What is Semantics?

Semantics

Semantics (from Ancient Greek:σημαντικός sēmantikós, "significant")^[1][2] is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relationship betweensignifiers—like words, phrases, signs, andsymbols—and what they stand for, theirdenotation. Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used for understanding human expression through language. Other forms of semantics include the semantics of programming languages, formal logics, andsemiotics. In international scientific vocabulary semantics is also calledsemasiology.

The word semantics was first used by Michel Bréal, a French philologist.^[3] It denotes a range of ideas—from the popular to the highly technical. It is often used in ordinary language for denoting a problem of understanding that comes down to word selection or connotation. This problem of understanding has been the subject of many formal enquiries, over a long period of time, especially in the field of formal semantics. Inlinguistics, it is the study of the interpretation of signs or symbols used in agents orcommunities within particular circumstances and contexts.^[4] Within this view, sounds, facial expressions, body language, andproxemics have semantic (meaningful) content, and each comprises several branches of study. In written language, things like paragraph structure and punctuation bear semantic content; other forms of language bear other semantic content.^[4]

The formal study of semantics intersects with many other fields of inquiry, includinglexicology, syntax, pragmatics, etymologyand others. Independently, semantics is also a well-defined field in its own right, often with synthetic properties.^[5] In the philosophy of language, semantics and reference are closely connected. Further related fields include philology, communication, andsemiotics. The formal study of semantics can therefore be manifold and complex.

Semantics contrasts with syntax, the study of the combinatorics of units of a language (without reference to their meaning), andpragmatics, the study of the relationships between the symbols of a language, their meaning, and the users of the language.^[6]Semantics as a field of study also has significant ties to various representational theories of meaning including truth theories of meaning, coherence theories of meaning, and correspondence theories of meaning. Each of these is related to the general philosophical study of reality and the representation of meaning.