Context Effect and its Strategies to Clarify the Meaning of Unfamiliar Words

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of context (verbal context or text of situation) to clarify the meaning of an unfamiliar words, by induction the Prophet’s traditions, which include unfamiliar words in the study's corps. Moreover, the article explains the context strategies to reach its effect. The context has varied aspects to clarify the meaning: it is either preference one meaning over another, or preference a formula over another, or clarification general meaning of a word (The semantic field), or clarification an exact meaning by various strategies: the selection restrictions, the simile, and the antonymy. The paper concludes that the context has a limited effect to clarify the meanings of unfamiliar words, especially if it is incomplete, when many of its elements of situation are absent, due to narration. Rather, the context may be a cause of ambiguity when it gives some expressions ambiguous meanings and takes off their known lexical meanings. Keywords: Unfamiliar words, Context, Semantics, Significance of context.