Semantics 666

study of meaning as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences and larger units of discourse

study of sign systems, how words and other signs make meaning. in semiotics a sign is anything that stands for something else

any unit of language (morpheme, word, phrase, sentence) used to designate objects or phenomena of reality

represents the form which the sign takes

 represents the sign’s concept

Sassure, examines language as a dynamic system of interconnected units, very formal (i guess u could say it’s… structured…)

conventional representation of an object, function or process

snapshot of language at particular point in time

 documenting linguistic change through time

the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses and sentences. syntax (greek) = “arrange together”

system = formal aspect of language

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use = actual use of language

formal aspect of language

actual use of language ;emphasising pragmatics and concepts

system of language analysis that recognises the various elements of a sentence

studies and classifies languages according to their structural and functional features, Aim = describing and explaining common properties and structural diversity

 Chomskyan theory: a certain set of structural rules is innate to humans, independent of sensory experience

formal u. = statements on the form the rules of a grammar can take; substantiva u. = the grammatical categories universally available and necessary for analysing language.

 quality of a clause, word or other linguistic element that conforms to the grammar of the language it is part of 
 

A lexeme  is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single root word. For example, in English, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, which can be represented as run.

A root (or root word) is a word that does not have a prefix in front of the word or a suffix at the end of the word.

Free morphemes can function independently as words (e.g. town, dog) and can appear within lexemes (e.g. town hall, doghouse).

Bound morphemes appear only as parts of words, always in conjunction with a root and sometimes with other bound morphemes. For example, un- appears only accompanied by other morphemes to form a word. Most bound morphemes in English are affixes, particularly prefixes and suffixes. 

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. A morpheme is not identical to a word. The main difference between them is that a morpheme sometimes does not stand alone, but a word, by definition, always stands alone.