Frame semantics is a sub-theory of semantics that establishes a direct link between meaning in a linguistic sense and the speaker’s knowledge of the world. This theory has been elaborated in the context of case grammar by Charles J. Fillmore.
Central is the idea that the knowledge of the world takes the form of psychic representations or frames. The meaning of, for example, individual words is in turn determined by these frames, which represent a certain concept in reality. In this way “semantic frameworks” are created. A semantic framework is a collection of concepts with a certain relationship, so that without knowledge of one concept it is not possible to have knowledge of the other concept.
The frame semantics was initially applied only to lexemes. Later this theory was extended to more complex linguistic units such as grammatical constructs. The theory is also one of the main principles in construction grammar for analyzing construction meanings.