The branch of the study of language concerned with the meaning of words and word equivalents is called semasiology. The name comes from the Greek word semasia meaning signification. As semasiology deals not with every kind of meaning but with the lexical meaning only, it may be regarded as a branch of Lexicology.
This does not mean that a semasiologist need not pay attention to the grammatical meaning. On the contrary, the grammatical meaning must be taken into consideration in so far as it bears a specific influence upon the lexical meaning.
If treated diachronically, semasiology studies the change in meaning which words undergo. Descriptive synchronic approach demands a study not of individual words but of semantic structures typical of the language studied and of its general semantic system.
Sometimes the words semasiology and semantics are used indiscriminately. They are really synonyms but the word semasiology has one meaning, the word semantics has several meanings.
Academic or pure semantics is a branch of mathematical logic originated by Carnap. Its aim is to build an abstract theory of relationships between signs and their referents. It is a part of semiotics the study of signs and languages in general, including all sorts of codes (traffic signals, military signals). Unlike linguistic semantics which deals with real languages, pure semantics has as its subject formalised language.
Semasiology is one of the youngest branches of linguistics, although the objects of its study have attracted the attention of philosophers and grammarians since the times of antiquity. A thousand years before our era Chinese scholars were interested in semantic change. We find the problems of word and notion relationship discussed in the works of Plato and Aristotle and the famous grammarian Panini.
For a very long period of time the study of meaning formed part of philosophy, logic, psychology, literary criticism and history of the language.
Semasiology came into its own in the 1830s when a German scholar Karl Reisig, lecturing in classical philology, suggested that the studies of meaning should be regarded as an independent branch of knowledge. Reisigs lectures were published by his pupil F. Heerdegen in 1839 some years after Reisigs death. At that time, however, they produced but little stir. It was Michel Breal, a Frenchman, who played a decisive part in the creation and development of the new science. His book Essai de semantique (Paris, 1897) became widely known and was followed by a considerable number of investigations and monographs on meaning not only in France, but in other countries as well.
The treatment of meaning throughout the 19th century and in the first decade of the 20th was purely diachronistic. Attention was concentrated upon the process of semantic change and the part semantic principles should play in etymology. Semasiology was even defined at that time as a science dealing with the changes in word meaning, their causes and classification. The approach was atomistic, i.e. semantic changes were traced and described for isolated words without taking into account the interrelation of structures existing within each language. Consequently, it was impossible for this approach to formulate any general tendencies peculiar to the English language.
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As to the English vocabulary, the accent in its semantic study, primarily laid upon philosophy, was in the 19th century shifted to lexicography. The Golden age of English Lexicography began in the middle of the 19th century, when the tremendous work on the many volumes of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language on Historical Principles was carried out. The English scholars R.C. Trench, J. Murray, W. Skeat constantly reaffirmed the primary importance of the historical principle, and at the same time elaborated the contextual principle. They were firmly convinced that the complete meaning of a word is always contextual, and no study of meaning apart from a complete context can be taken seriously.
Since that time indications of semantic change were found by comparing the contexts of words in older written records and in contemporary usage, and also by studying different meanings of cognate words in related languages.
In the 20th century the progress of semasiology was uneven. The 1930s were said to be the most crucial time in its whole history. After the work of F. de Saussure the structural orientation came to the forefront of semasiology when Jost Trier, a German philologist, offered his theory of semantic fields, treating semantic phenomena historically and within a definite language system at a definite period of its development.
In the list of current ideas stress is being laid upon synchronic analysis in which present-day linguists make successful efforts to profit by structuralist procedures combined with mathematical statistics and symbolic logic.
The Word and its Meaning.
There are broadly speaking two schools of thought in present-day linguistics representing the main lines of contemporary thinking on the problem: the referential approach which seeks to formulate the essence of meaning by establishing the interdependence between words and things or concepts they denote, and the functional approach, which studies the functions of a word in speech and is less concerned with what meaning is than with how it works.
All major works on semantic theory have so far been based on referential concepts of meaning. The essential feature of this approach is that it distinguishes between the three components closely connected with meaning: the sound form of the linguistic sign, the concept underlying this sound form and the referent, i.e. that part or that aspect of reality to which the linguistic sign refers. The best known referential model of meaning is the so-called basic triangle.
CONCEPT
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SOUND FORM REFERENT
As can be seen from the diagram the sound form of the linguistic sign, e.g. [teibl], is connected with our concept of the piece of furniture which it denotes and through it with the referent, i.e. the actual table. The common feature of any referential approach is the implication that meaning is in some form or other connected with the referent.
Meaning and Sound Form
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The sound form of the word is not identical with its meaning, e.g. [d v] is the sound form used to denote a pearl-grey bird. There are no inherent connections, however, between this particular sound cluster and the meaning of the word dove. The connections are conventional and arbitrary. This can be easily proved by comparing the sound forms of different languages conveying the same meaning: - - table tisch.
It can also be proved by comparing almost identical sound forms that possess different meanings in different languages. E.g.: [ ni:s] - a daughter of a brother or a sister (English); - a part of a face (Ukrainian).
For more convincing evidence of the conventional and arbitrary nature of the connection between sound form and meaning all we have to do is to point to homonyms. The word case means something that has happened and case also means a box, a container.
Besides, if meaning were inherently connected with the sound form of a linguistic unit, it would follow that a change in the sound form of the word in the course of its historical development does not necessarily affect its meaning.
Meaning and Concept
When we examine a word we see that its meaning though closely connected with the underlying concept or concepts is not identical with them.
Concept is the category of human cognition. Concept is the thought of the object that singles out its essential features. Our concepts reflect the most common and typical features of different objects. Being the result of abstraction and generalisation all concepts are thus almost the same for the whole of humanity in one and the same period of its historical development. That is to say, words expressing identical concepts in English and Ukrainian differ considerably.
e.g.: The concept of the physical organism is expressed in English by the word body, in Ukrainian by , but the semantic range of the English word is not identical with that of Ukrainian. The word body is known to have developed a number of secondary meanings and may denote: a number of persons and things, a collective whole (the body of electors) as distinguished from the limbs and the head; hence, the main part as of an army, a structure of a book (the body of a book). As it is known, such concepts are expressed in Ukrainian by other words.
The difference between meaning and concept can also be observed by comparing synonymous words and word-groups expressing the same concepts but possessing a linguistic meaning which is felt as different in each of the units under consideration.
e.g.: - to fail the exam, to come down, to muff;
- to be ploughed, plucked, pipped.
Meaning and Referent
Meaning is linguistic whereas the denoted object or the referent is beyond the scope of language. We can denote the same object by more than one word of a different meaning.
e.g.: a table can be denoted by the words table, a piece of furniture, something, this as all these words may have the same referent.
Meaning cannot be equated with the actual properties of the referent. The meaning of the word water cannot be regarded as identical with its chemical formula H2O as water means essentially the same to all English speakers including those who have no idea of its chemical composition.
Among the adherents of the referential approach there are some who hold that the meaning of a linguistic sign is the concept underlying it, and consequently they substitute meaning for concept in the basic triangle. Others identify meaning with the referent. Meaning is closely connected but not identical with the sound form, concept or referent. Yet, even those who accept this view disagree as to the nature of meaning. Some linguists regard meaning as the interrelation of the three points of the triangle within the framework of the given language, but not as an objectively existing part of the linguistic sign. Others proceed from the basic assumption of the objectivity of language and meaning and understand the linguistic sign as a two-facet unit. They view meaning as a certain reflection in our mind of objects, phenomena or relations that makes part of the linguistic sign its so-called inner facet, whereas the sound form functions as its outer facet.
