Website design By BotEap.comSemantics is a branch of linguistics that studies the meaning of language and tries to understand what meaning is as an element of language and how it is constructed by language, as well as interpreted, obscured, and negotiated by language speakers and listeners. We, as speakers of a language, have implicit knowledge about what is meaningful in our language. In our explanation of what that knowledge is, there are at least twelve technical terms that are used as aspects of our semantic knowledge: polysemy, homonymy, anomaly; paraphrase; synonymy; semantic feature; antonymy; contradiction; ambiguity; adjacency pairs; implication and presupposition although it is not possible to expect that we can clearly define all the words that we know or use, but the obvious thing is that we can make our thoughts and feelings and intentions known to other speakers of the language and we can understand what others say.

Website design By BotEap.comThis ability requires the possession of a vocabulary and that we, as speakers, know how to pronounce each element of this vocabulary and how to recognize its pronunciation by other speakers. We know how to use production vocabulary in meaningful sentences and understand sentences produced by others. And, of course, we know the meanings: how to choose the elements that express what we want to express and how to find the meanings in what other people say.

Website design By BotEap.comPolysemy

Website design By BotEap.comWe can know that a word is polysemic when it has two or more related meanings. In this case, the word takes one form but can be used to mean two different things. In the case of polysemy, these two meanings must be related in some way, and not be two completely unconnected meanings of the word, ex: bright (bright) and bright (intelligent). mouse (animal) and mouse (computer hardware).

Website design By BotEap.comhomophony

Website design By BotEap.comHomophony is similar to polysemy in that it refers to a single word form with two meanings; however, a word is homophone when the two meanings have no relationship, for example:

Website design By BotEap.comBat (flying mammal) and bat (sports equipment).

Website design By BotEap.comBallpoint pen (writing instrument) and ballpoint pen (small cage).

Website design By BotEap.comAnomaly

Website design By BotEap.comWe know, in a general way, if something is significant or not in our language and we can tell which of the following are significant in English.

Website design By BotEap.com3a Grace wrote a letter. 3b Henry smiled. 3c The grass laughed. 3d a wall harry painted.

Website design By BotEap.comWe can see that 3a and 3b are significant for English speakers, while 3c and 3d are anomalous (instances of anomaly), generally accepted as correct, while sentence 3c seems to have meaning and could acquire meaning in some children’s story or similar, while 3d is simply a sequence of words.

Website design By BotEap.comparaphrase

Website design By BotEap.comThe following sentences of the first and second pair have essentially the same meaning and when they do not, as in the following sentences:

Website design By BotEap.com4a Agnes arrived before Ruth. 4b Ruth arrived before Agnes.

Website design By BotEap.com4c Agnes came home after Ruth. 4d Ruth got home later than Agnes.

Website design By BotEap.comSentences that make equivalent statements about the same entities, such as 4a and 4c, or 4b and 4d, are paraphrases (of each other).

Website design By BotEap.comSynonymy

Website design By BotEap.comWe generally agree when two words have essentially the same meaning in a given context. In each sentence below a word is underlined. After the sentence there is a group of words, one of which can replace the underlined word without changing the meaning of the sentence.

Website design By BotEap.com5a Where did you buy these tools?

Website design By BotEap.comuse buy release modify take

Website design By BotEap.com5b At the end of the street we saw two huge statues,

Website design By BotEap.comsoft pink nice huge original

Website design By BotEap.comWords that have the same meaning in a given context are synonyms, are instances of synonymy, and are identical to each other.

Website design By BotEap.comContradictory

Website design By BotEap.comWe recognize when the meaning of a sentence contradicts another sentence. The following sentences are all about the same person, but two of them are related in such a way that if one is true, the other must be false.

Website design By BotEap.com6 years Edgar is married. 6b Edgar is quite rich.

Website design By BotEap.com6c Edgar is no longer young. 6d Edgar is single.

Website design By BotEap.comSentences that make opposite statements on the same topic are contradictory.

Website design By BotEap.comantonym

Website design By BotEap.comWe generally agree when two words have opposite meanings in a given context. We can choose from the group of words that follows 7a and 7b the word that is opposite to the underlined word in each sentence.

Website design By BotEap.com7a Betty cut a thick slice of cake. 7b The train leaves at 12:25.

Website design By BotEap.comshiny new smooth thin wet arrives leaves wait deviates

Website design By BotEap.comWe see that two words that make opposite statements about the same subject are antonyms; they are antonyms, instances of antonymy.

Website design By BotEap.comsemantic features

Website design By BotEap.comWe know that synonyms and antonyms must have some common elements of meaning to be respectively the same or different, but words can have some elements of meaning without being identical or antonymous, for example:

Website design By BotEap.com8a street lane road way house avenue 8b buy take use steal acquire inherit

Website design By BotEap.comThe common element of meaning, shared by all but one word in 8a and by all but one in 8b, is a semantic feature. We must all agree that in each of the word groups above, 8a and 8b, all but one of the words have something in common and we know which word does not belong.

