CRITICALLY EXAMINE THE APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF SEMANTICS

Thesis Overview

1.0 Introduction
It has been duly noted that the study of meaning in language has interested not only the linguists but the philosophers, psychologists, scientists, anthropologists and sociologists. Scholars have long puzzle dover what words mean or what they represent, or how they are related to reality. They have at times wondered whether words are more real than objects, and they have striven to find the essential meanings of words. It has also being debated that meaning can be approached from different angles. Indeed knowledge about semantics has been cumulative, developing from the earliest times to the modern period. This means that the study of semantics can be carried out on a historical basis. This can be done by focusing on the following approaches:• Traditional Semantics• Behavioural Semantics• Structural Semantics,and• Generative Semantics1.0 Traditional SemanticsTraditional semantics is associated with the work of such great philosophers as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. There were many others who came after these philosophers. Their preoccupation was on the nature of human language itself. One of the oldest views, found in Plato’s dialogue Cratylus, is that the signifier is a word in the language and the signified is the object in the world that it “stands for”, “refers to” or “denotes”. Words, that is to say, are “names” or “labels” for things.