Semantics Module for University Student
Introduction W hy study semantics? Semantics (as the study of meaning) is central to the study of communication and as communication becomes more and more a crucial factor in social organization, the need to understand it becomes more and more pressing. Semantics is also at the center of the study of the human mind – thought processes, cognition, conceptualization – all these are intricately bound up with the way in which we classify and convey our experience of the world through language. Because it is, in these two ways, a focal point in man's study of man, semantics has been the meeting place of various cross-currents of thinking and various disciplines of study. Philosophy, psychology, and linguistics all claim a deep interest in the subject. Semantics has often seemed baffling because there are many different approaches to it, and the ways in which they are related to one another are rarely clear, even to writers on the subject . Semantics is a branch of linguist...