Evaluating Word as a Semantic Unit

Evaluating word as a semantic unit

Farhad Uddin Ahmed Bhuiyan
Introduction: Semantics is simply the study of meaning of a language. We know
that language consists of words, which are considered as the basic meaningful
unit of language. So, the question arises if word can be considered as the basic
unit of semantics. To come into the conclusion, we must know what semantics
deals with, and then analyze and investigate functions of words in semantics.

Semantics and functions of words as semantics:
Semantics is one of the levels of linguistics and it is concerned with meaning. The
notion of meaning, actually, covers a wide range of applications, some of which
belong to the field of semantics and others lie beyond it. Undoubtedly, a
particular word, phrase or sentence has its own meaning. Likewise our everyday
actions and deeds also have meanings. However, semantics is exclusively concern
with the meanings of linguistic entities such as words, phrases, sentences and
other grammatical forms, but not with the meanings of actions or contexts. In
other words, semantics deals with the conceptual meaning, but not with the
associative meaning.
Conceptual meaning is synonymous with primary, central, logical cognitive or
denotative meaning of a word. It is the first ordinary meaning listed in
dictionaries, which is not affected by the contexts, or emotional overtones
associated with the act of communication. There is an assumed shared
conceptual meaning of every word of a language. There is a universal implication
of the conceptual meaning. On the contrary, associative meaning of a word is
affected by the contexts, background, time and the cultural realities of the users
of language. This type of meaning is not static. It is variable and open ended.

Semantics should be able to explain the nature of the meanings of words as well
as that of sentences. However, we have to keep in mind that the meaning of a
word may not always be realized from its referential or denotational
characteristics. Actually, there are many words whose basics characteristics may
not be easily analyzed. Such words are best studied by focusing on the kind of
relationship they create with other words. These relationships are based on the
sense of the words. There are several kinds of sense relations as a result of the
semantic relatedness between the form and meaning and between two
meanings, which will be discussed in the following:
Synonymy:
When two words are closely related in their meaning, the state is termed as
synonymy. The pairs of words that have very close similarities in meaning are
synonyms. For example, in the English language ‘small’ and ‘little’, ‘big’ and
‘large’, ‘politician’ and ‘statesman’ and so forth are synonyms.
Antonymy:
The relationship of oppositeness is referred to as antonymy. The pairs of words
which are carrying nearly opposite meaning are antonyms. For example, ‘big’ and
‘small’, ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and so on are antonyms.
Polysemy:
A word constitutes the case of polysemy if it has two or more interrelated
meanings or meaning variants. Each of these meaning variants has to be learnt
separately in order to be understood. Look at the following examples where the
same word “foot” indicates to different meanings.
 He hurt his foot.

 He stood at the foot of the mountain
 A foot of the bed is broken.
Hyponymy:
When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another, we have
hyponymy. For instance, dogs, elephants, goats and so on are included in animals.
We can also relate hyponymy to professions to include law, medicine, teaching,
banking and so on. There is always a hierarchical relationship drawing from
general to samples. A hyponym is a word whose meaning is encompassed by the
meaning of other words: woman is a hyponym of human.
Homonymy:
Homonymy explains a situation of identical spelling or pronunciation but with
different unrelated meanings. Such words usually create problems of ambiguity.
There are three categories that together constitute homonymy, which are
different from each other on the basis of subtle differences. These are explicated
below:
1. Homonyms: Homonyms refer to the words which have same spelling and
pronunciation, but are used to convey different meanings. For example, the
verb ‘lie’ in sentence “Please lie down” carries a different meaning from the
verb ‘lie’ in the sentence “Don’t lie, tell the truth”. But the word ‘lie’ is
written and pronounced in the same way in both cases.
2. Homophones: Homophones are the words which are pronounced in the
same way, but they have different spellings and meanings. For example,
‘steel’ and ‘steal’ are written differently, but are pronounced in the same
way. Similarly, ‘son’ and ‘sun’ are homophone.
3. Homographs: Homographs are words which are spelled the same, but have
different pronunciations and meanings. For example, the verb ‘bear’ (to
carry or endure) and the noun ‘bear’ (the animal with a shaggy coat) are
homographs.

Word as a semantic unit:
It is obvious that words play an important role in the fields of semantics, as they
are the carrier of meaning. So, it is reasonable to assume that word is one of the
basic unit of semantics. However, we have to encounter some difficulties in
establishing the word as such a unit.
We have come to know that words are sometimes confusing; in one case, same
spelled word has two or more difficult meanings, and on the other case, same
pronounced word has two different meanings and spellings. There are some other
issues that we face in establishing the word as a basic unit of semantics.

First of all, not all words have the same kind of meaning as others. Some words
have little or no meaning. For instance, prepositions have no meaning when taken
into isolation; they are only meaningful in sentences. They just play a grammatical
function. Next, there are words (mainly verbs) such as ‘going’, ‘working’, ‘singing’
etc are unable to convey the actual meaning and time without the help of
auxiliary verbs. Moreover, we must notice that some whole group of words must
be taken together to establish meaning. These are called idioms.

So, we can realize that words are not providing us clear and explicit meanings in
every situation. They are ambiguous in many cases and sometimes carry no
meaning without playing merely a grammatical function. That is why, it is not
appropriate to consider word as a semantic unit.

To conclude, though semantics is the study of meanings and words are primarily
believed to be the carriers of meanings, we can not consider words as semantic
units because of several limitations. So, we should abandon the idea that the
word is the basic unit of semantics.