The word is a grammatical unit which has attracted a lot of discussions. These discussions give rise to a lot of definitions of what a word is.
For our purposes, a word is a minimal unit which can be moved about in a sentence and can be altered by inserting a new material or lexical item. Again, its part cannot be altered or reordered. The dictionary in one of its functions compiles words and indicates their meanings. The meaning of words is an aspect of linguistic knowledge and is, therefore, part of the grammar of any given language because grammar conveys meaning.
The human brain is a compendium of words with their meanings just like the dictionary. In our brain, the words we hear every day have meanings according to the meanings given to the words by the society that uses the particular language. In other words, words have semantic properties which convey the meanings of the words.
The semantic properties which may be part of the denoted by the word and the opinions or attitudes we hold to the word. This brings us to some basic concepts in the study of meaning: denotation, connotation, collocation, and stylistic aspects of meaning.
A word may have both denotative and connotative values. However, the context of use specifies which of the meaning is applicable.
Denotative (Cognitive) Meaning
This is very important in communication. It takes cognizance of the contrastive features of lexical items involved. For instance, the meaning of a man is different from that of a girl in the following manner:
- man + human + male + adult (A man denotes + human + male + adult)
- girl + human – male – adult (A girl denotes + human – male – adult)
With these features, we can describe the two items listed above.
The definitions we give are based on our knowledge of what the two items refer to. In other words, the meaning of a word is what it stands for in the real world.
According to denotative meaning, there is a relationship between a word and what the object (non-linguistic item) refers to. In order to talk about an object when it is not present, a symbol is used to represent it. In this way, a semantic link is made between the word and the object. However, this link between a word and its referent is not natural except in an onomatopoeic relationship. That is the reason why the meaning of words is conventional.
Hence, a word can mean many things or many words may refer to the same thing (homonymy and polysemy). The name given to anything establishes a relationship of reference which is also known as extensionalism because of the treatment of meaning in terms of object.
Denotative meaning has its merits and demerits. The approach to meaning is very useful in teaching children in the nursery and primary schools. It is useful also in the treatment of lexical relations, for instance;
- hyponymy where a word possesses two or more unrelated referents
- polysemy – possession of two or more related referents by a word
- homophone – possession of the same sound by two or more words having different spellings and meanings.
Despite its usefulness, denotative meaning is hampered by the following limitations:
- It deals only with concrete objects. Words like and, very, should, can, not and so on are not accounted for because they do not have an external object that can serve as referents.
- The same referents may be used by several linguistic expressions and some of them may be synonymous.
Connotative Meaning
The term “connotation” means to suggest that there is a signification of attributes of a subject which is something additional to the denotation of the subjects which possess these attributes. In other words, connotative meaning communicates the value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to over and above its denotative content.
The additional properties could be physical, social, as well as psychological. The additional or connotative element may be pleasant or undesirable and it arises usually as a result of motive or affective reaction added to the central meaning of a word. It reflects the personal feelings or attitude of the speaker. Connotation varies from age to age, culture to culture, and from individual to individual.
For instance, the younger generations have their own words with their connotative meanings peculiar to them. Connotation includes idioms and other expressions whose value depends on personal or group/societal experience as opposed to general experience in the real world. Denotation and connotation are not two separate things or signs but are actually two sides of the same coin/sign. All signs bear each function depending on context.
The following are instances of linguistic expressions that have both denotative and connotative meanings:
Word Denotative Meaning Connotative Meaning
| Dove | A bird | Meekness |
| Rose | A flower | Beauty |
| Snake | A reptile | An untrustworthy person |
| Red | Colour | Danger |
| Lion | An animal | Strength |
Stylistic Meaning
This involves the meaning of a word/sentence according to the situation or context in which the expression is used. Meaning can vary according to the situation and different registers or social use.
Social meaning helps to reveal how social roles or relationships are established and regulated. Variables such as idiolect, dialect, tone, choice of words (colloquialism, slang, etc.,) and style affect the communicative value of an expression. In other words, the social use of words shows the geographical or social origin of the speaker, interpersonal relationship between the speaker and the hearer which may be formal or informal as well as the nature of the utterance itself.
In addition, style can be revealed through different registers like science, law, religion, politics, etc., because each of these registers uses words that are peculiar to it. The form of an expression is regulated by the situation which together with the register determines its meaning.
