Languages & Linguistics
Lexis and Semantics
Lexis refers to the vocabulary or words used in a language, while semantics deals with the meaning of those words and how they are used to convey meaning. Lexis and semantics are essential components of language, as they help to shape and convey the intended message in communication. Understanding the relationship between lexis and semantics is crucial for effective language use and comprehension.
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eBook - PDFLanguage
Its Structure and Use
- Edward Finegan, , , (Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Semantics is the branch of linguistics that examines word and sentence meaning while generally ignoring context. By con-trast, pragmatics attends more to the relationship of an utterance to its context. Lexical Semantics The lexicon of a language can be viewed as a compendium of all its words. Words are sometimes called lexical items , or lexemes (the -eme ending parallel to that in phoneme and morpheme ). The branch of semantics that deals with word mean-ing is called lexical semantics . Lexical semantics examines relationships among word meanings. For exam-ple, it asks what the relationship is between the words man and woman on the one hand and human being on the other hand. How are the adjectives large and small in the same relationship to each other as the pair dark and light ? What is the difference between the meaning of words such as always and never and the meaning of words such as often and seldom ? What do speakers actually mean when they say that a dog is “a type of” mammal? Lexical semantics investigates such questions. It is the study of how the lexicon is organized and how the meanings of lexical items are interrelated, and its principal goal is to build a model for the structure of the lexicon by categorizing the types of relationships between words. Lexical semantics focuses on linguistic meaning. Semantic Fields Consider the following sets of words: 1. cup, mug, wineglass, tumbler, chalice, goblet 2. hammer, cloud, tractor, eyeglasses, leaf, justice The words of 1 denote concepts that can be described as ‘vessels from which to drink,’ while the words of 2 denote concepts that have nothing in common. The words of 1 constitute a semantic field —a set of words with an identifiable semantic affinity. The following set is also a semantic field, all of whose words refer to emotional states: angry, sad, happy, exuberant, depressed, afraid Words, then, can be classified into sets according to their meaning.
- Praful Dhondopant Kulkarni(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Society Publishing(Publisher)
TRADITIONAL LINGUISTICS 2 CHAPTER 2.1. OVERVIEW Semantics is the branch of linguistics. Etymologically, the word originates from the Greek word seme, which in English means sign. It interprets the signs, symbols, and images used in a text by the authors to mean certain context. Mariam-Webster dictionary defines the term as: • the study of the meanings of words and phrases in the language. • the meanings of words and phrases in a particular context. Accordingly, we can say that this branch of linguistics focuses on the actual meaning of the words and phrases of that language in a particular context. The meaning of linguistic expressions may vary from scholar to scholar but the basic interpretations of the text present the similarity of the contexts. Semantics is, therefore, an investigation of the meanings of spoken or written words of a language. The language can be a man-made and natural dialect , for example, English or French, or a machine (artificial) dialect, for example, a PC programming language. Natural languages are examined by the linguists in semantics. It is one of the fundamental branches of linguistics. In the interpretation of artificial language, computer language experts attempt a relationship between the natural language writings to a possible combination of meanings with the help of a computer programme that has unlimited thinking and processing abilities. In semantics, therefore, New Language Technologies and Research in Linguistics 18 the human brains of the linguistics scholars have vast avenues to explore the meanings of the written texts or symbols with the help of artificial intelligence. The two principal fields of this branch are (1) logical semantics and (2) lexical semantics. Logical semantics looks for the sense and reference and presupposition and suggestion in the written words. Lexical semantics, on the other hand, investigates word implications and relations between them.
