• Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences. 

• Doing semantics is attempting to spell out what it is we all know when we behave as if we share knowledge of the meaning of a word, a phrase, or a sentence in a language. 

• Meaning is the widely accepted objective or factual meaning of words and not their subjective or personal meaning

• This distinction is generally presented in terms of referential meaning as opposed to associative (liên tưởng) or emotive meaning

– Referential meaning covers those basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed by the literal use of a word. It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are designed to describe.

E.g: ‘needle’ in Eng might include ‘thin, sharp, steel instrument’

However, different people might have different associations or connotations attached to a word like needle.

needle –>  “pain,” or “illness,” or “blood,” or “drugs,” or “thread,” or “knitting,” or “hard to find”

A means of accounting for the “oddness” we experience when we read sentences such as the following:
The hamburger ate the boy.
The table listens to the radio.
The horse is reading the newspaper.

A semantic feature is an element of meaning.

An element may be as general as “animate being.” we can then use this idea to describe part of the meaning of words as having either plus (+) or minus (–) that particular feature.

–> the feature that the noun boy has is “+animate” (= denotes an animate being) and the feature that the noun hamburger has is “–animate” (= does not denote an animate being).

E.g: Features such as “+animate / –animate,” “+human / –human,” “+female / –female,” –> can be treated as the basic elements involved in differentiating the meaning of each word in a language from every other word.

• For many words in a language it may not be as easy to come up with neat components of meaning.

• If we try to think of the components or features we would use to differentiate the nouns advice, threat and warning 

• –> E.g: we may not be very successful.

Semantic role (also known as case role or thematic role) is the actual role a participant plays in some real or imagined situation, apart from the linguistic encoding of those situations. 

• The noun phrase The boy as “the entity that performs the action,” is technically known as the agent.

• The ball as “the entity that is involved in or affected by the action,” which is called the theme (or sometimes the “patient”).

–> Agents and themes are the most common semantic roles.

• An agent uses another entity in order to perform an action, and that other entity fills the role of an instrument.

E.g: The boy cut the rope with an old razor and He drew the picture with a crayon –> the NPs an old razor and a crayon is being used in the semantic role of the instrument; the P with is often a clue that the following NP has the role of the instrument in English.

• When an NP is used to designate an entity as the person who has a feeling, perception, or state, it fills the semantic role of experiencer.

• If we feel, know, hear, or enjoy something, we are not really performing an action (hence we are not agents). –> We are in the role of experiencer.

–Location: The semantic role of the noun phrase identifying where an entity is

E.g: on the table, in the room

–Source: The semantic role of the noun phrase identifying where an entity moves from

E.g: from Chicago

–Goal: The semantic role of the noun phrase identifying where an entity moves to

E.g: We drove from Chicago to New Orleans.

• Lexical relations describe the relationships between the meanings of words. 

• The lexical relations we have just exemplified are synonymy (conceal/hide), antonymy (shallow/deep), and hyponymy (pine/tree).

• Two or more words with very closely related meanings are called synonyms. 

• E.g: What was his answer? or What was his reply? –> much the same meaning 

Antonyms are usually divided into three main types:

• “gradable” (opposites along a scale) used in comparative constructions involving adjectives (E.g: I’m smaller than you and slower, sadder, colder, shorter and older, but luckily quite a bit richer.); the negative of one member of a gradable pair does
  not necessarily imply the other (E.g: My car isn’t old doesn’t have to mean My car is new.)

• “non-gradable” also called “complementary pairs” (direct opposites) comparative
  constructions are not normally used; using the “negative test” – the negative of one member of a non-gradable pair does imply the other member (E.g: My grandparents aren’t alive does indeed mean My grandparents are dead.); other non-gradable antonyms are the pairs: male/female, married/single and true/false.

• “reversives” (one is the reverse action of the other) usually avoid describing one member of an antonymous pair as the negative of the other (E.g: while undress can be treated as the opposite of dress, it does not mean “not dress.” actually means “do the reverse of dress.”)

• The meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another, the relationship is described as hyponymy 

• E.g: animal/horse, insect/ant, flower/rose. 

When we investigate connections based on hyponymy, we are essentially looking at the meaning of words in some type of hierarchical relationship. 

