Lexical Meaning and Context
Abstract: With the With the development of technology, more and more new words are ud to express a new concept, but not every appearance of new concepts are accompanied by the emergence of a new word. Therefore, many ordinary words are also ud to express a particular concept. Becau of the different location and the different meaning, words have the contextual meaning. As an English-language learners, nor only should we understand the basic meaning of the words, but also we should learn the contextual meaning.
I divided this passage into four parts, which is definition of context, contextual restrictions,
the factors of the context and the influence of context. We can understand the method of analyzing the words in context and the impact of various contextual meaning of words. Then, we should try our best to understand the meaning of English words in the ntence by the provided clue. It can help us to avoid embarrassment of misunderstanding.
Key words: Definition; Factors, Contextual restrictions; Influence
1.The definition of context
Context is of great importance for the understanding of word meaning, especially for the understanding of the meanings of polymic words. The important role in the study of context in mantics is increasing brought to the attention of the people. In language communication, context is always changing, which leads to changes in the dynamic mantics. Without the context, the words’ meaning will be pale, indefinite and puzzling. What’s more, the communication will be failed. Therefore, we should know denotative meanings of a word as much as possible and generally there will be no risk of misunderstanding the meaning, when it occurs in a particular context.
2.The factors of context
Modern linguists have not only placed great emphasis on context but have considerably broadened its scope, and have also probed deeply into its influence on word meanings. The range of the term context has been widened in veral directions. Its also no longer restricted to what immediately precedes and follows, but many cover the whole passage and sometimes the whole book in which a word occurs, and in some cas even the entire social or cultural tting.
The factors of context can be divided into three parts. The first factor is natural environment. There are different geographical location between Chine and English. They have different lifestyles and different characteristics of the word meaning. England is an island country. Its maritime industry was once the top of the world. Thus, many words were produced from navigation. Han Chine live and multiply in the Asian continent. People can not live without land, land. Land is vital for people, so a lot of Chine words or idioms are related to land. The cond one is culture. Different country
has different culture and different customs. Different language implies different national culture and the words also carry a lot of national cultural accumulation. This accumulation plays an important role of ways of thinking and language behavior. When we u “牛饮” to describe the big drinkers, English would say: Drink like a fish. Therefore, in order to understand the meaning of the words in a context, we should learn the culture or background of the words.
3.The contextual restrictions on word meaning
London School Firth founded context in the 1940s. Since the context was founded, linguists expresd their different opinions frequently. Different rearchers lected different perspective to u different elements to make different definition of context.
Translators analyze and understand the passage by the source of language information to convert and express the understanding meaning of the passage. In this process, whether can the translators accurately understand and express the original information? Not only should they rely on their language skills, personal experiences and the translatio
n skills, but they should focus on the most important thing that is the source language text analysis and understanding accuracy. The accurate analysis of discour and understanding is inparable from context, becau the usage of every language has its own the context.
A. Two types of contexts
Nowadays, the context was divided into two types: Linguistic Context and Extra- linguistic context.[1] The former refers to the process of communication in the specific environment. It includes words, ntences, paragraphs and passages and so on. The latter one refers to the situation which is limited by the language communication, society and the communicators themlves, such as the specific occasion, time, topic and the character of communicators.
In English, polymy can be en frequently, including basic meaning, expanding meaning, and metaphorical meaning and so on. However, when a word enters the mantics of the system, its meaning would be single and certain becau of the restricti
on of mantic subjacency. In other words, in the context, the word only has a single meaning which can accurately express the meaning of the ntence or the passage. Therefore, in order to understand the meaning of a word, we must t it into a concrete context. English words meanings are flexible and they always be restricted by the context. Different context make the word has different meanings.
