SUPORT CURS – LEC – SEMANTICS

INTRODUCTION

Linguistics and its subfields (see for example Semantics) have a prominent place being the basis of each deepened study of words and sentences. The search of the origin of words have involved since ancient times (antiquity) many scholars who sought for not only the history but also the destiny itself of terms (nomen est omen). We need to know the forms and meanings of words but chiefly we need to “travelling in time” learning the mystery of words, the iron phonetic rules, the charm of analogies, the curiosity of apparent equalities of sounds or meaning among languages. And all this is given by Linguistics which is science, art and intuition.

PROPERTIES OF LANGUAGE

When talking about language we may say that it is a system of conventionalized symbols by which we communicate. The main properties are:

‘arbitrariness’‘symbolism’‘creativity’.

‘Arbitrariness’ can be explained by taking some words as examples:

dog (English)cane (Italian) chat (French)

The relationship between speech sounds and meaning is regarded as arbitrary and for this reason different languages have different speech sounds to represent the same things:

In the vocabulary of any language there is a small group of onomatopoeic words as the majority words of languages are to be seen as “arbitrary”. The relationship between the words and things is symbolic.

Dog symbolizes a certain class of quadruped Chair symbolizes a certain type of furniture

Creativity is another important feature of all languages which allow new utterances to be created thanks to new thoughts, experiences, situations.

Examples :The little girl ate the apple.The man ate the apple.Both ate the apple.

All these examples have structural similarity. But, for instance, the following sentence “ The rull stud the thrull” does not make any sense since the words have no meaning even though the structure conforms to the rules of English. On the contrary “dog the ate bone the” does not conform to the rules of English. In other examples such as

She wintered in Mexico.He holidayed in Greece. - the verbs are created from time expressions.

Thus it is clear from what I have said up to now that languages are rule-governed structures.

In each language we have the following characteristics :All languages have a grammar that can be more or less equal in complexity.

Grammar with its rules and elements; Linguistic competence which correspond to knowledge of language Linguistic performance which deals with how people use their knowledge of language, that is, grammar in comprehension and production.

And again I have to remember you the branches of Linguistics :

Phonetics: the articulation and perception of speech sound;Phonology: the pattering of speech sound;Morphology: word-formation; Syntax: sentence formation;Semantics: the interpretation of words and sentences;Pragmatics: how to use things with words.

More clarifications on the features of language

Talking about ‘human languages’ we can say that their main feature consists in the fact that unities of meaning (signs) are arbitrary and conventional. Nothing in the sound of the words in a language allow us to discover the meaning of the words. The sound, for example, of the words “chaise”, “chair”, do not have any physical relation with the objects described by these words.

All this implies that signs (unities of meaning which form a message) are conventional and arbitrary forms. The words of a language have been chosen by human beings to represent a given

set of objects, ideas, or phenomena. Speaking the same language as someone else, then, means sharing a certain number of conventions.

On the other hand, the meaning of a sentence is not necessarily the addition of the meaning of each word that forms it. Moreover the same word can have more than one meaning, that is, it can be polysemic. For example, the word ‘leaf’ in English means either ‘the leaf of a tree/plant or the page in a book. The context in which the sentence has been produced is necessary to any ambiguity which would arise in avoiding such cases. Language seen as a mental faculty allowing oral communication is innate while the code allowing its realization is learned.

JUST A MYTH, A LANGUAGE MYTH

The land that time forgot

Somewhere, runs the story, in the Ozarks, or in the Appalachians, or in Derbyshire in England, there’s a village where the locals still speak perfect Elizabethan English, untouched by the vast changes which have transformed English everywhere else. No, there isn’t: this is pure fantasy. There is no such thing as a living language which doesn’t change. This myth crops up because people occasionally notice that the local English in some corner of the world preserves one or two old forms which have disappeared elsewhere. (For example, Appalachian English preserves the a’doing form, as in “I was a’shootin’ at some squirrels”; this was once universal in Englishbut has been lost everywhere else.) But every variety of English preserves a few forms lost in other varieties, and every variety also exhibits a few innovations not found elsewhere. (For example, Appalachian English has undergone a change in its vowels such that Appalachian think sounds to the rest of us rather like thank.)Similar myths have been maintained by speakers of other languages. Until the eighteenth century, even some linguists believed that the ancestral language of all humankind was still spoken, in its pristine state, in some favoured corner of the world; much ink was spilt over deciding which corner this might be. (For example, one such linguist argued for the Netherlands, and claimed that Dutch was the uncorrupted ancestral tongue of all humans. He was Dutch, of course.) But all languages that are spoken change, and no language anywhere is closer than any other to the remote origins of human speech.There’s a moral here: don’t believe everything you read. Many journalists, authors of popular books, and especially website writers are ignorant of the facts.

Further reading: Crystal 1997; Pullum 1991.

SEMANTICS DEF. Semantics is the study of meaning in communication. The word is derived from the

Greek word “semantikos” =significant from “semaino”= to signify, to indicate and that from “sema”=sign, mark.

In linguistics, it is the study of interpretation of signs as used by communities within particular circumstances and contexts.

The word semantics in its modern sense is considered to have first appeared in French as semantique in Michel Breal’s book, “Essai de semantique” 1897.

An understanding of semantics is essential to the study of language acquisition and of language change. It is important for understanding language in social context, as these are likely to affect meaning, and for understanding varieties of English and effects of style.

