Root

A root, or a root word, is a word that does not have a prefix in front of the word or a suffix at the end of the word. 

The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family (root is then called base word), which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. 

Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of root morphemes. 

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Semantics

Semantics is primarily the linguistic, and also philosophical, study of meaning—in language, programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics. It focuses on the relationship between signifiers—like words, phrases, signs, and symbols—and what they stand for, their denotation.

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Semiotics

It is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign processes and meaningful communication. This includes the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor symbolism, signification, and communication

The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. As different from linguistics, however, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems.

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Sense

In linguistics, a word sense is one of the meanings of a word.

For example, a dictionary may have over 50 different senses of the word play, each of these having a different meaning based on the context of the word's usage in a sentence, as follows:

·        We went to see the play Romeo and Juliet at the theater.

·        The coach devised a great play that put the visiting team on the defensive.

·        The children went out to play in the park.

In each sentence we associate a different meaning of the word "play" based on hints the rest of the sentence gives us.

People and computers, as they read words, must use a process called word-sense disambiguation to find the correct meaning of a word. This process uses context to narrow the possible senses down to the probable ones. The context includes such things as the ideas conveyed by adjacent words and nearby phrases, the known or probable purpose and register of the conversation or document, and the orientation (time and place) implied or expressed. 

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Signifier

It is a symbol, sound, or image (as a word) that represents an underlying concept or meaning.

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Solecism

In traditional grammar, a solecism is a phrase that transgresses the rules of grammar. 

The word originally was used by the Greeks for what they perceived as grammatical mistakes in their language. 

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Speech Act

A speech act in linguistics and the philosophy of language is an utterance that has performative function in language and communication.

According to Kent Bach, "almost any speech act is really the performance of several acts at once, distinguished by different aspects of the speaker's intention: there is the act of saying something, what one does in saying it, such as requesting or promising, and how one is trying to affect one's audience."

The contemporary use of the term goes back to J. L. Austin's development of performative utterances and his theory of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Speech acts are commonly taken to include such acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating.

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