I.

Introduction
Semantic is the branch of linguistics that deals with the study of meaning, changes in meaning,
and the principles that govern the relationship between sentences or words and their meanings. It is
the study of the relationship between signs and symbols and what they represent. An understanding
of semantics is essential to the study of language acquisition. The study of semantic includes the
study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified,
negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased. Semantics is also closely related to grammar. Some
books on semantics have devoted a great deal of space to the investigation of the meaning of what
are essentially grammatical characteristics of language. In semantics, we also learn about lexical.
Lexical and sentence meaning, as one part of the meaning, are highly important to be studied.
Lexical meaning is a relationship that exist between words and morphemes or the smallest unit,
including affixes, of linguistic meaning or function. So, in this paper we will discuss about definition
of meaning, types of meaning, approaches in meaning, semantic at grammar, lexical
structure(synonym, antonym, polysemy, hiponym), and change of meaning.

II. Discussion
2.1 Definition of Meaning
Language is an important tools of human being to communicate one another. The language,
which is used by the human beings as tools of communication, indicate a certain meaning. According
to Richard (1985 : 172) says “meaning is what the language expresses about the world we live in or
any possible or imaginary word. The word “meaning” has a number different nations and varieties
since speaker, in expressing their ideas, minds, feelings, use a word to mean something different
from what it denotes. So we can say if meaning is the heart of language. Meaning, we might say, is
what language is for: to have a language without meaning would be like having lungs without air.
Only when sequences of sounds or letters have (or are judged capable of having) a meaning do they
qualify as language.

2.2 Types of Meaning

The expert of language have classified meaning from different point of view based on their
deliberation. According to Leech (1981 : 8-32) there are seven types of meaning:
1. Conceptual meaning
Conceptual meaning is logical, cognitive, or denotative content. For examples:

a. Church : a building made for Christian people to pray

b. Tiger : a kind of animal which has four legs, fangs, stripes, jaws and a tail.

2. Connotative meaning
connotative meaning is the communicative value anf expression has by the virtue of what it
refers to over and above its peurely conceptual content. It includes not only physical
characteristic,but also social properties and psychologycal. For examples:

a. the word “white” has the connotation of holy

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b. and the word “black” has the connotation of darkness or evil

3. Social meaning
Social meaning is a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of it use. It is
connected with the situation in which an utterance is uttered. For examples:

a. The word “horse, steed and hag” have the same conceptual meaning but the convey different
social circumstances of their use.

b. Horse (general), steed (poetic), hag (slang)

4. Affective meaning
Affective meaning is meaning that expresses the personal feelings or attitude of the speaker
or the writers. For example:

a. “i’m very glad to hear your voice, but i wonder if you would be so kind as to lower your voices a
little”.

5. Reflected meaning
Reflected meaning is the meaning that arises in case of multiple conceptual meaning when
one sense of a word forms part of our response to another sense. For example:

a. Intercourse

6. Collocative meaning
Collocative meaning consists of the association of a word acquires on account of the
meaning of words which tend to occur in its environment. For examples:

a The word “handsome” and “beautiful” have common ground in the meaning “good looking”.

b. The word “handsome” refers to man and “beautiful” refers to women.

7. Thematic meaning
Thematic meaning means what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or writer
organizes the message in terms of ordering, focus and emphasis. It is usually applied in the
use of acctive and passive forms. For example:

a. She likes orange juice the most

b. Orange juice she like the most

c. It’s orange juice that she likes the most.

2.3 Approaches of Meaning

There are several approach in meaning:

a. First, by looking at the proposal that meaning is reference, we considered how meaning might be
seen as reference in a mentally projected world and how a number of phenomena battled against a

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strictly reference of the view of meaning: for example, the priority of intention over extension, the
relationship of propositional attitudes to referential transparancy, the effect of expectation, and the
role of compositionality-meaning components-in determining reference. The false of themetaphor-
linguistic communication is wrongly the sending and receiving of linguistic packages, in the end, it
showed to be a more general principal to motivate reference in a mentally projected world and to
strengthen an extensional view of meaning.

b. Second, we considered meaning as logical form.This can tell by looking at the requirements of
formal analysis in general and the details of interpretation by a model. The difference between
formal and non formal approaches to meaning, arguing that the former runs into problems in it is
connected to categoricalness and contentiousness. By looking at quantifiers and negation, we have
seen how capable the description requires unsure categories and scales of meaning. Even logical
phenomena, such as tautology and contradiction, are best in both terms of the gradients of anomaly
and redundancy that are part and parcel of a non formal approach to meaning. We have in the end
looking for the unity formal and linguistic semantics in the search for real world meaning.

