Search Results - Lexical (semiotics)

In the lexicon of a language, lexical words or nouns refer to things. These words fall into three main classes

Other than lexical words, the lexicon consists of functional or grammatical words which do not refer to objects in the world.

Language is more than a functional system for naming things. Most lexical words refer to classes of things (e.g. 'animals' or 'insects') or to concepts (e.g. 'nonhuman'). Depending on the degree of specialisation, language may create a taxonomy or simple categories, but the act of creating a group by reference to one or more similarities, breaks the natural link between a name and its reality. Hence, "copse" is more than "tree" and less than "forest" and, as spatial areas, both copses and forests contain more than trees.