- •Воронежский государственный архитектурно-строительный университет
- •Введение
- •Lecture 1 lexicology as a branch of linguistics
- •1. General characteristics of Lexicology
- •2. Branches of Lexicology
- •3. The connection of Lexicology with other branches of Linguistics
- •4. Synchronic and Diachronic Lexicology
- •Lecture 2 word structure and word meaning
- •1. Lexical units. The word as a fundamental unit of the language
- •2. Components of the word meaning
- •3. Word-Meaning and Motivation
- •4. Types of Meaning
- •Lecture 3 semantic structure of the word
- •1. Types of context
- •2. Word-meaning in syntagmatics and paradigmatics
- •3. Polysemy and ways of its development
- •4. Types of lexical meaning
- •5. Types of polysemy
- •6. Types of semantic changes
- •Lecture 4 semantic relations of words
- •1. Homonymy. Classifications of homonyms, their sources
- •2. Sources of homonymy
- •3. Synonyms. Classification of synonyms. Euphemisms
- •4. Antonyms. Their classification
- •Lecture 5 general characteristics of english vocabulary
- •1. The volume of the vocabulary
- •2. Archaisms
- •3. Neologisms
- •4. Professional terminology
- •5. Standard English. Slang
- •Lecture 6 word-groups and phraseological units
- •1. Types of word combinations. Classifications of word-groups
- •2. Free word groups
- •3. Phraseology as a subsystem of language
- •4. A phraseological unit
- •5. Distinction between free word-groups and phraseological units
- •6. Classification of phraseological units
- •7. Sources of phraseological units
- •Lecture 7 word structure and word-formation
- •1. Morphological structure of the English word
- •2. Word-formation
- •3. Affixation. Prefixation
- •4. Suffixation. Classifications of suffixes
- •5. Conversion
- •6. Other types of word-formation
- •Lecture 8
- •Variants of the english language
- •1. British English and American English as the main variants of the English language
- •2. Morphological peculiarities of American words
- •3. Grammar peculiarities of American words
- •4. Lexical peculiarities of the two variants
- •5. The future of the English language
- •Lecture 9 english lexicography
- •1. Lexicography as a branch of linguistics, its aims and significance
- •2. The history of dictionary making
- •4. Classification of dictionaries
- •4. Main types of linguistic dictionaries of the English language
- •Modern Russian-English English-Russian Dictionaries
- •Modern English and American Dictionaries
- •Вопросы к зачету по курсу «Лексикология английского языка»
- •Final test English Lexicology
- •Заключение
- •Список литературы
- •Table of contents
- •394006 Воронеж, ул.20-летия Октября, 84
4. Types of Meaning
Lexical meaning possesses denotational and connotational components. As was mentioned above one of the functions of words is to denote things, concepts and so on. Users of a language cannot have any knowledge of the objects or phenomena of the real world around them unless this knowledge is embodied in words which have essentially the same meaning for all speakers of that language. This is the denotational meaning, i.e. that component of the lexical meaning which makes communication possible. The second component of the lexical meaning is the connotational component, i.e. the emotive charge and the stylistic value of the word. It may be negative, positive, neutral, common, poetic, archaic, terms, slang, vulgar words. Words contain an element of emotive evaluation as part of the connotational meaning; e.g. synonyms large, big, tremendous and like, love, adore have the difference in the emotive charge. The emotive charge of the words tremendous, and adore is heavier than that of the words large and like. This does not depend on the “feeling” of the individual speaker but is true for all speakers of English. The colloquial words daddy, mammy are more emotional than the neutral father, mother.
Words differ not only in their emotive charge but also in their stylistic reference. Stylistically words can be roughly subdivided into literary, neutral and colloquial layers. The greater part of the literary layer of Modern English vocabulary are words of general use, possessing no specific stylistic reference and known as neutral words. Against the background of neutral words we can distinguish two major subgroups — standard colloquial words and literary or bookish words. This may be best illustrated by comparing words almost identical in their denotational meaning, e. g., “parent — father — dad”. In comparison with the word father which is stylistically neutral, dad stands out as colloquial and parent is felt as bookish.
Specific subgroups may be singled out such as 1) terms or scientific words, e. g., renaissance, genocide, teletype; 2) poetic words and archaisms, e.g., whilome — “formerly”, aught — “anything”, ere — “before”, albeit —“although”, fare — “walk”, nay — “no”; 3) barbarisms and foreign words, e.g., bon mot — “a clever or witty saying’, apropos, faux pas, bouquet.
The colloquial words may be subdivided into: 1) slang, i.e. words which are often regarded as a violation of the norms of Standard English, e.g. governor for “father”, missus for “wife”, a gag for “a joke”; 2) professionalisms, i.e. words used in narrow groups bound by the same occupation, e.g., lab for “laboratory”, hypo for “hypodermic syringe”, a buster for “a bomb”; 3) jargonisms, i.e. words marked by their use within a particular social group and bearing a secret and cryptic character, e.g. a sucker — “a person who is easily deceived”, a squiffer — “a concertina”; 4) vulgarisms, i.e. coarse words that are not generally used in public, e.g. bloody, hell, damn, shut up; 5) dialectical words, e.g. lass, kirk (шотл.).
SEMINAR 2
KEY TERMS
meaning semantics
referent concept
denotation connotation
lexical unit motivation
neutral words archaisms
morpheme unit of communication
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND EXERCISES
Semantics as the branch of lexicology. Its aims and tasks.
The word and its characteristics.
The morpheme as the smallest meaningful language unit.
Word and meaning.
Lexical meaning and notion.
Three types of motivation.
Different approaches to meaning. Denotational and connotational meanings of a word.
Find out the difference in the denotational meaning of the words: appreciate, value, cherish.
Find out the difference in the connotational meaning of the words: beautiful, beauteous.
Comment on the connotations the following expressions convey: an ugly duckling, the Troyan horse, crocodile tears, a swan song, Achilles’ heel.
Test
1. Linguists try to explain the word-meaning through:
a) semantic triangle
b) definition of a word
c) grammatical forms
d) pronunciation
2. Morpheme is:
a) the main unit of lexical system
b) the smallest language unit which can stand alone as a complete
utterance
c) the smallest meaningful language unit
d) a group of words that exists in the language as a ready-made unit
3. Archaisms are words which:
a) ousted some new words
b) are no longer used in everyday speech
c) are used to express unimportance
d) are used instead of new meanings
4. Instead of the term “word” can be used the term
a) utterance
b) meaning
c) lexeme
d) morpheme
5. There are 2 types of word meaning in words:
a) grammatical and lexical
b) lexical and functional
c) grammatical and connotational
d) denotational and distinctive
6. Semantics is the study of
a) grammar
b) word meanings
c) phonetics
d) styles