Talk:Meaning (linguistics)

Bravado

Meaning (general) is a non-page. I have made it a redirect. Am removing the "merge" tag. Lucidish 23:10, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Havent heard about Semiotics?

Ahhh great! These philosophy of language articles are basically ignored by the hordes. There's a lot of good content in here too, on a quick glance. Needs to be referenced, cleaned up and so on. I haven't looked too mcuh into the content of specific sections. But, from an overview, it seems that you are missing something on

the struggle between semantic atomisn, holism and so on. I can't decide if this should go in here or the other article. Probably here. The tranlsation/interpreation section of this one should probable be in the POL article. The logic is simplt that there is nothing on translation/interpreation there, yet is mentioned as one of the most importan aspect of POL. I think I'll move that over there and expand a bit. Don't worry, it wonìt blow up. We can alwways move more of the reference section out to the reference article (ahich I havenìt looked at yet.).--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:19, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Sometimes it takes a fresh pair of eyes to catch this kind of thing, but now that I think of it, you're right. Lucidish _{{ Ben S. Nelson }} 15:34, 7 September 2006 (UTC)sounds good to me tooo.

overlap

hi. would please a linguist decide on whether my uneasy feeling about having semantics and meaning (linguistics) side by side is justified or not... Kku 14:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

They are different concepts. Note that the article is still under development. Hpvpp (talk) 22:29, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Re-move

The article shouldn't have been moved from meaning (linguistic), since it is not an article on linguistics, but an article on the philosophy of language. Actually, the name of the article should be "(Linguistic) Meaning", "Linguistic meaning" or even "Meaning (language)". Velho 02:25, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

You make a fair point, sort of, though: a) this article is Meaning (linguistic), which makes your comment's intent unclear; b) the overlap between the perspectives on semantics given by linguists and philosophers of language are not-so-remarkably similar, at least with respect to the recognized treatment of i) semantics-pragmatics, ii) cognitive semantics (esp. prototype theories) vs. classical categorization. Still, you're right, that there are issues that are absolutely essential to a linguistic approach that are not given sufficient treatment here: the interplay between syntax and semantics, lexical relations among words (i.e., synonymy, antonymy, etc). Another split (b/w "Linguistic meaning" and "Meaning (linguistic)") would seem justified. { Ben S. Nelson } 03:15, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the title should be "Meaning (spoken)". Another can of worms... I agree that the article should not have been moved. Bob 23:12, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here, the original move was from Philosophy of language (which was getting too big and unreasonably focused on meaning alone), and then from Meaning (which needed to be bifurcated into language- and non-linguistic forms). The problem here is that "Meaning (linguistic)" can be, and is, easily mistaken for "Meaning (linguistics)", which in hindsight seems unfortunate. But the original moves were entirely justified, if ill-executed. { Ben S. Nelson }

Ben, you are right. Now what are you going to do? Bob 06:20, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I just added a split tag. Let's see what other folks say. If there's a consensus, we'll fork it. { Ben S. Nelson } 22:10, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Split

• I'll support the split. Just do it and see if the articles can stand one their own. Banno 22:56, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
• Concur { Ben S. Nelson } 23:59, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
• Split But could the simpler word 'language' be used unstead of 'linguistic' Anarchia 21:31, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't object to the use of the word "language", but what should the full title be? "Language meaning" sounds bad. { Ben S. Nelson } 22:02, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Done. { Ben S. Nelson } 21:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

introduction

In following with most other wikipedia articles, I think it would be wise to start this article with something like "Meaning is _____" rather than starting it in medias res, so to speak. A nice, plain, non-circuitous, and linguistic definition is what is called for to start this article.--121.208.168.181 (talk) 08:13, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I have two objections to the definition "In linguistics, meaning is the information or concepts that a sender intends to convey, or does convey, in communication with a receiver."

Meaning is always of something. That something can be a written or spoken sentence in some language or a gesture or a picture etc. This definition misses out on this "something" is thus fundamentally flawed.

The words "information" and "concepts" are not defined or cited and so nothing can be made out of this definition.

Here the nature of sender and receiver is not identified. Are they human? Are there some qualifications of them if they happen to be human? (Both must be knowing the language and the meanings of the words used in which the sentences are written or spoken). Many other conditions / constraints need to be specified for an expression to have meaning. It is NOT clear where the meaning exists in the first place. Does it exist in the mind of the speaker or in the expression of the speaker or does it arise in the mind of the listener. Which meaning is considered here? There are also many kinds of meaning of expressions---literal meaning, implied meaning, hidden meaning, apparent meaning etc.