• Prototypes: The most characteristic instance of a category

E.g: “robin” is the prototype of “bird”

The concept of a prototype helps explain the meaning of certain words, like a bird, not in terms of component features (e.g. “has feathers,” “has wings”)

• Two or more words with the same form and related meanings have what is technically known as polysemy.

E.g: foot (of a person, of a bed, of a mountain), mouth (part of a face, a cave, a river) or run (person does, water does, colors do).

• Three lexical relations are the basis of a lot of wordplay, usually for humorous effect.

In the nursery rhyme Mary had a little lamb, we think of a small animal, but in the comic version Mary had a little lamb, some rice and vegetables, and we think of a small amount of meat.

• A word used in place of another with which it is closely connected in everyday experience.

• With metonymy that makes it possible for us to understand He drank the whole bottle, although it sounds absurd literally (i.e. he drank the liquid, not the glass object).

• We use metonymy when we talk about filling up the car, answering the door, boiling a kettle, giving someone a hand, or needing some wheels.

• Collocation: A relationship between words that frequently occur together

In recent years, the study of which words occur together, and their frequency of co-occurrence, has received a lot more attention in corpus linguistics.

• A corpus is the study of language in use by analyzing the occurrence and frequency of forms in a large collection of texts typically stored in a computer.

• Some of the most common collocations are actually everyday phrases which may consist of several words used together, as in I don’t know what to do (six words), you know what I mean (five words) or they don’t want to (four words).

1. The noun must have the semantic feature of [+HUMAN] to be used in the sentence "The _____ were discussing what to do. 

2. (a) The television drank my water. This sentence is odd because the noun "television" lacks the semantic feature [+ANIMATE] required for performing the action of "drinking."

(b) His dog writes poetry. While "dog" is animate, it typically lacks the semantic feature [+HUMAN] associated with the cognitive ability to write poetry.

3. "Thematic roles" are more commonly referred to as "semantic roles".

The term "theme" is often used interchangeably with "patient" in the semantic analysis of noun phrases.

4. The "negative test" identifies opposites based on their ability to be negated. For example, "hot" and "cold" are opposites because you can say "It's not hot" and "It's not cold." 

5. In semantics, a "prototype" is a typical or ideal example of a category. For instance, the prototype of a bird might be a robin, as it embodies many of the salient features associated with birds. 

6. With her new golf club: Instrument

Anne Marshall: Agent

the ball: Patient

from the woods: Source

to the grassy area near the hole: Goal

she: Agent

invincible: Attribut

7. Ant, cabbage, turnip, and vegetable are co-hyponyms because they are all hyponyms (subordinate terms) of the hypernym (more general term) "plant." 

8. (a) assemble/disassemble: Antonyms (words with opposite meanings)

(b) damp/moist: Synonyms (words with similar meanings)

(c) deep/shallow: Antonyms

(d) dog/schnauzer: Hyponymy (schnauzer is a kind of dog)

(e) furniture/table: Hyponymy (table is a kind of furniture)

(f) married/single: Antonyms

(g) move/run: Hyponymy (run is a type of movement)

(h) peace/piece: Homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings)

(i) pen/pen: Homographs (words that are spelled the same but have different meanings)

9. (a) absent/present: Non-gradable (there is no in-between state)

(b) appear/disappear: Reversive (the opposite action undoes the original)

(c) fail/pass: Non-gradable

(d) fair/unfair: Gradable (there are degrees of fairness or unfairness)

(e) fill it/empty it: Reversive

(f) high/low: Gradable

10. (a) The pen is mightier than the sword. This is an example of metonymy. The word "pen" is used to represent the written word or the power of ideas, while "sword" represents physical force.

(b) I had to park on the shoulder of the road. This is also metonymy. "Shoulder" refers to the side of the road, using a part to represent the whole.

(c) Yes, I love those. I ate a whole box on Sunday! This is polysemy. The word "box" can refer to a container or to the contents of the container.

(d) The bookstore has some new titles in linguistics. This is metonymy. "Titles" are used to represent books or works.

(e) Computer chips created an important new technology. This is metonymy. "Chips" represent the entire computer or its computational power.

(f) I'm going to sue your ass! This is metonymy. "Ass" is used to represent the whole person.

(g) I think that kind of music was called new wave. This is metonymy. "New wave" refers to a genre of music, using a specific example to represent the whole.