2024年4月11日发(作者：键盘不能打字了按哪个键恢复)

Word meaning and context

In linguistics, context carries tremendous importance in disambiguation of

meanings as well as in understanding the actual meaning of words. Therefore,

understanding the context becomes an important task in the area of applied

linguistics, computational linguistics, lexical semantics, cognitive linguistics, as well

as in other areas of linguistics as context triggers variation of meaning and

supplies valuable information to understand why and how a particular word varies

in meaning when used in a piece of text.

A word, when used in a piece of text, usually denotes only one meaning out of

multiple meanings it inherently carries. Although it is still unknown to us how does

it happen, the general observation is that it is the context that determines which

meaning of the word should be considered.

So we have known that in English, a word has many different meanings. And

this makes us language learners feel more difficult. Though the word is the same, it

is different in different context. That is to say, what is the meaning of a word

depends on what context it belongs to. For an English learner, we can not only

know vocabularies, we also need to know how to read an article well. That is the

aim for us learning English. In our traditional reading pattern, we pay the attention

to the vocabularies, phrases, and the main meaning of the passage, as time goes

by, we form a bad habit, we attach importance to the reading skills, and despise

the English language and knowledge, this will weaken our reading competence.

Therefore, to learn English well, to pay attention to the word meaning is necessary.

Like Chinese, English is a kind of fixable language, the fuzziness and vacillation

of this language. When we are reading, in order to suppress above interference, we

must set a piece of conception about the passage we read, and then find out what

context is about the passage. So we can give a foundation to the word, and then

make the word meaning clear and definite. Take the word “position” for an

example, it has the meaning “the way someone is standing, sitting, or lying”, it

also has the meaning “the situation that someone is in, especially when this

affects what they can and cannot do”, and the meaning “the place where

someone or something is, especially in relation to other objects and places”, and

so on. Beijing university professor Wang Fengjing says it at lease has ten meanings

in the phrase “what is your position”. To decide what the meaning is, we need to

confirm what the context it is in. So we know that different context shapes

different meaning of a word. They are totally different in different context.

The meaning of a sentence comes from language itself, and the uncertainty of

the language leads to ambiguity of the sentence. But the ambiguity can be

eliminated by context situation. In situational context, the atmosphere and nature

of time that a passage produces, also can clear up the meaning of a word. Look at

this sentence “He waited for me by the bank．”The first impression we get is the

word “bank” is a business that keeps and lends money and provides other

financial services. But if the following sentence is “And he enjoyed the scenery

around him.” Then we know the word “bank” actually means a piece land along

the side of a river or lake. So when we feel confused, we can pay attention to

context, make the word meaning more clear.

On the other hand, when authors write, they often include context clues to the

meaning of words they use but think that some of their readers may not know.

Thus when we are reading an article, we could meet some new words. This is a

general phenomenon. In fact, while we are reading, we can’t understand every

word in a passage. Some language learners will look up the new words in a

dictionary, but it can be wasting time, and reduce the accuracy. Now the most

effective way is guessing. we ought to guess the strange words according to the

context.

When we come to a new word, we can sometimes figure out what the word

means by thinking about the words around it. Words that give us clues about what

the new word means are called "context clues" because they give us clues about

meanings of new words. Sometimes the context clues come before the new word

and sometimes they come after it. We may find a definition of the new word in the

sentence or paragraph. A sentence might have a word that means the opposite of

the new word (antonym), and sometimes a synonym, or word that means the same

thing as the new word, will give us a context clue is usually presented in

the sentence or paragraph in which the word occurs. Sometimes a visual such as a

picture is provided.

For example, Read this sentence: They drove their bright new red vehicle to

the park. You might not know the word "vehicle," but the word "drove" is a clue

that vehicle could mean a this sentence the context clue comes before the

new word. Read the sentence again using the word "car" instead of "vehicle" to see

if the word makes sense.

So word meaning and context are closely related. In our reading, we can just

memorize the single meaning, we need to notice the context, for it will do us great

favor in reading and comprehension. If we know different meanings of a word, we

can confirm its meaning from the context, and if we don’t know any meaning of a

new word, we also can infer it from context clues. Think about the context is an

important strategy for language learners.