Website design By BotEap.comAmbiguity

Website design By BotEap.comWhen some sentences have a double meaning, they can be interpreted in two ways. We are aware of this fact that there must be two-way interpretations, such as the following.

Website design By BotEap.com9a Marjorie doesn’t care about her parakeet. ((he doesn’t like it; he doesn’t take care of it)

Website design By BotEap.com9b Marjorie took the sick parakeet to a small animal hospital. (small hospital for animals; hospital for small animals)

Website design By BotEap.comOne of the aspects of how meaning works in language is ambiguity. A sentence is ambiguous when it has two or more possible meanings, but how does ambiguity arise in language? A sentence can be ambiguous for any of the following reasons:

Website design By BotEap.comLexical ambiguity: A sentence is lexically ambiguous when it can have two or more possible meanings due to polysemous words (words that have two or more related meanings) or homophones (a single word that has two or more different meanings).

Website design By BotEap.comExample of a lexically ambiguous sentence: Prostitutes appeal to the Pope. This sentence is ambiguous because the word ‘appeal’ is polysemous and can mean ‘ask for help’ or ‘attract’.

Website design By BotEap.comStructural ambiguity: A sentence is structurally ambiguous if it can have two or more possible meanings because the words it contains can be combined in different ways to create different meanings.

Website design By BotEap.comStructurally ambiguous sentence example: Enraged cow insults farmer with ax. In this sentence, the ambiguity arises from the fact that ‘with axe’ can refer to either the farmer or the act of wounding (by the cow) ‘with axe’.

Website design By BotEap.comadjacency pair

Website design By BotEap.comWhen a question and an answer, or any two statements, can go together in a conversation and the second is obviously related to the first, they constitute an adjacency pair.

Website design By BotEap.com10a When did you last write an article?

Website design By BotEap.comTen minutes ago. Last Tuesday. Very pretty. Around noon. I think it was the first of June.

Website design By BotEap.com10b There is a new movie at Studio 21 tonight.

Website design By BotEap.comSo I have heard. What’s it called? When did she open? Me too. Are you sure it’s a comedy?

Website design By BotEap.comThe ability to deal with adjacency pairs is considered part of the implicit knowledge of any speaker.

Website design By BotEap.comlinkage

Website design By BotEap.comWe are aware that two statements can be related in such a way that if one is true, the other must also be true, as in the following linking examples.

Website design By BotEap.com11a There are apples in the fridge.

Website design By BotEap.com11b There is fruit in the fridge.

Website design By BotEap.com11c The ladder is too short to reach the roof.

Website design By BotEap.com11d The ladder is not long enough to reach the roof.

Website design By BotEap.comWe assume that 11a and 11b are roughly the same garden, the truth of 11a implies the truth of 11b, that is, if 11a is true, 11b must be true as well. Likewise, assuming the same ladder and ceiling, the truth of 11c implies the truth of 11d.

Website design By BotEap.comThere are two types of binding: mutual binding and asymmetric binding. In mutual binding, each sentence must be true for the other to be true, for example.: John is married to Rachel’ and ‘Rachel is John’s wife’, ‘Chris is a man’ and ‘Chris is human’, whereas in asymmetric binding, only one of the sentences must be true for the other to be true, but that sentence can be true without the other sentence necessarily having to be true, for example: ‘Rachel is John’s wife’ implies ‘John is married’ (but John is married does not imply that Rachel is his wife), ‘Rachel has two brothers’ implies ‘Rachel is not an only child’ (but Rachel is not an only child does not imply that Rachel has two brothers).

Website design By BotEap.comPresupposition

Website design By BotEap.comWe know that the message conveyed in a sentence may presuppose other knowledge. For example, if 12a is accepted as true, then 12b-12e must also be accepted as true.

Website design By BotEap.com12a Evan usually drives his Toyota to work.

Website design By BotEap.com12b There is a person named Evan.

Website design By BotEap.com12c Evan works.

Website design By BotEap.com12d There is a Toyota that belongs to Evan.

Website design By BotEap.com12 Evan knows how to drive a car.

Website design By BotEap.comThe meaning of sentence 12a presupposes what is expressed in 12b, c, d and e. These last ones are budgets of 12a. Note that a presupposition does not establish the truth of anything. Sentence 12a is significant as it is, but is true only if there is a person named Evan, who works and owns a Toyota, etc. The award is given as if there was a person named Evan.

Website design By BotEap.comIn short, the 12 terms above are introduced to show the latent knowledge we have about our language, the general implicit knowledge we have about meaning in our language. We can handle them successfully, we differ considerably, and circumstances differ considerably, depending on how individuals behave in a given situation or context, it does not necessarily indicate what our deepest competence is, there are personality factors involved such as willingness to cooperate, memory, attention, recent experience that greatly influences our performance.