Semantics is the study of word meanings

Semantics (from Ancient Greek: σημαντικός sēmantikós, «significant»)^[a][1] is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and computer science.

History[edit]

In English, the study of meaning in language has been known by many names that involve the Ancient Greek word σῆμα (sema, «sign, mark, token»).

In 1690, a Greek rendering of the term semiotics, the interpretation of signs and symbols, finds an early allusion in John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

The third Branch may be called σηµιωτικὴ [simeiotikí, «semiotics»], or the Doctrine of Signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also λογικὴ, Logick.

In 1831, the term sematology is suggested for the third branch of division of knowledge akin to Locke; the «signs of our knowledge».^[2]

In 1857, the term semasiology (borrowed from German Semasiologie) is attested in Josiah W. Gibbs’ Philological studies with English illustrations:^[3]

The development of intellectual and moral ideas from physical, constitutes an important part of semasiology, or that branch of grammar which treats of the development of the meaning of words. It is built on the analogy and correlation of the physical and intellectual worlds.

In 1893, the term semantics is used to translate French sémantique as used by Michel Bréal.^[4] Some years later, in Essai de Sémantique, Bréal writes:^[5]

What I have tried to do is to draw some broad lines, to mark some divisions and as a provisional plan on a field not yet exploited, and which requires the combined work of several generations of linguists. I therefore ask the reader to consider this book as a simple Introduction to the science I have proposed to call Semantics. [In footnote:] Σημαντικὴ τέχνη, the science of significations [i.e., what it means], from the verb σημαίνω «to signify», as opposed to Phonetics, the science of sounds [i.e., what it sounds like].

In 1922, the concept of semantics is attested in mathematical logic amidst a group of scholars in Poland including Leon Chwistek, Leśniewski, Łukasiewicz, Kotarbinski, Adjukiewicz, and Tarski. According to Allen Walker Read, they had been influenced by French culture; moreover, later, their work influenced Alfred Korzybski’s usage of the term.^[2][6][7]

In the 1960s, semantics for programming languages is attested in publications by Robert W. Floyd and Tony Hoare, later termed axiomatic semantics; its chief application is formal verification of computer programs. Some years later, the terms operational semantics and denotational semantics emerged.^[8] Floyd, in the lead to his 1967 paper Assigning meanings to programs, writes:^[9]

A semantic definition of a programming language, in our approach, is founded on a syntactic definition. It must specify which of the phrases in a syntactically correct program represent commands, and what conditions must be imposed on an interpretation in the neighborhood of each command.

Linguistics[edit]

In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that studies meaning.^[10] Semantics can address meaning at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, or larger units of discourse. Two of the fundamental issues in the field of semantics are that of compositional semantics (which pertains on how smaller parts, like words, combine and interact to form the meaning of larger expressions, such as sentences) and lexical semantics (the nature of the meaning of words).^[10] Other prominent issues are those of context and its role on interpretation, opaque contexts, ambiguity, vagueness, entailment, and presuppositions.^[10]

Several disciplines and approaches have contributed to the often-contentious field of semantics. One of the crucial questions which unites different approaches to linguistic semantics is that of the relationship between form and meaning.^[11] Some major contributions to the study of semantics have derived from studies in the 1980–1990s in related subjects of the syntax–semantics interface and pragmatics.^[10]

The semantic level of language interacts with other modules or levels (like syntax) in which language is traditionally divided. In linguistics, it is typical to talk in terms of «interfaces» regarding such interactions between modules or levels. For semantics, the most crucial interfaces are considered those with syntax (the syntax–semantics interface), pragmatics, and phonology (regarding prosody and intonation).^[10]

Disciplines and paradigms in linguistic semantics[edit]

Formal semantics[edit]

Formal semantics seeks to identify domain-specific mental operations which speakers perform when they compute a sentence’s meaning on the basis of its syntactic structure. Theories of formal semantics are typically floated on top of theories of syntax, such as generative syntax or combinatory categorial grammar, and provided a model theory based on mathematical tools, such as typed lambda calculi. The field’s central ideas are rooted in early twentieth century philosophical logic, as well as later ideas about linguistic syntax. It emerged as its own subfield in the 1970s after the pioneering work of Richard Montague and Barbara Partee and continues to be an active area of research.

Conceptual semantics[edit]

This theory is an effort to explain properties of argument structure. The assumption behind this theory is that syntactic properties of phrases reflect the meanings of the words that head them.^[12] With this theory, linguists can better deal with the fact that subtle differences in word meaning correlate with other differences in the syntactic structure that the word appears in.^[12] The way this is gone about is by looking at the internal structure of words.^[13] These small parts that make up the internal structure of words are termed semantic primitives.^[13]

Cognitive semantics[edit]

Cognitive semantics approaches meaning from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. In this framework, language is explained via general human cognitive abilities rather than a domain-specific language module. The techniques native to cognitive semantics are typically used in lexical studies such as those put forth by Leonard Talmy, George Lakoff, Dirk Geeraerts, and Bruce Wayne Hawkins. Some cognitive semantic frameworks, such as that developed by Talmy, take into account syntactic structures as well.^[14]

Lexical semantics[edit]

A linguistic theory that investigates word meaning. This theory understands that the meaning of a word is fully reflected by its context. Here, the meaning of a word is constituted by its contextual relations.^[15] Therefore, a distinction between degrees of participation as well as modes of participation are made.^[15] In order to accomplish this distinction, any part of a sentence that bears a meaning and combines with the meanings of other constituents is labeled as a semantic constituent. Semantic constituents that cannot be broken down into more elementary constituents are labeled minimal semantic constituents.^[15]

Cross-cultural semantics[edit]

Various fields or disciplines have long been contributing to cross-cultural semantics. Are words like love, truth, and hate universals?^[16] Is even the word sense – so central to semantics – a universal, or a concept entrenched in a long-standing but culture-specific tradition?^[17] These are the kind of crucial questions that are discussed in cross-cultural semantics. Translation theory, ethnolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and cultural linguistics specialize in the field of comparing, contrasting, and translating words, terms and meanings from one language to another (see J. G. Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and B. L. Whorf). Philosophy, sociology, and anthropology have long established traditions in contrasting the different nuances of the terms and concepts we use. Online encyclopaedias such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophyand Wikipedia itself have greatly facilitated the possibilities of comparing the background and usages of key cultural terms. In recent years, the question of whether key terms are translatable or untranslatable has increasingly come to the fore of global discussions, especially since the publication of Barbara Cassin’s Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon, in 2014.^[18][19]

Computational semantics[edit]

Computational semantics is focused on the processing of linguistic meaning. In order to do this, concrete algorithms and architectures are described. Within this framework the algorithms and architectures are also analyzed in terms of decidability, time/space complexity, data structures that they require and communication protocols.^[20]

Philosophy[edit]

Many of the formal approaches to semantics in mathematical logic and computer science originated in early twentieth century philosophy of language and philosophical logic. Initially, the most influential semantic theory stemmed from Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Frege and Russell are seen as the originators of a tradition in analytic philosophy to explain meaning compositionally via syntax and mathematical functionality. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a former student of Russell, is also seen as one of the seminal figures in the analytic tradition. All three of these early philosophers of language were concerned with how sentences expressed information in the form of propositions. They also dealt with the truth values or truth conditions a given sentence has in virtue of the proposition it expresses.^[21]

In present day philosophy, the term «semantics» is often used to refer to linguistic formal semantics, which bridges both linguistics and philosophy. There is also an active tradition of metasemantics, which studies the foundations of natural language semantics.^[22]

Computer science[edit]

In computer science, the term semantics refers to the meaning of language constructs, as opposed to their form (syntax). According to Euzenat, semantics «provides the rules for interpreting the syntax which do not provide the meaning directly but constrains the possible interpretations of what is declared».^[23]

Programming languages[edit]

The semantics of programming languages and other languages is an important issue and area of study in computer science. Like the syntax of a language, its semantics can be defined exactly.

