Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning

1. Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning Presented to Sir Islam Pasha

2. Presentation Participants Mumtaz Ahmad MadeehaSarwar

3. Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning • Word meaning is slippery • Native speakers might think, they know the meaning of a word but they might have vaguest feel and have to use dictionary to check meaning.

4. Influence of Context on Word Meaning • Some of the difficulties arise from the influence of the context on the word, as discussed by Firth (1957), Haliday (1966) and Lyons (1963). • It is easier to define a word if it is given in the phrase or word.

5. Influence of Context on Word Meaning • The contextual effects seem to pull word meaning in two opposite directions. 1. Collocation (the tendency of word to occur repeatedly together) 2. Idioms (a group of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word understood on its own)

6. Collocation and Word Meaning • Haliday (1966), compares the collocation pattern of two adjectives: • Strong • Powerful They seem to have similar meaning. • We can use both of them as • Strong arguments • Powerful arguments

7. Collocation and Word Meaning • But observe this pattern • Strong tea • Powerful tea • But observe this pattern • Powerful car • Strong car

8. Collocation and Word Meaning • As Gruber (1965) notes • Herd of cattle • A pack of dogs

9. Collocation and Word Meaning • The collocations can go a fossilization process until they become fixed expressions.

10. Idioms and Word Meaning Idioms (a group of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word understood on its own) • Fossilization also occurs in in the creation of idioms, expressions where individual words have ceased to have independent meaning.

11. Idioms and Word Meaning In the expressions like • Kith and kin • Spick and span • Not many English speakers would be able to assign a meaning here to kith or span

12. Contextual Effects and Word Meaning • Contextual effects can also pull word meanings in different direction, towards creativity and semantic shift. • In different contexts the word ‘run’ can have somewhat different meanings.

13. Contextual Effects and Word Meaning • Different contexts of the word ‘run’ and observe different meanings. • I go for a run every morning. • The tail-end batsmen added a single run before lunch. • The ball-player hit a home run. • We took the new car for a run. • He built a new run for his chickens. • There has been a run on the dollar. • The bears are here for the salmon run.

14. Contextual Effects and Word Meaning • The problem is how to view the relationship between these instances of run above. Are these different senses of the word run? • Or are they examples of the same sense influenced by different contexts? • That is, is there some sketchy common meaning that is plastic enough to be made to fit the different context provoked by other words like batsman, chickens and the dollar? • The answer might not be simple: some instances seem more closely related than others.

15. DISTINCTION • Some scholars have described this distinction in terms of AMBIGUITY and VAGUENESS. • 1 Ambiguity: if each of the meanings of ‘run’ has a different sense, then run is seven ways ambiguous. • 2Vagueness: On the ether hand, if ‘run’ shares the same sense then ‘run’ is seven ways ambiguous.

16. An important point to be noted here is that is that in examples of vagueness context can add meanings that is not specified in the sense. Whereas , in examples of ambiguity, the context will explain only one of the senses selected and not the rest.

17. MEANING vs CONTEXT • While decoding information, real problem arises to judge whether one is dealing with ambiguity or vagueness. Scholars have proposed different tests but they are difficult to apply. The main reason is the context. • Ambiguity has more potential than real since in any given situation one of the context is likely to fit in the context and automatically selected by the participants. They may not be aware of readings that they would naturally prefer in other contexts where both readings could be available. • Let’s have a few examples.

18. Zwicky and Sadock (1975) and Kempson(1977) • Suggest the use of abbreviatory forms like do, so, also too,& so do. • These short forms are used to avoid repitition of verbs. • For example, 1. Ali hates butter and so does Aliya. • 2. Abdullah took a sandwicw and Mahnoor did too.

19. Such expressions are understandable because there is a convention of identity between them and the preceding verb phrase ; thus we know that in the previous example Ali hates butter and Mahnoor took butter. The test relies on this identity.

20. LEXICAL AMBIGUITY • If the preceding verb phrase has more than one sense, then whichever sense is selected in this first full verb phrase must be kept in the same in the following do so clause; for example,(1) has two interpretations. • (1) Khan discovered a mole. • (a) Khan discovered a small burrowing mammal. • (b)Khan discovered a long dormant spy.

21. This depends on two different meanings of mole, and is therefore a an example of lexical ambiguity. If we add a do so clause as in example (2). • Khan discovered a mole and so did Dilawar. • Whichever sense is selected in the first clause has to be repeated in the second, i.e. it is not possible for the first clause to have the mammal interpretation and the second the spy interpretation, or vice versa. By contrast where a word is vague, the unspecified aspect of meaning are invisible to this do so identity. Basically they are not part of meaning and therefore are not available for identity check.

22. CONCLUSION • Today, we have discussed the problems involved in divorcing word meanings from contextual effects and we discussed lexical ambiguity and vagueness.