Syncronic approach – concerned with vocabulary as it
exists at a given period of time.
Diachronical approach – deals with the changes in the
vocabulary in the course of time.
Referential approach to meaning
The basic triangular.
Concept
Sound form
Referent
Connection between the sound form and the referent is
conventional. It can be established through the concept
which belongs to a category of human cognition (познание).
The concept is the result of abstraction. Meaning is the
interrelations between the three points of the triangular.
Functional approach to meaning
The meaning of a linguistic unit may be studied only through
its relations to other linguistic units (distribution of a word),
through the context. If the distribution of 2 words is
different, then their meanings are different. E.g. He looked at
me. (hardly to collect all meanings). Complementary to the
referential approach.
Operational approach to meaning
It describes meaning as information conveyed from the
speaker to the listener. E.g. John came at 6 o’clock.
(depending on the situation, it may mean smth else, e.g. he is
2 hours late or he is punctual as usual). The information
added to the extralinguistic situation may be called sense.
Word-meaning is made of several components: grammatical
meaning (tense, aspect), part-of-speech (lexico-grammatical)
meaning (refers a word to a certain class), lexical meaning.
Lex. maning consists of connotational (includes the emotive
charge and the stylistic value (st. reference) of the word) and
denotational meaning (expresses the notional content of the
word – words denote things or concepts). Emotive charge –
the capacity of a word to express emotion, evaluation and
intensity. E.g. Daddy as compared to father (emotion).
Clique as compared to group (evaluation). Adore as
compared to love (intensity). St. reference – literary, neutral
or colloquial. E.g. father-dad-parent.
Colloquial words may be subdivided into common coll.
(dad), slang (“egg” for person), professionalisms (lab, doc),
jargonisms (particular society groups; words bearing a secret,
e.g. a sucker), vulgarisms (damn), dialectal words, coll.
coinages.
Bookish words may be subdivided: general literary
(harmony), terms, poetic words and archaisms (albeit instead
of although, nay instead of no), barbarisms and foreign
words.
Meaning can be motivated phonetically, morphologically or
semantically. Phonetic motivation: connection of the phonetic
structure of a word and its meaning. Morphological
motivation: connection of the lexical meanings of the
component morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and
the meaning of the word. E.g. to rethink (the idea of thinking).
Semantic motivation: eye-wash – 2 meanings – lotion for eyes
and smth said or done to deceive a person; the 1 st meaning is
based on the literal meanings of the components, the
meanings of the morphemes “eye” and “wash”
(morphological motivation); the 2nd meaning is metaphoric, or
figurative (semantic motivation). S.m. is based on the
coexistence of the direct and figurative meaning in the
semantic structure of a word.
Semantic change
Causes: extralinguistic (hlaford – хранитель хлеба, стало –
лорд) and linguistic: ellipsis (to starve in OE used in
collocation with the word “hunger”, meaning “to die”, in ME
it acquired the meaning “to die of hunger”), differentiation
between synonyms (land in OE – solid part of Earth’s surface
and territory of a nation, in ME – the word “country” was
borrowed, which came to mean “territory of a nation”, the
word “land” lost this meaning), fixed context (token – native
word, sign – borrowed word; token became restricted in use:
love token).
Nature: some association between the old meaning and the
new one. 1) similarity of meaning (metaphor) – hand acquired
the meaning of a point of the clock (similarity of function); 2)
contiguity of meaning (metonymy) – bench acquired the
meaning of “judges” (judges used to sit on the bench).
Results: 1) changes of denotational meaning – restriction of
meaning (the word “hound” meant “a dog”, later – “a dog
used in the chase”); 2) extension of meaning (“target” meant a
small round shield, came to mean anything that is fired at); 3)
changes in the connotational component - deterioration of
meaning (“boor” – a peasant, became – a clumsy and ill-bred
fellow); 4) amelioration of meaning (“minister” – a servant,
came to mean a person administrating a department of state).
Polysemy
Word is a 2-facet unit (the formal facet – the sound form, the
content facet – meaning). Modern approaches to the study of
meaning are characterized by 2 different levels of
investigation – syntagmatic and paradigmatic. On the
syntagmatic level the semantic structure of word is analysed
in its relationships with neighbouring words in connected
speech (to get a letter, to get to London, to get tired). On the
paradigmatic level the word is studied in its relationships with
other words in the vocabulary system (the meaning of “to get”
may be understood only in comparison with other items – the
synonimic set). The English word-stock may be analysed into
numerous subsystems, the members of which have some
features in common, thus distinguishing them from members
of other lexical subsystems. Words may be classified
according to the concepts underlying their meaning. This
classification is connected with the theory of conceptual
(semantic) fields. Sem. field – a closely linked sector of
vocabulary characterized by a common concept (blue, red,
yellow – the sem. field of color). The members of this sem.
fields are not synonyms but are joined together by some
common sem. component (colour, emotion) – the common
denominator. Words making up sem. fields belong to
different parts of speech. There may be comparatively small
groups of words which belong to some part of speech, and
they are called lexico-semantic groups.
Another approach of the classification of vocabulary items
into lexico-semantic groups is the study of hyponymic
relations. Hyponym is a semantic relationship of inclusion
(may be viewed as the hierarachical relationship between the
meaning of the general (hyperonym) and individual
(hyponym) terms.
Word structure
Words consist of morphemes, and the morpheme is defined as
the smallest indivisible 2-facet language unit. Semantically
morphemes fall into root morphemes (lexical nucleus of a
word having an individual lexical meaning shared by no other
morphemes in the language) and non-root (affixational)
morphemes. They are inflections (only gram. meaning
relevant for the formation of word forms) and affixes
(relevant for building various types of stems) – the part of a
word remaining unchanged throughout its paradigm. There is
the functional and semantic distinction between a
morphological stem and the derivational base. E.g. boyish –
“boy” –derivational base, “boyish” – morphological stem.
