Word meaning also known as

1. The object of semasiology.
   Two approaches to the study of meaning.

2. Types of meaning.

3. Meaning and motivation.

3.1.
The branch of lexicology which studies meaning is called
«semasiology«.
Sometimes the term «semantics»
is used as a synonym to semasiology, but it is ambiguous as it can
stand as well for (1)
the expressive aspect of language in general and (2)
the meaning of one particular word.

Meaning
is certainly the most important property of the word but what is
«meaning»?

Meaning
is one of the most controversial terms in lexicology. At present
there is no generally accepted definition of meaning. Prof.
Smirnitsky defines meaning as «a certain reflection in the mind
of objects, phenomena or relations that makes part of the linguistic
sign, its so-called inner facet, whereas the sound form functions as
its outer facet». Generally speaking, meaning can be described
as a component of the word through which a concept is communicated,
enabling the word to denote objects in the real world.

There are
two
approaches
to the study of meaning: the
referential approach
and the
functional approach.
The former tries to define meaning in terms of relations between the
word (sound form), concept (notion, thought) and referent (object
which the word denotes). They are closely connected and the
relationship between them is represented by «the semiotic
triangle» ( = the basic triangle) of Ogden and Richards (in the
book «The Meaning of Meaning» (1923) by O.K. Ogden and I.A.
Richards).

concept

symbol
referent

(sound form)

This view denies a direct link
between words and things, arguing that the relationship can be made
only through the use of our minds. Meaning is related to a sound
form, concept and referent but not identical with them: meaning is a
linguistic phenomenon while neither concept nor referent is.

The
main criticism of this approach is the difficulty of identifying
«concepts»: they are mental phenomena and purely
subjective, existing
in the minds of individuals. The strongest point of this approach is
that it connects meaning and the process of nomination.

The functional approach to
meaning is less concerned with what meaning is than with how it
works. It is argued, to say that «words have meanings»
means only that they are used in a certain way in a sentence. There
is no meaning beyond that. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), in
particular, stressed the importance of this approach in his dictum:
«The meaning of the word is its use in the language». So
meaning is studied by making detailed analyses of the way words are
used in contexts, through their relations to other words in speech,
and not through their relations to concepts or referents.

Actually,
the functional approach is basically confined to the analysis of
sameness or difference of meaning. For example, we can say that in
«take
the bottle»
and «take
to the
bottle»
take
has different meaning as it is used differently, but it does not
explain what the meaning of the verb is. So the functional approach
should
be used not as the theoretical basis for the study of meaning, but
only as complementary to the referential approach.

3.2.
Word meaning is made up of different components, commonly known
as types
of meaning.
The two main types of meaning are grammatical
meaning and
lexical meaning.

Grammatical
meaning
belongs to sets of word-forms and is common to
all words of the given part of speech,

e.g.
girls,
boys, classes, children, mice
express the meaning of
«plurality».

Lexical
meaning
belongs to an individual word in all its forms. It
comprises several components. The two main ones are the
denotational
component and
the connotational component.

The
denotational (
=
denotative)
component,
also called «referential
meaning» or «cognitive meaning», expresses the
conceptual (notional)
content of a word; broadly, it is some information, or knowledge,
of the real-world object that the word denotes.
Basically, this is the component that makes communication possible.

e.g.
notorious
«widely-known»,
celebrated «known
widely».

The
connotational (connotative) component
expresses the attitude of
the speaker to what he is saying, to the object denoted by the word.
This component consists of emotive
connotation and
evaluative connotation.

1) Emotive
connotation
( = «affective meaning», or an emotive charge),

e.g.
In «a
single tree»
single states that there is only one tree,
but
«a
lonely tree»
besides giving the same information, also renders
(conveys) the feeling of sadness.

We
shouldn’t confuse emotive connotations and emotive denotative
meanings
in which some emotion is named, e.g. horror,
love, fear, etc.

2) Evaluative
connotation
labels
the referent as «good» or «bad»,

e.g.
notorious
has a negative evaluative connotation, while
celebrated
a positive one. Cf.: a
notorious criminal/liar/ coward,
etc.
and a
celebrated singer/ scholar/ artist, etc.

