SEMANTICS

Semantics is the study of meaning in language items such as morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. The branch of linguistics that studies word meaning is known as lexical semantics and the one that studies the sentence meaning is known as sentence semantics. 

These terms are used to show two different types of meaning of words. Denotation is the literal, referential meaning; while connotation is the meaning with a positive or negative emotional association of the word.

Semantics contrasts with pragmatics in that the former studies linguistic meaning separately from its extra-linguistic context; while pragmatics is concerned with meaning in all kinds of contexts, including extra linguistic context. Native speakers know the structure and meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences. Lexical semantics investigates the meaning of words.

One relationship between the words is known as hyponymy. Hypo- is a prefix that comes from Greek meaning under, beneath, below, lower, and -nym  means  name. Therefore, hyponyms are specific word meanings that are included under a word with a more general meaning.

Synonyms are words that are supposed to have the same meaning. Some examples are glad, happy, and felicitous in English and mesut, bahtiyar, and  mutlu in Turkish. Although these words seem to have the same meaning, they have some differences in different contexts as we shall see below. Therefore, there are no perfect synonyms.

Collocation is a term that is used to refer to the possibility of using two or more words together. The prefix co means together and locate means take place. For instance, drink and coffee can collocate but drink stone is not a possible phrase but throw stone is. Therefore, collocational restrictions do not allow the use of some terms together. In terms of collocational possibilities, not all synonyms can be used instead of one another.

Euphemism is a term that is used to replace a term that can be offensive or a taboo. Therefore, no two words mean exactly the same thing.

Antonyms are two words that have opposite meanings, such as siyah (black)  and beyaz (white) or yükselmek (ascend) and alçalmak (descend), etc. There are three types of antonyms:

a. Binary Antonyms
b. Gradable Antonyms
c. Converse Antonyms

Binary antonyms are words with two opposite ends. There is no continuum between these two ends. There are only two opposing points. This duality is signaled with the word binary, which means twofold or dual. Some examples are ölü — canlı and evli - bekar. These are binary antonyms because all people are either dead or alive or they are either married or single.

Gradable antonyms show the meaning of words that are at the opposite ends of gradable terms. For example, küçük (small) and büyük (big) are an examples of gradable antonyms. This is because they are gradable such as daha küçük  (smaller), en büyük (the biggest), etc. Furthermore, there is another dimension such as orta (medium), which is between the two opposing ends. Likewise,sıcak  (hot) and soğuk (cold) are gradable antonyms and there are degrees of heat including ılık (cool) among others. Gradable antonyms are usually found in the case of gradable adjectives or adverbs and sometimes in verbs denoting degree such as bayılmak and nefret etmek.

Converse antonyms are pairs that describe the relationship from opposite perspectives. For example, anne - çocuk; işçi - patron; öğretmen - öğrenci are converse antonyms because their relationship depends on the other pair. Somebody is a parent, because that person has a child, and somebody is a child of someone who is the parent.

Homonyms are words that are pronounced the same way but have completely different meanings. The word comes from Greek homos (same) + nym (name), meaning the same name. Examples from Turkish are given below:

acı: bitter 
acı: spicy hot 
aç: hungry 
aç: open

Polysemy is the case when the same word refers to many different things. The word comes from Greek poly (many) + semeion (sign). 

Polysemy and homonymy are terms that can cause some confusion at times because there may be some problems when we deal with polysemy and homonymy. While polysemy is one word with several meanings, homonymy is several words with the same spelling and pronunciation. The problem is to decide when there is a case of polysemy or homonymy. A polysemous word has several and related meanings. In dictionaries polysemy is given as a single entry with several definitions but homonyms are given as different entries. For example, baş (head) is a case of polysemy in both Turkish and English. It is the part of a human body and other uses are related: şirketin başı (head of a company), sürünün başı (head of the herd), etc. Another example is etek (skirt) as in eteğini giydi (she wore her skirt) and dağın eteği (the skirt of a mountain).

Proposition is a term that is used in semantics and philosophy. It covers the meaning or the content of a sentence that is represented in the mind of a person. For example: John is a new student has a proposition exactly corres-ponding to its meaning. The proposition is the same in any language it can be uttered, be in English, French, German, Japanese or Turkish.

According to Merriam - Webster dictionary, a proposition is an expression in language or signs of something that can be believed, doubted, or denied or is either true or false. Therefore, truth or falsity is an important aspect of a proposition.

An entailment is the meaning of a proposition that is necessarily conveyed in another proposition. In other words, in the case of entailment, a proposition P entails another proposition Q when the truth of Q is the result of the truth of P.

Entailment can be bidirectional. This means that both proposition P and proposition Q may entail one another. In that case, two propositions have the same meaning. Then, this is known as paraphrase. For instance, Ali Ayşe’yle evlendi and Ali ve Ayşe nikah kıydılar mutually entail each other. Thus, they are paraphrases.

Presupposition is used to refer to the part(s) of a proposition taken for granted. For example, if I say sigarayı bıraktın (You’ve quit smoking), this presupposes that you used to smoke. Presupposition persists under negation, interrogation, and conditionals. The term presupposition is used both in semantics and pragmatics. Therefore, it is relevant to these branches of linguistics. 

There is a group of linguistic items that bring presupposition to the sentence in which they are used. These are known as presupposition triggers. The following are some presupposition triggers:
• Some verbs: anla- (realize), fark et- (notice), bil- (know), pişman ol- (regret), farkına var- (become aware of), başar- (succeed), hallet- (manage), bitir- (finish), devam et- (continue), etc.
• Some adverbials: yeniden (again), bir kez daha (one more time), bir tane daha (one more), biraz daha (some more), artık (any more), etc.

These lexical items as well as some constructions known as cleft sentences (What John did was to buy the best picture in the shop) carry presuppositions (in that case John bought a picture).