ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The writer is grateful to special person such as, Claudia Benedita

and Lissa Donna for their valuable patience in accompanying him writing,

revising, and printing this book.

He also expressed his thanks to Benny and Victor for their typing

the concept of the book till the finishing of their script.

His thanks also goes t Bryan in his correction of the structure of the

writing and the content or meaning of the English Writing as the means of

the language in this book.

At last his thanks go to the students of FKIP Nommensen, whose

names can not be mentioned, for all support in the completion of this book.

Pematang Siantar, 2016

The Writer,

Hilman Pardede

SEMANTICS i
 FOREWORD

This book has long been inspired and thought for the handbook of
the students in semantic field, especially in Semantic Analysis on the logic
of the language.
Chapter one introduces the nature of language as the basis to see
the area of semantic that leads it to be an autonomy discipline among the
other branches of linguistics such as phonology, morphology, and syntax.
Chapter two talks about the nature of semantics realized in what is
the meaning of meaning. This copes with the seven types of meaning
proposed by Geoffrey Leech. The area of the analysis is also supported by
the inclusion of projection rules by Noam Chomsky and behaviorism and
contextualism theory by Malinowski and J. R. Firth, and Leonard
Bloomfield, however, what is the meaning of meaning will be thoroughly
discussed in chapter four.
Logic is discussed in chapter three. The nature of logic itself has
been related through proposition and its parts with semantics.
Chapter four gives the details of semantic analysis on the logic of
language. This part talks about the understanding of what is the meaning of
meaning such as: Synonymy, Entailment, Inconsistency, etc. The
explanation of all these is supported by predication analysis as the last
point but not least to give the whole understanding of this book.

Hilman Pardede

SEMANTICS ii
 CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ...................................................................... i
FOREWORD.......................................................................................... ii
CONTENTS........................................................................................... iii

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................1
1.1 Language is Sound ..................................................................................2
1.2 Language is Linier...................................................................................2
1.3 Language is Systematic...........................................................................2
1.4 Language is Meaningful..........................................................................2
1.5 Language is Arbitrary..............................................................................3
1.6 Language is a System of Contrast ...........................................................3
1.7 Language is Unique.................................................................................4
1.8 Language is Creative ...............................................................................4
1.9 Language is Similar.................................................................................4

CHAPTER II
THE BASIC PRINCIPLES IN SEMANTICS ...............................................11
2.1 What is Semantic?.................................................................................11
2.2 The Relation of Semantics with Other Branches of Linguistics ...........17
2.3 Lexical and Grammatical Meaning .......................................................20
2.4 Seven Types of Meaning.......................................................................22
2.4.1 Conceptual Meaning .............................................................................22
2.4.2 Connotative Meaning ............................................................................24
2.4.3 Social and Affective Meaning...............................................................26
2.4.4 Affective Meaning.................................................................................26
2.4.5 Reflective Meaning ...............................................................................27
2.4.6 Collocative Meaning .............................................................................28
2.4.7 Thematic Meaning.................................................................................28
2.5 Is Semantics Scientific? ........................................................................29

SEMANTICS iii
CHAPTER III
LOGIC ........................................................................................................32
3.1 What is Logic? ......................................................................................32
3.2 Formal Logic .........................................................................................33
3.3 Material Logic .......................................................................................36
3.4 Logical System......................................................................................37
3.4.1 Proposition ............................................................................................37
3.4.2 Part of Proposition.................................................................................38
3.4.3 Propositional Logic ...............................................................................45
3.4.4 Predicate Logic......................................................................................50

CHAPTER IV
THE LOGIC OF LANGUAGE.......................................................................53
4.1 Basic Statement .....................................................................................54
4.1.1 Synonymy..............................................................................................54
4.1.2 Entailment ............................................................................................56
4.1.3 Inconsistency ........................................................................................57
4.1.4 Tautology .............................................................................................57
4.1.5 Contradiction.........................................................................................58
4.1.6 Presupposition .......................................................................................58
4.1.7 Semantic Anomaly ................................................................................61
4.2 The Relation Among Statement in the Basic Statements......................62
4.3 Ambiguity..............................................................................................64
4.4 Logical Translation of Equivalences.....................................................66
4.5 Grammatical Translations .....................................................................66
4.6 Analytic and Synthetic ..........................................................................67
4.7 Definiteness...........................................................................................68
4.8 Co-reference ..........................................................................................70
4.9 Logical Operators..................................................................................72
4.9.1 The Negative Operator Not ...................................................................72
4.9.2 The Quantifiers All and Some...............................................................74
4.9.3 Zero expression .....................................................................................76
4.10 Predication Analysis..............................................................................77
4.10.1 Types of Predication..............................................................................81
4.11 Tense and Time .....................................................................................90

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SEMANTICS iv
 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

Whatever else may do, whether we play, make friends or make war, we
talk. We talks by means of using words, phrases, and sentences. The
possession of language that makes us human and distinguishes us from
animal. Animal is able to communicate with each other only in certain and
limited way, that is when the object being communicated exists in its
environment while the process of communication take place. In reverse
human can communicate without the existence of object. By possessing
language human thinks of something which is stored in his mind. When he
is in the toilet, for example, he thinks of his biology or plan what he will
have for dinner.
Then, what is language? To answer this question let us pick one of
many definitions of language which seems to be a reproduction within
those definition by each linguist ;
“ Language is purely human and non instinctive method of
communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a
system of voluntarily symbols” (Sapir, 1939)
This definition emphasizes three important aspects of language :
- Language is for human, as has been explained above.
- Language is non-instinctive means, that it has to be learnt, in
other words, language acquisition is got through learning.
- Learning the language as a system of arbitrary conventional
symbols. The symbols are vocals which are produced by the
organ speech. Though secondary systems as writing and other
codes, they are complement to vocal system.

From the third aspect, we can also generate others which specify the
language to be scientific.

SEMANTICS Page 1
1.1 Language is Sound
What is produced by the organ of speech is sound which represents
what in the speaker’s mind. For example, the word ‘chair’ consists of
five different sounds. When the word ‘chair’ is produced, the hearer
interprets it as the speaker does. Producing the sound is not just a random
movement of the speech organs, but each organ works in a regular way
from the act of inhaling till the shaping of the sounds. If we want to say
‘chair’ we don’t utter each sound separately, we move our organs of
speech continuously and we produce continuous sounds. All human
beings produce these speech sound with essentially the same equipment.

1.2 Language is Linear

When the sounds of language are produced, they are treated by
successive movement of the speech organs, that is we can represent
language by using symbols. for each distinct sound and arranging them
in linear order. In writing we usually have a left-to-right order.

1.3 Language is Systematic

The structure of language is based on phonological and
grammatical system. It means that the units are limited that can combine
in a limited number of ways. Like in the word ‘table’ we can put a suffix
and prefix the word to the word ; tables and stables, but we can’t put a
suffix to the word ‘stable’ nor is there a single sound or sound sequence
that we can put a suffix to the words tables and stables to result in
accepted in English.

1.4 Language is Meaningful

The speech sounds which are produced are connected with the fact
of the human life and cultural environment. The word ‘chair’ may mean a

SEMANTICS Page 2
wooden furniture which has four legs where to sit on or connected with
position in office. Concerning with the fact a child becomes a member of
community principally through the acquisition of language.

1.5 Language is Arbitrary

It is impossible two speakers of different languages make
communication, for there is no direct connection between the sounds of
each language and the message that is expressed. If one who understands
Indonesian hears /pen/, he will interpret it as a tool for writing. The
speakers of the language will be in agreement to accept this interpretation.
But there are some words that imitate the sound of their reference like :
buzz, hum, bang, etc. These kinds of words are called onomatopoeia. It
seems that our statement is not valid in this case, but such word are only a
few and they depend on the sounds which exist in the language.

1.6 Language is a System of Contrast

As a system of contrast, the sound of language differ in the form of
symmetry as can be seen in the consonant below:
/p/ - /b/
/t/ - /d/
/k/ - /g/
/s/ - /z/
(etc)
A contrast in meaning is found in word, like :
High - law
Top - bottom
Good - bad
Male - female (etc)

SEMANTICS Page 3
1.7 Language is Unique
A language or languages can be considered unique, as each
language has its own characteristic. For example, compound words in
English such as ; new book, the modifier comes first and then the modified
(modifier-modified). Unlike in Indonesian, the modified follows the
modifier or in reverse order. So the illustration above becomes book new.

1.8 Language is Creative

In language we have rules to form unlimited number of sentences
by means of novel sentences. The rules are limited, and that is why it is
said to be creative. As an example, from the sentence : He goes, new
sentences can be produced as He goes to Jakarta. He went fishing, I go to
my uncle’s house alone etc. more sentences can be produced from that very
simple sentence.

1.9 Language is Similar

This statement means that we have universal characteristic of language.
Universal means that all languages have a noun, is a case in point. It is
because of his language universal we are possible to learn languages.
The characteristics of a language or languages which mentioned above
make us possible to learn all languages in the world. To learn language
means to learn science of language, that is, linguistics.

Linguistics
“Linguistics is a scientific study of language or languages”
(T. A. Ridwan, 1982 :10).

SEMANTICS Page 4
 As a scientific study it should fulfill scientific procedures or what is
included in scientific method. T consider linguistics as science, it is fruitful
to make a brief description of linguistics development.
A linguist who criticized the work of Junggramatiker was
Ferdinand De Saussure. He contradicted the Junggramatiker’s idea that the
sole means of studying language scientifically is to examine it historically.
He then noted that through synchronic method, that is a method which
studies language particular time and which uses empirical data. According
to him, language should be studied as it is. A part of his contribution in
linguistics is the distinctions among La Langue, a Parole, and La Langage.
La Langue is La Langage minus La Parole. Where as La Langage is
the sum of La Parole and the rules of language and La Parole is the
individual manifestation of language which is called speaking. From the
three aspects De Saussure chose La Langue to be the object of linguistics
because it follows conditions :
- It is collective and general.
- It is a sum of impressions deposited in the brain of each
individual.
- It is a deposit of signs which each individual has received from
other speakers of the community.
So, according to De Saussure La Langue can be studied
scientifically, since it homogeneous. It is also stable, both through time and
in the consciousness of the speakers. Whereas La Parole and La Langage
constitute manifestation of individual and consist of an infinite number of
individual choices as acts of articulation.

SEMANTICS Page 5
 The focus on La Langue as the object of language study caused a
weakness of his insights. For he was influenced by Emile Durkheim who
made sociology to be an autonomous science through social fact. The
application of Durkheim’s idea to language study is obvious. Language is a
social fact since it is general throughout a community or it is a thing
separate from our use of it as individuals, because it is inherited entirely
from the other speakers who teach it to us and is not our product. So by
this application, De Saussure hardly paid no attention to the speech sounds
and their meanings, in other words, the two were not investigated in detail.
As result social fact which was applied to language study has not yet been
considered as scientific, it still needs development.
It was Leonard Bloomfield who strictly managed to make
linguistics both autonomous and scientific. His significant book is
language, the revision of his earlier work contains new findings in
linguistics. According to him to study language was not always depending
upon deductive or normative approach, even with this method it will be
misguiding because to use written data that the traditional did was just to
apply the system of certain language which will not be on effect to others.
Then, Bloomfield stated that the most important in language study is to
analyze it from the lower units. In this case, speech sounds should be the
first to be analyzed and then morphemes, phrases, clauses, and sentences.
So, the hierarchy of language study is :
- Phonology, is a study of language sounds.
- Morphology, is a study of morphemes and their arrangement in
forming words.