c. Third, we considered meaning as context and use. Linguistic meaning is can not be reduced to
context and use by showing how pragmatics differs from semantics on three aspects: truth-
conditionality, context-dependence, and changeability. Pragmatics and semantics form a scale of
background information, from implicature (heavily context-dependent) to presupposition (less
context-dependent) to entailment (least context-dependent).

d. Meaning as culture is our fourth approach. We have seen how the Sapir/Whorf Hypothesis and
linguistic relativity-two historically influential views of the determinate relation between culture and
meaning can not be deffended because they propose simplistic views of language, culture, thought,
and their interrelations. Cultural reduction are followed by variationism, or the view that differences
between languages and cultures are more important than similarities. On the other hand, linguistic
meaning has much in variants and also independent even if it is taped in culture. Finally, we can say
that meaning is as a conceptual structure, and we have seen how mental models account for
categorization and similarities and difference of meaning. All the lessons of the previous four
approaches centered on conceptual structure: the projected world, gradient categories, context-
independence, and cultural-independence are all accommodated by locating meaning as a mental
construct.

2.4 Semantic at Grammar

The meaning of grammatical elements has been ignored in previous chapters. Yet some books on
semantics have devoted a great deal of space to the investigation of the meaning of what are
essentially grammatical characteristics of language. The first concerns the status of grammar in
relation to the lexicon and semantics. This with exemplification will occupy the first three sections.
We shall then turn to from the fact that sleep cannot indicate the state of 'coming' as contrasted
with keep or begins which indicate continuity and initiation, and that the sentence is impossible for
semantic reasons, in that it simply does not 'make sense'. But if we accept this argument what are
we to say of John ran coming every day? Does this make sense? If it does not, the restriction is
semantic, if it does the restriction is grammatical. But we shall find it very difficult, if not impossible,
to decide whether or not it does 'make sense'.

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Another example of a borderline case is John is seeming happy.

We could say this is ungrammatical on the grounds that the verb seem does not occur in the
progressive (continuous) form is seeming. But is this in fact a grammatical rule or is it the case that
for semantic reasons John cannot be in a continuous state of seeming? some grammatical categories
that appear to relate directly to the context of situation and, finally, to some notions that have been
thought to he relevant to the grammatical-cum-semantic structure of sentences.

2.5 Lexical Structure

a. Lexical Meaning Analysis

Based on the Oxford Advance Leaner’s Dictionary, lexical meaning is “the meaning of a
word considered in isolation from the sentence containing it, and regardless of its
grammatical context. In other words, lexical meaning deals with a language’s lexicon or the
collection of words in a language and it is concerned with individual words, e.g. of love in or
as represented by loves, loved, loving, etc”. The words refer to things, people, actions,
descriptions, or other ideas that have more than just a grammatical usage. Their meaning is
easily identified by a clear concept or item. For example:

John Is Fish Post

Office

Human
Verb Animal Building
Proper
Noun

According to the example above, the word John is known by human proper noun.
Misunderstanding from these words seem rarely happen because some words have been
marked to someone’s name, kind of building, animal, etc. So that, the word itself has certain
meaning that every people consider when someone mentions the word.

B. Sentences Meaning Analysis

Theories of sentences meaning are designed to describe the relationship between the
meaning of the sentences and the meaning of the words of that sentences, both lexical and
grammatical. Grammatical meaning is the meaning of the whole class or a subclass. A set of
words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and predicate, conveying a
statement, question, exclamation, or command, and consisting of a main clause and
sometimes one or more subordinate clauses. Moreover, grammatical meaning is divided
into two types which are explicit grammatical meaning and implicit grammatical meaning.
The explicit grammatical meaning is always marked morphologically, it has its marker. For
example:

i. Cats – the grammatical meaning is plurality that is shown by the form of the noun
with –s;

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 ii. Cat’s – the grammatical meaning of possessiveness is shown by the form ‘s;

While implicit grammatical meaning is not expressed formally. It means the meaning is not
shown if it is not including into a phrase, clause or sentence. For example:

i. Table – it does not contain any hints in its form as to it being inanimate.

