Semantics : study of meaning of words, phrases and sentences.. Roles and features of semantics..

it comes under linguistics as it is a type of linguistics.
consists of major elements with examples and it's sub-types.. Features and scope.. Roles of semantics..
MA ENGLISH 2020-2021

1. SEMANTICS
SEMANTICS
Presented By : TIYASHA ROY
Subject: INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS
Course: MA ENGLISH
Session: 2020 –2022
Subject Teacher : SHASIDHAR SIR..

2. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF SEMANTICS?
•Semanticsis the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
•The branch of linguisticsand logic concerned with meaning.
•Semanticsis the study of the relationship between wordsand how we
draw meaningfrom those words.
•People can absolutely interpretwords differently and drawdifferent
meaningsfrom them.

3. WHAT IS THE BASIC DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN MEANING ANDSEMANTICS?
“Meaning” is specific. It refers to what a word, sentence, paragraph,
essay, speech or book conveys to you.
.
.
“Semantics” can mean either the study of meaning in general, or
how the meanings of words within a work relate to each other.

4. EXAMPLES OF SEMANTICS:
•General Semantics According to Kodish and Kodish,“General
semantics provides a general theory of evaluation”....
•For example, when we're interested in the word 'unicorn,' what
dictionaries say it 'means' and its history of 'meanings,' and what it
might refer to, we are involved in 'semantics.

5. •A toy block could be called a block, a cube, a toy.
•.
•A child could be called a child, kid, boy, girl, son, daughter.
•.
•The word "run" has many meanings-physically running, depart
or go(I have to run, spent (it has run its course), or even a snag in a
pair of hose (a run in my hose).

6. CATEGORIES OF SEMANTICS:
•Nick Rimer, author of Introducing Semantics, goes into
detail about the two categories of semantics.
“Based on the distinction between the meanings of words and
the meanings of sentences, we can recognize two main
divisions in the study of semantics: lexical semantics and
phrasal semantics.”

7. THE SCOPES OF SEMANTICS:
•Semantics is a broad topic with many layers and not all people that study it study
these layers in the same way.
•It is a very broad field of inquiry, and we find scholars writing on very different
topics and using quite different methods, though sharing the general aim of
describing semantic knowledge.
•In addition, semanticists have to have at least a nodding acquaintance with other
disciplines, like philosophy and psychology, which also investigate the creation
and transmission of meaning.

8. FEATURES OF SEMANTICS:
•Semantic features are theoretical units of meaning-holding components which are used for representing
word meaning. These features play a vital role in determining the kind of lexical relation which exists
between words in a language.
•Although such model of meaning representation has numerous applications in various fields, the manual
derivation of semantic features is a cumbersome and time consuming task.
•We aim to elevate this process by developing an automated semantic feature extraction system based on
ontological models.
•Such an approach will provide explicit word meaning representation, and enable the computation of
lexical relations such as synonym and antonymy.

9. ROLES OF SEMANTICS:
•Semantic roles (also known as thematic roles or theta roles) attempt to capture similarities
and differences in verb meaning that are reflected in argument expression, with emergent
generalizations that will contribute to the mapping from semantics to syntax. They belong,
then, to the semantics/syntax interface.
•A semantic role is the underlying relationship that a participant has with the main verb in a
clause.
▪Discussion: Semantic role is the actual role a participant plays in some real or
imagined situation, apart from the linguistic encoding of those situations.

10. EXAMPLE :
THE ACTION
THE GIRL CUT THE ROPE
THE AGENT THE THEME

11. AGENT AND THEME:
•Agent–The entity that intentionally carries out the action of the verb.
EXAMPLE: The girl spilled the water.
•Theme–The entity that directly receives the action of the verb.
EXAMPLE: The girl kicked the basket .

12. INSTRUMENT AND
EXPERIENCER:
•Experiencer–The entity that undergoes an emotion, a state of being, or a perception
expressed by the verb.
EXAMPLE: Ravismelled the rose.
(Here, RAVIis theEXPERIENCER BECAUSE HE IS THE ONE WHO SMELLED THE ROSE).
•Instrument–The entity by which the action of the verb is carried out.
EXAMPLE: Ravi cuts the cake with a knife.
( Here, Ravi is using a knife which is an instrumentin the sentence).

13. GOAL, LOCATION AND SOURCE :
•Goal–The direction towards which the action of the verb moves.
EXAMPLE: Ravi is FROM MEGHALAYA.
•Location–The location where the action of the verb takes place.
EXAMPLE: The girl is sitting ON THE TABLE.
•Source–The direction from which the action originates.
EXAMPLE: Ravi is going TO PHILIPPINS .

