Assessment:
- Written examination
o Part 1: theoretical question
o Part 2: exercises
Learning objectives:
- Understand key concepts in semantics and different approaches to meaning including;
o The nature of meaning; sense and reference, wand sentence meaning; sense
relations
- Develop skills:
o Critical
o Analytical
o Academic writing
- These skills are highly transferrable
Sense relation:
- Words that sound the same but have different meanings
- Words that are written in the same way but have different meanings
- Different ‘senses’ of the word
Semantics:
- Knowledge that allows speakers to know when different sentences mean the same, when
they contradict each other, when they are ambiguous, when one entails another
- Describing the internal mechanisms of language
Branches of semantics according to Cruse (2000):
- Grammatical semantics
o Closest to syntax
- Logical/formal semantics
o Relation between natural (spoken, contextual) language and ‘logical’ (literal)
language
- Lexical semantics
o Content words (not grammatical) and relationship between them and other word
o Lexes: words
Sentence and Speaker meaning:
- Sentence meaning: what a sentence means in relation to the language it uses, why words
mean what they do
o Dictionary definition, literal meaning
- Speaker meaning: what the speaker means when they use the language, what they intend to
convey
- Written examination
o Part 1: theoretical question
o Part 2: exercises
Learning objectives:
- Understand key concepts in semantics and different approaches to meaning including;
o The nature of meaning; sense and reference, wand sentence meaning; sense
relations
- Develop skills:
o Critical
o Analytical
o Academic writing
- These skills are highly transferrable
Sense relation:
- Words that sound the same but have different meanings
- Words that are written in the same way but have different meanings
- Different ‘senses’ of the word
Semantics:
- Knowledge that allows speakers to know when different sentences mean the same, when
they contradict each other, when they are ambiguous, when one entails another
- Describing the internal mechanisms of language
Branches of semantics according to Cruse (2000):
- Grammatical semantics
o Closest to syntax
- Logical/formal semantics
o Relation between natural (spoken, contextual) language and ‘logical’ (literal)
language
- Lexical semantics
o Content words (not grammatical) and relationship between them and other word
o Lexes: words
Sentence and Speaker meaning:
- Sentence meaning: what a sentence means in relation to the language it uses, why words
mean what they do
o Dictionary definition, literal meaning
- Speaker meaning: what the speaker means when they use the language, what they intend to
convey
