1. Semasiology. Referential and functional approaches to the study of meaning.

The branch of lexicology that is devoted to the study of meaning is known as semasiology.

The school is called “academic semantics” or “pure semantics” and is a branch of symbolic or mathematical logic, originated by R. Carnap. It aims at the building of an abstract theory of relationships between signs and their referents (things meant). It is a part of semiotics – the study of signs and languages in general, including all sorts of codes, such as military signals, traffic signals, etc. Unlike linguistic semantics which deals with real languages, pure semantics has as its subject formalized language.

Thus, it has been made clear, that semantics is an inappropriate term, because having several different referents, it creates confusion. That is why the term ‘semasiology’ should be used to designate the science of meaning.

The problem of meaning is considered to be the most controversial one in the linguistic theory. There are two schools of thought in present –day linguistics representing contemporary thinking on the problem:

1. referential approach (founded by Ferdinand de Saussure) distinguishes between the three components connected with meaning: the sound form of the linguistic sign, the concept underlying this sound form and the actual referent, the aspect of reality to which the linguistic sign refers.

Establishing this relationship our approach to the problem of meaning is referential because we refer to the sound form, to the concept and to the referent and discuss their relationship.

This referential approach is criticized because the scholars in their theory use extra-linguistic terms such as concept, referent. Besides, approaching the problem of meaning the linguistic elements (words) are discussed in isolation from each other (from other words). So referential approach is paradigmatic. We discuss the meanings of words in a certain system. But in speech we use words in their environment and not in isolation. In this environment we define the meaning of words.

2. functional approach (L. Bloomfield) maintains that the meaning of a word may be studied only through its relation to other words.

These two approaches should not be set against each other. They should be used in peaceful combination. The examination of meaning must start by collecting an adequate number of samples of contexts. On examination of the samples the meaning will emerge from the contexts. Then it is logical to pass to the referential phase and try to formulate the meaning thus identified.

2. Component elements of word meaning.

The analysis of meaning shows that it is not homogeneous. It is made up of grammatical and lexical types of meaning.

Grammatical type of meaning is typical of word-forms and it expresses the relationship of words in speech, that is their position in the utterance, relationship with other words, their belonging to a definite part of speech. Grammatical meaning is the component of meaning recurrent in identical word-forms, common to all words of a certain class.

Comparing word-forms of one and the same word, for example: go, goes, went, going, gone we see that they possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person and so on, but in each of these forms we find one and the same semantic component denoting the process of movement. This is the lexical type of meaning of the word that is the component of meaning proper to the word, recurrent in all the forms of this word and in all the possible distributions of these forms.

Both the lexical and the grammatical meaning make up the word meaning as neither can exist without the other. The difference between the lexical and the grammatical components of meaning is in the way they convey the meaning.

In the semantic structure of the lexical meaning two components are singled out: 1) denotational (denotative, referential, extensional) and 2) connotational (connotative).

Denotational component expresses the conceptual content of a word. It denotes an object of the reality to which the sound form refers. It makes communication possible. People use different words and understand each other.

The connotational component comprises the emotive charge and the stylistic reference proper to the word. If we compare the following synonyms: to look, to glance, to glare, to stare we will discover that the verb to look is common semantic denominator. It expresses denotative meaning. And this type of meaning is felt in all other synonyms, but each of the synonyms possesses connotational type of meaning which describes the way we look at other people and by this look we express our attitude to people.

Connotational component may have an element of emotive evaluation. For example, in the words tremendous, worship, and girlie it is heavier than that of the words large, like and girl. And this does not depend on the “feeling” of the individual speaker but it is true for all speakers of English.

Connotational component may have also stylistic reference.

Thus, connotations may be expressive, emotive, evaluatory and stylistic.

Polysemy.

The semantic structure of the word does not present an indissoluble unity, nor does it necessarily stand for one concept. Most words convey several concepts and possess several meanings, e.g. the word blanket has the following meanings: 1) a woolen covering used on beds (‘шерстяное одеяло’), 2) a covering for keeping a horse warm (‘попона’), 3) a covering of any kind (a blanket of snow, a blanket of gloom (‘покров’)).

A word having several meanings is called polysemantic. A number of meanings a word expresses are known as lexical-semantic variants. The ability of words to have several meanings is called polysemy. Polysemy is singleness of form and multiplicity of content.