Litotes

Hyperbole

Hyperbole, Litotes and Irony

Elevation and degradation of meaning (see the textbook pp. 158-160)

Generalization of meaning (see the textbook pp. 156-157)

Four ways of specialization of meaning

3.

Specialization (narrowing) of meaning is a gradual process when a word passes from a general sphere to some special sphere. In other words the range of meaning of the word is somewhat narrowed. There are at least four ways of specialization.

1. E.g. the word case has general meaning “circumstances in which person or thing is”. It is specialized in its meaning when used in law with the meaning of lawsuit, in grammar (a form in the paradigm of a noun), in medicine (a patient, an illness).

2. The meaning of a word can specialize when it remains in general usage. It happens in the case of conflict between two absolute synonyms when one of them must specialize in its meaning to remain in the language. E.g. the native English word meat had the meaning of food (this meaning is preserved in the compound sweetmeats). The meaning «мясо» was formed when the word food (also native) as its absolute synonym won the conflict. The same happened to the word starve (which previously meant to perish). It was specialized in its meaning after the Scandinavian word die (with the same meaning) was borrowed into English. Die became the general verb with the meaning “умирать” probably because in English there were the noun death and the adjective dead beginning with the consonant “ d ”. Finally the verb starve got the meaning “to die of hunger”.

3. The third way of specialization is the formation of proper names from common nouns, often used in toponymics. E.g. the City – the business part of London; Oxford – a University town in England, the Tower originally meant a fortress and palace, later – a prison, now it means a museum.

4. The fourth way of specialization is ellipsis. In such cases we primarily have a word group which is constantly used in a definite situation. The attribute can be dropped and the noun can get the meaning of the whole group. E.g. train of carriages – train.

It is the expression of one’s thought when the speaker uses exaggeration. E.g. to hate doing something; not to see somebody for ages; it’s a nightmare; a thousand pardons, I shall be eternally grateful to you. Hyperbole is often used to form phraseological units: to make a mountain out of a molehill; to split hairs.

It’s a case when the speaker expresses the affirmative with the help of negative or vice versa. E.g. not bad; no coward; not half as important. So it’s not bad is used instead of it’s good; not small for great.

It is, however, doubtful weather litotes should be considered as semantic change, because as a rule it creates no permanent change in the sense of the word used and concerns mostly usage and contextual meaning of words.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11