Linguistics & Semantics Vocabulary

the study of meaning in language; what words and sentences signify

“The semantic content was clear, though the phrasing was awkward.”

the rules governing how words combine into phrases and sentences

“The sentence was syntactically correct but semantically nonsensical.”

how context influences the interpretation of meaning

“Pragmatically, 'Can you pass the salt?' is a request, not a question.”

the study of word formation and internal structure

“The morphology of 'unhappiness' reveals three meaningful units.”

words whose meaning depends on context (I, here, now, this)

“Deictic expressions like 'tomorrow' shift meaning with each utterance.”

using a word to refer back to something mentioned earlier

“In 'John said he was tired,' 'he' is an anaphoric reference to John.”

a single word having multiple related meanings

“The polysemy of 'bank' (river/financial) causes ambiguity.”

resolving which meaning is intended when multiple are possible

“Context usually enables disambiguation without conscious effort.”

the meaning of a whole derived from its parts and their arrangement

“Idioms violate compositionality—'kick the bucket' isn't about buckets.”

the vocabulary of a language; a mental dictionary of words

“Her lexicon expanded dramatically after a year of reading.”

the smallest unit of sound that distinguishes meaning

“The phonemes /p/ and /b/ distinguish 'pat' from 'bat'.”

the smallest meaningful unit in a language

“The word 'cats' contains two morphemes: 'cat' and '-s'.”