The grammatical meaning also divided the words into part of speech. The first part of
speech is noun that reflects the name of person, place, thing, or idea. The second is pronoun
that reflect a word used in place of a noun. The third is verb that express action or being. The
forth is preposition that reflect a word placed before a noun or pronoun to form a phrase
modifying another word in the sentence. The fifth is adjective that modifies or describe a
noun or a pronoun. The sixth is adverb that modifies or describe a verb, an adjective, or
another adverb but never a noun. The seventh is interjection that reflect a word used to
express emotion. The last is conjunction that joins words, phrases or clauses and indicates
the relationship between the elements joined. Furthermore, sentence semantic is a group of
words, usually containing a verb, that expresses a thought in the form of a statement,
question, instruction, or exclamation and starts with capital letter when written. For
example:

John’s pen is on the table.

LM LM LM

GM GM GM GM

According to the example above, some words is classified into Lexical Meanig (LM) depend
on the meaning. The word John, pen and table has meaning of certain thing and a human
proper name. However, the words is, on, the, and also ‘s has Grammatical Meaning (GM)
because they make the sentence has grammatical signal. Also, the words and morpheme do
not have specific meaning if they are seperated from the sentence, unlike the words with
lexical meaning.

Valerie’s shoes are dirty.

LM GM LM GM LM

According to the example above, some words is classified into Lexical Meanig (LM) depend
on the meaning. The word Valerie, shoes and dirty has meaning of certain thing and a human
proper name. However, the words are and ‘s has Grammatical Meaning (GM) because they
make the sentence has grammatical signal. Also, the words and morpheme do not have

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 specific meaning if they are seperated from the sentence, unlike the words with lexical
meaning.

2.6 Synonym, Antonym, Polysemy and hiponym

A).Synonym

The first is Synonym :

From the oxford dictionary synonym has the three meanings :

1. word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another in the language, as happy, joyful,
elated. A dictionary of synonyms and antonyms (or opposites), such as Thesaurus.com, is called
thesaurus.

2. a word or expression accepted as another name for something, as Arcadia for pastoral simplicity
or Wall Street for U.S. financial markets; metonym.

3. Biology . one of two or more scientific names applied to a single taxon.

From the Merriam-Webster,synonym also has three meanings :

1 : one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the

same meaning in some or all senses

2a : a word or phrase that by association is held to embody something (such as a concept or quality)

a tyrant whose name has become a synonym for oppression

b : metonym

3 : one of two or more scientific names used to designate the same taxonomic group — compare

homonym

So, the summary of Synonyms are words that are similar, or have a related meaning, to another
word. They can be lifesavers when you want to avoid repeating the same word over and over. Also,
sometimes the word you have in mind might not be the most appropriate word, which is why finding
the right synonym can come in handy.

Choosing a Synonym

There's a certain skill involved in choosing the most appropriate synonym; not all are created equal.
It is important to consider the connotation of the word because some synonyms can inject a
different meaning than what was intended.

For example, one synonym for sad is "gloomy." However, this word carries quite a negative
connotation. Depending on the circumstance you can use it but, in this instance, if you just want to
say that someone is "down," then another synonym such as "blue" or "unhappy" would be a little
less heavy.

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Synonym Examples

Enjoy this list of synonyms and after you've reviewed the list, see if you can pass the synonym test
below!

i. Baffle: confuse, deceive

ii. Beautiful: attractive, pretty, lovely, stunning

iii. Bossy: controlling, tyrannical

iv. Fair: just, objective, impartial, unbiased

v. Funny: humorous, comical, hilarious, hysterical

These are just a few examples of synonyms but hopefully you can see how working with them can
make your writing more varied and help expand your vocabulary.

The Importance of Using Synonyms. Synonym: a word having the same or nearly the same meaning
as another in the language, for example a synonym for “happy” is “elated”. Words often have many
different synonyms. ... You can make your writing much more captivating by choosing lively
synonyms for the words in your sentences.

Synonyms are words that have the same or very similar meaning. All words can have a synonym.
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions can have a synonym as long as both words are
the same part of speech.

Synonym' is a word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another in the language. For
instance: ... The words 'begin', 'start', 'commence' and 'initiate' are synonyms each other. Words
that are synonyms are said to be 'synonymous', and the state of being a synonym is called
'synonymy'.

B). Antonym

Second is Antonyms are words that have contrasting, or opposite, meanings. Like so much of the
English language, "antonym" is rooted in the Greek language. The Greek word anti means opposite,
while onym means name. Opposite name - that makes sense!

Since the English language is so complex, people may disagree about which words truly have
opposite meanings. With the examples of antonyms listed below, we try to clear that up and offer
some tactics for choosing the most appropriate word every time.

