning, and if phonology has to do with sound and semantics has to do with
meaning, the idea that linguistic expressions are phonologically and semantically constituted
might seem inevitable. The contention of the RH, however, is that in order to model sound
with a meaning it is not necessary to attribute phonological properties and semantic
properties to a single object, provided that we distinguish between meaning and
semantics. From this perspective of the RH, standard generative grammar makes a
fundamental error equating having meaning with having semantic content if only because
it seems to imply that expressions of particular languages have their meanings intrinsically in
virtue of their intrinsic semantic content. That is, since semantic content is a property, the
implication is that meaning itself is a property. More specifically, it would imply that
meaning is a semantic property of natural language expressions.
The RHs and, indeed, my contention is that meaning is not an objective/intrinsic
property of expressions of particular languages. More specifically, meaning is not a semantic
property. Any account that seeks to explain meaning in terms of intrinsic semantic content
overlooks two important facts about meaning. The first is that meaning in language is both
conventional and intentional. Expressions in particular languages do not have their
meanings intrinsically (i.e. as a matter of natural fact); rather, what they mean is arbitrary. It
is universally acknowledged that the relation between sound and concept is non-natural and
mediated by Saussurean arbitrariness and, therefore, conventional. What this means is that
expressions of the languages we utter do not mean what they do in virtue of something
intrinsic to them. It isnt an intrinsic property of the noise corresponding to the word
chocolate that it means what it does. It might have meant planet, or whatever.
The other thing is that meaning, as suggested by Burton-Roberts (2007; also Burton-
Roberts & Poole 2006), is a pervasive notion covering all sorts of phenomena. We are
tempted to attribute constitutive semantic properties to expressions of particular languages
because they have meaning (are significant) for us. This seems to follow from the mistaken
assumption that since expressions of particular languages are meaningful (for someone), they
must have constitutive semantic properties. But that does not follow. All sorts of things have
Meaning versus semantics: a representational perspective Elsheikh
52

meaning (significance) for someone, but intuitively we do not want to say that they have
(i.e. are partly constituted by) semantic properties. This is the sort of meaning involved in
saying that, for example, smoke means fire, spots mean measles, black clouds mean rain, etc.
But it would be a mistake to say that smoke, black clouds or spots have constitutive semantic
content. Nevertheless, these physical phenomena do have significance/meaning for someone.
This is Gricean natural meaning. Similarly, to say that three bells in the bus mean that the
bus is full is to say that three bells in the bus is a sign that the bus is full. This is Grices
non-natural meaning. The upshot of this is that meaning is not a semantic property
intrinsic to expressions of particular languages. That is, meaning is not a property
exclusively and intrinsically of expressions of particular languages, nor is it a semantic
property.
If something could possibly have meaning without being actually possessed of or
constituted by semantic properties, this indeed calls for a distinction between meaning and
semantics, and between the sorts of things that have meaning and the sorts of things that
have semantic content. I have argued that all sorts of things could have meaning/significance
for someone. Now I claim, following Burton-Roberts (2007a) and, indeed, Fodor (1975,
1998, 2008), that semantic properties (whatever they may be) reside in and only in the
language of thought LOT. If anything, it is thoughts which have intrinsic semantic content.
Indeed, thought is constituted by its semantic content or, as Fodor (2001) puts it, thought is
its content. He also expresses the same position in other places. For example,

English inherits its semantics from the contents of the beliefs, desires, intentions, and
so forth that it's used to express, as per Grice and his followers. Or, if you prefer (as I
think, on balance, I do), English has no semantics. Learning English isn't learning a
theory about what its sentences mean, it's learning how to associate its sentences with
the corresponding thoughts. (Fodor 1998: 9)

English doesnt have a semantics; a fortiori English words dont have referents and
mutatis mutandis English sentences dont express propositions or have truth-
conditions. What does have a semantics is Mentalese...
(Fodor 2008: 73)

This raises the questions: where and what is meaning? Meaning is not in the
expression since expressions do not have their meanings intrinsically. Meaning is not in
thought because the semantic properties of thoughts are not themselves the semantics of
anything that has meaning, i.e. signs. Burton-Roberts (2007a, 2008) claims that meaning is
to be thought of as a relation and not a property. More specifically, it is a SEMIOTIC RELATION
that is a relation between a signifier and a signified (both signifier and signified are
radically separate). Defined as a relation between a signifier and a signified, meaning covers
all sorts of things (smoke, clouds, bells in the bus, traffic lights, and indeed utterable words).
Meaning resides in, indeed is constituted by, the semiotic relation. While the phenomenon
that functions as a sign is or might be mind-external, the signified and the semiotic relation
itself are emphatically mind-internal. A relation is semiotic (i.e. a meaning relation), if and
only if it is a relation between some phenomenon X (where X is anything) and Y (where Y is
a formula generated by LOT). What generally passes for the meaning of X (for someone S)
actually resides in the (semiotic) relation of X TO the constitutive semantic (Conceptual-
Intentional) properties of thought. In other words, something has a meaning (for someone S)
if and only if it communicates or leads S to have (i.e. entertain) a thought.
On these terms, while the process of constructing meaning crucially involves
semantics (meaning being itself a relation to semantic content), meaning and semantics
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53