The morph. stem is the starting point for the forms of the
word. E.g. glass-glasses. It predicts the part-of-speech
meaning and it stands for the whole semantic structure of a
word. Deriv. base – for different words: glass-glassful. It
represents only 1 meaning of the whole source word.
Word formation
Studies the derivative structure of existing words and the
patterns on which the language builds new words. The basic
ways of forming words
1) in word derivation:
1. Affixation
2. Conversion
3. Minor ways – shortening (defence-fence), sound
interchange (food-feed), stress interchange (to
increase-increase).
2) in word composition: looking-glass.
Word groups and phraseological units
The 2 main linguistic factors in uniting words into word
groups – lexical and grammatical valency of words. Lexical
valency – aptness of a word to appear in different
combinations (to raise a question). Gram. valency – to appear
in specific grammatical and syntactical structures (to offer to
do smth)
The meaning in w-grs may be motivated if the combined lex
meaning of this group is deducible from the meaning of its
components: red flower.
The meaning in w-gr may be non-motivated – red tape – if the
components do not syntactically possess the denotational
meaning found in the same words in isolation. Completely or
partially non-motivated w-grs are described as phraseological
units or idioms. The classification of Vinogradov is based on
the semantic principle. Taking into account the degree of
idiomacity phraseological units may be classified into 3 big
gr-s.
1. Phr. fusions (completely non-motivated)
2. Phr. unities (partially non-motivated) – meaning can be
usually perceived through the metaphoric meaning of the
whole unity (to wash one’s dirty linen in public).
3. Phr. collocations (motivated but made up of words
possessing specific lexical valency which accounts for a
certain degree of stability in such word groups).
Coonin. Smirnitsky.
Variants and dialects
Variants – original varieties of a standard literary language
characterized by some peculiarities in the sound system,
vocabulary and grammar and by their own literary norms.
Dialects – varieties of a language used as a means of oral
communication in small localities.
Variants – differences in the field of phonetics – articulation,
rhythm, intonation of speech. The variations in vocabulary are
not very numerous. In grammar – differences are not so
essential. E.g. Am.E – gotten, Br.E. – got. Not dialects
because they serve all spheres of verbal communication in
society and within their territorial area they have dialectal
differences of their own.
Lexical differences: different variants of English use different
words for the same object
BE
AE
flat
apartment
underground
subway
post
mail
government
administration
In some cases both variants may be used in England and the
US, but one of them is more frequent in Britain, the other – in
the US (post-mail). Full Briticisms (Americanisms) may be
subdivided into: 1) Lexical units denoting some realia that
have no counterparts elsewhere; 2) have counterparts but
expressed in quite a different way. (Locally marked words,
slang, etc. are not taken into consideration). There are
differences of other kind: the so-called derivational variant of
words having the same root and identical in lex. meaning but
different in derivational affixes (BE acclimate, AE –
acclimatize). It is not sufficient to bring into comparison
separate words, but to compare lexico-semantic groups (BE
and AE have different sets of words denoting inland areas, but
only “inland” is common to both). The differences in the very
fashion of use in words (the gram. valency of the verb “to
push” is much narrower in Austr.E than in BNE and AE). As
to word-formation, the difference lies in the degree of
productivity of word-building means in this or that variant
(suf. –ette and prefix super- are used more in AE). The
differences do not make a system.
Dialects – only for oral communication. In BE the local
dialects are replaced by regional variants of the literary
language with a proportion of local dialect features. Local
variations in the USA are relatively small. The dialects are
closer in nature to regional variants of the national literary
language.
Various ways of word creation
1) Lexicalization (grammatical flexion, development of
different lex. meanings)
2) Shortening
1. transformation of word groups into words
- substantivisation (dropping of the final nominal member of
a frequently used attributive word group) – the finals (from
“final examinations”)
- acronyms (regular vocabulary units – from the initial letters
(NATO), from the initial syllables (Interpol), by a
combination of a letter and a word (V-day)) and letter
abbreviations (replacement of longer phrases letter by letter –
DOD – Department of Defence)
- blendings (merging of fragments of several words –
Medicare, brunch).
2. clipping – shortening a word of 2 or more syllables – have
a certain phonetic shape and logical meaning of their own
(doc – one who practices medicine, doctor – the higher degree
given by university): phone, maths, flu.
Borrowings
Nowadays active only in the field of scientific terminology.
The present-day English vocabulary, especially its
terminological layers, is enriched by: words made up of
morphemes of Latin and Greek origin. There are true
borrowings from different languages, they reflect the way of
life, the peculiarities of development of the speech
communities from which they come (kolhoz), loan
translations (self-criticism).
Synonyms and antonyms
Synonyms – words belonging to the same part of speech,
different in their sound from and spelling, but similar in their
denotational meaning or meanings and interchangeable in
some contexts (to answer- to reply). Usually differ in shades
of denotational meaning, emotive charge, stylistic reference
and valency. Synonimic dominant – more general term.
Radiation of synonyms – when a particular word is given a
transferred meaning, its synonyms tend to develop along
parallel lines.
Antonyms – words belonging to the same part of speech,
identical in style, whose denotational meanings render
contrary or contradictory notions. Types:
1) contradictories (not A but B) – dead-alive
2) contraries (A and B = all) – cold-hot (may be cool,
warm, etc.)
3) incompatibles (A or B) – red-black.
Types:
1) absolute (root): love-hate
2) derivational: known-unknown.