5. Change of meaning

Extra-linguistic and linguistic reasons. By extra-linguistic reasons we understand various changes in the life of some speech community, changes in economic and social structure and other spheres of human activities as reflected in words.

The word “earth” changed its meaning with people enlarging their knowledge about the world. The old word meant just the ground soil that people see at their feet. Modern “earth” means the planet we live on.

Some changes of meaning can be explained by purely linguistic factors. There are several types of semantic changes:

1) Specialization (Narrowing) of meaning - word represented a notion of broad scope has come to render a notion of a narrower scope, so restriction of meaning takes place.

2) Generalization (Broadening) of meaning - word represented a notion of narrow scope has come to render a notion of a broader scope (ex.: ”to arrive” = “to come to shore, to land” and now = “to come”; “pipe” = “a musical wind instrument” and now “any hollow oblong cylindrical body”).

The process of change of meaning is called transference.

3) Metaphor (gr. “meta” = “change”, “pherein” = “bear”) is a semantic process based on resemblance (ex.: we can call a cunning person “fox”)

4) Metonymy (“meta” = “change”, “onoma” = “name”) is a semantic process of associating two references one of which make the part of the other or is closely connected with it (ex.: a woman may be called a coat, a skirt)

6. Types of word meanings

Lexical meaning is the realization of concept or emotion by means of a definite language system.

Grammatical meaning is an expression in speech of relationships between words based on contrasting features of arrangement in which they occur.

The conceptual content of a word is expressed in its denotative meaning. To denote is to serve as linguistic expression for a concept or as a name for an individual object. The denotative meaning may be significative, if the referent is a concept, or demonstrative, if it is an individual object.

Connotative meaning is the emotive charge and the stylistic value of the word.

7. Word formation

Word Formation is the system of derivative types of words and the process of creating new words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic patterns and formulas. There are several types of word formation – derivation (affixation, conversion) and compounding.

Affixation consists in making up new words by adding endings to some root morpheme. Conversion is the process of coining a new word in a different part of speech without adding any derivative element. Compounding is forming new words by combining or putting together old words.

8. Derivation

Derivation consists in making up new words by adding endings to some root morpheme. We can distinguish two types of derivation: affixation and conversion.

All morphemes which are not roots are affixes. In English all the productive affixes are either attached at the end of the stem (suffixes), or at the front of the stem (prefixes).

We can think of a root as a nuclear of the derivation (ex.: uninhabitableness. The stem is “habit”. “In-“ must be added first, then “un-“ in front of the whole formation because “un-“ is attached only to adjectives. The second stage is suffix –“able”. And the final stage is suffix “–ness” which can make a noun from an adjective).