PAPER

ENGLISH SEMANTIC

BY:

MARYAMAH
2019.05.01.00007

Constructed By: Mrs. Linta Wafdan Hidayah, S.S., M.Pd.

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY
UNIVERSITAS ISLAM MADURA
2021
 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of Study

Language is purely human and non instinctive method of communicating ideas,

emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily symbols” (Sapir, 1939)

This definition emphasizes three important aspects of language :

- Language is for human, as has been explained above.

- Language is non-instinctive means, that it has to be learnt, in other words,

language acquisition is got through learning.

- Learning the language as a system of arbitrary conventional symbols. The

symbols are vocals which are produced by the organ speech. Though secondary
systems as writing and other codes, they are complement to vocal system.

Semantics is the study of meaning. Seen by Breal, in the late 19th century, as an
emerging science (French, „semantique‟) opposed to phonetics („phonetique‟) as a
science of sounds: similarly for Bloomfield in 1930, it was a field covering, as one
account of meaningful forms, and the lexicon. Also seen more narrowly, in a traditional
lasting into the 1960s, as the study of meaning in the lexicon alone, including changes
in word meaning.
Later, in accounts in which the study of distribution was divorced from that of
meanings, opposed either to grammar in general; or, within grammar and especially
within a generative grammar from the 1960s onwards, to syntax specifically. Of the
uses current at the beginning of the 21st century, many restrict semantics to the study of
meaning is abstraction from the contexts in which words and sentences are uttered: in
opposition, therefore, to pragmatics. Others include pragmatics as one of its branches.
In others its scope is in practice very narrow: thus one handbook of „contemporary
semantic theory‟, in the mid-1990s deals almost solely with problems in formal
semantics, even the meanings of lexical units being neglected.

We know that language is used to express meanings which can be understood by

others. But meanings exist in our minds and we can express what is in our minds
through the spoken and written forms of language (as well as through gestures, action

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 etc.). The sound patterns of language are studied at the level of phonology and the
organization of words and sentences is studied at the level of morphology and syntax.
These are in turn organized in such a way that we can convey meaningful
messages or receive and understand messages. How is language organized in order to
be meaningful? This is the question we ask and attempt to answer at the level of
semantics. Semantics is that level of linguistic analysis where meaning is analyzed. It is
the most abstract level of linguistic analysis, since we cannot see or observe meaning as
we can observe and record sounds. Meaning is related very closely to the human
capacity to think logically and to understand. So when we try to analyze meaning, we
are trying to analyze our own capacity to think and understand our own ability to create
meaning. Semantics concerns itself with „giving a systematic account of the nature of
meaning‟ (Leech, 1981).

1.2 Problem of Study

2. What is definition of Semantic in English?
3. What are lexical and phrasal sentential semantics?
4. What is definition of word meaning in Semantic?
5. How is definition of Full and Empty word?
6. What is Lexical and Grmmatical word?
7. What is lexical relation?
1.3 Purpose of the Study
2. To know definition of semantic
3. We can get knowledge lexical and phrasal sentential semantics
4. To know about definition of word meaning in Semantic
5. To know about definition of Full and Empty word
6. To know definition lexical and grammatical word
7. To know definition and kind of lexical relation

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 DISCUSSION

2.1 Definition of Semantic

Semantics is the study of meanings. The term is derived from Greek semanen (to
signify or mean). It concerned with the relation between words or other symbols and
objects or concepts to which they refer. As an empirical study of word meaning in
existing language, semantics is a branch of linguistics” (American Encyclopedia : 536).

It is obvious that meaning plays a very important role in any situation of speech
acts. Without meaning, all the utterances of a language are useless or without meaning
there will be no language, or if a language is not intended to communicate meaning,
there will be no interaction of thought as we do in daily life. Meaning is concerned with
the relation between words and objects to which they refer, this statement leads us to
presuppose that :

- Meaning is the relation between words and objects to which they refer. If we say
chair, we are concerned with an object (a seat with a back or arms).

- It is impossible to find meaning in phonemes and syllables because they constitute

a hierarchy in phonology and functioning as distinctive feature in minimal pairs.
So, meaning is concerned with words or morphemes. The latter as a minimal
meaningful unit will do in this analysis, as a word is a morpheme, is not always a
word, like the prefix im – in impossible. Thus we just focus only to words.
We are not satisfied yet with the definition mentioned above, for it just concentrates
meaning on words. So why do not we find meaning in sentence in order that we can
find meaning outside language or what it refers to (despite the meaning of word which
constructs the meaning of sentence as a whole). Realizing the link between language
aspect and the aspect outside language is very close, meaning has recently been an
intricate but interesting subject and linguists began to embrace it separately from the
other aspect to grasp it more detail let us pick opinions of some linguists about what
meaning is and therefore we know it essence and domain.

