Lecture 4. Lexical Meaning and the Semantic Structure of Polysemantic Words

1. The Lexical Meaning versus Notion.

2. The Denotative and Connotative Meaning.

3. The Semantic Structure of Polysemantic Words.

4. National Peculiarities of Correlated Words in Two Languages.

5. Methods of Analysis.

Notions reflecting the most common and typical features of different objects and phenomena of the world are not static. Modern cognitive semantics distinguishes three types of knowledge: linguistic, conceptual and encyclopedic which form the background conceptual structure of the word. All the three are culture specific and this makes the word a unique linguistic unit.

Every word combines lexical and grammatical meaning. The lexical meaning is made up of various elements: denotative and connotative. The denotative meaning is that component of the lexical meaning which makes communication possible. The connotative meaning is the second component of lexical meaning which evokes or directly expresses the pragmatic communicative value of the word. The four main types of connotation are: emotional, stylistic, evaluative and expressive (or intensifying).

All lexico-grammatical variants of a word, taken together, form its semantic structure, or its paradigm. The elements are interrelated due to the existence of some common semantic component. The semantic structure of the word is an organized whole comprising recurrent meanings and shades of meaning together with emotional, stylistic and other connotations, if any. Words expressing identical notions may have different semantic structure. The semantic structure of correlated words of two languages does not coincide fully.

The word is polysemantic in the language but in actual speech it is always monosemantic. The linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts help to distinguish different meanings of the analyzed word. Though contextual analysis remains one of the main investigative methods for determining the semantic structure of the word it should be used in combination with other methods of linguistic analysis.

Different methods of componential analysis are widely used: distributional analysis, transformational analysis and definitional analysis. Lexicographical definitions lend themselves as suitable material for the analysis of lexical groups in terms of a definite set of semantic components.

Recommended Literature:

1.Арнольд И.В. Лексикология современного английского языка. .= The English

Word [Текст]: Учеб. для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. 3-е изд., перераб. и доп. /

И.В. Арнольд. – М.: Высшая школа,1986. – c. 37 – 57.

2. Гинзбург, Р.З. Лексикология английского языка [Текст]: Учебн для ин-тов и фак.иностр. яз. / Р.З. Гинзбург, С.С. Хидекель, Г.Ю. Князева и др.– М.: Высшая школа,1979. – p. 13 – 28.

3. Антрушина Г.Б. Лексикология английского языка = English Lexicology [Текст]: Учеб. ля студ. пед. ин-тов по спец. №.2103 «Иностр. яз.» / Г.Б. Антрушина, О.В. Афанасьева, Н.Н. Морозова – 3-е изд. Стереотип.– М.: Дрофа, 2001. – с. 99 – 110.

4. Селиверстова О.Н. Компонентный анализ многозначного слова. [Текст] / О.Н.

Селиверстова – М.: Наука, 1975. – с.5 – 25.

5. Арбекова Т.И. Лексикология английского языка (практический курс) [Текст]. Учебное пособие для студентов 2-3 курсов институтов и факультетов иностранных языков./ Т.И. Арбекова. – М.: Высшая школа, 1977. – c. 52 – 88. 5.

6.Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка [Текст] / А.И. Смирницкий – М.: Изд-во МГУ им. М.В. Ломоносова, 1998 .– с. 143 – 158.