Editing Semantics (section)

=== Others ===
Many other concepts are used to describe semantic phenomena. The [[semantic role]] of an expression is the function it fulfills in a sentence. In the sentence "the boy kicked the ball", the boy has the role of the agent who performs an action. The ball is the theme or patient of this action as something that does not act itself but is involved in or affected by the action. The same entity can be both agent and patient, like when someone cuts themselves. An entity has the semantic role of an instrument if it is used to perform the action, for instance, when cutting something with a knife then the knife is the instrument. For some sentences, no action is described but an experience takes place, like when a girl sees a bird. In this case, the girl has the role of the experiencer. Other common semantic roles are location, source, goal, beneficiary, and stimulus.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Yule|2010|pp=115–116}} | {{harvnb|Saeed|2009|pp=152–155}} }}</ref>

Lexical relations describe how words stand to one another. Two words are [[synonyms]] if they share the same or a very similar meaning, like ''car'' and ''automobile'' or ''buy'' and ''purchase''. [[Antonyms]] have opposite meanings, such as the contrast between ''alive'' and ''dead'' or ''fast'' and ''slow''.{{efn|''Antonym'' is an antonym of ''synonym''.<ref>{{harvnb|Heffer|2014|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=7WOEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA42 42]}}</ref>}} One term is a [[hyponym]] of another term if the meaning of the first term is included in the meaning of the second term. For example, [[ant]] is a hyponym of [[insect]]. A [[prototype]] is a hyponym that has characteristic features of the type it belongs to. A [[European robin|robin]] is a prototype of a [[bird]] but a [[penguin]] is not. Two words with the same pronunciation are [[homophones]] like ''flour'' and ''flower'', while two words with the same spelling are [[homonyms]], like a bank of a river in contrast to a bank as a financial institution.{{efn|Some linguists use the term ''homonym'' for both phenomena.<ref>{{harvnb|Saeed|2009|p=63}}</ref>}} Hyponymy is closely related to [[meronymy]], which describes the relation between part and whole. For instance, ''wheel'' is a meronym of ''car''.<ref name="auto7">{{multiref | {{harvnb|Yule|2010|pp=116–120}} | {{harvnb|Saeed|2009|pp=63–70}} }}</ref> An expression is [[ambiguous]] if it has more than one possible meaning. In some cases, it is possible to [[disambiguate]] them to discern the intended meaning.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Edmonds|2009|pp=223–226}} | {{harvnb|Murphy|Koskela|2010|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=YO0WDRPHcWIC&pg=PA57 57]}} }}</ref> The term ''[[polysemy]]'' is used if the different meanings are closely related to one another, like the meanings of the word ''head'', which can refer to the topmost part of the human body or the top-ranking person in an organization.<ref name="auto7"/>

The meaning of words can often be subdivided into meaning components called [[semantic features]]. The word ''horse'' has the semantic feature ''animate'' but lacks the semantic feature ''human''. It may not always be possible to fully reconstruct the meaning of a word by identifying all its semantic features.<ref>{{harvnb|Yule|2010|pp=113–115}}</ref>

A [[semantic field|semantic]] or lexical field is a group of words that are all related to the same activity or subject. For instance, the semantic field of [[cooking]] includes words like ''bake'', ''boil'', ''spice'', and ''pan''.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Saeed|2009|p=63}} | {{harvnb|Reif|Polzenhagen|2023|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=DyPdEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA129 129–130]}} }}</ref>

The [[Context (linguistics)|context]] of an expression refers to the situation or circumstances in which it is used and includes time, location, speaker, and audience. It also encompasses other passages in a text that come before and after it.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Meulen|2008|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=tSKfSI-7ZncC&pg=PA1653 Philosophy of Language and Linguistics]}} | {{harvnb|Kuche|Rowland|2023|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Kaa7EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA13 13–14]}} }}</ref> Context affects the meaning of various expressions, like the [[deictic]] expression ''here'' and the [[Anaphora (linguistics)|anaphoric]] expression ''she''.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Cornish|1999|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=xip76JYlvygC&pg=PA18 18–19]}} | {{harvnb|Jiang|2016|loc=§ Summary}} }}</ref>

A syntactic environment is [[Extensional context|extensional or transparent]] if it is always possible to exchange expressions with the same reference without affecting the truth value of the sentence. For example, the environment of the sentence "the number 8 is even" is extensional because replacing the expression "the number 8" with "the number of planets in the [[Solar System]]" does not change its truth value. For [[Opaque context|intensional or opaque contexts]], this type of substitution is not always possible. For instance, the [[embedded clause]] in "Paco believes that the number 8 is even" is intensional since Paco may not know that the number of planets in the solar system is 8.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Blackburn|2008c}} | {{harvnb|Partee|1997|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=o1jGSavwQZIC&pg=PA833 833–834]}} }}</ref>

Semanticists commonly distinguish the language they study, called object language, from the language they use to express their findings, called [[metalanguage]]. When a professor uses Japanese to teach their student how to interpret the language of [[first-order logic]] then the language of first-order logic is the object language and Japanese is the metalanguage. The same language may occupy the role of object language and metalanguage at the same time. This is the case in [[monolingual dictionary|monolingual English dictionaries]], in which both the entry term belonging to the object language and the definition text belonging to the metalanguage are taken from the English language.<ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Riemer|2010|pp=22–23}} | {{harvnb|Gamut|1991|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ktqxlzcc5nQC&pg=PA142 142–143]}} | {{harvnb|Dummett|1981|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=EYP7uCZIRQYC&pg=PA106 106]}} }}</ref>