The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, illustrated, contradicted and paraphrased.

The traditional descriptive aims of lexical semantics have been :

a.to represent the meaning of each word in the language ;

b. to show how the meanings of words in a language are interrelated.

Semantics studies the meaning of words and it surely deals with the creativity of language. Image is the representation of an object or scene which conveys only itself. In common usage, the word ‘image’ refers to a physical depiction of something, as in a photographic image, or in common speech: “he is the image of his father”. The words are used with the intention of describing something. By extension, however, the image also exits in a mental representation, as in the memory or the imagination.

Semantics is the field that studies the meaning of words and sentences. The main goal of linguistic description concerns a reflection of a speaker’s semantic knowledge. Certain sentences describe the same situation (the newspapers are behind/next to the computer or the computer is in front/next to the newspapers), other sentences contradict each other (‘the computer is next to the newspapers’ or ‘the computer is not next to the newspapers’ or else ‘the newspapers are not next to the computer’).

By semantic knowledge we intend not what we know about ‘newspapers or computer’ but our knowledge dealing with the relations or functions expressed by items such as ‘next to, behind, not’. Semantics however goes behind an encyclopedic set of definitions of linguistic expressions.

The context in meaning is very important because certain aspects of meaning change with the context of ‘utterance’( ‘A is young’ 'young' can have different meanings [it can be referred to 'person (male or female), food, place, currency, friend']). Meanings, in short, are held to be objective, that is to say, they are not dependent on the ways any given person happens to understand them, autonomous and disembodied.

This means that they should be considered as independent of what men/women in general do in speaking, understanding, and acting. We can added another feature called ‘compositionality’ whose aim consists in defining inherent properties which belong to abstract objects by analysing them in terms of components, i.e. “smaller” objects more “primitive” concepts and the like.

Furthermore, it is known that words , sentences, texts, and discourses have meaning in themselves. The meaning, for instance, of a given linguistic object can be unearthed thanks to a sophisticated linguistic analysis that intends to find the correct interpretation or the semantic representation inherent to it. The interpretation of an utterance, a discourse, a text, is never completely inferable from the linguistic object alone but needs for different kinds of background knowledge.

SEMANTIC PROPERTIES. THE LEXICON. SEMANTIC RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDSUnderstanding language implies three main points that are: a) Know the words and morphemes that compose them. b) Know how meanings of words combine into phrases and sentence meanings. C) Interpret the meaning of utterances in the context in which they are made. Lexicon is the part of grammar which deals with the knowledge speakers/hearers/readers possess about individual words, morphemes, including semantic properties.

Words that share the same property belong to the same semantic class ( for example the semantic class of ‘male’ words ). Semantic classes can share the same characteristics. In the case of the word ‘male’ we may see the class of words with the features ‘male’ and ‘old’. Thus, these particular features are devices for expressing the presence or the absence of them by using the sign plus and minus.

If we look at the lexical entries for words ‘man’, ‘father’, ‘girl’, ‘boy’ we shall see these words sharing or not the same features with the following sign (+ or -): ‘man’ (+ male + or –young +human ), ‘father’ (+male +human+ or –young +parent), mother (+female +parent +human + or-young ), ‘girl’ (+human + young + female), ‘boy’ (+young + human + male). Other lexical entries where some proprieties are shared are: ‘father, uncle, bachelor→ +male + human + adult (to the word ‘father’ we may also add +parent which distinguishes this word from ‘uncle and bachelor’).

The semantic proprieties also establish relationships between the words such as synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, homonymy. Synonymy is the relationship between words or expressions that have the same meaning in some or all contexts while antonymy is the relationship between words that are opposite with respect to some components of their meaning: in fact antonyms are words that share all but one semantic propriety (man ~ woman, daughter ~ son).

The perfect synonym is rare, perhaps, impossible. This can be seen in the following examples: the words ‘youth’ and ‘adolescent’ refer to people of about the same age, but only adolescent is used to imply ‘immaturity’ (he always remains an adolescent man!). Antonyms normally contrast for a particular aspect of their meaning. For example ‘men and women’ are antonyms that contrast in gender while ‘arrive and leave’ contrast in direction although these verbs specify motion.

In the case of synonyms we can have words with different sounds but with same meanings such as in ‘remember/recall, car/automobile, big/large). There are also terms that have same sounds but different meanings [light (first meaning: ‘not heavy’; second meaning: ‘illumination’= one pronunciation but different in meanings)]. Other terms called polysemic are regarded as an association of lexical items with different but related meanings [to glare(first meaning: ‘to shine intensely’; second meaning: ‘to stare angrily’)].

A large proportion of a language’s vocabulary is polysemic. It is sufficient to look in a dictionary to find more examples about ‘polysemic words’, for instance, in the Roget's Thesaurus of English words and phrases.

WHAT IS “MEANING” ?

The linguistic science at present is not able to put forward a definition of meaning which is conclusive.

However, there are certain facts of which we can be reasonably sure, and one of them is that the very function of the word as a unit of communication is made possible by its possessing a

meaning. Therefore, among the word's various characteristics, meaning is certainly the most important.

