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CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

A. Linguistic

Linguistic is “a branch of cognitive science. It is a term for a group of

disciplines that have the same goal: defining and analyzing human being’s

activity to think. Some scholars emphasize that the disciplines of linguistic,

along with psychology, philosophy, and computer science thus forms and

important.1 It means by studying linguistic someone will be studying either

micro linguistic or macro linguistic when they are analyzing about the

language, such as grammar, structure, pronounce, meaning, etc. Linguistic

also will have to recognize laws operating universally in language, strictly

rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restrict to one

branch of languages or another”.

According to Cook, “linguistic is the academic discipline concerned

with the relation of knowledge about language to decision making in the

real word”.2 It means that linguistic the knowledge about how to recognize

language by having knowledge about the detail of language itself such as

word, sentence, and phrase. It includes in the education field because people

are using language to get communication among others.

1 Carnie A, Syntax: A Generative Introduction, (Oxford: Blackwell Published, 2002), p.4

2 Cook V.J, Linguistic Second Language Acquisition, (United Kingdom: Essex University,
2002), p.20
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Meanwhile, Bauer states that “linguistic is the word meaning relating

to the language as well as the word meaning relating to the linguistic.3 It

means linguistic science of language which is not only has important

relation either micro linguistic or macro linguistic but also has meaning in

word or language”.

In addition, Whitla defines that “linguistic study many facts of language

such as how sound are produced and heard in physical acts of speech,

conversational interaction, the different use of language by men and women

and different social classes, the relation of language to the function of the

brain and memory, how languages develop and change, and the uses of

language by machines to store and reproduce language”.4 It means that

linguistic is the study of language that is involved in many areas such as

how language change, to be memorized, to be developed, etc.

From the theory above, the researcher concludes that linguistic is “the

study of language which has purpose to mastery about language. Besides,

by studying language someone can be mastery micro linguistic and macro

linguistic which is in the part of that has function and relation with each

other such as pragmatic, semantic, morphology, psycholinguistic and the

others”.

3 Bauer Laurie, Beginning Linguistics, (United Kingdom: Plagrave Macmillan, 2012), p.3
4 Whitla William, The English Handbook, (New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010),p. 3
 12

B. Semantic

According to Wibowo “Semantic is the one of branch from linguistics,

which semantic is the study of meanings of the language. Language is a

symbols that are meaningful and articulate sound (generated by said tool)

that are arbitrary and conventional, which is used as a means of

communication by a group of men to give birth to feelings and thoughts.5 It

means that language has a meaning either in speaking and writing

communication, which will berepresenting from the sender to the receiver.

Therefore to reduce miss understanding between the sender and receiver its

important to study of meaning of the language (semantic) in linguistics”.

Meanwhile, Sutrisno stated that “Semantic is the study of meaning in

language. It is in fact that meaning is a part of language, but this definition

has not been clearly delineated and given fair treatment in the study of

language until very recently.6 It means that in language sometimes has a

complex meaning so it makes difficult to understanding and need treatment

to make clearly meaning in the communication”.

In addition, Yule states that “semantics is the study of meaning of

words, phrases, and sentences. There is always an attempts to focus on what

the words conventionally mean on a particular occasion”.7 It means that

semantics is the study of meaning abstracted way from the aspects of words,

5 Wibowo Revelation, Language Management, (New York: Scolastic, 2001), p.3

6 Sutrisno Wagiman D, Semantics: An Introduction to the Basic Concepts, (Yogyakarta:
ANDI, 2008), p.1
7 Yule George, The Study of Language: Second Edition, (Great Britain: Cambridge

University Press, 1996), p.114

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phrases, and sentence that are derived from the intension of the speakers.

Those the socio-cultural aspects of the context in which their utterances are

made.

From those are definitions above, the researcher has conclusion that in

the “linguistics people need to study of meaning in the language. This is

when people try to deliver a meaning from the sender to the receiver,

sometimes not only has easy meaning to understand but also has a difficult

meaning to understand”. The meaning of language must be understood and

learned in order to avoid miscommunication among people and to get well

interaction in daily life. “All languages depend on words and sentences

having meaning (every word meaning). In the case of words, this essentially

means writing in a dictionary but in the case of sentences, the meaning of

those sentences depends on the meaning of words it contains”.

