What branch of linguistics is the study of meaning in language?

Semantics is the branch of linguistics concerned with meaning in language. It examines how words, phrases, sentences, and larger expressions convey meaning, including how parts combine to produce the meaning of a whole.

One important distinction is between sense and reference. The sense of an expression involves the concepts and associations connected with it, while its reference is the object or situation it points to. Semantics also studies lexical relationships such as synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, and ambiguity. For example, a word may have several related meanings, while two different words may refer to similar concepts.

Semantics is closely related to syntax and pragmatics, but the subjects are not identical. Syntax studies how words are structured into grammatical sentences. Pragmatics studies how context, speakers, listeners, and circumstances affect what an utterance communicates. The sentence "It is cold here" has a semantic meaning, but its pragmatic meaning might be a request to close a window.

The field includes lexical, formal, cognitive, computational, and cultural approaches. Although people have discussed meaning since antiquity, semantics became recognized as an independent area of linguistic study mainly during the nineteenth century.