Unit Four: Word Formation I
1 Morphemes, the smallest functioning units in the composition of words. They are abstract units, which are realized in speech by discrete units known as morphs, the minimal carriers of meaning. Morphemes can be classified into:
1) Free morpheme, stand alone as a word, also called free root 2) Bound morpheme, function together with root of word; it includes bound root and affix. 3) Lexical morpheme, used for the construction of new word as in compound word ‘blackbird’ 4) Grammatical morpheme, used to express grammatical relationship between a word and its context such as the suffixes in a word and inflectional endings
2 Allomorphs/Alternative Morphs, to be realized by more than one morphs, according to their position in a word.
1) vowel alternation man-men 2) addition ox-oxen 3) vowel alternation and addition child-children 4) alternation marking number datum-data/formulas-formula 5) zero or unrealized sheep-sheep 6) consonant variance books/s/-bags/z/-matches/-iz/
3 Relevant Components In Word
1) root, a basic form of a word which can not be further analyzed without total loss of identity. It carries the essential meaning of the word, a meaning that never changes as ‘tain’ in retain/detain/contain/pertain/maintain/sustain/attain/obtain
2) stem, a part of a word to which affixes of any kind can be added. It may consist of a single root morpheme as in iron or of two root morphemes as in ‘handcuff’ or of a root morpheme plus one or more affixational morphemes eg .nationalists-nationalist/national/nation/nat
3) affixes, forms that are attached to words or word elements to modify meaning or function. They are classified into two
a inflectional, attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationship, also called inflectional morphemes such as markers of numbers, cases, tenses, and degrees. b derivative, added to other morphemes to create new words such as prefixes and suffixes.
classification of morphemes
Unit Five: Word Formation II
1 Affixation/Derivation, by means of adding affixes to stems. It includes pre/suffixation
2 Compounding/Composition, by means of joining two or more stems into one word. It occurs mainly in nouns, adjectives and verbs. There are three kinds of compounds:
a) solid (bedtime) b) hyphenated (above-mentioned) c) open (fire engine)
3 Conversion/Functional Shift, a process of changing word from one class to another, involving the change of grammatical function and range of meaning as in ‘She papered the room green’. There are two kinds of conversion:
a) Full: release(v) to release (adj) b) Partial: wealthy(adj) to the wealthy (n) c) Miscellaneous: But me no but
4 Blending/Portmanteau Word, a formation by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another word. They fall into four major groups:
1) head+tail; brunch-breakfast+lunch/motel-motor+hotel/smog-smoke+fog 2) head+head; interpol-international+police/psywar-psychological+warfare 3) head+word; medicare-medical+care/Eurasia-Europe+Asia 4) word+tail;workfare-work+welfare/lunarnaut-lunar+astronaut
5 Clipping/Shortening, to shorten a longer word by cutting a part off the origin a) front clipping; bus-omnibus/phone-telephone/plane-airplane b) back clipping; ad-advertisement/lab-laboratory/photo-photograph c) front and back clipping; flu-influenza/fridge-refrigerator/script-prescription d) middle clipping; bike-bicycle/maths-mathematics/specs-spectacles e) phrase clipping; pub-public house/pop-popular music/zoo-zoological garden f) journalistic clipping;Dept.-Depatment/Cwlth-Commonwealth/H.K.-HongKong g) back clipping+suffix; hanky-handkerchief/comfy-comfortable/agro-aggression
6 Acronymy, a process of forming new words by joining the initial letters of names or phrases
1) Initialism/alphabetism, word so formed and pronounced letter by letter
a letters represent full words; VIP-very important person/UFO-unidentified flying object UN-the United Nations/p.c.-postcard b letters represent elements in a compound or parts of a word TV-television/ID-identity card/PLS-please
2) Acronym, word formed by the initial letters or parts of the elements involved and pronounced as a normal word
Laser-light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation Radar-radio detecting and ranging AIDS-acquired immune deficiency syndrome
3) Semi-acronym, formed with the initial letter of the first word plus the whole of second N-bomb-nuclear bomb/G-man-government man/V-Day-Victory Day
7 Back-formation, a reversed process of suffixation in which a shortened word derives by deleting the supposed suffix;
beg-beggar/edit-editor/televise-television/laze-lazy-drowse-drowsy type-typewriter/baby-sit-baby-sitter/lip-read-lip-reading/mass produce-mass-production
8 Name Adoption/Words from Proper Names, a phenomenon in which a proper noun turns into a common word and is used in circulation
sandwich/mackintosh/diesel/protean/watt/volt/ampere/quisling/bloomers (names of people) China/champagne/utopia/nylon/frisbee/xerox (names of objects or places)
9 Onomatopoeia/Echo Word, a device to form a word by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it; crow-cock/bark-dog/quack-duck/croak-frog/grunt-pig/buzz-bees murmur/babble/giggle/whistle/titter/bang/crash/thump/thud/tick/rumble/crack
10 Analogical Creation, a way to coin word by following an existing word already established
1) Single Word; telethon/talkathon-marathon//starquake/youthquake-earthquake chairperson/woman/one-chairman//cheese/beef/shrimpburger-hamburger
2) Phrase; sound/air/language/visional/cultural pollution-environment pollution swim/stay/stand in-sit in//botel/airtel/-motel
Unit Six: Word Meaning
1 Meaning Definition; a reciprocal relation between name and sense. In other word, meaning is what form stands for; a word meaning entails reference, concept and sense
Meaning is elusive in a language, depending upon speakers, hearers and context for their intention, interpretation and significance/value.
