14.12.2010 Descriptive grammar
WORDS AND MEANING
word meanings can be defined: concrete thnigs (table), activities(cutting) and abstract notions(sorrow)
Emty words: be, have, it, there, up, to.
Changes in empty-set are rareand slow (thou)
Meaning of pronouns he vs. She
I vs. We
it vs. she/he
meaning of prepositions is context-bound (above, to, in)
articles: Look at THE tree! / I saw a cat. THE cat was black.
Cohensive ties and deictic elements
morphemes as the smallest units of meaning
their representation in a dictionary
Inflectional morphemes have meanings
Plural morpheme 's' and its realistaions:
cat, cats /s/
dog, dogs /z/
horse, horses /yz/
DERIVATIONAL MORPHEMES
un-meaning NOT
kind > unkind
in- meaning NOT
ability> inability
ise meaning to MAKE
pritave> privatise
tion meaning THE PROCESS OF...
privatise> privatisation
ly meaning IN A … MANNER
mad> madly
happy> happily
PETRIFIED AND PRODUCTIVE MORPHEMES
be- meaning to MAKE
becalm, belittle, besmall, ???
ish meaning FAIRLY....
smallish, darkish, roundish, foolish, girlish.
ZERO-MORPHEMES
give me the HAMMER.
I HAMMERED the nails into the board.
I'll get the SAW.
He was SAWING logs.
A tool vs. The activity
MEANING OF COUMPONDS
transparent and opaque compound
swearword
blackbird
pickpocket
COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
MAN: male+, adult+, human+
WOMAN: male-, adult+, human+
CHILD: adult-, human+
CHAIR: for sitting upon+, with legs+, with a back+, for one person+.
-universla features
-too few examples of words have been analysed
-too many kind of semantic features employed
COMPONENTS AND SEMANTIC FIELDS
STRIDE walk/long steps
PACE walk/ repeatedly covering the same ground
MARCH walk/ placing feet down firlmy
GOOSESTEP walk/ placing feet down firmly/legs straight
SENSE RELATIONS
synonymy (near-synonyms) within a semantic field
oppositeness
slow – fast
happy – sad
break – mend
buy – sell
hyponymy ( a superordinate and hyponyms)
IDEAL SYNONYMS ARE EXTREMELY RARE
denotation
sense relations
grammatical behaviour
connotation(equality in social base, formal or informal)
collocation
polysemy