胡壮麟-语言学教程修订版-课堂笔记和讲义精选Chapter--(5)

Chapter 5 Meaning

5.1 Meanings of “meaning”

1. Meaning: Meaning refers to what a language expresses about the world we

live in or any possible or imaginary world.

2. Connotation: The additional meaning that a word or phrase has beyond its

central meaning.

3. Denotation: That part of the meanings of a word or phrase that relates it

to phenomena in the real world or in a fictional or possible word.

4. Different types of meaning (Recognized by Leech, 1974)

(1) Conceptual meaning: Logical, cognitive, or denotative content.

(2) Associative meaning

a. Connotative meaning: What is communicated by virtue of what

language refers to.

b. Social meaning: What is communicated of the social circumstances

of language use.

c. Affective meaning: What is communicated of the feelings and

attitudes of the speaker / writer.

d. Reflected meaning: What is communicated through association with

another sense of the same expression.

e. Collocative meaning: What is communicated through association with

words which tend to occur in the environment of another word.

(3) Thematic meaning: What is communicated by the way in which the message

is organized in terms of order and emphasis.

5. The difference between meaning, concept, connotation, and denotation

Meaning refers to the association of language symbols with the real world.

There are many types of meaning according to different approaches.

Concept is the impression of objects in people’s mind.

Connotation is the implied meaning, similar to implication.

Denotation, like sense, is not directly related with objects, but makes the abstract assumption of the real world.

5.2 The referential theory

1. The referential theory: The theory of meaning which relates the meaning

of a word to the thing it refers to, or stands for, is known as the

referential theory.

2. The semantic triangle theory

Ogden and Richards presented the classic “Semantic Triangle”as manifested in the following diagram, in which the “symbol”refers to the linguist elements (word, sentence, etc.), the “referent” refers to the object in the world of experience, and the “thought”or “reference”refers to concept or notion. Thus

the symbol of 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 the meaning of the word. The connection (represented with

a dotted line) between symbol and referent is made possible only through

“concept.”

Concept / notion

Thought / reference

----------------------

Symbol object

Word stands for reality

Signifier referent

Code signified

5.3 Sense relations

5.3.1 Synonymy

Synonymy is the technical name for the sameness relation.

5.3.2 Antonymy

Antonymy is the name for oppositeness relation. There are three subtypes: gradable, complementary and converse antonymy.

1. Gradable antonymy

Gradable antonymy is the commonest type of antonymy. They are mainly adjectives, e.g. good / bad, long / short, big / small, etc.

2. Complementary antonymy

The members of a pair in complementary antonymy are complementary to each other. That is, they divide up the whole of a semantic filed completely.

Not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other, the denial

of one also means the assertion of the other, e.g. alive / dead, hit / miss,

male / female, boy / girl, etc.

3. Converse antonymy

Converse antonyms are also called relational opposites. This is a special type of antonymy in that the members of a pair do not constitute

a positive-negative opposition. They show the reversal of a relationship

between two entities, e.g. buy / sell, parent / child, above / below,etc.

5.3.3 Hyponymy

Hyponymy involves us in the notion of meaning inclusion. It is a matter of class membership. That is to say, when x is a kind of y, the