For instance, the following statements use different syntaxes, but lead the computer to perform the same operations—add the value of a variable ‘y’ to the value of a variable ‘x’ and store the result in x:

Statement	Programming languages
x += y	C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, etc.
$x += $y	Perl, PHP
x := x + y	Ada, ALGOL, ALGOL 68, BCPL, Dylan, Eiffel, J, Modula-2, Oberon, OCaml, Object Pascal (Delphi), Pascal, SETL, Simula, Smalltalk, Standard ML, VHDL, and others.
MOV EAX,[y] ADD [x],EAX	Assembly languages: Intel 8086
ldr r2, [y] ldr r3, [x] add r3, r3, r2 str r3, [x]	Assembly languages: ARM
LET X = X + Y	BASIC: early
x = x + y	BASIC: most dialects; Fortran, MATLAB, Lua
Set x = x + y	Caché ObjectScript
ADD Y TO X.	ABAP
ADD Y TO X GIVING X	COBOL
set /a x=%x%+%y%	Batch
(incf x y)	Common Lisp
/x y x add def	PostScript
y @ x +!	Forth

Various ways have been developed to describe the semantics of programming languages formally, building on mathematical logic:^[24]

• Operational semantics: The meaning of a construct is specified by the computation it induces when it is executed on a machine. In particular, it is of interest how the effect of a computation is produced.
• Denotational semantics: Meanings are modelled by mathematical objects that represent the effect of executing the constructs. Thus, only the effect is of interest, not how it is obtained.
• Axiomatic semantics: Specific properties of the effect of executing the constructs are expressed as assertions. Thus there may be aspects of the executions that are ignored.

Semantic models[edit]

The Semantic Web refers to the extension of the World Wide Web via embedding added semantic metadata, using semantic data modeling techniques such as Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL). On the Semantic Web, terms such as semantic network and semantic data model are used to describe particular types of data model characterized by the use of directed graphs in which the vertices denote concepts or entities in the world and their properties, and the arcs denote relationships between them. These can formally be described as description logic concepts and roles, which correspond to OWL classes and properties.^[25]

Psychology[edit]

Semantic memory[edit]

In psychology, semantic memory is memory for meaning – in other words, the aspect of memory that preserves only the gist, the general significance, of remembered experience – while episodic memory is memory for the ephemeral details – the individual features, or the unique particulars of experience. The term «episodic memory» was introduced by Tulving and Schacter in the context of «declarative memory», which involved simple association of factual or objective information concerning its object. Word meaning is measured by the company they keep, i.e. the relationships among words themselves in a semantic network. The memories may be transferred intergenerationally or isolated in one generation due to a cultural disruption. Different generations may have different experiences at similar points in their own time-lines. This may then create a vertically heterogeneous semantic net for certain words in an otherwise homogeneous culture.^[26] In a network created by people analyzing their understanding of the word (such as Wordnet) the links and decomposition structures of the network are few in number and kind, and include part of, kind of, and similar links. In automated ontologies the links are computed vectors without explicit meaning. Various automated technologies are being developed to compute the meaning of words: latent semantic indexing and support vector machines, as well as natural language processing, artificial neural networks and predicate calculus techniques.

Ideasthesia[edit]

Ideasthesia is a psychological phenomenon in which activation of concepts evokes sensory experiences. For example, in synesthesia, activation of a concept of a letter (e.g., that of the letter A) evokes sensory-like experiences (e.g., of red color).

Psychosemantics[edit]

In the 1960s, psychosemantic studies became popular after Charles E. Osgood’s massive cross-cultural studies using his semantic differential (SD) method that used thousands of nouns and adjective bipolar scales. A specific form of the SD, Projective Semantics method^[27] uses only most common and neutral nouns that correspond to the 7 groups (factors) of adjective-scales most consistently found in cross-cultural studies (Evaluation, Potency, Activity as found by Osgood, and Reality, Organization, Complexity, Limitation as found in other studies). In this method, seven groups of bipolar adjective scales corresponded to seven types of nouns so the method was thought to have the object-scale symmetry (OSS) between the scales and nouns for evaluation using these scales. For example, the nouns corresponding to the listed 7 factors would be: Beauty, Power, Motion, Life, Work, Chaos, Law. Beauty was expected to be assessed unequivocally as «very good» on adjectives of Evaluation-related scales, Life as «very real» on Reality-related scales, etc. However, deviations in this symmetric and very basic matrix might show underlying biases of two types: scales-related bias and objects-related bias. This OSS design meant to increase the sensitivity of the SD method to any semantic biases in responses of people within the same culture and educational background.^[28][29]

Prototype theory[edit]

Another set of concepts related to fuzziness in semantics is based on prototypes. The work of Eleanor Rosch in the 1970s led to a view that natural categories are not characterizable in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but are graded (fuzzy at their boundaries) and inconsistent as to the status of their constituent members. One may compare it with Jung’s archetype, though the concept of archetype sticks to static concept. Some post-structuralists are against the fixed or static meaning of the words. Derrida, following Nietzsche, talked about slippages in fixed meanings.^{[citation needed]}

Systems of categories are not objectively out there in the world but are rooted in people’s experience. These categories evolve as learned concepts of the world – meaning is not an objective truth, but a subjective construct, learned from experience, and language arises out of the «grounding of our conceptual systems in shared embodiment and bodily experience».^[30]
A corollary of this is that the conceptual categories (i.e. the lexicon) will not be identical for different cultures, or indeed, for every individual in the same culture. This leads to another debate (see the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis or Eskimo words for snow).

See also[edit]

• Semantic technology

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Semanticsarchive.net
• Teaching page for GCE Advanced Level semantics
• «Semantics: an interview with Jerry Fodor» (ReVEL, vol. 5, no. 8 (2007))

Abstract

Semantics is study of the meaning of words and other parts of language, or the systematic study of meaning. The study of meaning can be undertaken in various ways. Speakers of a language have an implicit knowledge about what is meaningful in their language and it easy to show this. Three disciplines are concerned with the systematic study of ‘meaning’ in itself: psychology, philosophy, and linguistics.
In this paper the writers try to describe different approaches to the investigation of meaning. Linguistic semantics is concerned with what knowledge individual speakers of a language possess which makes it for them to communicate with one another.
More over, trough this paper the writers try to describe more at the specific features of communication, beginning with observations about non linguistic signs and how we get meaning from them. We introduce a distinction between a sentence, a language construction, and an utterance, a particular act of speaking or writing. An utterance is typically part of a larger discourse. In spoken discourse meanings are partly communicated by the emphases and melodies that are called prosody. Vocal and gestural signs can also be the means of transmitting meanings.
INTRODUCTION
Long before linguistics existed as a discipline, thinkers were speculating about the nature of meaning. For thousands of years, this question has been considered central to philosophy. More recently, it has come to be important in psychology as well. Contributions to semantics have come from a diverse group of scholars, ranging from Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece to Bertrand Russell in the twentieth century.
1. The study of meaning, by virtue of their meaning, words and phrases are able to enter into a variety of semantic relations with other words and phrases in the language. Because these relationships help identify those aspects of meaning relevant to linguistic analysis.
Synonyms are words or expressions that have the same meanings in some or
all contexts. Look at the following table.
Table 1.1 Some synonyms in English

● In the spine, the thoracic vertebrae are above the lumbar vertebrae.
In the spine, the lumbar vertebrae are below the thoracic vertebrae.

