Contextual Modulation OF Meaning PDF

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CONTEXTUAL MODULATION OF MEANING: A GUIDE

Ideas in the introduction of the section: -Meaning of words may vary according to their collocations (the words they appear with). -One clear example of this is the meaning of verbs, which may change depending on the object they appear with. oHave a look at the different examples given with the verb "cut” oDo you think that the action of cutting is the same in all the examples? oIn some cases, you separate something into pieces, in some other cases, you just trim a part of something or move parts of something, or you do something on a surface... -Is it the case, then, that the meaning of "cut” is different in each case? In a way, it is... -Still, there is some general meaning of "cut” involved in all those examples, isn't it? THIS IS WHAT WE CALL CONTEXTUAL MODULATION OF MEANING. Now, how do we explain this? There might be two different explanations to this meaning phenomenon: a.The meaning of those examples came from the meaning of "cut”, plus the meaning of each the collocates (foot, grass, cake, hair, etc.) à Compositional meaning, the meaning of one word + the meaning of the other (this is explained in section 2.2.4.1) Or b.We process the meaning of these phrases of "cut + object" as a unit, individually for each example, in a non-compositional way (this is explained in section 2.2.4.2). Both explanations have pros and cons, as everything we've seen so far in Semantics!!...