C. Kinds of Semantics

There are some kinds of semantic relations that divided into five. These

kind of semantic can make the people understand how to recognize the

meaning of word, phrases and sentence. Those can be explained as follows:

1. Polysemy : “the same morphological word mayhave a range of different

meanings as a glanceat any dictionary will reveal. Polysemy,‘meaning

many meanings’, is the name givento the study of his particular

phenomenon. Example : take a bath and take a bus”.

2. Synonymy: “two or more words with veryclosely related meanings but

always partialnever complete”. Example : tall and high, big and large.
 14

3. Antonymy : “this is the general term applied tothe sense relation

involving oppositeness ofmeaning for our prupose. Example : old and

young, male and female”.

4. Hyponymy : “related to complementarity andincompatibility or

semantic meaning is morespecific than the other’s. Example : animal –

dog – poodle and flower –rose – tea rose”.

5. Idioms : “an idiom is a group of words whosemeaning cannot be

explained in terms of thehabitual meanings of the words that make

upthe piece of language. Example : a blue moon, as right as rain,

andbreak a leg”.8

Based on the explanation above, it can be seen that there are five kinds

of semantics. They are polysemy, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, and

idiom. Polysemy is where the people can recognize the meaning by

identifying the uses of meaning itself such as the sentence “take a bus” it

means that “get inside the bus” not someone is taking the bus by his/her

hand. While synonymy is where the people can recognize meaning by

seeing the relatable meaning of word itself. Antonymy is about recognizing

meaning by finding the opposite of the word. Hyponymy is about finding

meaning by recognize the cluster of word itself such as the word animal may

have some clusters such as dog, cat, rabbit, etc. The last is idiom, it is about

finding meaning by seeing the context of word and learning more about

some “term” in native language such as “break a leg”, it means that to give

8 Loreto, An Introduction to Language, (Sydney: Harcourt. 2000), p.79

 15

spirit to someone such as come on, do not give up, etc. So that, break a leg

is not about breaking someone’s leg.

D. Ambiguity

According to Hurford and Heasley, “ambiguity is when the meaning of

word, phrase, or sentence is uncertain that can cause misinterpretation.9 In

other word, it means that to deliver a word or sentence it can be expressed

more than one way, then in the interpretation a meaning can be understand

into two or more meaning”.

Widdowson defines that an “ambiguous sentence is grammatically

well-formed, but it produces two completely different but equally valid

meanings”.10 It means that the sentence can refers ambiguous meaning if it

is presented or written correctly but possibly has more than one meaning.

For example, “the sentence the boy saw a man with a telescope is

ambiguous. It can both carry out two different meaning but makes sense

meanings. Hearer might catch different meaning that the speaker intended

to. The first option is that the telescope belongs to the boy and he saw a man

with it. While the other meaning option is that the telescope belongs to the

man and a boy saw the man having it”. This kind of situation is discussed

in study of meaning (semantic), especially in the study of ambiguity

meaning.

9 Hurford R James, Heasley Brendan and Smith Michael, Semantic: A Course Book,

(Cambridge: University Press, 2007), p.121

10 Widdowson H G, Discourse Analysis, (Oxford: University Press, 2007), p.14
 16

The ambiguity meaning is a thing(sentence) that has more than one

normal interpretation.Kreidler states thatambiguity occurs also because a

longer linguistic form has a literal sense and figurative sense.11 It means

ambiguity has either literal or figurative sense in the sentence.

The researcher conclude that “to determine an ambiguity in the sentence

can be referential ambiguity occurs when an indefinite referring expression

may be specific or not and the sentence is unclear becausepersonal pronoun

(he, she, it and they) can be linked to either of two referring expressions”.

In addition, Ullmandivides the ambiguity into three definition, there are

1. “Global Ambiguity : A full sentences but have more one meaning. For

example : 1) I know more beautiful woman than Mary. It has meaning I

know more beautiful woman than the beautiful woman that MaryorI

know more woman who are more beautiful than Mary.

2. Local Ambiguity : A part of sentences and have more one meaning. For

example: Flying plane can be dangerous. Flying plane has a meaning

action of the plane or plane which is flying.

3. Referential Ambiguity : An ambiguity its caused more than one object

to be one sentences. For example: after they finished the class, the

students and the teachers left. They its can be means students or teachers

or both of them”.12

11 KreidlerW Charles, Introduction English Linguistic, (New York: Routledge, 1988), p.56
12 Ullman Stephen, Semantics: An Introduction to the Science of Meaning, (London: Oxford
Basil Blackwel, 1977), p.203
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From these statements, the writer conclude “lexical ambiguity is not

only causes from the polysemy and homonymy” but also have some classes

a word which is has relation in the sentences such as : Global ambiguity (the

full sentences have more one meaning), Local ambiguity (part of sentences

have one meaning) and Referential ambiguity (the word which is has one

object).

