The Dragons of Grammar have been restive lately, sending out long plumes of smoke from their remote, rocky caves; making the occasional exploratory flight around the islands that they inhabit; sending me little love notes scratched on the back of any handy rock; and generally wanting to know why I’ve forgotten them.
Well, man does not live by blog alone, and the real world (American style) has been intruding on my thoughts of late. Prescription costs, much overdue maintenance on my apartment, and some trekking about in the thankfully cool Spring to meet old friends are among the items that have kept my attention elsewhere; so, I offer apologies to my scaly coterie!
And in particular, there’s that multifarious beast called Semantics, which is the study of meaning in signifiers, which include words, phrases, signs, and symbols.
1) In the context of the humble word, for instance, semantics draws the distinction between denotation and connotation–between a word’s literal meaning and the emotions and other meanings that the word suggests (and please note, this is a distinction understood by poets practically from the moment of birth 
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In other words, a word is never just a word, but a group of meanings and feelings triggered by a principle meaning. Or we could say that a word, once learned, does not remain static, but grows as we acquire its cultural associations and individual emotional responses to its use. One way to understand this is to think of how an acupuncture point works–my acupuncturist having pointed out to me on more than one occasion that there is no single point that she aims for, but an area about the size of quarter. You know you’ve hit pay dirt, she says, when the patient says, “Gee, that stings! Can you make it sting some more?”
Let’s look at this simile more closely. Suppose that when we learn a new word, we do not activate a single neuron, but a cluster of neurons. At the center is the neuron(s) containing the principle word; surrounding it are neurons that will contain closely related words. For example, a principle word might be “big,” and associated words, “large,” “giant,” “great,” “important,” and “formidable.” Thus, when a person hears any of these words, the entire cluster of meanings is stimulated.
We can say more. The needle of meaning also triggers an emotional response. Somehow, the cluster of a word’s meanings is associated with more basic emotions. I can imagine our meaning neurons lying on top (and perhaps grows out) of the primordial emotion neurons–which in turn may lie on top of even more primordial neurons associated with action. Thus, words can be seen as the topmost board of a game of 3-D chess (Mr. Spock will win the game, of course).
For instance, a person hears the word “bully.” A cluster of meanings is triggered, most negative, but which may include Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party. Depending on how much you’ve been thinking about early 20th Century American politics lately, the word may frighten you and perhaps stimulate a “fight or flight” response. Wow!
2) Then there is the issue of the way that meanings (denotations, in this case) relate to the sounds that represent them: a) homonyms (same sound, different meanings, as in row the boat and a row of cars in a parking lot); b) synonyms (different sounds, same meaning, as in “buy” or “purchase” the tomatoes); and c) antonyms (opposite and mutually exclusive meanings, such as male and female). And how about that curious critter, metaphor, in which one idea simply stands for another, as in “grasp your meaning.”
3) I won’t hide from you the fact that semantics can be a rather abstruse dragon, often bent over a book with its reading glasses perched neatly near its eyes ; its remit includes such daunting concepts as parsing (the diagramming of sentences in natural languages); truth values (the relationship of a proposition to truth); and thematic relations (the role that a noun phrase plays in regard to the verb in its sentence). But it is best to remember that semantics is above all a gentle creature, which easily yields up its mysteries and meanings…and invites further explorations of the amazing assortment of ways that sound and meaning interact.
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OK, team leader RT admits to being a wee bit tired at the moment–it’s time to bring our visit to rocky locales to a close for the day. But have no fear, though we’ve explored many of the amazing beasts associated with grammar, there are still more to come. Stay tuned!
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Photo: Chinese Barefoot Doctor Performing Acupuncture; author, D. Henrioud, World Health Organization; WikiCmns; Public Domain.
So this is the deal, folks: I lost my job in fall 2009, and my unemployment benefits ran out at the end of February.
