SEMANTICS

1.               STUDYING MEANING

There are two main branches in studying meaning, semantic and pragmatic

·                     Semantic is the real meaning of the word.

E.g. “could you please give me that book?”. Book here means the real meaning of the book. It’s a thing that we can read.

·                     Pragmatics is another meaning from a word.

E.g.  “Right arm”

Right arms here have two different meaning. First is the real meaning of right arm is part of body. The second meaning is someone that we trust to do something.

1.1              Utterances and Sentences

·                     Utterances are interpreted in contexts; there is a context in utterances.

·                     Sentences are interpreted abstract, there is no context in sentences

The differences between utterances and sentences is when you are using a word with meaning and there is no context to think, it’s mean you are doing semantics, but if there is a context to be brought into consideration when you are saying, it’s mean you are doing pragmatics. Pragmatics is the study of utterance meaning. And semantics is the study of sentence meaning and word meaning.

There are three distinguishable stages. Literal meaning, explicature and implicature

“This bag was limited edition”

©                  Literal meaning: someone who said this sentence mean that this bag was made in limited edition. The speaker means the real meaning of the sentence.

©                  Explicature: there are several interpretation from this utterance based on what people know. Firstly Mela asked Ime “is your bag expensive?” and Ime responds “this bag is limited edition”. It can be interpreted that the bag is expensive because the bag was limited edition. Even ime did not say that it was expensive.

©                  Implicature: when ime said that “this bas was limited edition” there is a background that make her said that utterance. We go to get further information about this utterance. For example, the relationship between Ime and Mela. It can be that conversation happened between friends or it happened between seller and buyer.

1.2              Entailments

Entailment is the principle that under certain conditions the truth of one statement makes sure the truth of a second statement. "For example," he says, "the performative sentence 'I beg you to help me open this box' illocutionary entails the imperative sentence 'Please, help me open this box!' and truth conditionally entails the declarative sentence 'You can help me open this box'". Another example:

·                     The performance was excellent ⇒ The performance was very good

·                     Jimmy has arrived in Jakarta ⇒ Jimmy is not in Bali

·                     Jimmy has arrived in Jakarta ⇒ Jimmy went to Jakarta

2.               ADJECTIVE MEANING

2.1              Synonym

Synonymy is equivalence of sense. For example, Father/daddy/dad/ there are synonym. This is the example of synonym in semantic:

a. Ailee is a nice girl.

b. Ailee is a good girl.

c. (2.2a ⇒2.2b) & (2.2b ⇒2.2a)

d. *Ailee is a nice girl but she isn’t a good girl.

e. *Ailee is a good girl but she isn’t a nice girl.

The word nice and good here is a synonym, so ( a⇒b) and (b⇒a). you can not said like (D and E) because the meaning is the same so, you can not make the word become like that.

2.2  Antonyms

The term antonym is the word that has opposite meaning, for instance clean and dirty.

a. The street was clean.

b. The street was dirty.

c. (2.2a ⇒NOT2.2b) & (2.2b ⇒NOT2.2a)

d. (NOT2.2a ⇒2.2b) & (NOT 2.2b ⇒2.2a)

The word has different or opposite meaning that’s why “the street was clean ⇒ the street was not dirty” is true. It can not be “the street was clean ⇒ the street was dirty” because the word clean and dirty have opposite meaning so, it’s not entailments.

3.               NOUN VOCABULARY

3.1              The has-relation

The part of a thing is called prototype. For example:

·                     A prototype tree has root.

·                     A prototype tree has leaf.

·                     A prototype tree has a fruit.

·                     A prototype tree has a flower.

3.2              Hyponymy

For example,  handphone is one kind of gadget, and a tablet and a i-pad are other kinds of gadget. The pattern of entailment that defines hyponymy is :

a. he is playing handphone.

b. he is playing gadget.     

c. (3.8a ⇒   3.8b) & (3.8b ⇒   3.8a)

handphone is hyponym from gadget so, playing handphone ⇒   playing gadget but, playing gadget ⇒   playing handphone. It’s because of gadget is superordinate of handphone. Palaying gadget doesn’t mean he is playing handphone. It can be he is playing tablet so, it’s not entailments.

3.3              Incompatibility

Handphone, tablet and I-pad are hyponym of gadget and the differences between that hyponym is called Incompatibility. Handphone is different with tablet so that is incompatibility.

4.                VERBS AND SITUATIONS

There is achievement and accomplishment when we are talking about situation types.

a. She got car accident. (Achievement)

b. She had a sprained ankle. (State)

c. She had chemotherapy. (Activity)

d. She got better. (Accomplishment)

she got car accident here is achievement because there is a transition from healthy to sick and it can not be stopped. It’s strange to stop the car accident. She got better here is an accomplishment because there the transition. Activity is the process when you want to get something (achievement).  When an unwell person gets better (an accomplishment), there is a phase of healing or taking medicine or whatever (an activity) which culminates in a transition from ill to well (an achievement), and immediately after that the person is in good health (a state).

5.               TENSE AND ASPECT

·                     Tense: to locate events in time. it’s about the time and some kind of the tense are: past tense, present and future tense

·                     Aspect: it has relation to the time of speaking or writing, and about grammatical signals regarding the sender’s notions of how an event is distributed in time. when we use past tense, it’s mean that we said something that happen in the past time.

6.               MODALITY, SCOPE AND QUANTFICATION

Modality is the term for a cluster of meanings focused on the notions of Necessity and possibility.

a. You must submit it.

b. You have to submit it.

c. You mustn’t submit it.

d. You don’t have to submit it.

Must and have to here had different meaning. When it uses must it’s mean you should submitted the task but, when you said “you don’t have to submit it” it’s mean you can submitted the task or not. The main carriers of modality are a set of auxiliary verbs called

Modals: will, would, can, could, may, might, shall, should, must and ought to.

·                     Epistemic interpretations have to do with knowledge and understanding. Its mean when we want to said something it based on our knowledge or understanding. For instance:

a. Isco went by bus.

b. Isco probably went by bus.

The speaker can said “isco probably went by bus” because of his understanding. Maybe he knows that Isco always go to somewhere using bus so, he can say that he is probably went by bus.