Chapter 8  Meaning and contest

1.Context is very important for the understanding of word-meaning because the meaning is influenced immediately by the linguistic context， and in many cases by the whole speech situation as well.

Types of context: the linguistic context , extra-linguistic context

In a broad  sense of linguistic context, there are three main types: lexical context, grammatical context, verbal context.

Explain the follow terms: Lexical Context and extra-linguistic Context or context of situation

a. Lexical Context – refers to the lexical items combined with a given polysemous word.

b. Grammatical context – the syntactic structure of the context determiners various individual meanings of a polysermous word.

c. Verbal context : Verbal context  in it’s broadest sense, may cover an entire passage, or even an entire book, and in some cases even the entire social or cultural setting, as stated at the beginning of the chapter.

The extra-linguistic context  refers not only to the actual speech situation in which a word is use but also to the entire cultural background against which a word, or an utterance, or a speech event has to be set. 

a. the actual speech situation in which a word(or an utterance, or a speech event) occurs  

b.  the entire cultural background against which a word, or an utterance, or a speech event has been set. 

2. The vital role of context in determination of word meaning

A. eliminating ambiguities(歧义,含糊,不明确)

Ambiguity refers to a word, phrase, sentence or group of sentence with more than one possible

interpretation or meaning.

a)      One is lexical ambiguity ue to polysemy: e.g.  1)the damage was done by the river

                                                                               2)Pass the port.

b)another type is structural ambiguity arising from the grammatical analysis of a sentence or a phrase

 e.g. 1) I like bill more than mary

        2) Visiting relatives can be difficult.

B.Conveying emotional overtones

The emotive side of word meaning depends largely on the context, with the exception of those words that have affective meaning as part of word meaning.

C. Indicating referents and the range of the meaning of a word

3. suggested ways for the correct comprehension of word meaning

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