Semantics is the study of meaning in language.

The term is taken

from the Greek seme, meaning sign. The word meaning can be
defined in many ways, but the definition most pertinent to
linguistics and the one we will use is that meaning is "the function of
signs in language." This understanding of meaning corresponds to
German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's definition: 'the meaning
of a word is its use in the language' (in other words, the role a word
plays in the language).

The term semantics was only invented in the 19th century, but
the subject of meaning has interested philosophers for thousands of
years. The Greek philosophers were the first people known to have
debated the nature of meaning. They held two opposing views on
the subject.

The naturalist view, held by Plato and his followers,

maintained that there was an intrinsic motivation between a word
and its meaning. The meaning of a word flows directly from its
sound. The Greek word thalassa, sea, in its classical pronunciation,
supposedly sounded like the waves rushing up onto the beach. If
the naturalist view were entirely correct for all words, we would be
able to tell the meaning of any word just by hearing it. In reality
only a few onomotopoeic words in each language actually sound
something like what they mean:swoosh, splash, bow wow,
meow. Poets can skillfully use words with sound features that
heighten the meaning intended:

a.) Shevchenko (Ot topota kopyt pyl po polu idyot.)

b.) Lermontov (... a on, myatezhny, prosit buri, kak budto v

buryakh yest pokoi.)

But poetic sound imagery represents a rare, highly clever use of

language, so the naturalist approach is applicable to only a tiny
portion of any language.

The conventionalist view of Aristotle and his followers holds

that the connection between sound and meaning is completely
arbitrary, a matter of social convention and prior agreement
between speakers. It is true that the form of most words is
arbitrary from an extra-linguistic point of view. This position is much
nearer the truth.

However, the form of a word may be motivated by the forms of

other words in a language. That is, although a word's meaning is
arbitrary from the point of view of the real world, is is often
somehow motivated by the system of the language it is a part of. In
studying morphology we saw that the meaning of a word can often
be deduced from knowing the meaning of its parts. Since words
often originate from other words, a word very often has some
historical reason for being the shape it is. Sometimes the origin
(or etymology) of a word is completely transparent, as in the case
of unknown from known, or discomfort from comfort. At other
times the origin of a word is less immediately obvious but
nevertheless present in the form of a word, as in the case
of acorn < oak + orn.

Philologists (this is a broader term for people who study

language as well as anything created with language) often make a
distinction between meaning and concept. Concept is the totality
of real world knowledge about an item, while meaning is a category
of language. It is possible to know the meaning of the word without
knowing everything about the concept referred to by that
meaning. For example, one can know the meaning of a word
like diamond without knowing the chemical composition of the stone
or that carbon and pencil lead are, chemically speaking, composed
of the same substance. In other words, one can know the
word diamond means a type of gemstone without understanding the
full concept associated with that gemstone in the real world.

Sometimes, however, meaning and concept cannot be so easily

differentiated. For instance, the meaning of many abstract words
completely parallels the concept they refer to, as with the
word tradition and the concept "tradition." It is arguable that one
cannot know the meaning of the word "tradition" without
understanding the concept "tradition."

Linguists have a second way of looking at the distinction

between linguistic and real-world knowledge. They often discuss
the difference between a word's sense and its reference. A word's
sense is how the word relates to other words in a language
(Wittgenstein's "meaning"); it's reference is how it relates to real
world concepts. The French word mouton refers to a sheep as well
as to the meat of the animal as used for food (the sense of the word
combines two references). In English we have two separate words
for each extra-linguistic reference. The sense of the English
word sheep is limited by the presence of the word mutton in
English. There are many such examples when comparing
languages:

a.) Cherokee nvda means the concept sun as well as moon.

b.) Russian ruka, hand or arm --kist' ruki specifically means

hand.

c.) English hand vs. Cherokee atisa (right hand), akskani (left
hand)

d.) English uncle vs. stry´ko(father's brother) vs. ujo (mother's

brother).

Thus, the sense of a word concerns its linguistic boundaries in a

particular language. The reference of a word concerns which
concepts it refers to in the real world.

