Language is the most important aspect in the life of all beings.

We use language to express inner thoughts and emotions, make sense of complex and
abstract thought, to learn to communicate with others, to fulfill our wants and needs,
as well as to establish rules and maintain our culture.

Language can be defined as verbal, physical, biologically innate, and a basic form of
communication.
Behaviourists often define language as a learned behaviour involving a stimulus and a
response.(Ormrod,1995)
Often times they will refer to language as verbal behaviour, which is language that
includes gestures and body movements as well as spoken word. ( Pierce,&
Eplin,1999)

When we define language we have to be careful not to exclude symbols, gestures,or

motions. This is because if we exclude these from our definition, we will be denying
the language of the deaf community.

All human languages share basic characteristics, some of which are organizational
rules and infinite generativity.
Infinite Generativity is the ability to produce an infinite number of sentences using a
limited set of rules and words. ( Santrock,& Mitterer,2001)

Semantics is a sub discipline of linguistics which focuses on the study of meaning.

Semantics tries to understand what meaning is as an element of language and how it is
constructed by language as well as interpreted, obscured and negotiated by speakers
and listeners of language.[1]

Semantics is closely linked with another sub discipline of linguistics, pragmatics,

which is also, broadly speaking, the study of meaning. However, unlike pragmatics,
semantics is a highly theoretical research perspective, and looks at meaning in
language in isolation, in the language itself, whereas pragmatics is a more practical
subject and is interested in meaning in language in use.

Semantics is the study of meaning, but what do we mean by 'meaning'?

Meaning has been given different definitions in the past.

Meaning = Connotation?
Is meaning simply the set of associations that a word evokes, is the meaning of a word
defined by the images that its users connect to it?
So 'winter' might mean 'snow', 'sledging' and 'mulled wine'. But what about someone
living in the amazon? Their 'winter' is still wet and hot, so its original meaning is lost.
Because the associations of a word don't always apply, it was decided that this
couldn't be the whole story.

Meaning = Denotation?
It has also been suggested that the meaning of a word is simply the entity in the World
which that word refers to. This makes perfect sense for proper nouns like 'New York'
and 'the Eiffel Tower', but there are lots of words like 'sing' and 'altruism' that don't
have a solid thing in the world that they are connected to. So meaning cannot be
entirely denotation either.

The Principle of Compositionality says that the meaning of speech is the sum of the
meanings of the individual words plus the way in which they are arranged into a
structure.

The relationships between words:

Semantics also looks at the ways in which the meanings of words can be related to
each other. Here are a few of the ways in which words can be semantically related.
Semantic relationship
Definition
Example
Synonymy

Words are synonymous/ synonyms

Begin and start,
when they can be used to mean the
Big and large,
same thing (at least in some contexts - Youth and adolescent.
words are rarely fully identical in all
contexts).

Antonyms

Words are antonyms of one another

when they have opposite meanings
(again, at least in some contexts).

Polysemy

A word is polysemous when it has

Bright- shining and brighttwo or more related meanings. In this intelligent. Mouse- animal and
case the word takes one form but can mouse- on a computer.
be used to mean two different things.
In the case of polysemy, these two
meanings must be related in some
way, and not be two completely
unrelated meanings of the word.

Homophony

Homophony is similar to polysemy in

that it refers to a single form of word
with two meanings, however a word is
a homophone when the two meanings
are entirely unrelated.

Big and small,

Come and go,
Boy and girl.

Bat- flying mammal and batequipment used in cricket.

Pen- writing instrument and pensmall cage.

The relationships between sentences:

Sentences can also be semantically related to one-another in a few different ways.

Semantic relationship

Definition

Example

Paraphrase

One relationship that two sentences

'The boys like the girls' and 'the girls
can have with each other is being
are liked by the boys',
paraphrases of each other. This is a
'John gave the book to Chris' and
good example of how we all
'John gave Chris the book'.
understand semantics already on some
level because people can easily tell
when a sentence is a paraphrase,
because when two sentences are
paraphrases of each other, even though
the form is different you will
understand the same meaning from
them. Paraphrases have the sametruth
conditions; if one is true, the other
must also be true.

Entailment

Entailment is a little more tricky than

paraphrase in that the two sentences
don't mean exactly the same thing,
instead, when one sentence entails
another, for the second sentence to be
true, the first one must be true. There
are two different types of entailment.

Mutual enatilment

When each sentence entails the other, 'John is married to Rachel' and
i.e. each sentence must be true for the 'Rachel is John's wife',
other to be true.
'Chris is a man' and 'Chris is human'.

Asymmetrical entailment

With asymmetrical entailment, only

one of the sentences must be true for
the other to be true, but that sentence
may be true without the other sentence
nescessarily having to be true.

