Лексическое значение и семантическая структура английских слов.

Комплексная цель: дать общее представление о природе значения слов, определение семасиологии, раскрыть основные типы лексических значений слова и принципы их классификации, взаимосвязь между значением слова и его сочетаемостью, значением и употреблением. Охарактеризовать понятие полисемия, ее роль в языке и причины этого явления, смысловая структура многозначного слова, историческая изменчивость смысловой структуры слова и ее причины, основные типы семантических изменений слов.

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Types of Meaning

Semasiologyis a branch of lexicology which deals not with every kind of linguistic meaning but with lexical meaning only. Word-meaning is not homogeneous. It is made up of various components. These components are described as types of meaning. The two main types of meaning are the grammatical meaning and the lexical meaning.

The grammatical meaningis defined as an expression in speech of relationship between words. Grammatical meaning is the component of meaning recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words, as, for example, the tense meaning in the word-forms of the verbs: asked, thought, walked; the case meaning in the word-forms of various nouns: girl's, boy's, night's; the meaning of plurality which is found in the word-forms of nouns: joys, tables, places.

The majority of the linguists of our country agree as to one basic principle: they all point out thatlexical meaningis the realization of the notion by means of definite language system.The lexical meaning of the word is the meaning proper to the given linguistic unit in all its forms and distributions. The word-forms go, goes, went, going, gone possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person, number, but in each form they have one and the same semantic component denoting 'the process of movement'.

Both the lexical and grammatical meanings make up the word-meaning as neither can exist without the other.

The denotational aspectof lexical meaning is the part of lexical meaning which establishes correlation between the name and the object, phenomenon, process or characteristic feature of concrete reality (or thought as such), which is denoted by the given word. The term “denotational” is derived from the English word to denote which means 'be a sign of, indicate, stand as a name or symbol for'. For example, the denotational meaning of booklet is 'a small thin book that gives information about something'. The denotational aspect of lexical meaning expresses the notional content of a word.

The connotational aspectof lexical meaning is the part of meaning which reflects the attitude of the speaker towards what he speaks about. Connotation conveys additional information in the process of communication. Connotation includes:

1) the emotive charge,e.g. daddy as compared to father,

2) evaluation,which may be positive or negative, e. g. clique (a small group of people who seem unfriendly to other people) as compared to group (a set of people);

3) intensity(or expressiveness),e.g. adore as compared to love;

4) imagery,e.g. to wade — to walk with an effort (through mud, water or anything that makes progress difficult). The figurative use of the word gives rise to another meaning which is based on the same image as the first — to wade through a book.

The pragmatic aspectof lexical meaning is the part of meaning, that conveys information on the situation of communication. Like the connotational aspect, the pragmatic aspect falls into four closely linked together subsections:

1) information on the “time and space” relationship of the participants.

2) information on the participants and the given language
community.

3) information on the tenor of discourse.

4)information on the register of communication.Three main types of the situations of communication are usually singled out: formal, neutral and informal. Practically every word in the language is register-oriented. Thus, the pragmatic aspect of meaning refers words like cordial, fraternal, anticipate, aid, sanguinary, celestial to the formal register while units like cut it out, to be kidding, hi, stuff 'are to be used in the informal register.

Word meaning is liable to change in the course of the historical development of language. There are distinguished causes of semantic change, nature and results of the process of change of meaning.

Causes of Semantic Change.The factors accounting for semantic changes may be roughly subdivided into two groups: a) extra-linguistic; b) linguistic.

By extra-linguistic causes various changes in the life of the speech community are meant, i. e. changes in economic and social structure, changes in scientific concepts. For example, changes in the way of life of the British brought about changes in the meaning hlaford. Originally the word meant 'bread-keeper' («хранитель хлеба»), and later on 'master, ruler' («повелитель, лорд»).

Some changes of meaning occur due to purely linguistic causes, i. e. factors acting within the language system.

Nature of Semantic Change.A necessary condition of any semantic change is some connection, some association between the old meaning and the new one. There are two kinds of association involved in various semantic changes:

a)similarity of meanings;

b)contiguity of meanings.

Similarity of meanings or metaphormay be described as the semantic process of associating two referents, one of which in some way resembles the other. The word hand, for instance, acquired in the 16^th century the meaning of “a pointer of a clock or a watch” because of the similarity of one of the functions performed by the hand (“to point to smth.”) and the function of the clock-pointer. See the expression hands of the clock {watch).

Contiguity of meanings or metonymymay be described as the semantic process of associating two referents one of which makes part of the other or is closely connected with it. This can be illustrated by the use of the word tongue — “the organ of speech” in the meaning of 'language' (as in mother tongue).

Results of Semantic Change.Results of semantic change can be generally observed in the changes of the denotational meaning of the word, i.e. in restriction or extension of meaning.

Restriction of meaningcan be illustrated by the semantic development of the word hound which used to denote “dog of any breed” but now denotes only “a dog used in the chase”. If the word with a new restricted meaning comes to be used in the specialized vocabulary of some limited group within the speech community it is usual to speak of the specialization of meaning.

Extension of meaningmay be illustrated by the word target which originally meant “a small round shield” but now means “anything that is fired at”. If the word with the extended meaning passes from the specialized vocabulary into common use, the result of the semantic change is described as the generalization of meaning.

