autosemantic

adjective

Meaning

Possessing an independent lexical meaning that does not require the presence of other words to be understood.

Examples

  • Nouns and verbs are typically autosemantic, whereas prepositions and conjunctions are synsemantic.
  • The linguist argued that every autosemantic unit in the sentence provides a distinct piece of information.

Synonyms: independent, content-bearing, lexical, notional