“Semantics”

 Is the study of meaning of words phrases and sentences (literal meaning or conventional
meaning)

Conceptual and Associative Meaning

 Conceptual Meaning is the basic components of meaning conveyed by the literal use of
words
- For example :
 The basic components of word like needle may include ‘thin, sharp, and
instrument’
 Associative Meaning is type of meaning that speakers associate a word with thing that isn’t
part of conceptual meaning
- Example :
 The word needle might associated with ‘pain, ‘pain’ or ‘illness’ or ‘blood’ or
‘drugs’ or ‘thread’ or ‘kniting’ or ‘hard to find’ and thee association may
differ from one to the next.
 Some people may associate the expression low calorine when used to
describe a product with ‘healthy’

Semantic Features

 Now think about these sentences

- The hamburger ate the boy (NP V NP)
- The table listens to the radio
- The horse is reading the news paper
 These sentences are syntantically good, but semantically odd.
- The hamburger ate boy isn’t acceptable (odd)but The boy ate the hamburger is
acceptable because verb ate denote an entity that capable of ‘eating’. The noun
hamburger doesn’t have this property and the noun boy does.
- The verb ate need a subject that one of the elements it has in general is “animate
being”

Semantic Roles

 Semantic roles are parts played by noun phrases that described by the sentences
- The noun phrases in the sentence describe the roles of entities such as people and
things , involved in the action
- Noun Phrase can be :
 Agent and theme
 Instrument and experiencer
 Location , source and goal

Agent and Theme

 Agent is the entity that perform an action

- Agents are typically human, but they can be non human entities
 Theme is the entity that is involved in or affected by the action
- Theme is typically non-human, it can be
- Example :
 The dog chrased the boy
  The boy kicked the ball

Instrument and Experiencer

 Instrument is an entity that by this entity an action is carried out

- Example :
 The boy cut the rope with an old razor
 He drew the picture with a crayon
 John used a screwdriver to open the thin

 Experiencer is an entity that, typically a person, is

Mentally aware of, percevier, or experiences the action
Or state described by sentence.
- Examp :
 The children heard the loud noise
 The boy feels sad

Location, Source, and Goal

 Location is the semantic role of noun phrase identifying where an entity is

- Examp :
 The boy is sitting in the classroom
 Source is the semantic role of the noun phrase identifying where an entity moves from.
- Examp :
 The boy ran from the house
 They come from England
 Goal is the semantic role of the noun phrase identifying where an entity moves to.
- Examp :
 She handed the magazine to George
 The girl walked to the window

Lexical Relation

 Lexical relation are the relationship of meaning between words

- Words not only have ‘container’ of meaning or fulfiling
‘roles’ but they can also have ‘relationship’ with each other.
- In this way, we are characterizing the meaning of each word, not in terms of its
component features, but in termsn of its relationship to other words
- Examp :
 Conceal><hide (synonym)
 Shallow><deep(synonym)
 Rose ><flower (hyponym)

Synonym

 Synonym are two or more words with very closely related meaning (or the same meaning)
- They can often be substituted for each other in sentences
 Examp :
Almost/nearly, big/large. Broad/wide, buy/purchase
- But we have to keep in mind that idea of ‘sameness’ of meaning used in discussing
synonym isn’t necessarily ‘total sameness’
  Examp :
1. Sandy had only one answer correct on the test (fit)
2. Sandy had only one reply correct on the test (odd)

Antonym

 Antonym are two forms which are opposite meaning

- Examp :
 Long >< short
 High><low
 Old ><young
 Tall ><short
 Gradable antonym are words with apposite meanings along a scale :
- Examp : rich/poor, fast/slow, young/old, beautiful/ugly
 Gradable antonyms are the relations between oppostes where the positive of one term
doesn’t necessarily imply the negative of the other
- Examp : she isn’t rich, it doesnt mean that she is poor
- Gradable antonym are used to express point on a scale which has midpoint, such as
hot><cold and there is a point between them , that is, tepid
 Gradable antonym are used in comparison
Examp : this house is bigger than that house

 Non gradable antonym are the relation between words such that negative of one implies the
positive of the other
- These relations are called complementary pairs or binary pairs, or non gradable antonym
 Female/male , alive/dead, married/single, pass/fall
 If someone is not a female, she is a male
 If someone has falled on exam, he hasn’t necessarily passed it.
- non gradable antonym aren’t usually used in comparative constructions
 we dont typically describe someone as deader or more female than other
- the negative of one member of a non gradable pair does imply the other member
 my grandparents aren’t alive does indeed mean My grandparent are dead