14. LEXICAL RELATIONS:
Lexical relationssuch as homophones and homonymy, polysemy, synonymy,
antonymy, prototypes, word play, hyponymyandmetonymyare well-
establishedsemanticlinks between words in the mentallexicon, but in modern
linguistic approaches tolexical semantics, the focus is more often on aspects of
meaning below the word level.

15. SOME MEANINGS:
To better explain what these words mean, we can look at the separate components of
each of the words:
•homo-means "the same as"
•hetero-means "different to"
•-phonemeans "sounding"
•-nymstands for "meaning"
•-graphmeans "written"

16. A PICTURE TELLS A THOUSAND WORDS
HeterographHomonymHeteronym
different
spelling
same spelling same spelling
different
meaning
different
meaning
different
meaning
same sounding same sounding different
sounding

17. HOMOPHONES AND HOMONYMY
•Homophonesare lexemes that have the same pronunciation, but can differ in spelling.
EXAMPLE: FLOWER / FLOUR , RIGHT / WRITE , TOO / TWO etc.
•Homonymycan therefore be seen as a subclass of homophony and homography.Thiscan also be
divided in absolute and partialhomonymy. Words that have different meanings but are pronounced the
same or spelled the same or both.
EXAMPLE: BANK( of a river ) -BANK( financial institution ) ,
MOLE ( on skin ) -MOLE ( small animal ) etc.

18. POLYSEMY AND PROTOTYPE
•Polysemyis the association of one word with two or more distinct meanings, and a polyseme is a word
or phrase with multiple meanings.
EXAMPLE: HEAD {(of body part )also( a person who is at the top of an institution ) }
FOOT { (of a body part)also( of mountains ) } etc.
•Prototypeis a cognitive reference point, i.e. the proto-image of all representatives of the meaning of a
word or of a category.
EXAMPLE: DOVE –DUCK –PEACOCK–SPARROW ( same category ) . ( BIRDS ).

19. SYNONYMYANDANTONYMY
•SYNONYMYhave a significant semantic overlap, but the degree of synonymy is not necessarily related
to that overlap. A word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another in the language.
EXAMPLE : HAPPY –JOYFUL –CHEERFUL –MERRY etc.
•ANTONYMYare opposites cover a very large variety of phenomena, more or less clearly defined.
There are also various degrees of opposition: some pairs of word-senses are more prototypically opposites
than others. Antonyms refer to gradable properties and opposites to non-gradable ones.
EXAMPLE: HAPPY : SAD, UP : DOWN, BIG : SMALL etc.

20. HYPONYMYANDMETONYMY
•HYPONYMYis a word or phrase whose semantic field is more specific than its hypernym. Forexample,
verbs such as stare, gaze, view and peer can also be consideredhyponymsof the verb look, which is their
hypernym.
EXAMPLE: TREE: MANGO, ANIMAL: TIGERetc.
•METONYMY is a figure of speech in which we refer to something by using a word that describes an attribute or
accompaniment to the actual thing we are talking about.
EXAMPLE: Saying "suits" when we mean "businessmen“
Referingto the monarchy as "The Crown"

21. WORD PLAY:
•Wordplay(or word play, and also called play-on-words) is the clever and witty use of words and
meaning. It involves using literary devices and techniques like consonance, assonance, spelling,
alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme, acronym, pun, and slang (to name a few) to form amusing and
often humorous written and oral expressions. Using wordplay techniques relies on several different
aspects of rhetoric, like spelling, phonetics (sound and pronunciation of words), and semantics (meaning
of words).
•EXAMPLE: BRO ( brother ), SIS (sister ), EWE ( YOU ) etc.

22. SOME KEY WORDS:
i.CONSONANCEis the matching of consonant sounds. These techniques can create some very catchy and interesting wordplay.
ii.Double entendre is the double interpretation of a word or phrase, with the secondary meaning usually being funny .
iii.Malapropismis incorrect use of a word or phrase when you mean to use another word or phrase that sounds similar.
iv.Onomatopoeiaare words that phonetically imitate sounds. Some common examples are boom, achoo, pow, whoosh,
bam, tick-tock, click, meow, woof, tweet, and ribbit, just to name a few.
v.A pun is the ultimate form of wordplay and probably the most popular and widely used. E.g.: “Hit the hay”(“Sorry,
guys, I have to hit the hay now!”) , Love at first sight etc.
vi.Slang is the use of casual and unique language and expressions, and varies depending on age, location, field of work or
study, and many other factors.
vii.Acronymsare abbreviations of terms formed by using parts or letters of the original words. E.g. : CURD-YOGURT

23. COLLOCATION
•A collocationis two or more words that often go together. These combinations just sound
"right" to native English speakers, who use them all the time. On the other hand, other
combinations may be unnatural and just sound "wrong".