Semantics

By: Fatima Hassan

 What is meant by semantics?
• According to crystal (2011:428), defines semantics as, a major branch of linguistics devoted
to the study of meaning in language. The term is also used in philosophy and logic, but not
with the same range of meaning or emphasis as in linguistics.
• Robins (1964:20), points out to the semantics, is the study of meaning that brings in symbol
using and symbol system outside the language, yet due to the fact that language has a symbolic
system, semantics makes it its primary concern.
• Semantics: is the study of meaning, but what is meaning? Philosophers have debated the
question, with a particular reference to language, for well over 2000 years (Lyons,1981, p.136).
• Semantics focus on the literal meanings of words, phrases, and sentences; it is concerned with
how grammatical process build complex meaning out. of the simpler ones (Ralph w. fasold,
anal Connor. Linton, 2006: 137).
 Philosophical and linguistic interest in meaning

• The study of logic is closely connected with the study of

language because language is the vehicle of philosophical
discourse.

• The logician is concerned with inferential uses of language, that

is, the formal means by which statements or propositions may
be reached as valid conclusions relying upon the preceding
statements or propositions operating as premises
 Philosophical and linguistic interest in meaning

• The philosophical interest in language lies in the self-evident fact

that the study and analysis of meaning have been dealt with and
taken into account during the whole of human’s intellectual history.

• Philosophical semantics, accordingly, studies the relations between

linguistic expressions and the phenomena in the world to which
they refer.
• It studies considers the conditions of language.
• It studies the factors which affect the interpretation of language use.
 Philosophical and linguistic interest in meaning

According to (Malmkjaer 2002:455)

 The linguist tends to concentrate on the way in
which meaning operates in language

 The philosopher is more interested in the nature of

meaning itself in particular, in the relationship
between the linguistic and the non-linguistic
 The concern of the Linguist
• Robins states that the concern of the Linguist:

• The linguist's concern is with language in all its uses and manifestations as part of the processes of
daily living and social interaction
• The linguist is interested in the specialized applications that form the provinces of philosophers and
literary critics. 
• The linguist deals with the approaches that study of meaning that's based on much wider range of
language use and types of utterance.

•  Philosophical semantics studies the relations between linguistic expressions and the phenomena in
the world to which they refer, and considers the conditions under which such expressions can be said
to be true or false, moreover it studies the factors which affect the interpretation of language use.
 The concern of the Linguist
Jack C. Richards’s and Richard Schmidt’s (2010:520), points of view
There are many different approaches to the way in which meaning in language is
studied.
• Philosophers have investigated the relation between linguistic expressions,
such as the words of a language, and persons, things and events in the world
to which these words refer.
• Linguists have investigated, for example, the way in which meaning in a
language is structured and have distinguished between different types of
meanings, there have also been studies of the semantic structure of sentences
 Word meaning
• Meaning includes the relations between utterances and parts of utterances (e.g. words)
and the world outside.

• The meaningful activity of speaking consists of fundamental factors characterized not

only by words, but by utterances, stretches of speaking having sentences marked by
pauses, silence, or the speech of other people.

• Utterances have meaning, are meaningful; and a child learns the meaning of many words
by hearing them in other people's utterances and practicing such utterances himself
subject to the correction of others and the test of being understood by those to whom he
is talking
 Word meaning
Words are meaningful by virtue of their employment in sentences
for three reasons:
1.Sentences and utterances comprising several sentences are the
primary linguistic phenomena.
2.The grammatical structures and certain phonological features such
as an intonation may themselves give an indication of part of its
meaning.
3.Many words have particular meanings or uses that are found when
such words are used together in conjunction with other words.
 Word meaning
Oftentimes, it is said the meaning of a word is the idea it conveys,
yet such accounts of meaning are objectionable for two reasons:
1. They try to explain public phenomena (i.e. speech, writing)
primarily by reference to private phenomena.

2. It is not easy to say what an idea is, or how it helps because an

idea is often taken as equivalent to mental pictures while mental
pictures seem of little relevance.
 Word meaning
A great consideration is given to the historical
development of words meaning (i.e. the real meaning of
a word is to be found in its etymology or its earlier
form). Certainly, the meaning of any word is casually
the product of continuous changes in its antecedent
meanings or uses.
 Context of situation
• The concept of “context of situation” is coined by the anthropologist
Malinowski in 1923 to refer to the cultural context of use in which an
utterance was located.
• Situational Context is a term in Firthian linguistic theory, deriving from
the work of the anthropologist Malinowski (1884-1942). In this theory,
meaning is seen as a multiple phenomenon, its various facets being relatable
on the one hand to features of the external world, and on the other hand to
the different level of linguistic analysis, such as phonetics, grammar and
semantics (Crystal, 2008:109).
 Context of situation
• Firth (1957: 7) depends on the notion of context in his theory of meaning.
He refuses to accept that words and sentences can have meaning in and by
themselves and firmly believes that "the complete meaning of a word is
always contextual, and no study of meaning apart from a complete context
can be taken seriously"
 Context of situation
• The theory of context of situation further
developed by Halliday who defines language
as a social system that cannot be understood
unless used in a context.
• Halliday then he has three characterizations,
called field, mode, and tenor.
 Context of situation
A. Field: that field is also called as a social action, what is actually taking
place. It refers to what is happening to the nature of the social action
that is taking place.
B. Tenor: conveys the role structure, who is taking part, It refers to who
is taking part, to the nature of the participants. their statuses and roles.
C. Mode: Halliday states the mode of discourse refer to how it the part of
language is playing. So, mode (how) refers to text construction, looking
at whether it is based on written or spoken forms of communication
e.g. the mode in part of the printed advertisement was a written text.
 Translation
• Questions of translation are very closely connected with
semantic analysis and the contextual theory of meaning.
• And this cannot be covered in an elementary introduction but
the existence of bilingual speakers and the possibility of
learning foreign languages and of forming utterances in one
language serving nearly
• The same purposes as corresponding utterances in another (i.e.
of translating) are universally obvious facts that must be taken
into consideration
 Translation
• The process of translation becomes easier when the source language and the target
language are of unified culture and vice versa.
• A translator faces some difficulties in translating utterances, like cultural issues may arise
from differences between cultural references.
• Difficulties arise when all the complex functions of words must be taken into
consideration, this sort of difficulty is found in the translation of literary works,
especially when the features of linguistic levels such as grammar or phonetics are
stylistically interpreted.
 َ َ‫مدان َواَألبَواب ُمغلَقَةٌ َو ِمث ُل ه‬
‫مدان سنّى فَت َحةَ الباب‬ َ َ‫يت ه‬ ُ ‫نا َد‬
ِ ‫َوجهٌ َجمي ٌل َوقَلبٌ َغي ُر َوجّا‬
‫ب‬ ُ‫ضاربُه‬
ِ ‫َكالهُن ُدوانِ ُّي لَم تُ َغلِل َم‬

I called to Hamdan whilst the doors were closed

And people like Hamdan make it easy to open the door
Like an Indian sword the edges of which are too hard
to be notched (have not been notched):
A handsome face, and a heart not that of a coward