HMCS Max Bernays Pre-Deployment Brief (May 2024).pptx
Syntax & Semantics
1. 1
Group Members
• Hamza Khan (Leader)
• Shahrukh Khan
• Wasif Ali
• Sheraz Khan
• Syed Muhammad Saadan Kaka Khel
2. 2
Semantics
• Word meaning
• Importance of semantics
• Semantics roles
Syntax
• Ambiguity
• Recursion
• Tree Structure
Presentation Topics
3. What is Semantics?
Semantics is the study of meanings in words,
phrases and sentences.
In semantics there is always an attempt to focus on
what the words conventionally means, rather than
on what a speaker might want the words on a
particular occasion.
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4. Meanings of a Word
Conceptual meanings: In Semantics, conceptual
meaning is the literal or core sense of a word. Also
called denotation or cognitive meaning.
For example: “Needle” – thin sharp steel instrument.
Associative meanings: In Associative meaning you
may have ‘association’ or ‘connotations’ attached to
a word.
For example: “Needle” – Pain, Blood, Hard to find.
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5. Conceptual vs Associative meanings
When linguist investigates the meaning of words in a
language they are normally interested in
characterizing the conceptual meaning and less
concerned with associative meaning of words.
However, poets and advertisers are very interested
in using terms in such a way that their associative
meanings are evoked.
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6. Importance Of Semantics
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is a sentence
composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book
Syntactic Structures as an example of a sentence that
is grammatically correct, but semantically wrong.
Semantics gives us the ability to know if a sentence
is correct in terms of meanings.
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7. Semantic Roles
Words are not just “containers” of meanings.
They fulfill different “roles” within the situation
described by a sentence.
For example: If the situation is a simple event
Such as,
The boy kicked the ball
The verb ‘kicked’ describes an action.
The noun phrase ‘The boy’ & ‘the ball’ describe the roles of
bodies such as people and things involved in the action.
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8. Semantic Roles
Agent: The entity that perform the action is technically
known as “agent”.
For example: The boy kicked the ball.
• Agents are usually humans, they can also be non humans
forces, machines or creatures
For example: The wind blew the ball away
Theme: The entity that is involved in or affected by an action
is technically known as “theme”.
For example: The boy kicked the ball.
• In this sentence “ball” is the theme because it is affected by
an action performed by the ‘agent’.
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9. Semantic Roles
Experiencer: If a person feels something in a noun
phrase, He/She fills the role of an experiencer.
If we see, know or enjoy something, we do not
perform any action. In this way we are in the role of
experiencer.
For example: Did you hear that noise?
The experiencer is“you” and the theme is “that noise”.
Source: Place/ location from which something
moves.
For example: The baby crawled from the kitchen to the door.
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10. Semantic Roles
Goal: Place to which something moves.
For example: He threw a stone at me.
Instrument: A thing that an agent uses to
implement an event.
For example: Someone cut the bread with a knife.
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11. Lexical Relations
Words are not only the ‘containers’ and fulfilling ‘roles’. They can
also have ‘relationships’.
Synonymy refers to words that are pronounced and spelled
differently but contain the same meaning.
Example: Happy, joyful, glad
Antonymy refers to words that are related by having the
opposite meanings to each other.
Example: Dead, alive
Homonymy refers to the relationship between words that are
spelled or pronounced the same way but hold different
meanings.
Example: bark (the sound of a dog) and bark (the skin of a tree).
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12. What is Syntax?
The arrangement of words and phrases to create well formed
sentences in a language.
The word “Syntax” originally comes from Greek and literally
means “putting together” or “arrangement.”
Rules for proper arrangement of words in English
Grammar/Syntax
S + V + O
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13. What is Syntax?
Syntax is not about meaning! Sentences can have no sense
and still be grammatically correct
Incorrect sentence should be marked with a star (*).
For example:
He eats a car.
- nonsense, but grammatically correct .
*Car a eats he.
- Grammatically incorrect.
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14. Ambiguity
The Property of having two or more meanings.
Structural ambiguity: A “sentence/phrase” that has two or
more than two meanings.
For example: I saw a man with a telescope.
(Who has the telescope, me or the man?)
Lexical ambiguity: A “word” that has two or more than two
meanings.
For example: We saw her duck.
(We saw her pet animal.)
(We saw her bend to avoid something.)
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15. Recursion
In syntax ‘recursion’ is the repeating of something in a
sentence.
We can repeat Noun Phrase (NP) in a sentence as long as it
makes sense.
For example: The gun was on the table.
Adding another NP (near the window) & (in the bedroom)
The gun was on the table near the window in the bedeoom.
Putting sentences inside other sentences/phrases.
For example: I helped him
Adding “She knew” in the upper sentence.
She knew that I helped him.
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16. Tree Diagram
Tree diagram provides us a visual representation of a
sentence structure.
Symbols used in tree diagram
Sentence – S Adjective – Adj
Noun Phrase – NP Adverb - Adv
Verb Phrase – VP Preposition – Prep
Prepositional Phrase – PP Article - Art
Noun – N Verb - V
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