1. Semantics

    The subject concerning the study of meaning is called semantics. More specifically, semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic units, words and sentences in particular.

 2. G Leech's seven types of meaning

    G. Leech in a more moderate tone recognizes 7 types of meaning in his Semantics, first published in 1974, as follows:

    (1). Conceptual meaning: logical, cognitive, or denotative content.

    (2). Connotative meaning: What is communicated by virtue of what language refers to.

    (3). Social meaning: What is communicated of the social circumstances of language use.

    (4). Affective meaning: What is communicated of the feelings and attitudes of the speaker/writer.

    (5). Reflected meaning: What is communicated through association with another sense of the same expression.

    (6). Collocative meaning: What is communicated through association with words which tend to occur in the same environment of another word.

    (7). Thematic meaning: What is communicated by the way in which the message is organized in terms of order and emphasis.

    Leech's conceptual meaning has two sides: sense and reference.

 3. Sense vs. reference

    The former refers to the abstract properties of an entity, while the latter refers to the concrete entities having these properties. To some extent, we can say every word has a sense, but not every word has a reference. Therefore, people suggest that we should study meaning in terms of sense rather than reference.

 4. Denotation vs. connotation

    In the philosophers' usage, denotation involves the relationship between a linguistic unit and the nonlinguistic entity to which it refers. Thus it is equivalent to referential meaning, while connotation, opposite to denotation, means the properties of the entity a word denotes. For example, the denotation of human is any person such as John and Mary, and its connotation is "biped", "featherless", "rational", etc.

 5. The Referential Theory

    The theory of meaning which relates the meaning if a word to the thing it refers to, or stand for, is known as the Referential Theory.

 6. Concept

    That something is abstract, which has no existence in the material world and can only be sensed in our minds. This abstract thing is usually called Concept.

 7. The semantic triangle

   A theory which explicitly employs the notion "concept" is the semantic triangle proposed by Ogden and Richards in The Meaning of Meaning. They argue that the relation between a word and a thing it refers to is not direct. It is mediated by concept.

 8. Sense relations

    Sense may be defined as the semantic relations between one word and another, or more generally between one linguistic unit and another. It is concerned with the intralinguistic relations. In contrast, reference is concerned with the relation between a word an the thing it refers to, or more generally between a linguistic unit and a non-linguistic entity it refers to. There are generally three kinds of sense relations recognized, namely, sameness relation, oppositeness relation and inclusiveness relation.

 9. Synonymy

    Synonymy is the technical name for the sameness relation. But total synonymy is rare. The so-called synonymy are all context dependent. They may differ in style. They may also differ in connotations. Thirdly, there are dialectal differences.

 10. Antonymy

    Antonymy is the name for oppositeness relation. There are three main sub-types: gradable antonymy, complementary antonymy, and converse antonymy.

 11. Gradable antonymy

    This is the commonest type of antonymy. They have three characteristics: First, They are gradable. That is, the members of a pair differ in terms of degree. Second, antonymy of this kind are graded against different norms. Third, one member of a pair, usually the term for the higher degree, serves as the cover term.

 12. Complementary antonymy

    The members of this type are complementary to each other. That is, they divide up the whole of a semantic field completely. Not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other, the denial of one also means the assertion of the other. Not only He is alive means "He is not dead", He is not alive also means "He is dead". There is no intermediate ground between the two. The adjectives of this kind cannot be modified by very, and they do not have comparative or superlative degrees either. The norm in this type is absolute, and there is no cover term for the two members of a pair.

    Now the pair of antonyms true: false is exceptional to some extent. This pair is usually regarded as complementary. True equals not false, and not true equals false. But there is a cover term. We can say "How true is the story?" and there is a noun truth, related to this cover term. We can also use very to modify true. It even has comparative and superlative degrees. A description may be true than another, or the truest among a number of descriptions, though false cannot be used in this way.

 13. Converse antonymy

   This is a special type of antonymy in that the members of a pair do not constitute a positive negative opposition. They show the reversal of a relationship between two entities. This type of antonymy is typically seen in reciprocal social roles, kinship relations, temporal and spatial relations. In this sense, they are also known as Relational Opposites. With converse antonymy, there are always two sides. If there is a buyer, there must also be a seller. The comparative degrees also belong here, since they involve a relation between two entities.

 14. Hyponymy

    Hyponymy is a matter of class membership. The upper term in the sense relation, that is i.e. the class name, is called superordinate, and the lower terms, the members, Hyponyms. The members of the same class are C0-hyponyms. Sometimes a superordinate may be a superordinate to itself(e.g. animal). A superordinate may be missing sometimes (e.g. for the colour terms). Hyponyms may also be missing(e.g. Only one word in English for the different kinds of uncles).

 15. Semantic Features/components

     That is, the meaning of a word is not an unanalysable whole. They may be seen as a complex of different semantic features. There are smaller semantic units smaller than the meaning of a word. For example, the meaning of the word boy may be analysed in three components: HUMAN, YOUNG and MALE.

 15. Difficulties in the approach to analyse the meaning of a word in terms of semantic components:

     (1). Many words are polysemous.

     (2). Some semantic components are seen as binary taxonomies.

     (3). There are may be words whose semantic components are difficult to ascertain.

 16. Compositionality

     The idea that the meaning of a sentence depends on the meaning of the constituent words and the way they are combined is usually known as the principle of Compositionality.