Change of meaning in English.
Word-meaning is liable to change in the course of the historical development of language.
Causes of semantic change:
v Extra-linguistic (various changes in the life of the speech community, changes in economic and social structure, changes in ideas, scientific concepts, way of life and other spheres of human activities as reflected in word meanings)
v Linguistic (ellipsis, discrimination of synonyms, linguistic analogy)
The kinds of associationinvolved in semantic changes are:
1. similarity of meanings (or metaphor) - a semantic process of associating two referents, one of which in some way resembles the other. – EX. hand
2. contiguity of meanings (or metonymy) - the semantic process of associating two referents one of which makes part of the other or is closely connected with it. EX. tongue
Results of semantic change:
1. changes in denotational meaning (generalization, extension)
2. changes in connotational meaning:
v pejorative development (derogatory emotive charge)
v ameliorative development (the improvement of the con. component)
Causes, nature and result of semantic changes should be regarded as 3 essentially different but closely connected aspects of the same linguistic phenomenon.
Polysemy in English.
When analysing the word-meaning we observe, that words usually have more than 1 meaning. Monosemantic words, i.e. words having only one meaning are comparatively few in number, these are mainly scientific terms, such as hydrogen, moleculeand the like. The majority of English words are polysemantic(more than one meaning).
If Polysemy is viewed diachronically, it means, that the development of word’s meaning is shown through the history. There are 2 meanings: primary & secondary. EX. Table- the primary meaning in ME is ‘a flat slab of stone or wood’, which is proper to the word in OE - tabulefrom L. tabula);all other meanings are secondary as they are derived from the primary meaning of the word and appeared later than the primary meaning,
If Polysemy is viewed synchronically, it means, that the development of word’s meaning is shown in the certain period of time. There are 2 meanings: major & minor. EX – hand (part of body & part of clock).
Homonymy in English. Polysemy vs homonymy
Homonyms are words that sound alike but have different semantic structure. The problem of homonymy is mainly the problem of differentiation between two different semantic structures of identically sounding words.
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2 types of himonymy:
* full homonymy (of words belonging to the same part of speech).
* partial homonymy (of individuals word-forms of different part of speech).
Homonymsmay be:
ü lexical (differ in lexical meaning)
ü lexico-grammatical (both in lexical and grammatical)
ü grammatical (in grammatical meaning only)
Homonyms may be classified on the basis of 3 aspects as well:
1. sound form
2. graphic form
3. meaning (they are derived into homograpgs, homophones, perfect (absolute) homonyms)
Perfect homonyms are words identical both in spelling and in sound-form but different in meaning, e.g. case1 n — ’something that has happened’ and case2 n — ‘a box, a container’.
Homophones are words identical in sound-form but different both in spelling and in meaning, e.g. sean and seev; son n and sunn.
Polysemy vs homonymy
The most debatable problem of homonymy is the demarcation line “between homonymy and polysemy, i.e. between different meanings of one word and the meanings of two or more phonemically different words. If homonymy is viewed diachronically then all cases of sound convergence of two or more words may be safely regarded as cases of homonymy, as, e.g., race1and race2. Synchronically the differentiation between homonymy and polysemy is as a rule based on the semantic criterion. The criteria used in the synchronic analysis of homonymy are:
1) the semantic criterion of related or unrelated meanings;
2) the criterion of spelling;
3) the criterion of distribution.
Semantic and non-semantic classification of English words.
Present days’ semantic theory focuses on synchronic relations in the language system. It’s concerned both with: 1. relations within language (sense relations = semantic relations = semasiology), 2. relations between language and the word. The major of linguistic agree on one point: vocabulary should be studied as a system or as a set of interrelated sub-system. No lexeme exists in isolation. There is no lexeme without relation.
What are these relations that connected words in the lexicon?
Semantic relations:
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· polysemantic relations
· synonymic relations - there are no lexemes which have exactly the same meaning (linguistically)
Synonyms can be defined as two or more words of the same language, belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, they are interchangeable. Kinds of synonyms: ideographic, contextual (depend on the context), relative (like, love, adore), total synonymy (child, kid).
· antonymic relations -Antonyms - two or more words which have contrary meanings. Kinds of antonyms: gradable(capable of comparison, they don’t refer to absolute qualities: happy – sad), converses (sell – buy), contradictory (alive means ‘not dead’)
Another classification of antonyms is based on a morphological approach:
ü root words form absolute antonyms (right : : wrong),
ü the presence of negative affixes creates derivational antonyms (happy : : unhappy).
Hypero-hypenymic relations ( plant – tree (oak, apple tree (…)), flower…)
part-and-whole relations (body – face, eyes, nose; house – kitchen, sitting room, window, bathroom)
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