Semantics in Linguistics

Semantics in Linguistics

1. The study of meaning communicated through language

   • Focuses on the meaning of individual words and sentences
     • Starts off with a native language
       • Includes knowledge of more than a thousand words
       • Lexicon
       • We learn and forget words
     • Expressions derive from the language they are part from
       • Utterance
         • A spoken or written piece of language
       • Sentences
         • Abstract grammatical element obtained from utterances .
       • Prepositions
         • Words beginning a prepositional phrase
   • Involves three main challenges
     • How to state the meaning of a word, with its exceptions
     • How distinguish linguistic knowledge and its accuracy
     • What to do if speakers of a language differ on a word meaning
   • It may be transmitted in two ways
     • Literal
     • Nonliteral

2. It is related to other branches in linguistics

   • Syntax
     • How words can be combined into sentences
   • Phonology
   • What sounds a language has and how these sounds combine to form words