A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics (Studies in Linguistic ...

MEANINGS 103
a legislative assembly, a theater audience, and a dormitory do indeed imply
“structures” of special kinds that “humans” can be said to “inhabit” (occupy)
in some specific way, Any connotative use of the word house is constrained
by the distinctive features of its meaning; i.e., house can be applied to refer to
anything that involves or implicates humans (or beings) corning together for
some speclfic reason. More formally, connotation can be defined as the mapping
of the semantic features of a sign onto a new referent if it is perceived to entail
these features by inference or analogy.
There is a special type of connotation that is worth mentioning here. It is
called emotive. The word yes, for example, can have various emotive
connotations, depending on the tone of voice with which it is uttered (as we
discussed briefly in chapter 3). If one says it with a normal tone of voice, it
will be understood as a sign of affirmation. If, however, one says it with a
raised tone, as in a question, Yes?, then it would imply doubt or incredulity.
Such “added meanings” to the word yes are examples of emotive connotation.
Connotation is yet another manifestation of Zipf’s Law. To cover the
connotative meanings of cat and house above, at least six new words would
have to be coined. This would require much more effort in terms of memory,
lexical choice, and so on. Generally speaking, therefore, through connotation
Zipf’s Law ensures that we will make use of a finite set of linguistic resources
to encompass an infinitude of meanings, thus decreasing cognitive effort in
matters of reference.
The distinction between denotative and connotative meanings is the key
principle used in the making of dictionaries-known as the science of
lexicography. The primary task in lexicography is to unravel the semantic
features that govern a word’s meaning and from which all potential uses can
be derived.
At this point, it should be mentioned that there is a caveat in the use of the
concept of “semantic feature.” As it turns out, specifying what features are
relevant in the meaning of a sign is not a straightforward matter. Consider the
word sets below:
(1) father, mother, son, daughter
(2) bull, cow, calf (male), heifer
(3) dog (male), dog (female), pup (male), pup (female)
If we contrast the items in these sets with words such as bread, milk,
sword, car, etc., we can easily see that they all share the property of animacy.
Hence, the feature [*animate] would appear to be a basic one in establishing