Introducing English Linguistics

word formation processes
, that describe the ways that new vocabulary
are added to a language.
In addition to having meaning, words also have a “pointing” function.
This function is known as deixis, a word of Greek origin that means ‘to
point’ or ‘to show.’ In the sentence The woman bought a clock, not only does
the word woman have meaning (‘an adult female’) but it points, or refers,
to a particular woman in the external world. The ability of nouns and pro-
nouns to refer is one type of deixis: 
referential deixis
. Other types include
spatial 
and
temporal
deixis. For instance, spatial deixis is indicated by
prepositions such as in and on or demonstratives such as this or that, which
situate what is being discussed either close to the speaker/writer (This wine
is giving me a headache) or away from him/her (That person always bothers me).
The sentence I walked a mile yesterday contains two temporal markers that
anchor this sentence in the past: the past tense marker on the verb walked
and the adverb yesterday. Other time frames are indicated by the present
tense marker in English as well as the two aspect markers (perfective and
progressive).
But before discussing the internal structure of words and how their
meaning can be described, it is necessary first of all to define exactly what
is meant by the notion of “meaning”: what philosophers of language often
describe as “what it means to mean.”
In Chapter 3, two types of meaning were distinguished: grammatical
meaning and pragmatic meaning. Grammatical meaning was concerned
with the meaning that could be derived directly from the words, phrases,
clauses, and sentences in which language was encoded. Thus, at this level
of meaning, a sentence such as The woman called her husband is meaningful
because, for instance, the word woman designates an adult female and the
past tense marker on the verb indicates that the act of calling took place
at some time in the past. The other words in the sentence could be sub-
jected to a similar analysis. This is meaning as it is represented at the level
of grammar.
Pragmatic meaning, in contrast, describes meaning as a product of the
social context in which language takes place. Consequently, when a father
says to his two children We’re going to be late, the full meaning of this state-
ment is more than the sum of the words it contains. Instead, it is a polite