C

Stylistically

olloqual

S

Neutral

marked

Common

colloquial

lang

D

Substandard

colloqual

ialect

L

Vulgar-s

earned

Poetic

T

Slang

Prof-sms

erminological

A

Jargon -s

rchaic

terms

Dialect

2) Literary

Bookish

barbaisms

Poetic words

I.R. Galperin

Neutral	::Literary::	Non-Literary (Familiar Colloqual )
	- General	-Low Colloqual
	- Poetic	- Jargon
	Scientific Learned Archaic Neologisms	Slang Vulgarisms Dialectal words

Witness1 “evidence, testimony” – a direct, abstract, primary meaning;

Witness2 “a person with knowledge of an event” – a metonymical, concrete, secondary;

Witness3 “a person who gives evidence in court” – metonymical, concrete, secondary;

Witness4 “a person who puts his signature to a document” – metonymical, concrete, secondary fr. W3.

The study of means and ways of naming the elements of reality is onomasiology (theory of nomination). Ex.: Ophelia, sweet maid, nymph, kind sister,a rose of May, pretty lady.

Contextual analysis: “It is from linguistic contexts that the meanings of a high proportion of lexical units in active or passive vocabularies are learned” (E. Nida). ‘Some men have acted courage who had it not; but no man can act wit’ (Halifax) = act ’pretend’

N.N. Amosova:

Context is a combination of the indicator or indicating minimum and the dependant or the word, the meaning of which is to be rendered in a given utterance”

Context:

1. Lexical (black gloves, velvet(colour); but black thoughts, despair(sad); black days, black period(unhappy )

2. Syntactical ( I couldn’t make (cause) him understand a word I said)

3. Mixed (after affixed time): to be late for school, but in late summer( the end of the period); the late (recently dead)

Componential analysis:

Describes the meaning of words in terms of a universal inventory of semantic components and their possible combinations.

L. Hjelmslev’s commutation test:

d1 = boy::girl = man::woman = bull::cow (distinctive feature, a semantic component, seme - sex);

d2 = boy::man = girl::woman (age);

d3 = boy::bull = girl: cow (human and animal being)

A man (male (adult ((human being))) ;

Woman (female (adult (human being))),

Girl (female (non-adult (human being))).

L. Hielmslev’s commutation test.

D1=boy = man =bull(male::female)

Girl=woman=cow

D2=boy=girl

Man=woman(young::adult)

D3=boy=girl

Bull=cow(human::animal)

D1,D2, D3(male, young, human) -distinctive features

J.Katz and J.Fodor, R.S. Ginzburg:

semantic markers (common features) and distinguishers (distinctive features):

spinster – noun (class seme), count noun, human, adult, female, who has never been married (distinguisher) as in opposition: spinster::widow, bride, etc.

Method of logical definition:

cow – a full grown female of any animal of the ox family;

calf – the young of the cow.

Transformational analysis: team ‘a group of people acting together in a game’:

Sn coll.-a body (group, number) of people (men, persons) who V (Ving,Ved).

TEST

1. Name as many approaches to the word definition as possible.

2. Enumerate types of a word.

3. Give examples of different motivations of words.

4. Define lexical, grammatical and lexico-grammatical meanings and give examples of each.

5. Name the components of denotative meaning and give examples.

6. Name the components of connotative meaning and give examples.

7. Give examples of the main oppositions in the semantic structure of a polysemantic word.

8. What semantic change is gradual and what is momentary?

9. Enumerate different cases of SPECIALIZATION and give examples.

10. What types of similarity can metaphor be based on?