Types of Lexical Meaning

Impressions which have born by concepts are called imagery.

Imagery is mainly produced by the interplay of diffe?rent meanings.

Among the lexical means we distinguish three types of meanings, which we call logical, emotive and no?minal meanings.

2.Logical meaning is the exact and definite name of an object, phenomenon or idea. This meaning is also synony?mously called denotative, referential or direct meaning. Let?s see the illustration of the logical meaning of the following words: "empty" - having nothing inside, containing nothing. E.g.: an empty box; "fate" - good or bad luck coming to a person; "moon" - the body which moves round the earth once a month and shines at night by light reflecting from the sun. E.g.: Scientists have explo?red the surface of the moon.

Logical meaning may be primary and secondary (derivative). The above-given examples are primary logi?cal meanings. The secondary logical meaning of these words are the following: "empty" - not meaning anything; "feeling empty" (calloq) - hungry; words "empty of mea?ning" - meaningless words.

Some stylistic devices are built on the interplay of primary and secondary logical meanings.

All the meanings fixed by English and American dic?tionaries constitute the semantic structure of the word. The main and the major component of the semantic structure of the word is its lexical meaning. And meanings which are not registered in dictionaries but exist in our speech or written texts are called contextual meanings. They don?t enter the semantic structure of the word and exist only in a text.

3. The content of the word consists not only of the agg?regate of lexical meanings. Some additional meanings also exist in the content of the word. These additional mea?nings are named in different terms: "emotive meanings", "connotative meanings", "stylistic meanings" etc. These additional meanings, unlike lexical meanings, do not have reference directly to the things or phenomena of the objec?tive reality, but they refer to the feelings and emotions of the speaker towards these things or to his emotions. These emotive meanings are fixed in most of dictionaries and are components of the semantic structure of words as well as the lexical meanings of these words. E.g.: "I feel so dar?ned lonely." (G. Green). The italicized word has no logi?cal meaning. It has only emotive meaning. Its function is to reveal the subjective, evaluating attitude of the writer to things and events spoken of.

Some words with emotive meanings have lost their logical meaning and function in the language as interjecti?ons. Such words as "alas", "oh", "ah", "pooh", "gosh" and the like have practically no logical meaning at all; words like "the devil", "Christ", "God", "goodness gracious", etc., are frequently used only in their emotive meaning. The same can be said about the words bloody, damn and others.

Emotive meanings of words play an important role in stylistics. Writers use the words with emotive meaning for definite stylistic effects, thus calling the attention of the reader to the meaning of such words.

The following words have also emotive meanings...

1. Interjections: O! Alas! Hey! Yogh! Gosh!

2. Exclamatory words: Good! Well! Look out! Hurrah! Hear, hear! Heavens!

3. Oaths and swear words: Upon my word! The devil!
Christ! God! Goodness gracious! Bloody, damn, bastard!

4. Qualitative and intensifying adjectives and ad?
verbs: awfully, terrible, wonderful, dreadful, fine, fantastic, terrific.

Another class of words with emotive meaning has lost their logical meaning and function in the language as interjections. Such words as alas, oh, ah, pooh, darn, gosh and the like have practically no logical meaning at all; words like the devil, Christ, God, goodness gracious, etc., are frequently used only in their emotive meaning. The same can be said about the words bloody, damn.

There are groups of words in the language in which emotive meaning prevails. Among them we have such words as: love, hate, motherland, scoundrel, traitor, hero.

Suffixes having diminutive meanings may also be treated as adding emotive meaning to words with neutral logical meaning: cubicle (cube), particle (part), townlet (town), booklet (book), shirtie (shirt), birdie (bird).

Anything recognizable as having a strong impact on our senses may be considered as having emotive meaning, either dictionary or contextual.

The context helps to distinguish if the word is used in its emotive meaning or in its logical meaning.

4. Words having nominal meanings are treated as proper nouns. In order to distinguish the word with a nominal meaning one must know that it is spelt by a capital letter. Such words as Longfellow, Black Sea, Smith have nominal meanings. The logical meaning from which the nominal meaning originated may in the course of time be forgotten.

Most proper names may be considered as homonyms of common nouns. For example: Miss Hope (hope), Mrs. Brown (brown), Miss Sweet (sweet), Browning (pistol).

It must be remembered that the nominal meaning will always be secondary to the logical meaning.

The process of development of meaning may go still further. A nominal meaning may assume a logical meaning due to certain circumstances. The result is that a logical meaning takes its origin in a nominal meaning. Some features of a person which have made him famous are re?cognized by the society and these features become the ba?sis for the new logical meaning. E.g.: hooligan - is pro?bably derived from the name of a rowdy family (the Irish name Hooligan). The verb boycott was first used in 1880 to describe the action of the Land League towards Captain Boycott, an Irish landlord. The nominal meanings of these words have now faded away and we perceive only one, the logical meaning.