- Semantics as the study of the meaning of terms removed from any context (for instance, Carnap’s theory of meaning postulates, much of componential semantics, and the various forms of semic analysis, not to mention lexicography of every kind and tendency).
- Semantics as the study of content systems or structural semantics (Hjelmslev and structural approaches to semantic fields in general et similia).
- Semantics as the study of the relation between term (or sentence) and referent, or as the study of reference (for instance, Morris, Ogden, and Richards, much of analytic philosophy, and in primis Kripke). Let me remind the reader, however, of the distinction I posited in Kant and the Platypus between (i) providing instructions to identify the possible referent of a term and (ii) the act of reference itself.
- Semantics as the study of the truth conditions of propositions expressed by sentences.
- Semantics as the study of the particular meaning that terms or sentences assume in context or in the text as a whole (this is a vast and variegated field that is concerned with the meaning of the same sentences in different contexts and circumstances, for which we may cite in first and foremost the later Wittgenstein, as well as the theory of different discursive isotopies, etc.).
Any student of semiotics is familiar with all these meanings of semantics, and yet it would be optimistic to claim that this awareness is shared by all students of language—not to mention the fact that the semioticians themselves, though well aware of the definition of semantics cited in 3 and 4 above, are often prone to reject it as nonpertinent, or to consider it as a single problem, whereas in fact it involves two quite different problems.
17.2. Encyclopedia Entries
Let us consider a few examples of how the different conceptions of semantics may fail to recognize one another. In the Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences du langage of Greimas and Courtés, “truth” is defined.2 The concept of truth might be foreign to a semanticist in senses 1 and 2, but it is certainly central for anyone concerned with senses 3 and 4 and, as Greimas demonstrates, it cannot be sidestepped by someone concerned with sense 5:
Truth designates the complex term which subsumes the terms being and seeming situated on the axis of contraries within the semiotic square of veridictory modalities. It might be helpful to point out that the true is situated within the discourse, because it is the fruit of veridiction operations; this thus excludes any relation (or any homologation) with an external referent.
I suspect that an analytic philosopher would find this definition confused and troublesome. But it would also be troublesome for someone concerned with semantics in sense 3, while it would have to be viewed with some indulgence by someone concerned with sense 4. In fact a truth-conditional approach is not concerned with establishing whether a given proposition is true but rather with what inferences one might legitimately draw if the proposition were true. What is certain is that, for someone who subscribes to sense 4, these truth conditions are posited within a “corporate body,” or coherent set of assumptions. When, however, doubt is cast upon the existence of this holistic system, as it is in Davidson, we may say that the principle of charity leads us to assume that a proposition makes sense and is therefore true within a discursive exchange (even if the sentence that conveys it does not present itself as especially perspicuous). Are we then to say that Greimas’s definition is so foreign to the analytical koine? I am not so sure. Granted, if someone says to me on the freeway “Look out, there’s a train ahead,” and I am aware that what is in front of me is a trailer truck, given that I have certain convictions concerning the real world, and appealing to the principle of charity, I assume that the speaker meant to say that there was a big rig ahead, and I let the communicative interaction go forward without a hitch. But do I only exercise the principle of charity in cases where I am able to counter an ambiguous sentence with certain convictions based on experience (that is, on what I consider to be true in the outside world), or do I not also behave in the same way when I attribute to someone else convictions that coincide with those I hold on the basis of a shared system of assumptions?
Let us suppose that a student of astronomy were to say to me: “Assuming that, after Galileo, the sun revolves around the earth and not vice versa,” I understand perfectly well, based on a shared system of assumptions, that he is asserting something false, but, applying the principle of charity, I assume that what he meant to say was what I consider to be true, in other words, the exact opposite of what he actually said (and that what he said was a common or garden lapsus), and I go on listening to his argument. In such a case I would be considering as true not what is confirmed by my experience of the outside world but what is guaranteed to be true by the holistic system of our received assumptions. We have only to stretch a little the notion of “situated within the discourse” for the conversation between a Greimasian and a Davidsonian, provided each of them exercises a reasonable principle of charity, to lose its dramatic edge.
But let us proceed with our examples. In the Einaudi Enciclopedia, under the entry “Semantica,” Diego Marconi—after defining semantics as the study of meaning—assumes that standard semantics is concerned only with natural languages. He devotes the bulk of his article to model semantics (sense 4), the semantics of possible worlds (senses 3 and 4), the dictionary vs. encyclopedia discussion (sense 1), but only in his introduction does he mention the existence of another tendency known as componential analysis (which is certainly concerned with meaning 1 and, for the purpose of establishing theoretically the number of components, presupposes sense 2).
The fact is that Marconi, at the time of writing, was an orthodox analyst and shared the conviction, common to many of his persuasion, that these problems were part and parcel of lexicography (senses 1 and 2); and for the analysts lexicography had nothing to do with semantics.
In the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics edited by T. A. Sebeok (1986), the entry “Semantics,” written by Bierwisch, at first tries to elude the often mortal embrace between semantics and the study of natural languages. After defining semantics as the study of meaning, Bierwisch excogitates the formula “A interprets B as representing C,” in which B is an object or an event, which permits it to be understood as something different from a phonation or a verbal enunciate. The author lists all the problems and takes into account the various positions, but in the body of the article he gives his own personal solution to these problems. Thanks to a happy decision by the editorial board, an entry on “Seme” (by Schogt) follows, in which we find a broad investigation into other linguistic positions, for the most part structural in their orientation (Lyons, Lamb, Pottier, Apresjan, Coseriu, Buyssens, Prieto, Greimas, etc.). Unfortunately, there is no mention of truth-conditional semantics—for some scholars the only semantics worthy of the name.
On the other hand, the Greimas-Courtés Dictionnaire, through a number of different entries, provides a review of the various lexicographical theories in the semantic and notional fields. They examine the componential theory, taken to the Hjelmslevian extreme of its own ambitions (how from “a score of binary semic categories, considered as the taxonomical basis of possible combinations” one can succeed “in producing several million sememic combinations”). They assume as prerequisites of any semantics that it be at once generative (recognizing too the work of the post-Chomskyan generativists), syntagmatic (attempting to overcome the limits of linguistic taxonomism and come to grips with a semantics of the sentence and finally of the text, sense 5), and general; semantics is not limited to the investigation of linguistic meanings but must address the semantics of the natural world insofar as it is made manifest by the various semiotics. I would say that senses 1, 2, and 5 are covered, and at this point we cannot expect Greimas to give his attention to model semantics or to the semantics of possible worlds (given that his treatment takes no account whatsoever of modal logic) or to truth-conditional semantics, considering the position he has staked out with regard to truth. The dictionary proceeds, then, with entries dedicated to Discursive semantics, Fundamental semantics, Generative semantics, Narrative semantics, Seme and Sememe, all, however, in a strictly Greimasian key.
The most balanced treatment is the one appearing in John Lyons’s two-volume Semantics, which represents a tolerant approach to all of the relevant traditions. Being on the one hand a linguist, exposed to the sirens of European theory, and on the other an insular Briton, did not prove a disadvantage for Lyons. But he does not formulate a theory, he expounds what has previously been said on the subject, and he can therefore afford to be ecumenical. Ecumenical, but hardly systematic.
Is ecumenism a pis aller, a necessity for the popularizer, or may it also be a theoretical choice? I would choose the second option. The problem of meaning is so
