Loading... Please wait...1.61.What is hypotactic relation? What is paratactic relation?
"Hypotactic relation" refers to a construction where constituents are linked by means of conjunction, e.g. "He bought eggs and milk." "Paratactic relation" refers to constructions which are connected by juxtaposition, punctuation or intonation, e. g., "He bought tea, coffee, eggs and milk" (pay attention to the first three nouns connected without "and").
1.62.What is semantics?
"Semantics" refers to the study of the communication of meaning through language. Or simply, it is the study of meaning.
1.63.What is meaning?
Though it is difficult to define, "meaning" has the following meaning: (1) an intrinsic property; (2) the connotation of a word; (3) the words put after a dictionary entry; (4) the position an object occupies in a system; (5) what the symbol user actually refers to; (6) what the symbol user should refer to; (7) what the symbol user believes he is referring to; (8) what the symbol interpreter refers to; (9) what the symbol interpreter believes it refers to; (10) what the symbol interpreter believes the user refers to... linguists argued about "meaning of meaning" fiercely in the result of "realism", "conceptualism/mentalism", "mechanism", "contextualism", "behaviorism", "functionalism", etc. (see Hu Zhuanglin et al., pp140-142). Mention ought to be made of the "Semantic Triangle Theory" of Ogden & Richards. We use a word and the listener knows what it refers to because, according to the theory, they have acquired the same concept/reference of the word used and of the object/referent.
1.64.What is the difference------- between meaning, concept, connotation, sense, implication, denotation, notation, reference, implicature and signification?
(1) "Meaning" refers to the association of language symbols with the real word. (2) "Concept" or "notion" is the impression of objects in people's mind. (3) "connotation" is the implied meaning ,similar to "implication" and "implicature". (4) "Sense" is the lexical position in which a word finds itself. (5) "Denotation", like "sense", is not directly related with objects, but makes the abstract assumption of the real world. (6) "Reference" is the word-object relationship. (7) "Implicature", in its narrow sense, refers to conversational implicature achieved by intentionally violating one of the four CP maxims (see I.122-123). (8) "Signification", in contrast with "value", mean the meaning of situation may not have any communicative value, like "What's this?"
1.65.What is the Semantic/Semiotic Triangle?
Ogden and Richards presented the classic "Semantic Triangle" as manifested in the following diagram, in which the "symbol" or "form" refers to the linguistic elements (word, sentence, etc.), the "referent" refers to the object in the world of experience, and "thought" or "reference" refers to concept or notion. Thus, the symbol a word signifies "things" by virtue of the "concept", associated with the form of the word in the mind of the speaker of the language. The "concept" thus considered is meaning of the word.
1.66.What is contextualism?
"Contextualism" is based on the presumption that one can derive meaning from, or reduce it to, observable context: the "situational context" and the "linguistic context". Every utterance occurs in a particular spatio-temporal situation, as the following factors are related to the situational context: (1) the speaker and the hearer; (2) the actions they are performing at the time; (3) various external objects and events; (4) deictic features.
The "linguistic context" is another aspect of contextualism. It considers the probability of one word's co-occurrence or collocation with another, which forms part of the meaning, and an important factor in communication.
1.67.How many kinds of meaning did linguists find and study?
(1) C.C.Fries(1952) makes a traditional distinction between lexical meaning and structural meaning. The former is expressed by those "meaningful" parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and is given in the dictionary associated with grammar. The latter expresses the distinction between the subject and the object of a sentence, oppositions of definiteness, tense the number, and the difference between statements, questions and requests. In a word, "the total linguistic meaning of any utterance consists of the lexical meaning of the separate words plus such structural meaning..."
(2) G. Leech(1981) categorizes seven kinds of meaning, five of which are brought under the "associative meaning" (see the following chart).
(3) Different from the traditional and the functional approach, F.R.Palmer(1981) and J.Lyons(1977) suggest we draw a distinction between sentence meaning and utterance meaning, the former being directly predictable from the grammatical and lexical features of the sentence, while the latter includes all the various types of meaning not necessarily associated thereto.
1.68.What is synonymy?
