25) Degradation and elevation of meaning

The terms degradation and elevation of meaning are imprecise and are not an objective reflection of the semantic phenomena they describe. It would be more credible to state that some cases of transference based on contiguity may result in development or loss of evaluative connotations.

It’s illogical to suppose that meanings can become better or worse. In order to understand why linguists use such terms as degradation and elevation, let’s consider some examples. The word ‘Knave’ meant ‘a boy’, but then it began to mean ‘a swindler’. Here we see the degradation of meaning. Here is another example of degradation of meaning. “Gossip” meant a god parent , but then it began to mean ‘the one who tells bad stories about people.’ Also, the word ‘silly’ meant happy, but now it means foolish.

Here are some examples of elevation of meaning – nice meant foolish, but now it means ‘good, fine ’. The word ‘knight’ meant ‘manservant’ but now it means ‘a noble courageous man’. The word ‘lord’ meant ‘the master of the house, head of the family’ and now it means ‘baronet’

26) The Indo-European element

The English vocabulary comprises a great number of borrowings, only 25-30 per cent of all English words are native. But the native element comprises a large number of high-frequency words like the articles, preposition, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries and words, denoting every day objects and ideas (house, water, child, to go, to come, etc.). By the native element we mean the words which were not borrowed from other languages, but represent the original stock of this particular language. The native element includes: the indo-European and Germanic elements. The Indo-European element comprises 10 categories. These are words of roots common to all or most languages without them no human communication would be possible. The following groups can be identified: 1) Family relations (father, mother, brother, son, daughter)2) Parts of the human body (foot, nose, lip, heart)3) animals (cow, swine, goose)4) plants (tree, birch, corn)5) time of day (day, night)6) heavenly bodies (sun, moon, star)7) numerous adjectives (red, new, glad. sad )8) the numerals (from 1 to 100)9) demonstrative and personal pronouns (except ‘they’, which is a Scandinavian borrowing)10) numerous verbs (to be, to know, to stand, to sit, to eat, atc)

27) Criteria of synonymy

Up to the present moment criteria of synonymy is considered to be one of the most controversial problems in linguistics. Representatives of traditional linguistics define synonyms on the basis of conceptual criterion. To synonyms they refer words of the same part of speech, conveying the same concept but different either in shades of meaning or in stylistic characteristics. But this approach has been criticized because linguistic phenomena should be defined in linguistic terms and the use of term concept makes this extra linguistic definition, the term ‘shade of meaning’ is vague and lacks precision.

Another approach is represented by semantic criterion which defines synonyms as words with the same definition, but different in connotative components.

Definitial analysis allows to study synonyms with the help of their dictionary definitions. In this work the data from various dictionaries are analyzed comparatively. Let’s consider some examples. The words ‘to stare’(which means уставиться), ‘to glare’ ( which means уставиться), ‘to gaze’ (which means любоваться), to glance(взглянуть), to peep (подглядывать) and to peer (вглядываться) are synonyms. The leading semantic component which expresses the conceptual content of words is ‘to look”. This is the denotative component. But these words have connotative components. The word ‘to stare’ means ‘to look steadily lastingly in surprise or curiosity’. The word ‘to glare’ means ‘to look steadily lastingly in anger, rage or fury’. The word ‘to gaze’ means ‘to look steadily lastingly in tenderness, admiration or wonder’. The to glance means to look briefly, in passing. The word to peep means to look steadily lastingly and by stealth, through an opening location. The word to peer means to look steadily lastingly with difficulty or strain. The common denotation shows that according to the semantic criterion the words are synonyms. The connotative components represent their differentiations. In modern research of synonyms the criterion of interchangeability is sometimes applied, according to it synonyms are defined as words which are interchangeable at least in some contexts without any considerable alteration in dennotational meaning but such an interchange is practically impossible. For example ‘He glared at her’ means ‘He looked angrily at her’. He gazed at her’ means ‘He looked at her with admiration or interest’. He peered at her means ‘’He tried to see her better but something prevented him from doing it. These examples show that each synonym creates an entirely new situation, which so sharply differs from the rest, that any attempt at interchanging anything can only destroy the utterance, devoiding of any sence at all. The substitution of one word for another is impossible not only due to the context, but also to the peculiar individual connotative structure of each individual word as synonyms are similar but not identical in meaning. If synonyms were interchangeable, they would become useless ballast in the vocabulary. Synonyms are frequently said to be the vocabularies colors, teens and hues. Even if there are some synonyms which are interchangeable it’s quite certain that there are also others which are not, but a criterion should be applicable to all synonyms and not just to some of them. Thus the criterion of interchangeability is not valid.