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Semantics studies meaning in language, which is limited to the meaning of linguistic expressions. It concerns how signs are interpreted and what information they contain. An example is the meaning of words provided in dictionary definitions by giving synonymous expressions or paraphrases, like defining the meaning of the term ram as adult male sheep. [22]
Literal language is the usage of words exactly according to their direct, straightforward, or conventionally accepted meanings: their denotation. Figurative (or non-literal) language is the usage of words in a way that deviates from their conventionally accepted definitions in order to convey a more complex meaning or a heightened effect. [1]
Some of the properties that define human language as opposed to other communication systems are: the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, meaning that there is no predictable connection between a linguistic sign and its meaning; the duality of the linguistic system, meaning that linguistic structures are built by combining elements into larger ...
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. [1] [2] [3] The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to ...
Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings. [1] [2] It includes the study of how words structure their meaning, how they act in grammar and compositionality, [1] and the relationships between the distinct senses and uses of a word.
The language has generally been described as having contrastive word stress or accent as evidenced by numerous stem and stem-clitic minimal pairs such as /mɒhi/ [mɒ.hí] (' fish ') and /mɒh-i/ [mɒ́.hi] (' some month '). The authors argue that the reason why Persian listeners are stress "deaf" is that their accent locations arise postlexically.
Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that analyzes the lexicon of a specific language.A word is the smallest meaningful unit of a language that can stand on its own, and is made up of small components called morphemes and even smaller elements known as phonemes, or distinguishing sounds.
The basic fields of linguistics broadly focus on language structure at different "scales". Morphology is considered to operate at a scale larger than phonology , which investigates the categories of speech sounds that are distinguished within a spoken language, and thus may constitute the difference between a morpheme and another.