Semantics and Pragmatics PDF

Semantics and Pragmatics  Chapter Five 1 Chapter One 5 Pragmatics Introduction Chapter Six 2 Chapter Two 6...

Semantics and Pragmatics  Chapter Five 1 Chapter One 5 Pragmatics Introduction Chapter Six 2 Chapter Two 6 Issues in Table of Semantic Relations among Pragmatics Contents Words 7 Chapter Seven 3 Chapter Three Meaning Change Exercises 4 Chapter Four Ambiguity Introduction Chapter One  1 The Concept of Semantics  The Concept of semantics Semantics is the area of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words or the meaning attached to words or symbols. This view places semantics at the core of communication in language. Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. In semantic analysis, there is always an attempt to focus on what the words conventionally mean, rather than on what an individual speaker might think they mean, or want them to mean, on a particular occasion.  The Concept of Semantics Doing semantics is attempting to spell out what it is we all know when we behave as if we share knowledge of the meaning of a word, a phrase, or a sentence in a language.  Meaning That is, our main interest is in what we might describe as the widely accepted objective or factual meaning of words and not their subjective or personal meaning. This distinction is generally presented in terms of referential meaning as opposed to associative or emotive meaning, such as feelings or reactions to words that may be found among some individuals or groups but not others.  Referential meaning covers those basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed by the literal use of a word. It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are designed to describe. Some of the basic components of a word like needle in English might include “thin, sharp, steel instrument.” However, different people might have different associations or connotations attached to a word like needle. They might associate it with “pain,” or “illness,” or “blood,” or “drugs,” or “thread,” or “knitting,” or “hard to find”.  Oddness “oddness” we experience when we read sentences such as the following: The hamburger ate the boy. The table listens to the radio. The horse is reading the newspaper. We should first note that the oddness of these sentences does not derive from their syntactic structure. According to the basic syntactic rules for forming English sentences, we have well- formed structures. NP V NP The hamburger ate the boy.  Semantics semantics is a field of study focused on understanding the meaning within language.  What is meaning? Meaning is derived from the relations between words, concepts and things in the real world. Meaning can be defined as: Other words related to that word in a dictionary ▪ The connotations of a word ▪ The thing to which the speaker of that word refers ▪ The thing to which the speaker of that word should refer ▪ The thing to which the speaker of that word believes himself to be referring ▪ The thing to which the hearer of that word believes is being referred to.  How can meaning be communicated? language is not the only way in which we can communicate meaning. We can do it, for example, just by showing people our hands: D A C G I Almost everybody knows the meaning that these “signs” have (approximately, disapproval, victory (or peace), approval, question and greeting). There are lots of “symbols” that are used to communicate meaning: all the traffic signs are an example. The study of meaning in general is done by Semiotics. Semiotics studies how “signs” mean, that is, how we can make one thing stand for another (a “signifier” stands for a “signified”). For example, black clothes are used to indicate mourning, and a red flag means that it’s dangerous to swim. It is clear that all these signs are culturally-based: for example, in some Eastern cultures, the color to indicate mourning is white.