"Synonymy" is used to mean sameness or close similarity of meaning. Dictionary makers (lexicographers) rely on the existence of synonymy for their definitions. Some semanticians maintain, however, that there are no real synonyms, because two or more words named synonyms are expected without exception to differ from one another in one of the following aspects:
(1) In shades of meaning (e.g., finish, complete, close, conclude, terminate, finalize, end, etc.);
(2) In stylistic meaning(see 1.67);
(3) In emotive meaning(or affective meaning, see 1.67);
(4) In range of use (or collocative meaning, see 1.67);
(5) In British and American English usages [e.g., autumn (BrE), fall (AmE)].
Simeon Potter said," Language is like dress. We vary our dress to suit the occasion. We do not appear at a friend's silver-wedding anniversary in gardening clothes, nor do we go punting on the river in a dinner-jacket." This means the learning lf synonyms is important to anyone that wishes to use his language freely and well.
1.69.What is Antonymy? How many kinds of antonyms are there?
The term "antonymy" is used for oppositions of meaning; words that stand opposite in meaning are called "antonyms", or opposites, which fall in there categories:(1)gradable antonyms(e.g, good-bad); (2)complementary antonyms(e.g., single-mar-ried); (3)relational antonyms(e.g., buy-sell).
1.70.What is hyponymy? What is a hyponym? What is superordinate?
"Hyponymy" involves us in the notion of meaning inclusion. It is a matter of class membership. That is to say, when X id a kind of Y, the lower term X is the "hyponym", and the upper term Y is the "superordinate". Two or more hyponyms sharing the same one superordinate are called "co-hyponyms". For example, "flower" is the superordinate of "tulip", "violet" and "rose", which are the co-hyponyms of "flower".
1.71.What is polysemy? What is homonymy?
"Polysemy" refers to the semantic phenomenon that a word may have than one meaning. For example, "negative", means(1)a statement saying or meaning "no", (2)a refusal or denial, (3)one of the following words and expressions: no, not, nothing, never, not at all, etc. ,(4) a negative photograph or film. But we can sometimes hardly tell if a form has several meanings or it is a different word taking this form; hence the difference between polysemy and homonymy.
1.72.What is entailment?
"Entailment" can be illustrated by the following two sentences, with Sentence A entailing Sentence B:
A: He married a blonde heiress.
B: He married a blonde.
In terms of truth value, the following relationships exist between these two sentences:(1) When A is true, B is necessarily true;(2) When B is false, too;(3) when A is false, B may be true or false ;(4) When B is true, A may be true or false. Entailment is basically a semantic relation or logical implication, but we have to assume co-reference of "He" in sentence A and sentence B, before we have A entail B.
1.73.What is presupposition?
Similar to entailment, "presupposition" is a semantic relationship or logical connection. The above-mentioned "When phrase No.1"is also true with presupposition. For example:
A: The girl he married was an heiress.
B: He married a girl.
But there is an important difference: Presupposition is not subject to negation, i.e., when A is false, B is still true. Other statements about the truth value in presupposition are:(1) When B is true, A can either be true or false;(2) When B is false, A has no truth value at all. Presupposition does not have to be found between two propositions. An example in point is :" When did you stop beating your wife?" This presupposes that he has been beating his wife.
1.74.What is componential analysis?
"Componential analysis" defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of semantic components. For example, we may "clip" the following words "Man", "Woman", "Boy" and "Girl" so that we have only separate parts of them.
Man: +Human+Adult+Male
Woman:+Human+Adult-Male
Boy:+Human-Adult+Male
Girl:+Huamn-Adult-Male
1.75.What is predication analysis? What is a one-place predicate? What is a two-place predicate? What is a no-place predicate? What are down-graded predications?
"Predication analysis" is a new approach for sentential meaning analysis. "Predication" is usually considered an important common category shared by propositions, questions, commands, etc. Predication is to break down the sentence into their smaller constituents: argument (logical participant) and predicate (relation element). The "predicate" is the major or pivotal element governing the argument. We may now distinguish a "two-place predicate" (which governs two arguments, e.g., subject and object), a "one-place predicate" (which governs one argument, i.e., subject) and a "no-place predicate" that has simply no argument(no real subject or object).
1.76.What is a logical operator?
(1)"Logical operator " make only one kind of the "logical factors" or "logical means", others being "definiteness", " coreference ", "tense" and "time", since predication is not the whole of a sentence or proposition. All these factors play a part in prepositional actualization of the predication ---the pining of a predication down a claim about reality.
