SEMANTICS

INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY , ISLAMABD

Group 1
Huma Hafeez
Kinza
Ghafoor
Huma Aslam
Ayesha
Sumaira Bibi

 “Semantics” comes from the Greek semantikos
which means to show or give signs.

 Semantics can be applied to different kinds of
symbol systems, such as computer languages
and similar coding systems.
 It is a wide subject within the general study of
language

 Semantics is the study of meaning.

 An understanding of semantics is essential to
the study of language acquisition (how
language users acquire a sense of meaning, as
speakers and writers, listeners and readers)
and of language change (how meanings alter
over time). It is important for understanding
language in social contexts, as these are likely
to affect meaning, and for understanding
varieties of English and effects of style. It is
thus one of the most fundamental concepts in
linguistics

 The study of semantics includes the study of
how meaning is
constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, ill
ustrated, simplified negotiated, contradicted
and paraphrased.
 In general, however, semantics generally refers
to how meaning is conveyed through the
symbols of a written language.semantics is the
"study of the meaning of a language".

 Additionally, it is concerned with the
conceptual meaning and not the associative
meaning. The conceptual meaning is what a
word in fact denotes, as for example Friday the
13th is a day between Thursday the 12th and
Saturday the 14th, and that is the conceptual
meaning of the phrase Friday the 13 th. Yet, for
many people the idea of that day brings to mind
thoughts of bad luck and misfortune, which is
the associative meaning.

Associative
meaning

WORD

EXAMPLE

 2.When one first reads the word “crash,” for
example, a car accident may leap to mind.
However, the term can also be used to discuss
the sound that is created when a pair of large
symbols are brought together in a piece of
music, or how waves break against a rocky
coast.
 The meaning of words is analyzed in several
different ways in order to account for as many
aspects of meaning as possible. First of all,
words are analyzed in terms of their semantic
features that is basic elements which enable
the differentiation of meaning of words.

ELEMENTS OF SEMANTICS
 There are many different aspects of
semantics, which are all very interesting. Just think
of the many ways that words, phrases and
sentences aquire meaning. Some words have
actual entites to which they refer, such as chair.
This word refers to a collective idea of all the chairs
in existence. Other words have less exact meaning
and may vary within the minds of speakers, such as
love. This word can mean many
 I love my mom.
 I love chocolate cake.
 I love my husband.
 I love Paris.
 Each of these examples show a different contextual
meaning of the word love

ROLE OF SEMANTICS IN
LANGUAGE:
 Semantics in language determines the
relationship between signifiers and what they
signify. Although images and body language
can be included as signifiers in a wider study of
semantics, linguistic semantics deals strictly
with words and their meanings. Semantics is a
subfield of linguistics specializing in the study
of meaning.
 Signifiers have multiple levels of meaning:

 The simplest level, also known as the first
order of signification, is the denotation of a
word.

 Denotation refers to a strictly literal
understanding, and the object referred to is known
as the denotata.
 For example:
 The noun phrase “brown bear” signifies a large
omnivorous mammal known scientifically as the
ursus arctos.
 Various cultural or emotional meanings attached to
a word provide one or more deeper levels of
meaning. These subjective meanings are known as
connotations. For example:
 A camper might hear “brown bear” with a
connotation of fear and panic. On the other
hand, “brown bear” might mean
friendship, comfort, and security for a child who
plays and sleeps with a stuffed animal.

MONTAGUE GRAMMAR:
 The field of formal semantics, or model
theoretic semantics, was pioneered by
philosopher and mathematician Richard
Montague in the mid twentieth century.
Montague showed how all sentences could be
broken down into subjects and predicates.
These parts could be compared to
mathematical concepts, particularly those in
the branch of mathematics called typed
lambda calculi, in order to evaluate its
meaning. This theory is also known as
Montague grammar.

 Although Montague‟s theory of semantics in
language is one of the first and most commonly
accepted, various philosophers have created
other systems.
 For example, the theory of truth-conditional
semantics was developed by Donald Davidson
shortly after Montague published his work on
formal semantics. Truth-conditional semantics
evaluates the truth of a sentence by looking to
specific, real world examples. Other theories
include conceptual, lexical, and computational
semantics…… semantics.

AGENT, THEME, INSTRUMENT, EXPERIENCER:
 Semantic roles describe the way in which
words are used in sentences and the functions
they fulfill. Thus, the entity that performs an
action is known as an agent, while the entity
involved in an action is called the theme. When
an agent uses an entity in order to do
something this entity is called an instrument.
 However, when a person in a sentence does
not perform any action, but only has a
perception, state of feeling then the role is
described as experiencer

 Finally there are roles connected with motion
or position of entities. So, the location is where
an entity is, the source is the initial position of
the entity, the place where it moves from and
the goal is where the entity moves to.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORDS:

 One other issue investigated by semantics is
the relationship between words, some of which
are known to almost every language user,
others very abstract and vague for a common
speaker.

SYNONYMS:
 Synonym and antonym are forms of Greek
nouns which mean, respectively, “same name”
and “opposed (or different) name”. Synonyms
have an identical reference meaning, but since
they have differing connotations, they can
never be truly synonymous.
 Synonyms are two words with very similar,
almost identical meaning, such as buy and
purchase, or cab and taxi. In some cases
however, although the meaning seems nearly
identical there is a difference in the word usage
or the level of formality and therefore the
words can not always be substituted.

