Name of the Course Unit: ESHD 2142

Language and Language Studies

Name of the Lecturer: Prof.Manoj

Ariyaratne

Semantics
• Semantics can be defined as "the study of the
meaning of morphemes, words, phrases and
sentences.

• You will sometimes see definitions for semantics like

"the analysis of meaning," To see why this is too
broad, consider the following.Gamini, returning home
after a long day, discovers that the new puppy has
crapped on the rug, and says "Oh, lovely."
• Dictionary Meaning: (ADJECTIVE): [love-li-er,
love-li-est]. 1. Full of love; loving. 2. Inspiring love
or affection. 3. Having pleasing or attractive qualities.
4. Enjoyable; delightful.
Obviously this is because Gamini is being ironic, in
the sense of "using words to convey the opposite of
their literal meaning". Gamini might have said
"great," or "wonderful," or "beautiful", or "how
exquisite", and none of the dictionary entries for these
words will help us understand that Gamini means to
express disgust and annoyance.
• That's because a word's meaning is one thing, and
Gamini 's meaning -- what Gamini means by using
the word -- is something else.
• There are lots of other ways besides irony to use
words to mean something different from what you get
by putting their dictionary entries together.
• In fact, even when we mean what we literally say, we
often – may be always -- mean something more as
well. The study of "speaker meaning" -- the meaning
of language in its context of use -- is
called pragmatics.
• There are a variety of common processes by which
existing conventional word meanings are creatively
extended or modified.
• When one of processes is applied commonly enough
in a particular case, a new convention is created; a
new "path" is worn.
• Eg: Metaphor
• Metaphor
• Consider the difference in meaning between "He's a
leech" and. "he's a louse." Both leech and louse are
parasites that suck blood through the skin of their
host, and we -- being among their hosts -- dislike
them for it.
• According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a
leech is "one who preys (Victims) on or clings to
another", whereas a louse is "a mean or despicable
(Contemptible) person." These extended meanings
have an element of arbitrariness. Most of us regard
leeches as "despicable," and lice certainly "prey on"
and "cling to" their hosts.
• Therefore it's appropriate for the dictionary to include
these extended meanings as part of the meaning of the
word. All the same, we can see that these words
originally acquired their extended meanings by the
completely general process of metaphor.
• A metaphor is "a figure of speech in which a term is
transferred from the object it ordinarily designates to
an object it may designate only by implicit
comparison or analogy." For instance, if we speak of
"the evening of her life", we're making an analogy
between the time span of a day and the time span of a
life, and naming part of life by reference to a part of
the day.
 Metaphors/ Metaphorical/Figurative Meaning

• Eg. He is the light of my life - The person described

by this metaphor isn't really providing physical light.
He or she is just someone who brings happiness or
joy.

• Time is a thief - Time isn't really stealing anything,

this metaphor just indicates that time passes quickly.

• He is the apple of my eye - There is, of course, no

real apple in a person's eye. The "apple" is someone
beloved and held dear.
• Feel blue - No one actually ever feels like the color
blue, although many people say they are "feeling
blue" to mean they are feeling sad.
• I feel blue to see the disaster in India in the wake of
Covid 19.
• Literal meaning ( Surface Meaning)

• Literal meaning is most basic meaning of a word or

phrase, rather than an extended or poetic meaning.

• Eg: I want to meet you.

• Figurative Meaning or Metaphorical Meaning: (of
language, words, phrases, etc.) used in a way that is
different from the usual meaning, in order to create a
particular mental picture. For example, ‘He exploded
with rage’ shows a figurative use of the verb ‘explode

• The word “head” has several figurative senses, as in

“She's the head of the company”.
 Example for Figurative Language with full of
figurative meaning
• I could not get out of my mind the thought of a friend, who said that the
rainbows over [Niagara] Falls were like the arts and beauty and goodness,
with regard to the stream of life--caused by it, thrown upon its spray, but
unable to stay or direct or affect it, and ceasing when it ceased. In all
comparisons that rise in the heart, the river, with its multitudinous waves
and its single current, likens itself to a life, whether of an individual or of a
community. A man's life is of many flashing moments, and yet one stream;
a nation's flows through all its citizens, and yet is more than they. In such
places, one is aware, with an almost insupportable and yet comforting
certitude, that both men and nations are hurried onwards to their ruin or
ending as inevitably as this dark flood. Some go down to it unreluctant, and
meet it, like the river, not without nobility.
(Rupert Brooke, "Niagara Falls," 1913)
 Denotation

