Introduction:
The focus
of phonology, morphology, and syntax has been on internal structure i.e. the
structures of words and sentences. In contrast, semantics covers the domain of
meaning i.e. what a piece of language means. Semantics is a branch of
linguistics that is concerned with the study of the relation between form and
meaning.
What is Semantics?
The term
semantics comes from the Greek word semantikos, which means ‘meaningful,
significant’. Lyons (1995) defines semantics as the study of meaning and
linguistic semantics as the study of meaning in so far as it is systematically
encoded in the vocabulary and grammar of natural languages. Semantics is the
study of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences. In the semantic
analysis, there is always an attempt to focus on what the words conventionally
mean, rather than on what an individual speaker might want them to mean on a
particular occasion (Yule, 2010). For Yule, semantics is concerned with the
objective or general meaning rather than the subjective or local meaning.
Meaning:
While
semantics is the study of meaning in language, there is more interest in
certain aspects of meaning than in others. When linguists investigate the
meaning of words in a language, they are normally interested in characterizing
the conceptual meaning and less concerned with the associative or stylistic
meaning of words.
Conceptual vs. associative meaning
Conventional
(also called conceptual) meaning covers the essential components of meaning
which are conveyed by the literal use of a word (Yule,2010). it's a meaning
which will be described in almost mathematical terms. It will be applied to
sentences that we will often evaluate in terms of their truth value. It is the
meaning that is described by dictionaries.
As
illustrated by Yule (2010), a number of the essential components of a word like
needle in English might include “thin, sharp, steel instrument.” These
components would be a part of the conceptual meaning of needle. Yet, different
individuals might have different associations or connotations attached to the
word needle. They may associate it with “pain, illness, blood, drugs, thread,
knitting, or hard to find”.
Sometimes a
given expression is also related to purely social or affective meaning. As an
example, people may associate the expression low-calorie with “healthy,” but
this may be not an element of the essential conceptual meaning of the
expression. Poets, song-writers, novelists, literary critics, and advertisers
may all have an interest in how words can evoke certain aspects of associative
meaning; however, linguistic semantics is more concerned with trying to analyse
conceptual meaning (Yule, 2010).
Note:
Denotation & Connotation
The terms
denotation and connotation are useful to separate the literal, value-neutral and
restricted sense of an expression from its figural, cultural or associative
meanings. The connotation of a term depends on the user community's values and
beliefs, whereas denotation does not.
Semantic features
One way in
which the study of basic conceptual meaning might be helpful would be as a
means of accounting for the “oddness”. After analysing the examples (a), (b),
and (c), we can first notice that the oddness of these sentences does not
derive from their syntactic structure. Thus, according to the basic syntactic
rules for forming English sentences, we find that (a), (b), and (c), are
well-formed structures (Yule, 2010).
a. The hamburger ate the boy.
b. The table listens to the radio.
c. The horse is reading the newspaper.
The
sentence “The boy ate the hamburger” is a correct sentence according to the
syntactic rules for forming English sentences, but semantically odd. What makes
the sentence odd are the components of the conceptual meaning. That is, the
components of the conceptual meaning of the noun hamburger must be different
from those of the noun boy. The kind of noun that can be the subject of the
verb “ate” must denote an entity that is capable of “eating.” The noun
“hamburger” does not have this property and the noun boy (human) does (Yule,
2010).
Lexical relations
The lexical
relations are the relationships of meaning between words such as synonymy,
antonymy, hyponymy, homophones and homonyms, prototypes, and polysemy.
Synonymy:
Synonyms
are two or more words with very closely related meanings (Yule, 2010). A
synonym is a word that has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word
like complex – complicated (Jarmila. P & Jirka. H, 2011).
Antonym
Antonyms
are opposition pairs such as happy-sad. Antonyms are, according to Yule (2010),
two forms with opposite meanings. Antonyms can be divided into two main types;
“gradable” and “non-gradable” depending on whether or not we can attach
inflectional morphemes to them to indicate comparison.
Gradable antonyms
Gradable
opposites such as the pair big/small can be used in comparative constructions
as in I’m bigger than you. Besides, the negative of one member of a gradable
pair does not necessarily imply the other. For instance, the sentence "My
car isn't old" doesn't necessarily mean My car is new (Yule, 2010).
Non-gradable antonyms
Non-gradable
antonyms or complementary opposites are lexemes in such a relationship that the
negation of the meaning of one lexeme gives us the meaning of the other (Varga,
2010). Examples of non-gradable antonyms are: dead- alive, male-female. The
comparative constructions are not normally used with non-gradable antonyms
(Yule, 2010). The non-gradable antonyms are direct antonyms.
Hyponymy:
Hyponymy is
a kind of relationship between lexemes when the meaning of one form is included
in the meaning of another (Yule, 2010). Hyponymy describes hierarchical
relations between terms. The following example explains the hyponymy
relationship:
- e.g.: Colour → blue, red, green, yellow, purple,….
The word
"colour" is superordinate, whereas the words “blue, red, green,
yellow, purple” are hyponyms.
Homophones and homonyms:
Homophones
are two or more different (written) forms that have the same pronunciation
(Yule, 2010). Examples of homophones are: flour-flower, see – sea, and
right-write.
We use the
term homonyms when both pronunciation and writing are identical. That is, when
one form has two or more unrelated meanings (Yule, 2010), as in the following:
- bank (of a river) – bank (financial institution).
- race (contest of speed) – race (ethnic group).
Note:
When two
terms are spelled similarly but the sound patterns differ, we speak of
homographs. An example of a pair of homographs: content that means happy or
satisfied, and content which means all that is contained inside something.
Prototypes
A prototype
is a cognitive reference point, i.e. the proto-image of all representatives of
the meaning of a word or, of a category. Thus, a robin, according to Yule
(2010), can be regarded as a prototype or a "good example" of the
category bird, while a penguin or an ostrich is a rather "bad
example" of this category.
Polysemy:
Polysemy
describes individual words with multiple and distinct senses (polysemes).
Polysemy can be defined as one form having multiple meanings that are all
related by an extension (Yule, 2010). Examples of polysemy are the word head,
(a) used to refer to the object on top of your body and (b) of a person at the
top of a company.
Collocation:
When
one-word collocates with another, they often occur together. The term
collocation denotes a meaningful word combination that often (regularly or
frequently or typically) occurs in natural language. Collocation is a familiar
grouping of words that appears together because of their habitual use and thus
creating the same meaning.
References:
Yule,
George. (2010). The study of language. Cambridge, UK; Cambridge University
Press.
László,
Varga. (2010). Introduction to English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University.
Jarmila.
Panevov´a & Jirka. Hana (2011). Intro to Linguistics – Semantics
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