24. Transference of meaning.

Metaphor is the transference of name based on the association of similarity between two referents and thus is actually a hidden comparison. Models of metaphorical transference:

-similarity of shape, e.g. the head of a cabbage, the nose of a plane etc;

- similarity of colour, e.g. orange for colour and fruit, black despair etc.;

-similarity of function, e.g. the wing of a plane, the hand of a clock etc.;

-similarity of age, e.g. a green man etc.;

-similarity of position, e.g. the leg of the table, the foot of a hill etc.;

-similarity of behaviour or qualities of animals, e.g. a bookworm, a pig, a rat etc.;

-similarity in temperature, e.g. cold reason, warm heart etc.;

-transition of proper names into common nouns, e.g. a Rockefeller, a Cinderella, a Judas, a Don Juan, an Adonis etc.

Metonymy is the transference of name based on the association of contiguity (суміжність). Models of metonymical transference:

-the part the whole (synecdoche), e.g. to be all ears;

-the place people occupying it, e.g. The White House, The Pentagon;

-the material the object made from it, e.g. a glass, an iron;

-the container the thing contained, e.g. the kettle is boiling;

-a geographical name a common noun, e.g. madeira, bourbon, champagne, sardine, labrador;

-the instrument the agent, e.g. the best pens of the day;

-the sign the thing signified, e.g. gray hair ‘old age’;

-the symbol the thing symbolised, e.g. the crown ‘the monarchy’.

25. Traditional lexicological groupings of words: thematic and ideographic groups, lexicosemantic groups, semantic fields.

A word-family is a set of words that all share a common root, e.g. graceful, ungraceful, gracefulness, to disgrace, disgracefully, disgraceful, disgrace, disgracefulness, gracelessly, graceless etc.

A thematic group is a subsystem of the vocabulary for which the basis of grouping is not only linguistic but also extralinguistic: the words are associated because the things they name occur together and are closely connected in reality, e.g.:

-terms of kinship: father, cousin, mother-in-law, uncle;

-names for parts of the human body: head, neck, arm, foot, thumb;

-colour terms: blue, green, yellow, red / scarlet, crimson, coral;

-military terms: lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, general.

An ideographic group unites thematically related words of different parts of speech; here words and expressions are classed not according to their lexico-grammatical meaning but strictly according to their signification, i.e. to the system of logical notions, e.g.: ‘Trade’: to buy, to sell, to pay, to cost, a price, money, cash, a receipt, expensive etc.

As a rule, ideographic groups deal with contexts on the level of the sentence. Words in ideographic groups are joined together by common contextual associations within the framework of the sentence and reflect the interlinking of things or events, e.g.:

‘Going by train’: railway, a journey, a train, a train station, timetable, a platform, a passenger, a single ticket, a return ticket, luggage, a smoking carriage, a non-smoking carriage, a dining-car, to enquire, to catch the train, to miss the train etc.

A semantic field is the extensive organisation of related words and expressions into a system which shows their relations to one another.

The significance of each unit is determined by its neighbours, with the units’ semantic areas reciprocally limiting each other.

The members of the semantic fields are joined together by some common semantic component known as the common denominator of meaning.

‘Human Mind’: mind, reason, cognition, idea, concept, judgment, analysis, conclusion;

A lexico-semantic group is singled out on purely linguistic principles: words are united if they have one or more semantic components in common, but differ in some other semantic components constituting their semantic structures. The

This type of groupings is mostly applied to verbs, e.g.

-verbs of sense perception: to see, to hear, to feel, to taste;

-verbs denoting speech acts: to speak, to talk, to chat, to natter, to mumble, to ramble, to stammer, to converse;

-verbs of motion: to walk, to run, to tiptoe, to stroll, to stagger, to stomp, to swagger, to wander.