Thematic Meaning
Thematic meaning is concerned with solving the problems that linguists have in trying to convert totally spoken form into written form without loss of focus. It involves how a speaker or a writer communicates a message through the way he or she organises the expression in terms of ordering, focus, and emphasis.
For convenience, the sentence is divided into two – the theme and rheme. Depending on the one (theme or rheme) a writer wants to focus on and in which part of the sentence he/she wants to place the focused part, the thematised element tells us the most important part of the sentence our attention should be directed to. There are four ways through which we can achieve the pinning down of meaning thematically: active/passive constructions and reference.
Active/Passive Construction
Here the construction can be reversed and the resultant configuration will be the same conceptually but different communicative values. For example:
- The boy killed the lizard. (active)
- The lizard was killed by the boy. (passive)
The ways the words are ordered affect the meaning that the sentence entails. For focus and emphasis, a speaker or a writer may decide to reorder the words such that the subject becomes the object, while the object becomes the subject as in the passive construction represented by the second sentence.
Reference
Some languages like English have a way of indicating the given and the new, that is, information that is already given and that which is freshly stated. This is done through reference. Repetition can be avoided by using proforms. Proforms are words/expressions that function as substitutes for function words/phrase, clause or sentence. They can come in the form of pronouns, pro-verbs, pro-adjectives, pro-adverbs, and conjunctions.
For instance, pronouns replace nouns or noun phrase, pro-verb substitutes a verb or verb phrase, pro-adverb substitutes an adverb or adverb phrase. These are often used either as anaphoric or cataphoric reference. Anaphoric reference is reference backward or to a preceding expression and cataphoric is forward reference. Consider the following example:
- Three days later, Kunle was sick again and it was a painful experience for him, for he had pains in his stomach. He vomited several times during the night. By morning, he was a shadow of his former self. His parents took him to the hospital very early in the morning. They had waited for two hours before the doctor came and Kunle was diagnosed to have typhoid fever.
In the example above, the underlined expressions him, he, his refer to Kunle while they refers to Kunle’s parents.
Collocative Meaning
This refers to the company words keep. Words have a way of affecting each other in the environment in which they occur. This involves the syntagmatic relations between words. Collocation deals with the idiosyncratic nature of individual words. It is the meaning words yield in different circumstances of use. Due to conventionality of collocation, a word yields a different meaning when it collocates with different words.
Collocation is of two types – fixed and free collation. Fixed collocation acts like an individual unit. The meaning of an expression cannot be realised by considering the individual words that make up the expression nor can the ordering of the words be altered. Fixed collocation includes phrasal verbs (put up with, stand up for, and so on), idioms (a wet blanket, crossing the Rubicon, kick the bucket, and so on), compound words (such as sleep walker, keyboard, goalkeeper, and so on).
Free collocation is subject to restrictions and limitations which give rise to a range of collocations. For example:
- over – load, lord, look, leaf, grown, head, draw, and so on
- fruit – rotten
- butter – rancid
- black – sheep, man, coffee, polish, dress, etc.
Conclusion
From the above discussions, semantics tries to capture the sense or meaning of linguistic expressions (words and sentences) in relation to the context (situational or linguistic) under which the expressions are uttered.
In its bid to do this, it considers the referent of the expression in the world which is extra-linguistic in nature, factors affecting their interpretations such as the cultural or personal attitude of the user (probably idiosyncratic), the style of use which may be formal or informal and the words associated with the expression to determine the meaning.
Exercises
1) Write out both the denotative and connotative meaning of the following words/expressions:
- butcher, patriotism, strongman, side effects, black, rose, naked, mouth
- child, morning, rat, woman, rock, night, mermaid, young
- lame, leg, league, fold, feast, juicy, cat, green, scarlet, iron, varnish
2) Read the passage below carefully and pick out the pronouns that are used to substitute for noun from the passage:
The relationship between parent and child in the world of matter is based on this spiritual design. The parent is the vehicle for the child’s entrance into the world and is responsible for his/her education. The child must, between birth and the age of perhaps eighteen, learn the dos and don’ts of his/her culture. The significant fact underlying the parent/child relationship is that there is more freedom for the child, as he/she gets older and assumes more responsibility. The parent has failed in his/her duties if the child reaches legal age and is unfit to take his/her place in the world.
