An Introduction to Semantics in Linguistics

 

An Introduction to Semantics

Fundamental Concepts in Semantics

Definitions

"Semantics is the branch of linguistics that mainly concerns with how the ‘meanings’ are conveyed by the linguistics system consisting of different units, structures like morpheme, words, phrases and sentences. It is the knowledge encoded in the vocabulary of the language and in its patterns for building more elaborate meanings up to the level of sentence meanings."

“Semantics is the toolkit for the study of the meanings of words and sentences at the linguistics or non-linguistic levels.”

                                                         What is meaning?

Ogden and Richards (1923) define the term ‘meaning’ in their book “The Meaning of Meaning”.

“Meaning is an intrinsic property of something or words related to that words in the dictionary or connotations of a word.”

“Meaning is the thing to which the speaker of that word refers or should refer to which the speaker of that word believes himself to be referring or the hearer of that word believes is being referred.”

Words & Meaning

A.    Can I have your pen to write my phone number?

B.     I have a red pen.

Words	Meaning
Pen”  is a noun, Name of concept for pen is just pen. Words are names for their meanings, so we could say pen means pen.	Concepts of pen are meanings. Pen is an apparatus for writing. Part of knowledge or concept

Sense

Referent

Meaning of a word that lives permanently in the dictionary is sense. Meaning of the words “Pen” is  its sense. A word’s sense does not change every time the word takes on a new referent. Regardless of whether the referent of queen is Elizabeth II or Margrethe, its sense is something like ‘female reigning monarch’. However, that ‘female reigning monarch’ is not the only sense of the word queen. Another sense of queen is ‘second highest ranking piece in a game of chess’

Thing referred to is called the referent. Varies from occasion to occasion A referent is the particular thing, person, place, etc. An expression stands for on a particular occasion of use, It changes each time the word is applied to a different object or situation in the world.

Sense & Referent

Reference

There are two types of reference, speaker's reference and linguistic reference.

Speaker-reference is what the speaker is referring to by using some linguistic expression. E.g. here comes my love Elizabeth….( dear & close). It is pragmatic in nature.

Linguistic-reference is the systematic denotation of some linguistic expression as part of a language. e.g. here comes Queen Elizabeth refers in fact to the public figure Queen Elizabeth. It is semantic/dictionary meaning in nature.