Types of Antonyms :

You may be interested to know that there are three different kinds of antonyms. Let's take a look at
each one:

Complementary: Complementary antonyms have no middle ground. Examples include:

i. boy - girl, off - on, night - day, entrance - exit, exterior - interior, true - false, dead - alive, push -
pull, pass - fail

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Relational: These are similar to complementary antonyms, except that both must exist for them to
be antonyms of each other. Check out these examples:

ii. above - below, doctor - patient, husband - wife, servant - master, borrow - lend, give - receive,
predator - prey, buy - sell, instructor - pupil

Graded: These antonyms deal with levels of comparison and they can be two words on a scale.
Many are relative terms, which can be interpreted differently by different people. Examples include:

iii. young - elderly, hard - easy, happy - wistful, wise - foolish, fat - slim, warm - cool, early - late, fast -
slow, dark - pale

Add a Prefix to Create an Antonym

Sometimes, you don't need to search for another word entirely. It's possible to create an antonym
simply by adding a prefix to the word.

Some examples of antonyms created by adding the prefix dis- are:

i. Agree → disagree

ii. Appear → disappear

Adding the prefix in- can make the following opposites:

i. Tolerant → intolerant

ii. Decent → indecent

Using the prefix mis- create antonyms like:

i. Behave → misbehave

ii. Interpret → misinterpret

Examples of antonyms made by adding the prefix un- are:

i. Likely → unlikely

ii. Able → unable

By adding the prefix non- you can make these antonyms:

i. Entity → nonentity

ii. Conformist → nonconformist

Difference between Antonym and Synonym

A synonym is basically the opposite of an antonym. It is a word that means the same, or almost
the same, as another word. They help us avoid repetition in our speech and writing and expand our
vocabulary. Synonyms and antonyms are used every day by teachers, students, writers, editors,
poets, and songwriters to add variety to writing.

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The practical importance of antonyms relies on their understanding in use of everyday life
communicational situations. Even though the linguistic explanation is important and fundamental, it

helps for other disciplines to understand better situations and circumstances when antonyms are
used.

C).Hyponym

The third is Hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is included within that of another
word,its hyperonym or hypernym. Hyponymy is the more specific concept and the more general
concept is known as the hypernym. In other word, A hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic
field is more specific than its hypernym.

In simpler terms, a hyponym shares a type-of relationship with its hypernym. For example :
pigeon, crow, eagle and seagull are all hyponyms of bird (their hyperonym); which, in turn, is a
hyponym of animal.

In linguistics and lexicography, hyponym is a term used to designate a particular member of a

broader class. For instance, daisy and rose are hyponyms of flower. Also called a subtype or
a subordinate term. Adjective: hyponymic.

Words that are hyponyms of the same broader term (that is, a hypernym) are called co-hyponyms.
The semantic relationship between each of the more specific words (such as daisy and rose) and the
broader term (flower) is called hyponymy or inclusion.

Hyponymy is not restricted to nouns. The verbto see, for example, has several hyponyms—glimpse,
stare, gaze, ogle, and so on. Edward Finnegan points out that although "hyponymy is found in all
languages, the concepts that have words in hyponymic relationships vary from one language to the
next’’

The examples are :

I. Manggo- fruit ; Car- vehicles ; table- furniture ; Hen - animal.

II. The verb ‘colour’ has many hyponyms

Word: colour (hypernym)

Hyponyms: blue, red, yellow, green, white, black, purple and pink.

III. The verb ‘cook’ has many hyponyms.

Word: Cook (hypernym)

Hyponyms: Roast (Memanggang), boil (merebus), fry (menggoreng), grill (memanggang), bake
(membakar).

D).Polysemy

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 The last is Polysemy is the association of one word with two or more distinct meanings. A
polyseme is a word or phrase with multiple meanings. The word "polysemy" comes from the Greek
for "many signs." The adjective forms of the word include polysemous or polysemic.

A polysemy is a word or symbol that has more than one meaning. In order to be considered a
polysemy, a word has to have separate meanings that can be different, but related to one another.
The meanings and the words must have the same spelling and pronunciation and they must have the
same origin.

The term polysemy is used in linguistics as a means of categorizing and studying various aspects of
languages. Like many words used to categorize languages, polysemy is a mixture of Latin and Greek
and means literally ‘many meanings.’ The opposite of a polysemy is a heterosemy, which means the
word has only a single meaning.

For example the polisemy in Pasa Raya words in minang dialoque :

A : ba’a da lai ramcak baju ko?

B : onde, masuak (cocok) tu diak, ambiaklah.

