Chapter 2

Word Meaning and Semantic Features

This chapter covers 3 parts, and is planned to becompleted in 4 hours.

Teaching Aims:

1. To help students know the conventionality andmotivation.

2. To help students know the main types of wordmeaning.

3. To let students know the semantic features.

4. To help students do some exercises.

Teaching Procedures:

Step one: Introduction

In chapter one, we havetalked about word. We know that a word is a combination of form and meaning. Byform we mean both its pronunciation and spelling. Meaning is what the formstands for. But meaning is not as simple as it seems to be. There are somerelated concepts which need further explanation.

Pre-reading Questions

◆How are the sound and meaning of most words related? Give examplesto illustrate your point.

Most English words areconventional, arbitrary symbols, that is to say, there is no

intrinsic relation between the sound and its meaning. For example, the Englishword

“house”, the French callitmaison, the Chinese call itFang Zi.

Definitions

Conventionality

Conventionality meansthere is no relation between the sound-symbol and its meaning. People call thewords just because of convention or they are used to call them in this way. Suchas we call “a small four-legged animal with soft fur and sharp claws” cat. Anotherexample is homophones:write, right and rite.

Motivation

Motivation accounts forthe connection between the linguistic symbol and its meaning. As we know, therelationship between the word-form and meaning is conventional and arbitrary,and most words can be said to be non-motivated. That is, the connection of thesign and meaning does not have a logical explanation. However, there is a smallgroup of words that can be described as motivated, that is, a dirct connectionbetween the symbol and its sense.

Phonetic

motivation:the pronunciation of some words suggests the meanng. Words like echoicwords or onomatopoetic words. Such as buzz by bees, miaow by cat, bow-wow bydog, coo by pigeon, roar by lion, ping-pang, ha ha, tick-tuck.

Morphological

motivation:we say the word is morphologically motivated, for a direct connection can beobserved between the morphemic structure of the word and its meaning. Compoundsand derived words can explain it. Such as: reading-lamp, small skirt,modernize.

Semantic

motivation:it refers to motivation based on semantic factors. Ot is a kind of mentalassociation. It explains the connectionbetween the literal sense and figurativesense of the world. When we use the foot of the mountain, we are comparing thelower part of the mountain to the foot of a human being. In the sentence “he isfoond of the bottle”, bottle reminds one of what is contained inside.

Key points

Types of meaning:grammatical meaning and lexicalmeaning

grammatical

meaning:it refers to that part of the meaning of the word which indicates grammaticalconcept or relationships such as part of speech, singular and plural meaning ofnouns, tense meaning of verbs and their inflectional forms. Functional wordspossess strong grammatical meaning whereas content words have meanings, andlexical meaning in particular.

Lexical

meaning:it is the meaning to the word as a lexical item. It can be subdivided intodenotative meaning, connotative meaning social meaning and affective meaning.

denotative

meaning(conceptualmeaning): it involves the relationship between a linguistic unit and thenon-linguistic entities to which it refers. It is the meaning given in thedictionary and form the core of word-meaning. Features: constant and stable.

connotative

meaning:it refers to the emotional association which a word or a phrase suggests in one’smind; it is the supplementary value which is added to the purely denotativemeaning of a word. For examle, the denotative meaning of the word “rose” is “aflower with sweet smell that grows on a bush with thorns, but it generallyconnotes “love”. The denotative meaning of the word “moon” is “the round objectthat moves around the earth once every 28 days and shines at night by lightreflected from the sun”, but it generally connotes “missing home, lonely”.

social

meaning: wordshave social or stylistic meaning just because they must be appropriate to thedfferent situation. In dictionary, these stylistic features are marked as “formal”,“informal”, “literary”, “archaic”, “slang”. Such as, clever(informal),intelligent(informal), cute(literary).

affective

meaning:affective meaning indicates the speaker’s attitude towards the person or thingin questions. Such as “stateman” and “politician”, “slender” and “skinny”.

Supplement:

Componential analysis andsemantic features

The analysis of word meaning is often seen as a

process of breaking down the sense of a word into its minimal components. For

example: man{+human+male+adult}; child{+human±adult}; lamb{+ovine±adult}

Step three: Exercises/assignment:

1. to give a conclusion of this chapter

2. to finish the exercises

3. to ask students to prepare the next chapter

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