SEMANTICS

PREPARED BY:
MS. FAIRODZ S. FELMIN
 WHAT IS SEMANTICS?
• - It is a branch of linguistics that deals with the study of meaning, changes
in meaning, and the principles that governs the relationship between
sentences or words and their meanings.
• - It is the study of meanings of words and phrases in language. (Meriam
Webster Dictionary)
• -(how language users acquire a sense of meaning, as speakers and writers,
listeners, and readers) and language change (how meanings alter over
time.
• The study of semantics includes the study how meaning is
constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated,
simplified, negotiated, contradicted, and paraphrased.
ROLES OF SEMANTICS IN LANGUAGE

• Semantics in language determines the relationship between signifiers and

what they signify. Although images and body language can be included as
signifiers in a wider study of semantics, INGUISTIC SEMANTICS deals
STRICTLY with WORDS and their MEANINGS.
• Signifiers have multiple levels of meaning.
• The simplest level, also known as the first order of signification, is the
denotation of a word.
SEMANTIC FEATURES

• 1. How does semantic approach help us to understand the

nature of a language?
• A.The Hamburger ate the man.
• B. My cat studied linguistics.
• C. A table was listening to some music.
• According to some basic syntactic rules for forming English sentences we have well
structured sentences.

•The hamburger ate the man.

•NP V NP
OTHER TERMINOLOGY IN LEXICAL SEMANTICS

• 1. Synonymy- “sameness of meaning”

• Ex.“Pavement is synonym of sidewalk”
• “Bachelor is synonymous to “unmarried man”
• 2. Hyponymy- “inclusion of meaning”
• Ex.“Cat is a hyponym of animal”
• CARROT- VEGETABLE
3.Antonymy- “oppositeness of meaning”
• Ex. Big is a antonym of small
4. Incompatibility- “mutual exclusiveness within the same
superordinate category
• Ex. Red and green
• Not the same meaning but it becomes the same since both
are examples of colors.
5. HOMOPHONY

• When two or more different written forms have the same pronunciation, they are
described as “HOMOPHONES”
• EX. Bare- Bear
• Meat-Meet
• Pail-Pale
6. HOMONYMY

• Are words which have quite separate meanings, but which have accidentally
come to have exactly the same form.
• The term homonym is used when one form written or spoken has two or more
unrelated meanings.
• Ex. 1. BANK (of a river)
• BANK ( financial institution)
• BAT (flying creature)
• BAT(used in sports)
• RACE (contest of speed)
• RACE (ethnic group)
SEVEN TYPES OF MEANING

• Geoffrey Leech in his “SEMANCTIC-A STUDY

OF MEANING” (1974) breaks down meaning into
seven types or ingredients giving primacy to conceptual
meaning.
7 TYPES OF MEANING

• 1. Conceptual or Denotative Meaning

• 2.Connotative Meaning
• 3. Social Meaning
• 4. Affective or Emotive Meaning
• 5. Reflective Meaning
• 6. Collocative Meaning
• 7. Thematic Meaning
1. CONCEPTUAL OR DENOTATIVE MEANING

• Conceptual meaning is also called logical or cognitive meaning. It is the basic

propositional meaning which corresponds to the primary dictionary definition.
• It is the essential or core meaning.
• /P/ can be described as –voiceless=bilabial=plosive.
• Similarly
• Boy= human+male-adult.
• The hierarchical structure of “BOY” = Human+ male+adult
• It is the literal meaning of the word indicating the idea or concept to
which it refers. The concept is minimal unit of meaning which could be
called “sememe”.
• As we define phoneme on the basis of binary contrast, similarly we can
define sememe “woman” as =+human + female + adult.
• Conceptual meaning deals with the core meaning of expression. It is the
denotative or literal meaning. It is essential for the functioning of language.
• “NEEDLE” may be “THIN”,“SHARP”” OR INSTRUMENT”.
• The aim of conceptual meaning is to provide an appropriate semantic
representation to a sentence or statement.
• The conceptual meaning is the base of all the other types of meaning.
2. CONNOTATIVE MEANING

