definitions Flashcards
semantics
the study of the ways in which linguistic expressions have meaning
meaning
the mental representations in the mind conveyed through linguistic expressionss
icon
a sign that is associated with what it represents by means of a similarity relationship
index
a sign that is closely associated with its signified, often in a causal relationship
symbol
conventionalised object used to refer to something
sound symbolism
arbitrary correspondences between certain sounds and certain meanings
onomatopoeia
a resemblance relationship between sound and meaning which involves the linguistic mimicking of non-linguistic sounds.
phonesthesia
a resemblance relationship between sound and meaning when the sound of a word reminds us of the action or object
phonesthemes
a resemblance relationship between sound and meaning involving the random association of sound groupings with meaning
morphemes
minimal meaning bearing units
derivational morphemes
minimal unit bearing units that change the category of a word and change the word’s meaning
inflectional morphemes
minimal meaning bearing units that alter the meaning of a word without changing the lexical category
open class words
lexical items that have no clear limitations to the meaning they can express
closed class words
lexical items that behave like morphemes
idiom
non-compositional phrase whose overall meaning is different to the combined meaning of the individual constituents
collocations
words that tend to appear together, with one meaning being specified by the other word
content words
main carriers of information in a sentence
function words
represent items from a limited choice of expressions of the same kind
referent
the entity referred to by an expression
expression meaning
the level of meaning involving the meaning of words, phrases and sentences taken out of contextu
utterance meaning
the level of meaning involving meaning of words, phrases and sentence in a particular context which relies on truth factors
communicative meaning
the level of meaning involving how the meaning of an utterance is interpreted
referent
the thing in the world that a linguistic expression denotes or stands for