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Conceptual semantics is a framework for semantic analysis developed mainly by
Ray Jackendoff Ray Jackendoff (born January 23, 1945) is an American linguist. He is professor of philosophy, Seth Merrin Chair in the Humanities and, with Daniel Dennett, co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He has always str ...
in 1976. Its aim is to provide a characterization of the conceptual elements by which a person understands words and sentences, and thus to provide ''an explanatory semantic representation'' (title of a Jackendoff 1976 paper). ''Explanatory'' in this sense refers to the ability of a given linguistic theory to describe how a component of language is acquired by a child (as proposed by
Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
; see Levels of adequacy). Recently, conceptual semantics in particular, and
lexical semantics Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings.Pustejovsky, J. (2005) Lexical Semantics: Overview' in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition, Volumes 1-14Ta ...
in general, have taken on increasing importance in linguistics and psycholinguistics. Many contemporary theories of
syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
(how sentences are constructed from individual words) rely on elements that are idiosyncratic to words themselves. As a result, a sound theory accounting for the properties of the meanings of words is required.


Meaning and decomposition

Jackendoff has claimed that the goal of conceptual semantics is to investigate: Conceptual semantics distinguishes a single, universal meaning to a word. Instead of having a lexical semantic meaning in addition to the conceptual representation of the actual referent, here the two are combined into what Jackendoff calls "lexical concepts" (Murphy 2010:59). Conceptual semantics is considered to be not just a linguistic theory, but a theory on human cognition. As do many semantic theories, Jackendoff claims that a decompositional method is necessary to explore conceptualization. Just as one of the ways a physical scientist tries to understand matter is by breaking it down into progressively smaller parts, so a scientific study of conceptualization proceeds by breaking down, or decomposing, meanings into smaller parts. However, this decomposition cannot go on forever, for at some point, meanings can no longer be broken down. This is the level of conceptual structure, the level of mental representations which encode the human understanding of the world, containing the primitive conceptual elements out of which meanings are built, plus their rules of combination. Conceptual semantics does not work with a mental dictionary, in the classical sense. There are no definitions attached to concepts and reference, only the idea of the concept or reference itself. Just as generative syntax posits a finite set of syntactic categories and rules for combining them, so, too, does Conceptual Semantics posit 'a finite set of mental primitives and a finite set of principles of mental combination' governing their interaction (Jackendoff 1990: 9). Jackendoff refers to this set of primitives and the rules governing them as the 'grammar of sentential concepts' (Jackendoff 1990: 9). His starting point is a close analysis of the meanings of lexemes dedicated to bringing out parallelisms and contrasts which reveal the nature of the conceptual structures underlying them. Jackendoff considers the lexicon to be made of three parts: phonological, syntactic, and conceptual. These three aspects of a concept give a "full picture of a word" (Murphy 2010:60). What his method shows, he says, is that the psychological organization on which meaning rests 'lies a very short distance below the surface of everyday lexical items – and that progress can be made in exploring it' (1991: 44). Jackendoff claims that a decompositional method is necessary to explore conceptual structure, in which the concepts underlying word meaning are broken down into their smallest elements: conceptual primitives envisaged as the semantic equivalents of phonological features. Conceptual Semantics posits 'a finite set of mental primitives and a finite set of principles of mental combination' governing their interaction. The conceptual structure of a lexical item is an element with zero or more open argument slots, which are filled by the syntactic complements of the lexical item.


Semantic structures

Conceptual semantics breaks lexical concepts up into ontological categories: events, states, places, amounts, things, and property, to name a few. These ontological categories are called
semantic primes Semantic primes or semantic primitives are a set of semantic concepts that are argued to be innately understood by all people but impossible to express in simpler terms. They represent words or phrases that are learned through practice but cannot ...
, or semantic primitives. Jackendoff poses that any concept in the human brain can be expressed using these semantic primes. Conceptual semantics is compositional, in that the meanings of phrases, clauses, and sentences can be determined from the lexical concepts that make them up. (Murphy 2010:66)


Problems

Jackendoff's system has been criticised for its highly abstract primitives, which linguists such as Wierzbicka (2007a, 2007b) and Goddard (1998, 2001) have called "obscure". The main reason for this is because one requires special training to understand them, and they often must be translated into plain English to be communicated. Another criticism often raised against conceptual semantics is that it is arbitrary. In its current state, there are no clear procedures for determining when a primitive is justified. Another criticism Wierzbicka and Goddard have raised is that the theory was formulated around and applied only to English, though it claims to be universal. Jackendoff responds to these criticisms by saying:


See also

*
Conceptual metaphor In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another. An example of this is the understanding of quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. "the pr ...
* Levels of adequacy *
Lexical semantics Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings.Pustejovsky, J. (2005) Lexical Semantics: Overview' in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition, Volumes 1-14Ta ...
*
Semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...


References

* Goddard, Cliff (1998) ''Semantic Analysis.'' Oxford University Press * Goddard, Cliff (2001) Review: Language, logic, and concepts: essays in memory of John Macnamara, ed. by Ray Jackendoff, Paul Bloom, and Karen Wynn. ''Journal of Linguistics'' 205-210. * * * * * *
Jackendoff Ray Jackendoff (born January 23, 1945) is an American linguist. He is professor of philosophy, Seth Merrin Chair in the Humanities and, with Daniel Dennett, co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He has always str ...
, Ray (2006) On conceptual Semantics. ''Intercultural Pragmatics'', 353-358 * {{cite book , author = Jackendoff, Ray , authorlink = Ray Jackendoff , year = 2007 , title = Language, Consciousness, Culture: Essays on Mental Structure , url = https://archive.org/details/languageconsciou00jack , url-access = limited , publisher = MIT Press , location = Cambridge, Massachusetts , isbn = 978-0-262-10119-6 , page
403
} * Murphy, Lynne (2010) "Lexical Meaning" ''Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics''. * Wierzbicka, Anna (2007b) NSM semantics versus Conceptual Semantics: goals and standards (a response to Jackendoff). ''Intercultural Pragmatics'' 521-529. * Wierzbicka, Anna (2007a) Theory and empirical findings: a response to Jackendoff. ''Intercultural Pragmatics 399-409.'' Generative linguistics Semantic theories