The structure of lexical meaning.
Denotational component. The word “denotational” is formed from the word denote – to state as a name for smth. Denotational meaning is a kind of meaning when a word serves as a name for an object of extralinguistic reality. The word is used in its significative meaning when it serves a name for a class of objects and denotes a general idea of an object. F.e.: East or West home is best; A good laugh is sunshine in the house. The word is used in its demonstrative meaning when it serves to name individual elements of reality. F.e.: She studied to make their home a nice place.
Connotational component is the part of lexical meaning which reflects the attitude of the speaker to what he speaks about.
Emotive charge. F.e.: “father” is neutral and “daddy” is emotionally colored.
Expressiveness sometimes is called intensity. F.e.: “love” and “door”, the first word is more intense.
Imagery presupposes the image which we have in our mind when we use the word in its figurative meaning.
Evaluation. It can be positive and negative. F.e.: “лошадь” – “кляча”, “помощник” – “пособник”, “to clique” – “group”.
Pragmatic component conveys the information on the situation of communication.
Information on the participants and the given language community. This component reflects the social system the given language community. F.e.: “policeman” – “cop”; “invalid” – “physically / mentally challenged”.
Information on the time and space relationship. F.e. – obsolete / archaic words: “to see” – “to behold”, “enemy” – “foe”.
Information on the conditions of communication. It can range from extremely formal to extremely informal. F.e.: formal – “anticipate”, “aid”; informal – “stuff”, “to butt in”.
Types of lexical meaning according to Виноградов:
1) nominative meaning is the basic meaning of a word which refers to objects of extralinguistic reality in a direst way. F.e. “a chair”
2) nominative-derivative meaning comes into existence when the word is stretched out semantically to cover new facts and phenomena of extralinguistic reality. F.e.: Petrov is the chair of our meeting; the English chair – кафедра английского языка.
These two meanings are based on contiguity.
3) colligationally conditioned (морфо-синтаксически обусловленное). Colligational is a given morpho-syntactic pattern. Verb + Object + Infinitive. F.e.: “to make” – “to make smb to do smth”: “to carry” – “the bill was carried by the Parliament”.
4) collocationally conditioned. Collocation is a marriage contract between words. Collocationally conditioned is determined by the combine ability of words. F.e.: “walk”. When this word is used in combination with adjectives describing some territory the meaning is “route, path”. If this word is used in combination with such adjectives as “lazy”, “quick”, “morning” it means “a journey on foot”.
5) phraseologically bound. Phraseologically bound meaning appears in the idioms and phraseologically units. F.e.: “blank”. Blank wall” – a wall without a window; “Blank despair” – the highest degree of despair; “Blank verse” – белый стих. “To kick the bucket” – умереть.
Semantic changes.
Causes of semantic changes:
Extra-linguistic causes:
1) historical – changes in the way of life
2) psychological – taboos of different kind. F.e. “bathroom” is a euphemism for “toilet”.
Linguistic causes:
1) ellipsis – takes place when in a phrase made up of two words one of them is emitted and its meaning is transferred to its partner. F.e.: “to starve”. In OE it meant “to die”. In the 16th century the verb developed a new meaning – “to die of hunger”.
2) differentiation of synonyms. F.e. “land”. In OE the word “land” had two meanings: “solid part of the surface of earth” and “the territory of the nation“. Later the word “country” was borrowed and the word “land” lost the second meaning due to the competition of synonyms.
3) fixed context is cause closely connected with the competition of synonyms. F.e. “heaven”. In OE it meant “sky”. Then the word “sky” was borrowed and “heaven” became restricted in use (religion, poetic spheres).