I would be glad to submit my articles on meaning if anyone is interested. putchavn@yahoo.com 103.24.126.34 (talk) 15:39, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Request

That editors who contribute to and watch this article check out this Article for Deletion nomination and comment. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 19:39, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

A convenient distinction of two kinds of meaning

Link...-->      --Faustnh (talk) 19:47, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Wittgenstein

The following is in the article: The term "pragmatics" was introduced by the Logical Positivist, Rudolf Carnap. This was an attempt to reduce subjective meaning to a secondary status and to treat what remained as objective by following Wittgenstein, who sought to objectify meaning as intent as if it were merely a matter of context.

As far as I understand, neither earlier or later Wittgenstein objectified meaning as intent. Earlier Wittgenstein has meaning as the information expressed about relationships in the world (picture theory), and later Wittgenstein has meaning as use, with intent or any other psychological act more or less explicitly excluded from the act of meaning (though not from the very broad context of forms of life). Presumably Carnap was misreading Wittgenstein, but without a citation, it's difficult to check. Either that, or the sentence needs more clarity for the challenged (like me).VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 09:16, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Pragmatics copy vio

I believe that the pragmatics section is a big copy vio - either that or someone has copied wikipedia. Here is the document here.

I don't want to delete an entire section on pragmatics; is there a way of checking who copied whom?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 09:25, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

can anyone translate this for me?

miniveer mourned the ripe renown

  that made so many a name so fragrant

He mourned Romance,now on the town

And  Art,A vagrant  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.40.138.226 (talk) 16:01, 9 October 2009 (UTC) 

We need a definition here

How about this one?

Meaning is the first abstraction via/of perception of something existing. An object isolated as existing and taken as making sense and being meaningful with reference to nothing (no perception), lack of something in contrast to something existing, where existing is the most generic property of all objects. Avoid the contradiction of nothing existing, because it is the fundamental property of the thinking mind not to allow for opposites/contradiction in one place and at one time and one aspect (of the observer). Meaning is then a relation of an object to the observer with the awareness of whether the object is to attract or to repulse him for any meaningful resons (further breakdown of the details of meaning). If no interest is generated, the object will be ignored as meaningless. The fact that an object may be a sign or a symbol in context standing for other objects in reality or concepts made by man associated with the complex mental representations of experience of reality does not change this basic definition of meaning.

Genezistan (talk) 07:54, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

How about this one:

The term "meaning" can have one of two senses:

1. The information referring a sign to its referent.
2. Significance or importance.

Sense 1, defined in Saussurean terms, is what refers the signifier to its signified; in Peirce's terminology it is the interpretant.

Sense 2 is easily distinguishable from sense 1 in that only in sense 2 is the term "meaning" quantifiable (e.g. "of little meaning", "of great meaning") or otherwise modified ("of personal meaning", "of cultural meaning", "of strategic meaning").

Examples:

Sense 1 (signifying):	sign:	referent:
"♀" has many meanings: The female sex, the planet Venus, copper.	♀	The female sex, the planet Venus, copper
When two people bump fists, this means they mutually accept and respect each other.	fist bump	mutual acceptance and respect
The ring of a bell at a hotel's reception desk means that a receptionist is requested to attend.	the ring of a bell at a hotel's reception desk	the request, that a receptionist attend
Sense 2 (significance):	reworded (quantifiers and modifiers in bold):
NATO "protection" plan means little to Afghan village.	The plan has little importance to the village.
The conflict is over a very small amount of land that has great historical meaning for many people.	The land is very important to the people historically.
No great meaning in today's numbers: today's once-in-a-lifetime alignment of numbers in date and time — that is, 12:34:56 on 07/08/09 — means absolutely nothing.	The numbers are generally unimportant.

Dan ☺ 12:46, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

From a Wittgensteinian point of view, you'd need to add meaning as use, rather than signifying.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 07:01, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

What is sense then?

I wonder if you could accept a different approach to defining meaning (to follow soon). In the meantime I am looking forward to your reply.

