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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the writer will discuss the background of the study, the research questions, the purpose of the study, and the significance of the study.
1.1 Background of the Study
Meaning is fundamental to every human society, and language is one of the primary ways of conveying meaning. However, meaning is not a simple
phenomenon. There has been suggestion that meanings are there first, and that language comes later, as a straightforward representation of these prior meanings.
Meanin g is a kind of ‘invisible, unclothed being’, waiting for the clothes of language
to allow it to be seen. This assumes that meaning and language are in a simple relationship where language reflects some ‘given’ reality.
Nida 1975:11 says that a word seems to have a central meaning from which a number of other meanings are derived. From that point, we then recognize or
imagine some kind of connection between each of these meanings. For instance when we are given the word hand, the first idea that comes up in our mind is part of the
body which includes the fingers and the thumb, used to hold things. However, the word hand now occurs in many kinds of contexts in which it creates diverse
meanings, e.g. give a hand, lend a hand, on the other hand, in the hands of somebody, at first hand, and so on. While meaning is developed, the word hand no longer means
part of the body. Thus, givelend a hand does not mean to give one’s part of the body
to someone else. It means to help someone with something as in the sentence Can you give me a hand to bring these cardboards? or My best friend is always willing to lend
2 a hand. Several words may also be developed syntactically. In the same example, the
word hand may also carry out verb part of speech. As in a sentence He handed the teacher a slip of paper, the word hand means to give something to someone else with
our hand. Even it can mean something else which is not related to part of our body. In a sentence Stories handed down by word of mouth, the word hand means to give or
leave something to people who will live after you. In our everyday life, we often hear expression like
“I seriously mean it.” It implies that sometimes we say things we do not, in fact, mean. Perhaps it is most
often heard coming from frustrated parents who have made too many empty threats to their naughty children. One thing we can find is that speakers of English instinctively
know that there is difference in many cases between what we say and what we mean. In our daily conversation, we use ‘literal’ and ‘non-literal’ meaning to convey
our intention. We use the word ‘literally’ to emphasize the honesty and direct objective of our statements. For example, a mother is talking to her naughty child,
“If you kick Judith one more,
I’ll take you straight home and you’ll miss the biscuits” The mother finds that she has to emphasize her intention to carry out the message. To
illustrate the inferential type of non-literal meaning, we can see from polite requests made at a dinner-table. If the salt is out of reach from the place we are sitting, we
might say, “Is that the salt up your end, Cathy?” This expression occurs as a polite
request and we already know its intended purpose , namely one is asking Cathy’s help
to get the salt. Many of the things we say are intended to be understood by applying rules of interpretation which are agreed by a community.
3 One feature of human language is the fact that it is an ‘arbitrary’ system of
representation. Although not all aspects of meaning in English are completely arbitrary, it
is generally true that there is very little ‘natural’ connection between the words we use and the things they refer to. Language is not the only symbolic system
human beings use, although it is probably the most complex one and is used for a wide variety of purposes. In order to understand the properties of symbolic systems, it
is useful for us to know non-linguistic system, such as color symbolism. For example, the color of green
is used as a symbolic color to express ‘go’ in traffic lights, ‘environmentalism’ in the Green Party, or it can also be ‘an open country or parks’
when it refers on maps. Fromkin 1996:151 states that to understand a language, we need to know the
meaning of its words as well as the morphemes that compose them. We must also know how the meanings of words combine into phrase and sentence meanings.
Finally, we must interpret the meaning of utterances in the context in which they are made. In linguistics, the study of meaning of words, phrases, and sentence is called
semantics. Semantics has two subfields, i.e. lexical semantics which is concerned with the meanings of words and the meaning relationships among words and
sentential semantics which is concerned with the meaning of syntactic unit larger than the word.
Learning a language includes learning the agreed-upon meanings of certain strings of sounds and learning how to combine these meaningful units into larger
units that also convey meaning Fromkin 1996:152. We are not free to change the meanings of these words at will, because if we did we would be unable to
4 communicate with anyone. All speakers of a language share basic vocabulary, the
sounds and meanings of morphemes and words. Every dictionary is filled with words and their meanings and so is the mind of every human being who speaks a language.