eBook - PDF- Dieter Wunderlich(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The study of a language’s lexicon is lexicology . A network of semantically related lexical items, such as the words for colour or fruit, is a lexical field (or semantic field ). In generative grammar, the lexicon is the component containing all the information about the structural properties of lexical items. Lexical syntax is an approach which incorpo-rates syntactic rules within the lexicon; lexical phonology is an approach where some of the phonological rules are transferred to the lexicon. In psy-cholinguistics, the stored mental representation of what people know about their language is called the mental lexicon , and the study of the psychology of word meanings is sometimes called psycholexicology . (Crystal 1992: 227–228) ———–———————————————————————————— 3 Most of the German dictionaries we checked restrict their definitions and expli-cations to the ‘dictionary’-reading. This is e.g. true of Klappenbach & Steinitz (1977: 3.2361) and Pfeifer et al. (1989: 1011). The distinction under discussion is made in Duden (1994: 819f.). Concepts of the lexicon in theoretical linguistics 29 This definition is basically in agreement with the definition by Bußmann (1996): Lexicon [Late Grk lexicón (sc. biblión) ‘book of or for words’]. 1 An alpha-betically or semantically ordered list of words for a language, dialect , or sociolect , or a list of terminology for a specific discipline. Such lists are generally compiled as reference works ( also lexicography , vocabulary ). 2 In its most general sense the level of description which codifies the mor-phol. and semant. aspects (i.e. the forms and meanings) of the vocabulary of a lang. which cannot be derived from the regularities of the ling. system. 3 In transformational grammar , one of the basic components of grammar in the form of a subordinated list of all lexical formatives . The lex. entry consists of a phonetic-phonolog. descr.
eBook - PDFWord Knowledge and Word Usage
A Cross-Disciplinary Guide to the Mental Lexicon
- Vito Pirrelli, Ingo Plag, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Vito Pirrelli, Ingo Plag, Wolfgang U. Dressler(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Lexical semantics as we see it today is concerned with modeling the meaning of lexical items. Its leading questions are how forms and meanings combine, what they mean, how they are used, and of course also how they change. These as-pects are challenging, since language is dynamic and word meanings are not easily placed in neat little boxes. Meaning definition, description and explana-tion are hard nuts for all semanticists, irrespective of theoretical affiliation and Paolo Acquaviva, University College Dublin, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Dublin 4, Ireland Alessandro Lenci, Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica, Pisa, Italy Carita Paradis, Lund University, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund, Sweden Ida Raffaelli, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Department of Linguistics, Zagreb, Croatia Open Access. © 2020 Paolo Acquaviva et al., published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110440577-010 scientific priorities. If the priority is to describe the empirical domain of meanings in real language in a sufficiently fine-grained way, to be able to explain the map-pings of concepts to forms, to account for how meanings of lexical items are learned and how meanings change, then a methodology must be selected that meets those requirements. If, on the other hand, concerns of economy and ex-plicit formalization take priority over the need to consider language use in all its guises, then another type of methodology is called for. In other words, our re-search questions, our scope and priorities govern our methods.
- Alex Barber, Robert J Stainton(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Elsevier Science(Publisher)
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 229–245. Zurif E, Caramazza A & Myerson R (1972). ‘Grammatical judgments of agrammatic aphasics.’ Neuropsychologia 10, 405–417. 356 Lexical Conceptual Structure Lexical Semantics: Overview J Pustejovsky , Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Word Knowledge Semantic interpretation requires access to knowledge about words. The lexicon of a grammar must provide a systematic and efficient way of encoding the infor-mation associated with words in a language. Lexical semantics is the study of what words mean and how they structure these meanings. This article examines word meaning from two different perspectives: the in-formation required for composition in the syntax and the knowledge needed for semantic interpretation. The lexicon is not merely a collection of words with their associated phonetic, orthographic, and semantic forms. Rather, lexical entries are structured objects that participate in larger operations and compositions, both enabling syntactic environments and acting as signa-tures to semantic entailments and implicatures in the context of larger discourse. There are four basic questions in modeling the se-mantic content and structure of the lexicon: (1) What semantic information goes into a lexical entry? (2) How do lexical entries relate semantically to one another? (3) How is this information exploited com-positionally by the grammar? and (4) How is this information available to semantic interpretation gen-erally? This article focuses on the first two. The lexicon and lexical semantics have traditional-ly been viewed as the most passive modules of lan-guage, acting in the service of the more dynamic components of the grammar. This view has its origins in the generative tradition (Chomsky, 1955) and has been an integral part of the notion of the lexicon ever since.
