Differentiation (linguistics)

Differentiation in semantics is defined by Löbner (2002) as a meaning shift reached by "adding concepts to the original concepts". His example is James Joyce is hard to understand, where understand is differentiated from "perceiving the meaning" to "interpret the text meaning". Meaning shifts are very common among language users, and allow for great flexibility of word usage. It is not to be confused with lexical ambiguity though, words as uttered in a context may have perfectly precise meanings even though in varying contexts they may be used to express widely different meanings.

Differentiation (linguistics)

Differentiation in semantics is defined by Löbner (2002) as a meaning shift reached by "adding concepts to the original concepts". His example is James Joyce is hard to understand, where understand is differentiated from "perceiving the meaning" to "interpret the text meaning". Meaning shifts are very common among language users, and allow for great flexibility of word usage. It is not to be confused with lexical ambiguity though, words as uttered in a context may have perfectly precise meanings even though in varying contexts they may be used to express widely different meanings.