Syntactic and Lexico-semantic Analyses of Selected SMS Text Messages Among the University of Ilorin Students
Chapter One
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to contribute to the body of knowledge through an investigation into the combination of word and their meaning in conveying an SMS. This work seeks to examine selected personal text messages sent by the students of the University of Ilorin between the ages of 18-25 years, identify the word-formation processes, lexical features and relations that exist among the lexemes that are contained in them. Also, how the knowledge of the lexical and semantic relations contribute to the meaning of the text messages would be examined. This will help to promote a better understanding of text messages.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
INTRODUCTION
This chapter will provide a clearer picture and a more extensive and detailed discussion of the variables contained in the topic of study. This chapter will focus on:
The meaning of lexis;
Lexical features;
Lexical relations;
Word-formation processes;
The sequence of words;
A brief examination of semantics;
Lexico-semantics; and
SMS text messaging in Nigeria.
THE MEANING OF LEXIS
Jackson & Amvela (2000, p.11) defined lexis as “the stock of words in a given language”. It is made up of the words the in a language, which is called vocabulary. The term “lexis” originated from Greek and it means “word”, Jackson & Amvela (2000, p.1). The lexis of any language is made up of lexemes. These lexemes are the words contained in the vocabulary of a language.
A lexeme as defined by Crystal (2008, p.276) is the “minimal distinctive unit in the semantic system of a language”. Lexemes have lexical rather than grammatical meanings. They function in different ways and can also be referred to as words. However, a lexeme carries a deeper meaning that goes beyond the meaning of an ordinary word.
In writing, at the level of ordinary language, a word is regarded as an item bounded by spaces(Jackson, 1988) and in speeches separated by pauses(Jackson & Amvela, 2000). A lexeme, as defined by Crystal (1995) as cited by Jackson & Amvela (2000, p.63) is a “unit of lexical meaning, which exists regardless of any inflectional ending it may have or the number of words it may contain”. From this definition, a lexeme is an independent item i.e. it can stand on its own. It forms the basis for larger words.
Lexemes can also be described as expressions that carry lexical meanings, that is, meanings that are permanently stored in the mind(Lobner, 2002). Lexemes are linguistic entities within a language system. They can be built into phrases, clauses and sentences. Lexemes are however different in their grammatical behaviour. As a result, they have been grouped into various categories, which in formal usage are called “word classes” or “lexical features”.
LEXICAL FEATURES
These are features that characterize the various words that make up an expression or an utterance i.e. phrase, clause or sentence. Lexical features are also called word classes(Lobner, 2002). Words are grouped into classes depending on their grammatical function or behaviour in an expression or an utterance. Every lexeme in an expression falls into at least one of these word classes. The knowledge of the word class of a lexeme in an utterance or expression enhances a proper interpretation of the whole expression. Alabi (2005, pp.22-39) identified eight word classes. All the word classes identified will be examined one after the other.
Nouns
Any word used to identify a person, animal; place or thing is considered a noun. Nouns are also used to identify objects, qualities, actions, ideas or concepts. Alabi (2005, p.22) believes that a noun names anything. Examples include: Taofeeq, John, Sheep, Tortoise, Nigeria, Ilorin, books, biro, Goodness, Gentleness, Teaching, Maturity, Philosophy, Grammar, etc. Nouns can further be divided into sub-groups according to form and composition. These sub-groups include:
Proper nouns: They are names of people, continents, countries, races, institutions, days, months, subjects and careers, Alabi (2005, p.23). Examples of proper nouns include: Elizabeth, Africa,Liberia, December, Linguistics, Wednesday, Computer science, Doctor, etc.
Common nouns: These are nouns that denote tangible entities that can be seen or touched. They have a physical manifestation. Examples of nouns in this group are: car, candle, hand, etc.
Abstract nouns: The manifestation of these nouns exists in the mind. Alabi (2005) said that they express general terms, feeling, attributes, ideas or concepts. They cannot be seen or touched, they reside in the imagination of human beings e.g. loyalty, foolishness, knowledge, love, etc.
Count nouns: Count nouns can be identified where such determiners such as “a” or “an” precede them. They are nouns that can be counted or numbered e.g. lecturer, box, umbrella, table, etc.
Mass nouns: These are nouns which are expressible in terms of quantity. They can also be referred to as “uncountable” or “non-count” nouns e.g. blood, water, salt, sand, etc.
