Types of Word Meaning

2.2 Lexical Meaning

It is just the lexical meaning which is the most outstanding individual of the word that makes it different from any other word. The lexical meaning of a word may be thought of as the specific value it has in a particular language system, and the personality it acquires through usage within that system. It is not homogenous since it involves the three kinds of meaning signaled by language: descriptive, social and expressive. The lexical meaning of a lexeme, therefore, may be analyzed into descriptive and non-descriptive meaning.

The descriptive meaning of a lexeme (sometimes called conceptual, cognitive or propositional meaning) is widely assumed to be the central factor in linguistic communication. The non-descriptive meaning of a lexeme (sometimes called connotation, affective, associative or expressive meaning), by contrast, provides additional effects to its central meaning. The following sections are dealing with denotation and sense as descriptive meaning, and connotation as non-descriptive meaning. [18]

The lexical meaning of a word is the realization of a notion by means of a definite language system. A word is a language unit, while a notion is a unit of thinking. A notion cannot exist without a word expressing it in the language, but there are words which do not express any notion but have a lexical meaning. Interjections express emotions but not notions, but they have lexical meanings, e.g. Alas! - disappointment, Oh, my buttons! – surprise, etc. There are also words which express notions and emotions, e.g. girlie, a pig, when used metaphorically. The number of meanings does not correspond to the number of words, neither does the number of notions. Their distribution in relation to words is peculiar in every language. The Russian has two words for the English man:  мужчина and человек. In English, however, man cannot be applied to a female person. We say in Russian: Она хороший человек. In English we use the word person – She is a good person. Development of lexical meanings in any language is influenced by the whole network of ties and relations between words and other aspects of the language. [2, 138]

An exact definition of any basic term is no easy task altogether. In the case of lexical meaning it becomes especially difficult due to the complexity of the process by which language and human conscience serve to reflect outward reality and to adapt it to human needs. The definition has been attempted more than once in accordance with the main principles of different linguistic schools. We got acquainted with the disciples of Saussure that consider meaning to be the relation between the object or notion named, and the name itself. Descriptive linguistics of the Bloomfieldian trend defines the meaning as the situation in which the word is uttered. Both ways of approach afford no possibility of a further investigation of semantic problems in strictly linguistic terms, and therefore, if taken as a basis for a general linguistic theory, give no insight into the mechanism of meaning.[9, 165]

Comparing word-forms of one and the same word we observe that besides grammatical meaning, there is another component of meaning to be found in them. Unlike the grammatical meaning this component is identical in all the forms of the word. Thus, e.g. the word-forms go, goes, went, going, gone possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person and so on, but in each of these forms we find one and the same semantic component denoting the process of movement. This is the lexical meaning of the word which may be described as the component of meaning proper to the word as a linguistic unit, i.e. recurrent in all the forms of this word.

The difference between the lexical and the grammatical components of meaning is not to be sought in the difference of the concepts underlying the two types of meaning, but rather in the way they are conveyed. The concept of plurality, e.g., may be expressed by the lexical meaning of the world plurality; it may also be expressed in the forms of various words irrespective of their lexical meaning, e.g. boys, girls, joys, etc. The concept of relation may be expressed by the lexical meaning of the word relation and also by any of the prepositions, e.g. in, on, behind, etc. (the book is in/on, behind the table).

It follows that by lexical meaning we designate the meaning proper to the given linguistic unit in all its forms and distributions, while by grammatical meaning we designate the meaning proper to sets of word-forms common to all words of a certain class. Both the lexical and the grammatical meaning make up the word-meaning as neither can exist without the other. That can be also observed in the semantic analysis of correlated words in different languages. E.g. the Russian word сведения is not semantically identical with the English equivalent information because unlike the Russian сведения the English word does not possess the grammatical meaning of plurality which is part of the semantic structure of the Russian word. [11, 124].

