PAPER

HOW TO COMPARE TO DIFFERENT MEANING

SYSTEM OF LANGUAGE

Arranged By,

EBENESER GINTING
13210064

Lecturer,
Roikestina Silaban, SS. M.Hum

FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND TEACHER

INSTITUTE RIAMA
MEDAN
2016

FOREWORD

I would like to thank for God, because his blessing so that I can
complete the task this English course with titled "HOW TO COMPARE TO
DIFFERENT MEANING SYSTEM OF LANGUAGE". Task is structured aims
to fulfill the task of studying English in the Faculty Of Education And Teacher
Institute (STKIP ) RIAMA Medan.
I realize that there are still many shortcomings and limitations in the
presentation of this paper. Therefore, I expect criticism and suggestions from all
readers of this paper for the sake of perfection. Hopefully this paper is useful and
can add to the knowledge of the reader.

Medan,

April 2016

TABLE OF CONTENS

FOREWORD.........................................................................................

TABLE OF CONTENS.........................................................................

ii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION........................................................

1.1 The Background of the study...........................................

1.2 The problem of the study.................................................
1.3 The objective of the study................................................
1.4 The scope of the study.....................................................
1.5 The significance of the study...........................................

1
3
3
3
4

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE....................................

2.1 Meaning in language........................................................

2.2 Meaning system in language...........................................
2.2.1 Semantic............................................................
2.2.2 Pragmatic...........................................................
2.3 Compare to different meaning system of language.........
2.3.1 Contex................................................................
2.3.2 Sentences meaning vs. Utterances meaning......

5
7
7
11
12
18
18

CHAPTER III CONCLUSSION........................................................

21

3.1 Conclussion.....................................................................

21

REFERENCE........................................................................................

22

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of the Study

The field of education is one of the very important field and needs a
special attention from all walks of life because education has a vital role to
develop the human resource that play a role in the formation of students to be
assets of the nation's expected to become productive human. in the life of a
country, education holds a role to ensure the survival of a country and a nation,
because education is a vehicle to improve and develop the quality of human
resources. To achieve a good education quality certainly can not be separated
from teaching and learning activity as the main activity in the school.
In learning English, students are expected to be able to master all
language skills of English; listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It is based on
the goal of teaching English. To be able to use English well, reading is one of the
important skills. English reading becomes a more and more important in
intenational communication.
Language is a means of communication that is used to transfer
information, ideas, and feelings from one person to another. It is used to
communicate both in written and spoken form. Considering the importance of the
language, our government has drawn up English as a foreign language that should
be mastered by the students.
Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of
communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any
specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called

linguistics. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. There are three aspects
to this study: language form, language meaning, and language in context. The
earliest activities in the description of language have been attributed to the 4th
century BCE Indian grammarian Pn ini, who was an early student of linguistics
and wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language in his As t dhyy
(Wikipedia).
Linguistics analyzes human language as a system for relating sounds
(or signs in signed languages) and meaning. Phonetics studies acoustic and
articulatory properties of the production and perception of speech sounds and nonspeech sounds. The study of language meaning, on the other hand, deals with how
languages encode relations between entities, properties, and other aspects of the
world to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as to manage and resolve
ambiguity. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth
conditions, pragmatics deals with how context influences meanings.
From the study above, I will discuss about how to distinguish between
the meaning of a language system in accordance with my title, namely, How to
compare to different meaning system of language.

1.2 The Problem of the Study

In doing some research there are issues that must be resolved. it is
necessary that the research problem more clear and focused . The problems of the
study are briefly stated as follows :
1. What is meaning in language ?
2. What are the meaning system in language ?
3. How to compare to different meaning system of language ?

1.3 The Objective of the Study

In conducting a study of course there is the purpose of the study, in
other words, the research conducted to obtain accurate information from the
research conducted. The objective of the study are :
1. to know about meaning in language.
2. to identify and describe the meaning system of the language.
3. to know how to compare to different meaning system of language.

1.4 The Scope of the Study

In a study of the problems to be studied should be limited in scope or
the problem must be specific. the limited issues will further facilitate researchers
in completing the study. restrictions on the problem will simplify the research
problem and facilitate researchers in solving these problems. The scope of teh
study are :
1. Meaning in language.
2. Brances of meanings system of the language.
3. To compare to different meaning system of language.

