第五章

　　Reference （领会） – the relationship between language and the world. By means of reference， a speaker indicates which things in the world （including persons） are being talked about.

　　The reference of a word to a thing outside the language is arbitrary and conventional. This connection is the result of generalization and abstraction.

　　Although reference is abstract， yet with the help of context， it can refer to something specific.

　　Concept（领会） – which beyond language is the result of human cognition reflecting the objective world in the human mind. It isn’t affected by language. Meaning and concept are closely connected but not identical. Meaning belongs to language， so is restricted to language use.

　　A concept can have as many referring expressions as there are language in the world.

　　Sense （领会） – denotes the relationship inside the language. Every word that has meaning has sense.

　　The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language.

　　It is also abstraction.

　　Motivation——accounts for the connection between the linguistic symbol and its meaning.

　　English does have words whose meanings can be explained to a certain extent.

　　Most words are non-motivated. The connection of the sign and meaning dose not have a logical explanation.

　　Onomatopoeic Motivation – the words whose sounds suggest their meaning. （Indicate the relationship between sound and meaning）. Knowing the sounds of the words means understanding the meaning. These words were created by imitating the natural sounds or noises. For example， bang， ping-pang， crow by cocks， etc.

　　Such echoic words are also conventional for the sounds we say in English may not be the same in other language.

　　Morphological Motivation ——Compounds and derived words are multi-morphemic words and the meaning of many words are the sum total of the morphemes combined. （Indicate the relationship between word meaning and each morpheme meaning）. For instance， airmail means to “mail by air”， miniskirt is “a small skirt”。

　　There are a lot of words whose structures are opaque， their meanings are not the combinations of the separate words.

　　Semantic Motivation——refers to the mental associations suggested by the conceptual meaning of a word. It explained the connection between literal sense and figurative sense of a word）. E.g. When we say the mouth of a river， we associate the opening part of the river with the mouth of a human being or an animal.

　　Etymological Motivation——The history of the word explains the meaning of the word. （Indicate the relationship between word meaning and its origin）.

　　E.g. the word ’laconic’ meaning ’brief’ or ’short’ is derived from Laconic， a tribe of people who were known for their ’brevity of speech’ and for their habit of never using more words than necessary. Hence a laconic answer is a ’short answer’。

　　All the words communized from proper nouns can be interpreted in terms of their origins.

　　Types of meaning （领会，运用）

　　Word-formation is not monogamous but a composite consisting of different parts.

　　Grammatical meaning – refer to that part of the meaning of the word which indicates grammatical concept or relationships， such as part of speech of words， singular and plural meanings of nouns， tense meaning of verbs and their inflectional forms.

　　Grammatical meaning becomes important only used in actual context.

　　Different Lexical meaning may have different grammatical meaning.

　　The same word may have different grammatical meaning.

　　Functional words， though having little lexical meaning， posses strong grammatical meaning， content words have both meanings and lexical meaning in particular.

　　Lexical meaning —— is constant in all the words within or without context related to the notion that the word conveys.

　　It has two components conceptual meaning and associative meaning.

　　Lexical meaning and grammatical meaning make up the word-meaning.

　　Grammatical meaning surfaces only in use.

　　Conceptual meaning （denotative meaning） – the meaning given in the dictionary and forms the core of word-meaning.

　　It is constant and relative stable. Conceptual meaning forms the basis for communication.

　　e.g. The sun rises in the East. the “sun”

　　Associative meaning – the secondary meaning supplemented to the conceptual meaning.

　　It is open-ended and indeterminate

　　Connotative meaning （connotation） —— the overtones or association suggested by the conceptual meaning. It is not an essential part of the word- meaning， but associations that might occur in the mind of a particular use in the language.

　　e.g. Mother——a female parent —— love， care， tenderness， forgiving

　　Home —— a dwelling place —— family， friends， warmth， safety.

　　It is unstable varying considerably according to situations.

　　Stylistic meaning – stylistic features make the words appropriate for different contexts.

　　（informal， formal， literary， archaic. slang） e.g. pregnant， expecting， knock up， in the club，

　　The stylistic difference is true of synonyms.

　　There are few words have both the same Conceptual meaning and Stylistic meaning.

　　分析：

　　1. they chucked a stone at the cops， and then did a bunk with the loot.

　　2. after costing a stone at the police， they absconded with the money.

　　The stylistic feature of words are obvious.

　　Sentence 1 could be said by 2 criminals， all the words used in italics are slangy， sentence 2 might be said by the chief inspector in making his official report and the words used are literary （cast， abscond） or neutral （police， money）.

　　Affective meaning – the speaker’s attitude towards the person or thing in question. Interjections are affective words as they are expression of emotions.

　　Words that have emotive values may fall into two categories： appreciative and pejorative. Words of positive overtones are used show appreciation or the attitude of approval. Those of negative connotations imply disapproval， contempt or criticism.

　　Affective meaning varies from inspanidual to inspanidual， from culture to culture …

　　e.g. revolution， democracy， imperialism，

　　dog loyalty， faithfulness， a close companion （western）

　　useful animal （Chinese）

　　Collocative meaning – the associations a word acquires in its collocation. It is that part of the word—meaning suggested by the word before or after the word in discussion.

　　There is some overlaps between the collcations of the two words.

　　e.g. pretty and handsome = goodlooking

　　pretty woman stress the attractiveness of facial feature.

　　handsome woman may not be facial beautiful， yet is attractive in other respects.

　　tremble/quiver = shake involuntary

　　tremble with fear/quiver with excitement

　　Function： Collocative meaning overlaps with stylistic and affective meanings because in a sense both stylistic and affective meanings are revealed by means of collocations.

　　Form – by form we mean both its pronunciation and spelling. A word is the combination of form and meaning. Form is the carrier of meaning.

　　Meaning