 

2.3 Connotational  Meaning.

The term connotation is particularly rich in technical senses. In this study, it is used in opposition with denotation and sense – the components of descriptive meaning of a lexeme. Connotation is, in fact, largely dependent on the context of usage of the word. We have non-propositional meaning (or connotation) into expressive, presupposed and evoked meaning.  Connotation refers to all types of non-denotational meaning as a whole including emotive, stylistic, discursive and evocative meaning. Connotation is also used to refer to the expressive and evoked meaning. It is obvious that there is no clear-cut classification of non-descriptive meaning of a lexeme. Part of the connotation of a lexeme is its expressive meaning, (sometimes called emotive, attitudinal, or affective meaning), which communicates the speakers’ evaluation or their attitudes. For example, complain and whine have the same descriptive meaning, but the latter communicates the speaker’s annoyance when complaining while the former does not.

The connotation of a lexeme is its evoked meaning (stylistic colouring in other linguists’ term), which is a consequence of the existence of different dialects and registers within a language. Dialectal variation can be classified as geographical (e.g. Scottish dialect: loch, American English: fall as opposed to British English: autumn), temporal (e.g. words used by members of different age groups within a community or words used at different periods in the history of language), and social (words used by members of different social classes).

While dialects are varieties of language associated with different characteristics of users (e.g. age, class and regional affiliation), registers are varieties of language that a single speaker considers appropriate to a specific situation which may be formal or informal. Bicycle and bike, for instance, have the same descriptive meaning, but the former is a neutral word while the latter is an informal one, thus being used in less formal circumstances than the former. Other examples are chat, talk, and converse, which are used depending on different situations: informal, neutral, and formal, respectively. [18]

2.4 Grammatical Meaning.

A lexeme may have different word-forms and these word-forms will generally differ in meaning: their grammatical meaning – the meaning in terms of grammar. For example, the forms of student and students differ in respect of their grammatical meaning, in that one is the singular form (of a noun of a particular class) and the other is plural form (of a noun of a particular class); and the difference between singular forms and plural forms is semantically relevant: it affects sentence-meaning (syntagmatica function). The meaning of a sentence is determined partly by the meaning of the words (i.e. lexemes) of which it consists and partly by its grammatical meaning. [19]

The grammatical meaning can be explicit and implicit. The explicit grammatical meaning is not expressed formally (the word table does not contain any hint in its form as to being inanimate). The explicit grammatical meaning is always marked morphologically – it has its marker. In the word cats the grammatical meaning of plurality is shown in the form of the noun; cat’s – here the grammatical meaning of possessiveness. The implicit grammatical meaning may be of two types – general and dependent. The general grammatical meaning is the meaning of the whole word – class, of a part of speech (nouns – the general grammatical meaning of thingness). The grammatical dependent meaning is the meaning of a subclass within the same part of speech. For example, any verb possess the grammatical dependenr meaning of transitivity/intransitivity, terminativeness/non – terminativeness, stativeness/non – stativeness; the nouns have the grammatical dependent grammatical meaning of contableness/uncountableness and animativeness/inanimativeness. The most important thing about the dependent grammatical meaning is that it influences the realization of grammatical category of number as the number categoryis realized only within the subclass of countable nouns, the grammatical meaning of animativeness/inanimativeness influences the realization of grammatical category of case, terminativeness/non – terminativeness – the grammatical category of tense, transitivity/intransitivity – the grammatical category of voice. [21]

The categorial meaning, which is part of grammatical meaning: it is that part of the meaning of lexemes which derives from their being members of one category of major parts of speech rather than another (nouns rather than verbs, verbs rather than adjectives, and so on). Thus, all lexemes with full word-forms have a grammatical, more particularly, a categorical, meaning.

