Understanding Semantics: Key Concepts and Definitions

Understanding Semantics: Key Concepts

Here's a breakdown of essential semantic terms:

• Meaningful: A sequence of phonemes or letters received by the speaker.
• Meaning: A psychic image associated with a particular signifier.
• Semantic: The discipline that deals with the meaning of signs, words, and sentences.
• Linguistic Context: The words surrounding a particular word.
• Extralinguistic Context: The situation in which a word is pronounced.
• Sema: Each basic feature that breaks down the meaning of a word.
• Semantic Field: Words associated together because they belong to the same grammatical category and share part of their meaning. Defined by the seme.

Semantic Field Types

• Closed Field: Fixed.
• Open Field: Not fixed.

• Denotation: The objective meaning common to all speakers; a primary meaning that doesn't change with context.
• Connotation: The subjective meaning that depends on the speaker's circumstances; any secondary meaning associated with a term.

Connotation Types

• Shared or Collective Connotation: Meaning understood by a large group of speakers.
• Individual Connotation: Meaning a person associates based on experience.

• Loan Words: Words adopted from other languages.
• Patrimonial Words: Words that have evolved over centuries from their original form.
• Cultism: Words closely resembling their original form, without significant evolution.
• Doublet: Two words with a common origin, one patrimonial and one cultism.

Figurative Language

• Metaphor: A relationship of similarity where one object is called by the name of another.

Metaphor Examples

• Anthropomorphic Metaphor: Using words that name body parts to describe objects.
• Quintessential: Giving a person with a certain quality the name of another considered the greatest exponent.

• Metonymy: A relationship of contiguity between two things, arising from a comparison of similar items.

Metonymy Examples

• Replace a name with the author.
• Use place of origin.
• Refer to content with the container.
• Call a party by a part of it.
• Replace a sign with its signified.

• Popular Etymology: Adding a meaning to a term that it never originally had.
• Lexicalization: With the passage of time, forgetting the original meaning of a word.
• Semantic Contagion: Words absorbing the meaning of other words.
• Taboo: Words replaced by others that are considered less offensive.
• Euphemism: A socially acceptable term used in place of a taboo word.
• Degradation or Wear of Euphemisms: Successive euphemisms replaced by new ones.
• Lexicography: The discipline concerned with the preparation of dictionaries.
• Dictionary: A work in which the meanings of words in one or more languages are collected and explained.