Semantic grouping

SEMANTICS

REGIONAL VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY: American English and British English

American English, the variant or variety of English spoken in the USA. Americanism, a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA.

E.g., cookie – a biscuit; frame house – a house consisting of a skeleton of timber, with boards or shingles laid on; frame-up – a staged or preconcerted law case; guess – think; store – shop.

British English, the variant of English used in Great Britain.

Briticism, a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as spoken in Great Britain, i.e. a word or phrase that is of distinctively (modern) British origin, particularly in contrast to a different American equivalent.

E.g., laddish – having the quality of macho uncouthness and aggression exhibited by male groups; dawn raid – a sudden unexpected attempt to buy a significant proportion of a company’s equity, typically at the start of a day’s trading.

Semantics is the branch of linguistics concerned with the meaning of linguistic units.

Linguistic Unit is a discrete part of the linguistic stream at any level of analysis (morpheme, word, phrase, etc.)

A linguistic unit (linguistic sign) has two sides: outer side – the sound or graphic form, and inner side – the meaning.

Meaning is the relation between the object or notion named, and the name itself.

Types Of Meaning:

Grammatical meaning is the component of meaning repeated (or recurrent) in identical sets of individual forms of different words.

E.g., books, desks, pens – the grammatical meaning of plurality.

Lexical meaning is the meaning proper to the linguistic unit in all its forms.

E.g., goes, went, going – these forms possess different grammatical meanings but the same semantic component denoting the process of movement. This is the lexical meaning of the word ‘go’.

Lexical meaning (the realization of concept or emotion by means of a definite language system) includes denotative and connotative components of meaning.

Denotative meaning is the notional content of a linguistic unit. This is the component of meaning which makes communication possible. This is the meaning primarily listed in linguistic dictionaries (general, explanatory, translation)

E.g., smelt: a small silvery food fish (the basic denotative meaning).

Connotation is a suggestive power of a word, it can arouse certain feelings about the referent. The feelings may not give an accurate representation of the denoted object, but they can often move one to action by their very strength. Names like smelt have inappropriate connotations for the average consumer. Connotation is the pragmatic communicative value the word receives by virtue of where, when, how, by whom, for what purpose and in what contexts it is or may be used. Types of connotation: stylistic, emotional, evaluative and expressive or intensifying.

Stylistic: associations concern the situation in which the word is uttered (formal, familiar), social relationship between the people (polite, rough), the type and purpose of communication (learned, poetic, official).

E.g., slay (poetic) – kill (neutral) – do in (slang)

Emotional or affective connotations: mammy v. mother

Evaluative connotations express approval or disapproval.

E.g., group v. clique

Intensifying connotations express the degree of intensity.

E.g., worship, adore, love, like; tremendous, great

Words may have two or three connotations at once.

E.g., beastly weather – emotional, colloquial, intensifying. (three connotations at once).

Semantic change (change of meaning), the development and change of the semantic structure of a linguistic unit in the course of time.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-07