Semantics Introduction By Riaz
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Semantics is the study of meanings of words, phrases, and sentences. It focuses on the conventional meanings of words rather than what a speaker intends. Conceptual meaning refers to the basic components of a word's meaning, like "thin sharp steel instrument" for the word "needle." Associative meaning involves connotations a word evokes, like "needle" suggesting pain. While linguists study conceptual meanings, poets and advertisers leverage associative meanings. Semantic features help account for sentences that are syntactically valid but semantically odd, like "The hamburger ate the man."
Semantics Introduction By Riaz
- 1. SEMANTICS PRESENTED BY: RIAZ AHMAD SARFRAZ MUNIR CHAUDHARY M.NASIR ASLAM KAHLOWN M.ASIF SALEEM
- 2. What is semantics? Semantics is the study of meanings 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 a speaker might want the words on a particular occasion.
- 3. Conceptual meanings Conceptual meaning covers those basic essential components of meaning which are conveyed by the literal use of a word. For Example : Some of the basic components of a word like needle in English might include “ thin sharp steel instrument”.
- 4. Associative meanings In associative meaning you may have ‘associations’ or ‘connotations’ attached to a word, For example : like needle which lead you to think of ‘painful’ whenever you encounter the said word. This ‘association’ is not treated as a conceptual meaning of needle.
- 5. Conceptual vs Associative meaning When linguists investigate the meaning of words in a language they are normally interested in characterizing the conceptual meaning and less concerned with the associative meaning of words. However, poets and advertisers are very interested in using terms in such a way that there associative meanings are evoked. For example: In the ad of Pepsi “generation next” or in Zong advertisement “sub keh do”.
- 6. Semantic Features How does semantic approach help us to understand the nature of language? It might be helpful as a means of accounting for the ‘ oddness ’ which we experience when we read English sentences such as the follows: For example: 1- The hamburger ate the man. 2- My cat studied linguistics. 3- A table was listening to some music. Above sentences are syntactically right but semantically odd.
- 7. According to some basic syntactic rules for forming English sentences we have well structured sentences. The hamburger ate the man NP V NP This sentence is syntactically good, but semantically odd. Since the sentence “The man ate the hamburger” is perfectly acceptable. The kind of noun which can be subjects of the verb ‘ate’ must denote entities which are capable of eating. The noun ‘hamburger’ does not have this property and man has.