Our knowledge of meanings permits us to use them to express our thoughts and to understand them when heard. The meaning of words is part of linguistic knowledge
and is, therefore, a part of the grammar. Our mental storehouse of information about words and morphemes is what we have been calling lexicon.
As it is stated before that a word can carry many meanings. Hence, it is worthy to understand the development of words. Resmini 1996 in his article entitled
Ambiguitas dan Perubahan Makna says that words might not change in meaning in short period of time but there is possibility that a word will change over the times. It
happens for some lexicons of every language in the world because of several reasons. First, it happens owing to the development of technology. With the development and
invention of advanced technology, there are some changes in meaning or even there are new words created. For instance, the word mouse used to refer only to a type of
animal with a long tail that lives in pe ople’s houses or in fields. Now, as the invention
of a computer, the word mouse can refer to a small device which is connected to a computer, and we can use it by our hand to move cursor or give instruction to the
computer. As the internet grows, we can find some new words, such as malware, phishing, bloggable, or qwerty as they are commonly used in internet nowadays.
The second factor is the development of social and culture. Historical records tell us that interaction between societies and other cultures is not a new phenomenon.
Wardhaugh 1990 defines society is any group of people who are drawn together for
5 a certain purpose of purposes and that language is what the members of a particular
society speak. We can see that language in almost any society can take many very different forms and what forms we should choose to discuss when we attempt to
describe the language of a society may prove to be a contentious matter. Communication among societies is possible because we have knowledge
about language which is shared with others, although how it is shared or even how it is acquired is not well understood. Chomsky 1965, in this case, distinguishes
between what he has called competence and performance. The language we use in everyday living is remarkably varied and when we look closely at any language, we
will discover time and time again that there is considerable internal variation, that speakers make constant use of the many different possibilities offered to them. No
one speaks the same way all the time, and people constantly exploit the nuances of the languages they speak for a wide variety of purposes.
Wardhaugh 1986 highlighted there is a variety of possible relationships between language and society. One is that social structure may either influence or
determine linguistic structure and behavior. Studies show that the varieties of language that speakers use reflect their regional, social or ethnic origin and possibly
even their sex. Other studies show that particular ways of speaking, choices of words and even rules for conversing are determined by certain social requirements.
The relationship between language and culture has fascinated people from a wide variety of backgrounds. When we refer to what we mean by ‘culture’, it does
not refer to the sense of ‘high culture’, i.e. the appreciation of music, literature, arts,
and so on. Goodenough 1957:167 defined culture as a society’s culture which
6 consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner
acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves. One long-standing claim concerning the relationship between language
and culture is that the structure of a language determines the way in which speakers of that language view the world. Thus, the development of society concerning with
social and cultural attitudes, will also provoke the changes in meaning in language. The next factor that brings about changes is the development of the word
usages. Every scientific field usually has vocabulary which is related to that field. For instance, in medical field, there are some particular words which we can only define
using specific dictionaries. Given example the term ‘swine influenza’ did not exist before the nineteenth century. It appears during the outbreak in 2009 in which lots of
people died as this viral epidemic spread rapidly. Some medical terms also take Latin words, as in the word febris, it does not exist in English and we cannot find it in
English dictionaries. It comes from Latin which means fever, an abnormally high body temperature, usually accompanied by shivering, headache, and in severe
instances, delirium Oxford dictionary. It is described in Oxford that the word fever comes from
fēfor Old English and from febris Latin, reinforced in Middle English by Old French fievre, also from febris. Thus, with the invention and development of
certain knowledge or fields, it will also bring about changes in lexicons and their meanings.
