Semantic Assignment on 22nd October 2015

Read the following text and do the tasks.

1. a. Bukit rumah itu mengambil sendiri semua kembalian dari alas kaki besok yang lalu.

    b. These colourless green ideas sleep on no where very soundly silent.

2. a. Eats one apple every morning the man.

    b. Iwan’s Budi car Tom’s drove office to.

Task One.

1.       Do you know the meanings of all words in (1)?

2.       Can you find parts of the sentences in (1) which can be considered  functional elements of the sentences (S V O A)?

3.       Write each part and identify the category (NP, VP, AP, PP).

4.        Based on each category of the phrases, try to identify the meanings. Can you get the meanings of every phrase?

5.       Identify the meaningful phrases and meaningless ones. Try to discuss with your friends and references, why are certain phrases meaningful and not meaningful?

Task Two

1.       Do you know the meanings of all words in (2)?

2.       Without any manipulations, do you get the meanings of the strings of words as a whole?

3.       Without any manipulations, can you identify parts of the strings which are supposed to be elements of the sentences (S V O A)?

4.       Is there any relation between the orders of the words and meanings?

Task Three

1.       Do you find different reasons that cause sentence (1) and (2) meaningless?

2.       Related to the way you think, what makes sentence (1) meaningless?

3.       Related to the way you think, what makes sentence (2) meaningless?

4.       For sentence (1), is it the orders of the words or the combinations that cause meaninglessness?

5.       Or, is it your mental condition that causes meaninglessness?

Remarks:

1.       What we discuss about the meaning of words as individual morphemes so far is called lexical semantics. It studies all aspects of meaning of words as isolated morphemes and as related to certain structures like a phrase or sentence.

2.       There afre some factors that decide meanings of words which are not purely linguistic. They are for instance commonsense and thought. This initiates the study of syntax. As a preliminary study think of this question: Does a sentence pattern decide meaning or meaning decide a sentence pattern?

3.       Your answers are not the main points but your comprehensions.

4.       Life is short. Get happiness from thinking. Smile.