Denotation and connotation

Lexical and semantic fields.

The Thesaurus.

LECTURE 13

Main points:

1. Lexical and semantic fields.

2. Denotation and connotation.

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The thesaurus. Two main points are studied. The thesaurus provides us with a model for storing groups of words (and phrases) in a number of ways: where they are a) synonyms or b) antonyms or c) related to other ways. As an advance in lexicography and indeed in semantics, Roget’s Thesaurus (1852) was much ahead of its time. The intention of the author was to produce: “a system of verbal classification... a classed catalogue of words.” R. Thesaurus not only created listings of words and phrases “according to the ideas they express” but showed the linkages between groupings: for example, it is the characteristics a) animate / human agent, b) use of legs, c) sequential movement of legs, etc., in such lexical items as hike, march, pace, parade, promenade, ramble, saunter

/´s:nt /(прогумоватись), step, stroll (гуляти),tramp (топати), tread (ступати) which places them all together under WALK.

A lexical or semantic field is broader in scope than the thesaurus, since it links words not only in terms of: 1) meaning postulates such as synonymy, hyponymy and antonymy but also in terms of 2) syntactic occurrence (collocation) and 3) phonological characteristics: initial sound, rhyme, etc. Similarity of occurrence - collocation - is the basic formal relationship in lexis: the chain (or syntagmatic) relationship between items. A word tends to occur in relatively predictable ways with other words; certain nouns with particular adjectives or verbs, verbs with particular adverbials, etc. Chomsky’s famous sentence: “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” shows how the selection of items from sets, made up of equally normal individual lexical items cannot be accepted. In contrast, we could keep the same syntactic structure and create an acceptable sentence: “ homeless black cats mew pitifully”.

We have used the terms denotative (який вказує) and connotative (який визначає) in relation to two aspects of meaning.

The first refers to meaning which is referential, objective and cognitive (пізнавальний) and, hence, the shared property of the speech community which uses the language of which the word or sentence forms a part.

The second, in contrast, refers to meaning which is not referential but assoсiational (асоціативний), subjective and affective (еволюційний). This kind of meaning, being personal, may or may not be shared by the community at large, it may vary from person to person. It is important to recognize that virtually all words possess both types of meanings and the few exceptions to this appear to be words which are not “full” lexical items but grammatical operators such as the, and, may, etc. Items like democracy, love, patriotism,

etc., seem extraordinary difficult to define in objective terms and are clearly highly emotionally charged. (Labov, 1973, Osgood, 1967). The most significant message for translation is the recognition that the essential characteristic of the lexical systems of languages is not precise boundary-marking but fuzziness (прозорі межі)and that it is the inherent fuzziness of language which presents the most formidable aspect to the translator.

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