NUR AUNI BAHARUDDIN

SEMANTICS : LANGUAGE AND MEANING

Structural & Lexical Ambiguity

A word or sentence is ambiguous if it can be interpreted in more than one way.

Four types of ambiguity:1. Morphological ambiguity2. Structural (or

grammatical) ambiguity.3. Lexical ambiguity4. Metaphorical ambiguity

AMBIGUITY

The ambiguity that some phrases and sentences exhibit when their (constituent) syntactic structure can be interpreted in more than one way.

E.g., the sentence We need more intelligent leaders is structurally ambiguous.

1. We need leaders that are more intelligent. 2. We need more leaders that are intelligent.

Visiting strangers can be dangerous. Moving sidewalks can be useful. I saw the man with the telescope.

Structural (or grammatical) Ambiguity

PrototypeHomophonyHomographyHeteronymyHomonymyPolysemyCollocation

Lexical Ambiguity

The idea of ‘the characteristic instance’ of a category

The prototype of any category is the member or set of members of a category that best represents the category as a whole.

A prototype is as good as an example as can be found for the purpose in hand.

EXAMPLE:o Giving an example to a topic discussed. The

example is the prototype of the topic. Same goes to this example. This example is the prototype to this prototype topic.

PROTOTYPE

Definition: a lexical relation where ‘two or more different (written) forms have the same pronunciation’ (Yule 2006, p. 106)

Described as homophones.EXAMPLE:o /sel/ - Cell and Sello /bi:n/ - Been and Beano More on

http://www.bifroest.demon.co.uk/misc/homophones-list.html

HOMOPHONY

Definition: a lexical relation where words of like spelling but with more than one meaning

These are called homographs (literally ‘same writing’).

EXAMPLE:o a live concert, but where do you live?o take a bow, but what’s with your bowtie?o More on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_homographs

HOMOGRAPHY

Definition: Words that are written identically but have different pronunciations and meanings. In other words, they are homographs that are not homophones.

 Therefore, a homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym.

EXAMPLE:o don't desert me here in the desert!o with every number I read, my mind

gets number and number.o More on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_(linguistics)

HETERONYMY

Definition: One of a group of words that share the same pronunciation but have different meanings.

Two words are homonyms when the original spelling is the same and their phonemic or graphemic representation is identical.

EXAMPLE:o /bæŋk/ - bank (the financial ins @ the side of the

river)o /laɪk/ – like (similar to @ enjoy)o More on

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_you_give_examples_of_10_homonyms_with_the_same_spelling

HOMONYMY

Definition: The capacity for a sign (e.g., a word, phrase, etc.) or signs to have multiple meanings.

EXAMPLE:o Present : A gifto Mother : the one who gave birth to youo Man : Males of the human specieso More on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_polysemes

POLYSEMY

Definition: The habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with a frequency greater than chance.

6 types : adjective+noun, noun+noun, verb+noun, adverb+adjective, verbs+prepositional phrase, & verb+adverb.

EXAMPLE:o get losto come lasto More on

http://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/collocations-lists.htm

COLLOCATION

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