大学英语专业词汇学第五章.doc

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