What is Semantics: Brief Explanation

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences. It focuses on the conventional meaning conveyed by the use of words and sentences in language, not on what a spaeker might want the words to mean in a particular occasion. It means that semantics only deals with objective and general meaning rather than subjective and local meaning.

Linguists and Philosophers invent three ways in defining meaning. First, by defining the essence of words or lexicon meaning, second, by defining the essence of the meaning of sentence, and third, by explaining communication process. Therefore based on the above ways of defining meaning,  the study of semantics is broken down into are three levels, in which they have different and varied theories to analyze each levels, those are:

• Lexical semantic 
• Sentential semantic, and
• Speech act semantic

Lexical semantic is semantic which tries to explain the meaning of words or lexicon, it means that the focus of this level is only in word and lexicon. Before I go to the kinds of theories in analyzing this level. I want to ask you something. What is the different between word and lexicon anyway? To differentiate those two terms have a look these illustration.

1.  What is the meaning of "kill"?

2. You kill the deer with a gun.

Take a close attention to the word "kill" on those two sentences, the first "kill" refers to word and the second "kill" refers to lexicon. So can you guess what is word and lexicon? Yes you're right, word refers to phonological construct which carries meaning in which it doesn't have any context. Meanwhile, lexicon refers to word which is context sensitive, or word that have context is called lexicon. Therefore you can safely say that every lexicon is word but word is not necessarily lexicon.

There are generally four kinds of theories in this level, those are:

• Referential Theory;
• Image Theory;
• Conceptual Theory; and
• Componential Analysis Theory.

Sentential semantic, the higher level of lexical semantic, is semantic which tries to explain the meaning of sentence. Sentence refers to a group of words which contain a topic and a comment. e.g. "John killed a deer" means that John caused a deer to die. There are three kinds of theories used to analyze this level, those are:

• Truth Condition Theory;
• Theory of Deep Structure; and
• Theory of Predicate Calculus 

Speech act semantic is semantic which tries to explain the meaning of utterances in language used. There are eight features of language in use, those are:

• Appropriacy
• Non-literal or indirect
• Inference
• Indeterminacy
• Context
• Relevance
• Reflexivity
• Misfire

Presupposition

Presupposition is first assumption that appears in speaker's mind in conversation that the hearer can understand what the speaker is talking about.  Presupposition is assumption that the addressee is able to understand what the speaker means because the speaker's utterance has certain sign, context, and reference that is understood by interlocutor.


In addition, Palmer (1989: 181) tries to explain this by giving an example "the king of France is bald", Palmer tries to compare the notion of Russell (1905) and Strawson in which according to Russell, considered by Palmer as the first notion appeared, the sentence "the king of France is bald" indicates two things, first, the existence of king of France and the king is bald. If essentially the king of France does not exist, the sentence is judged as fake or false sentence, and conversely. The second notion comes from Strawson, he states that in sentence "the king of France is bald", the speaker supposes that the hearer is able to recognize exactly the man or thing in the sentence uttered by him exists. So that the speaker is not necessary to confirm whether the man or thing is really exist, however the speaker only makes presupposition about the existence of it. If the man or thing does not exist, so it will appear what is called 'the failure of presupposition', and the sentence is not true or false. Simpler we can say that, if sentence (a) presuppose sentence (b), the truth of the sentence (b) must follow from the truth of sentence (a), but if sentence (b) is false, then the sentence (a) will has no truth value. 


In addition presupposition is divided into two categories, they are: logic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition. Logic presupposition is presupposition which deals with the arrangement and understanding of message in which as the part of semantics has logic relationship with form of expression, both in coding and structuring of relationship. In addition, pragmatic presupposition is presupposition which deals with context, both in the relation between the users and social-situational surrounded it.


In the study of logic of language, we know about the term propositional calculus. This term basically involve two concepts, they are: calculus and proposition. Calculus is 'taking conclusion determining truth' and proposition is 'statement which suitable with abstraction in the consciousness of the user'. So that, propositional calculus deals with characteristics abstraction of reference when it is in the conceptualization of expression, taking conclusion of the characteristic of relationship of abstraction result is signed by connective sign, such as: which, that, to be, and, not, or. For instance, '"Malang is beautiful city", when the speaker abstracts Malang city for instance, he has known well about Malang city so that he is able to give earmark' beautiful'.  
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See also:

• Formal Semantics
• Analytic Sentence
• Synthetic Sentence
• Entailment
• Presupposition

Entailment

Entailment is a relationship that applies between two sentences, where the truth of one implies the truth of the other because the meanings of the words involved. It is relation between sentences such that the truth of the second sentence necessarily follows from the truth of the first. The test of entailment can be done as follows: sentence (a) entails sentence (b) if the truth of sentence (a) insures the truth of sentence (b) and if the falsity of sentence (b) insures the falsity of sentence (a). For instance, (a) Adi is a bachelor (b) Adi has been unmarried. In this case, sentence (a) entails sentence (b) because the truth of sentence (a) insures the truth sentence (b) (if Adi is a bachelor, he is automatically unmarried), and the falsity of sentence (b) insures the falsity of sentence (a) (if Adi is married, he is not bachelor). However, the relation of entailment is unidirectional, it means the position between sentence (a) and (b) are irreplaceable. For instance, let us take the previous example and try to replace them, (b) Adi has been unmarried (a) Adi is a bachelor. In this case, sentence (b) does not entail sentence (a¬) because if Adi has been unmarried, it does not mean that he a bachelor, it is very possible that he is a widower or etc. (Kempson, 1977: 142).

