Understanding Semantic Meaning
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Heidy Teresa MoralesUnderstanding Semantic Meaning
Uploaded by
Heidy Teresa MoralesSEMANTIC
S
- Kiara Pichis Freitas
- Lucy Torres Ojanama
Pedro
pp 11
Armijo
DEFINITION
The study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences
Always an attempt to focus on what the words conventionally
mean
Derived from Greek semanen (to signify or mean)
Conventional meaning conveyed by the use of words and
sentences of a language.
From Leech’s point of view it seems to us that understanding
language means understanding meaning
Pedro
Armijo pp 22
WHAT’S MEANING OF
MEANING?
Katz list questions which are to be a
model of semantic theory.
What are synonymys and paraphrase?
●
What are semantic similarity and semantic difference?
What is antonymy?
●
What is super ordintation?
What are meaningfulness and semantic anomaly?
●
What is semantic ambiguity?
What is semantic redundancy?
Pedro
●
What is semantic truth (analycity)? Armijo pp 33
Morris, 1946_19
► We always see the
meaning as we look, think
in meanings as we think,
act in terms of meaning
when we act. Apparently
we are never directly
conscious of anything but
meanings” (Morris, 1946 :
19).
Pedro
Armijo pp 44
TYPES OF MEANING
Conce Conno Soci Affec
ptual tative al tive
meani meani mea mea
ng ng
ning ning
Refle Collo The
ctive cative matic
mean mean mean
ing ing ing Pedro
Armijo pp 55
CONCEPTUAL VERSUS ASSOCIATIVE
MEANING
Conceptual meaning Associative meaning
► Refers to the particular qualities or
► Conceptual meaning covers those characteristics beyond the
basic, essential components of denotative meaning that people
meaning which are conveyed by commonly think of (correctly or
the literal use of a word. incorrectly) in relation to a word
or phrase.
For example: “ Needle”
'thin, sharp, steel, needle which lead you to
instrument' think of 'painful'
Pedro
Armijo pp 66
THE RELATION OF SEMANTICS WITH OTHER
BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS
The meaning of higher level syntactic
1 constituent comes from the meanings of their
component words.
phonology
-Lydia had visited Robert
morpholog
syntax -Robert had visited Lydia
y
Semantic
(meaning)
Pedro
Armijo pp 77
SEMANTIC FEATURES
what is the source of the oddness we experience?
The hamburger
ate the man The kinds of nouns which can be subjects of HAMBURGE
R - animate
the verb ate must denote entities which are
capable of “eating”.
- human
The noun hamburger does not have this - + male
property (and man does)
My cat studied We need to take its components and use it to I
describe part of the meaning of words as either plus
linguistics (+) or minus (-) the feature-.
Pedro
Armijo pp 88
EXAMPLE:
Supplementing the syntactic analysis with semantic features.
Pedro
Armijo pp 99
SEMANTIC ROLES
Pedro
Armijo pp 10
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Pedro
Armijo pp 11
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