It
should be noted that emotive and evaluative connotations are not
individual, they are common to all speakers of the language. But
emotive implications are individual (or common to a group of
speakers),
subjective, depend on personal experience.

e.g.
The word «hospital»
may evoke all kinds of emotions in
different
people (an
architect, a doctor, an invalid, etc.)

Stylistic
connotation,
or stylistic reference, another component of word meaning, stands
somewhat apart from emotive and evaluative connotations. Indeed, it
does not characterize a referent, but rather states how a word should
be used by referring it to a certain functional style of the language
peculiar to a specific sphere of communication. It shows in what
social context, in what communicative situations the word can be
used.

Stylistically,
words can be roughly classified into literary,
or formal
(e.g.
commence, discharge, parent),
neutral
(e.g.
father, begin, dismiss)
and non-literary,
or informal
(e.g.
dad, sack, set off).

3.3.
The term «motivation»
is used to denote the relationship between the
form of the word, i.e. its sound form, morphemic composition and
structural pattern, and its meaning.

There
are three
main types of motivation:
phonetic,
morphological
and
semantic.

1)
Phonetic
motivation
is a direct connection between the sound form
of a word and its meaning. There are two types of phonetic
motivation: sound
imitation and
sound symbolism.

a) Sound
imitation, or
onomatopoeia:
phonetically motivated words are
a direct imitation of the sounds they denote (or the sounds produced
by actions or objects they denote),

e.g.
buzz,
swish, bang, thud, cuckoo.

b) Sound
symbolism.
It’s argued by some linguists that the sounds that make up a word may
reflect or symbolise the properties of the object which the word
refers
to, i.e. they may suggest size, shape, speed, colour, etc.

e.g.
back
vowels
suggest big size, heavy weight, dark colour, front
vowels
suggest lightness, smallness, etc.

Many
words beginning with sl-
are slippery in some way: slide,
slip, slither, sludge,
etc.
or pejorative: slut,
slattern, sly, sloppy, slovenly;
words that end in -ump
almost
all refer to some kind of roundish mass: plump,
chump,
rump, hump, stump.

Certainly, not every word with
these phonetic characteristics will have the meaning suggested. This
is, perhaps, one of the reasons why sound symbolism is not
universally recognized in linguistics.

2) Morphological
motivation
is
a direct connection between the lexical meaning of the component
morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and the meaning of the
word.

Morphologically motivated
words are those whose meaning is determined by the meaning of their
components,

e.g.
re-write
«write
again»,
ex-wife «former
wife».

The degree
of morphological motivation may be different. Words may be
fully
motivated
(then they are transparent), partially
motivated
and
non-motivated
(idiomatic, or opaque).

a)
If the meaning of the word is determined by the meaning of the
components
and the structural pattern, it is fully
motivated:
e.g. hatless.

b)
If the connection between the morphemic composition of a word and
its meaning is arbitrary, the word is non-motivated,
e.g. buttercup
«yellow-flowered plant».

c)
In hammer
-er
shows that it is an instrument, but what is «hamming«?
«Ham»
has no lexical meaning in this word, thus the word is partially
motivated.
Cf. also cranberry.

Motivation may be lost in the
course of time,

e.g.
in OE wīfman
was
motivated morphologically: wīf
+ man «wife
of a man»; now it is opaque;
its motivation is said to be faded (woman).

3) Semantic
motivation
is based on co-existence of direct and figurative
meanings of the same word,

e.g.
butterfly
–
1) insect; 2) showy and
frivolous person.( = metaphorical extension of the direct meaning).

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Word meaning has played a quite marginal role in early contemporary philosophy of language, which was primarily concerned with the structural features of sentences and showed less interest in the format of lexical representations and in the nature of the word-level input to compositional processes. Nowadays, it is well-established that the way we account for word meaning is bound to have a major impact in tipping the balance in favor or against a given picture of the fundamental properties of human language. This entry provides an overview of the way issues related to lexical meaning have been explored in analytic philosophy and a summary of relevant research on the subject in neighboring scientific domains.

