Consider two people, Pat and Chris, who are getting to know each other on a first date. We can appreciate how someone can mean more than they `strictly speaking' say by considering the same thing said in two different contexts. The result of all of these (sometimes very abstract) investigations is a deeper understanding and appreciation of the complexity and expressive elegance of particular languages and the uniquely human system of linguistic communication.
Investigating how our understanding of what is said is influenced by our individual and cultural assumptions and experience, which are much less visible than what is explicitly said, can help make us more aware and effective communicators. Studying the rules governing the composition of word meanings into sentence meanings and larger discourses allows us to build computer systems which can interact with their users in more naturalistic language. It also improves materials which help those acquiring a second language through instruction. The study of lexical (word) semantics and the conceptual distinctions implicit in the vocabulary of a language improves dictionaries which enable speakers of a language to extend their knowledge of its stock of words. Research in these areas reveals principles and systems which have many applications. They encompass several different investigations: how each language provides words and idioms for fundamental concepts and ideas (lexical semantics), how the parts of a sentence are integrated into the basis for understanding its meaning (compositional semantics), and how our assessment of what someone means on a particular occasion depends not only on what is actually said but also on aspects of the context of its saying and an assessment of the information and beliefs we share with the speaker. Questions of 'semantics' are an important part of the study of linguistic structure. But the steps in understanding something said to us in a language in which we are fluent are so rapid, so transparent, that we have little conscious feel for the principles and knowledge which underlie this communicative ability. It is obvious because it is what we use language for-to communicate with each other, to convey 'what we mean' effectively. Meaning seems at once the most obvious feature of language and the most obscure aspect to study.
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