(2)Example of logical operators are "not", "and", "or", "some", "if", "false", etc. The term "logical operation" reflects the fact that these meaning elements are often thought of as performing operations, controlling elements of the semantic system, so to speak.
1.77.Why is writing important? Why is speech considered prior to writing?
(1)Language can take the form of speech or writing, the former using sound as medium and the latter employing visual symbols. No one could tell when mankind first spoke; nor could people tell when mankind developed the first writing. A writing system consists of a graphemes plus characteristic features of their use, resulting in the diversion of the writing forms; word writing, syllabic writing and sound writing.
(2)It is widely considered that speech is the primary medium, and writing the secondary medium. But this comparative diminution does not mean that writing is unimportant. With the shot-lived memory and the finite capacity of information storing, writing is used, partly for compensation and partly for better communication. We cannot trust the negotiation counterpart so we turn to the writing and signing of an agreement. Writing leads people to the acme of science, study and research, and to the ultimate joy of literature
1.78.What is a pictogram? What is an ideogram?
(1)A "pictogram" refers to an inscription representing the features of a physical object. The Hebrew and the Chinese orthography still reflects traces of their pictorial origin. For instance, the letter "a" (aleph) imitates the head of an ox and the letter "b" (beth) imitates a horse. And "niú", "mǎ", "hǔ"and hundreds more of Chinese words derived from, and still keep the pictorial resemblance to, the shapes of the things or objects.
(2)The advantage of pictograms is that they can be easily understood by anyone. That explains why international road signs and public-toilet signs make a wide use of them.
(4) An "ideogram" means an idea picture or idea writing. In order to express the attribute of an object or concepts associated with it, the pictogram's meaning had to be extended. For instance, a picture of the sun does not necessarily represent the object itself, but connotes "warmth", "heat", "light", "daytime", etc. In spite of its disadvantages, the later form of ideograms turned out to be linguistic symbols, symbols for the sounds of these objects. The process is called the "Rebus Principle" indicating that writing is like a riddle composed of words or syllables depicted by symbols or pictures that suggest the sound of the words or syllables they represent.
1.79.What is word writing? What is sound writing? What is syllabic writing?
(1)Word writing refers to the writing system based on ideograms and/or pictograms, like Chinese (see 1.78). "Sound writing " or "alphabetic writing", which dominates the world, derived form the Latin alphabet with mild adjustments. Most of the European alphabets belong to the sound writing system, e.g., Spanish, German, French, English, etc.
(2)"Syllabic writing" is a word-syllabus writing, developed by the Egyptians. Japanese is a typical syllabic-writing language, though derived from Chinese, a Sino-Tibetan language. The Japanese modified the Chinese characters they had borrowed from ancient China so that the Japanese syllables(to the number of fifty) were each represented, either by what is called "hiragana" or by what is name "katakana".
1.80.What is an alphabet? What is a syllabary?
An "alphabet" refers to the letters or signs representing speech sounds used in writing a language , arranged in a conventional order. A "syllabary" refers to a set or table or system of written characters representing syllables rather than individual sounds.
1.81.What is a grapheme? What is orthography?
(1)A "grapheme" is the minimal constructive unit in the writing system of a language. The English grapheme A is represented by A,α,a etc.
(2)Orthography means correct spelling, spelling rules or attempts to improve spelling.
1.82.What is reference?
"Reference", as far as writing is concerned, means that in a sound writing system the graphemes and the phonemes are expected to build up and to keep up co-reference. For instance, the Reference of the English grapheme B generally is "b" and that of the grapheme X is "ks". The problem with reference is that more than one phoneme can be represented by one single letter or grapheme. The grapheme O, for example, can represent its its different corresponding phonemes as in: so [], money [], together [], sob [].
For reference used in the sense of "sense" or "meaning", place refer back to 1.64.
1.83.What is affixation, conversion and compounding?
(1)"Affixation" is the morphological process whereby grammatical of lexical information is added to the base (root or stem). It has been the oldest and the most productive word-formation method in the English language and some other European languages. "Prefixation" means addition of a prefix to make a new word, while "suffixation" means adding a suffix to a word. The word "unfaithful" is result of both prefixation and suffixation.