SEMANTICS Page 6
 - Syntax, is a study of words construction into a larger units such
as phrases, clauses, and sentences.
Leonard Bloomfield did not include semantics in the hierarchy,
because he considered meaning as the weak point in language study. His
reason to consider so was based on his statement below :
“ We can define the meaning of a speech-form accurately when
this meaning has to do with some matter of which we posses
scientific knowledge. We can define the names of plants, or
animals by means of the technical botany or zoology, but we
have no precise way of defining love or hate and these latter are
in the great majority” (Bloomfield, 1933 : 139).

This statement suggests that linguistic is not fully autonomous,

since form, meaning and their associations be the linguistics’ work. But
since science as a unified and integral body of knowledge, meaning can
not be separated from language study, or semantic is to be included in the
hierarchy of language study.
Most contemporary linguists therefore emphasize that semantics
must be regarded as an important branch or level of linguistic analysis.
And in semantics, theories have been developed from time to time like ;
conceptual theory, Componential Analysis up to generative semantics.
The definition of linguistics as a scientific study of language then
indicates us that it is a science, and sciences are by definition by logical
systems. From this we can understand that language is related to logic.
Again it supported by Aristotle expression in Bolinger’s book :

SEMANTICS Page 7
 “ Aristotle assigned to language a position superior to logic,
that of meaningful expression in general” (Bolinger, 1975 : 238).

Even though linguistic is not yet fully autonomous, but it is

important that the end of nineteenth- century was the beginning of effort to
make linguistics as scientific and autonomous. And that is why this period
is taken as a starting point in linguistic development.
Linguistics classification can e viewed from its structural hierarchy,
approaching theory, function and its inter-disciplines. This general
classification where in this analysis the writer will not concern it in detail
is as follows :

Based on structural hierarchy

- Phonology
- Morphology
- Syntax
- Semantic
Based on its theory
- Synchronic Linguistics
- Diachronic Linguistics

Based on its function

- Genera Linguistics
- Applied Linguistics
- Theoritical Linguistics
- Comparative Linguistics

SEMANTICS Page 8
Based on its inter-disciplines
- Sociolinguistics
- Anthropological Linguistics
- Ethno-Linguistics
- Psycho-Linguistics
- Philosophical Linguistics
- Computational Linguistics

As has been mention in the previous section that linguistics is a

scientific study of language. A science or sciences are by definition of
logical system. As a logical system, language (the object of linguistics)
may be treated as data for description that can be tasted for truth and
falsity. But is language in itself a logical system or does language contain
devices like the ones used in formal logic (will be discussed in separated
chapter), and is it the purpose of language to be logical? Or how we justify
the linguist’s theory that there is logico-semantic representation (the
meaning of sentence and their relation to its form) and what are the
elements which build the logical system?
Concerning with those questions above, this book will talk about
semantics as the view to logic of language.
This book involves two main aspects, Semantics and logic. Both
Semantics and Logic have a wide domain of analysis. It is possible to
include all parts of them, therefore the analysis must be restricted to know
which is which.
The analysis is based on semantics, of which analyzing the logic of
language through proposition, not sentence. Because logic is concerned
with proposition. To make a boundary between them is what will be
discussed in later chapter.

SEMANTICS Page 9
 The logic which is included in this analysis derives from formal
logic and material logic. Formal logic occurs more because it is the most
concerned or has a close link to semantics.
Despite of focusing semantic to logic, it does not mean that the
other aspects are ignored, but at least in analyzing language (the four
structural hierarchy) are involved, as a language unity. That is why the
relation of semantics with other branches are also treated and available in
the sub-item of the analysis. On the other hand not all semantic aspects are
included, t is done to get rid of overlapping among the items being
analyzed.

SEMANTICS Page 10
 CHAPTER II
THE BASIC PRINSCIPLES IN SEMANTICS

2.1 What is Semantics?

“Semantics is the study of meanings. The term is derived from
Greek semanen (to signify or mean). It concerned with the
relation between words or other symbols and objects or
concepts to which they refer. As an empirical study of word
meaning in existing language, semantics is a branch of
linguistics” (American Encyclopedia : 536).

It is obvious that meaning plays a very important role in any

situation of speech acts. Without meaning, all the utterances of a language
are useless or without meaning there will be no language, or if a language
is not intended to communicate meaning, there will be no interaction of
thought as we do in daily life. Meaning is concerned with the relation
between words and objects to which they refer, this statement leads us to
presuppose that :
- Meaning is the relation between words and objects to which
they refer. If we say chair, we are concerned with an object (a
seat with a back or arms).
- It is impossible to find meaning in phonemes and syllables
because they constitute a hierarchy in phonology and
functioning as distinctive feature in minimal pairs. So, meaning
is concerned with words or morphemes. The latter as a minimal
meaningful unit will do in this analysis, as a word is a
morpheme, is not always a word, like the prefix im – in
impossible. Thus we just focus only to words.

SEMANTICS Page 11
 We are not satisfied yet with the definition mentioned above, for it
just concentrates meaning on words. So why do not we find meaning in
sentence in order that we can find meaning outside language or what it
refers to (despite the meaning of word which constructs the meaning of
sentence as a whole). Realizing the link between language aspect and the
aspect outside language is very close, meaning has recently been an
intricate but interesting subject and linguists began to embrace it separately
from the other aspect to grasp it more detail let us pick opinions of some
linguists about what meaning is and therefore we know it essence and
domain.

“Meaning signifies any and all phrases of sign-process (the

status of being a sign, the interpreted, the fact of denoting, the
signification.) and frequently suggest mental and valuation
process as well” (C. W. Morris, 1946: 19).

Morris in his definition included mental and valuation process to which

meanings signifies. As a mental and valuation process there is no an
occurrence of physical process. This is accordance with or we happen to
remember about the mentalist concern to meaning as : “the characteristic
mental event which occurs in every speaker and hearer in connection with
the utterance or hearing of the linguistic form”. This can be seen for
example, in uttering the word, book, the speaker has had a mental image of
a book and this word evokes a similar image in a hearer’s mind. So, a
mental and valuation process consist of non physical process, a thought,
concept, image, feeling or the like. This mental process is opposed to
physical process which was called by Bloomfield as the mechanistic.

Semantics is central to the study of communication ; and as

communication becomes more and more a crucial factor in social

SEMANTICS Page 12
organization, they need to understand it becomes more and more pressing.
Semantics is also at the centre of the study of the human mind – thought
processes, cognition, conceptualization – all these are intricately bound up
with the way in which we classify and convey our experience of the world
through language. What Geoffrey Leech stated about semantics is that he
emphasized its rule on a broader sense – communication in social
organization and our experience of the world which se convey through
thought processes and the like. From Leech’s point of view it seems to us
that understanding language means understanding meaning, thus meaning
would be the starting point in communication. We can see for example in
the sentence below how we tend to focus on its meaning first despite its
ungrammatical form : I go to Jakarta last week. We can be easily
understood and our communication still keep going on through thought
process which meaning is bound up which causes the communication
flows. Thus semantics is also an empiric study of meaning.

Jerrold J. Katz defined semantics as :

“Semantics is the study of linguistics meaning. It is concerned

with that sentences and other linguistic objects express, not
with the arrangement of their syntactic parts or with their
pronunciation” (Katz, 1972 : 1).

According to Katz , nearly everyone agrees on this and it is also

generally agreed that the basic question of semantic is ’’what is meaning?
“but he argued what kind of meaning we are concerned with ,or in general
,as the semanticists we have often seemed argued the term which is also
called “what is meaning of meaning ?

SEMANTICS Page 13
 C.K .OGDEN and RICHARD list twenty _two definition of the word
meaning. Some of the definition are quoted by Leech (1974:1) as :

- an intrinsic property

- the other words annexed to a word in the dictionary

- the connotation of a word

- the place of anything in a system

- the practical consequences of a thing in our future experience

- that to which the user of a system actually refers

- that to which the user of a symbol ought to be referring

- that to which the user of the symbol believe himself to be

referring

- that to which the interpreter of a symbol :

a) refers

b) believes himself to be referring

c) believes the user to be referring

According to Leech those definitions are the definitions of

philosopher, psychologist, philologist, literary critics and other specialists,
in other words, it is explained in terms of other scientific disciplines. They
cause diverse frames of reference, as each specialist desire to study
meaning in his own requirement of each field. Consequently, it will have

SEMANTICS Page 14
little in common. The best we can do for finding the answer to what is
meaning of meaning is exactly by making questions to the question of
breaking down the general question. For an autonomous discipline begins
not with answers, but with questions. It is on a par with a phusicist does,
before defining terms like heat, atom, electricity or the like, he should
investigate their properties.

How then the construct questions from question what is

meaning of meaning?

Katz list questions which are to be a model of semantic theory as given

below

- what are synonymy and paraphrase?

- What are semantic similarity and semantic difference?

- What is antonymy ?

- What is super ordination?

- What are meaningfulness and semantic anomaly?

- What is semantic ambiguity?

- What is semantic redundancy?

- What is semantic truth (analyticity)?

- What is contradiction?

- What is syntenticity?

SEMANTICS Page 15
 - What is inconsistency?

- What is entailment?

- What is presupposition?

- What is possible answer to a question?

- What is self-answer question?

All those questions pin down the domain of a semantic theory that
offers an answer to “what is meaning” or these questions show what kinds
of phenomena of semantic theory has to explain.

Those questions, except the last two will be treated in chapter four
in detail concerning with the elements of proposition as to which they are
also related to logic. The model of semantic theory of Katz that has been
mention above will do to that of Leech’s and it is the reason why this book
based on their theories.

We have seen so far that semantic can not be ignored or considered

to be the weak point in the language. Of its essence, Mooris bravely stated
:

“ We come then to conclusion that meaning is practically

everything. We always see the meaning as we look, think in
meanings as we think, act in terms of meaning when we act.
Apparently we are never directly conscious of anything but
meanings” (Morris, 1946 :19).

SEMANTICS Page 16
2. 2 The Relation of Semantics with Other Branches of Linguistics

To speak about the relation of semantics with the other branches of

linguistics like phonology, morphology, and syntax is to relate meaning
with sounds, words or morphemes and the arrangement of words into a
larger unit like sentences. Words or morphemes are formed from
phonological elements. Morphemes are meaningful in a sense which
makes them contrast with nonsense syllables and non-words. They cannot
convey full messages in linguistic communication as do words and
sentences. For example, the words like girl, chair, and plane are
meaningful in a different way from affixes like un-, -ness, and –ed. So,
morphemes have no intrinsic semantic content.

The larger constituents then are formed from them, and it is of

course, the meaning of higher level syntactic constituent comes from the
meanings of their component words. But the meaning of the higher level
constituents does not depend only on the meaning of its words. It also
depends on the syntactic structure, that is, the words are syntactically
arranged. The same words can mean different thins when arranged in
different order, as illustrated in :

- Lydia had visited Robert.

- Robert had visited Lydia.

The sentence can be semantically-ill if it is rearranged like,

- Lydia Robert visited had.

So, to be able to understand sentences, we must be able to go from

the meaning of words in syntactic relations to the meaning of sentences.

