The meaning of any domain, whether morpheme or larger, may be defined as the common feature in the social, cultural, and interpersonal situations in which that interval occurs. It is often impossible to state such a common feature of meaning; we can then say that the meaning of an element in each linguistic environment is the difference between the meaning of its linguistic environment and the meaning of the whole utterance (i.e. the whole social situation). Thus the meaning of 'blue' in 'blueberry' might be said to be the meaning of 'blueberry' minus the meaning of 'berry' and of the ˈ̀—ˌˌ— morpheme: 'blue' here therefore does not mean simply a color, but the observable differentia of 'blueberry' as against other 'berries'. However, in some languages, including English, the easily observable variation of meaning is very great. The correlation with meaning can then be made directly with the sequence of morpheme plus its environment, using as much of the environment as is necessary to differentiate the special meaning: we use 'blueberry' but not 'blueberries', since the meaning of 'blueberries' is simply the meaning of 'blueberry' plus the meaning of '-s'. Thus the dictionary which would ordinarily list only the morphemes and their meanings and individual special selections, would also list these constructional sequences of morphemes, instead of discussing the participating morphemes separately. In some cases it would be possible to show that as aspect of the meaning is common to all the occurrences of a particular construction, no matter what the individual morphemes involved. That much can then be taken out as the meaning of the domain arrangement, and need not be given as due to any of the morphemes involved. Of course, if there is a morpheme characteristic of the construction, like the ˈ̀—ˌˌ— morpheme of the 'FBFB' construction, the constructional meaning can be assigned to that morpheme. If there is no such common morpheme, the meaning is assigned merely to the arrangement of morpheme classes which constitutes that construction.
- Harris (1951), a pag.347