A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse - The Intonation of Increments

The Psychological Foundations of the Grammar 81

or synonymous communicative value. Putnam (1999: 236) demonstrates
that speakers may ‘know’ lexical items such as elm and beech but yet be unable
to locate or distinguish their referents. Hasan (1996: 100) states:

The concept of reference has been a problematic one in semantics.

The interpretation of the term ‘reference’ as an onomastic relation to

existents is a limiting one, which arbitrarily cuts the sign system (lexis)

into two distinct areas. There are signs such as tree ‘referring’ to TREE, a

concrete object, a member of a class ‘out there’ and there are signs such

as gather, collect which lack referents.

Carter (1987: 15) agrees and states that there are ‘several words in a language
which, when taken singly, have no obvious referents’. The communicative
value of all lexical items cannot be measured solely by reference to the
outside world; the sense relations contracted between lexical items as
part of the lexical system must also be considered. Carter (ibid. 16–18)
describes an attempt to defi ne lexical items by componential analysis which
presupposes a stable universal world of concepts where the structure of
reality is semanticized by lexical items. For example, woman is defi ned as

• HUMAN +ADULT + FEMALE, while girl is defi ned as + HUMAN – ADULT


• FEMALE.
  By recognizing that the meaning of lexical items can be atomized,
  componential analysis acknowledges that lexical relations play a signifi cant
  role in measuring their communicative values. However, while a step in
  the right direction, componential analysis is clearly not the full answer.
  Carter (ibid. 17–18) points out some of the numerous problems with com-
  ponential analysis notably: the lack of limitation of the number of potential
  features associated with a lexical item; not all lexical contrasts are binary,
  e.g. tall and short which do not realize absolute values but rather stand
  at different ends of a cline; and lexical items which realize different
  communicative values in different contexts, e.g.

(41) I am meeting my girl for a drink tonight

In (41) girl does not have the feature – ADULT and must be differentiated
from the non-selected woman by some other feature.^34
Carter (ibid. 18–22) describes strong evidence that paradigmatic lexical
relations play an important role in defi ning the communicative value of
individual lexical items. He (ibid. 22) reports that subjects in word associ-
ation experiments defi ned the communicative value of individual lexical