• Connotative meaning is the communicative value of an expression over

and above its purely conceptual content. It goes beyond mere referent of a
word and hints and its attributes in the real world.
• A word connotation can be negative or positive depending on the
audience.
• Ex.The label of being “liberal” or “conservative”,
• Connotations vary age and society to society.
• The boundary between conceptual and connotative seems to be
analogous.
• Connotative meaning is regarded as incidental , comparatively unstable, in
determinant, open ended. Variable according to age, culture, and individual,
whereas conceptual meaning is not like that, It can be codified in terms of
limited symbols.
3. SOCIAL MEANING

• The meaning conveyed by the piece of language about a social context of

its use is called the social meaning.
• The decoding of the text is dependent on our knowledge in stylistics and
other variations of language.
• We recognize some words or pronunciation as being dialectical i.e. as
telling us something about the regional or social origin of the speaker.
• Social meaning is related to the situation in which an utterance is used.
• E.g “I ain’t done nothing”
• The line tells us about the speaker and that is the speaker is
probably a black American, under privelgede and uneducated.
• Stylistic variation represents the social variation. This is because
styles shows the geographical region social class of the speaker. Style
helps us to know about the period, field, and status of the discourse.
• For example “steed”, “horse” and “nag” are synonymous. They all
mean a kind of animal
• i.e Horse. But they differ in style and so have various social meaning.
• “steed” is used in poetry, “horse is used in general, while “nag” is
slang.
• The word “HOME” can have many use also like domicile (official),
residence (formal) abode (poetic), home (ordinary use).
4. AFFECTIVE OR EMOTIVE MEANING

• It refers to emotive association or effects of words evoked in the reader,

listener. It is what is conveyed about the personal feelings or attitude
towards the listener.
• E.g. “Home” for a sailor/soldier or expatriate and “mother” for a
motherless child.
• For leech affective meaning refers to what is conveyed about the feeling
and attitude of the speaker through use of language (attitude to listener as
well as attitude to what he is saying.)
• Affective meaning is often conveyed through conceptual, connotative
content of the words used.
• E.g “You are a vicious tyrant and a villainous reprobation and I
hate you”
• or “I hate you, you idiot”
• We are left with a little doubt about the speaker’s feelings towards the
listener. Here speaker seems ton have a very negative attitude towards his
listener.This is called affective meaning.
• But very often we are more discreet (cautious) and convey our attitude
indirectly
• E.g “I am terribly sorry but if you would be so kind as to lower your voice a
little”
• The sentence conveys our irritation in a scaled down manner for the sake of
politeness. Intonation and voice quality are also important here. Thus, the
sentence above can be uttered in biting sarcasm and the impression of politeness
maybe reverse while.
• “Will you bel up?”
• Can be turned into a playful remark between intimates if said with the intonation
of a request.
• Words like darling, sweetheart, or hooligan, vandal have inherent emotive quality
and they can be used neutrally.
5. REFLECTIVE MEANING

• Reflective meaning arises when a word has more than one conceptual meaning or
multiple conceptual meaning.
• Daffodils
• “the could not but be gay
• In such jocund company”
• The word “GAY” was frequently used in the time of William Wordsworth but the word
now is used for “HOMOSEXUALITY”.
• Reflective meaning is also found in taboo words.
• The word “INTERCOURSE” immediately reminds us of its association
with sex (sexual intercourse). The sexual association of the word
drives away its innocent sense. i.e “COMMUNICATION”.
6. COLLOCATIVE MEANING

• Collocative meaning is the meaning which a word acquires in the company of certain
words.Words collocate or co-occur with certain words only
• E.g Big Business not large or great.
• Collocative meaning refers to associations of a word because of its usual or habitual co-
occurrence with certain types of words.
• “PRETTY” and “HANDSOME” indicate “GOOD LOOKING”.
• The word “pretty” collocates with “girls, woman, village, gardens, flowers,
etc.
• On the other hand, the word “handsome” collocates with –”boys” men,
etc. so “pretty woman” and “handsome man”.