Meanings also change due to the perception of our senses. Given the example the word snow, generally it means soft white pieces of frozen water that fall from the
sky in cold weather and cover the ground Longman dictionary. Yet, there are many
7 different kinds of snow we can define based on our senses. They are flurry, which
refers to a small amount of snow that is blown by the wind, flake, which is a feathery ice crystal, typically displaying delicate sixfold symmetry, graupel, which is small
particles of snow with a fragile crust of ice or soft hail, or blizzard, which refers to a severe snowstorm with high winds. We can also define snow based on the shapes of
what we see, i.e. columns to refer to a class of snowflakes that is shaped like a six sided column or one of the 4 classes of snowflakes, dendrites to refer to a class of
snowflakes that has 6 points, making it somewhat star shaped and is the classic snowflake shape, needles to refer to a class of snowflakes that are acicular in shape
their length is much longer than their diameter, like a needle. Based on what we see or what we feel, new words can be created and improved gradually.
The factor which also brings about changes in meaning of a word is the association of word. It is an association between a form of speech with something
else that is related to that form of speech. For instance, the word drug literally means a medicine or another substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or
otherwise introduced into the body as in the sentence A new drug aimed at sufferers from Parkinson’s disease. However, when we hear the word drug, sometimes we
associate it with an illegal substance such as marijuana or cocaine, which some people take in order to feel happy, relaxed, or excited.
Ogden and Richards 1985:10-12 maintain that the word, what they called the ‘symbol’, and the actual object, the ‘referent’, are linked only indirectly, by way of
our mental perception of that object, the thought or reference. More recently Ullman 1962:57 suggests t
hat we might use more common terms: ‘name’ to denote the
8 sequence of sounds that is the physical form of the utterance, ‘thing’ to denote the
object or event that is being referred to, and ‘sense’ to denote the information that the name conveys to the hearer.
As mentioned before that learning a language includes learning the agreed- upon meanings of certain strings of sounds and learning how to combine these
meaningful units into larger units that also convey meaning, the writer here would like to conduct a semantic study on the verb run. In our mind, when we hear the word
run, we might refer to an activity of running, i.e. to move our legs more quickly than when we walk. It is true that run is a kind of activity and thus refers to verb in part of
speech. However, in many dictionaries the word run belongs to many different parts of speech, i.e. noun, verb, adjective and adverb. In addition, every part of speech
carries lots of different meaning for the same word. Given the example when the word run belongs to noun, it has a lot of meanings depending on the context. First, it
means ‘a period of time spent running or a distance that you run’, as in the sentence
She usually goes for a run before breakfast. It can mean ‘later in the future or not
immediately ’, as in the phrase in the long run or in the short run, ‘in the near future’,
as in the sentence Sufficient supply, in the short run, will be a problem , ‘a series of
successes or failures ’ as in the phrase run of goodbad luck, a run of victories, ‘an
amount of a product produced at one time ’ as in the phrase a limited run of 200
copies, and so on. We seldom notice that run may also be an adjective. By adding the suffix
– ing, the word run may function as an adjective, as in the phrase the sound of running
water, running commentary, running total, running joke, running sore, in running
9 order, the running order or take a running jump. Likewise, the suffix
–ing also makes the word run change into adverb. Given the example of a sentence She won the prize
for the fourth year running, the word run functions as an adjective which means for four years, she won the prize constantly.
Nida 1975 says that to determine the linguistic meaning of any form contrasts must be found, for there is no meaning apart from significant differences.
Besides, he also highlights that in endeavoring to determine the meaning of any lexical unit, from the level of a morpheme to the level of an entire discourse, it is
essential to establish the basis of contrast. Thus, the writer here will make a contrastive meaning of the verb run by contrasting with the verbs race, gallop, and
sprint. To some extent, one word can carry lots of meaning. We can take the example
from the word red which has several meanings, i.e. color or pigment which resembles the hue of blood, emotionally charged terms used to refer to extreme radicals or
revolutionaries, the amount by which the cost of a business exceeds its revenue or a socialist who advocates communism. In order to differ the meaning of a word
between one another, we have to put the word into its context. Therefore, the writer will also conduct the contextual meaning analysis on his study.
1.2 Research Questions
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