Semasiology

Distinctive Stress

Sound Interchange

is not productive in Modern English but exists as a survival of the language’s past: food - feed, speak - speech, life - live, long – length, blood – bleed, wide – width, etc. It may be either the result of ablaut or vowel gradation: bear – burden, ride – road, strike – stroke, везу – воз, несу – ноша or vowel mutation or umlaunt: full-fill, tale – tell, whole – heal. Consonant interchange is also caused by phonetic surroundings: speak – speech, bake – batch, wake – watch. No neologisms are formed by sound interchange, it only serves to distinguish one long-established word from another.

is also non-productive in Modern English: 'present – pres'ent, 'accent – ac'cent, 'contrast - cont'rast, 'conduct - con'duct. These words were F. borrowings with original stress on the last syllable. Verbs retained it on the analogy with E (to be'come), nouns were assimilated. It may be referred to adjectives and verbs: 'abstract - abstr'act, 'perfect - perf'ect. In many cases verbs and nouns have stress on the first syllable: figure, quarrel, comment, preface and on the second: defeat, escape, attack, advance, research. Stress alone is not sufficient to distinguish words.

Word-meaning, its structure

The meaning of words, its structure, change and development are studied by semasiology (“sema” – sign, “logos” – learning).

The definition of lexical meaning may be based on the relation between the object or notion and the name (through concepts), on the situation in which the word is uttered. Though meaning cannot be studied instrumentally strictly and objectively we cannot exclude it from linguistics which treats it as the realization of concept or emotion by means of language system.

When we take into consideration only referential functions of words it means that we ignore the pragmatic functions of the language – communicative, emotive, evaluative, phatic, esthetic, ideological, national, cultural, etc.

There are no words without lexical and grammatical meaning. Grammatical meaning unites words into parts of speech: books girls, tables have a common grammatical meaning but different lexical meanings; they are characterized by a common system of forms in which their grammatical categories are expressed.

Lexical meaning includes two components: denotational and connotational.

Denotational component is present in every word and is regarded as the central factor in the functioning of the language, due to the denotational component people understand each other: it makes human communication possible. It is given in every explanatory dictionary which try to formulate the simplest concept:

· month – any of the twelve parts into which the year is divided.

· savannah - treeless, grassy plain, in tropical and subtropical America and East and West Africa.

· sausage – chopped up meat, etc. flavoured and stuffed into a casing or tube of thin skin.

Denotational component of meaning shows what the word refers to.

Connotational component is connected with pragmatic communicative value of the word, it shows where, when, how, by whom, for what purpose and in what context it is used.

Connotational component includes stylistic, emotional, evaluative types of connotation.

Stylistic connotation (component of connotation) shows the stylistic characteristics of every word: neutral, bookish, poetical, colloquial, slangy, jargon, vulgar (parent, father, dad, daddy, pop, old man, oldie, octogenarian, oldster).

Evaluative component of connotation expresses approval or disapproval, positive and negative attitude towards what you say. It may be rational and emotional.

Emotional evaluation is connected with the expression of our emotions.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11