Semantics:
* Focus: Literal meaning of words and sentences.
* Deals with:
* The relationship between words and the concepts they represent.
* How words combine to form the meaning of phrases and sentences.
* The truth conditions of sentences (whether they are true or false).
* Example: "The cat sat on the mat." Semantics would analyze the meaning of individual words ("cat," "sat," "on," "mat") and their combination to understand the literal meaning of the sentence.
Pragmatics:
* Focus: The meaning of language in context.
* Deals with:
* How context affects the interpretation of meaning.
* The speaker's intentions and beliefs.
* The social and cultural factors that influence communication.
* Example:
* "Can you pass the salt?" This sentence literally asks about the listener's ability to pass the salt. However, pragmatically, it is a request to pass the salt.
* "It's cold in here." This sentence can have multiple pragmatic interpretations depending on the context, such as a request to close the window or a simple observation.
Relationship between Semantics and Pragmatics:
* Pragmatics builds upon semantics: Pragmatic meaning relies on the literal meaning provided by semantics. You can't understand the pragmatic meaning of a sentence without understanding its literal meaning.
* Interaction: Semantics and pragmatics often interact. The literal meaning of a sentence can be influenced by pragmatic factors, and vice versa. For example, the word "bank" can have different semantic meanings (a financial institution or the edge of a river), but its pragmatic meaning will depend on the context in which it is used.
* Complementary: Semantics and pragmatics are complementary disciplines that work together to provide a full understanding of language meaning.
Analogy: Imagine a puzzle. Semantics provides the individual puzzle pieces, while pragmatics helps you put the pieces together to form the complete picture.
In essence, semantics provides the foundation for understanding meaning, while pragmatics allows us to interpret and apply that meaning in real-world situations.