Generally speaking, meaning can be more or less described as a component of the word through which a concept is communicated, in this way endowing the word with the ability of denoting real objects, qualities, actions and abstract notions. The complex and somewhat mysterious relationships between referent (object, etc. denoted by the word), concept and word are traditionally represented by the following triangle :

Thought or Reference (concept)

Symbol Referent(object)

(word)

By the "symbol" here is meant the word; thought or reference is concept. The dotted line suggests that there is no immediate relation between word and referent: it is established only through the concept.

On the other hand, there is a hypothesis that concepts can only find their realisation through words. It seems that thought is dormant till the word wakens it up. It is only when we hear a spoken word or read a printed word that the corresponding concept springs into mind.

The mechanism by which concepts (i. e. mental phenomena) are converted into words (i. e. linguistic phenomena) and the reverse process by which a heard or a printed word is converted into a kind of mental picture are not yet understood or described. Probably that is the reason why the process of communication through words, if one gives it some thought, seems nothing short of a miracle. Isn't it fantastic that the mere vibrations of a speaker's vocal chords should be taken up by a listener's brain and converted into vivid pictures?

TYPES OF MEANING

1.conventional meaning

2.social meaning

3.affective meaning

Compare the following examples :

1. Beagles are a breed of dogs.2. Hey Jane, how are you ?

3. Linguistics is really cool !

ASPECTS OF MEANING : CONNOTATION AND DENOTATION

Sometimes word meanings are somewhat like game trails. So we have a new word when one of the main processes will be applied commonly enough in a particular instance. This new process can originate in a real world a connotation or a denotation: the former refers to the further meanings that a certain word evokes while the latter refers to the basic, literal meaning of some word.

Denotation

The central meaning of a linguistic form, regarded as the set of things it could possibly refer to. The study of meaning is a complex affair, and several quite different kinds of meaning have to becarefully distinguished before we can hope to make much progress. For example, when you say “The cat is scratching the sofa”, you clearly have some particular, individual cat in mind, and the relation between the cat and that animal is one of reference. Now the word cat itself cannot normally refer to any particular entity in this way. However, one way of looking at the central meaning of cat is to see this as consisting of all the cats in the (real or conceptual) world – that is, as the totality of things to which the word cat might reasonably be applied. This interpretation is called the denotation of the word cat.Denotation is a difficult concept to work with, since concepts like ‘all the cats in the world’ are almost impossible to pin down. Among ‘all the cats in the world’, should we include all those cats which have not yet been born, and all those which died millions of years ago?

Denotation is most frequently contrasted with connotation, but it has important similarities to sense, which is essentially a more directly linguistic way of interpreting the same kind of meaning.(And some writers have a habit of using denotation almost interchangeably with reference, but this is inappropriate.)

Therefore ‘denotation’ is the set of elements in the real world picked out by a linguistic expression ( the word ‘dog’ with all its relations); connotation, on the other hand, includes the set of associations (personal or communal) that are evoked by the use of a word (‘earth’ connotes safety, fertility, stability; ‘sea’ denotes a large body of water but connotes a sense of danger, instability etc).

When we analyze word meanings we should distinguish two separate concepts called ‘denotational and connotational meaning’. The denotational meaning gives us the basic meaning of a word on conceptual level (this is a dictionary definition). The connotational meaning can be created thanks to different factors and they turn out to be more problematic. One aspect concerning the connotational meanings is the social meaning which varies between age-groups, sexes, social classes and cultures. Dialect can be a good example.

Walking along the street you might listen to a conversation between two young boys or girls. ‘ Get’ut o’ere ‘andsome boy’, ‘Get out of here handsome boy’. The dialects carry certain connotations and in these examples we can understand to what social status the speakers belong. In the first case the speaker is low educated and he belongs to lower class, in the second case, the speaker is RP and well-educated.

Connotation

The meaning of a word that is broader than its central and primary sense, often acquired through frequent associations. All these associations are part of the connotation of the word.

Even affective meaning is in a close accordance with connotational meaning referring to attitudes that are reflected towards the hearer or the subject by speaker.

Moreover words can carry emotive meanings, for instance, the phonetic structure of a certain word can raise emotive effects (onomatopoeic words may strengthen the suggestive power). Connotations change and vary and can be simply classified in the same way as denotational meanings are classified in a dictionary. However they cause problems in cross cultural communication and our emotions as well as our culture will weld certain ideas and associations together with certain words. We must say that without connotational meaning communication would be quite impossible altogether.

SEMANTIC CHANGE

FIGURES OF SPEECH

The meaning of a word can change in the course of time. Changes of lexical meanings can be proved by comparing contexts of different times. Transfer of the meaning is called lexico-semantic word-building. In such cases the outer aspect of a word does not change.

The causes of semantic changes can be extra-linguistic and linguistic, e.g. the change of the lexical meaning of the noun “pen” was due to extra-linguistic causes. Primarily “ pen” comes back to the Latin word “penna” (a feather of a bird). As people wrote with goose pens the name was transferred to steel pens which were later on used for writing. Still later any instrument for writing was called ”a pen”.

On the other hand causes can be linguistic, e.g. the conflict of synonyms when a perfect synonym of a native word is borrowed from some other language one of them may specialize in its meaning, e.g. the noun “tide” in Old English was polysemantic and denoted “time”, “season”, “hour”. When the French words “time”, “season”, “hour” were borrowed into English they ousted the word “tide” in these meanings. It was specialized and now means “regular rise and fall of the sea caused by attraction of the moon”

.Semantic changes have been classified by different scientists. The most complete classification was suggested by a German scientist Herman Paul1. It is based on the logical principle. He distiguishes two main ways where the semantic change is gradual ( specialization and generalization), two momentary conscious semantic changes (metaphor and metonymy) and also secondary ways: gradual (elevation and degradation), momentary (hyperbole and litote).