• The verbs “WANDER” and “STROLL” are quasi-synonymous- they

may have almost the same meaning but while “cows may wander
into another farm, they don’t stroll into that farm
because “stroll” collocates with human subject only.
7. THEMATIC MEANING

• It refers to what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or a

writer organizes the message in terms of ordering focus and emphasis.
• thus, active is different from passive though its conceptual meaning is the
same.
• The ways we order our message also convey what is important and what
not.
• E.g
• 1. Mrs. Smith donated the first prize.
• 2. The first prize was donated by Mrs. Smith.
• In the first sentence, “who gave away the prize” is more
important, but in the second sentence “ What did Mrs. Smith
gave is important”. Thus, the change of focus change the
meaning also.
• Alternative grammatical construction also gives
thematic meaning.

• E.g
• 1. He likes Indian goods most.
• 2. Indian goods he likes most.
• 3. It is the Indian goods he likes most.
•Thank you!
HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF
MEANING (BRITANNICA ENCYCLOPEDIA)
• 1. IDEATIONAL SEMANTICS
• 2. BEHAVIOURIST SEMANTICS
• 3. REFERENTIAL SEMANTICS
• 4. POSSIBLE-WORLD SEMANTICS
• 5. FREGEAN SEMANTICS
• 6.VERIFICATIONIST SEMANTICS
• 7.TRUTH-CONDITIONAL SEMANTICS
• 8. CONCEPTUAL-ROLE SEMANTICS
• 9. GRICEAN SEMANTICS
1. IDEATIONAL SEMANTICS

• 17th Century British empiricist John Locke said that the linguistic meaning
is mental; words are used to encode and convey thoughts or ideas.
Successful communication requires that the hearer correctly decode the
speaker’s words into their associated ideas.
• “The idea associated in mind of anyone who knows and understand that
expression.
• - This idea is vulnerable to many objections because a person could have
different view or idea associated to the word.
• Ex.“GRASS”, for other person it is warm water.
2. BEHAVIOURIST SEMANTICS

• B.F SKINNER (1904-90) proposed that the correct semantics for a natural language is
behaviourist.

• The meaning of an expression , as uttered on a particular occasion, is either (1) the

behavioral stimulus that produces the utterance (2) the
behavioral response that the utterance produces or (3) a
combination of both.
• Example:
• When someone says FIRE! As uttered on particular occasion might
include running or calling for help. But not everyone who hears “Fire! Will
response by running or calling for help if the person who said it is a
firefighter or a pathological liar.
3. REFERENTIAL MEANING

• Jo.hn Stuart Mill suggested that the meaning of an expression is

whatever the expression applies to.
• Ex. The morning Star and the evening star refer to the same
object which is “VENUS” but it is not synonymous.
• It doesn’t refer to the real thing
4. POSSIBLE-WORLD SEMANTICS

• EX. UNICORN is meaningful because it would apply to in certain

circumstances, though in actuality it does not apply to anything.
The meaning of an expression is determined not only by what it
applies to in actual world but also by what it would apply to in
different “possible worlds”.
5. FREGEAN SEMANTICS

• According to Frege, the meaning of an expression consist of two elements:

a referent and what he called sense. Both REFERENT and the SENSE
contribute systematically to the truth or falsehood(the truth value) of the
sentences in which an expression occurs.
• Example:
• If Smith does not know that George Washington was the
President of the United States, the Smith believes that George
Washington chopped down a cherry tree can be true while
Smith believes that the first president of the United States
chopped down a cherry tree is FALSE.
• Frege’s explanation of the phenomenon was that,
in such sentences, truth value is determined not
only by reference but also by sense.
6.VERIFICATIONIST SEMANTICS

• An example of this approach is provide by the school of logical positivism,

which was developed by the members of the Vienna Circle discussion
group in the 1920’s and 30’s.
• The meaning of the sentence is given by an account of the experiences on
the basis of which the sentence could be verified. Sentences that are
unverifiable through any possible experience (including many ethical,
religious, and metaphysical sentences) are literally meaningless.
• The basic idea underlying verificationism is that
meaning results from LINKS between LANGUAGE and
EXPERIENCE .
• ex. OBSERVATION SENTENCES
• Since whose meaning derive from direct connection
with experience and especially from the fact that they
are reports of experience.
7. TRUTH-CONDITIONAL SEMANTICS