Word-Meaning.

There are broadly speaking two schools of thought in present-day linguistics representing the main lines of contemporary thinking on the problem: the referential approach, which seeks to formulate the essence of meaning by establishing the interdependence between words and the things or concepts they denote, and the functional approach, which studies the functions of a word in speech and is less concerned with that meaning is than with how it works.

Meaning is closely connected but not identical with sound-form, concept or referent. Meaning is to be found in all linguistic units and together with their sound-form constitutes the linguistic signs studied by linguistic science.

The criticism of the referential theories of meaning:

1. Meaning, as understood in the referential approach, comprises the interrelation of linguistic signs with categories and phenomena outside the scope of language. As neither referents nor concepts belong to language, the analysis of meaning is confined either to the study of the interrelation of the linguistic sign and referent or that of the linguistic sign and concepts, all of which, properly speaking, is not the object of linguistic study.

2. The great stumbling block in referential theories of meaning has always been that they operate with subjective and intangible mental processes. Semasiology has to rely too much on linguistic intuition and unlike other fields of linguistic inquiry does not possess objective methods of investigation.

3. Functional Approach to Meaning.

In recent years a new and entirely different approach to meaning known as the functional approach has begun to take shape in linguistics and especially in structural linguistics. The functional approach maintains that the meaning of a linguistic unit may be studied only through its relation to other concept or referent. In a very simplified form this view may be illustrated by the following: for instance, that the meaning of two words move and movement is different because they function in speech differently. Comparing the contexts in which we find these words we cannot fail to observe that they occupy different positions in relation to other words. (To) move, e.g., can be followed by a noun (move the chair), proceeded by a pronoun (we move), etc. The position occupied by the word “movement” is different: it may be followed by a preposition (movement of smth), proceeded by an adjective (slow movement) and so on.

As the distribution of the two words is different: they belong not only to different classes of words, but that their meanings are different too.

When comparing the two approaches described above in terms of methods of linguistic analysis we see that the functional approach should not be considered an alternative, but rather a valuable complement to the referential theory. There is absolutely no need to set the two approaches against each other.

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