ANTONYMS:

 The relationship between words is the
case when two words have opposite
meanings, the words such as
male/female, old/new, interesting/boring
are antonyms.
 Antonyms are divided into gradable and
non-gradable antonyms.

 Gradable antonyms are opposites along a scale
in that when someone says „I am not high‟ it
does not necessarily mean „I am short‟.
 Non-gradable antonyms do not present such
flexibility: when we say „I am married‟ the only
antonym available in this sentence would be „I
am single‟.
 True and false may show a clearer contrast.
Clear either/or conditions are expressed
by complementary antonyms as, open/closed,
dead/alive, on/off.

 Another kind (not really opposites at all) are
pairs which go together, and represent two
sides of a relation: these are relational
antonyms. Examples would
be husband/wife, borrow/lend, murderer/victim,
plaintiff/defendant.

HYPONYMS:
 Sometimes the meaning of one word is
included in the meaning of another, broader
term. Then the relationship between words can
be described as hyponymy as in the case of
words: vegetable and carrot. A carrot is
necessarily a vegetable, therefore the meaning
of the word vegetable is included in the word
carrot, so carrot is a hyponym of vegetable. In
this relation the word vegetable is the
superordinte (higher level term) of the word
carrot. The relationship of hyponymy and
superordination can be illustrated by the
following diagram:

 Hyponymy is an inclusive relationship where
some lexemes are co-hyponyms of another that
includes them.
 As cutlery includes knife, fork, spoon (but
not teacup) these are co-hyponyms of the parent
or super ordinating term. This traditional term
denotes a grouping similar to a semantic field.
So cod, guppy, salmon and trout are hyponyms
for fish.
 David Crystal points out that this is a linguistic,
not a real-world, relationship - so it varies from
one language to another. In English potato is a
hyponym of vegetable but in German the
lexeme Gemüse does not
include Kartoffel (potato).

HOMOPHONY:

 Homonyms are different lexemes with the
same form (written, spoken or both).
 Homophones are words which have
different written forms, but the same
pronunciation such as: right/write,
to/too/two, bear/bare. Homophones are
often mistaken for homonyms, but
homonyms are words which have the same
written or spoken forms and unrelated
meanings.
 For example:
 Bat (flying creature) and bat (used in
baseball), race (contest) and race (ethnic
group).

POLYSEMY:
 Polysemy (or polysemia) is an intimidating
compound noun for a basic language feature. The
name comes from Greek poly (many)
and semy (to do with meaning, as in semantics).
Polysemy is also
called radiation or multiplication.
 For example:
 Paper comes from Greek papyrus. Originally it
referred to writing material made from the
papyrus reeds of the Nile, later to other writing
materials, and now to things such as government
documents, scientific reports, family archives or
newspapers.
 Another example could be Head: head as a part
of body; mind, or mental ability; a person in
charge.

METONYMY:
 Metonymy is based on close
connection of certain entities in
everyday experience. The
connection can be that of
container-content, whole-part, or
others. It is clearly visible in the
following example „he drank the
whole bottle‟ when it is obvious that
he did not drink the container, but
the content of the bottle.

DENOTATION:

 This is the core or central meaning of a word or
lexeme, as far as it can be described in a
dictionary. It is therefore sometimes known as
 the cognitive or referential meaning. It is
possible to think of lexical items that have a
more or less fixed denotation (sun, denoting
the nearest star, perhaps) but this is rare.

CONNOTATION:

 Connotation is connected with psychology
and culture, as it means the
personal or emotional associations aroused
by words. When these associations are
widespread and become established by
common usage, a new denotation is
recorded in dictionaries. A possible
example of such change would be vicious.
Originally derived from vice, it meant
“extremely wicked”. In modern British
usage it is commonly used to mean “fierce”,
as in the brown rat is a vicious animal.


COLLOCATION:

 Some words are most commonly found paired
with other words, to create a semantic unit or
lexeme. These pairs are known as collocations.
They are very helpful in establishing the
meanings of the words in the pair.
 For Example:

 Play is likely to be followed by film, mag,
series.It may be collocated with actor,
director & merchant but is less likely to be
followed by customer, operative or minister.

FIXED EXPRESSIONS:

 When words become grouped in almost
predictable ways these are fixed
expressions.
 For Example:

 Jewel in the crown, desirable residence,
criminal mastermind, world of work,
address the issues, I put it to you.

PROTOTYPE THEORY:

 Prototype theory helped in explaining the meaning
of a certain word not in terms of its features but in
terms of resemblanceto the clearest examplar.
 For Example:
 If we take an example of Bird then we will
understand it that dove, pigeon, hen, parrot fall in
this category, not according to its features that
which has feathers or wings.
 Native speakers of english might wonder that
ostrich and penguin are hyponyms of birds, but we
are sure that sparrow and pigeon are birds so they
are prototype.

SEMANTIC FIELDS:

 In studying the lexicon of English (or any language)
we may group together lexemes which inter-
relate, in the sense that we need them to define or
describe each other.
 For Example:
 We can see how such lexemes as
cat, feline, moggy, puss, kitten, tom, queen and
miaow occupy the same semantic field. We can also
see that some lexemes will occupy many fields:
noise will appear in semantic fields for
acoustics, pain or discomfort and electronics.
Although such fields are not clear-cut and
coherent, they are akin to the kind of groupings
children make for themselves in learning a
language. An entertaining way to see how we
organize the lexicon for ourselves is to play word-
association games.

SEMANTICS

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