Topics Language

Question Would you please explain two quite philosophical terms, "semantic" and "syntactic", to me in plain and ordinary language? It seems impossible for a person without much philosophical knowledge like me to understand these two terms...

Accepted:
November 1, 2005

Comments

These aren't terms from philosophy per se but from logic or linguistics. Semantics is the study of matters have to do with meaning, truth, reference, and the like. Syntax is the study of matters having to do with grammar, like that of a grammatical sentence. The two interact, of course, in complex ways. The question whether a sentence is grammatical is syntactic, but it is an open question to what extent, if any, information about the meanings of words in a sentence—that is, semantic information—is needed to make that determination. Perhaps the most obvious place where the two interact, however, is in the study of so-called "lexical" ambiguities, such as in the sentence "Fighting administrators can be distracting". There are two different things that this string of words can mean, and the now standard explanation of this fact is that there really two sentences that can be written that way, sentences that have very different grammatical structures. (To put it in traditional terms: Is "fighting" modifying "administrators"? Or is "administrators" the direct object of "fighting"?) That the string has these two structures is a fact of syntax. That its having those two structures implies that it has those two meanings is a fact of semantics.

Syntax has to do with grammarand semantics has to do with meaning. The syntax of a language can bethought of as a set of rules that determine which things are expressions of thelanguage and which things are not, and that determine the identity of eachexpression in the language. So, for example (oversimplifying in a numberof respects) the rules of English determine that 'dogs' is aparticular common noun in plural form and 'swim' is a particular verb in pluralform and that 'fish swim' is a sentence composed of those two. Notice that thesame sentence can take very different physical forms (‘FISH SWIM’). It can evenappear as a pattern of sound waves, when spoken. Notice also that I havejust told you about the syntax of the sentence without saying anything aboutwhat it means. Generalizing the idea: syntax is independent of semantics. Youcan think of the semantics of a language as a set of rules that determine whatall the expressions of the language mean - 'fish' means fish and 'swim' means swimand ‘fish swim’ means that fish swim. Semantics concerns the strict and literalmeaning of expressions, rather than specific messages that they can be used toconvey on particular occasions. So, for example, (oversimplifying considerablynow) the semantics of English tells you that 'It's cold here' means that it iscold where the speaker is. The speaker, however, may use the sentence as a wayof issuing a command to his butler to close the window. The rules thatdetermine this sort of conveyed message are called 'pragmatics'.

Question Would you please explain two quite philosophical terms, "semantic" and "syntactic", to me in plain and ordinary language? It seems impossible for a person without much philosophical knowledge like me to understand these two terms... Accepted:November 1, 2005

Question Would you please explain two quite philosophical terms, "semantic" and "syntactic", to me in plain and ordinary language? It seems impossible for a person without much philosophical knowledge like me to understand these two terms...

Accepted:
November 1, 2005