02/22/2023 Waqas Ahmad - English - UoSwabi 1

‫انمانھکلںیہنےھکیسںیہنجڑپھرکےچ‬
‫اُناتکوبںہپیسکیکیھبدنسےہردےہ‬
‫دیمحہاشنیہؔ‬

‫‪02/22/2023‬‬ ‫‪Waqas Ahmad - English - UoSwabi‬‬ ‫‪2‬‬

 Semantics
WAQAS AHMAD
Visiting Lecturer
Department of English
University of Swabi

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“Language without meaning is meaningless”. (Roman Jacobson)

We speak for the sake of meaning. Whenever we speak we mean

something, we want to convey, share, or discuss some meaningful things.

“Semantics is the study of meaning of words, change of meaning of words,

and relationship of words with their meaning”.

Semantics is also the study of the relationship between signs/symbols and

meaning.

Under the umbrella of pure linguistics we have this branch of semantics.

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Lexical semantics is concerned with the meanings of words and the
meaning of relationships among words.

Phrasal semantics is concerned with the meaning of syntactic units larger

than the word. (meaning of a group of words; phrase or sentence).

Semantic properties are the components of meanings of words. For

example, the semantic property "human" can be found in many words such
as parent, doctor, baby, professor, widow, and aunt. Other semantic
properties include animate objects, male, female, countable items and non-
countable items.

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Homonyms: different words that are pronounced the same, but may or may
not be spelled the same (to, two, and too). (beer, bear).

Synonym: words that mean the same but sound different. i.e; (couch and
sofa). (important, significant, crucial).

Antonym: words that are opposite in meaning. i.e; (alive and dead). (big
and small).

Hyponym: set of related words (red, white, yellow, blue are all hyponyms of
"color").

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