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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background

Semantics is the study of meaning knowledge encoded in the

vocabulary of the language and in it is patterns for building more elaborate
meanings, up to the level the study of word meaning and sentence
meaning, abstacted away from contexs of use, is a descriptive subject. It is
an attempt to describe and understand the nature of the knowledge about
meaning in their language that people have from knowing the language. In
a prescriptive enterprise with an interest in advising or pressuring speakers
or writers into abandoning some meanings and adopting others (though
pedants can certainly benefit from studying the semantics of a language
they want to lay down rules about, to become clear on what aspects of
conventional meaning they dislike and which they favour). A related point
is that one can know a language perfectly well without knowing its
history. While it is fascinating to find out about the historical currents and
changes that explain why there are similarities in the pronunciations or
spellings of words that share similarities in meaning, example arms-body
parts, and arms-weapons. This kind of knowledge is not essential for using
present-day English, so it is not in this discussion. Historical linguistics
investigating language change over time sometimes concern themselves
with semantic.

Semantic description of language knowledge is different from the

encyclopedia maker’s task of caraloguing general knowledge. The words
tangerine and clementine illustrate distictions that are not part of our
knowledge of English, but rather fruiterer’s of expertise, which some other
people also know, but which most users of English do not have not need
English lesson on this point. In the other definiton semantic language
disciplines that examines the meaning of lingual units, lexical meaning, or
grammatical meaning. Lexical meaning is the meaning of the smallest
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semantic units called lexeme, while grammatical meaning is the meaning

that is formed from the merger of linguistic units. Darmojuwono says that
the semantics is the field of linguistics that studies the meaning of sign
language, while the intended meaning of the sign language is the sign
which has elements of the symbol of the sound and the concept or mental
image of an object that is marked, for example in the words of the book,
consisting of the elements of the coat of arms of the sound (b-o-o-k), and
the concept or mental image objects are called book.

A. Problem Formulation
1. What the definition of semantics ?
2. What the brief history of semantics ?
3. What the systematic study of meaning ?

B. Purpose of the problem

1. To know the definition of semantics ?
2. To know the brief history of semantics ?
3. To know the systematic study of meaning ?
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CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A. Definition of Semantics

Semantics is the study of word, meaning, and sentences.1 It can be used to

describe how words can have different meanings for different people.
According to Oxford dictionary semantics is the study of the meaning of
words and phrases or systems.2 Semantics is the study of meaning in language.
We know that language is use to express menings which can be understood by
others. But meaning exist in our minds and we can express what is it our
minds through the spoken and written forms of language (as well as through
gestures, action etc). The sounds patterns of language are studied at the level
of phonology and the organization of words and sentences is studied at the
level of morphology and syntax. These are in turn organized in such a way
that we can convey meaningful messages or recieve and understand messages.
“How is language organized in order to be meaningful?” this is the question
we ask and attempt to answer at the level of semantics. Semantics is that level
of linguistic analysis where meaning is analyzed. It is the most abstrack levell
of linguistic analysis, since we cannot see or observe meaning as we can
observe and record sounds. Meaning is related very closely to the human
capacity to think logically and to understand. So when we try to analysis
meaning, we are trying to analyze our own capacity to think and understand
our own ability to create meaning. Semantics concerns it self with `giving a
systematic account of the nature of meaning` (Leech,1981).

Knowledge encoded in the vocabulary of the language and in its pattern of

buliding more elaborate meanings, up to the levels of sentence meaning.
According to Alan he said that, semantics is concerned with the stable

1
Patrict Griffiths, An istroduction to english Semantics and Pragmatics (Endinburgh
University Press Ltd:Endinburgh, 2006), p. 28.
2
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary International Students new 9th Edition,( Oxford
University Press.
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meaning resources of language-as-a-system. 3We are all necessarily interested

in meaning. According to Alan, Semantics deals with truth conditional aspects
of meaning.4 It means that Semantics is concerned with the description of
meanings. We wonder about the meaning of a new word. Sometimes we are
not sure about the message we should get from something we read or hear,
and we are concerned about getting our own messages across to others. We
find pleasure in jokes, which often depend for their humor on double
meanings of words or ambiguities in sentences.