Metaphor is a figure of speech in which a term is transferred from the object it ordinarily designates to an object: it may designate only by implicit comparison or analogy’. Metaphor belongs to daily language. It is a typical linguistic phenomenon and concerns our way of thinking because it is our own thought that is metaphorical.

Conventionalized metaphors belonging to the system language are the basis to understand original and new metaphorical expressions. An example of conceptual metaphor is given by the following expression ‘time flies’ where the abstract dominium of time can be led back to a more concrete dominium of the verb ‘to fly’.

1.Herman Paul - Prinzipien des Sprachgeschichte

This metaphor does not refer exclusively to a single expression of a language, but we must locate it to a superior level in order to motivate a series of locutions. [‘Time → flies, persons → birds, time that flows → fly, persons’ aspiration → destination of fly, difficulties → obstacles caused by the fly]. The success of metaphor, used today mainly in advertisements and in propaganda in general, depends on the novelty of the invention, by unforeseeable discover of a relation between two terms whose meaning is completely different.

There are verbal metaphors that attribute inanimate objects: ‘the dish cries, time flies, the moon smiles, etc.’. Metaphor is originated by the need of exteriorizing emotional and ideal contents for which denotative language doesn’t contemplate adequate terms.

The preference for the ‘concrete’, for the ‘particular’ is deeply and firmly rooted in the human mind. In a following example ‘ there is a hell of a wind’ the metaphor employed to explain the strong wind adds force ad vigour and has some relation with the thinness of detail and the concreteness of the expression.

Let’s suppose we are strangely happy and we want to express our feelings. We can say ‘I am happy’ or try to find a more accurate word capable of defining this special and particular sentiment: pleased, glad, delighted, blissful, cheerful, gay, merry etc. There are many synonyms that may replace the word ‘happy’ that have light nuances as we have already noticed by looking at a dictionary.

‘Ecstatic’ suggests a sublime ecstasy, ‘gay’ suggests, on the contrary, cheerfulness, light-heartedness. Rarely we find an adjective that exactly expresses our feelings. For this reason we recur to the daily use of metaphors such as ‘I am as merry as a lark or as a cricket’, or , ‘I feel as a millionaire man’, ‘I am in the seventh heaven’.

So metaphors become a strong mean of communication and enrich our thought and lexicon. To be able to discern a metaphor in a piece of literature depends on one’s own ability to make a connection between two seemingly unlike objects finding their common aspects.

There is a good physical example of this in the common experience of looking at a bright light source, then closing one’s eyes and still seeing the ‘afterimage’, apparently on the backs of the eyelids. Metaphor compares two things that are alike in some way so as to clarify our understanding of one of them. The metaphor is used above all by poets because they want to make their readers seeing an aspect of something they have not noticed before. Writers of prose take use of metaphors to make a difficult idea easier to understand, by comparing something which is unfamiliar to something which is familiar; in ordinary speech people use metaphors for emphasis.

All metaphors, however, have one fact in common, that is, they do not announce they are comparing one thing to the other. The difference between metaphor and simile is that in metaphor the comparison is implied, while in simile it is explicit. So metaphors have a way of activating previous experiences and associations. At first glance they can seem ambiguous and paradoxical, but in practice they can explain complex concepts both quicker and more accurate than a more literal explanation. In many areas, especially where instant communication of

complex messages must be achieved, metaphor have become more and more important.

Metonymy It is a transfer of the meaning on the basis of contiguity. There are different types of metonymy:

- the name of the place may become the name of the people or of an object placed there, e.g. the House - members of Parliament, Fleet Street - bourgeois press, the White House - the Administration of the USA etc;

- the name of some person may become a common noun, e.g. “boycott” was originally the name of an Irish family who were so much disliked by their neighbours that they did not mix with them, “sandwich” was named after Lord Sandwich who was a gambler. He did not want to interrupt his game and had his food brought to him while he was playing cards between two slices of bread not to soil his fingers.

- names of inventors very often become terms to denote things they invented, e.g. “watt” “roentgen” etc

- some geographical names can also become common nouns through metonymy, e.g. holland (linen fabrics), Brussels (a special kind of carpets) , china (porcelain) , astrachan ( a sheep fur) etc.

Simile - A simile is defined as a figure of speech that draws a comparison between two different things, especially a phrase containing the word "like" or "as". Thus, it is a figurative language drawing comparison - the likening of one thing to another. There are many examples of similes that are used in our everyday conversation however.

Few Examples of Similes using “like”My love is like a red, red roseHe eats like a birdHow like the winter hath my absence been” (Shakespeare).The realization hit me like a bucket of cold water.The snow was like a blanket.Death lies on her, like an untimely frost —William ShakespeareSuspicion climbed all over her face, like a kitten, but not so playfully —Raymond Chandler

Elevation of meaning

It is a transfer of the meaning when it becomes better in the course of time, e.g. “knight” ,the Old English form was cniht originally meant “a boy”, then “a young servant”, then “a military servant”, then “a noble man”. Now it is a title of nobility given to outstanding people; “marshal” originally meant “a horse man”, now it is the highest military rank etc.