“Meaning signifies any and all phrases of sign-process ( the status of being a sign,
the interpreted, the fact of denoting, the signification.) and frequently suggest
mental and valuation process as well” (C. W. Morris, 1946: 19).

Morris in his definition included mental and valuation process to which meanings
signifies. As a mental and valuation process there is no an occurrence of physical
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 process. This is accordance with or we happen to remember about the mentalist concern
to meaning as : “the characteristic

mental event which occurs in every speaker and hearer in connection with the
utterance or hearing of the linguistic form”. This can be seen for example, in uttering
the word, book, the speaker has had a mental image of a book and this word evokes a
similar image in a hearer’s mind. So, a mental and valuation process consist of non
physical process, a thought, concept, image, feeling or the like. This mental process is
opposed to physical process which was called by Bloomfield as the mechanistic.

Semantics is central to the study of communication ; and as communication

becomes more and more a crucial factor in social organization, they need to understand
it becomes more and more pressing. Semantics is also at the centre of the study of the
human mind – thought processes, cognition, conceptualization – all these are intricately
bound up with the way in which we classify and convey our experience of the world
through language. What Geoffrey Leech stated about semantics is that he emphasized
its rule on a broader sense – communication in social organization and our experience
of the world which se convey through thought processes and the like. From Leech’s
point of view it seems to us that understanding language means understanding meaning,
thus meaning would be the starting point in communication. We can see for example in
the sentence below how we tend to focus on its meaning first despite its ungrammatical
form : I go to Jakarta last week. We can be easily understood and our communication
still keep going on through thought process which meaning is bound up which causes
the communication flows. Thus semantics is also an empiric study of meaning.

2.2 Lexical and Phrasal Sentential Semantics

2.2.1 Lexical Semantics
Lexical semantics is the study of individual words and their relationships to
each another. List of words can share semantic properties; for example, shark,
sturgeon, cichlid, holacanthus ciliaris, and tuna, all share the properties of ‘live
in the water,’ ‘have fins,’ and ‘eat fish.’  Binary values for semantic features [+,
-] are used to denote word meaning.  Consider the set below.
(1)
lady      hen       aunt         maiden
doe      mare     widow      girl
ewe     vixen     woman     tigress

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 Each of these words bears the features [+animate], [+female], (as well as others
which we will not discuss here).  If we add the feature [-animal], the set is now
reduced to only those words that are [+animate] [+female] [-animal].

(2)

lady            widow         aunt

woman      maiden       girl

By adding the feature [-youth], we are left with an even more reduced set:

(3)

lady         aunt

widow    woman

Semantic features can also show ryelationships in word pairs.

2.2.2 Phrasal Sentential Semantics

The Principle of Compositionality states that the meaning of a sentence is the
sum of its parts. In other words, we can judge the truth of the sentence based on
the existence of its referents in the world. In (6), if there is a person named
George Washington who belongs to the group of people in the world that never
told a lie, then (6) is true.
- George Washington never told a lie.
Entailment describes a situation in which the truth of one sentence assures the
truth of another. For example, sentence (7) entails sentence (8).
- Ruth is a wealthy psychiatrist.
- Ruth is a psychiatrist.
The truth conditions of a sentence are determined according to what exists in
the world.
A tautology is a sentence that is always true. Thus (9) is always true, since a
queen is the title for a female monarch. It can never not be true.
- All princesses are female.
A sentence that is always false is referred to as a contradiction. (10) could
never be true since the title for a male monarch is king.
- All kings are female.

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 Lastly, we have paradoxes to which no truth can be ascribed. Consider (11).
- I am not speaking the truth.
The truth-value of this sentence is impossible to ascertain.
There also exist sentences in which the parts do not equal the whole. In (12),
no truth can be understood because the meanings of the parts are nonsensical.
- The flowers stole the pie and ran home.
This is the stuff that many nursery rhymes are made of. This is called
an anomaly. 

