It doesn't quite work that way in all languages, but it certainly works that way in English, and it's worth remembering to mean is "to intend" -- it makes a lot of sense to say that a meaning just is an intention and that it's perhaps against the grain of common sense to factor them apart, to say, "Well, I can see this sentence and I have a certain notion what it might mean, but I still don't know what the author intended to say," which is forbidden from the standpoint of Knapp and 