Semantics

Semantics (Greek semantikos, giving signs, significant, symptomatic, from sema, sign) refers to the aspects of meaning that are expressed in a language, code, or other form of representation. Semantics is contrasted with two other aspects of meaningful expression, namely, syntax, the construction of complex signs from simpler signs, and pragmatics, the practical use of signs by agents or communities of interpretation in particular circumstances and contexts. By the usual convention that calls a study or a theory by the name of its subject matter, semantics may also denote the theoretical study of meaning in systems of signs.

Though terminology varies, writers on the subject of meaning generally recognize two sorts of meaning that a significant expression may have: (1) the relation that a sign has to objects and objective situations, actual or possible, and (2) the relation that a sign has to other signs, most especially the sorts of mental signs that are conceived of as concepts.

Most theorists refer to the relation between a sign and its objects, as always including any manner of objective reference, as its denotation. Some theorists refer to the relation between a sign and the signs that serve in its practical interpretation as its connotation, but there are many more differences of opinion and distinctions of theory that are made in this case. Many theorists, especially in the formal semantic, pragmatic, and semiotic traditions, restrict the application of semantics to the denotative aspect, using other terms or altogether ignoring the connotative aspect.

Linguistics

In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, as borne on the syntactic levels of words, phrases, sentences, and sometimes larger units of discourse, generically referred to as texts. As with any empirical science, semantics involves the interplay of concrete data with theoretical concepts. Traditionally, semantics has included the study of connotative sense and denotative reference, truth conditions, argument structure, thematic roles, discourse analysis, and the linkage of all of these to syntax.

The decompositional perspective towards meaning holds that the meaning of words can be analyzed by defining meaning atoms or primitives, which establish a language of thought. An area of study is the meaning of compounds, another is the study of relations between different linguistic expressions (homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, paronyms, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy, exocentric, and endocentric).

The Dynamic Turn in Semantics

This traditional view of semantics, as a finite meaning inherent in a lexical unit that can be composed to generate meanings for larger chunks of discourse, is being fiercely debated in the emerging domain of cognitive linguistics and also in the non-Fodorian camp in Philosophy of Language. The challenge is motivated by

• factors internal to language, such as the problem of resolving indexical or anaphora (e.g. this X, him, last week). In these situations "context" serves as the input, but the interpreted utterance also modifies the context, so it is also the output. Thus, the interpretation is necessarily dynamic and the meaning of sentences are viewed as context-change potentials instead of propositions.
• factors external to language, i.e. Language is not a set of labels stuck on things, but "a toolbox, the importance of whose elements lie in the way they function rather than their attachments to things." This view reflects the position of the later Wittgenstein and his famous game example, and is related to the positions of Quine, Davidson and others.

A concrete example of the latter phenomenon is semantic underspecification — meanings are not complete without some elements of context. To take an example of a single word, "red", it's meaning in a phrase such as red book is similar to many other usages, and can be viewed as compositional. However, the colour implied in phrases such as "red wine" (very dark), and "red hair" (coppery), or "red soil", or "red skin" - are very different. Indeed, these colours by themselves would not be called "red" by native speakers. These instances are contrastive, so "red wine" is so called only in comparison with the other kind of wine (which also is not "white" for the same reasons). This view goes back to de Saussure:

Each of a set of synonyms like redouter ('to dread'), craindre ('to fear'), avoir peur ('to be afraid') has its particular value only because they stand in contrast with one another. No word has a value that can be identified independently of what else is in its vicinity.

and may go back to earlier Indian views on language, especially the Nyaya view of words as indicators and not carriers of meaning.

An attempt to propose a system based on propositional meaning for semantic underspecification can be found in the Generative Lexicon model of James Pustejovsky, who extends contextual operations (based on type shifting) into the lexicon. Thus meanings are generated on the fly based on context.

Prototype Theory

Another set of concepts related to fuzziness in semantics is based on prototypes. The work of Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff in the 1970s led to a view that natural categories are not characterizable in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but are graded (fuzzy at their boundaries) and inconsistent as to the status of their constituent members.

Systems of categories are not objectively "out there" in the world but are rooted in people's experience. These categories evolve as learned concepts of the world —meaning is not an objective truth, but a subjective construct, learned from experience, and language arises out of the "grounding of our conceptual systems in shared embodiment and bodily experience". A corollary of this is that the conceptual categories (i.e. the lexicon) will not be identical for different cultures, or indeed, for every individual in the same culture. This leads to another debate (see the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis or Eskimo words for snow).

Logic and mathematics

Many of the formal approaches to semantics applied in linguistics, mathematical logic, and computer science originated in techniques for the semantics of logic, most influentially being Alfred Tarski's ideas in model theory and his semantic theory of truth. Also, inferential role semantics has its roots in the work of Gerhard Gentzen on proof theory and proof-theoretic semantics. One of the most popular alternatives to the standard model theoretic semantics is truth-value semantics.

Computer science

In computer science, considered in part as an application of mathematical logic, semantics reflects the meaning of programs.

Psychology

In psychology, semantic memory is memory for meaning, in other words, the aspect of memory that preserves only the gist, the general significance, of remembered experience, while episodic memory is memory for the ephemeral details, the individual features, or the unique particulars of experience.

Semasiology

In International Scientific Vocabulary semantics is also called semasiology.

See also

Major theorists

Aristotle Thomas Aquinas Augustine of Hippo J.L. Austin Jeremy Bentham Rudolf Carnap Janet Dean Fodor Gottlob Frege

Cliff Goddard Nelson Goodman H.P. Grice Jürgen Habermas Ray Jackendoff Saul Kripke John Locke John Stuart Mill Charles W. Morris

Charles Sanders Peirce C.K. Ogden Plato I.A. Richards Bertrand Russell Ferdinand de Saussure Alfred Tarski Anna Wierzbicka Ludwig Wittgenstein

Linguistics and semiotics

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously Discourse representation theory General semantics Meta-semantics Natural semantic metalanguage Pragmatic maxim Pragmaticism Pragmatism Semantic change Semantic class

Semantic feature Semantic field Semantic lexicon Semantic progression Semantic property Semeiotic Sememe Semiosis Semiotics Words whose meanings changed when people misunderstood them in context

Logic and mathematics

Formal logic Game semantics Model theory Possible world

Proof-theoretic semantics Semantics of logic Semantic theory of truth Truth-value semantics

Computer science

Axiomatic semantics Denotational semantics Formal semantics of programming languages Inheritance semantics Operational semantics Semantic integration

Semantic link Semantic network Semantic spectrum Semantic web Theory-based semantics

External links

• OWL
• Cypher Free software that converts natural language statements into semantic metadata representation

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