Lexicons and meaning

Abstract

Focal point Certain words and phrases have a specialized or unique meaning in AAE: saditty, kitchen, pot liquor, get my praise on . Some of these words and phrases are used by African Americans from a range of age groups, while others are common to speakers of a particular age group. One way of adding phrases to the AAE lexicon is by the productive process in which a word of the appropriate grammatical class such as noun or verb is inserted into a template. That evening the women brought bowls of pot liquor from black-eyed peas, from mustards, from cabbage, from kale, from collards, from turnips, from beets, from green beans. Even the juice from a boiling hog jowl. [Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye ] Introduction A study of the lexicon and semantics of AAE should reveal information about the type of meaning that is associated with lexical items (words and phrases) in the language system, and it should also reveal information about unique meaning in the variety. The lexicon is the repository for words and phrases in a language system, and semantics refers to the ways in which sounds and meanings are related. The lexicon can be described as an abstract dictionary in which meanings and other information such as pronunciations of words can be found. When speakers know a language system, they have access to the lexicon of that system, so speakers who know AAE know the unique meanings of elements in the lexicon of that system.