SEMANTICS
Semantics is the study of meanings of words, phrases, sentences where we focus on what the words
conventionally mean and not what an individual speaker might mean..
This approach is concerned with the linguistic meaning that is shared by all the competent users of
the language.
Lexical relations:
Lexical relations involve
1. Synonymy
Two or more words with closely related meanings are synonyms.
Broad/ wide
Big/large
Buy/purchase
Reply/answer
But is it a case of total sameness?... not always. At best they are close synonyms.
We speak of being in broad agreement, not wide agreement.
The whole wideworld and not the whole broad world.
Regional differences in the use of synonymous pairs. American candy is British sweet.
Check out on synonyms of ‘see’
2. Antonymy
Antonyms give opposite meanings
Big/small
Buy/sell
Antonyms are divided into a. gradable eg smaller, older
b. non gradable e g awake/asleep true/false
c. reversives, eg raise/lower or pack/unpack
Unpack does not mean not pack.It means do the reverse of pack.
3. hyponymy
When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another, the relationship is
called hyponymy
The meaning of rose is included in the meaning of flower. So rose is a hyponym of flower.
In hyponomy one looks at some kind of hierarchical relationship. Pug is a kind of dog which
is a category of an animal which is a category of a living thing.
So dog is a hyponym of animal. Carrot is a hyponym of vegetable. The higher level terms,
here the animal and vegetable are called the superordinate. Two or more words that share
the same superordinate term are referred to as co-hyponyms. Dog and cat are co-hyponyms
and the superordinate term is animal. Carrot and beans are co-hyponyms and the
superordinate term is vegetable.
These terms can be used for verbs as well. ‘Shoot’, ‘punch’, ‘hit’ can be co-hyponyms of the
superordinate-‘injure’
Homophones and homonyms
Weak/week
Tale/tail
Are homophones. They have different written forms(spellings), but the same pronunciation.
Homonyms are words where the spoken and written forms are similar, but the meanings are
different
Sole means 1. Single, 2. Part of the foot or shoe.
Examples: bark, date, bear…
Polysemy
Where one form has multiple meanings that are related by extension. Run , for instance. A
person runs, water runs, colors run.
The lexical relations become the basis of word play. This is used for puns, riddles or for
humorous effects.
Shakespeare was so good at it there is a book on his wordplay.
Metonymy
A close connection between words may be based on container-contents relation. When we
say he drank the whole bottle, we understand it as water from the bottle and not the bottle
itself.
Metonymy also refers to whole-part relation(car-wheels, house/roof) or a representative-
symbol relationship(President-White House).when we say he has no roof we mean he needs
a house. When we say ‘the White house announced’ we mean the President’s office did.
Collocation
Collocation means’ frequently occurring together’. Mature speakers of language know which
words occur with which other words. Some examples are
table and chair
salt and pepper
needle and thread
nook and corner
We say catch a cold, but not catch a headache and so the former is a collocation.
Have a swim , not get a swim
Do household work, not make
Make a mistake, not do a mistake
Resounding success, a miserable failure
Semantic changes
Language keeps changing, transforming with new words getting added, some old ones
getting dropped. Expressions like Lo, verily are no longer in active use. Foin is thrust of a
word, but it was used when it was normal for men to carry swords. Often old words are used
with new meanings. Words like awful, terrible originally meant horror or terror are used
today to mean ‘extremely’ as in ‘The room is awfully small or ‘I am terribly late.
Similarly the word, ‘literally’ originally meant. ‘exactly worded’, but used metaphorically
today when someone says. I literally fainted or died
The semantic change can be a broadening one or a narrowing one. Holy day has a religious
programme with a break from work. But it has broadened into a holiday and freedom from
work.
‘foda’ food for cattle has become all kinds of ‘food’
“dogca” was used for one kind of breed, but we use dog for all breeds.
The reverse process, narrowing , has also happened. ‘Hund’ old English was used for any
kind of dog, but today ‘hound’ is used for specific breeds.
Likewise,’wife’ meant a woman, but it has narrowed to mean a married woman,
Vulgar which meant ‘ordinary’ has a negative connotation today.
Notorious which once meant ‘widely known’ means, ‘known for something bad’ today.
The changes in language are not just semantic. Given the fact that language is something so
dynamic, it is continuously subject to change whether it is phonological, syntactic or
semantic changes.
A study of such changes is known as philology.
Philology
In the 19th century philology dominated the study of language.
Sir William Jones, a British government official in India, made the following observation on
Sanskrit in 1786:
The Sanskrit language has a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious
than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a
stronger affinity in the roots of verbs and forms of grammar than could possibly have been
produced by accident.
He felt that this affinity was probably because of a common ancestor.So came the idea of a
great great grandmother called Proto Indo European.That is the original(proto)form that was
the source of the modern languages of the Indian sub continent and Europe. Linguists thus
set out to identify the branches of the Indo-European family tree.
Eg Father in Sanskrit was pitar, in Latin Pater,
Likewise brother was brathru in Sanskrit, phrather in Greek
The close similarities in pronunciation is a good evidence for suggesting a family connection.
Cognates
A cognate of a word in one language is a word in another language which has a similar form
and a similar meaning.
English: mother, father, friend
German: mutter, vater, freund
Modern English and German have a common ancestor in the Germanic branch of the Indo
European.
Cognates in Spanish and Italian
Spanish: madre, padre, amigo
Italian: madre,padre, amico
Which among the Indian languages do you consider as Cognates?
Bangla and Assamese?
Hindi and Marathi?
Two principles are used to reconstruct the proto of the ancestral language:
1. The majority principle.
In a cognate set if 2 words begin with a [p] and one with a [b], then the guess is that the
majority has retained the [p]
2. The most natural development principle is based on the fact that certain types of sound
changes are very common like a. the final vowels disappear,b.voiceless sounds become
voiced often between vowels, c.Consonants become voiceless at the end of words.