The distinction between a word's sense and its reference, or

between linguistic meaning and real-world concept--difficult though
this distinction may be to draw in many cases--is useful in
comparing semantic categories across languages. Languages may
divide the same set of real-world concepts in very different ways.

The concept of blood relations offers a good example. Each

language has its own set of kinship terms to refer to one's parents'
generation (mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles). Discussing kinship
terms from the point of view of real world concepts allows
comparison across languages without bias in favor of the meaning
categories of any particular language. Here is a comparison of
kinship terms for aunts and uncles in English and Pitjantjatrara, an
Australian language:
kamuru --bio. brother of female parent

ngunytju-- bio. sister of female parent or female parent

kurntili --bio. sister of male parent

mama-- bio. brother of male parent or male parent

Another good example is provided by color terms. Every

language has a set of basic color terms. But these color terms do
not divide the color spectrum in the same place. In other words,
the extra-linguistic concept "color" is reflected in each language
idiosyncratically. For instance, literary Welsh divides the
green/brown part of the spectrum quite differently than English
(Welsh as it is used in everyday speech today has conformed to the
English divisions of color):

English green ! blue ! grey

! brown

Welsh gwyrdd ! glas (Engl. blue + color of

plants) ! llwydd

The linguistic division of concepts is in part arbitrary and

idiosyncratic to each language, in part motivated by factors actually
present in the real world. Extra-linguistic (real world) factors may
result in universal tendencies in how languages divide up
concepts. A second look at color terms illustrates this point.

Berlin and Kay (1969) in Basic Color Systems, noted that the
number of basic color terms may differ across languages. A basic
color term is defined as one which cannot be said to be a part of
the meaning of another basic term. Yellow is a basic color term in
English because it is not a type of red, green, blue, etc.; but
turquoise is not because it is a type of blue. Berlin and Kay found
that some languages have only two basic color terms while others
have as many as 11. Berlin and Kay discovered that the number of
color terms seems to be systematically related to the core color
represented by the terms:
 1 2. 3 4 5 6

black/white + red + yellow/green + blue

+ brown + purple, pink, orange, grey

A few languages, including Russian, have 12 terms because in place

of one generic term for blue, there are two words:
Russ. goluboi/sinii. Subsequent research has shown that a
minority of languages violate this scheme.

The question arizes as to why color terms in languages should

conform so universally to such a general pattern. Geoffrey
Sampson, who wrote Schools of Linguistics, offers what might be a
partial explanation. Physiologically, red is the most noticeable color
to the eye; therefore, it is the first most likely to be represented
after light and dark. Distinctions involving yellow and green occur
frequently in nature, whereas blue only naturally occurs in a few
things: the color of some flowers, of bodies of water, the sky; the
distinction between blue and other types of dark, therefore, is
relatively unimportant to many aboriginal cultures and not as likely
to be included in the language under specific terms.

Linguists who study meaning (semanticists) often divide the

meaning of a word into semantic components based on real world
concepts, such as human/ live/ dead/ animal/ plant/ thing/
etc. Discussing the meaning of words by breaking it down into
smaller semantic components such as is called componential
analysis.

Noting how semantics is based on extra-linguistic categories, a

group of linguists (including the Polish-born Australian linguist
Anna Wierzbicka) have tried to reduce all meaning in language to
a set of universal core concepts, such as tall, short, male, female,
etc. This finite set of concepts are then used universally, to
describe the meanings of all words in all languages. This semantic
approach to language structure has problems.
 The first problem is in deciding which concepts are basic and
which are derived. Whatever language is used to label the concepts
in the first place biases the semantic analysis in favor of the
semantic structure of that lang.

A second problem is the old difficulty of distinguishing between

sense and reference. The linguistic boundaries between conceptual
features vary across languages. This is especially true with
grammatical categories of meaning.

a.) Masculine and feminine in English and Russian.

b.) Animacy in Russian and Polish (objects), and Cherokee (one

plural ending from human, another for inanimate, and a different
one for plants and animals).

Attempts to reduce meaning in all languages to a limited set of

conceptual categories existing outside of language have been
unsuccessful.

