semantics

Language

2022

We explain what semantics is and the components with which it assigns meanings. Also, what is a semantic family and examples.

Semantics studies the meaning of words.

What is semantics?

A branch of the linguistics dedicated to the study of meaning. Its name comes from the Greek term sëmantikós ("Relevant meaning") and together with the phonetics, grammar and morphosyntax, constitutes one of the main approaches to the organized study of language verbal.

The semantics faces the Linguistic sign from the interest for its immaterial part, that is, its mental, conventional and abstract part: the meaning. This means that it is interested not only in the way in which the meanings of words are formed from their components (their roots and aggregates), but also in the way in which meanings change over time and become others, changing together with culture who uses the language.

Also, the semantics deals with accidents of meaning, such as synonymy, antonymy, polysemy and lexical-semantic families, as long as the study does not abandon the place of the eminently verbal, since the non-verbal areas of the communication others take care disciplines, like pragmatics.

The minimum unit of semantics is thebe more: the smallest portions of the word endowed with their own verifiable meaning.Thus, the same word contains different semes that relate it to others.

Components of meaning

Commonly, semantics comprises two components or ways of assigning meaning, which are:

  • Denotation. The "standard" meaning of words, the one recorded by dictionaries and constitutes their "official" meaning, more evident, more referential.
  • Connotation. Those secondary meanings that are attributed to a term and that do not have to do directly with the enunciated referent, but with certain characteristics attributed to it by a certain culture.

An example of the latter is constituted by the word "harpy", whose denotative meaning is that of mythological animals from ancient Greece, which attracted sailors with their song and after making them shipwrecked against the rocks, proceeded to devour them.

The denotative meaning of "harpy", on the other hand, is transmitted by imaginary association to women who consider themselves evil, cruel, unbearable or treacherous.

Semantic families

A semantic family is a set of words that share a common seme.

In the language there are relationships of association, similarity, comparison or of various kinds between meanings: mental images of the things that make up the reality. Many times, this relationship also has a related component between different meanings that allows them to be organized as a tree: a semantic family.

It can be said, then, that a semantic family is a set of words that share a common sema. Usually this occurs between words that share their grammatical category (word type), for example:

Examples of semantics

Some examples of connotation and denotation of meanings are:

  • That car is paintedblack (denotation: color)

That man's intentions seem to beblack (connotation: evil, murky, secret)

  • They had an operation onheart open (denotation: the organ)

He told me that his girlfriend had broken hisheart (connotation: feelings)

  • The plane isflying over Edinburgh (denotation: the actual action)

I will fly to the supermarket to see if I arrive before it closes (connotation: go fast)

  • I left the exam sheet atWhite (denotation: not written)

My cousin wants to marryWhite (connotation: correctly, formally, traditionally)

  • Yesterday we adopted adog (denotation: the animal)

That man is adog (connotation: unfaithful, promiscuous, abusive)

  • I willlift up the pencil of the I usually (denotation: take from the ground)

I love melift up to Ezequiel's cousin (connotation: to fall in love, to conquer)

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