Linguistic Semantics: Meaning, Context, and Evolution

Introduction to Semantics

Semantics: As we have seen in studying the linguistic sign, words consist of a signifier (significante) and a signified (conceptual meaning), which are the qualities and actions associated with the signifier. In the same way that morphology studies the signal, the changes and evolution of meanings are studied by the linguistic discipline of semantics.

Denotation and Connotation

Denotation is the common meaning and purpose that words have for all speakers, which is collected and explained in dictionaries. This meaning is independent of context. We call connotation the subjective and particular meaning that a word (palabra) acquires in a given context.

Semantic and Associative Fields

A semantic field is a set (conjunto) of words of the same lexical category related to each other by sharing significant features in common. An associative field differs in that the words forming it may also belong to different lexical categories; the concept is, therefore, broader (más amplio).

Types of Semantic Relationships

Attending to the relationship between meanings, we classify words into the following groups:

• Monosemic: Those words that have only one meaning.
• Polysemic: Those that have multiple meanings.
• Homonymous: Homonyms are words of different origin or different meanings that, by chance, have the same form.
  • Homographs: Example: wine (the drink) / wine (past tense of come).
  • Homophones: Example: cow (vaca) / roof rack (baca).
• Hypernymy and Hyponymy: Hypernyms encompass a group of words known as hyponyms.

Causes of Semantic Change

In the same way that words have changed over time, meanings are also subject to various modifications and changes. The causes of semantic changes are varied:

• Historical: The passage of time causes words to modify their meanings.
• Social: Very often, society imposes semantic changes.
• Psychological: Some changes are subjective to the valuation of reality; many terms can acquire significant pejorative or praised nuances.
• Linguistic: The linguistic context often determines the change of meaning, especially when two closely related terms allow the removal of one, and the remaining term acquires the former's meaning.

Mechanisms of Meaning Shift

• Metaphor: Designating one object with the name of another because there is a relationship of similarity (semejanza) between them.
• Metonymy: Consists of naming an object with another name because there is a relationship of proximity or contiguity between them.
• Ellipsis: The suppression of linguistic elements which give meaning to others.
• Popular Etymology: Consists of the confusion of two words similar in form; this confusion involves a semantic change.