Borrowing of French words.

There are the following semantic groups of French borrowings:

a) words relating to government : administer, empire, state, government;

b) words relating to military affairs: army, war, banner, soldier, battle;

c) words relating to jury: advocate, petition, inquest, sentence, barrister;

d) words relating to fashion: luxury, coat, collar, lace, pleat, embroidery;

e) words relating to jewelry: topaz, emerald, ruby, pearl ;

f) words relating to food and cooking: lunch, dinner, appetite, to roast, to stew.

Words were borrowed from French into English after 1650, mainly through French literature, but they were not as numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated. There are the following semantic groups of these borrowings:

a) words relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatorie, brochure, nuance, piruette, vaudeville;

b) words relating to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage, manouvre;

c) words relating to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau;

d) words relating to food and cooking: ragout, cuisine.

26. Word mng. Approaches to defining it + p.89

Meaning is one of the most controversial terms in the theory of language. At first sight the understanding of this term seems to present no difficulty at all — it is freely used in teaching, interpreting and translation. The scientific definition of meaning however just as the definition of some other basic linguistic terms, such as word. sentence, etc., has been the issue of interminable discussions. Since there is no universally accepted definition of meaning ⁴ we shall confine ourselves to a brief survey of the problem as it is viewed in modern linguistics both in our country and elsewhere.

The lexical meaning of a word is the realization of a notion by means of a definite language system. A word is a language unit, while a notion is a unit of thinking. A notion cannot exict without a word expressing it in the language, but there are words which do not express any notion but have a lexical meaning.

The term «notion» was introduced into lexicology from logics. A notion denotes the reflection in the mind of real objects and phenomena in their relations. Notions, as a rule, are international, especially with the nations of the same cultural level. While meanings can be nationally limited. Grouping of meanings in the semantic structure of a word is determined by the whole system of every language.

The number of meanings does not correspond to the number of words, neither does the number of notions. Their distribution in relation to words is peculiar in every language. Development of lexical meanings in any language is influenced by the whole network of ties and relations between words and other aspects of the language.

Approaches to defining Lex. Mng:

Referential approach:

Mng – is the info conveyed from the speaker to the listener. Mng remains stable if we have adequate translation from one L. to another.

There’s no direct connection between the sign & the mng. of the W. Real objects don’t belong to linguistic studies. Content is a unit of lexicology, mng. belongs to the language. The concepts are more or less the same for the humanity for a certain period of time. But they also change in time. The mngs. Are different in languages, but the concepts are more or less the same.

Criticism: it’s not easy to correctly guess the direct referent; some Ws have no referent at all; some objects have several different names.

Functional approach:

Mng = W’s use

Wittgenstein: the number of usages = the number of mngs

EG: deep: see wound, sleep, purple

Operational approach:

Tries to define mng through its role in communication. Info conveyed from the speaker to the listener =>deals with sentences => mng => info

This approach fails to draw a line between direst sense & implication of W.

27. Types, varieties and aspects of mng.

Types;

1. diachr-ly: primary (first appeared in a L.) / secondary mng (historically derived from primary) eg: train шлейф – primary 13 c. from French the long tail of a woman’s dress, поезд – then a vehicle

2. Central & minor mng in which the word is (not) used frequently. Synchr-ly Sometimes primary & central are the same

3. bound / free mngsBound mng: a W used in this mng in a limited number of contexts, it’s limited by the context

Lexically bound mng.: don’t exist in the real life (green flower)

Traditionally bound mng: clishes (to wage a campaign)

Phraseologically bound mngs : PHUs (white elephant)

Free mng. syncronical/diachronical

4. direct/ transferred vehicle, part of a dress; of thoughts – because of the poss. Similarity. # weed ws – similar to plants. Through metaphor or metonymy # the crown walked into the hall. Spectacles ordered beer.

