SEMANTIC
The dimention of meaning by Charles W. Kreidler
This article refers to 15 pages
this article said Anything meaningful in a language is a linguistic expression. Linguistic
expressions may be of various length. it recognize three units of
meaning: morphemes (which may be less than a word), lexemes (roughly,
words and idioms), and sentences.
Semantics is one of
the important branches of linguistics that deals with interpretation and
meaning of the words, sentence structure and symbols, while determining the
reading comprehension of the readers how they understand others and their
interpretations. In addition, semantics construct a relation between adjoining
words and clarifies the sense of a sentence whether the meanings of words are
literal or figurative.
In international scientific
vocabulary semantics is also called semiotics, semology, or semasiology, the philosophical and scientific
study of meaning in natural and artificial languages. The term is one of a group of English words
formed from the various derivatives of the Greek verb sēmainō (“to mean” or “to signify”). The noun semantics and the adjective semantic are derived from sēmantikos (“significant”); semiotics (adjective and noun) comes from sēmeiōtikos (“pertaining to signs”); semiology from sēma (“sign”)
+ logos (“account”); and semasiology from sēmasia (“signification”)
+ logos.
It is difficult to formulate a distinct definition for each of these terms, because their
use largely overlaps in the literature despite individual preferences.
Semantics is a relatively new field of study, and its originators, often
working independently of one another, felt the need to coin a new name for the
new discipline—hence the variety of terms denoting the same subject. The word semantics has ultimately prevailed as a name for
the doctrine of meaning, of linguistic meaning in particular. Semiotics is
still used, however, to denote a broader field: the study of sign-using behaviour
in general.
Semantics
contrasts with syntax, the study of the combinatorics of units of a language
(without reference to their meaning), and pragmatics, the study of the relationships between the symbols of a
language, their meaning, and the users of the language. Semantics as a field of
study also has significant ties to various representational theories of meaning
including truth theories of meaning, coherence theories of meaning, and
correspondence theories of meaning. Each of these is related to the general
philosophical study of reality and the representation of meaning.
In
linguistics semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the
study of meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and
larger units of discourse (termed texts, or narratives).
The study of semantics is also closely linked to the subjects of
representation, reference and denotation. The basic study of semantics is
oriented to the examination of the meaning
of signs, and the study of relations between different linguistic units
and compounds: homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy, paronyms. A key concern is how meaning attaches to
larger chunks of text, possibly as a result of the composition from smaller
units of meaning. Traditionally, semantics has included the study of sense and
denotative reference, truth conditions, argument structure, thematic roles, discourse analysis, and
the linkage of all of these to syntax.
Types
of Semantic
There are two types of Semantics:
1)
Connotative
Semantic
When a word suggests a set of
associations, or it is an imaginative or emotional suggestion connected with
the words, while readers can relate to such associations. Simply, it represents
figurative meaning. Usually poets use this type of meaning in their poetry.
2)
Denotative
Semantic
It suggests the literal, explicit or
dictionary meanings of the words without using associated meanings. It also
uses symbols in writing that suggest expressions of writers such as an
exclamation mark, quotation mark, apostrophe, colon, and quotation mark
etc.
Semantic
relationships between words
Modern
studies of semantics are interested in meaning primarily in terms of word and
sentence relationships. Let's examine some semantic relationships between
words:
Ø Synonyms are
words with similar meanings. They are listed in a special type of
dictionary called a thesaurus.
A
regular dictionary lists words according to form, usually in alphabetical
order; a thesaurus lists words according to meaning. Synonyms
usually differ in at least one semantic feature. Sometimes the feature is
objective (denotative), referring to some actual, real world difference in
the referents: walk, lumber, stroll, meander, lurch, stagger, stride, mince.
Sometimes the feature is subjective (connotative), referring to how the
speaker feels about the referent rather than any real difference in the
referent itself: die, pass away, give up the ghost, kick the bucket, croak.
One type of synonym is
called a paronym. Paronyms are words with associated meanings which
also have great similarities in form: proscribe/ prescribe, industrial/
industrious, except/accept, affect/effect. Many errors in
speech and writing are due to mixups involving paronyms.
Ø Antonyms are
words that have the opposite meaning. Oppositeness is a logical category. There are
three types:
1. Complementary
pairs are antonyms in which the presence of one quality or state signifies
the absence of the other and vice versa. Single/
married, not pregnant/pregnant There are no intermediate states.
2. Gradable
pairs are antonyms which allow for a gradual transition between two poles,
the possibility of making a comparison--a little/a lot
good/bad, hot/ cold cf. the complementary
pair: pregnant/not pregnant.
