UNIVERSIDAD DE CARABOBO

FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACIN

ESCUELA DE EDUCACIN
DEPARTAMENTO DE IDIOMAS MODERNOS
CTEDRA: GRAMTICA Y LINGSTICA INGLESA
ASIGNATURA: LINGSTICA APLICADA
PREPARADORA: ADRIANA OROPEZA
HANDOUT 6
SEMANTICS
Semantics: It is the study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes,
words, phrases, and sentences.
Lexical Semantics: It is concerned with the meaning of
words, and the meaning relationships among words.
Phrasal Semantics: It is concerned with the meaning of the
syntactic units larger than the word.
LEXICAL SEMANTICS
Semantics properties: Words and morphemes have meanings.
All content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) are
defined by semantic properties.
Examples of Semantic Properties of Nouns:
Young:
Male:
Female:
hen.
Animal:

baby, child, puppy, colt.

bachelor, father, son.
mother, daughter, sister, mare, doe, ewe, tigress,
mare, doe, ewe, tigress, hen, bull, stallion.

Examples of Semantic Properties of Verbs:

Motion: bring, fall, plod, walk, run.
Contact: hit, kiss, touch.
Creation: build, imagine, make.
Sense: see, hear, feel.
Semantic features: They are a notational device for expressing
the presence (+) or absence (-) of semantic properties by pluses
and minuses.
Examples:

baby [+young], [+human], [-abstract].

Woman [+female], [+human], [-young].

Semantic relationship among words: homonyms, homographs,

homophones, polisemy, heteronyms, synonyms, antonyms,
metonyms, retronyms.

Homonyms: They are different words that are pronounced the

same but may or may not be spelled the same and have
different meanings. For example: Too, to, two.
Homographs: They are words that are spelled the same but
have different
meanings. For example: dove (bird) and dove (past tense of
dive)
Homophones: They are words which have the same
pronunciation as each
other but different spellings and meanings. For example:
bear and bare.

Polysemy: It occurs when a word has multiple meanings. For

example: guard, music and rot.

Heteronyms: They are words that are spelled the same but
are pronounced differently and have different meanings. For
example: Bass (guitar) vs. bass (fish)

Synonyms: They are words that sound different but have the
same or nearly the same meaning. For example: sofa/ couch.

Antonyms: They are words that are opposite in meaning. They

may be complementary, gradable or relational. For example:
tall/short
Gradable antonyms: two antonyms related in such a way
that more of one
is less of the other. For example: warm/cool.
Complementary antonyms: the members of a pair in this
types are
complementary to each other. Not only the assertion of one
means the
denial of the other, the denial of one also mean the assertion
of the other.
For example: Male/female
married/single.

Relational antonyms: they show the reversal in a

relationship between two
entities. For example : husband/wife teacher/pupil.

Hyponyms: They are a set of words that share semantic

features. For Example: red, white, blue are hyponyms of color.

Metonyms: They are words used instead of another with

which they are associated. For example: crown - king

Retronyms: it refers to an expression that would once have

been redundant, but which societal or technological changes
have made non-redundant. Examples: silent movie, snail mail,
whole milk

PHRASAL SEMANTICS
Paraphrases: it occurs when two sentences have the same true
conditions. For example: the horse threw the rider/ the rider was
thrown by the horse.
Implication or entailment: Sometimes knowing the truth of one
sentence entails, or necessarily implies, the truth of another
sentence. For example if you know that it is true that Corday
assassinated Marat, then you know that it is true that Marat is dead.
Contradiction: it is negative entailment; that is the truth of one
sentence necessarily implies the falseness of another sentence. For
example: Scott is a baby/ Scott is an adult.
Ambiguity: A word or a sentence is ambiguous if it can be
understood or interpreted in more than one way.
Metaphor: it is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story
or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible
quality or idea. E.g.: Her eyes were glistening jewels.
Idiom: it is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative
meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that
expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of
the words of which it is made.