For example, the lexemes easy and difficult have the same categorial meaning: they are both adjectives. Each lexemes, however, has certain semantically relevant grammatical properties. The two word-forms easy and easier of the lexeme easy, though sharing some part of their categorical meaning, differ grammatically in that: one is the absolute form and the other the comparative form. This difference does not occur to the lexeme difficult for this lexeme has only one form difficult, which does not accept any inflection. Though easy and difficult belong to the same category of adjectives, having the same categorial meaning, they do not share all the grammatical features each has in terms of morphology and syntax. Likewise, all the lexemes sharing categorial meaning do not have all the grammatical meanings in common. [18]

But it will be useful to remind that the grammatical meaning is defined as an expression in speech of relationship between words based on contrastive features of arrangements in which they occur. Every lexico-grammatical group of words or class is characterized by its own lexico-grammatical meaning forming, as it were, the common denominator of all the meanings of the words which belong to this group. The lexico-grammatical meaning may be also regarded as the feature according to which these words are grouped together. Many recent investigations are devoted to establishing word classes on the basis of similarity of distribution.

In the lexical meaning of every separate word the lexico-grammatical meaning common to all the words of the class to which this word belongs is enriched by additional features and becomes particularized. The meaning of a specific property in such words as bright, clear, good, quick, steady, thin is a particular realization of the lexico-grammatical meaning of qualitative adjectives. These adjectives always denote the properties of things capable of being compared and so have degrees of comparison. The scope of the notion rendered by the lexico-grammatical meaning of the class is much larger than the scope of the notion rendered by the lexical meaning of each individual word. The reverse also holds good: the content of the notion expressed by the lexico-grammatical meaning of the class is smaller, poorer in features than the content of the notion expressed by the lexical meaning of a word.

The lexico-grammatical meaning of each lexico-grammatical group is approximated in the   lexical   meaning of   generic terms, i. e. words that are called semantically wide. These are words expressing notions in which abstraction and generalization are so great that they can substitute any word of their class. The word state denotes the class of all states, generic terms are non-specific and are applicable to a great number of individual members of big classes. For example, such words as thing, job, affair, business, object and others render the notion of thingness common to all nouns. The word matter is a generic term for material nouns.

These generic words denote in a most general way objects, actions, states, qualities or relationships between them, that the human mind discerns in the surrounding reality and reflects in notions. The degree and quality of abstraction and generalization here are intermediate between those characteristic of grammatical categories and those observed on the lexical level, therefore one can classify them as expressing lexico-grammatical meaning.

The structure of every separate meaning depends on the linguistic syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships because meaning is an inherent component of language. The complexity of each word meaning is due to the fact that it combines lexical meaning with structural meaning and sometimes with emotional colouring, stylistic peculiarities and connotations born from previous usage. [9, 171]

We notice that word-forms, such as girls, winters, joys, tables, etc. though denoting widely different objects of reality have something in common. This common element is the grammatical meaning of plurality which can be found in all of them.

Thus grammatical meaning may be defined ,as the component of meaning recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words, as, e.g., the tense meaning in the word-forms of verbs (asked, thought, walked, etc.) or the case meaning in the word-forms of various nouns (girl’s, boy’s, night’s, etc.). In a broad sense it may be argued that linguists who make a distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning are, in fact, making a distinction between the functional (linguistic) meaning which operates at various levels as the interrelation of various linguistic units and referential (conceptual) meaning as the interrelation of linguistic units and referents (or concepts).

In modern linguistic science it is commonly held that some elements of grammatical meaning can be identified by the position of the linguistic unit in relation to other linguistic units, i.e. by its distribution. Word-forms speaks, reads, writes have one and the same grammatical meaning as they can all be found in identical distribution, e.g. only after the pronouns he, she, it and before adverbs like well, badly, today, etc. [11, 130]

As the task of our course paper was to observe and to examine the types of word meaning, we divided the second chapter into four parts. Every part was devoted to each type of word meaning (denotative meaning, lexical meaning, connotational meaning and grammatical meaning) and came to the following conclusion – in the connection of types of word meaning lexical meaning is a basic component. Lexical descriptive meaning – is conceptual and cognitive meaning of a word – it may influence on grammatical meaning (in the creation of word – forms and morphemes; morphological and syntagmatical function of a word), on denotative meaning (reference is utterance – dependent, denotation – it is invariant and context – dependant and according to the classification of noun ranks), on connotational meaning (it is also a lexical non – descriptive meaning, it is affective, associative, expressive, discursive and stylistic meaning at the same time; we had separated connotational meaning from lexical meaning on purpose – for us to investigate the peculiarities of tight connection between them).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter III The Analysis of Types of Word Meaning

