Lexical Meaning Versus Gramatical Meaning

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.    Background of study

The subject concerning the study of meaning is called Semantics. The word semantic (from French sémantique) was invented by Michel Bréal during the 19th century.Some people would like semantics to pursue study of meaning in a wider sense of ‘all that is communicated by language’; others (among them most modern writers within the framework of general linguistics) limit it in practice to the study of logical or conceptual meaning. It needs no great insight to see that semantics in the former, wider sense can lead us once again into the void from which Bloomfield retreated with understandable misgivings- the description of all that may be the object of human knowledge or belief. On the other hand, we can, by carefully distinguishing types of meaning, show how they all fit into the total composite effect of a linguistic communication, and show how method of study appropriate to one type may not be appropriate to another.

It has been observed that there is tremendous renewal of interest in semantic theory among linguists in the last few years. The main reason is the development of generative grammar with its emphasis on the distinction between ‘deep structure’ and ‘surface structure’. On the one hand semantics deals with the way words are and sentences are related to objects and processes in the world. On the other hand, it deals with the way in which they are related to one another in terms of such notions as ‘synonymy’, entailment’, and ‘contradiction’. According to John I Saeed, Semantics is the study of meaning communicated through language. He further says that a speaker’s semantic knowledge is an exciting and challenging task.

The semantic analysis, generally, must explain how the sentences of a particular language are understood, interpreted, and related to states, processes and objects in the world.

More specifically, semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic units, words and sentences in particular.

     Meaning has always been a central topic in human scholarship, though the term "semantics" has only a history of a little over a hundred years. There were discussions of meaning in the works of the Greek philosopher Plato as early as in the fifth century before Christ. In China, Lao Zi had discussed similar questions even earlier. The fact that over the years numerous dictionaries have been produced with a view to explaining the meaning of words also bears witness to its long tradition. Nevertheless, semantics remains the least known area in linguistics, compared with phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax. Here, the writer focus on the specific of class of word in semnatics that is lexical meaning and grammatical meaning..

B.     The Formulation of The Problem

1.      What is the meaning of lexical meaning?

2.      What is the meaning of grammatical meaning?

C.    Aim of The Problem

       To know or understand about meaning and preliminary points need to be clarified In connection with word meaning .

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A.    Lexical meaning

Based on the Oxford Advance Leaner’s Dictionary, lexical meaning is “the meaning of a word considered in isolation from the sentence containing it, and regardless of its grammatical context, e.g. of love in or as represented by loves, loved, loving, etc”.

According to the free dictionary , lexical is “the meaning of a word in relation to the  physical world or to abstract concepts, without reference to any sentence in which the word may occur Compare grammatical meaning, content word”.

Lexical words, also known as content words, have concrete meaning that goes beyond their function in a sentence. These words refer to things, people, actions, descriptions, or other ideas that have more than just a grammatical usage. Their meaning is easily identified by a clear concept or item.

The categories of English words that are lexical include nouns, adjectives, most verbs, and many adverbs. Nouns, for example, refer to specified ideas, people, places, or things. The concepts behind words like "dog," "love," or "Brazil," for example, are veryclear.

Adjectives describe nouns in well-defined ways, providing information about colors, texture, number, size, and so on. Likewise, adverbs can be lexical words if they specifically describe nouns or verbs. Because they evoke specific ideas, descriptors like "red," "quickly," "heavy," or "effectively" are considered lexical.

Most verbs also fall into the lexical category because they refer to specific actions. For example, the meanings of words like "think," "sing," "understand," and "jump" are easy to grasp.

B.     Gramatical Meaning

According to Lyons (1995: 52) a lexeme may have different word-forms and these word-forms will generally differ in meaning: their grammatical meaning – the meaning in terms of grammar. For example, the forms of student and students differ in respect of their grammatical meaning, in that one is the singular form (of a noun of a particular class) and the other is plural form (of a noun of a particular class); and the difference between singular forms and plural forms is semantically relevant: it affects sentence-meaning. The meaning of a sentence is determined partly by the meaning of the words (i.e. lexemes) of which it consists and partly by its grammatical meaning.

Lyons introduces the term “categorial meaning” which is part of grammatical meaning: it is that part of the meaning of lexemes which derives from their being members of one category of major parts of speech rather than another (nouns rather than verbs, verbs rather than adjectives, and so on). Thus, all lexemes with full word-forms have a grammatical, more particularly, a categorical, meaning.

For example, the lexemes ‘easy’ and ‘difficult’ have the same categorial meaning: they are both adjectives. Each lexemes, however, has certain semantically relevant grammatical properties. The two word-forms easy and easier of the lexeme ‘easy’, though sharing some part of their categorical meaning, differ grammatically in that: one is the absolute form and the other the comparative form. This difference does not occur to the lexeme ‘difficult’ for this lexeme has only one form difficult, which does not accept any inflection.

Though ‘easy’ and ‘difficult’ belong to the same category of adjectives, having the same categorial meaning, they do not share all the grammatical features each has in terms of morphology and syntax. Likewise, all the lexemes sharing categorial meaning do not have all the grammatical meanings in common.

