Introductory

The term ‘semantics’

Semantics may be defined, initially and provisionally, as ‘the study of meaning’. The term ‘semantics’ is of relatively recent origin, being coined in the late nineteenth century from a Greek verb meaning ‘to signify’. This does not mean, of course, that scholars first turned their attention to the investigation of the meaning of words less than a hundred years ago. On the contrary, from the earliest times down to the present day grammarians have been interested in the meaning of words, and frequently more interested in what words mean than in their syntactic function. A practical manifestation of this interest is seen in the innumerable dictionaries that have been produced throughout the ages, not only in the West, but in all parts of the world where language has been studied. As we have already seen, the categories of traditional grammar were to a large extent determined by their characteristic ‘modes of signifying’ (cf. 1.2.7).

Neglect of semantics in modern linguistics

Many of the more influential books on linguistics that have appeared in the last thirty years devote little or no attention to semantics. The reason for this is that many linguists have come to doubt whether meaning can be studied as objectively and as rigorously as grammar and phonology, for the present at least.