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Conceptual semantics is a framework for semantic analysis developed mainly by Ray Jackendoff in 1976. Its aim is to provide a characterization of the conceptual elements by which a person understands words and sentences, and thus to provide an explanatory semantic representation (title of a Jackendoff 1976 paper).
This influential theory has resulted in a view of semantic components more as possible rather than necessary contributors to the meaning of texts. His discussion on the category game is particularly incisive: [16] Consider for example the proceedings that we call 'games'. I mean board games, card games, ball games, Olympic games, and so on.
Meanwhile, cognitive semantic theories are typically built on the argument that lexical meaning is conceptual. That is, meaning is not necessarily reference to the entity or relation in some real or possible world. Instead, meaning corresponds with a concept held in the mind based on personal understanding.
Other theories making use of similar conceptual primitives to capture meaning include Jean M. Mandler's spatial primitives, Anna Wierzbicka's semantic primes [10], Leonard Talmy's conceptual primitives, Roger Schank conceptual dependency theory and Andrea A. diSessa's phenomenological primitives (p-prims).
The term conceptual model refers to any model that is formed after a conceptualization or generalization process. [1] [2] Conceptual models are often abstractions of things in the real world, whether physical or social. Semantic studies are relevant to various stages of concept formation. Semantics is fundamentally a study of concepts, the ...
Inferentialist semantics, also called conceptual role semantics, holds that the meaning of an expression is given by the role it plays in the premises and conclusions of good inferences. [130] For example, one can infer from "x is a male sibling" that "x is a brother" and one can infer from "x is a brother" that "x has parents".
Today, the signifier is often interpreted as the conceptual material form, i.e. something which can be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted; and the signified as the conceptual ideal form. [ 6 ] : 14 In other words, "contemporary commentators tend to describe the signifier as the form that the sign takes and the signified as the concept to ...
Social meaning, where words are used to establish relationships between people and to delineate social roles. For example, in Japanese, the suffix "-san" when added to a proper name denotes respect, sometimes indicating that the speaker is subordinate to the listener; while the suffix "-chan" denotes that the speaker thinks the listener is a ...