Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time

By Reinhart Koselleck
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Description
Modernity in the late eighteenth century transformed all domains of European life -
intellectual, industrial, and social. Not least affected was the experience of time itself:
ever-accelerating change left people with briefer intervals of time in which to gather new
experiences and adapt. In this provocative and erudite book Reinhart Koselleck, a
distinguished philosopher of history, explores the concept of historical time by posing
the question: what kind of experience is opened up by the emergence of modernity?
Relying on an extraordinary array of witnesses and texts from politicians, philosophers,
theologians, and poets to Renaissance paintings and the dreams of German citizens
during the Third Reich, Koselleck shows that, with the advent of modernity, the past and
the future became 'relocated' in relation to each other.
The promises of modernity -freedom, progress, infinite human improvement -produced
a world accelerating toward an unknown and unknowable future within which awaited
the possibility of achieving utopian fulfillment. History, Koselleck asserts, emerged in
this crucial moment as a new temporality providing distinctly new ways of assimilating
experience. In the present context of globalization and its resulting crises, the modern
world once again faces a crisis in aligning the experience of past and present. To
realize that each present was once an imagined future may help us once again place
ourselves within a temporality organized by human thought and humane ends as much
as by the contingencies of uncontrolled events.

Sev en t y pes of meani ng

Semantics is a study of the meaning of lexical items and other parts of language. There are seven types of
meaning in Semantics; conceptual,connotative, stylistic, affective, reflected, collocative and thematic
meaning.This study focuses on only two of the types of meaning: conceptual meaningand connotative
meaning.
1/Conceptual meaning
Conceptual meaning means logical, cognitive, or denotative content. It isbased on two structural principles,
which arecontractivenessand constituentstructures(in a scientific way). It is usually derived from definitions
we find indictionaries and the appearance of these lexical items. We give these lexicalitems features
(constituent structures) and eliminate other features whichare not present (contractiveness structures).- The
conceptual meaning of a language can be studied in terms of
contrastive feature,
depends on the given lexical field
,
so that (forexample) the meaning of the word
woman
could be specified as
(+ human, +adult,- male),
as distinct from,
man
, which could be defined
(+ human, +adult,+ male),
man is incompatible with woman because of the distinctfeature which is (male feature)- The second
principle, that of structure, is the principle by which largerlinguistic units are built up out of smaller units, (for
example) in thissentence:
{[(All) (men)] [(are)] [(mortal)]}

(We are able to analyze the sentence syntactically into a its constituentsparts)The semantic representation
of conceptual meaning is governed by twolinguistic principles: that of contrast and that of arrangement.
Theseprinciples are comparable to the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationsobserved in phonological
and syntactic analyses.
2/Associative meaning
The associative meaning of an expression has to do with individual
mentalunderstandings of the speaker. They, in turn, can be broken up into six sub-
types:connotative, collocative, social, affective, reflected and thematic

A/ Connotative meaning

“The communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to” (Leech 1981:
12).
Connotation is the real-world value a speaker associates with an expression.In other words, it is the
meaning above the conceptual meaning and it mayvary according to culture, background or society. Thus,
connotative meaningcan be subjective or unstable. It depends very much on how an individual orsociety
perceives a word. It is the association that we make in our mind of what these lexical items represent. (For
example), In English, the word
dog
may have the connotation
loyalty
, apart from its referential meaning.When we analyze word meanings we should distinguish two
separateconcepts called denotative and connotative meaning; “
sea
” denotes a largebody of water but connotes a sense of danger, instability…One aspect concerning the
connotative meaning is the

social meaning
(sometimes termed stylistic meaning)
which varies between age-groups, sex,social class and cultures. Dialect can be a good example.It is a
piece of language that conveys about the social circumstances of itsuse. Pavement is used in British
English and sidewalk in American English.Residence is formal and home is casual.
C/ Affective meaning
Is what is communicated of the feeling or attitude of the speaker/writertoward what is referred to? (For
example), by scaling our remarks accordingto politeness with the object of getting people to be quiet, we
might sayeither:
1/ I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if you would be so kind as to loweryou
voices a little2/ will you belt up
Factors such as intonation and voice-timber (tone of voice) are also importanthere
. And there are elements of language such as interjections, like (Aha! Yippee!),Whose
main function is to express emotions.
D/ Reflected meaning
What is communicated through association with another sense of the sameexpression. So it is the
meaning that arises in cases of multiple conceptualmeaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our
response to anothersense.In the church service, the synonymous expression (the comforter), it sounds

