14 communication, they transfer the message to their interlocutors. This message
contains meaning that is speakers intended meaning. Finegan 2004 suggests three types of meaning; linguistics meaning, social meaning, and affective
meaning p. 182. However, Leech 1981 divides types of meaning in wider sense into seven categories p. 9.
a. Conceptual Meaning
This meaning sometimes known as denotative meaning or cognitive meaning. There are two structural principles that underlie the linguistics
patterning. Those are the principle of contractiveness and the principle of structure. In conceptual meaning, those two principles also play their role in
revealing the conceptual, denotative, or cognitive meaning of a sentence or expression.
Phonology also uses the contractiveness principle to describe the classification of sounds. Symbol + and - are used to represent the presence of
the attribute. According to the contractiveness principle, componential analysis can determine meaning. Based on the certain attribute, meaning can be derived by
giving label positive + or negative - which refer to the presence of the attribute. The examples are as follows.
i. man
: [+human] [+male] [+adult] ii.
girl : [+human] [-male] [-adult]
By seeing the example i and ii, people can conclude that the meaning of man is an adult male human, while girl is a young female human. To describe the meaning
of the words, people only need to see the attributes which are possessed by the
15 certain word. People can also infer the antonym of the unpossessed attribute as
seen on the example. Another principle used in the approach to conceptual meaning is the
structure principle. It is the belief that larger linguistics units such as sentences and phrases are formed from the smaller units such as words, or vice versa. This
principle can be easily understood by seeing the tree diagram in Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1 Tree diagram
From Figure 2.1, people can see the smaller unit of the sentence which build a sentence and also vice versa. Besides the tree diagram, bracketing can also be
used to analyze the linguistics units: iii.
{Theboy}{[is][astudent]}. The bracket shows the connection of words, and also the order of the connection.
The different types of brackets {[]} shows the order of the connection. However, some might find difficulties in reading bracket and prefer reading tree diagram
Napoli, 1997, p. 307
b. Connotative Meaning
