In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is adherent to the abstraction of meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and beyond units of abode (termed texts). The basal breadth of abstraction is the acceptation of signs, and the abstraction of relations amid altered linguistic units and compounds: homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy, paronyms. A key affair is how acceptation attaches to beyond chunks of text, possibly as a aftereffect of the agreement from abate units of meaning. Traditionally, semantics has included the abstraction of faculty and allegorical reference, accuracy conditions, altercation structure, contemporary roles, abode analysis, and the bond of all of these to syntax.
editMontague grammar
In the backward 1960s, Richard Montague proposed a arrangement for defining semantic entries in the dictionary in agreement of the lambda calculus. In these terms, the syntactic anatomize of the book John ate every bagel would abide of a accountable (John) and a assert (ate every bagel); Montague showed that the acceptation of the book as a accomplished could be addle into the meanings of its locations and almost few rules of combination. The analytic assert appropriately acquired would be abundant further, e.g. application accuracy approach models, which ultimately chronicle meanings to a set of Tarskiian universals, which may lie alfresco the logic. The angle of such acceptation atoms or primitives is basal to the accent of anticipation antecedent from the 1970s.
Despite its elegance, Montague grammar was bound by the context-dependent airheadedness in chat sense, and led to several attempts at accumulation context, such as:
Situation semantics (1980s): truth-values are incomplete, they get assigned based on context
Generative dictionary (1990s): categories (types) are incomplete, and get assigned based on context
editDynamic about-face in semantics
Semantics
Language · Linguistics
Formal semantics (logic & linguistics)
Lexis
Lexical semantics
Statistical semantics
Structural semantics
Prototype semantics
Lexicology
Semantic analysis
Latent semantic analysis
Theory of descriptions
Force dynamics
Unsolved problems
Semantic matching
Analysis (machine)
Abstract semantic graph
Semantic Web
Semantic wiki
Semantic book system
Abstract interpretation
Formal semantics of
programming languages
Denotational semantics
Axiomatic semantics
Operational semantics
Action semantics
Categorical semantics
Concurrency semantics
Game semantics
Predicate transformer..
v t e
In Chomskian linguistics there was no apparatus for the acquirements of semantic relations, and the nativist appearance advised all semantic notions as inborn. Thus, even atypical concepts were proposed to accept been abeyant in some sense. This appearance was aswell anticipation clumsy to abode abounding issues such as allegory or akin meanings, and semantic change, area meanings aural a linguistic association change over time, and qualia or abstruse experience. Addition affair not addressed by the nativist archetypal was how perceptual cues are accumulated in thought, e.g. in brainy rotation.6
This appearance of semantics, as an congenital bound acceptation inherent in a lexical assemblage that can be composed to achieve meanings for beyond chunks of discourse, is now getting angrily debated in the arising area of cerebral linguistics7 and aswell in the non-Fodorian affected in aesthetics of language.8 The claiming is motivated by:
factors centralized to language, such as the botheration of absolute indexical or adumbration (e.g. this x, him, endure week). In these situations ambience serves as the input, but the interpreted announcement aswell modifies the context, so it is aswell the output. Thus, the estimation is necessarily activating and the acceptation of sentences is beheld as ambience change potentials instead of propositions.
factors alien to language, i.e. accent is not a set of labels ashore on things, but "a toolbox, the accent of whose elements lie in the way they action rather than their accessories to things."8 This appearance reflects the position of the after Wittgenstein and his acclaimed bold example, and is accompanying to the positions of Quine, Davidson, and others.
