Sementics

Linguistics

1. Qamar Khokhar Riphah International University Faisalabad F18-005-9996

2. SEMANTICS

3. Introduction: Semantics is a study of meaning in language.the term is taken from greek semantikos,which means “giving signs”,the functions of signs in language. The term semantics deals with lexical words and the relations between them.

4. Lexical relations: Synonymy Antonymy Hyponomy Homonomy polysemy

5. Synonymy: A word having the same or nearly same meaning as another word. For example: almost/nearly , big/large , broad/wide ,buy/purchase. There are many occasions when one word is appropriate in a sentense.but its synonym would be odd. I e , Asad had only one answer correct on the test ,the word reply would sound odd.

6. Antonymy: A word having the opposite meaning as another word. For example: happy/sad, heavy/light, long/short, old/new.

7. Hyponymy: When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another,the relationship is described as hyponymy. For example: animal_dog_poodle, plant_flower_rose. When we considered hyponymous connections,we are essentially looking at the meaning of words in some type of hierarchical relationship.we say that poodle is hyponym of dog and rose is a hyponym of flower.

8. Homonymy: A word having a different meaning,but the same form as another word. For example: bear(verb),bear(animal noun). bank(financial institution),bank(river bank). They having the same spellings.

9. Homophones: When two or more different forms have same pronounciation,they are homophones. For example: Meat(noun),meet(verb). Right(concept,noun),write(verb). Flower(plant,noun),flour(noun).

10. Polysemy: When we encounter two or more words with the same form and related meaning. Simply defined as “one form having multiple meanings”. For example: the word “head” used to refer to an object on top of your body,a person at the top of a company or department and froth top on the glass of milk,so the question is: where is the head? Could have several different interpretations.