The idea of word and word meaning are difficult to define, and this is reflected in the difficulties one encounters in defining the basic terminology of lexical semantics. In part, this depends on the fact that the words ‘word’ and ‘meaning’ themselves have multiple meanings, depending on the context and the purpose they are used for (Matthews 1991). But the idea of word can be defined in two fundamental ways. On one side, we have linguistic definitions, which attempt to characterize the notion of word by illustrating the explanatory role words play or are expected to play in the context of a formal grammar. (e.g., Di Sciullo & Williams 1987). On the other side, we have metaphysical definitions, which attempt to elucidate the notion of word by describing the metaphysical type of words.

Because of lack of clarity affecting the notion of sense, and surely because of Russell’s (1905) authoritative criticism of Fregean semantics, word meaning disappeared from the philosophical scene during the 1920s and 1930s. The study of word meaning acquired the status of a mature academic enterprise in the 19th century, with the birth of historical-philological semantics (Section 2.2). Yet, matters related to word meaning had been the subject of much debate in earlier times. Word meaning constituted a prominent topic of inquiry in three classical traditions: speculative etymology, rhetoric, and lexicography (Meier-Oeser 2011; Geeraerts 2013).  There are two kinds of theory of word meaning. The first type of theory, that we can label a semantic theory of word meaning, is interested in clarifying what meaning-determining information is encoded by the lexical items of a natural language. an. The second type of theory, that we can label a foundational theory of word meaning, is interested in singling out the facts whereby lexical expressions come to have the semantic properties they have for their users.

A function word has little or no meaningful content. Function words are also known as grammatical words, grammatical functions, grammatical morphemes, function morphemes, form words, and empty words. In contrast to content words, function words, such as determiners and auxiliary verbs, do not have ‘content full’ meanings; rather, they are defined in terms of their use, or function. “Function words are like thumbtacks. We don’t notice thumbtacks; we look at the calendar or the poster they are holding up. If we were to take the tacks away, the calendar and the poster would fall down. Likewise, if we took the function words out of speech, it would be hard to figure out what was going on:

Literally the most misused word in the language has officially changed definition. Now as well as meaning “in a literal manner or sense; exactly: Changes in word meanings (a process called semantic shift) happen for various reasons and in various ways. Four common types of change are broadening, narrowing, amelioration, and pejoration. The meanings don’t change overnight. Different senses of the same word often overlap, and new meanings can co-exist with older meanings for centuries. In linguistic terms, polysemy is the rule, not the exception. Word usage is how a word, phrase, or concept is used in a language. Lexicographers gather samples of written or spoken instances where a word is used and analyze them to determine patterns of regional or social usage as well as meaning. Some words have different meanings, but are so closely related that there is confusion about their proper use. Function words are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker.

Words have different meaning depending on the context and the purpose they are used . For example, in ordinary parlance ‘word’ is ambiguous between lexeme (as in “Color and colour are spellings of the same word”) and lexical unit (as in “there are thirteen words in the tongue-twister How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”). Let us then elucidate the notion of word in a little more detail, and specify what key questions will guide our discussion of word meaning in the rest of the entry.

Many words with multiple meanings exist in the English language. Technically, almost every word has a multiple meaning.

When we start talking about words with multiple meanings, there are some basic definitions that we need to discuss first. Those definitions are the ones attached to homonyms, homophones, and homographs.

Homonyms are words which have the same spelling and pronunciation, but have different meanings.

Homophones are words which have the same pronunciation, but different spellings and meanings.

Homographs are words that are spelt the same, but have different pronunciation  and meanings.

Since the topic of words with multiple meanings is so broad, we will cover examples from each of these three unique areas. What follows are lists of homonyms, homophones, and homographs, and an explanation as to why each word belongs in that category if it is not apparent from the spellings.

