Download refterence and denotations chapter 2

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•Reference & Denotation
•Connotation
•Sense Relations
•Lexical & Grammatical Meanings
Important Definitions
• Lexeme: a basic lexical unit of a language consisting of
one word or several words, the elements of which do not
separately convey the meaning of the whole.
• Morpheme: a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical
function.
• Function words: words that have little lexical meaning
or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express
grammatical relationships with other words within
a sentence.
Homophones & Homonyms
When two or more differently written words
have the same pronunciation they are
considered to be homophones. Examples:
Too\ two, right\write.
When one written or spoken word has two
or more unrelated meanings. For example,
Bat, bank.
Polysemy
• One form having multiple meanings
that are all related by extension.
For example the word: head.
1- The object on the top of a human body.
2- The person at the top of a company.
Meaning
How can we ever know that we all
have the same mental images?
Connotation
• Connotation refers to the personal
aspect of meaning, the emotional
associations that the word arouses.
• They vary according to the experience
of individuals.
• Because some people have common
experiences, some words have shared
connotations.
• The police.
• Men in Blue.
• The filth.
Sense Relations
The meaning of the word depends
on its association with other
words. Lexemes do not merely
have meanings, they contribute
meanings to the utterances in
which they occur.
An hour elapsed.
hour
An hour
elapsed
second
minute
• A window broke.
- Became broken.
• Tom Broke a window.
- Caused it to be broken.
• A happy child, a happy family.
Who enjoys happiness.
• A happy accident, a happy experience.
The feature event: it roughly
produces happiness.
• A happy story, a happy report.
Discourse: happy event or
events.
Lexemes are linked to other
lexemes through two things
Lexemes
linked through
Syntagmatic
relations
Paradigmatic
relation
Syntagmatic relations
The mutual association of two or more
words in a sequence (not necessarily right
next to one another) so that the meaning of
each is affected by the other(s) and together
their meanings contribute to the meaning of
the larger unit, phrase or sentence.
Example,
Read + book or newspaper
Happy + child or accident
Paradigmatic relation
It is a relation of choice.
We choose from a number of possible
words the one which suits us most. Words
can have similar meanings but are not
entirely exchangeable.
Paradigmatic
Choosing read for the
word book is paradigmatic
which makes it syntagmtic.
Syntagmatic
Lexical & Grammatical Meanings
A dog barked.
A referring expression: a piece of language
that is used as if it linked to something outside
language. (Some living or dead entity).
A dog = the referent.
Barked (an activity outside the language) =
predicate.
Grammatical meaning
Did a dog bark?
Question
A dog did not bark.
A dog barked.
Negative
A dog barks.
Present
Some dogs barked.
Plural
Dog + Bark
-Their meanings are not grammatical;
they are lexical.
-They are associated with things outside
the language.
-Both are lexemes.
-All the lexemes of the language make
the lexicon of the language.
-All the lexemes we know, make our
personal lexicon.
References
• Linguistics book of ENGL 2322
• Wikipedia
• Semantic issues (compiled by Prof. Walid M.
Amer.