THE SCOPE OF SEMANTICS

Make to fulfill the Assignment Of Semantics

Lecturer: Wawat Srinawati, M.Pd.

Arranged by :

 Jihan Ma’rifatul Hidayah (0142S1C019016)

 Intan Lestari (0142S1C019012)
 Varian Al Ramahdan (0142S1C019029)

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

OF STKIP MUHAMMADIYAH BOGOR
2021
 PREFACE

Praise the author for the presence of Allah SWT who has bestowed His mercy
and guidance so that the author can finish this paper. This paper is a group
assignment and is structured to fulfill the Semantics for students of the S1 English
Language Education Program at Muhammadiyah College of Education and
Education, Bogor. This paper can be completed thanks to the encouragement and
attention from various parties. Therefore, on this occasion the author would like to
sincerely thank Wawat Srinawati, M.Pd., as a lecturer who supports the Semantics
course, and parents who have provided funding, support, enthusiasm, and prayers
that are always offered to him. Hopefully what has been given to the author can be
a useful charity and get more gifts from Allah SWT. The author is fully aware,
that this paper is far from perfect. Therefore, constructive criticism and
suggestions are always waiting for writers to improve their quality in the future.
Hopefully this paper can be useful for the writer and everyone who reads it.

Bogor, October 23rd 2021

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE............................................................................................................i
TABLE OF CONTENTS....................................................................................ii
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION .....................................................................1
A. Background.............................................................................................1
B. Formulation Of The Problem..................................................................1
C. Writing Purpose.......................................................................................1
CHAPTER II DISCUSSION ...........................................................................
A. Scope of Semantics.................................................................................2
B. Naming....................................................................................................2
C. Meaning ..................................................................................................3
D. Concept ...................................................................................................5
E. Sense and Reference................................................................................6
BAB III CLOSING ...........................................................................................9
A. Conclusion...............................................................................................9
REFERENCES....................................................................................................10

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 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

A. Background
In human communication, much of what is expressed goes beyond
simply conveyinginformation to others. Social and affective meaning are not
covered by semantics (which focuseson conventional/conceptual meaning
only), but virtually any real-life communicative situationcontains signs which
are used to express something about the speakers and their
socialrelationships. Semantics is the study of how languages organize and
express meanings. Semanticsis concerned only with the way we relate our
language to our experience. We have two kinds ofsemantics, they are one
deals with semantic structure and the other deals with meanings in terms
ofour experience outside language. Knowing further for the theory of
semantics and how to recgnizethe meaning of the words and sentences, there
is one limitation of semantics is that dimensions ofmeaning that are outside
the content of the linguistic sign are also outside the scope of
description.Because of that, this paper will discuss about scopes of semantics.
We will discuss what scopes ofsemantics are.

B. Problem Formulation
1. What are the scopes of semantics ?
2. What is naming ?
3. What are the various meanings?
4. What is concept ?
5. What is sense and reference ?

C. Writing Purpose
1. For knowing the scope of semantics
2. For knowing naming.
3. For knowing the various of meanings.
4. For knowing concept
5. For knowing sense and reference

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 6. For fulfill the assignment of semantics

CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION

1. Scope of Semantics
Semantics is the study of the linguistics meaning. It is not concerned
with what sentences and other linguistics object expressed. It is not concerned
with the arrangements of syntactic parts, or with their pronounciation.
Semantics could cover more extensive areas, from structure and function of
language as well as the interrelationship with other discipline. In this thesis,
the scope of semantics is about the meaning itself in linguistics. Meaning of
linguistic object can be various. Every people may have different way to
analyze the meaning of a linguistic because there is no very general
agreement about the nature of meaning or the way in which it should be
described.
There are two major approaches to the way in which meaning in
language
studied, the first is the linguistic approach. The students of language or
linguists have long been interested in the way in which meaning in a
language is structured. There have been studies of the meaning of words and
the semantic structure of the sentences. Some of them also have
distinguished between different types of meaning.The second is
philosophical approach. Philosophers have investigated the relation between
linguistic expression, such as the words of language, and persons, things, and
events in the world to which these words refer to. Although there are may be
different approach to semantics, three basic terms seem to be widely
mentioned in of each these approach, there are meaning, sense and reference.

