语言学试题与答案(8)

胡壮麟

47. Two-place predication: A two-place predication is one which contains two

arguments.

V. Answer the following questions.

48. Why do we say that a meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the

meanings of all its components?

The meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the meanings of all its

components because it cannot be worked out by adding up all the meanings of its constituent words. For example:

(A) The dog bit the man.

(B) The man bit the dog.

If the meaning of a sentence were the sum total of the meanings of all its components, then the above two sentences would have the same meaning. In fact they are different in meanings.

As we know, there are two aspects to sentence meaning: grammatical meaning and semantic meaning. The grammatical meanings of “the dog” and “the man” in (A) are different from the grammatical meanings of “the dog” and “the man” in (B). The meaning of a sentence is the product of both lexical and grammatical meaning. It is the product of the meaning of the constituent words and of the grammatical

constructions that relate one word syntagmatically to another.

49. What is componential analysis? Illustrate it with examples.

Componential analysis, proposed by structural semanticists, is a way to analyze word meaning. The approach is based on the belief that the meaning of a word can be divided into meaning components, which are called semantic features. Plus and minus signs are used to indicate whether a certain semantic feature is present or absent in the