The Semantic Structure of a Word
Lexical Meaning as a Linguistic Category
Language is primarily a means of communication, the most important means of communication. This is why the main category of linguistics is meaning.
Let us begin by briefly recapitulating what the theoretical background of this category is. The problem consists first of all in understanding very clearly the nature of linguistic meaning. When people try to answer this question, they very often turn to various definitions of meaning elaborated by philosophers, psychologists, logicians, anthropologists, etc. It is deplorable that, as a rule, in this case no distinction is made between the ‘term’ (the name) and the actual ‘thing’ (the phenomenon) under analysis. Leaving on one side those definitions of meaning which are relevant to philosophy, logic, etc. we shall concentrate on those features of the phenomenon in question which are of paramount importance to linguistics.
Linguistic meaning is the specific kind of ‘content’ produced (or engendered) by the reverberation in the human consciousness of objective reality which constitutes the inner (semantic) structure of linguistic units and with respect to which their expression, the sounds in which they are materialized, is the outer (or phonetic) structure. From the above definition it is evident that the category of linguistic meaning cannot be understood or explained unless insight is gained into the nature of linguistic expression, the form of linguistic units. As will be shown below, the study of linguistic form is absolutely indispensable to the interpretation of meaning in language.
There are two kinds of linguistic meaning – the lexical (material) and the grammatical (categorial) meaning. The former is characteristic of separate words which are referable to certain referents, whereas the latter is of a more abstract character and becomes obvious only against the background of meaningful oppositions. It should be added in this connection that ‘meaning’ should be properly used only of words and phrases. Sentences carry ‘purports’.
If we turn to lexical meaning we should emphasize that it is a reverberation in the human consciousness of ‘objects’ of reality (phenomena, relationships, qualities and processes) which (the reverberations) becomes a fact of language because (only when) a constant and indissoluble connection is established between the reverberation and a certain sound (or sound complex). Thus, the particular reverberation becomes the content of the word, with respect to which its sound‑form expression functions as a ‘sound‑envelope’ – indispensable not only because it is the physical expression of the content and the vehicle for communicating it to other people, but also because without it the given lexical meaning could not come into being, exist and develop. Lexical meaning is the meaning of the main material part of the word which reflects the concept the given word expresses and the basic properties of the thing (phenomenon, quality, state) it denotes.
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Here immediately the question is bound to arise: how much of the concrete concept, what part of the general notional category is comprised in each particular word? In order to answer this question one should go more deeply into the relationship between form and meaning, expression and content in word‑stock.
First, there is in every language a certain lexical subsystem, which is more or less indifferent to the linguistic form in which it exists. Thus, for example, in cases like two, seventy‑five, or one hundred and two, etc. we deal with those subdivisions of the word‑stock of the language, for which in a civilized society there is a well‑established secondary semiotic system (2, 75, 102). Whenever we have something, which exists in other civilized societies in the form of a secondary semiotic system we have to admit that although there is a certain difference between these lexical subsystems (French: deux, soixante quinze, sent‑deux; Russian: два, семьдесят пять, сто два) it is, by and large, immaterial.
The second type can be conveniently exemplified by the ‘arm – hand’ situation. We look at the upper limb of the human body which has been ‘reverberated’ by the human mind since time immemorial, and find that in English it is divided into two parts: hand and arm. In Russian the whole limb is indiscriminately called рука. The difference between рука, on the one hand, and arm and hand, on the other, clearly indicates that the meaning of words is the particular reverberation which consists in slicing up, cutting up reality in this or that way. In our case, the Russian language does not cut it up and has only one word – рука, while the English language cuts it up into two parts – hand and arm. This is, comparatively speaking, a simple case of relationship between form and content because in this case we can actually see what happens. We look at the object and say: this is the arm and this is the hand, or this is the leg, and this is the foot, while in Russian the whole limb is merely рука or нога.What in English is called ‘little finger’ is monolexemically expressed in Russian as мизинец. Conversely, in English we do not speak of a big finger but a thumb.
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The situation becomes far more complicated when we reach the third category – words like fancy, disdain, horrible, terror, etc. because their referent, that is the object of thought correlated with a certain linguistic expression, is not directly cognoscible. The content of these words is such a complex combination of different ‘reverberations’ that to understand the difference between to fancy and to like, or horrible and terrible a serious lexicological investigation has to be carried out.
This is the reason why some people say that words of this kind in general cannot be referred to anything in objective reality, that in this case it is not a question of reverberation, but of primacy of language, of ‘mind’ before ‘matter’. Nothing, however, can be further from the truth. The difference between 1, 2 and 3 is just in the different kinds of reverberation, degrees of complexity of reverberation.
From what has been said above we are justified in concluding that the expression plane of the word ‘cuts out’, as it were, a certain piece of conceptual material and thus signals an independent lexical unit. Thus, for example, when a sequence of sounds like (bOI) is ‘pronounced’ by a tape‑recorder it lacks meaning. It becomes meaningful only when a link is established between the sound complex and a piece of ‘conceptual material’. When boy is associated with the content ‘male child’ it becomes a fact of the English language.
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It follows from what has just been said that the indissoluble connection between content and expression is of paramount importance because it is crucial for the linguistic interpretation of the concept of ‘meaning’. Different expressions emphasize the fact that the meanings under consideration do exist, do function and develop in different linguistic systems.
This point can be easily illustrated by the following sets of examples:
(1)
to sit on a chair
сидеть на стуле
to sit on the floor
сидеть на полу
to sit in an arm‑chair
сидеть в кресле
to sit at a table
сидеть за столом
to sit at a deskс
сидеть за письменным столом
to sit on a horseс
сидеть на лошади
(2)
My luggage is still sitting in London.
Мой багаж все еще лежит в Лондоне.
The vase sits in the centre of the table.
Ваза стоит в центре стола.
They served a French gateausitting in a thin puddle of asparagus sauce.
Они подали французский паштет, плавающий в спаржевом соусе.
Udaipur, deeper in Rajastan, a lake‑side town, sits in a circle of hills.
Удайпур – город, расположенный на берегу озера в глубине Раджастана, находится в окружении холмов.
There is no sign that he has withdrawn his resignation – it still sits there.
Нет никаких признаков того, что он забрал свое заявление об отставке – оно все еще там.
At first sight it may seem that to sit and сидеть have the same meaning (see the examples under 1), but the detailed analysis of their semantics in concrete contexts shows that the English verb is entirely different from its Russian counterpart (see the examples under 2).
The following examples borrowed from fiction give more evidence of the difference between the two verbs:
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1… but most wonderful that she should so dote on Sir Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviour seemed ever to abhore…
– Is’t possible? Sits the wind in that corner?…
– А всего удивительней то, что она с ума сходит по Бенедикту, которого, судя по ее поведению, она всегда ненавидела…
– Возможно ли? Так вот откуда ветер дует!
2… Farewell, Old Gaunt.
Thou goest to Coventry, there to behold
Our cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight:
O! sit my husband’s wrongs on Hereford’s spear,
That it may enter butcher Mowbray’s breast!
… Прощай! Увидишь скоро
Ты в Ковентри, как там на поединке
Сойдутся Херефорд и гнусный Маубрей.
О! Пусть несчастья мужа моего
С копьем кузена Херефорда вместе
Убийце Маубрею вонзятся в грудь.
3. But, Lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,
Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm;
We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,
And yet we strike not, but securely perish.
Но, лорды, мы внимаем свисту бури,
Укрыться же не ищем от нее.
Глядим, как вихрь рвет наши паруса,
И смерти ждем, сложивши руки праздно.
