Semasiology - is the branch of linguistics that is devoted to the study of meaning.

Meaning – is a certain reflection in our mind of objects, phenomena or relations, which makes inner-faced part of linguistic sign, the sound form functions as its out-faced part.

There are 2 approaches to meaning.

1) Referential – formulates the essence of meaning by establishing the dependence between words and things and concepts they denote.

All works on the theory of meaning are based on referential approach.

The referential model of meaning is called “basic triangle”. It underlines the semantic system of all principles of this school.

Dove : Concept (bird) Sound form Referent (a particular bird – голуб)

Sound form of the linguistic sign “dove” is connected with our concept of the bird, which denotes the actual referent.

So, the common feature of referential approach is implication that meaning is in some case connected with the referent

2) Functional – studies functions of the word in speech, less concerned with what meaning is, rather with how it works.

The essential feature of this approach is that it distinguishes between 3 components, closely connected with meaning: The sound form of the sign The concept, underlining this sound form The actual referent – aspect of reality to which the linguistic sign refers.

Functional approach claims that a linguistic study of meaning is the investigation of the relation of sign to sign only. The meaning of linguistic units may be studied through their relation to other linguistic units, not through relation to concept or referent.

So, meanings of words “move” and “movement” are different because they function in speech differently.

Types of meaning.

1) Grammatical – is a component of meaning, recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of words (e.g. plural of nouns, Past Indefinite etc.).

2) Lexical meaning has denotational and connotational components.

The denotational component expresses notional content of a word and makes communication possible. Denotation – expression of main meaning, meaning proper of a linguistic unit, in contrast to its connotation.

Connotational component – additional semantic meaning.

Types of connotation: Emotive Evaluative Connotation of duration and cause.

Connotation – supplementary meaning and stylistic shade that is added to the word’s main meaning and express all sorts of emotional, expressive overtones.

A word having several meanings is called polysemantic.

The ability of words to have more than one meaning is named polysemy.

The system of meanings of every polysemantic word develops gradually, over the centuries. As more meanings are added, some of old meanings may be lost.

There are 2 levels of analysis of semantic structure of polysemantic words.

1) The semantic structure of a word is treated as the system of meanings.

E.g.: fire – 1) flame (полум’я) 2) an instance of destructive burning (пожежа) 3) burning material in the stove, fireplace (вогонь) 4) the shooting of guns (артилерійський вогонь) 5) strong feeling, passion 6) strong pain.

Meaning 1 is a dominant, describes concept in the most general way, other meanings are associated with special aspects of the same phenomenon. Meaning 1 is a centre of semantic structure and is the main meaning. Meanings 2-6 are secondary meanings and can be associated with one another.

Each meaning can be divided into semantic components.

Changing of meaning

Word meaning changes in the course of historical development of language under the influence of extralinguistic and linguistic factors.

Extralinguistic factors – changes in the life of speech community, changes in economic and social structure, ideas, way of life as reflected in a word meaning.

E.g.: car – any 4-wheeled wagon; motor-car

Linguistic factors – development of language system itself. E.g.: deer – O.E. any animal; Modern E. “олень”.

Types of changing of meaning.

1) Extension – extension of a word range, when the exact denotation is lost and the word’s meaning extends and is generalized.

It is often due to resemblance of form, position, colour, similarity of function. It is change from concrete to abstract, from specific to general.

E.g.: country – сільська місцевість - країна To fly – махати крилами – літати.

New meaning is wider and more abstract.

2) Narrowing – a word of wide meaning gets narrower, specialized sense. Its usage is restricted to some objects. E.g.: corpse – будь-яке тіло - труп field – поле – галузь.

3) Transference (metaphor and metonymy).

Metaphor – transference of name, based on association of similarity. A new meaning appears as a result of associating 2 objects due to their outer similarity.

Metaphor is based on different types of similarity.