1) reference, the relationship between language and the world or the connection between the linguistic sign (symbol) and an object (referent) The reference of a word to a thing outside the language is arbitrary and conventional. It is the result of generalization and abstraction and it can be specific with a help of context.
2) concept, a notion of word related directly to referent beyond language; it is the result of human cognition, reflecting the objective world in the mind of speaker. Concept and meaning are closely connected but not identical. Meaning belongs to language and is so restricted to language use
3) sense, the meaning of ‘meaning’, denoting the relationships inside the language. The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language.
A word may entail several senses. For example, ‘mother’ is defined as a female adult parent which has three senses of female, adult and parent from the word meaning composition theory. Expressions in different dialects of one language may have the same sense:pavement (Br E) and sidewalk (Am E) have the same sense. The following are the examples of three senses of the word ‘foot’ in its different relations with contexts:
He scored with his left foot (part of the leg below the ankle) They made camp at the foot of the mountain (base or bottom of something) I ate a foot long hot-dog (unit of length, one third of a yard)
When we examine a word meaning, we must keep in mind that a word has in it the semantic information, semantic relations in addition to its pronunciation and morphological entity.
There is a famous sign theory concerning word meaning in which word meaning is interpreted as consisting of concept, symbol and referent. It is also called semiotic triangle.
2 Motivation and Its Types
Motivation, the logical explanation of the relationship between the structure of word and its meaning. In English, the relationship between the form and meaning of some words can be well accounted for. They are called motivated words. Motivation occurs in different ways:
1) phonetic/onomatopoeic motivation, words whose sounds suggest their meanings because they are coined by imitating the natural sounds or noises associable. Words of this kind are called echoic words such as ‘splash’ by stirred water, ‘crash’ by breaking up plane, ‘bleat’ by goats and ‘croak’ by frogs
2) morphological motivation, words whose meanings derive from the total sum of the morphemes involved. These words are often polymorphemic such as teacher/teach+er, motherland/mother+land and reading-lamp/reading+lamp.
3) semantic motivation, words whose figurative sense derives from its literal sense through mental association suggested by the conceptual meaning of a word. Examples are as ‘the mouth of the river’ in which the opening part of the river is associated with the mouth of a human being and ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ is where pen and sword are used to suggest writing and war respectively.
4) etymological motivation, words whose meanings are related directly to the origins. In these words, history explains their meanings. For example, ‘laconic’ means brief or short, because it derives from Lacons, a tribe of people well-known for their brevity of speech and their manners of using as few words as possible for their expression. Other words such as those commonized from proper nouns fall into this category.
5) psychological motivation, words whose sense-shift and form change are gained through the mental working out of curiosity, interest, impatience or tabooism. For example, writers play on words; poets express themselves using imaginary lexis; common people display their ingenuity of eloquence or simplicity by idioms, euphemism, figurative speeches and other rhetorical devices. And taboos and certain dialectal expressions are attended to to reflect a sort of national psychological condition or culture. All the above produce certain fitting words for the required sense. And words derived from the formation process such as shortening, blending and backformation are typical.
Motivation can also be classified into variance in which the word meaning is related with another cognate such as peace---pacific; contact, attack, attach, tag---touch and recessive in which the relationship between the word meaning and word form becomes vague as in bother---both; doubt---double.
3 Types of Meaning
1) grammatical, that part of word meaning which indicates grammatical concept or relationships such as part of speech, singular and plural forms and tense, voice and their inflectional variations
2) lexical, that of a word as is rendered in the dictionary. It entails
a. conceptual/denotative meaning which is the given meaning in the dictionary and forms the core of word meaning
b. associative meaning which, as the secondary meaning supplements to the conceptual meaning, comprises the following:
a) connotative, the overtones or associations suggested by the conceptual meaning. It is unstable, varying considerably according to culture, historical period and the experience of the individual.
