Introduction to semantics

Introduction to semantics

1. Linguistics

   • Study of meaning

2. Semantics

   • Study of how languages organize and express meanings

3. Language use and acquisition

4. Attempt to explicate the knowledge of any speaker of a language which allows that speaker to comunicate facts, feelings, intentions and products of imagination to other speakers and to understand what they communicate to him or her

   • The speaker knowledge is largely implicit.

5. Essentials of a language

   • Use and meaning
     • Vocabulary
     • Pronunciation

6. Linguist

   • Grammar
     • An explicit description of the language
     • Categories of the language and rules

7. Semantics is one part of the grammar

   • Phonology
   • Syntax
   • Morphology

8. Categories of semantics

   • Lexical semantics
     • The study of word meaning.
   • Phrasal semantics
     • The study of the principles which govern the construction of the meaning of phrases and of sentence meaning out of compositional combinations of individual lexemes.

9. The job of semantics is to study the basic, literal meanings of words as considered principally as parts of a language system