The term pastor underwent amelioration, originally meaning "shepherd" (a sense surviving in the word pastoral), but coming to mean "a minister, especially of a Nonconformist church.

Another example of elevated word by which its meaning improves is minister, coming from the Latin "minister", it originally meant "servant". Nowadays it came to be exactly the opposite of what it used to mean: a clergyman; a person in charge of a department of State.

Elevation also called regeneration or amelioration process, is often the result of narrowing during which former negative connotations have been lost.

Degradation of meaning

It is a transfer of the meaning when it becomes worse in the course of time. It is usually connected with nouns denoting common people, e.g. Villain comes from the Latin word "villanus" that meant "person living in a countryside mansion". During the time the word villain has suffered a meaning mutation: "a person how is guilty or capable of great wickedness": Degradation of meaning is to be found in silly which meant "blessed". How did a word meaning "blessed" come to mean "silly"? Well, since people who are blessed are often innocent and guileless, the word gradually came to mean "innocent". Some of those who are innocent might be innocent because they haven't the brains to be anything else. And some of those who are innocent might be innocent because they reject opportunities for temptation. In either case they must therefore be foolish which is the primary meaning of the word silly. Another example of this kind will be: idiot, word that used to mean "private person". Now it means: a very foolish person.The adjective vulgar once it meant: 'popular" or "of the common people". During the time it has received a pejorative meaning: "lacking in good taste, not refined, being more like obscene. For example: a vulgar gesture.

All these rhetorical figures are very important to grasp the real meaning of words, phrases, sentences and finally texts and so they are introduced in the field of textual linguistics or textual analysis.

LEXICAL AMBIGUITY

The modern approach to semantics is based on the assumption that the inner form of the word (its meaning) presents a structure – the semantic structure of the word.

Most words convey several concepts and thus possess the corresponding number of the meanings.

1. The ability of words to have more than one meaning = Polysemy

2. A word having several meanings = polysemantic word

The process f developing a new meaning is termed transference. Transference based on resemblance is a process where a new meaning appears as a result of associating two objects.

HOMONYMY

Homonyms are the words which is identical in sound and spelling or at least in one of these aspects, but different in their meanings.

e.g. bank, n – a shore

bank, n – an institution

English vocabulary is rich in such pairs and even groups of words. Their identical forms are mostly accidental: the majority of homonyms coincided due to phonetic changes which they suffered during their development.

If synonyms and antonyms can be regarded as the treasury of the language's expressive resources, homonyms are of no interest in this respect, and one cannot expect them to be of particular value for communication. Metaphorically speaking, groups of synonyms and pairs of antonyms are created by the vocabulary system with a particular purpose whereas homonyms are accidental creations. Homonyms may lead to confusion or misunderstanding. But it is this very characteristic which makes them one of the most important sources of humor.

Homomymy creates lexical ambiguity in that a single form has two or more meanings.

Homonyms – are the words of one and the same language which are identical phonetically or graphically in all or several grammar forms (and in all or several phonetic and graphic variants) but which have essential difference in lexical or grammatical meanings.

Sources of homonyms are as follows:

1) Phonetic changes

2) Borrowings

3) Word-building

Classification of homonyms:

They are subdivided into full homonyms and partial homonyms.

Full homonyms are identical in sound in all their forms of paradigms of two or more different words, e.g., in seal 1 — ‘a sea animal’ and seal 2 — ‘a design printed on paper by means of a stamp’.

Seal 1 seal2

seals seals

seal’s seal’s

seals’ seals’

Full lexical homonyms are words which represent the same category of part of speech and have the same paradigm.

e.g. match, n – contest, game ;

match, n – thin piece of wood

Partial homonyms are subdivided into 3 subgroups:

1) Simple lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words which belong to the same category of part of speech and have one identical form.

e.g. lay, v – infinitive

lay, v – Past Indefinite of the verb to lie.

2) Complex lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words of different categories of parts of speech which have one identical form.

e.g. rose, n - flower

rose, v – Past Indefinite of the verb to rise

3) Partial lexical homonyms are words of the same category of part of speech which are identical only in their corresponding forms.

e.g. to can, n – sealed tin container for preservation of food or drink ;

can, v – modal verb.

GRAPHIC AND SOUND-FORM CLASSIFICATION OF HOMONYMS

1. Homophones - are words with the same sound but different spellings and different meanings:

Piece (n) part separated from smth. - Peace (n) a situation in which there is no war between countries;

Knight (n) [nait] in the past, a European soldier from a high class - Night (n) [nait] the part of each 24-hour period when it is dark

Read – red; pair – pear; know – no; write – right etc.

2. Homographs are words different in sound-form and in meaning but identical in spelling:

Bow (n) [bou] a weapon for shooting arrows - Bow n [bau] a forward movement of the body or head to show respect;

Lead (v) [li:d] to conduct - Lead (n) [led] a soft heavy grey metal

Row [rou] a line of smth. – row [rau] – a quarrel, tear [tiэ] – tear [teэ].

The distinction between homonymy and polysemy

One indication of the distinction can be found in the typical dictionary entry for words. If a word has two or more meanings (polysemic), then there will be a single entry, with a numbered list of the different meanings of the word. If two words are treated as homonyms, they will typically have two separate entries.

