WORD MEANING

Semantics

Words & Grammatical Categories (1)

Grammatical categories (e.g. noun, preposition) reflect semantic differences: Different categories of words must be given different semantic descriptions. They show different characteristics of reference and sensea. Names e.g. Fred Flintstoneb. Common Noun e.g. dog, manc. Pronoun e.g. I, you, themd. Logical words e.g. not, and, all, any

Words & Grammatical Categories (2)

Some types can be used to refer (name), others may not (common noun)Some can only be interpreted in a particular context (pronoun)Others are very consistent in meaning across the whole range of context (logical words)Semantic Relation between common noun like man, animal, etc are clearer than between any noun and logical words

Words & Lexical Items (1)

A dictionary or lexicon is a list of all the words in a language, together with idiosyncratic information about themA word is a minimum free form (Bloofield)Word is typically the smallest element of a sentence which has positional mobility—that can be moved around without destroying the grammaticality of the sentencee.g. John saw Bill

Bill saw JohnBill, John saw

Words & Lexical Items (2)

Words can be identified at the level of writing, where we are familiar with them being separated by space (orthographic word)At the level of phonology, words can be identified from the strings of sounds which may show internal structuring which does not occur outside the wordAt syntax level, words can be identified from several grammatically distinct variante.g. He walks like a duck

He’s walking like a duckHe walked like a duck

LEXEME

Lexemes are the items listed in lexiconIn a dictionary, the variants of lexeme is known as Lemma e.g. walks, walked, walking (from to walk)The usual approach in semantics is to try to associate phonological and grammatical words with semantics words or lexemeSeveral lexemes can be represented by one phonological and grammatical worde.g. He scored with his left foot They made camp at the foot of the mountain I ate a foot long hot-dogThus, the wod foot has three senses (1) part of leg below the ankle (2) base or bottom of something(3) unit of length, one third of a yard

one lexical entry may contain several lexeme or senses

Vagueness & Ambiguity

The basic idea is that in vagueness the context can add information that is not specified in the sense. In ambiguity, the context will cause one of the senses to be selectedAmbiguity is usually more potential than real since any given context one of the readings is likely to fit the context and be automatically selected by the participantsIn vagueness, the unspecified aspects of meaning are the invinsible. Basically, they are not part of the meanig and therefore are not available for the identity check

Examples of Vagueness & Ambiguity

Vagueness1. I go for a run this morning2. The tail-end batsmen added a single run before lunch3. The ball player hit a home runAmbiguity1. Duffy discovered a mole2. Duffy discovered a small burring mammal3. Duffy discovered a long dormant spyOne test for ambiguity rely on one sense being network Of relation with certain other lexemes and another sense being a different network