b) stylistic, that a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use. Words have their stylistic features which make them appropriate for different contexts. They are marked as common, formal and informal which include colloquialism, slang, vulgarism, jargon and argot. And five degrees of formality are suggested as frozen, formal, consultative, casual and intimate
c) affective, that indicates the speaker’s attitude. Words of some kind have their emotive charge which can be used to overtly and explicitly convey personal affections. They include appreciative and pejorative words
d) collocative, that suggested by the association in its collocation. ‘handsome’ and ‘beautiful’ are close in meaning, but they vary with collocation. ‘green’ has different associative meanings when used to collocate with different range of nouns as in green on the job/green fruit/ green with envy/green-eyed monster
Appendix: Triangular Semiotics
Thought/concept
Symbol/word object/referent
Unit Seven: Sense Relations and Semantic Field
Words are arbitrary symbols and independent identities so far as their outer facet--spelling and pronunciation is concerned. But they are related in one way or another in sense. These sense relations are characterized by polysemy, homonymy, synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy
1 Polysemy, a condition in which a word has two meanings or over. A word, when first coined, usually is monosemic but in the course of development, it acquires new meanings and becomes polysemic. There are two approaches to polysemy
1) diachronic, examining the word concerned as a process going from the past to the present. The first meaning is the primary meaning and the later acquired are derived meanings; the primary is the basic and all the rest are derived from the precedent
2) synchronic, viewing polysemy as the coexistence of various meanings of the same word in a certain historical period of time. The basic meaning is the core of the word meaning and becomes the central meaning and the derived meanings are secondary. The central meaning is the dominant
There are two processes by which the word meaning changes:
1) radiation, a semantic process in which the primary meaning stands at the center and the secondary meanings proceed out of it in every direction like rays
2) concatenation, a semantic process in which the meaning of a word moves gradually away from its first sense until, in many cases, there is not a sign of connection between the sense that is finally developed
2 Homonymy, a term used to refer to words different in meaning but either identical both in sound and spelling or identical only in sound or spelling.;
1) Classification
a perfect homonyms, identical both in sound and spelling bank- n, land along the sides of a river/a place where money is kept or paid out upon demand last-a, following all the rest/v go on or continue/n a piece of wood or metal shaped like a human foot, used by shoemakers or repairers
b homographs, identical only in spelling but different in sound and spelling lead-v /li:d/ to show sb. the way//n /led/ a soft heavy easily melted grayish-blue metal wind-n /wind/ strong moving air//v /waind/ to turn round and round
c homophones, identical only in sound but different in spelling and meaning eye-n /ai/ the organ of sight//I pron. a pronoun used by the speaker to refer to himself right- a /rait/ correct//write v. to put down on paper with a pen//rite n. a fixed pattern of behaviour, usu. for a religious purpose
d homoforms, identical in sound and grammatical forms but different in meaning found-/faund/ the past tense and past participle of verb‘find’/ v. to establish bound-/baund/ the past tense and past participle of the verb‘bind’/v. to jump or leap
2) Causes of Homonyms;
a converging sound-development, words of different meanings coincide in sound and spelling b diverging sense-development, two or more meanings of the same word drift apart and split into two or more independent words with no connection among them c foreign influence, borrowed words coincide in sound or spelling with those of the native origin d shortening, shortened forms of words happen to be identical with other words in spelling or sound
3) Differentiation of Homonyms from Polysemants
Perfect homonyms and polysemants are fully identical with regard to spelling and pronunciation. To identify their difference, one needs to understand that homonyms are different words which happen to share the same form and polysemants are of one same word having several distinguishable meanings. This difference can be traced out through:
a etymology; homonyms are from different sources whereas polysemants are from one same source which have acquired different meanings in the course of development b semantic relatedness; various meanings of a polysemant are correlated and often connected to one central meaning to a greater or lesser degree whereas the meanings in homonyms are separate and unrelated c dictionary; a polysemant has its meanings all listed under one headword whereas homonyms are listed as separate entries
4) Rhetorical Features of Homonyms
As homonyms are identical in sound or spelling, they are often employed to create puns for desired effects of humor, sarcasm or ridicule, adding to them an extreme splendor and vigor by which the sheen of human intelligence prolifically displays. Examples: In a restaurant Waitress: You are not eating fish, Anything wrong with it? Customer: Yah, long time no sea.(sea food is implied by employing the homophone) After church service A London worker: On Sunday they pray for you and on Monday they prey on you A sardonic remark exposing the double-faced upper-class people who call for blessing in service but ruthlessly plunder like ferocious animals preying on their victims
In a single child family An exhausted father speaking of his spoiled child: He is more the sun and less the son in our family, indicating that his son stand at the center in his family and he is his hope for the future