Varieties of lex. Mng:

1. Grammatical mng.

A mng. repeated by in similar gr. forms of Ws, should be studied in context (mng of plurality: -s)

2. Derivational mng.

A mng. which establishes semantic correlation between a source W and a derived W. Descrie through der-l patterns.

3. Lexical mng.– the basic.Is the correlation b-n sign and phenomenon

A mng. which establishes relations of the sound form & objects (phenomena of reality). We look up in the dict-ry, is present in all gr-l forms.

Lex. Variety has 3 Aspects:

All the mngs are connected but should be studied through history.

Denotational mng.is the core of the lex. mng. We look for it in the dictionary. Some nouns are abstract, have no real denotation, no direct referent. => we talk about conceptional mngs (the object doesn’t exist: friendship)

Aspects:

Connotational mng: this aspect gives additional info about the attitude of the given lex. community to what is expressed in the W, it’s not individual. It’s restricted in a dictionary.

The 1^st part of the conn-l mng-Emotive charge: (ex. Inform-Daddy/official-parent/neutr-father) The den-l mng is the same. The 2^nd component – stylistic register/ reference. Connotations are registered in the dict-s too. # well-known, famous, infamous, notorious – reflected in the dict-ry definition

Pragmatic aspest:often describes the situation in which the W is used. # come & go

28. The fundamental features of W mng. + p.9,1,12

- relative stability

The mngs don’t change during long periods of time. The concepts remain more or less the same for a long time, so their mngs remain more or less the same.

- relative flexibility

Lang would have died if the mng hadn’t been flexible. In time some there are some changes in people’s way of life, new objects appear, other objects (& concepts) are used no more. So people use the existing names for new concepts => new mngs appear. Usually the old and the new mng have smth in common, some feature unites them.

29. Polysemy, its sources. Polysemy & homonymy. Sources of homonyms. Classification of homonyms.+ p.10

The word «polysemy» means «plurality of meanings» it exists only in the language, not in speech. A word which has more than one meaning is called polysemantic.

Different meanings of a polysemantic word may come together due to the proximity of notions which they express.

There are some words in the language which are monosemantic, such as most scientific terms.

Homonyms are words different in meaning but identical in sound or spelling, or both in sound and spelling.

Some words are homonymous in all their forms, i.e. we observe full homonymy of the paradigms of two or more different words, e.g., in seal₁ — ‘a sea animal’ and seal₂ — ‘a design printed on paper by means of a stamp’. The paradigm “seal, seal’s, seals, seals’ ” is identical for both of them and gives no indication of whether it is seal₁ or seal₂, that we are analysing. In other cases, e.g. seal₁ — ‘a sea animal’ and (to) seal, — ‘to close tightly’, we see that although some individual word- forms are homonymous, the whole of the paradigm is not identical. seal₁ (to) seal₃

seal seal

seal’s seals

seals sealed

seals’ sealing, etc.

It is easily observed that only some of the word-forms (e.g. seal, seals, etc.) are homonymous, whereas others (e.g. sealed, sealing) are not. In such cases we cannot speak of homonymous words but only of homonymy of individual word-forms or of partial homonymy. The bulk of full homonyms are to be found within the same parts of speech (e.g. seal₁n— seal₂n), partial homonymy as a rule is observed in word-forms belonging to different parts of speech (e.g. seal₁n — seal₃v). This is not to say that partial homonymy is impossible within one part of speech. For instance in the case of the two verbs — lie[lai] — ‘to be in a horizontal or resting position’ and He [lai] — ‘to make an untrue statement' — we also find partial homonymy as only two word-forms [lai], [laiz] are homonymous, all other forms of the two verbs are different. Cases of full homonymy may be found in different parts of speech too; e.g. for [fo:] — preposition, for[fo:] — conjunction and four[fo:] — numeral, as these parts of speech have no other word-forms.

