词汇学论文lexical-meaning-and-context.doc

英语词汇学课程论文 Lexical Meaning and ContextAbstract: With the With the development of technology, more and more new words are used to express a new concept, but not every appearance of new concepts are accompanied by the emergence of a new word. Therefore, many ordinary words are also used to express a particular concept. Because of the different location and the different meaning, words have the contextual meaning. As an English-language learners, nor only should we understand the basic meaning of the words, but also we should learn the contextual meaning. I divided this passage into four parts, which is definition of context, contextual restrictions, the factors of the context and the influence of context. We can understand the method of analyzing the words in context and the impact of various contextual meaning of words. Then, we should try our best to understand the meaning of English words in the sentence by the provided clue. It can help us to avoid embarrassment of misunderstanding.Key words: Definition; Factors, Contextual restrictions; Influence 1. The definition of context Context is of great importance for the understanding of word meaning, especially for the understanding of the meanings of polysemic words. The important role in the study of context in semantics is increasing brought to the attention of the people. In language communication, context is always changing, which leads to changes in the dynamic semantics. Without the context, the words meaning will be pale, indefinite and puzzling. Whats more, the communication will be failed. Therefore, we should know denotative meanings of a word as much as possible and generally there will be no risk of misunderstanding the meaning, when it occurs in a particular context. 2. The factors of context Modern linguists have not only placed great emphasis on context but have considerably broadened its scope, and have also probed deeply into its influence on word meanings. The range of the term context has been widened in several directions. Its also no longer restricted to what immediately precedes and follows, but many cover the whole passage and sometimes the whole book in which a word occurs, and in some cases even the entire social or cultural setting. The factors of context can be divided into three parts. The first factor is natural environment. There are different geographical location between Chinese and English. They have different lifestyles and different characteristics of the word meaning. England is an island country. Its maritime industry was once the top of the world. Thus, many words were produced from navigation. Han Chinese live and multiply in the Asian continent. People can not live without land, land. Land is vital for people, so a lot of Chinese words or idioms are related to land. The second one is culture. Different country has different culture and different customs. Different language implies different national culture and the words also carry a lot of national cultural accumulation. This accumulation plays an important role of ways of thinking and language behavior. When we use “牛饮” to describe the big drinkers, English would say: Drink like a fish. Therefore, in order to understand the meaning of the words in a context, we should learn the culture or background of the words.3. The contextual restrictions on word meaning London School Firth founded context in the 1940s. Since the context was founded, linguists expressed their different opinions frequently. Different researchers selected different perspective to use different elements to make different definition of context. Translators analyze and understand the passage by the source of language information to convert and express the understanding meaning of the passage. In this process, whether can the translators accurately understand and express the original information? Not only should they rely on their language skills, personal experiences and the translation skills, but they should focus on the most important thing that is the source language text analysis and understanding accuracy. The accurate analysis of discourse and understanding is inseparable from context, because the usage of every language has its own the context. A. Two types of contexts Nowadays, the context was divided into two types: Linguistic Context and Extra- linguistic context.1 The former refers to the process of communication in the specific environment. It includes words, sentences, paragraphs and passages and so on. The latter one refers to the situation which is limited by the language communication, society and the communicators themselves, such as the specific occasion, time, topic and the character of communicators. In English, polysemy can be seen frequently, including basic meaning, expanding meaning, and metaphorical meaning and so on. However, when a word enters the semantics of the system, its meaning would be single and certain because of the restriction of semantic subjacency. In other words, in the context, the word only has a single meaning which can accurately express the meaning of the sentence or the passage. Therefore, in order to understand the meaning of a word, we must set it into a concrete context. English words meanings are flexible and they always be restricted by the context. Different context make the word has different meanings. American linguist Dwright Bolinger said: In order to understand the meaning of a word, we should rely on the entire semantic range of the word and the function of this word and other word in the same occasion! 2 For example, the preposition “on” has 10 meanings totally in the Anglo Dictionary, but in the specific context, it has only a meaning in a sentence.a book on the table( 在.上); a town on the river( 在.旁); smile on somebody( 向着.); live on ones salary (依靠.); on questions of common concern(关于.); be on the committee(是.的成员); be on leave( 处于.情况) ; talk on the telephone(以.方式); on Sunday( 在.时候) ; This lunch is on me( 由.支付) 。B. Context can be used to eliminate ambiguity. Generally speaking, in a specific context, the meanings of the words are often subject to the provisions. It has only a meaning. A word has different meanings, but as long as it is used in a certain context, it wont be ambiguous, because the specific context does not make sense to the other meaning of the polysemy! 4 However, sometimes two different meanings can make sense in a sentence. At this time, ambiguity arises. For example: “She was driving on the right side of the road.” Here, the “right” means”右边的” or ”正确的” ? “The oil is running out.” The “oil” means 食用油，润肤油，润滑油 or 煤油? “ He is a poor mechanic.” The “poor” means ”贫穷的” or “拙劣的” ? Therefore, if we want to know the accurate meaning of the words and eliminate the ambiguity, we should consider both the inner context and objective context. We should know When,Where,Who,Why. Sometimes, in order to create a positive impact, the speaker may use polysemous word to show the effect of pun. Take Benjamin Franklin famously in his speech in the American Revolutionary War as an example: We must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately. (我们必须团结在一起，否则我们将被一个个被绞死。) In this sentence, “hang together” means “团结一致” and the second “ hang” means “绞死”. C. The method of analyzing and understanding the context.The concept of context clues was firstly proposed by Gumperz. He called it as Contextualization cues. It can help people to understand others words. The content is related to other sentences and the theme of the whole passage. If we just remember the meaning of the word without the specific context, we would misunderstand it. Words are bricks of the passage. Every passage can not live without words. When we meet some difficult words, maybe we cannot know the meaning. However, we can try to use the cues to guess the meaning and understand it. a. Semantic CollocationIn the locales，people use certain combination of words to create semantic links that can generate unlimited. Some combination of words in the course of long-term use has gradually formed a regular of fixed phrases. These words are flexible. We can consider the context to understand the meaning. For example, The coffee spilled, get a mop. The coffee spilled, get a broom. The mop and broom are collocated with coffee. We can image a situation of cleaning. Then, we know that “mop” is used to clean the liquid rubbish and the “broom” is used to clean the solid rubbish. So, we can know that the first “coffee” means “咖啡”( liquid ), but the second “coffee” means “咖啡豆”. b. Call and responseSometimes, one word can not be obtained from the word meaning itself in a context. We must find answers to the object from which it is specifies. That is a concept named “call and response”. According to the (semantic field) theory of lexical structure which was proposed by J. Trier, words can be combined in a common concept of semantic field 4. In the same semantic field, words have common semantic features and distinguishing features. Common semantic features make the two linguistic units to maintain some kind of contact, such as overlapping relationship, hyponymy, relationship of parts and whole. They can help us to understand the words meaning well. 4. The vital influence of context on word meaningA. The context makes the development of words. The use of the words is inseparable from the social context. Words will never be rigid. Words meaning is going to develop because of the historical reasons of