INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTIC

SEMANTICS

By: Group 7

1. St. Fatimah (200512501044)

2. Nur Masita Syahril (200512501045)
3. Nurmadina (200512501046)

ENGLISH LITERATURE
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MAKASSAR
 ➢ Definition
Semantic is the study of meaning of words, phrases, and sentences. In semantic
analysis, there is always an attempt to focus on what the words convetionally
mean, rather than on what an individual speaker (like George Carlin) might want
them to mean on a particular occasion.
➢ Two types of meaning:
1. Conceptual meaning: In semantics, conceptual meaning is the literal or core
sense of a word. There is nothing read into the term, no subtext; it's just the
straightforward, literal, dictionary definition of the word.
2. Associative meaning: In semantics, associative meaning refers to the
particular qualities or characteristics beyond the denotative meaning that
people commonly think of (correctly or incorrectly) in relation to a word or
phrase. Also known as expressive meaning and stylistic meaning.
➢ The two main areas of word meaning
1. Lexical semantics: Concerned with the analysis of word meaning and
relations between them.

Lexical relations
• Synonym: it is the semantic relationship that exists between
two or more words that have the same or nearly the same
meaning and belong to the same part of speech, but spelled
differently.

Example:
Tall = high

Big = large
To begin = to start

• Antonym: the semantic relationship that exists between two or

more words that have opposite meaning. There are two types
of antonym:
1. Gradable antonyms (also called ‘complementary pairs’):
These are words with various degrees.

For Example: beautiful – ugly, expensive – cheap.

 2. Non-gradable antonyms (also called ‘complementary
pairs’): Comparative constructions and negative of one
member does imply the other.
For example: live – deas. The person is not dead, does indeed
mean that person is live.
Male – female.
• Hyphonym : the reationship exists between two or more words
in a way that the meaning of one word includes the meaning of
other words.
Example: rose, tulip, edelwais = flower

• Homonym: the relationship that exists between two or more

words that belong to the same category; they have same
spelling but different meaning

Example:
we can save money in the bank

I tree is growing on the bank.

To lie = to rest

To lie = not telling the truth

• Polysemy: the semantic relationships that exist between a

word and its multiple conceptually and historically related
meaning.

Example:
Foot : 1- part of body
2- lower part of something
Example: bright: ‘shiny’ ; ‘intelligent’

• Metonymy: When a word is used in place of another related

word.
Example:

He drank the whole bottle.

 • Metaphor: When a word is replaced with another beacuse of
similar attributes.

Example:
My sister’s memory is a camera that remembers everything we
see.
• Collocation: When two words go well with each other, such as
deliver and speech, formulate and policy, and interesting and
proposition. These are found by looking at statistics in a corpus,
or a collection of language in use.
For example:

Collacations with time: take a hower, take a bath

Collacationa with get: get a job, get angry
2. Logical semantics: Concerned with the matters such as sense and reference
presupposition and implication.
a. References: by means of reference a speaker indicates which thing or
people are being talked about.

Example:
My friends is in the court
b. Sense: the sense of an expression isnits plaxe in a system of semantic
relationship with other expression in the language.
➢ Semantic features
It is a national method which can be used to express the existance or non-existance
of pre-established semantic properties by using plus and minus signs.

For example:
Man is [+human], [+male], [+adult].
Woman is [+human], [-male], [+adult].
Boy is [+human], [+male], [-adult].

Girl is [+human], [-male], [-adult].

➢ Semantic roles
The role played by a word in expressing meaning is called the semantic role or
thematic role.

• Agent: The 'doer' of an action, like the cat in The cat scratched the sofa.
• Theme or Patient: The 'receiver' of the action, like the sofa in The cat
scratched the sofa.
• Experiencer: Someone or something that 'experiences' the situation, like the
child in The child saw the cat scratching the sofa.
• Instrument: Something that the agent uses to do something, like its paws in
The cat scratched the sofa with its paws.
• Recipient: Something or someone that receives something, like the cat in The
child gave the cat its food.
• Time: Surprisingly enough, that is the time when an action is done, such as
midnight in The cat scratch the sofa at midnight.