 The term Semantics, originally Greek, is a recent addition to the English language. However, in its early use in the 19th century, the term was not used simply to refer to meaning, but to its development, with what we today call historical Semantics. Today, Semantics is one of the main areas in linguistics. Often, Semantics is used synonymously with word Semantics, a branch of Semantics that seeks to explain the phenomenon of meaning in natural language by means of defining the nature of word meaning. We will concentrate on word Semantics in this introductory e-lecture to Semantics. Now, word Semantics seeks to explain the phenomenon of meaning in natural language by means of defining the nature of word meaning. There are two ways of looking at word meaning, resulting in two branches of word Semantics. The first is referred to as reference or referential Semantics. The second deals with sense, and it is often referred to as lexical Semantics. Let's start with reference. Now, what is the relation between a linguistic sign, that is a word, or to be precise a lexeme, and the real-life object? Well, there is clearly some sort of definable relationship between lexemes and objects. We use lexemes to refer to objects. Fly, for example, can clearly be defined as an animate physical object, an insect with six legs and two wings. Or we refer to actions such as cooking, which is clearly an action. Do you remember these two cooks? I used them in my phonology e-lecture associated with the famous quotation, Phonetics gathers the raw material, phonemics cooks it. By who is it? Do you remember? Okay, let's return to Semantics. The explanation of the relationship between lexemes and the real-world objects is undoubtedly the task of Semantics. One of the oldest views can be found in Plato's dialogue Cratinos, the so-called naming view. However, the definition of word-object or lexeme-object relationships via simple naming involves a number of problems. Let's look at some of them. For example, abstract objects. What is love? Love is an abstract object, but what is it? Or look at extinct objects. How can you establish a relationship with something that doesn't exist anymore? Dinosaurs. And then we have opaque contexts. John knows that Bill wants to kiss Mary, but how can we define the meaning of no? Well, we certainly need a more sophisticated view that relates words and objects via a mediator. And this mediator is referred to as concept. So we have to expand the unidimensional naming view by a third dimension. So let's do it. Here you see the extension. Now the solution to the problem of explaining the nature of word meaning is now to define the meaning of a word in terms of the image or concept in the speaker's or hearer's mind. This relationship can best be illustrated by means of the semiotic triangle as introduced by Charles K Ogden and Ivar Armstrong Richards in 1923. The idea is that words and objects may be related in several ways. Their model, by the way, is referred to as the semiotic triangle. Now one way to define this relationship is a more or less direct relationship. This direct relationship between the object, hear our fly and hear the linguistic symbol, can be realized in two ways. The first one is referred to as onomatopoeia. Well, here is the Greek word. I have always found it quite interesting that the English word onomatopoeia involves four vowels on the trot in this word. Well, it goes back to the Greek original, which consists of the two items onoma and pieo, where onoma means name. Now onomatopoeia works relatively well for items such as cow. Now all over the world the object cow is associated with the sound moo. It works well here, doesn't it? However, it works less well for dogs, where in English, dogs are associated with the sound bow-wow, and in German dogs go wow-wow. What about your language? Do Germans in English perceive animal noises differently? Well, maybe not. In any case, onomatopoeia is not a stable relationship between linguistic signs and objects. Look at the cock over here. Oh well, is that a cock? I think it's a turkey. Well, let's consider this as a cock. It's interesting to associate the sound with it. That's what I'm after. In German it goes kickery-key, whereas in English you would associate it with the sound. Yes? Cook-a-doodle-doo. So what are these different animals? Well, I think you can see clearly that onomatopoeia only affects a handful of items. This is why this bottom line here is dashed and not a straight line. Well, this functionality of a direct relationship between lexeme and object can be confirmed by a second relation that is often said to be more direct. It is referred to as iconicity. That is, the use of imagery in linguistic signs or more precisely, a term referring to the property of some linguistic symbols whose physical form closely corresponds to the characteristics of the object they're referred to. Here are two examples where it seems to work. Let's look at this object first. Obviously a big object, a whale. And if you look at the adjectives associated with it, like grand in French, gross in German, or take the German expletive boar, which immediately tells you that there's something big, something enormous. And what do they have in common? They involve a vowel which involves a big vocal tract. So the size of the vocal tract seems to indicate that we have a big object. And if we compare that with this small item over here, the tiny little mouse, or as you would say in French, or in German, the E involves a small vocal tract and a small opening. So we have a small object. But as you know, it doesn't work all the time. Look at words such as big, which involves a small vocal tract, but relates to a huge object. Music in German, gigantic, which involves a small vocal tract and also relates to a gigantic object. So in human language, as opposed to animal communication, only a few items can be said to possess such symbolic properties. In the majority of the cases, the relationship is established via concept in the mind. The relationship is something like this, where you associate the linguistic sign with the concept, and the concept refers you to the object, and vice versa, of course. The problem here is to know what form these concepts take. In fact, there are several theories to establish the relationship between concepts. For example, we have the word field theory. We have the theory of componential analysis, where meaning is defined by means of atomic components. Or we have other more specialized theories such as semantic networks, originally from computational approaches to semantics. The prototype theory, a more or less cognitive approach. And finally, the theory of meaning postulates, which is a logic-based theory of word meaning. All these theories and other approaches will be explained in more advanced semantic lectures. Let's now look at the second big branch of word semantics, sense. While reference deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements and the non-linguistic world of experience, sense relates to the complex system of relationships that hold between the linguistic elements themselves. It is only concerned with intra-linguistic relationships. For this reason, some linguists refer to this field as lexical semantics. There is disagreement among linguists, though, about the number of semantic relationships at the level of words. The most common view defines three semantic relationships, which you can see over here. Let's illustrate them. Synonomy, that is, the semantic relation of relatedness of meaning, refers to all types of semantic relatedness. That is, two words have an identical semantic core, but different extensions. Well, here is an interactive tool, which you can find in the virtual session about word semantics. It displays the lexine woman in the center. Now, what could a synonym of woman be? Certainly, female would be one. So, woman and female are synonyms. Antonomy, our next sense relation, refers to all types of semantic oppositeness. There are various types of antonomy. For example, gradable antonomy, which involves adjectival relationships such as big and small. You can grade them bigger, smaller. And then we have non-gradable antonyms such as dead versus alive. It cannot be less alive. And there are further types. So, let's look at what we can define as an antonyms of woman here. Well, there is something like man, of course. Whether they are true opposites, I do not know, but certainly they are not gradable or non-gradable. Antonomy, our third sense relation, is a basic semantic relation where one lexeme is included in another one. Let's see what we have got here. Yes, we have human as the superordinate term of woman. So, human is a superordinate term which includes the hyponome woman. Once more, the superordinate term is called hyperonym. The set of subterms or subordinate terms are called cohyponyms. That is, the hyperonym human includes the hyponym woman. Shall we try another one? Okay. Well, here we have cell. The synonym of cell, well, that's something like vend. And the antonym of cell, by, well, that's clearly some sort of opposition. And the hyponym would be something like transfer, because cell involves just like by the transfer of money. Some linguists even include a fourth relationship, namely, myronomy. And this is a sense relation between parts and holds. For example, in this little picture here, you see that the mouth is part of the face. The eyes are part of the face. The nose is part of the face. And so on and so forth. Not all semanticists subscribe to these positions. Some prefer a more extended view of hyponymy as one relationship and would define incompatibility as a second. Well, this e-lecture is just an overview of the central topics of word semantics. We did not discuss the details of sense relations. The components and principles used in conceptual theories, let alone how we can specify concepts formally. This will be covered in depth in further semantics e-lectures.