warm ‘comforting’ but in the religious context it means the strengthener orsupporter. i.e sense of the word
seems to ‘rub off ’ on another sense.
E/ Collocative meaning
Collocative meaning is the associated meaning a word acquires in line withthe meaning of words which
tend to co-occur with it. Both pretty andhandsome mean good-looking but they differ in collocative
meaning. Prettyoften co-occurs with girl, woman, flower, skirt, etc. Handsome oftencollocates with boy,
man, car, overcoat, etc.
See (green ideas sleep furiously) to more understand the meaning of collocation.
2/Thematic meaning
It concerns itself with how the order of words spoken affects the meaningthat is entailed.If we say:1/ I will do
it tomorrow. In a neutral way.2/ tomorrow, I will do it. Showing a promise.4/ Mrs. Bessi Smith donated the
first prize.5/ The first prize was donated by Mrs. Bessi Smith.Certainly these have different communicative
value: the active sentenceseems to answer ‘
what did Mrs. Bessi Smith donate?
’, while the passivesentence seems to answer ‘
who donated the first prize
’.
Furthermore…
Antonymy
(A is the opposite of B; e.g. cold is the opposite of warm)
Homonym.
Two concepts, A and B, are expressed by the same symbol. Ex-ample: Both a financial institution and a
edge of a river are expressed by theword bank (the word has two senses).
Hyponymous relationships
("is a" relation or hyponym-hyperonym),generic relation, genus-species relation: a hierarchical subordinate
relation.(A is kind of B; A is subordinate to B; A is narrower than B; B is broader thanA). The "is a" relation
denotes what class an object is a member of. Forexample, "CAR - is a - VEHICLE" and
"CHICKEN - is a - BIRD". It can bethought of as being a shorthand for "is a type of". When all the
relationshipsin a system are "is a", is the system a taxonomy. The "generic of" optionallows you to indicate
all the particular types (species, hyponyms) of aconcept. The "specific of" option al-lows you to indicate the
common genus(hypernym) of all the particular types.

Incompatibility.
It has to do with the
componential analysis
which is
alsocalled
feature analysis
or
contrast analysis
, refers to the description of the meaningof words through structured sets
of semanticfeatures, which are given as “present”,“absent” or “indifferent with reference
to feature”. (Example)See the example of man and woman_ under the conceptual
meaning_ 1/ they must share the same lexical field (in semantics) _
Hyponymousrelationships_ (the human race)
1/they differ in only one feature. (Male feature)So man is incompatible with woman
(meaning exclusion)

CRITICALLY EXAMINE THE APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF SEMANTICS

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CRITICALLY EXAMINE THE APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF SEMANTICS

Abstract

Semantics, the area of linguistic study that concerns itself with the study of
meaning is a complex aspect in language study. It studies meaning and up
till now, no one has been able to come up with satisfactory definitions of
“the meaning of meaning”. There are other complexities that surround the
study of semantics but for this study, we will critically examine the
approaches to the study of Semantics. This will be done with a view of
enlightening readers on these approaches.
1.0 Introduction

It has been duly noted that the study of meaning in language has interested
not only the linguists but the philosophers, psychologists, scientists,
anthropologists and sociologists. Scholars have long puzzle dover what
words mean or what they represent, or how they are related to reality. They
have at times wondered whether words are more real than objects, and they
have striven to find the essential meanings of words. It has also being
debated that meaning can be approached from different angles. Indeed
knowledge about semantics has been cumulative, developing from the
earliest times to the modern period. This means that the study of semantics
can be carried out on a historical basis. This can be done by focusing on the
following approaches:

