Учебно-методический комплекс дисциплины
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The meaning of the word is the thing denoted by the linguistic sign, that is, its referent. Identification of the meaning of the linguistic unit and the thing it denotes is characteristic of the school of logical semantics and a most influential trend of formal semantics. G. Frege, a logician and a philosopher, distinguished between Sinn (смысл) and Bedeutung (значение). We can see from his analyses of the following examples what he meant by those terms:EX: Ancient Greeks called the bright star which they could see in the sky at dawn the Morning Star, Phosphorus, and they called the Evening Star, Hesperus the bright star they could see in the sky at dusk. They didn’t know at the time, that both stars were practically one and the same thing – the planet Venus. The words Phosphorus and Hesperus had one and the same referent, one and the same Bedeutung, one and the same meaning. But they had different Sinn, because the expressions M.S and E.S are not identical. So meaning is equivalent to the thing denoted by these expressions – the planet Venus, something, which does not belong to the sphere of the language, but to the reality. Criticism 1.This hypothesis is not very convenient for explaining the meaning of words which denote abstract notions such as mind, “thought, “love”, ‘idea” or scientific terms, which are mostly correlated with ideas, notions, but not things. Or, we can understand the words like “angel”, “unicorn, » elf’, which actually denote non-existent things. If there are no things, then there should be no meanings, but we understand these words. How can we understand them, if they are meaningless? 2.This doesn’t either explain why different nations, perceiving one and the same reality – the same things ,phenomena – work out, nevertheless very different systems of word-meaning Perceiving one and the same colors – and the ability of the human eye to differentiate colors of an Englishman is no different from that of an n Indian or Japanese – different nations have different colour systems: EX: blue –голубой, синий, kök (in Turkish) – blue, grey. Russians do not discriminate between older and younger sisters and brothers, while in Tatar the elder sister is apa, the younger – sengle. But the Russians see the difference between дядя и брат while Turkish languages have the same name for an uncle and an elder brother. In Javanese many terms do not distinguish between sexes, but are very specific about seniority or juniority : adik – younger sister or brother, adik sepupu – the child of younger brother or sister, a boy-cousin or a girl-cousin; For Russian невесткa,золовка, свояченица both English and French have only one term – belle-soeur, sister- in –law. 3.Relational hypotheses, or approach. In this version meaning is understood as the relation of a word either to the referent, or to the notion, or to another word. That is, the meaning of the word is supposed to contain information about the thing, the notion and the language. Again there are some weaknesses in the interpretation We certainly establish relations between the word table and different objects of reality which answer the description, but what makes us establish this relation? Meaning, and only meaning makes it possible to establish such relations, so meaning is something which stands outside the relation, meaning is not a relation
The functional approach The idea is that the meaning of a linguistic unit must be studied only through its relation to other linguistic units, not to referent or notion. The idea is simple enough: such words as paper and to paper are different in meaning, because they function differently in speech: they are combined with words of different classes, they occupy different positions in a sentence. As their distribution if different, we can conclude that their meaning is different. So semantic analyses is mostly stating, whether the meanings are identical or different, but nothing is clear what meaning is. B.Types of Linguistic meaning Though there is no clear idea of what meaning is, still there have been attempts to describe types of meaning. Geoffrey Leech, for one, gives the following types of meaning 1. Conceptual meaning, or sense; logical, cognitive or denotative meaning, which is mostly associated with notion, or concept 2. Connotative meaning is mostly implicative. The conceptual meaning of the word woman includes such properties as human, female, adult. Connotative meaning is associated with a multitude of other, non-criterial properties which we expect a referent of woman to possess, physical characteristics, psychological and social characteristics such as : talkative, experienced in cooking, capable of giving birth to offsprings, skirt- or- dress wearing, frail, prone to tears, emotional, irrational, gentle, sensitive etc. 3. Stylistic meaning, what is communicated of the social circumstances of language use. EX: horse (general), steed (poetic) nag (slang) gee-gee (baby-language) 4. Affective meaning Explanations are rather vague. Is said to communicate the feelings and attitudes of the speaker to the object of his speech or to the addressee. 5. Reflected meaning arises when one meaning of the polysemantic word is associated with another meaning of the same word. The author gives, as an example, the expression Holy Ghost, and says that he is immediately reminded of another, more common meaning of the word ghost. 6. Collocative meaning Consists of the association the word acquires on account of the meanings of words which habitually occur with it. A very good example is the Russian паюсная…икра or the English clap … your hands. Nod… your head, hazel eye. 7. Thematic meaning The meaning is rendered mostly syntactically, sometimes by lexical means, or stress or intonation. Its main aim is to bring to focus, emphasis or, on the contrary, to topicalize, to make less focused, certain parts of the sentence. G.Leech, certainly speaks of different types of meaning, but not only word-meaning. We must bear in mind, that there are many miscellaneous classifications of meaning, and very often the same terms are used in different meanings. I.Kobozeva, in her recent book, speaks of the following meanings: актуальное, виртуальное, узуальное, денотативное, сигнификативное, коннотативное, прагматическоe, синтаксическое, экстралингвистическое Никитин speaks of интенсиональное, экстенсиональное, импликациональное meanings 8.Word-meaning Lexical and grammatical meaning It is not homogeneous: its main components are the so-called lexical meaning and grammatical meaning Lexical meaning It is the common meaning of the word forms of one and the same word That is in the paradigm come, comes, coming, came, will come has come etc in