4. And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes;
There held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble…
И зеркало души крылатой,
Был холодней, чем мрамор статуй,
Твой лик нездешний до тех пор,
Пока вперенный в небо взор
Сама и нежно, и сурово
К земле не обратишь ты снова.
But even when it is quite clear that we deal with words which are in one‑to‑one correspondence one should not be misled into thinking that the lexical meanings of juxtaposed words are identical. The thing is that one of the aspects of lexical meaning is formed by the images the word evokes in the speaker’s mind. Such associations are accumulated in the sociolinguistic connotation of a word. This can be easily illustrated by the following pair of words: champagne and шампанское. According to the «Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English» champagneis «an expensive French white wine, containing a lot of bubbles, usually served on special occasions». The meaning of the Russian word is defined by Ozhegov as follows: «игристое белое виноградное вино, насыщенное углекислым газом в результате вторичного брожения». Thus, in contrast with the English champagnethe Russian шампанскоеis neither French, nor very expensive. As for ‘special occasions’ one should be reminded that right after the antialcoholic decree in the eighties шампанскоеwas the only wine on sale and people drank it on all occasions. It follows from what has just been said that cultural associations evoked by the two words are quite different and these, too, keep them clearly apart.
One more example. From the definition of hot‑water bottle given in the «Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English» we learn that it is «a rubber container that is filled with hot water and put in a bed to make it warm». Its Russian equivalent грелкаis associated not with cosiness and comfort but with ache and disease.
The situation becomes still more complicated if either denotational and connotational components of the lexical meaning is ideologically marked, that is reflects the moral code of the speech community in question, its system of values, determined by socio‑historical factors.
As not all speakers of the language share the same interpretive frames there exists the possibility of misunderstanding between speakers belonging to different cultures but using the same language as a means of communication. A case in point is religious or political terminology because these lexical subsystems are ideologically marked.
For example, in many cases in Russian society the word демократияis understood primarily in terms of its association with Western material consumption and its opposition to communism. Hence the use of such derrogatory word‑combinations with the word in question and its derivatives as обанкротившаяся демократия, демократические игры, так называемые демократы. In the West, however, democracy is associated primarily with freedom and justice and has no negative connotations.
The word democracy has been part of the English language for a very long time. The word glasnostcould be called a neologism. It was borrowed from the Russian language in the 1980s and is associated with the policies of Michael Gorbachev. The Russian word гласность can be traced back to the word голос and it presupposes that news is widely announced and everybody is well informed. The English glasnostis defined in a monolingual dictionary of English in the following way «(in the former Soviet Union) the policy of more open government and a wider spread of information in public affairs». The dictionary emphasizes that the concept in question is associated with the policies of the former Soviet Union and that it implies the readiness of a government to discuss its decisions with people. However it does not mean that the government becomes accountable to people. In effect, this is addressing the problem the wrong way.
Modern cognitive semantics distinguishes three types of knowledge: linguistic underlying the prototypical meaning of the word, conceptual determining linguistically conditioned lexical meanings and encyclopedic which forms the background conceptual structure of the word. All the three are culture specific and this makes the word a unique linguistic unit (Ferenc Kiefer, Linguistic, Conceptual and Encyclopedic Knowledge: Some Implications for Lexicography. Budapest, 1988).
Adherents of logical semantics, who ignore the dialectical unity of content and expression in the word, approach the problem of the lexical meaning of the word in a very simplistic way. One of their methods is based on the assumption that the question may be solved only by means of a one‑sided division of a word into a number of semantic components (‘componential analysis’). This approach which appeared to be tenable when applied to kinship and colour terms is still restricted to those very limited thematic groups the members of which do not rely on linguistic expression and could just as well be distinguished from one another by formulae or other kinds of extralinguistic notation. Thus, for example, the ‘things’ themselves in the case of words like mother, father, sister, brother, etc. can be easily conceived as mere sums of elementary components: male – female, direct lineability – colineal lineability – ablineal lineabilityand five generation components g1, g2, g3, g4, g5. Uncle then can be presented as: male + colineal lineability + g2.
Now it has become clear that componential analysis only appears, at first sight, to be an attractive way of handling semantic relations. But it raises far too many difficulties at all workable. Special investigations in the field show that the method in question has been a complete failure even in the case of kinship and colour terms (Palmer, F.R. Semantics.
A New Outline. London, 1976, p. 91). It follows that the logical approach of componential analysis cannot be used in linguistic investigation of natural human languages. Linguistic investigation requires much finer ‘tools’ than those used by componential analysis: in this case simplification should in principle be ruled out.
Polysemy
The reason why any word may potentially have more than one meaning (be polysemantic) is obvious: the reality of the world is infinite, while the resources of even the richest language are limited. Thus, language keeps stretching out its lexical units to cover new phenomena of objective reality. The speaker observes certain similarities between objects and acquires the habit of using words metaphorically. When the metaphor becomes habitual it is included as a lexical‑semantic variant in the word’s semantic structure.
This, however, is not merely a theoretical question, but one that is of the greatest practical significance to the compiler of dictionaries. How do we know that this or that word is polysemantic and what are the criteria used to arrive at the final decision? And how does a lexicographer know that he (or she) is dealing with different meanings of the same word and not different words (homonyms)?
To demonstrate the complexity of the problem let us turn to the dictionary entries of the adjective fine in different dictionaries. Even a cursory glance reveals that the meaning of the adjective in question is differently interpreted in three learner’s dictionaries of the same size: The «Cambridge International Dictionary of English» (CUP, 1995) regis‑ters four meanings of fine:
1. satisfactory,
2. good,
3. thin,
4. sunny.
The «Harrap’s Essential English Dictionary» (Chambers Harrap Pub‑lishers, 1995) singles out eight meanings of the adjective in question:
1. You describe something as fine if you think it is splendid or excellent.
2. Fine articles are of high quality.
3. The weather is fine when it is not raining.
4. You say you are fine when you are well.
5. You say something is fineif it is OK, satisfactory, or acceptable.
6. Threads that are fine are thin and narrow.
7.Fineparticles are very small.
8. Finemeans very precise, exact, slight or subtle.
The «Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English» describes twelve meanings of the same adjective:
1. very good, of high quality,
2. very well, in good health,
3. acceptable, satisfactory,
4. attractive,
5. delicate,
6. (of weather) bright, not raining,
7. very thin,
8. difficult to see or describe,
9. with small grains,
10. (of person) that you have a lot of respect for,
11. (of words, speeches) sounding important and impressive but unlikely to have any effect,
12. (of metals) containing only a particular metal and no other substances that reduce the quality.
Now, why the discrepancy? First, because the word is a global lexical unit, and all the attempts at splitting it up, one way or another, are not borne out by readily observable ‘overt’ facts, and, second, because we are still not very clear about the methodology of semantic analysis. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the method of semantic analysis remains very problematic. Lexical semasiology remains one of the most controversial areas in spite of the number of papers and books on the subject being very considerable.
In the preceding chapter the attempt to base all analysis of lexical meaning on the idea of semantic components has already been mentioned. The conclusion we reached was that so far the results have left much to be desired as far as actual lexicographic work is concerned. The methods based on logical approach to lexis have been so unproductive because very little attention was given to the methods actually used by Russian lexicographers and lexicologists.
The fundamental approach to the study and description of lexical meaning was elaborated by V. V. Vinogradov. He analysed the overall meaning of a word in terms of: nominative, nominative‑derivative, colligationally and collocationally conditioned and phraseologically bound meanings.