Results of semantic change can be also observed in the alteration of the connotational aspect of meaning, i.e. in amelioration or deterioration of meaning.

Amelioration of meaningimplies the improvement of the connotational component of meaning. For instance, the word minister originally denoted ”a servant” but now — “a civil servant of higher rank, a person administering a department of state”.

Deterioration(or the pejorative development) of meaningimplies the acquisition by the word of some derogatory emotive charge. For example, the word boor was originally used to denote “a peasant” and then acquired a derogatory connotational meaning and came to denote “a clumsy or ill-bred fellow”.

Polysemyis a phenomenon which has an exceptional importance for the description of a language system and for the solution of practical tasks connected with an adequate understanding of the meaning of a word and its use.

A word may have several meanings. Then it is called a polysemanticword. Words having only one meaning are called monosemantic.Monosemantic words are few in number. These are mainly scientific terms. The bulk of English words are polysemantic.

A great contribution to the development of the problem of polysemy was made by the Russian linguist V.V. Vinogradov. The scientist admitted the importance of differentiating the meaning from the usage (a contexual variant). Meaningsare fixed and common to all people, who know the language system. The usageis only a possible application of one of the meanings of a polysemantic word, sometimes very individual, sometimes more or less familiar. Meaning is not identical with usage.

Of special importance is the fact that polysemy exists only in language, not in speech. The meaning of a word in speech is contextual.

If polysemy is viewed diachronicallyit is understood as the growth and development or as a change in the semantic structure of the word. Polysemy in diachronic terms implies that a word may retain its previous meaning or meanings and at the same time acquire one or several new ones. Thus, according to the diachronic approach in the semantic structure of a word two types of meaning can be singled out: the primary meaningand the secondary meaning.

Synchronicallypolysemy is understood as the coexistence of various meanings of the same word at a certain historical period of the development of the English language.

The term “context”denotes the minimal stretch of speech determining each individual meaning of the word. Contexts may be of two types: linguistic (verbal) and extra-linguistic (non-verbal).

Linguistic contextsmay be subdivided into lexical and grammatical.

In lexical contextsof primary importance are the groups of lexical items combined with the polysemantic word under consideration. This can be illustrated by the results of the analysis of different lexical contexts in which a polysemantic word is used. For example, the adjective heavy used with the words load, table means 'of great weight'. When combined with the words denoting natural phenomena such as rain, storm, snow, wind the adjective heavy is understood as denoting 'abundant, striking, falling with force'. If used with the words industry, artillery, arms and the like, heavy has the meaning 'the larger kind of smth'.

In grammatical contextsit is the grammatical (syntactic) structure of the context that serves to determine various individual meanings of a polysemantic word. The meaning of the verb to make — 'to force, to induce' is found only in the grammatical context possessing the syn­tactic structure to make + prn. + verb {to make smb. laugh, to make smb. work, to make smb. sit). Another meaning of this verb — 'to be­come' is observed in the context of a different syntactic structure — to make + adj. + noun {to make a good wife, to make a good teacher). Such meanings are sometimes described as grammatically bound mean­ings.

There are cases when the meaning of a word is ultimately determined by the actual speech situation in which the word is used, i.e. by the extra-linguistic context(or context of situation).

There are two main participants in the process of nomination: the one who gives a name to an object (the nominator)and the object which is given a name (the referent).The process of giving a name to an object consists of several stages.

1. The process of nomination starts with forming a conceptof the object. The concept is a generalized idea of a class of objects, summing up the most essential features of the given class thus distinguishing it from other classes. There are several factors which influence the formation of concepts: 1) the objective reality itself. This factor accounts for differences in concepts in different language communities. 2) the level of knowledge about the nature and structure of the given object. 3) the general system of notions typical of the given language community, e.g. philosophic, moral, religious and other principles existing at the given period of time.

The next stage in the process of naming is the designation of class of objects under nomination with the help of linguistic means. To form meaning certain features (not necessarily the most important in shaping the concept) are singled out to underlie word semantics. The features chosen as the basic characteristics of the object form the denotatum.It is really what the word denotes, while the concept and the referent are what the word is correlated with. The interrelations of concept and denotatum may be different, in some cases the denotatum is close to the concept, in other cases it is much narrower than the underlying concept as can be seen from. The denotational part of meaning is relatively stable and it stands to represent all the characteristics of the object — general, individual, and those to be discovered.

3. Defining a set of denotational features constituting the most important part of meaning (i. e. the semantic core) in the process of nomination is not the final stage. The next step is the formation of functional significance of a linguistic unit. The attitude of the speaker towards the object, the place it is ascribed among other things also finds its reflection in shaping lexical meaning. Information suggested in addition to the denotatummay refer to the positive or negative attitude of the nominator, or it may indicate a certain situation of communication and point out at the participants and their roles. This additional information shapes the communicative value of lexical meaning.

4. Coming to the final stage it should be noted that to become a word, the semantic side formed in the process of nomination is to be correlated with certain material structure, i.e. the sound formand the graphic form.The acquisition of the sound and graphic forms makes it possible for the word to be conveyed from one person to another to serve the purposes of communication.

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