Various Semantic Models

Before going on with recent developments in semantics, we’ll review the terms which have been and are now in use in the field, not so much because they are important in themselves, but because the concepts behind the terms are important, and the existence of the terms shows the kind and the amount of work that has been done.

When a person is trying to communicate, the intended meaning exists in that person’s mind. It comes to the surface either through speech or through writing. In either case there are complications which might interfere with the intended communication. These can occur with either a single word or with an entire sentence. The problems in speech are not necessarily the same problems as will occur in writing. For example in writing there might be confusion caused by homographs which are words written with the same characters but having different meanings and different origins. Since homographs are pronounced the same, it is appropriate to also call them homophones. The nouns bank as in I’m putting my money in the bank, and She was sitting on the river bank, are both homographs and homophones because they are written and pronounced the same. However, the three words their, there, and they’re are not homographs because their spelling is different. But they are homophones (at least in some dialects) because they sound the same. A cover term, which is the word most commonly used for this concept, is homonym. Homonyms are words which have different meanings but which sound the same regardless of their spelling. Words which are spelled the same but which have different pronunciations and different meanings are called heteronyms, for example, the verb lead as in I will lead you there, and the noun lead as in I broke the lead in my pencil. [...]

Words which have similar meanings but different spellings and sounds are called synonyms, for example trousers and pants. Sentences having similar meanings but different words are called paraphrases, for example, John came by plane, and My best friend arrived on a 707 jet.

But what about a pair of words like borrow and lend? The sentences, John lent me $5.00, and I borrowed $5.00 from John, refer to the same real-world situation. Therefore in a sense the words borrow and lend must have the same meaning and might therefore be considered synonyms. More specifically, such pairs as borrow — lend, buy — sell, give — take, etc, are called converses, meaning that they occur with the same words (e. g., John, me, and $5.00), and have basically the same meanings, but they impose a surface structure constraint that the words must be in a different linear order. They cause different words to end up as subjects, objects, and prepositional phrases. This means that different words are emphasized, but the meanings are the same. So in a way it is possible to consider such terms as lend and borrow both as synonyms and as antonyms without being contradictory.

Words which are alike or very similar in all three areas of meaning, pronunciation, and spelling but which occur in different languages are called cognates, for example Italian studiare and English study. At the opposite extreme from these very similar words are words which are different in meaning, pronunciation, and spelling. These wards are called antonyms as exemplified by the pair freeze — melt. But it is not enough to say simply that the meanings of two antonyms are different, since there are some semantic constraints on the amount and type of difference. First, antonyms must be of the same syntactic and semantic class. And second, within this class they must be polar opposites. […]

There are several approaches to the study of semantics. Some of these are full-fledged rigorous models presenting machinery for the treatment of semantic matters, while others are merely statements about semantics and ways of dealing with it. In the United States early semantic models included general semantics, Whorfian semantics, and semantic differentiation. More recent developments are logical and mathematical semantics, interpretive semantics, generative semantics, case grammar, and Chafe grammar.