Antonym are words or phrases that are opposites with respect to some component of their meaning.
Table 1.2 Some antonyms in English

Contradict each other:

Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia.
Jakarta isn’t the capital of Indonesia
Polysemy occurs where a word has two or more related meanings.
Table 1.3 Some polysemy in English
Word Meaning A Meaning B
bright
to glare
a deposit shining
to shine intensely
minerals in the earth intelligent
to stare angrily
money in the bank

Homophony exist where a single form has two or more entirely distinct meanings. In such cases, it is assumed that there are two (or more) separate words with the same pronunciation rather than a single word with different meanings.

Table 1.4 Some homophones in English
Word Meaning A Meaning B
bat

bank

club
plot
pen A flying, mouse-like nocturnal mammal.
A financial institution

A social organization
A plan of a literary work
A writing instrument A piece of equipment used in cricket or baseball.
A small cliff at the edge of a river.
A blunt weapon
A small piece of ground
A small cage

1.1. Systematic study of meaning

Linguistic semantics is an attempt to explicate the knowledge of any
speakers of a language which allows that speaker to communicate facts, feeling, intentions and products of the imagination to other speakers and to understand what they communicate to him or her..

Three disciplines are concerned with the systematic study of ‘meaning’ in itself:
psychology, philosophy, and linguistics. Psychologists, they are interested in: how individual human learn, how they retain, recall, or lose information; how they classify, make judgments and solve problems. In other words, how the human mind seeks meanings, and works with them; Philosophers of language are concerned with how we know, how any particular fact that we know or accept as true is related to other possible facts In other words, what must be antecedent to that fact and what is a likely consequence, or entailment of it; what statements are mutually contradictory, which sentences express the same meaning in different words, and which are unrelated; Linguists want to understand how language works. Just what common knowledge do two people posses when they share a language that makes it possible for them to give and get information, to express their feelings and their intentions to another, and to be understood with a fair degree of success.
While linguistic semantic is concerned with the language system that people have in common that makes them able to communicate with one another, pragmatic is the study (and description) of how people actually use language in communicating. The elements of language are similar to natural signs and, more especially, to conventional signals. A sign is meaningful to us only if we perceive it, identify it and interpret it.

1.2 Nature of Language

All animal have some system for communication with other member of their members of their species, but only humans have a language which allows them to produce and understand ever-new message and to do without any outside stimulus. Bees, birds, dolphins and chimpanzees, among other animals, transmit and interpret a fixed number of messages that signal friendliness or hostility, the presence of food or of danger, or have to do with mating and care of offspring.
According to Hockett (1957; 574 850; Bickerton (1990:10-16) humans can be differed from animals because of, first, animal communicate only response to some particular stimulus. Human (stimulus free) are able to talk about vast numbers of things which come from accumulated knowledge, memory, and imagination; second, animals have only a fixed repertoire of messages. Human language is creative – can produce new utterances which others understand. Arbitrariness – there is no natural relation and what that word designates.
1.3 Language and the individual

Language is considered to be a system of communicating with other people using sound, symbol, words in expressing a meaning, ideas or thought. Human child learn language of the society in which it grows up, and acquires the fundamentals of that language in the first or six years of life, at about the age of twelve months, begins to imitate its parents’ ways of naming what is the environment (bed, bottle, doll, baby, mama, etc) and of telling the characteristics and events in which these things can be observed (wet, empty, up, sit, all-gone). By the age of eighteen months the child is likely to be producing two-word utterances (baby up, Daddy bye bye, Mama shoes, Dolly sit). Soon utterances become more and more complex, and these utterances are clearly invented, not just repetitions of what parents may have said. According to Lenneberg (1967); Clark and Clark (1977:295 – 403), process that go beyond a mere reflection of what is in the environment and make it possible for the child to express himself and interact with others. And then, our ability to use language and our ability to think and conceptualize, develop at the same time and these abilities depend on each other.
Knowledge that a speaker of a language has about that language is a vocabulary and the ways to use it. More specifically, speakers have two vocabularies, one that is needed for understanding a variety of people. The vocabulary contains numerous names of people and places, as well as what we might think of as ordinary words; And knowledge that makes one capable of using the vocabulary, productively and receptively is he has to know how to combine the vocabulary items into utterances that will carry meanings for others and he has to grasp the meanings of complex utterances that others produce. For production or recognition, he must know the pronunciation, how it fits into various utterances, and what it means.

1.4. Demonstrating semantic knowledge
To demonstrate semantic knowledge the speakers must have a vocabulary and know how to pronounce every item in this vocabulary and how to recognize its production by other speakers. According to Bierwisch (1970: 167-75); Dillon (1977: 1-6), it is fairly easy to show what knowledge speakers have about meanings in their language and therefore what things must be included in an account of semantics.
The followings demonstrate ten aspects of any speaker’s semantic knowledge.
1. Meaningful in English
1a. Henry drew a picture.
1b. Henry laughed.
1c. The picture laughed.
1d. Picture a Henry drew.
1a and 1b are meaningful, while 1c and 1d are anomalous (examples of anomaly). Sentence 1c has the appearance of being meaningful and it might attain meaning in some children’s story or the like, while 1d is merely a sequence of words.

2. Speakers of a language generally agree as to when two sentences have essentially the same meaning and when they do not.
2a. Rebecca got home before Robert.
2b. Robert got home before Rebecca.
2c. Robert arrived at home after Rebecca.
2d. Rebecca got home later than Robert.

Sentences that make equivalent statements about the same entities, like 2a and 2c, or 2b and 2d, are paraphrases (of each other).

3. Speakers generally agree when two words have essentially the same meaning – in a given context. In each sentence below one word is underlined. Following the sentence is a group of words, one of which can replace the underlined word without changing the meaning of the sentence.
3a. Where did you purchase these tools?
use buy release modify take.

3b. At the end of the street we saw two enormous statues.
pink smooth nice huge original

Word that have the same sense in a given context are synonyms – they are instances of synonymy and are synonymous with each other.

4. Speakers recognize when the meaning of one sentence contradicts another sentence. The sentences below are all about the same person, but two of them are related in such a way that if one is true the other must be false.
4a. Edgar is married.
4b. Edgar is fairly rich.
4c. Edgar is no longer young.
4d. Edgar is a bachelor.

Sentence that make opposite statements about the same subject are contradictory.
5. Speakers generally agree when two words have opposite meanings in a given context. For example, speakers are able to choose from the group of words following 5a and 5b the word which is contrary to the underlined word in each sentence.
5a. Betty cut a thick slice a cake.
bright new soft thin wet

5b. The train departs at 12:25.
arrives leaves waits swerves

Two words that make opposite statements about the same subject are antonyms; they are antonymous, instances of antonymy.

