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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
• 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
• 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”.
• 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.