each of these form there is one and the same component denoting the process of movement. This is the lexical meaning of the word Grammatical meaning It can be approximately described as that component of meaning which is different in the word-forms of one and the same word EX: clear, clearer, the clearest bring, brings, brought, bringing, will bring, is brought etc or the identical meaning in one and the same word-form of different words EX: Numbers, trees, apples, joys Asked, wrote, remembered, worked It is said that grammatical meaning is more abstract and more general that the lexical meaning. Which is not altogether true. Actually, strictly speaking, we do not have the right to speak of lexical or grammatical meanings, because meanings, as logical, mental entities, cannot be lexical or grammatical. They can be concrete or categorical, abstract. They can be expressed through lexical means –word, word-combinations, or with the help of grammatical means; meanings, expressed grammatically are called. For short, for convenience, grammatical meanings, and meanings, expressed lexically, are called lexical meanings for the same reason. Both the lexical and the grammatical meaning make up the word-meaning, and neither can exist without the other within a word. So grammatical meaning unites words into big groups, called word-classes, or parts of speech, or lexico-grammatical classes – Part-of –the speech meaning (Lexico-grammatical meaning) Lexical items are classified into word-groups: notional (nouns, verbs, adjectives, numerals, adverbs, pronouns) and formal, or functional (articles, prepositions, conjunctions, connectives) All words of a notional word-class have the part-of-the-speech meaning, or lexico-grammatical meaning. It consists of two components: semantic and grammatical. Semantic component is very abstract. The semantic, or lexical component of the part-of-the-speech meaning of a noun is thingness, of the verb – process, of the adjective –property. These words, which can represent the semantic component, are called g e n e r i c t e r ms. The grammatical component of part-of—the speech meaning is represented by a common system (paradigm) of forms in which grammatical categories, peculiar to a certain word-class, are expressed. EX: The English noun has the grammatical category of number, represented by forms of the plural and singular. The category of case, represented by the common and genitive forms As we are dealing with lexical units and study lexicology, we shall disregard grammatical and lexico-grammatical meanings of the word and concentrate mostly on the lexical meaning Lexical meaning: denotation and connotation It is not homogeneous as well and can be subdivided into denotational and connotational meanings The denotational component expresses the content of the word. It is the information about things and phenomena of the world. A denotation is the objective relation between a lexeme and the reality to which it refers. The denotation of spectacles is the object which balances on our nose in front of the eyes. A denotation identifies the central aspect of lexical meaning, which everyone would agree about – and hence, the concept of a dictionary definition. It is the ability of the word to name things and to denote them – individual things in the world of discourse, or the class of things which can be denoted by the given word. The denotative meaning makes it possible to denote an individual thing in the communicative situation, and the thing is called a referent. That is, if you, speaking to your friend, tell him to put the books on the table, you use the word in its referential function. It can denote and name the whole class of the objects in question, and the class is called denotatum, or extension. The extension of the word table is all the things which can be called by that name. The extension of the word furniture is larger that that of the word table, and the extension of the word coffee table is smaller. Denotative meaning is the component of meaning which makes communication possible, it is t is the knowledge, embodied in words, which is essentially the same for all the speakers of the language. Significative meaning is singled out by some authors, by others it is considered to be part of denotative meaning. Actually significative meaning is the concept, the idea of a thing or phenomena. It is a complex of features, or properties on the basis of which certain things are united as a class and differ from all other classes. NB: care should be taken not to confuse extension and significative meaning which is sometimes called an intension. Extension corresponds to the class of things, while intension corresponds to the features which make up the class of things. Actually intension or signification is the concept, the notion in its logical aspect, its semantic minimum. What should be considered a semantic minimum? Nobody knows. Certainly, the concept of water is different with a grown up chemists and a six year old child, but they seem to understand each other. In this respect some linguists speak of naïve, or folk, all-national concepts, used in contexts of natural speech. Again, these terms can be used differently and with different meaning in different sciences and by different scholars. Connotative meaning Connotation refers to the personal aspect of lexical meaning – often, the emotional associations which the lexeme incidentally brings to mind. For many people the connotations of the w0ord BUS may be those of quickness and convenience (people who had no bus service and had to get into town by different, less convenient ways and means); or, on the contrary, discomfort and inconvenience, if you are an owner of a car which has temporarily got out of order. For American children it may have connotations connected with school .Connotations are unpredictable, because they depend on the experience of the individuals. On the other hand, because people do have some common experiences, many lexemes in the language have common connotations either for the whole nation, or some territorial, professional, social, occupational or age groups. Connotations can be a constant feature of a word as a vocabulary unit, and in this connection connotations can play an important role in explaining the way in which lexemes are used. Actually connotation is the information about the conditions, attitudes of the speaker, circumstances and the situations favoring the usage of a particular word. A group of synonyms may have the identical denotation, but display noticeable differences in their connotations, as in the case of car, buggy, old crock, racer Connotation may be acquired by the word only in a certain context Connotations are also an important means of conveying personal attitude and points of view.