Homonyms may be also classified by the type of meaning into lexical, lexico-grammatical and grammatical homonyms. In seal₁n and seal₂n, e.g., the part-of-speech meaning of the word and the grammatical meanings of all its forms are identical (cf. seal[si:l] Common Case Singular, seal’s [si:lz] Possessive Case Singular for both seal₁and seal₂).The difference is confined to the lexical meaning only: seal₁denotes ‘a sea animal’, ‘the fur of this animal’, etc., seal₂ — ‘a design printed on paper, the stamp by which the design is made’, etc. So we can say that seal₂and seal₁ are lexical homonyms because they differ in lexical meaning.

If we compare seal₁ — ‘a sea animal’, and (to) seal₃ — ‘to close tightly, we shall observe not only a difference in the lexical meaning of their homonymous word-forms but a difference in their grammatical meanings as well. Identical sound-forms, i.e. seals[si:lz] (Common Case Plural of the noun) and (he) seals[si:lz] (third person Singular of the verb) possess each of them different grammatical meanings. As both grammatical and lexical meanings differ we describe these homonymous word-forms as lexico-grammatical.

Lexico-grammatical homonymy generally implies that the homonyms in question belong to different parts of speech as the part-of-speech meaning is a blend of the lexical and grammatical semantic components. There may be cases however when lexico-grammatical homonymy is observed within the same part of speech, e.g., in the verbs (to) find[faind] and (to) found[faund], where the homonymic word-forms: found[faund] — Past Tense of (to) findand found[faund] — Present Tense of (to) founddiffer both grammatically and lexically.

Modern English abounds in homonymic word-forms differing in grammatical meaning only. In the paradigms of the majority of verbs the form of the Past Tense is homonymous with the form of Participle II, e.g. asked— asked; in the paradigm of nouns we usually find homonymous forms of the Possessive Case Singular and the Common Case Plural, e.g. brother’s— brothers. It may be easily observed that grammatical homonymy is the homonymy of different word-forms of one and the same word.

One of the most debatable problems in semasiology is the demarcation line between homonymy and polysemy, i.e. between different meanings of one word and the meanings of two homonymous words. Synchronically the differentiation between homonymy and polysemy is as a rule wholly based on the semantic criterion. It is usually held that if a connection between the various meanings is apprehended by the speaker, these are to be considered as making up the semantic structure of a polysemantic word, otherwise it is a case of homonymy, not polysemy.

Thus the semantic criterion implies that the difference between polysemy and homonymy is actually reduced to the differentiation between related and unrelated meanings. This traditional semantic criterion does not seem to be reliable, firstly, because various meanings of the same word and the meanings of two or more different words may be equally apprehended by the speaker as synchronically unrelated. For instance, the meaning ‘a change in the form of a noun or pronoun’ which is usually listed in dictionaries as one of the meanings of case₁seems to be synchronically just as unrelated to the meanings of this word as ’something that has happened’, or ‘a question decided in the court of law’ to the meaning of case₂ — ‘a box, a container’, etc.

A clearly perceptible connection, e.g., can be seen in all metaphoric or metonymic meanings of one word (cf., e.g., footof theman— footof the mountain).

Thus, the context/ distribution serves to differentiate meanings but is of little help in distinguishing between homonymy and polysemy. paper « — (to) paperv the noun may be preceded by the article and followed by a verb; (to) papercan never be found in identical distribution. This formal criterion can be used to discriminate not only lexico-grammatical but also grammatical homonyms, but it often fails in cases of lexical homonymy, not differentiated by means of spelling.

30. The main types of semantic relations between mngs. + p.22

Lexicon is a system that exists in the mind of the speaker. The Ws divide the semantic space between themselves.

Thesaurus: Ws are grouped according to some common concepts.

Types of relations:

1. inclusion

2. proximity (a kind of similarity – closest mngs, partially similar)

3. opposition

4. equivalence (strictly speaking doesn’t exist, one of the ws is extra an)

2) 2 Ws share close semantic features

Degree of proximity:

Proximity is always a matter of degree. There are cases when Ws share only 1 semantic feature (ex: red, green, father, son). The higher the degree is the more possible becomes synonymy.

