ENG1100 Introduction to English Grammar
Johan Elsness 2003 II
http://folk.uio.no/elsness/
Words and their meanings
Thought for the day: What is the difference between
It’s a time-consuming task waiting for Alexander. and
There’s a time-consuming task waiting for Alexander. - ?
Form – sense – referent
The form of a word refers to the way it is pronounced and spelt.
girl is spelt <g>, <i>, <r>, <l> and pronounced /g/, /:/, /l/.
1
The sense of a word is its meaning as this can be defined in a dictionary. Lexical words have
sense in a more obvious sense (!) than function words.
2
girl means 1. a female child, from birth to full growth, 2. a young, immature woman, esp.,
formerly, an unmarried one, …’ [from the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary]
The referent of a word is the entity it is used to refer to, usually in the world outside
language, in particular instances.
3 I think we should ask the girl in the front row.
Lexeme: ‘a unit of meaning which underlies a number of word forms that are grammatically
related through inflections’. Go, goes, went, gone, going are different forms of the same
lexeme GO. Boy, boys, boy’s are different forms of the lexeme BOY.
Relationships between the forms of words
Homonymy refers to the relationship between different words (i.e., with clearly different
meanings) with the same form. Such words are referred to as homonyms. Sometimes one
may be in doubt about whether to recognise a single polysemous lexeme or two separate
lexemes. For instance, do we have the same word foot in
4 the foot of a mountain
and
5 the foot of a human being
?
Words which have the same form in writing are known as homographs. Words which have
the same form in speech are called homophones. Words which have the same forms in both
speech and writing are referred to as full homonyms.
Homographs:
lead /led/: metal
lead /li:d/: guide
row /r/: with oars or line
row /ra/: quarrel
Homophones:
bear, bare /be/
jeans, genes /di:nz/
meat, meet /mi:t/
lead (metal), led (past tense and past participle of verb) /led/
row (with oars), (cod’s) roe /r/
male, mail /mel/
pale, pail /pel/
sole, soul /sl/
Full homonyms:
bear /be/ (animal – carry)
mould /mld/ (form – Norw. mugg)
sole /sl/ (only – part of shoe – fish)
row /r/ (with oars – line)
Sense relations
Synonymy: Synonyms are words which have (more or less) the same meaning.
Synonyms:
wide – broad
high – tall
country – land
Antonymy: Antonyms are words with opposite meanings.
Antonyms:
black – white
good – bad
Hyponomy refers to the relationship between words which are such that the meaning of one
is included in the meaning of the other. The word with the more inclusive meaning is called
the superordinate term, the other is called the hyponym.
motor vehicle (superordinate term): bus – lorry – van – car (co-hyponyms)
car (superordinate term): sedan – hatchback – station wagon – limo (co-hyponyms)
Not only single words but even multi-word units can function as lexemes.
Phrasal and prepositional verbs
6 She looked up the word.
7 She looked at the boy.
8 She looked up the ladder.
9 They looked into the problem.
10 They looked into the room.
11 He ran over a bridge.
12 He ran over a cat.
I
Phrasal verb
II
Prepositional verb
III
Verb plus independent preposition (often part of prepositional phrase with adverbial
function)
II, and often I as well, appear in transitive clause patterns.
I
II
III
a. NP before particle
+
-
-
b. Passivisation
+
+
-
c. Intervening adverbial
-
+
+
d. Particle stressed
+
-
?
e. Adverbial question
-
-
+
f. Pronominal question
+
+
+
g. Close semantic unit (idiom)
+
+
-
Phrasal-prepositional verbs:
13 do away with (an institution)
14 put up with (nonsense)
15 catch up on (one's reading)
16 catch up with (somebody)
17 look down on (somebody)