Pashto Semantics

Abstract

Semantics is the study of meaning of words and phrases in a language. Not only linguist but also philosophers are also interested in it. In the past philosophers hare been much more concerned with it but now it is deeply studied in linguistics also. Its field is very wide. It studies the way of paraphrasing, transformation and detecting the ambiguities. To understand the meaning of a sentence and its semantic relations with other expressions only the meaning of lexical items is not enough but one is also required to know how they inter – relate. A semantic analysis explains antonyms, synonyms, homonyms, and polysemy, Hyponyms, Meronym, Homonymy, Homophony and Homographs. The author of this paper has thrown light on semantics and different aspect of semantics and then defined synonyms, antonyms, Homonyms and polysemy etc. and has given examples from Pashto language and concluded that Homograph Homonyms and Polysyms are greater in number in Pashto while Homophone are very short in Pashto language.