Word Meaning

1. WORD MEANING

2. MEANING THEORIES

• REFERENTIAL THEORY
• FUNCTIONAL THEORY

3. REFERENTIAL THEORY

• Referent / thing meant / denotatum
• Thought / concept / meaning / designatum
• Symbol / sound form / sign
thought
symbol
referent

4. FUNCTIONAL THEORY

Meaning is the way the word is used in certain
contexts. Meaning depends on the
distribution of the word, on different
contexts.
Functional approach = contextual approach

5. TYPES OF MEANING

• Part – of – speech meaning
• Grammatical meaning
• Lexical meaning
- denotational meaning
- connotational meaning

6. TYPES OF MEANING

Part-of-speech meaning
Nouns: thingness
Verbs: action or process
Adjectives: quality and state

7. TYPES OF MEANING

Grammatical meaning
It is recurrent (serial) in identical sets of
different words.
books/pens/pencils, etc.
worked/ played/ wrote/ went, etc.

8. TYPES OF MEANING

Lexical meaning
denotational
connotational
Denotational meaning refers the word to its
denotatum – an individual object or a
concept.
Connotational meaning: emotive charge,
stylistic reference

9. Analysis of word meaning (componential analysis)

semantic components, or semes
Ex. man, woman, boy, girl
Man [+HUMAN] [+ADULT] [+MALE]
Woman [+HUMAN] [+ADULT] [-MALE]