SEMANTICS Page 17
Learning the sounds, the meaning, the words and the rules to combine
these words to form sentences constitute the grammar of a language
(Fromkin & Rodman, 1974 :9).Our question then, to which semantics has
the close link among those branches of linguistics? It will be more easily
seen in a model of theory of grammar, that is, Standard theory of Chomsky
(1965), which is quoted in Leech (1981 : 344), ad diagrammed below (read
from top to bottom) :

TRANSFORMATIONAL GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

Semantic interpretation

(Projection Rules)

(Base) DEEP STRUCTURE

(Transformational Rules)

SURFACE STRUCTURE

(Phonological Rules)

Phonetic Interpretation

The deep structure from which we come (as the base) give
information of the meaning (Semantic interpretation) through projection
Rules, that is, the projection of sentence meaning from word meanings,
SEMANTICS Page 18
and rules that use information about the syntactic structures of sentences
are abstract representations which most clearly reflect the meaning of the
sentence.
The surface structure is what the speaker actually utters which is
transformed from Deep Structure through transformational Rules. Then, it
is interpreted through phonological rules to determine the phonetic form of
the sentence. To make clear, let’s have a look to the sentence like :
The red book is new.
The deep structure of the sentence from which it derives is :
- The book is red.
- The book is new.
Which can be drawn in three diagrams as follows :
S

NP Aux VP

NP S adj P

AIP aux VP

The book the book is red is new

SEMANTICS Page 19
Actually, this Deep Structure is transformed into Surface Structure through
transformation rules by process of adding, deleting and rearranging
constituents (Wardhaugh, 1977 : 253). So the surface Structure The red
book is new has undergone process of deletion into which it remains so.
The surface is what speaker actually utters, and this constitutes the
phonetic form of the sentences which is interpreted by phonological rules.
So the phonetic form of The red book is new / /.
Phonological from them determine surface structure but it seems to be
unaffected since the sentence is understood in terms of its lexical items and
grammatical relations among the lexical items, not merely in the surface
presentation of an utterance. From this we can see a close link between
meaning and structure (Semantic and Syntax).
In the diagram above an arrow from the Base to DEEP
STRUCTURE shows us that before producing the surface structure, our
mind had been filled by lexical items and deep syntactic of it. We are not
only concerned with the lexical tem (word meaning) but also sentence
meaning. Sentence meaning derived from word meaning, which is
determined by its grammatical relation.

2.3 Lexical and Grammatical Meaning

We have mention that the sentence is understood in terms of
lexical items and the grammatical relations among the lexical items. The
former in concerned with lexical meaning, the latter with the grammatical
meaning. Lexical meaning is the sense of a speaker attaches to linguistic
elements as symbol of actual objects and events. Thus words such us boy,
book, pen, have lexical meaning, which may be found in dictionary.
Grammatical meaning is the relationship that may be said to exist between
linguistic elements such as the words within the sentence. Those two
definitions which are taken from dictionary of language and linguistics

SEMANTICS Page 20
(Hartmann, 1973 : 138), of which the former contains the word sense. It
may confuse us with the term refer (reference) that has been mentioned in
the previous part of this analysis. So what is the notion of sense and
reference (is there a distinction between the sense and the reference of a
word?).
Gottlob Frege the German philosopher and mathematician made a
distinction between sense and reference. He noted that the reference of
evening star and morning star are identical, equal to that or venus. But
Frege expressed that the sentence ; Venus is Venus does not have the same
meaning as ; The evening star is the morning star. He concluded that the
meaning of words involves more than just reference. It is “something
extra” sense. What Frege called sense is what we have been calling
meaning (see Fromkin, 1973 : 122).
There is no direct relation between the word or symbol with the
object or referent (to which it refers). The relation exists via our thought, as
illustrated by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richard in their Semantic Triangle
below :
(3) idea ; sense

(2) symbol (1) thing

The broken lines between the symbol and object show their indirect
relation, instead we use our thought (idea or sense) to relate id. The word
bird, for example \, it is possible to think not only the real object but also
specify its feature as having two wings, animate, etc.

SEMANTICS Page 21
2. 4 Seven Types of Meaning
we have known that semantic is the study of meanings. Meaning
comprise not one, but some kinds of meaning. Leech divides meaning into
seven, they are called seven types of meanings, namely:
- conceptual meaning
- connotative meaning
- social meaning
- affective meaning
- reflective meaning
- collocative meaning
- thematic meaning

2.4.1 Conceptual Meaning

Conceptual meaning is also called denotative or cognitive meaning.
To make clear, it is worth nothing the two principles by Leech, the
principles of contrastiveness and principle of structure.
Contrastiveness which is treated in phonology, that is, the features
a sounds possesses and the features it does not posses. If it has features it is
said to be positive (+) and if it doesn’t, it is said to be negative (-). For
example the phonetic symbol /d/ has contrastive features as : + alveolar +
voiced, + stop, -nasal : these features are also called binary features.
In similar way we can also treat conceptual meaning in terms of
contrastive features. As an examples, take the word girl, it has features as:
+ human, - male, -adult. We can also specify the word pen as having
features: -human, + concrete.

SEMANTICS Page 22
 The principle of structure which gives the semantics of language in
a syntactic structure, the smaller units built up the larger linguistic units, or
the larger units are analyzed into constituents. This can be exhibited in tree
diagram below:

Sentence

Subject Predicate

Determiner Noun Verb Complement

Determiner Noun

No man is an Island

(Leech, 1981: 10)

The sentence: No man is an Island is broken into constituent parts

of subject, predicate, determiner, noun, verb, complement, determiner,
noun. If we examine this subdivision, we happen to know that it moves

SEMANTICS Page 23
from immediate constituents to its ultimate constituents. Thus the
sentences can be diagrammed in which the constituent derives from the
kernel or head, as the structural list proposed:

No man is an Island

Studying conceptual meaning from those two principles ; principle

of contrastiveness and principle of structure means studying it in term of
paradigmatic and syntagmatic. Therefore conceptual meaning is meaning
by virtue of logical links, not by virtue of its links to the outside language
as we will find in the other six types.

2.4.2 Connotative Meaning

Connotative meaning is concerned with the communicative value
and expression has by virtue of what it refers to over its purely conceptual
content. Leech noted that connotative meaning is aimed at :
- The real word experience one associates with an expression
when one uses or hears it. This is related to the meaning of an
expression with the musical representation and visual art of it.
For example, the meaning of the word baby reflect at drawing
of a baby or an imitation of a baby cry.
- The fact that connotative meaning is relatively unstable. It
varies from time to time according to culture, historical period,

SEMANTICS Page 24
 the experience and the individuals. As an example let’s take the
word woman. In the past the connotative of woman were
known as, frail, cowardly, emotional, irrational, and other
weak or low connotations. And hundred years ago woman was
considered to be one who was not wearing trousers. Today
these have been changing or at least some of these
characteristics cannot be entailed to woman. How then Mrs.
Margaret Tatcher, Mrs. Indira Ghandi, Mrs. Cory aquino came
to be leaders if they are frail, coward, emotional and irrational?
But how we justify the sentence, he is really a woman ; which
is often used by speakers to mean allusion? This fact shows that
up today, physically, woman is still weaker than man.
- The fact that connotative meaning is indeterminate and open-
ended, in a sense that conceptual meaning is determinate.
Connotative meaning can not be determined in similar way
with conceptual meaning which is codified in term of limited
set of symbols (like contrastive features). Connotative is on a
par with our knowledge of the universe which is also open-
ended.
Even though the first fact seems to overlap with conceptual
meaning we can say connotative opposed to conceptual meaning
(denotative). It is fruitful to know that connotative meanings are different
from language to language.

SEMANTICS Page 25
2.4.3 Social and Affective Meaning
If we are concerned with meaning, which is determined by its
social circumstances we are dealing with social meaning. The social
circumstances can easily be seen in social relationship between the speaker
and hearer that is frequently in usage of words according to social status.
For example, sentences :
- They chucked the stone at the cops, and then did a bunk with
the loot.
- After casting a stone at the police, they absconded with the
money.
Of which the first could be said by two criminals, and the second by chief
inspector in making his official report. The social status made it possible
that words are used differently by speakers – the higher rank a speaker in
social status the more difficult his utterance to be understood, especially by
those of the people on the street. In reverse, the lower his rank in social
status the more ordinary words he used in his utterance.
Social meaning also includes what is called illocutionary force of
an utterance, whether it is interpreted as a request, an assertion, an
apology, etc. for example, I haven’t got a spoon ,has a meaning of
assertion and the situation where it is spoken in a restaurant (addressed to
the waiter). The assertion would be a request such as ; please bring me a
spoon. Another example is : Have you seen my child? It could be said by a
woman in crowded market to the people in front of her. This sentence may
mean as a request as : Please help me to find it, though she hasn’t yet
recognize the people.

2.4.4 Affective Meaning

Affective meaning refers to meaning, which reflect the individual
feeling of the speaker including his attitude to the speaker’s object he
expresses. For example, with the object of getting people to be quiet, we
SEMANTICS Page 26
might say : I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if you would be so
kind as to lower your voices a little. Politeness is include here, and factor
such as a voice timbre is also necessary to affect.

2.4.5 Reflected meaning

This sort of meaning arises in cases of multiple conceptual
meaning. A sense of a word makes our reference to another sense. For
example, the synonymous expression of the comforter and the holy ghost,
both refer to Third Person of Trinity. Those two expression are used in
church service, of which, according to Geoffrey Leech these expressions
are influenced by everyday non religious meanings of comfort and ghost.
So the comforter sounds warm and comforting, while the Holy Ghost
sounds awesome.
Reflected meanings are less obvious in poetry, in this case a high
sensitivity to language is needed. We can see for example in a poem of
Wilfred Owen :
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved-still warm-to hard to stir
Wilfred Owen meant to the word dear is expensively, but one feels in the
context of the poem, to the sense beloved.
In reflected meanings, words are said to be taboo in case that they
are connected to its sex association. Cock was considered to be taboo in
the former and replaced by rooster in its farmyard sense (as what was
explained by Bloomfield). The replacement (of the former use which is
taboo) to its latter form is called euphemism. In Indonesian we find many
of this kind.

SEMANTICS Page 27
2.4.6 Collocative meaning
Collocative meaning is the words, which are considered to have
individual lexical items or share common ground in meaning but may be
distinguish in their occurance. For example, pretty and handsome mean
good looking, but they can be distinguished in their occurance with the
nouns followed, as list below :
Pretty handsome
- Girl - oy
- Woman man
- Flower car
- Garden vessel
- Etc etc.
The words, like green also collocatives with grass, and dark with
night. The term collocate is a linguistic term to stand for the collocative
words.

2.4.7 Thematic Meaning

The seven types of meaning, that is thematic meaning is what is
communicated by the way in which a speaker or writer organizes the
message in terms of ordering, focus and emphasis. It is the choice among
expressions which have the same sense but different in communicative
values. Let’s examine the sentences below :
- The boy kills the snake.
- The snake is killed by the boy.
Even though these two sentences have the same meaning but their ordering
made them somewhat different in their communicative values. One tells us
something that after walking with a far distance, they arrived in the city.

SEMANTICS Page 28
Another sentence tells us that they want to see the crowded of people or
high buildings, thus in the city, they arrived.

2.5 Is Semantics Scientific?

Now what is the answer to the question above? It is not difficult,
just say yes or no. one who is not a linguist will say that semantics is not
scientific because he considers semantics as an aspect of language. As an
aspect of language semantics is not science, therefore it is not scientific.
But one who is from a linguist or interested in linguistics find difficulties
in answering the question. He will manage to study the area and theories,
in order that he can prove it. So here we will study theories which are so
called contextualism and behaviorism before determining whether
semantics is scientific or not.
Contextualism
The term contextualism is meant here context of situation which
was proposed by Malinowski and J. R. Firth. These two scholars expressed
meaning in term of the context in which language is used. Let’s just
examine the conversation below :
A : Could we have a table for two, please?
B : Certainly, Sir. There is one over there, in the corner.
The situation in which this conversation took place is in restaurant. If we
do not know the situation, it is of course difficult to state its meaning. The
conversation above might take place in other situation like in a shop which
sells furniture. The speaker in this case wted a table, a dining table for two
person only.
The similar case is also found in this conversation :
A : Have a nice time.
B : Thank you, I’m sure I will.