Commercial organizations spend a lot of effort and money on naming

products, devising slogans, and creating messages that will be meaningful to
the buying public. Legal scholars argue about the interpretation that is, the
meaning of a law or a judicial decision. Literary scholars quarrel similarly
5
over the meaning of some poem or story. Three disciplines are concerned
with the systematic study of meaning in it self : psychology, philosophy and
linguistics. Their particular interests and approaches are different, yet each
borrows from and contributes to the others.

1. Psychologists

Psychologists are interested in how individual humans learn, how they

retain, recall, or lose information, how they classify, make judgements and
solve problems in other words, how the human mind seeks meanings and
works with them.

2. Philosophers

Philosophers of language are concerned with how we know, how any

particular fact that we know or accept as true is related to other possible
facts what must be antecedent (a presupposition) to that fact and what is a
likely consequence, or entailment of it what statements are mutually

3
Alan Cruse, A Glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics, ((Endinburgh University Press
Ltd:Endinburgh,2006),p. 2.
4
Ibid, p. 4.
5
Charles W. Creidler, Intriducing English Semantics (Taylor & Francis e-
Library:Rouledge, 2002),p.15-!6.
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contradictory, which sentences express the same meaning in different

words, and which are unrelated.

3. Linguistics

Linguistics want to understand how language works. Just what common

knowledge do two people possess when they share a language English,
Swahili, Korean or whatever that makes it possible for them to give and
get information, to express their feelings and their intentions to one
another, and to be understood with a fair degree of success? Linguistics is
concerned with identifying the meaningful elements of specific languages,
for example, English words like paint and happy and affixes like the -er of
painter and the un- of unhappy. It is concerned with describing how such
elements go together to express more complex meanings in phrases like
the unhappy painter and sentences like The painter is unhappy and telling
how these are related to each other. Linguistics also deals with the
meanings expressed by modulations of a speaker’s voice and the processes
by which hearers and readers relate new information to the information
they already have.

Some expert describe about semantics such as:

1. According to Lyons said that, Semantics is study of meaning.

2. Hurford and Heasley said that, Semantics is the study of meaning in
language.
3. Saeed said that, Semantics is the study communicated through language
4. Lobner said that, Semantics is a part of lingustics that is concerned with
meaning.
5. Kreidler said that, Lingustics semantics is the study of how language
organize and express meaning.6
The other approach to semantics we could call psychologically-oriented
semantics or cognitive semantics. This approach does not the logical
structure of language as important for the description of the meaning of

6
Charles W. Creidler, Intriducing English Semantics (Taylor & Francis e-
Library:Rouledge, 2002),p.3.
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language, and tends to disregard nations such as truth-values or strict

compositionality. Cognitive semantics tries to explain semantics
phenomena by appealing to biological, psychological and even cultural
issues. So we can conclude that semantics is study of meaning. It is a wide
subject within the general study. An udesrtanding of semantics is essential
to the study of language acquisiton (how language users acquire a sense of
meaning, as speakers and writers, listeners and readers) and of language
changed (how meanings alter over time, it is importanat for
undersatanding language in social contexts, as these are likely to effect
meaning, and for understanding varieties of english and effects of style. It
is thus one of the most fundamental concepts in lingustics.

B. Brief History of Semantics

The term of ‘semantics’ from the various derivatives of the Greek verb
semaino “to mean”or “ to signify”). It was appeared for the first time in the
17th century in A Discourse concerning Prodigies by John Spencer on 1663,
but it was used here in a philological rather than stricly linguistic sense. The
firts use of the term from a linguistic perspective did not occur until well into
the 19th century when the French linguist Michel Breal on 1893 introduce and
defined semantics as ‘la science des signification ‘. Breal was folllowed by
Arsene Darmesteten who employed the term in a diachronic strudy. From then
on, scholars involved in the study of meaning began to use the term
‘semantics’ and ‘semasiology’ interchangeably, with the first of this ultimately
prevailing, and by the beginning on the 20th century, semantics was defined as
the school of thought concerned with the fields of meaning of words.
7
Initially, semantics was understood to be the study of historical semantics.
Years later, Firth would differentiate between two approaches to the study of
meaning, using this two terms: semasiology is concerned with the study of

7
Begona Crespo, Change in Life, Change in Language, (london: Peter Lang Edition,
2013),p. 63.
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changes in meaning, while semantics is use for ‘situational and experiental

study of meaning8.

