Semantics

The Study of Language by George Yule

Members of the group 5B :

Rosyta Syah Alam Nanda Elia Fatma Maria Renita Wuryanti

20202241008 20202241009 20202241017
Table of Contents

Description and Semantics Semantics

meaning Features Roles

Lexical Relation Collocation

WHAT IS SEMANTICS?
 Definition and meaning
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences.
In semantic analysis, there is always an attempt to focus on what the
words conventionally mean, rather than on what an individual speaker
might think they mean, or want them to mean, on a particular occasion.
 Semantic Features
We can also say that in addition to [ + animate], boy has the feature [ + human] and horse has [-
human]. These examples illustrate a way of analyzing the meaning of words in terms of semantic
features.

We can then characterize which semantic feature is required in a noun in order for it to appear as the
subject of a particular verb. In this way we can predict which nouns (boy, horse, hamburger) would fit in a
sentence appropriately and which would be odd, as in the following two. Both boy and horse would work
in the first example, only boy would work in the second, and hamburger would be odd in both.

The _________ ate all the food.

N [ + animate]

The _________ is reading the newspaper.

N [ + human]
Componential Analysis

Semantic features have been used to analyze how words in a language are (or are not)
connected to each other. Features such as [ + human] or [ + adult] can be treated as
basic elements or components of meaning in an approach called componential analysis,
as illustrated with one set of connected words in Table 9.1. If we replace [human] with
[equine] , we can analyze the set colt, ally, stallion, mare in the same way.
 Words as Containers of Meaning

For many words in a language it may not be easy to come up with neat
components of meaning. If we try to think of the components of
features we would use to differentiate the nouns advice, threat, and
warning. Part of the problem seems to be that the approach involves a
view of words in a language as some sort of “containers” that carry
meaning components. This approach seems to be too restrictive and
very limited in terms of practical use. There is more to the meaning of
words than these basic types of features.
Semantic Roles
Instead of thinking words as containers of meaning, we can look at
the “roles” they fulfill within the situation described by a sentence. If
the situation is a simple event, as in The boy kicked the ball, then the
verb describes an action (kick). The noun phrases in the sentence
describe the roles of entities, such as people and things, involved in
the action. We can identify a small number of semantic roles (also
called “thematic roles” or “case roles”) for these noun phrases.
 A. Agent and Theme

Agents and themes are the most common semantic Although agents are typically human
roles. {The boy), as in (1) below, they can also
be non-human entities that cause
Agent → the entity that performs the action
actions, as in noun phrases denoting a
Theme → the entity that is involved in or affected natural force (The wind), a machine (A
by the action car), or a creature (The dog), all of
For Example: which affect the ball as theme in
(1) The boy kicked the ball. examples (2)-(4). The theme is typically
(2) The wind blew the ball away. non-human, but can be human (the boy),
(3) A car ran over the ball. as in the last sentence (5).
(4) The dog caught the ball.
(5) The dog chased the boy.
 B. Instrument and experienced
If an agent uses another entity in order to perform an action, that other entity fills the role
of instrument. In the sentences The boy cut the rope with an old razor and He drew the
picture with a crayon, the noun phrases rim old razor and crayon are being used in the
semantic role of instrument. Note that the preposition with is often a clue that the
following noun phrase has the role of instrument in English.

When a noun phrase is used to designate an entity as the person who has a feeling,
perception or state, it fills the semantic role of experiencer. If we feel, know, hear or
enjoy something, we are not really performing an action (hence we are not agents). We
are in the role of experiencer. In the first sentence below, the experiencer (The woman) is
the only semantic role. In the second example, the question is asking if (you) had the
experience of hearing the theme (that noise).
The woman feels sad
Did you hear that noise?
 C. Location, Source, and Goal

A number of other semantic roles designate where an entity is in the

description of an event.
● Where an entity is (on the table, in the room) fills the role of
location.
● Where the entity moves from is the source (from Chicago).
● Where it moves to is the goal (to New Orleans), as in We drove
from Chicago to New Orleans.

When we talk about transferring money from savings to checking,

● the source is savings
● the goal is checking
Lexical Relations

Not only can words be treated as containers

of meaning, or as fulfilling roles in events,
they can also have “relationships” with each
other. In everyday talk, we often explain the
meanings of words in terms of their
relationships. We are characterizing the
meaning of each word, not in terms of its
component features, but in terms of its
relationship to other words. This approach
is used in the semantic description of
language and treated as the analysis of
lexical relations.
Synonymy
Synonyms are two or more words with very closely related meanings. They can often (though
not always) be substituted for each other in sentences.

Other common examples of synonyms are the following pairs

almost/nearly big/large cab/taxi car/automobile
freedom/liberty handbag/purse broad/wide buy/purchase
couch/sofa doctor/ph hard/difficult sweat/perspire

We should keep in mind that the idea of “sameness” of meaning used in discussing synonymy is
not necessarily “total sameness,” and it is best to think of these pairs as “close synonyms.”

Synonymous forms may also differ in terms of formal versus informal uses. The sentence My
father purchased a large automobile has virtually the same meaning as My dad bought a big
car, with four synonymous replacements, but the second version sounds much more casual or
informal than the first.
 Antonymy
Antonym is two forms with opposite meanings.
Example :
Alive/ dead big/small buy/sell enter/exit
Happy/sad not/cold long/short male/female
Married/single old/new raise/lower rich/poor
Smart/stupid true/false
 Types of Antonymy
1. Gradable antonym (opposite along a scale)
Gradable antonym is a type of "opposite" adjective or adverb where the words are on a
scale with others before, after and/or in between and ungradable antonyms beyond. We
can use gradable antonyms in comparative constructions involving adjectives, as in
these underlined examples: I’m smaller than you and slower, sadder, colder, shorter
and older, but luckily quite a bit richer.

