1. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
Semantics
LECTURE - 5
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

2. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
Semantics
Semantics is a branch of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words, phrases and sentences,
different associations or connotations attached to a word like needle. They might associate it with “pain,” or “illness,” or “blood,” or “drugs,” or “thread,” or “knitting,” or “hard to find” (especially in a haystack), and these associations may differ from one person to the next
Meaning
Associative
Conceptual
Covers those basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed by the literal use of a word. It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are designed to describe. Some of the basic components of a word like needle in English might include “thin, sharp, steel instrument.”
what a word in fact denotes, as for example Friday the 13th is a day between Thursday the 12th and Saturday the 14th and that is the conceptual meaning of the phrase Friday the 13th.
many people the idea of that day brings to mind thoughts of bad luck and misfortune
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

3. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
Semantic Features
words are analyzed in terms of their semantic features that is basic elements which enable the differentiation of meaning of words.
The hamburger ate the boy.
The table listens to the radio.
The horse is reading the newspaper
According to the basic syntactic rules for forming English sentences well-formed structures.
NP V NP
The hamburger ate the boy
syntactically good, but semantically odd
“−animate”
“+animate”
“+animate, −animate,” “+human, −human,” “+female, −female,” for example, can be treated as the basic elements involved in differentiating the meaning of each word in a language from every other word.
The is reading the newspaper.
N [+human]
Analyzing the conceptual components of word meaning, but it is not without problems. For many words in a language it may not be as easy to come up with neat components of meaning
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

4. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
SEMANTIC ROLES
Apart from the semantic features of words also semantic roles (sometimes called ‘thematic roles’) are examined.
Semantic roles describe the way in which words are used in sentences and the functions they fulfill.
The entity that performs an action is known as an agent, while the entity involved in an action is called the theme (or ‘patient).
When an agent uses an entity in order to do something this entity is called an instrument.
when a person in a sentence does not perform any action, but only has a perception, state of feeling then the role is described as experiencer.
Finally there are roles connected with motion or position of entities.
The location is where an entity is, the source is the initial position of the entity, the place where it moves from and the goal is where the entity moves to.
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

5. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
SEMANTIC ROLES
The boy kicked the ball.
The boy cut himself
Agent
Agent
Theme
The boy cut the rope with an old razor
Instrument
The boy feels sad
Did you hear that noise?
Experiencer
Experiencer
Mary saw a fly on the wall.
Experiencer Theme Location
She handed the magazine back to George.
Agent Theme Goal
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

6. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
LEXICAL RELATIONS
Semantics is the relationship between words, some of which are known to almost every language user, others very abstract and vague for a common speaker.
Explain the meanings of words in terms of their relationships. Conceal - hide,
shallow –deep,
daffodil -kind of flower.
Characterizing the meaning of each word, not in terms of its component features, but in terms of its relationship to other words. This approach is used in the semantic description of language and treated as the analysis of lexical relations.
The lexical relations
(conceal/hide) (shallow/deep) (daffodil/flower).
Synonymy
Antonymy
Hyponymy
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

7. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
SYNONYMS & ANTONYMS
Synonyms are two words with very similar, almost identical meaning, such as buy and purchase, or cab and taxi.
The next relationship between words is the case when two words have opposite meanings, the words such as male/female, old/new, interesting/boring are antonyms.
Antonyms
gradable
non-gradable
opposites along a scale in that when someone says ‘I am not high’ it does not necessarily mean ‘I am short’.
do not present such flexibility: when we say ‘I am married’ the only antonym available in this sentence would be ‘I am single’.
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

8. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
Hyponymy
The meaning of one word is included in the meaning of another, broader term.
Then the relationship between words can be described as hyponymy as in the case of words: vegetable and carrot.
A carrot is necessarily a vegetable, therefore the meaning of the word vegetable is included in the word carrot, so carrot is a hyponym of vegetable.
In this relation the word vegetable is the Superordinte (higher level term) of the word carrot. The relationship of hyponymy and Superordination can be illustrated by the following diagram:
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

9. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
Prototypes
canary
cormorant
dove
duck
flamingo
parrot
pelican and
Robin
The idea of “the characteristic instance” of a category is known as the prototype.
The concept of a prototype helps explain the meaning of certain words, like bird, not in terms of component features (e.g. “has feathers,” “has wings”), but in terms of resemblance to the clearest example.
Thus, even native speakers of English might wonder if ostrich or penguin should be hyponyms of bird (technically they are), but have no trouble deciding about sparrow or pigeon. These last two are much closer to the prototype.
Co-hyponyms of the superordinate bird, they are not all considered to be equally good examples of the category “bird.”
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

10. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
Homophones & Homonyms
A very common word type in the English language is that of Homophones
Homophones are words which have different written forms, but the same Pronunciation
Example : right/write, to/too/two, bear/bare.
Homophones are often mistaken for homonyms, but homonyms are words which have the same written or spoken forms and unrelated meanings, as for example:
bat (flying creature) and bat (used in baseball), race (contest) and race (ethnic group).
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

11. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
POLYSEMY
Polysemy is also called radiation or multiplication.
A word has multiple related meanings then linguists speak of polysemy as with head for instance: head as a part of body; mind, or mental ability; a person in charge
The words date (= a thing we can eat) and date (= a point in time) are homonyms.
However, the “point in time” kind of date is polysemous in terms of a particular day and month (= on a letter), an arranged meeting time (= an appointment), a social meeting (= with someone we like), and even a person (= that person we like).
Word Play
These last three lexical relations are the basis of a lot of word play, usually for humorous effect.
In the nursery rhyme Mary had a little lamb, we think of a small animal, but in the comic version Mary had a little lamb, some rice and vegetables, we think of a small amount of meat.
The polysemy of lamb allows the two interpretations.
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

12. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
Metonymy
Relation between words is that of metonymy which is based on close connection of certain entities in everyday experience.
The connection can be that of container-content, whole-part, or others.
It is clearly visible in the following example ‘he drank the whole bottle’ when it is obvious that he did not drink the container, but the content of the bottle.
(bottle/water, can/juice)
a whole–part relation (car/wheels, house/roof)
a representative–symbol relationship
(king/crown, the President/the White House)
Metonymy Are Highly Conventionalized And Easy To Interpret
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

13. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
COLLOCATION
Collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that co occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology collocation is a sub-type of phraseme
Collocations are partly or fully fixed expressions that become established through repeated context-dependent use.
Examples of collocated pairs of words.
'crystal clear',
'middle management',
'nuclear family', and
'cosmetic surgery‘
Collocations can be in a syntactic relation – Verb-Object 'make' and 'decision’, lexical relation - Antonymy, or they can be in no linguistically defined relation. Knowledge of collocations is vital for the competent use of a language: a grammatically correct sentence will stand out as awkward if collocational preferences are violated.
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline

14. Dept. of English Prof.Roseline
THANK YOU
Dept. of English Prof.Roseline