SYNONYMY IN ENGLISH

A characteristic feature of a vocabulary of any language is the existence of synonyms, which is closely connected with the problem of meaning of the word.

The most complicated problem is the definition of the term "synonyms". There are a great many definitions of the term, but there is no universally accepted one. Traditionally the synonyms are defined as words different in sound-form, but identical or similar in meaning. But this definition has been severely criticized on many points.

Among numerous definitions of the term, the most comprehensive and full one is suggested by I.V. Arnold: "Synonyms - are two or more words of the same meaning, belonging to the same part of speech, possessing one or more identical meaning, interchangeable at least in some contexts without any considerable alteration in denotational meaning, but differing in morphemic composition, phonemic shape, shades of meaning, connotation, affective value, style, emotional coloring and valence, peculiar to one of the elements in a synonymic group."

This definition describes the notion "synonymy", gives some criteria of synonymy (identity of meaning, interchangeability), shows some difference in connotation, emotive coloring, style, etc. But this descriptive definition as well as many others has the main drawbacks - there are no objective criteria of "identity" or "similarity" or sameness of meaning. They all are based on the linguistic intuitions of the scholars.

From the definition follows, that the members of the synonymic group in a dictionary should have their common denotational meaning and consequently it should be explained in the same words; they may have some differences in implication connotation, shades of meaning, idiomatic usage, etc.

Hope, expectation, anticipation are considered to be synonymous because they all mean "having something in mind which is likely to happen..." But expectation may be either of good or of evil. Anticipation is as a rule an expectation of something good. Hope is not only a belief but a desire that some event would happen. The stylistic difference is also quite marked. The Romance words anticipation and expectation are formal literary words used only by educated speakers, whereas the native monosyllabic hope is stylistically neutral. Moreover, they differ in idiomatic usage. Only hope is possible in such set expressions as to hope against hope, to lose hope, to pin one's hopes on something. Neither expectation nor anticipation could be substituted into the following quotation from T. Eliot: "You don't know what hope is until you have lost it".

Criteria of SynonymyNot a single definition of the term synonym provides for any objective criterion of similarity

or sameness of meaning as far as it is based on the linguistic intuition of the scholars.

Many scholars defined synonyms as words conveying the same notion but differing either in shades of meaning or in stylistic characteristics. In "Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms" its authors used the semantic criterion along with the criterion of interchangeability, which we may see from the definition.

A synonym is one of two or more words which have the same or nearly the same essential (denotational) meaning. It is not a matter of mere likeness in meaning, but a likeness in denotation which may be expressed in its definition. The definition must indicate the part of speech and the relations of the ideas involved in a term's meaning.

They usually are interchangeable within limits, but interchangeability is not the final test, since idiomatic usage is often a preventive of that. The only satisfactory test of synonyms is their agreement in connotation.

Classification of Synonyms

1. Ideographic synonyms - words conveying the same notion but differing in shades of

meaning: to understand - to realize

to expect - to anticipate

to look - glance - stare - peep - gaze

2. Stylistic synonyms- words differing only in stylistic characteristics:

to begin - to commence - to high

to think - to deem

enemy - opponent - foe – adversary

to help - to aid - to assist

courage - dauntlessness - grit - guts

3. Absolute (perfect, complete) - words coinciding in all their shades of meaning and in

all their stylistic characteristics. Absolute synonyms are rare in a language.

In English: pilot – airman; scriptwriter – scripter ; .

Synonymic Patterns

The English word-stock is extremely rich in synonyms, which can be largely accounted for by abundant borrowings. The synonymic resources of a language tend to form certain characteristic and fairly consistent patterns. Synonyms in English are organized according to 2 basic principles. One of them involves double, the other a triple scale. In English there are countless pairs of synonyms where a native term is opposed to one borrowed from French, Latin, and Greek. In most cases the native word is more spontaneous, more informal and unpretentious whereas the

foreign one often has a learned, abstract air. The native words are usually colloquial. We quote a few examples of synonymic patterns double scale.

Adjectives: bodily - corporal, brotherly - fraternal, heavenly - celestial, inner - internal, learned - erudite, sharp - acute.

Nouns: fiddle - violin, friendship - amity, help - aid, wire - telegram, world - universe.

Verbs: answer - reply, buy - purchase.

Side-by-side with this main pattern there exists in English a pattern based on a triple scale of synonyms:

NATIVE FROM FRENCH FROM LATIN

to ask1 to question2 to interrogate3 stomach abdomen belly

to end finish complete

to gather to assemble collect

to rise to mount to ascent

teaching guidance instruction

The infiltration of British English by Americanisms also results in the formation of synonyms pairs, one being a traditional Briticism and the other - a new American loan: Leader - editorial; autumn - fall; government - administration; luggage - baggage; wireless -radio; lorry - truck;

tin – can ; stone - rock; team -squad.

As a rule the Americanisms have a lower frequency index than the British counterparts. Thus, tin is more common than can, team - than squad. But luggage - baggage, lorry - truck, leader -editorial are used sometimes interchangeably.

English also used many pairs of synonymous derivatives, the one Hellenic and the other Romance: hypotheses – supposition, periphery – circumference, sympathy-compassion, synthesis - composition.

Another source of synonymy is the so-called euphemism, when a harsh word indelicate or unpleasant or least inoffensive connotation. Thus the denotational meaning of drunk and merry may be the same. The euphemistic expression merry coincides in denotation with the word it

1

2

3

substituted but the connotation of the latter faded out and so the utterance on the whole is milder and less offensive.

