Semantics

BASIC CONCEPTS I 27
view. He introduced some structure in meaning content distinguishing
between reference (Bedeutung) and sense (Sinn). The object that an
expression refers to is its reference whereas the specific way used to
express it is its sense. For example, for him
Beethoven’s home town
and
The former capital of the Deutschland’s Republic
both have the same reference, Bonn, but different sense.
Other authors approach these differences from a more linguistic point
of view. Saussure (1945) distinguished between signifier and signified and
held that the meaning of linguistic expressions derives from two sources:
the language they are part of and the world they describe. Again for him,
the relationship by which language hooks onto the world is called
reference, whereas the question of the semantic links between elements
within the vocabulary system is an aspect of their sense. In Saussurian
terms, the signifier would be the referent while the signified would be
related to other terms in the same language. This distinction explains how
the referent of the British Prime Minister and the Head of the British
Conservative Party may or may not be the same person depending on who
is who at a particular time. This apparently simple distinction has
important consequences in semantics.
There are two main approaches to defining ‘sense’. Cruse among a
group of semanticists uses this concept to define some kind of mental
representation of the type of thing that can be used to refer to. Other
authors define ‘sense’ by saying that it is a matter of the relations
between a word and other words in a language. Sense for them is an
interlexical or intra-lingual relation; it defines relations within the same
language.
Hurford & Heasley (1983) explain that, while the referent of an
expression is often a thing or a person in the world, the sense of an
expression is not a thing at all. They also find it difficult to say what sort
of entity the sense of an expression is because the sense of an expression
is an abstraction in the mind of the speaker.
Gregory (2000) defines sense as what he calls a more intuitive sense
of meaning; what remains constant when the referent changes. He also
adds that, if we know the sense of a word, we will be able to pick out its
referent in any particular set of circumstances, as long as we know the
appropriate facts. As a result, Gregory identifies denotation and sense.