SEMANTICS
1. Definition
of Semantics
Semantics
is the part of linguistics that is concerned with meaning. Meaning is a notion
with a wide range of applications, some of which belong to the field of
semantics, while others lie beyond it. Meaning is always the meaning of something.
Words have meanings, as do phrases and sentences. But deeds may have meaning
too. The first thing to be stated is that semantics is exclusively corcerned
with the meanings of linguistic entities such as words, phrases, grammatical forms
and sentences, but not with the meanings of actions or phenomena.The main verb
in a sentence occupies a key role its meaning.
A
characteristic semantic question is: what is the meaning of this sentence.
Since you understand the sentence, you know what it means. But knowing what the
sentence means is one thing, describing its meaning is another. The situation
is similar with almost all our knowledge. We may exactly know how to get from
one place to another, yet be unable to tell the way to someone else. We may be
able to sing a song by heart, but unable to describe its melody. We are able to
recognize tens of thousands of words when we hear them but the knowledge that
enables us to do so unconscious. Uncovering the knowledge of the meanings of
words and sentences and revealing its nature are the central objectives of
semantics.
Semantics
is the science that we study about the meaning of language, including words,
phrases, sentences, symbols, and signals.
Semantics
is the study of meaning. It is a wide subject within the general study of
language. An understanding of semantics is essential to the study of language
acquisition (how language users acquire a sense of meaning, as speakers and
writers, listeners and readers) and of language change (how meanings alter over
time). It is important for understanding language in social contexts, as these
are likely to affect meaning, and for understanding varieties of English and
effects of style. It is thus one of the most fundamental concepts in
linguistics. The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is
constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified
negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased.
“The word
semantics is derived from the Greek semaino, meaning, to signify or mean.
Semantics is part of the larger study of signs, semiotics. It is the part that
deals with words as signs (symbols) and language as a system of signs (words as
symbols)." (Hipkiss, 1995:ix)
Saeed
(2003:3) “Semantics is the study of meaning communicated through language”.
Hurford dan Heasley (1983:1)"Semantics is the study of
meaning in Language".
Palmer (1976:1) "Semantics is the technical
term used to refer to the study of meaning, and since meaning is a part of
language, semantics is a part of linguistics".
Lōbner (2002) “Semantics
is the part of linguistics that is concerned with meaning.”
Frawley (1992) “Linguistic
semantics is the study of literal, decontextualized, grammatical meaning”.
Kreidler (1998) “Linguistic
semantics is the study of how languages organize and express meanings”.
This, however, leaves us with a second question:
what do we understand by “meaning?” what is that “meaning” that is organized
and expressed by languages? In very general terms, speaking consists of
communicating information: somebody (the speaker) has something in his/her mind
(an idea, a feeling, an intention, whatnot), and decides to communicate it
linguistically. Vocal noises are then emitted that are heard by a second person
(the hearer), who “translates” these noises back into ideas, with the result
being that this hearer somehow “knows” what the first person had in mind. That
“something” that was at first in the speaker’s mind and now is also in the
hearer’s mind is what we call meaning. What can it be? The problem is that it
can be virtually anything: objects (concrete, abstract or imaginary), events
and states (past, present, future or hypothetical), all sort of properties of objects,
feelings, emotions, intentions, locations, etc. We can talk about anything we
can think of (or perhaps almost). And if we were to arrive at a rough idea of
what meaning is, we would nevertheless have another list of questions waiting
in line. There are some of them, in no particular order:
a. How exact is the “copy” of the meaning that goes
“from” the speaker “into” the hearer? That is, how faithful or precise is
linguistic communication.
b. How can the meaning of a given word or expression be
defined or measured?
c. Are there different types of meaning?
d. What is the relationship between language and
thought? Do we think in language or a similar format?
e. Can language express all meanings or are there
meanings that cannot be expressed linguistically? If you cannot expressed
something in your language, can you think about it?
f. Which are the laws governing the changes of meaning
that words undergo through time?
g. Should semantics study all aspects of the meaning of
a word, or only those that are important or necessary for linguistic
processing? (i.e. should we distinguish semantics and pragmatics, and if so,
where do we draw the line?)
h. Do different languages structure and expressed
meaning in significant different ways?
i. How do children learn the meaning of words?
There are some of questions that semantics has to
try to answer. The formal semanticsapproach
connects with classical philosophical semantics, that is, logic. Formal
semantics tries to describe the meaning of language using the descriptive
apparatus of formal logic.
The goal is to describe natural language in a formal, precise, unambiguous way.
Related (though not identical) denominations for this type of semantics are truth-conditional semantics, model-theoretic semantics, logical semantics, etc. In truth-conditional semantics, the goal is
to describe the conditions that would have to be met for a sentence to be true.
Formal semantics is concerned with how words are related to objects in the
world and how combinations of words preserve or not the truth-conditions of
their components. Formal semantics follows Frege’s
principle of compositionality: the meaning of the whole is a function of
the meaning of the parts.
The psychologically-oriented
semantics or cognitive semantics approach does not consider the logical
structure of language as important for the description of the meaning of
language, and tends to disregard notions such as truth-values or strict
compositionality. Cognitive semantics tries to explain semantics phenomena by
appealing to biological, psychological and even cultural issues. They are less
concerned with notions of reference and try to propose explanations that will
fit with everything that we know about cognition, including perception and the
role of the body in the structuring of meaning structures.
References:
Seno
H.Putra Drs,.M.Pd.,P.Hd.2006.Introduction to General Linguistics
Lōbner
Sebastian.Understanding Semantics
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