To bear in mind, semantics is the study of the meaning of words and sentences. A word is a minimum free form. Sentences are abstract grammatical elements obtained from utterances.
Word meanings and sentence meanings
The meaning of an expression is determined by the meaning of its component parts and the way in which they are combined. E.g ‘I bought a book’ component parts ( words, phrases, clauses):
Tense, aspect, and modalityI + bought + a book(a + book)I bought a book
These three elements are influential in meaning as the way in which a sentence combined. Tense is marking of time that allows a speaker to potray the situation type. Aspect is the internal temporal nature of situation/ duration of the situation happened.
E.g ;
- Ralph was bulding a fire-escape last week.
- Ralph built a fire escape last week.
Modality is a cover term for devices which allows speakers to express varying degrees of commitment to, or belief in, a proposition. Modal system allow speakers to modulate the guarantee to signal stronger and weaker commitment to the factuality of statements. The signal shows the degree of knowledge or deontic modality, where the verbs mark the speaker’s attitude to social factors of obligation, responsibility and permission.
- E.g you must take these books back.
- You can leave them there.
Cognitive semantics
This is influenced by the mental spaces that speakers had to set up to manipulate reference to entities or to construal of a scene as the conceptual process such as viewpoint shifting, figure-ground shifting and profiling.
Metaphor
It is an essential element in our categorization of the world and the thingking process. An important characteristics of cognitive semantics is the central role in thought and language assigned to metaphor. Metaphor goes further by causing a transference, where the properties are transfered from one concept to another. The metaphor can be conventionality, systematicity, asymetry, and abstraction.
E.g ;
Life is a jouney:
The person leading a life is a traveller.
His purposes are destinations.
Difficuties in life are impediments to travel.
Metonymy
- It is to identify a referent by something asociated with.
- It is the productive way of creating new vocabulary.
Types of metonymic relations
- Part for whole: all hands on deck.
- Whole for part: Brazil won the world cup.
- Container for content: I don’t drink more than two bottles.
- Place for event: Hiroshima changed our view of war
Indicator items
- Lexical relation and sentence
- Sentence and sentence meaning
- The difference of tense and aspect in a sentence
- Deontic modality
- Provide your own examples of metaphor and metonymy’