| 释义 |
semantic, a. and n.|sɪˈmæntɪk|
[ad. Gr. σηµαντικ-ός significant, f. σηµαίνειν to show, signify. Cf. F. sémantique.]
A. adj.
†1. Relating to signs of the weather. Obs.
1665J. Spencer Prodigies v. §1 (ed. 2) 300 'Twere easie to shew how much this Semantick Philosophy..was studied.
2. a. Relating to signification or meaning.
1894E. W. Fay in Amer. Jrnl. Philol. XV. 433 Freedom of interchange between r and l is limited by semantic considerations. 1895Bloomfield in Amer. Jrnl. Philol. XVI. 412 The semantic value of the older reduplications. 1901H. Oertel Lectures on Study of Lang. i. 72 He was the first to distinguish clearly between the formal and the semantic side of a word. Ibid. v. 297 In the discussion of all semantic changes the logical aspect must be carefully kept separate from the psychological aspect. 1920B. Malinowski in Bull. School Oriental Studies London Inst. I. iv. 62 Sound semantic definitions valid for a wide range of linguistic types are needed before any grammatical analysis of native languages is possible. 1943Time 22 Nov. 99/3 U.S. intellectuals in 1943 went out and ratified the Constitution all over again. But some of them had semantic reservations. 1968N.Y. Post 15 Jan. 45/3 Each day passes with some new semantic quibble emanating from Washington. 1976J. S. Gruber Lexical Structures in Syntax & Semantics 1 We would acknowledge the necessity for interpretive semantics of some sort (e.g. a semantic calculus), but not one based on the interpretation of words and phrases.
b. In weakened uses.
1959W. R. Fishel in New Leader 2 Nov. 13/1 We do ourselves and our Asian neighbors a distinct disservice when we insist on stretching them or shrinking them to fit our particular semantic bed. 1971L. Koppett N.Y. Times Guide Spectator Sports ii. 41 Lesson No. 1 must be clung to through all the semantic storms.
B. n. pl.
1. a. = semasiology. Also, (the study or analysis of) the relationships between linguistic symbols and their meanings. Const. as sing. and pl.
Now the usual word in this sense.
[1883M. Bréal in Études Grecques en France XVII. 133 Cette étude..nous l'appellerons la Sémantique..c'est-à-dire la science des significations.] 1893E. Williams tr. M. Bréal in Trans. Amer. Philol. Assoc. XXIV. 27 All, or almost all, the chapter of linguistics treating of Semantics, or the science of meanings, has yet to be written. 1895C. R. Lanman in Ibid. XXVI. p. xi, The doctrine of the principles that underlie the processes of the development of the meanings of words may be called semantics or semasiology. 1900Mrs. H. Cust (title) Semantics: Studies in the Science of Meaning. [tr. M. Bréal Essai de Sémantique.] 1901Athenæum 13 July, As applied to language, psychology is not easily distinguishable from semantics or semasiology. 1912E. Weekley Romance of Words 79 The convenient name semantics has been applied of late to the science of meanings, as distinguished from phonetics, the science of sound. 1920B. Malinowski in Bull. School of Oriental Studies London Inst. I. iv. 35 All these works..are résumés of the present state of linguistics, and they reflect the insufficient attention hitherto given to Semantics. 1933L. Bloomfield Language viii. 138 When the phonology of a language has been established, there remains the task of telling what meanings are attached to the several phonetic forms. This phase of the description is semantics. It is ordinarily divided into two parts, grammar and lexicon. 1941J. C. Ransom New Criticism i. 5 The Meaning of Meaning is in terms of the new philosophy of language; the authors refer to the latter as Symbolism, but since their book the name of it appears to have become standardized as Semantics. 1952Economist 21 June 813/2 Professor Hayakawa says nothing about..the importance of semantics in the determination of word-origins and word-history. 1964E. A. Nida Toward Sci. Transl. iii. 35 While semantics deals with the relationship of symbols to referents, syntactics is concerned with the relationship of symbol to symbol. 1972Hartmann & Stork Dict. Lang. & Linguistics 204/2 Linguistic semantics has studied meaning more in terms of the connexions between speech acts and the physical and intellectual environment of the speaker. 1980Times Lit. Suppl. 7 Mar. 268/1 Frege's goal was not to provide a semantics for natural language as he found it.
b. In weakened uses.
1944M. Ryskind in Sat. Rev. Lit. 23 Dec. 4/1 The technique of character-assassination instead of arguments is..standard totalitarian semantics. 1966N.Y. Post 3 Aug. 6/4 Sen. Pastore said that everybody was engaged in semantics. ‘It comes down to a very fine point,’ he said, stating the obvious in a nutshell. 1978K. Hudson Jargon of Professions 16 Almost daily in the press briefing, whenever a newsman raises his hand to ask for clarification of some mealy-mouthed statement: ‘I am not going to debate semantics with you,’ the spokesman replies.
2. transf. The interpretation of signs in general.
1946C. Morris Signs, Lang. & Behavior viii. 219 Semantics deals with the signification of signs in all modes of signifying... When so conceived, pragmatics, semantics, and syntactics are all interpretable within a behaviorally oriented semiotic. 1962Listener 11 Jan. 70/2 Exposure to art, erroneous notions mixed with some accurate ones of history, the private struggle with semantics and meaning. 1970G. Greer Female Eunuch 33 The notion of a curve is so closely connected to sexual semantics that some people cannot resist sniggering at road signs.
