Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

The marking of meaning 
In most studies of semantics, or the science of meaning, the emphasis is upon the 
relative ambivalence of terms, i.e., their capacity to have many different meanings. For 
example, words such as red, chair, and man are discussed in terms of the great variety of 
possibilities. While this is undoubtedly quite true, the real point of all is that in the actual 
usage of language there is no such prevailing ambivalence. In fact, in most instances the 

---

51 
surrounding context points out quite clearly which of these basic meanings of a word is 
intended. 
But when speaking about the contextual specification of the meanings of words, the 
linguistic context in the sense in which it is referred to has two very definite aspects: (I) In 
many cases, the particular meaning of a word that is intended is clearly specified by the 
grammatical constructions in which it occurs; and is referred to as syntactic marking (2) In 
other cases, the specific meaning of a word which is intended to mark by the interaction of 
that term with the meanings of the terms in its environment. This conditioning by the 
meanings of surrounding terms is referred to as semotactic marking. 
Marking of meaning by the syntax 
In many instances the meaning of term is clearly indicated by the syntactic 
constructions in which they occur. Compare, for example, the following sets: 
A B 
1.
He picked up a stone 1. They will stone him 
2.
He fell in the water 2. Please water the garden. 
The distinct meanings of the terms stone, and water are very clearly marked by the 
occurrence of these terms in quite different constructions i.e., as nouns in contrast with verbs. 
In this sense the grammar itself points to the correct intended meaning. 
In some instances, however, the syntactic marking is not simply a distinction in world 
classes. For example, the term fox may occur in the following contexts, with three quite 
different meanings: 
1.
It is a fox. 
2.
He is a fox. 
3.
She will fox him. 
In the first sentence, the presence of it identifies fox as an animal, because that is the 
only sense of fox for which it is a legitimate substitute: fox in this sense belongs to the same 
grammatical class as animal, what the hunters are chasing, that mammal, etc. In the second 
sentence, the presence of he, forces us to take a sense of fox that applies to a person, since he 
in this construction, as an anaphoric substitute for a “make human,” is a legitimate substitute 
only for a class of terms, including the man, the young fellow, that politician, etc., which 
identify male persons; and the only sense of fox that applies to a person is “cunning person”. 
In the third sentence, fox is a verb, as can be seen from its position between the auxiliary will 
and the object pronoun him; the verbal sense of fox is “deceive by clever means”. 
As seen from the above examples, the syntactic classes which help in the selection of 
specific meanings of words are determined by adjective, animate or inanimate, transitive or 
intransitive, etc., are generally large, comprehensive and clearly contrastive; and they are 
often formally marked as for example by the presence of certain endings, typical of such a 
grammatical class of words. 

---

52