SEMANTICS Page 29
 We have seen that context of situation is important in determining
the meaning of an utterance, but according to Bloomfield it is not. As
speech may take place in the absence of objects being talked about.

Behaviorism
It is figured by Leonard Bloomfield, a well known American
linguist through his book Language (1933). He defined the meaning of a
linguistic form as the situation in which the speaker utters it and the
response it calls forth in the hearer : (p. 20).
Malnowski and Firth stated meaning in terms of situation. But
Bloomfield defined it as the situation. As an example, he made an account
of Jack and Jill. Jill is hungry, sees an apple, with the use of language he
get Jack to fetch the apple. If Jack was absent, Jill herself would move and
got the apple. Before getting he apple, what made Jill hungry is called
Response (R). Since Jack was with her, (R) would be placed by a linguistic
reaction, Jill would say something. The sound waves resulting from this in
turn created a stimulus for Jack. The linguistic reaction is symbolized by
(r) and the stimulus produced is symbolized by (s). The stimulus (s) would
result in non linguistic reaction (R) of getting the apple. We can make the
diagram of those events as :

S R (if Jill alone)

S r…………s R (if Jill accompanied by Jack)
So according to Bloomfield, meaning is the relation between
speech (r……s) and the practical events that precede and follow it. What is
important here is that the stimulus and response are physical events.
Now based on the two approaches we can determine or at least
prepare an answer to the previous question, but we should deal with
conditions that make something to be scientific.

SEMANTICS Page 30
 Something is called scientific, at least it must treat such as
consistency, systematic, objective, logic, etc. two of these conditions can e
fulfilled. To get semantic data in analysis meaning in the context of
situation, we can collect various context, that makes it objectives. But
meaning in the context of situation is not consistence and logic because it
varies from context to context. In behaviorism, meaning is defined in term
of physical events, therefore physical events are scientifically explainable.
But what was defined by Bloomfield, s…….r is the only physical entities
which can be brought to laboratory. The relation of r……...s with the
others is actually the meaning which is kept in mind. Then Bloomfield
stated that it can be explained scientifically if it has to do with mater of
scientific knowledge, like the meaning of salt ; natrium chloride (NaCl).
But how to define the meaning of love and hate?
In fact, love and hate can be analyzed in term of contrastive
features to which languages have in common/universal. The problem of
scientific is also dealing with the problem of universality. Unfortunately,
his is only applied to conceptual meaning, the other types of meaning
cannot e treated in similar way.
The two theories, contextualism and behaviorism may be said to be
frail in treating semantics and scientific. Nevertheless, we dare to say that
semantics is scientific by means of its conceptual meaning or logical
meaning..

SEMANTICS Page 31
 CHAPTER III
LOGIC

3.1 What is love?

The term logic derives from the Greek logos, means reason. In
general it refers to the study of the principles of right reasoning. Robert
Sharvy defined it as the study of the rules of correct arguments (Sharvy,
1964 :1)
For this definition, the general object of logic is argument. The
word argument means discourse in which it is claimed that one or more of
the sentences are evidence for another sentence called the conclusion. In
other words, it is a conclusion follows from something already known. An
example of argument is :
- Iron rusts
- Guns are made of iron
- Therefore, guns rust.
Within the general field of argument the specific concern of logic is the
problem of correctness. The logician is not concerned with describing the
brain process involved in reasoning nor with the problem of whether
particular sentences in an argument are true, but instead, he focuses on the
normative problem of establishing rules for correctly getting from the
evidence to the conclusion. From the argument mentioned above, we may
not know whether all guns are made of iron, but if they are, and iron rusts,
then all gun must rust.
Daniel . Sullivan defined logic as : “The art that enables us to
proceed with order, ease, and correctness in the act of reason itself” (1963 :
6). This definition was based on Aristotle’s Analytics in St. Thomas
Aquinas’ commentary.

SEMANTICS Page 32
 The definition is clearly showing us that besides the correctness of
our act of reason, it is claimed to be in order and ease. But shall we accept
the argument like :
- I have a pain in my foot.
- My foot is my shoes.
- Therefore, I have a pain in my shoes.

Is in case of its wrong conclusion? We say it is wrong because it is

possible all parts of my foot are in my shoes or my shoes itself feel pain.
Seeing that the conclusion does follow from the other two sentences but is
it acceptable to be logic? To know this, it will be worth dividing logic into
two, formal logic and material logic (as proposed by Sullivan).

3.2 Formal Logic

This sort of logic is the part of logic, which examines the form of
thought with a view to ensuring the correctness of our reasoning activities.
The word form itself was taken originally by Aristotle from the form of
statue, which may be realized over and over again in many different blocks
of stones. Thus the analogy of repeated pattern, according to Aristotle is
called form. We can see for example :
- Every dog barks.
- But every wolf is dog.
- Therefore, every wolf barks.
- Every vertebrate is an animal.
- But every horse is a vertebrate.
- Therefore every horse is an animal.

SEMANTICS Page 33
What the arguments are talking about (their content) is different but the
form is the same, so that we can make a substitution by using symbols for
the things reasoned about :
- Every A is B.
- But every C is A.
- Therefore every C is B.

So formal logic is concerned about the form of thought without any

regard as to whether or not their content is true. We cannot ensure whether
every A is B or every C is A but based on relation of the consequent upon
the antecedent we can make a conclusion. To make it clear the operation of
formal logic can e charted as follows:

Operator of the Though Product Language

Intellect Expression
Simple apprehension concept/definition Term
Affirmation/negation Judgment Proposition
Reasoning Argument :
inductive Inductive
sequence
Deductive syllogism
(Daniel J. Sullivan, 1963 : 15)

Part of logic, which investigates the content of thought with a view

to determine the truth of reasoning in material logic. What this definition
teaches us is that we are claimed to determine the truth of reasoning. Truth
is actually the fact of reality. Thus the truth of reasoning depends on the
truth of judgments we make about the way things are in actual existence. If

SEMANTICS Page 34
we find an error we try to see the cause of the error, for example a wrong
judgment of determining the first step from which conclusion derives, or
the judgment like make a wring estimate of the nature of things, as what is
seen in the argument below :
 Every oyster is a vertebrate.
 But every claim is an oyster.
 Therefore every claim is vertebrate.

As a matter of fact, oyster is not a class of vertebrate, then calm is not a

vertebrate. So before we state a fully valid acts of reasoning we must make
a true judgment about the things. If a doctor underestimate the disease of
his patient the medicine he gives will be wrong, and we can guess what
will happen to the patient, no matter how accurate the doctor examined his
patient. Another argument which has a wrong conclusion is :
- Every body is a male.
- Every girl is a male.
- Therefore every boy is a girl.

The conclusion is wrong because its antecedent is wrong. We never

equalize a boy with a girl, or in their real existence they are quiet different.
By this description we can say : “This is very logical but it is not
necessarily true”.

In our daily speech we always find such logical arguments

regardless of their truth (whether not or they are true according to the fact).
Perhaps in most of our debate we try to make logical arguments of this
kind by the act of reasoning. A student may say : “I am intelligent because
I received an A on te examination”. In this case he is reasoning and
presenting an argument. The fact of getting A is the evident for the truth of

SEMANTICS Page 35
the conclusion that he is intelligent. It is not enough to say that the remark
A signal his intelligent, but the fact of how he got that mark.

3. 3 Material Logic

Material logic then has three kinds of operation, they are the
concept, the judgment, and reasoning. These are in accordance with the
fundamental operational of the intellect. The three operations can be
charted as follows (based on Sullivan, 1963 : 15).
First operation : The concept Predicable
Predicaments
Definition and division
Second operation : The judgment In necessary matter
In contingent matter
Demonstrative
Dialectical
Third operation : Reasoning Syllogism Rhetorical
Literary
Induction and scientific
Method
Fallacies

SEMANTICS Page 36
3.4 Logical System

3.4.1 Proposition

Proposition or propositions are the part of argument and they

function either as premises or as the conclusion. “A proposition can be
defined as what declarative sentence means” (Robert Sharvy, 1964 : 3).
According to the definition, these two sentences ; The news that Reagan
will visit Indonesia is true and it is true that Reagan will come to
Indonesia, express one proposition since they have the same meaning.
Also, the two sentences ; All thief are dishonest and No thief are honest
express one proposition. Sentence like : Move to the sea-shore. Are you a
coward? do not express propositions as they are not declarative sentences.
Robert Sharvy then said : “Logic is concerned with propositions and not
with sentences., except as they express propositions, because inference is a
connection between meanings and not between marks on a piece paper”
(p.3). thus we can understand that proposition is on a par with meaning,
not with the structure of the sentence (marks on a piece of paper), and from
this it s true that proposition is sentence, but sentence is not proposition
(not all sentence are proposition).

What has been described above will be somewhat different to the

following : “A Statement or sentence that signifies truth or falsity
distinguishes proposition from other kinds of sentences which ask
question, give commands, and so on.

Sullivian emphasizes on the truth and falsity of the sentence or

sentences, while Sharvy emphasizes on what declarative sentence means. It
is in fact that we can make inference or signify the truth and falsity in
declarative sentence, on the other hand, questions, commands are not

SEMANTICS Page 37
declarative that can not be proved the truth and falsity. We can see from
example in :
- Open the door.
- Open the book.

are not found the truth value, for how we determine something to be true or
false if we are commanding or asking question. Unlike in declarative, it is
statement which we always accept whether true or false. Thus those
definition reflect the same meaning.

3.4.2 Parts of Proposition

Like sentence, proposition can be broken into a smaller units, the

units which are s-called the structure (which constructs) of proposition.
The proposition like ;

The camel is dessert animal.

Consists of subject, Copula and Predicate. It is charted as :

The camel is a dessert animal.

S C P

The subject tells us what the proposition is about, the copula functions as
joining the predicate to the subject and tell us something about the
existence or quality of the subject. The predicate tells us what is said about
the subject.

SEMANTICS Page 38
 From this, we can understand that the proposition is about the
camel (S) what is said about the subject is that the camel after joined by
copula exist as a dessert animal.

But those divisions which were proposed by Sullivan seem to be

awkward since there is a proposition or propositions which contain no
copula, like : The police runs.

The proposition of this kind, according to Sullivan can be put into

copula form by rephrasing as :

The police is running.

Also, the sentence ; Every bird sings becomes :

Every bird sings songster.

The subject of a proposition have values of quantity like every,

some, few, this, that, etc. these propositions below can be typed into
universal affirmative, universal negative, particular affirmative and
particular negative successively :

- Every dog barks

- No dog barks.

- Some dog barks.

- Some dog does not bark.

The proposition ; All dog bark is also a universal affirmative since it is

included in each dog. The proposition ; This dog barks is a particular
singular affirmative. Of the types of proposition mentioned above we know
SEMANTICS Page 39
that its quantity depends on the extension of the subject, that is, the nature
about which the proposition says something is taken in its whole extension
or part of it.

