The development of semantics has gone through several stages. What are their characteristics?

The development of semantics has gone through three important stages.

1, the period of philology (1before the 9th century)

The early semantic work was the annotation of ancient books, and the semantic research in philology period was accompanied by this work.

Europe: Ancient Greece annotated philosophical classics → studied classical grammar, and investigated its meaning at the same time → the purpose was to make future generations understand.

China: Semantic Research in the Period of China Literature → Exegetics

Achievements and shortcomings: accumulated a lot of material; However, it is limited to the annotation of ancient books, and the study of word meaning is not comprehensive, scientific and systematic.

2. Traditional semantics (19th century-1920s and 1930s)

/kloc-at the beginning of the 0/9th century, linguistics became an independent discipline → from writing to linguistics → its development speed was accelerated and its fields were expanded.

At this time, semantic research has become a branch of linguistics → a part of lexicology (traditional semantics period).

Main contributions and shortcomings:

Semantic research is a leap from philology, exegetics to traditional semantics.

Disadvantages: A. The research method is atomistic. Unlike phonetics and grammar, we don't systematically sort out and study the semantic system from the perspective of relationship, and study the copula as an isolated individual → semantic analysis is atomic.

B, the scope of research is limited to the meaning of words. Phonetics has developed from the smallest phonetic unit to the largest. So is grammar. Traditional semantics only focuses on the meaning of words.

3. Modern semantics (from 20th century to 1930s)

At the beginning of the 20th century, semantics was separated from lexicology and became a new discipline of linguistics.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the study of semantics entered a new development stage → modern semantics stage, which greatly exceeded the traditional semantics in breadth and depth.

Achievements and shortcomings of modern semantics;

Achievement: Modern semantics not only attaches importance to the meaning of words, but also attaches importance to the analysis of sentence meaning. Adapted to the requirements of natural language and information processing and achieved results, making semantic research more scientific and systematic → semantic research has become the focus and hot spot.

Disadvantages: Compared with pronunciation and grammar, it is rough and immature.