Significance of the Study

5 CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Semantics

Semantics is the philosophical and scientific study of meaning. Brinton 2000: 11 states that the word semantic has ultimately prevailed as a name for the doctrine of meaning, in particular of linguistic meaning. It means that semantics discuss about the meaning for the linguistics. Kearns 2000:10 states that semantics is the study of meaning in language. Semantics terms was derived from Greek word sema the meaning is sign or symbol, refers to the aspects of meaning that are expressed to the meaning of the words and how they combined two form sentence meaning”. The former is to do with the meaning of words; the letteer is to do with the meaning of phrases, including a sentences. It means that semantics told about the signsymbol that means of communication to give the message or meaning of them. Yule 2006:14 states that semantics can be described as the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. Semantics is concerned to the meaning of words and how they combined two form sentences meaning. It is useful to distinguish lexical semantic and structural semantic. Semantics is one of the branches of linguistics studying about the meaning and it is considered as a major branch of linguistic devoted to the study of meaning in a language. But what is meaning? Philosopers have debated the 6 question, with particular reference to language, for well over 2000 years, and no more have yet produced a satisfactory to it Lyons, 1984: 136. In order the meaning to be successfully studied, of course, it must be made clear just what the meaning is. According to what has long been the most widely accepted theory of semantics, meanings are ideas or concept that can be transferred from the mind of the speaker to the hearer by embodying them. So, semantics is the study of meaning which can be used to communicate better in society, not only for special person. Semantics also can be used to understand a literary works, like a prose or