The nominative meaning denotes the objects of extralinguistic reality in direct and straightforward way, reflecting their actual relations. Thus, for example: to carry whose nominative meaning is ‘to support the weight of and move from place to place’ normally combines with nouns like a box, a chair, a heavy stone, a baby, etc., sweet – ‘tasting like sugar or honey’ – with candy, milk, jam, cake, tea, coffee, etc.
The nominative meaning is the basic of all the other meanings of the word. It is said to be ‘free’ because no linguistic constraints are imposed on its realizations. The word may have several ‘free’ meanings but they all depend on the nominative one: that is why they are called ‘nominative‑derivative’, for example: sweet in the nominative‑derivative meaning of ‘pleasant, attractive’ goes with face, voice, singer, little boy, temper, etc.
Side by side with the ‘free’ meanings of the word there are linguistically conditioned (or ‘bound’) meanings which can be of two kinds: colligationally conditioned and collocationally conditioned. The former can be illustrated by the uses of the verb to keep. When used with nouns like hens, bees, pigs, etc. the verb means ‘own or manage especially for profit’. The verb to keep has an altogether different meaning, namely ‘continue doing something’ when it is used with a gerund, for example: Keep smiling! Why does she keep giggling? etc.
The colligationally conditioned meaning is determined by the morpho‑syntactic combinability of the word, while the collocationally conditioned meaning depends on its lexical‑phraseological ties. One of the collocationally conditioned meanings of the adjective heavy is ‘more than usual size’; it is realized in speech when heavyis brought together with words like crops, pain, blow, etc.
Very often a colligationally or collocationally conditioned meaning is realized only in one or two set‑phrases. It is then said to be ‘phraseologically bound’. A case in point is the verb to love in the expression ‘d love to, for example, I’d love to meet them; I’d love to come with you; I’d love to help them.
This approach to the semantics of the word is perfectly reliable because it is based on linguistic criteria which signal all the modifications of the semantic core of the word. Our discussion of different kinds of lexical meaning would not be complete if we did not mention one more meaning which so far has not received all the attention it deserves. It has become increasingly obvious that in the majority of cases the meaning of a word cannot be specified and explained with reference only to objective reality and its reflection in human consciousness. In every language there exists a considerable number of words which lend themselves to semantic analysis only against the backdrop of other words. Thus, for example, the meaning of words like cop,egghead, to peeve, etc. can be properly understood and analysed only against the background of words like policeman, theorist, to vex, etc. This is what academician V.V.Vinogradov called ‘expressive‑synonymic meaning’.
We must now turn to another aspect of the problem. In the previous chapters very much attention has been paid to the analysis of prosodic peculiarities of the word as a linguistic unit. Let us see whether the method of lexicological phonetics, the method based on the unity of content and form, can yield any fruitful results when applied in the sphere of semantic investigation.
The starting point for the present part of the present book is the fact that language ‘stretches out’ its units to cover new facts and phenomena of objective reality. The speaker observes certain similarities between objects of extralinguistic reality and attempts to use a word metaphorically to cope with the particular requirements of the moment. Even a cursory glance reveals that expressive‑emotional‑evaluative overtones affect the prosodic arrangement of words. Thus, for example:
I. delicate 1 –‘fine exquisite’; delicate 2 –‘requiring careful treatment or skilful handling’:
1. || 0 Delicate · lace ruffles. fell over the. lean. yellow 7 hands | that were 0 so over. laden with 6 rings. ||
2. || I have 0 come to consult you on a 0 very \delicate / matter, M. Poi7 rot. ||
slowly
II. material – ‘(contrasted with spiritual) made of, connected with, matter or substance’; material – ‘important, essential’:
1. || He had 0 not. broken · down the · artifacts into ma. terial 6 groups: |
7 earthenware, 7 stone, 7 bone, 7 ivory, | but 0 lumped to. gether. everything from a par. ticular 6 area.||
2. || I would. have you \ know | that. my \sentiments
have under. gone so ma 4 terial a 7 change since that 7 period. ||
slowly
III. common 1 – ‘usual and ordinary’; common 2 – ‘vulgar, of inferior quality or taste’:
1. || He will have a 0 pilot’s · whistle upon. which he will 7 blow, | and he will ѓ wear in · every re. spect a · common \pilot’s 6 uniform. ||
n n
2. || She · must have been 4 dreadfully 6 common. ||
h> <h
IV. cold 1 – ‘of low temperature’; cold 2 – ‘unkind, unfriendly’:
1. || He 0 loved to · kneel. down on the. cold 7 marble. pavement, | and 0 watch the 6 priest. || l n
2. || 0 If it 7 does, | 0 give it a 0 cold · look «and 0 walk 6 through it. ||
V. divine 1 – ‘of from or like God or a god’; divine 2 –‘excellent, very beautiful’:
1. || In/stead «she 0 slipped to her · knees be. fore her 7 icon, | an
0 exquisite · albeit · solemn · Virgin · Mary in · deep. purple 7 robe and 7 hood, | and 0 prayed for di. vine 6 guidance. ||
2. || She 0 does one. very 6 well, | and it 0 ought to be di\vine in the
0 country just 6 now. || slowly
VI. vital 1 – ‘of, connected with, necessary for, living’;
Vital 2 – ‘supreme, indispensable’:
1. || He was 0 wounded into a · vital ‘ part. ||
2. || It was to over 0 looking this 0 vital 6 point that my \own. downfall in 7 Leicester · Square was 6 due. ||
It does not require a very close examination to see that there is a drastic difference between the two sets of examples of each word insofar as their prosody is concerned. The nominative and the nominative‑derivative meanings can be distinguished because of the accompanying regular prosodic modifications. Within each set the examples, though not identical in their suprasegmental arrangement, have one thing in common. When used in the nominative meaning the word does not violate the laws of syntactic prosody, whereas the nominative‑derivative meaning is invariably accompanied by the modifications of suprasynatctic prosody. Otherwise stated, the prosody of the word varies a good deal from one context to another, and between different syntactic positions, but it is evidently neutral in the former case and emphatic in the latter one.
Thus, there is every reason to believe that the prosody of the word obeys the general rule of linguistic variation: the prosodic invariant which corresponds to a meaning of the word can be ‘distilled’ from the innumerable prosodic variants serving as the expression plane of concrete uses of the word in the same meaning.
Let us now turn to colligationally conditioned meaning. In V.V.Vi‑nogradov’s article the difference between nominative and colliga‑tionally conditioned meanings is illustrated by the following oppositions: the nominative meaning of the verb разобраться‘to unpack’ is opposed to the colligationally conditioned meaning ‘to investigate, to examine’, the nominative meaning of the verb отозваться‘to answer’ is realized by the absolute syntactic position, whereas its colligationally conditioned meaning ‘to speak of’ is confined to the prepositional construction отозваться о ком/чем.
When we apply this method to English material we are immediately faced with a number of complex problems and the very first difficulty to be mentioned is obviously the problem of distinguishing between colligationally conditioned meanings proper and phraseological units of different kinds (see Chapter 10. Phraseology).
If, for example, we take the adjective ill which can occur attributively and predicatively, it may seem that we are dealing with colligationally conditioned meanings, for instance:
She has been ill for a long time.
The child remained ill for ten days.
She did not permit herself to fall ill.
I want not even a shadow of ill feeling to exist between your husband and myself.
He found much to offend his ideas to decorum and confirmed his ill opinion of that man.
It’s perfectly allowable, when untinctured by ill humour or roughness.
Theoretically speaking the difference in meanings can be ascribed to the difference in colligation but in actual fact it is not always the case. The thing is that to fall illis a phraseological unit which means ‘to become ill’. On the other hand, ill feeling, ill opinion and ill humour are on the verge of becoming an unstable compound and not infrequently hyphenated. Thus, both types of meanings tend to become phraseo‑logically bound and the concept of colligation in this case can be applied with a grain of salt.
