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Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning in language, focusing on how words and phrases convey meaning and how they are interpreted. Lexicographers compile dictionaries using various sources to define words, though definitions can vary in precision and context. Different semantic relationships exist between words, and various approaches to semantics, such as formal and cognitive semantics, explore these meanings in distinct ways.

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Clara Montserrat Lopez
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2 views

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning in language, focusing on how words and phrases convey meaning and how they are interpreted. Lexicographers compile dictionaries using various sources to define words, though definitions can vary in precision and context. Different semantic relationships exist between words, and various approaches to semantics, such as formal and cognitive semantics, explore these meanings in distinct ways.

Uploaded by

Clara Montserrat Lopez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Semantics is the area of linguistics that studies meaning in language.

It covers how
words, phrases, sentences, and texts convey meaning, and how people interpret them.
Lexicographers are the people who write dictionaries. They use different sources of
evidence, such as usage, etymology, and corpus data, to describe how words are used
and what they mean. In addition, to know the meaning of a word, we look up the
definition; and the definition is a way of explaining the meaning of a word by using
other words. However, definitions are not always precise or complete, and they may
vary depending on the context and the purpose of the dictionary. Definitions are also
useful for describing how words shift their meaning over time
 There are different types of semantic relationships between words, such as
synonymy (words that have the same or similar meaning), antonymy (words that have
opposite or contrasting meanings), hyponymy (words that are more specific examples
of a more general word), and meronymy (words that are parts of a larger whole).
 Different languages may have different ways of defining these semantic relationships,
such as using different words, word order, morphology, or syntax. For example, some
languages have more words for colors than others, or use different grammatical
markers to indicate possession or comparison.
 There are different approaches to semantics, such as formal semantics, which uses
logic and mathematics to model meaning in a precise and consistent way,
and cognitive semantics, which focuses on how people conceptualize and categorize
meaning based on their experience and knowledge.

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