Linguistic semantics

Linguistic semantics is a subfield of general semantics and linguistics that studies the encoding of meaning within linguistic expressions. Etymologically, the term comes from the Greek σημαντικός sēmantikós, which meant 'relevant meaning', derived from σῆμα sêma, which meant 'sign'.

Structural Semantics

A language is a conventional system for verbal communication, that is, a system for transmitting conventionally coded messages that transmit information or allow interaction with other individuals.

The transmission of information requires some kind of encoding of the semantic content in the form of linguistic expressions. The syntax explicitly encodes some of the syntactic relations of the situation or state of events described by the message. Thus, the nouns represent the physical entities that intervene in a state of facts, while the verb describes states of some of these entities or the processes that some entities carry out on others. The different types of material entities can be classified according to the type of function they play in each state of fact in different thematic roles. Thus, a grammatical description of a language must contain certain principles that describe how the thematic roles of the entities involved in a sentence are encoded. Therefore, semantic information is an integral part of grammar.

However, linguistic semantics does not end with the study of thematic roles and their codification. For example, lexical semantics deals with the encoding of meanings, both in the paradigmatic dimension, and also with meanings obtained by deriving various morphological procedures.

Terms Related to Semantics

• Ilocutive acts: These are acts with a particular ilocutive force.
• Cohiponimia: It is the relationship that is established between hiponyms of the same hyperonym, so that "sauce" and "olmo" are cohiponimos, for both have the same hyperonymous, "tree".
• Ilocutive force: It is the communicative intention with which the speaker issues a statement.
• Hiperonimia: It is the relationship between a word (hyperonym) whose meaning, more general, is fully included in the meanings of other more specific words (hyponomes): "tree" is a hyperonym of "sauce, olmo,...", because the meaning of these latter includes all the features of "tree".
• Hyponymy: It is the reverse relationship to hyperonymy, in which the meaning of a more specific word (the hyponymous) contains all the meanings of the most general term (hyperonymous); so, "olmo" and "sauce" are hypnomists of "tree", because in its meaning they include the traits of the latter, which is its hyperonymous.
• Holonimia: It is the relationship between a word (holonimo) and another or other (merónimos) that designate parts of the denoted by the first. Unlike hyponimia/hyperonimia, here it is not a matter of a meaning being contained in another, but of what is named by the metroonym is, in extralinguistic reality, one of the parts that make up what is named by the holonimo. Thus, "tree" is a holonimo of "hojas", "ramas", "tronco" and "raíces", which are their meronimos.
• Meronimia: This is the reverse relationship to the previous one, so that a meronimo designates a part of the reality named by a holonimo. If the hiponyms designate "classes" of hyperonyms, the meronimos designate "parts" of holonimos.
• Monosemia: It is monosemic words that have only meaning or meaning.
• Polysemia: A single word has several meanings, acquired by extension or restriction of its original meaning, so that all of them are semantically related.
• Homonimia: It belongs to the same kind of relationship as polysemia; several meanings associated with a single form, but this does not originate from the divergence of meanings, but because of the confluence of forms between several words that were different in origin, so that their different meanings do not relate to each other.

There are three types of homonimia:

• Homophony or partial homonimity: Words have the same pronunciation, but either do not have the same graph or do not belong to the same syntactic category. Example: Baya (fruit) / go (verb go), basto (tosco) / vasto (large), mate (herb) / I killed (verb kill in the past).
• Homography or absolute homonimia, in which there is no difference in form, but the words belong to the different syntactic category. Example: tent (pez)/carp (covered).
• Paradigm

• Paronymy: It is the relationship between two similar terms, although not identical in form and different meanings. Example: Absorber/absolver, grid/regia.
• Synonym: It is the relationship between two terms of similar and interchangeable meanings in the discourse for belonging to the same syntactic category. Example: wide/extensive, hair/roll, estimate/acpreciate.

There are two types of synonym:

• Absolute
• Partial

• Antonimia: It is the relationship that maintains two words whose meanings are opposed, either by incompatibility (living/death), or by a gradation that allows the existence of intermediate terms (cold/hot/template), either in a reciprocity relationship (dar/receive).
• Criptolexemia: Cryptolexemia is significant whose meaning ignores the speaker and which, especially in the literary sphere, awaken an aesthetic pleasure in him.

Lexical semantics, a branch of Linguistics that studies the meaning of words, can be approached from an onomasiological perspective, which starts from the meaning to arrive at the form, or from a semasiological perspective, which starts from the form (significant) to arrive at the study of meaning.

Meaning and reference

An adequate description of natural languages must contain meaning data, linguistic reference and truth conditions. But semantic analyzes are also applied to those expressions made of words: phrases and sentences. Traditionally, phrases and sentences have received more attention than the words that compose them.

Meaning and referent

• Referent: It is what the word denotes. For example:
  • Own names refer to individuals.
  • Common names refer to groups of individuals.
  • Adjectives refer to qualities.
  • Verbs refer to actions.

However, the concept of referent entails certain problems. On the one hand, it doesn't always work, since not all verbs denote action, nor all adjectives, qualities... It also doesn't work when the noun refers to an entity that doesn't exist, something imaginary. Finally, several expressions can share the same referent but mean very different things. For all these reasons, when studying the word we take into account the following:

• Sitting: The mental image of what something is. It may even not exist in the real world. It's more conceptual than the referent. For example, "friendship, happiness."

Therefore, it is a very important branch of linguistic grammar in the elaboration of texts.

Denotation and connotation

• Denotation: Denotation is basically the relationship between a word and what it refers to.
• Connotation: Connotation is based on certain experiences and values associated with meaning.

Thus, while "dog" and "pooch" denote the same meaning, their connotations are very different. The connotation varies depending on who it is suggested to. Thus, the word "pacifist" has different connotations in military jargon and in a group of "hippies".

It should be mentioned that synonyms do not exist, since the law of language is lost, "the one that says that a language seeks efficiency, the least effort there is in a language".

Likewise, the semes constitute a fundamental part in terms of the constituents of meaning, being in this context the basic functional unit.