Staff Site Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta

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The Dimensions of

Meaning


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Main Points

Reference and DenotationConnotation

Sense Relation

Lexical and Grammatical MeaningsMorphemes

Homonymy and PolysemyLexical Ambiguity


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1. Reference and

Denotation

… a language consists of a large number of

words and each of these words has a direct correlation with something outside of

language, which is its meaning. And since, if we communicate with one another through language, it must be that we all have the

same ‘idea’ or ‘concept’ associated with each word…….. A mentalistic theory about


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concept

association reference

Word object


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Concept …… a mental picture of what the

word represents.

Reference … the relation between a

language expression and whatever the

expression pertains to in a particular situation of language use including what a speaker may imagine or it is the way speakers and hearers use an expression successfully.

Denotation … the knowledge they have that


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Some considerations

Meaning is more than denotation.

People not only talk and write to describe

things and events and characteristics; they also express their opinions, favorable and unfavorable……connotation and sense relations.


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2. Connotation

Connotation …. the affective or emotional

associations elicited by a word, which clearly need to be the same for all people who know and use the word.

A denotation identifies the central aspect of word

meaning which every body generally agrees about.

Connotation refers to the personal aspect of

meaning, the emotional associations that the word arouses.

Connotation ….the degree of formality, the style


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3. Sense Relations

The meaning that a lexeme has because of its

relationships with other lexemes they are associated with in an utterance is the sense of that lexeme.

E.g : 1. A window broke.

Tom broke window.

2. A happy child, a happy family…. Who enjoys

A happy accident, a happy experience….. That produces

A happy story, a happy report…. Containing a happy event


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Sense Relation

Syntagmatic…the relation of the lexeme

with other lexemes with which it occurs in the same phrases or sencences.

Syntagmatic ---the mutual association of two

or more words in a sequence so that the

meanings contribute to the meaning of the larger unit, the phrase, or sentence.


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4.

Lexical and Grammatical

Meanings

A referring Expression…. A piece of language that

is used as if it is linked to something outside

language, some living or dead entity or concept or group of entities or concepts. The entity is called

referent.

Grammatical Meanings are expressed by

bound morphemes, by function words, and by arrangement of forms in a sentence.

Referring expressions and predicates have

lexical meaning while grammatical morphemes and function words express grammatical meaning.


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5. Morphemes

Morpheme …. A minimal meaningful part.Free morphemes … which can occur by

themselves.

Bound Morphemes… the ones which are

always attached to something else.

The minimal form that can have reference or

can predicate is a lexeme. A set of forms with grammatical affixes is a single lexeme. A non-minimal form with single meaning is a single lexeme, an idiom.


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6. Homonymy and

Polysemy

Homonyms …two or more forms that are

identical in speech (pronunciation and spelling) but have different meanings…. different lexeme.

Homographs …. forms identical in writing

(spelling) but not in speech (different pronunciation) nor in meaning and also different lexemes.

A polysemous lexeme has several


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7. Lexical Ambiguity

When homonyms can occur in the same

position in utterances, the results is lexical ambiguity.

E.g : I was on my way to the bank.

Ambiguity occurs also because a longer

linguistic form has a literal sense an a figurative sense.


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8. Sentence Meaning

What sentence meaning is?

First, the meaning of a sentence derives from

the meanings of its constituent lexemes and from the grammatical meanings it contains.

Second, at least if the sentence is a

statement, if you know the meaning of the sentence, you know what conditions are

necessary in the world for that sentence to be true.


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In semantics, we are not interested in

intuitions or hints but we are interested in the instances when the language of the message

implicates some additional meaning that accounts for our inference.

Truth-conditional semantics is the study of

meaning through a consideration of the

conditions that must exist for a sentence to be true, and how the truth of one sentence relates to the truth or falsity of other sentences.


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4.

Lexical and Grammatical

Meanings

A referring Expression…. A piece of language that

is used as if it is linked to something outside

language, some living or dead entity or concept or group of entities or concepts. The entity is called

referent.

Grammatical Meanings are expressed by

bound morphemes, by function words, and by arrangement of forms in a sentence.

Referring expressions and predicates have

lexical meaning while grammatical morphemes and function words express grammatical meaning.


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5. Morphemes

Morpheme …. A minimal meaningful part.Free morphemes … which can occur by

themselves.

Bound Morphemes… the ones which are

always attached to something else.

The minimal form that can have reference or

can predicate is a lexeme. A set of forms with grammatical affixes is a single lexeme. A non-minimal form with single meaning is a single lexeme, an idiom.


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6. Homonymy and

Polysemy

Homonyms …two or more forms that are

identical in speech (pronunciation and spelling) but have different meanings…. different lexeme.

Homographs …. forms identical in writing

(spelling) but not in speech (different pronunciation) nor in meaning and also different lexemes.

A polysemous lexeme has several


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7. Lexical Ambiguity

When homonyms can occur in the same

position in utterances, the results is lexical ambiguity.

E.g : I was on my way to the bank.

Ambiguity occurs also because a longer

linguistic form has a literal sense an a figurative sense.


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8. Sentence Meaning

What sentence meaning is?

First, the meaning of a sentence derives from

the meanings of its constituent lexemes and from the grammatical meanings it contains.

Second, at least if the sentence is a

statement, if you know the meaning of the sentence, you know what conditions are

necessary in the world for that sentence to be true.


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In semantics, we are not interested in

intuitions or hints but we are interested in the instances when the language of the message

implicates some additional meaning that accounts for our inference.

Truth-conditional semantics is the study of

meaning through a consideration of the

conditions that must exist for a sentence to be true, and how the truth of one sentence relates to the truth or falsity of other sentences.