A central topic in semantics concerns the relation between language, world, and mental concepts.
Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and reference. Sense is given by the ideas and concepts associated with an expression while reference is the object to which an expression points. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which studies the rules that dictate how to create grammatically correct sentences, and pragmatics, which investigates how people use language in communication.
Lexical semantics is the branch of semantics that studies word meaning. It examines whether words have one or several meanings and in what lexical relations they stand to one another. Phrasal semantics studies the meaning of sentences by exploring the phenomenon of compositionality or how new meanings can be created by arranging words. Formal semantics relies on logic and mathematics to provide precise frameworks of the relation between language and meaning. Cognitive semantics examines meaning from a psychological perspective and assumes a close relation between language ability and the conceptual structures used to understand the world. Other branches of semantics include conceptual semantics, computational semantics, and cultural semantics.
Theories of meaning are general explanations of the nature of meaning and how expressions are endowed with it. According to referential theories, the meaning of an expression is the part of reality to which it points. Ideational theories identify meaning with mental states like the ideas that an expression evokes in the minds of language users. According to causal theories, meaning is determined by causes and effects, which behaviorist semantics analyzes in terms of stimulus and response. Further theories of meaning include truth-conditional semantics, verificationist theories, the use theory, and inferentialist semantics.
The study of semantic phenomena began during antiquity but was not recognized as an independent field of inquiry until the 19th century. Semantics is relevant to the fields of formal logic, computer science, and psychology.
Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends...
Programming languages are described in terms of their syntax (form) and semantics (meaning), usually defined by a formal language. Languages usually provide...
In logic, the semantics of logic or formal semantics is the study of the semantics, or interpretations, of formal languages and (idealizations of) natural...
Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings. It includes the study of how words...
Look up formal semantics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Formal semantics may refer to: Formal semantics (natural language), the study of meaning...
In computer science, having value semantics (also value-type semantics or copy-by-value semantics) means for an object that only its value counts, not...
Kripke semantics (also known as relational semantics or frame semantics, and often confused with possible world semantics) is a formal semantics for non-classical...
Operational semantics is a category of formal programming language semantics in which certain desired properties of a program, such as correctness, safety...
General semantics is a school of thought that incorporates philosophic and scientific aspects. Although it does not stand on its own as a separate school...
Frame semantics can refer to: Kripke semantics - semantics for modal logics Frame semantics (linguistics) - linguistic theory developed by Charles J....
In computer science, denotational semantics (initially known as mathematical semantics or Scott–Strachey semantics) is an approach of formalizing the meanings...
analysis correspond to syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and...
Distributional semantics is a research area that develops and studies theories and methods for quantifying and categorizing semantic similarities between...
The Semantics was an American pop rock band from Nashville, Tennessee, formed by Jody Spence (drums), Millard Powers (bass) and Will Owsley (guitars,...
Regular semantics is a computer hardware consistency model. It describes a type of guarantee provided by a processor register that is shared by several...
science, concurrency semantics is a way to give meaning to concurrent systems in a mathematically rigorous way. Concurrency semantics is often based on mathematical...
Atomic semantics is a type of guarantee provided by a data register shared by several processors in a parallel machine or in a network of computers working...
Action semantics is a framework for the formal specification of semantics of programming languages invented by David Watt and Peter D. Mosses in the 1990s...
Dynamic semantics is a framework in logic and natural language semantics that treats the meaning of a sentence as its potential to update a context. In...
In distributed computing, failure semantics is used to describe and classify errors that distributed systems can experience. A list of types of errors...
Several systems of semantics for intuitionistic logic have been studied. One of these semantics mirrors classical Boolean-valued semantics but uses Heyting...
Cognitive semantics is part of the cognitive linguistics movement. Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. Cognitive semantics holds that language...
computer science, particularly in human-computer interaction, presentation semantics specify how a particular piece of a formal language is represented in...
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