semantic error
- noun
- Specialized
:
error semántico
- There's some deeper semantic errors, that's where the syntax works out, but the meaning is wrong.
Examples
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During testing, we discovered a semantic error that led to incorrect calculations despite the code being syntactically correct.
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The software crashed due to a semantic error that caused it to misinterpret user inputs.
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We measured grammatical accuracy as the percentage of utterances without grammatical or semantic errors (PGU).
Academic text (2012) -
The narratives were analyzed for INMIS productivity, INMIS complexity, and the proportion of utterances with syntactic or semantic errors.
Academic text (2012) -
Hillis, A. E., & Caramazza, A. (1995). The compositionality of lexical semantic representations: Clues from semantic errors in object naming. Memory, 3, 333-358.
Academic text (2012) -
The programmer fixed the semantic error that made the application behave unexpectedly under certain conditions.
How Severe
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun phrase literally combines 'semantic' (relating to meaning) with 'error' (a mistake), so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes an error concerning meaning or logic. However, the specific technical distinction in computing (i.e., a runtime/logic mistake as opposed to a syntax error) is domain-specific, so the full intended sense may not be fully predictable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Semantic error comes from the words semantic (about 'meaning') and error (a 'mistake'), like a sentence that looks correct but says the wrong thing. In programming, this image helps: the code runs but does the wrong job, so it is a 'mistake in meaning' rather than a mistake in how the code is written.