18 Lexical meaning and semantic structure of the English word Word meaning
The branch of linguistics which studies the meaning of words is called semasiology.
Meaning – the most controversial problem of the theory of the language. The definition of meaning has been the subject of discussions for a long time. Meaning has been the object of study at the early stages of civilization when linguistics was a part of philosophy. The problem of meaning was investigated by Plato, Socrates.
Meaning is characteristics of words which makes it possible for the word to function as the unit of communication. Meaning can be described as a component of the word through which a concept is conveyed. There are two approaches to the problem of meaning:
referential,
functional.
Referential approach establishes the interdependence between words, things and concepts they denote.
The functional approach studies the function of words in speech and is more concerned with how the meaning acts.
The referential approach distinguishes between three components of meaning. They are the sound form of the linguistic sign, the concept, the actual referent that is the part of reality to which the linguistic sign refers. The best known model of the connection between these 3 components is called semantic triangle (basic triangle) established by Ogden and Richards.
There is no immediate connection between these components as relations are conveyed through people’s mind. There exists a hypothesis that concepts can only find realization through words. According to it it’s only where we see the printed word or hear them we can imagine the object. The mechanisms of realization are not yet completely understood. The problem between words and reference has been studied by many generations of linguists. There are many modifications of triangle. The sound form of the word is not identical to its meaning as in different language one and the same meaning is conveyed by different sound forms. There are some cases when almost identical forms have different meanings, e. g.: speed – СПИД, tree – три. Meaning and concepts are not identical too. Concept is the thought about the object that is singled out from the others. Concepts are results of generalization and abstraction. They are the same for the whole human kind in minds but meanings are different in different languages. In different languages words denoting the same concepts may have different semantic structure, e. g.: “house” (строение) is not equal to the word “home” (дом). It is possible to denote one and the same object by more than one word with different meaning.
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Concept (thought) |
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symbol (sound form) |
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referent (object as a part of the reality) |
Meaning is not always equal to the actual properties of the object or referent. There are some words which have meanings but the objects they denote don’t exist, e. g.: “witch”, “angel”. So meaning can’t be identified with any of the points of the semantic triangle.
The functional approach has been developed in structural linguistics. It maintains that the meaning of any linguistic unit can be studied only through its relation to other linguistic units. The meanings are different because their functions in speech are different. Words occupy certain position ascribed to them, e. g.: verb + noun or verb + adjective, pronoun + verb, adjective + noun. The distribution of words is different hence the meaning is different too. The functional approach is not alternative but the compliment to the referential theory.