Another example, the verb to bear. The nominative meaning of to bear is ‘to carry’, for example, to bear a heavy load. Does it change when the colligation changes? Can we say that the difference between to bear as ‘to carry’ and to bearas ‘to endure, to tolerate’ is colligationally conditioned? Indeed, the latter is usually realized with can or couldespecially in negative or interrogative constructions, for example:
I can’t bear the sight of that old man.
The pain was almost more than I could bear.
She could not bear to see animals treated cruelly.
She can’t bear to be laughed at.
But we can just as well come across the nominative meaning of the verb being realized in the same construction, for instance, I can’t bear a heavy load, I don’t feel well. Thus, the change in colligation does not result in any semantic changes. The difference in meaning becomes obvious only against the opposition of contexts in terms of prosody. To bear as ‘to carry’ is generally neutral, whereas to bear as ‘to endure, to tolerate’ is prosodically marked.
The evidence of the above examples proves that prosody is one of the most important factors without which it would be impossible to demonstrate the objective existence of the word not only in conventional orthographic text but in the actual flow of speech as well. The methods of prosodic analysis, however, ought to be applied very carefully lest the investigator should read into the word what is not there. To illustrate this point let us turn to the verb to love.
We have already spoken of the utter unacceptability of rough‑and‑ready ‘segmentation’ of the living global units (the words of a natural human langua‑ge) and have claimed that the analysis of these units should be effected with care. Otherwise stated, we can understand what a word really means only if
its different semantic facets are revealed gradually, in a chain‑like succession.
Thus, in the present case, first come those collocations where to love is combined with words denoting persons or with nouns like country, painting, or music. Thus, for instance:
love one’s parents (She loved her mother very much);
love children (He loved his son);
love a person of the opposite sex (Each thing that happened made me love you more);
love music (She loves good music).
We also find instances in which there is no object following the verb to love, as in:
She had loved and been deceived…
In all these cases to love is used to express a strong affection or a deep feeling for somebody or something. This meaning of the verb can be described as its main nominative meaning. It includes a number of nuances, because every time different kinds of strong affectionate feelings are expressed, they are engendered by feelings of blood ties, tenderness, patriotism.
As far as prosody is concerned, investigation of a large number of actual uses of this word has shown that in all cases of this kind prosody is neutral, for example:
|| 0 All her · pupils 6 love her. ||
|| 0 Hugh · loved his · daughter 6 dearly… |
|| I 0 think they would a\muse you, | and, of /course, they would 6love you. ||
The word to love, meaning ‘to have a strong affection for smb., smth.’, when used with neutral prosody is usually part of serious, or matter‑of‑fact statement. No specific or particular prosody is called for.
Next comes another kind of love and a different ‘intonation’ of the word as in:
|| And I \love you, 7 Maisie, | he. said in 7 whisper… |
|| I \ love you. || I’ve \always. loved you | from the 0 first
slowly
· moment I 6 met you…|.
This is a separate and special use of the word in direct speech. It has little to do with the preceding set of uses, although to love here also means ‘to have a strong affection’. This use of the verb is treated situationally different because it occurs in direct speech when people confess in their deep feelings towards one another. Cases of this kind should be treated separately, because of their peculiar prosodic pattern.
Then comes the nominative‑derivative meaning of the verb. It is no longer possible to define it as ‘to have strong affection’; to love is ‘to be very fond of something, to enjoy something’. When used in this meaning, the verb is always prosodically marked:
|| He 0 said «he 0 dearly \ loved a. bit of 7 cheese. ||
slowly
|| I 0 always \love a. chat. ||
|| I \love. dancing with at· tractive /people…|
It is extremely important to understand the difference between words brought into prominence for metasemiotic consideration (as in cases where, for example, deep feelings towards a member of the opposite sex are expressed) and those where the specific prosody is the only possible means of realizing one of the meanings (as in love soup or love to tease somebody).
Every single word can be used emphatically, it depends on how emotional the speaker is. The emphatic prosodic arrangement (if used at all) is something additional, something which comes over and above the basic semantic structure. But there are meanings which normally can be realized only with marked prosody.
There are also cases where to love occurs with a conditional auxiliary (should, would) as a special kind of clichй modal phrases:
|| I’d 0 love to 6 meet them…|.
|| I’d 0 love to 6 help you…|
Another example of phraseologically bound meaning is the use of love not with words denoting persons but those denoting plants and animals, for example:
|| 0 Plants · love 7 sunlight. ||
|| 0 Central Asia 0 wild 7 pheasants | 0 love im. penetrable 6 jungles. ||
The phraseologically bound meaning here is ‘be in need’. In oral speech it is expressed by means of neutral prosody.
Let us now try to apply our methods to the analysis of the different meanings of the verb to pray. The nominative meaning of the verb is ‘to commune with God’ and is expressed colligationally by means of absolute syntactic position, for example:
|| They 0 knelt ’ down and 6 prayed. ||
|| I 0 pray · every 6 morning. ||
|| 0 Do you. often /pray? |
Then comes the meaning ‘offer thanks, make requests known’, which is confined to the colligation to pray for something/somebody, for example:
|| The 0 farmers are. praying for 6 rain. ||
|| I 0 prayed for for 6 giveness. ||
|| I 0 prayed for her · every 6 day. ||
|| The 0 mother · prayed for her 6 baby. ||
The evidence of the adduced examples shows that here we can observe an interesting interaction of colligation and collocation. Subtle modifications of meaning depend on the words which are brought together in the same colligation.
The two meanings discussed above are not prosodically marked. The situation is drastically different in the case of to pray as ‘to ask somebody as a favour’. This meaning finds its manifestation in the colligation to pray somebody for something/to do something, for example:
|| I 0 pray you to think 6 again. ||
slowly
|| We \pray you that the · prisoner may be. set 6 free. ||
|| I \pray you to · show 6 mercy. ||
slowly
The meaning in question is generally accompanied by marked prosody. It should be emphasized right away that emphatic prosody in this case is due to the socio‑linguistic character of the meaning (the meaning is hardly ever used nowadays for it is slightly high‑flown) but not to its colligation.
If we compare the pronunciation of pray in the above examples with pray in the following sentences we shall see that the prosody of the word in question has changed once again:
|| Pray, 0 ask the · lady to come 6 out here. ||
|| And 0 may I \know, pray, 4 what / lady has the · credit
slowly
of in. spiring. such re 3 flection? ||
Pray here is a formal request equivalent to please. The semantic debasement of the verb finds its immediate manifestation in modifications of prosody: praydoes not carry a stress of its own.
It follows from what has been expounded above that the semantic structure of the verb to pray is revealed in its prosodic variation.
The lexical‑prosodic research of different classes of words has made it possible to establish at least five prosodic invariants which form the opposition of unmarked, neutral and marked types of prosodic variation. Neutral prosodic invariant is determined not by the semantics of the word but by its syntactic properties. As far as unmarked variation is concerned it is represented by what can be described as ‘zero prosodic invariant’ which is observed when the word in one of its meanings has no prosodic contour of its own. A case in point is pray 4 adduced above.
The zero prosodic invariant is also typical of oh, ahand wellwhen they function as voiced pauses rather than interjections, for example:
1. || Oh, that’s \nonsense, / Algy. ||
2. Have you studied that card? ||Well, \tell me,| ‘ does anything /strike you about it? ||
3. || Ah, ‘ what’s in the \bottle, /boy? ||
As can be seen from the above examples oh, ahand wellare prosodically suppressed: they have no stress of their own and are pronounced very quickly with diminished loudness. The effect produced is that of a parasitic sound.
