SEMANTICS AND

PRAGMATICS
By
Indri Wirahmi Bay, MA
 WHAT IS SEMANTICS?
 In general perspective, semantics is a study of meaning.
 Semantics is a component or level of linguistics of the same
kind as phonetics and grammar (Palmer, 1976:6).
 Crystal (2008:428) defines semantics as a major branch of
linguistics devoted to the study of meaning in language.
 Semantics is the study of meaning that can be determined from a
sentence, phrase or word
 Semantics concerns on the relationship among form, sense, and
reference.
 FORM, MEANING AND
REFERENCE
 Generally, the elements of language could classified into
two: Form (bentuk) and Meaning (makna)
 Form In its most general sense refers to the abstract
phonological and/ or grammatical characterization of a
language, and opposed to its meaning. More specifically,
it refers to phonological/grammatical or lexical
characteristics of linguistic units, such as sentence,
morpheme, lexemes, nouns, etc (Crystal, 2008:194)
 FORM, MEANING AND
REFERENCE
• Wijana and Rohmadi (2008:9) stated that form is the physic
of speech started from the lowest level phoneme, syllable,
morpheme,word, phrase, sentence, paragraph and discourse
as the highest level.
• The form of language has a mental concept in human’s
thought that is called meaning (makna)
 FORM, MEANING AND
REFERENCE

• Meaning is the abstract concept of human’s

experience
• Meaning then can be defined as the non-physic of
speech
• Ferdinand de Saussure stated that the correlation
between form and meaning refer to an arbiter and
conventional connection.
 FORM, MEANING AND
REFERENCE

• An arbiter means no clausal, logical, natural or

historical correlation between form and meaning
• Conventional suggests the correlation among form
and meaning should be based on convention or
agreement.
 FORM, MEANING AND REFERENCE

• Reference is the relation between the linguistics expression

(name, word) and the object in extra-linguistic reality to which
the expression refers (Busman, 1998:989).
• Referent is object or state of affairs in extra-linguistic reality or
also a linguistic element to which the speaker writer referring
by using a linguistic sign (Busman, 1998:990).
• Referent is a term used in philosophical linguistics and
semantics for the entity (object, state of affairs, etc) in external
world to which a linguistic expression relates (Crystal,
2008:408).
THANK YOU