THE SCOPE OF SEMANTICS

Lecturer:
Ms. Evi Fitri Aglina, M.Pd

Arranged by :
Group 2
6H

Aji Pangestu 1811040167

Juwita Hesti Putri Ayu 1811040109
Nabila Husen 1811040134
Rossa Shafah Risqia 1811040012

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

EDUCATION AND TARBIYAH FACULTY
STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY RADEN INTAN LAMPUNG
2020/2021
 PREFACE

First of all, thanks to Allah SWT because of the help of Allah, the authors
finished writing the paper entitled “THE SCOPE OF SEMANTICS” right in the
calculated time.
The purpose in writing this paper is to fulfill the assignment that given by
Ms. Evi Fitri Aglina, M.Pd as lecturer in Semantics/Pragmatics. In arranging this
paper, the writer trully get lots challenges and obstructions but with help of many
indiviuals, those obstructions could passed. The writer also realized there are still
many mistakes in process of writing this paper.
Because of that, the authors say thank you to all individuals who helps in
the process of writing this paper. hopefully allah replies all helps and bless you
all.the writer realized tha this paper still imperfect in arrangment and the content.
then the writer hope the criticism from the readers can help the writer in
perfecting the next paper.last but not the least Hopefully, this paper can helps the
readers to gain more knowledge about samantics major.

                                                                        Bandar Lampung, 31 Maret 2021

                                  The authors

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE..............................................................................................i
TABLE OF CONTENTS......................................................................ii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background Of The Paper.................................................................1
1.2 Problem Formulation.........................................................................1
1.3 Purpose Of The Paper.......................................................................2

CHAPTER II DISCUSSION
2.1 Definition of Semantics....................................................................3
2.2 The Scope of Semantics...................................................................3
2.2.1 Naming...................................................................................4
2.2.2 Concepts.................................................................................4
2.2.3 Sense and Reference ..............................................................5
2.2.4 The Word................................................................................6
2.2.5 The Sentence..........................................................................8

CHAPTER III CLOSING

3.1 Conclusion.........................................................................................10

REFERENCES......................................................................................11

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 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background Of The Paper

In human communication, much of what is expressed goes beyond

simply conveying information to others. Social and affective meaning are not
covered by semantics (which focuses on conventional/conceptual meaning
only), but virtually any real-life communicative situation contains signs
which are used to express something about the speakers and their
social relationships. Semantics is derived from the Greek semanticos, meaning
the study of meaning.

Semantics focuses on the relationship between markers such as words,

phrases, signs and symbols. In the general sense of semantics is a discipline that
examines the meaning of the lingual unit, both the lexical meaning and the
grammatical meaning. The lexical meaning is the meaning of the smallest
semantic unit called lexeme, while the grammatical meaning is the meaning
formed from the merging of linguistic units. Based on these opinions it can be
concluded that semantics is the study of the meaning contained in words or
groups of words.

We have two kinds of semantics, they are one deals with semantic structure
and th e other deals with meanings in terms of our experience outside language.
Knowing further for the theory of semantics and how to recgnize the meaning of
the words and sentences, there is one limitation of semantics is that dimensions of
meaning that are outside the content of the linguistic sign are also outside the
scope of description. Because of that, this paper will discuss about scopes of
semantics. We will discuss what scopes of semantics are.

1.2 Problem Formulation

1. What is the definition of semantics ?

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 2. What are the scope of semantics ?

1.3 Purpose
1. To know the definition of semantics.
2. To know the scope of semantics.

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 CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION

2.1 The Definition of Semantic

Semantics is a field of linguistics concerned with the
study of meaning in language. Additionally, it is concerned
with the conceptual meaning and not the associated meaning.
According to Ferdinand de Saussure the linguistic consists of a
signifier and a signified; these are, however, more strictly a sound
image and a concept, both linked by a psychological "associative"
bond. Semantics deals with the literal meaning of words and the
meaning of the way they are combined, which taken together
form the core of meaning, or the starting point from which the
whole meaning of a particular utterance is constructed.
It is one of the interesting subjects to discuss in
linguistics. Language is abstract and so is its meaning. The concrete
one is the entities. People have different terms in expressing one
thing, so it becomes arbitrary. It means, semantics concerns with
the meaning not only non-sentences meaning, such as phrase
and incomplete sentences, but also with the meaning of whole
sentences. The meaning of whole sentences involve propositions,
and the notion of proposition is central to semantics.

