英语词汇学教程课件第2章English-Lexicology-2下

1、Seven Types of MeaningLeech (1981) distinguishes seven types of meaning in language: conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning, and thematic meaning. Connotative meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning, affective meanin

2、g and social meaning have the same open-ended, variable character and thus fall under the heading of associative meaning. Seven Types of MeaningLeech (1Conceptual MeaningConceptual meaning, which is sometimes called denotative or cognitive meaning, refers to meanings as presented in a dictionary. It

3、 is widely assumed to be the central factor in linguistic communication. The conceptual meanings of a language can be studied in terms of contrastive features. For example, the meaning of the word woman could be specified as +HUMAN, -MALE, +ADULT, as distinct from boy, which could be defined as +HUM

4、AN, +MALE, -ADULT.Conceptual MeaningConceptual mConnotative MeaningConnotative meaning is the communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content. Connotative meaning is indeterminate and open-ended. Any characteristic of the referent ma

5、y contribute to the connotative meaning of the expression which denotes it. Connotative MeaningConnotativeTake the word woman for example. It is defined conceptually by three features (+HUMAN, -MALE, +ADULT), but there is a multitude of additional, non-criterial properties that we have learnt to exp

6、ect a referent of woman to possess. They include not only physical characteristics, but also psychological and social properties, and may extend to features which are typical concomitants of womanhood (experienced in cookery, skirt-or-dress-wearing). Take the word woman for examplStill further, conn

7、otative meaning can embrace the putative properties of the referent, due to the viewpoint adopted by an individual or a group of people or a whole society. Still further, connotative meaSo in the past woman has been burdened with such attributes (frail, prone to tears, emotional, irrational, inconst

8、ant) as the dominant male has imposed on her, as well as with more becoming qualifies such as gentle, compassionate, hard-working. Connotations are the real world experience one associates with a word when one uses or hears it. They vary from age to age, from society to society, and from individual

9、to individual within the same speech community. So in the past woman has been Social and Affective MeaningsSocial meaning refers to the kind of meaning a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use. From the use of words we can recognize the geographical, social origin of the

10、 speaker, or the social relationship between the speaker and hearer. We can decode the social meaning of a text through our recognition of different dimensions and levels of style. Social and Affective MeaningsSFor example, horse is a general word, steed is used in poetic language, nag is slang, but

11、 gee-gee is used in baby language. For example, horse is a generaThe term affective meaning can be used to cover the attitudinal and emotional factors expressed in a word. Affective meaning is often explicitly conveyed through the conceptual or connotative content of the words used. The term affecti

12、ve meaning canReflected and Collocative MeaningsReflected meaning is the meaning which arises in cases of multiple conceptual meaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our response to another sense. Reflected and Collocative MeanReflected meaning is most strikingly illustrated by words which h

13、ave a taboo meaning. Since their popularization in senses connected with the physiology of sex, it has become increasingly difficult to use words like intercourse in innocent senses without conjuring up its sexual associations. Reflected meaning is most striCollocative meaning consists of the associ

14、ations a word acquires on account of the meanings of words which tend to occur in its environment. Pretty and handsome share common ground in the meaning of good-looking, but may be distinguished by the range of nouns with which they are likely to co-occur or collocate. For example, pretty often co-

15、occur with woman, flower, garden, color, village etc. while handsome often co-occur with man, car, vessel, overcoat, airliner, typewriter, etc. Collocative meaning consists oThematic MeaningThematic meaning is what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or writer organizes the message, in ter

16、ms of ordering, focus, and emphasis. According to Halliday (1994), a clause, as a message structure, consists of a Theme accompanied by Rheme. Whatever is chosen as the Theme is put in the first position in the clause. The Theme is the element which serves as the point of departure of the message. T

17、hematic MeaningThematic meaniThus, a word or phrase may occur in the first position, serving as the starting point of the message. Thus, a word or phrase may occFor example, the following two sentences carry different thematic meaning, although in conceptual content they seem to be the same. (1) Mrs

18、 Bessie Smith donated the first prize. (2) The first prize was donated by Mrs Bessie Smith.The first sentence seems to say Ill tell you about Mrs Bessie Smith. while the second seems to say Ill tell you about the first prize. For example, the following twoRoot and StemThe word to which affixes are a

19、dded and which carries the basic meaning of the resulting complex word is known as the stem. A stem may consist of one or more morphemes. A stem consisting of a single morpheme is labeled as root. It is the part that is always present in the various realizations of a lexeme. For example, walk is a r

20、oot and it appears in the set of word-forms that instantiate the lexeme walk such as walk, walks, walking and walked. Root and StemThe word to whichMany words contain a root standing on its own. Roots which are capable of standing independently are called free morphemes. Single words like man, book,

