A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed.
A comparison of prepositions and directional prefixes in Greek, Latin, English, and German.
Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and reference. Sense is given by the ideas and concepts associated with an expression while reference is the object to which an expression points. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which studies the rules that dictate how to create grammatically correct sentences, and pragmatics, which investigates how people use language in communication.
Semantics is not focused on subjective speaker meaning and is instead interested in public meaning, like the meaning found in general dictionary definitions.
The distinction between sense and reference was first introduced by the philosopher Gottlob Frege.
Bhartṛhari developed and compared various semantic theories of the meaning of words.
Michel Bréal coined the French term semantique and conceptualized the scope of this field of inquiry.
