APPROACHES TO WORD MEANING

APPROACHES TO WORD MEANING

1. Referential theory

   • This view concentrates on the referents of lexemes
   • This seems correct in the case of proper names
   • There are lexemes that do not refer to anything in the extralinguistic word
   • there are lexemes which perform grammatical functions in sentences
     • called function words

2. Conceptual theory

   • is based on the concepts with which lexemes are associated
   • a lexeme is the sum of the most essential features of the concept associated with the lexeme
   • into semantic features is called componential analysis
   • The most obvious one is that a large number of lexemes are not associated with concepts at all