We examine the types of word meaning in the following ranks of nouns – abstract nouns, concrete nouns, collective nouns, unitary nouns, animate nouns, inanimate nouns, anthroponomy, non –  anthroponomy. For a full investigation and research of types of word meaning we have taken the work of Charles Dickens Oliver Twist or The Parish’s Boy Progress:

Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many

reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to

which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently

common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and

in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not

trouble myself to repeat, in as much as it can be of no possible

consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all

events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head

of this chapter. [15, 3]

Среди общественных зданий в некоем городе, который по многим причинам благоразумнее будет не называть и которому я не дам никакого вымышленного наименования, находится здание, издавна встречающееся почти  во  всех городах, больших и малых, именно - работный дом. И в том работном  доме родился, - я могу себя не утруждать указанием дня и числа, так как это не имеет никакого значения для читателя, во всяком случае на данной стадии повествования, - родился смертный, чье имя предшествует началу  этой главы.

The concrete nouns in the sentence are – buildings, town, mentioning, towns, workhouse, business. It means that these are words, denoting concrete things, activities and concrete process of our real life such as – building, town, workhouse (things) and mentioning, business (process) – in the concrete nouns of a given sentence the inner form of words coincides with sound form of words, the reason of names fully forms a semantic inner form of a lexical unit. A concrete noun can be understood as the real object, which is possible to imagine and to observe clearly and visually, and the expression of a real process – houses, towns, buildings – are built up by people, table, chair – are made by people,  mentioning, business – it is a process and also an action of people.

Lets observe the lexical meanings of a given nouns – a building – 1 a structure, such as a  house, church or school, that has roof and walls, 2 the process or business of making buildings ( again we see the object of a real life, that is made by people and the process, which is connected to it) [14, 79], a town – 1 a place with many streets and buildings, 2 all the people who leave in a town, 3 the main part of a town, where the shops, office centers etc are [14, 658] ( also we see the links of process, but in the second lexical meaning of a word we see people – citizens or dwellers – it gets a meaning of an animate noun – in this case we see the resonating of ranks of nouns), a house – 1 a building that is made for one family to leave in (bungalow, cottage, flat, home), 2 all the people who leave in one house: Don’t shout. You will wake all house up. 3 a building that is used for a particular purpose (a warehouse, a public house, a workhouse – they are all denote to the connotative changes of a word – the word Workhouse was used in 18 century in USA and in Britain as the factories, where poor people worked and lived, and now this word came out of English vocabulary), [6,163] 4 a group of people who meet to make a country’s laws: The House of Commons, The House of Parliament, 5 the people at the theatre or cinema, or the area where they sit (again the resonating in the ranks of nouns – meanings 2,4 and 5 are denoting to the animate nouns) [14, 311], business – 1 buying and selling as the way of earning money; commerce, 2 the work that you do as a job; 3 the amount of trade done, 4 a firm, a shop, a factory etc which produces or sells goods or provides the service; 5 something that concerns a particular person: The friends choose are my business, not yours, 6 a situation or an event: The divorce was an awful business (mostly a full coinciding of ranks of nouns, but the meanings 5 and 6 denote abstract nouns) [14, 82], mentioning – saying or writing something about somebody or something; talking about somebody or something [14, 393] (it is a continuous process and action).

