SEMANTICS

“ Language without
meaning is meaningless.”

Roman Jakobson
 What is SEMANTICS?
is the technical term used to
refer to the study of meaning of
words, phrases, and sentences,
and, since meaning is a part of
language, semantics is a part of
linguistics.
 SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY
-refers to the characteristic of a phrase
that has more than one meaning.

Example:
French literature teacher
can mean...
 a teacher of French literature
 literature teacher who is French
 LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
-refers to a characteristic of a word
that has more than one sense.

Example:
The English word fly is ambiguous because it has
more than one sense.
 an insect
 a zipper on a pair of pants
 a baseball hit into the air with a bat
 ENTAILMENT
-is a proposition (expressed in sentence)
that follows necessarily from another
sentence. A sentence entails another if the
meaning of the first includes the meaning of
the second. It is also called paraphrase.
Example:
John had a fatal accident.
The sentence entails that ‘John died’ since it is
impossible to figure in a fatal accident without
loss of life.
 ANAPHORA
- is a linguistic expression that refers to
another linguistic expression.

Example:
The tsunami killed thousands of people. It was
devastating.

It is used to anaphorically to refer to “the

tsunami”.