We can also apply this to the predicate. Thus the proposition ;

Every tiger is wild.

tells us that the class of tiger is found within the class of things that are
wild. In this case the class which is signified by predicate to the subject is
not limited. Other things apart from tigers can be wild. Their relation can
be diagrammed as follow, the black area is the part of the area about which
we are making a statement.

P. things that are

wild
S. tiger

The diagram consists of two areas, the small circle in the middle
(S) is the class of tiger which is found within the area of the extension of
the class wild. So there is still roo for other things besides tiger in the class
wild.

SEMANTICS Page 40
 If our proposition is ; Some tigers are wild, the diagram would be :

S: tiger
P : things that are
wild

So the diagram indicates that part of tiger is wild, which is seen in

the diagram as the overlapping area (between the class wild and class
tiger).

The predicate in universal negative is separated entirely from the

class of the subject. The proposition ; no tiger is wild, the negation makes
the class of tiger separated from the class of being wild. So the diagram
would be :

P : things that are wild

S : tiger

SEMANTICS Page 41
In the diagram we can see the whole black area is things that are wild.
From negative proposition ; No tiger is wild. That is why the class of tiger
(S) s separate from the things that are wild (P).

In the particular negative : some tigers are not wild, part of the
subject indicated by the word some is in the area of the class of things
which are wild, as seen in the diagram below :

P : things that are wild

S : tiger

We have seen the part of proposition : S C P and the types of S and

relation between S and P via its copula are those which constructs a
proposition and its type. Sullivan added the term modifier to the subject
and predicate. Sullivan’s idea in the case of the parts of proposition seems
to be somewhat fail, for we have some declarative sentences which cannot
be rephrased into the form of copula. The proposition like ; Every child
likes sweets, is a case in point, where if it is changed it becomes ; *Every
child is liking sweets. The asterisk indicates ungrammaticality.

Since proposition deals with meaning, we can rephrase the

proposition by putting it into passive form : Sweets are liked by every
child. The two propositions have the same meaning in spite of their

SEMANTICS Page 42
difference in form. Therefore they constitute one proposition. From this
what Sullivan stated that the S, C, and P and their relationship to each
other as the logical form of proposition is true, because the problem of
logic is the problem of meaning.

In case grammar, a proposition consists of two basic parts, they are

the verb, its arguments and modality. The argument here is not like the one
that we have discussed, but it is a noun or noun phrase (NP). Modality
(Mod) consists of : verb, tense, modals, aspect, etc.

Let’s have a look on this proposition :

- He kicked the ball.

It consists of two arguments, verb and the verb tense. So it can be analyzed
as follows :
- He = Arg (1)
- The ball = Arg (2)
- Kicked = V
- -ed = V (tense)

The term predication is included to the verb and modality, which is

concerned with semantic category as : action, process, position, condition,
and identity. Thus would be :

Prop Arg 1) + Arg (2) + P

This is also in accordance with the diagram below, but the predicate
follows the arguments :

SEMANTICS Page 43
 Prop

Predication Argument (1) Argument (2)

The final form of the proposition :

Prop

Pred Arg (1) Arg(2)

Action actor object

V + Past N (1) N (2)

Kicked He the ball

The parts of proposition of this sort are more practical than that of S< C< P
sequence. The proposition which contains copula :

Amar is at home.

SEMANTICS Page 44
can be diagrammed as :

Prop

Pred Arg

V N

C Loc Actor

Is at home Amar

3.4.3 Propositional Logic

The alternative name of Propositional Logic is Propositional

Calculus ; which is dealing with the relation between propositions. It is of
course, necessary to know compound propositions as prepositional
concerns with this kind of proposition.

SEMANTICS Page 45
 Compound propositions can be divided into two parts :

- Propositions which have relation of dependence, one

with another. Because of their relation of independent
this sort is called Implicative Propositions.

- Proposition whose parts (categorical propositions) are

joined by conjunction and.

There are three kinds of implicative propositions they are,

conditional, Disjunctive, and Conjunctive Proposition. Conditional
proposition is two propositions which are joined by connectives If…, then.
For example, If rain falls, then the street will be wet. The first proposition
is called he antecedent, the second is the consequent.

The relationship between those two propositions is seen through

their truth condition. If the antecedent is true, then the consequent must
follow. Both parts of the proposition may be false but the condition can be
true. For example ; If cotton is heavier than iron, then its gravitational pull
will be stronger than the iron.

Logicians made the symbol for conditional proposition as :

(if….., then). So instead of saying ; if p, then q, we

symbolize it as
: p q

Since the relation of one proposition with another is embedded in

their truth condition, it is necessary to set up Truth Tables a proposed by
the logicians. Thus the truth tables below indicate what is the truth value of

SEMANTICS Page 46
the compound sentence in relation to the truth value of the simple sentence
from which it is formed.

P q p q

t t t

t f f

f t t

f f t

the first line shows that, if both p and q are true, p q is

true. The second line shows that, if p is true, q is true, then p q
is false. The third shows that, if p is false, then p q is true. The
last shows that, if both p and q are false, then p q is true.

More examples about this propositional calculus will be given in

chapter four.

Disjunctive Proposition is two propositions which are joined by the

conjunction or, as examples, let’s look at the prepositional below :

- He is a criminal or he is a sailor.

- Mary is intelligent or she is aggressive..

The first disjunctive tells us that both parts may be true simultaneously,
therefore it is called weak. In Latin, this proposition is also signed by the
word ; vel, Means either and possibly both, is in the insurance policy
which is written ; “In the event of accident or illness all premiums are
cancelled” (see also Sullivan : 105.)
SEMANTICS Page 47
 Thus the truth tables of disjunctive proposition an be charted as
follows :

P q p V q

t t t

t f f

f t t

f f f

The first line indicates that, if both p and q are true, then p V q (read p or
q) is true. The second line tells us that, if p is true and q is false, then p V q
or the compound propositions are true. Then if both p and q are false, the
compound propositions are true.

The third kind of implicative proposition is Conjunctive

Proposition, that is, two propositions which are joined by and. For example
:

She cannot eat and he is not thin.

Birds cannot fly and whisper.

The conjunctive proposition has also strong and weak form. The
strong conjunction shows that part of it, not both, must be false, as seen in
the first example. Where as the weak conjunction, both parts must be false,
like in the second example

SEMANTICS Page 48
 From both examples, we see that they are in the negative for. So
conjunctive proposition is always in his form.

The propositional calculus (the relationship between the parts of the

proposition) in conjunctive form can be charted in the following of which
the symbol is given for conjunctive (p & q is read p and q).

P q p & q

t t t

t f f

f t f

f f f

from the truth tables we can state that the conjunctive proposition is true
only when both parts are true (if p is true, q is true, then p & q is true), like
in this proposition ; He is not clever and intelligent.

Besides the negative forms, the positive forms of conjunctive

propositions are found. Let’s see some examples :

- Sea is deep and sky is blue.

- Dogs are animals and apples tree are plants and stones are solid
and humans are mortal.

- She is pretty, kind and skillful.

From the examples it is seen that the conjunction and, function as

joining one part to the other parts of categories.

SEMANTICS Page 49
 If in the previous propositions, the relationship between them can
be shown in truth tables, but here it seems that their relation can not be
shown. The reason is that, how do we make symbol such p, q, or the others
to the sentence which I long? Or if our sentence is like this : “The book is
thin and the pencil is long and the pen is new and the paper is white,….,
etc”. It is very complicated indeed.

3.4.4 Predicate Logic

As we have seen that propositional logic or prepositional calculus

deals with relations between sentences, predicate logic deals with relations
among predicates. In propositional logic, the relations are between
sentences (within two sentences), while in predicate logic the relations are
among predicates (more than two sentences). But they are not wholly
different, as predicate logic is included in proposition or sentence or in the
predicate logic we deal also with relation among sentences. Let’s see the
examples :
- All animals are animate.
- Dogs are animal.
- Therefore dogs are animate.

The predicate of the first proposition is are animate that is, what is
said about the property of the animals, it is symbolized with A, the subject
(what the preposition is about) is symbolized with x, where x refers to any
individual or it is variable which substitutes any individual, the same with
y and z. if the subject is a specific individual like John, Mary, or Brown as
the name of dog, the symbol will be a, b, and c. these symbols are called
individual constants. The symbol A here is the initial of animals, so it is
not a conventional symbol.

SEMANTICS Page 50
 In our example above we find the quantifier all which indicates any
animal, both individual animal, so we substitute symbol x for this, where
as the quantifier all is symbolized with V. thus the predicate calculus of
the proposition would be :
V x (A (X) ) C (x) )

We read it : For all x, s, if x s are animal, x s are animate. The symbol C

stands for animate.
The example can also be put like this :
V x ( A (x) C (x) )
A (a)
C (a)

In this case the subject is a specific one.

After analyzing the predicate logic, we can now understand that it

is the argument that has relation of predicate with the proposition.

Beside their relation within proposition, what is then the elements

of predicate? Do the term predicate and predication have the same
interpretation? These will be discussed in chapter four, in the Predicate
Analysis.

Up to this point we have discussed about the logic and its

extensions, our problems now is, is it the same logic to logicians with logic
to linguists? As what is seen in simple example of the use of neither……
nor….., where not X ( X is any proposition) for logicians the proposition
John is not a man is an abbreviation for John is neither a man or nor is he

SEMANTICS Page 51
a man, because it has the same truth value. Where as for linguists it is not
well formed. Then it should be : John is neither a man nor a woman. For
in using neither….nor…., the non it follows cannot be the same. If he is
neither a man nor a woman, what is he?

SEMANTICS Page 52
 CHAPTER IV

THE LOGIC OF LANGUAGE

Based on the title above, we are now concerning with the logic of
language which is proposed by the linguists. Despite the fact that some
cases of the logicians are also very general to those of linguist, but t seems
that the logic which is found in language is wider, by means that a linguist,
besides finding the rules of characterizing the logic-semantic
representation of sentences, he should also (as expressed by Leech) take
account of:

a. The actual facts of language usage. Whatever propositions native

speakers of language fine meaningful, meaningless synonymous,
inconsistent, etc, are part of the data the linguist has to explained. He
must not stray into any idealized or artificially normalized system of
language.

b. The place of logic semantic in the overall account of language. This

mean that he must provide rules or other formalisms which show the
relation between semantic and syntax on the one hand, and semantics
and pragmatics on the other . Logic, which is an autonomous system of
logician, is not so for the linguist.

c. The psychological plausibility of semantic descriptions, For the

linguist, natural logic means the actual mental apparatus with which
people think and express their thought rationally. Certain convention of
logic calculi e. g. that left-to right on the page is significant are not
particularly plausible from the psychological point of view: There is no

SEMANTICS Page 53
 suppose that the human mind apprehends logical relations in a linear
way (Leech, 1981: 153).

So, the logic of language which deals with synonymy,

inconsistency, semantic anomaly (meaningless), meaningfulness,
ambiguity, entailment, tautology, etc, or as Katz said they are as a model of
semantic theory, are not only the task of linguists to construct, but it is
even wider than what the logicians’ concern. Leech added the two items
above (a and b). item a is applied or used in this book, for the essence of
syntax and pragmatics are close to semantics. Like ambiguity as the
property of sentence (syntax), and the pragmatic use of the definiteness
the, of which both are logical.

Whereas as, item b id not much concerned in this book, because

this domain (psychological purpose) is closely linked to logic as the branch
of philosophy.

4.1 Basic Statements

According to Leech, it is so-called basic statements because they

are statements at level where investigators seem to find themselves
intuitively in agreement and that they are statements easily translatable
into terms of truth and falsehood, notion which all normal users of
language understand.