John Locke (1632-1704) in his essay concerning humane understanding

reiterated the notion that language is convential, disclaiming any inherent or
necessary link between a word and its denotatum (Locke 1700:III.ii.1).
`ideasa` provide the mind with representations of objective qulities of objects
(such as size,shape, or weight) and also secondary qualities such as
colour,taste, or smell which are subjective (ibid. Book II).

C. The Systematic Study of Meaning

Ligustics semantics is an attempt to explicate the knowledge of any

speakers of a language which allows that speaker to communicate facts,
feeling, intentions and products of the imagination to other speakers and to
understand what they communicate to him or her. According to Alsayed
(2012) meaning covers a variety of aspect of language and there is no general
agreement about the nature of meaning. Looking at the word it self, the
dictionary will suggest a number of different meanings of the noun “meaning”
and the verb “mean”. The word mean can be applied to peole who use
language, i.e. to speakers, in the sense of “intend”. And it can be applied to
words and sentences in the sense of “be equivalent”. To understand what
meaning is, one has to keep in mind whether we are talking about what
speakers mean or what words (or sentences) mean. It may seem to you that
meaning is so vague, insubstantial, and elusive that it is imppossible to come
to any clear,concrete, or tanible conclusion about it. We hope to convince you
that by careful though about the language you speak and the way it is used,
define conclusions can be arrived at concerning meaning. In the passages
above he is playfully suggesting that the meanings carried by words may be
affected by speakers will. The aim of serious semantics is to explain and
clarify the nature of meaning. And Semantics deal with :

1. Words meaning

8
Ibid, p. 64.
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Language is used for communication. In communicating, speakers or

writers communicate meaning to listeners or readers. The nature of the
meaning of a words is its referent. The differentof word can be an object,
an event, a state a process or an action here in this world. Word meaning
can also said lexical meaning. The meaning of lexemes depend upon the of
sentences in which they occur. Example :

a. Hot is : a state of having a high temperature

b. To sew is : an action of working with a needle and thread
c. Drizzling is : the process of raining in small drops
d. A party is : an event of the gathering of persons, by invitation,
for pleasure
2. Sentence Meaning

According to Hurford, Heasley and Smith, sentences meaning is what a

sentence means, what it counts as the equivalent of in the language
concerned. 9The meaning of sentence is the product of both lexical and
grammatical meaning (the meaning of the constituent of lexemes and of
the grammatical constructions). Examples :

a. This is a beautiful garden flower

b. This is a beautiful flower garden

In sentence (a) focus is on flower, where as in sentence (b) focus on

garden. It is clear that the conceptual meaning of the sentence depends on
the reference and the structures of the words.

3. Utterance Meaning

Speaker meaning is what a speakier means (i.e. intends to convey) when

he uses a piece of language. In communication, the meaning of an
utterance is not only determined by the conceptual meaning of the
sentence but also by paralinguistic features such as stress, pitch,

9
James Hurford, Bendan Heasley, Michael B. Smith, Semantics a Coursebook,(New
York : Cambridge University Press, 2007),p. 8.
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intonation,body movements, head movements, hand gestures, eye contact,

and the distance between the interlacutors.

Example: “it’s one o’clock,can be interpreted as “it’s really one o’clock”

or it’s time to have lunch” or it’s time to stop the lecture.” So the meaning
doest not only depends the reference, conceptual sentence but also context,
gestures, intonation, etc.
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CHAPTER III

CONCLUTION

The study of meaning can be undertaken in various ways. Linguistic

semantics is an attempt to explicate the knowledge of any speaker of a
language which allows that speaker to communicate facts, feelings, intention
and products of the imagination to other speakers and to understand what they
communicate to him or her. Semantics is one part of the grammar, phonology,
syntax and morphology are other parts. Speakers of a language have an implicit
knowledge about what is meaningful in their language, and it is easy to show
this. In our account of what that knowledge is, we introduced ten technical
terms: anomaly, paraphrase, synonymy semantic feature, antonymy,
contradiction, ambiguity, adjacency pa irs, entailment and presupposition.
Whereas semantics studies the literal meaning of an expression. In the other
side semantics is a branch of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words and
sentences.
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