THE NATURE OF SEMANTICS

Abstract

With regard to the teaching of semantics, many semantics teachers find difficulty in deciding what to teach in their semantics classes. They have the opinion that concepts such as connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, collocative meaning, thematic meaning, meaning changes of words, synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, harmonymy, homophony, and homography are the primary materials of semantics classes. While those concepts are necessary materials of semantics and are usually taught, teachers of semantics must be well aware that they are not the primary materials of semantics. They are secondary materials. This paper describes the main materials of semantics which consist of word meaning, sentence meaning, and utterance meaning.