Also slender /thin/ skinny. Frank /blunt/ insolent, overweigh /|plump/ fat When a lexeme is highly charged with connotations we commonly refer to it as “loaded”. Very often the connotations dim out the denotations entirely. You filthy scum, or you are the sweetest girl on earth have very little objective content, but evaluation and emotive charge ( subtypes of connotations) Questions
Task 3 Choose the correct answer
Reading
4. The Structure of the Lexical Meaning and methods of its analysis OUTLINE 1. Types of word-meaning analyses 2. Componential analysis A. Semes as relational units of meaning: linear and hierarchical presentation B. Types of semes 3. Limitations of Componential analysis 1. Types of word-meaning analyses The basic types of word-meaning analyses are definition, prototypical description and componential analysis (different versions). Definition is the traditional lexicographic description of the word either in natural language or with some elements of formal languages. Definitions must be explicit, sufficient and devoid of tautology and redundancy. These requirements are often violated in dictionaries and are not accepted theoretically by every lexicologist. Thus, tautological circle in definitions is sometimes necessary. It is impossible to give the definition of ear without the verb to hear and the definition of to hear without ear. Word-meanings are organized as a system: any meaning is in various relations with other meanings, and these relations cannot but be reflected in dictionary definitions. Prototypical description is based on the theory of an American psychologist E.H. Rosch. In accordance with the theory, categories have a structure consisting of a centre (prototype) and a periphery (центр и периферия). A prototypical member of the category is a member which (who) displays all the typical most characteristic features of the category. Most prototypical furniture is the chair. And the most prototypical bird is the robin (малиновка, для американского социума; для русского социума это может быть воробей, или голубь). Most characteristic features of a category, represented by the prototypical member, are hierarchically structured (the centre and the periphery). Birds can be characterized by the following properties:
This hierarchy of properties reflects the intuition of a native speaker. In accordance with this intuition the sparrow is more a bird than an eagle, and an eagle is more a bird than a penguin. A dead bird or a sculpture of a bird are lesser birds, they belong to periphery. The prototypical standard in the theory of language was worked out by Ch. Fillmore, G.Lakoff. The prototype of the word is the cluster of basic properties and stereotypes associated with the corresponding notion. It may cover all the LSVs of the word, or at least one of the properties of the cluster may be part of the meaning of a certain LSV. There is also a periphery which explains non-prototypical usages. Componential analysis the idea of which was first laid down by L. Hjelmslev and R.O. Jakobson was worked out in European and American linguistics. Special theoretic contribution was made by J.J. Katz , J. A. Fodor and P.M. Postal. 2. Componential analysis A. Semes as relational units of meaning: linear and hierarchical presentation The analysis of word-meaning in CA (componential analysis) is often seen as a process of breaking down the sense of a word (LSV) into its minimal distinctive features that is with into components which contrasts with other components. A very simple example of this is provided by the words man, woman, boy, girl. These words belong to the semantic field human race, and relations between them may be represented by a two-dimensional field diagram:
H U M A N Another way to represent these senses: MAN: human, adult, male BOY: human, young, male WOMAN: human, adult, female GIRL: human, young, female Or: Man: + human, +adult, +male Woman: =+human, +adult,- male Boy: + human, - adult, + male Girl:+ human, - adult, - male where - denotes the absence of a property and + - its presence. It is clearly seen that in this version of CA the semes are organized into a linear structure. Componential analysis consists of reducing the word’s meaning, one of its LSV into its ultimate contrastive elements. These elements are called semantic components, semes, (семантические составляющие, семантические множители, семы, семантический дифференциальный признак, семантический примитив, смысловой атом, фигура содержания). Conceptually there is no difference between meaning expressed by words or by semes. One and the same meaning may be expressed by both. For example, the concept parent is expressed by the word p a r e n t and by the seme in the word m o t h e r. Only in the first case the meaning is expressed by a nominating unit, in the second case it is not expressed by any nominating unit, it is singled out relationally. So seme is the part of the word-meaning, which is not expressed formally by a unit which has the power of nomination. Componential analysis presupposes that the lexicon of any language can be described on the bases of a limited universal inventory of semantic components. It is used in many variants and for many purposes, but mostly for description of meaning. B.Types of semes Many types of CA are based on the idea that the semes within a word- meaning are arranged hierarchically. In the Soviet linguistics the following system was mostly used:
American linguists J.Katz and J.Fodor, and also the Soviet linguist Розалия Залмановна Гинзбург classified semes into markers –semantic features which are present also in the lexical meaning of other words, and distinguishers – semantic features which are individual. EX; spinster (noun, count-noun, Human, adult, female, who has never been married) Nikitin M.V. uses the following terms: hyperonym, hyponym, equonym. Parent is a hyperonym in relation to father, mother and father, mother are hyponyms in relation to Parent, but in relation to each other father, mother is equonyms. 3. Limitations of the CA The criticism of CA mainly touches upon 2 points:
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