Marked prosodic variation is represented by three invariants: positive, negative and intensifying. The three invariants are marked because they make the word stand out in the flow of speech. But the prominence of the word is expressed by different combinations of prosodic parameters. Thus, the positive prosodic invariant (widened pitch range, emphatic pitch movement, increased loudness, slow tempo) is the expression plane of those meanings which are inherently charged with meliorative expressive‑emotional‑evaluative overtones. For example, the nominative meaning of advantageous, beautiful, charming, to delight, excellent, fun, happy, perfect, remarkably, superb, wonderfuletc. and the nominative‑derivative meaning of angel, to bless, gallant, galaxy, honey, to love, sweet,etc. are accompanied by the positive prosodic invariant.
We deal with the negative prosodic invariant when we come across those meanings of words which are endowed with pejorative expressive‑emotional‑evaluative overtones. Thus, for example, the expression plane of the nominative meaning of absurd, cowardice, horrible, filth, insolent, miserable, odious, ugly, wickedness,etc. and the nominative‑derivative meaning of bitter, dry, coldness, ghastly, hollow, morbidness,etc. can be described in terms of the negative prosodic invariant – narrow pitch range, emphatic pitch movement, increased loudness, slowed down tempo, tense articulatory setting.
The intensifying prosodic invariant (raised placing of the tone in pitch range and slow tempo) can be observed in words like absolutely, entirely, enormous, huge, mighty, totally, utterly,etc.
It should be apparent by now that it is no easy task to discover the actual semantic structure of the word as manifested in the oral form of language. Prosodic analysis, although needlessly complicated at first sight, is very useful because of the great number of words whose semantic structure is disclosed in the subtle modifications of their prosodic contour. With words like terrific, fantastic, etc., for example, any attempt at displaying a correspondence between prosody and lexical semantic variation is complicated by subtle variations of prosodic parameters. To illustrate this let us consider the adjective fantastic. We shall begin, as usual, with the nominative meaning: ‘wild and strange, grotesque’:
|| The 0 lamp · cast fan · tastic. shadows on the ’ wall and 6 staircase. ||
slowly
|| 0 Suddenly he re 7 marked | that 0 every · face that he · drew. seemed to have a fan · tastic · likeness to · Basil 6 Hallward. ||
slowly
Here fantastic is pronounced with a level tone, decreased loudness and slow tempo which, together, may be regarded as serving to enhance the concept of ‘mystery’.
Going down the scale, we arrive at the nominative‑derivative meaning: ‘impossible to carry out, absurd’, for example:
1. || 0 No \argument, 7 Jeeves. | 0 No dis 6 cussion. || Whatever
n n
fan\tastic ob. jection you may have 7 taken to it, | I \wear this / jacket. ||
2. || I could 0 not understand | 0 how it was 0 possible for her to · like being. kissed by an. old 6 man, | and the fan\tastic. notion. passed through my 6 mind. || slowly
The expressive‑emotional‑evaluative features of fantasticare realized with the help of a falling tone, narrow pitch‑range and slow tempo. This testifies to the assertion that the word may be endowed with inherent connotations in its different meanings. It should be added in this connection that it is often difficult to distinguish between a case of fantastic 1 and a case of fantastic 2. Certain contexts are, of course, obvious. No one would hesitate to identify them in the examples cited above. Between the two clear extremes, however, the scale of variation is continuous. As far as these border‑line cases are concerned, the prosodic analysis has proved to be quite practicable.
The matter is further complicated by the fact that fantastic 3 is also connotative, for example:
1. || She 0 cried \out: | «Panaghia 6 mou, „0 Holy. Mother of 6 God, | what a fan 4 tastic 6 sight!“ ||
slowly
2. || 0 Here we can · find · 200 fan 4 tastic / fashions at · every 6 price. ||
The pronunciation of fantastic 3‘marvellous, wonderful’ differs markedly from the prosody which is typical of the other two meanings. The adjective is uttered with a high falling tone, increased loudness and slow tempo. It should also be noted that the meaning in question is sociologically determined and is used mainly by people belonging to the younger generation. Not infrequently it occurs in the register of advertizing.
The importance of prosodic analysis consists in the fact that it proves without a shadow of doubt that lexical material must be handled with care: preconceived logical ideas have very little to do with it. What we require is real understanding of all the subtleties of a word actual functioning in speech. By using proper linguistic methods we may hope to draw finer distinctions between the different lexical‑semantic variants of words, their polysemies appearing as delicate ‘chain‑wise’ traceries.
So far we have concentrated on keeping the different meanings of words carefully apart. But in fiction we very often come across contexts in which two or even three lexical semantic variants are simultaneously realized. At first sight it may seem paradoxical but if we bear in mind what has been said about the globality of a word then the ‘polyphonic’ approach becomes perfectly well‑grounded.
Very often a master of style excels in using the globality of a word for stylistic purposes. Generally speaking the verb to move, for example, has two different meanings:
move 1 –‘change position in motion’, for example:
1. Move your chair nearer to the fire.
2. It was calm and not a leaf moved.
and move 2 – ‘affect with pity’, for example:
1. His meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him.
2. It was terribly pathetic. But I was not moved a bit.
In the following passage the overlapping of move 1 and move 2produces a comic effect:
In that instant she put a rouge‑pot, a brandy‑bottle and a plate of broken meat into the bed…..she put her hand to her heart with a passionate gesture of despair, burning her face for a moment on the bed.
|| The 0 brandy‑bottle in/side 0 clinked · up against the · plate which
· held the · cold 6 sausage. || · Both were 0 moved, no. doubt, by the exhi– · bition of · so much 6 grief. || slowly
Moved is marked off in the utterance by a high level tone and slow tempo. Such prosodic arrangement undoubtedly makes for enhancing the connotation which comes into play.
It follows that in actual speech the word functions as a global unit and the play on its different meanings becomes possible because the reader/listener is aware of this property of the word.
Enantiosemy and Homonymy
In the foregoing part of the present manual the general problems of semantic analysis of words have been explained and clarified. In this chapter we are going to concentrate on the specific problems – the correlation of expression and content in the case of enantiosemy and homonymy.
As far as the first of these categories is concerned, in general outline the question may be formulated in the following manner. It has often been stated by different philologists that one and the same word can be used in two exactly opposite or ‘polar’ meanings. Thus, for instance, if we were to consider the words nice and pretty in the following passage this assumption might seem to be correct:
But that Harold Pinker, a clerk in Holy Orders, a chap who buttons his collar at the back, should countenance this thing appals me. He knows she has got that book. He knows that she is holding me up with it. But does he insist on her returning it? No! He lends himself to the raw work with open enthusiasm. A nicelookout for the Totleigh‑in‑the‑Wold flock, trying to keep on the straight and narrow path with a shepherd like that! A prettyexample he sets to this Infants’ Bible Class of which he speaks! A few years of sitting at the feet of Harold Pinker and imbibing his extraordinary views on morality and ethics and every bally child on the list will be serving a long stretch at Wormwood Scrubs for blackmail.
If we confined ourselves to the written version of this text, we would be unable to understand that in this case nice and pretty have acquired the meanings of ‘nasty’ and ‘disgusting’. It transpires only when the text is transposed into its oral form and the prosody of a rise‑fall, narrow pitch‑range and slow tempo is actually realized.
