Semantics

Meaning is a multifaced phenomenon. Especially it has two faces: information content and mental representation.

Information content

Meaning carries the following information:

• referring something (the reference of the symbol)
• relating several things

Mental representation

Meaning is a mental representation which is:

• processed in minds
• constructs a mental lexicon

Lexical semantics v.s. compositional semantics

• Lexical semantics is limited by the number of words; compositional semantics is not.

• Lexical semantics is consciously acquired; compositional semantics is not.

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