2.3 Word Meaning

According to Katz , nearly everyone agrees on this and it is also generally agreed
that the basic question of semantic is ’’what is meaning? “but he argued what kind of
meaning we are concerned with ,or in general ,as the semanticists we have often
seemed argued the term which is also called “what is meaning of meaning ?
C.K .OGDEN and RICHARD list twenty _two definition of the word meaning. Some of

the definition are quoted by Leech (1974:1) as :

▪ an intrinsic property
▪ the other words annexed to a word in the dictionary
▪ the connotation of a word
▪ the place of anything in a system
▪ the practical consequences of a thing in our future experience
▪ that to which the user of a system actually refers
▪ that to which the user of a symbol ought to be referring
▪ that to which the user of the symbol believe himself to be referring
▪ that to which the interpreter of a symbol :
a) refers
b) believes himself to be referring
c) believes the user to be referring

2.4 Full and Empty Words

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2.4.1 Full Words
Full word in English are forms of the major parts of speech, such as nouns,
verbs, and adjectives. Ex:
a. Adjectives: beautiful, diligent, smart, cleaver, etc.
b. Nouns: table, chair, pen, books, key, etc.
c. Verbs: sleep, sit, eat, take, put, etc.
In the process of communication full words perform two important
functions semantic and grammatical:

a. Full words present the semantic material for building the lexical meaning and
the theme in the text.
b. Full words function as sentence members - they structure sentences

grammatically.

2.4.2 Empty Words

Empty words are the words traditionally grouped into the following parts of
speech: interjections, particles, articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions
1. Particle: a part of speech sharing the features of the verb and the noun
2. Interjection: a part of speech expressing emotion alone
3. Preposition: a part of speech placed before other words in composition and
in syntax
4. Adverb: a part of speech without inflection, in modification of or in
addition to a verb, adjective, clause, sentence, or other adverb
5. Conjunction: a part of speech binding together the discourse and filling
gaps in its interpretation.
Not all of them are necessarily manifested in every language. Some adverbs
also belong to these, and occasionally, in text adjectives and nouns of certain
general semantics could function like empty words.

 It is hard to discuss without putting it in a context. It is discussed in terms

of grammatical phrase or combined with full words. While Empty word does not
have semantic decomposition.

Therefore Closed word classes is included into empty word:

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  auxiliary verbs
 Clitics
 Coverbs
 Vonjunctions
 Determiners (articles, quantifiers, demonstrative adjectives,
and possessive adjectives)
 Particles
 Measure words
 Adpositions (prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions)
 Preverbs
 Pronouns
 Contractions
 Cardinal numbers
6. Noun: a part of speech inflected for case, signifying a concrete or abstract
entity
7. Verb: a part of speech without case inflection, but inflected for tense,
person and number, signifying an activity or process performed or
undergone
8. Pronoun: a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for a person

2.5 Lexical and Grammatical word

2.5.1 Lexical Words
Lexical words or Open-class words, as Leslie Jeffries writes, are “those
which contain the main semantic information in a text, and they fall into the four
main lexical word classes: noun, verb, adjective and adverb” (Jeffries, 2006, p.
83). Stott and Chapman, in their book Grammar and Writing (2001) define these
classes as:
 Verb: A word or phrase which expresses the action, process or state in the
clause (e.g. I’m eating my favourite meal right now; I will go to that football
match; I went quietly)
 Adverb: Single words that modify verbs by adding to their meaning (e.g. The
choir sang sweetly). Words or phrases that modify or give extra definition to
the verb in terms of place, manner and time (e.g. I’m eating my favourite

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 meal right now; I’m eating my favourite meal in my favourite restaurant), are
often referred to as adverbial.
 Noun: Words that names persons / places / things or abstractions (e.g. Edward,
Tanzania, guitar, happiness). In earlier centuries all nouns in the English
language were given a capital letter. In German, they still do the same. In
English now, only proper nouns are given capital letters.
 Adjective: Words that modify nouns by adding to their meanings (e.g. That
was a long film). Most adjectives have comparative (I’m glad it wasn’t
any longer) and Superlative forms (It was the longest film I’ve ever seen).
They classes are referred to as open-class because “they are open-ended and can
be added to readily” (Jeffries, 2006, p. 83), but they are also often referred to as
lexical words because they carry a lexicial meaning (sometimes they are even
referred to as semantic words, for the same reason). Sara Thorne goes on to say:
“New words can be added to nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs as they
become necessary, developing language to match changes in the society around
us. The computer age, for example, has introduced new words like hardware,
software, CD-Rom and spreadsheet; the 1980s introduced words like Rambo,
kissogram and wimp; the 1990s introduced words like babelicious, alcopop and
e-verdict; and the twenty-first century words like bling, chav, sudoko, bluetooth,
chuggers (‘charity muggers’), mediatrics (‘media dramatics’ i.e. a story
created from nothing), and doorstepping (journalists catching celebrities on
their doorsteps to question them about incidents they would prefer not to
discuss). Open-class words are often called lexical words and have a clearly
definable meaning”. (Thorne, 2008. p. 4)
2.5.2 Grammatical Words
If open-class words tend to change frequently, then closed-class words tend
not to change very often. Closed-class or grammatical words (sometimes
referred to as function words) have less meaning than open-class or lexical
words, but do useful jobs in language. They are the ‘little words’ that act as the
glue, or connectors, inside a sentence. Without them, lexical words might still
carry meaning but they do not make as much sense.