E. Kinds of Ambiguity
Commonly in the ambiguity divide some kinds types there are

structurally ambiguity and lexical ambiguity. Hurfordet al divide the kind

of ambiguity such as:

1. “Structural Ambiguity. A sentence which is ambiguous because its words

relate to each other in different ways, even though none of the individual

words are ambiguous. For example : The chicken is ready to eat”.

1) “The chicken is ready to be eaten”.

2) “The chicken is ready to eat some food”.

2. Lexical ambiguity. “Lexical Ambiguity is about when at least one word in

a phrase has more than one meaning. For instance, this will make you smart

it is ambiguous because of the two meanings of the word smart clever or

burning sensation.13 Lexical ambiguity arises when context is insufficient

to determine the sense of a single word that has more than one meaning. It

depends on homonymy (sense not related) and polysemy (sense related).

For example: Lexical Ambiguity caused Homonymy”.

13 Fromkin, Victoria, An Introduction to Language, (Boston: Thomson Heinle, 2003), p.122

 18

a) “I will meet you at the bank (riparian)”.

b) “I will meet you at the bank in fornt of the receptionist desk (place

which is related with financial)”.

1) Lexical Ambiguity caused Polysemy

a) “I will get the foods (find some foods)”.

b) “I get it (understanding something)”.14

From the explaination above, the writer conclude in “the some

sentences can be ambiguity because in the some words have two or more

meaning. The causes of ambiguity can be determine in the structural

ambiguity (structural sentences) and lexical ambiguity (a word depends on

polysemy and homonymy)”.

In addition to Meyer states that “Structural ambiguity: two different

meanings depending upon how the words in the expression are grouped.”

For example: Marry and Joe or Bill frightened the sheepdog.

This is ambiguous sentence caused in the sentence has coordinate

conjunction “and” and “or”.

1) “(1) Mary and Joe, (2) or, (3) Bill frightened the sheepdog. Its mean

Mary and Joe frightened the sheepdog or just Bill frightened the

sheepdog.

2) (1) Mary, (2) and, (3) Joe or Bill Its mean Mary and Joe frightened the

sheepdog or Mary and Bill frightened the sheepdog”.15

14 Hurford R James, Heasley Brendan and Smith Michael, Op Cit, p.128

15 Meyer M and Wodak R, Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis, (London: Sage
Publications, 2009), p.115
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From statement above, the researcher concludes that the ambiguity

is divided into two kinds namely structural and lexical ambiguity. “Lexical

ambiguity is the presence of two or more possible meanings for a single

word. It is also called as semantic ambiguity or homonymy. It differs from

syntactic ambiguity, which is the presence of two or more possible meanings

within a sentence or sequence of words. The meaning of structural

ambiguity is a structure sentence can be causing by the grammatically such

as in noun, verb, conjunction, preposition, adverb and adjective. Therefore

usually its make miss understanding in communication between the sender

to the receiver”.

F. Causes of Ambiguity

Some linguists and communication experts in their contribution to

the study of ambiguity have identified causes of ambiguity. Cann (1994):

states that ‘ambiguity can arise through (1) the ascription of multiple

meanings to single words’. For instance "the mean's punch was impressive".

Ambiguity occurs because the word "punch" may be interpreted as a drink

or as an action. (2) Lexemes whose word forms have this property are called

homonyms and can be subdivided into homophones where the forms of the

lexemes sound the same but may be written differently.For example "draft

and draught" which can be represented phonemically as /dra:ft/ and

homographs for instance "minute" which are written the same way but

pronounced differently. (3) Ambiguity can also arise through the

assignment of different syntactic structures to a sentence. For example: ‘The

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strike was called by radical lecturers and students’.16 In this sentence, the

ambiguity results from the possibility of assigning two or more syntactic

structures to a single grammatical string of words.

It becomes necessary to know whether the adjective "radical

modifies the nominal phrase lecturers and students, in which case both the

student who called the strike are said to be radical but the political attitude

of the students who did so is not specified. The major issue here is, the scope

of the adjective, ‘radical’. Scope is a primary source of ambiguity which

involves not only adjectives but also conjunctions, like ‘and’, ‘or’ and

quantifiers like ‘every’, ‘all’ and ‘some’. Apart from lexical ambiguity,

there is structural ambiguity. This has its source in the syntax of a language.