1.5 The Significance of the Study

Research benefits formulated to obtain an idea of what benefits or
uses that can be obtained from these studies. The significance of this study are :
1. To meet the requirements or tasks subjects of contrastive analysis.
2. To add insight and knowledge particularly about the meaning system of
language in a linguistic or study of langauge.

3. Reading material and inputs for readers, especially students of English

Department in STKIP Riama Medan.

CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Meaning in Language

According to wikipedia, The nature of meaning, its definition,
elements, and types, was discussed by philosophers Aristotle, Augustine, and
Aquinas. According to them "meaning is a relationship between two sorts of
things: signs and the kinds of things they mean (intend, express or signify)". One
term in the relationship of meaning necessarily causes something else to come to
the mind. In other words: "a sign is defined as an entity that indicates another
4

entity to some agent for some purpose". As Augustine states, a sign is something
that shows itself to the senses and something other than itself to the mind
(Signum est quod se ipsum sensui et praeter se aliquid animo ostendit; De dial.,
1975, 86).
The types of meanings vary according to the types of the thing that is
being represented. Namely:
1. There are the things in the world, which might have meaning;
2. There are things in the world that are also signs of other things in the world,
and so, are always meaningful (i.e., natural signs of the physical world and
ideas within the mind);
3. There are things that are always necessarily meaningful, such as words, and
other nonverbal symbols.
(Cruse, Alan 2000) There are four recognisable types of meaning:
lexical meaning, grammatical meaning, sentence meaning and utterance meaning
which refer to the areas of derivational morphology, inflectional morphology,
syntax and pragmatics respectively. External meaning relationships involve sense
(relationships between words) and denotation (relationship of word to what it
signifies).
1. LEXICAL MEANING is that of individual words or of compound words,
for instance, What is the trachea? What is lexicology? What is a drumlin?
2. GRAMMATICAL MEANING is that of form words which only obtain
significance when used in connection with lexical words. Such form words
are the many prepositions, conjunctions or determiners in a language. Their
meaning is only evident in a sentence or phrase containing lexical items. For

instance, the word to has no independently specifiable meaning but in the

sentence He gave a lovely present to his wife it has grammatical meaning as
it precedes the beneficiary of an action. These elements typically have many
functions, for example, to is commonly used as an infinitive marker as in
They decided to come.
3. SENTENCE MEANING results from the combination of words in a
sentence. This can vary even with the same words as with a sentence where
the subject and the object are exchanged. Meaning can furthermore depend
on the scope of an element, deriving from its position in a sentence,
compare that of all in the following sentences All the boys ate the food and
The boys ate all the food which contain the same words but in a different
order.
4. UTTERANCE MEANING is that of a sentence in a particular spoken
context which is not necessarily the same as its literal meaning, cf. Can you
pass me the salt? Which is not a question but a request. Utterance meaning
is closely linked to the area of linguistics called speech act theory which
examines the use and classification of language in concrete situations.
There are various internal meaning relationships such synonymy
(sameness of meaning), antonymy (difference in meaning), hyponymy
(hierarchical order of meaning). Antonyms can be classified as graded and nongraded. Perfect synonymy does not exist as similar words usually differ in the
stylistic contexts in which they are to be found.

Deixis concerns the various types of pointing which is possible with

language. This can be direct, with adverbs of direction, or indirect, for instance
with different types of pronoun.

.2 Meaning System in Language

There are two kinds of meaning system or two brances of meaning in
language. The two brances are : semantic and pragmatic.
.2.1

Semantic
The word semantics is actually a technical term that refers to the study

of meaning. This term is a new term in the English language. The linguists
provide an understanding of semantics as a branch of linguistics that studies the
relationship between linguistic signs or signs lingual with things that indicated
they (meaning).
Semantics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the study of
meaning, changes in meaning, and the principles that govern the relationship
between sentences or words and their meanings. It is the study of the relationships
between signs and symbols and what they represent.
Another term that has been used the same thing is semiotics,
semiology, semasiology, and semetik. Talks about the meaning of a word becomes
the object semantics. That is why (Lehrer 1974: 1) say that semantics is the study
of meaning (see also Lyons 1, 1977: 1), the semantic Lehrer is a very broad field
of study because it also alluded to aspects of the structure and function of the
language so that it can be connected with psychology , philosophy, and