(2)"Conversion" (called sometimes "full conversion") is a word-formation process by which a word is altered from one part of speech into another without the addition (or deletion) of any morpheme. "Partial conversion" is also alteration when a word of one word-class appears in a function which is characteristic of another word-class, e.g., " the wealthy" (=wealthy people).
(3)"Compounding" is so complex a word-formation process as far as English is concerned that there is no formal criterion that can be used for the definition of it, though it may mean simply that two words or more come together used as one lexical item, like "dustbin".
1.84.What is blending, abbreviation and back formation?
(1)"Blending" is a relatively complex form of compounding in which two roots are blended by joining the initial part of the first root and the final part of the second root, or by joining the initial parts of the two roots, e.g., smog→smoke+fog, boatel→boat+hotel, etc.
(2)"Abbreviation", also called in some cases "clipping", means that a word that seems unnecessarily long is shortened, usually by clipping either the front or the back part of it, e.g., telephone→phone, professor→prof., etc.
Broadly speaking, abbreviation includes acronyms that are made up from the first letters of the long name of an organization, e.g., World Bank→WB, European Economic Community→EEC, etc. Other examples of acronyms can be found with terminologies, to be read like one word, e.g., radio detecting and ranging→radar []. Test of English as a Foreign Language→TOEFL [], etc.
(3)"Back-formation" refers to an abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word is derived by detecting an imagined affix from a longer form already present in the language. It is a special kind of metanalyais, combined with analogical creation (see 1.85), e.g., editor→edit, enthusiasm→enthuse, etc.
1.85.What is analogical creation? What is borrowing?
The process of "analogical creation", as one of the English tendencies in English word-formation, refers to the phenomenon that a new word or a new phrase is coined by analogy between a newly created one and an existing one. For example, "marathon" appeared at the First Olympic Games and by analogy modern English created such words as "telethon", "talkthon", etc. Analogy may create single words(e.g., sunrise-moonrise, earthrise, etc.; earthquake-starquake, youthquake, etc.) and phrases( e.g., environmental pollution-sound pollution, air pollution, cultural pollution,etc.).
"Borrowing" means the English language borrowed words from foreign languages, which fall in four categories: aliens, denizens, translation-loans and semantic borrowings.
"Aliens" are foreign loans that still keep their alien shapes, i. e., morphological and phonological features, e.g., "elite", "coup détat", "coupé", etc.(from French). "Deniens" , also foreign words, have transformed their foreign appearance, i.e., they have been Angolcized (or Americanized), e. g., "get" (a Scandinavian borrowing), "theater" (a French loan), etc. "Hybrids" are also denizens, because they are words made up of two parts both from foreign soil, such as "sociology" ("socio-" from French and -logy from Greek).
"Translation-loans" are words imported by way of translation, e. g., "black humor" from French("humor noir"), "found object" form French ,too ("object trouve"), etc. Finally, semantic borrowings have acquired new meaning under the influence of language or languages other than the source tongue. For example, "gift" mean "the price of a wife " in Old English (450-1150AD), and after the semantic borrowing of the meaning of "gift or present" of the Scandinavian term "gipt", it meant and still means "gift" in the modern sense of it.
1.86.What is assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis?
(1) "Assimilation" refers to change of a sound as the result of the influence of an adjacent sound, which is called "contact" or "contiguous" assimilation. The assimitative processes at word in language could be explained by the "theory of least effort" ,i.e., in speaking we tend to exert as little effort as possible so that we do not want to vary too often places of articulation in uttering a sequence of sounds. Assimilation takes place in quick speech very often. In expressions such as "immobile" , "illegal", etc., the negative prefixes should be or have been "in-" etymologically.
(2) "Dissimilation", opposite of assimilation, is the influence exercised by one sound segment upon the articulation of another sound, so that the sounds become less alike than expected. As there are two[r] sounds in the Latin word "peregrines", for instance, the first segment had to dissimilate into[l], hence the English word "pilgrim".
(3) "Metathesis" is a process involving an alteration in the sequence of sounds. Metathesis had originally been a performance error, which was overlooked and accepted by the speech community. For instance, the word "bird" was "bird" in Old English. The word "ask" used to be pronounced [ask] in Old English, as still occurs in some English dialects.