E.g.: a head of a cabbage (shape) Long distance – long speech (duration of time and space) Short line – short time (duration of time and space)

Transition of proper names into common:Don Juan,Adonys,Narcissus,Cl,Hercules,Don Quixote

Metonymy – transference of meaning based upon association of contiguity. The name of one thing is changed for the name of another thing to which it is related by association.

The transference may be influenced by many relations:

Spatial: house – House of Commons, chair – chairman, department, cash – safe.

Causial: youth – young people, old age – old people.

Symbolic:the British Crown–monarchy,White House–US president,Capitol-USCongress,Fort Knox–US go

Instrumental: hand – handwriting.

Common names derived from proper: diesel, mackintosh.

4) Elevation – changes depending on the attitude to the object named, connected with social evaluation. It is change from humble meaning to position of greater importance.

E.g.: fond: foolish – loving Nice: foolish – fine Lord: master of the house – title Lady:

5) Degradation – change by which for one reason or another a word falls into a derogatory emotive change.

A change in denotational component brings extension or restriction of meaning.

A change in connotational component results in elevation or degradation of meaning.

E.g.: knave: boy–thief Villain–peasant–servant–rascal Bubble–булькати–бубоніти нерозбірливо

Morpheme is the minimum meaningful language unit, constituent part of words, not independent, not divided into smaller meaningful units.

Types of morphemes:

Root morpheme – lexical nucleus of the word. It has a very general and abstract lexical meaning, common to a set of semantically related words, constituting one word cluster. Besides lexical meaning, root morphemes possess other types of meaning, proper to morphemes, except the part-of-speech meaning, which is not found in roots.

Affixational morphemes, which are divided into inflexional affixes (inflexions) and derivational affixes (prefixes and suffixes). They are lexically dependent on the root they modify.

Inflexions carry only grammatical meaning and are relevant only for the formation of word forms.

Derivational affixes are relevant for building various types of words.

Lexicology is concerned only with derivational affixes.

Morphemes may be:

Free – coincide with word forms of independently functioning words. Free morphemes can be found only among roots. E.g.: boy, undesirable, screensaver

Bound – do not coincide with independently functioning words. These are prefixes and suffixes.

E.g.: -un, -able, -er, -dis, re-

Positional variant of morpheme occurring in the specific environment and characterized by complementary distribution is called allomorph.

E.g.: allomorphs of prefix in-: il- (illegal, illogical) im- (impossible, impolite) ir- (irregular, irrational)

Between the inflexions allomorphs also occur (variants of pronunciation of plural ending –s, ending –ed).

According to number of morphemes words are classified into monomorphic and polymorphic.

Monomorphic (root) word consists of only one root morpheme (cat, book, knife).

Polymorphic words are divided into:

Derived words, which are composed of one root morpheme and one or several derivational morphemes (disagree, illness, impossibility, unlikely).

Compound words contain at least 2 root morphemes and number of derivational morphemes is insignificant. There can be root and derivational morphemes (lampshade, light-mindedness).

Morphemic analysis.

The morphological analysis aims at splitting the word into its constituent morphemes – the basic units at this level of analysis – and at determining their number and types.

The segmentation of words is carried out according to the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents (ICs and UCs). It is based on binary principle. Each stage of the procedure involves 2 components the word immediately breaks into.

At each stage these 2 components are named Immediate Constituents (ICs). Each IC at the next stage of analysis is broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we get constituents incapable of future division – morphemes. These are named UCs.

E.g.: friend+ly + ness friendliness

PRODUCTIVE TYPES OF WORD-FORMATION

Productive types of word-formation include: 1) Affixation is the process of coining a new word by adding one or several affixes to some root morpheme.

Classification of affixes. From the etymological point of view affixes are classified into native and borrowed.

