SEMANTICS

A.    THE DEFINITION OF SEMANTICS

Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, like words, phrases, signs, and symbols, and what they stand for; their denotation. Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used for understanding human expression through language. Other forms of semantics include the semantics of programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics. In international scientific vocabulary semantics is also called semasiology


B.     WORD MEANING

The meaning of a word in a language is its referent in the real world. There are several possibilities of referents, such as:

a.       The referent can be an entity, like; a thing, a person, or an animal.

Word
   

Referent

House
   

Inanimate, building with rooms, made for a family to live in.

Doctor
   

Animate, human, male or female, having been trained in medical science.



b.      The referent can be a psychological power.

Word
   

Referent

Tolerance
   

The power to endure without protes.

Intelligence
   

The power of seeing, learning, understanding and knowing.



c.       The referent can be an event.

Word
   

Referent

Party
   

An event of gathering of persons, by invitation, for pleasure.

Earthquake
   

An event of sudden, violent shaking of the earth surface.



d.      The referent can be situation or time.

Word
   

Referent

Season
   

Time to suitable or normal for something.

Depression
   

Time when business is depressed or inactive.



e.       The referent can be a state.

Word
   

Referent

Sad
   

A state of being unhappy.

Diligent
   

A state of being hard working.



f.       The referent can be an action.

Word
   

Referent

Kill
   

An action that causes the death of an animate being.

Sing
   

An action of making musical sounds with the voice.



g.      The referent can be a prosess.

Word
   

Referent

Raining
   

A prosess of rain falling.

Improving
   

A prosess of becaming better.


h.      The referent can be a psychological experience.

Word
   

Referent

Remember
   

Call back to mind the memory of something.

Understand
   

Know the meaning, nature, explanation of something.


i.        The referent can be a manner.

Word
   

Referent

Softly
   

In a soft manner.

Foolishly
   

In a foolish manner.

\The referent can be a location.

Word
   

Referent

In front of
   

In a position of head of something.

Under
   

In a position lower than something.


Those examples show that a referent has contrastive or contrasting features. These contrastive features are called semantic elements, or semantic features, or semantic component, or semantic primitives. Accordingly, the meaning of a word consists of a set of contrastive features. This kind of word meaning is called conceptual meaning, or logical meaning, cognitive meaning, or denotative meaning.

The conceptual meaning of a word is universal. It is the same everywhere in the world, which becomes the basic for universal communication.


C.    SENTENCE MEANING

Accroding to Devitt and Stereny (1999), human beings apply the principle of referent and structure to understand the conceptual meaning of a senience. The principle of referent refers to the conceptual meaning of the works which are embodied in the sentence, while the principle of structure refers to the organization or combination of the words to form a sentence by means of structural rules. In the sentence: The knife is sharp. Two words have conceptual meaning: Knife and sharp. The conceptual meaning of knife is inanimate. a tool, made of metal, having a back, having a blade to cut things. The conceptual meaning of Sharp is with a fine cutting edge, state, relative. Semantically knifeis called an argument and sharp is a predicate. The is a function word to signal a noun and is is not a verb. Is is a word “to carry the tense and other inflectionnal units” (Chafe, 1970: 160). The meaning of the sentence The knife is sharp is: The knife is sharp, the inanimate tool made of metal, with a back and a blade. to cut hings has a fine cutting edge which is a state and is relative. The knife is the argument of the sentence, and sharp is th predicate of the sentence, the verb.

             In the sentence:

            The window of house  is  open.

                          Argument                          Predicate

The meaning is the opening in the wall of the house to let in light and air is open. Not closed< which is a state and is absolute.

In the sentence the squirrel is eating a coconut, three ewords have a referent. They are:

Eat                    : action, taking food into the mounth and swallow it

Coconut            : inanimate, fruit, large, hard-shelled seed of the palm-tree


These referents constitute the meaning of the sentence.

         The principle of structure states that a large unit is composed of smaller constituent units (Leech, 1981: 10). These smaller constituent units, the word, combine according to syntactic rules. These syntactic rules determine the meaning of a sentence, as well as referents of the words. John Loves Mary is not the same as Mary Loves John. In those people are building a bridge, building is a verb. In the sentence This is an office building, building is noun.  In the sentence This a large flower garden, the noun referent is a garden. In the sentence This is a large garden flower , the referent is a flower. In They talk much, talk is a verb. In This is an interesting talk, talk is a noun.

         According to Chafe(1981), a sentence is basically a structure of predication. An element that must be present in, all sentence is the predicate . The predicate may be accompanied by one or more  arguments; or it may not have an argument at all. When a predicate is accompanied by one or more arguments , the predicate dictates the nature and type of the argument, or arguments that accompany the predicate. For example , the predicate drink requires an argument that is animate, animals or humans, and another argumen which is liquid. The predicate die requires an argument that is animate.