3 Synonymy, a term used in semantics to refer to a major type of sense relation between lexical items. Synonyms are the words which are similar or the same in meaning, denoting similar concept. They may differ in stylistic appropriateness, affective values and shade of meaning. They are not exactly identical in meaning nor interchangeable in all context. English vocabulary is particular rich in synonyms due to its constant large scale borrowings from Latin, Greek, French, Scandinavian and other languages and its circulation and promulgation through trade, cultural exchange and colonization which has established English as the first or official language in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Synonyms stay in couplets between ;
A English Latin B British English American English answer reply coach bus brotherly fraternal chemist druggist buy purchase lift elevator help aid petrol gasoline heavenly celestial railway railroad inner internal pavement sidewalk sharp acute tap faucet world universe lorry truck
And in triplets among;
C English French Latin or Greek ask question interrogate fire flame conflagration fear terror trepidation holy sacred consecrated rise mount ascend time age epoch
Among these words, native words usually are informal with denotative meaning whereas the loan words are formal charged with emotive meaning and have more connotative sense and learnt value. The difference between British and American English lies more in their formation; British words are, in sense, more conservative, original and elaborate, reflecting its cultural tradition and historical legacy whereas the American words are liberal, straight and of fashion, characterizing the openness, directness and practicalism of its people
1) Discrimination of Synonyms
Synonyms are classified into relative and absolute and the relative differ in
a denotation as in the range, intensity or degree of the meaning listen/hear; extend/increase/expand; rich/wealthy
b connotation as in the stylistic appropriateness, emotive coloring and affective values fleshy/carnal; policeman/constable/cop; bliss/happiness; negro/black
c application in usage, collocation fall/autumn; empty box/vacant seat; a slice of meat/a chunk of wood/a lump of sugar
4 Antonyms, words opposite in meaning. They can be categorized into
1) Morphological Classification as a root antonyms: clear/vague; large/small b derivative antonyms: polite/impolite; useful/useless;
2) Semantic Classification as
a contradictory terms, words truly opposite in meaning and mutually exclusive and as a result, the assertion of one comes to mean the denial of the other as alive/dead; present/absent; male/female; true/false;
They are characterized by the facts of non-gradability and disallowance of being qualified by adverbs of intensity like ‘very’ and ‘most’.
b contrary terms, words expressing the semantic polarity, running between tow poles or extremes as huge/very big/big/quite big/medium-sized/quite small/small/tiny beautiful/pretty/good looking/plain/ugly
c conversives/relative terms, words not only opposite in meaning but also interdependent often indicative of a reciprocal social and space relationship as lend/borrow; husband /wife; above/below
3) Characteristics
a Antonyms are based on semantic opposition and exist in words denoting nature, quality and state of things which are largely accomplished by adjectives, verbs, adverbs and nouns; There are more synonyms than antonyms in a language
b A word may have more than one antonym because it may have several meanings and be used in different collocations as fresh bread/air/news/flower/meat/water/color/hand which are corresponded by stale/foul/old/faded/frozen/salt/dull/old
c Antonyms differ in semantic inclusion as in man /woman and dog/bitch; tall/short; old/young in which the former is more general and the latter is more specific and the specific is included in that of the general and is more restricted in use:
Man is different from animal; man refers to all human beings including women It is a male/female dog but we can not say that of bitch How tall/old are you? But we can not say that of short/young
d Contrary terms are gradable antonyms, differing in degree of intensity with each one having its corresponding antonyms as hot with cold, warm with cool not otherwise as hot with cool nor cold with warm; Some words may have two different types of antonyms at the same time with one being the negative and the other opposite as happy; unhappy/sad; productive; unproductive/destructive
4) Use of antonyms
Like synonyms, antonyms have many variable uses; they can be used to
a define word meanings as in fresh bread/air/flowers/look vs stale/stuffy/faded/tired With antonyms in use, different shades of meaning are easily brought out. b express economically the opposite of a particular thought, often for the sake of contrast with rhythms as in the idioms of: rain or shine/friend or foe/now or never/weal and woe/thick and thin c form antithesis to achieve emphasis as in the popular sayings and proverbs of Easy come, easy go/United we stand, divided we fall. d to serve stylistic purpose as in many famous writings
5) Hyponyms, words included in those of more general meanings, reflecting the relationship of semantic inclusion as lion, elephant and horse are subordinates of superordinate animal.
Hyponymy can be described in terms of tree-like graphs, with higher order superordinates above the lower order subordinates. There are words on the same level called coordinates.
The sense relation of hyponymy is very helpful in both receptive and productive processing of language
6) Meronyms, denoting part-whole relationships between lexical items as X is part of Y, or Y has X, which reflects hierarchical classifications in the lexicon somewhat like taxonomies.
7) synsensonyms, referring to words whose compositional senses overlap as in stay, stand, station, all of which contain a common sense of ‘fixed’.
8) Semantic Field, words interrelated in sense form into an integrated system of sets or fields around meaning category as red, yellow, green, blue white, black, purple and pink (semantically related words) under color (field).
A word could be both a component in a meaning area and a semantic categorical headword as well. For example, house can go with residence, domicile, dormitory, palace, villa, mansion, apartment, bungalow, edifice etc. into a semantic field of building and at the same time be an area of 1)rooms within 2)building parts inside 3)appliances and equipments
accommodated
Words in each field are semantically related and define each other and word meaning spreads over the neighboring words which in turn, help form the semantic field and pin down the exact meaning.
