What Is Semantics

What is Semantics
Semantics' definition: Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. In semantic analysis, there is always an attempt to focus on what the words conventionally mean, rather than on what a speaker might want the words to mean on a particular occasion. Meaning: When linguists investigate the meaning of words in a language, they are normally interested in characterizing the conceptual meaning and less concerned with the associative meaning covers those basic, essential components of meaning which are conveyed by the literal use of a word. Some of the basic components of a words like "needle" in English might include "thin, sharp, steel instrument". These components would be part of the conceptual meaning of needle. However, you may have "association", or "connotations" attached to a word like "needle" which lead you to think of "painful" wherever you encounter the word. This "association" is not treated as part of the conceptual meaning of "needle". How can we describe the meaning of different words? There are three types of analysis: 1-Words as 'containers'---semantic features 2-'Roles' they fulfill---semantic roles 3-'Relationship' with other words---lexical relation Semantic features:
How would a semantic approach help us to understand something about the nature of language? It might be helpful as a means of accounting for the "oddness" we experience when we read English sentences, such as: The girl is a crocodile The chair was reading a book Dinah is a cheesecake These sentences are syntactically good, but semantically odd. This relates to the conceptual components of the words "crocodile, chair and cheesecake" are not humans. Semantic properties: The components of meaning of a word. Such a component may be as general as 'animate being'. We can then take this component and use it to describe part of the meaning of words as either plus (+) or minus (-) the feature. So, the feature becomes + animate or animate Example of componential analysis: Grandfather is [+old], [+human], [+animate] Identify the features: Mom Animate Human Female Adult + + + + boy + + _ _ chair _ _ _ _ monkey + _ _ _ flower + _ _ _
The_______ is reading a story
N(+human) Now, we can predict what nouns would make the above sentence semantically odd. Examples would be Sea or Spider because they have the feature (-human). Semantic roles: Instead of thinking of the word as 'containers' of meaning, we can look at the 'roles' they fulfill within the situation described by a sentence. The teacher hit the student -Verb---indicates action -Teacher---who performs the action (the agent) -Student---undergoes the action (theme) Agent/theme/instrument Although agents are typically human, they can also be non-human forces (the rain made me happy), machines (the vacuum annoyed us), or creature (the cat feeds her child). If an agent uses another entity in performing an action that other entity fills the role of instrument. In drawing with a pencil or eating with a fork, the noun phrases a pencil and a fork have the semantic role of instrument. Example: John threatens with a handgun Agent instrument
Experiencer/ location/ source/goal When a noun phrase designates an entity as the person who has a feeling, a perception or a state, it fills the role of Experiencer. If you see, know
or enjoy something, you do not really have to perform any action (hence you are not an agent). You are in the role of experiencer. If someone asks you did you like the party? The experiencer is you and the theme is the party. Location: where an entity is Source: where the entity moves from Goal: where the entity moves to Examples: Mariana saw a movie in the cinema Experienecer location
Dinah traveled from California to Canada

Agent source goal
Lexical Relations
Lexical relations: Words can be treated not only as 'containers' or fulfilling 'roles', but they can also have 'relationships'. For example, when people say fat, we recognize fat is the opposite of thin. When people say Kleenex, we recognize that it is a kind of tissue. If someone asks us to give another word for smart, we recognize the word intelligent. In doing so, we are characterizing the meaning of a word not in terms of its component features, but in terms of its relationship to other words. This procedure has been used in the semantic description of languages and is treated as the analysis of lexical relations. Types of lexical relations: 1- Synonyms: words that have the same meanings.
Examples: Casual-informal Deep-profound Liberty-freedom It should be noted that the idea of 'sameness of meaning' used in discussing synonymy is not necessarily 'total sameness'. There are many occasions that one word is appropriate in a sentence, but its synonym would be odd. 2- Antonymy: words that are opposite in meanings. Examples: Intelligent-stupid Alive-dead Big-small Types of Antonymy: Antonyms are usually divided into two main types: Gradable and Nongradable. 1- Gradable antonyms: not absolute, question of degree. Example: High-low Happy-sad Hot-cold
2- Non-gradable antonyms: In the non-gradable antonyms, the negative of one member does imply the other. Examples: Fail-pass Married-single Dead- alive It is important to avoid describing most antonym pairs as one word meaning the negative of another. Consider the opposites tie-untie. The word untie doesn't mean 'not tie'. It actually means 'does the reverse of tie'. Such pairs are called reversives. Examples: Fair-unfair Fill-empty 3- Hyponymy: words whose meanings are specific instances of a more general word, meaning that one thing is included (kind of) in another thing. Examples: Dog- animal Table-furniture Watermelon-fruit Co-hyponyms: two or more terms which share the same super ordinate term.
Example: Apples and oranges are hyponyms of the word fruit. In this case, apples and oranges are co-hyponyms share the same 'super ordinate'. Prototypes: While the words duck, flamingo, robin and canary are all equally cohyponyms of the super ordinate bird, they are not all considered to be equally good exemplars of the category 'bird'. For many American English speakers, the best exemplar or the prototype, of 'bird' is the robin. The concept of a prototype helps explain the meaning of certain words, like bird, not in terms of component features (e.g. 'has feathers',' has wings'), but in terms of resemblance to the clearest exemplar. When we hear the word furniture, we are quicker to recognize chair as an exemplar than bench and when we hear the word clothes, we recognize shirts quicker than shoes. It is obvious that there is some general pattern to the categorization process involved in prototypes and that it determines our interpretation of word meaning. 4- Homophony: different words pronounced the same but spelled differently. Examples: Suit-sweet Two-too Meat-meet 5- Homonymy: a word which has two or more entirely distinct meanings. Examples: Pupil: 'at school'; 'in the eye'
Bat: 'flying creature'; 'used in sports' Race: 'contest of speed'; 'ethnic group' 6- Polysemy: a word which has multiple related meanings. Examples: Bright: 'shining'; 'intelligent' Head: 'the object on top of your body' or 'on top of a glass beer' Foot: 'of a person' or 'of a bed' or 'of a mountain'. 6- Metonymy:' a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something'. A short definition is 'part for whole'. Examples: I drank the whole battle The white house announced A word substituted for another word with which it is closely associated. Bottle is used for alcohol. 7-Collocation: words tend to occur with other words. Examples: Salt-pepper

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The_______ is reading a story

Dinah traveled from California to Canada

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