The word's semantic structure. The various types of lexical meaning

The word's semantic structure. The various types of lexical meaning.
Semantics is the branch of Linguistics that studies the meaning of various linguistic units. Semasiology is the branch of Lexicology that studies the meaning and development of words.
There are several approaches to the issue of word meaning: 1) The referential, or denotational, approach is distinguished by the belief that (тeм то) the essence (сут) of meaning is found in the interconnection and interdependence of the word as a soundform, the referent, and the concept. In this context, meaning refers to the realization of a concept/notion through the use of a specific language system. 2)The functional, or contextual, approach is distinguished by the notion that the meaning of a linguistic unit can only be studied in relation to other linguistic units. Thus, meaning is defined as the function of linguistic signs or their application in context.
Different types of meaning are used to represent word meaning: grammatical, lexical, and lexico-grammatical.
Grammatical meaning is a component of word meaning that is found in identical sets of individual forms of various words. It is expressed through: word-form (for example, books, girls, boys with the meaning of plurality; looked, asked tense meaning); and the position of the word in relation to other words (e.g. He sings well, She dances badly sings and dances are found in identical positions between a pronoun and an adverb, their identical distribution proves that they have identical gr.m.)
The common denominator (наменател) of all the meanings of words belonging to a specific lexico-grammatical class or group of words is the word's lexico-grammatical meaning.
Lexical meaning is the component of word meaning that appears in all forms of the word. The word forms go, goes, went, gone, and going have different gr.m., but they all refer to the same thing: the process of movement.
The main components of L.m. are: the denotational meaning of words is the same for all speakers. It is the realization of the concept through the use of the given language.
The pragmatic aspect of l.m. is the part of meaning that conveys information on the situation of communication: information on the time and space relationship of the participants, information on the participants in the given language community, information on the register of communication.
The connotational meaning conveys the speaker's attitude toward what he is speaking about. There are four types of connotations: a) The emotional connotation expresses human emotions and feelings (e.g. daddy, father); b) The evaluative connotation expresses approval or disapproval (e.g. agent and spy, planning and scheming=secretly planning); c) The intensifying connotation adds emphasis (усиление) to the meaning. (For example, enormous, huge, tremendous=very); d) The stylistic connotation determines the functional speech style characteristic of the word usage (dad-father-parent; colloquial-neutral-bookish).


Polysemy refers to a word's ability to have more than one m-g. The following factors contributed to the development of polysemy in English: 1) a large number of monosyllabic root words; 2) an abundance of long-duration words, which were used to express more new m-gs over time, thus becoming highly polysemantic. Monosemantic words, or words with only one m-g form. They mostly consist of bird names (blackbird, swallow), animal names (walrus, weasel), fish names (ruff, perch), and special terms (systole, phoneme). The majority of English words are polysemantic, meaning they have multiple m-gs. The m-g in speech is situational. In a specific context, any polysemantic word expresses only one m-g. A lexico-semantic variant of a word is one that is used in speech in one of its m-g. A polysemantic word's semantic structure consists of a collection of interconnected and interdependent lexico-semantic variants. On the synchronic level, we distinguish: - the basic (major) and minor; - the central and marginal; -direct and transferred (figurative); -. Because of the presence of common semantic components/ semes, each LSV is linked to the major m-g. The seme is the smallest further indivisible unit of m-g, as well as the smallest unit of the plan of content. Componential analysis refers to the breakdown of the m-g into these components, or semes.