Factors that Determine the Meaning of a Word

Abstract

This study looks at the elements that influence a word’s meaning in order to settle a
long-running disagreement among lexicalists, constructionists, emergentists, and other schools of
thought. The Constructionists place a high value on the following skills that skilled
communicators possess: Linguistic competence includes the correct application of grammar and
syntax, as well as the capacity to linguistically comprehend communications from other
speakers. Lexicism, on the other hand, is a modern generative linguistics theoretical position that
claims that the processes and procedures that generate complex words are accounted for by a set
of Lexical Rules that are independent of and distinct from the processes and procedures that form
simple words. Thus, some factors come to play vital roles to decipher the meaning of words and
facilitate successful communication and this article shows how mental ability, linguistic
competence, and contextual and grammatical knowledge disambiguate the meaning of a word.