4.1.1 Synonymy

Synonymy is the relation of sameness of meaning, for example

glad and happy, sofa and couch, John loves Mary’s only sister and John

SEMANTICS Page 54
loves the female sibling of Mary, are synonymous. The latter pairs are
paraphrase. Paraphrase is the process or result, of rewording an utterance
from one level or variety of a language into another without altering the
meaning (Hatmann & Stork, 1973 : 162).

It is in paraphrase the rules of synonymy can be given of which

logic is the relation of meaning in sentence, not between words alone.
Another example of paraphrase ; He is an orphan – he is a child and have
no father and mother.

Thus the rule of synonymy is :

X is synonymous with Y

X has the same truth value as Y – if X is true, Y is true and

if X is false and Y is false.

Also, Amir lives in Jakarta has the same truth value with Amir lives in the
capital of Indonesia.

But how if our example is like this, Amir lives in Jakarta and Amir
lives in the capital of Indonesia. Shall we say that they have the same truth
value? Our judgment then, based on logicians view of the use of
neither…..nor to its application of not X where X is any proposition, the
two sentences have the same truth value. If it is so, the logicians viewed
them from just the meaning, not including the syntactic or grammatical
marker which signifies meaning.

For linguist ( in semantic sense), both sentences above have no the

same truth value, as the latter means : Amir does not live in the capital of
Indonesia (Jakarta) now, which is shown by the verb tense.

SEMANTICS Page 55
4.1.2 Entailment

Entailment is the relation between the two sentences under which

one follows necessary from the other by the virtue of a certain semantic
relation between them for example : I buy some apples entails but I buy
some fruit. The rules of entailments is :

X entails Y

If X is true, Y is true.

Also, if Y is false, X is false.

Another example ;

I saw a boy entails I saw a child.

So, in entailment it is clear that there is a semantic relation, as what the

example above tells us, a boy has a semantic relation with a child but how
if ; Boys of today are not respectful. Where the boys here mean men. Can
we say it entails Children of today are not respectful despite they have
semantic relation – both of them include the feature male human. If the
problem of entailment is he problem of semantic relation, it is, of course an
entailment.

But according to Leech if a word is interpreted out of its conceptual

meaning it is no more a logical meaning. Thus the interpretation of boys
become men is not the fact that one entails the other (with children).

SEMANTICS Page 56
4.1.3 Inconsistency

The fact that the sentences ; John is alive and John is dead, are
neither true neither false when they refer to the same individual but, rather,
one must be true and the other false. Also, I am an orphan is inconsistent
with I have a father. So the rule of inconsistency is :

X is inconsistent with Y

If X is true, Y is false, also if Y is true, X is false.

If our example is like this ; I am an orphan and He has a father, can we

say one entails the other? Of course not, because the subject in the latte is
not the same with the former, therefore the latter cannot be said to be false
in case it seemed to be influenced by the former and seems to be false.

4.1.4 Tautology

Tautology is a semantic redundancy that in it there is a superfluous

information. For example, The man is an adult. We can look in the
predicate (adult) that its sense is included in the subject (man). So, it is also
a meaningless repetition. Another example My brother is an unmarried
bachelor.

The rule of tautology would be :

X is a tautology

X is invariably true.

SEMANTICS Page 57
4.1.5 Contradiction

The term deals with a contradiction between the subject and

predicate in their words, that the meaning of the subject contains
information incompatible with what is attributed to it in the predicate. For
example, Kings are women, bachelors are pregnant. We know that kings
and bachelors do not contain such a female feature. But it is true that in
king s embedded or we have an interpretation of queen. If we say,
Nowadays kings are women, it is of course, they are no longer kings, but
queens.

The rule for contradiction :

X is a contradiction

X is invariably false.

4.1.6 Presupposition

Presupposition is a condition found in the meaning of the sentence

expressing the proposition. It expresses referential requirement whose
satisfaction is the condition which the proposition can make statement. To
make clear, let’s see this example ; My brother is a doctor presupposes I
have a brother. Thus the rule of presupposition :

X presupposes Y

If X is true, Y s true

If the negation of X is true, Y is true.

SEMANTICS Page 58
 According to leech there are two types of presupposition :

- Logical Presupposition

- Pragmatic Presupposition.

Logical presupposition is a theory, which treats presupposition as a relation

between propositions, defined in terms of their truth and falsehood.
Pragmatic presupposition is a theory, which treats presuppositions as a
question of the status of a speech act in relation to the speaker’s or hearer’s
beliefs.

To distinguish one from the other let’s se the example below :

a. The book you stole from the library is valuable.

(proposition)

b. The book you stole from the library is not valuable.

(negative proposition)

c. Is the book you stole from the library valuable? (yes –

no question)

d. When did you steel the book from the library? (wh –
question)

e. See that you return the boo you stole from the library.
(command)

f. What an interesting book you stole from the library!.

SEMANTICS Page 59
 By the virtue of logic, only (a) and (b) said to be proposition and
that they are the presupposition of ; You stole the book from the library.
Therefore it is a logical proposition.

But Leech expressed that ; You stole the book from the library
presupposes all the sentence mentioned above. For, based on pragmatic,
one is concerned with what is publicy interpretable, not with the secret
intentions or assumptions of the speaker (1981 : 281).

We can see for example the illocutionary forced which was

proposed by J. L. Austin on which he was dissatisfied with the traditional
concentration on referential meaning and the truth and falsehood of
statements. He expressed that the illocutionary force deals with ; What sort
of act do we perform in uttering a sentence.

Charles J. Fillmore was a linguist influenced by this approach and

gave an illustration illocutionary of an utterance such :

Please shut the door, as :

- the speaker and the addresses of this sentence are in some kind
of relationship which allows the speaker to make a request of
the addresses.

- The addresses is in a position where he is capable of shutting

the door.

- There are some particulars which the speaker has in mind and
which he has reason to assume the addresses can identify
without any further descriptive aid on the speaker’s part.

- The door in question, is, at the time of utterance, open.

SEMANTICS Page 60
 - The speaker wants the door to become closed

From this we can identify the utterance to be the situation in which

speaker and hearer utter it (in stimulus respond). In other words, it is a
linguistic expression related to its users (in pragmatic sense). That is why
those which are mentioned above called pragmatic presupposition.

If presupposition concerns with pragmatic use, then we can not

make the rule of its truth and falsehood. But still, it is logic. As also, seen
in this question ; Where is the comb? Its presupposition would be ; It is
some place.

4. 1. 7 Semantic anomaly

The term deals with the absurd utterance. For example, The
orphan’s mother lives in New York. Therefore X is absurd in the sense that
it presupposes a contradiction. It makes no sense to ask whether X is true
or false. What Geoffrey Leech meant here that it is nonsense to determine
whether X is true or false if it makes no sense at all. For example, if we
make :

X is anomalous

X is absolutely false

Then if X is false it doesn’t mean that it has no sense.

SEMANTICS Page 61
4. 2 The Relation Among Statements I The Basic Statements

There are relations among the types of statement such as,

synonymy, entailment, inconsistency, etc.

Like synonymy, can be expressed as bi-directional entailment : X is

synonymous with Y means as the same with X entails Y and entails Y and
Y entails X. this will agree with our previous example :
- He is an orphan is synonymous with
X
- He is a child and have no father and mother.
Y
- He is an orphan entails
X
- He is a child and have no father and mother.
Y
(and vice versa)
But if we say X entails Y, it doesn’t mean that X is synonymous with Y,
like :
- He is an orphan entails.
X

- He has no father.

SEMANTICS Page 62
 The inconsistency of X and Y can be expressed as entailment
relation between X and the negation of Y, and between Y and the negation
of X. We can see them in the following :
- John is alive is inconsistency with
X
- John is dead.
Y
- John is alive has an entailment relation with
X
- John is dead.
Neg Y
It seems that inconsistency can also be expressed as X is synonymous with
the negation o Y, and Y is synonymous with the negation of X. It is seen in
the fact that the negation of John is dead is synonymous with John is alive.
We can also express tautology and contradiction in term of
entailment ; a contradiction is a proposition whose negation is tautology,
and a tautology is a proposition which is entailed by all other propositions.
Let’s prove this with examples :
X is a contradiction :
Kings are women.
X
The negation of contradiction is tautology.
(neg X = Tautology) :
Kings are women.

SEMANTICS Page 63
A tautology is a proposition which is entailed by all other propositions (X
is entailed by all other proposition) :

Kings are men is the entailment of :

Kings are women.

Monarches are kings.

Kings bark.

Etc.

From our analysis of relation among the types of statement, it is

true what Leech expressed that all basic statements can be translated into
statements about entailment.

4. 3 Ambiguity

“A sentence is having more than one meaning, as being

ambiguous” (Rosenbaum, 1968 : 5).

Rosenbaum noted that ambiguity of sentence is not concerning

with the proposition. But the ambiguity of word, grammatical structure and
sentence.

As we have seen that X and Y used in basic statement formulate are

proposition. Ambiguity on the other hand, is a property of sentences ; in
fact, an ambiguous (declarative) sentence may be defined as a declarative

SEMANTICS Page 64
sentence which expresses more than one proposition. These reflects a
difference between levels of linguistic statement ; sentences are syntactic
units, where as propositions are semantic units ; ambiguity is one-many
relation between syntax and sense. Thus, we may say that Hugo is drawing
a cart is ambiguous, that t expresses more than one proposition :

- Hugo is drawing (a picture of) a cart.

- Hugo is drawing (pulling) a cart.

If ambiguity is one-many relation between sentence and sense it might be

argued that synonymy is the opposite phenomenon, i.e. a one-many
relation between sense and sentence. On this basis, I would be right to say
that two sentences are synonymous :

- Hugo is drawing a cart.

- Hugo is pulling a cart.

In that, they express same proposition. But if propositions are the meaning
of sentences, then it seems illogical to say that two propositions are
synonymous (that two meanings have same meaning).

So, we can draw now that ambiguity is a sentence which has more
than one proposition. Or X is ambiguous (X is a sentence) where X has
propositions a, b, etc. in this case the truth and falsehood is not applied.

Then ambiguity is a property of sentences or propositions, as Leech

expressed (1981 :79).

SEMANTICS Page 65
 Though we cannot make the rule of ambiguity, it is still logical in
condition that it should be concerned with the situation where speaker and
hearer utter it.

4. 4 Logical Translation of Equivalences

By logical translation of equivalence is meant the process whereby

a standard form of proposition is changed into another standard form of
proposition with the same meaning. For example : All men are mortal is
changed into ; No men are immortal.

This process is called a logical translation because it proceeds by

regular rules. The two propositions are said t be logically equivalent
because the equivalence is established by an inspection of the form of the
proposition. So, the rule :

Y is a logical translation equivalent of X

X is true, Y is true.

4. 5 Grammatical translations

It is important to distinguish what we are calling grammatical

translations from the mechanical procedures of the logical translations.

The relation between the standard form and the original proposition
must be equivalence, i.e. if one proposition is true, the other must be true,
if one is false, the other must be false.

SEMANTICS Page 66
 In grammatical translation we must find out the subject, predicate
and copula.
For example :
Into the night rode Lochinvar,
The subject is Lochinvar. A standard form translation might be :
“Lochinvar is a person who rode into the night”.
Another common situation occurs when a clause is part of the
subject but is separated from it by other words. The sentence :
All played who practiced,
has a clause who practiced, separated from the word all which is modified.
Thus the standard form of the proposition would be :
all persons who practiced are persons who played.
The clause now becomes the part of the subject joined by copula to the
predicate.

