It may be carried out at different levels and employ various methods and procedures of a semantic research.

There are 2 levels of LSA^

On the first level LSA is aimed at establishing the number and types of LS variants and relations between them.To reach this aim we use different methods and procedures of semantic research such as

-analysis of dictionary definitions

-Contextual analysis

- transformational analysis

- componential analysis

Componential analysis is the method which precedes from the assumption that word meaning or each LSvariant can be decomposed into elementary semantic components or semantic features.

The semes are the smallest further indivisible unit of meaning.

The analysis of the meaning into these components or semes is called the componential analysis.

Componential analysis is divided into:

1. Semantic marker is a seme which is common to other LSV or words

2. Semantic distinguisher is a seme which differentiate the word|LSV from other word|LSV

Ex. Man(male,adult,human)-woman(semes –noun,female,countable,human)

Contextual analysis.

Is based on the assumption of difference in meaning of words is always indicated by different environment.

There are 2 types of environment:

-linguistic (context)

-extralinguistic (actual speech situations)

The term context is used to denote the minimal stretch of speech which determines each individual meaning of the word.

3 types of context –lexical,grammatical and mixed.

In lexical context the meaning of the word is determined by the lexical meanings of the words, the givan words combines with.

Ex. Black-denotes colour(with noun denotes object or material) –black velvet, but in combinations with nouns(denotes feelings or thoughts)=-black despair(sadness)

In gram.context the meaning of the word is determined by the gram.structure in which the word is used.

Ex. Make+noun= produce,do

Make+smb+inf= to force smb

Q-20: Polysemy

is the ability of a word to have more than one m-g.

The causes of the development of polysemy in Eng. are:

1) the great amount of monosyllabic root words;

2) an abundance of words of long duration, which in the course of time were used to express more & more new m-gs thus becoming highly polysemantic. Monosemantic words, i.e. words which have only one m-g form rather a considerable group of words in Eng. They are mostly names of birds (blackbird,swallow), animals (walrus, weasel), fishes (ruff, perch) & special terms (systole, phoneme).

The bulk of Eng. words are polysemantic,i.e. they have several m-gs. The number of m-gs of a commonly used word ranges from five to a hundred. The first thousand of commonest Eng. words express 25 000 m-gs (get, give, turn, and keep)

Polysemy exists only in language, not in speech. The m-g in speech is contextual. In a definite context any polysemantic word expresses only one m-g.

A word in one of its m-g in which it is used in speech is called a lexico-semantic variant of a word, or LSV, according to Smirnitsky. The m-gs, or lexico-semantic variants, of a polysemantic word form its semantic structure. The semantic structure of a polysemantic word presents a set of interrelated & interdependent lexico-semantic variants.

In a polysemantic Eng. word all the lexico-semantic variants co-exist at a certain historical period of the development of the Eng. language. The commoner is the word; the broader is their semantic structure. We distinguish on the synchronic level: - the basic (major) & the minor; - the central & the marginal; -direct & transferred (figurative); -historically primary-secondary (derived) LSVs.

The basic LSV is the least dependable in the context (on the syntagmatic level) & the most dependable on the paradigmatic level.

E.g. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English gives 11 m-gs of the polysemantic word “hand”. The m-g which comes first-“part of the human body beyond the wrist” – is major,basic, central, primary & direct; the m-g which comes second –“keeping possession,guardianship, responsibility” (pl) is minor, marginal, secondary & transferred (e.g. The property is no longer in my hands).

The analysis of the number & types of LSV & interrelations b/w the LSVs of a polysemantic word is called the lexico-semantic analysis. Every LSV is connected with the major m-g due to the existence of the common semantic components/ semes (integral & differentiating). The seme is the smallest further indivisible unit of m-g, the smallest unit of the plan of content. The analysis of the m-g into these components, or semes, is called the componential analysis. It is widely used in the study of hyponymic groups, the semantic structure of synonyms & antonyms. It’s very helpful in the teaching-learning process, as the semantic structures of correlated words in different languages do not always coincide:

e.g. the Russian word “хозяин” has several correlated words in Eng.: S1”receiving guests” – Eng. “host”; S2 “directing something” –Eng. “master”; S3 “possessing something” – Eng. “owner”; S4 “having subordinates” – Eng. “boss”; S5 “letting something” – Eng. “landlord”.

Q-21: Semantic changes.

During historical development of the Eng language many words have changed their semantic structure.

The word “mill” 1^st meant the place where grain was ground (OE). Later it acquired the m-ng of the place of production usually in Eng industry: textile mill. Sometimes the original & new m-ngs co-exist in the sem structure like in “mill”.

