In a broad sense, it includes the physical situation as well. This is called extra-linguistic or non-linguistic context, which embraces the people, time, place, and even the whole cultural background.
to the words, clauses, sentences in which a word appears. This is known as linguistic context which may cover a paragraph, a whole chapter and even the entire book. In a broad sense, it includes the physical situation as well. This is called extra-linguistic or non-linguistic context, which embraces the people, time, place, and even the whole cultural background.
2 - Linguistic context can be subdivided into lexical context and grammatical context.
Lexical context This context refers to the words that occur together with the word in question. The meaning of the word is often affected and defined by the neighbouring words.
Grammatical context In some cases, the meanings of a word may be influenced by the structure in which it occurs. This is what we call grammatical context.
3 - The Role of Context:
Elimination of Ambiguity, Ambiguity often arises due to polysemy and homonymy.Grammatical structure can also lead to ambiguity.
Indication of Referents.
Provision of Clues for Inferring Word meaning: In many cases, when a new word (thought to be) appears for the first time, the author generally manages to give hints which might help the readers to grasp the concept or understand the idea. Context clues vary a great deal but can be summed up as follows:
1) Definition. Often we find that the author gives formal definition immediately after the new term, e.g.
2) Explanation. If the concept is complicated and must involve technical terms in its definition, the author might explain the idea in simple words. That is, he might make a restatement in known words e.g.
3) Example. In some cases, instead of giving a formal definition or explanation, the author may cite an example which is sufficient to throw light on the meaning of the term, e.g.
4) Synonymy. Synonyms or synonymous expressions are frequently employed by authors to explain new words, e.g.
5) Antonymy. Contrasting words or statements are also commonly used to explain unknown words, e.g.
6) Hyponymy. Superordinates and subordinates often define and explain each other, thus forming an important context clue, e.g.
7) Relevant details. In some contexts, the author provides details relating to the unknown word, such as the functions, characteristics, nature, etc. of the referent, e.g.
8) Word structure. The morphemic structure of words, especially compounds and derived words offers clues for inferring the meanings of unknown words, e.g.> |
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