A : iyo da, ko sadang mamilaih warna nyo.

Masuak in this dialoque has the meaning the clotes is looked better for the girls, it means that
masuak in minangnese or in indonesian has the meaning masuk is not has one meaning. Depeans
from the contexs, polisemy that can used.

2.7 Change of Meaning

In semantics and historical linguistics, semantic change refers to any change in the meaning of a
word over the course of time. There are several types of changes of meaning in semantics here are
the explanation:

2.1 Amelioration

In linguistics, amelioration is the upgrading or elevation of a word's meaning. as when a word with
a negative sense develops a positive one. Also called melioration or elevation and amelioration is
less common than the opposite historical process, called pejoration. The word nice is a classic
example of amelioration . This is a rare occurrence, compared with the opposite process of
pejoration, or downgrading. The meaning of nice when it first appeared in Middle English (about
1300) was '(of persons or their actions) foolish, silly, simple; ignorant, senseless, absurd. The
movement toward amelioration reached its apex in the 1800s with such meanings as 'kind and
considerate, friendly.

2.2 Pejoration

In linguistics, pejoration is the downgrading or depreciation of a word's meaning. as when a word

with a positive sense develops a negative one. Pejoration is much more common than the opposite
process, called amelioration.The word silly is a classic example of pejoration, or gradual worsening of
meaning. In early Middle English (around 1200), sely (as the word was then spelled) meant 'happy,

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blissful, blessed, fortunate,' as it did in Old English. The original meaning was followed by a
succession of narrower ones, including 'spiritually blessed, pious, holy, good, innocent, harmless. As
the form (and pronunciation) sely changed to silly in the 1500s, the earlier meanings passed into
increasingly less favorable senses such as weak, feeble, insignificant. By the late 1500s, the word's
use declined to its present-day meaning of 'lacking good sense, empty-headed, senseless, foolish,' as
in 'This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.

2.3 Metaphor

A metaphor is a trope or figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two
unlike things that actually have something in common. A metaphor expresses the unfamiliar in terms
of the familiar. When Neil Young sings, "Love is a rose," the word "rose" is the vehicle for the term
"love," the tenor. The word metaphor itself is a metaphor, coming from a Greek term meaning to
"transfer" or "carry across." Metaphors "carry" meaning from one word, image, idea, or situation to
another. Metaphor in semantic change involves extensions in the meaning of a word that suggest a
semantic similarity or connection between the new sense and the original one. Frequently
mentioned examples of metaphoric extensions involve expressions for to kill are dispose of, do
someone in, liquidate, terminate.

2.4 Metonymy

Metonymy is a figure of speech (or trope) in which one word or phrase is substituted for another
with which it's closely associated. Metonymy is also the rhetorical strategy of describing something
indirectly by referring to things around it, as in describing someone's clothing to characterize the
individual. Adjective: metonymic. The example for metonymy is In a corner, a cluster of lab coats
made lunch plans. The lab coats are substitute for the researcher.

2.5 Broadening

Broadening is the change in the meaning of a word by expansion, so that the word is applicable in
more contexts than it previously was and means more than it previously did. An example of
broadening is the word "business", which originally meant "a state of being busy, careworn or
anxious", but has now broadened to include all kinds of work occupations.

2.6 Narrowing

Narrowing refers to the opposite of broadening, and is defined as a reduction in the contexts in
which a word can appear. In simple terms, the meaning of the word has gotten more specific. One
example of this would be the world 'girl', which originally meant a child of either gender, rather than
a female child. The word has evolved to mean what was only part of it's orginial definition, and this
is semantic narrowing.

Also all of these types in semantics changes are caused by several things from internal and external.
The causes are consist of four that are from lingistics causes, social causes, historical causes, and
foriegn causes. Semantic change may also occur when native speakers of another language adopt
English expressions and apply them to activities or conditions in their own social and cultural
environment.

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III. Conclusion
So, in conclusion meaning is something which is very closely related to languange. Meaning has a
number different nations and varieties since speaker, in expressing their ideas, minds, feelings, use a
word to mean something different from what it denotes. Meaning has seven types, there are
conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning,
collocative meanning and thematic meaning. For approach, there are four approach in meaning.
First, by looking at the proposal that meaning is reference. second, considered meaning as logical
form. Third, considered meaning as context and use. And the last is Meaning as culture. Meaning
also related with grammar and lexical structure. It include synonym, antonym, polysemy and
hiponym. And for change of meaning, have several types such as amelioration, pajoration,
metaphor, metonymy, broadening, and narrowing.

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