In chapter 6, we saw how linguists traditionally divide the study of words into two main areas: grammar and meaning. Morphology is concerned with the grammar of words. Here we now turn to the meaning of words, the branch of linguistics known as semantics.

Whenever we acquire a new word in a foreign language, it is not only the form of that word which must be learned (i.e. its pronunciation, grammar and spelling), but also the meaning. Having said this, how do we actually learn meaning? Let us take the example of Hund. If you are a native speaker of German, and are hearing the word Hund for the first time, you will probably learn its meaning by association with a furry animal which barks. Foreign learners of a language can also acquire meaning in this way. Frequently, however, they try to make comparisons with their mother tongue, i.e. they hear a word such as Hund and want to know its English translation. They then measure their understanding of a new word in terms of whether or not they have found a semantic equivalent in their own language. This is a perfectly natural thing to do, but it is not without its problems.

In many cases, finding semantic equivalents for words in German and English is easy: the translation of Hund is clearly ‘dog’.