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Introduction

Linguistic expressions may be of various leght. We recognize three units of meaning:


morphemes(which may be less than word), lexemes (roughly), words and idioms),


























1. Reference

In every language there are words like tree and run and red which seem to have an obvious
relation to objects and events and descriptions of things in the world around us. Children
learning their native language first learn words in association with observable items and
situations and events.










































2. Connotations and Denotations
The relationship between words and meanings is extremely complicated, and belongs to the
field of semantics. For now, though, what you need to know is that words do not have single,
simple meanings. Traditionally, grammarians have referred to the meanings of words in two
parts:
Denotation
a literal meaning of the word, Denotation refers to the literal meaning of a word, the
"dictionary definition." For example, if you look up the word snakein a dictionary, you will
discover that one of its denotative meanings is "any of numerous scaly, legless, sometimes
venomous reptilesKhaving a long, tapering, cylindrical body and found in most tropical and
temperate regions."
Connotation
an association (emotional or otherwise) which the word evokes, Connotation, on the other
hand, refers to the associations that are connected to a certain word or the emotional
suggestions related to that word. The connotative meanings of a word exist together with the
denotative meanings. The connotations for the word snake could include evil or danger.
For example, both "woman" and "chick" have the denotation "adult female" in North American
society, but "chick" has somewhat negative connotations, while "woman" is neutral,
For another example of connotations, consider the following:
negative
There are over 2,000 vagrants in the city.
neutral
There are over 2,000 people with no fixed address in the city.
positive
There are over 2,000 homeless in the city.
All three of these expressions refer to exactly the same people, but they will invoke
different associations in the reader's mind: a "vagrant" is a public nuisance while a "homeless"
person is a worthy object of pity and charity. Presumably, someone writing an editorial in
support of a new shelter would use the positive form, while someone writing an editorial in
support of anti-loitering laws would use the negative form.
In this case, the dry legal expression "with no fixed address" quite deliberately avoids
most of the positive or negative associations of the other two terms -- a legal specialist will try
to avoid connotative language altogether when writing legislation, often resorting to archaic
Latin or French terms which are not a part of ordinary spoken English, and thus, relatively free
of strong emotional associations.
Many of the most obvious changes in the English language over the past few decades have had
to do with the connotations of words which refer to groups of people. Since the 1950's, words
like "Negro" and "crippled" have acquired strong negative connotations, and have been
replaced either by words with neutral connotations (ie "black," "handicapped") or by words
with deliberately positive connotations (ie "African-Canadian," "differently-abled").
The word dog has a certain denotation, the possibly of entering into numerous referring
expressions such as the underlined expressions in the following.
1. This dog is a Dalmatian.
2. My children have just acquired a dog
3. Several dog were fighting over a bone.

A denotation identifies the central aspect of word meaning, which everybody
generally agrees about. Connotation refers to the personal aspect of meaning, the emotional
associations that the word arouses. Connotations vary according to the experience of
individuals but, because people do have common experiences, some words have shared
connotations.
Languages provide means of expressing different attitudes, the referring expressions
that violin and that fiddle can have the same referent- can refer to same object on particular
occasion-but they do not have the same meaning. They differ in connotations. Violin is the
usual term, the neutral one; fiddle- is used for humor or to express affection or lack or
esteem. Somewhat similar relations are seen with automobile and car, building and edifice,
fire and conflagration and other sets,

3. Sense Relation
Meaning is more than denotation and connotation. What a word means depends in
part on its associations with other words, the relational aspect. lexemes do not merely have
meaning; they contribute meanings to the utterences in which they occur, and what meanings
they contributed depens on what other lexemes they are associated with in these utterences.
The meaning that a lexeme has because of these relationships is the sense of that lexeme. Part
of this relationship is seen in the way words do, or do not, go together meaning fully. It makes
sense to say.john walked and it makes sense to say an hour elapsed. It doesnt make sense to
say say john elapsed or an hour walked. Part of the meaning of elapse is that it goes with
hour, second, minute, day but not with john, and part of meaning of hour , second and so forth
is that these words can co-occur with elapse.
A lexeme does not merely have meaning; it contributes to the meaning of a larger units, a
phrase or sentence. Take these phrases with the adjective happy.
a happy child, a happy family
a happy accident, a happy experience
a happy story, a happy report.

When happy combines with a word that has the feature (human),like child and
family in the first line, it is roughly equivalent to who enjoy (s) happiness- a happy child is a
child who has or enjoys happiness. In combination with words that have the feature (even)
such as accident and experience, its contribution is roughly that produce happiness. In
combination with words that have the feature (discourse)-story, report- its meaning is
roughly containing a happy event or events. Each of these words has a range of meanings;
each meaning is determined by its linguistic context, just as the meaning of door on any
specific occasion is determined by the physical context in which it occurs.
The meaning of a lexeme is, in part, its relation to other lexemes of the language.
Each lexeme is linked in some way to numerous other lexemes of the language. We can notice
two kinds of linkage,especially. First, there is the relation of the lexeme with other lexemes
with which it occurs in the same phrases or sentences, in te way that arbitrary can co-occur
with judge, happy with child or with accident, sit with chair, read with book or newspaper.
These are syntagmatic relations, the mutual associated of two or more words in a sequence
(not necessarily right next to one another) so that the meaning of teach is affected by the
others and together their meaning of the larger unit, the phrase or sentence.
Another kind of relation is contrastive. Instead of saying the judge was arbitrary,
for instance, we can say the judge was cautious or careless, or busy or irritable, and so on with
numerous other possible descriptors. This paradigmatic relation, a relation of choice. We
choose from among a number of possible words that can fill the same blank: the words may
be similar in meaning or have little in common but each is different from the others.
Since we are used to a writing system that goes from left to right, we may think of
syntagmatic relations as horizontal and paradigmatic relations as vertical. A compound
expression, such as book and newspaper, cautious but arbitrary, read or write puts two
lexemes that are paradigmatically related into a syntagmatic relationship.
As children, we learn vocabulary first through specific associations with specific
things, actions, and characteristics (reference) and as we learn to recognize different instances
of the same thing the same event and so on , we generalize (denotation). Slowly we learn
from other members of our speech community and from our personal experiences what
associations are favorable and which are not (connotation). And we acquire an implicit
knowledge of how lexemes are associated with others lexemes (sense relations). Our implicit
knowledge of syntagmatic relations
Facilities our perception and identification of what we hear and see, or what we think we hear
and see, when correction is needed: we must have heard five oclock because *fine oclock is
not familiar collocation. (an asterisk inserted before a phrase or sentence in the text indicates
that this is not an acceptable English constuction).

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