The Understanding about of Semantics Mariani Agustina Situmorang

Semantics: is the technical term used to refer to the study of meaning and since meaning is a part of language, semantics is a part of linguistics.

Semantics => Semantics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the study of meaning, changes in meaning, and the principles that govern the relationship between sentences or words and their meanings. => It is the study of the relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent.

Some important areas of semantic theory or related subjects include these: => Symbol and referent => Conceptions of meaning => Words and lexemes => Denotation, connotation, implication => Pragmatics => Ambiguity => Metaphor, simile and symbol => Semantic fields

=> Synonym, antonym and hyponym => Collocation, fixed expression and idiom => Semantic change and etymology => Polysemy => Homonymy, homophones and homographs => Lexicology and lexicography => Thesauruses, libraries and Web portals => Epistemology => Colour

�The noun semantics and the adjective semantic are derived from the Greek word semantikos (“significant”). �In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, as borne on the syntactic levels of words, phrases, sentences, and sometimes larger units of discourse, generically referred to as texts.

For thousands of years, philosophers have pondered the meaning of meaning, yet speakers of a language can understand what is said to them and can produce strings of words that are meaningful to other speakers.

�To understand language we need to know the meaning of words and the morphemes that compose them. We also must know how the meanings of words combine into phrases and sentence meanings. Finally, we must consider context when determining meaning. �The study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences is called Semantics.

�Subfields of semantics are lexical (of or relating to the vocabulary, words, or morphemes of a language) semantics, which is concerned with the meanings of words, and the meaning relationships among words; and phrasal or sentential semantics, which is concerned with the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word.

�The study of how context affects meaning is called Pragmatics. �For example, the sentence "It's cold in here" can be interpreted in certain situations as "close the windows".

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