anthropology. The opinion states that "semantic is the study of the meaning of"
put forward also by Kambartel (in Bauerle, 1979: 195). According semantics
assumes that the language consists of structures that reveal meaning when
associated with objects in the world of human experience. While (Verhaar 1983:
124) says that the semantic meaning of meaning theory or theories of meaning.
Similar restrictions were also found in the Encyclopedia Britanika (Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Vol. 20, 1965: 313) is translated "Semantics is the study of the
relationship between a linguistic distinction with the relationship of mental
processes or symbols in speech activity." The issue becomes semantic meaning.
Based on this description it can be concluded that the semantics are talking about
the meaning of linguistic sub-disciplines. In other words the object of semantic
meaning.
What Is Semantics?
1.

Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It is a wide subject within

the general study of language.

2. An understanding of semantics is essential to the study of language
acquisition (how language users acquire a sense of meaning, as speakers and
3.

writers, listeners and readers).

It is also essential to the study of language change (how meanings alter

4.

over time).
It is important for understanding language in social contexts, as these are
likely to affect meaning, and for understanding varieties of English and

effects of style.
5. It is thus one of the most fundamental concepts in linguistics.

6.

The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed,

interpreted,

clarified,

obscured,

illustrated,

simplified,

negotiated,

contradicted, and paraphrased.

Important Areas Of Semantic. Some important areas of semantic theory or
related subjects include these: Symbol and referent, Conceptions of meaning,
Words and lexemes, Denotation, connotation, implication, Pragmatics, Ambiguity,
Metaphor, simile and symbol, Semantic fields, Synonym, antonym and hyponym,
Collocation, fixed expression and idiom, Semantic change and etymology,
Polysemy, Homonymy, homophones and

homographs, Lexicology and

lexicography, Thesauruses, libraries and Web portals, Epistemology, Colour.

The noun semantics and the adjective semantic are derived from the
Greek word semantikos (significant). In linguistics, semantics is the subfield
that is devoted to the study of meaning, as borne on the syntactic levels of words,
phrases, sentences, and sometimes larger units of discourse, generically referred
to as texts.
For thousands of years, philosophers have pondered the meaning of
meaning, yet speakers of a language can understand what is said to them and can
produce strings of words that are meaningful to other speakers.
To understand language we need to know the meaning of words and
the morphemes that compose them. We also must know how the meanings of
words combine into phrases and sentence meanings. Finally, we must consider
context when determining meaning. The study of the linguistic meaning of
morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences is called Semantics.
Subfields of semantics are lexical (of or relating to the vocabulary,
words, or morphemes of a language) semantics, which is concerned with the
meanings of words, and the meaning relationships among words; and phrasal or

sentential semantics, which is concerned with the meaning of syntactic units

larger than the word.

1.12.2.2

Pragmatic
Pragmatics is The study of language in use. The study of meaning in

context. The study of speakers meaning, utterance meaning, contextual meaning.

(Thomas 1995: 2) mentions two tendencies in pragmatics is divided
into two parts, first, by using a social perspective, connecting with the pragmatic
meaning of the speaker (speaker meaning); and secondly, by using a cognitive
standpoint, connecting with the pragmatic interpretation of utterances (utterance
interpretation).
(Furthermore, Thomas 1995: 22), assuming that the meaning is a
dynamic process that involves negotiations between the speaker and the listener as
well as between the context of speech (physical, social, and linguistic) and the
potential significance of a speech utterance may, defines pragmatics as a field that
examines meaning in the interaction (meaning in interaction).
(Leech 1983: 6 (in Gunarwan 2004: 2)) see pragmatics as a field of
study in linguistics that is concerned with semantics. This linkage he called
semantisisme, which saw the pragmatic as part of semantics; pragmatisisme,
which saw the semantics as part of a pragmatic; and complementarism, or saw the
semantics and pragmatics as two complementary fields.
What Is Pragmatics?

10

1. Pragmatics is the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to

effect successful communication. It studies the following topics: deixis,
speech acts, indirect language, conversation, politeness, cross-cultural
communication, and presupposition. (Dai & He, 2002: 84)
2. Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning, contextual meaning, how more
gets communicated than is said, the expression of relative distance. (Yule,
2000, p. 3).
Meaning is a triadic relation Speaker means Y by X. E.g:
A

Shall we see that film tonight?