Hyponym

 hyponym is the relationship of meaning of one form with other in which meaning of one
forms is included in the meaning of another.
- Hyponym includes the meaning of more general word.
 Dog/animal , carrot/vegetable, rose/flower
- The idea of Hyponym involves the concept of ‘inclusion; if an object is a rose , then the
object is necessarily a flower
- The meaning of flower is included in the meaning of rose
 Rose is a hyponym of flower
- The other examp
 Dog is hyponym of animal
 Carrot is hyponym of vegetable

Polysemy

 In simple way, polysemy is two or more with the same form and related meaning
  Polysemy is one form that
And are all related by
 Examp :
- On the top of body
- On the top ofglass
- Person at the top of a company

Polysemy and homonym

 If we aren’t sure wheather different use of a single word are example of homonym of
polysemy , we can check in a dictionary
 If the word has multiple meaning (i.e its polysemous)
Then there will be a single entry, with numbered list of the different meanings of that word
 If two words are treated as homonyms, they will typically have two separate enteries
 In most dictionaries, bank, mall, mole, and sole are clearly trated as homonyms whereas
face, foot,get,head and are treated as examples of polysemy
 Its possible for two forms to be distinguished via homonym and for one of the forms alsonto
have various uses via polysemy
 The words date (=a point in time) are homonyms
 However,’ the point in time’ kind of date is polysemous in terms of:
- A particular day and month (=on a letter)
- An arranged meeting time(=an appointment=)
- A social......with someone we like )
- And every....... person we like )

Metonymy

 Another examples of metonymy :

- Filling up the car
- Boiling a kettlegiving someone a hand
- Answering the door
 Metonymy needs context, background knowledge, and infence to make sense an epression,
such as :
- Get your but over here (interfere)
- The strings are too quiet (about orchestral music)
- I prefer cable (television program)

Collocation

 Collacation is a relationship between words that frequently occur together (co-occurence of

words)
- Which words tend to occur with other words
- The association between two words that are typically or frequently used together
- Examp :
 If you ask a thousand people what they think when you say hammer, more than
half will say nail
 If you say table, they will say chair
 If you say salt, they will say pepper
 Another examp :
 Butter/bread
  Needle/thread
 Sheep/wool
 Congress/politician

Metonym

 Metonymy is the relationship between words, based simply on a close connection in

everyday experience
- That close connection can be based on :
 A container content relation, such as bottle/water, can/juice
 A whole-part relation, such as :car/wheels, house/roof
 A representative-symbol relationship, such as: king/crown, the
President/the White House
 Metonym is also a process of meaning change in which a word shifts to a continguous
meaning
 Examp :
- He drank the whole bottle
- The White House has announced...

Hierarchical relationship of Hyponymy

Living thing

Creature plant

Animal insect Vegetable flower tree

Dog horse snake ant coackroach Carrot rose banyan pine

Poodle Asp

 Horse is a hyponym of animal

 Coackroach is a hyponym of insect
- Insect and animal are called superordinate (higher level) terms.
- Co-hyponym are two or more words that share the same superordinate term
 Dog and horse are co-hyponyms and the superordinate term is animal
 Ant and cockroach are co-hyponyms and the superordinate term is insect
 Banyan and pine are co-hyponym and the superordinate term is tree

Another concept of hyponym

 Besides a concept of ‘’inclusion’ hyponym has a concept of ‘a kind of’ by giving the meaning
by saying : Sedan is a kind of car
 Hyponym is sometimes used to express the only thing we know about the meaning of word
and we may know nothing more about the meaning
 - Poodle is a kind of dog
- Asp is a kind of snake

Prototype

 Prototype is an object which is held to be very TYPICAL of kind of object which can be
referred to by an expression containing the predicate
o The characteristic instance of a category
o Objects on which there would be general agreement that they were typical
examples of the class of objects described by a certain predicate
o Examp :
 Bird (robin) has feathers and wings
 Furniture (chair or table )

Homophones

 When two or more different (written) forms have the same pronounciation,they are
describe as Homophones/
o Different words, different meaning, but the same sound (pronounciation)
 Common examp :
o Bare/bear , meat /meet,flour/flower, pail/pale