Homonyms example:

crane: That bird is a crane./They had to use a crane to lift the object./She had to crane her neck to see the movie.

engaged: They got engaged on March 7th./The students were very engaged in the presentation.

foil: Please wrap the sandwich in foil./They learned about the role of a dramatic foil in English class.

leaves: The children love to play in the leaves./They do not like when their father leaves for work.

net: What was your net gain for the year?/Crabbing is easier if you bring a net along.

point: The pencil has a sharp point./It is not polite to point at people.

right: You were right./Make a right turn at the light.

rose: My favorite flower is a rose./He quickly rose from his seat.

type: He can type over 100 words per minute./That dress is really not her type.

Homophones Examples :

pale/pail, ate/eight, alter/altar, band/banned,  buy/bye, /red/read, blew/blue, boar/bore, canon/cannon, coarse/course, blew/blue, boar/bore, canon/cannon, coarse/course, fair/fare, genes/jeans, foul/fowl, grate/great, in/inn, hour/our, knight/night, nose/knows, maize/maze, meddle/metal, rain/reign, sea/see, role/roll, their/there, and veil/va

Homographs

read: She is going to read the book later./He read the book last night.

bass: They caught a bass./His voice belongs in the bass section.

bow: She put a bow in her daughter’s hair./Please bow down to the emperor.

minute: That is only a minute problem./Wait a minute!

learned: The class learned that information last week./He is a very learned individual.

sewer: The rats crept through the sewer./She is a fine sewer.

wound: They wound up the toy as soon as they got it./She received a wound from the punch.

does: He does his homework every night./There were many does in the forest.

wind: The wind swept up the leaves./Wind the clock up before you go to bed.

sow: A sow is a female pig./We’ll sow the seeds in springtime.(yourdictionary.com)

There are two fundamental way in defining the idea of word .First, we have linguistic definitions, which attempt to characterize the notion of word by illustrating the explanatory role words play or are expected to play in the context of a formal grammar. These approaches often end up splitting the notion of word into a number of more fine-grained and theoretically manageable notions, but still tend to regard ‘word’ as a term that zeroes in on a scientifically respectable concept (e.g., Di Sciullo & Williams 1987). For example, words are the primary locus of stress and tone assignment, the basic domain of morphological conditions on affixation, clitization, compounding, and the theme of phonological and morphological processes of assimilation, vowel shift, metathesis, and reduplication (Bromberger 2011).

In linguistics, a word is the smallest element that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content (with literal or practical meaning) This contrasts deeply with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own. A word may consist of a single morpheme (for example: oh!, rock, red, quick, run, expect), or several (rocks, redness, quickly, running, unexpected), whereas a morpheme may not be able to stand on its own as a word (in the words just mentioned, these are -s, -ness, -ly, -ing, un-, -ed). A complex word will typically include a root and one or more affixes (rock-s, red-ness, quick-ly, run-ning, un-expect-ed), or more than one root in a compound (black-board, rat-race). Words can be put together to build larger elements of language, such as phrases (a red rock), clauses (I threw a rock), and sentences (He threw a rock too, but he missed).

Second, we have metaphysical definitions, which attempt to elucidate the notion of word by describing the metaphysical type of words. This implies answering such questions as “what are words?”, “how should words be individuated?”, and “on what conditions two utterances count as utterances of the same word?”. For example, Kaplan (1990, 2011) has proposed to replace the orthodox type-token account of the relation between words and word occurrences with a “common currency” view on which words relate to their occurrences as continuants relate to stages in four-dimensionalist metaphysics (see the entries on types and tokens and identity over time.The adjective metaphysical entered the English language through Aristotle, whose “Metaphysics” is a collection of treatises that follows his work, “Physics.” “Physics” concerned natural philosophy, what we call science today, while “Metaphysics” dealt with more abstract questions about the reality beyond what we perceive with our senses. Look at a physical object, say an apple. At what exact point did that apple come into existence? If you eat it, does it cease to exist, or does it still exist but in a changed way? These are metaphysical questions.

There are two kinds of theory in word meaning. The term “theory of meaning” has figured, in one way or another, in a great number of philosophical disputes over the last century. Unfortunately, this term has also been used to mean a great number of different things.

