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Understanding Semantics in Linguistics

Semantics is the study of meaning in language, encompassing words, phrases, and sentences. It includes concepts like syntactic and lexical ambiguity, entailment, and anaphora, which illustrate how meaning can vary or be derived in different contexts. For example, syntactic ambiguity can arise from phrases with multiple interpretations, while entailment shows how one sentence can imply another.

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Hao Li Min
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13 views7 pages

Understanding Semantics in Linguistics

Semantics is the study of meaning in language, encompassing words, phrases, and sentences. It includes concepts like syntactic and lexical ambiguity, entailment, and anaphora, which illustrate how meaning can vary or be derived in different contexts. For example, syntactic ambiguity can arise from phrases with multiple interpretations, while entailment shows how one sentence can imply another.

Uploaded by

Hao Li Min
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

SEMANTICS

“ Language without
meaning is meaningless.”

Roman Jakobson
What is SEMANTICS?
is the technical term used to
refer to the study of meaning of
words, phrases, and sentences,
and, since meaning is a part of
language, semantics is a part of
linguistics.
SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY
-refers to the characteristic of a phrase
that has more than one meaning.

Example:
French literature teacher
can mean...
 a teacher of French literature
 literature teacher who is French
LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
-refers to a characteristic of a word
that has more than one sense.

Example:
The English word fly is ambiguous because it has
more than one sense.
 an insect
 a zipper on a pair of pants
 a baseball hit into the air with a bat
ENTAILMENT
-is a proposition (expressed in sentence)
that follows necessarily from another
sentence. A sentence entails another if the
meaning of the first includes the meaning of
the second. It is also called paraphrase.
Example:
John had a fatal accident.
The sentence entails that ‘John died’ since it is
impossible to figure in a fatal accident without
loss of life.
ANAPHORA
- is a linguistic expression that refers to
another linguistic expression.

Example:
The tsunami killed thousands of people. It was
devastating.

It is used to anaphorically to refer to “the


tsunami”.

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