6. Some sentences have double meanings; they can be interpreted in two ways. Speakers are aware of this fact because they appreciate jokes which depend on two-way interpretation, like the following.
6a. Marjorie doesn’t care for her parakeet.
(doesn’t like it; doesn’t take care of it)

6b. Marjorie took the sick parakeet to a small animal hospital.
(small hospital for animals; hospital for small animals)

A sentence that has two meanings is ambiguous – an example of ambiguity.

7. Speakers are aware that two statements may be related in such a way that if one is true, the other must also be true.

7a. There are tulips in the garden
7b. There are flowers in the garden.
7c. The ladder is too short to reach the roof.
7d. The ladder isn’t long enough to reach the roof.

These pairs of sentences are examples of entailment. Assuming that 9a and 9b are about the same garden, the truth of 9a entails the truth of 9b, that is, if 9a is true, 9b must also be true. Likewise, assuming the same ladder and roof, the truth of 9c entails the truth of 9d.

2.1 Language in use

Pragmatics: another branch of linguistics that is concerned with meaning,
but speakers also know how to use this knowledge when they listen and read, when they speak and write – when they communicate (particular acts of communication).
The study of how words and phrases are used with special meanings in particular situations.
e.g. “When did you last see my brother?”
“ Around noon,”
“Last Tuesday,”
“I think it was on June first,”…. And so on.

Different between Pragmatics and Semantics
Semantics: Mainly concerned with a speaker’s competence to use the language system in producing meaningful utterances and processing (comprehending) utterances produced by others.
Pragmatics: a person’s ability to derive meanings from specific kinds of speech
situations – to recognize what the speaker is referring to, to relate new information, to interpret, to infer, …

2.2 Natural and conventional
Language is a system of symbols through which people communicate. e.g. spoken, written, or signed with the hands. Language is only one of the common activities of a society. The totality of common activities, institutions, and beliefs make up the culture of that society.
A language is a complex system of symbols, or signs, that are shared by members of a community. It will be useful to consider other signs that we know and how we react to them. e.g. Signs : Cases foot prints Robinson Crusoe in the Defoe’s novel; we see smoke and know that there is a fire; A black cloud informs us of the possibility of rain; treetops moving tell us that wind is blowing.
Our own bodies: earaches and hunger pangs, interpret shivering, perspiration, head nodding with drowsiness. All sorts of sights, sounds and smells, in modern life: horns, whistles, sirens, buzzers and bells. None of these communication uses language, though of course devising, installing and learning them could not be accomplished by people who had no language.
Perception, the sign and the observer share a context of place and time in which the sign attracts the observer’s attention (the process of using the senses to acquire information about the surrounding environment or situation). e.g. Robinson Crusoe with footprint.

Identification, is the action of identifying somebody or something, or an act of recognizing and naming somebody or something.
Interpretation, The meaning of any sign depends on the space-time context in
which we observe it. e.g. – cases Crusoe’s reaction and footprint was due to the circumstances of his life; the whistle of a policeman directing traffic, the whistle of a hotel doorman summoning a taxi, and the whistle of the referee in a soccer game.

2.3. Linguistic signs
Words are linguistic signs, similar in certain respects to natural and conventional signs. In order to grasp what somebody says, we must first of all perceive the utterance.
Clark (1996:92 – 121) Identification of the elements in an utterance requires speaker and hearer to share ‘common ground’.
2.4 Utterance and sentence
Different pieces of language can have different meanings in different contexts.
illustrate:

A beggar who has not eaten all day says “I’m hungry”;
A child who hopes to put off going to bed announces “I’m hungry”;
A young man who hopes to get better acquainted with one of his co-workers and intends to ask her to have dinner with him begins with the statement “I’m hungry”;

They are different intentions – interpreted differently because the situations and the participants are different. Each of three speech events illustrated above is a different utterance, and we write and utterance with quotation marks: “I’m hungry.”
Each utterance contains the same sentence, which we write with italics: I’m hungry. A Sentence is not event; it is a construction of words in a particular sequence which is meaningful.
• An utterance is often part of a larger discourse – a conversation, a formal lecture, a poem, a short story, a business letter, or a love letter, among other possibilities.
• A written discourse may be the record of something that has been spoken, or it, may originate for the purpose of being performed aloud, like a play or speech, articles, books.
2.5 Prosody
Prosody is an important carrier of meaning in spoken utterances and consists of two parts, accent and intonation.
e.g. 1. A: Has the Winston Street bus come yet?
B: Sorry. I didn’t understand. What did you say?

2. C: I’m afraid Fred didn’t like the remark I made.
D: Oh? What did you say?

3. E: Some of my partners said they wouldn’t accept these terms.
F: And you? What did you say?
4. G: You’re misquoting me. I didn’t say anything like that.
H: Oh? What did you say?

1. T did you say?
A
H
W
S
2. What did you A
Y?
Y
3. What did O
U say?
D
4. What I
D you say?

• Intonation is the set of tunes that can diff-erentiate meanings of utterances
with the same verbal content. Intonation patterns are falls and rise in pitch and combinations of falls and rises. Generally a fall indicates spe-aker dominance or ter-mination. A rise is hearer oriented and suggests continuance.

Accents is the comparatively greater force and higher pitch that makes one part of the utterance more prominent than other parts. It has a syntagmatic function, giving focus is an emphasis on one word as opposed to other words that might have been used.
• Accent is mobile, enabling us to communicate different meanings by putting the emphasis in different places. The usual place is on last important word,
e.g.
• “I’d never say THAT” with one focus and “I/would NEVer/say THAT”with three.
My cousin is an ARchitect.

● If the utterance is broken into two or more sense groups, each group has its own accent. The last accent is ordinarily the most prominent of all because the pitch changes on that syllable.
My COUsin is an ARchitect.
My cousin EDWard, who lives in
FULton, is an ARchitect.
The placement of accent on different words ties the utterance to what has been said previously. For example, in reply to the question.
• “What does your cousin do?”, one might say:
• My cousin
• Edward ‘s an
• He ARchitect.
architect is new information, something not previously mentioned, Edward my cousin is old.
The Role of accent
Each of the following utterances has an emphasis that makes a contrast.
Alex phoned Edna LAST Sunday.
Alex phoned EDna last Sunday.
Alex PHONED Edna last Sunday.
Alex phoned Edna last Sunday.
A falling pitch is more ‘normal’ of and, correspondingly, a rising pitch at the end of an utterance is the indication of something special.
• Allen (1968:Chapter 5);
A falling tune suggests that the speaker is confident of what he or she is saying and the utterance is delivered with finality; it shows speaker dominance.
A rising tune is more oriented toward the addressee. It is customary when the speaker is asking the addressee to repeat, or to contradict what has just been said.
1. Statement vs question (fall vs rise)
Yes. Yes? This is the place.
This is the place?
With a falling tone “Yes” is an answer to some question and “This is the place” is a statement. With rising tones the speaker seeks confirmation or information from addressee.
2. Information sought vs repetition
requested (fall vs rise)
When? Where?
When? Where?
• With “When?,” “Where?” rising,
the speaker is asking for repetition of something that was said; the speaker has understood enough of the previous utterance to know that some time or place was mentioned. The falling intonation in such utterances is a request for information that has not yet been given.
3. Parallel structure vs antithesis
(fallvs fall and rise)
This is my sister, Ellen.
This is my sister, Ellen.
If sister and Ellen have the same tune, a fall on sister and a long fall on Ellen, the parallel structure indicates a correlation of the two – specifically here, equivalence: that Ellen is the name of the speaker’s sister. Fall on sister – typically a long fall – and a short rise on Ellen denotes lack of correlation, so that Ellen can only be the name of the addressee, a short vocative attached to an utterance.
4. Open question vs alternative question (rise vs rise, fall)
Do you have a pencil or a pen?
Do you have a pencil or a pen?
The distinction here reflects the speaker’s attitude, perhaps about what seems appropriate in what addressee can answer.
5. Full statement vs reservation (fall vs fall-rise)
That’s true, (or That’s true.)
That’s true.
This difference reflects the speaker’s attitude. A fall expresses agreement with what has been said; a fall and short rise expresses only partial agreement, agreement with reservations.
2.6. Non-verbal communication
paralanguage nonverbal vocal nuances in commu-nication that may add meaning to language as it is used in context, e.g. tone of voice or whispering.
Gestures, a movement made with a part of the body in order to express meaning or emotion or to communicate an instruction. In gestures, the former, the visible signs, have the capacity to communicate in much the way a word communicates; the latter could only be said to communicate in a secondary sense.
Consider the visual sign;
Nodding the head in response to an utterance.
Crossing one’s fingers.
Pretending to yawn, with finger tips in front of mouth.
Holding up a thumb from a closed fist.
Pinching one’s nostrils closed with thumb and forefinger.

