Name : Fianty Nada Huwaida

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SEMANTIC D

MIDTERM SUMMARY ASSIGMENT

SEMANTIC

A. DEFINITION
Semantics is the study of the relationship between words and how we draw meaning from those
words.
Semantics involves the deconstruction of words, signals, and sentence structure. It influences our
reading comprehension as well as our comprehension of other people’s words in everyday
conversation. Semantics play a large part in our daily communication, understanding, and language
learning without us even realizing it.

 Formal Semantics - Formal semantics uses techniques from math, philosophy, and logic to analyze
the broader relationship between language and reality, truth and possibility. Has your teacher ever
asked you to use an “if… then” question? It breaks apart lines of information to detect the
underlying meaning or consequence of events.
 Lexical Semantics - Lexical semantics deconstruct words and phrases within a line of text to
understand the meaning in terms of context. This can include a study of individual nouns, verbs,
adjectives, prefixes, root words, suffixes, or longer phrases or idioms.
 Conceptual Semantics - Conceptual semantics deals with the most basic concept and form of a
word before our thoughts and feelings added context to it. For example, at its most basic we know
a cougar to be a large wild cat. But, the word cougar has also come to indicate an older woman
who’s dating a younger man. This is where context is important.

B. THREE BASIC TYPES OF MEANING

1. THEMATIC MEANING
What is commucicated by the way in wich a speaker or a writer organize the message in terms
of ordering focus or emphasis. It refers to what is communicated by the way in which a
speaker or a writer organizes the message in terms of ordering focus and emphasis.
Thus active is different from passive though its conceptual meaning is the same. Various parts
of the sentence also can be used as subject, object or complement to show prominence. It is
done through focus, theme (topic) or emotive emphasis. Thematic meaning helps us to
understand the message and its implications properly. For example, the following statements
in active and passive voice have same conceptual meaning but different communicative values.

Example :
a. Mrs. Smith donated the first prize
b. The first prize was donated by Mrs. Smith.

In the first sentence “who gave away the prize“ is more important, but in the second
sentence  what did Mrs. Smith gave is important”. Thus the change of focus changes the
meaning also. The first suggests that we already know Mrs. Smith (perhaps through earlier
mention) its known/given information while it’s new information. Alternative grammatical
construction also gives thematic meaning.

Alternative grammatical construction also gives thematic meaning. For example,

 a. He likes Australian goods most.
b. Australian goods he likes most
c. It is the Australian goods he likes most.

Thematic meanings are communicated by the listener, the writer, and speaker through the
combination of sentence by ordering are focusing and emphasizing on some element of the
sentence. The ways we order our message also convey what is important and what not. This is
basically thematic meaning.

2. CONCEPTUAL MEANING

Conceptual which means abstract meaning that is additionally famous is the denotative or
psychological feature which means is widely assumed to be the central consider
communication. We can also call the conceptual Meaning as literal or dictionary meaning. Also
known as “ denotative” or cognitive” meaning. This type of meaning can be explained by
breaking the world into different semantic constituents. Conceptual meaning is also called
logical or cognitive meaning. Conceptual

Meanings are the essential or core meaning while other six types are the peripheral. It is
peripheral in as sense that it is non essential. They are stylistically marked and subjective kind
of meanings. Leech gives primacy to conceptual meaning because it has sophisticated
organization based on the principle of contrastiveness and hierarchical structure.

Conceptual meaning deals with the core meaning of expression. It is the denotative or literal
meaning. It is essential for the functioning of language. For example, a part of the conceptual
meaning of ‘Needle” may be “thin”, “sharp” or “instrument”.

The organization of conceptual meaning is based on two structural principles- Contrastiveness

and the principle of structure. The conceptual meanings can be studied typically in terms of
contrastive features.

3. ASSOCIATIVE MEANING

Leech uses this as an umbrella term for the remaining 5 types of meanings ( connotative,
social, affective, reflective and collocative). All these have more in common with connotative
than conceptual meaning. They all have the same open ended, variable character and can be
analyzed in terms of scales or ranges ( more/less) than in either or contrastive terms. These
meanings contain many imponderable factors. But conceptual meaning is stable.

Type of Associative Meaning :

a. Connotative Meaning

Connotative is kind of associated meaning. Certain characteristics or features are

associated with a particular world. Connotative meaning includes not only physical
characteristics but also psychological, historical and social properties. For example, the
word women mean gregarious, emotional, sensitive etc. The other example is that rose.
The conceptual meaning of the word rose is a flower but its connotative meaning is
freshness. Similarly, the connotative meaning of the word “Night” is “Evil”, “Lamb” refers
to innocence, while “beauty” is the connotative meaning of “moon”.

b. Collocative Meaning

Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquire on account of the meaning
of words. Which tend to occur in its environment. It is created with the collocative of one
word with the other. In collocative Meaning, a particular word goes with another particular
word. Linguistic communication conspicuously includes the communication of something
through association with words which tend to occur in the context of another word.  
 For example:

1) Boy collocates with handsome

2) Girl collocates with pretty
3) Road collocates with long

c. Affective Meaning

Affective meaning is related to how someone feels when they hear or read certain words.
The feelings that arise can be positive or negative. The words honest, humble, and wise
lead to positive affective meanings, while corruption and collusion give rise to negative
affective meanings. But leech’s includes as in the case of social meaning, not only
difference in the use of words or lexemes but also factors of intonation and voice-timber
referred to as tone of voice. Achieved by the choice of words. Certain words suggest.

Affective meaning is a sort of meaning which  an effect the personal feeling of speakers,
including his/her attitude to the listener, or his/her attitude to something he/she talking
about. In order to get people attention to be quiet, we might say either (1)”I’m terribly
sorry to interrupt,  but I wonder if you would be so kind as to lower your voice as a little” or
(2) “Will you belt up”. Factors such as intonation and voice timbre are also important here.
The impression of politeness in the sentence (1) can be reserved by tone of biting sarcasm;
sentence (2) can be turn into a playful remark between intimates if delivered with the
intonation of a mild request.

Example :

 Positive feelings : Love, attraction, happiness, exciting.

 Negative feelings : Disgusting, dissapointing
 Interjection : Ah! Oh! Uh! Often suggest the emotional state of mind.

Sources

https://masudadam.blogspot.com/2017/11/types-of-meaning-semantics.html

https://www.emaze.com/@ALCRIWCF#:~:text=Thematic%20Meaning-,Semantics,conceptual%20meaning
%20is%20the%20same.

https://www.slideshare.net/MiftadiaLaulaAmm/seven-types-of-meaning

http://universeofenglish.blogspot.com/2009/02/seven-types-of-meaning-in-semantics.html