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 Grammatical words include articles, prepositions, conjunctions and
pronouns.
 Articles: There are only two articles in English: the definite article, the, and
the indefinite article a(n) (Jeffries, 2006. p. 96).
 Prepositions: Define the relationships that exist between elements. This
includes relationships of place (at, on, by, opposite), of direction (towards,
past, out, of, to, through), of time (at, before, in, on), of comparison (as, like),
of source (from, out of), and of purpose (for) (Thorne, 2008. p. 20).
Prepositions are by no means uncomplicated – you will have noticed from
this list that the word 'at' can function as both a preposition of place and of
time, depending on its contexts.
 Conjuntions: The function of conjunctions is to link together elements of
sentences and phrases. They come in two forms. Co-ordinating conjunctions
are words that join two clauses in a sentence, where each clause is of equal
importance (i.e., 'and', 'but', 'either', 'or', 'neither', 'nor'). Subordinating
conjunctions are words that link sentences where one half is a consequence
of the other ('although', 'as', 'because', 'if', 'since', 'that', 'though', 'until',
'where', 'when', 'while', etc.).
 Pronouns: Pronouns come in two forms. Firstly, the pronoun itself, where
words are “used instead of a noun or noun phrase (e.g. it, he, who, theirs)”.
Secondly, there is the personal pronoun, in which “[w]ords identify speakers,
addressees and others (I, you, she, it, we, they)” (Stott and Shapman, 2001).
2.6 Lexical Relations
There are a few ways to characterize the meaning of a word; we can do it
through morphology, phonology, or even through its categorization: whether it is
animate, human, female, or adult. However, there is another way to characterize
the meaning of a word: namely, to characterize the word through its lexical
relations.
Lexical relationships are the connections established between one word and
another; for example, we all know that the opposite of “closed” is “open” and
that “literature” is similar to “book”. These words have a significant relationship
to one another, whereas words like “chair” and “coffee” might have no
meaningful relationship; thus, certain lexical relationships can inform us about
the meaning of a word.

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 Lexical relations describe relationship among word meanings. It is the study of
how lexicon is managed and how the lexical meanings of lexical items are related each
other. There are several types of lexical relations, such as; homonym, polysemy,
synonymy, antonym, hyponymy, and metonymy (Palmer, 1976).
There are a few common types of lexical relationships: synonymy,
antonymy, hyponymy, and polysemy. This is not all the known types of lexical
relationships, but as an introduction to lexical relations, these will suffice.
a. Synonymy
This is perhaps the most commonly understood of all the lexical
relations. Synonymy is the idea that some words have the same meaning as
others, though this is not always the case; that is, there are some synonyms
which cannot replace one another in a sentence, we will give some
examples of this further down.
When words have the same meaning, they can replace one another
without altering the meaning of a sentence; for example:

Jane is quick

Jane is fast

Jane is speedy

All three sentences have the same meaning even though they are each
unique instances of that sentence; only because the meanings  of all three
words at the end of the sentences are the same. This, by extension, then
allows each sentence to maintain the same meaning as before.
Now, this lexical relationship, as said earlier, does not necessarily
hold for all synonyms. Consider some of these pairs: quick/high-speed,
quick/brisk. When we do the same sentence exercise as above, we will get
radically different meanings:
Jane is quick

Jane is high-speed

Jane is brisk

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 So, synonyms sometimes lack the same meanings when applied to a
specific context or sentence; indeed, there are cases where the result will
give us something incoherent or incredibly odd. Therefore, the key to
remember with synonyms is that, although they have a relationship in
meaning, they do not always have the same meaning in sentences.
b. Antonymy
Antonymy is precisely the opposite of synonymy. With antonymy, we
are concerned with constructions which are opposite to one another with
respect to lexical relationships. For example, ice/hot, beautiful/ugly, and
big/small. These words have meanings which are opposite to one another,
and these opposite meanings come in two forms: categorical and
continuous.
The categorical distinction is one that has two categories that contrast
one another; for example, fire/water. These are categorical because there is
no continuum between them; that is, less fire never means more water and
less water never means more fire. Comparatively, antonyms that are on a
continuum are constructions like big/small.  This is due to the relative
nature of these words; meaning, when we call a horse small, it may be
relative to something else like another horse. And when that same horse is
compared yet again, it might be the case that the horse is now big. So, the
meanings between big and small are on a continuum relative to the object
of discussion.
Some example phrases of antonymy are as follows:

Jane is small

Jane is big

Jane is slow

Jane is fast

These phrases all have opposite meanings to one another, and we can
see this more readily through their applications to sentences. It is also
important to note that antonymy can have issues as well, though only when

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 we shift the nature of our communication: I.e., “The economy is going
nuts,” can also be said, though sarcastically, in the following manner: “the
economy is perfectly healthy”. Traditionally, “going nuts” and “mentally
healthy” are viewed as opposite meanings, but when we shift the manner in
which we speak, like with sarcasm, this relationship fails to hold up. Thus,
antonyms work differently when we hold as an assumption a literal or
straightforward view of discourse.

c. Hyponymy
Hyponymy is similar to the notion of embeddedness; meaning, the
semantics of one object is implied by another. That is to say, because words
represent objects, the semantic properties of a particular object, like
whether it is a female or animate, can be embedded in a word that implies
those same objects; and so, the meaning of word “x” can be embedded in
word “z”. For example, “Donald Trump” implies “human,” or “animate”.
This is due to the fact that Donald Trump, despite the beliefs of others, is
both a human and animate. With each word, there is implied the notion of
another semantic feature.
These semantic features, might I add, are organized in an ordinal
fashion, which means there is a rank for embeddedness: from specific to
general. The most general word would sit atop the hierarchy; so, with
respect to our friend Donald Trump, the hierarchy might look something
like the following:
1. Animate

2. Human

3. Male

4. Adult

There are also technical terms that are used to describe the
relationships amongst these hierarchies: superordinates and co-hyponyms.

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 In the previous example, animate would be considered superordinate to
human and human would be considered superordinate to female. On the
other hand, when a term is on the same level as another word, then it is
named a co-hyponym; for instance, “dog” and “cat” are a co-hyponyms that
have “pet” as their superordinate. So, hyponyms move from either specific
to general or general to specific, where general is at the top of the hierarchy
and specific is at the bottom.
So hyponymy is the idea of embedded semantic features in a
hierarchical order. When we speak of Donald Trump, we necessarily bring
up specific semantic features.
d. Polysemy
Polysemy deals with constructions that have multiple meanings; for
example, “head,”, “over,” or, “letter,” can all adopt multiple meanings.
These words could be considered polysemous since they each have many
potential meanings.
The word “head” can be used to refer to the top of someone’s body:
“Jane received a head injury”; it can be used to refer to the front of a line:
“Jane is at the head of the line”. It can also be used to refer to how prepared
someone is: “Jane is way ahead of the curve, she already read the chapter
for next week”.  So, the word “head” is polysemous since it has many
meanings.
Another word with many meanings is “over”. The word “over” can be
used more ways than countable; for instance, “she lives over there,” is
different from, “she lives over the hill”. Even furthermore, “the lid is over
the pot,” and, “is it over yet,” are both different from one another and the
two previously mentioned examples. The word “over,” as said already, has
more meanings than countable.
Words are not alone when it comes to being polysemous, sentences
are polysemous to; for instance, “Jane hit the man with the umbrella”.
Here, it is unclear as to whether Jane had hit someone with an umbrella, as
though the umbrella were a weapon, or if she had bumped into someone

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that was holding an umbrella. And not every meaning associated with a
given polysemous sentence will be the same.
So, polysemy pertains to words and phrases that can have more than
one meaning; sometimes the context of a specific phrase will allow us to
negate other phrases, like if someone was holding an umbrella, but when
removed from context, phrases remain ambiguous. And thus, polysemy
highlights the importance of analyzing semantic features of words rather
than analyzing syntax alone.

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 Question section
1. What do you know about semantic? Please explain briefly and give example!
2. How many kind of Semantic? Explain and give example each one!
3. What is word meaning? Give an example!
4. Please explain and give example of Full and Empty word!
5. Give an example of Lexical and Grammatical Word! (Minim 3 example)

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 REFERENCES

Baga, Karim Nazhari. 2011. A Short Introduction to Semantic. Finland: 2011

Academy Publisher

Ideasinhat. 2018. How Word Relate: Lexical Realationship._________:

ideasinhat.com

Jeffries, L. 2006. Discovering Language: The Structure of Modern English.

Basingstoke: Palgrave

Pardede, Hilman. 2016. Semantic: Aview to Logic of Language. Pematang

Siantar:_________

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