Semantic Analysis

8 Key excerpts on "Semantic Analysis"

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  eBook - ePub

  Linguistics for Language Teachers

  Lessons for Classroom Practice

  • Sunny Park-Johnson, Sarah J. Shin(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  6  Semantics and Pragmatics

  The Study of Meanings

  6.1 Introduction

  In the last several chapters, we have been building up language from the smallest component all the way to complex sentences. We have learned how to structure sounds and words, phrases, and clauses. However, what is structure without meaning? To explore this question, let us consider a famous sentence in (1).

  • (1) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

  While the sentence is structurally sound and grammatically correct, there are some problems with the meaning. We might point out that something colorless cannot also be green, that ideas cannot be colored, that ideas do not sleep, and that sleeping cannot be done furiously. This sentence demonstrates that even if you follow all the phrase structure rules of a language—in fact, you can probably diagram this sentence after reading Chapter 5 —it can still yield a meaningless utterance. Thus, it is not enough that a language learner acquire the structures in the target language; the learner must also understand (1) meanings of individual words, (2) how words function together in phrases and clauses to make meaning, and (3) how the speaker and listener make sense of this through context, norms, and other non-linguistics elements. Semantics is the layer of language that provides this understanding.

  In this chapter, we will begin by discussing lexical semantics, or how meaning is created within and between words. Next, we will describe how meaning is derived from phrases and sentences. This chapter also discusses how non-grammatical factors such as speaker attitudes and situational context contribute to meaning. It explains how meaning is communicated in conversation and shows that what people say and how they say things are culturally conditioned (cross-cultural pragmatics). Finally, we will provide some strategies for helping learners to use language in culturally appropriate ways.

  6.2 Lexical Semantics

  6.2.1 Sense and Reference

  Let us begin with a single word. Meaning can be constructed in many ways, but at the word level, it comes down to two things: sense and reference. Sense is defined as the concept or mental representation of a word. If you hear the word bird

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  Towards A Semantic Web

  Connecting Knowledge in Academic Research

  • Bill Cope, Mary Kalantzis, Liam Magee(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Chandos Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Extensive research has been undertaken in the field of computer science, notably in the area of ontology matching, but also in related areas of ontology and database modelling and design. Much of this research focuses on developing improved algorithms for concept translation between ontologies; as noted in the introduction, there has been relatively little attention to using background knowledge as a heuristic tool for augmenting ontology translation efforts. The section on computational semantics, below, surveys work in ontology matching, and also discusses related studies looking at ontology metrics and collaboration.

  Finally, considerable work in philosophy of mind and language has been oriented towards problems of conceptual schemes, translatability and interpretation. However, this field is much too broad to survey even schematically here; Chapter 11 , ‘On commensurability’, provides a further review of this tradition, within the specific context of outlining a theoretical background for a framework of commensurability.

  Linguistic semantics

  Semantics in language

  As a subsidiary domain of linguistics, semantics is, as a textbook puts it, ‘the study of the systematic ways in which languages structure meaning’ (Besnier et al. 1992 ). Early in the history of linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure established several foundational semantic distinctions: between signifier (a spoken or written symbol) and signified (a mental concept); and between sign (the combination of signifier and signified) and referent (the thing referred to by the sign) (Saussure 1986 ). Bloomfieldian research in the 1930s and 1940s emphasised structural, comparative and descriptive rather than semantic features of language; ironically it was the advent of Chomskyian generative grammar in the 1950s which, in spite of emphasising syntax, again paved the way for a more explicit focus on semantics in the 1960s (Harris 1993

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  eBook - ePub

  Linguistic Semantics

  • William Frawley(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1  

  Semantics and Linguistic Semantics: Toward Grammatical Meaning

  1.1. INTRODUCTION

  In this chapter we define linguistic semantics as the study of literal, decontextualized, grammatical meaning. We begin with the difference between literal and implicational meaning and then illustrate meaning that has grammatical relevance. We contrast this view of meaning with that given by philosophical semantics, focusing on two basic questions: Is meaning possible? What kinds of meanings are possible? We show how linguistic semantics positions itself differently from philosophical semantics on such issues as the kinds of meaning that languages grammaticalize and the structural and empirical methods of Semantic Analysis. We close with a consideration of grammatical conditions on meaning and the relation of semantics to morphology.

  1.2. GRAMMATICAL MEANING: AN INTRODUCTION AND ILLUSTRATION

  Linguistic semantics is the study of literal meanings that are grammaticalized or encoded (i.e., reflected in how the grammar of a language structures its sentences). Defined as such, linguistic semantics is a branch of both semiotics, the study of meaning in general, and semantics, the study of linguistic meaning in particular. But linguistic semantics is narrower than either semiotics or semantics, focusing as it does on meanings that are actually reflected in overt form differences.

