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Word Meaning

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Page 1: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Word Meaning

Page 2: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Word Meaning

• Two approaches to word meaning

• Meaning and Notion

• Types of word meaning

• Types of morpheme meaning

• Motivation

Page 3: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Semantics

branch of linguistics which studies meaning of words and word

equivalents

Page 4: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Two Approaches to Word Meaning

• The Referential Approach

• The Functional Approach

Page 5: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Referential Approach

• formulates the essence of meaning by establishing the interdependence between words and things or concepts they denote

• distinguishes between three components closely connected with meaning: the sound-form of the linguistic sign, the concept and the actual referent

Page 6: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Basic Triangle

• concept (thought, reference) – the thought of the object that singles out its essential features

• referent – object denoted by the word, part of reality

• sound-form (symbol, sign) – linguistic sign

concept – flower

sound-form referent [rәuz]

Page 7: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Meaning and Sound-form

• are not identical

different

e.g. dove - [d۸v] English sound-forms

[golub’] Russian convey one

[taube] German and the same meaning

Page 8: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Meaning and Sound-form

• nearly identical sound-forms have different meanings in different languages

e.g. [kot] English – a small bed for a child

[kot] Russian – a male cat

• identical sound-forms have different meanings (homonyms)

e.g. knight [nait]

night [nait]

Page 9: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Meaning and Sound-form

• even considerable changes in sound-form do not affect the meaning

e.g. OE lufian [luvian] – love [l v]

Page 10: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Meaning and Concept

• concept is a category of human cognition• concept is abstract and reflects the most

common and typical features of different objects and phenomena in the world

• concept is almost the same for the whole humanity in one and the same period of its historical development

• meanings of words are different in different languages

Page 11: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Meaning and Concept

• identical concepts may have different semantic structures in different languages

e.g. concept “a building for human habitation” – in English HOUSE ≠

in Russian ДОМ (+ “fixed residence of family or household)

• one and the same concept possess meaning which is felt as different in each of the units

e.g. “young child” – child, baby, babe, infant

Page 12: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Meaning and Referent

• referent is beyond the scope of language

• one and the same object (referent) may be denoted by more than one word of a different meaning

e.g. apple – apple, fruit, something, this

Page 13: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Meaning

• a component of a word through which a concept is communicated, in this way endowing the word with the ability to denote objects, qualities, abstract notions

Page 14: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Functional Approach

• studies the functions of a word in speech

• meaning of a word is studied through relations of it with other linguistic units

e.g. to move (we move, move a chair)

movement (movement of smth, slow movement)

Page 15: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Lexical Meaning and Notion

• Notion denotes the reflection in the mind of real objects and phenomena in their relations

• Notion is a unit of thinking

• Lexical meaning is the realization of a notion by means of a definite language system

• Word is a language unit

Page 16: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Lexical Meaning and Notion

• Notions are always emotionally neutral as they are a category of thought.

• Lexical meanings convey not only reflection of objective reality but also the speaker’s state of mind and his attitude to what he is speaking about.

Page 17: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Lexical Meaning and Notion

• Notions are stylistically neutral, they belong to abstract logic and has ties with any stylistic sphere

• Lexical meanings have stylistic reference

Page 18: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Lexical Meaning and Notion

• Notions are international especially with the nations of the same cultural level

• Meanings are nationally limited

Page 19: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Lexical Meaning and Notion

• The logical notion is the referent of lexical meaning when a referent is not a real object.

• Real objects may be referents of lexical meaning.

Page 20: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Types of Meaning

types of meaning

grammatical meaning

lexico-grammatical meaning

lexical meaning

denotational connotational

Page 21: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Grammatical Meaning

• component of meaning recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words

e.g. girls, winters, toys, tables – grammatical meaning of plurality

asked, thought, walked – meaning of tense

Page 22: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Lexico-grammatical meaning

• denominator of all the meanings of words belonging to a lexico-grammatical class

e.g. action – generic term for verbs

• words of one lexico-grammatical class have the same paradigm

Page 23: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Lexical Meaning

• component of meaning proper to a word as a linguistic unit met in all word-forms

e.g. go-goes-went

lexical meaning – process of movement

grammatical meaning – tense and person

Page 24: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Denotational Meaning

• expresses the conceptual content of a word

• makes communication possible

e.g. notorious, adj. – widely known

celebrated, adj. – widely known

Page 25: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Connotational Meaning

• emotive charge or stylistic reference of a word

• it is optional – a word either has it or not

Page 26: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Connotation

• stylistic connotation – associations concern the situation in which the word is uttered, the social circumstances (formal, informal, etc.), social relationships between the interlocutors (polite, rough, etc.), the type and purpose of communication (poetic, official, etc.)

e.g. horse (neutral) – steed (poetic) – nag (slang) – gee-gee (baby language)

Page 27: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Connotation

• Emotional connotation – emotive charge of words that does not depend on the “feeling” of the individual speaker but is true for all speakers of English

• varies in different word-classes

e.g. in interjections - it prevails

in conjunctions – non-existant

Page 28: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Connotational Meaning

notorious +

celebrated +

widely known

for criminal acts or bad traits of a character

widely known

for special achievements in

science, arts, etc.

Page 29: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Types of Morpheme Meaning

• lexical

• differential

• functional

• distributional

Page 30: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Lexical Meaning in Morphemes

• root-morphemes that are homonymous to words possess lexical meaning

e.g. boy – boyhood – boyish

• affixes have lexical meaning of a more generalized character

e.g. –er – agent, doer of an action

Page 31: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Lexical Meaning in Morphemes

• has denotational and connotational components

e.g. –ly, -like, -ish – denotational meaning of similiarity – womanly, womanlike, womanish

connotational component - -ly (positive evaluation), -ish (deragotary) женственный - женоподобный

Page 32: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Differential Meaning

• a semantic component that serves to distinguish one word from all others containing identical morphemes

e.g. cranberry, blackberry, gooseberry

Page 33: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Functional Meaning

• found only in derivational affixes

• a semantic component which serve to refer the word to the certain part of speech

e.g. just, adj. – justice, n.

Page 34: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Distributional Meaning

• the meaning of the order and the arrangement of morphemes making up the word

• found in words containing more than one morpheme

• different arrangement of the same morphemes would make the word meaningless

e.g. sing- + -er =singer, -er + sing- = ?

Page 35: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Motivation

• relation between the structure of a word, its phonemic or morphemic composition

and its meaning

• words may be motivated and non-motivated

Page 36: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Phonetical Motivation

• when there is a certain similarity between the sounds that make up the word and those produced by animals, objects, etc.

e.g. swish, sizzle, boom, splash

Page 37: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Morphological Motivation

• when there is a direct connection between the structure of a word and its meaning

e.g. finger-ring – ring-finger,

lead- + -er=leader

• one-morpheme words are morphologically non-motivated

e.g. dog, girl

Page 38: Word Meaning. Two approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Semantic Motivation

• based on co-existence of direct and figurative meanings of the same word

• when there is a direct connection between the central meaning of a word and minor meanings which are metaphorically colored (the combination of components is used figuratively)

e.g. a watchdog –”a dog kept for watching property” (morphological motivation)

a watchdog – “a watchful human guardian” (semantic motivation)