Assignment

number 3
Submitted to: Mam Ansa
Ahsan

Submitted by: Sidra Zafar

Roll number: 07010602-002

BS English

6th Semester

Topic: The Sense Theory of

Meaning
Course: Semantics

Submission Date: 31-05-2010

Introduction:
Sense Theory of Meaning

I would start with a passage quoted in Language and Linguistics An

introduction (1981, Cambridge University Press) by John Lyons,

“What is meaning? Philosophers have debated the question, with particular

reference to language, for over 2000 years. No one has yet produced a
satisfactory answer to it.” Lyons is right in saying so because it is evident from
the fact that so far a number of theories of meaning have been put forth, most
important of them are listed below:

1. Denotational theory of meaning

2. Mentalist theory of meaning
3. Sense theory of meaning
4. Use theory of meaning

Still there is no clear cut demarcation about the meaning of ‘meaning’. It is still
a mysterious puzzle anxiously waiting for its successful solution. This notion is
evident from the fact that from the above theories, no one of them provides full
and final solution for this intricate problem.

In my topic, i.e. sense theory of meaning, the other important term apart from
meaning is ‘sense’. I would like to define sense first of all, these meanings of
sense are usually used in normal circumstances.

1. physical faculty: any of the faculties by which a person or animal obtains information about the
physical world, e.g. sight or taste

2. feeling derived from senses: a feeling derived from multiple or subtle sense impressions
 a sense of security

3. ability to appreciate something: the faculty whereby somebody appreciates a particular

quality
 a sense of humor

4. moral discernment: the ability to perceive and be motivated by moral or ethical principles
 instill a sense of right and wrong in the children

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5. intelligence: the ability to make intelligent decisions or sound judgments
 He's got no sense at all.

6. point: useful purpose or good reason

 There's no sense in waiting any longer.

7. reasoned opinion: an opinion arrived at through reflection or perception, often as a consensus

 The sense of the meeting was clearly to go ahead.

8. main idea: the essence or gist of something

 What was the sense of her argument?

9. meaning: a single meaning of a word or phrase that may have many

10. LOGIC meaning of term: the meaning as opposed to the reference of a word or sentence

(Meanings of sense taken from Encarta Dictionaries)

But with reference to semantics, sense has a bit different ‘sense’ and we need to
peep through it. So for that reason, I searched for the essence of sense (with
reference to semantics) from a book issued from library entitled An
Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics by Patrick Griffiths (2006,
Edinburgh University Press)

“to learn formal semantics………..the central concept is sense: those aspects of

the meaning of an expression that give it the denotation it has. Differences in
sense therefore make for differences in denotation. For instance,

(a) He is a conductor.
(b) ‘He is a public transport ticket checker’.
(c) ‘He regulates the performance of a musical group’.

The above mentioned example illustrates two senses of conductor, and a third
sense of this word denotes things or substances that transmit electricity, heat,
light or sound.”

In addition to that, sense is the extended meaning of a word or phrase that, in

context, clarifies the referent. There are abstract concepts such as love, truth,
and justice, which do not have concrete referents. However, they are
meaningful to English speakers because they understand their sense, which is
additional meaning beyond referential meaning. Sense allows us to understand
words that have no concrete referent.

Moving on to the main area of discussion, for many years it has been thought
that ideas or images that appear in the mind of the speaker of a language are
actually the meanings of the related word. But this view of meaning as mental
images was nullified by Frege (1848-1925) who was a German philosopher.
He negated the previously prevailing theory due to the fact that ideas are highly
subjective and unstable entities, whereas meanings are relatively stable and
objective in nature. So, these two aspects apparently seem to be of
contradictory nature. He presented his novel ideas regarding conception of
meaning which will be discussed in the later paragraphs.

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Frege (1892) claimed that denotations are not enough because if language
consisted only of form and denotations, then the identity sentence such as (3a)
would carry the same information as (3b)

(3)

a. a=a (Karachi is (=) Karachi)

b. a=b (Karachi is (=) capital of Sindh province)

But, Frege argued that these two do not convey the same information.
Frege suggested that all referring expressions with a denotation also had what
he called sense- a way that the denotation is known to the language user. For
example,

Dr. Abid is our resident cardiologist.

Both these refer to the same person, they have the same concrete referent. But,
I might know that the person named Dr. Abid is our neighbour, but remain
unaware of the fact that he is a cardiologist at the same time.

So far I have been talking about sense and its semantic theory, Frege extended
the idea of sense and proposed that whole sentences have a sense. This sense
was termed as satisfaction conditions which would be discussed in detail by my
group member Isra Irshad.