tailieunhanh - Ebook Semantics a coursebook: Part 2

This book presents a standard and relatively orthodox view of modern linguistic semantics in what we hope is a clear, stimulating, and accessible format. Our emphasis is on getting the student at every stage to think for himself, and so to proceed through the development of concepts in semantics with the confidence and conviction that comes from doing practical exercises with them. Inviting you to refer to part 2 of ebook. | 5 Word meaning UNIT 16 ABOUT DICTIONARIES Entry requirements None. Introduction A dictionary is a central part of the description of any language. A good ordinary household dictionary typically gives at least three kinds of information about words phonological information about how the word is pronounced grammatical syntactical and morphological information about its part of speech . noun verb and inflections . for plural number or past tense and semantic information about the word s meaning. Practice Given below are some slightly edited entries extracted from the Random House Dictionary of the English Language College edition 1968 . In each case a underline the phonological information b bracket thus the grammatical information and c leave the semantic information unmarked. 1 green gr-n adj. of the color of growing foliage 2 must must auxiliary verb to be compelled to as by instinct or natural law 3 oak ok noun any fagaceous tree or shrub of the genus Quercus bearing the acorn as fruit 4 squirt skwurt intransitive verb to eject liquid in a jet as from a narrow orifice Feedback 1 gren adj. of the color of growing foliage 2 must auxiliary verb to be compelled to as by instinct or natural law 3 ok noun any fagaceous . as fruit 4 skwurt intransitive verb to eject liquid . . . narrow orifice Comment If you are familiar with a phonetic alphabet typically used by linguists such as the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA you will notice that Random House regrettably uses an idiosyncratic imitated pronunciation instead of a proper phonetic alphabet. From now on we will suppress phonological information about the words we use as examples and we will only refer to grammatical information in order to distinguish between various semantic senses of a word . between the sense of carp the verb and that of carp the noun . We shall concentrate our attention on the semantic aspects of the kind of dictionary of a language 194 UNIT 16 About dictionaries that a linguist would