Trends in Sentence Meaning: A Conceptual Review

Abstract

Every language, regardless of its name and users, is meant to express meaning. This can bethrough a lexical or structural means. Lexical meanings are expressed through the various lexicalrelations inherent words while the structural meanings come through the ways words aremanipulated to generate meaning. Both processes are language specific. This paper, therefore,focuses on one specific aspect of structural meaning known as “sentence meaning†functions inthe English Language. The paper identifies three major types of meaning a sentence can generatein English, viz: conceptual meaning, associative meaning and thematic meaning. The paperargues that conceptual meaning is universal, stable and not affected by contextual colouring oremotional overtones while associative meaning open-ended, unstable and heavily influenced bythe diverse historical epochs within the language. The paper goes further to argue that thematicmeaning depends on how information is organised within a language. The concludes thatsentence meanings depend on how lexical items in a sentence are organised and the relativeinterpretations that speakers of the language assign to them, any disparity between speakers or awriter’s intention and what the listener or reader interprets the expression to be, will be abreakdown in communication. Thus, to avoid any breakdown in communication, all the factorswhich may disrupt the free flow of information between the encoder and decoder must beeliminated to make for easy flow and sequential presentation of information.