Genezistan (talk) 16:39, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

(These are just my thoughts) – I believe Frege's need for the concept "sense" comes from some confusion of concepts, firstly confusing the meaning of a phrase (the phrase functioning as a signifier in its own right) with the sum of meanings of the phrase's constituents, and secondly confusing Saussure's "referents" and "signifieds", i.e., the need for the separate concept "sense" might sometimes be avoided simply by regarding "meaning" as pointing a sign to a mental object (the signified), not to a thing in the world (some ontological food for thought: referents are signifieds – mental objects – and never things in the world).

Thus "Evening Star" and "Morning Star" would have different meanings if they referred to different mental objects, or they could have the same meaning as a phrase referring to the same mental object (e.g., if it is known that, in both cases, what's being referred to is the planet Venus).

In the second case, the different "senses" in Frege's terminology don't describe a genus of "meaning" fundamentally different from "referring a signifier to a signified", but simply different sums of meanings: "evening" + "star" ≠ "morning" + "star" (the sums of meanings are different because each of the signifiers "morning" and "evening" have different signifieds). Each phrase, regarded per se as a sign, can refer to the same signified (Venus), while still conveying different information about this signified by means of comprising several different constituent signs with different meanings. In all cases, "meaning" remains one simple entity: the information referring a signifier to its signified. Dan ☺ 23:55, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Meaning - defined my way

Re: From a Wittgensteinian point of view, you'd need to add meaning as use, rather than signifying.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 07:01, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

That would cover sense...

Now meaning is a term that is not explained properly by linguists in their handbooks on Semantics/Semiotics either. This is like the concept of time in Physics - they call it the thing that we measure by a clock. So they say that maaning is a 'relational' term.

Some assumptions:

Meaning is a property that we humans attribute to objects. Just like animals and babies do without using a language. Thus we look at the picture and we interpret what we see in terms of our knowledge already accumulated. In fact, we look at a photo through that knowledge. (See Dewey: How we think). Our perception (and thinking) is anticipatory (check out in cognition) and it works to result in interpretations that make sense. This is a necessity to guide rational behaviour/reaction. So you may speak of spatial semantics (in robotics) where you try to figure out the meaning of what you see and react accordingly.

Just as in spatial semantics, in interpreting texts spoken or written you analyze the input that should be a whole, a complete message. A complete message (an object) is recognized as a whole because it has boundaries (delimiters, such as pauses, spaces and full stops, etc.)

Now a message as an object is a unity of form and content (check out: this is going to be dialectical logic and no syntax parsing or formal logic). A form is used to identify a chunk of reality - both inside and outside the mind. What we can share though is the form made explicit, and what we need to do is align our internal associations related to that form so that we can communicate reasonably. If we are short of words, we use other modalities, the point is that we seek mutual understanding.

Now obviously whatever we perceive exist in spacetime and can be seen from different angles. If we share the same location and the same period and event, the aspect is the same, we are likely to have the same experience, except for the selective processes in action such as memory, perception, etc. So we can come to an agreement as to what we see, but we may use different words, sentences, or even different language to identify such a common experience.

All this is caught up in the process of learning and communication. Without seeing the situation in that wide focus (context), we never get a decent description of reality. The content of an object that we perceive is its properties.

Concepts are also objects with the difference that they are man created through mental operations. For instance, properties are created through abstraction, and such properties altogether are a product, (a, b, c properties are "multiplied" to get abc). This is why Frege is wrong when he believes that syntactical parsing (decomposing signs into additive elements) will result in semantic primitives. Nonsense. The smallest semantic unit is not a word, neither a sentence, but a clause. Check out with David Crystal's Making Sense of Grammar.

You should also remember Mittins who said: what you have is word clusters, which are of two kinds, labels, titles and headings (group one) and messages (group two).

Therefore the meaning of word classes (used to be parts of speech) should be defined in terms of semantic primitives (object, property and relation) and not by other words, such as words called synonyms. There is no such a thing as a synonym. What you have is a word (phrase) that can be used in lieu of another phrase - which is semantically equivalent. But even sentences can be transcribed into forms that are semantically equivalent! Check out WorNet where they have "glosses" instead of defintions and about a dozen or so "semantic primitives" that are not.

Semantical equivalence is no problem with labels and tags because you have the reality check to pass. The law of identity helps, except that space and time parameters should also be kept in mind, otherwise you cheat about identity.