The first sort of theory—a semantic theory—is a theory which assigns semantic contents to expressions of a language. Approaches to semantics may be divided according to whether they assign propositions as the meanings of sentences and, if they do, what view they take of the nature of these propositions.

The second sort of theory—a foundational theory of meaning—is a theory which states the facts in virtue of which expressions have the semantic contents that they have. Approaches to the foundational theory of meaning may be divided into theories which do, and theories which do not, explain the meanings of expressions of a language used by a group in terms of the contents of the mental states of members of that group

Each function word either gives some grammatical information on other words in a sentence or clause, and cannot be isolated from other words, or it may indicate the speaker’s mental model as to what is being said.

The following is a list of the kind of words considered to be function words:

Whether you’re trying to sound sophisticated or simply repeating what you’ve heard, word fails are all too common and can make smart people sound dumb.

Types of semantic change

The first type is broadening is a type of semantic change by which the meaning of a word becomes broader or more inclusive than its earlier meaning. Also known as semantic broadening, generalization, expansion, or extension .Broadening of meaning  occurs when a word with a specific or limited meaning is widened. The broadening process is technically called generalization. An example of generalization is the word business, which originally meant ‘the state of being busy, careworn, or anxious,’ and was broadened to encompass all kinds of work or occupations.”

Semantic narrowing is the second  type of semantic change by which the meaning of a word becomes less general or inclusive than its earlier meaning. Also  known as specialization or restriction. “Narrowing of meaning happens when a word with a general meaning is by degrees applied to something much more specific. The word litter, for example, meant originally (before 1300) ‘a bed,’ then gradually narrowed down to ‘bedding,’ then to ‘animals on a bedding of straw,’ and finally to things scattered about, odds and ends. . . Other examples of specialization are deer, which originally had the general meaning ‘animal,’ girl, which meant originally ‘a young person,’ and meat, whose original meaning was ‘food.’”

Third  is, amelioration is the upgrading or elevation of a word’s meaning, as when a word with a negative sense develops a positive one. Also  called melioration or elevation. Word  “ Dizzy” a example of amelioration during ME [Middle English] might be, depending on one’s viewpoint, the word dizzy. In OE [Old English] it meant ‘foolish,’ a meaning that survives marginally in such expressions as a dizzy blonde; but by ME its primary meaning was ‘suffering from vertigo.’”(C. M. Millward and Mary Hayes, A Biography of the English Language, 3rd ed. Wadsworth, 2011)

The last is, pejoration is the downgrading or depreciation of a word’s meaning, as when a word with a positive sense develops a negative one. Example is Hierarchy “Hierarchy shows a similar, though more pronounced, deterioration. Originally applied to an order or a host of angels from the fourteenth century, it has steadily moved down the scale of being, referring to ‘a collective body of ecclesiastical rulers’ from c. 1619, from whence the similar secular sense develops c.1643 (in Milton’s tract on divorce) Today one frequently hears of ‘the party hierarchy,’ ‘business hierarchies,’ and the like, denoting only the top of the hierarchy, not the whole order, and conveying the same nuances of hostility and envy implied in elite.”(Geoffrey Hughes, Words in Time: A Social History of the English Vocabulary. Basil Blackwell, 1988).

Word usage is how a word, phrase, or concept is used in a language. Lexicographers gather samples of written or spoken instances where a word is used and analyze them to determine patterns of regional or social usage as well as meaning. A word, for example the English word “donny” (a round rock about the size of a man’s head)[citation needed], may be only a rare regional usage, or a word may be used worldwide by all English speakers and have one or several evolving definitions .Word usage may also involve grammar.

Word Use, choosing the right word at the right time is often a challenging task because it requires recognizing the role context plays in determining the best means of communication. Choosing the right word to match the meaning you intend is an equally challenging task and a process that requires a fair amount of trial and error. Below you’ll find a few guidelines to help you in the selection process:

Consider what might be the right word(s) in a given context by evaluating your audience, their needs, and their understanding of your subject matter.