3. CONCLUSION

The study of meaning can be undertaken in various ways. Linguistic semantics is an attempt to explicate the knowledge of any speaker of a language which allows that speaker to communicate fact, feelings, intentions and products of the imagination to other speakers and to understand what they communicate to him or her. Language differs from the communication systems of other animals in being stimulus-free and creative.
The elements of language are similar to natural signs and, more especially, to conventional signals. A sign is meaningful to us only if we perceive it, identify it and interpret it. Speakers do not merely have certain abstract knowledge; they use that knowledge in various social contexts. Piece of language, like other signs, depend on context for what they signify. We recognize social context and linguistic context. We distinguish between sentence, a language formation and utterance, what is produced in a particular social context. The meaning that speakers extract from an utterance is often more than the linguistic message itself; knowledge of reality, the situation, and the participants in the communication event enables the individual to fill in. A conversational implicature is the formation that is not spoken but is understood in tying one utterance meaningfully to a previous utterance.

The relationship between these elements and how writers interpret them is also part of semantics. Semantics also deals with how these different elements influence one another. For instance, if one word is used in a new way, how it’s interpreted by different people in different places. Body language is also a part of semantics. 

Semantics is incredibly important in one’s ability to understand literature. Without a way to connect words, their meanings and allusions, sentences, paragraphs, and the broader stories they’re a part of would make no sense. 

Semantic pronunciation: seh-man-tick

Definition of Semantic 

Semantics is the study of language, its meaning, and how it’s used differently around the world. This is auditory language as well as gestures and signs. For example, one gesture in a western country could mean something completely different in an eastern country or vice versa. Semantics also requires a knowledge of how meaning is built over time and words change while influencing one another. There are several different types of semantics that deal with everything from sign language to computer programming. 

The word “semantics” comes from the French meaning “the psychology of language.” 

Types of Semantics 

Below are a few of the many different types of semantics: 

• Conceptual semantics: focuses on the conceptual elements that allow groups to understand words. It is concerned with literal and connotative meanings. 
• Formal semantics: studies meaning in artificial and natural language using logic. 
• Cross-cultural semantics: explores words that may or may not have universal meanings and the differences in translations between cultures and over time. 
• Lexical semantics: the meaning of words through context. It involves an in-depth study of parts of speech. 
• Truth-conditional semantics: a formal theory that connects language with meta-language. 
• Computational semantics: one of the least obvious types of semantics. It focuses on the use of algorithms to process meaning in language. 

Examples of Semantic Language 

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Within this well-loved tragedy, the reader can find a great example of Juliet questioning semantics and how language is used. The following lines are used to convey a figurative use of language as she asks rhetorical questions about names. 

Tis but thy name that is my enemy.

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other word would smell as sweet.

Here, Juliet is asking, “What’s in a name?” and “What’s a Montague?” These two questions get to the heart of semantics. She’s trying to convey a figurative meaning that would be impossible to uncover if readers couldn’t connect the question to her broader situation and what the feud between the two families means for the lover’s relationship. She argues in these lines that “Montague” isn’t important to her. What his name is and what it symbolizes means nothing in the face of their love. 

Explore William Shakespeare’s poetry.

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll 

Carroll’s literary works are often a source of interesting examples of language. His characters are usually quite self-aware and put forward curious statements that allude toter potion in the novel. Consider these lines from the novel: 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

In these lines, the writer is suggest ing something about semantics. Humpty Dumpty wants his words to be interpreted denotatively while Alice is looking for different meanings. These are based around emotions and experiences that go beyond exactly what Humpty Dumpty said. There is no symbolism behind what he says, Humpty Dumpty suggests. When he says a word, it means what the dictionary says it means, “neither more nor less.” 

Read Lewis Carroll’s poetry.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 

In this memorable passage from Catch-22, Heller describes Yossarian’s censoring of letters from his fellow officers and enlisted men. He starts off feeling incredibly bored by the task but starts to make a game of it.

It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. […] To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. […]That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving the text untouched.

He removes bits and pieces of their language, axing adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, and so on, on a rotating basis. This, he thought, made the messages “far more universal.” This is a curious statement that alludes to the nature of language. Without the depth of information needed to understand the sentence, the writer’s personal history becomes meaningless. Soon, anyone and everyone could understand the letters to the same extent. There is nothing for anyone to read into or interpret. 

FAQs 

What is semantics? 

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words and how they influence one another. It is concerned with how language changes and how symbols and signs are used around the world. 

Why is semantics important? 

Semantics is an incredibly important part of the language. Without connections between words, and the reader’s ability to create new connections, language would be meaningless.

What is connotative semantics? 

A phrase, word, or passage that has various associations and meanings. It might bring up emotional memories or allude to other experiences. It connotes other things. 

What is denotative semantics? 

A phrase, word, or passage that does not have any other associations or shouldn’t be interpreted as having any. It’s concerned with the dictionary definition of a word or phrase. 

What is figurative language? 

It refers to figures of speech that are used in order to improve a piece of writing. That is words that have another meaning other than their basic definition. 

• Figurative Language: refers to figures of speech that are used in order to improve a piece of writing.
• Antanaclasis: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used several times and the meaning changes.
• Antiphrasis: a rhetorical device that occurs when someone says the opposite of what they mean, but their true meaning is obvious.
• Denotation: the literal definition of a word. It is the meaning that’s most commonly found in dictionaries and other academic sources.

Other Resources 

• Watch: Semantics Crash Course
• Listen: What is semantics? 
• Watch: Intro to Linguistics 

What is semantics?

Semantics (from the Greek semantikos , ‘what has meaning’), study of the meaning of linguistic signs, that is, words, expressions and sentences. In metalogic it is the part that studies the interpretations of formal systems of logic ; and the grammar component that interprets the significance of the sentences generated by the syntax and the lexicon in the generative linguistic theory.
Those who study semantics try to answer questions of the type “What is the meaning of X (the word)?”. To do this they have to study what signs exist and which ones have meaning – that is, what they mean to speakers, how they designate them (that is, how they refer to ideas and things), and finally, how they interpret them the listeners. The purpose of semantics is to establish the meaning of the signs – what they mean – within the process that assigns such meanings.

