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signs, whose meanings we have to learn if we have to know the language. Just as tools in a tool kit, different kinds of words perform different kinds of jobs in a language. Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, Adverbs etc have their own functions. The word is the smallest unit of meaning and the meaning of the word is its use in the language. The letters of which the word is composed of are meaningless except few of the single-lettered words. A word is not merely a noise when it is spoken or set of marks on the paper but it is a spoken noise or set of marks with a meaning. Language can be observed from various point of view and they are reflected in various concepts of 'Meaning
RELATION OF WORDS AND THE MEANINGS
Word is explicit and meaning is implicit and to take out meaning hidden in spoken noise or written marks is a hard job. It was long believed that there were' natural connection between words and what a word stands for. The word cat and the creature cat are different. We must not confuse them. The primitive people did believed that he utterance of certain words would have effect on the thing meant by the word. For e.g. the utterance of the word God; would evoke the wrath of God. Hence there is a natural connection between the word and the thing it stands for, But later it was believed no such natural connection exists. Words are arbitrary signs. The meanings that words have are not originally discovered but practically assigned. The relation of the word with its meaning is like that of a label on the bottle. The label merely indicates what is there in the bottle but bears no intrinsic relation to the contents of the bottle.
Since words are conventional signs, there is no such thing as the right and the wrong. Word for a thing another noise can be always used instead but once the name has already been given and popularized, it is most convenient to use only that word in that meaning. If this rule of common usage is not followed & if a lamp is said to be a chair, it would surely mislead the hearer. The rule of common usage must be applied in communication. Nevertheless there is always a way open for the freedom of stipulation of new words and assigning new meaning to the pre-existing words in case of necessity.
gere uşi saçar-FOYER, 2008
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