CHAPTER THREE
DATA ANALYSIS
INTRODUCTION
As mentioned earlier in chapter one, thirty messages have been selected out of the whole body of personal text messages. All the identified features will be used to analyze all thirty messages that constitute the data for this essay.
LEXICAL FEATURES
Lexical features are the various categories or word classes that lexemes fall into based on their grammatical functions in an expression. The lexical features that are present in our data are: nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, preposition and conjunctions. They are discussed next.
Nouns
Nouns can be defined as the name of persons, animals, places, things, qualities, concepts, ideas or actions, Alabi (2005). Nouns serve as reference items in text messages and expressions. There are nouns in all the data. In all, there are two hundred nouns in the data, totalling 39.22%, where the most prominent is the sub-class of proper nouns with 37.5%, followed by abstract nouns with 18%, the common nouns have 8.5%, and countable nouns with 4.5%. The least portion is the sub-class of uncountable nouns with 1.5%. Proper nouns “Month and Night” and abstract noun “Love” were used more than once in our data, thereby giving them more prominence than other nouns in the data.
Verbs
Verbs describe a class of ‘doing’ or ‘action’ words, (Crystal, 2008). They complete the meaning of a sentence. There are one hundred and forty-three instances of the use of verbs in the text messages. Verbs are present in all the text messages. They take up 28.04% of the data. The most prominent types of verbs are finite verbs with sixty-seven occurrences and making up 46.8% of the verbs in the data, modal auxiliary verbs come next with 3.4% and then primary auxiliary verbs with 3.4%. The most recurrent verbs are primary auxiliary verbs ‘is’, ‘do’, ‘have’ and their inflections.
CHAPTER FOUR
SUMMARY, FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
Summary
This study analyzed personal text messages in order to bring out the various lexical and grammatical devices that characterize them. Twenty-seven of these devices were identified for the analysis of thirty personal text messages, composed and sent by the University of Ilorin students between the year 2008 and 2010. These devices were grouped into lexical features or word classes, lexical relations, word-formation processes and word sequences.
Findings
After the analysis of the text messages it was discovered that among the word classes, the most frequently occurring element is the noun with 39.22%. It was discovered that all thetext messages had noun elements in them. These elements were used for reference, comparative and expressive purposes by senders in conveying their messages to the receivers. The noun was followed by the verb with 28.04%.Verbs were used as a life wire to complete the meaning of the text messages. As mentioned in chapter two, that without verbs, expressions including text messages will be meaningless. After the verb came pronoun with 13.2% and was used to avoid a repetition of nouns. Following the pronoun was preposition with 8.63%, used to give precise descriptions of places, time and mode of particular actions. Thereafter came adjectives with 5.5%, which were used to create accurate pictures of actions and things to the receiver. Closely after adjective was conjunction with 5.3%. Conjunctions were used to perform a linking function of joining words, phrases and clauses. Adverbs had the least frequency with 0.19%. There were no interjections in the data.
A number of lexical relations were found in the text messages. Antonymy rated the highest with 2.4%. Antonyms were used to create contrasts in order to create meaning. Meronymy comes next with 1%, used to make known what the component parts of objects or human beings signify in relation to the expression of certain human feelings and emotions. Coming after meronymy is hyponymy with 0.8%, then Ambiguity with 0.6%, then synonymy with 0.2%, homonymy with 0.2% and polysemy with 0.2% as well. The use of polysemy and homonymy show other possible meanings of a particular word, object, idea or phenomenon in passing across a message. The use of these other possible meanings however resulted in ambiguity.
Furthermore, most of the words that were used in the composition of the messages were created through derivation, which had 4.12%. Following it was compounding with 1.6% and conversion with 1.2%. Coinages had 0.2%, clipping had 0.2% and acronyms also had 0.2%. Borrowings, blends and back-formations where not found in our data.
The most prominent word sequence was the clause which had 20.5%. This was as a result of the use of very short expressions that are not sentences and they contained finite verbs, which did not make them phrases either. Next to the clause came phrases with 10.2% and then sentences with 5.9%. Most of the sentences used were simple sentences or dependent clauses, while other sentences were products of a combination of main and subordinate clauses.
Conclusion
The attempt of this essay was a Syntactic and a Lexico-semantic analysis of the personal text messages of the students of the University of Ilorin. As a result of the findings, it can therefore be concluded that, if an effective communication through personal text messages should be achieved, receivers should take note of all the lexical and syntactic features identified, for an appropriate interpretation.
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