Semantics is studied from a philosophical (pure semantics), linguistic (theoretical and descriptive semantics) perspective as well as from an approach known as general semantics. The philosophical aspect is based on behaviorism and focuses on the process that establishes significance. The linguist studies the elements or traits of meaning and how they relate within the linguistic system. General semantics is interested in meaning, how it influences what people do and say.

1. Meaning Components

Commonly, semantics comprises two components or ways of assigning meaning, which are:

• Denotation . The “standard” meaning of the words, the one recorded by the dictionaries and constitutes their “official” sense, more obvious, more referential.
• Connotation . Those secondary senses that are attributed to a term and that do not have to do directly with the referent enunciated, but with certain characteristics attributed to him by certain culture.

An example of the latter is the word “harpy”, whose denotative meaning is that of mythological animals of ancient Greece, who attracted the sailors with their song and after making them shipwreck against the rocks, they proceeded to devour them.

The denotative meaning of “harpy”, on the other hand, is transmitted by imaginary association to women who consider themselves evil, cruel, unbearable or treacherous.

1. Semantic families

In the language, relations of association, similarity, comparison or of various kinds arise between meanings: mental images of the things that make up reality. Many times, this relationship also has a related component between different meanings that allows them to be organized like a tree: a semantic family.

It can be said, then, that a semantic family is a set of words that share a common sema. This usually occurs between words that share their grammatical category (word type), for example:

• Tree: shrub, leaves, roots, flowers, fruits, wood, branches …
• Book: sheets, cover, library, bookstore, reading, literature …
• Sport: athletics, tennis, baseball, soccer, basketball …
• Bread: bakery, sandwich, wheat, oven …

1. Semantics Examples

Some examples of connotation and denotation of meanings are:

• That car is painted  black  (denotation: color)

The intentions of that man seem to be  black  (connotation: evil, murky, secret)

• He had an   open heart operation (denotation: the organ)

He told me that his girlfriend had broken his  heart  (connotation: feelings)

• The plane is  flying  over Edinburgh (denotation: the real action)

I will fly  to the supermarket to see if I arrive before it closes (connotation: go fast)

• I left the exam sheet  blank  (denotation: no writing)

My cousin wants to marry in  white  (connotation: correctly, formally, traditionally)

• Yesterday we adopted a  dog  (denotation: the animal)

That man is a  dog  (connotation: unfaithful, promiscuous, abusive)

• I will  lift  the pencil from the ground (denotation: take from the ground)

I want to  get up  to Ezekiel’s cousin (connotation: fall in love, conquer)

Philosophical perspective

From the philosophical perspective, semantics (pure semantics), linguistics (theoretical and descriptive semantics) are studied, as well as from the approach known as general semantics. The philosophical aspect is instituted in behaviorism and focuses on the process that constitutes significance. Linguists study the traits of meaning and how they relate in the linguistic system. General semantics is interested in meaning, and how it influences what people do and say.
These approaches have certain applications. The anthropology based on the descriptive semantics, study what conceives a people from culturally significant. the psychology, supported by theoretical semantics, studies what mental process involves understanding and how people identify the acquisition of meaning. Behaviorism applied to animal psychology studies what animal species are capable of delivering messages and how they do it. Those who rely on general semantics examine the connotations of signs that apparently mean the same. The literary criticism , mediated by studies that differentiate the literary language of popular, describes how metaphors evoke feelings and attitudes, also linking to general semantics.

Symbolic logic

One of the most prominent figures of the Vienna Circle, the German philosopher Rudolf Carnap , made his most important contribution to philosophical semantics when he developed symbolic logic: formal system that analyzes the signs and what they designate. Logical positivism understands that meaning is the relationship that exists between words and things, and its study has an empirical foundation: since language, ideally, is a reflection of reality, its signs are linked to things and facts. Now, symbolic logic uses a mathematical notation to establish what the signs designate, and it does so more precisely and clearly than language; this notation also constitutes itself a language, specifically a metalanguage(formal technical language) used to speak the language as if it were another object: the language is the object of a particular semantic study.

An object language has a speaker (for example a French one) who uses expressions (such as plume rouge) to designate a meaning (in this case to indicate a certain pen – plume – of red color –rouge-). The complete description of an object language is called the semiotics of that language. Semiotics presents the following aspects: 1) a semantic aspect, in which the signs (words, expressions and sentences) receive specific designations; 2) a pragmatic aspect, in which contextual relations between speakers and signs are indicated; 3) a syntactic aspect, in which the formal relationships that exist between the elements that make up a sign are indicated (for example, between the sounds that form a sentence).

Any language interpreted according to symbolic logic is an object language that has rules that link signs to their designations. Each sign that is interpreted has a condition of truth – a condition that must be found for the sign to be true. The meaning of a sign is what it designates when its condition of truth is satisfied. For example, the expression or sign the moon is a sphere is understood by anyone who knows Spanish; However, even if it is understood, it may or may not be true. The expression is true if the thing to which the expression or sign is linked – the moon – is really a sphere. To determine the truth values ​​of the sign, everyone will have to check it by looking at the moon.

Semantics of speech acts

The symbolic logic of the positivist school tries to capture the meaning through the empirical verification of the signs — that is, to verify whether the truth of the sign can be confirmed by observing something in the real world. This attempt to understand the meaning in this way has only been moderately successful. The British nationalized Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein abandoned her in favor of his philosophy of ‘ordinary language’ where it was claimed that the truth is based on daily language. He pointed out that not all signs designate things that exist in the world, nor all signs can be associated with truth values. In its approach to philosophical semantics, the rules of meaning are revealed in the use made of language.

The British philosopher JL Austin states that when a person says something, he performs an act of speech, or does something, such as enunciate, predict or warn, and its meaning is what is done in the act of speech through expression. Taking another step in this theory, the American John R. Searle focuses on the need to relate the functions of the signs or expressions with their social context. Affirms that speech implies at least three types of acts: 1) locutionary acts, when things that have a certain meaning or reference are enunciated (of the type the moon is a sphere); 2) ilocutionary acts, when something of a loud voice is promised or ordered, and 3) perlocutionary acts, when the speaker does something to the interlocutor while speaking, how to enrage him, comfort him, promise him something or convince him of something. The ilocutionary force, who receive the signs thanks to the actions implicit in what is said, expresses the intentions of the speaker. To achieve this, the signs used must be adequate, sincere and consistent with the speaker‘s beliefs and behavior, and they must also be recognizable by the listener and have meaning for him.

Philosophical semantics studies the distinction between organized semantics about the values ​​of truth and the semantics of speech acts. Criticisms of this theory maintain that its true function is to analyze the meaning of communication (as opposed to the meaning of language), and that therefore it becomes pragmatic, that is, semiotics, and therefore relates the signs to knowledge. of the world that speakers and listeners show, instead of relating the signs to what they designate (semantic aspect) or establishing the formal relationships between the signs (syntactic aspect). Those who make this criticism affirm that semantics should be limited to assigning the interpretations that correspond to the signs, regardless of who is the speaker and the listener.

Linguistic perspective

In this sense, two schools stand out:

• descriptive semantics
• The theoretical.