are distinct. Whatever semantic properties are involved in the construction of the meaning of
some phenomenon P is emphatically not the semantics of P. It is precisely because meaning
is so closely and intimately related to semantics that the two get confused and we are tempted
to attribute constitutive semantic properties to expressions of particular languages on the
grounds that they have meaning (for someone). On these terms, the problem in explaining the
meaning of a phenomenon P by appeal to Ps semantic content is that it takes the content of
the thought which P gives rise to and attributes it as a content of P itself. It projects onto P
what pertains only to the thought which P gives rise to. It also follows from this that
semantics as a discipline is distinct from semiotics (the theory of meaning). Semantics is to
do with and only with thoughts and their conceptual content. Semiotics, on the other hand, is
to do with meaning i.e. the relation between some phenomenon and thought. Semiotics as the
theory of meaning in general concerns the cognitive (mind-internal) relation of something to
the constitutive semantic properties of objects generated by LOT (and thus thoughts, which
are by definition couched in the conceptual formulae of LOT).
I have argued that only formulae in the LOT have semantic content. But do they have
meaning? Thoughts do not communicate in virtue of their semantic content. But it very often
happens that entertaining a thought leads one to have another thought, and so on. But to the
extent that this is true, thoughts, like everything else, could function as signs for us (Peirces
secondary sign). It seems that thoughts do mean things. Thus we need to distinguish here
between the semantic content of thoughts and the meanings those thoughts might in
appropriate circumstances give rise to. Generally speaking, thoughts do not have meaning in
virtue of their intrinsic semantic content; nevertheless, thoughts can have meaning. But this
meaning is independent of, though constrained by, the intrinsic semantic content of thoughts.
There are semiotic (inferential) relations among thoughts: one thought could lead the thinker
to have another thought. The very fact that thoughts can have meaning independently of their
intrinsic semantic content is another argument for the proposed distinction between semantics
and semiotics (meaning).
It follows that there are two types of semiotic (meaning) relations. First, there is the
semiotic relation between some mind-external phenomenon (e.g. a phonetic stimulus) and a
thought. There are also semiotic relations among thoughts. It might be that this latter type of
semiotic relation (among thoughts) is responsible for generating what is standardly referred to
in the pragmatics literature as implicature. To illustrate, consider the following exchange:

(10) A: Are you bringing any drinks to the party?
B: Well, I have invited my father.
Bs utterance communicates the thought that B has invited her father to the party.

Part of the semantic content of this thought is that B has invited a man. This is a semantic
relation of entailment. However, independently of its semantic content the thought that B has
invited her father to the party might in the appropriate circumstances lead A to infer and
entertain another thought, for example the thought that we should behave ourselves at the
party, that Bs father is a conservative type of father, etc. These thoughts are not part of the
semantic content of the thought communicated by the utterance. They are distinct thoughts
that stand in a semiotic (inferential) relation to the original thought. These thoughts are
implicit but not implicated or implicatures.

4. Implications

The Representational Hypothesis offers a radical alternative to standard views of
linguistic encoding. It follows from the RH that expressions of particular languages do not
Meaning versus semantics: a representational perspective Elsheikh
54

have conceptual-logical properties, and that it is only formulae in the LOT that have
conceptual-logical properties. In RH terms, the difficulty with the RT view of encoding is
that it takes properties of the representatum (LOT) and projects them onto the M-
representation. On RTs sense of encoding, if a natural language expression-type encodes
some logico-conceptual property X, then X is a constitutive semantic property of that
expression. That is, for RT, the word is in part constituted by the logico-conceptual properties
it encodes. This conflates properties of the representatum (what is encoded) with
properties of the M-representation (encoder). Burton-Roberts (2007a) calls this sense of
encoding C-encoding (C for Constitutive). The main thrust of the Representational
Hypothesis is to distinguish between the representation and what-is-represented (between a
representation/pointer to a concept and the concept itself). A pointer to a concept is not itself
a concept. If X is in a relation to Y, this relation is not a property of either X or Y. It may well
be that this relation follows from properties of both X and Y. But the relation itself is not a
property. Xs being in a relation to something does not make the relation a property of X.
However, I believe that there is a sense of encoding which is more compatible with the
distinction. Burton-Roberts (2007a) calls it M-encoding
Adopting Burton-Roberts idea of M-encoding or M-representing, expressions of
particular languages do not encode logical and conceptual properties, but are merely
phonetic M-representational pointers to conceptual regions in thought (Burton-Roberts
2007a: 109). As Burton-Roberts puts it:

A pointer, [], is other than what-it-points-to, []. [] does not, in virtue of pointing to
[], partake of any of []s properties (conceptual, in our case).
(Burton-Roberts 2007a: 104)

The force of my argument is that utterable expressions of particular languages are not
possessed of semantic properties. They have cognitive significance on occasions of use and
this significance derives from their being in a semiotic (meaning) relation to what is
possessed of semantic properties namely, thoughts. What generally passes for the
meaning of expressions of particular languages (PLs) is in fact a relation between those
expressions and conceptual structures. On this view, meanings are always negotiated and get
their definite interpretations in the specific context where they are used. Some sound-concept
connections are conventional and potentially represented in long-term memory, whereas
novel uses of words and expressions are always ad hoc, which may or may not be
conventionalized through diachronic change. Multiple interpretations of expressions of PLs
are therefore to be expected.

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Meaning versus semantics: a representational perspective Elsheikh
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Enas Elsheikh
Department of Linguistics
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
Newcastle University
United Kingdom

enas.elsheikh@ncl.ac.uk