2. Non-gradable (Complementary Pairs)

Non-gradable opposite can refer to as ‘complementaries’. Comparative constructions are not
normally used. We don’t typically describe someone as deader or more dead than another. Also,
using the “negative test,” we can see that the negative of one member of a non-gradable pair does
imply the other member. That is, My grandparents aren’t mine does indeed mean by grandparents
are dead. Other non-gradable antonyms are the pairs: male/[female, married/single and
true/[false. Although we can use the “negative test” to identify non-gradable antonyms in a
language, we usually avoid describing one member of an antonymous pair as the negative of
the other.
 Hyponymy
Hyponymy is when the meaning of one form is inserted into the
meaning of another. Examples are pairs: nimn/horse, insect/ant,
flower/rose. The concept of "inclusion" involved in this relationship is
the idea that if an object is a rose, then it must be a flower, so the
meaning of Flower is included in the meaning of a rose. Or, rose is a
hyponym of flower. When we investigate relationships based on
hyponymy, we are essentially looking at the meaning of the word in
some kind of hierarchical relationship.
Prototypes

The idea of “the characteristic instance” of a category is known as the prototype.

The concept of a prototype helps explain the meaning of certain words, like bird, not in
terms of component features (e.g. “has feathers,” “has wings”), but in terms of
resemblance to the clearest example.
Given the category label furniture, we are quick to recognize chair as a better
example than bench or stool. Given clothing, people recognize shirts quicker than shoes,
and given vegetable, they accept carrot before potato or turnip. It is clear that there is
some general pattern to the categorization process involved in prototypes and that it
determines our interpretation of word meaning. However, this is one area where
individual experience can lead to substantial variation in interpretation. People may
disagree over the categorization of words like avocado or tomato and treat them as co-
hyponyms of both fruit and vegetable in different contexts.
Homophones and Homonyms
When two or more different (written) forms have the same pronunciation, they are described as
homophones. Common English examples are:

bare/bear flour/flower meat/meet pail/pale

pair/ pear right/write sew/so to/too/two

Homonyms refers to one form (written or spoken) has two or more unrelated meanings,
as in these examples:

bat (flying creature) - bat (used in sports)

mole (on skin) — more (small animal)
pen (writing instrument) — pen (enclosed space)
race (contest of speed) — race (ethnic group)
sole (single) — sole (part of foot or shoe)
Homonyms are words that have separate histories and meanings, but have accidentally come to
have exactly the same form
Polysemy

Polysemy is two or more words with the same form and related meanings. Polysemy can be
defined as one form (written or spoken) having multiple meanings that are all related by
extension.
Example :
a. the word head, used to refer to the object on top of your body, froth on top of a glass of
beer, person at the top of a company or department, or school.
b. foot (of a person, of a bed, of a mountain)
c. mouth (part of a face, a cave, a river), or
d. run (person does, water does, colors do).

If we are not sure whether different uses of a single word are examples of homonym or
polysemy, we can check in a dictionary. If the word has multiple meanings (i.e. it is
polysemous), there will be a single entry, with a numbered list of the different meanings. If two
words are homonyms, they will have two separate entries
Word Play
These last three lexical relations are the basis of a lot of word play, usually for humorous
effect.
In the nursery rhyme Mary had a little lamb, we think of a small animal, but in the comic
version Mary and a little lamb, some rice and vegetables, we think of a small amount of meat.
The polysemy of lamb allows the two interpretations. It is recognizing the polysemy of leg and
foot in the riddle What has four legs, but only one foot? that leads to a solution (a bed) .

We can make sense of another riddle Why are trees often mistaken for dogs? by recognizing
the homonymy in the answer: Because of their bark. Shakespeare used homophones
(sun/son) for word play in the first lines of the play Richard III:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.
Metonymy

The relatedness of meaning found in polysemy is essentially based on similarity.

The head of a company is similar to the head of a person on top of and controlling
the body. There is another type of relationship between words, based simply on a
close connection in everyday experience. That close connection can be based on a
container—contents relation (bottle/water, can/ juice), a whole—part relation
(car/wheels, house/roof) or a representative—symbol relationship (king/crown,
the President/the White House) . Using one of these words to refer to the other is
an example of metonymy.
Collocation
As mature speakers of a language, we all know which words tend to occur with other
words. If you ask a thousand people what they think of when you say hammer, more
than half will say mail. One way we seem to organize our knowledge of words is simply
on the basis of collocation, or frequently occurring together. The study of which words
occur together, and their frequency of co-occurrence, has received a lot more attention
in corpus linguistics. A corpus is a large collection of texts, spoken or written, typically
stored as a database in a computer. Those doing corpus linguistics can then use the
database to find out how often specific words or phrases occur and what types of
collocations are most common. Some of the most common collocations are actually
everyday phrases which may consist of several words used together, as in I don’t know
what to do (six words), you know what I mean (five words) or they don’t want to (four
words).
Concordance

A concordance is a listing of each occurrence of a word (or phrase) in a corpus,

along with the words surrounding it. The word being studied is described as the
“keyword in context” (KWIC).

1 I can’t without being a bit sarcastic or rude. I’ll simply photocopy and submit
2 to me — I mean if they were being sarcastic or rude, I think I would have noticed

From these examples, it is clear that sarcastic conveys an evaluation of behavior,

with a range of negative terms (e.g. abusive, condescending, hateful)
accompanying it. By far the most common collocate is the word rude, indicating
that being sarcastic is frequently evaluated as a form of impoliteness, with an
interpersonal meaning, adding to the referential meaning in the dictionary.
Thank You