Friday: General Knowledge
What is the study of meaning in language called?
Hint: This branch of linguistics focuses on how words, phrases, and sentences convey meaning in different contexts.
Semantics is the branch of linguistics that focuses on the study of meaning in language, analyzing how words, phrases, and sentences convey information.
It plays a crucial role in understanding how meaning is constructed, interpreted, and communicated across different contexts. Semantics is often divided into areas such as lexical semantics, which examines the meanings of individual words, and compositional semantics, which explores how words combine to form meaningful sentences. It is closely related to fields like pragmatics, which considers meaning in context, and philosophy, where it intersects with theories of truth and reference. In modern applications, semantics is essential for fields like translation, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing, helping machines and humans interpret language more accurately. By studying semantics, linguists gain valuable insights into how meaning shapes communication across different languages and cultures.
What about the other answers?
Pragmatics: Studies language use in context but not meaning itself.
Morphology: Examines word formation and structure, not meaning.
Linguistics: The broad study of language, which includes semantics but is not specifically about meaning.