3. Relational
opposites are antonyms which share the same semantic features, only the
focus, or direction, is reversed: tie/untie, buy/sell, give/receive,
teacher/pupil, father/son.
Some concepts lack logical opposites that can be
described in terms of any special word; colors are a good example: the logical
opposite of red is not red. Such concepts may form relational
antonyms, however, through symbolic systems of thinking. For instance, in
Cold War thinking, the relational opposite of American is Russian;
in current US politics, the relational opposite
of Democrat is Republican.
Ø Homonyms are
words that have the same form but different meanings. There are two major
types of homonyms, based upon whether the meanings of the word are historically
connected or result from coincidence.
Coincidental
homonyms are the result of such historical accidents as phonetic
convergence of two formerly different forms or the borrowing of a new word
which happens to be identical to an old word. There is usually no natural
link between the two meanings: the bill of a bird vs the bill one
has to pay; or the bark of a dog vs the bark of a tree.
The second type of
homonym, polysemous homonyms, results when multiple meanings develop
historically from the same word. The process by which a word acquires new
meanings is called polysemy. Unlike coincidental homonyms,
polysemous homonyms usually preserve some perceptible semantic link marking the
development of one meaning out of the other, as in the leg of chair and the
leg of person; or the face of a person vs. the face of a clock.
Sometimes it is
impossible to tell whether two words of identical form are true homonyms
(historically unrelated) or polysemous homonyms (historically related), such
as ice scate vs. skate the fish: skate--fish (from Old
English skata') ice skate (from
Dutch schaat'); deer/dear are historically related (cf. darling,
German Tier, animal.)
Since polysemy is so
difficult to separate from true homonymy, dictionaries usually order entries
according to
1) the first recorded
appearance of word or
2) frequency of meaning use.
There are a few other minor semantic
relations that may pertain between words.
The first involves the distinction
between a category vs. a particular type or example of that
category. For example, a tiger is a type of feline,
so feline is a category containing lion, tiger, etc.; color is a
category containing red, green, etc, red, green are types of
colors. Thus, feline and color are hyponyms, or cover
words, and red, green, lion, tiger are their taxonyms.
The second involves a whole vs.
part of the whole. A finger is a part of a hand,
thus hand is the holonym of finger;
and finger is a meronym of hand.
Similarly, family is the holonym
of child, mother or father.
Ø A metaphor is
an implied comparison using a word to mean something similar to its literal
meaning. A contradiction arises between the literal meaning and the
referent. Metaphors can be fresh and creative or hackneyed (the eye
of night for moon). Metaphors that cease to tickle listeners
with their creativity are called dead metaphors: they simply become
secondary meanings of words, polysemous homonyms. We don't even sense the
original creativity that went into the first usages of such historical
metaphors as: leg, handle. Most compliments or insults contain
metaphors: calling someone a pig, a worm, a big ox or
a monster; or an angel.
Ø A simile is
a direct comparison using like or as: Examples: quiet as a
mouse, as mad as a hatter. New similes can be created, but each language
has its own particular store of accepted similes that function as
collocations. English: healthy as a horse, quiet as a mouse.
All
semantic relationships in all languages can be described based on similarity or
contiguity. This seems to stem directly from the structure of the human
brain. People who suffer brain damage affecting language usually
experience impairment of either their similarity relations or their contiguity
relations.
Function
of Semantic
The purpose of semantic is to propose
exact meanings of the words and phrases and remove confusion, which might lead
the readers to believe a word has many possible meanings. It makes a relationship
between a word and the sentence through their meanings. Besides, semantic
enables the readers to explore a sense of the meaning, because if we remove or
change the place of a single word from the sentence, it will change the entire
meanings, or else the sentence will become anomalous. Hence, the sense relation
inside a sentence is very important, as a single word does not carry any sense
or meaning.
We communicate with utterances, and each utterance is an instance of a sentence. But how can we explain what ‘sentence meaning’ is? Two points are obvious. First, the meaning of a sentence derives from the meanings of its constituent lexemes and from the grammatical meanings it contains. So if we know all the lexical and grammatical meanings expressed in a sentence, you know the meaning of the sentence, and vice versa. Second, at least if the sentence is a statement, if we know the meaning of the sentence, we know what conditions are necessary in the world for that sentence to be true.
We communicate with utterances, and each utterance is an instance of a sentence. But how can we explain what ‘sentence meaning’ is? Two points are obvious. First, the meaning of a sentence derives from the meanings of its constituent lexemes and from the grammatical meanings it contains. So if we know all the lexical and grammatical meanings expressed in a sentence, you know the meaning of the sentence, and vice versa. Second, at least if the sentence is a statement, if we know the meaning of the sentence, we know what conditions are necessary in the world for that sentence to be true.
