Category
It refers to the defining properties of these general units: Categories of the noun: number, gender, case and countability Categories of the verb: tense, aspect, voice
In a diagram form, the relation is represented as follows: concept
word
thing
5.3 Sense relations
Words are in different sense relations with each other. Some words have more similar senses than others.
5.3.1 Synonymy: the sameness relation Synonymy: ♦ buy/purchase ♦ autumn/fall ♦ flat/apartment ♦ tube/underground
Let’s take two pairs of synonyms as an example and find out their difference. • Buy/purchase ( style ) When did you buy this coat? The company has purchased large amounts of raw materials. • Flat/apartment ( dialectal difference ) Flat: British English Apartment: American English
Chapter 5 Me study of the meaning of linguistic units, words and sentences in particular. Meaning has been studied for thousands of years by philosophers, logicians and linguists. E.g. Plato & Lao Zi.
One problem of this theory is that when we explain the meaning of desk by pointing to the thing it refers to, we do not mean a desk must be of the particular size, shape, color and material as the desk we are pointing to at the moment of speaking. We are using this particular desk as an example, of something more general. That is, there is something behind the concrete thing we can see with our eyes. And something is abstract, which has no existence in the material world and can only be sensed in our minds. This abstract thing is usually called CONCEPT. A theory which explicitly employs the notion “concept” is the semantic triangle proposed by Ogden and Richards in The Meaning of Meaning.
Introduction of This Class
Step one: A brief review of the previous chapter Step two: Learning Chapter 5 Step three: Assignment
Step One A brief review of the previous chapter
5.2 The referential theory
The theory of meaning which relates the meaning of a word to the thing it refers to, or stands for, is known as the REFERENTIAL THEORY, which is a very popular theory. It is generally possible to explain the meaning of a word by pointing to the thing it refers to.
5.3.3 Hyponymy It refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. In other words, hyponymy is a matter of class membership. The upper term in this sense relation, i.e. the class name, is called superordinate, and the lower terms, the members, hyponyms. These members of the same class are co-hyponyms.
Geoffrey Leech (1974, 1981). Semantics: The Study of Meaning. Seven types of meaning: • Conceptual meaning • Connotative meaning • Social meaning Associative Meaning • Affective meaning • Reflected meaning • Collocative meaning • Thematic meaning
Gradable antonyms (old and young, hot and cold, big and small) have three characteristics: • First, they are gradable. That is, the members of a pair differ in terms of degree. The denial of one is not necessarily the assertion of the other and can be modified by adverbs of degree like very. They may have comparative and superlative degrees. • Second, they are graded against different norms. • Third, one member of a pair, usually the term for the higher degree, serves as the cover term.
Complementary antonyms (alive and dead, male and female) also have three characteristics: • First, they divide the whole of a semantic field completely. Not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other, the denial of one also means the assertion of the other. So the adjectives in this type cannot be modified by very and do not have comparative or superlative degrees either. • Second, the norm in this type is absolute. • Third, there is no cover term for the two members of a pair.
Constituent
It is a part of a larger linguistic unit.
Endocentric
Endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent to that of one or more of its constituents, i.e., a word or a group of words, which serves as a definable centre or head.
Converse antonymy show the reversal of a relationship between two entities such as buy and sell, husband and wife, teacher and pupil, above and below, before and after. Each pair shows the same relationship from two different angles, so they are also known as RELATIONAL OPPOSITES.
5.1 Meanings of “meaning”