  To see exactly what linguistic semantics admits and excludes, we begin with an example that illustrates grammatical meaning in contrast to other kinds of meaning. Thereafter, we examine the position of linguistic semantics in relation to semantics in general so that we can delimit more precisely the domain of linguistic semantics.

  1.21. Literal and Implicational Meaning What does (1) mean?   1. Tom bought some rice.

  We want to know what state of affairs or situation in the world the expression represents. This is its literal or representational meaning. The literal meaning of a linguistic form contrasts with its implicational meaning,

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  Phasal Analysis

  Analysing Discourse through Communication Linguistics

  • Karen Malcolm(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  6

  Each form of analysis introduced thus far describes a different type of meaning. Graphological meaning is encoded in the visual selection and arrangement of graphs and images. Phonological meaning is encoded in the choices and relationships between sounds and silence. Lexical meaning is encoded in the choice and juxtaposition of conceptually related words and sets, and syntactic meaning is encoded in the sequence of, and relationship between, words, groups, clauses, sentences and turns.

  Semology , like syntax, is concerned with the arrangement of meaning. However, not the abstract relationships between class / parts of speech and elements of structure, but the more semantically inclined relationships between actors / participants, processes / events, goals / participants, and circumstances / setting. In the sentences

  Jyota threw the ball, Eku learns / loves math

  , and

  Yoga is fun

  the syntactic Subject describes the participant (Jyota, Eku, yoga ) involved; the syntactic Predicate describes the event or process (threw, learns / loves, is ) and the syntactic Complement describes the goal (the ball, physics, fun). Semological circumstances are realized syntactically by syntactic Adjuncts: Yesterday , in Killarney ,

  Jyota threw

  the ball.

  Semological roles are given to all elements of clause structure (SPCA), not sentence or group structure. In semology , the independent clause is called a proposition (which is a different usage than the syntactic sentence level structural element for the ic ). Each syntactic clause, both dependent and independent, comprises a semological predication

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  Speech to Print

  Language Essentials for Teachers

  • Louisa Cook Moats(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Brookes Publishing

    (Publisher)

  7 Semantics: Word and Sentence Meaning Chapter Goals •Understand that meaning is conveyed by individual words, by phrases combined into sentences, by the links within and between sentences, and by the context of communication •Explain why knowledge of word meanings is so important for text reading comprehension •Understand that words are arbitrary linguistic signs with phonological, orthographic, morphological, and syntactic features •Understand that knowledge of word meanings can be superficial and limited or deep and elaborated, and that depth of word knowledge impacts vocabulary acquisition and comprehension •Demonstrate how new word meanings are learned and stored in relation to other known words •Explain and rehearse important, research-based principles for vocabulary instruction

  •Understand that processing of meaning within and between sentences requires interpreting phrase structure, roles assigned by verbs, referential devices, and connecting words (conjunctions), and making inferences to connect ideas

  •Review instructional approaches for strengthening local comprehension of text

  THE DOMAIN OF SEMANTICS: WORDS, SENTENCES, AND CONTEXT

  In this chapter we investigate ways that language and other, nonlinguistic cues convey meaning. We focus on the characteristics and organization of meaning networks in our minds so that we can deliberately strengthen those networks during classroom instruction. The nature of meaning will be considered at the word level (lexical semantics), at the phrase and sentence level (sentential semantics), and by a brief look at the supports for meaning-making residing within a social context (pragmatics

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  eBook - ePub

  A Concise Introduction to Linguistics

  • Bruce M. Rowe, Diane P. Levine(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~koller/papers/sem-handbook.pdf .
• Kövecses, Zoltan, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction , 2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Saeed, John I., Semantics , 5th ed., Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022.
• Schubert, Lenhart, “Computational Linguistics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta, Spring, 2015. Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/computational-linguistics .

Websites

• Korzybski’s General Semantics: Applying Science-Mathematical Methods and Discoveries to Daily Living: www.stevenlewis.info/gs . An interesting, eclectic collection of essays and articles on a site developed by Steven Lewis .
• Semiotics for Beginners : http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/
• TeachIt: www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/lang/semantics.htm . Free resources from an English teaching website for semantics, etymology, and the lexicon, with links to much more .

Review of terms and concepts: semantics

1. Semantics is the study of _____________________________________________________________________________.
2. A ________ is something, a word, a gesture, a sign, or other representation that signifies or represents something else that is not intrinsically (causally) related to it.
3. The meaning of the symbol and what it signifies must be ___________.
4. Unlike a symbol, an __________________ has a causal relationship to what it indicates.
5. Lexical semantics is the study of ______________.
6. In the brain is a ______________ containing the definitions of all the words that a person knows.
7. Some words have an actual concrete item or concept that the word refers to. That item is its ______________.