grammatical meaning

6.3

A part of a word that shows its grammar role, like tense or number

noun
/ˈɡræmətɪkəl ˈmiːnɪŋ/

Specialized

: significado gramatical

In the verb 'walked', the '-ed' ending gives the word its grammatical meaning of past tense.

Examples

The grammatical meaning of a noun can indicate singular or plural form through its ending.
Some words have little lexical meaning and exist primarily to convey grammatical meaning.
The grammatical meaning of the verb changes with tense.
Understanding grammatical meanings is essential for language learning.
In the verb 'walked', the '-ed' ending gives the word its grammatical meaning of past tense.
Some words have little lexical meaning and exist primarily to convey grammatical meaning.
The grammatical meaning of a noun can indicate singular or plural form through its ending.

Surface Forms

grammatical meaning singular

grammatical meanings plural

Morphology

grammatical + meaning

The phrase is a straightforward compositional combination: 'grammatical' (pertaining to language structure) qualifies 'meaning' (the sense conveyed), so the idea of meaning determined by grammar is directly inferable. This adjective+noun pattern is cross-linguistically common and should be understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.

Etymology

The term grammatical meaning comes from the idea that small grammar parts, like the ending -ed in walked, work like clues that tell us 'past' or 'plural'. So the phrase means the meaning a word gets from its grammar job in a sentence.