eBook - PDF- Ladislav Zgusta, Vera Cerny(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Our further discussion will show that this is only a very rough model, in any respect. Notwithstanding its sketchiness, we assume that the reader will understand the notion of lexical meaning, at least intuitively; we hope, however, to refine the notion in the following paragraphs. We shall see, for example, that it is not only single words which carry lexical meaning and are constituent elements of sentences, but also much more complex units (see § 3.3.4), so that we should rather speak about lexical units in order to cover both the simple and the more complex ones. It is only for the sake of simplification that we speak about words; as already stated, what has been said is meant only as a starting point for the discussion, to give the first general idea. And this is also the reason why we begin our whole discussion with the concept of lexical meaning, and not with the form of the words (lexical units); we shall see (§ 3.3.4) that their form is rather irrelevant: they are constitute more by the lexical meaning they carry than by anything else. 3 SEMANTICS 1.1 The science, or the branch of linguistics, which studies lexical meaning is usually called semantics, or, less frequently in English, semasiology. Let us say at once that it is one of the most difficult fields. There are many diffi-culties in this sphere of research, only some of which we shall mention. There is no agreement among linguists, or at least no impressively strong concord of opinion, about the very nature of lexical meaning. Some are in-clined to interpret it in more or less psychological terms, assuming that there are mental processes involved in the situation.
eBook - PDFThe German Language
A Linguistic Introduction
- Jean Boase-Beier, Ken R. Lodge(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
Other approaches are non-decompositional , that is, they favour the expression of meaning in terms of unanalysed concepts and networks of inferences amongst concepts. We shall not discuss these differences further here as they relate to uni-versal semantic issues. But, however such meanings are seen to be encoded in individual lexical items, it is clear that this must occur in such a way as to make relations between individual lexical items clear. Such relations are an essential aspect of a native speaker’s knowledge of the language. The idea that the meanings of lexical items are related to one another in particular ways is usually seen in the context of structuralism (a view of language prevalent in the early to middle years of the twentieth cen-tury, which particularly emphasized the arbitrariness of the way words related to meanings and the importance of the different ways in which meanings could relate to one another) and the semantic theories which follow a general structuralist direction, such as Geckeler (1971). How-ever, as Lyons (1977: 250) points out, the theory of these relations, and the view that words are part of a complex system related by meaning, goes back to the ideas of von Humboldt in the nineteenth century and even further to Herder in the eighteenth. Most of its best-known pro-ponents such as Porzig (1934), Trier (1934) and Weisgerber (1954) have written about the German language. The theory is usually referred to as the theory of semantic fields (or lexical fields ; we shall use the two terms interchangeably here) and is concerned with such fields as subdivisions of the lexicon of a particular language. Lyons (1977: 251) also discusses the distinction between theories which take the ‘objects, properties and relations external to language’ as their starting point and those which use as their basis the lexemes of a particular language.
eBook - PDF- William Bright(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
A dictionary should be maximally useful to lexicology, but it cannot do the work of lexicology itself. Urdang (1963:594) has given a reasonable warning: 'Lexicography, in practice, is a form of applied linguistics and, although more theore-ticians would be a welcome addition to the field, they must remember that their theories should be interpretable above all in terms of practicability.' 4.4 Meaning in Lexicography The word meaning has been handed down from centuries of general usage, and hence is not suitable for precise use as a technical term. Even though we may attempt to refine it, the popular usage keeps getting in the way. Especially misleading is the notion that a word is an empty form into which a segment of meaning is poured. The APPROACHES TO LEXICOGRAPHY AND SEMANTICS 171 popular view is that a word is a receptacle for a 'thought'. Most linguists avoid such a naive outlook and accept 'meaning' as a suffusing characteristic of all language phenomena. By definition, language is differentiated from noise by its symbolizing function. For the lexicographer, the crucial question about meaning is how to slice it up into manageable units, usually called SENSES . If a word has more than two senses, it is POLYSEMOUS . But how are the senses arrived at? In the dichotomy between the 'God's truth' approach and the 'hocus pocus' approach, nowhere in linguistics is 'hocus pocus' more evident. Fortunately, a pragmatic technique comes to the lexicographer's rescue. In accord with the OED tradition, he collects large bodies of documented quotations, studies them for similarities and differences, and puts them into various piles. For a large scale dictionary, the differences can be emphasized, but for a smaller scale the similarities will cause the number of senses to be reduced.