A accurate archetype of the closing abnormality is semantic underspecification – meanings are not complete after some elements of context. To yield an archetype of one word, red, its acceptation in a byword such as red book is agnate to abounding added usages, and can be beheld as compositional.9 However, the colours adumbrated in phrases such as red wine (very dark), and red hair (coppery), or red soil, or red derma are actual different. Indeed, these colours by themselves would not be alleged red by built-in speakers. These instances are contrastive, so red wine is so alleged alone in allegory with the added affectionate of wine (which aswell is not white for the aforementioned reasons). This appearance goes aback to de Saussure:
Each of a set of synonyms like redouter ('to dread'), craindre ('to fear'), avoir peur ('to be afraid') has its accurate amount alone because they angle in adverse with one another. No chat has a amount that can be articular apart of what abroad is in its vicinity.10
and may go aback to beforehand Indian angle on language, abnormally the Nyaya appearance of words as indicators and not carriers of meaning.11
An attack to avert a arrangement based on propositional acceptation for semantic underspecification can be begin in the abundant dictionary archetypal of James Pustejovsky, who extends contextual operations (based on blazon shifting) into the lexicon. Appropriately meanings are generated on the fly based on bound context.
editPrototype theory
Another set of concepts accompanying to fuzziness in semantics is based on prototypes. The plan of Eleanor Rosch in the 1970s led to a appearance that accustomed categories are not characterizable in agreement of all-important and acceptable conditions, but are graded (fuzzy at their boundaries) and inconsistent as to the cachet of their basic members.
Systems of categories are not considerately out there in the apple but are abiding in people's experience. These categories advance as abstruse concepts of the apple – acceptation is not an cold truth, but a abstruse construct, abstruse from experience, and accent arises out of the "grounding of our conceptual systems in aggregate apotheosis and actual experience".12 A aftereffect of this is that the conceptual categories (i.e. the lexicon) will not be identical for altered cultures, or indeed, for every alone in the aforementioned culture. This leads to addition agitation (see the Sapir–Whorf antecedent or Eskimo words for snow).
editTheories in semantics
editModel academic semantics
Main article: academic semantics (linguistics)
Originates from Montague's plan (see above). A awful formalized approach of accustomed accent semantics in which expressions are assigned denotations (meanings) such as individuals, accuracy values, or functions from one of these to another. The accuracy of a sentence, and added interestingly, its analytic affiliation to added sentences, is again evaluated about to a model.
editFormal (or truth-conditional) semantics
Main article: truth-conditional semantics
Pioneered by the philosopher Donald Davidson, addition formalized theory, which aims to accessory anniversary accustomed accent book with a meta-language description of the altitude beneath which it is true, for example: `Snow is white' is accurate if and alone if snow is white. The claiming is to access at the accuracy altitude for any sentences from anchored meanings assigned to the alone words and anchored rules for how to amalgamate them. In practice, truth-conditional semantics is agnate to model-theoretic semantics; conceptually, however, they alter in that truth-conditional semantics seeks to affix accent with statements about the absolute apple (in the anatomy of meta-language statements), rather than with abstruse models.
editLexical and conceptual semantics
Main article: conceptual semantics
This approach is an accomplishment to explain backdrop of altercation structure. The acceptance abaft this approach is that syntactic backdrop of phrases reflect the meanings of the words that arch them.13 With this theory, linguists can bigger accord with the actuality that attenuate differences in chat acceptation associate with added differences in the syntactic anatomy that the chat appears in.13 The way this is gone about is by searching at the centralized anatomy of words.14 These baby locations that achieve up the centralized anatomy of words are termed semantic primitives.14
editLexical semantics
Main article: lexical semantics
A linguistic approach that investigates chat meaning. This approach understands that the acceptation of a chat is absolutely reflected by its context. Here, the acceptation of a chat is constituted by its contextual relations.15 Therefore, a acumen amid degrees of accord as able-bodied as modes of accord are made.15 In adjustment to achieve this acumen any allotment of a book that bears a acceptation and combines with the meanings of added capacity is labeled as a semantic constituent. Semantic capacity that cannot be torn down into added elementary capacity are labeled basal semantic constituents.15
editComputational semantics
Main article: computational semantics
Computational semantics is focused on the processing of linguistic meaning. In adjustment to do this accurate algorithms and architectures are described. Aural this framework the algorithms and architectures are aswell analyzed in agreement of decidability, time/space complexity, abstracts structures which they crave and advice protocols.16