I have a headache.

The speaker means NO by saying I Have A Headache.

.3 Compare to Different Meaning System of Language

What is the differences between Semantics and Pragmatics ? The
differences between semantic and pragmatic is very simple. Semantics is the
study of meaning that can be determined from a sentence, phrase or word.
Pragmatics is the study of meaning, as it depends on context (speaker, situation).
The theory of signs by (Morris 1938) clearly highlighted the differences
between these branches of study by describing how we can deal with the meaning
of signs from a semantic dimension or a pragmatic dimension. Based on this
logical view, we can grasp meanings of words from two different dimensions. The
semantic dimension refers to the study of the relations of words to which they

11

refer whereas the pragmatic dimension refers to the study of the relationship
between words, the interlocutors and the context.
Although (Bach 1999) stated that viewing the differences between
semantics and pragmatics through their implementation is easier than to
describing them in plain words, certain evidences highlight the differences
between semantics and pragmatics. First of all, one of them is highlighted by the
process of determining meaning. Semanticists adopt a narrow scope because they
deal with only text and analyze the meaning of words and how they are combined
to constitute meaningful sentences. In contrast, pragmaticists work adopts a wider
scope beyond the text itself; indeed, they consider the facts surrounding the
utterance such as the contextual factors, knowledge of the world surrounding the
context of the message, the speakers intended meaning and the hearers
inferences in order to interpret that utterance (Bianchi, 2004). Consequently, the
meaning of an utterance is context-independent in semantics but it is contextdependent in pragmatics. In addition, certain words and expressions cannot be
understood unless they are put in a context. For example, the English use of
sentence it hit me has many different meaning when used in everyday
conversation. It could mean it came into violent contact with the speaker or it
became apparent to the speaker. Either way, the determination of the correct
meaning of this sentence requires knowledge of the context in which it is used.
Another difference can be found in Grices Theory of Implicature which is
pragmatics oriented (Horn, 2006). In fact, this theory shed more light on the fine
line separating semantics and pragmatics. In this theory, Grice focused on the

12

speakers intention with a particular utterance because the speaker may wish to
convey a different meaning than what the sentence itself means (Horn, 2006). For
example, (Horn 2006) detailed a situation in which a person is described as having
a good personality which may imply that he/she is not attractive, thereby
necessitating a discussion about their personality rather than their looks.
In addition to this theory, the two theories of locution and illocution clarify the
importance of and illustrate the difference between pragmatics and semantics in
terms of their approaches to analyzing sentences. Locution refers to uttering a
stretch of words that have been formed in a particular way to carry some degree of
specific meaning while illocution refers to the task that those utterances perform
such as demanding, asking, requesting, etc. (Lyons, 1995). In other words,
locutionary act is what a sentence says and is; therefore, equivalent to meaning in
the traditional sense whereas illocutionary act is what a sentence does when
uttered by a speaker and; as a result, performs a certain act intended by the
speaker. Both of these acts are related to semantics and pragmatics respectively.
Another dissimilarity emerges with the principle of compositionality attributed to
Frege (Partee, 2008). This principle introduces an interesting view based on which
understanding the whole meaning of an expression entails figuring out the
meanings of its constituent parts (Partee, 2008).
For instance, a customer enters a coffee shop where the following
conversation takes place:
Customer: May I have English tea and a glass of water, please?
Waiter: Sure. Right away, sir.

13

The principle of compositionality claims that we do not need to know

anything other than the context to understand the meaning of the sentences. The
waiter figures out the meaning of the sentence by knowing the meaning of each
lexical item in that given sentence and by being aware of their combinations rather
than trying to understand the speakers intention or having knowledge of the
surrounding world. This theory is more useful to semanticists since they deal with
meanings of words and how they are combined to form sentences.
Another difference is noted when examining some conjunctions that have
non-truth conditional meanings that can only be determined if they are inserted
into a given context. In other words, such conjunctions as so and but can only
be studied within a pragmatic framework rather than semantic one (Blakemore,
2002).
Another distinction is introduced in (Blakemores 2002) discussions of the
idea of the procedural process versus the conceptual process. According to
(Blakemores 2002), in procedural process, the hearer follows certain clues in the
uttered expressions to grasp the contextual assumptions and effects that are
intended by the speaker. By those uttered expressions, the procedural information
is encoded while, in conceptual process, the hearer constructs a series of
representations including phonetics, phonological, syntactic and semantic ones
which are connected to different linguistic rules. However, pragmatics involves
the procedural process with the focus on the connection between the language
uttered and the context in which it is used while semantics entails the conceptual
process by concentrating on the meaning of expressions (Blakemore 2002).

