It starts by considering three alternative characterizations and explain what the article finds problematic about each of them. This leads to the discussion of utterance interpretation, which situates semantics and pragmatics in a larger enterprise.
But the characterization of their contrast remains sketchy until the final section, where the article discusses how truth-conditions and the notion of what is said fit into the picture. Keywords: semantics , pragmatics , linguistic expressions , meanings , utterance interpretation , truth-condition. Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase.
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All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice. Oxford Handbooks Online. Thus, it is the study of linguistic meaning, or more precisely, the study of the relation between linguistic expressions and their meaning.
Therefore, it considers the meaning of a sentence without paying attention to their context. Hence, according to this, sounds, facial expressions, body language, and proxemics have semantic meaningful content, and each of these comprises several branches of study. Moreover, in written language, things like paragraph structure and punctuation bear semantic content; other forms of language bear other semantic content. Therefore, semantics also looks at the ways in which the meanings of words can be related to each other.
Furthermore, semantics has two main categories as lexical semantics and phrasal semantics. Accordingly, lexical semantics concerns the meanings of words and the meaning of relationships among words, while phrasal semantics concerns the meaning of syntactic units, which are larger than words.
Similarly, semantic properties are the components of meanings of words. Thus, under lexical semantics, semantics analyze words and see how they can be related to each other with relations to synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, polysemy , figures of speech, etc.
Phrasal semantics concerns concepts such as paraphrase, contradiction, ambiguity, mutual entailment, etc. Semantically, this sentence can be interpreted as — He is very nice, a compliment to the person, which is the literal meaning.
But under pragmatics, this sentence suggests the context: the positive attitude of the speaker towards the person. This is the intended or the inferred meaning in the sentence.
Semantics looks at these relationships in language and how these meanings are created. This is a necessity for understanding how language works as a whole. Or is he asking for food by this comment? Semantics is a branch of linguistics concerned with the meaning of morphemes , words, phrases and sentences and their relation. Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics concerned with the use of language in different contexts and the ways in which people produce and comprehend meanings through language.
Semantics is a narrow compared to pragmatics. Pragmatics is a broader field when compared to semantics. Hasa is a BA graduate in the field of Humanities and is currently pursuing a Master's degree in the field of English language and literature. Her areas of interests include language, literature, linguistics and culture. Your email address will not be published.
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