Introducing English Semantics

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BIBLIOGRAPHY: Kreidler, C. (2002). Introducing english semantics. Routledge. ESPE. (2023). Semantics and discourse analysis. Obtenido de evirtual: https://evirtual.espe.edu.ec/prg_archivo.cgi?wAccion=ver_archivo&id_archivo=9752628&id_curso=25355&id_unidad=289547

Introducing English Semantics

The nature of language

Humans alone are able to talk about vast numbers of things which come from accumulated knowledge, memory and imagination.

The simple fact is that the human mind deals easily and frequently with what does not exist, or what does not yet exist. Nobody can explain just how people are able to abstract elements from their sensory world and put these elements together in ways that are partly familiar, partly new.

First, animals can communicate only in response to some particular stimulus.

All animals have some system for communicating with other members of their species, but only humans have a language which allows them to produce and understand ever-new messages and to do so without any outside stimulus.

The productivity of language is due to another feature which distinguishes our communication from that of other animals.

The systematic study of meaning

Semantics is the systematic study of meaning and linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organize and express meanings.

Three disciplines are concerned with the systematic study of "meaning" in itself:

Linguistics

Philosophy

Psychology

Legal scholars argue about the interpretation-that is, the meaning-of a law or a judicial decision. Literary scholars quarrel similary over the meaning of some poem or story.

Language and the individual

Ability to use language, think and conceptualize.

language is creative, our communication is not restricted to a fixed set of topics.

Subtopic

knowledge is partly conscious and explicit but to a large extent unconscious and implicit.

Develop at the same time and these abilities depend on each other.

Learns the language of the society in which it grows up.

Utterances become more and more complex.

Interact with others.

Negative statements.

Questions.

By the age of eighteen months the child producing two-word utterances.

Dolly sit.

Mama shoes.

Daddy byebye.

Approximately at twelve months, begins to imitate their first words.

Baby.

Doll.

Bed.

Mama.

A child acquires a language in the first five or six years of life.