Misurata University
Faculty of Languages and Translation
Department of English
Semantics
Lecture 1: What is “Semantics”?
Lecturer: Ms. Rudayna Elkhaldy
Outline
• What is semantics?
• Conceptual Meaning vs associative meaning
• Lexical semantics and sentential semantics
• Semantic relations
• Semantics vs Pragmatics
• Truth-conditional semantics / compositional semantics
• Tautologies and contradictions
The meaning of Language
• Why do we use language?
1. To convey information
2. Ask questions
3. Give commands
4. Express wishes
What is semantics?
• Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and
sentences.
Conceptual
Meaning
Associative
Meaning
• Conceptual meaning covers those basic, essential
components of meaning that are conveyed by the literal use
of a word. It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are
designed to describe.
• Associative Meaning is the idea, and the connection of what
that specific word brings to you.
e.g needle : pain, doctor, illness,… etc
• Semantics:
The study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and
sentences.
It is the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
• Lexical semantics:
Subfields of semantics that concerns with the internal semantic
structure of words and the semantics relations that occur within the
vocabulary.
• phrasal/ / sentential semantics:
Concerns with the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word.
• Internal semantics:
If the word has more than one meaning.
• Semantic relations:
Concerns with the lexical relations ( metaphor and metonymy).
▪ Metaphor: a substitution of one thing for another, directly refers to
one thing by mentioning another thing. E.g., Time is a thief.
▪ Metonymy: when a concept is referred to by the name of something
closely associated with that thing or concept. E.e., The White House
issued a statement.
Other Lexical Relations are;
Homophones Antonymy Hyponymy
and
homonyms
Synonymy Polysemy
Metonymy Collocation
Prototypes
Semantics vs Pragmatics
• Pragmatics is the
study of how context
affects meaning ( how
Semantics studies a sentence is
the linguistic interpreted).
meaning of a word Ex: It’s cold in here.
Which can be interpreted as
or a sentence. close the windows.
Semantics vs Pragmatics
Semantics Pragmatics
Study of words and their meanings in a Study of words and their meaning in a
language. language with concern to their context.
Focuses mainly on the significance of Additionally focuses on the meaning of
the meaning of words in a literal sense. words according to the context and
their inferred meanings as well.
Studies the literal meaning. Studies the intended or the inferred
meaning as well.
What do you know about meaning when you
know a language?
word meaningful meaningless
sentence meaningful meaningless
A word Two meanings
A sentence Two meanings
Two words Same meaning Opposite meanings
Two sentences Same meaning Opposite meanings
• Truth-conditional semantics / compositional semantics:
The meaning of a sentence is formulated from the meaning of
its words and the way the words combine syntactically.
The truth value of a sentence is calculates by composing, or
putting together, the meaning of smaller units.
Tautologies and contradictions
Tautologies
• Sentences are always true regardless of the circumstances.
Ex: Jack swims.
Contradictions
• Sentences are always false. A statement is logically contradictory. If one
is true, the other must be false.
Ex: circles are square.
Jach is alive contradicts Jack is dead.
