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