Semantic means PDF

Title Semantic means
Course Semantics and Pragmatics I
Institution Freie Universität Berlin
Pages 2
File Size 70.8 KB
File Type PDF
Total Downloads 47
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Summary

Zusammenfassung von semantic means...


Description

The word Semantics is derived from the Greek word semantikos meaning to show or to give signs. William Frawley defines linguistic semantics as "the study of literal, decontextualized, grammatical meaning". Thus, Semantics is concerned with the conceptual meaning related to words. Semantics does not focus on the context, rather it deals with the meaning according to grammar and vocabulary. The focus is only on the general rules used for a language. Semantics help in getting a sense of meaning in context to speakers, writers, readers of learners. But can also help identifying the change of meaning over a period of time. The author emphasizes that semantics allow us to understand structures of communication and their function of structuring meaning. A mean on the semantic level helps organizing the different levels in the mind. COMMUNICATIVE SEMANTICS Semantics enable us to realize the overall meaning of communicative devices. Beyond the Mode of language, multiple communicative Modes structure the meaning of words in multiple systematic ways. The framework of multimodal interactions enables us to investigate the multiplicity and fluidity of communication, which is a sophisticated process. When it is investigated how interlocutors make sense of this complex process we can find underlying communicative semantics. It is essential to note that communicative semantics underlie the holistic and multimodal interaction. Communicative semantics in this context are "simultaneously structured communicative processes in a dialogical relationship to a communicative semantics" (Norris :114). Furthermore, one can say that lower level actions determine the fore or backgrounding of higher level action an interlocutor is simultaneously engaged in. 

An Icon has a physical resemblance to the signified, the thing being represented. A photograph is a good example as it certainly resembles whatever it depicts.



An Index shows evidence of what’s being represented. A good example is using an image of smoke to indicate fire.



A Symbol has no resemblance between the signifier and the signified. The connection between them must be culturally learned. Numbers and alphabets are good examples. It must be culturally learned. SIGNS

Semantics deal with the study of what signs denote. It’s easy to think all signs are the same thing and communicate in the same way by presenting one thing that represents another, but there are different types of signs that communicate in different ways. Signs can communicate by resembling what they represent, by implying what they represent, or through arbitrary representations that must be learned before we can understand their meaning....


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