Semantics Is The Linguistic and Philosophical Study of Meaning in Language

1.
Definition of Semantics
Semantics is the linguistic and philosophical study of meaning in
language, programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics. It is concerned
with the relationship between signifiers like words, phrases, signs, and symbols
and what they stand for in reality, their denotation.
Semantics is defined as the study of meaning in Language (Hurford and
Heasley, 1983). As a study of meaning, semantics has a very crucial position in
the study of language in general and in order to understand the nature of language
and human language abilities, because basically language means expressing
meanings. Everything in a language words, grammatical constructions, intonation
patternsis aimed at realizing meaning in the fullest, richest, and subtlest way (Heri
Yufrizal,Ph.D).
In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of
meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units of
discourse (termed texts, or narratives). The study of semantics is also closely
linked to the subjects of representation, reference and denotation. The basic study
of semantics is oriented to the examination of the meaning of signs, and the study
of relations between different linguistic units and compounds: homonymy,
synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy,
paronyms. A key concern is how meaning attaches to larger chunks of text,
possibly as a result of the composition from smaller units of meaning.
Traditionally, semantics has included the study of sense and denotative reference,
truth conditions, argument structure, thematic roles, discourse analysis, and the
linkage of all of these to syntax.
Example of words that have more than one meaning, and can be described with
semantics rules:
1. "Young" can allude to a colt, filly, piglet, baby, puppy, or kitten.
2. The word "create" can mean build, make, construct, erect, compose or
imagine.
3. The verb "move" can mean change place, push, pull or carry, or stir emotion.
2. Scope of study in semantics
a. Prosodies: Intonation, stress, rhythm and loudness etc. Example of
prosodies is like the same sentence but in the different intonation.
- Close the door! - Close the door?
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b. Paralinguistic: Facial expression and gesture are called paralinguistics.
Example we can indicate that what we are saying is not really true, but is
just meant to tease, by winking or even simply smiling.
c. Sense and Reference: The term reference means the relationship between
linguistic form and the outside world. The distinction between sense and
Reference is a critical one because it allows us to study the many cases
where we happily use words. For example, we use such words like beautiful
and beauty. The sense of words is nice.
d. Word and Lexeme: The word is not a clearly defined linguistic unit. It's to
degree purely conventional as Lyons says a word is any sequence of letters
which, in formal typographical practice, is bounded on either side by a
space.we have been using this term in the sense that love and loved are
different words. But we could also say that they are forms of the same word
the verb to love. A technical term for the word in this second sense is
Lexeme.
Example of words :
Run, Running.
1. They run quickly
2. Running man is the winner of football championship
So, there is the difference between a word ‘run’ as a verb and ‘running’ as a
gerund. By learning semantics, we can distinguish the words.
Example of lexeme :
Run, runs, running
e. Sarcasm: Saying something completely the opposite. For example, if we call
someone as beautiful but the way we utter it indicate that we mean he is not
beautiful.
f. Social: Social relationship with the person spoken to is also an important
factor. we may be polite or rude while we say ''would you please be quiet ''or
''shut up''.
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CONCLUSION
Semantics is the branches of linguistic that study about meaning in

language. Semantics help us to understand what the word mean really mean. It
means that semantics give us direction about words that can have more than one
meaning. There is several scope of study in semantics, such as prosodies,
paralinguistic, sense and reference, word and lexeme, sarcasm, and social.
3
REFERENCES
https://masudadam.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-scope-of-semantics.html?m=1
https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-semantics.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/semantics-linguistics-1692080

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