That approach does not work with verbs though. Neither does the concept of event and situation prove to be appropriate in a Core (Upper) Ontology Language.

TBC-d

Genezistan (talk) 13:36, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Genezistan I think you've misunderstood what wikipedia is about. It's not about trying to present "the truth". It's about presenting what published recognised authorities in the field say, with none of your own added gloss. What you have just written is original research. If you want to discuss your ideas, you'll have to find another venue. Wikipedia reflects scholarship, but it should not take part in it. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 14:30, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

This is not an entry page, but a discussion page. But I can move all this stuff to my userpage, if you do not like what I say. On the other hand I do not see why you are labelling the ideas here as original thought. For instance, check out [[1]] Where byou can read The basic loop occurring in the creation of language consists of the following stages: (last one: • Linguistic form is decoded into meaning. I would like to see you substitute meaning in that sentence with a link that explains what you get at the end of the creation of language as defined in wikipedia. Whether it is common knowledge or original research it should not matter, provided that it makes sense. And IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE as it is left hazy, unclear, vague and undecideable - the antynome of any Meaning which should make sense. I do not mind shutting up. Peace Genezistan (talk) 16:06, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I contributed to this confusion (couldn't resist responding to the challenge): the articles' talk pages are for discussing the articles, which should not contain original research, therefore there's no point in including original research in them either. Anyone's welcome to improve the way an article informs about its subject, e.g. by means of clearer definitions, but these definitions must reflect accepted publications and not editors' original ideas. Thus, if the link you provided points to a reliable source that contains a definition to "meaning" of which you approve, it's probably ok to add it to the article, stating its source. On the other hand, mere common sense is not a sufficient criterion for inclusion of data in Wikipedia. VsevolodKrolikov wasn't attacking you personally, he was simply explaining Wikipedia principles – no need to be offended! Dan ☺ 21:11, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I certainly didn't mean to attack you Genezistan. It's a common mistake to make for people new to Wikipedia. Think of it like this - none of the editors on here can be considered, officially, an expert on anything, regardless of our real-life qualifications or credentials. Our personal opinions on any article topic count for nothing. It's not our job to tell the truth. It's our job to report and organise what other people think/have thought the truth is. We're the librarians, not the writers. That may sound dull, but the pleasure for me is a zen-like indifference to what my own views are when trying to present a balanced view of the sources, as well as the chance to learn about topics where articles are lacking or of obviously poor quality. While you might find one or two people willing to engage you in discussion of your own ideas, I suspect most editors will back off. The thing is, there are quite a few people who come to Wikipedia to spread their own often inflammatory views on a variety of topics (climate change, religion, September 11, Communism, the correct name for the islands just off the west coast of Europe etc.). Wikipedia's way round this is appeal to reliable sources as the arbiter of content (verifiability). So anyone putting forward their own views/arguments rather than those of sources is often treated as a bit suspect, no matter how well intended they are. Anyway, no offence meant, and happy editing.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:19, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

No offense taken

Well, we still need a definition, whether original or foolproof. I can see that you are both wise men, I would like to encourage you not to defend policies only, but to join and supply what is missing here. Once I wrote somewhere in this product that consistency is lacking in many ways. In theory all the words, concepts and names should be defined and identified properly. There are tools to do that. Disambiguation is one thing, running a concordance program on all texts created afresh and checking the list of words against the index of this encyclopedia is another. Consistency should be maintained at text level, not just at entry (article heading or label) level. See what I mean? If this encyclopedia is to be of any use in scientific terms, then the two articles below should give you proper guidance to do the job of defining meaning. Just have a go at it, please. And then you may realize that procedural knowledge (How to... and know.how) is a lot more useful then lexical knowledge or citing a lot of rubbish, just because they have already been published. Cheers,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic#Semantics_of_languages

Genezistan (talk) 03:44, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

{ec}

I'm afraid citing a lot of rubbish is what we have to do. In this case we have to cite the various rubbish that linguistics specialists and philosophers have spouted, weighted in more or less direct relation to how many other people have swallowed it and vomited it back up in support. The best thing to do right now is make a list of the major viewpoints/perspectives we think should be included. (Running a concordance program is original research. We'd have to find someone else who's done it and published it.)But I agree the article is in bad shape. The current passage on conceptual meaning, for example, is one long essay. I have no idea according to whom most of that section is, apart from S.I. Hayakawa's 1961 book, which appears to be what it's derived from, at least to my essay-grading eye. This sentence is a gem of "it's an essay" writing": Since meaning, linguistics, and semantics are often understood with the help of words like "denotation" and "connotation" one feels obliged to have to discuss them at length. but one should be very careful about using the terms. Yes, thanks for that.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:38, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Sense

