Chapter 5 Word meaning and semantic feature

. Conventionalityand Motivation: ()@ --- A. Conventionality: It refers that words are conventional, arbitrary symbols; that is,there is no intrinsic() relation between the sound symbol and its sense. There is no way to explain why this or that sound-symbol has this or that meaning beyond the fact that the people of a given community have agreed to use one to designate the other.For instance,the English call what Chinese call fangzi in house,the French call it Maison and the Russian dom.All these symbols are totally different from one another,yet they all signify the same thing. B. Motivation: It refers to the connection between word-symbol and its sense. Though the great majority of English words are conventional and arbitrary symbols, there is a group of words that can be described as motivated, that is there is a +direct connection between the symbol and its sense. For example, onomatopoeic words such as roar, bang and clash,derived words and compound words such as readable, kilgram and daydream, etc. A. phonetic motivation: Words motivated phonetically are called echoic words or onomatopoeic words, whose pronunciation suggests the meaning. b. Morphological motivation: Most of the derivational affixes have a specific meaning,when added to a base, they derive a new word. We say the word is morphologically motivated, for a direct connection can be observed between the morphemic structure of the word and its meaning. c. Semantic motivation: It refers to motivation base on semantic factors. It is a kind of mental association. Main types of word meaning

1 A Grammatical meaning: Grammatical meaning is indispensable in determining the

position a word occupies in a sentence. a. word-class: when a dictionary lists the function of a word,the definition does at least two things: it describes the words lexcal meaning and also gives what is traditionally known as the part of speech of the word,which modern linguists call the wors-class.the word-class is essential , for when we use a word in a sentence, we have to take into consideration two factors: its specific lexical meaning and the position it normally occupies in a sentence, which is determinded by the word-class to which the word belongs. B. Lexical meaning: which is different from grammatical meaning is two respects: first the lexical meaning of a word is the same in all the forms of one and the same word while the grammatical meaning varies from one word-form to another, second,every word has a different lexical meaning, whereas the grammatical meaning is the same in identical sets of individual forms of different meaning.

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How are the sound and meaning of most words related? Give examples to illustrate your point?
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What do we mean by phonetic motivation

Phonetic/Onomatopoeic motivation: Indicates the relatinship between sound and meaning of word.Its sound suggests its meaning. e.g. , cuckoo,squeak,quack,etc.@ ping-pang

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Quote a short poem or a passage tha shows the literary effect of onomatopoeic words what is meant by grammatical meaning? Grammatical meaning:refer to that part of the meaning of the word which indicates grammatical concept or relationships, such as part of speech of words, singular and plural meanings of nouns, tense meaning of verbs and their inflectional forms.
It consists of word-class and inflectional paradigm() 1)Word-class: It describe the words lexicological meaning and also gives what is traditonally known as the part of speech of the word. e.g. modern will be marked as a noun. 2)Inflectional paradigm:It refers to thegrammatical forms ()of a word which appear the different forms when used in actual speech. e.g. cat-cats; to walk,walks etc.

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What is the difference between grammatical meaning ()and lexical meaning( )?

Lexical meaning -- is constant in all the words within or without context related to the notion that the word conveys. It has two components conceptual meaning 1) Denotative meaning()/ Conceptual meaning(): 2) associative meaning.() Lexical meaning and grammatical meaning make up the word-meaning. Grammatical meaning surfaces only in use. Conceptual meaning (denotative meaning) the meaning given in the dictionary and forms the core of word-meaning. It is constant and relative stable. Conceptual meaning forms the basis for communication. e.g. The sun rises in the East. the sun Associative meaning the secondary meaning supplemented to the conceptual meaning. It is open-ended and indeterminate 7. Why should we give primary importations to conceptual/denotative meaning of word? Conceptual meaning (denotative meaning) the meaning given in the dictionary and forms the core of word-meaning. It is constant and relative stable. Conceptual meaning forms the basis for communication.-- give three or five words which have connotation varying from one speech community to another speech commnunity ,or from era to era
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Connotative meaning(): refers to the emotional association which a word or phrase sugests in one's mind;it is the supplementary value which is added to the purely denotative meaning of a word@ Explain the following terms with example 9. Semantic feature The analysis of word meaning is often seen as a process of breaking down the sense of word into its minimal components, which are known as semantic feature or sense components

10. Componential Analysis()p.156:

It refers to the analysis of breaking down the conceptual meaning into its minimal distinctive components which are known as semantic features.