But sometimes the original m-ng is lost & only the new one remains: sabotage (Fr) – workers on strikes used to throw their wooden shoes (sabots), & now this m-ng is lost & replaced by the m-ng “an international wreckage of work by not fulfilling it at all”.

However, in many cases all the LSVs are preserved & connected with 1 another, though the semantic structure of a word has changed. Graduak development in sem structure goes step by step – “concatenation”. Silly – saint, blessed-insane-foolish.

Causes of sem changes are:

1)extralinguistic - connected with the development of society.

E.g. the need for a word expressing a specific notion is fully satisfied in cases like: game1 – “children’s play”; game2 –sports. Social factors are at work in the cases of elevation & degradation of m-ng. As there are always moral codes which mark certain things as proper or improper, the latter wll be tabooed. & tabooed word may be substituted with a harmless word – euphemism. It seems more tactful to call “undeveloped countries – developing”.

2) Linguistic - are not so well studied as extraling-c. They include differentiation of syn-ms, fixed context & ellipses. Differentiation of syn-ms is a gradual change of m-ng observed in the course of the historical development of the lang-ge often connected with the sem assimilation of loan words. Due to the appearance of the Scand word “sky” the Eng “heaven” changed its sem structure & came to denote “the place where Gods live”. Fixed context is another ling-c factor in sem change. The native word token after the borr-ng of the sym-mous word sign became restricted in use to a number of set expres-s – “love token”, so became specialized in m-ng.

Ellipses are the omission of a word or words in a phrase or a sentence brings about sem changes too, as in motor car, which gave car.

Q-22: The main semantic processes.

Specialization or narrowing of m-ng indicates that the word passes from general usage & acquires some special m-ng. When the m-ng is specialized, the range of the notion is narrowed, i.e. the word can name, fewer objects, but the content of the notion is enriched, and the notion will include a greater number of relevant features. O.E. "deor" - "wild beast" means now only "wild animal of a particular species" - "oлень"; "girl" in O.E. meant "a child of any sex", now only "a female child». Common nouns are often specialized in toponymics (place names) becoming proper names, e.g. The City (the business part of London), the Highlands (the mountainous part of Scotland), the Tower (of London) - a fortress and a palace & now a museum.

Generalizing or widening of m-ng. The word having a special m-ng due to wide use gets widened in m-ng: thing, business. In case of generalization the range of the new notion is wider than that of the original one, but the content of the notion becomes poorer. In many cases it is a kind of transition from a concrete m-ng to an abstract one. In O.E. "season'' meant only "spring time" then it acquired the m-ng "time for sowing & in Modern Eng it means "any of the 4 seasons". The process of gener-n is mostly at work in creating generic terms, words which can be applied to a great number of individual members of a big class of words: thing, business, to have, to do.

Elevation & degradation of m-ng are the semantic changes determined by social evaluation of the thing or phenomenon named & emotional tone. As the referent of the word comes up or down the social scale, its m-ng is either elevated or becomes pejorative. Examples of elevation: Minister - in earlier times meant merely "a servant", now it means "an important public official". Comrade - is a Spanish borr-ng which originally meant "a room-mate". Smart - in earlier times meant «causing pain", now it is syn-mous with "chic”. Knight - O.E. "lad, servant, soldier" now "a nobleman".

Degradation of m-ng is the reverse of elevation often reflecting relations b/w classes. O.E. "cnafa" meant "a boy", the ruling classes called their servants "knaves" and the word got a negative emotive colouring. Now it means "негодяй. плут". "vulgar, silly, insane, idiot" originally were neutral words m-ng correspondently; vulgar - "common, ordinary", silly - "happy", insane - "not well", idiot - "a private person". We speak of gener-n, special-n, elevation, degradation when we compare the results of the development of the semantic structure of words.

Q-23: Metonymy and metaphor.

Metonymy is the semantic processes accompanying the actual naming of a new phenomenon are transferences of name, which occur when there is a smth common b/w 2 thing or phenomena for 1 of which a word already exists. It may be the likeness & some other connections or associations (similarity & contiguity). Transference of name based on similarity or likeness is called a metaphoric change of m-ng. In lex-gy we study the transference of name that concerns the whole nation - is socially relevant but not a stylistic device of an author. The basic structure of metaphor is very simple. There are always 2 terms present: the thing we are talking about and that to which we are comparing it.

Metaphor is actually a hidden comparison.

