synsemantic field of language [Grk ‘sign’]

Term coined by K.Bühler, inspired by Gestalt psychology, to designate the determination of the meaning of individual signs of speech through the verbal context as well as through the associated non-verbal signs (illustrations, mimicry, gesture, music). ( also axiomatics of linguistics, symbol field of language)

References

axiomatics of linguistics

Words which, in isolation, have allegedly no independent lexical meaning (cf. the literal translation of synsemantic, i.e. ‘co-signing’). Candidates for these so-called empty or function words are prepositions, conjunctions, derivational elements, and other words or word classes that form more or less closed classes. Synsemantic words, in the wider sense, are polysemic linguistic expressions like the adjective good, whose meaning varies with the context, e.g. His character/the answer/the weather/the food is good. ( also autosemantic word)

Several recent studies on word formation presuppose that certain affixes demonstrate selectional characteristics that go beyond the usual word configurations. For example, in the gerund construction Philip’s spraying paint on the wall the verb assigns its complements their thematic relation. For this reason, Toman (1986) and Abney (1987) postulate that affixes such as -ing are more closely associated with a syntactic category (VP or S) than with a lexical stem (such as V).