semantics: the referential theory of meaning

Semantics, the philosophical and scientific study of meaning in natural

and artificial languages. The term is one of a group of English words
formed from the various derivatives of the Greek verb sēmainō (―to mean‖
or ―to signify‖). The noun semantics and the adjective semantic are
derived from sēmantikos (―significant‖); semiotics (adjective and noun)
comes from sēmeiōtikos (―pertaining to signs‖); semiology from sēma
(―sign‖) + logos (―account‖); and semasiology from sēmasia
(―signification‖) + logos.

It is difficult to formulate a distinct definition for each of these terms,

because their use largely overlaps in the literature despite individual
preferences. The word semantics has ultimately prevailed as a name for the
doctrine of meaning, of linguistic meaning in particular. Semiotics is still
used, however, to denote a broader field: the study of sign-using behaviour
in general.

The notion of linguistic meaning, the special concern of philosophical and

linguistic semantics, must be distinguished from other common notions
with which it is sometimes confused. Among them are natural meaning, as
in smoke means fire or those spots mean measles; conventional meaning,
as in a red traffic light means stop or the skull and crossbones means
danger; and intentional meaning, as in John means well or Frank means
business. The notion of linguistic meaning, in contrast, is the one
exemplified in the following sentences:

- The words bachelor and unmarried man have the same meaning (are
synonymous).
 - The word bank has several meanings (is ambiguous).
- The string of words colourless green ideas sleep furiously is
meaningless (anomalous).
- The sentence all bachelors are unmarried is true by virtue of its
meaning (is analytic).
- Schnee ist weiss means that snow is white.

Linguistic meaning has been a topic of philosophical interest since

ancient times. In the first decades of the 20th century, it became one of the
central concerns of philosophy in the English-speaking world. That
development can be attributed to an interaction of several trends in various
disciplines. From the middle of the 19th century onward, logic, the formal
study of reasoning, underwent a period of growth unparalleled since the
time of Aristotle (384–322 BCE). Although the main motivation for the
renewed interest in logic was a search for the epistemological foundations
of mathematics, the chief protagonists of this effort—the German
mathematician Gottlob Frege and the British philosopher Bertrand
Russell—extended their inquiry into the domain of the natural languages,
which are the original media of human reasoning. The influence of
mathematical thinking, and of mathematical logic in particular, however,
left a permanent mark on the subsequent study of semantics.

A characteristic feature of natural languages is what is known as their

productivity, creativity, or unboundedness. In natural languages there is no
upper limit to the length, complexity, or number of grammatical
expressions. (There are limits to the length, complexity, and number of
expressions that a speaker of a natural language can understand or
produce, but that is a fact about the speaker’s memory or mortality, not
about the language itself.) In English and other natural languages,
grammatical expressions of increasing length and complexity can be
created from simpler expressions by concatenation, relativization,
complementization, and many other devices. Thus, just as a tomato is
better than an apple and an apple is better than an orange are sentences, so
too is a tomato is better than an apple and an apple is better than an orange.
Just as the apple is rotten is a sentence, so too are the apple that fell on the
man is rotten, the apple that fell on the man who sat under a tree is rotten,
and the apple that fell on the man who sat under the tree that blocked the
road is rotten. And just as the Earth moves is a sentence, so too are Galileo
believes that the Earth moves, the pope suspects that Galileo believes that
the Earth moves, Smith fears that the pope suspects that Galileo believes
that the Earth moves, and so on, with no obvious end.

The complex expressions generated by these devices are not only

grammatical (assuming that their constituents are grammatical) but also
meaningful (assuming that their constituents are meaningful). An adequate
semantic theory, therefore, must account for this fact. In other words, it
must explain how the meanings of complex expressions are determined by
and predictable from the meanings of their simpler constituents. The fact
that complex meanings are determined by the meanings of their
constituents is often referred to as the compositionality of natural
languages. A semantic theory that is capable of explaining
compositionality is called compositional.

In addition to compositionality, semantic theories must also account for

the phenomenon of reference. Reference is a characteristic of many
expressions whereby they seem to ―reach out‖ into the world to pick out,
name, designate, apply to, or denote different things. Although the
appearance of connection between words and the world is familiar to
anyone who speaks a language, it is also quite mysterious. The following
survey will evaluate various semantic theories according to how well they
explain compositionality, reference, and other important characteristics of
natural languages.

Referential semantics: As noted, reference is an apparent relation

between a word and the world. Russell, following the 19th-century British
philosopher John Stuart Mill, pursued the intuition that linguistic
expressions are signs of something other than themselves. He suggested
that the meaning of an expression is whatever that expression applies to,
thus removing meaning from the minds of its users and placing it squarely
in the world. According to a referential semantics, all that one learns when
one learns the meaning of tomato is that it applies to tomatoes and to
nothing else. One advantage of a referential semantics is that it respects
compositionality: the meaning of red tomato is a function of the meanings
of red and tomato, because red tomato will apply to anything that is both
red and a tomato.

