Universidad técnica particular de loja la universidad Técnica Particular de Loja

SEMANTICS
According to Saeed (2003), Semantics is the study of meaning 
communicated through language. 
To support this idea he divides linguistics in a clear way and 
specifies that it has different levels of analysis giving semantics the 
function of studying the meanings of words and sentences. Similarly, 
Palmer (1981) agrees with the definition stated above but also “places” 
semantics within linguistics. He says: “Nearly all linguists have, 
explicitly or implicitly, accepted a linguistic model in which semantics is 
at one ‘end’ and phonetics at the other, with grammar somewhere in the 
middle”. 
Lyons (1977) states a short but clear definition which is: “Semantics is 
generally defined as the study of meaning”. This is basically the main 
root and definition of semantics. The question which needs to be 

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answered then is “what is meaning?” since even the noun “meaning” 
and the verb “to mean” themselves have many distinguishable 
meanings.
PRAGMATICS
The modern usage of the term pragmatics can be attributable to 
the philosopher Charles Morris (1938), who was concerned to outline 
the general shape of a science of signs, or 
semiotics. During his 
research, Morris detected three distinct branches which were: Syntactics 
(or syntax), being the study of “the formal relation of signs to one 
another”, semantics, the study of “the relations of signs to the objects to 
which the signs are applicable” (their designata), and pragmatics, the 
study of “the relation of signis to interpreters”. 
Starting with this basic definition, Levinson (1983) simply says 
that pragmatics is the study of language usage. 
After establishing the probably “main” concept of pragmatics, 
Levinson (1983) declares he is unsatisfied with this definition and starts 
developing different concepts of pragmatics based upon different 
theories and authors, some of them are considered below:
a. Pragmatics is the study of those principles that will account for 
why a certain set of sentences are anomalous, or not possible 
utterances. 

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b. Pragmatics is the study of language from a functional perspective. 
In other words, pragmatics tries to explain linguistic structures by 
reference to non-linguistic causes. 
c. Pragmatics is the study of all aspects of meaning not captured in 
a semantic theory. 
d. Pragmatics is the study of the relations between language and 
context that are basic to an account of language understanding. 
Although these concepts define pragmatics in different ways, the 
main definition is in all the cases almost the same. Similarly according 
to Stalnaker (1972) pragmatics is the study of linguistic acts and the 
contexts in which they are performed. 
As we can see pragmatics in all of it extent is mainly the study of 
those context-dependent aspects of meaning which are systematically 
abstracted away from in the construction of content or logical form.