There are other ambiguities that involve negation (not), quantification

(every, some) and other elements like ‘sense’, which do not vary their

syntactic position according to the reading of the sentence”.17 Alderton and

Evelyn (1970) emphasizes that; A sentence can be ambiguous through bad

arrangement of words and clauses, that is a violation of the rule of

proximity. For example; “this lift must only be used by the staff”.18 The

vague use of pronouns-this occurs particularly in reported speech. For

example; ‘he told his younger brother that he could not sleep because he

16 Cann, Ronnie, Formal Semantics: An Introduction, (Cambridge: University Pesss,

1994), p.3-5
17 Ibid, p.6
18 Alderton, P.M., and Evelyn, T.S, English Grammar: Composition and Correspondence,

(Cambridge: Richard Clay Ltd, 1970), p.27

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was too busy at night’. Ambiguity arises because we do not know if "he"

refers to "the speaker" or to his "younger brother".

The omission of necessary words and "insertion" of articles to

certain sentences. For example: ‘The qualification for a teacher and lecturer

are not the same’. The article "a" should be inserted before "lecturer" to

show that two distinct persons are referred to. Akwanya agreeing with

others, states that “some lexical items play a pivotal role in the interpretation

of a sentence and that the sentence may be subject to more interpretation if

the item is not sufficiently specified in the context.19 For instance the item

run in the following sentence plays such a central role. ‘Obiageli is running

the race’. Run here may be interpreted to mean (1) contending in a race (2)

organizing a race”.

Fowler, H.Wapart from agreeing that “the use of a word with two

meanings in a context makes for absurdity or uncertainty also lists other

common causes of ambiguity as: the use of pronouns in such a way that the

reader cannot be sure of their antecedents”. For example: 1. In the December

previous to his raid on the Tower he was chief of a gang who overpowering

his attendants seized Mayor of Abuja in Yakubu Street when returning from

a dinner party’. (His refers not to the preceding he, but to the Mayor) 2. ‘If

the baby does not feed on feed on fresh milk, boil it’. 3. ‘John told Derek

that he has passed the examinations’. In the last sentence does "he" in the

19 Akwanya, A.N, Semantic and Discourse: Thoeries of Meaning and Textual Analysis,

(Enugu: Acna Publisher, 1996), p.78

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sentence mean John or Derek, does "it" in sentence (2) refer to the milk or

the baby.20 It cannot be assumed that readers will always associate a

pronoun with the last noun but one can think of the baby as the antecedent

of it. “Another cause of ambiguity is uncertainty ‘whether’ ‘shall’ or ‘will’,

‘should’ or ‘would’ is used as a simple auxiliary or as implying volition or

obligation. Example: ‘It is of interest to note that even as a tiro in politics’,

he should have taken his own line, failure to make clear the field of

operation of a word or phrase for example; He needs more suitable

compassions, or a participle – ‘His dog might sometimes come to resemble

the frightened and exhausted rabbit who in the end walks towards the stoat

seeking to devour him or a relative”.

Other subordinate clause, for example: ‘I accused him of having

violated the principles of concentration of force which had resulted in her

present failures’. Are so, a negative in a sentence can cause ambiguity. For

example, ‘the hat was not sent because of information received’. The word

"because" showing a negative clause is often a cause of ambiguity. Does

"because" in the subordinate disclaim the reason why a thing was done or

does it give a reason why a thing was not done. Furthermore, the placing of

the word "even" wrongly can cause ambiguity. It will be seen in position of

adverbs that their placing is a matter partly of idiom and partly of sense.

20 Flower, H.W, Oxford Flower’s Modern English Usage, (New York: Holt, Rinchart and

Winston Inc, 1974), p.17

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"Even" is one of those words whose placing is important to the sense. For

example:

1. ‘Even I did not see him on Monday’. This implies that I was more

likely to see him than anyone else was.

2. ‘I did not even see him on Monday’ implies that I had expected not

only to see him but also to speak to him.

3. ‘I did not see him even on Monday’ implies that he was the person

expected to see.

