A course In Modern English Lexicology

§ 6. Interrelation of Lexical
and Structural Meaning in meaning in word-groups are interdependent Word-Groups a
nd inseparable. The inseparability of these
two semantic components in word-groups can, perhaps, be best illustrated by the semantic analysis of individual word-groups in which the norms of conventional collocability of words seem to be deliberately overstepped.
For instance, in the word-group all the sun long we observe a departure from the norm of lexical valency represented by such word-groups as all the day long, all the night long, all the week long, and a few others. The structural pattern of these word-groups in ordinary usage and the wordgroup all the sun long is identical. The generalised meaning of the pattern may be described as ‘a unit of time’. Replacing day, night, week by another noun the sun we do not find any change in the structural meaning of the pattern. The group all the sun long functions semantically as a unit of time. The noun sun, however, included in the group continues to carry the semantic value or, to be more exact, the lexical meaning that it has in word-groups of other structural patterns (cf. the sun rays, African sun, etc.). This is also true of the word-group a grief ago made up by analogy with the patterns a week ago, a year ago, etc. It follows that the meaning of the word-group is derived from the combined lexical meanings of its constituents and is inseparable from the meaning of the pattern of their arrangement. Comparing two nominal phrases a factory hand — ‘a factory worker’ and a hand bag — ‘a bag carried in the hand’ we see that though the word hand makes part of both its lexical meaning and the role it plays
1 See ‘Semasiology’, §§ 15, 16, p. p. 24, 25.
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in the structure of word-groups is different which accounts for the difference in the lexical and structural meaning of the word-groups under discussion.
It is often argued that the meaning of word-groups is also dependent on some extra-linguistic factors, i.e. on the situation in which word-groups are habitually used by native speakers. For example, the meaning of the nominal group wrong number is linguistically defined by the combined lexical meaning of the component words and the structural meaning of the pattern. Proceeding from the linguistic meaning this group can denote any number that is wrong. Actually, however, it is habitually used by English speakers in answering telephone calls and, as a rule, denotes the wrong telephone number.
INTERDEPENDENCE OF STRUCTURE
AND MEANING IN WORD-GROUPS
As both structure and meaning are parts of the word-group as a linguistic unit, the interdependence of these two facets is naturally the subject matter of lexicological analysis.
In connection with the problem under discus-