Российский государственный педагогический университет им. А.И. Герцена

Факультет иностранных языков

Лексикологический анализ стихотворения

“A Cradle Song” by William Blake

Выполнила студентка 3 курса, 1ПА группы

Навроцкая Анастасия

Санкт-Петербург

2012

Contents

1. “A Cradle song”. The poem for the analysis……………………………………………3

2. The Functional Style…………………………………………………………………….4

3. Polysemy…………………………………………………………………………………5

4. Synonyms…………………………………………………………………………………7

5. Antonyms………………………………………………………………………………….8

6. Homonyms………………………………………………………………………………...9

7. Hypero-hyponimic relations……………………………………………………………..10

8. Word formation analysis…………………………………………………………………11

9. Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..12

A Cradle Song

Sweet dreams form a shade, O'er my lovely infants head. Sweet dreams of pleasant streams, By happy silent moony beams Sweet sleep with soft down. Weave thy brows an infant crown. Sweet sleep Angel mild, Hover o'er my happy child. Sweet smiles in the night, Hover over my delight. Sweet smiles Mothers smiles, All the livelong night beguiles. Sweet moans, dovelike sighs, Chase not slumber from thy eyes, Sweet moans, sweeter smiles, All the dovelike moans beguiles. Sleep sleep happy child, All creation slept and smil'd. Sleep sleep, happy sleep. While o'er thee thy mother weep Sweet babe in thy face, Holy image I can trace. Sweet babe once like thee. Thy maker lay and wept for me Wept for me for thee for all, When he was an infant small. Thou his image ever see. Heavenly face that smiles on thee, Smiles on thee on me on all, Who became an infant small, Infant smiles are His own smiles, Heaven & earth to peace beguiles. 

William Blake

3

The Functional Style

The Functional Style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves to define an aim of communication. . A functional style should be regarded as the product of a certain concrete task set by the sender of the message. Functional styles appear mainly in the literary standard of the language. These represent varieties of the abstract invariant and can deviate from the invariant, even breaking away with it.

Every functional style of language is marked by a specific use of language means, thus establishing its own norms which, however, are subordinated to the norm-invariant and which do not violate the general notion of the literary norm. The writers of the given period in the development of the literary language contribute greatly to establishing the system of norms of their period.

The language of poetry is characterized by its orderly form, which is based mainly on the rhythmic and phonetic arrangement of the utterances. The rhythmic aspect calls forth syntactic and semantic peculiarities. There are certain restrictions which result in brevity of expression, epigram-like utterances and fresh, unexpected imagery. Syntactically this brevity is shown in elliptical sentences, in detached constructions, in inversion, etc.

The Functional Style of “A Cradle Song”: “A Cradle Song” has a language that is a little bit different from the contemporary English language. Because of the fact that William Blake lived in 18-19 century there are some old forms of the words (thee). There are also words which are typical to poetry (O'er).

4

Polysemy

• The association of one word with two or more distinct meanings.

Head

1. top of body (He turned his head and looked at me.)

2. mind (Use your head to work out the answer.)

3. calm/sensible (We need a candidate who can keep his or her head even when clients get aggressive.)

4. person in charge (You should discuss the matter with your head of department.)

5. leading position (Jenny marched proudly at the head of the procession.)

…

Radial polysemy (or radiation) is the type of polysemy in which the primary meaning stands in the centre and the secondary meanings proceed out of it like rays. Each secondary meaning can be traced to the pri­mary meaning.

5

 Chain polysemy (or concatenation) is the type of polysemy in which the secondary meanings of a word develop like a chain. In such cases it may be difficult to trace some meanings to the primary one.

Dream

1. a series of thoughts, images, and feelings that you experience when you are asleep (In my dream I flew to a forest of enormous trees.)

2. a wish to do, be, or have something - used especially when this seems unlikely. (Her dream is to make a movie.)

3. something that seems perfect (I've finally found my dream house.)

6

Synonyms

Many scholars defined synonyms as words conveying the same notion but differing either in shades of meaning or in stylistic characteristics. In "Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms" its authors used the semantic criterion along with the criterion of interchangeability, which we may see from the definition.

A synonym is one of two or more words which have the same or nearly the same essential (denotational) meaning. It is not a matter of mere likeness in meaning, but a likeness in denotation which may be expressed in its definition. The definition must indicate¹ the part of speech and the relations of the ideas involved in a term's meaning.

The Russian philologist A.I. Smirnitsky suggested the classification of synonyms into 3 types:

1. Ideographic synonyms - words conveying the same notion but differing in shades of meaning: “Sweet” (looking pretty and attractive) – “dovelike” (cute, gentle)

2. Stylistic - words differing only in stylistic characteristics: “infant” – “babe” – “child” (more common and neutral).

3. Absolute (perfect, complete) - words coinciding in all their shades of meaning and in all their stylistic characteristics. Absolute synonyms are rare in a language.