Sense and Reference It has been explained earlier that signs
refer to concepts as well as to other signs. A sign is a symbol that indicates
a concept. This concept is the reference, which refers in turn to some object
in the real world, called the referent. The relationship between linguistic
items (e.g. words, sentences) and the non-linguistic world of experience is a
relationship of reference. It can be understood by the following diagram given
by Ogden and Richards: The objects in the real world are referents, the concept
which we have of them in our minds is the reference and the symbol we use to
refer to them is the word, or linguistic item. As we have seen, we can explain
the meaning of a linguistic item by using other words. The relation of a word
with another word is a sense-relation. Therefore, sense is the complex system
of relationships that holds between the linguistic items themselves. Sense is
concerned with the intra-linguistic relations, i.e. relations within the system
of the language itself, such as similarity between words, opposition,
inclusion, and presupposition. Sense relations include homonymy, polysemy,
synonymy and antonymy. Homonyms are different items (lexical items or structure
words) with the same phonetic form. They
differ only in meaning, e.g. the item ‘ear’ meaning ‘organ
of hearing’ is a homonym of the item ‘ear’ meaning ‘a stem of wheat’. Homonymy
may be classified as: (a) Homography: a phenomenon of two or more words having
the same spellings but different pronunciation or meaning, e.g. lead /led/ =
metal; lead/li:d/ = verb. (b) Homophony: a phenomenon of two or more words
having the same pronunciation but different meanings or spellings, e.g. sea/see,
knew/new, some/ sum, sun/son. It is difficult to distinguish between homonymy
and polysemy as in polysemy, the ‘same’ lexical item has different meanings,
e.g. ‘bank*’, ‘face*’: Two lexical items can be considered as synonyms if they
have the same denotative, connotative and social meaning and can replace each
other in all contexts of occurrence. Only then can they be absolutely
synonymous. For example, ‘radio’ and ‘wireless’ co-existed for a while as
synonyms, being used as alternatives by speakers of British English. But now,
‘wireless’ is not used frequently. What we consider as synonyms in a language
are usually nearequivalent items, or descriptive items. For example,
‘lavatory’, ‘toilet’, ‘WC’, ‘washroom’ are descriptive or near-equivalent synonyms
in English. Antonyms are lexical items which are different both in form as well
as meaning. An antonym of a lexical item conveys the opposite sense, e.g.
single-married, good-bad. But this gives rise to questions of what is an
opposite or contrasted meaning. For example, the opposite of ‘woman’ could be
‘man’ or girl’ since the denotation of both is different from that of ‘woman’.
Thus we need to modify our definition of antonymy. We can say that some items
are less compatible than other items. There can be nearness of contrast or
remoteness of contrast. Thus ‘man’ or ‘girl’ is contrasted to ‘woman’ but less
contrasted than ‘woman’ and ‘tree’. In this sense, ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are
related, just as ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ are related, in spite of being contrasted.
Other meaning-relations of a similar nature are: mare/stallion, cow/bull,
ram/ewe etc., all based on gender distinctions. Another set of meaning
relations can be of age and family relationship: father/son, uncle/nephew,
aunt/ niece. In this, too, there are differences in the structures of different
languages. In Urdu, for instance, gender distinction or contrast may be marked
by a change in the ending of the noun (e.g. /gho: a:/gho: i:/ for ‘horse’ and ‘mare’ respectively)
or, in some cases, by a different word (e.g. /ga:e/bael/ for ‘cow’ and ‘bull’
respectively). In English, there are usually different words to mark contrast
in gender except in a few cases (e.g. elephant, giraffe). The evolution of a
complex system of sense relations is dependent on the way in which the objects
of the world and the environment are perceived and conceptualized by the people
who make that language. For example, Eskimos have many words related in meaning
to ‘snow’ because snow in different forms is a part o their environment. In
English, there are only two ‘snow’ and ‘ice’, while in Urdu there is only one:
‘baraf’. This reflects the importance that a particular object or phenomena may
have for a certain community. Another kind of sense-relationship is hyponymy.
Hyponymy is the relation that holds between a more general and more specific
lexical item. For example, ‘flower’ is a more general item, and ‘rose’, ‘lily’,
etc. are more specific. The more specific item is considered a hyponym of the
more general item—’rose’ is a hyponym of ‘flower’. The specific item includes
the meaning of the general. When we say ‘rose’, the meaning of ‘flower’ is
included in its meaning. ‘Rose’ is also hyponymous to ‘plant’ and ‘living
thing’ as these are the most general categories.
