Lexis and Semantics

11 Key excerpts on "Lexis and Semantics"

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  eBook - ePub

  Introduction to English Linguistics

  • Ingo Plag, Sabine Arndt-Lappe, Maria Braun, Mareile Schramm(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  5 The meaning of words and sentences: semantics

  5.1Introduction

  Semantics is the study of the structure of meaning. To us as speakers of a language, the idea that language is used to communicate meaning seems intuitively quite straightforward. However, we will see in this chapter that, if we look at how meaning is actually encoded in language, things are much more complex than they seem. First of all we may wonder what meaning is in the first place. This question will be discussed in section 5.2 . Secondly, we may wonder which linguistic units are relevant for meaning, and we will look at this question in section 5.3 . Section 5.4 . will then be concerned in more detail with the ways in which meaning is organised in language. As an example, we will deal with the organisation of word meaning in the speaker’s mind.

  5.2What does ‘meaning’ mean? Words, concepts and referents

  In contrast to maybe other linguistic structures, we are quite used to consciously dealing with semantic issues in everyday life. The linguistic unit with which we tend to associate meaning is the word. When we meet a word in a language that is unknown to us, we may consult a dictionary in order to find out about its meaning. Imagine, for example, you came across the word box , and you did not know what it meant. In (1) you find an extract from what the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English will tell you about the meaning of box .

  (1) Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, s.v. box

  a. A definition in English:‘a container for putting things in, especially one with four stiff straight sides’ b. Six pictures:

  (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003), printed with permission)

  In how far can this definition and these pictures tell us something about what meaning is to speakers of a language? We can draw an analogy between the dictionary entry and the way in which language organises meaning.

  The word box itself is a combination of four sounds: [b], [ ], [k] and [s]. This combination is arbitrary in the sense that there is nothing special about this sequence of sounds that would make them particularly suitable to be used to refer to box-like objects. For example, we may take three of those sounds, put them in a different order, and arrive at a completely different word that has absolutely nothing to do with boxes: sock ([s] + [

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  eBook - ePub

  Lexical Ontological Semantics

  • Guoxiang Wu, Yulin Yuan(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Introduction From lexis to lexical ontological semantics

  Knowledge that mediates between Lexis and Semantics has been structured into what is referred to as linguistic ontologies. Among them, grammars are important forms. A grammar usually organises words into noun, verb, adjective, and other parts of speech according to what they mean and how they function. Because lexical items denote objects, events, states or attributes in the physical or mental world, a linguistic ontology serves not only as a bridge between Lexis and Semantics but also as an interface between linguistic knowledge and world knowledge.

  Lexis and grammar

  The belief that the ever-evolving feature shared by human languages should be manifested in linguistic studies is deeply rooted in both Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan traditions. In the beginning chapter of On Interpretation, Aristotle summarises the one-sided relation between words and meanings as ‘spoken words represent mental experience and written words represent spoken words’ (Ἔστι μὲν οὖυ τὰἐν τῇ φωνῇ τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ παθηάμτων σύμβολα, καὶ τὰ γραφόμενα τῶν ἐν τῇ φωνῇ ). This statement clearly shows that written language corresponds to spoken language and spoken language does to mental experience. As Confucius puts it with regard to the same relation in the 12th chapter of The Great Appendix, however, ‘written language does no traverse spoken language and spoken language does no traverse all ideas’ (书不尽言 ,言不尽意 shū bù jìn yán, yán bù jìn yì). That is to say, written language fails to retrieve all spoken facts; neither does spoken language capture all mental experiences. To exhaust all potential meanings and fully set forth ideas, abstract symbols are accordingly created (立象以尽意 lì xiàng yǐ jìn yì).

