Classical and cognitive approach to meaning. Features and mechanisms of meaning construction.

Pragmatic meaning. Pragmatics studies the ways that context affects meaning. In applied pragmatics, for example, meaning is formed through sensory experiences. The two primary forms of context:

Linguistic context becomes important when looking at particular linguistic problems such as that of pronouns. In most situations, for example, the pronoun him in the sentence "Joe also saw him" has a radically different meaning if preceded by "Jerry said he saw a guy riding an elephant" than it does if preceded by "Jerry saw your dog run that way. Linguistic context is how meaning is understood without relying on intent and assumptions.

Semantic meaning

In logical or formal Semantics the study of meaning is conveyed through signs and language. Linguistic semantics focuses on the history of how words have been used in the past. General semantics is about how people mean and refer in terms of likely intent and assumptions. Understanding how facial expressions, body language, and tone affects meaning, and how words, phrases, sentences, and punctuation relate to meaning are also examples of what Semanticists study.

Conceptional meaning

Languages allow information to be conveyed even when the specific words used are not known by the reader or listener. People connect words with meaning and use words to refer to concepts. A person's intentions affect what is meant. Meaning is associated with to think or intend.

The meaning in relation to the concept appears as a part of its content. Many cognitive linguists agree that components of lexical meaning reflect only significant conceptual features, but not all of them. The structure of the concept is much more complicated and more varied than the lexical meaning of the words.

The meaning conveys certain cognitive features and components that make up the concept, but it is always only part of the semantic content of the concept. For the explication of the content of the concept numerous lexical items as well as experimental studies to complement the results of linguistic analysis are required. Thus, the meaning and the concept are correlated as communicatively relevant part and a mental whole.

Features and mechanisms of meaning construction.

Meaning construction proceeds not by ‘matching up’ sentences with objectively defined ‘states of affairs’, but on the basis of linguistic expressions ‘prompting’ for highly complex conceptual processes which construct meaning based on sophisticated encyclopaedic knowledge.Firstly, the meanings ‘encoded’ in language (the semantic representations associated with linguistic units) are partial and incomplete representations of conceptual structure. Secondly, the cognitive view holds that conceptualisation emerges from language use in context. It follows that there is no principled distinction between semantics and pragmatics.

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