Semantics: part of grammar

Semantics has not always enjoyed a prominent role in modern linguistics. From World War 1 to the early 1969s semantics was viewed, especially in the United States as not quite respectable: its inclusion in a grammar (as linguist sometimes called a scientific description of a language) was considered by many as either a sort of methodological impurity or an objective to be reached only in the distance future.

But there is as much reason to consider semantics a part of grammar as syntax or phonology. It is often said that a grammar describes what fluent speakers know of their language – their linguistics competence.

If that is so, whatever fluent speakers know of their language is a proper part of a description of that language. In other words, appealing to what fluent speakers know about their language counts as motivation for including a phonological fact or a syntactic fact in the grammar of that language, then the same sort of consideration motivates the inclusion of semantic facts.

A more general consideration also motivates us to include semantics in the part of grammar of a language.

A language is often defined as a conventional system for communication, a system for conveying messages. Moreover, communication can be accomplished (in the system) only because words have certain meanings; therefore, to characterize this system – the language – it is necessary to describe these meanings.

Hence, if a grammar describes a language, part of it must describe meaning, and thus the grammar must contain semantics. Taking these two considerations together, it seems reasonable to conclude that semantic information is an integral part of a grammar.
Semantics: part of grammar