  It remains an important task in modern linguistics to fill the gap between mental experiences (knowledge) and linguistic symbols (representation). One way to approach this task is to go through grammar. In its classical sense, ‘the art of grammar’ (téchnē grammatikḗ [τέχνηγ ραμματική

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  Phasal Analysis

  Analysing Discourse through Communication Linguistics

  • Karen Malcolm(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  Lexis 4 Lexis is the study of the organization of the meanings of words. Communication works because people share meanings. Meanings are organized into taxonomies / groups of relatedness. If someone says the word cat, not only do numerous attributes of cats come to mind like animal, tail, paw, whiskers, fur, meow, but so do several related words such as gray, white, stray, tabby, scratch, purr, pet. The former denotative meanings of a word like cat include the attributes of cats that are held more or less universally. These meanings are the ones used in dictionary definitions like ‘ a small furry domesticated animal often kept as a pet ’ (Oxford English Dictionary). The latter connotative meanings are more general, associated with cat more by proximity than exclusivity. Connotations are more likely to be situationally and culturally specific. When children talk to friends about their pet cat they use words like Mukti (name), cuddly, purr, gray, Persian. Professional cat breeders, however, use a very different group of words to discuss cats at cat shows: Koret, registered (not purebred), lilac point, locket, bracelet, ticking, dam, sire, altered, spay. Such specialized, technical words are called field-restricted words or jargon. Language users understand the meanings of words in terms of the beliefs, values, expectations and stereotypes associated with their culture. Despite the common referent (thing in the world), each language has its own referring expression : in English, cat ; in French, chat. Communicators also understand the meaning of the present instantial discourse by comparing it to their non-instantial memories of past linguistic experiences of such meanings. Although individuals can easily misinterpret the meaning of a word that is emotionally charged for them, it seems that people share enough meaning to understand one another more or less

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  eBook - ePub

  Semantics - Foundations, History and Methods

  • Klaus Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn, Paul Portner(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Formenlehre ). Reisig claims that the word should not only be studied with regard to its form (etymology) and in its relation to other words (syntax), but as having a certain meaning. He points out that there are words whose meaning is neither determined by their form alone nor by their place in the sentence, and that the meaning of these words has to be studied by semasiology. More specifically semasiology is the study of the development of the meaning of certain words, as well as the study of their use, both phenomena that were covered by neither etymology nor syntax.

  Reisig puts forward thirteen principles of semantics, according to which language precedes grammar, languages are the products of nations, not of single human beings, language comes into being through imagination and enthusiasm in the social interaction of people. We shall see that this dynamic view of language and semantic change became central to historical semantics at the end of the 19th century when it was also linked to a more contextual approach. According to Reisig the evolution of a particular language is determined by free language-use within the limits set by the general laws of language. These general laws of language are Kant’s laws of pure intuition (space and time), and his categories. This means that language and language change are brought about by a dynamic interplay of several forces which Reisig derived from his knowledge of German idealism on the one side and the romantic movement on the other. In line with German idealistic philosophy, he wanted to find the general principles of semantic change, assumed to be based on general laws of the human mind. In tune with the romantic movement, he saw that every language has, however, its individuality, based on the history of the nation and he recognized that speakers too have certain degrees of freedom in their creative use of language. This freedom is however constrained by certain habitual associations between ideas which had already been discussed in rhetoric, but which semasiology should, he claims, take account of, namely synecdoche, metonymy and metaphor. Whereas rhetoric focuses on their aesthetic function, semasiology focuses on the way these figures have come to structure language use in a particular language.

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  eBook - ePub

  A Concise Introduction to Linguistics

  • Bruce M. Rowe, Diane P. Levine(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~koller/papers/sem-handbook.pdf .
• Kövecses, Zoltan, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction , 2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Saeed, John I., Semantics , 5th ed., Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022.
• Schubert, Lenhart, “Computational Linguistics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta, Spring, 2015. Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/computational-linguistics .

Websites

• Korzybski’s General Semantics: Applying Science-Mathematical Methods and Discoveries to Daily Living: www.stevenlewis.info/gs . An interesting, eclectic collection of essays and articles on a site developed by Steven Lewis .
• Semiotics for Beginners : http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/
• TeachIt: www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/lang/semantics.htm . Free resources from an English teaching website for semantics, etymology, and the lexicon, with links to much more .

Review of terms and concepts: semantics

1. Semantics is the study of _____________________________________________________________________________.
2. A ________ is something, a word, a gesture, a sign, or other representation that signifies or represents something else that is not intrinsically (causally) related to it.
3. The meaning of the symbol and what it signifies must be ___________.
4. Unlike a symbol, an __________________ has a causal relationship to what it indicates.
5. Lexical semantics is the study of ______________.
6. In the brain is a ______________ containing the definitions of all the words that a person knows.
7. Some words have an actual concrete item or concept that the word refers to. That item is its ______________.