Class 3

Words and meanings

In this course we'll talk about the form and function of words and language in general.
Reading Assignment: O'Grady, William and Michael Dobrobolsky: Contemporary linguistics : an introduction: Pages 245 - 252(US-Canadian edition, p. 169 ff in the British edition) (see reserved reading shelf ).

Dictionary types

For different types of lexica see last weeks class.

Structure of lexica

A lexicon consists of lexical entries that have certain properties. Lexical entries contain at least a lexical key, which is used to access the lexicon entry, and a lexical property, which is the information that is to be found.

Semantic Relations

First in-class exercise

Synonymy:

Two words that have (more or less) the same meaning.

Polysemy:

One word that have two (or more) (closely) related meanings.

Homonymy:

Two words that have the same form, that is: they look the same, are pronounced the same, belong to the same grammatical class but their meaning is not at all related.

Antonymy:

Two words that are closely related (share the same word class, distribution, etc.) but their meaning is "opposite" to the other are called an antonym. In terms of logic a word A is an antonym of word B iff when A is true, B is not true.

The distinction between polysems and homonyms is not easy in some cases. When in doubt they are distinguished by their etymology (if they are derived from the same word they are polysems, if they are derived from two different words they are homonyms).

Approaching Meaning

Second in-class exercise

Semantic change

Words can change their meaning. One process of semantic change is projoration when a word takes on a negative meaning in the course of the years. One example is the German word "Weib" which used to mean "Frau" and now has a slightly negative meaning.

Words can also narrow their meanings: In English "Chant" used to mean "sing", but now it can only be used for singing in church or on a boat.

Sign and Content: Ferdinand de Saussure and semiotics

According to Saussure's 'dyadic' (two-part) model of the sign, each sign is composed of:

1. a 'signifier' (signifiant): the form of a sign
2. the 'signified' (signifié): the concept of a sign

The relation between signifier and signified is arbitrary, nevertheless a community must have a sort of agreement to be able to communicate with each other. Where this does not happen there are different languages.

Figure 1: Saussures sign model

Example:

Figure 2: Example of the sign model

There is another dimension, illustrated by the semiotic triangle, it is the dimension of perception.

Figure 3: Semiotic triangle

The semiotic triangle expresses the difference in the perception of the concept and the concept itself.

Third in-class exercise

Abstraction in the Lexicon

Lexemes

are the smallest meaningful objects having a lexical meaning. It has no grammatical form -- no inflection at all (see the sessions on morphology) -- and it is the smallest unit in the lexicon. The lexical properties are the morpho-syntactic, phonetic, semantic, etc. properties of the lexem; the lexical key is the lexicon specific representation of the lexem.

Final Discussion: Finding the lexical key

• If we do have abstract objects called lexemes in a lexicon, how do we find them?
• What is the role of the lexical key?
• What is an appropriate lexical key?

Reading Assignment for next week

O'Grady, et al. 1989 Chapter Morphology: The Analysis of Word Structure (Chapter 4) sections 1.1-2(Words and word Structure) and sections 2 (Derivation) and 3(Compounding)

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