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Chapter 5 Semantics 1. Different Approaches to Meaning 1.1 Meaning as naming ◆The meaning of an expression is what it refers to, or names. (1) One of your friends Holly, a philosophy major, frequently comes up with language questions for you. Recently, she asked, “Do George Washington and the first president of the United States mean the same thing?” What will you tell her? Answer: The two expressions have the same referent, but the fact that two expressions refer to the same entity does not necessarily entail that they mean the same. (2) a. the evening star b. the morning star. ◆Weaknesses of the approach 1.2 Meaning as concept ◆The meaning of an expression is viewed by some linguistics as the concept or idea associated with it. Any symbol is psychologically associated with a particular concept. So when the word chair is spoken, the concept of chair is called upon in the mind of the speaker or the hearer. According to this view, there is no direct link between symbol and referent, that is, between language and world. The link is via thought, the concepts in our minds. Semantic Triangle Relation between Concept and Language From concept to lexical concepts Lexical concepts are linguistically encoded concepts. Unlike the sort of mental entities referred to by psychologists as ‘concepts’ that cannot find linguistic expressions, lexical concepts are concepts that have a corresponding linguistic expression, or that can be “externalized via language”/coded as linguistic expressions. They constitute the semantic pole/value of lexical items. Language only covers part of the world of concepts which humans have or may have. Lexical concepts are only part of the conceptual world of the human mind, for we have many more concepts and thoughts than there are linguistic expressions to express them. […] Concepts which structure our world of thought are conceptual categories, i.e., concepts of a set as a whole. ◆ Weaknesses of the appr