A word is “right” when it is used appropriately and in a context where its intended meaning, tone, and implications correspond to the those associated with it. In other words, the writer should understand and be comfortable with what the word means both denotatively and connotatively.

Denotation is the definition of a word as you would find it in a dictionary, while connotation refers to the implied meanings carried by a word. Connotations build from how a word is used in particular contexts. Moreover, two words might have the same denotative meaning, but differ in their connotations. For example, home and house both refer to ‘a shelter in which one or more people live.’ However, while house refers primarily to the physical structure, home generally refers not only to the structure itself but also to a person’s relationship to that structure, which connotes belonging and warmth.

Some words have different meanings, but are so closely related that there is confusion about their proper use. Consider the words continuously and continually, for example. Continuously means ‘unceasingly’ and continually means ‘regularly,’ so they are not properly interchangeable, and their similarity often causes confusion.

Another example is the difference between affect and effect. Because of similar spelling and pronunciation, many people use them interchangeably. To add to the confusion, each can function both as a noun and a verb. As a general rule, when talking about one thing influencing another, use affect as a verb to mean ‘to influence,’ and use effect as a noun to mean ‘a result’ or ‘the impact something or someone has on something or someone else.’ You can find a description of the other uses of affect and effect on Dictionary.com.

Sometimes a good dictionary will include the connotations of a word, but often it will contain only a basic definition. The most reliable way of learning how a word is generally used comes from careful observation of how a word is used in specific contexts.

Grammatical words, as a class, can have distinct phonological properties from content words. Grammatical words sometimes do not make full use of all the sounds in a language. For example, in some of the Khoisan languages, most content words begin with clicks, but very few function words do.[3] In English, very few words other than function words begin with voiced th-“[ð]”[citation needed] (see Pronunciation of English th); English function words may have fewer than three letters ‘I’, ‘an’, ‘in’ while non-function words usually have three or more ‘eye’, ‘Ann’, ‘inn’ (see three letter rule).

The following is a list of the kind of words considered to be function words:

Articles  — the and a. In some inflected languages, the articles may take on the case of the declension of the following noun.

Pronouns  —, as he — him, she — her, etc. A pronoun (I, me, he, she, herself, you, it, that, they, each, few, many, who, whoever, whose, someone, everybody, etc.) is a word that takes the place of a noun. In the sentence Joe saw Jill, and he waved at her, the pronouns he and her take the place of Joe and Jill, respectively.

Appositive  —  is a noun or noun phrase that renames another noun right beside it. The appositive can be a short or long combination of words. Look at these appositive examples, all of which rename insect: The insect, a cockroach, is crawling across the kitchen table.

Conjunctions — is the joining together of elements and it is a word that connects sentences, phrases or clauses. An example of conjunction is classmates coming together to solve a math problem. An example of conjunction is the word “and.”

auxiliary verbs  — forming part of the conjugation (pattern of the tenses of main verbs), always inflected An auxiliary verb (abbreviated aux) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it appears, such as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany a main verb. The main verb provides the main semantic content of the clause.

interjections — sometimes called “filled pauses”, uninflected. An interjection is a part of speech that shows the emotion or feeling of the author. These words or phrases can stand alone or be placed before or after a sentence. Many times an interjection is followed by a punctuation mark, often an exclamation point.

particles   — convey the attitude of the speaker and are uninflected, as if, then, well, however, thus, etc.

expletives   — take the place of sentences, among other functions. The definition of an expletive is a crude or obscene expression, or an unnecessary word or phrase used to fill space in a sentence for grammar or rhythm purposes. An example of an expletive is saying “damn it.” An example of an expletive is adding “it is” in the sentence “time for us to eat.”

pro-sentences   — pro-sentence is a function word or expression that substitutes for a whole sentence whose content is recoverable from the context. A pro-sentence is a kind of pro-form and is therefore anaphoric. In English, yes, no, okay and amen are common pro-sentences.

Being clear and direct  does not preclude you from using those words as long as you use them correctly and as long as the context is right.

Sources:

Wikipedia.org