Semantic Relations

A verb is related in various ways to the constituents in a sentence. The relations depend on the meaning of  the particular verb. For example the NP the girl in the girl found a red brick is called agent or ‘doer’ of the action of finding. The NP a red brick is the patient or ‘recipient’ of the action. Part of the meaning of find is that its subject is as an agent and its logical object is a patient. That fact is reflected in the entry for find in the lexicon.

MODIFIER 5

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MODIFIERS─CAUSE AND RESULT

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PHRASE AND SENTENCE MEANING

Words and morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of language. For the most part, however, we communicate in phrases and sentences, which also have meaning. The meaning of phrases or sentences depends on both the meaning of its words and how these words are structurally combined. (Idioms are exceptional and will be discussed later.)

NAMES

‘What’s in a name?’ is a question that has occupied philosophers of language for centuries. Plato was concerned with whether names were ‘natural’. Though the question did not bother Adam when he named the animals; Humpty dumpty thought his name meant his shape, and in part it does.