Apparently what Wittgenstein says about use is roughly corresponds to sense. The only trouble is that sense is associated with a form, usually homonymy. With meaning we nees something broader and wider. Wittgenstein writes: 3.343 Definitions are the rules for translating from one language inbto another. All correct languages should be possible to translate into any other by following those rules: this is what is common in them. (my translation) But the very same person wites rubbish here: 4.025 Translating from one language into another is not done by translating individual statements by mapping them into statements in the target language, but by translating the components of such statements. (And the esulting dictionary will include not only the translations of nouns , but those of verbs, adjectives and conjuctives and will handle all of them in the same way.) What an outdated idea! (But fom Wittgenstein...) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Genezistan (talk • contribs) 04:41, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Genezistan (talk) 04:30, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Whether you think it's outdated is neither here nor there. In any case, I am referring to later Wittgenstein, not the view articulated in the Tractatus. For (later) Wittgenstein, the literature is very clear that the meaning of a word is how it is used - it's fundamental to the arguments developed in Philosophical Investigations. Sense (and nonsense) are slightly different, typically applied to sentences and propositions - combinations of words put together.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:53, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

From a Book Review of Laszlo Antal: Content, Meaning and Understanding, Mouton and Co, The Hague, 1964. 63 p. (Introduction, Sentence and Judgement, Content and Understanding, The Hypothetical Nature of Meaning, Meaning and Emotion, Bibliography.)

The central issue in Antal’s book is the meaning of meaning , which is easy to grasp as long as you provide a definition. Last year I read a whole book on Semantics , which was supposed to define, among other, meaning, yet I have not found a passage dedicated to the definition of meaning . So I was quite prepared that Antal might let me down by not providing one in his current book, or in its predecessor The Questions of Meaning. But he is far from anything like that as I have come to know.

Antal suggests that you should differentiate between meaning and content. So in his terminology a sign (a word, or a morpheme) has a denotatum, whereas a sentence has a content (instead of a denotatum). He then makes it an issue to separate meaning and content, saying that nearly everybody confuses the two.

Antal claims that meaning is not identical with the knowledge of the denotatum, but it is that of the denotation. Much of the misunderstanding comes from the branch of Logic calling itself Semantics and trying to replace Semantics in Linguistics he says. Unlike Chomsky, who believes a sentence is a dichotomous unity, Antal views a sentence to be evaluated by three factors, namely form, meaning and content, where the presence, absence or change of the last one has no effect on the correctness of a sentence . And he adds that meaning is also of formal nature before he comes to his main message that runs like this:

“…meaning is not primarily the knowledge of the speaker’s mind, but an objective part of the objectively existing language. Although the speaker is familiar with the meaning, and meaning for him may be said to be knowledge, this knowledge does not concern some object, it is not then knowledge of the denotatum, but a linguistic form of knowledge.” .

In his chapter Sentence and Judgment Antal makes a distinction between sentences that cannot be addressed by everybody to anybody. They would be a class of sentences typical of a trade or another community, whose language (vocabulary?) is not understood by the lay people. Antal calls them particular sentences or professional sentences. In contrast to those particular sentences there are utterances that can be addressed by everybody to anybody. He calls them universal sentences. Then he discards the idea of analysing linguistically the linguistic content of particular sentences.

But his main point is that the analysis of content falls outside the scope of linguistics in the case of either type of sentence. Then he turns to Logic to see the difference in the object of study in Logic and Linguistics. Following the classes of universal and particular sentences he claims that there are universal and particular judgments and concludes that the falsity or truth of particular or universal judgments cannot be decided by Logic is qualified to scrutinize not the content of judgements, but only their form. The content of sentences in Linguistics consist of other form of other sentences, in Logic judgements As judgements may be expressed in sentences the subject of Linguistics and Logic is the same. But sentence form and judgement form are not the same. To sum up he writes a) All judgements are sentences b) not all sentences are judgements c) sentence form and judgment form are two different things d) sentence content and judgment content are identical.