Very often a learned word which sounds less familiar and less offensive or derogative: for example “drunkenness” – “intoxication”, “sweat” – “perspiration”. The effect is achieved because the expression is not so harsh.

Set expressions consisting of a verb with a postpositive are widely used in present day English: to choose - pick out, abandon - give up, postpone - put off, return - come back, quarrel - fall out.

Even more frequent are, for instance, such set expressions which differ from simple verbs in aspect or emphasis: to laugh - to give a laugh, to sign - to give a sign, to smoke - to have a smoke, to love - to fall in love.

Smell, scent, odor, aroma all denote a property of a thing that makes it perceptible to the olfactory sense. Smell not only is the most general of these terms but tends to be the most colorless. It is the appropriate word when merely a sensation is indicated and no hint or its source, quality or character is necessary.

Scent tends to call attention to the physical basis of the sense of smell and is particularly appropriate when the emphasis is on emanations or explanations from an external object which reach the olfactory receptors rather than impression produced in the olfactory center of the brain. Odor is oftentimes indistinguishable from scent for it too can be thought of as smth. diffused and as smth. by means of which external objects are identified by the sense of smell.

Aroma usually adds to odor the implication of a penetrating, pervasive or sometimes a pungent quality; it need not imply delicacy or fragrance, but it seldom connotes unpleasantness, and it often suggests smth. to be savored.

Understand, comprehend, appreciate are synonyms when they mean to have a clear and true idea or conception, or full and exact knowledge, of sth. They (especially the first two) are often used interchangeably and seemingly without loss; nevertheless, they are distinguishable by fine sharp differences in meaning in precise use. In general, it may be said that understand refers to the result of a mental process, comprehend to the mental process of arriving at such a result; thus , one may come to understand a person although one has had difficulty in comprehending his motives and his peculiarities; one may be unable to comprehend a poem, no matter how clearly one understands every sentence in it. "You begin to comprehend me, do you" cried he, turning towards her. "Oh! Yes - I understand you perfectly." Sometimes the difference is more subtle; comprehend implies the mental act of grasping or seizing clearly and fully; understand, the power to receive and register a clear and true impression. Appreciate, as here considered, implies a just judgment or the estimation of a thing's true or exact value; therefore,

the word is used in reference to persons or things which may be undervaluing or overvaluing. "You are of an age now to appreciate his character."

THE DOMINANT SYNONYM

All (or, at least, most) synonymic groups have a "central" word of this kind whose meaning is equal to the denotation common to all the synonymic group. This word is called the dominant synonym.

Here are examples of other dominant synonyms with their groups:

To surprise — to astonish — to amaze — to astound.

To shout — to yell — to bellow — to roar.

To shine — to flash — to blaze — to gleam — to glisten — to sparkle — to glitter — to shimmer — to glimmer.

To tremble — to shiver — to shudder — to shake.

To make — to produce — to create — to fabricate — to manufacture.

Differences Between Synonyms

Very often words are completely synonyms in the sense of being interchangeable in any content without the slightest alteration in objective meaning, feeling-tone or evocative meaning. But majority of them may have some distinctive features, which are listed below. These differences are the following:

1. Between general and specific;

2. Between shades of meaning;

ANTONYMY IN ENGLISH

Antonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or contradictory notions.

The number of antonyms with the suffixes ful- and -less is not very large, and sometimes even if we have a word with one of these suffixes its antonym is formed not by substituting -ful by less-, e.g. «successful» -»unsuccessful», «selfless» - «selfish».

CLASSIFICATION OF ANTONYMS

a) complementary, e.g. male -female, married -single,

b) gradable antonyms, e.g. good -bad,

c) converseness, e.g. to buy - to sell.

In this classification, a).complementarity is described in the following way: the denial of the one implies the assertion of the other, and vice versa. «John is not married» implies that «John is single». The type of oppositeness is based on yes/no decision. Incompatibility only concerns pairs of lexical units.

Complementary (or binary antonyms) are based on binary oppositions, which do not allow for gradations between the extreme poles of a semantic axis. These are forms of antonyms which truly represent oppositeness of meaning. They are said to be exclusive.

For example: "present" - "absent" ,"accept "-"refuse", “married"— "single" , "male"- "female" , "alive"- "dead" , "begin" - "end" , "perfect" - "imperfect", "false "-"true", "animate " — "inanimate " , "same"- "different".

b). Gradable Antonymy is the second class of oppositeness. It is distinguished from complementarity by being based on different logical relationships. For pairs of antonyms like good/bad, big/small only the second one of the above mentioned relations of implication holds. The assertion containing one member implies the negation of the other, but not vice versa. «John is good» implies that «John is not bad», but «John is not good» does not imply that «John is bad». The negation of one term does not necessarily implies the assertion of the other.