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See also:

• Formal Semantics
• Analytic Sentence
• Synthetic Sentence
• Entailment
• Presupposition

Synthetic Sentence

Sentence which might be true or false depend on the world which they refer. In contrast to analytic sentences, synthetic sentences are not true or false because of the words which comprise them; they, however, do or do not accurately describe some state of affairs in the world. For instance, the sentence, 'Adi's home is burning.' is a synthetic sentence. We cannot judge its truth or falsity by examining the words in the sentence. We must investigate the truth or falsity of this sentence empirically. 


In addition, there are certain sentences which make us confuse to determine whether it is included in analytic or synthetic sentence. For instance the sentence ' oxygen is not blue', the problem appears concerning the color of the oxygen, because we do not know the color of oxygen since we can not see it just feel it, in this case the sentence tend to be included into synthetic sentence since the definition of the two categories them selves, analytic is true by definition and synthetic is true as the result of investigating, verifying, and falsifying empirically. 

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See also:

• Formal Semantics
• Analytic Sentence
• Synthetic Sentence
• Entailment
• Presupposition

Analytic Sentence

An analytic sentence is one that is necessarily true as a result of the words in it. For instance "bachelor is unmarried man” is true not because the world is the way it is, but because of the English is the way it is. Based on our English knowledge, the word 'bachelor' means 'unmarried man'. It is not necessary for us to check on the outside world to prove the truth of this sentence. In the other word, the sentence is obligatory true, it is not bounded the condition that follows, based on the relationships between words formed the sentence (Kempson, 1977: 26). In addition, it can be defined that analytic sentence are "true by definition". Analytic truth may be considered as linguistic truth since they are true in virtue of the language itself. Parker in Ahmadin (1998: 17).

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See also:

• Formal Semantics
• Analytic Sentence
• Synthetic Sentence
• Entailment
• Presupposition

Formal semantics

Although the term of 'formal semantic' might be used in a very general sense to refer to a whole set of different approaches to the study of meaning, it is usually employed nowadays with particular reference to a certain version of truth conditional semantics which originated in the investigation of specially constructed formal languages by logicians and has recently been applied to the investigation of natural languages.


According to Tarski to know the meaning of certain sentence, it means to understand in what condition the sentence is true. For instance, the sentence 'snow is white', to know the meaning of that sentence we have to understand what condition existed that supports that sentence is true. There is a formula concerning this discussion:


S is true if and if only P


S refers to the sentence, and P refers to the condition which supports the S. from the preceding example we can say that snow is white is true and if only snow is white.


In addition, the study of truth condition falls into two basic categories: the study of different types included in individual sentences: analytic and syntactic; and the study of different types of truth connections that hold between sentences; entailment and presupposition. 
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See also:

• Formal Semantics
• Analytic Sentence
• Synthetic Sentence
• Entailment
• Presupposition

Meaning Relations

1. Synonymy is a meaning relation which involves two or more expression having the same interpretation. Synonymy will always mean one of two or more words in the English language which have the same or very nearly the same essential meaning.
Synonym: words which have the same meaning.

Three kinds of synonymy

• True synonymy is a meaning relation which involves two or more sentences having the same exact meaning.

e.g.

"Uncle is a true synonymy of the brother of one’s father or mother, or the husband of one’s aunt."

• Close synonymy is a meaning relation which involves two or more expressions of which the interpretation is not entirely the same but very close.

e.g. war, battle, combat, fight, struggle.

• Partial synonymy is a meaning relation in which the meaning or interpretation of one lexicon only a part of the meaning of the other.

e.g. hen is partial meaning of chicken.


2. Antonymy: a meaning relation which involves two or more lexicons having opposite interpretations/ meanings.

Four kinds of antonymy

• True antonymy: the meaning relation which involves two or more lexicons having true opposite meaning.

e.g. - male vs. female

      - true vs. false

• Reciprocal antonymy: the meaning relation which involves two or more lexicons having reciprocal opposite meaning. Usually, it is in the form of actions.

e.g. - close vs. open

       - sleep vs. awake

• Gradual antonymy: the meaning relation which involves two or more lexicons having gradual opposite meaning.

e.g. - uninjured- barely injured –injured- badly wounded- died

      - big – medium – small

• One- to- many antonymy: the meaning relation in which one lexicons has many opposite meanings.

e.g. . sweet vs. bitter

                      salty

                      sour

                      hot

                      etc.

3. Hyponymy: a relationship between two words, in which the meaning of one of the words includes the meaning of the other words
e.g. ‘Eagle’, ‘swallow’, ‘parrot’, etc. are hyponyms of the super ordinate ‘bird’

4. Ambiguity: a meaning relation which involve only one expression having more than one interpretation.

• Lexical ambiguity arises when context is insufficient to determine the sense of a single word that has more than one meaning.

e.g. can, bank, duck etc.

• Syntactic ambiguity arises when a sentence can be parsed in more than one way.

e.g. The chicken is ready to eat

5. Polysemy is a word or phrase with multiple, related meanings
e.g.

The house is at the foot of the mountains

One of his shoes felt too tight for his foot

'Foot' here refers to the bottom part of the mountains in the first sentence and the bottom part of the leg in the second.