Semantic

Semantic

Definition:

The field of linguistics concerned with the study of meaning in language.

Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It can be applied to entire texts or to single words. For example, "destination" and "last stop" technically mean the same thing, but students of semantics analyze their subtle shades of meaning.

"Oddly," says R.L. Trask, "some of the most important work in semantics was being done from the late 19th century onwards by philosophers [rather than by linguists]." Over the past 50 years, however, "approaches to semantics have proliferated, and the subject is now one of the liveliest areas in linguistics" (Language and Linguistics: The Key Concepts, 2007).
The term semantics (from the Greek for "sign") was coined by French linguist Michel Bréal (1832-1915), who is commonly regarded as a founder of modern semantics.

Semantic relationships between words

      Modern studies of semantics are interested in meaning primarily in terms of word and sentence relationships.  Let's examine some semantic relationships between words:

• Homophony: When two words have the same pronunciation, but are written differently and mean different things, such as bare and bear. 
• Polysemy: When a single word has multiple meanings. For example, the verb bear can mean tolerate, but also bring (he bore gifts) or have (they bear a certain resemblance).
• Synonymy: When two words are close in meaning, such as the synonyms insinuate and suggest. Although they are similar, they are not identical.
• Antonymy: When two words have opposite meanings, such as the unmarked pair of antonyms happy and sad or the marked pair of antonyms unhappy and happy. There are two types of antonyms:
• Gradable antonyms: These are words with various degrees, such as happy and sad. Not happy is not the same as sad.
• Non-gradable antonyms: These are words without degrees; it's either one way or the other, such as on and off. Your computer is either one or the other: it is not on indicates it is off.
• Reversives: Sometimes, with a pair of antonyms X and Y, not X does not imply Y. For example, I did not close the windows does not imply I opened the windows. These are reversives.
• Converse or Reciprocal antonym: If A happened before B, then B must have happened after A. If A is B's husband, then B is A's wife, assuming they are not a gay couple. This relationship is called converse.
• Hyponymy: When one word indicates a category of things that is a subset of the category of things indicated by another word. For example, child is a hyponym of human, which is a superordinate of child. Child and adult are called cohyponyms.
• Prototype: Sometimes, a certain hyponym is more representative of the superordinate than most. For example, when you hear the word 'fish', you probably don't think about weird fish like seahorses or swordfish. You are more likely to think of, say, salmon, which is said to be the prototype of the hyponymy.
• Metonymy: When a word is used in place of another related word. For example, you can say he found solace in the bottle if you want to express the idea that he drank alcohol to comfort himself. Using bottle instead of alcohol is metonymy.
• Synecdoche: It is a type of metonymy when you're substituting a word for a part of it, e.g. farm hands.
• Metaphor: When a word is replaced with another because of similar attributes. For example, the Chinese word for communication, goutong, originally meant 'to merge two river channels into one by dreding'.
• Transferred epithet: It is when a word, usually an adjective, describes another word, but actually describes a third concept. For example, happy in a happy morning describes not the morning, but the mood of the speaker during the morning.
• Collocation: When two words go well with each other, such as deliver and speech, formulate and policy, and interesting and proposition. These are found by looking at statistics in a corpus, or a collection of language in use.