Table of ContentsIntroductionBasic DivisionsLinguistic Semantics and GrammarIntroductionSemantics is the field of linguistics concerned with the study of meaning in language. Linguistic semantics has been defined as the study of how languages ​​organize and express meanings. Interestingly, says RL Trask, some of the most important work in semantics was done from the late 19th century onwards by philosophers [rather than linguists]. However, over the past 50 years, approaches to semantics have proliferated and the topic is now one of the most vibrant areas of linguistics (Language and Linguistics: The Key Concepts, 2007). Say no to plagiarism . Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"?Get the original essayThe term semantic (from the Greek meaning sign) was coined by the French linguist Michel Bréal (1832-1915), commonly considered to be a founder of modern semantics. The technical term for the study of meaning in language is semantics. But whenever this term is used, a word of caution is in order. Any scientific approach to semantics must be clearly distinguished from the pejorative sense of the term that has developed in popular usage, when talking about the way in which language can be manipulated in order to mislead the public. A newspaper headline might read. “Tax increases reduced to semantics” – referring to how a government tried to hide a proposed increase behind carefully chosen words. Or someone might say in an argument, "It's just semantics," implying that it's just a verbal quibble, unrelated to anything in the argument. real world. This type of nuance is absent when we talk about semantics from the objective point of view of linguistic research. The linguistic approach studies the properties of meaning in a systematic and objective way, with reference to as wide a range of utterances and languages ​​as possible. (David Crystal, How Language Works. Overlook, 2006) Fundamental divisions Based on the distinction between word meaning and sentence meaning, we can recognize two main divisions in the study of semantics: lexical semantics and semantics of sentences. Lexical semantics is the study of word meaning, while sentence semantics is the study of the principles that govern the construction of phrase meaning and sentence meaning from compositional combinations of individual lexemes. The job of semantics is to study basic literal meaning. word meanings are seen primarily as parts of a linguistic system, while pragmatics focuses on how these core meanings are used in practice, including topics such as how different expressions are assigned meanings. referents in different contexts and the different ones (ironic, metaphorical, etc.) to which language is subject. (Nick Riemer, Introducing Semantics. Cambridge University Press, 2010)The scope of semantics A recurring problem in semantics is the delimitation of its subject. The term meaning can be used in a variety of ways, and only some of them correspond to the usual understanding of the scope of linguistic or computational semantics. We will consider that the scope of semantics is limited to literal interpretations of sentences in a context, ignoring phenomena like irony, metaphor or conversational implicature. (Stephen G. Pulman, Basic Notions of Semantics. SRI International, Cambridge, England) The scope of semantics A problem, 1998)