SEMANTICS AND LINGUISTICS
A.
Semantics
Semantics is a branch of
linguistics dealing with meanings of morphemes,
words, phrases, utterances, sentences, and propositions.
1. Semantics
as a Term.
In English the term semantics
appeared for the first
time in a paper “Reflected meanings: a point in semantics” presented by a
member of the American Philological Association in 1894.
2. M.
Breal.
In French M. Breal coined the term semantique from the Greek language in
1883. In 1900 M. Breal published
Semantics: studies in the science of
meaning. The original in French was published in 1897.
3. C.K.
Ogden and I.A. Richards.
C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards
published The Meaning of Meaning in
1923. Yet the term semantics was not
found in the body of the book, it appears in the appendix.
B.
Semantics and Linguistics
1. Semantics
as a level of linguistics.
Semantics
is a component or level of linguistics,
and the other levels are: phonetics,
phonology, morphology, and syntax.
2. Language
as a communication system.
As a communication system, a language
is related with (1) something to be communicated: a message (signified) and (2)
something that communicates, a set of signs or symbols (signifier).
3. Other
communication systems.
Other communication
systems are much simpler than language.
4. A
Communicative System.
a) Not
every piece of language has a message in any real sense. In many cases the function
of language is concerned with establishing and or maintaining social
relationships.
b) Each
sign and message in language is very complicated and the relationships between
them are even more complicated.
c) In
language it is extremely difficult to specify precisely what the message is,
while in other communication systems there is no problem, because the message can
be independently identified
in terms of language.
C.
Semantics
is Empirical
Semantics should
be empirical because
it must be verifiable by observation.
It is easy to apply this method to speaking, but there is no simple way of
dealing with semantics.
D.
Semantics Concerning Generalization.
1. Parole
and langue
Linguistics as a science is not
concerned with specific instances, but with generalization. Ferdinand de
Saussure (1916) indicates this point by stating the distinction between
LANGUAGE (langue) and SPEAKING (parole), later Noam Chomsky (1957) uses the
terms COMPETENCE and PERFORMANCE to refer to more or less the same point. Both
are concerned essentially to exclude what is purely individual and accidental
(speaking or performance), and to insist that the proper study of linguistics
is langue or competence.
2. The
focus of the general study of semantics
The focus of the general study of
semantics is on studying the normal patterns of semantics.
E.
Speaker
Meaning versus Word/Sentence Meaning
Speaker meaning
is what a speaker means when he utters a piece of language. Many sentences
deliver information in a straight forward way, but many other sentences do not
give any information at all.
F.
Semantic
Theory
Semantics is an
attempt to set up a theory to meaning. Hurford and Heasley (1984, 8) state that
“A theory is a precisely specified, coherent, and economical frame-work of
interdependent statements and definitions constructed so that as large a number
as possible of particular basic facts can either be seen to follow from it or
be describable in terms of it”
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