Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

LESSON - II 
SEMANTIC RELATIONSHIP AMONG WORDS 
Referential Meaning
A study of the meanings conveyed by the words becomes essential and indispensable 
after the analysis of the relationship between the words. The study of the meanings of words 
can be undertaken from either one of the following two perspectives.
1.
Approaching the words as signs used to refer to objects, incidents, relationships, etc.
2.
Approaching the words as stimuli for the actions that take place among the 
participants involved in communication.
The first approach analyses the referential meanings of the words whereas the second 
approach analyses the connotative meanings of the words. The speakers of a language with 
the help of a limited number of lexical items give expression to unlimited thoughts and 
feelings in their day-to-day life. The number of words used by a common man in his routine 
life is not too high. The speakers of a language utilize only a few words in their normal social 
interaction and communicate innumerable ideas and messages. How is it possible? Semantics 
deals with the problem of how words refer to the meaning. For example, the English words 
hand, chair, man, etc., function as nouns and as verbs also. In other words, these words are 
used in more than one meaning. But when a language is used in its social context, the 
meaning referred by them becomes clear. The context helps us in understanding the 
referential meanings of the words. Because of this the communication taking place 
successfully between two individuals when they use a language. On this basis only we are 
able to understand the semantic structure of a language.
When we say that the meaning referred to by a word is derived by studying the 
context in which it is used, we approach this problem scientifically from linguistic point of 
view so that clarity is established. The contexts which help us to understand the referential 
meaning of words are of two types, namely,
1.
The referential meaning of a word is determined mostly by the function done by it in a 
sentence and also by the relationship it has with other words.
2.
At times, the referential meaning of a word is determined by studying the type of 
involvement it has with other words in sentence.
Let us assume that a word has got two meanings. The question whether the word 
refers to the first meaning or to the second meaning can be answered after knowing the 
meanings of other words in that sentence. When a particular word co- occurs with a word that 
has two meanings, we immediately conclude that this word refers to such meaning only and 
not to the other meaning.
The meaning of a word is marked in two ways, namely, syntactic marking and 
semiotactic marking. In a sentence, generally, one can find both these two types of markings 
are available.

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