- •1. Lexicology as a linguistic science. Word as the basic unit of the language.
- •2. The English vocabulary as an Adaptive system.
- •5. Loan words. Assimilation of loan words.
- •6. Etymological doublets. International words.
- •7. The influence of borrowings. Hybrids.
- •9. Lexical peculiarities of Formal and Informal styles.
- •10. The notion of the Morpheme. The classification of morphemes.
- •11. Derivational structure of English words.
- •2. Types of word-formation means and their productivity.
- •13. Affixation. Classification of affixes.
- •14. The phenomenon of conversion.
- •15. Compounding. Criteria of compounds. Types of compounds.
- •16. Shortening. Onomatopoeia. Reduplication.
- •17. Back formation. Blending.
- •18. Word meaning. Types of meaning.
- •19. Lexical meaning of the word. Motivation and meaning.
- •20. Polysemy.
- •21. Hyponymy as types of paradigmatic relationships in Lexis. Sources of homonymy, types of homonyms.
- •22. Semantic change: its causes, nature and types.
- •23. The problem of antonymy in modern linguistics.
- •24. Modern theory of synonymy.
- •25. Euphemisms. Paronyms.
- •26. Lexicography as a branch of linguistics. Many types of dictionaries.
- •27. Basic problems of lexicography.
- •28. Proverbs, sayings, familiar quotations and clichés.
- •29. Classification of phraseological units. Phraseological units and free word groups.
- •30. Denotative and connotative component of meaning.
19. Lexical meaning of the word. Motivation and meaning.
Lexical meaning includes several components. Traditionally they differentiate between 2 components: denotational; connotational. One of the functions of words is to denote things/concepts etc. users of a language cannot have only knowledge or thought of the object of the real word unless this knowledge is embodied in words. This is the denotational meaning. This component makes the communication possible. Connotational – emotive charge and the stylistic value of the word. Almost all words have connotational meaning. e.g.: big, large, tremendous (more emotional). Komlev introduced another component: cultural connotation in his book “Компоненты содержательной структуры слова” (1969). He proved that the semantic of the language is determined by the cultural environment of the speaking community. E.g.: ‘white’ is connected with ‘cleanliness’ or ‘purity’ in Russian. For the Muslims it is ‘mourning’. All the words in a certain language which contain a cultural connotation divide into: 1) words which denote unique notions and absent in other culture. Have no equivalents in other language. Exotic words – тайга, пельмени. 2) words which don’t only denote the object but also point out to their characteristic features. E.g.: ‘scone’ for English and Scotland it is ‘a soft cake with dried fruit’. For Americans it is ‘a small biscuit baked on a grill’. 3) words which possess some additional semantic and stylistic colouring known only to the people speaking this language. The colour terms and phraseologies. There are cases when there is a direct connection between the structural pattern of the word and its meaning. This relationship between morphemic structure and meaning is termed morphological motivation. Morphological motivation implies a direct connection between the lexical meaning of the component morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and the meaning of the word. The degree of morphological motivation may be different varying from the external/complete motivation to the lack of motivation. E.g.: ‘finger-ring’; ‘ring-finger’. They contain 2 identical morphemes. The combined morphical meanings are the same. The difference – in the arrangement of the morphemes which results in the meaning. The word ‘endless’ is completely motivated. Phonetical motivation implies a direct connection between phonetic structure and its meaning. It is argued that speech sounds may suggest special and visual dimensions (shape, size etc.). But experiments show that the back open vowels are suggestive of big size, heavy weight, dark colour. Sound imitation – ‘boom’, ‘splash’. The sound clusters in these words are the direct imitation of sounds these words denote. It is also suggested that sounds themselves may be emotionally expressive. E.g.: [p], [f] are felt as impressing contempt, scorn or disgust. – ‘poo’, ‘fee’ etc. Semantic motivation implies a direct connection between the central and marginal meanings of the word. This connection can be regarded as metaphoric extension of the central meaning based on the similarity of different classes of reference denoted by words. e.g.: necessity is the mother of invention.