Meaning, Sense and Reference

Semantics is the branch of linguistics concerned with meaning. It examines how words, phrases, sentences, and larger expressions convey meaning and how different meanings are related to one another.

Understanding semantics helps explain why two expressions can refer to the same thing but have different meanings, or why the same word can communicate different ideas in different contexts.

Meaning

The meaning of a linguistic expression is the information, concept, idea, or relationship that the expression communicates.

For example:

Bird refers to a general category of living creatures with certain characteristics.

The meaning of a word is not necessarily a physical object. Words can represent:

• objects
• actions
• qualities
• relationships
• emotions
• abstract ideas

book → object
run → action
beautiful → quality
friendship → relationship or abstract concept

Sense

The sense of a word concerns the conceptual or linguistic meaning associated with it and its relationship to other words.

For example:

big and small

have contrasting senses.

Similarly:

buy and sell

are closely related in meaning but represent different perspectives on the same transaction.

Sense is therefore concerned with how an expression is understood within the language system.

Reference

Reference concerns the actual person, object, place, event, or concept to which an expression points in a particular context.

For example:

The capital of France

has a particular reference, Paris.

Two expressions can have the same reference while having different senses:

the morning star
the evening star

Both can refer to the planet Venus, but they present it from different conceptual perspectives.

Words Without a Concrete Reference

Not every meaningful expression refers to a physical object:

justice
happiness
freedom
democracy

These words have meanings even though their reference cannot necessarily be identified as a single physical object.

Context and Meaning

Meaning is sometimes influenced strongly by context:

It’s cold here.

This can simply describe the temperature, but in a particular situation it might indirectly mean:

Please close the window.

Thus, understanding language requires distinguishing what words mean as part of the language system from what a speaker intends to communicate in a particular situation.