SEMANTIC

Semantics is a study of the meaning of lexical items and other parts of language.
There are seven types of meaning in Semantics; conceptual,connotative, stylistic,
affective, reflected, collocative and thematic meaning.This study focuses on only
two of the types of meaning: conceptual meaning and connotative meaning.

1/Conceptual meaning
Conceptual meaning means logical, cognitive, or denotative content. It is based
on two tructural principles, which are contractiveness and constituent
structures(in a scientific way). It is usually derived from definitions we find
indictionaries and the appearance of these lexical items. We give these lexical
items features (constituent structures) and eliminate other features whichare not
present (contractiveness structures).- The conceptual meaning of a language can
be studied in terms of contrastive feature, depends on the given lexical field,
so that (forexample) the meaning of the Word woman could be specified as (+
human, +adult,- male), as distinct from, man , which could be defined (+
human, +adult,+ male),
man is incompatible with woman because of the distinct feature which is (male
feature)- The second principle, that of structure, is the principle by which larger
linguistic units are built up out of smaller units, (for example) in this sentence:

{[(All) (men)] [(are)] [(mortal)]}

(We are able to analyze the sentence syntactically into a its constituentsparts)The
semantic representation of conceptual meaning is governed by two linguistic
principles: that of contrast and that of arrangement. These principles are
comparable to the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations observed in
phonological and syntactic analyses.

2/Associative meaning
The associative meaning of an expression has to do with individual
mental understandings of the speaker. They, in turn, can be broken up
into six sub-types: connotative, collocative, social, affective, reflected
and thematic

A/ Connotative meaning

The communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers

to (Leech 1981: 12).
Connotation is the real-world value a speaker associates with an expression.In
other words, it is the meaning above the conceptual meaning and it may vary
according to culture, background or society. Thus, connotative meaning can be
subjective or unstable. It depends very much on how an individual orsociety
perceives a word. It is the association that we make in our mind of what these
lexical items represent. (For example), In English, the word dog may have the
connotation loyalty , apart from its referential meaning.When we analyze word
meanings we should distinguish two separate concepts called denotative and
connotative meaning; sea denotes a large body of water but connotes a sense of
danger, instability

One aspect concerning the connotative meaning is the

social meaning (sometimes termed stylistic meaning)

which varies between age-groups, sex,social class and cultures. Dialect can be a
good example.It is a piece of language that conveys about the social circumstances
of its use. Pavement is used in British English and sidewalk in American
English.Residence is formal and home is casual.

C/ Affective meaning
Is what is communicated of the feeling or attitude of the speaker/writertoward
what is referred to? (For example), by scaling our remarks according to politeness
with the object of getting people to be quiet, we might say either:

1/ Im terribly sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if you would be so kind

as to lower you voices a little.

2/ will you belt up.

Factors such as intonation and voice-timber (tone of voice) are also importan
there. And there are elements of language such as interjections, like
(Aha! Yippee!), Whose main function is to express emotions.

D/ Reflected meaning
What is communicated through association with another sense of the same
expression. So it is the meaning that arises in cases of multiple conceptual
meaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our response to another sense.
In the church service, the synonymous expression (the comforter), it sounds
warm comforting but in the religious context it means the strengthener or
supporter. i.e sense of the word seems to rub off on another sense.
E/ Collocative meaning
Collocative meaning is the associated meaning a word acquires in line withthe
meaning of words which tend to co-occur with it. Both pretty andhandsome mean
good-looking but they differ in collocative meaning. Prettyoften co-occurs with girl,
woman, flower, skirt, etc. Handsome oftencollocates with boy, man, car, overcoat,
etc.

See (green ideas sleep furiously) to more understand the meaning

of collocation