Assignment Topic:

Semantics and Word as a Semantic Unit

Course Title: ESL/EFL Introduction to Linguistics

Course no: CC007

Trimester: Summer 2017

Submitted by: Submitted to:

Mohammad Jahirul Islam Sumana Gupta

ID: 1171001 Assistant Professor
Reg.: ENG17000680 Department of English
Section: N/A Jahangirnagar University

Submission Date: 26 August 2017

Semantics is simply the study of meaning of a language. We know that language consists of
words, which are considered as the basic meaningful unit of language. So, the question arises
if word can be considered as the basic unit of semantics. To come into the conclusion, we
must know what semantics deals with, and then analyze and investigate functions of words in
semantics.

Semantics and Functions of Words in Semantics:

Semantics is one of the levels of linguistics and it is concerned with meaning. The notion of
meaning, actually, covers a wide range of applications, some of which belong to the field of
semantics and others lie beyond it. Undoubtedly, a particular word, phrase or sentence has its
own meaning. Likewise our everyday actions or deeds also have meanings. However,
semantics is exclusively concerned with the meanings of linguistic entities such as words,
phrases, sentences and other grammatical forms, but not with the meanings of actions or
contexts. In other words, semantics deals with the conceptual meaning, but not with the
associative meaning.

Conceptual meaning is synonymous with primary, central, logical, cognitive or denotative

meaning of a word. It is the first ordinary meaning listed in dictionaries, which is not affected
by the context, or emotional overtones associated with the act of communication. There is an
assumed shared conceptual meaning of every word of a language. There is a universal
implication of the conceptual meaning. On the contrary, associative meaning of a word is
affected by the context, background, time and the cultural realities of the users of language.
This type of meaning is not static. It is variable and open ended.

Semantics should be able to explain the nature of the meaning of words as well as that of
sentences. However, we have to keep in mind that the meaning of a word may not always be
realized from its referential or denotational characteristics. Indeed, there are many words
whose basic characteristics may not be easily analyzed. Such words are best studied by
focusing on the kind of relationship they create with other words. These relationships are
based on the sense of the words. There are several kinds of sense relations as a result of the
semantic relatedness between the form and meaning and between two meanings, which will
be discussed in the following.

Synonymy:
When two words are closely related in their meaning, the state is termed as synonymy. The
pairs of words that have very close similarities in meaning are synonyms. For example, in the
English language, ‘small’ and ‘little’, ‘big’ and ‘large’, ‘politician’ and ‘statesman’ and so
forth are synonyms.

Antonymy:
The relationship of oppositeness is referred to as antonymy. The pairs of words which are
carrying nearly opposite meaning are antonyms. For example, ‘big’ and ‘small’, ‘boy’ and
‘girl’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ etc. are antonyms.

Polysemy:
A word constitutes the case of polysemy if it has two or more interrelated meanings or
meaning variants. Each of these meaning variants has to be learnt separately in order to be
understood. Look at the following examples, where the same word “foot” indicates to
different meanings.

 He hurt his foot.

 He stood at the foot of the mountain.
 A foot of the bed is broken.

Hyponymy:
When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another, we have hyponymy.
For instance, dogs, elephants, goats, and so on are included in animals. We can also relate
hyponymy to professions to include law, medicine, teaching, banking, and so on. There is
always a hierarchical relationship drawing from the general to samples. A hyponym is a word
whose meaning is encompassed by the meaning of the other word: woman is a hyponym of
human.

Homonymy:
Homonymy explains a situation of identical spelling or pronunciation but with different
unrelated meanings. Such words usually create problems of ambiguity. There are three
categories that together constitute homonymy, which are different from each other on the
basis of subtle differences. These are explicated below.

1) Homonyms:
Homonyms refer to the words which have same spelling and pronunciation, but are
used to convey different meanings. For instance, the verb ‘lie’ in sentence ‘Please lie
down’ carries a different meaning from the verb ‘lie’ in the sentence ‘Don’t lie, tell the
truth.’ But the word ‘lie’ is written and pronounced in the same way in both cases.
 2) Homophones:
Homophones are the words which are pronounced in the same way, but they have
different spellings and meanings. For example, ‘steel’ and ‘steal’ are written differently,
but are pronounced in the same way. Similarly ‘son’ and ‘sun’ are homophones.

3) Homographs:
Homographs are words which are spelled the same, but have different pronunciations
and meanings. As for example, the verb bear (to carry or endure) and the noun bear (the
animal with a shaggy coat) are homographs.

So far we have acquired a little knowledge about semantics and a few functions of words. Let
us delve into further analysis and see if we can fit ‘word’ as the basic unit of semantics.

Word as a Semantic Unit:

It is obvious that words play an important role in the field of semantics, as they are the carrier
of meaning. So it is reasonable to assume that the word is one of the basic units of semantics.
However, we have to encounter some difficulties in establishing the word as such a unit.

We have come to know that words are sometimes confusing; in one case, same spelled word
has two or more different meanings, and on the other case, same pronounced word has two
different meanings and spelling. There are some other issues that we face in establishing the
word as a basic unit of semantics.

First of all, not all words have the same kind of meaning as others. Some words have little or
no meaning. For instance, prepositions have no meaning when taken into isolation; they are
only meaningful in sentences. They just play a grammatical function. Next, there are words
(mainly verbs) such as ‘going’, ‘working’, ‘singing’ etc. are unable to convey the actual
meaning and time without the help of auxiliary verbs. Moreover, we must notice that some
whole group of words must be taken together to establish meaning. These are idioms.

So, we can realize that words are not providing us clear and explicit meanings in every
situation. They are ambiguous in many cases and sometimes carry no meaning without
playing merely a grammatical function. That is why, it is not appropriate to consider word as
a semantic unit.

To conclude, though semantics is study of meaning and words are primarily believed to be
the carriers of meaning, we cannot consider words as semantic units because of several
limitations. So, we should abandon the idea that the word is the basic unit of semantics.