Semantics, or Semasiology; the Science of Meaning.— The simplest word has six "personalities?) so to speak; it is an intricate Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. It has three material forms : the moving muscle, the vibrating air and the written or printed signs. To each of these corresponds a purely mental side: the word picture, as seen "in the mind's eye"; the memory image of the sound and the kines thetic or "motor" image; that is, the feeling of touch, strain, etc., in the muscles: These are mental states, mental The pic ture of a word is the same sort of thing as the pipture of a house. Both are made up of ideas of color, shape and direction. We saw above that these are linked to one another by associa tions, that they are also linked up with the motor areas. We now add that they are linked up with all other mental contents that con stitute thought, so that when these last are in consciousness the word images also appear. It is a law of that any mental con tent may thus be linked up with, that is, sug gest, recall or represent any other mental con tent. But all ideas are mental contents and all word images are ideas or mental contents. Meaning is simply one mental content which some other mental content by association calls up, that is, represents. When we hear or see words, their mental images simply through asso ciation call into consciousness other mental con tents, which are their meaning. Meaning is representation.
Two kinds of mental content enter into all thought: sensation and feeling. The first is the mental state resulting immediately from the stimulus of one of the sense organs. Examples are: red, bitterness, cold, hardness, fragrance, pain, etc. We locate them (except headache) outside of the brain. Combinations of these sensations constitute ideas. No idea ever enters consciousness without awakening a personal re sponse, such as that of pleasure, displeasure, relaxation, strain (as in anxiety), stimulation or inhibition. This reaction is called feeling. Combinations of these feelings constitute emo tions and passions. The will is one form of them. On the basis of ideas and feelings ab stract ideas develop.
In ideas, as in muscular movement, there is continual variation. The details of form, di rection, color, intensity, are continually chang ing. We never obtain a wholly new idea; it is always a variation or modification of the old. The variations are greatest in childhood; in manhood the ideas become more stable; in old age they approach a condition of rigidity as we draw near to death. Changes in ideas consist in the loss of former elements from them and the addition of new ones.
Of the elements of an idea some are rela tively permanent, recurring time after time with the recurring idea, as, for example, the general shape of a horse. Others a temporary, as the color, actions or temper of the horse. A detail may be present once and then disappear for ever. Permanency is often, as in the case just mentioned, based on qualities of objects in nature, but often it is not. Again, not all the elements are equally prominent in our conscious ness. Some come out clearly, others fade into the background. Now it is the color of the bird on which we fix attention, now his song, now he is for us merely a symbol of the coming of spring.
In the meanings of words, as in muscular movement, the small variations accumulate with time so that a word may eventually have totally changed its meaning. We are not usu
ally aware of these changes any more than we are aware of the sound changes, because our attention is wholly occupied with the present idea and we seldom recall its older form for comparison. But when we read old books, these changes force themselves upon the at tention. Comparing old and new meanings, we find that concrete words have become abstract and vice-versa, comprehend meant at once time *seize,* and we now use catch, take, get, tumble in the sense of *understand,* that words have suffered restriction or expansion of meaning (a minister was originally any servant, now it is a servant of God, or of the state; gain orig inally had the narrower meaning *harvest*, that they have shifted to a higher or to a lower moral value (German selig *blessed* is English silly; Latin mens means *mind,* but mentiri means *to lie,* i.e., falsify). There have also been distinguished (a) changes of non-domi nating elements, (b) of dominating elements, (c) of permanent elements, (d) of transitory elements, (e) from ideational content to emo tional content and the reverse, (f) in degree of emotional value, (g) ideas corresponding to one sense organ to those corresponding to another, as when we say 'a sharp knife, a sharp tone, a sharp taste, a sharp man* (the last usage being abstract).
Grammatical especially important branch of semantics is that dealing with the parts of speech and other grammatical categories, the case relationships, mood, tense, voice, number, degree, etc., all of which are the product of the analyzing and classifying proc esses of the mind. The normal mind quickly develops the power of distinguishing various qualities, such as sex, and their degrees, and of observing relationships of (present, past, fqture, before, after, simultaneous), place (in, on, about), cause, effect and so on. Other categories reflect the attitude of mind: pur pose, will, desire, probability, doubt, neces sity. They run into the thousands. Finnish has 18 cases. One language has over 60. Some of these occur very frequently and are very important dominating elements of thought. Their frequent occurrence, import ance and the degree of readiness and closeness with which they fuse with other concepts, are such that the sounds or words representing them act both phonetically and semasiologically in peculiar ways. They find expression in the following forms: (1) Juxtaposition, e.g., apple tree, tree toad. Juxtaposition is but the first stage of composition, as seen in therefore, Johnson; (2) Relative rapidity of utterance of different sounds or groups of sound, including pauses. (3) Stress of voice, signifying, for example, relative importance; (4) Pitch of voice, indicating interrogation, irony, etc.; (5) order, e.g., apple-pie, pie-apple; (6) adverbs; (7) prepositions; (8) conjunc tions (including (9) pronouns) ; (10) auxiliary verbs; (11) inflectional forms: suffixes, pre fixes, infixes and various modifications of sound, such as umlaut (mutation) and vowel gradation; (12) often no special formal sign is needed, as when the relationship in which objects stand to each other in nature is so im pressed "Upon us that the mere mention of the objects suggests it. Dickens' character Jingle depended much upon this fact. (13) Lastly the general circumstances and conditions of a conversation and the known purpose of the speaker are valuable keys to the meaning.