Descriptive semantics

From this perspective, research focuses on examining what the signs mean in a specific language. For example, they investigate what constitutes a name, a noun phrase, a verb or a verbal phrase. In some languages ​​such as Spanish, the analysis is done through the subject-predicate relationship. In other languages, which are not clear about the distinctions between names, verbs and prepositions, one can say what the signs mean when analyzing the sentence structure. In this analysis, a sign is an operator that is combined with one or more arguments, also signs – often nominal arguments (or noun phrases) – or it relates the nominal arguments to other elements of the expression (such as prepositional phrases or the adverbial ones). For example, in the expression:

Whether the analysis is done based on the subject-predicate relationship, as if it is done on the basis of the sentence, the descriptive semantics sets the classes of expressions (or classes of units that can be substituted within the same sign) and the classes of units, which are the parts of the sentence, as they are traditionally called (as names and verbs).

Thus, the resulting classes are defined in syntactic terms, which also have semantic roles; In other words, the units that constitute the classes perform specific grammatical functions, and when they do, they establish the meaning through preaching, reference and distinctions between entities, relationships and actions. For example ‘wetting’ belongs to a certain kind of expression that contains other units such as ‘modify’ and ‘cure’, and also belongs to the part of the sentence that is known as a verb, where it is part of the subclass of operators that need two arguments, one agent and another patient.

In The rain wets the streets, the semantic role of ‘wet’ is to relate two nominal arguments (‘rain’ and ‘streets’), therefore its semantic role is to identify a type of action. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to establish an exact correlation between semantic classes and semantic roles. For example, ‘David’ has the same semantic role – to identify a person – in the following sentences: It does not seem easy to love David and it does not seem easy for David to love us. However, the syntactic role of ‘David’ is different in the two sentences: in the first one ‘David’ is patient and recipient of the action, in the second he is an agent.

Anthropology, called ethnolinguistics, uses linguistic semantics to determine how the perceptions and beliefs of the people who speak that language express the signs of a language, and this is what is done through formal semantic analysis (or component analysis ). A sign is understood as a word, with its own unity in vocabulary, which is called lexeme.

The component analysis demonstrates the idea that linguistic categories influence or determine the worldview that a particular people has; This hypothesis, called by some ‘Whorf hypothesis’, has been formulated by several authors and has been much debated at the beginning of the 20th century by other authors such as Sapir, Vendryes or Menéndez Pidal. In component analysis, lexemes that belong to the same field of significance integrate the semantic domain. This is characterized by a series of distinctive semantic features (components or constituents) that are the minimum units of meaning that distinguish one lexeme from another.

An analysis of this type fixes, for example, that in Spanish the semantic domain of seating basically covers the chair, armchair, sofa, bench, stool and bench lexemes that distinguish each other by having or not having backrest, arms, number of people who they accommodate in the seat, and height of the legs. But all lexemes have in common a component or feature of significance: something to sit on.

With component analysis, linguists hope to identify the universal set of semantic features that exist, from which each language builds its own, which makes it distinct from another. French structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss has applied the hypothesis of universal semantic features to analyze the myth and kinship systems of various cultures. He showed that peoples organize their societies and interpret their hierarchies in them according to certain rules, despite the apparent differences they show.

Theoretical semantics

This school seeks a general theory of meaning within the language. For its followers, meaning is part of the linguistic knowledge or competence that every human has.

Generative grammar, as a model of linguistic competence, has three components:

• the phonological (sound system)
• the syntactic
• the semantic

The latter, since it is part of the generative theory of meaning, is understood as a system of rules to decide how to interpret the signs that can be interpreted and determine which signs lack interpretation even if they are grammatical expressions. For example, the phrase Impressionist cats painted a ladder is meaningless even if it is an acceptable sentence from the point of view of their syntactic correction – there are no rules that can interpret it because the phrase is semantically locked.

These same rules also have to decide which interpretation is appropriate in some ambiguous sentences such as: Sancho’s donkey stumbled that can have at least two interpretations.

Generative semantics arose to explain the speaker‘s ability to produce and understand new expressions where grammar or syntax fails. Its purpose is to demonstrate how and why a person, for example, immediately understands that prayer is meaningless. Impressionist cats painted a ladder although it is constructed according to the rules of Spanish grammar; or how that speaker decides as soon as he hears it, what interpretation to give, within the two possible ones, to Sancho’s donkey.

Generative semantics develops the hypothesis that all the information necessary to semantically interpret a sign (usually a sentence) is in the deep syntactic or grammatical structure of that sign. This deep structure includes lexemes (to be understood as words or units of vocabulary that are formed by semantic features that have been selected within the universal set of semantic features).

In a superficial structure (this is when speaking) the lexemes will appear as names, verbs, adjectives and other parts of the sentence, that is, as vocabulary units. When a speaker produces a sentence, he assigns lexemes the semantic roles (of the subject, object and predicate type); The listener listens to the prayer and interprets the semantic features they mean.

Within this school, it has been discussed whether the deep structure and semantic interpretation are different. Most generativists affirm that a grammar should generate the series of well-constructed expressions that are possible in each language, and that that grammar should assign the semantic interpretation that corresponds to each expression. It has also been discussed whether semantic interpretation should be understood to be based on the syntactic structure (that is, it comes from the deep structure of the sentence), or if it should be based only on semantics. According to Noam Chomsky, the founder of this school – within a syntactic-based theory – the superficial and deep structure may jointly determine the semantic interpretation of an expression.

General semantics

This focuses on responding to the argument that raises how people value words and how they influence their behavior. Its main representatives are the linguist Alfred Korzybski , an American of Polish origin, and SI Hayakawa linguist and politician of the same nationality, who warned about the dangers of treating words only in their condition as signs. These authors use the guidelines of general semantics to nullify poor rigorous generalizations, rigid attitudes, incorrect purpose and inaccuracy. Some philosophers and linguists criticize general semantics for suffering from scientific rigor, which is why this approach has lost notoriety .

Textual analysis at the semantic level

The analysis of the texts is carried out at different levels: morphological, syntactic, lexical, syntactic, morphological, phonic and semantic; the precise semantic level:

• semantic cores and word networks:
• lexical-semantic oppositions
• discursive configuration
• hermeneutical analysis
• semi-narrative analysis of the lyrical text
• grammatical lexical cohesive procedures or means
• text theme determination

Linguistic Semantics

The language is the discipline where originally the semantics concept was introduced. Linguistic semantics is the study of the meaning of language words . Linguistic semantics contrasts with three other aspects that intervene in an expression with meaning: syntax and pragmatics . Semantics is the study of the meaning attributable to syntactically well-formed expressions. The syntax studies only the rules and principles on how to construct semantically interpretable expressions from simpler expressions, but in itself it does not allow to attribute meanings. Semantics examines the way in which meanings were attributed to words, their modifications throughtime and even its changes for new meanings. The lexicography is another part of the semantics that tries to describe the meaning of the words of a language at a given moment and often display their results in the preparation of dictionaries.

On the other hand, pragmatics refers to how circumstances and context help to decide between alternatives of use or interpretation; Thanks to pragmatics, language can be used for humorous or ironic purposes. In addition, pragmatics reduces the ambiguity of expressions, selecting only an appropriate set of interpretations in a given context.