The point we are now going to make is that a word, although meliorative on the segmental level, can acquire a pejorative meaning if it is pronounced with an altogether different prosody. Otherwise stated, enantiosemy is realized by means of a specific prosodic structure of the utterance as a whole. Enantiosemy is created by the incompatibility of lexis and prosody, that is to say the direct meaning of the word and the purport of the intonation with which it is spoken. The word precious is a case in point.
The adjective precious means ‘of great value and beauty’, e.g. the precious metals, precious stones, etc. But precious can also be used as an evaluative adjective, for example, Bless the precious boy! or Her children are very precious to her, where it means ‘dearly loved’. Precious 1usually requires neutral prosodic invariant (a level tone, normal tempo and loudness), while precious 2 is realized by means of the positive marked prosodic invariant. Both precious 1and precious 2are meliorative adjectives.
In a sentence like That precious father of histhe prosodic variant of precious is quite different from the intonation of precious 1 and precious 2. Here we deal with precious 3 which is a pejorative adjective, it is enunciated with a mid‑falling tone, breathiness and a half‑unit pause before it. This is the negative marked prosodic invariant which is incompatible with the meliorative connotation, expressed by precious 1 and precious 2. Precious 3 is, therefore, an instance of the enantiosemic use of the adjective.
What has been said above applies not only to words but also to set‑expressions. Let us take, for example, the set‑expression to be in one’s glory, which means ‘to be at the peak of one’s fame’. The meaning of the expression when pronounced with neutral prosody is clearly meliorative. In the following example, however, in all his glory is used sardonically:
…and then, | I’ll \answer for it, | you’ll 0 see your
n n
· nephew in \all his \glory. ||
slowly
The prosody of in all his gloryis the following: a mid‑falling tone of narrow interval and slow tempo. This prosodic arrangement is typical of words with pejorative connotation. We can, therefore, conclude that all evaluative words or word‑combinations can function enantiosemically when accompanied by the appropriate variety of prosodic arrangment.
Quite a few enantiosemic uses of words have become habitual and are now registered as such in dictionaries, for example:
Fine: A fine specimen! A fine kettle of fish.
Nice: You’ve got us into a nice mess.
Pretty: A pretty kettle of fish.
Glorious: What a glorious mess!
It should be emphasized that enantiosemy is not confined to certain types or classes of words. Enantiosemy may be observed in words belonging to different thematic groups and different parts of speech. But all the enantiosemic uses of words display one common feature: they all express the attitude of the speaker to the subject of conversation, the subjective evaluation of what is taking place. Hence the importance of evaluative connotation for enantiosemic studies. To gain an insight into the interaction between prosodic and lexical characteristics in the case of enantiosemy, one should turn to the opposition of two kinds of connotation: positive and negative.
The reader should not be misled into thinking, however, that incompatibility of lexis and prosody invariably results in enantiosemy. It can produce different kinds of stylistic effects. Thus, for instance, a particular example of irony, created when the speaker assumes the role of the ‘devil’s advocate’, presenting a view of things, or opinion, which, in the nature of things he himself cannot share. A case in point is the following passage from «The School for Scandal»:
Mr. Premium, the plain state of the matter is this: I am an extravagant young fellow, who wants to borrow money; you I take to be a prudent old fellow, who has got money to lend. I am blockhead enough to give fifty percent sooner than not have it; and you, I presume, are rogue enough to take a hundred if you can get it.
The irony is expressed by means of the particular prosodic interpretation, the importance of which for the effect achieved is obvious. If this text were presented in isolation, it could have been interpreted in a variety of ways. By using different kinds of prosodic arrangment, the reader could express anger or indignation – although the lexical meaning as expressed by the words and their combinations could, at first glance, seem to be incompatible with these connotative purports.
Instances of this kind can be multiplied infinitely especially if what we are after is a complete set of different shades of meaning coming under the title of ‘irony’ and the corresponding forms of prosodic expression. The difference between enantiosemy and irony is very subtle, because these categories are among the most difficult to analyse being hard to perceive, transcribe and ‘measure’. An adequate treatment of the interaction of these categories is outside the scope of the present manual. It is essential, however, to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that in both cases very much depends on the prosody of the utterance.
It follows from what has just been said that words originally endowed with positive connotations can acquire negative connotations under certain circumstances, provided they are pronounced with the appropriate prosody.
It should be noted in this connection that enantiosemy should not be confounded with homonymy. The word pretty,for example, in What a pretty girl is not a homophone of pretty in a phrase like A pretty story, indeed. To make this point clearer let us consider homonymy in detail.
The concept and the term have been familiar from time immemorial. There exists a number of different classes of words which could, one way or another, be described as homonyms. In this chapter we shall confine ourselves to the study of lexical homonymy, leaving on one side the complexity of the grammatical relationships between homonyms of the to find – found vs. to found – founded type. Our discussion will be confined to head‑words of dictionary entries.
It is a matter of common observation that many English homonyms came into being owing to convergent sound development – the so‑called ‘etymological homonyms’. But this is by no means the only source. Homonymy can also develop as ‘the next step in polysemy’: in the course of time a lexical‑semantic variant may become a separate word when all associative links with the nominative meaning are obliterated. These two types of homonymy may be illustrated by the following examples.
In the etymological dictionary we find four homonyms for sound. We shall begin with sound 1 ‘that which is for may be heard, auditory effect’. This sound is traceable to ME sounand it goes back to French son. Sound 1 is a Romance word, and like many other Romance words it goes back to Latin (sonus).
The final dof sound 1 must not be confounded with that of sound 2 ‘to probe’. Sound 2 can be traced back to ME sounden, sonden and then to French sonder. So, in contrast with din sound 1which was acquired by the word quite accidentally, din sound 2was part of the original French word and was then preserved in English.
Sound 3‘sea water’ is a Germanic word. It goes back to OE sund which meant ‘swimming straight’ and has nothing in common with other sounds.
Sound 4‘unhurt, uninjured’ which was first registered in the 17 th century, is assumed to be derived from OE g.esund.
Etymological information shows that originally there were two Romance words and two Germanic ones which became identical in expression owing to various phonetic processes which took place in the course of the historical development of English. In this case we are in possession of firmly established facts.
The matter is far more complicated in the case of homonymy as the ‘limit’ of polysemy. The borderline between polysemy and homonymy is unstable. The fact is that polysemy, as has been shown above, consists in the ‘stretching’ of the expression of a word until at a certain moment new lexical‑semantic variants become mutually incompatible semantically, morphologically, in terms of word‑combination, style, frequency of occurrence, usage, etc. In what follows we shall demonstrate a method of descriminating between polysemy and homonymy using the word band as an example.
The word band heads a long dictionary entry:
1. flat, thin strip of material, esp. for fastening things together or for placing round an object to strengthen it;
2. flat, thin strip of material forming part of an article of clothing;
3. strip or line different from the rest in colour or design, on something;
4. group of persons doing something together under a leader and with a common purpose;
5. group of persons who play music together;
6. (radio; short for wave‑band) range of frequencies that may be turned in together.
If this material is carefully scrutinized it becomes apparent that band is far from being semantically uniform.
There is every reason to believe that band 1, band 2 and band 3 are closely connected. Although the ‘real objects’ (‘real things’) denoted by these units are factually different, their semantic affinity is obvious. All of them bear on the same idea – ‘a long‑shaped flat piece of something’
– a flat strip of material, as in iron bands round a barrel, or papers kept together with a rubber band;
– a ribbon as in the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a crape band;
– a bar of colour as in a white plate with a blue band round the edge.
Owing to these shared properties different objects can be denoted by one and the same word without impairing its identity.
