Semantics deals
with the meaning of language. It tries to interpret the meaning of linguistic
signs- how they are intended by the speakers, how they designate (make
reference to things and ideas) and how they are interpreted by the hearers. A
word may have two sorts of meanings- conceptual meaning or denotation, and
associative or figurative or stylistic meaning. These are also studied in
semantics.
The word
semantics has come from the Greek noun ‘sema’,
sign, signal and the verb ‘semaino’,
signal mean. It is regarded as ‘‘the study of meaning” “the study of meaning of
words and phrases’’ etc. According to Microsoft
Encarta 2007, Semantics is –
‘‘The study of the meaning of linguistic signs-that
is, words, expressions and sentences. The goal of semantics is to match the
meaning of signs- what they stand for-with the process of assigning those
meaning.’’
Semantic feature:
Considering the
following sentences, we can understand the semantic approach to the study of
meaning in language.
1. The hamburger ate the man
NP+ V+ NP
2. My cat studied linguistics
NP+ V+ NP
These sentences
are syntactically good but semantically odd. Because in (1) the inanimate
object ‘hamburger’ does not have the ability to ‘eat’ anything. Thus the
meaning of the sentence is odd.
We can analyze meaning in terms of semantic features by adding plus (+)
or minus (-) with the qualities to justify the word, such as, + animate, -
animate; + human, - human; + male, - male; +adult, -adult. It will be clearer
in the following diagram:
Diagram for semantic features:
table
|
cow
|
girl
|
woman
|
boy
|
man
|
|
animate
|
-
|
+
|
+
|
+
|
+
|
+
|
human
|
-
|
-
|
+
|
+
|
+
|
+
|
male
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
+
|
+
|
adult
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
+
|
-
|
+
|
Here in the case of ‘girl’, the word is animate, and
human, and not male, and not adult.
We can further understand which is good or odd to become the subject of the verb in the
following example supplementing the syntactic analysis with semantic features:
The...................is reading a book.
N(+human)
Lexical relation in semantics:
The type of
lexical relations which are usually analyzed are defined and exemplified in the
following sections.
Synonymy:
“Synonymy is a word which has the same or nearly the
same, meaning as another’’ (Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics)
Synonyms are two
or more forms with very closely related meaning, which are often, but not
always, intersubstitutable in sentences. For example, big-large, buy-purchase,
someway-somehow, cab-taxi, answer-reply, (liberty-freedom) etc.
However, the idea of ‘sameness of
meaning’ used in discussing synonymy is not necessarily ‘total sameness’. If we
replace ‘answer’ in “Cathy had only one answer correct on the test” with its
near synonym ‘reply’, it would sound
odd.
Antonymy:
‘‘Two forms with opposite meanings are called antonyms.’’ Such as, quick- slow, big-small, long-short, rich-poor, happy-sad,
hot-cold, old-young.
However, these
examples of antonyms are ‘gradable’. Because they can be used in comparative
constructions, and the negative of one member of a pair does not necessarily
imply the other. For instance, ‘the dog is not old’ does not have to mean ‘the
dog is young’.
On the other
hand, the examples, of non-gradable antonyms are male-female, true- false,
dead- alive. Because they cannot be made comparative as deader, and for
examples, if we say ‘he is not dead’ it will mean ‘he is alive’.
Hyponymy:
‘‘When the meaning of one form is included in the
meaning of another, the relationship is described as hyponymy.’’ For example, daffodil-flower, dog-animal, carrot-vegetable,
banyan-tree.
Here, if any
object is a ‘daffodil’, then it is necessarily a ‘flower’, so the meaning of
flower is ‘included’ in the meaning of daffodil. Or ‘daffodil’ is a hyponymy of
‘flower’. This relationship can be shown in the following hierarchical diagram:
Hierarchical diagram for hyponymous relationship of
words:
From this
diagram, we can say that dog is a hyponym of animal and so on. Moreover, snake
and horse are co-hyponyms and the superordinate term is animal.
Homophomy:
‘‘When two or more different (written) forms have the
same pronunciation, they are described as homophones.’’
Examples are
bare-bear, meat-meet, flour-flower, pail-pale, saw-so.
Homonymy:
‘‘Homonyms are words which have quite separate
meanings, but which have accidentally come to have exactly the same form’’
For instance,
bank (of a river)- bank (financial institution), pupil (at school)- pupil (in the eye), race (contest
of speed)- race (ethnic group)
Polysemy:
It can be
defined as ‘‘one form (written or spoken)
having multiple meaning which are all related by extension’’.
As for example,
head (on top of human body, on top of a company or department); run (person
does, water does, colors do).
Context:
Meaning differs
according to different types of contexts. When someone says ‘I am going to bank
to cash a cheque’, we perceive the meaning depending on the linguistic context.