Third, part of the reason the semantic universalists have been

unsuccessful is that meaning is more than simply a reflection of real
world categories. Meaning is a linguistic category rather than a real
world category reducible to pure logic and perception. The role of
semantics in language is often highly idiosyncratic. We have seen
that semantic factors often serve as constraints on morphology and
syntax. Here are some more examples:

a.) English locative adverbs with toponyms (This is my bed; I

sleep here/in it; This is Fairhaven; I live here/*in it) Note the
distinction between an idiosyncratic semantic constraint and a
logical constraint. Idiosyncratic semantic constraints in the
grammar result in reference being made using one form instead of
another.

Logical constraints result in reference not being made at

all. Compare the illogical sentence: Here is my thoroughness--I
sleep *here/*in it. If a sentence is illogical, than all paraphrases
are equally illogical. Other examples: the Russian -ovat suffix; the
plural of fishes in English.
 Thus, meaning is not merely a reference to concepts in the real
world. It depends on linguistic factors in part unique to each
individual language; meaning depends not only on the logical
combination of real world concepts. The system of language cannot
be described only in terms of extra-linguistic logic.

--------------------------------------

How meaning affects word associations in language

The purely linguistic side of meaning is equally evident when

examining how words combine with one another to produce
phrases. The set of restrictions on how a word may combine with
other words of a single syntactic category is referred to as the
word's collocability. Two words may have the same referent, and
yet differ in their ability to combine with particular words.

In English, the word flock collocates with sheep ;

and school with fish, although both flock and school mean group.

Also, addled combines only with brains or eggs (one

must steam rice and boil water), blond collocates with hair,
while red may collocate with hair as well as other objects.

Idiosyncratic restrictions on the collocability of words (and by

idiosyncratic here I mean that part of meaning which is peculiar to
language structure and not deriving purely from logic) result in set
phrases: green with jealousy; white table vs. white lie. On can get
or grow old, but only get drunk, get ready, not *grow drunk, *grow
ready.

Every language has its own peculiar stock of set phrases. In

English we face problems and interpret dreams, but in modern
Hebrew we stand in front of problems and solve dreams. In English
we drink water but eat soup. In Japanese the verb
for drink collocates not only with water and soup, but also
with tabletsand cigarettes.

From the point of view of etymology, set phrases are of two

types.
 1.) The first type of set phrase, the collocation, may be
defined as "a set phrase which still makes sense": make noise,
make haste. One simply doesn't say to produce noise or make
swiftness, even though such phrases would be perfectly
understandable. Since collocations still may be taken literally, they
can be paraphrased using regular syntactic transformations: Haste
was made by me, noise was made by the children.

2.) Phrases whose words no longer make sense when taken

literally are called idioms. The semantic relations between words in
idiomatic set phrases may be illogical to varying degrees: white
elephant sale, soap opera, to see red, break a leg, small voice, loud
tie, wee hours of the night.

Also, true idioms cannot be paraphrased by regular means,

because they do not participate in the regular syntactic relations of
the language: John kicked the table--The table was kicked by
John. vs. John kicked the bucket. A bearded sailor walked by.-- A
sailor who was bearded passed by. vs. An occasional sailor walked
by.

Thus, meaning involves real-world concepts and logic but it is at

the same time a linguistic category. The semantic structure of a
language is the language's special system of conveying extra
linguistic relations by idiosyncratic linguistic means.

Semantic relationships between words

Modern studies of semantics are interested in meaning primarily

in terms of word and sentence relationships. Let's examine some
semantic relationships between words:

Synonyms are words with similar meanings. They are listed in

a special type of dictionary called a thesaurus. A regular dictionary
lists words according to form, usually in alphabetical order;
a thesaurus lists words according to meaning. Synonyms usually
differ in at least one semantic feature. Sometimes the feature is
objective (denotative), referring to some actual, real world
difference in the referents: walk, lumber, stroll, meander, lurch,
stagger, stride, mince. Sometimes the feature is subjective
(connotative), referring to how the speaker feels about the
referent rather than any real difference in the referent itself: die,
pass away, give up the ghost, kick the bucket, croak. There tend to
be very few absolute synonyms in a
language. Example: sofa and couch are nearly complete synonyms,
yet they differ in their collocability in at least one way: one may
say couch potato, but not *sofa potato.