An altogether different state of affairs transpires in the case of band 4and band 5. The meanings of these units have drifted so far away from the nominative meaning ‘flat, thin strip of material’, that they ceased to be lexical semantic variants of the same word and are felt to be separate words or ‘homonyms’. It goes without saying that we can re‑establish the semantic link between band I and band II in terms of their historical development: band I is used to bind things, whereas band II implies something that brings different individuals together. Synchronically, however, band I and band IIare no longer compatible.
The fact that they are homonyms is borne out by their derivatives and typical word‑combinations. Thus, for instance:
Band I
bandage, to bandage;
band‑box;
band‑collar;
band‑fish;
band‑saw;
white, blue, yellow, etc. band;
an iron, steel, hay, faggot, india‑rubber, etc. band;
a band of iron, a band of steel;
a band passed under her chin;
a band is broken for ever;
to wear a band.
Band II
band‑master;
bandstand;
bandsman;
jazz‑band;
string‑band;
a German (American) band;
brass band, dance band, a military band, a regimental band;
a band of brothers;
a band of marauders, a band of strugglers;
the band began to play;
the band had arrived;
to hear a band, to drill one’s band.
It is well known that the lexical core of the word is ‘elastic’ and can be stretched out to cover various situations in extralinguistic reality. But here we have every reason to assume that, at this point, part of the word band has broken off and a new word has come into being.
There is one more band which is most emphatically one more homonym. We mean band III – ‘(radio, short for waveband) range of frequencies that may be turned in together’. In this case the gap between the nominative meaning and the transferred one becomes too wide. These meanings belong to two separate words. This can be very well illustrated by the word‑combinations in which this meaning most naturally occurs, for example: the 19‑meter band. Band III is moreover a technical term and therefore belongs to a different register of English.
The net result of the foregoing analysis is that the sound complex (bжnd) serves as the ‘expression’ for three homonyms: band I (with three meanings), band II (with two meanings) and the monosemantic band III.
We have every reason to state that the diachronic and synchronic approaches to the problem of homonymy present a dialectical unity. The application of these methods enables us to gain an insight into homonymy as a linguistic phenomenon.
In this connection we cannot but dwell at some length on a strange misapprehension of the relationship between homonymy and polysemy which can be found in some publications which state that «the difference between homonymy and polysemy is easier to explain in general terms than it is to define in terms of objective and operationally satisfactory criteria» and that, for instance, the etymological criterion is of no significance because «useful though it may be to have readily accessible in our standard dictionaries whatever information is available about the origins and history of particular words, this information is, or should be, irrelevant in the synchronic analysis of languages. For the native speaker is generally unaware of the etymology of the words that he uses and his interpretation of them is unaffected /…/ by whatever knowledge of their historical derivation he may happen to possess.» (Lyons John,Semantics. Cambridge, 1977, p. 2, 550).
John Lyons is also very sceptical about the criterion of «relatedness of meaning», because «the relatedness of meaning appears to be a matter of degree; and it has yet to be demonstrated, and may not in fact be demonstrable /…/ It has often been pointed out that some native speakers will claim to see a connection between an ear of corn and the part of the body that is denoted by the noun ear, while other native speakers will deny that any such connection exists». His conclusion, then, is this: «Until it has been demonstrated that intuitions of the kind (the native speaker’s intuition of relatedness of meaning. – L. M.) with empirically decidable differences in the use of words, the linguist might well decide that it is preferable to leave the theoretical status of the distinction between homonymy and polysemy unresolved».
If we consider this issue in terms of linguistic theory the fact that ‘native speakers’ cannot apply scientific linguistic categories to analysis of their speech is totally irrelevant. True, it is not always easy to distinguish between polysemy and homonymy. But the doubtful categorisation of some lexical units does not impugn the principium divisionisstipulated above. Thus, if we compare ear 1 and ear 2 in terms of their derivations, their syntactic and lexical syntagmatics and spheres of their occurrence, it will become quite clear that no ambiguity can arise in this case.
As far as ear1 ‘organ of hearing’ is concerned, dictionaries adduce the following phraseological units:
be all ears,
fall on deaf ears,
feel your ears burning,
give one’s ears,
go in at one ear and out (at) the other,
have an ear to the ground,
(have) a word in somebody’s ear,
have/win somebody’s ear(s),
over head and ears,
prick up one’s ears,
turn a deaf ear (to),
set (persons) by the ears,
up to one’s ears in work,
wet behind the ears;
and compound words:
ear‑ache,
ear‑drop,
ear‑drum,
ear‑mark,
ear‑piece,
ear‑phone,
ear‑ring,
ear‑shot,
ear‑trumpet,
ear‑wax.
Ear 2 in contrast with ear 1 has no illustrative phraseology except for one highly specialized expression – corn in the ear. It will not be an exaggeration to say that this is the only expression in which ear 2 ‘seed‑bearing part of a cereal’ has been listed lexicographically as actually occurring in speech. It follows that ear 1 and ear 2 are quite different both diachronically and synchronically.
The net result of the above discussion would be that confounding polysemy and homonymy at the present stage of linguistic investigation is hardly admissible. Besides, by so doing the investigator would easily lose sight of their realization in speech. The fact that in some modern monolingual dictionaries of English the difference between separate meanings of the same word and independent homonyms is not clearly presented (see, for example, the «Cambridge International Dictionary of English») cannot be regarded as a scientific proof of the identity of polysemy and homonymy. This is a lexicographic device which facilitates the search of various senses of the word in the dictionary entry.
Let us now turn to analysis of homonymy in the flow of speech. Like so many other phenomena and categories of language homonymy has so far been studied as part of the system of lexicological regularities discernible within the confines of traditional orthographical texts. But, as has already been shown, the ontology of linguistic categories is realized to the full only when the transposition into oral speech has been effectively carried out. The same applies to homonymy. The importance of prosodic analysis becomes particularly evident in the case of word‑play.
Thus, in the following examples the pun is based on the contamination of homophones:
1. Pardon me, Julius! – Here wast thou bay’d brave hart;
Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand,
Sign’d in thy spoil, and crimson’d in thy death, –
|| 0 O world! thou. wast the forest to this 6 hart; ||
And \this, in 7 deed, O 0 world! the \heart of thee. || –
2. How like a deer, strucken by many princes,
Dost thou here lie!
..|.and the third, »
Sir 0 Thomas \Grey, · knight of Nor 6 thumberland, | –
n
/ Have, for the · gilt of /France «– O 6 guilt in 6 deed! –
h> <h
Con 0 firm’d con 6 spiracy with. fearful 6 France; ||
In the adduced passages the opposition of homophones becomes more conspicuous in oral speech owing to the opposition on the suprasegmental level. Hart and gilt are pronounced neutrally whereas heart and guilt are brought into prominence by means of changes in pitch‑range, a falling tone and increased loudness.
It follows from what has been said that homonyms are brought out only when they are played upon. The homonyms light 1and light 2 when used in isolation are pronounced neutrally, for example,
1. || I am\ sorry, | ex 4 ceedingly 6 sorry, | that you have 0 ever been
in 6 formed of what 0 may, «in a mis\taken 7 light, «have 0 given you un6easiness. ||
2. || I have to 0 say that he is a · man of · light 6 character. ||
But when they are brought together they acquire a different ‘intona‑tion’, for example:
Bassanio: We should hold day with the Antipodes,
If you would walk in absence of the sun.
Portia: || 0 Let me / give 7 light, |but 0 let me · not be«4 light;
For a light wife doth make a heavy husband…
In contrast with homonymy enantiosemy, as has been shown above, does not exist without modifications in prosody.