2.2 The Scope of Semantics

One limitation of semantics is that dimensions of meaning that
are outside the content of the linguistic sign are also outside the
scope of description or the scope of semantics. Scope is a range of
statements. We shall attempt to clear the way for the various
aspects of semantics first, by discussing and simissing two
unsatisfactory views of semantics and by attempting to set out
some of the more important distinction that have to be made.

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 1. Naming
Naming is a communication system which with on the
one hand the signifier, on the other the signified. One of the
oldest views found in Plato is that the signifier is a word in the
language and signified is the object in the real world. Naming In
an earlier section it was suggested that language might be thought
of as a communication system with on the one hand the
signifier, on the other the signified. But a basic problem is to
establish the nature and relationship of these two. Signifier is a
word in the language and the signified is the object in the world
that it "stand for", "refers to", or "denotes". Words, that is to say
are "names" or "label" for things. The theory of naming to
include these other parts of speech, such as adjectives, noun,
verb, etc.
Some nouns do not denote objects in the world, e.g.
Unicorn, goblin, fairy. As a solution, we distinguish two kinds of
worlds, the real and that of fairy tales. Some nouns do not refer
to physical objects at all, e.g. love, hate, inspiration. The
meaning of the relevant word is by no means the same as its
denotation. E.g. the evening star and the morning star. Both denote
a single object, the planet Venus, but hard ly have the same meaning.

2. Concepts

Concept (Signified)

Image ( Signifier)

According to Ferdinand De Saussure (1857-1913), he said that

linguistic signs are divided into two, namely "Signifier" and "Signified".
In theory, Signifier is seen as a form or physical form that can be
recognized through the form of architectural works, while Signified is seen

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as meaning or sound, images, concepts, and thoughts. Then the symbol is
the reference for the linguistic element is the object and the mind is the
concept.

According to this theory there is no direct relationship between

symbols and references through our meanings, thoughts and concepts. And
in communicating, someone uses a sign to send meaning about the object
and other people will interpret the sign. Objects to Saussure are called
"referents". Similar to Peirce's term interpretant for signified and object for
the signifier, the difference is that Saussure interprets “object” as a referent
and mentions it as an additional element in the marking process. For
example: when people say the word “dog” (signifier) in a swearing tone
then it is a sign of bad luck (signified). Thus, according to Saussure,
"Signifier and signified are unity, inseparable, like the two sides of a sheet
of paper." (Sobur, 2006)

3. Sense and reference

Reference deals with the relationship between the
linguistic elements, word, sentences, and the non linguistic
world of experience. Sense relates to the complex system of
the relationship that holds between the linguistics elements
themselves (mostly the words); it is concerned only with intra-
linguistic relation. Based on the Palmer’s concept it can be said
that the reference of the word is the object designated by the
word. For example, the reference of the word chair is the object
designated by the word which can be ‘upside down number
four’. The other example is bed has a certain meaning as ‘a piece
of furniture with a mattress and covering’. Bed refers to ‘a thing
that functions to sleep or to rest on’. There are some words that
have meaning but they don’t have reference.
They don’t refer physical object at all, for example: love,
had, inspiration and s ad. The words are common called as
abstract thing. There are also some words that have meaning

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 but they are kinds of world of fairy story. In other words,
they do not denote objects in the world. For example: unicorn
and goblin relate to creatures that do not exist. When people
are speaking of the meaning of a word, they are usually
speaking about one of its senses which are usually believed as
the primary sense. Some words, perhaps, have more than one
sense. In some cases, the same word can have more than one
sense. Some semanticists would regard ‘bank’ as several different
words (different entries in dictionaries). One sentence can have dif
ferent senses as well. Sense relationships are important in the study
of language. Examples of related words:
1. involving sex or gender: ram/ewe, cow/bull, sow/boar
2. involving adult and young: duck/duckling, pig/piglet
3. involving family relationship: father/son, uncle/nephew

The notion of sense and reference are central to the study

of meaning. Reference is not only meant the words which refers
to something but also to the words which can not be brought
forward for the existence of something but have lexical items
referring to it, while the sense is a relation which occur between
two lexical items.

4. The word
The word is one of the basic units of semantics. Yet there
difficulties. Not all words have the same kind of meaning as
others; some seem to have little or none. e .g. ‘to’ in Boys like to
play. Words may be divided into two types:
1. Full words like sing, tree, blue.
2. Form words like it, the, an

The “word” is one of the basic units in semantics. Yet there

difficulties. A “word” is a string of caracters that can have different
meanings.

