Name : Maharani Kesuma Putri
NIM : 2020205018
RESUME SEMANTICS MEETING 5
Basic Notions in Semantics
The Notion of Semantic
In order for language fulfill its communicative function, utterances mustalso convey a
message or content; they must have content. We call this message or content the utterance‟s
meaning.Semantics is study of meaning in human language (O‟Grady, et al,1997:245).
A. Aspects Of Semantic Knowledge
Semantics is a branch of Linguistics which studies the meaning of language and it
tries to understand what meaning is as an element of language and how it is constructed by
language as well as interpreted, obscured and negotiated by speakers and listeners of
language. We as speakers of a language have an implicit knowledge about what is meaningful
in our language. In our account of what that knowledge is, there are at least twelve technical
terms used as aspects of our semantic knowledge: polysemy, homonymy, anomaly;
paraphrase; synonymy; semantic feature; antonymy; contradiction; ambiguity; adjacency
pairs; entailment and presupposition although it is not possible to expect that we can clearly
define all the words we know or use, but the obvious thing is that we can make our thoughts
and feelings and intentions known to other speakers of the language and can understand what
others say.
This ability requires possession of a vocabulary and for us as speakers to know how to
pronounce every item in this vocabulary and how to recognize its pronunciation by other
speakers. We know how to use the production vocabulary in meaningful sentences and to
understand the sentences produced by others. And of course, we know meanings-how to
choose the items that express what we want to express and how to find the meanings in what
other people say.
1. Polisemy
Polysemy occurs when a word has two or more related meanings.
We can know that a word is polysemous when it has two or more related meanings. In this
case the word takes one form but can be used to mean two different things. In the case of
polysemy, these two meanings must be related in some way, and not be two completely
unrelated meanings of the word.
Examples :
1. Bright (shining) and Bright (intelligent).
2. Mouse (animal) and Mouse (computer hardware).
3. A deposit = minerals in the earth, money in the bank, etc
2. Homophony
Homophony exists where a single word form has two or more entirelydistinct meanings.
It is assumed that there are two (or more) separate wordswith the same pronunciation with
different meanings. Homophony is similar to polysemy in that it refers to a single form of
word with two meanings, however a word is a homophone when the two meanings are
entirely unrelated.
Some homophones in English for examples :
Bank = “ a financial institution”, „ a small cliff at the edge of theriver”
Club = “ a social organization”, “ a blunt weapon”, and etc.
3. Anomaly
We know, in a general way, whether something is or is not meaningful in our language and
we can tell which of the following are meaningful in English.
Examples :
a) Grace wrote a letter. b) Henry smiled. c) The grass laughed. d) a Wall Harry painted.
We can see that a and b are meaningful to speakers of English, while c and d are anomalous
(examples of anomaly), they are generally accepted to be correct while sentence c appears to
be meaningful and it might attain meaning in some children‟s story or the like, while d is
merely a sequence of words.
4. Paraphrase
Two sentences that can have the same meaning are said to be paraphraseof each other.
For examples :
1) The teacher punished the students.
2) The students were punished by the teacher
Those 2 sentences has similar meaning: If it is true thatthe teacher punished the
students, it is also true that the students were punished by the teacher, BUT;
There are subtle differences in emphasis between those 2 sentences. Sentence
1) merely talked about „what the teacher did‟,and sentence 2) is about „what happened
to the students‟
5. Synonym
Synonyms are words or expressions that have the same meanings insome or all contexts.
We generally agree when two words have essentially the same meaning-in a given context. In
each sentence below one word is underlined. Following the sentence is a group of words, one
of which can replace the underlined word without changing the meaning of the sentence.
Words that have the same sense in a given context are synonymsthey are instances of
synonymy and are synonymous with each other.
For examples:
Automobile = Car
Big = Large
Purchase = Buy, and etc
6. Contradictory
Sometimes, it turns out that if one sentence is truth, then another sentence must be false.
When the truth of one sentence entails the falsity of another, we say there is a contradiction.
We recognize when the meaning of one sentence contradicts another sentence. The sentences
below are all about the same person, but two of them are related in such a way that if one is
true the other must be false.
Edgar is married.
Edgar is fairly rich.
Edgar is no longer young.
Edgar is a bachelor.
Sentences that make opposite statements about the same subject are contradictory.
1)Vera is an only child
2)Olga is Vera‟s sister
If it is true that Vera is an only child, then it cannot be true thatVera has a sister.
7. Antonym
Antonyms are words or phrases that are opposites with respect to some components of their
meaning.
For example:
Dark >< Light
Boy >< Girl
Up >< Down, and etc
We generally agree when two words have opposite meanings in a given context. We are able
to choose from the group of words following a and b the word which is contrary to the
underlined word in each sentence. We see two words that make opposite statements about the
same subject are antonyms; they are antonymous, instances of antonymy.
