英语词汇学5.1types of meaning.ppt

6.2 Main Types of Word Meaning 6.2.1 Grammatical meaning Grammatical meaning consists of word-class and inflectional paradigm (词形变化). 1. Word-class: Word-class is traditionally known as the part of speech of the word. e.g. modern : adj., modernize: v, modernization: n 2.Lexical meaning is dominant in content words, whereas grammatical meaning is dominant in function words, but in neither case is grammatical meaning absent. The two kinds of meaning can be demonstrated by nonsense verse: Lewis Carrolls Jabberwocky, in Through the Looking Glass”, 1871 .(first stanza) Twas brillig,and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome rath outgrabe.” Nonsense sentences or verses are not strings of random words put together. The words are combined according to regular rules of syntax with grammatical signals, i.e. function words, except that the content words are arbitrarily invented without lexical meaning and what is left is only grammatical meaning 2. Inflectional paradigm词形变化 e.g. cat--cats, mouse--mice; great-- greater to walk--walked, to write—writes, wrote, written The set of grammatical forms of a word are called its paradigm. Nouns are declined, verbs are conjugated (动词)变化, and gradable可分级的 adjectives have degrees of comparison. The lexical meaning of a word is the same throughout the paradigm; that is, all the word-forms of one and the same word have the same lexical meaning, yet the grammatical meaning varies from one word-form to another; On the other hand the grammatical meaning is the same in identical set of individual forms of different words, e.g. played, sang, worked, etc. desks, data, boxes, etc. 6.2.2 Lexical meaning 1. Denotative meaning Denotative meaning / conceptual meaning. It is the central factor in linguistic communication. One of the functions of words is to designate or describe something, such as an object, a property, a