One type of synonym is called a paronym. Paronyms are

words with associated meanings which also have great similarities in
form: proscribe/ prescribe, industrial/
industrious, except/accept, affect/effect. Many errors in speech
and writing are due to mixups involving paronyms.

Antonyms are words that have the opposite

meaning. Oppositeness is a logical category. There are three
types:

Complementary pairs are antonyms in which the presence of

one quality or state signifies the absence of the other and vice
versa. single/ married, not pregnant/pregnant There are no
intermediate states.

Gradable pairs are antonyms which allow for a gradual

transition between two poles, the possibility of making a
comparison--a little/a lot good/bad, hot/ cold cf. the
complementary pair: pregnant/not pregnant

Relational opposites are antonyms which share the same

semantic features, only the focus, or direction, is
reversed: tie/untie, buy/sell, give/receive, teacher/pupil, father/son.

Some concepts lack logical opposites that can be described in

terms of any special word; colors are a good example: the logical
opposite of red is not red. Such concepts may form relational
antonyms, however, through symbolic systems of thinking. For
instance, in Cold War thinking, the relational opposite
of American is Russian; in current US politics, the relational opposite
of Democrat is Republican.
 Homonyms are words that have the same form but different
meanings. There are two major types of homonyms, based upon
whether the meanings of the word are historically connected or
result from coincidence.

Coincidental homonyms are the result of such historical

accidents as phonetic convergence of two formerly different forms
or the borrowing of a new word which happens to be identical to an
old word. There is usually no natural link between the two
meanings: the bill of a bird vs the bill one has to pay; or the bark of
a dog vs the bark of a tree.

The second type of homonym, polysemous homonyms,

results when multiple meanings develop historically from the same
word. The process by which a word acquires new meanings is
called polysemy. Unlike coincidental homonyms, polysemous
homonyms usually preserve some perceptible semantic link marking
the development of one meaning out of the other, as in the leg of
chair and the leg of person; or the face of a person vs. the face of a
clock.

Sometimes it is impossible to tell whether two words of identical

form are true homonyms (historically unrelated) or polysemous
homonyms (historically related), such as ice scate vs. skate the
fish: skate--fish (from Old English skata') ice skate (from
Dutch schaat'); deer/dear are historically related (cf. darling,
German Tier, animal.)

Since polysemy is so difficult to separate from true homonymy,

dictionaries usually order entries according to 1) the first recorded
appearance of word or 2) frequency of meaning use. This is a
problem for lexicographers, the people who study words and write
dictionaries.

There are universal tendencies in the directionality of

polysemy. studies of polysemy in a wide variety of languages
generally find the following directions in meaning shift:

1) part of body to part of object (hands, face, lip, elbow, belly,

veins of gold or leaf); but: appendix.
 2) animal to human for personality traits (shrew, bear, wolf, fox,
quiet as a fish); but: my cat is a real Einstein.

3) space to time (long, short, plural),

4) spatial to sound (melt, rush,)

5) sound to color (loud, clashing, mellow)

6) Physical, visible attribute to emotional or mental, invisible

quality (crushed, big head, green with envy, yellow coward,
sharp/dull, spark)

Directionality in polysemy seems to be logically motivated:

concrete meanings give rise to abstract ones (sharp knife-> sharp
mind); mundane gives rise to the technical (chip of wood->
computer chip).

A note about spelling and semantics

In a language like English where spelling often diverges widely

from pronunciation, There is a special type of homonym called
the homophone. Homophones have the same pronunciation but
different spellings: meet/meat, peace/piece, whether/weather, you,
ewe, through/threw, to, two, too. cot/caught.
flour/flower. Homophones are usually are true homonyms in that
they derive from completely unrelated sources. There are also
occasional polysemous homophones: draft (into the army),
draught (of beer), or the Russian voskresenie (Resurrection) -->
voskresenye (Sunday).