It is clear from this small selection of examples that ‘homonymic condensation’ is primarily used for stylistic purposes. The expressive‑emotional‑evaluative overtones which are superimposed on lexical meaning of homonyms are prosodically marked. Thus, homonyms are brought out in the flow of speech only if they clash.
Paronymy
The study of homonymy in speech is further complicated by paronymy. By paronyms we mean words which because of similarity of sound or partial identity of morphemic structure can be erroneously or punningly used in speech, for example, proscribe – prescribe, affect – effect, allusion – illusion, ingenious – ingenuous,etc. It will be helpful at this point to adduce an example of paronymy as it is manifested in speech:
«Well, watch out, that’s all I say to you, watch out. I happened to know that Bassett is making overtures to him.»
«How do you mean, overtures?»
«He is trying to steal him from you.»
I reeled and might have fallen, had I not been sitting at the time.
«Incredulous!»
«If you mean increadible, you are wrong.»
This example shows that paronyms cannot be called variants of one and the same word, they are, no doubt, different words. Here is one more example which proves this point:
«Why, your father has got some nonsense in his head that he’s the son of a poor gentleman that dies the other day,» said Mrs. Squeers.
«The son of a gentleman!»
«Yes, but I don’t believe a word of it. If he is a gentleman’s son at all, he’s a fondling, that’s my opinion.»
Mrs. Squeers intended to say foundling, but as she frequently remarked when she made any such mistake, it would be all the same a hudred years hence; with which axiom of philosophy, indeed, she was in the constant habit of consoling the boys when they laboured under more than ordinary ill usage.
In this case again fondling is not a variant of the word foundling, although the difference between the expression of the two units appears to be very small, but a completely different word. As has been shown above there are plenty of cases when the change on the expression plane may be just as great (or even greater) without the word losing its globality or lexical identity.
In this connection the following question is bound to arise: what is the relationship between paronyms and all the adjacent groups of words, that is synonyms, homonyms, morphological and phonetic variants of the word. As has been shown above, the study of all the cases of flagrant violations of the law of the sign should be based on the profound semantic analysis. Thus, for example, it becomes quite clear that illusion and allusion are different words whereas begin (bq’gin) and begin (bI’gIn) are phonetic variants of the same word although the difference is confined to the opposition of two sounds (q) and (I) in both cases. The criterion is the semantic core of the juxtaposed units. Illusion and allusion are not synonyms because their meanings are absolutely incompatible. These observations make it possible to state that paronyms are most of the time quasi‑nonhomographic homonyms. The introduction of the term ‘paronyms’, then, could be justified only if it could be shown to be a derivative of ‘paronymic attraction’.
This well‑established concept can be defined as follows: a certain similarity in the expression of two words which ‘attracts’ the words to one another despite either of them being a completely different word insofar as both their meanings and history are concerned. In other words, the entirely mechanical likeness (or shadow of a likeness) creates a certain amount of mutual attraction between words and thus paves the way for certain stylistic effects, for example:
1. «But I want some reading – some fine bold reading, some splendid book in a gorging Lord‑Mayor’s‑Show of wollumes» (probably meaning gorgeous, but misled by association of ideas); «as’ll reach right down your pint of view and take time to go by you.»
2. «And how many hours a day did you do lessons?» said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. «Ten hours the first day,» said the Mock Turtle: «nine the next, and so on.»
«What a curious plan!» exclaimed Alice.
«That’s the reason they’re called lessons,» the Gryphon remarked, «because they lessen from day to day.»
3. «And if you are not doubly fast with my breakfast I shall fasten my boot on the posterior portion of your miserable anatomy.»
Examples could be multiplied but these will serve well enough to illustrate the use of paronymic attraction for various stylistic purposes. It is noticeable that paronymic attraction can very frequently manifest itself in malapropisms (example 1), folk etymology (example 2) and puns (example 3).
It should be emphasized in this connection that like so many other phenomena and categories of language, paronyms and paronymic attraction were mostly studied within the confines of orthographic texts. If we turn to the actual manifestations of paronymic attraction in speech and take into consideration its sound form we shall see that it is possible to keep apart its different types. Thus, the puns are accompanied by modifications of prosodic parameters, for example:
n n
||The 4 growing 4 British /Empire | – some 4 called it \Brutish /Empire |
slowly
– had 4 suffered 4 two 4 major \setbacks in 4 recent \decades. ||
The pun is effected by the use of the paronyms ‘British’ and ‘brutish’. The expression of the one is similar to that of the other, and this device of sound similarity enhances the semantic alliance of the words in question. Prosody, on the contrary, emphasizes their opposition: ‘Brutish’ is said with a falling tone, narrow pitch‑range, louder and slower than the immediate context. The result achieved is two‑fold: the listener’s attention is drawn to the word ‘Brutish’ and its negative connotation is reinforced.
Another manifestation of paronymic attraction, as has been shown above, is malopropism. The concept of ‘malapropism’ which goes back to Mrs. Malaprop from R. Sheridan’s «Rivals». Malapropism is based on contamination of bookish words which uneducated people are not familiar with, for example:
Abs: Ask the lady, sir.
Mrs. Malaprop: || \Oh, \mercy! – I’m ‘ quite \analysed for my \part. ||
slowly
Mrs. Malaprop is quite sure that she knows how the word ‘to analyse’ should be used (in actual fact what she wanted to say was ‘I’m quite paralysed’). More than that, she thinks that the use of words like that makes her speech more learned and impressive. This is the reason why she intentionally brings them out in the flow of speech by means of logical stress (a high falling tone, increased loudness and slow tempo).
In contrast with puns and malapropisms folk etymology is not prosodically marked because, for one thing, the speaker is not aware that he makes a mistake and, secondly, to him it is just an ordinary word. As far as this type of paronymic attraction is concerned it can be exemplified by the following passage:
«These other gentlemen, I presume, are legatees, are they?» inquired Pell with a congratulatory smile.
||«\/Sammy| is a 4 leg‑at‑\ease,» |re 4 plied Mr. \Weller,| «these other gentl’m’n is friends of mine.»
No doubt, the most interesting case of paronymic attraction is a deliberate play upon words with similar sound forms. Most of the time it results in a comic effect, for example:
1. I suppose Stiffy’s sore about this … what’s the word?… Not vaseline… Vacillation, that’s it.
2. Apparently it’s disappeared, and Spode has got the extraordinary idea that I’ve pinched it and am holding it… what’s the word… Not incognito…
Incommunicado, that’s it. He thinks I’m holding it incommu‑nicado.
3. Mrs. Bryant: Blust me if you ent the meanest ole sod that walks this earth. Your own daughter and you won’t let her use your oven. You bloody ole hypercrite.
Mr. Bryant: You pay the bills and then you call names.
Mrs. Bryant:What I ever seen in you God knows. Yes! An’ he never warn me. Bloody ole hypercrite.
As for the last example it should be noted that the word hypercrite does not exist and is used here as a nonce‑word. Hypercriteand hypocrite are also incompatible morphonologically.
It would be wrong to believe, however, that paronymic attraction is confined to imaginative prose writing. The actual possibilities of individual creativity in paronymic attraction are enormous. It is quite obvious that a good speaker who is linguistically minded may avail himself of the innumerable connotations paronymic attraction offers him in order to make his speech more effective and varied. By way of illustration here are a few passages demonstrating the use of paronymic attraction in different registers.
Poetry
1) Open here I flung the shutter, when with many a flirt and flutter
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
2) Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells of despair!
How they clang and clash and roar.
Advertising
1) From sensible to sensational. Lancome. Paris.
2) Shired satisfaction. Lean and Luxe.
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