• Denotation is the actual object or idea to which the word

refers.
• Eg. 1. Husband and wife
• Pedestrians shall walk on the right side of the road.
• 2.This act may be cited as the Eighteen Amendment to
the Constitution.
• 3. The Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
( hereinafter referred to as “ Constitution”) is hereby amended
in Article 31 thereof, as follows:
• (Ammendment of Article 31 of the Constitution of the
Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka)
 Connotation

• The associated or secondary meaning of

a word or expression in addition to its explicit or prim
ary meaning:A possible connotation of “home” is
“a place of warmth, comfort, and affection.”

• The act of connoting; the suggesting of

an additional meaning for a word or expression, apart
from its explicit meaning.
• Connotation

• The word "sea" denotes a large body of water, but its

connotative meaning includes the sense of
overwhelming space, danger, instability; whereas
"earth" connotes safety, fertility and stability. Of
many potential connotations, the particular ones
evoked depend upon the context in which words are
used.
 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

• Contextual Meaning
• The definition of contextual is depending on the
context, or surrounding words, phrases, and
paragraphs, of the writing. An example
of contextual is how the word "read" can have two
different meanings depending upon what words are
around it.
• To get the real meaning of a word or an utterance according to
J.R Firth , the ‘Context of situation’ is very much important.
There is a dynamic relation between text and context of
situation . Context of situation is the totality of extralinguistic
features having relevance to communicative act.

• E.g . 1. Please give a brief account of the situation.

• 2. My account in the Commercial bank has been

abandoned. ( The meaning is that the bank account with credits
has not been used for ten years.
• Other Terminology in Lexical Semantics
• In discussing semantics, linguists sometimes use the
term lexeme (as opposed to word), so that word can
be retained for the inflected variants. Thus one can
say that the words walk, walks, walked, and walking
are different forms of the same lexeme.
• A lexical item (or lexical unit, lexical entry) is a
single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words
that forms the basic elements of a
language's lexicon (≈ vocabulary). Examples are cat,
traffic light, take care of, by the way, and it's raining
cats and dogs.
• There are several kinds of sense relations among
lexemes. First is the opposition between
syntagmatic relations (the way lexemes are related in
sentences) and paradigmatic relation (the way
words can substitute for each other in the same
sentence context).
• Important paradigmatic relations include:
• synonymy - "sameness of meaning" (pavement is a
synonym of sidewalk)
• hyponymy - "inclusion of meaning" (cat is a
hyponym of animal) a word with a particular meaning that
is included in the meaning of a more general word, for
example ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ are hyponyms of ‘animal’
• antonymy - "oppositeness of meaning" (big is an
antonym of small)
• Paradigmatic contrasts at the level of sounds allow
one to identify the phonemes (minimal distinctive
sound units) of a language: for
example, bat, fat, mat contrast with one another on
the basis of a single sound, as do bat, bet, bit,
and bat, bap, ban.
• On the lexical level, paradigmatic contrasts indicate
which words are likely to belong to the same word
class (part of speech): cat, dog, parrot in the diagram
are all nouns, sat, slept are all verbs
• Syntagmatic relations between words enable one to
build up a picture of co-occurrence restrictions
within SYNTAX, for example, the
verbs hit, kick have to be followed by a noun (Paul
hit the wall, not *Paul hit), but sleep, doze do not
normally do so (Peter slept, not *Peter slept the
bed). .
 Semantics and Grammar

• The meaning of a sentence is the product of both lexical and

grammatical meaning. Of the meaning of the constituent
lexemes and of the grammatical constructions that relate one
lexeme syntagmatically to another.
• Compare following two sentences to make grammatical
meaning clear.
• 1. The dog bit the postman.
• 2. The postman bit the dog.
However, the word order of a language serves an expressive
function.
Eg : A: What would you like to eat?
B: I would like to eat biscuits.
C: Biscuits I would like.
The word order difference in the answer of C
affects the lexical meaning as it highlight the object ‘biscuits’
 Exercise

• 1. Do the following two sentences in English mean

approximately the same?
• 1. I will be back later.
• 2. I will return after sometime.

• 2. Write two sentences with ambiguous meaning

• i………………………………………………………
• ii………………………………………………………
.
Thank you