1 Morphemes, the smallest functioning units in the composition of words. They are abstract units, which are realized in speech by discrete units known as morphs, the minimal carriers of meaning. Morphemes can be classified into:
1) Free morpheme, stand alone as a word, also called free root 2) Bound morpheme, function together with root of word; it includes bound root and affix. 3) Lexical morpheme, used for the construction of new word as in compound word ‘blackbird’ 4) Grammatical morpheme, used to express grammatical relationship between a word and its context such as the suffixes in a word and inflectional endings
2 Allomorphs/Alternative Morphs, to be realized by more than one morphs, according to their position in a word.
1) vowel alternation man-men 2) addition ox-oxen 3) vowel alternation and addition child-children 4) alternation marking number datum-data/formulas-formula 5) zero or unrealized sheep-sheep 6) consonant variance books/s/-bags/z/-matches/-iz/
3 Relevant Components In Word
1) root, a basic form of a word which can not be further analyzed without total loss of identity. It carries the essential meaning of the word, a meaning that never changes as ‘tain’ in retain/detain/contain/pertain/maintain/sustain/attain/obtain
2) stem, a part of a word to which affixes of any kind can be added. It may consist of a single root morpheme as in iron or of two root morphemes as in ‘handcuff’ or of a root morpheme plus one or more affixational morphemes eg .nationalists-nationalist/national/nation/nat
3) affixes, forms that are attached to words or word elements to modify meaning or function. They are classified into two
a inflectional, attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationship, also called inflectional morphemes such as markers of numbers, cases, tenses, and degrees. b derivative, added to other morphemes to create new words such as prefixes and suffixes.
classification of morphemes
Unit Five: Word Formation II
1 Affixation/Derivation, by means of adding affixes to stems. It includes pre/suffixation
2 Compounding/Composition, by means of joining two or more stems into one word. It occurs mainly in nouns, adjectives and verbs. There are three kinds of compounds:
a) solid (bedtime) b) hyphenated (above-mentioned) c) open (fire engine)
3 Conversion/Functional Shift, a process of changing word from one class to another, involving the change of grammatical function and range of meaning as in ‘She papered the room green’. There are two kinds of conversion:
a) Full: release(v) to release (adj) b) Partial: wealthy(adj) to the wealthy (n) c) Miscellaneous: But me no but
4 Blending/Portmanteau Word, a formation by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another word. They fall into four major groups:
1) head+tail; brunch-breakfast+lunch/motel-motor+hotel/smog-smoke+fog 2) head+head; interpol-international+police/psywar-psychological+warfare 3) head+word; medicare-medical+care/Eurasia-Europe+Asia 4) word+tail;workfare-work+welfare/lunarnaut-lunar+astronaut
5 Clipping/Shortening, to shorten a longer word by cutting a part off the origin a) front clipping; bus-omnibus/phone-telephone/plane-airplane b) back clipping; ad-advertisement/lab-laboratory/photo-photograph c) front and back clipping; flu-influenza/fridge-refrigerator/script-prescription d) middle clipping; bike-bicycle/maths-mathematics/specs-spectacles e) phrase clipping; pub-public house/pop-popular music/zoo-zoological garden f) journalistic clipping;Dept.-Depatment/Cwlth-Commonwealth/H.K.-HongKong g) back clipping+suffix; hanky-handkerchief/comfy-comfortable/agro-aggression
6 Acronymy, a process of forming new words by joining the initial letters of names or phrases
1) Initialism/alphabetism, word so formed and pronounced letter by letter
a letters represent full words; VIP-very important person/UFO-unidentified flying object UN-the United Nations/p.c.-postcard b letters represent elements in a compound or parts of a word TV-television/ID-identity card/PLS-please
2) Acronym, word formed by the initial letters or parts of the elements involved and pronounced as a normal word
Laser-light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation Radar-radio detecting and ranging AIDS-acquired immune deficiency syndrome
3) Semi-acronym, formed with the initial letter of the first word plus the whole of second N-bomb-nuclear bomb/G-man-government man/V-Day-Victory Day
7 Back-formation, a reversed process of suffixation in which a shortened word derives by deleting the supposed suffix;
beg-beggar/edit-editor/televise-television/laze-lazy-drowse-drowsy type-typewriter/baby-sit-baby-sitter/lip-read-lip-reading/mass produce-mass-production
8 Name Adoption/Words from Proper Names, a phenomenon in which a proper noun turns into a common word and is used in circulation
sandwich/mackintosh/diesel/protean/watt/volt/ampere/quisling/bloomers (names of people) China/champagne/utopia/nylon/frisbee/xerox (names of objects or places)
9 Onomatopoeia/Echo Word, a device to form a word by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it; crow-cock/bark-dog/quack-duck/croak-frog/grunt-pig/buzz-bees murmur/babble/giggle/whistle/titter/bang/crash/thump/thud/tick/rumble/crack
10 Analogical Creation, a way to coin word by following an existing word already established
1) Single Word; telethon/talkathon-marathon//starquake/youthquake-earthquake chairperson/woman/one-chairman//cheese/beef/shrimpburger-hamburger
2) Phrase; sound/air/language/visional/cultural pollution-environment pollution swim/stay/stand in-sit in//botel/airtel/-motel
Unit Six: Word Meaning
1 Meaning Definition; a reciprocal relation between name and sense. In other word, meaning is what form stands for; a word meaning entails reference, concept and sense
Meaning is elusive in a language, depending upon speakers, hearers and context for their intention, interpretation and significance/value.
