Readings for Week 10 "My toothbrush is pregnant"

The Chapter in Finegan covered Semantics and the study of meaning. The chapter began with multiple definitions of the word 'meaning'. Meaning can be broken down into 3 basic areas-

• Linguistic
• Social
• Affective

Each of these mentioned above pertain to the meaning of language in various ways. Linguistic meaning is the actual meaning of the individual words. There is a problem with simply taking the meaning of the parts of the sentences to assume the whole meaning of that unit. Two other aspects need to be taken into consideration and that is where social and affective meaning come into play. Social meaning can convey the status or situation of the speaker. Affective meaning can convey the impression or stance that speaker has.

I enjoyed reading about Polysemy and Homonymy and how they can affect meaning. Words like "wind" (the wind is blowing perfectly so we can fly a kite) and "wind" (that wind up toy is broken) can be somewhat tricky for second language learners. These examples bring me to my next point and that there were so many implications for teachers with this chapter!

For example, English has homonyms such as girl and boy with references to the superordinate term "child". Spanish has 'tios' for 'tias' and 'tios' (ignore the lack of accents on the 'i').

Another example is in English has to do with metaphors and the fact that "the heart is where emotions are experienced" such as "I have my heart set on that car" . In many languages this sentence would not make much sense. (This brings about one question for me, What is the difference between metaphors and idioms?) In other languages the stomach is the root of feelings such as the Polynesian language.

The third person pronoun is different in other languages when compared to English. Some languages do not have a 3rd person pronoun at all. Finally, there are 2 demonstratives in the English language and some languages such as Eskimo have 30!