Gradable Antonymy is used to designate those meaning oppositions which admit certain gradations with regard to the expressed meaning:

Example: "young" - "old"

“clever "-"stupid"

"near "-"far"

"interesting "- "boring "

"small "-"large" "good"-"bad"

"big" and "small" form part of a scale of values which will include some of the following:

"huge " / "very big" / "big" / "quite big" / "medium-sized" / "quite small"

/"small "/"tiny"

"hot” / “cold"

"Sue's coffee is cold"

“Mary's coffee is hot"

The scale of values: "boiling" / "very hot" / "hot" / "quite hot" / "warm" / "lukewarm" / "tepid" / "cool" / "cold" / "freezing"

An important linguistic difference from complementaries is that gradable antonyms are always fully gradable, e.g. hot, warm, tepid, cold.

c).Converseness ( Relational antonyms ) is mirror-image relations or functions, e.g. husband/wife, pupil/teacher, precede/follow, above/below, before/after etc.

These are terms which describe a relation between two entities from alternate viewpoints, as in the pairs: "own"/"belong to", "above"/ "below", "employer"/ "employee"

«John bought the car from Bill» implies that «Bill sold the car to John». Mirror-image sentences are in many ways similar to the relations between active and passive sentences.

HIERARCHICAL RELATIONS ( HYPONYMY, MERONYMY)

HYPONYMY

Hyponomy is a relation of inclusion,

so ‘dog’ and ‘poodle’ are hyponyms of ‘animal’, as, in fact, are ‘cat’ and ‘cheetah’; ‘poodle’

in turn is a hyponym of ‘dog’, and ‘cheetah’ (and any other cat you can think of) is a hyponym

of ‘cat’. Conversely, ‘animal’ is a hypernym (or superordinate) of ‘dog’, and ‘dog’ is a

hypernym of ‘poodle’. The relation is probably best illustrated by a diagram :

animal

dog cat

poodle terrier etc. cheetah persan etc,

I mentioned that hyponymy is often presented as a relation of inclusion. It’s worth thinking

for a moment, though, about what exactly this means. What includes what? Well interestingly,

the answer to this question depends on whether we look at meaning extensionally or

intensionally. Seen extensionally, the set of objects denoted by the superordinate term includes

the set of objects denoted by the hyponym – i.e. the set of animals includes the set of

dogs (the correct term – again from set theory – is that the set of dogs is a sub-set of the set

of animals). Looking at meanings intensionally, however, might lead us to conclude that the

meaning of ‘dog’ is somehow richer and more complex than the meaning of ‘animal’, or even

that the meaning of ‘dog’ somehow includes the meaning of ‘animal’.

MERONYMY

The final sense relation I would like to introduce you to is meronymy. This describes a

kind of part-whole relationship, and like hyponomy it is a relation of inclusion. So ‘leaf’,

‘bark’ and ‘branch’ are meronyms of ‘tree’, because they are parts of a tree; ‘clutch’, ‘brake’ and

‘engine’ are meronyms of ‘car’ because they are parts of a car. It is a fairly complex relation which attempts to take into account the degree of differentiation of the parts with respect to the whole and also the role that these parts play with respect to their whole.There are interesting parallels between meronymy and hyponymy, although it should be obvious the two are not the same – a poodle is a type of dog and a cheetah is a kind of cat, but a leaf is not type of tree and a clutch is not a type of car. One obvious parallel is that you could also represent meronymic

relations using a tree diagram.

Many objects in the world are conceived as a whole consisting of different parts. And correspondingly, our concepts for complex objects contain these parts as elements. One of the best examples of a complex object is the human body with its parts, their sub-parts and so on. The head is the part of the body that carries the most important sense organs : eyes, ears, nose and tongue.

A system of this type is not to be confused with hierarchy based on hyponymy. It is a part-whole relation, it means that a potential referent of face is part of a potential referent of head.

Meronymy (from ancient Greek meron = part );

Holonym (Greek holos = whole ).

If A is a meronym of B, then B is holonym of A.

It is not generally a transitive relation. Hyponymy is always transitive, but meronymy may or may not be so.

The division of the human body into parts served as a prototype for all part-whole hierarchies :

Body ( holonym )

Head neck(meronym) trunk arm leg

Face forearm hand(holonym)

Eye nose chin mouth palm finger (meronym)

Iris pupil lashes tongue lip teeth

So, body is the holonym and head, neck, trunk, arm, leg are meronyms of body.

Face is the holonym and eyes, nose, chin, mouth are meronyms of face.

But Face is also the meronym for Head.

Eye is the holonym and iris, pupil, lashes are meronyms of eyes.

But eye is also the meronym of face.

The ultimate conclusion to be drawn is that meronymy is a complex relation.

The following diagram shows how part-whole relationship can be represented hierarchically :

Car

Body wheel electrical system

Frame chassis tire rim starter motor battery

Distinction between meronymy and hyponymyMeronymy can be expressed by the pattern “X is a part of Y”, whereas hyponymy is by the pattern “X is a kind of Y”. For example, head is a part of body, but not a kind of body, while potato is a kind of vegetable, but not a part of vegetable.

I conclude that, lexical semantics relations play an essential role in lexical semantics and intervene at many levels in natural language comprehension and production. They are also a central element in the organization of lexical semantics knowledge bases.

There are many inferences we can make solely on the basis of what words mean. We know, for

example, that if something is a poodle, then it’s a dog; we know that if it is a dog, then it is

not a cat, but that it is an animal and so on... This must reflect some knowledge about the

meaning of words that we have. John Lyons, a linguist some of you may have heard of, put it

like this:

“Looked at from a semantic point of view, the lexical structure of a language – the

structure of its vocabulary – is best regarded as a large and intricate network of sense

relations: it is like a huge multi-dimensional spider’s web…”