AN APPRAISAL OF THE INDISPENSABLE ROLE OF LEXICAL FIELD ANALYSIS IN THE STUDY OF MEANING (ENGLISH AND LINGUISTIC PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
Abstract
The focus of semantics is the study of meaning and meaning related terms. This paper is an appraisal of the indispensable role of lexical field analysis in the study of meaning. The study adopts a descriptive analysis of semantic meaning, stating that it is impossible, if not, almost unrealistic to carry out a semantic analysis without lexical field analysis; thus ascertaining the indispensability of this branch of semantics.
INTRODUCTION
Linguistics has been defined by Omachonu as “the scientific study of language” (7). The discipline called linguistics has various branches such as: Sociolinguistics, Anthropological linguistics, Phonetics and Phonology, Discourse Analysis, Applied linguistics, Pragmatics, Forensic linguistics, Stylistics, Semantics, etc. and linguistics as a discipline has tried to spread its tentacles to the various fields of human endeavour in order to examine the role of language in human activities with the aim of analyzing human interactions and communications. This study concerns itself with the above latter field which is the branch of linguistics that examines meaning in communication.
According to Ogbulogo (1), semantics as a term was first formally used by Breal in 1897. Hence, it can be deduced 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 according to Ogbulogo (1) examines “the relationship between linguistic expressions and the phenomena they refer to in the external world.” Philosophical semantics focuses on examining the conditions under which such linguistic expressions and the phenomena they refer to are true or false. This can be traced to as far back as Plato and Aristotle’s works.
However, contemporary philosophical semantics can be traced to the works of authors like Rudolf Carnap (1891 – 1970), Alfred Tarski (1902) and Charles Peirce (1839 – 1914). According to Peirce, philosophical semantics developed as Semiotics in America while with the influence of Saussure in France, the term “semiology” was used. However, the idea of truth-based semantics was Tarski’s major contribution (Ogbulogo, 2). Ogbulogo goes ahead to observe that linguistic semantics emphasizes the properties of natural languages while pure or logical semantics is the study of the meaning of expressions using logical systems or calculi. Examining semantics in this dimension makes it more mathematically related than linguistic in nature. Alfred Korzybski was the first person to attempt studying semantics as a distinct discipline, separate from the discipline of philosophy. Incidentally, Korzybski was a non-linguist who was passionate about introducing a generally acceptable science of communication. Prior to the work of Korzybski, semantics has been looked at from a nonscientific perspective but Korzybski’s work was the first formal attempt at bringing in a scientific model to the study of semantics. Korzybski started by describing all entities and realities by assigning labels to them. He went further to group the names into three. He had names for common objects such as chair, stone, cow and so on. He also had labels for groups and collections like nations, animals, people and so on. Korzybski’s third group of labels does not have identifiable referents in the outside world. These labels are highly abstract and do not readily lend themselves to the assignment of concrete reality. These labels are only assignable to concrete realities by imagination. Such labels include but are not limited to freedom, love, and democracy among others. They feature in aesthetics, philosophy and politics. However, this is not the same with common objects since there seems to be a direct correspondence between items and linguistic expressions. It is interesting to also know that a serious difficulty tends to be posed by labels for groups as a result of the wide range of items within the group. The main challenge with abstract labels stems from the fact that meaning does not have an objective reference in reality because different people will react to different words differently. For instance, the word “love” would be viewed differently by different people as a result of their circumstance or present reality. One person who probably is in a loving relationship will view it positively while another in an unfulfilled relationship will view it negatively. Hence, their reactions will be different and will therefore evoke different emotions from them.
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AN APPRAISAL OF THE INDISPENSABLE ROLE OF LEXICAL FIELD ANALYSIS IN THE STUDY OF MEANING (ENGLISH AND LINGUISTIC PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