21、 tea, sweet, cook are the smallest free morphemes capable of occurring in isolation. However, some roots are incapable of occurring in isolation. They always occur with some other word-building element attached to them. Such roots are called bound morphemes, like mit in permit, remit, commit, admit

22、and -ceive in perceive, receive, conceive. Many words contain a root stanThe bound roots -mit and -ceive co-occur with forms like re-, de- which recur in numerous other words as prefixes or suffixes. None of these roots could occur as an independent word. Roots tend to have a core meaning which is i

23、n some way modified by the affix. The bound roots -mit and -ceivBut determining meaning is sometimes tricky. Perhaps you are able to recognize the meaning sit in sedan, sedate, sedent, sedentary, and sediment which contain sed-.The root sed- came into English from Latin. Unless you have studied Lati

24、n, you are unable to say that sed- means sit without looking up sed- in an etymological dictionary.But determining meaning is somThe stem is that part of a word that is in existence before any inflectional affixes (i.e. those affixes whose presence is required by the syntax such as markers of singul

25、ar and plural number in nouns, tense in verbs etc.) have been added. For example: Noun stem Plural desk -s reader -sThe stem is that part of a worIn the word-form desks, the plural inflectional suffix -s is attached to the simple stem desk, which is a bare root. In readers, the same inflectional -s

26、suffix comes after a slightly more complex stem consisting of the root read plus the suffix -er which is used to form nouns from verbs. Here read is the root, but reader is the stem to which -s is attached. In the word-form desks, the plA base is any unit whatsoever to which affixes of any kind can

27、be added. A root like boy can be a base since it can have attached to it inflectional affixes like -s to form the plural boys or derivational affixes like -ish to turn the noun boy into the adjective boyish. In other words, all roots are bases. Bases are called stems only in the context of inflectio

28、nal morphology. For example, -ed and s are inflectional affixes; un-, -ful, er and ness are derivational affixes; faith can be a root, a stem or a base. A base is any unit whatsoever It is possible to form a complex word by adding affixes to a form containing more than one root. For instance, the in

29、dependent words frog and march can be joined together to form the base (a stem, to be precise) frog-march to which the suffix -ed may be added to yield frog-march-ed. It is possible to form a complA root or stem can be attached with an affix. It is a morpheme which only occurs when attached to some

30、other morpheme or morphemes. By definition affixes are bound morphemes. No word may contain only an affix standing on its own, like *-s or *-ed or *-al or even a number of affixes strung together like *-al-s.A root or stem can be attachedThere are three types of affixes: prefix, suffix and infix. A

31、prefix is an affix attached before a root (or stem or base) like re-, un- and in-, as in re-make, un-kind, in-decent. A suffix is an affix attached after a root (or stem or base) like -ly, -er, -ist, -ing and ed, as in kind-ly, wait-er, interest-ing, interest-ed. There are three types of affixAn inf

32、ix is an affix inserted into the root itself. Infixing is somewhat rare in English. Affixes can be divided into inflectional affixes and derivational affixes. Inflectional affixes are used for syntactic reasons to indicate number, tense, case, and so on while derivational affixes can alter the meani

33、ng or grammatical category of the base.An infix is an affix inserted PolysemyPolysemy refers to the situation where the same word has two or more different meanings. For instance, the noun bank is said to be polysemous because it may mean: (l) a financial institution that people or businesses can ke

34、ep their money in or borrow money from, (2) a raised area of land along the side of a river, (3) a large number of things in a row, especially pieces of equipment. PolysemyPolysemy refers to theThe concept of polysemy is complex and involves a certain number of problems. We cannot determine exactly

35、how many meanings a polysemous word has, as a word may have both a literal meaning and one or more transferred meanings. The concept of polysemy is comIt is difficult to distinguish between polysemy (i.e. one word with several meanings) and homonymy (i.e. several words with the same shape spelling a

36、nd/or pronunciation). Assuming that we have a written form with two meanings, dictionaries have to decide whether a particular item is to be handled in terms of polysemy or homonymy, because a polysemous word will be treated as a single entry, while a homonymous one will have a separate entry for ea

37、ch of the homonyms. It is difficult to distinguishHomonymyHomonymy refers to a situation where we have two or more words with the same shape. Although they have the same shape, homonyms are considered distinct lexemes, mainly because they have unrelated meanings and different etymologies.HomonymyHom

38、onymy refers to a sHomonyms can be divided into two types: homograph and homophone. Homograph refers to a word which is spelt the same as another word but has a different meaning and sometimes a different pronunciation. For example, lead (metal) and lead (dogs lead) are spelt the same but pronounced differently. Homonyms can be divided into tHomophone refers to a word that sounds the same as another word but has its own sp