Semantic

It's a study of meaning. But what's meaning, it's something very problematic
because meaning is not stable and can mean something for me , it could
something else for you which is one of most difficult areas in linguistics.

Ex: what's the picture for you?

Book :
Dog:
It's examples to show how difficult to talk about the meaning.
These two represent something concrete. When you go to abstract words or
concepts actually. Things are going to be more complicated. For example, what's
the meaning of love , what's the meaning of hope . Maybe love meaning for you
different from someone else. What's happiness, what's democracy?
Semantic is the study of meaning but what type of meaning. Semantic studies
literal meaning or the dictionary meaning I mean we can check it in the dictionary.
But the problem is not end because meanings are different. We have semantic
and pragmatics that deal with intended and invisible meanings.
Literal meaning is complicated because there are associations.
Connotation ‫داللة الكلمة‬
Use this word in this situation is appropriate while to use another word in the
same situation is inappropriate why? because of connotation.
We have two types of meaning in semantic?
We have conceptual and associative meaning.
Conceptual meaning is literal meaning: a meaning that represents a concept of a
word or the word . A meaning that we can take it from any dictionary.
Just like dog , I go the dictionary and I find the Definition of the dog . Just like it's
animal . But the word dog itself has association with the meaning of word or with
the dog it self.
Dog , it could be associated with fear or dirty. A word like needle it could be
associated with fear.
Even associations are not stable . I said people are afraid of dog but not all. The
word dark , for some people, it is terrifying
But for others it is not. Children are expected to be afraid of dark. While adults are
not . So associative meaning is not stable. It depends on age , gender , just in dog
, it's associated with fear . In our culture it associated with dirty but in other
cultures it is lovely and friendly. So it different from one culture to another from
one society to another, from one person to another. So things are not stable.
Needle could be associated with illness, blood, pain , drugs, hard , etc.
This is examples to know how a word changed from one society to another.
Rose: it's associated with beauty,love and passion. But in our society that's rare.
Maybe it depends on colours. Red rose differs from yellow rose.
Bull: in our society it's associated with a stupidity. But in other society, it's
associated with strength, power.

Bullying ‫يتنمر‬
Chicago Bulls! ‫ثيران شيكاغو‬
In our society we don't accept this name because it represents stupidity or it's
related to bullying.

Proper name:
We use them for their associations. For example, most of us nowadays use
religious names just like Ali Hassan. We use them for their associative
meaning. Because it's related to religion. Or use a strange name for a reader or
actor or artist .

Semantic features:

Noun like chair can't follow by a verb like drink so both of them can't match
because they are different.

The boy kicked the ball.

Boy: a noun +animate + human
Kicked: transitive
Note: only native speaker can produce grammatical and meaningful sentences .
So a native speaker cannot produce a sentence like this The ball kicked the boy.
Why can't native speaker produce this sentence?
Because the ball doesn't match with the verb kick
The ball -human
So there is semantic features to make a full sentence?
Note: Grammar is not enough, we need meaning.
Features just like animate, human , female, adult
If the feature exists in the word , it takes + if it doesn't, it takes _
We as a native speaker, we use these features to arrange our words in the
sentences to make our sentences meaningful.
Semantic is very important to cover our sentences with meaning. Why we
speak? Because we speak to convey meaning syntax alone is not
enough. Structure of the sentence is not enough.
The .......is reading the newspaper.
N( +human)
We should use human in this sentence because we can't use animal or robot. So
only human can read.

Semantic Roles

The role which is a copied by the elements of the sentence. Roles that are related
to meaning not Grammar. In Grammar, we have nouns, verb. Nouns could be
subject or object but these are in Grammar so we use terminology. But in semantic
the terminology is different.
The boy ate an apple.
The boy: agent
Ate: verb shows an action.
Apple: affected or recipient of an action.
So apple is theme
But sometimes subject could be non human . Also in object it could be human .

We look at word that has meaning. But actually they play a role.
Containers: a meaning that we can find it in a dictionary or check in a dictionary.
But the play a role in this sentence.
Just like th boy is agent
Semantic role is role played by items of the sentence not refer to grammatical role
or grammatical positions in this sentence.
Agent and themes are the most common semantic roles, although agents are
typically human ( The boy), they can also be non human entities that cause
actions.
Just like
The car hit the boy.
The car : agent
Affected could be human or non human. Effected called theme . Again it could be
human or non human.