Metaphoric transference may be based on similarity:

1) sim-ty of appearance: the leg of a table, a needle's eye, the tongue of a shoe, the teeth of a comb, the eyes of a potato;

2) simil-ty of position: the foot of a mountain, the bottom of a page, the head of a procession, the root of a tooth (inanimate objects are often compared with parts of a human (or animal) body: the mouth of a river, the lungs of a town, the hands of a clock), also - a dog, a cat, a fox, a parrot, an ape.(about people);

3) sim-rity of movement: fox - trot, a caterpillar tractor;

4) sim-ty of sound: barking (for cough);

5) sim-ty of quality: a lion (a brave man), a fox (a sly person), a star (a leading actor);

6) sim-ty of function: a boat (for a steamer);

7) transposition: from one sense to another, from sound to sight, from touch to sound: a warm (cold) voice, loud colours;

8) some more complicated transferences are usually connected with generalization: an avenue to fame, cream or scum of society, an angel (for a financial supporter).

Metonymic transference is based on:

1) using the name of a receptacle for its contents, e.g. the kettle is boiling;

2) using the name of a place for its inhabitants, e.g. the whole city was talking, the whole village came to meet me;

3) using the name of an instrument for its function, e.g. under the knife (operation), eye;- for eyesight, the best pens (writers) of the century;

4) using the name of the material for the thing made of it, e.g. brass - for instruments, linen (sheets), clay (pipe);

5) using the part for flie whole (or vice versa): a fleet of 50 sails, gray beards were present, she wore a beautiful fox;

6) using the name of an inventor for the invention, e.g. mauser (Mauser), diesel (Diesel);

7) using the name of the country or town for the things produced there: china, astrachan, havana (a cigar);

8) using the proper name of a person for smth associated with it: hooligan, badminton;

9) human types and social classes are often called after some characteristic garment:. redcoat (a militiaman) bluestocking.

Q-24: Homonymy in English. The problem of homonymy and polysemy.

I. H-my may be described as the sameness of form associated with the difference of m-ng.

The term “h-my” is derived from Greek “homos”- the same, “onoma”- name & expresses the sameness of name combined with the difference in m-ng. E.g. “match”- 1.a game/contest. 2. a piece of wood. H-my in Eng is found on different levels: morphemes & also word forms can be h-ms. E.g. pear – pair [pєe]; friendly-quickly, he taught-he has taught (gram forms). Eng is rich in H-ms but usually no ambiguity arises in speech due to H-ms cause the m-ng of the given word is determined by the context. E.g. 1.Meet my sister! 2. Fish & poultry are usually called meat. Quite a number of jokes, puns & modern advertisements are built on H-ms. E.g. 7 days without pizza makes one week/weak.

II. The development of Hom-y in Eng is due to the monosyllabic character of its voc-ry & the analytical structure of the Eng lang-ge. From the point of view of the morphological structure about 90% of H-ms in Eng are one-morpheme words.

Diff-nt causes of H-my may be divided into 2 main groups:

1. H-my which developed due to convergent sound development when 2 or more words of different origin accidentally coincided in sound (etymological & heterogeneous h-ms);

2. H-ms which developed from Polysemy through divergent sense development or split of Polysemy (semantic or homogeneous H-ms). The majority of H-ms in Eng are etymologically different. Only less than 10% of H-ms are due to split of Polysemy when different means of a polysemantic word move so far apart that any semantic connection b/w them is lost. E.g. the semantic structure of “board” was split into 3 units forming 3 hom-s: board¹- a long, thin piece of timber; board²- daily meals provided for pa; board³- an official group of persons. As the semantic link b/w those the m-ng “table” became archaic with the use of the Norman bor-g TABLE. SOURCES.

1) Phonetic changes developing identical sound forms present a very important source of H-ms: a. due to the Great Vowel Shift the old Eng words sæ>sea & sĕon>see coinsided in their soundforms developing h-ms. ‘meat’ & ‘meet’ also appeared due to the Great Vowel Shift. b. due to the loss of inflexions there appeared such words as “to work” from old Eng “wyrkean” & “work” from old Eng “weork”. (‘love’-lufu, ‘to love’-lufian; ‘son’-sunu, ‘sun’-sunne). c. the dropping of the initial ‘K’ led to the formation of Hom-s: niht-night, kniht-knight.

2) Borr-g is another souce of h-ms in Eng. The Fr borr-g “pen”-instrument for writing is a homonym to the word of Native origin –pen(хлев, курятник). As a result of an accidental coincidance of sounds & in their pronunciation.

3) WB contributes greatly to the growth of Hom-s in Eng.

