Heart – a part of body which pumps blood

The heart of a matter

Functional stylistic component of meaning shows the sphere of communication with which the word is associated.

3. Context: different interpretations. The role of context in the discrimination of the individual meaning of polysemantic words. Extralinguistic and linguistic context. Lexical, syntactical and mixed context. Lexical context of the first and second degree. Connection between a dependent and the indicator.

We distinguish between the lexical meaning of a word in speech and its semantic structure in lang. The meaning in speech is contextual as any word actually used has only one meaning. – it’s monosemantic but the bulk of English words are polysemantic, i.e. they possess more than one meaning. The actial number of meanings of the commonly used words ranges from 5 to about 100 (i.e. to set has 126 meanings).

Polysemy is characteristic of most words in many lang-s. However different they may be but it is more characteristic of the English voc-ry as compared with Russian due to the monosyllabic character of English words and predominance of root words. Verbs and nouns are characterized by a greater polysemy than adjectives and adverbs. All the meanings of a polysemantic word depend on the context they are used in. Distinction is made between extralinguistic or situational context and verbal or linguistic context.

Linguistic context contains a necessary indication in the semantics of a word in the sentence structure, in the morphological form of the word.

Extralinguistic context is situational. Its indicators are different elements of reality.

Which way have youshosen? 9a route)

This way of the experiment is the shortest.

Linguistic context is defined as the minimum stretch of speech necessary and sufficient to show which meaning of a polysemantic word is realised.

Context includes:

• the indicator

• the dependant – the word whose meaning is to be realised in the given utterance.

Types of linguistic context

• lexical – in which indication comes from the semantics of a word or words (the mouth of the river – [the mouth is the dependant, river – the indicator]; the mouth of the child ). Indication comes from the lexical meaning of the words river, child.

We deal with the lexical context of the 1^st and the 2^nd degree. In lexical context of the 1^st degree there’s immediate syntactical connection between the dependant and the indicator.

Sharp (dependant ) teeth, knife, flavour – indicators

In lexical context of the 2^nd degree there is no direct connection between a dependant and the indicator

Fair woman

• Grammatical context – the meanings are distinguished by some morphological form of the word (custom – customs – plural form does serve as the meaning distinguisher) or the syntactic structure of the word helps to determine various individual meanings of the words (to make sth., to make smb., to make smb. do sth. – the indicator is the syntactic str-re).

4.Conversion as a productive type of word-building means in Modern English. The historical development of conversion: synchronic and diachronic approach. Semantic relationships in conversion. Conversion in different parts of speech. Conversion and other types of word-formation.

Conversion is a characteristic feature of the English word-building system. It is also called affixless derivation or zero-suffixation. The term «conversion» first appeared in the book by Henry Sweet «New English Grammar» in 1891. Conversion is treated differently by different scientists, e.g. prof. A.I. Smirntitsky treats conversion as a morphological way of forming words when one part of speech is formed from another part of speech by changing its paradigm, e.g. to form the verb «to dial» from the noun «dial» we change the paradigm of the noun (a dial, dials) for the paradigm of a regular verb (I dial, he dials, dialed, dialing). A. Marchand in his book «The Categories and Types of Present-day English» treats conversion as a morphological-syntactical word-building because we have not only the change of the paradigm, but also the change of the syntactic function, e.g. I need some good paper for my room. (The noun «paper» is an object in the sentence). I paper my room every year. (The verb «paper» is the predicate in the sentence).

Conversion is the main way of forming verbs in Modern English. Verbs can be formed from nouns of different semantic groups and have different meanings because of that, e.g.

a) verbs have instrumental meaning if they are formed from nouns denoting parts of a human body e.g. to eye, to finger, to elbow, to shoulder etc. They have instrumental meaning if they are formed from nouns denoting tools, machines, instruments, weapons, e.g. to hammer, to machine-gun, to rifle, to nail,

b) verbs can denote an action characteristic of the living being denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to crowd, to wolf, to ape,

c) verbs can denote acquisition, addition or deprivation if they are formed from nouns denoting an object, e.g. to fish, to dust, to peel, to paper,

d) verbs can denote an action performed at the place denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to park, to garage, to bottle, to corner, to pocket,

e) verbs can denote an action performed at the time denoted by the noun from which they have been converted e.g. to winter, to week-end .

Verbs can be also converted from adjectives, in such cases they denote the change of the state, e.g. to tame (to become or make tame) , to clean, to slim etc.

Nouns can also be formed by means of conversion from verbs. Converted nouns can denote:

a) instant of an action e.g. a jump, a move,

b) process or state e.g. sleep, walk,

c) agent of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a help, a flirt, a scold ,

d) object or result of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a burn, a find, a purchase,

e) place of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a drive, a stop, a walk.

Many nouns converted from verbs can be used only in the Singular form and denote momentaneous actions. In such cases we have partial conversion. Such deverbal nouns are often used with such verbs as : to have, to get, to take etc., e.g. to have a try, to give a push, to take a swim .