Branch of semantics
semantics concerns the study of meaning as communicated through language, while for some others, semantics studies all aspects of meaning and they have to add the label “linguistic” to arrive ata more precise definition. This distinction, however, is not generally given much importance and leaving aside special formulations, probably all authors would agree with Kreidler’s definition (to choose just one of them): linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organize and express meanings.
So, Linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organize and express meanings. Semantics is part of grammar.
The meaning of a complex expression is determined by:
• the meanings of its parts,
• the way in which those parts are combined
Example: A cat chased a small rat.
A small rat chased a cat.
Lexical Semantics
1. Hyponym: word x is a hyponym of word y if the sets of referents of x is always in the set of referents of y.
• example: the set of poodles is always in the set of dogs
2. Hypernym: the converse of hyponym
• example: above, ‘dogs’ = hypernym, ‘poodles’ = hyponym
3. Synonyms: words that seem to have the same meaning
• example: ‘couch’ vs. ‘sofa’
4. Antonyms: words that seem to have opposite meanings
Three types of antonyms:
a. Complementary à single - married, dead - alive
• mutually exclusive
b. Gradable à cold - cool - warm - hot, wet - dry
• can modify with ‘very’, ‘a little’, etc.
c. Converse à above / below, give / receive, buy - sell
• reciprocal relationship between words • relationship x entails existence of relationship y
Ø Compositional Semantics
• Deals with phrasal and sentence meaning.
• Non-idiomatic meanings are compositional in that they combine the meanings of smaller units.
There are 3 kinds of compositional semantics, like:
1. Entailment
2. Presupposition
3. Thematic roles
http://udel.edu/~dlarsen/ling101/slides/Semantics.pdf
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