1) reference, the relationship between language and the world or the connection between the linguistic sign (symbol) and an object (referent) The reference of a word to a thing outside the language is arbitrary and conventional. It is the result of generalization and abstraction and it can be specific with a help of context.
2) concept, a notion of word related directly to referent beyond language; it is the result of human cognition, reflecting the objective world in the mind of speaker. Concept and meaning are closely connected but not identical. Meaning belongs to language and is so restricted to language use
3) sense, the meaning of ‘meaning’, denoting the relationships inside the language. The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language.
A word may entail several senses. For example, ‘mother’ is defined as a female adult parent which has three senses of female, adult and parent from the word meaning composition theory. Expressions in different dialects of one language may have the same sense:pavement (Br E) and sidewalk (Am E) have the same sense. The following are the examples of three senses of the word ‘foot’ in its different relations with contexts:
He scored with his left foot (part of the leg below the ankle) They made camp at the foot of the mountain (base or bottom of something) I ate a foot long hot-dog (unit of length, one third of a yard)
When we examine a word meaning, we must keep in mind that a word has in it the semantic information, semantic relations in addition to its pronunciation and morphological entity.
There is a famous sign theory concerning word meaning in which word meaning is interpreted as consisting of concept, symbol and referent. It is also called semiotic triangle.
2 Motivation and Its Types
Motivation, the logical explanation of the relationship between the structure of word and its meaning. In English, the relationship between the form and meaning of some words can be well accounted for. They are called motivated words. Motivation occurs in different ways:
1) phonetic/onomatopoeic motivation, words whose sounds suggest their meanings because they are coined by imitating the natural sounds or noises associable. Words of this kind are called echoic words such as ‘splash’ by stirred water, ‘crash’ by breaking up plane, ‘bleat’ by goats and ‘croak’ by frogs
2) morphological motivation, words whose meanings derive from the total sum of the morphemes involved. These words are often polymorphemic such as teacher/teach+er, motherland/mother+land and reading-lamp/reading+lamp.
3) semantic motivation, words whose figurative sense derives from its literal sense through mental association suggested by the conceptual meaning of a word. Examples are as ‘the mouth of the river’ in which the opening part of the river is associated with the mouth of a human being and ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ is where pen and sword are used to suggest writing and war respectively.
4) etymological motivation, words whose meanings are related directly to the origins. In these words, history explains their meanings. For example, ‘laconic’ means brief or short, because it derives from Lacons, a tribe of people well-known for their brevity of speech and their manners of using as few words as possible for their expression. Other words such as those commonized from proper nouns fall into this category.
5) psychological motivation, words whose sense-shift and form change are gained through the mental working out of curiosity, interest, impatience or tabooism. For example, writers play on words; poets express themselves using imaginary lexis; common people display their ingenuity of eloquence or simplicity by idioms, euphemism, figurative speeches and other rhetorical devices. And taboos and certain dialectal expressions are attended to to reflect a sort of national psychological condition or culture. All the above produce certain fitting words for the required sense. And words derived from the formation process such as shortening, blending and backformation are typical.
Motivation can also be classified into variance in which the word meaning is related with another cognate such as peace---pacific; contact, attack, attach, tag---touch and recessive in which the relationship between the word meaning and word form becomes vague as in bother---both; doubt---double.
3 Types of Meaning
1) grammatical, that part of word meaning which indicates grammatical concept or relationships such as part of speech, singular and plural forms and tense, voice and their inflectional variations
2) lexical, that of a word as is rendered in the dictionary. It entails
a. conceptual/denotative meaning which is the given meaning in the dictionary and forms the core of word meaning
b. associative meaning which, as the secondary meaning supplements to the conceptual meaning, comprises the following:
a) connotative, the overtones or associations suggested by the conceptual meaning. It is unstable, varying considerably according to culture, historical period and the experience of the individual.
