Linguistic Signs, Words, and Semantics
Linguistic Sign
The linguistic sign is an inseparable unit with two levels: signifier and signified. It is characterized by:
- Arbitrariness: The relationship between signified and signifier is unmotivated.
- Conventionality: Users have accepted signs that are agreed upon throughout history.
- Orality: Languages are basically spoken.
- Linearity: The linguistic sign develops in time and can be physically represented.
- Synchronic Immutability: No speaker can voluntarily change a sign.
- Diachronic Mutability of Value: Over time, signs can change in form and content.
- Segmentable: It is divisible into units (texts, paragraphs, sentences…) and well-articulated phonemes.
- Doubly Articulated: Any message can be broken down into minimum units (monemes) and smaller units without meaning (phonemes).
Other Key Concepts
Pause: Can differentiate, for example, an adjectival proposition from a specific explanation.
Accent: Distinguishes words.
Intonation: Three types clearly present opposing limitations to punctuation marks.
Morphemes and Lexemes
Lexeme: A moneme containing the lexicon’s meaning, referring to extralinguistic reality.
Morpheme: A moneme with grammatical meaning, referring to the language itself (gender, number, person…).
- Independent Morphemes: Not associated with any other.
- Dependent Morphemes: Need to be associated with another moneme:
- Reflexives: Indicate gender, number, aspect…
- Derivatives: Classified depending on their position regarding the lexeme (prefix, infix, and suffix).
Audio: Formed by a combination of two or more lexicalized words, and whose meaning is not equivalent to the sum of the partial meanings of their components.
Word Unit
- Simple: Contain a single lexeme, or a lexeme containing one moneme.
- Derivatives: The lexeme is accompanied by one or more derivational morphemes.
- Compounds: Contain more than one lexeme. Also formed by the union of two independent morphemes.
- Parasynthetics:
- By composition: Two lexemes and one derivative morpheme joined simultaneously.
- By derivation: A prefix and a suffix bind simultaneously to a lexeme.
Complex Lexia: Several words forming a solid phonic group.
Textual Lexias: Lexicalization of an organized prayer or statement that has been memorized.
Word Origins and Relationships
Cultism: Words originating from Latin or Greek, introduced later, and have hardly changed in form.
Loans: Words imported from other languages, generally due to cultural influence at a particular moment in the original language.
Semantic Field: A group of words that have common semes.
Antonyms
- Formally:
- Grammatical: By affixation.
- Lexical: Using different lexemes.
- Conceptually:
- Gradual: There are intermediate terms between antonyms.
- Complementary: There is no intermediate term.
- Reciprocal: Antonyms need each other.
Homonymy
- Homophones: They sound the same (e.g., “baca” / “vaca”).
- Homographs: They are written and sound the same (e.g., “para” (preposition) / “para” (verb)).
Polysemy: One signifier has several signifieds, which share some semes.
Taboo: Any word whose use is not recommended because it is socially frowned upon and has negative connotations. Euphemisms are used instead (e.g., “person of color,” “maid,” “passed away”).