LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:11 November 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Evaluating the Distinct Use of Meaning Relationship At Semantic Level

Md. Rizwan, Ph.D (JNU), MADE, CTE

Abstract

Semantics is a branch of linguistics which studies about the relationships between words and how the meanings are constructed and how we understand each other. It means the meaning and interpretation of words, signs, and sentence structure. In a broader term, the semantics study the meaning in a language as well as anything created with language, and often make a distinction between meaning and concept. Meaning is a category of language and concept is the totality of real world knowledge about an item. It is possible to know the meaning of the word without knowing everything about the concept referred to by that meaning.

Further, the meaning relationships are relations between concepts and meanings. The concept ‘school’ may, for example, be expressed by the terms or expressions ‘school’, ‘schoolhouse’ and ‘place for teaching’. The relation between ‘school’ and ‘schoolhouse’ is a (synonym) relation between two words, while the relation between ‘school’ and ‘place for teaching’ is a relation between a word and an expression or phrase. These relations between words are termed lexical relations.

'School' also means ‘a group of people who share common characteristics of outlook’, ‘a school of thought’. This is a homonym relation where two senses share the same word or expression as ‘school’. Synonyms and homonyms are not only relations between concepts, but are about concepts expressed with identical or with different signs. In this article some of the important dimensions of meaning relationships have been discussed and the examples have been drawn from English and also from Urdu, Hindi or Persian, in order to clear the distinctive use among the languages.

Keywords: Collocation, Selectional Choice, Selectional Restriction, Compatibility, Antonymy, Homonymy, Polysemy, Hyponymy, Part-Whole Relationship, Metonymy, Metaphor, Aronyms, Simile, etc.

Introduction

The word semantics means ‘of or relating to meaning’. Semantics is one of the branches of linguistics which studies about the relationships between words and how the meanings are constructed, sheds light on how we experience the world and how we understand each other. It means the meaning and interpretation of words, signs, and sentence structure. It largely determines our reading comprehension, how we understand others, and even what decisions we make as a result of our interpretations.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Md. Rizwan, Ph.D. (JNU), MADE, CTE
Resource Person
NTS-India (CT&E)
Central Institute of Indian Languages
Mysore – 570006
Karnataka
India
mdrizwan01@yahoo.com
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