SEMANTICS

SEMANTICS

1. is

   • The study of meaning Lyons (1977)
   • the study of meaning in language Hurford & Heasley (1983)
   • The study of meaning communicated through language Saeed (1997)
   • The part of linguistics that is concerned with meaning Löbner (2002)
   • The study of literal, decontextualized, grammatical meaning Frawley (1992)
   • The study of how languages organize and express meanings Kreidler (1998)

2. History

   • Semantic studies can be traced back to the first studies of language by man
     • Since the very first moments in which man started to investigate the phenomenon of linguistic communication, semantics had a central place in that endeavor.
   • was banned from linguistics by American structuralism
     • due to
       • It was not something “observable”
   • XXth century, Chomskyan generativism, also decided that semantics was not a central part of linguistic analysis.
   • Since 1980’s, we start to find more opinions which are completely different.
     • For example
       • Langacker speaks about the “centrality of meaning to virtually all linguistic concerns”
   • There are two ways of approaching semantics
     • Formal semantics
       • Follows
         • Frege’s principle of compositionality
           • is
             • The meaning of the whole is a function of the meaning of the parts.
     • Cognitive semantics
       • Explain semantic phenomena by appealing to biological, psychological and even cultural issues

3. The change in meaning was at the center of the attention of early semantics, such as Bréal (founder of modern semantics), and its predecessor Reisig.