In Content and Understanding he starts with saying that content forms no part of language. If content is taken away, form remains, but form is meaningful. As in sign, meaning and denotatum, you have from, meaning and content here. Understanding of meaning and understanding content are not the same thing: the latter is not dependent on linguistic condition.`

The sentence is the minimum unit of content and at the same time the maximum unit of meaning

The only legitimate question that can be raised with regard to meaning whether it is complete, or incomplete, correct or incorrect as far as language usage is concerned Meaning units the form of the sentence (its signs) and the content of the sentence, The existence of meaning Is merely postulated, because otherwise we could not explain the relationship between physical i.e. phonic signs and extralingual context As meaning has a latent character we can only infer it, but cannot directly study it. Neither is content a real guide in matters of meaning. Consequently, there is only one solution left: to examine the form of the sentence.

In the Hypothetical nature of meaning

Language is nothing but a hypothetical system Wittgenstein writes that the meaning of a word is its use

If words are arranged in concept system then they no longer function as words i.e. linguistic units, but only as a material expressions of something which is not immediately lingual

The he criticises the word dictionary and claims that the morpheme dictionary is the real dictionary for which he blames lexicology

Emotion can only be the denotatum of language

Page 61.

Is it possible to speak of perfect synonyms? There are no perfect synonyms (neither can there be absolutely identical denotata – in the case of two different things. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Genezistan (talk • contribs) 04:55, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, so you think Antal's theories should be included. Anyone else?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:39, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, Antal and Wittgenstein are two authorities but neither of them offers a defintion that I would buy. So much about reliable originators. Antal even has very strange beliefs concerning the subject of linguistics. This is a catch 22 situation. tara Genezistan (talk) 16:43, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

To me, Genezistan's work on Antal seems worthy of its own article, or at least to be included in one, but in this magnitude too extensive to be included in this article. For this article I would suggest listing ultra-concise outlines of how the term "meaning" was defined by noted thinkers, each linked to a separate article (or section of another article) with a more elaborated account (a "main article"). Genezistan's work on Antal's analysis of "meaning" could either become the content of an article titled "Meaning (László Antal)" or incorporated into the existing article László Antal. Dan ☺ 14:07, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Needs heavy editing

There are whole sections of this article that are semantically meaningless (pardon the irony). For example:

Linguistic context becomes important when looking at particular said he saw a guy riding an elephant" than it does if preceded by " of a phrase

What is that supposed to mean? --Coching (talk) 10:06, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Results of (presumed) vandalism - reverted, problem fixed. Hpvpp (talk) 03:00, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

what is a reference to the pseudoscienctific NLP doing in an article about a genuinely scientific field.Alnpete (talk) 15:52, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Removed. You could have taken it out yourself. Hpvpp (talk) 00:38, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

meaning, please?

What is this supposed to mean?

"The field of semantics in so far is it is objectified by not considering particular situations and the real intentions of speakers and writers examines the ways in which words, phrases, and sentences can have meaning. This type of semantics is contrasted with communication-focused semantics where understanding the intent and assumptions of particular speakers and writers is primary as in the idea that people mean and not words, sentences or proposition. An underlying difference is that where causes are identified with relations or laws then it is normal to objectify meaning, while if causes are identified with particular agents, objects, or forces as if to cause means to influence as most historians and practical people assume, then real or non-objectified meaning is primary."

intellectual charabia (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/charabia)

Denispir (talk) 19:51, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Personal thought about some improvement

For the introduction section, it seems a bit short and I am not sure if that is the best definition of meaning. In my personal opinion, a meaning of something might be understand differently depending on individual's thought. It can be categorized into either surface meaning or underlying meaning too. For the first section, I would recommend the title of 'pragmatics' changes to 'pragmatic meaning'. This makes the sub-section titles to be consistent like 'semantic meaning' and 'conceptual meaning'. On the other hand, I suggest there should include some examples showing how pragmatic is different from semantic. Also, under semantic section, it talks about three different categories of semantic. I would say it is a good idea to give a brief introduction for each of it. For the conceptual meaning section, would it be a good idea to link 'Anglo-Saxon' to its page in case some readers want to know more about it? In general, this article gives a very brief information about meaning in linguistics point of view. More details and reliable sources are needed to enrich this article. --Kathyhht (talk) 03:26, 17 September 2014 (UTC)