Chapter 5    

Word Meaning and Componential Analysis

    Having discussed the structure and formation of words, we now move to the meaning of words. In Chapter 1, we touched upon word meaning in brief, in this chapter we will discuss it in more depth in terms of meanings of 'meaning', motivation of meaning, types of meaning and the components of word meaning.

 

5.1   Word Meaning

It is agreed that a word is the combination of word-form and its meaning. 'Form' refers to both its pronunciation and spelling. 'Meaning' is what the form stands for. For example, the linguistic form cat /kaet/ is used to denote 'a small four-legged animal with soft fur and sharp claws'. It can be said that 'a small four-legged animal with soft fur and sharp claws' is the meaning of the word cat. But the term is not as simple as it seems to be. There are some related concepts which need further clarification.

 

1. Reference

    Words are but symbols, many of which have meaning only when they have acquired reference. Reference is 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.' (Hurford and Heasley 1983:25) In other words, only when a connection has been established between the linguistic sign and a referent, i. e. , an object, a phenomenon, a person, etc. does the sign become meaningful. The form cat is meaningful because the language user employs it conventionally to refer to the 'animal' concerned. So part of the word meaning is the reference under discussion.

    The reference of a word to a thing outside the language is arbitrary(任意的) and conventional （约定俗成的）(See Chapter 1). This connection is the result of generalization(概括) and abstraction(抽象). The word cat refers to a whole set of animals of the same species without the distinction of size, color, region, owner and other factors. It is the extension of all cats in the universe.

Although reference is a kind of abstraction, yet with the help of context, it can refer to something definite(确定的). Cat without context denotes a set of cats; but it refers to a particular cat in 'Jean forgot to feed her cat yesterday evening'. Therefore, meaning can be pinned down(确定；使明确说明) by the user, time, place, etc. . The same thing can have different referring expressions without causing any confusion. The cat can be referred to as, say, the animal, my dear, Jassy, this , she and so on.

 

2. Concept

    In many cases meaning is used in the sense of concept. Meaning and concept are closely connected but not identical(完全相同的). They are both related directly to referents(所指) and are notions of the words but belong to different categories(范畴). Concept, which is beyond language, is the result of human cognition(认知), reflecting the objective world in the human mind. It is universal to all men alike regardless of culture, race, language and so on whereas meaning belongs to language, so is restricted to language use. Therefore, a concept can have as many referring expressions as there are languages in the world. Even in the same language, the same concept can be expressed in different words. For example, much and many both have the same concept, but collocate with different words, much time, much money, much water, but many people, many books, many buildings, not vice versa. Synonymous(同义的) pairs such as die—pass away, maiden—-woman, quarrel—argue are all good examples. Each pair has the same concept but different socio-cultural and stylistic values(文体色彩).

 

3. Sense

Generally speaking, the meaning of 'meaning' is perhaps what is termed sense. Unlike reference, sense denotes(指称) the relationships inside the language. ' The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language'. (ibid) Since the sense of an expression is not a thing, it is often difficult to say what sort of identity it is. It is also an abstraction that can be entertained(心存，持有（信心、意见）；容纳，接受；（准备）考虑) in the mind of a language user. Every word that has meaning has sense but not every word has reference. For example, probable, nearly, and, if, but, yes, none of which refer to anything in the world, all have some sense. Just as one can talk of the same concept in different languages, so one can talk of expressions in different dialects of one language as having the same sense: pavement in British English and sidewalk in American English have the same sense, so do pal(<口>伙伴，好友) and chum(<口>好友，同房间的人).