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Introducing English Semantics - Coggle Diagram
Introducing English Semantics
The systematic study of meaning
Three disciplines are concerned
psychology
Psychologists are interested in how individual humans learn
how the human mind seeks meanings and works with them.
philosophy
Philosophers of language are concerned with how we know
what must be antecedent (a presupposition) to that fact and what is a likely consequence
linguistics.
Linguists want to understand how language works
is concerned with identifying the meaningful elements of specific languages
Example, paint and happy and affixes like the -er of painter and the un- of unhappy.
SEMANTICS
is the systematic study of meaning
LINGUISTIC SEMANTICS
is the study of how languages organize and express meanings
The nature of language
humans have a language which allows them to produce and understand ever-new messages
HUMAN LANGUAGE
stimulus-free.
creative
utterance consists of words in a particular sequence
word consists of sound-units, or phonemes,
complex and subtle, capable of expressing
Language and the individual
The child acquires the ability to make use, as speaker and hearer, of the most important communication system of the community
The productive vocabulary grows rapidly in early childhood, and for most people changes somewhat throughout life.
GRAMAR
to mean two things: the implicit knowledge that a speaker has and the explicit description and explanation of it by the linguist.
PHONOLOGY
is the knowledge, or the description, of how speech sounds are organized in a particular language
SYNTAX
is the knowledge, or the description, of the classes of words
called parts of speech, and of how members of these classes go together to form phrases and sentences.
MORPHOLOGY
the description or the knowledge of word formation
