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Gowher Ahmad Naik, LPU Unit 31: Semantic: Meaning Types: Lexical, Contextual and Others Semantics Practice

Unit 31: Semantic: Meaning Types: Lexical, Notes
Contextual and Others Semantics Practice

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
31.1 What is Semantics ?
31.2 Importance of Meaning
31.3 Difficulties in the Study of Meaning
31.4 Lexical and Grammatical Meaning
31.5 Meaning of Meaning
31.6 Semantic Theories
31.7 Summary
31.8 Key-Words
31.9 Review Questions
31.10 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this unit students will be able to:
• Understand about Semantics and Lexical practices.
• Explain the lexical and Grammatical Meaning.
Introduction

Where as syntax is about sentence formation, sementics is about sentence interpretation. Semantics
is the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions. The language can be a natural language, such
as English or Navajo, or an artificial language, like a computer programming language. Meaning
in natural languages is mainly studied by linguists. In fact, semantics is one of the main branches
of contemporary linguistics. Theoretical computer scientists and logicians think about artificial
languages. In some areas of computer science, these divisions are crossed. In machine translation,
for instance, computer scientists may want to relate natural language texts to abstract representations
of their meanings; to do this, they have to design artificial languages for representing meanings.

31.1 What is Semantics ?

The study of meaning and its manifestation in language is normally referred to as semantics from
the Greek noun sema ‘sign’, signal; and the verb semains ‘signal, mean, signify’. The Shorter
Oxford Dictionary glosses the term semantics as ‘relating to signification or meaning’. Broadly
speaking, semantics is that aspect of linguistics which deals with the relations between referents
(names) and referends (things)—that is, linguistic levels (words, expressions, phrases) and the
objects or concepts or ideas to which they refer—and with the history and changes in the meaning
of words. Diachronic (historical) semantics studies semantic change, whereas synchronic semantics
accounts for semantic relationship, simple or multiple. A semanticist would like to find how a
man is able to paraphrase, transform, and detect ambiguities and why the surrounding words
sometimes force him to choose one interpretation rather than another. A semantic analysis, for
example of English, must also explain antonyms, synonyms, homonyms, polysemy, anomalies,

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