b) stylistic, that a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use. Words have their stylistic features which make them appropriate for different contexts. They are marked as common, formal and informal which include colloquialism, slang, vulgarism, jargon and argot. And five degrees of formality are suggested as frozen, formal, consultative, casual and intimate
c) affective, that indicates the speaker’s attitude. Words of some kind have their emotive charge which can be used to overtly and explicitly convey personal affections. They include appreciative and pejorative words
d) collocative, that suggested by the association in its collocation. ‘handsome’ and ‘beautiful’ are close in meaning, but they vary with collocation. ‘green’ has different associative meanings when used to collocate with different range of nouns as in green on the job/green fruit/ green with envy/green-eyed monster
Appendix: Triangular Semiotics
Thought/concept
Symbol/word object/referent
Unit Seven: Sense Relations and Semantic Field
Words are arbitrary symbols and independent identities so far as their outer facet--spelling and pronunciation is concerned. But they are related in one way or another in sense. These sense relations are characterized by polysemy, homonymy, synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy
1 Polysemy, a condition in which a word has two meanings or over. A word, when first coined, usually is monosemic but in the course of development, it acquires new meanings and becomes polysemic. There are two approaches to polysemy
1) diachronic, examining the word concerned as a process going from the past to the present. The first meaning is the primary meaning and the later acquired are derived meanings; the primary is the basic and all the rest are derived from the precedent
2) synchronic, viewing polysemy as the coexistence of various meanings of the same word in a certain historical period of time. The basic meaning is the core of the word meaning and becomes the central meaning and the derived meanings are secondary. The central meaning is the dominant
There are two processes by which the word meaning changes:
1) radiation, a semantic process in which the primary meaning stands at the center and the secondary meanings proceed out of it in every direction like rays
2) concatenation, a semantic process in which the meaning of a word moves gradually away from its first sense until, in many cases, there is not a sign of connection between the sense that is finally developed
2 Homonymy, a term used to refer to words different in meaning but either identical both in sound and spelling or identical only in sound or spelling.;
1) Classification
a perfect homonyms, identical both in sound and spelling bank- n, land along the sides of a river/a place where money is kept or paid out upon demand last-a, following all the rest/v go on or continue/n a piece of wood or metal shaped like a human foot, used by shoemakers or repairers
b homographs, identical only in spelling but different in sound and spelling lead-v /li:d/ to show sb. the way//n /led/ a soft heavy easily melted grayish-blue metal wind-n /wind/ strong moving air//v /waind/ to turn round and round
c homophones, identical only in sound but different in spelling and meaning eye-n /ai/ the organ of sight//I pron. a pronoun used by the speaker to refer to himself right- a /rait/ correct//write v. to put down on paper with a pen//rite n. a fixed pattern of behaviour, usu. for a religious purpose
d homoforms, identical in sound and grammatical forms but different in meaning found-/faund/ the past tense and past participle of verb‘find’/ v. to establish bound-/baund/ the past tense and past participle of the verb‘bind’/v. to jump or leap
2) Causes of Homonyms;
a converging sound-development, words of different meanings coincide in sound and spelling b diverging sense-development, two or more meanings of the same word drift apart and split into two or more independent words with no connection among them c foreign influence, borrowed words coincide in sound or spelling with those of the native origin d shortening, shortened forms of words happen to be identical with other words in spelling or sound
3) Differentiation of Homonyms from Polysemants
Perfect homonyms and polysemants are fully identical with regard to spelling and pronunciation. To identify their difference, one needs to understand that homonyms are different words which happen to share the same form and polysemants are of one same word having several distinguishable meanings. This difference can be traced out through:
a etymology; homonyms are from different sources whereas polysemants are from one same source which have acquired different meanings in the course of development b semantic relatedness; various meanings of a polysemant are correlated and often connected to one central meaning to a greater or lesser degree whereas the meanings in homonyms are separate and unrelated c dictionary; a polysemant has its meanings all listed under one headword whereas homonyms are listed as separate entries
4) Rhetorical Features of Homonyms
As homonyms are identical in sound or spelling, they are often employed to create puns for desired effects of humor, sarcasm or ridicule, adding to them an extreme splendor and vigor by which the sheen of human intelligence prolifically displays. Examples: In a restaurant Waitress: You are not eating fish, Anything wrong with it? Customer: Yah, long time no sea.(sea food is implied by employing the homophone) After church service A London worker: On Sunday they pray for you and on Monday they prey on you A sardonic remark exposing the double-faced upper-class people who call for blessing in service but ruthlessly plunder like ferocious animals preying on their victims
In a single child family An exhausted father speaking of his spoiled child: He is more the sun and less the son in our family, indicating that his son stand at the center in his family and he is his hope for the future