No longer available |Learn moreUnderstanding Language
A Basic Course in Linguistics
- Elizabeth Grace Winkler, Elizabeth Winkler(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
Understanding Language 198 leave the definition open to a wide range of interpretation because each word used has variable meanings and connotations. In the definition above of the word meaning , the word logical , used to define connotation and denotation, is certainly not unambiguous. Logical to whom and in what sense? This chapter and the following one will focus on two aspects of meaning: the construction of literal meaning, semantics (Chapter 8), and the construc-tion of meaning within a particular culture or social interactional context, the study of pragmatics (Chapter 9). 1. How is meaning developed? Imagine the first human speakers and the task they confronted with creating a language. Not only would they have faced the simple task of naming things, but they also would have been developing a systematic way to combine the sounds and grammar of the language they were developing. As we learned in Chapter 3, humans are hard-wired to acquire the language(s) spoken around them with sufficient exposure. However, the first speakers had no models for language. This chapter is not going to debate how the first language evolved, but focus on how meaning is constructed within a culture. Language is not an individual phenomenon for the expression of our internal dialogues but is a group phenomenon in that people use it to share information with each other. Therefore, words and meanings must be co-constructed by a group so that meaning can be shared. If each individual maintained widely different meanings for every word, communication would be impossible. Semantics: Language and Meaning 199 One thought about the origin of speech is that many of the first words were iconic in some fashion. A word or sign is iconic if its sound or shape implies its meaning or some aspect of it. Modern-day examples of this are words like meow (a cat’s cry) and hiss (air escaping from something).
eBook - PDFPragmalinguistics
Theory and Practice
- Jacob L. Mey(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Semantics is delimit-ed IMMANENTLY (from 'within') by the argument that it can be con-sidered independently of context (setting). But this cannot give us any LANGUAGE AND NON-LANGUAGE 109 reliable criterion for deciding on what falls within the domain of seman-tics. Neither can we formulate a well-defined upper bound of linguistics in this way. Recently, Katz (1972) has introduced a 'rhetorical com-ponent' into linguistic description; there seems to be no principled upper limit in generative grammar for what components that can be introduced, such as a pragmatic component, a logical component, an ideological component, etc. In the next section, I will show how this situation is a consequence of the way generative grammar - and, more generally, modern linguistics -delimits its subject matter. A discussion of the theoretical background for the delimitation of semantics as undertaken by Fodor and Katz will enable us to see the problems indicated in the present section more clearly. 2. THE DELIMITATION OF LANGUAGE AND THE COMPETENCE/PERFORMANCE DISTINCTION 2.1 One of the most important distinctions guiding linguistic research is certainly the Saussurean distinction between langue and parole. Chom-sky even states (1964:52) that The classical Saussurean assumption of the logical priority of the study of 'langue' (and the generative grammar that describes it) seems quite inescapable. One of the reason for according langue - or, in Chomsky's terminology, competence - this priority seems to depend upon the relative homogeneity of langue in contrast to parole, or the linguistic performance. Saussure claims (1968: 24) that the actual use of language shows us un amas confus des choses hétéroclites sans lien entre elles, and Chomsky follows the same line of thought in stating (1964:52) that the actual use of language involves a complex interplay of many factors of the most disparate sorts of which the grammatical process constitutes only one.
eBook - PDF- Keith Allan(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Elsevier Science(Publisher)
Litkowski, applying the theory of labeled directed graphs to the dictionary structure, concluded that primitives had to be concept nodes lexicalized by one or more words and verbalized with a gloss (identical to the syno-nym set encapsulated in the nodes in WordNet). He also hypothesized that primitives essentially charac-terize a pattern of usage in expressing their concepts. Figure 2 shows an example of a directed graph with three defining cycles; in this example, oxygenate is the base word underlying all the others and is only relatively primitive. Evens and Smith (1978), in considering lexical needs for a question-answering system, presented a description of approximately 45 syntactic and se-mantic lexical relations. Lexical semantics is the study of these relations and is concerned with how meanings of words relate to one another ( see Lexical Semantics ). Evens and Smith grouped the lexical rela-tions into nine categories: taxonomy and synonymy, antonymy, grading, attribute relations, parts and wholes, case relations, collocation relations, para-digmatic relations, and inflectional relations. Each Figure 2 Illustrations of definition cycles for ( aerify, aerate ), ( aerate, ventilate ), and ( air, aerate, ventilate ) in a directed graph anchored by oxygenate . Lexicon/Dictionary: Computational Approaches 491 relation was viewed as an entry in the lexicon itself, with predicate properties describing how to use the relations in a first-order predicate calculus. The study of lexical relations is distinguished from the componential analysis of meaning (Nida, 1975), which seeks to analyze meanings into discrete seman-tic components (or features ). In this form of analysis, semantic features (such as maleness or animacy ) are used to contrast the meanings of words (such as father and mother ). These features proved to be extremely important among field anthropo-logists in understanding and translating among many languages.
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