Review Semantic from Other Journals

SEMANTICS REVIEW

A. Defenition Sematics from Experts Perspective

    Bloomfield (1933) stated that the context of situation was an essential part of meaning. He defined the meaning of a linguistic form as the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response which it calls forth in the hearer. Palmer(1981) used reference in the sense of non– linguistic world of objects and experiences. In this sense, the word reference is used for the whole network of the contexts of situations in which we live. In other words, both Bloomfield and Palmer focus on the context of situations. Bloomfield also thinks of meaning as something describable in terms of stimuli and responses like Skinner who came after him. Skinner (1957) views meaning as a result of stimuli and responses made by participants in a verbal act of communication. Like Skinner, Bloomfield explained his view of meaning with the help of an imagined verbal communication between Jack and Jill.
    Malinowski (1923) and Firth (1951) believe that the description of a language could not be complete without some reference to the context of situation in which the language operates. They made statements of meaning in terms of the situation.

Theories of Semantics: Merits and Limitations Ramadan & Ababneh

Firth felt that Malinowski’s context of situation was not satisfactory for the more accurate and precise linguistic approach to the problem. So, he sees the context of situation as part of the linguistic apparatus in the same way as are the grammatical categories that he uses. It was best used as “ a suitable schematic construct” to apply to language event, and he, therefore, suggested the following categories.

• The relevant features of participants: persons, personalities.

• The verbal action of the participants.

• The non–verbal action of the participants.

• The relevant object.

• The effect of the verbal action. In this way, contexts of situation can be grouped and classified; this is essential if it is to be part of linguistic analysis of language.

 Although the terms lexical field or semantic field are usually used interchangeably, Siegfried wyler (1992) made a distinction between a lexical field is a structure formed by lexemes while a semantic field is underlying meaning which finds expression in lexemes. There are lexical groups or components that made up semantic field also used for semantic field. Those are:

1.     Meronymy

     A meronymy is a word that denotes a constituent part or a member of something. For example: applies a meronymy of apple tree; finger is a meronymy of hand.

2.     Holonymy

     Holonymy is a opposite of meronymy. Holonymy is the name of the whole of which the meronymy is a part. For instance: apple tree is a holonymy of apple; hand is a holonymy of finger.

3.     Sememe

     Sememe is a unit of meaning conveyed by a morpheme that is, a word or word element. A sememe is a semantic language unit of meaning correlative to a morpheme. A sememe can be the meaning expressed by a morpheme, such as the English pluralizing morpheme -s, which carries the sememic feature (+ plural).

B.   Semantic Relations

     Semantic relations or meaning relations are words that are semantically related to other words. Semantic relations are considered in terms of the following relations:

1.     Synonymy

      Akwanya (1996) defined synonyms as “different phonological words having similar meanings. Pamler (1996) also opined that “synonymy is used to men sameness.” Synonymy usually differs in at least one semantic feature. Sometimes the feature is objective (denotative) or subjective (connotative). Ndimele (1997 pp. 56-58) stated that there are different types of synonyms, namely:

a.      Absolute synonyms: those words which mean exactly the same thing and have the same communicative effect in all the contexts in which they are used. They can be used in identical environments all the time without a change in meaning. For example: anybody/anyone, rarely/seldom, noon/middy, etc.

b.      Near or broad synonyms: those words which have the same reference but differ in their associative meanings. For example: slender/thin/skinny, ripe/mature, little/small, etc.

2.     Antonyms

      An antonym is a word that is the opposite meaning of another. It comes from the Greek words “anti” for opposite and “onym” for name.

There are three categories of antonyms:

a.      Graded antonyms: deal with levels of the meaning of the words, like if something is not “good”, it may still not be “bad”. Examples include: fat and skinny, young and old, last and first, etc.

b.      Complementary antonyms: have a relationship where there is no middle ground. There are only two possibilities, either one or other. Examples include: man and woman, sink and float, input and output, etc.

c.       Relational antonyms: sometimes considered a subcategory of complementary antonyms: with these pairs, for there to be a relationship, both must exist. Example are: husband and wife, buy and sell, come and go, etc.

3.     Polysemy

     This is a meaning relation whereby a single lexical item has several (apparaently) related meanings. That is the several meanings of polysemy word must belong to a common semantic field. The word bank has at least two meanings: side of river and financial intuition. But unfortunately, it does not qualify as a polysemous word because these two meanings are totally unrelated. For example :  mouth: aspart of the body, where rivers flow into the sea and entrance of a cave.

4.     Antagonymy

      It is a word that can mean the opposite of its self. For example: besides cleave has meaning as to cut apart, it also means that to seal together.

Homonymy

A homonymy is a word that is written and produced the same way as another, but which has a different meaning. For example: lie, lay, lain (to be in horizontal position).

5.     Hyponymy / Hypernymy

     Hyponymy is a sense relation in semantics that serves to relate word concepts in a hierarchical fashion. Hyponymy is a relation between two words in which the meaning of one of the words includes the meaning of other word. For example: apple- fruit, car-vehicles, chair- furniture, etc.

      The more specific concept is known as the hyponym, and more general is known as hypernym or superordinate. For example: a verb “cook” has many hyponyms. Word “cook” means that it is hypernym, while kind of cook like bake, roast, boil, fry are hyponym.

REFERENCE:

https://desinorisahputri.blogspot.co.id/2017/03/theories-of-semantics-merits-and.html

http://myblog-ratnasari.blogspot.co.id

http://byeolinab.blogspot.co.id/2017/03/review-semantics-and-theories-of.html
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