Native Suffixes: Noun-forming –er(teacher),–ness( coldness),–ing(reading), -dom(freedom), -hood(childhood), -ship (friendship), -th (health, truth)

Adjective-forming -ful (wonderful), -less (careless), -y (tidy), -ish (English), -ly (likely), -en(golden), -some(handsome)

Verb-forming -en (darken, sadden)

Adverb-forming -ly (hardly, carefully, coldly)

Affixes are classified into productive and non-productive types. By productive affixes we mean the ones, which take part in deriving new words in this particular period of language development. The best way to identify productive affixes is to look for them among neologisms and so-called nonce-words, i. e. words coined and used only for this particular occasion. The latter are usually formed on the level of living speech and reflect the most productive and progressive patterns in word-building.

One should not confuse the productivity of affixes with their frequency of occurrence. There are quite a number of high-frequency affixes which, nevertheless, are no longer used in word-derivation (e. g. the adjec­tive-forming native suffixes -ful, -ly; the adjective-forming suffixes of Latin origin -ant, -ent, -al which are quite frequent).

Productive Affixes Noun-forming suffixes -er, -ing, -ness, -ism (materialism), -ist (impressionist), -ance; Adjective-forming suffixes -y, -ish, -ed (learned), -able, -less Adverb-forming suffixes –ly Verb-forming suffixes -ize/-ise (realize), -ate

Prefixes un- (unhappy), re- (reconstruct), dis- (disappoint)

Non-Productive Affixes Noun-forming suffixes -th, -hood Adjective-forming suffixes -ly, -some, -en, -ous Verb-forming suffix -en

2) Composition is the type of word-building, in which new words are produced by combining two or more stems. It is one of the three most productive types in Modern English.

Classification of compounds.

Taking into consideration the structural aspect, three types are distinguished: neutral (without any linking elements, bedroom), morphological ( a linking vowel or consonant, Anglo-Saxon, handicraft) and syntactic(from segments of speech, good-for-nothing)

Another focus of interest is the semantic aspect of compound words, that is, the question of correlations of the separate meanings of the constituent parts and the actual meaning of the compound. The compounds whose meanings do not correspond to the separate meanings of their constituent parts (2nd and 3rd group listed above) are called idiomatic compounds, in contrast to the first group known as non-idiomatic compounds.

3) Conversion consists in making a new word from some existing word by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged. The new word has a meaning which differs from that of the original one though it can be associated with it. It has also a new paradigm peculiar to its new category as a part of speech.

One should guard against thinking that every case of noun and verb (verb and adjective, adjective and noun, etc.) with the same morphemic shape results from conversion. There are numerous pairs of words (e. g. love, n. — to love, v.; work, n. — to work, v.; drink, n. — to drink, v., etc.) which did, not occur due to conversion but coincided as a result of certain historical processes (dropping of endings, simplification of stems) when before that they had different forms (e. g. O. E. lufu, n. — lufian, v.).

The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous amongst the words produced by conversion: e. g. to hand, to back, to face, to eye, to mouth, to nose, to dog, to wolf, to monkey, to can, to coal, to stage, to screen, to room, to floor, to blackmail, to blacklist, to honeymoon, and very many others.

Nouns are frequently made from verbs: do (e. g. This is the queerest do I've ever come across. Do — event, incident), go (e. g. He has still plenty of go at his age. Go — energy), make, run, find, catch, cut, walk, worry, show, move, etc.

Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to pale, to yellow, to cool, to grey, to rough (e. g. We decided to rough it in the tents as the weather was warm), etc.

Other parts of speech are not entirely unsusceptible to conversion as the following examples show: to down, to out (as in a newspaper heading Diplomatist Outed from Budapest), the ups and downs, the ins and outs, like, n. (as in the like of me and the like of you).

A word made by conversion has a different meaning from that of the word from which it was made though the two meanings can be associated. There are certain regularities in these associations which can be roughly classified. For instance, in the group of verbs made from nouns such semantic relations:

I. The noun is the name of a tool or implement, the verb denotes an action performed by the tool: to hammer, to nail, to pin, to brush, to comb, to pencil.