• Traditional Semantics

• Behavioural Semantics

• Structural Semantics,and

• Generative Semantics

1.0 Traditional Semantics

Traditional semantics is associated with the work of such great philosophers

as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. There were many others who came after
these philosophers. Their preoccupation was on the nature of human
language itself. One of the oldest views, found in Plato’s dialogue Cratylus, is
that the signifier is a word in the language and the signified is the object in
the world that it “stands for”, “refers to” or “denotes”. Words, that is to say,
are “names” or “labels” for things.
Semantics 1: Traditional Approaches to Meaning

Semantics (from Gr. σημαντικός = meaningful ⇐ σήμα = sign) is the study of (‘grammatical’)
meaning in language. In studying semantics, we can draw a distinction between the meaning(s)
attributed to the individual word and that/those in or of larger syntactic units.

Analysis of Meaning

The study of word meaning constitutes the more traditional approach to semantics which can be
traced back to Aristotle and assumes that it is possible to categorise words (or concepts)
according to sets of necessary and sufficient features . It is essentially ‘paradigmatic’ in nature,
as it contrasts the semantic content of individual words in terms of their individual meaning
components, as we shall see further below. For that purpose, it applies a technique known
as componential analysis , which attempts to identify salient features of meaning (in analogy to
the features we’ll later encounter when we talk about phonology).

In contrast to this, the analysis of meaning in context can be seen as more ‘syntagmatic’. Here,
sometimes a further distinction is made between ‘sentence meaning’ and ‘utterance
meaning’ , where the former refers to the literal meaning of the words as they are uttered and
the latter to their meaning in context, i.e. how they are meant to be interpreted in this particular
context. However, the second type may also be seen as belonging to the realm of pragmatics,
rather than semantics. We’ll largely focus on the analysis of word meaning in our discussions,
although we’ll also look at some issues in contextual meaning.

Synonymy

We talk of two words being synonymous when they basically express the ‘same’ meaning. This
variety of different expressions may have different reasons or motivations, as you’ll be able to
see when you look at the brief list below:

1. common vs. learned/borrowed: buy ⇔ purchase

2. common vs. technical/scientific: water ⇔ H2O
3. ‘dialectal’: autumn ⇔ fall, boot ⇔ trunk
4. grammatical: start ⇔ begin

Exercises

 Find potential synonyms for the following

words: car, lorry, finish, CO2, radiator, commence. Categorise these according to the
explanations given above and try to give reasons as to why they may have developed.
 Find further examples of synonyms yourself and see whether the potential explanations
given above are sufficient to describe them.
When two words behave in exactly the same way in all contexts, we have total synonymy . This
may be deemed true for what has been labelled ‘dialectal’ synonymy above, but for almost all
other cases, we can probably only assume partial synonymy . The negative counter-part to
synonymy is called antonymy and will be described in more detail later.

Hyper- & Hyponyms

In order to describe the meaning of individual words, it is very useful to be able to group them
into classes or categories. Each class/category may in turn be divided into a number of sub-
classes or sub-categories. Categories are often based on general classification systems used in
everyday language ( folk categories ), but may also be based on technical classification systems
( expert categories ). Within each categorisation scheme, there is usually a hierarchy, where
some words are deemed to belong to superordinate and some to subordinate categories, with the
subordinate elements usually being specific types of the superordinate categories. Words that are
used to label superordinate categories are usually referred to as hypernyms (also hyperonyms;
{hyper} = above) and those that belong to subordinate categories are known as
their hyponyms ({hypo} = below). Thus the relationship between a hypernym and its individual
hyponyms is usually an is-a relationship, where the hyponyms are specialised types of the
hypernym. Therefore car and lorry would be hyponyms of vehicle and conversely vehicle the
hypernym of car and lorry.

The relationship between hypernyms and hyponyms is also often represented in the form of a
tree, similar to those in syntax, e.g.
Words that appear at the same level within the hierarchy are called co-hyponyms , e.g. sports
car and family car in our case. A classification scheme like the one above that groups words
together is known as a taxonomy .