A language like English also has homographs, words spelled

alike but pronounced differently in each of their meanings. In
English, most homographs are polysemous
homographs: use (the noun vs. the verb), record (the noun vs.
the verb). But there are a few true homonyms that are
homographs: wind (a noun meaning moving air vs. a verb meaning
what is done to a watch or clock).
 Polysemy may involve conversion of one part of speech to
another. Many verbs in English, especially monosyllabic verbs, can
be nouns: bend, drink, kill. Many verbs can be transitive or
intransitive: walk, fly, burn, return . So polysemy can result in new
grammatical as well as lexical meaning.

In certain instances, polysemy acts as a regular, productive

pattern which affects entire classes of words rather than single,
isolated words. In English, words with certain functions
systematically have a secondary function. For example: the + noun
in English may mean a) a single specific example (Thanks for letting
me ride the horse (this specific horse) or b) a general type
(example: The zebra is a relative of the horse.). A new noun in
English will combined with the automatically in these two different
meanings: the wug (may mean one particular wug already
mentioned or a general category of beings.) Also, any verb in
English can mean either single or multiple action: He hit the table
(maybe once or more than once). If a new verb is created it
automatically inherits these two meanings: He burbled the table
(maybe once, maybe more than once). Every language has
examples of such regular, grammatical polysemy.

There are a few other minor semantic relations that may pertain
between words. The first involves the distinction between a
category vs. a particular type or example of that category. For
example, a tiger is a type of feline, so feline is a category
containing lion, tiger, etc.; color is a category containing red, green,
etc, red, green are types of colors.
Thus, feline and color are hyponyms, or cover words, and red,
green, lion, tiger are their taxonyms.

The second involves a whole vs. part of the whole. A finger is a

part of a hand, thus hand is the holonym of finger; and finger is
a meronym of hand. Similarly, family is the holonym
of child, mother or father.

Remember semantic terms such as synonym, hyponym,

meronym, etc. are relational rather than absolute: red is a
taxonym in relation to the word color; it is a relational antonym of
the word green; finally red is a synonym of ruddy, etc.
 Now that we have discussed various semantic relations between
words, let us try to categorize these relations in a more concise
way. Psychologically, it has been shown, the meanings of words or
phrases are always related in one of two possible ways.

The first way involves some relation based on similarity: the

two referents actually physically resemble one another in some way
(iconicity): face and hands of a clock, chip (of wood vs. potato
chip).

Certain figures of speech, or tropes, that is, words used in

other than their literal meaning, are based on similarity relations:

A metaphor is an implied comparison using a word to mean

something similar to its literal meaning. A contradiction arises
between the literal meaning and the referent. Metaphors can be
fresh and creative or hackneyed (the eye of
night for moon). Metaphors that cease to tickle listeners with their
creativity are called dead metaphors: they simply become
secondary meanings of words, polysemous homonyms. We don't
even sense the original creativity that went into the first usages of
such historical metaphors as: leg, handle. Most compliments or
insults contain metaphors: calling someone a pig, a worm, a big
ox or a monster; or an angel.

A simile is a direct comparison using like or as:

Examples: quiet as a mouse, as mad as a hatter. New similes can
be created, but each language has its own particular store of
accepted similes that function as collocations. English: healthy as a
horse, quiet as a mouse. Other languages have their own stock of
well-0established similes: Russian: healthy as an ox, Mongol: quiet
as a fish.

The second type of meaning relation between polysemous

words is based on contiguity. Here the two referents do not
resemble one another; rather they occur in the real world in some
spatial proximity to one another (either as parts of a whole or as
one item located next to another). For instance, the mother has
many mouths to feed, all hands on deck, to boot someone out of a
place, London issued a statement (London here means the people
governing England).

A few figures of speech are based on contiguity relations.

Metonymy: Use of word to mean something existing in close

physical proximity: Saying London to mean the people who govern
England. Also: TheWhite House said meaning The president said.

Synecdoche: Using a part to describe a whole: all hands on

deck, he has x mouths to feed.

All semantic relationships in all languages can be described

based on similarity or contiguity. This seems to stem directly from
the structure of the human brain. People who suffer brain damage
affecting language usually experience impairment of either their
similarity relations or their contiguity relations.