II. The noun is the name of an animal, the verb denotes an action or aspect of behaviour considered typical of this animal: to dog, to wolf, to monkey, to ape, to fox, to rat. Yet, to fish does not mean "to behave like a fish" but "to try to catch fish". The same meaning of hunting activities is conveyed by the verb to whale and one of the meanings of to rat; the other is "to turn in­former, squeal".

III. The name of a part of the human body — an action performed by it: to hand, to leg, to eye, to elbow, to shoulder, to nose, to mouth. However, to face does not imply doing something by or even with one's face but turning it in a certain direction. To back means either "to move backwards" or, in the figurative sense, "to support somebody or something".

IV. The name of a profession or occupation — an activity typical of it: to nurse, to cook, to maid, to groom.

V. The name of a place — the process of occupying the place or of putting smth./smb. in it (to room, to house, to place, to table, to cage).

VI. The name of a container — the act of putting smth. within the container (to can, to bottle, to pocket). VII. The name of a meal — the process of taking it (to lunch, to supper).

4) Shortening. Being once non-productive, in contemporary English it is marked by high productivity. Shortening is substituting of a part for a whole.

Both words and word-groups can be shortened. In written speech it results in graphic abbreviations. E.g.: rd.–road, dr. – drive, str. – street, dr. – doctor, Mr. – mister, Mrs. – mistress.

Latin abbreviations: a.m., p.m., i.e., etc.

Many abbreviations of proper names especially names of celebrities, can be found in English:

JFK – John Fitzgerald Kennedy J.L.(J.Lo) – Jennifer Lopez FDR –Franklin Delano Roosevelt

There are 2 ways to read abbreviations:

1. As a succession of alphabet reading of letters (BBC, TV, ABC, C-in-C, USA).

2. As a succession of sounds, denoted by letters (UNO, NATO, LASER, RAF).

In some cases only the first component of 2-member group is shortened: H-bomb – hydrogen bomb V-Day – Victory Day V.J. Day – Victory over Japan day P-Day – Presidents’ Day

5) Clipping. Like shortening, clipping, being once non-productive, in contemporary English it is marked by high productivity. It is cutting off of one or several syllables of the word.

In many cases the stressed syllable is preserved. Clippings occur in oral, colloquial speech. There are many clippings of proper names: Ed–Edward Rob–Robert Lou–Louise Toine–Antoine

Traditionally, clippings are classified into several types depending on which part of the word is clipped: 1. Words, which have been shortened at the end (apocope). Ed – education, lab – laboratory, cap – captain, gym – gymnasium.

2. Words shortened at the beginning (aphaeresis). Phone – telephone, chute – parachute.

3. Words, where some syllables or sounds have been omitted from the middle (syncope).Maths–mathematics, pants–pantaloons, specs–spectacles, ma’am–madam, gent’s–gentlemen’s room.

4. Words clipped at the beginning and end. Flu – influenza, fridge – refrigerator, tec – detective.

NON-PRODUCTIVE TYPES OF WORD-FORMATION

1. Onomatopoeia – formation of words from sounds that resemble those associated with the object or action to be made or that seem suggestive of its qualities.

E.g.: chatter, bubble, murmur, buzz, giggle, grumble, growl, shriek.

Sound-imitations of animals: to coo-coo, moo, bow-wow, cock-a-doodle-doo, neigh, oink.

Interjections: oh, ah, bang, hush, ouch, pooh.

2. Reduplication - is formation of words by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic (bye-bye) or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant (ping-pong, chit-chat) – gradational reduplication.

This type of word-formation is facilitated by the vast number of monosyllables. Most words made by reduplication represent informal groups: colloquialisms and slang. E.g.: walkie-talkie (a portable radio), riff-raff (the worthless or disreputable element of society), chi-chi (sl.for chic)

3. Reversion (back-formation) - singling out of a stem from a word which wrongly regarded as derivative, on the analogy of the existing pairs.