Exercise

Try to develop a taxonomy for living beings and justify your choices as to the different levels
you may want to postulate.

Basic Semantic Features

Basic semantic features are a means of classifying individual properties of words, i.e.
conducting componential analysis, so that these can be compared to or contrasted with one
another. Feature classification systems are usually binary (i.e. have only two values, + & -), but
may sometimes also specify a (third) neutral value (0). Some typical/often used features are:

 animate
 human
 concrete
 male
 mature/adult
 married
 etc.

And examples where these features have been applied are:

 bachelor: +male, +mature/adult, +human, +animate, +concrete, -married

 child: 0male, -mature/adult, +human, +animate, +concrete, -married
 daughter: -male, 0mature/adult, +human, +animate, +concrete, 0married

Approaches to the Study of Semantics..........11 Module 2 The Study of

Meaning...................................16 Unit 1 Unit 2 The Nature of Meaning...................................16
Theories of Meaning........................................23 Module 3 Word and Sentence
Meaning.......................27 Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 Unit 4 Semantics and the Study of the Word:
Sense Relations..........................................................27 Semantics and the Nature of the
Lexicon......32 Aspects of Sentential Meaning.......................38 Pragmatics: Conversational
Implicative and Speech Acts Theories.......................................44 Module 4 Logic and
Fallacies.........................................50Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 Basic Aspects of Linguistics
Fallacies.............50Aspects of Material Fallacies Relevant to
Semantics..........................................................55 Elements of Logic in
Semantics........................62 Module 5 Semantics and the Practice of Literary
Communication...............................................68 Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 The Application of
Semantics to Literary Communication................................................68 The Application of
Semantics to Everyday Communication................................................75 Semantic Problems in
Nigerian English.........80
 ENG 331 MODULE 1 MODULE 1 DEFINITION SEMANTICS AND SCOPE OF Unit 1 Unit 2
Unit 3 Definition and Brief History of Semantics The Scope of Semantics Approaches to the
Study of Semantics UNIT 1 DEFINITION AND BRIEF HISTORY OF SEMANTICS CONTENTS 1.0
Introduction 2.0 Objectives 3.0 Main Content 3.1 The Concept of Semantics 3.2 The Definition
of Semantics 3.3 The Brief History of Semantics 4.0 Conclusion 5.0 Summary 6.0 Tutor-Marked
Assignment 7.0 References/Further Reading 1.0 INTRODUCTION Semantics simply implies the
study of how meaning in language is produced or created. Semantics encompasses how words,
phrases and sentences come together to make meaning in language. The term semantics
simply means the study of meanings. It has been the subject of discourse for many years by
philosophers and other scholars but later was introduced formally in literature in the late
1800s. Hence, we have philosophical semantics, linguistic semantics among other varieties of
semantics. For the purpose of the present discourse, we shall be focusing on the development
and nature of semantics. Hence, we shall be learning the definition and beginnings of linguistic
semantics. 2.0 OBJECTIVES At the end of this unit, you should be able to: • • define and
explain the meaning of semantics trace the beginnings of linguistic semantics. 1
 ENG 331 3.0 MAIN CONTENT 3.1 The Concept of Semantics INTRODUCTION TO
SEMANTICS Semantics is the area of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words or the
meaning attached to words or symbols. This view places semantics at the core of
communication in language. Indeed, there is no communication without the sharing of
meaning. 3.2 The Definition of Semantics Semantics as a term was first formally used by Breal
in 1897. Hence, we can deduce that Breal was the first to bring to the fore in a formally
acceptable way, the nature of meaning in language. Though the quest for the understanding of
meaning has always been of interest to scholars, semantics was not mentioned as a term and
did not come up in literature until 1897 when it was first used by Breal. This first attempt to
study meanings by philosophers brought about the area of semantics called philosophical
semantics, which examines the relationship between
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 TERMFall '18
 PROFESSORProf. Charles Ogbulogo
 TAGSOde, Semantics, It, ........., Study Of Semantics, Brief History Of Semantics

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