Semantics

Semantics

What is the meaning a Semantics?

According to some experts of semantics:

1.      Katz and Postal (1964) (E-Book : General Semantic, Lewis David)

Semantic markers are symbols: items in the vocabulary of an artificial language we may call Semantic Markerese.

Semantic interpretation by means of them amounts merely to a translation algorithm from the object language to the auxiliary language Markerese. But we can know the Markerese translation of an English sentence without knowing the first thing about the meaning of the English sentence: namely, the conditions under which it would be true. Semantics with no treatment of truth conditions is not semantics. Translation into Markerese is at best a substitute for real semantics, relying either on our tacit competence (at some future date) as speakers of Markerese or on our ability to do real semantics at least for the one language Markerese. Translation into Latin might serve as well, except insofar as the designers of Markerese may choose to build into it useful features - freedom from ambiguity, grammar based on symbolic logic - that might make it easier to do real semantics for Markerese than for Latin. (See Vermazen, 1967, for similar criticisms). The Markerese method is attractive in part just because it deals with nothing but symbols: finite combinations of entities of a familiar sort out of a finite set of elements by finitely many applications of finitely many rules. There is no risk of alarming the ontologically parsimonious. But it is just this pleasing ]initude that prevents Markerese semantics from dealing with the relations between symbols and the world of non - symbols - that is, with genuinely semantic relations. Accordingly, we should be prepared to find that in a more adequate method, meanings may turn out to be complicated, infinite entities built up out of elements belonging to various ontological categories.

2.      Second Edition Semantics a Coursebook ( Page 1, 2007)

Semantics is study of Meaning in Language. that meaning is so vague, insubstantial, and elusive that it is impossible to come to any clear, concrete, or tangible conclusions about it.We hope to convince you that by careful thought about the language you speak and the way it is used, definite conclusions CAN be arrived at concerning meaning.

3.      Sheth, Ramakrishnan and Thomas (2005) (E-Book : Semantic – E- Learning)

Provide an important summary and analysis of the meaning of the word ‘semantics’ within the context of scientific disciplines:

Semantics has been a part of several scientific disciplines, both in the realm of computer science and outside of it. Research areas such as Information Retrieval (IR), Information Extraction (IE), Computational Linguistics (CL), Knowledge Representation (KR) Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data (base) Management (DB) have all addressed issues pertaining to semantics in their own

4.      Lyons (1977)

Semantics is the study of meaning

5.      Hurford & Heasley (1983)

Semantics is the study of meaning in language

6.      Saeed (1997)

Semantics is the study of meaning communicated through language

7.      Lobner (2002)

Semantics is the part of linguistics that is concerned with meaning

8.      Frawley (1992)

Linguistic semantics is the study of literal, decontextualized, grammatical meaning

9.      Kreidler (1998)

Linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organize and express meanings

10.  George Carlin (Book of The Study of Language, Page 100)

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. In semantics analysis , there is always an attempt to focus on what the words conventionally mean, rather than on what an individual speaker.

11.  Drs. Seno H. Putra, M.Pd, P.Hd. (Book Of Introduction to General Linguistics, Page 15)

Semantics is the science that we study about the meaning of language, including words, phrases, sentences, symbols, and signals.

12.  Palmer (1981:1)

Semantics is the technical term used to refer to the study of meaning, and since meaning is a part of language, semantics is a part of linguistic.