Semantics in mathematics and logic

First-order predicate logic is the simplest type of logical-mathematical system where the concept of semantic interpretation appears. This logic is formed by:

1. A set of signs (connective, parentheses, quantifiers, …).
2. A set of variables and constants.
3. A set of predicates about the variables.
4. A set of rules for good expression formation from simple expressions.

In the first order logic, the set of variables and constants plays a role similar to the lexicon of natural languages, since under a semantic interpretation they are the elements that admit referents. In turn, the set of rules for good expression training plays the role of syntax in natural languages.

To semantically interpret the formal expressions of a first-order logical system we need to define a structured model or set on which to interpret the formal statements of the logical system. A model according to model theory is a set with a certain structure together with a rule of interpretation that allows to assign to each variable or constant an element of the set and each predicate in which a set of variables intervenes can be judged as true or false about the set in which the propositions of the formal logical system are interpreted.

In mathematical logic , axioms are usually divided into two types:

• Logical axioms, which basically define the rules of deduction and are formed by tautologies. They are basically valid for any kind of reasonable formal system.
• Mathematical axioms, which affirm the existence of certain types of sets and objects with true semantic content. Thanks to this, it is possible to introduce new concepts and test the relationships between them.

Thus, if there is a set of axioms that define group theory, any mathematical group is a model in which the propositions and axioms of said theory receive interpretation and result in certain propositions about that model.

Semantics in cognitive sciences

The semantics in cognitive sciences has to do with the combination of signs and with how the mind attributes permanent relationships between these combinations of signs and other facts unrelated by nature to these symbols. It is also very special, since it is the way to introduce given meanings of oneself. For example, the notion that there is a chair in which it has 4 legs, backrest, etc. There are more or less legs but it is a sense of sliding, which is constructed in the mind from the central case or prototype.

Semantic and syntax

The syntax has the function of offering guidelines or norms to create sentences in a coherent way, with the objective of expressing or enunciating the correct meaning of the words, being able to be supervised by the semantic linguistic science that as well identified above is responsible for studying the meaning of words.

Semantic and morphological

Morphology is the linguistic discipline in charge of studying the form and combinations of the internal components of words. Morphology studies through monemas and, these are divided into: lexemes and morphemes.

The lexemes give the lexical meaning to the word, that is, the root of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, for example: baker, the lexeme is bread, bluish the lexeme is blue.

On the other hand, morphemes provide grammatical meaning, such as: the determining articles, prepositions, conjunctions, disengagements or affixes.

Semantics and syntax

The syntactic function is the type of relationship established between the different kinds of phrases.

The syntactic functions can be classified into 3 categories:

• Primary, subject and predicate.
• Secondary, performed by verbal supplements.
• Tertiary, they affect the secondary, that is, complement of the name, complement of the adjective, complement of the adverb.

Lexical and structural semantics

Lexical semantics consists in the study of words without any connection with the context in which it operates. For its part, structural semantics, as indicated by its name, consists in building and analyzing elementary units to understand such meanings.

Generative semantics

In generative linguistic theory, semantics is the grammar component that interprets the significance of the sentences generated by the syntax and the lexicon.

Well, generative semantics is the linguistic theory that comes from generative grammar, and states that every sentence made comes, through transformations, from a semantic and non-syntactic structure.

The field of linguistics is concerned with the study of meaning in language. Linguistic semantics has been defined as the study of how languages organize and express meanings. The term semantics (from the Greek word for sign) was coined by French linguist Michel Bréal (1832-1915), who is commonly regarded as a founder of modern semantics.

«Oddly,» says R.L. Trask in Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics, «some of the most important work in semantics was being done from the late 19th century onwards by philosophers [rather than by linguists].» Over the past 50 years, however, «approaches to semantics have proliferated, and the subject is now one of the liveliest areas in linguistics,» (Trask 1999).

Linguistic Semantics and Grammar

Linguistic semantics looks not only at grammar and meaning but at language use and language acquisition as a whole. «The study of meaning can be undertaken in various ways. Linguistic semantics is an attempt to explicate the knowledge of any speaker of a language which allows that speaker to communicate facts, feelings, intentions and products of the imagination to other speakers and to understand what they communicate to him or her.

«Early in life every human acquires the essentials of a language—a vocabulary and the pronunciation, use and meaning of each item in it. The speaker’s knowledge is largely implicit. The linguist attempts to construct a grammar, an explicit description of the language, the categories of the language and the rules by which they interact. Semantics is one part of grammar; phonology, syntax and morphology are other parts,» (Charles W. Kreidler, Introducing English Semantics. Routledge, 1998).

Semantics vs. Language Manipulation

As David Crystal explains in the following excerpt, there is a difference between semantics as linguistics describe it and semantics as the general public describes it. «The technical term for the study of meaning in language is semantics. But as soon as this term is used, a word of warning is in order. Any scientific approach to semantics has to be clearly distinguished from a pejorative sense of the term that has developed in popular use, when people talk about the way that language can be manipulated in order to mislead the public.

«A newspaper headline might read. ‘Tax increases reduced to semantics’—referring to the way a government was trying to hide a proposed increase behind some carefully chosen words. Or someone might say in an argument, ‘That’s just semantics,’ implying that the point is purely a verbal quibble, bearing no relationship to anything in the real world. This kind of nuance is absent when we talk about semantics from the objective point of linguistic research. The linguistic approach studies the properties of meaning in a systematic and objective way, with reference to as wide a range of utterances and languages as possible,» (David Crystal, How Language Works. Overlook, 2006).

Categories of Semantics

Nick Rimer, author of Introducing Semantics, goes into detail about the two categories of semantics. «Based on the distinction between the meanings of words and the meanings of sentences, we can recognize two main divisions in the study of semantics: lexical semantics and phrasal semantics. Lexical semantics is the study of word meaning, whereas phrasal semantics is the study of the principles which govern the construction of the meaning of phrases and of sentence meaning out of compositional combinations of individual lexemes.

«The job of semantics is to study the basic, literal meanings of words as considered principally as parts of a language system, whereas pragmatics concentrates on the ways in which these basic meanings are used in practice, including such topics as the ways in which different expressions are assigned referents in different contexts, and the differing (ironic, metaphorical, etc.) uses to which language is put,»
(Nick Riemer, Introducing Semantics. Cambridge University Press, 2010).

The Scope of Semantics

Semantics is a broad topic with many layers and not all people that study it study these layers in the same way. «[S]emantics is the study of the meanings of words and sentences. … As our original definition of semantics suggests, it is a very broad field of inquiry, and we find scholars writing on very different topics and using quite different methods, though sharing the general aim of describing semantic knowledge. As a result, semantics is the most diverse field within linguistics. In addition, semanticists have to have at least a nodding acquaintance with other disciplines, like philosophy and psychology, which also investigate the creation and transmission of meaning. Some of the questions raised in these neighboring disciplines have important effects on the way linguists do semantics,» (John I. Saeed, Semantics, 2nd ed. Blackwell, 2003).

Unfortunately, when countless scholars attempt to describe what they’re studying, this results in confusion that Stephen G. Pulman describes in more detail. «A perennial problem in semantics is the delineation of its subject matter. The term meaning can be used in a variety of ways, and only some of these correspond to the usual understanding of the scope of linguistic or computational semantics. We shall take the scope of semantics to be restricted to the literal interpretations of sentences in a context, ignoring phenomena like irony, metaphor, or conversational implicature,» (Stephen G. Pulman, «Basic Notions of Semantics,» Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language Technology. Cambridge University Press, 1997).