But what about expressions that apparently refer to nothing at all, such
as unicorn? A referential semantics would appear to be committed to the
view that expressions such as unicorn, Santa Claus, and Sherlock Holmes
are meaningless. Another problem, first pointed out by Frege, is that two
expressions may have the same referent without having the same meaning.
The morning star and the evening star, for example, refer to the same
object, the planet Venus, but they are not synonymous. As Frege noted, it
is possible to believe that the morning star and the evening star are not
identical without being irrational (indeed, the identity of the morning star
and the evening star was a scientific discovery).

Such examples have led some philosophers, including Mill himself and
Saul Kripke, to conclude that proper names lack meaning. But the problem
also affects common nouns, including definite descriptions. The
descriptions the first president of the United States and the husband of
Martha Washington apply to the same individual but are not synonymous.
It is possible to understand both without recognizing that they refer to the
same person. It follows that meaning cannot be the same as reference.

For example, human beings use sounds to communicate and describe

things around us. What makes these sounds meaningful to us? Consider
the following two sentences below. Trivially, we can easily tell that, while
the first sentence is meaningful, the second sentence is gibberish that
doesn’t mean anything.

- My dog ate my math homework last night.

- Asjd asdhnl nasdnak.

To nail down a theory of meaning, we like to start by thinking that the

basic units within a meaningful sentence are individual words. This begs
the fundamental question in philosophy of language: what makes
individual words meaningful?

How do babies learn languages? During such a learning process, how

do gibberish sounds suddenly elicit meaning? Perhaps we can find our
clues this way.
 Imagine a parent pointing an apple to a child and says ―apple‖. It is
intuitive to think that the baby must learn by correlating words with actual
objects. The word ―apple‖ must refer to the fruit apple. Perhaps words
have meaning because they stand for persons, objects, or places, etc. This
is the referential theory of meaning. While this theory is a good start,
people are skeptical due to some salient problems.

Obvious counterexamples such as parts of speech, or adjectives that

purport to describe some abstract qualities don’t denote or stand in for
anything. However, these parts of speech, as well as adjectives, are still
meaningful. Can we restrict the referential theory so that it only covers
singular terms such as names, definite descriptions, or pronouns?

Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege raised four important objections

against the referential theory of meaning for singular terms. Here are the
four objections:

Objection 1: Referent to Nonexistent

Consider the sentence, “The present King of France is bald.”

This sentence is obviously meaningful. Such a sentence in the subject-

predicate form picks out a distinct subject and ascribe a property to it. But
this is an objection to the referential theory for definite descriptions,
simply because the present King of France doesn’t exist. The definite
description, as well as the sentence, are both meaningful. But the definite
description doesn’t refer to anything in the real world.

Objection 2: Negative Existentials

Consider the sentence, “Unicorns don’t exist.”

 This objection is a special case of objection 1. This sentence is also
obviously meaningful and even seems to be true. But if unicorns don’t
actually exist, then we can’t actually refer to it meaningfully under the
referential theory. The sentence can be meaningful if unicorns do exist.
But then the sentence would be false again! Because we would be picking
out an object that exists and claiming that it doesn’t exist, contradicting
ourselves.

Objection 3: Identity

Consider the sentence, “Superman is Clark Kent.”

If you follow DC comics, you would know that ―Superman‖ and ―Clark
Kent‖ are singular terms that pick out and refer to the same person. Clark
Kent is an alternate identity for Superman. Therefore, if the meaning of
singular terms only purports to pick out the same person, then this
sentence can be reduced to the form of an identity statement that trivially
claims ―A is A‖. But this sentence is different from the identity statement,
in that this sentence is informative. It can plausibly tell us something about
the referent that we didn’t know before. We can speculate that perhaps
names such as these do more than just referring to persons, objects, or
places.

Objection 4: Substitutivity

Consider the sentence, “Taylor believes that Superman is 6 feet tall.”

As we noted above in objection 3, ―Superman‖ and ―Clark Kent‖ pick

out and refer to the same person. If they do pick out the same person, then
we should have no problem substituting ―Clark Kent‖ into the sentence for
―Superman.”

But we can easily imagine a case where Taylor does not know that
―Clark Kent‖ is another name for ―Superman‖. She has no idea these two
terms refer to the same person. In this particular case, we cannot make
such a substitution, because Taylor does not possess the belief that Clark
Kent is 6 feet tall. Taylor does not even know who Clark Kent is.