Contradiction

Sentences can also be semantically

'Rachel is an only child' and
related when they contradict each
'Rachel's brother is called Phil', 'Alex
other. Sentences contradict each other is alive' and 'Alex died last week'.
when for one to be true the other must
not be.

'Rachel is John's wife' entails 'John is

married' (but John is married does
not entail Rachel being his wife),
'Rachel has two brothers' entails
'Rachel is not an only child' (but
Rachel not being an only child does
not entail Rachel having two
brothers).

Ambiguity:

One of the aspects of how meaning works in language which is studied most in
semantics is ambiguity. A sentence is ambiguous when it has two or more possible

meanings, but how does ambiguity arise in language? A sentence can be ambiguous
for either (or both!) of the following reasons:
Lexical Ambiguity: A sentence is lexically ambiguous when it can have two or more
possible meanings due to polysemous (words that have two or more related meanings)
or homophonous (a single word which has two or more different meanings) words.
Example of lexically ambiguous sentence: 'Prostitutes appeal to the Pope'. This
sentence is ambiguous because the word 'appeal' is polysemous and can mean 'ask for
help' or 'are attractive to'.
Structural Ambiguity: A sentence is structurally ambiguous if it can have two or
more possible meanings due to the words it contains being able to be combined in
different ways which create different meanings.
Example of structurally ambiguous sentence: 'Enraged cow injures farmer with
axe'. In this sentence the ambiguity arises from the fact that the 'with axe' can either
refer to the farmer, or to the act of injuring being carried out (by the cow) 'with axe'.

Reflection

Language teachers do need linguistics. Therefore they shall know the relationship
between linguistics and language teaching. WWFSMD Wilkins (1972) states that
there are three types of relationships. First, linguistic provide a complete description
of the language, but do not provide the best teaching methods. Second, any
developments in the field of linguistics, not misunderstood as a reason to make a
change. Much of this information will be used to teach the language. but a language
teacher shall adjust the information for the purposes and interests. Third, linguistic
indeed affect the teaching of languages, but not so often so, but let it be limited to

current needs.

1.1 Linguistic Knowledge How Much Should Language Teacher Know?

Perhaps many language teachers who are not so clear about the benefits they can get
from linguistics. In other words they do not know the use of linguistics in the
classroom. For example, in an effort to learn the language sound system, a teacher
must be assured, and may continue to be disappointed, if he is given written material
in the form of differential characteristics. The same is true with the description of
grammar transformation, it seems as though convoluted so scary. The description is
usually full anyway with mathematical symbols. For many teachers, this linguistic
foreigners and they still do not quite understand how to teach grammar to associate
with everyday tasks. They must be given a version that has been watered down, so
they do not feel so upset when faced linguistics for the first time.

1.2 Linguistics is Subjects

What is clear is that a teacher shall have sufficient knowledge of the subjects they
teach. A mathematics teacher must learn mathematics at the level of the subject
taught. So, for the same reasons, a language teacher requires a description of the
language, including any clarification and how it applies to your system language
teaching materials. This is what pedagogical grammar. Actually, we can also
determine the linguistic knowledge necessary if we know which program will be
taught the language. Anyone who teaches speech shall know the sound system of the
language. Indeed, the language teacher should also know the entire description

language. He also needs to know the linguistic theories that will be useful to him
during class. For example, in Malaysia, a language teacher should also know the
natural language description of the student, such as the Chinese and the Indians, or
any language or dialect may be. Teach the language as a second language requires
teachers to know students' problems. This can only be achieved if teachers know
students' language habits. So, not only linguistic knowledge necessary to be known by
one teacher, there are other aspects that are important for the teacher. Linguistics
alone will not be able to form a good language teacher. Also it cannot be determined
by the ratio between the linguistic methodology. What is clear is that it is important
linguistics in the training of language teachers.

1.3 conclusion

We know that theory and language descriptions can help teaching languages.
However, if a teacher has learned or disclosed to the sound system, grammar and
structure of meaning in English, is still not guaranteed that she will be an English
teachers. To be a good teacher, it takes a lot of will and other knowledge, such as
teaching materials, student motivation, methods, encouraging environment, a healthy
attitude, tools, and so on. Each case is equally important. linguistic knowledge would
be a tool only. This will allow us to understand the material they teach it. It is
impossible for us to understand how a teacher would be able to teach English without
the knowledge of the system and how it happened.

Wilkins (1972) says we do not have to accept the result of linguistic and continue to
find it useful. What should be done is that we recognize all the problems of language

teaching and then see the answer in linguistics. This is a major contribution of
linguistics to language teaching, which provides information about the language.

If a teacher fails to achieve the goal of a program to teach the language, then there
must be a lot of reasons. For example, failure to teach English in schools that can be
caused by many things. Lack of linguistic knowledge indeed be one reason. Teachers
who are not proficient in the language is assigned to teach English. Teachers like this
will not succeed. There are many reasons and we should not blame one party only.