4. 6 Analytic and Synthetic

Analytic and synthetic here is concerned with analytic truth and

synthetic truth. Analytic truth is truth by virtue of meaning (that the
meaning of the subject contains of the property expresses by predicate).
For example :

- Kings are monarchs.

- Uncles are males.

SEMANTICS Page 67
We can see they also contain superfluous information, thus it is right to say
that analytic truth is similar with tautology, as have been discussed in the
previous paragraph.

Synthetic truth is truth by virtue of fact. For example :

Kings are generous.

Priests are polite.

They are neither true nor false in the basis of meaning alone, that is, their
truth o falsity is not indicated by the language but depends on what is the
case in actuality.

If we examine again an analytic truth, it seems that it tells us

nothing, as seen in our example : King a are monarchs, that it can be
shown also by : Kings are kings it is the same with Frege’s example in the
previous chapter – on the basis of : Venus is Venus, he made morning Star
is Morning Star which is uninteresting or tells us nothing. Evening Star is
Morning, Star teaches something. Or if we make our example to be : Kings
are queens.

But analytic truth seems more logical. How then the Evening Star
becomes Morning Star or Kings become Queens if our planet is still
around?

4. 7 Definiteness.

When we use the definite article the, we presume that both the
speaker and the hearer know what is being talked about. According to

SEMANTICS Page 68
leech this is dealing with the pragmatic use rather than in purely semantics
terms. To interpret the, we have to relate it to a particular speech situation
and to assumptions made about the speaker about the hearer. If for
example a speaker says a phrase the X means that there is some X that can
be identified uniquely in the contextual knowledge shared by speaker and
hearer.

Shared knowledge means that if I say Where is the cat, it is true

that the person I am addressing is aware of which cat I am referring to.
Uniquely means that the addresses must be able to select the one cat in
question from all other referent of the word cat. And contextual knowledge
means that selection is determined by what background information is
relevant to particular situation. For example that we are talking about our
sole feline pet.

Leech continued that the condition of uniqueness does not seem to

apply to plural phrases such as the children, the flowers, the novels, but it
does apply in the sense that such phrases pick out a unique set of referents ;
thus the children on a particular occasion will refer to John, Chloe, and
Lionel, rather than Chloe, Margareth, and Bill. Further, it id not applied to
phrases like the sun, the stars. It is because of the fact that there is only one
sun in our universe. But we can still draw a context (of conversation about
the universe) Which sun do you mean?

The writer gets confused of this, for what Leech meant here (the
conversation about the universe). Can we say or answer the question above
by ; I mean the sun that never rises, or The yesterday’s sun which shone
brightly?

Despite we can draw a proposition, that is, the presupposition of

Which sun do you mean?, it is true that the presupposition (the answer) is
SEMANTICS Page 69
impossible to be accepted. Therefore, the problem of uniqueness in plural
is not agreement to noun of general truth like ; the sun, stars, etc.

But the uniqueness is applied to the words whose definitions

include a feature of definiteness :

Personal pronouns : he/him/his/, she/her, it, they, I, you, etc.

Reflexive pronouns : himself, herself, themselves, myself,

yourself, etc.

Deitic words :this/that, these/those, here/there, now/then, etc.

We can see it ; He works every day, the uniqueness (that it includes the
definite feature of the). He can be drawn as : the third person singular, +
male. Also, in ; This ha is blue. The uniqueness of this is the near. Where
as That hat is blue, that contains : the, -near. The uniqueness of now in
Now we are secure is at this time where here we have to draw this time as ;
the + near time. And then in : They went on their journey, contains ; at that
time : the –near time.

4.8 Co-reference

Co-reference deals with the same of referent in a text. A text here is

according to Halliday refers to : “Any passage, spoken or written whatever
length, the does form a unified” (1980 : 1).

Text according to the definition above is a semantic units, not a

grammatical units. Actually, what we have discussed in the preceding
section was dealing with proposition of the semantic representation of
sentences. But in this case, co-reference is a part of a text or the common
term a discourse.
SEMANTICS Page 70
 Co-reference consists of : Anaphoric and Cataphoric. To make
clear let’s look at the examples below :

Look at the sun, it is going down quickly.

It is going down quickly, the sun.

In the first example, it refers back to the sun, while in the second, it refers
forward to the sun. thus in anaphoric, the referent is determined by what
has been previously mentioned in a text. Where as cataphoric – the referent
is determined by what will be mentioned of the following (referring
forward).

The definite article the can also be found in anaphoric, where in the
preceding, indefinite article a/an has been mentioned. Leech made the
example of this sort as :

They have made a film of his latest novel, but after reading
the book, I found the film a great disappointment

The referents of the book and the film are made clear by the fact that a film
and a novel have already been mentioned earlier in the sentence. Thus the
film and book co-refer to a film and his last novel.

In the problem o co-reference is one that has same referents, how

then to make justification of the following entailment?

Daphne rode a stallion entails Daphne rode a horse.

Can we guarantee that both Daphne refer to the same person? On the other
hand, if one of the Daphne above is the name of a cat or one is male
(person) and another is female?

SEMANTICS Page 71
 It is, of course, we cannot guarantee that one (Daphne) co-refers to
another. It is in accordance with what Geoffrey leech explained that proper
nouns do not appear to have contrastive meaning (do not have
componential definitions), where as common nouns like girl, book, etc, do.

So, we may think or decide to give the name Daphne to a girl’s

name, a car, a cat, or a mountain.

4. 9 Logical operator

As a mater of fact, the negative which was given in (4.2) can be put
into its logical term, namely, logical operator. Logical operator is semantic
elements such as ; the, not, if, or, some, all, etc.

Due to the limited knowledge of the writer about this logical

operators, he, on this occasion, is just analyzing some of them. They are
logical operators not, some and all.

4. 9. 1 The Negative Operator Not

For any positive proposition X, a corresponding negative

proposition (not : (x)) can be formed. In negative proposition, not
constitutes a one-place predicate (the term one-place predicate will be
discussed later in Predication analysis) governing (X). in this scope, one-
place predicate means that there is only one negative proposition occurs in
the positive proposition.

Actually, the rules of negative operator is not treated here are the
clarification of what have been discussed in (4.2). the difference lies on the
writer’s additions to the analysis, which based on Leech’s examples.
SEMANTICS Page 72
 a. (X) is inconsistent with (not : (X) :

These scissors are sharp is inconsistent with ;

These scissors are not sharp.

b. if (X) is tautology, (not : (X) is a contradiction :

Apples are fruits is tautology

Apples are not fruits is a contradiction.

c. if (X) is a contradiction, (not : (X) is tautology :

Apples are animals is a contradiction.

Apples are not animals is a tautology.

We have said there is not a double not in a positive proposition, or

the negation of positive proposition cannot be two. If for example, the
following negative proposition (contain in two negations) :

John did not open the door,

can be accepted (in the sense that it is grammatical), the rule such :

d. (not : (X) is synonymous with (X), will agree.

But if we deal with Leech’s expression : “ And if we want to make

its meaning clear we have to use intonation” (Leech 1981 : 172). He was
concerning here with ambiguous sentence. Nevertheless, we can apply this
to the negative proposition above, in a way that we put the voice fall on not

SEMANTICS Page 73
(the first) in a low pitch, and to the second we make the voice rise/stressed
a little. So it becomes :

John did not open the door.

So that it is possible to use more than one negation for the sake of
emphasis, like the following :

John did not, not, not, not,……………………………………

open the door.

Rosenbaum said that we can produce a long, longer sentence as we want,

but we can slip upon the uneffective meaning. Similarly with our notes
above.

4. 9. 2 The Quantifiers All and Some

The existential quantifier all (to give them their usual name), leech
noted that they are the type of contrast called an inverse opposition. The
rules are illustrated as :

1. (not : (a . all : (a : P))) (a. some (not : (a : P )))

The mark means there is a relation of synonymy. Example :

Not all paint is soluble Some paint is not soluble.

A in the rule is argument, P is predicate. As we see in the example

all paint and is soluble.

2. (not : (a. some. (a : P ))) (a. all. (not : (a : P )))

SEMANTICS Page 74
Example :
Nobody is perfect. Every body is not perfect. (i.e. Every
person is imperfect).
If we notice, this example is not fixed to the rule. Our example should be :
Not some persons are perfect >< All people are not perfect. (the
mark >< means no relation of synonymy).
We can analyze, the first has no relation of synonymy with the second. Not
some people are perfect is not grammatical. Suppose it is, the meaning is
that some people are perfect. While ; All people are perfect means that No
people are perfect.
Why then leech used nobody in the scope of some? The reason is,
if we interpret the no of nobody to mean not + any, any being the form
which some takes when it is within the scope of negation, thus no is seen
to be equivalent to not + some. On the other hand, every of everybody is a
universal quantifier in combination with singular meaning.
If the case that no of nobody interpreted as not + any (on a part
with not + some), the rule will not be on effect. In other words, that it
cannot be applied as general rule. As we have proved above that the
relation of synonymy does not exist. Therefore, the rule is just fixed if we
interpreted anything to mean something. If it is not done the type of
contrast or inverse opposition still occurs.
In these two examples :
Not all girls like sailors.
All nice girls do not like sailors.
Are found the negations of which they are the negation of :
All nice girls like sailor.

SEMANTICS Page 75
According to Leech, the first negation expresses the true negation, because
its meaning is inconsistent with that the corresponding positive sentence.
He applied the term of scope in this, where the first negation : the
quantifier is in the scope of negative, where as the second ; the negative is
in the scope of the quantifier.

If the first sentence (Not all girls like sailor) is inconsistence with
its positive, the second is also the same. The differences is that ; Not all
girls like sailors means some girls like sailors, where as ; All nice girls do
not like sailors means ; No girl likes sailor

4. 9. 3 Zero expression

Zero expression does not mean as what is found in morphology

(i.e. the plural noun like ; deer – deer, or the verb tense like ; put – put), but
the absence of an object signals which are unnecessarily occur.

Some examples are shown below :

They are eating (i.e. eating apples)

They have a parrot called Montague (i.e. which is called

Montague).

She’s gone away. (i.e. away from here/there).

It is worth noticing here that the absent syntactic expression,

contextually determined element. In other words, that some of them should
be related to context like ; Can I join? (i.e. join the club/society). All the
absent expressions are stored in the speaker’s mind. But according to

SEMANTICS Page 76
transformational grammar, not oly them to be stored but what is being
sated, by means of their meaning.

4. 10 Predication Analysis

Before analyzing the predication, it is necessary to know what is

meant by predication (it is wider than what is treated in chapter three).

Geoffrey Leech noted that predication consists of arguments and

predicates where arguments and predicates consists of features. It can be
diagrammed as follows :

ARGUMENTS

PREDICATION Consists of consists of FEATURES

PREDICATES

SEMANTICS Page 77
For example, A man is in front of a woman can be put into this form below

PREDICATION

Predicate

DIRECTION

LATERAL

Argument (1) Argument (2)

+ Human + Human

+ Adult + Adult

+ Male + Male

+ Singular + Singular

A man A woman
(1981 : 128)

SEMANTICS Page 78
 So, here we find the features – it deals with the Semantic Features,
or in other term Semantic components, that is a technique of analyzing the
meaning of words (arguments) in features, like ; + human, -male, etc. such
features are also called contrastive features.
As a matter of fact, it is not only arguments that can be analyzed
into features, but also predicate. Predicate like in front of is put into
features such ;

Spatial, direction, + horizontal, - lateral.

