Semantics

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Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics

Term coined by Bréal (1897) for the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the analysis and description of the so-called ‘literal‘meaning of linguistic expressions. Depending on the focus, various aspects of meaning may be prominent: (a) the internal semantic structure of individual linguistic expressions, as described by componential analysis, meaning postulates, or stereotypes ( stereotype², also prototype); (b) the semantic relations between linguistic expressions as in synonymy, antonymy; (c) the whole meaning of sentences ( sentence meaning, principle of compositionality) as the sum of the meaning of the individual lexemes as well as the grammatical relations between them; (d) the relation of linguistic expressions—or their meaning—to extralinguistic reality ( referential semantics). All questions under (a)—(d) can be examined both diachronically and synchronically.

One traditional area of semantics is the historical semantics of single words ( semantic change, etymology). Under the influence of structuralism, semanticists began to focus on the semantic relations between words and, thus, on the semantic structure of present-day vocabulary. With the development of generative grammar, lexically oriented structuralist semantics was expanded to view problems concerning sentence semantics; the rivalry between interpretive semantics and generative semantics attests to the controversial state of research of the 1960s.

More recent developments in semantics are characterized by an overlap within various areas of linguistic investigation; this applies both to pragmatic aspects of meaning ( pragmatics, speech act theory, maxim of conversation, presupposition) as well as to the descriptive approaches of formal logic which attempt to define meaning according to truth conditions ( predicate logic, intensional logic). Moving away from this preoccupation with truth values, some semanticists have attempted a direct semantic categorization of situations (see Barwise & Perry 1983), a semantic interpretation based on a mathematical concept of game theory (see Saarinen 1979), or a dynamism based on a mathematical concept of catastrophe theory (see Wildgen 1982). In the meantime, semantics has become more and more a branch of an interdisciplinary ‘cognitive science’ ( language and cognition).

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Fodor, J.D. 1977. Semantics: theories of meaning in generative grammar. New York.

Goodenough, W. 1956. Componential analysis and the study of meaning. Lg 32.195–216.

Gruber, J. 1976. Lexical structures in syntax and semantics, 2 vols. Amsterdam.

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Saarinen, E. (ed.) 1979. Game-theoretical semantics: essays on semantics by Hintikka, Carlson, Peacocke, Rantala, and Saarinen. Dordrecht.

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Steinberg, D.D. and L.A.Jakobovits (eds) 1971. Semantics: an interdisciplinary reader in philosophy, linguistics and psychology. Cambridge, MA.

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Wallace, A.F.C. 1965. The problem of psychological validity of componential analysis. AA 67.229–48.

Wierzbicka, A. 1992. Semantics, culture and cognition. Oxford.

Wildgen, W. 1982. Catastrophe theoretic semantics: an elaboration and application of René Thom ‘s theory. Amsterdam.

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The Journal of Semantics.

Natural Language Semantics.

componential analysis. computational linguistics, formal logic, generative semantics, intensional logic, interpretive semantics, lexicography, lexicology, lexicon, meaning, meaning postulate, onomasiology, prototype, semantic change, stereotype, structural semantics.

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