Grammatical words, also known as function words, have little definite meaning on their own and are ambiguous without context. Some also function to impart the speaker's attitude or perspective onto other words. These kinds of words define the structure of a sentence and relate lexical words to each other.

Grammatical words include prepositions, modals and auxiliary verbs, pronouns, articles, conjunctions, and some adverbs.

·         Prepositions are used in a variety of ways, and often have ambiguous meanings dependent on the context.

·         Auxiliary verbs like "be" and "have" are used to shift a verb's time, while modals like "should" or "will" also impact the sense of verb in various ways related to time or attitude.

·          Pronouns have little meaning except as placeholders for general nouns.

·         Articles also simply qualify nouns.

·          Question words, like "why," alter the function of a sentence or replace a noun. Other adverbs can shift the time or other senses of the lexical words they are connected to.

·          Conjunctions link parts of a sentence together by establishing logical relationships between lexical words.

Grammatical meaning consists of word-class and inflectional paradigm.

1.      Word-class

When a dictionary lists the function of a word, the definition does at least two things: it describes the word’s lexical meaning and also gives what is traditionally known as the part of speech of the word, which modern linguists call the word-class; e.g. modern will be marked as a n adjective, modernize as a verb, and modernization as a noun.  The word-class is essential, for when we use a word in a sentence, we have to take into consideration two factors: its specific lexical meaning and the position it normally occupies in a sentence, which is determined by the word class to which the word belongs.

Lexical meaning is dominant in content words, whereas grammatical meaning is dominant in function words, but in neither is grammatical meaning absent.  The two kinds of meaning can be demonstrated by nonsense verse.  Nonsense sentences of verses are not strings of random words put together.  The words are combined according to regular rules of syntax with grammatical signals, i.e. function words, except that the content words are arbitrarily invented without lexical meaning and what is left is only grammatical meaning.  Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”, which appears in his book through the Looking Glass, 1871, is probably the most famous poem in which most of the content words have no meaning – they do not exist in the vocabulary of the English language.  Yet all the sentences “sound” as if they should be English sentences.  The following is the first stanza of “Jabberwocky” (Note: the author have italicized all the content words):

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.”

2.      Inflectional paradigm

When used in actual speech, words (mainly nouns and verbs) appear in different forms; e.g. cat –cats, mouse – mice, to walk, walks, walked, to write, writes, wrote, written, etc.  The set of grammatical forms of a word is called its paradigm.  Nouns are declined, verbs are conjugated, and gradable adjectives have degrees of comparison.  The lexical meaning of a word is the same throughout the paradigm; that is, all the word-forms of one and the same word have the same lexical meaning, yet the grammatical meaning varies from one word-form to another, e.g. cat is grammatically singular in meaning while cats is plural; writes denotes third person, singular, present tense, whereas wrote denotes past tense.

On the other hand the grammatical meaning is the same in identical sets of individual forms of different words, for example, the past-tense meaning in the word-forms of different verbs (played, sang, worked, etc.), or the grammatical meaning of plurality in the word-forms of various nouns (desks, data, boxes, etc.).

C.    The Difference Between Lexical Words And Grammatical Words

Lexical words supply meaning to a sentence, whereas grammatical words relate the lexical words to one another. Look at the following sentence that only shows the lexical words: " ___ cat jumped ___ ___ tree ___ ___ dog ran ___." This looks like nonsense. All you know is that it is about jumping cats, running dogs, and trees. It may be possible to guess the complete meaning of the sentence, but you can't know for certain because cats, dogs, and trees can be related in different ways. Now look at the sentence with the grammatical words re-inserted: "The cat jumped into the tree as the dog ran forward." The sentence makes sense. Notice, however, that if you put a different set of grammatical words in, you get a completely different meaning: "The cat jumped from the tree after the dog ran away." You can see that the grammatical words clarify the logical relations between the lexical words and define their function in the sentence.

Although it's technical, the difference between lexical words and grammatical words is straightforward. It is an important concept for linguists because the distinction seems to exist in all languages, not just English. Understanding these differences helps scholars figure out the relationship between the different languages, as well as the history of the English language. It may even give some insight into how human minds work. Understanding these types of words will help increase your comprehension of English.

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

lexical meaning is “the most outstanding individual of the word that makes it different from any other word”. The lexical meaning of a word may be thought of as the specific value it has in a particular language system, and the ‘personality’ it acquires through usage within that system.

The categories of English words that are lexical include nouns, adjectives, most verbs, and many adverbs.

Lexical meaning is dominant in content words, whereas grammatical meaning is dominant in function words, but in neither is grammatical meaning absent.

Grammatical words include prepositions, modals and auxiliary verbs, pronouns, articles, conjunctions, and some adverbs.

The difference between lexical words and grammatical words is straightforward. It is an important concept for linguists because the distinction seems to exist in all languages, not just English. Understanding these differences helps scholars figure out the relationship between the different languages, as well as the history of the English language. It may even give some insight into how human minds work. Understanding these types of words will help increase your comprehension of English.