4. ‘I did not see him even on Monday’ implies that ‘Monday was the

day on which I expected to see him’.21

The indiscriminate placing of adverbs can cause ambiguity. There is

an important difference between these two sentences: 1. ‘He did not win

luckily’. 2. He did not win, luckily. Doubt avoided by re-arranging the order

of the second sentences as luckily, he did not win. All adverbs need not be

placed where there can be doubt what word they are modifying but some

adverbs like ‘hardly’, ‘scarcely’, ‘almost’, ‘even’, and ‘only’, need special

care. In some sentences ambiguity occurs because of faulty punctuation. It

may be because a comma has been omitted or wrongly introduced.

Example: ‘I am speaking to you Ugo’. There should be a comma after you

so the sentence should be I am speaking to you, Ugo. Consider the

following: ‘She likes coffee and rolls in bed’. If comma is introduced after

coffee the sentence will have quite a different meaning.

21 Ibid.
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G. Aladdin Movie

The object of this research is Aladdin movie. The researcher chose

Aladdin movie as the object of this research, which focuses on the analysis

of song lyric from the soundtrack of this movie. The researcher selects the

last version of Aladdin movie that launched in 2019. It was selected because

this is the new version of Aladdin movie that all of the aspects are interesting

to be analyzed. One of those aspects is from the soundtrack.

There are many soundtracks in this movie, but the researcher chooses

the English songs. The other songs are written in other languages, those are

not relate to this research. The songs that written in English that had been

selected by the researcher are; a whole new world, speechless, friend like

me, Prince Ali, and one jump ahead. These songs are written by native

speaker, so that it can cause misinterpretation for non-native speaker,

especially for the students as learners.

H. Song Lyric

Song is short poem or number of verses set music and intended to be

sung. Song is consisting of many lyrics. A good song has good lyric. Lyrics

can be described as something for musician message to other. Wijay

(2013:17) said that “song lyric is abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such

cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry

of expression. Song lyric is the set of words that make up a song, usually
 25

consisting of verses and choruses.22 It means the definition of song lyrics is

a song lyrics are words and different with daily language, which the

meaning of words are ambiguity and combine with the music so it will

interest to listening”.

Commonly, “lyrics have meaning an instrument used by the Grecians

to play when reading a poem. By lyrical, a poets or song writers demonstrate

specific moods and emotions through words, such as moods to express a

range of emotions about life, love, death, or the experience of life. Hornby

stated that song is a deliver words or sentence which is composed by rhytm

and rhyme to express the feeling in order to claims emotional place in music

and poem”.23 It means that lyric in a song is made based on someone’s

feeling. The song lyric can express someone’s situation and can be as an

entertainment for the ones who needs it.

Meanwhile, Lakoff and Johnson defines that “when words and sentence

are written down, they can be readily looked upon as object. Lyric is the

word that written by someone to make the song meaningful with some

themes like happy, sadness, disappointed, angry, etc”. 24 It means that so

much feeling can be expressed by the lyric of song. The writer and the

composer of a song are collaborated to make the good lyric with music.

22 Wijaya T Wisnu, The Effectiveness of Song for Teaching, (Yogyakarta: Journal of Foreign
Language Teaching and Learning, 2015), p.17
23 Hornby Peter, Achieving Second Language Fluency through Immersion Education,

(London: Oxford University, 1980), p.822

24 Lakoff George and Johnson Mark, Methapors We Live by, (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1980), p.204

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Song is a short musical work set a poetic text with equal importance

given to music and to the words.Song is a short metrical composition

intended for singing, etc.

Then, the researcher presents some theories of the definitions of lyrics:

1) Lyrics are the compositions in verse which is sung to a melody to

constitute a song. Lyric is expressing deep personal emotion or

observations.

2) According to Merriam Webster, song is a melody for a lyric poem or

ballad.25

3) Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. “Lyrics can be studied

from an academic perspective. For example, some lyrics can be

considered as a form of social commentary. Lyrics can also be analyzed

with respect to the sense of unity (or lack of unity) with music.26 Song

is one of teaching media that can be used to teach any material, it may

be used to create a more relaxing in learning foreign language. It also

can be used to teach vocabulary because in the lyrics of song there are

several kinds of vocabularies”.

The researcher concludes that “lyric is expressing direct personal

feelings, of or for singing, words of a song and lyrical is expressing strong

emotion in an imaginative way. Lyric is a deliver words or sentences which

is composed by rhytm and rhyme to expresses the feeling or thought by

25
Internet Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/song, Retrieved on July
12 2021 at 12:39 am
26 Internet Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_lyricss, Retrieved on July 12 2021 at

12:40 am
 27

means of lyric and has a meaning to describe about the daily of people such

as love, life, dead, respect and other feelings”.