Let’s observe the grammatical meaning of words:  – a building – has implicit grammatical meaning with the following grammatical categories: grammatical categories of contableness  and inanimativeness, it has a grammatical category of number and doesn’t have a grammatical category of a gender; a town -  also has an implicit grammatical meaning with  grammatical categories: grammatical categories of contableness  and it may have a grammatical category of animativeness and inanimativeness at the same time due to the plurality of lexical meanings,  grammatical category of number and it doesn’t have a grammatical category of a gender; a house - has an implicit grammatical meaning with  grammatical categories: grammatical categories of contableness  and it may also have a grammatical category of animativeness and inanimativeness at the same time again due to the plurality of lexical meanings; business – this noun has an implicit grammatical meaning with  grammatical categories: grammatical categories of contableness  and it may a grammatical category of inanimativeness and without grammatical meaning of gender; mentioning – has following dependent grammatical categories of transitivity (Active Voice), terminativeness (Present Continuous Time)  and non – stativeness – that is in the case the word mentioning used as a verb. In the case it to be a noun the word should be described as the follows: it simply can’t be a noun, it is a gerund, which has the functions of the verb and of the noun, especially in translations from English into Russian and vice verso.

It was recognized by us that in some definite cases due to the plurality of lexical meaning the ranks of the nouns can be resonating and such phenomena can define the set of grammatical categories of an exact word (grammatical meaning).

Let’s observe abstract nouns in a given sentence: reasons, day, date, consequence, events and mortality. Abstract nouns mean words, denoting distracted actions, qualities, features and properties or notions and conceptions. These are phenomena denoting the things and the actions of moral and immoral features of a human, different situations and circumstances, emotional states, mood, features of person’s temper and character, phenomena of nature and life philosophy features, for example: - day, date – features and qualities of human’s life - time; reasons, consequence – are the first and the final logical parts and motivators of person’s deeds and acts, events – are the current occasions or acts in a situation or in a process, mortality -  is a feature of our life quality, but in a given context and in the translation into the Russian we have «смертный», that means: a human can’t leave forever. Again, the ranks of nouns are resonating – at the same time we have animate and abstract nouns, not due to the plurality of lexical meanings, but according to the context and way of translation.

Let’s observe the lexical meanings of the given abstract nouns: day – 1 a period of 24 hours; of which seven make up a week, 2 the time between sunrise and sunset, 3 the hours of the day when you are work, 4 particular period of time (as we see  - time – is the most important factor of life quality and life time, it runs in the space and has it’s own peculiar features – a speed, for example); [14, 162] date – 1 a particular day of the month or of the year, 2 a particular time, 3 an appointment to meet somebody, especially a boyfriend or girlfriend, 4 a boyfriend or girlfriend (this noun denotes the following ranks: abstract noun (time), concrete noun (a meeting) and also an animate noun ( a boyfriend, a girlfriend) [14, 162] – the ranks of a noun are resonating; reason – 1 the case of something, something that explains why something happens or exists, 2 something that shows that it is right or logical to do something, 3 the ability to think and to make sensible decisions, 4 to form a judgment or opinion after thinking about something in a logical way [14, 513] (it is a logical basis and explanation of our deeds, we create our explanation in a mental process, it is a feature of our quality of education and  the level of person’s development as Homo Sapiens); consequence – 1 something that shows a result or effect of something else, 2 importance (formal) [14, 133] - a word denotes a definite stage of the situation and the character of it’s development – the final result or the attitude of the speaker or the recipient  to it; event – 1 something that happens, especially something important or unusual, 2 one of the races competitions, etc in a sports programme -  for example:  - The next event is the 800 metres [14, 216] – this word denotes some current accident or some definite sport action (race of competitions) – again the resonating of ranks of nouns – the word event is an abstract noun (the distractive process) and the concrete noun (one of the races competitions, etc in a sports programme); mortality – 1 the fact that nobody can leave forever, 2 the number of deaths in a certain period of time or in a certain place: Infant mortality is high in this region (this word denotes to the rank of abstract noun and to the rank of collective nouns – because we have the fact, that had already been proved (as an abstract noun – concerning the death) and we have the exact number or quantity). [14, 406] [12, 87]