Words and meaning

What are words?

Words are generally the basic elements of language that clearly show up in writing and are the items defined in dictionaries. Words are classified into word classes – parts of speech. Orthographic words are in written language separated by spaces (King Arthur was brave. - contains 4 orthographic words). Grammatical words fall into one word class or another (King – noun, was – verb, brave – adjective). Lexemes = a set of grammatical words which share the same basic meaning and word class (Was, are, being = members of the verb lexeme to be).

Words can be grouped into three families:

Lexical words are the main carriers of information that fall into word classes of nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives and adverbs = members of open classes. They can be heads of phrases. Function words fall into word classes such as determiners, prepositions, coordinators, auxiliary verbs, adverbial particles and pronouns = members of closed classes. They help us interpret units of lexical words by showing how units are related to each other. Inserts are found mainly in spoken language with a tendency occur freely in a text, often marked off by intonation in speech or a punctuation mark in writing. They generally carry emotional meanings such as ah, wow and responses like yes, no, okay.

Lexeme is the bearer of meaning and as a unit of vocabulary a lexical item. It covers more than a single word since e.g. lexeme nut has semantic representation as food, engineering component, silly, head. Lemma is a dictionary form of a set of words. Run is a headword and its set includes runs, ran, running and they are still the same lexeme.

Sememe is the meaning of the lexeme, a set of its elements semes. Seme is the smallest unit of meaning. Every word has meaning in two categories:

Denotative meaning is an objective link between a lexeme as reflection of reality in language and the reality (dog – canine quadruped). Connotative meaning is an equivalent of the emotional aspect, it represents the personal dimension of the lexical meaning (dog – helper, friend, faithful).

If lexeme is highly charged with connotations, we say that it is loaded which happens typically with language of politicians (capitalism, fascism, radical, democracy) and language of colours.

Red – confident, assertive, aggressive. Pink – feminine, gentle, unimportant. Blue – peaceful, trustworthy, conservative. Brown – earth, homely, boring. Yellow – cheerful, impulsive. Green – nurturing, stubborn. Orange – funny, enthusiastic, superficial. Violet – imaginative, superior, immature. Grey – respectable, neutral. Black – formal, mysterious, mournful. White – pure, clean, futuristic, clinical, cold.

Semantic field is a named area of meaning in which lexemes interrelate and define each other. It is possible to classify words like banana (food) and mouth (body) yet it is much more difficult with abstract words.

Thesaurus pioneered by Peter Mark Roget in 1852 divides the lexicon into six areas: abstract relations, space, the material world, intellect, volition, sentiment/moral powers. Thesaurus provides a systematic offer of a particular semantic field. Normal dictionaries are divided alphabetically, thesaurus according to themes.

Semantics is related to segmentation of reality in which the reality must be segmented, these segments are repetitive (dog – 4 legs, fur, barking) but not absolutely identical (Chihuahua and ban dog are still dogs yet different in size and shape).

Semantic analysis

Lexical structure by Ferdinand de Saussure analyses words from angle of two dimensions. Horizontal dimension (syntagmatic level) senses relationships between lexemes in a sequence. In vertical dimension (paradigmatic) one lexeme can be substituted by another.

Componential analysis analyzes the meaning of words by single components – series of semes. Each seme is given a dichotomic value (present/non-present = +/-) and some words have certain features in common.

                 Human   Adult   Male   Female

Mother      +           +            -             +

Bull             -            +            +            -

Calf             -            -             +/-        +/-

Diagrammatic analysis is a very useful method of semantic analysis due to its visual representation.

1. Without overlap (wet vs dry = either – or relationship)

2. Overlapping (wet - moist is not entirely wet but not entirely dry either – dry)

3. Inclusive = zahrnutí (to peel “loupat” includes to skin “škrábat” as the same activity with lower outcome)