3 Synonymy, a term used in semantics to refer to a major type of sense relation between lexical items. Synonyms are the words which are similar or the same in meaning, denoting similar concept. They may differ in stylistic appropriateness, affective values and shade of meaning. They are not exactly identical in meaning nor interchangeable in all context. English vocabulary is particular rich in synonyms due to its constant large scale borrowings from Latin, Greek, French, Scandinavian and other languages and its circulation and promulgation through trade, cultural exchange and colonization which has established English as the first or official language in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Synonyms stay in couplets between ;
A English Latin B British English American English answer reply coach bus brotherly fraternal chemist druggist buy purchase lift elevator help aid petrol gasoline heavenly celestial railway railroad inner internal pavement sidewalk sharp acute tap faucet world universe lorry truck
And in triplets among;
C English French Latin or Greek ask question interrogate fire flame conflagration fear terror trepidation holy sacred consecrated rise mount ascend time age epoch
Among these words, native words usually are informal with denotative meaning whereas the loan words are formal charged with emotive meaning and have more connotative sense and learnt value. The difference between British and American English lies more in their formation; British words are, in sense, more conservative, original and elaborate, reflecting its cultural tradition and historical legacy whereas the American words are liberal, straight and of fashion, characterizing the openness, directness and practicalism of its people
1) Discrimination of Synonyms
Synonyms are classified into relative and absolute and the relative differ in
a denotation as in the range, intensity or degree of the meaning listen/hear; extend/increase/expand; rich/wealthy
b connotation as in the stylistic appropriateness, emotive coloring and affective values fleshy/carnal; policeman/constable/cop; bliss/happiness; negro/black
c application in usage, collocation fall/autumn; empty box/vacant seat; a slice of meat/a chunk of wood/a lump of sugar
4 Antonyms, words opposite in meaning. They can be categorized into
1) Morphological Classification as a root antonyms: clear/vague; large/small b derivative antonyms: polite/impolite; useful/useless;
2) Semantic Classification as
a contradictory terms, words truly opposite in meaning and mutually exclusive and as a result, the assertion of one comes to mean the denial of the other as alive/dead; present/absent; male/female; true/false;
They are characterized by the facts of non-gradability and disallowance of being qualified by adverbs of intensity like ‘very’ and ‘most’.
b contrary terms, words expressing the semantic polarity, running between tow poles or extremes as huge/very big/big/quite big/medium-sized/quite small/small/tiny beautiful/pretty/good looking/plain/ugly
c conversives/relative terms, words not only opposite in meaning but also interdependent often indicative of a reciprocal social and space relationship as lend/borrow; husband /wife; above/below
3) Characteristics
a Antonyms are based on semantic opposition and exist in words denoting nature, quality and state of things which are largely accomplished by adjectives, verbs, adverbs and nouns; There are more synonyms than antonyms in a language
b A word may have more than one antonym because it may have several meanings and be used in different collocations as fresh bread/air/news/flower/meat/water/color/hand which are corresponded by stale/foul/old/faded/frozen/salt/dull/old
c Antonyms differ in semantic inclusion as in man /woman and dog/bitch; tall/short; old/young in which the former is more general and the latter is more specific and the specific is included in that of the general and is more restricted in use:
Man is different from animal; man refers to all human beings including women It is a male/female dog but we can not say that of bitch How tall/old are you? But we can not say that of short/young
d Contrary terms are gradable antonyms, differing in degree of intensity with each one having its corresponding antonyms as hot with cold, warm with cool not otherwise as hot with cool nor cold with warm; Some words may have two different types of antonyms at the same time with one being the negative and the other opposite as happy; unhappy/sad; productive; unproductive/destructive
4) Use of antonyms
Like synonyms, antonyms have many variable uses; they can be used to
a define word meanings as in fresh bread/air/flowers/look vs stale/stuffy/faded/tired With antonyms in use, different shades of meaning are easily brought out. b express economically the opposite of a particular thought, often for the sake of contrast with rhythms as in the idioms of: rain or shine/friend or foe/now or never/weal and woe/thick and thin c form antithesis to achieve emphasis as in the popular sayings and proverbs of Easy come, easy go/United we stand, divided we fall. d to serve stylistic purpose as in many famous writings
5) Hyponyms, words included in those of more general meanings, reflecting the relationship of semantic inclusion as lion, elephant and horse are subordinates of superordinate animal.
Hyponymy can be described in terms of tree-like graphs, with higher order superordinates above the lower order subordinates. There are words on the same level called coordinates.
The sense relation of hyponymy is very helpful in both receptive and productive processing of language
6) Meronyms, denoting part-whole relationships between lexical items as X is part of Y, or Y has X, which reflects hierarchical classifications in the lexicon somewhat like taxonomies.
7) synsensonyms, referring to words whose compositional senses overlap as in stay, stand, station, all of which contain a common sense of ‘fixed’.
8) Semantic Field, words interrelated in sense form into an integrated system of sets or fields around meaning category as red, yellow, green, blue white, black, purple and pink (semantically related words) under color (field).
A word could be both a component in a meaning area and a semantic categorical headword as well. For example, house can go with residence, domicile, dormitory, palace, villa, mansion, apartment, bungalow, edifice etc. into a semantic field of building and at the same time be an area of 1)rooms within 2)building parts inside 3)appliances and equipments
accommodated
Words in each field are semantically related and define each other and word meaning spreads over the neighboring words which in turn, help form the semantic field and pin down the exact meaning.