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The phrase "lend me your ear" is interpreted to metaphorically mean that the speaker wants the listener to grant the speaker temporary control over what the listener hears. First, analyze the verb phrase "lend me your ear" metaphorically to mean "turn your ear in my direction", since it is known that, literally lending a body part is ...
Semantics is the study of meaning in languages. [1] It is a systematic inquiry that examines what linguistic meaning is and how it arises. [2] It investigates how expressions are built up from different layers of constituents, like morphemes, words, clauses, sentences, and texts, and how the meanings of the constituents affect one another. [3]
In many non-theoretical grammars, the terms subject complement (also called a predicative of the subject) and object complement are employed to denote the predicative expressions (predicative complements), such as predicative adjectives and nominals (also called a predicative nominative or predicate nominative), that serve to assign a property to a subject or an object: [3]
Adianoeta – a phrase carrying two meanings: an obvious meaning and a second, more subtle and ingenious one (more commonly known as double entendre). Alliteration – the use of a series of two or more words beginning with the same letter. Amphiboly – a sentence that may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous structure.
Almost every noun phrase bears at least one thematic relation (the exception are expletives). Thematic relations on a noun are identical in sentences that are paraphrases of one another. Theta roles are syntactic structures reflecting positions in the argument structure of the verb they are associated with. A noun may only bear one theta role.
They have been the subject of much theoretical analysis, particularly in regard to the difficulty of maintaining, in the case of such sentences, the usual division into a subject noun phrase and a predicate verb phrase. Another issue is verb agreement when both subject and predicative expression are noun phrases (and differ in number or person ...
In traditional grammar, a subject complement is a predicative expression that follows a copula (commonly known as a linking verb), which complements the subject of a clause by means of characterization that completes the meaning of the subject. [1] When a noun, noun phrase, or pronoun functions as a subject complement, it is called a ...
Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings. [1] [2] It includes the study of how words structure their meaning, how they act in grammar and compositionality, [1] and the relationships between the distinct senses and uses of a word. [2]