Chapter 3 Chapter 3 The Semantic Structure The Semantic Structure of Language of Language

Semantics- the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meanings.

According to Chomsky – The most important concept are surface and deep structure.

* Deep structure*

- the input of transformational rules- cannot apply transformation rules if you don't have deep structure.

Semantic structure - Universal than grammatical structure. - The type of units, the features and the

relationships are essentially the same for all languages.

Semantic prepositions - Occur in all languages - Consists of concepts related to one another with

an EVENT, THING or ATTRIBUTE as the central concept.

Example:

It is used in the following four propositions which are in sequential relation to one another.

DEEP STRUCTURE

• John met Bill on the corner.• John and Bill talked.• Bill left.• John left.

In English, a number of alternate surface structure forms might be used:

SURFACE STRUCTURE

1. John met Bill on the corner. They talked. Bill left. Then John left, too.

2. John met Bill on the corner and they talked. Then Bill left and John did too.

3. John met Bill on the corner. After they talked, Bill left and then John left.

4. John and Bill met on the corner to talk. When they finished talking, Bill left first and then John also left.

In semantic structure the only ordering is chronological. This chronological order does not need to match the order of words in the grammatical structure and is often different (skewed). The above propositions could also be expressed in the following English form:

5. John left last, after he and Bill had met on the corner, talked, and Bill had left.

Semantic units The nouns and pronouns of the grammar refer to

THINGS in the semantic structure, the verbs of the grammar to EVENTS, etc. If there were no skewing, the relationship would be as follows:

▫ THINGS …................ NOUNS,PRONOUNS▫ EVENTS …............... VERBS▫ ATTRIBUTES …....... ADJECTIVES,ADVERBS▫ RELATIONS ….........

CONJUNCTIONS,PREPOSITIONS

,PARTICLES,ENCLITICS etc.

Semantic hierarchy • If there were no skewing between the semantic

configurations and the grammatical structures then the relationship would be as follows:

• meaning component morpheme (roots and affixes)

• concept word• complex concept (concept cluster) phrase• propositions clause• propositional cluster sentence• semantic paragraph paragraph • episode cluster division• semantic part part• discourse text