What is Semantics?
Richmond H. Thomason
Version 1 prepared: December 1, 1996
Version 2 (minor revisions): March 27, 2012
Copyright, Richmond H. Thomason, 1996
Comments Invited: Send Comments to rthomaso@umich.edu

Note: A Polish translation of this document can be found here.




Semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions. The language can be a natural language, such as English or Navajo, or an artificial language, like a computer programming language. Meaning in natural languages is mainly studied by linguists. In fact, semantics is one of the main branches of contemporary linguistics. Theoretical computer scientists and logicians think about artificial languages. In some areas of computer science, these divisions are crossed. In machine translation, for instance, computer scientists may want to relate natural language texts to abstract representations of their meanings; to do this, they have to design artificial languages for representing meanings.
There are strong connections to philosophy. Earlier in this century, much work in semantics was done by philosophers, and some important work is still done by philosophers.
Anyone who speaks a language has a truly amazing capacity to reason about the meanings of texts. Take, for instance, the sentence
(S) I can't untie that knot with one hand.
Even though you have probably never seen this sentence, you can easily see things like the following:
The sentence is about the abilities of whoever spoke or wrote it. (Call this person the speaker.)
It's also about a knot, maybe one that the speaker is pointing at.
The sentence denies that the speaker has a certain ability. (This is the contribution of the word ‘can't’.)
Untying is a way of making something not tied.
The sentence doesn't mean that the knot has one hand; it has to do with how many hands are used to do the untying.
The meaning of a sentence is not just an unordered heap of the meanings of its words. If that were true, then ‘Cowboys ride horses’ and ‘Horses ride cowboys’ would mean the same thing. So we need to think about arrangements of meanings.
Here is an arrangement that seems to bring out the relationships of the meanings in sentence (S).
Not [ I [ Able [ [ [Make [Not [Tied]]] [That knot ] ] [With One Hand] ] ] ]
The unit [Make [Not [Tied]] here corresponds to the act of untying; it contains a subunit corresponding to the state of being untied. Larger units correspond to the act of untying-that-knot and to the act to-untie-that-knot-with-one-hand. Then this act combines with Able to make a larger unit, corresponding to the state of being-able-to-untie-that-knot-with-one-hand. This unit combines with I to make the thought that I have this state -- that is, the thought that I-am-able-to-untie-that-knot-with-one-hand. Finally, this combines with Not and we get the denial of that thought.
This idea that meaningful units combine systematically to form larger meaningful units, and understanding sentences is a way of working out these combinations, has probably been the most important theme in contemporary semantics.
Linguists who study semantics look for general rules that bring out the relationship between form, which is the observed arrangement of words in sentences, and meaning. This is interesting and challenging, because these relationships are so complex

Semantics

What is meaning...?
Meaning is kind of the things can mean something. Word...? Signs...? Symbols...? Or body language...? You can think of all this posibble can mean something.
We are really interested in meaning.sometimes we are not sure about the message we should get from something we read or maybe we hear,and we concerned about getting our own message accross the others.

How about semantics.....?
Semantics....is a branch of linguistics which relates wiyh meaning. Semantics is considered relates wiyh meaning. Semantics is considered as a study of meaning in language. It deals with the expression of linguistics object such as word, phrases, and sentences.not with the arrangement with their syntatic parts or with the pronounciation.
You know there are two factors that make semantics become important and worthy study....

First, meaning is strictly connected with communication. A certain meaning can be delivered throught communication plays an important role in human life(meaning in human language).
Second, thr process of human attempts to comprehead the nature of meaninf involves the mental ability by the use of reasoning and perception.

Semantics process:
* Human expression
Include sound and proxemics(body language).
* intrepretation
Include circumstances and context
* understanding
Like as language

Two kind of semantics:
* conotatif(Allegory)
* denotatif(reality)

And with semantics we can share the meaning and know how meaning can change overtime(such as old english and modern language).And we use be a new words in language. Because word told necessary of fix independent meaning.

Semantics also at the centre of the study of the human mind-thought process, cognition and conceptualization(by leech 1989:lx)