14

Finally, (Leech 1980) stated that semantics can be placed in the grammar
domain with a linguistic system or code while pragmatics can be placed in the
rhetoric domain where codes are implemented. Moreover, the former is rulegoverned whereas the later is principle-governed (Leech, 1980). Note that (Leech
1980) mentioned this comparison between rules and principles in relation to
Sealres distinction between regulative and constitutive rules to draw our attention
to the idea that principle is more normative than descriptive, thereby
differentiating it from rules.

There are The Origin of semantic and pragmatic :

Semantics

Context considered

Pragmatics

Context unconsidered

Traditional semantics

Think over : Meanings meaning

He meant to write.

A green light means go.

Health means everything.

Intended
Indicate
Has importance

15

Whats the meaning of life?

Point

What does it mean to you?

Convey

What does ghost mean?

Refer to in the world

Example of how to compare between semantic and pragmatic

SEMANTIC

PRAGMATIC
NO PARKING

RESTAURANT

SLIPPERY FLOOR

DANGER

NO LEFT TURN

16

Semanticists take meaning to be an inherent property of language,

pragmatics regard meaning as something that is realized in the course of
communication.
Pragmatics is concerned with the interpretation of linguistic meaning
in context. It is the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect
successful communication.
A : I have a fourteen-year-old son.
B : Well, thats all right
A : I also have a dog.
B : Oh, Im sorry.
.3.1 Contex
There are two scope of knowledge in the contex. There are linguistic
knowledge and extra-linguistic knowledge.
1.
.

Linguistic knowledge
a. Knowledge of the language they use
b. Knowledge of what has been said before
Extra-linguistic knowledge
a. Knowledge about the world in general
b. Knowledge about the specific situation
c. Knowledge about each other

.3.2 Sentence Meaning Vs. Utterance Meaning

Sentence : abstract units of the language system.
Utterance : units of language in use.
Utterance : if we think of a sentence as what people actually utter in the course of
communication, it becomes an utterance.
For example :
Today is Sunday.
It can be
1. an answer for what day is it today?

17

2.
3.
4.
5.

statement
complaint
reminder
criticism (reproach)

Sentence Meaning
1
What does X mean?
2
Sentence : a grammatical concept, abstract, self-contained unit in isolation
from context
3
Sentence meaning : abstract, intrinsic property, decontexualized
Utterance meaning
1
What do you mean by X?
2
Utterance : sth. a speaker utters in a certain situation with a certain purpose
3
Utterance meaning : concrete, context-dependent
4
Speakers meaning
Speakers meaning
For example :
(A father is trying to get his 3-year-old daughter to stop lifting up her dress to
display her new underwear to the assemble.)
Father
:
We dont DO that.
Daughter :
I KNOW, Daddy.
You dont WEAR dresses

CHAPTER III
CONCLUSSION

18

.1 Conclussion
From the discussion in the previous chapter, some point can be
concluded as follows :
1. Meaning is brances of linguistic (study of language) and There are four
recognisable types of meaning: lexical meaning, grammatical meaning,
sentence meaning and utterance meaning.
2. There are two kinds of meaning system or two brances of meaning in
language. The two brances are : semantic and pragmatic. Semantics is the
branch of linguistics that deals with the study of meaning, changes in
meaning, and the principles that govern the relationship between sentences
or words and their meanings. Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning,
contextual meaning, how more gets communicated than is said, the
expression of relative distance
3. To compare to difference meaning system of language between semantic
and pragmatic is Semantics the study of meaning that can be determined
from a sentence, phrase or word, symbol, sign and Pragmatics the study of
meaning, as it depends on context (speaker, situation) .

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19

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Blakemore, D. (2002). Relevance and linguistic meaning: The semantics and
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