C. Special collocations. semantic aphasia Path., disturbance in understanding the significance of any but the simplest forms of words or speech caused by disorder in the cerebral cortex; semantic differential Psychol., a technique devised to measure the distribution of meaning that a person attaches to a concept, by rating descriptive words selected by him from an evaluated list; a scale or test to achieve this; semantic paradox Logic, a paradox caused by ambiguity of meaning in the language of a statement, rather than by its logical reasoning; semantic poetry (see quot. 1969).
1926H. Head Aphasia II. 259 A case of Semantic Aphasia. 1958Lang. & Speech I. 26 This symptom, appearing distinctly in cases where the affection damages the most complex and most recently formed zones of the parieto-occipital region at its border with the temporal region, constitutes a basic symptom of so-called ‘semantic aphasia’. 1974L. F. Sies Aphasia Theory & Therapy i. 51 Semantic aphasia produces an inability to perceive the complex relationships by which language classifies separate concepts.
1953C. E. Osgood Method & Theory in Exper. Psychol. xvi. 713 The distribution of his [sc. the subject's] judgments on a standardized series of such scales serves to differentiate the meaning of this concept from others; for this reason this measuring instrument has been called a ‘semantic differential’. 1962Listener 11 Jan. 62/1 Identification with parents was measured by the similarity of children's description of their parents, and of the kind of person they would most like to be themselves, on a series of seven-point rating scales known as the ‘semantic differential’. 1962U. Weinreich in Householder & Saporta Probl. Lexicogr. 26 Semantic-differential tests. 1979T. Shapiro Clinical Psycholinguistics iii. 26 Procedures such as the semantic differential offer valid and important experimental properties to understand meaning.
[1939Mind XLVIII. 358 This semantico-empirical paradox can easily be solved by the ramified theory of types without using the simple theory of types. 1948H. C. Brodie tr. Chwistek's Limits of Sci. ii. 40 Logical paradoxes must be distinguished from semantical paradoxes.] 1960P. Ziff Semantic Anal. iv. 134 The fact that the semantic paradoxes can be formulated in English has led some philosophers, primarily logicians, to the conclusion that English is in a muddled state. 1978T. J. Smiley in F. P. Ramsey Foundations 8 Ramsey transforms the problem by drawing the now standard distinction between the logical and semantic paradoxes.
1949S. Themerson (title) Bayamus and the Theatre of Semantic Poetry. 1951Times 5 Apr. 5/1 Nothing could prevent Mr. Vyshinsky or Mr. Acheson from discussing Etruscan pottery or semantic poetry if they really wished to do so. 1969Poetry Rev. LX. 274 Semantic Poetry is based on the idea that words such as moon, night, heart, flower, etc., having become clichés have become devalued and devoid of affective effect. SP avoids all forms of rhetorical device and relies upon a text derived from traditional language by replacing each word by its dictionary definition... Semantic Poetry does not rarefy the verbal material to condense the meaning.
Hence seˈmantical (also -ly adv.) a.; semanˈtician, seˈmanticist, a student of semantics; semanˈticity, the quality of being semantic or possessing meaning derived from signs.
1895M. Bloomfield in Amer. Jrnl. Philol. XVI. 409 Every word, in so far as it is semantically expressive, may establish, by hap-hazard favoritism, a union between its meaning and any of its sounds. 1917Jrnl. Eng. & Gmc. Philol. XVI. 472 The professional semanticist is visualized in his work-shop,..feverishly fingering the leaves of a host of lexical tomes, standard and dialect, old, middle and new. 1921H. E. Palmer Princ. Lang.-Study 62 The lexicologist or semantician will study the meanings. 1926C. M. Doke Phonetics of Zulu Lang. 217 (caption) Words semantically alike but differing in tone. 1936Mind XLV. 272 Chwistek, a semanticist and metamathematician noted for his work on the theory of types. 1941J. C. Ransom New Criticism iv. 282 All discourse consists in signs.., there is the semantical dimension proper, involving the reference of a sign to an object. 1960Sci. Amer. Sept. 90/2 The dog's panting [does not] exhibit the design-feature of ‘semanticity’... The calls of gibbons..possess semanticity. 1960Economist 15 Oct. 251/1 In Natal..there has been some talk of secession—semantically disguised because secession today bears a stigma it did not carry ten years ago. 1973J. M. Anderson Structural Aspects Lang. Change 186 Many of the outstanding semanticists have been optimistic about finding some kind of regularity behind semantic processes. 1975Language LI. 207 This distinction [between competence and performance]..is constantly attacked..by the ‘semanticians’. 1975I. Robinson New Grammarians' Funeral viii. 165 He says that music hasn't semanticity because ‘Vivaldi's Four Seasons is stylized away from the reality it pretends to imitate’. 1978C. Hookway in Hookway & Pettit Action & Interpretation 26 The semantical and intentional discourse of the subjects provides an additional control.
Add: seˈmanticism n.
1949R. K. Merton Social Theory viii. 219 Not only ideological analysis..but also..Marxism, semanticism, propaganda analysis, Paretanism and..functional analysis have..a similar outlook on the role of ideas. 1951Theology LIV. 272 To exclude all mention of Logical Positivism and Semanticism on the Continent and in the United States. 1979Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts Nov. 782/2 There was a semanticism about the very best examples of the nineteenth century. |