2. Naming
Deals with the possibility of treating language as nomenclatures. As far
back as we can trace the history of linguistics speculation, the basic semantic

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 function of words has been seen as that of meaning. A language might be
thought of as a communication system with on the hand of the signifier, on
the other the signified. Names as they are employed in everyday language
behaviour, have two characteristic functions. One is referential and other is
vocative. To mention referential function, it is worth pointing out here, that
names are frequently used simply to draw the hearer's attention to the
presence of the person being named to remind them here to the existence
relevance of the person being named. By the vocative function of names is
meant their being used to attract the attention of the person being called or
summoned. The linguistic status of names has long been a subject of
controversy, not only among philosophers but also among linguists
Semantics and Names Naming of data entities (data elements, value
domains, attributes, etc.) in a rational and organized way is an integral part of
the metadata management of an organization. Artificial intelligence
researchers try to develop languages that have restricted vocabularies, rules
and constraints so that their meanings may be easily interpreted by both
machine and human intelligence. These are called controlled languages.
Naming conventions are sets of such rules applied to names. Unlike natural
language names, which have evolved from many influences so that any
particular name may or may not describe the thing named, the goal for
metadata naming is to have maximum clarity and transparency of meaning,
combined with concision, with minimal effort of interpretation by the end
user.

3. Meaning
The term meaning is simply derived from the verb mean. Meaning is
regarded as the message that is intended or expressed or signified. In other
word, it can be said that meaning is the idea that is intended.
There are some definitions, which are given by semanticists about
what meaning is, they are:

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 a. Leech (1969: 5) states, “The aim of semantics is to explain and
describe meaning in the natural language”.
b. Lyons (1979: 2) states, “The meaning can be distinguished by the
technique of substituting others word in the same context and
enquiry whether the resulting sentence are equivalent.”
3.1 Varieties of Meaning
There are two kinds of meaning, they are linguistic meaning and
speaker meaning (Siregar:1992).

3.1.1 Linguistic Meaning

Linguistic meaning is simply the meaning of an expression in some
form of language. In linguistics, meaning is expressed by the writer or
speaker and what is conveyed to the reader or listener provided that they talk
about the same thing. The knowledge of the reader or listener will determine
how much or whether he or she understands the message of the speaker or
the writer. For examples:
1. He likes to run.
2. Our new engines run well.
3. They run a mail – order house.
In standard British English, the word run means something different in
each of the sentences. In other words, the word of run has more than one the
linguistics meaning based on the context of the sentence or dictionary.

3.1.2 Speaker Meaning

Speaker meaning is what speaker means in producing an utterance.
Although words can not be used to mean something what they do not mean,
there is a tendency of a speaker to use a word to mean something different
from what words mean literally. By saying, ‘you are clever’ the speaker may
mean ‘you are bright’ (intelligent). Because the word clever has meaning
‘bright mentally’ or ‘have intelligence’ in English or he may mean the

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 opposite of what the word means. i.e. ‘you are stupid’. The speaker meaning
is classified in two parts, they are literal meaning and non literal meaning.

3.1.2.1 Literal Meaning

Siregar (1992) says, “If we are speaking literally, then we mean what
our words mean”. Literal is actual words or the real one. It means not use
figurative or symbolic. When the speaker speaks literal, it means that he or
she does not have any hidden meaning in his or her words.
The following examples illustrate the literal meaning:
1. We are eating right now.
2. My mother goes to traditional market everyday.
3. Thomas is playing badminton in front of his house.
All the sentences above are easily understood as long as the speakers
mean what they say lexically. In literal meaning there is no misunderstanding
or misinterpretation between the speaker and the listener.

3.1.2.2 Non Literal Meaning

Siregar (1992:10) says, “We sometimes mean something different from
what our mean, in other words, we sometimes speak non-literally”. People
sometimes speak non literal. When the speaker speaks non literally, therefore,
means something different from what the words mean. It is the opposite of
literal meaning. In additional the words orsentence which is spoken by the
speaker have hidden meaning beside the lexical meaning.
Everyday people may find many non literal meaning such as in novel,
poem, lyrics of song, the Holy Bible, etc. Non literal meaning is very needed
to make our sentences or language more beautiful. The following example
illustrate the non literal meaning is‘My pen is dancing on paper now’. This
sentence has nonliteral meaning and it means I am writing on paper now.

4. Concepts

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 Conception, a word can be considered as the label which names the
object. The meaning of words can be also created by the concepts in the
language users’ minds. Concepts are created by human’s knowledge,
experiences and perceptions toward a phenomenon, an object or an event. The
Meaning of a word can be also created by the relationship among stimulus, a
word and responds found in the cases of utterance. In semantics, there are two
major ways to find out the meaning of a word which then becomes the two
major branches in linguistic semantics, they are reference (referential
semantics) and sense (lexical semantics). Name Object Concept Problems in
references 1. Abstract things 2. Extinct things 3.Etc… Concept as a mediator
According to Ferdinand De Saussure, the linguistic sign consists of a
signifier and a signified. Sounds, image, concept and thought are called
signified. The symbol is the linguistic element referent is object and thought
are concepts. According to the theory, there is no direct link between symbol
and referent - the link is via thought, the concept of our mind.
The main criticism of this approach is the difficulty of identifying “
Concepts”. The “ Concepts” underlying a word such as tradition is no easier
to define than the “ thing” referred to by tradition. Some words do have
meaning that are relatively easy to conceptualize but we certainly do not have
neat visual images corresponding to very word we say.

