2. SEMANTIC THEORY
2.1 The Understanding of Semantics
The study of word meaning has a very long history whose practical effect and has produced many dictionary. The meaning of some kinds of sentences in particular
those used to make statements has been studied by logicians for more than two millennia. The studies of the science of meaning as we call semantic. Unfortunately
the term meaning covers a variety of language aspects and there is no general agreement either about what meaning is or about the way in which it should be
described. The term meaning is of course, much more familiar to us. But the
dictionary will suggest a number of different meanings of meaning which more correctly.
In our practical language, sometimes we find that words or phrases could have meaning that is different from its words meaning For example, clouds mean it
will rain or a red light means stop. The words rain and stop refer to signs. Sign indicates something that is happening or will happen, or something that has to be
done. Such signs provide information or give instruction, and it is easy to a s s u m e t h a t language consist of signs of a similar kind.
Now, let us see the definition of semantic given by the linguist below: Kreidler 1998:3 says, Semantics is systematic study of the meaning and
linguistic semantics is the study of how language is organized and express meaning”. Nornby 1974:789 cites that semantics is a branch of linguistics concern with
studying of the meanings in words and sentences.
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J.J. Katz 1972:1 cites that semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. It is concerned with what sentences and other linguistic objects express, not with the
arrangement of their syntactic parts and their pronunciations.
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2.1 The Scope of Semantics
Semantics can be recognized as a level of linguistic description and as a component of linguistic.
What one does really try to do in semantics is to explicate or to make explicit the sentence with various grammatical constructions which are used and understood by
native or fluent speaker of a language. Sentence consists of words, and the words which are used in a part of speech as a component of sentence. Nonetheless semantics can be
considered from the word meaning point of view and from the sentence meaning. Language might be thought as a system of communication which the one is called
as the signifier, and the other one is called as the signified. The signifier is a word in the language and the signified is the object in the word that it stands for, refers to or denotes.
Words, that is to say, they are ‘names’ or ‘labels’ for things and activities. In learning the names of things, we also create a word and say something. The use
of word always has a strongest view which relates sentences to actual things and events. The view we have just been criticizing relates words and things directly and relates
them through the mediation of concepts of the mind.
2.2 Concept
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