Importance of semantics

Importance of semantics

1. linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organize and express meanings.

   • The history of Semantics is not straightforward. In a way, 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.
     • the central concern of language is syntax: linguistic knowledge is basically knowledge about syntax. This is the information that is “pre-wired” in children’s brains, in the Language Acquisition Device.
       • The connection between words and phrases and their meanings is something that is achieved by general purpose devices, that is, psychological mechanisms that are not specifically linguistic in nature, and thus, fall outside the scope of the linguistic study.
   • Formal semantics tries to describe the meaning of language using the descriptive apparatus of formal logic. The goal is to describe natural language in a formal, precise, unambiguous way.
     • This is the approach that we will follow in this course, and we will see some of their tenets and proposals with some detail.
       • Formal semantics is concerned with how words are related to objects in the world and how combinations of words preserve or not the truth-conditions of their components.
         • This approach connects with Chomskyan linguistics, in which syntax is actually the driving force in language. This type of semantics has proposed very precise and detailed analyses of sentences and propositions
   • Semiotics
     • Semiotics studies how “signs” mean, that is, how we can make one thing stand for another a “signifier” stands for a “signified".
       • Icon: a relation of similarity between the sign and what it represents; for example, a portrait, etc.
         • Index: a cause-effect relationship; contiguity in space or time; for example, smoke and fire, yawning and boredom, vultures circling overhead a dead animal
           • Symbol: an arbitrary, conventional relationship between sign and meaning: for example, red flag and danger.
   • Formal semantics
   • Cognitive semantics
     • Cognitive semantics tries to explain semantic phenomena by appealing to biological, psychological and even cultural issues.
       • Phonology studies phenomena which are quite concrete and tangible: the linguistic sounds produced by humans.
       • Morphology studies the different parts of words and their order of combination, while syntax studies the order in which words are placed when formulating a message and the different structures that can be formed when different words are grouped together.
     • This approach does not consider the logical structure of language as important for the description of the meaning of language