23. Semasiology. Types of meaning. Meaning of a morpheme.

Semasiology is a discipline within linguistics concerned with the question "what does the word X mean?". It studies the meaning of words regardless of their phonetic expression.

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 (categorical) meaning and the lexical (material) meaning.

The grammatical meaning is defined as an expression in speech of relationship between words.

The lexical meaning 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'.

23. Word meaning. Referential and functional approaches to meaning.

Word – is considered a central unit of linguistic and speech because it possesses a phonetic shape and grammatical structure (morphological) and its meaning (semantic shape).

23. Connotative and denotative meaning. Types of connotative meaning.

• Denotation refers to the literal meaning of a word, the "dictionary definition."¨ For example, if you look up the word snake in a dictionary, you will discover that one of itsdenotative meanings is "any of numerous scaly, legless, sometimes venomous reptiles¡Khaving a long, tapering, cylindrical body and found in most tropical and temperate regions."

• Connotation, on the other hand, refers to the associations that are connected to a certain word or the emotional suggestions related to that word. The connotativemeanings of a word exist together with the denotative meanings. The connotations for the word snake could include evil or danger.

Types of connotative meaning

- Attitudinal meaning: The connotative meaning of a linguistic expression which takes the form of implicitly conveying a commonly held attitude or value. Instance: ‘The police’, ‘the filth’, and ‘the boy in blue’ are synonymous in terms of denotative content, but they have different overall meaning.

- Associative meaning: The connotative meaning of a linguistic expression which takes the form of attributing to the referent certain stereotypically expected properties culturally associated with that referent. Instance: The word ‘nurse’ is a good example. Most people automatically associate nurse with the idea of female gender

- Affective meaning: A type of connotative meaning, affective meaning is the emotive effect worked on the addressee by using one particular linguistic expression rather than others that might have been used to express the same literal meaning. Instance: ‘silence, please’ and ‘shut up’ share the same core denotative meaning of ‘be quiet’, but the speaker’s implied attitude to the listener produce a different affective impact in each case: polite in the first, rude in the second.

- Allusive meaning: A type of connotative meaning consists of invoking the meaning of an entire saying or quotation in which that expression figures. Instance: In the novel of ‘The City of Oppression’ by a Palestinian novelist. The city in question is clearly Jerusalem. The term ‘city of oppression’, which is used as a name of the city, alludes to the fact that Jerusalem is sometimes referred to as ‘city of peace’.

- Collocative meaning: The connotative meaning lent to a linguistic expression by the meaning of some other expression with which it frequently collocates. Instance: ‘pretty’, ‘handsome’, have a shared a sense of ‘good looking’. However, ‘pretty’ collocates readily with ‘girl’, ‘boy’, ‘woman’, ‘flower’, ‘garden’, while ‘handsome’ collocates with ’boy’, ‘man’, ‘car, ‘vessel’.

- Reflected meaning: connotative meaning given to a linguistic expression by the fact either that the form used calls to mind another denotative meaning of the same word or phrase, or that the form used to call to mind another denotative meaning of another word or phrase which is the same or similar in form. Instance: If someone says, ‘ Richard Nixon was a rat’, using ‘rat’ in the sense of a person who deserted his friends or associates, the word ‘rat’ not only carries the particular denotative meaning, but also invokes/evokes the more basic denotative meaning of the animal ’rat’.

23. Semantic structure of a word. Polysemy

23. Synchronic and diachronic approaches to polysemy.

Polysemy – is the ability of a word to possess several meanings or lexico-semantic variants (LSV), for instance, bright means ‘shining’ and ‘intelligent’.

A word having only one meaning is called monosemantic, for example, hydrogen, molecule. Such words are few in number.

A word having several meanings is called polysemantic. Such words are the bulk of the English vocabulary.

Synchronically polysemy is understood as the coexistence of various meanings of the same word at a certain historical period of the development of the English language. In the course of a synchronic semantic analysis of the world table all its meanings represent the semantic structure of it. The central (basic) place in the semantic structure occupies the meaning ‘a piece of furniture’. This emerges as the central (basic) meaning of the word, and all other meanings are marginal (minor) meanings.

DIACHRONIC APPROACH TO POLYSEMY

If polysemy is viewed diachronically it is understood as the growth and development or as a change in semantic structure of the word. Polysemy in diachronic term implies that a word may retain its previous meaning or meanings and at the same time acquire one or several new ones.

According to this approach in the semantic structure of a word two types of meaning can be singled out: the primary meaning and the secondary meaning.

23. Semantic structure of a word. Word paradigm.

23. Change of word meaning. Elevation and degradation of meaning.

24. Change of word meaning. Extension and narrowing of meaning.

25. Change of word meaning. Figures of speech. Metaphor and metonymy.

Elevation - When the meaning of a word narrows toward a more favourable meaning it is called elevation

Degradation - Degradation means the falling of word meaning into disrepute, for one reason or another. Words once respectable or neutral may shift to a less respectable, or even derogatory meaning.

Extension - The extension of meaning, the opposite of restriction, means the widening of a word's sense until it covers much more than what it originally conveyed.

Narrowing - Narrowing of meaning, also called restriction of meaning, means that a word of wide meaning acquires a narrower, specialised sense which is applicable to only one of the objects it previously denoted.

Metaphor (drawing a similarity between two things) and metonymy (drawing a contiguity between two things) are two fundamental opposite poles along which a discourse withhuman language is developed.^[1] It has been argued that the two poles of similarity and contiguity are fundamental ones along which the human brain is structured; in the study of human language the two poles have been called metaphor and metonymy, while in the study of the unconscious they have been called condensation and displacement.