8. Semantic Features
We know that synonyms and antonyms have to have some common elements of meaning in
order to be respectively the same or different but words can have some elements of meaning
without being synonymous or antonyms for example: a. Street lane road path house avenue b.
Buy take use steal acquire inherit The common element of meaning, shared by all but one
word in a and by all but one item in b, is a semantic feature. We should all agree that in each
of the groups of words above, a and b, all but one of the words have something in common
and we know which is the word that doesn‟t belong.
9. Ambiguity
When some sentences have double meanings, they can be interpreted in two ways. We are
aware of this fact that there should be two-way interpretations, like the following.
a. Marjorie doesn‟t care for her parakeet. ((doesn‟t like it; doesn‟t take care of it)
b. Marjorie took the sick parakeet to a small animal hospital. (small hospital for animals;
hospital for small animals)
One of the aspects of how meaning works in language is ambiguity. A sentence is
ambiguous when it has two or more possible meanings, but how does ambiguity arise in
language? A sentence can be ambiguous for either of the following reasons: Lexical
Ambiguity: A sentence is lexically ambiguous when it can have two or more possible
meanings due to polysemous (words that have two or more related meanings) or
homophonous (a single word which has two or more different meanings) words.
Example of lexically ambiguous sentences: Prostitutes appeal to the Pope. This
sentence is ambiguous because the word „appeal‟ is polysemous and can mean „ask for help‟
or „are attractive to‟.
Structural Ambiguity: A sentence is structurally ambiguous if it can have two or more
possible meanings due to the words it contains being able to be combined in different ways
which create different meanings.
Example of structurally ambiguous sentence: Enraged cow injures farmer with axe. In this
sentence the ambiguity arises from the fact that the „with axe‟ can either refer to the farmer,
or to the act of injuring being carried out (by the cow) „with axe‟.
10. Adjacency pair
When a question and an answer, or any two utterances, can go together in a conversation and
the second is obviously related to the first, they constitute an adjacency pair.
a. When did you last write an article? Ten minutes ago. Last Tuesday. Very nice. Around
noon. I think it was on the first of June.
b. There‟s a new film at Studio 21 tonight. So I‟ve heard. What‟s it called? When did it open?
So do I. Are you sure it‟s a comedy?
The ability to cope with adjacency pairs is considered as part of any speaker‟s implicit
knowledge.
11. Entailment
A relation in which the truth of one sentence necessarily implies the
truthof another is called entailment. Entailment can mean the truth of one Sentence implies
the truth of another BUT the reverse does not follow.
For example:
1)The house is red.
2)The house is not white.
If it is true that the house is red, then it is also true that the houseis not white. However the
reverse does not follow, even if weknow that the house is not white, we cannot conclude that
the house is red, it can be green, brown and etc
We are aware that two statements may be related in such a way that if one is true, the other
must also be true as in the following examples of entailment.
a. There are apples in the fridge.
b. There are fruits in the fridge.
c. The ladder is too short to reach the roof.
d. The ladder isn‟t long enough to reach the roof.
We assume that a and b are about the same garden, the truth of a entails the truth of b,
that is, if a is true, b must also be true. Likewise, assuming the same ladder and roof, the truth
of c entails the truth of d.
There are two kinds of entailment: mutual entailment and asymmetrical entailment. In
mutual entailment, each sentence must be true for the other to be true, e.g.: John is married to
Rachel‟ and „Rachel is John‟s wife‟, „Chris is a man‟ and „Chris is human‟, while in
asymmetrical entailment, only one of the sentences must be true for the other to be true, but
that sentence may be true without the other sentence necessarily having to be true, for
example: „Rachel is John‟s wife‟ entails „John is married‟ (but John is married does not entail
Rachel being his wife), „Rachel has two brothers‟ entails „Rachel is not an only child‟ (but
Rachel not being an only child does not entail Rachel having two brothers).
12. Presupposition
We know that the message conveyed in one sentence may presuppose other pieces of
knowledge. For instance, if a is accepted as true, b-e must also be accepted as true.
a. Evan usually drives his Toyota to work
b. There is a person named Evan.
c. Evan works.
d. There is a Toyota that belongs to Evan.
e. Evan knows how to drive a car.
The meaning of sentence a presupposes what is expressed in b, c, d and e. The latter are
presuppositions of a. Note that a presupposition does not establish the truth of anything.
Sentence a is meaningful as it is, but it is true only if there is a person named Evan, who
works and owns a Toyota, etc. The sentence is presented as if there is a person named Evan.
References :
Asriati, Asmayanti, 2014. Semantics Book For English Department Students Retrieved from
https://library.unismuh.ac.id/uploaded_files/temporary/DigitalCollection/ZWU4NzkyZjJlZG
YyYjUzMDIzNGViYmIxY2EwY2Q4MTQ0NDk3Nzg2NQ==.pdf
https://www.scribd.com/document/53802617/Semantics