Conversion is the most important type of WB leading to the development of H-my which is often referred to as regular patterned H-my. As formed by means of Conversion are lexico-grammatical H-ms of a special type as their m-gs are not totally unrelated but have common semantic components being connected by derivative relations. E.g. yellow – to yellow, a find – to find, must – a must.

Shortening also increases a number of Hom-s in Eng. Compare the follow: ‘vet’ from ‘veteran’ & ‘veterinarian’; flu – influenza, flew – from ‘to fly’.

4) Interpenetration of the stylistic layers may also serve as a source of H-ms. E.g. mummy (coll. of children’s speech ‘mother’) is a h-m of the stylisrically neutral word ‘mummy’(мумия).

III. The traditional class-n of H-ms recognizes:

1. H-ms Proper – words identical both in sound form & spelling but different in m-ng. Pike-a fish, pike- a spear.

2. Homophones – words identical in sound but different in spelling/m-ng. e.g. blue – blew,night – knight;

3. Homographs – words identical in spelling but different in sound/m-ng. e.g. tear [tıe] – tear [tεe], bow [bευ] – [baυ], minute [minit] – [mainjut], lead [li:d] – [led].

There are other ways of classifying H-ms.

All the cases of H-ms may be divided into 2 classes: full Homonymy & partial Homonymy. e.g. light(легкий) – light(светлый) → full Homonyms, found(to find) – found(основывать) → partial Homonyms.

According to Prof. Smirnitsky’s classification all H-ms may be divided into:

1. Lexical which differ only in lexical m-ng: seal – тюлень, seal – печать;

2. Lexico-grammatical which differs in lexical & grammatical m-ng: e.g. blue – blew;

3. Grammatical – differ only in gram. M-ng: e.g. word forms of one & the same word & are studied in Grammar. Ask-asked-asked. H-ms belonging to one & the same part of speech are called simple. Complex h-ms are those belonging to different parts of speech.

Q-25: Antonyms. Hyponyms.

Antonyms are defined as words of the same part of speech which are opposite in m-ng, e.g. big – small.

Ant-my is oppositeness in m-ng. Words opposite in m-ng maybe characterized by diff-nt types of semantic contrast. Compare the adj-ves “kind” and “cruel” which express completely opposed notions; “kind” – “unkind” which show no polarity of m-ng but simple negation, as “unkind” is not necessarily “cruel”. Thus, ant-ms may be described as 2 or more words of the same part of speech which have some common denotational components characterized by diff-nt types of semantic contrast of denotational m-ng and interchangeable at least in some contexts as they have the same gram-cal and lexical valency and colloqability. They differ only in their denotational m-ng but do not differ in their stylistical colouring & emotive charge. Ant-mic substitution never results in a change of stylistic colouring: “There’s so much good in the worst of us & so much bad in the best of us”. Not every word of a lang-ge may have an ant-m though every word may have a syn-m.

Many words of concrete denotation have no ant-ms: table. Names of physical & mental qualities usually have ant-ms: round-square, bad-good. Abstract nouns have ant-ms: love-hatred, cleverness-foolishness. Verbs denoting physical & mental activity have ant-ms too: to put on – to put off, to open – to close. Ant-my is diff-nt in diff-nt parts of speech.

Diff-nt lexico-semantic variants of a word have diff-nt ant-ms: dry – wet, dry – interesting; dear – hateful, dear – cheap.

There may be pairs of ant-ms: normal – abnormal; forward – backward.

We have ant-us syn-mic groups: normal (abnormal) – ordinary (extraordinary) – usual (unusual) – regular (irregular) – natural (unnatural).

Ant-ms are words of the same part of speech that have some common denotational components in their semantic structure but express contrasting notions.

According to the relationship b/w the notions expressed, ant-ms are divided into

1. contradictories (form a binary complimentary opposition which admits of no possibility b/w the members, e.g. dead – alive, single – married)

2. contraries (form a gradual opposition which admits of possibility b/w them. They are the polar points of this gradual opposition: cold –(cool, warm)– hot; beautiful –(plain, good-looking)– ugly).

According to their morphological structure ant-ms may be divided into

1. root (they have different roots: bad-good)

2. derivational (differ in derivational elements: possible – impossible, to agree – to disagree) ant-ms.

There are several WB affixes, prefixes and suffixes in the EL which help in the formation of ant-ms, they are: un (unusual), ir (irregular), im (impolite), in (inexperienced), il (illegal), dis (distrust), a (achromatic), ab (abnormal), under/over (overestimate), sub/super (superstructure), ful/less (artful), y/less (windy).