1. Denotations are the same, connotations are different

(ex: foe-enemy – dif.style; father-daddy – dif. emotive connotation).

2. Denotations are close, but different, connotations are the same. The degree of proximity is lower.

(clever – intelligent)

3. Denotations are close, but not identical, connotations & pragmatics differ. (economical – stingy)

Ideographic stylistic synonyms belong to the same group, have same connotations. Some syns. are very distant.

4. Denotations, connotations & pragmatics are close. (ex: to kill-murder; convince-persuade)

Opposition: at some step Ws stop sharing common features, but there’s still smth that unites them. (ex: black-white).

There should be some ground for the opposition. Opposition is the key to antonymy. Ws can be contrasted & opposed, have smth in common. (ex: man-woman).

1. Lex-gy as a branch of ling-s

Lex-gy (Greek lexicos “related to a word” + logos “learning”) the study of the w. Lex-gy – a branch of ling. that studies the word and a system of words (knowledge of the words and their relations).

There are smaller meaningful units than the word – morphemes, bigger – word –groups (not Ss). Lex-gy deals with everything that has mng. But the central unit of lex-gy – the word, as psychologically we speak with words.

The aim of lex-gy – to study and systematically describe the voc of a L, to study the system of words, not a single word. + relations (synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy) #well-known, famous, notorious, infamous

Lex-gy has several branches:

1. the core of lex-gysemantics, semasiology (studies the mng of words)

2. morphology (tells us about the composition of the words - morphemes)

w-building/ formation also tells us about how a word was made

m-gy splits the words into parts, word-formation constructs the words. They are not the same, but very closely connected

3. phraseology (studies word-groups and collocations of words)

4. etymology (studies the history of mean., how words appeared in Eng)

5. lexicography is about dictionary compilation (how, types)

6. dialectology (deals with the dialects of Eng – Am, Br, Can)

7. methods used in lex-gy to study words

Word – the 2facet (form + meaning) ready-made (normally stored in the lang. and our memory) meaningful independent/ autonomous unit. A morpheme – the smaller 2facet, meaningful, ready-made (may be counted) but not autonomous – dependent (parts of words).

Types of lex-gy:

I. 1)general lex-gy studies ling. phenomena and properties common to all lang.

2)special - studies characteristic peculiarities in the voc. of 1 particular L

Contrastive

There are two principal approaches in linguistic science to the study of language material:

1)synchronic – descriptive – deals with the voc. of a given lang. at a given stage of its dev-t (15 c.)

2)diachronic – historical approach, studies how it developed.

This distinction due to Swiss philologist FdS. It’s artificial. It should be stressed that the distinction between the synchronic and the diachronic study in real language is inseparable. The two approaches should not be contrasted, or set one against the other; in fact, they are interconnected and interdependent: every linguistic structure and system actually exists in a state of constant development so that the synchronic state of a language system is a result of a long process of linguistic evolution, of its historical development.

Lex-gy is connected with other branches of ling.:

a)phonetics may influence the mg of a w when we change a sound, phonemes have no mng of their own, but serve to distinguish b-n mng: tip- top- tap; hop- hope- hap- hoop;

Spoonerisms – accidental or jocular transposition of the initial sounds of 2 or > words – illustrate the same point # our dear old queen, half-warmed fish – half-formed wish

Stress # import, compounds # blackbird

b) stylistics (how to chose the w – functional styles): dad- father- parent; shades of mg: notorious- famous.

c) grammar and lex-gy are interconnected – ws have both lex & gram mng: head- v,n, the gr-l paradigm changes. Brothers - relatives & brethren members of some society, us. secret).

d) socioling-s – rels ↔ L & society, differences in society.

The conquest and research of outer space started by the Soviet people contributed words like sputnik, lunokhod, babymoon, moon-car, spaceship,etc. It is significant that the suffix -nikoccurring in the noun sputnikis freely applied to new words of various kinds, e.g. flopnik, mousenik, woofnik.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 1024