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Example : jaguar = car or animal?
Driver = one who drive a vehicle or part of computer?

The full words seem to have the kind of meaning that we

would find in a dictionary. The form words belong to grammar
and have only grammatical meaning. Words as we know them are
the written items between which we have learnt to put spaces. But
we may well wuestion whether this is necessarily an indication of a
wel-defined linguistic element. The word is not a clearly defined
linguistic unit. It is conventional, defined in terms of the spaces in
the written text.

Bloomfield offered a solution by suggesting that the word is

the minimum free form, the smallest form that may occur in
isolation. Bloomfield also suggested that we should look for an
element smaller than the word, a unit of meaning – the morpheme.
However, in cases where morpheme do not work, we use the
lexeme.

Bloomfield – suggestion :

The morpheme = a unit of meaning

e.g : -berry in blackberry

e.g : loved = love + d (adore+past)

→need to redefine the word: lexeme

Love, loved = 2 forms of the same word

Lexeme – dictionary headings

→ we can talk about meaning of words (lexemes) + meaning of

grammatical elements (e.g., past tense). There is no consistency
about the number of semantic units we may recognize in a word.
In this point we have to distinguish between two types of words.
Stephen Ullman made the distinction of these words :

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1. Transparent words : are those whose meaning can be determined
from the meaning of their parts, e.g : Chopper, driver, etc.
2. Opaque words : are the words whose meaning can not be determined
from the meaning of their parts, e.g : hammer, porter, spanner, etc.

5. The sentence
We communicate with sentences and the sentence is the
expression of a complete thought. The sentence is essentially a
grammatical unit, and the function of syntax is to describe the
structure of the sentence. Traditionally, sentence is an expression
of a complete thought. Thus S=NP + VP which can be a single
word.

e.g : ‘Birds fly’ or one word sentence ‘Horses’. Both words and
sentences have meaning. The meaning of the sentence can be
predicted from the meaning of the words it contains. According to
Lyons suggested the distinction between :

1. Sentence meaning is directly predictable from the

grammatical and lexical features of a sentence or can be
called written.

2. Utterence meaning includes all various types of meaning

or can be called spoken. The part of meaning of a
sentence that is not directly related to the grammatical
and lexical features, but is obtained either from
associated prosodic and paralinguistic features or from
the context, linguistic and non - linguistic, i n which it
occur.

A “sentence” is generally defined as a word or group of words

that expresses a thorough idea by giving a statement/orders, or
asking a question, or exclaiming.

Example : He is a good boy (statement)

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 Is he a good boy? (question)

What a nice weather! (exclaiming)

To capture it, we need to understand how words relate to other

words (“Paul, Jack’s brother, is married to Linda”. Linda is
married to Paul, not Jack.). Ideally, a sentence requires at least one
subject and one verb. Sometimes the subject of a sentence can be
hidden, but the verb must be visible an present in the sentence.
Verb is called the essence of sentence.

Ex : Do it. (in this sentence, a subject ‘you’ is hidden but verb

‘do’ is visible).

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 CHAPTER III
CONCLUSION

A. Conclusion
Semantics is a field of linguistics concerned with the study of meaning in
language. Additionally, it is concerned with the conceptual meaning and not the
associated meaning. Scope is a range of statements. There are several parts in
semantics:
a. Naming, Naming  Naming, Naming is a communication system
communication system with on with on the one hand the hand the
signifier, signifier, on the other the signified.  
b. Concepts, According to  Ferdinand  Ferdinand de Saussure, Saussure, as
we have seen, the linguistic sign consists of a signifier and a signified.
c. Sense and reference, Sense relates to the complex system of relationships
that hold  between the  between the linguistics elements linguistics
elements and themselves and themselves (mostly the (mostly the words).
Reference indicates words). Reference indicates that actual persons
things, being referred to by it in a particular context.
d. The word, The word is one of the basic un The word, The word is one of
the basic units of sem its of semantics. antics.
e. The sentence is essentially a grammatical unit, and the function of syntax
is to describe the structure of the sentence

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 REFERENCES

Palmer, F.R. 1981. Semantics 2nd ed. Cambridge: The University

Press.
https://www.slideshare.net/yuliantyayipumkin/the-scope-of-semantics
https://masudadam.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-scope-of-semantics.html
https://komunikasiana.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/teori-teori-
semiotika-sebuah-pengantar/

https://www.expert.ai/blog/word-meaning-sentence-meaning/
https://www.learngrammar.net/english-grammar/sentence-definition-
n-types

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