E.g.: to beg from beggar to burgle from burglar to cobble from cobbler to butle from butler

to baby-sit from baby-sitter to force-land from forced landing to straphang from straphanger

4. Blending - is merging parts of words into one new word. The result is named a blend.

E.g.: smog–smoke+fog brunch–breakfast+lunch Laundromat–laundry+automat Bisquick – bisquit+quick Rosella – Rose+Bella

5. Sentence-condensation - substantivising of the phrase.

E.g.: forget-me-not, hide-and-seek, merry-go-round, kiss-me-in-the-ring.

6. Sound and stress interchange – gradation of sounds occupying one place in the same morpheme in various cases of its occurrence.

It is the way of forming new words only diachronically because in Modern English not a single word can be formed by changing of the root vowel of the word or by shifting the stress.

E.g.: food - to feed blood – to bleed to shoot – shot to sing – song

There are 2 groups of sound interchange: 1. Vowel interchange: (foot – feet).

2. Consonant interchange: (use [jus] – to use [juz], believe – belief, half – halves).

Many English verbs of Latin and French origin are distinguished from nouns by the position of stress. E.g.: to record – record, extract – to extract, expert – to expert.

Homonyms – words identical in sound and spelling or in one of these aspects but different in their meaning, distribution and, in many cases, origin. E.g.: bank – берег банк ball – бал м’яч

There are 3 sources of homonyms:

1) Phonetic changes. Words undergo to phonetic changes in the course of their historical development. As a result of such changes 2 or more words which were pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and become homonyms.E.g.:night–knight (were not h.in OE

2) Borrowings. Borrowed words may in the final stage of the phonetic adaptation duplicate in form wither a native word or another borrowing. E.g.: match – матч (native) сірник (Latin).

3) The result of split polysemy. 2 or more homonyms can originate from different meanings of the same word when for some reason the semantic structure of the word brakes into several parts.E.g:board –дошка пансіон, інтернат рада директорів.The meanings of these words are in no way associated with one another. The semantic structure of the word was split in 3 units.

Homonyms are classified into the following classes:

1) Full lexical homonyms – represent the same category of part of speech and have the same paradigm. E.g.: box – коробка; удар; самшит fan – вентилятор, фанат ball – м’яч; бал; очко match – пара; сірник; матч.

2) Partial homonyms are subdivided into:

А) simple lexico-grammatical partial homonyms – which belong to the same part of speech. Their paradigms have one identical form, but it is never the same form.

E.g.: to found – found (Past Indefinite “to find”).

b) complex lexico-grammatical partial homonyms – different parts of speech, which have one identical form in their paradigms. E.g.: rose (flower) – rose (Past Indefinite of “to rise”)

maid (girl) – made (Past Indefinite of “to make”) one – won (Past Indefinite of “to win”).

c) partial lexical homonyms – words of the same part of speech, which are identical only in their corresponding forms. E.g.: to lie – to lie lay – lied lain – lied to can - can canned - could canned - -------

Taking into consideration sound form, spelling and meaning, homonyms are classified into:

1) Perfect homonyms – words, identical both in spelling and sound form, but different in meaning. E.g.: case – чемодан; причина, випадок fair – ярмарок; чесний

2) Homophones – words, identical in sound form but different in spelling and meaning.

E.g.: to see – sea; sun – son; die – dye; fair – fare; sail – sale; cite – sight; flower – flour; hair – hare; peace – piece; rain – reign.

3) Homographs – words, identical in spelling, but different in sound form and meaning.

E.g.: lead – lead; tear – tear; Polish – polish; bow – bow.

SYNONYMS - 2 or more words belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable in some contexts. These words are distinguished by different shades of meaning, connotations and stylistic features. Several words, belonging to the same part of speech, constitute the synonymic group.