The wind blew the ball away.

A car ran over the ball.
The dog caught the ball.
Blew, ran over , caught refers to action.

The theme is non_ human, but can be human ( the boy) , as in The dog chased the
boy.

Instrument and experiencer

If an agent uses another entity in order to perform an action, thay other entity fills
the role of instrument.
The boy cut the rope with an old razor.

If the verb is not an action. In this case is called experiencer .

The boy feels sad. There is no action here.
Because it refers to a sense or feeling . It shows feeling.

Locating, source and goal.

I live in Basrah. Basrah is a noun but the semantic role of Basrah is a location.
I moved from Basrah to Baghdad.
Basrah here is not a location, it's a source.
From.....to ......
Baghdad is a goal. A place we move to.

Lexical Relations
I mean relation among words concerning their meaning or generalization.
For example,
What's the relationship between Big, small: they have opposite meaning
Big, large : they have similar meaning.
So these are called lexical relations

1_ synonymy
Two or more words with very closely related meanings .
We have what's called partial synonymy, not full meaning, I mean not exactly the
same meaning. So if two words have similar meaning, we say they are
synonyms. They a closely meaning, similar meaning but not exactly the Same
meaning. For example, big / large, broad/ wide, buy/ purchase. Couch/ sofa .
Couch: outside houses
Sofa: inside the building
Freedom/ liberty : it's a matter of use in these words .
Street/ road
Home/ house

2_ Antonymy
Two forms with opposite meanings .so it refers to opposite meanings.
Hot/ cold alive/ dead
But we need to draw attention to something very interesting of opposites in these
examples.
Tea is not hot.
Does it mean cold??? No because we have a sort of scale .
Hot....................cold
I mean it could be in the middle so I don't mean cold. So this is a Gradable: we
can put it in a grade . But human beings, for example; is either dead or alive .
These are non gradable. If someone dead , l mean he is not alive actually. Or alive
he is not dead.
There is something between black and white. They are opposite meaning. But
there is a scale between them.

3_ Hyponymy
When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another.
Dog , what's dog? An animal.
What's a pencil? Stationery
We can have a sort of hierarchy of relationships. One is included another.
Rose is a hyponym of flower.
Examples in book.
Superordinate = higher level terms. Just like animal and insect.
Co_ Hyponyms: two or more words that share the same superordinate term. Just
like dog and horse are co_ hyponyms and the superordinate term is animal.

4_ prototype
It means something we agree upon native speaker but it's not necessarily true or
acceptable. For example,
Spider: an insect but is a spider is an insect? Actually no why? Because spider is
not an insect , it belongs to a family . Spider is a category that differs from insects.
Why is it not an insect? Because all insects should have six legs , while a spider
had 8 legs .
Ostrach is it a bird. It has wings + feather but can't fly. And we know birds are fly .
So it's not a bird.
Another examples: Bat , whale ......

5_ Homophones and homonyms

Homophone: when two or more different written forms have the same
pronunciation.
Flour/ flower, pail/pale, right /write......
Week/weak
Homonyms: when one form written or spoken has two or more unrelated
meanings .
Bank has two meaning.
Bank ( of a river) bank ( financial institution)
It has the same spelling, pronunciation but different meanings.

6_ polysemy
When encounter two or more words with the same form and related meanings.

Two words have the same spelling, pronunciation, and they are related in
meaning.

Neck ( of the body) ( of the shirt) ( of the bottle)

Shoulder ( of the street)
Arm( of the chair)

7_ Metonymy
There is another type of relationship between words , based simply on a close
connection in everyday experience. That close connection can be based on a
container _ contents relation. Just like bottle= water or a whole part relation car =
wheels
It based on our experience.
The department of English will have a party next week.
What we mean in department of English? Do we mean a building? We mean
people, teachers .
Irag declares.....
Iraq mean people or president of lraq ...
USA will do .....
USA mean government of USA or White House

8_ collection
One way we seem to organize our knowledge of words is simply on the basis of
collocation or frequently occurring together.
Two words have a relationship as a sort of neighborhood .
We have words come together
Black and white not white and black
Because it's sequence. There is no mistakes in Grammar but we have a sequence
to arrange words .
Fish and chips not chips and fish
It's a sequence .This is a relationship of neighborhood.
Rotten apple ..