To make clear the semantic oppositions are drawn as :
DIRECTION ‘in front of”
DIRECTION ‘behind, over, under, etc.

+ HORIZONTAL ‘horizontal’ + LATERAL ‘side to side’

- HORIZONTAL ‘vertical’ - LATERAL ‘back to back’

SPATIAL ‘a is in spatial relation with b’ (it is a reciprocal

relation indicating that common ground of all these
meanings).
+ HORIZONTAL requires SPATIAL.
+ LATERAL requires + HORIZONTAL.
Thus in front of can put like this :
in front of
( SPATIAL)
DIRECTION
+ HORIZONTAL
- LATERAL

SEMANTICS Page 79
But how we analyze the predicate in ; He is around the house? If
requires not only + horizontal but also – horizontal, even it requires
also, direction and Direction.
Or if it is drawn it would be :

Around
SPATIAL
DIRECTION
DIRECTION
+ HORIZONTAL
It seems that the spatial relationship of predicate is very complicated. How
then if our example is ; He is face to face with me? The features such
direction and
directions are not applied. In spite of this, the spatial relationship can help
us to simplify the whole semantic descriptions.
The predicate boiled in ; He boiled an egg can be analyzed into
components like ; cook, in water, and past. Beside these three components,
do we find another feature in the predicate above? How if we put the
component like + human. It will, of course, be redundant, as we have
known that the Arg (1) ic predictable. Plays in ; honesty plays golf can be
analyzed into : + human, present, etc. In this we know that P is not agree
with Arg (1), in the case that Arg (1) consists of human. This disagreement
makes the sentences ungrammatical. Thus if the feature human is included
in the predicate, it means that our work is to check the ungrammaticality of
sentence. In generative grammar this case is concerning with selecting the
appropriate features (selectional restriction).

SEMANTICS Page 80
4. 10. 1 Types of Predication
A predication can contain one argument or two arguments, or it
can be said that some predication do not contain argument. One which has
no argument is seen in ; It is raining, where it has no meaning unless it is
not dependent of the predicate. One which has two arguments is ; Netty
likes chocolates and predication which contains one argument ; Ida is kind.
We can diagram them as :
Two place
2 1 0
P P P

a b a
Ida is (be) kind Mary likes chocolate It is cold
The one and two place predicate can be put into a linear formulate :
Two-lace predication : (a. P.b) or
(b. P.a) or (a. P. b.)
One place predication : (a : P) or (P ; a)
The bracket shows predication, single dot separates arguments from
predicate in two-place predication, and colon separates argument from
predicate in one-place predication.
Thus a new formulate can be made :
(a c b)

Human Direction Human

Adult - Lateral Adult
Male - male
Singular Singular

Taufik is behind Ani

SEMANTICS Page 81
If we take an example like ; Sarman gives Anto a book., how to construct
with the same formulae? Shall we say that it contains three arguments, and
determine it as three place prediction?
To answer this question, it is necessary drawing the deep structure
o the sentence as:
Sarman gives a book.
Sarman give anto.
It will be clearly seen in the three diagram below :
S

NP VP

Vb NP

NP S

Gives a book VP NP

John gives Anto

SEMANTICS Page 82
 In fact, the case above is about the subordinate predication, of
which predicate may contain not only arguments but also other predicates.
Serman gives Anto a book can be drawn as :
Sarman causes X
X = Anto receives a book.
It will be analyzed in the next paragraph. Now, apart from subordinate
predication, the types of predication : one-place predication, two-place
predication and predication which contains no argument are also embedded
as :
Two-place predication : transitive
e.g. The societies criticized the government’s policy.
One-place predication : intransitive
e.g. Roy is sleeping.
The president is generous
It is impossible to place predication of no argument to be transitive or
intransitive or intransitive in ; It is raining, because as Leech proved we
can not construct a question for which it is an appropriate answer ;
“What was raining cats and dogs all last night? * It” (p : 131). Even if we
substitute an argument like earth to it ; The earth is raining. But it is
possible to say : The earth is covered by rain. Unlike in ; It is warm,
arguments like the weather, His welcome, etc, can be substituted. Thus the
predication of this kind seems logical, and it can be typed into a one-place
predication.

SEMANTICS Page 83
Subordinate Predication
A subordinate predication is what we call in syntax as a nominal
clause. The example that has been mentioned – Sarman causes X, where X
= Anto receivesa book. So, it would be : Sarman causes Anto receives a
book, that can be diagrammed below :
P
CAUSE

Sarmn Anto Receive

c
book
it is based on, John made bill become / get angry, as seen in the diagram
(Leech : 142) :
P
CAUSE

a Q
John become

R
Angry

B
bill

SEMANTICS Page 84
 (Note : P, Q, R, are predicates a, b, are arguments). The predication
contains three predicates : Cause, Becomes, and Angry. The linear notation
is used :
(a. p. (Q : (R : b ))),
or they can be symbolized a follows :
(John. Cause. (Become (Angry Bill ))).
If we change the form into : John expected to get a prize, here the
subordinate predication is to get a prize. To be a noun clause, as Leech
expressed (p : 183) it necessary to change it – that he will get a prize. So it
becomes ; John expected that he will get a prize.
The diagram can be drawn below :
P
EXPECT

a Q
John GET

b
prize
The linear notation would be :
(a. P. (Q : b)).
(John. EXPECT. (GET : Prize ))
We have seen that some elements whether it is drawn in the
diagram or in the linear formulae are lost. Like the article, tense, etc. they
are dummy elements in syntax, that is, elements which exist on the
syntactic level to fulfill certain conditions of syntactic wellformedness but
which have no semantic content (Leech : 184).

SEMANTICS Page 85
 Despite of their semanticless content, they are logical elements as
have been studied in the previous section (tense will be discussed later).
Downgraded Predication
Downgraded predication can be expressed by means of a relative
clause and adverbial clause. To make clear, two kinds of downgraded
predication are given here.
1. A qualifying Predication occurs within a predicate, and underlies
many of the adjectival function of syntax : adjective, qualifying
prepositional phrase, relative clause, etc. e.g. rich bachelor,
bachelors who own fast cars.
2. A modifying predication occurs within a predicate, and underlines
many of the adverbial function of syntax : adverbs, adverbial
prepositional phrases, adverbial clauses, etc. e.g. He got married in
church, He soon got married, He got married to please the family,
(Leech : 146).
We should not be misunderstood, that adjectives (adjectival phrase) are
also included as one-place predication. We can see, for example, He is a
rich bachelor.
The diagram can be drawn below :

P
RICH BACHELOR

a
he
The linear form is : a (b, P). or man (who. RICH).

SEMANTICS Page 86
 If the single word bachelor put into definition a man who is not
married (as downgraded predication can also be made into its definition,
see also Leech :145) it becomes downgrade predication. Thus it would be ;
He is a man who is not married. How about the word rich? It is, certainly
to be concluded : He is a rich man who is not married.

P
RICHMAN

a Q
he - MARRIED

The linear from : (a : P (b. Q) or (man : RIH (who. NOT MARRIED).

So a qualifying predication can be as a one-place predication if it
occurs within a single word. The case above ; He is a rich man who is not
married is a one-place predication which contains another predication
The modifying predication which occurs within predicate can also
be found in a definition of a single word like ;sprint means to run quickly,
repeat means to say again, etc.
The predication in You will wait till my returning (the modifying
predication) is in adverb phrase. To be an adverb clause it needs to be
changed into ; You will wait till I return. The diagram is :

SEMANTICS Page 87
 P
WAIT

a b Q
You I RETURN

The linear form : (A : P (b. Q) or : (you : WAIT (I : RETURN)

A modifying predication of in The girl was asleep, which lasted three
hours is which lasted, which is derives form for (The girl slept for three
hours). Here the predication is analyzed into (based on Leech) :
(a P)

HUMAN

- ADULT + ASLEEP

- MALE (which. LAST hours)

SINGULAR

The linear form : (a : P (b. Q. C) (………) shows

Downgraded Predication
or (girl : SLEEP (which. LAST. Hours).
Here, even though there are two predicates, but in componential analysis
only one is included, because we see in the diagram asleep and which

SEMANTICS Page 88
lasted three hours are treated as the features of the predicate. Why not like
in your first analysis (i.e. in font of :
direction, + horizontal etc), thus the predication above asleep is
analyzed in the same way.
In predication analysis, apart from the arguments and predicates
which consist of features, the role of syntax cannot be ignored as what
have been found in the analysis.
Therefore, t is important to see the relation (syntactic and semantic
relation by means of the terms in predication analysis) which is based on
the chart below :

Syntactic Semantic
Noun phrase Argument
Verb phrase Predicate
Adjective (phrase) One-place predicate
Prepositional phrase Downgraded
Relative clause predication
Downgraded qualifying
predication
Adverbial phrase
Downgraded modifying
Phrase or clause
Predication
Nominal clause
Subordinate predication
Nominalization

Note : Some elements are not included, as it is out of the analysis.

SEMANTICS Page 89
4. 11 Tense and Time
The meaning s of tense are in fact a special case of definite
reference, where the definite features occurs within a modifying
predication time. We have discussed that now = at this time, or represented
as the + near time. Thus present tense can be represented as : the TIME.
the near. The first co-refers to the main predication, or the verb has the
same referent with the. Let’s make a test by using example :
Hertati walks to school everyday.
From this we know that predication walks indicates present tense, and
everyday is embedded in the predication.
If the predication in the present tense co-refers with the time, the
predication of now does the same. Because they are both (at the time)
represented as : the near time. it is seen below:
He comes now.
The past tense indicates the event to a definite time in the past. It can be
represented as (the. TIME. the (the. BEFORE. The NEAR )) i.e. which
happen at the time before now. In this respect it is not appropriate with the
example below
Mira lived in Paris two years ago.
It is clear that two years ago is the time before now, but it is far
behind (not the near time). but since the near time indicates now it is
acceptable. Thus it is appropriate with the past which is not shown by time
maker, e.g. :
Jane rode a horse.
The manager attended the meeting.

SEMANTICS Page 90
The meaning of the past tense in Jane rode a horse is different with the
indefinite meaning in perfect ; Jane has ridden a horse, where the perfect is
represented as : (the. TIME. 0 (the. BEFORE. The NEAR )) i.e. which
happen at a time before now. 0 indicates shows indefinite meaning. Also
the future meaning Jane will ride a horse can be represented as : (the.
TIME. 0 ( BEFORE. The near ))).
Before indicates after. (at a time after now).

SEMANTICS Page 91
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

American encyclopedia

Austin, J. L. 1962. How to do things with words. Oxford Clarendon Press.

Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. New York : Henry Hold.

Bolinger, D. L. 1977. Meaning and Form. London : Longman.

Clark, H. H. and E. V. Clark 1977. Psychology of Language. New York :

Harcourt Bruce Javanovich.

Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of Theory of Syntax Cambridge. Mass : MIT

Press.

Crystal, D. 1980. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford :

Basil Blackwell.

Ferguson, C. A. Language Structure and Language Use. Stanford :

Stanford University Press.

Fries, C 1952. The Structure of English. New York .

Fromkin, V. and R. Rodman 1983. An Introduction to Language. New

York : Hold, Richard and Winston.

Halliday, M. A. K. 1973. Explorations in the Functions of Language.

London : Edward Arnold.

Hartmann, R. R. K. & Sotrk, FC 1973. Dictionary of Language and

Linguistics. Yardmouth: Galliard Limited.

SEMANTICS Page 92