| VI. SEMANTICS Semantics is the theories of meaning or the study of meaning. According to Richard and Ogdent (Chaer, 1994), meaning consists of form, concept, and referent, which can be illustrated as this triangle. b concept /\ / \ a /____\ c form referent For instance, the word cat, the form is cat, the concept is an animal that resembles a tiger but much smaller, the referent is the animal itself. Therefore meaning is the concept of the linguistics code, that is the form. 6.1 Kinds of meaning 6.1.1 Lexical, grammatical, and contextual meaning Lexical meaning is the meaning of a word without context. The word horse for instance is an animal with four legs and is commonly ridden. A dictionary usually contains the lexical meanings or words. Grammatical meaning is the meaning of form such as affixes, reduplication, and compound words. The meaning of suffix s in books is to indicate plural. Contextual meaning is the meaning of a word in a certain context. Notice the word bill in these sentences: 1) I can't pay the bill. 2) The bill will be enacted by parliament. 3) The bill of the bird is very long. The meaning of bill in the first sentences is a piece of paper used to ask someone to pay some money. In the second sentence the word means a proposed law. In the third, it means the mouth. 6.1.2 Referential meaning and Non referential meaning If a word has its reference, it is referential meaning, such as house, plane, tree etc., but the words because, and, at etc. do not have any reference. The latter are called non referential meaning. There some words which can change their reference several times, such as pronouns, here, there, etc. 1) 'I'll come tomorrow', Mark said. 2) Ben said, 'I'll come one day after Mark'. In the first sentence I refers to Mark, while in the second it refers to Ben. 6.1.3 Denotative Meaning and Connotative Meaning The first one means the real meaning of a word, that is the lexical meaning, the basic or original meaning of a word. The denotative meaning of pig is a mammal animal with four legs that is raised for its meat. Connotative meaning means the additional meaning added to the literal meaning, or implicit meaning of a word given to the word. For those who are Christians pig has the positive meaning because for them it is delicious meat to eat, but those who are moslems that word has bad connotative meaning, that is something bad, something which is forbidden to eat. The words mengamankan in Indonesian for instance in denotative meaning means to put some one in a safe place; but it has a connotative meaning that is, to put someone in jail or being arrested by the police. Another example is the word lokalisasi' which means the process of localizing certain group of people or things or anials in one place, but now people means the place where protitutes localized. Thus, a word may have positive connotative meaning to a group of people, but negative meaning to the other group. 6.1.4 Conceptual Meaning and Associative meaning Conceptual meaning is the same as the lexical meaning, it is the real meaning without connecting to other things. Associative meaning is the meaning of a word associated with another thing, so that it may give connotative meaning, depending on a certain group of people. 6.1.5 Idiomatical meaning and Proverb Idiomatical meaning means that the meaning of the whole constituents does not derive from the constituents. The phrase kick the bucket which means to die, has the meaning which does not derive from any constituents. The phrase black list still has basic meaning that is the list of persons who are presumed to have done crimes. The first one is called full idiomatical while the second is partially idiomatical. Proverb is a phrase or a sentence or longer which represents the characteristics or attitude of people associated with the characteristics or attitudes of something or certain people. Thus the meaning of the proverb is associated with the real meaning, such as Tong kosong nyaring bunyinya, seperti kucing dan anjing. Compare with motto, maxim, saying, etc. 6.2 Relation of Meaning This topic means the relation of meaning between one unit to another unit of language, it can be synonym, antonym, polisemy, homonymy, hyponymy, and ambiguity. 6.2.1 Synonym This kind of relation means the similarity of meaning between one utterance and the other utterance, such as pleased, and happy, She is pregnant and She is expecting a baby, die and pass away, He killed the dog and The dog was killed by him, etc. Although two or more words synonymous their meanings are not exactly the same. There are some factors which make them not exactly the same such as time, place, formality, society, and activities. Certain word is only used for certain time, certain place, certain formality, certain society, and certain event. The literal meaning of die and pass away are the same, but they are used in different context. That is why they may not be exchanged. Examples: different in dia beliau > status/society hulubalang komandan > time saya beta > place uang duit > formality mama mami > status/society matahari surya > event/activity |