5. Sense and Reference

 Sense
Word and phrases normally both have sense and reference. In order
to have a better understanding of a word and references, there should be a
distinction between its sense and reference.
Sense relates to the complex system of relationships that hold
between the linguistic elements themselves (mostly the words); is
concerned only with intralinguistic relations.
Other linguists who contributed the meaning of sense and reference
in his book is Lyons (1979:197) says “Sense is the term used by a number

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of philosopher for what others would describe simply as their meaning or
perhaps more narrowly as their cognitive or descriptive meaning”.
In some cases, the same word can have more than on sense. For
example the word ‘bank’ has different meaning in the following sentences:
a. Every month the company I work for pays my salary directly into
my Bank.
b. My apartment is on the east bank of the river.
Based on the examples (a) and (b) above, we can see that the word
bank has a number of different senses. In the example (a), the word bank
is an organization or a place that provides a financial service. Simply,
bank is a place for keeping money safely. In other hand, in the example (b),
the word bank has sense the land sloping up along each river or canal or the
ground near the river.
Stephen Ullman made thedistinction of these words :
1. Transparent words : are those whose meaning can be determined
from the meaning oftheir parts, e.g : Chopper, driver, etc.
2. Opaque words : are the words whose meaning can not be determined
fromt hemeaning oftheir parts, e.g : hammer, porter, spanner, etc.e.

The Sentence We communicate with sentences and the sentence is

the expression of a complete thought. Thesentence is essentially a
grammatical unit, and the function of syntax is to describe the structure
ofthe sentence.
e.g : Birds fly’ or one word sentence ‘Horses’.
Both words and sentences have meaning. Themeaning of the
sentence can be predicted from the meaning of the words it
contains.According to Lyons suggested the distinction between :
1. Sentence meaning is directly predictable from the grammatical and
lexical features of asentence or can be called written.
2. Utterence meaning includes all various types of meaning or can be
called spoken. The part of meaning of a sentence that is not directly

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 related to the grammatical and lexicalfeatures, but is obtained either
from associated prosodic and paralinguistic features orfrom the
context, linguistic and non - linguistic, in which it occur.

 Reference
Reference can be said as a link of signifie and signified by words.
The signifier is a word in the language and the signified is the object in the
worlds that stands for, refers to or denotes. It is an obvious fact that
reference is the centre of symbol and object. Through reference, the
language being mentioned is associated to the world.
According to Palmer (1976:30), “Reference deals with the
relationship between the linguistic elements, word, sentences, etc., and the
non-linguistic world of experience”. For example, the word ‘hand’ has a
certain meaning. The first one has meaning a part of body, includes right
hand and left hand, a hand has five of fingers and each finger has a
fingernail. The second one, the word ‘hand’ also possesses a characteristic
which is known as ‘reference’ that is the ability of the hand is to do
anything such to take, throw, wash, etc.

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 CHAPTER III
CLOSING

A. Conclusion
Semantics is a field of linguistics concerned with the study of meaning
in language.Additionally, it is concerned with the conceptual meaning and not
the associated meaning. Scopeis a range of statements. There are several parts
in semantics:
a. Naming, Naming is a communication system with on the one hand the
signifier, on theother the signified.
b. Meaning is regarded as the message that is intended or expressed or
signified. In other word, it can be said that meaning is the idea that is
intended. And There are two kinds of meaning, they are linguistic
meaning and speaker meaning (Siregar:1992).
c. Conception, a word can be considered as the label which names the
object. The meaning of words can be also created by the concepts in
the language users’ minds.
d. Sense and reference, Sense relates to the complex system of
relationships that hold between the linguistics elements and
themselves (mostly the words). Reference indicatesthat actual persons
things, being referred to by it in a particular context.
e. The sentence is essentially a grammatical unit, and the function of
syntax is to describethe structure of the sentence.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Figurative Expressions In John Steinbeck's The Pearl. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://text-
id.123dok.com/document/dy4r2l10z-scope-of-semantics-meaning.html
LYONS, J. (1978). SEMANTICS volume I. NEW York: Cambridge University Press .

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