Lectures in Contrastive Lexicology of the English and Ukrainian Languages

At the present time back formation is applied intentionally. At the beginning of the 19th century to diddle appeared by means of back formation from the surname Jeremy Diddler (the character in J.Kenney’s work “Raising the Wind”. At the beginning of the 20th century the verb to maffick appeared under the influence of the spirit which was in London during Anglo-boerish war after the town Mafeking yielded.

Back formation is held due to the rules of the development of the English language. It is not by chance that such words as to beg, to peeve, to resurrect were formed on the analogy of the existing word-building pattern.

8. Blending

The term blending is used to designate the method of merging parts of words (not morphemes) into one new word. The result of it is a blend, also known as a portmanteau word. It was Lewis Carroll , the author of the well-known book “Alice in Wonderland”, who called such creations portmanteau words and described them as words into which two meanings are packed like in a portmanteau.

We always look for a way of saving time. This explains the growing popularity of blends. Why use two words if one will do? If, for example, you get up too late for breakfast and too early for lunch you can have brunch. If a state decides to execute a criminal with the aid of electricity it electrocutes him. A telegram sent by cable is a cablegram. The astronaut has a tool, a space hammer, which is known as spammer. News that is broadcast is a newscast. If фрукт is added to йогурт you will get фругурт.

Many blends are short-lived. A fair proportion has become established in the vocabulary. In most cases blends belong to the colloquial layer of the vocabulary sometimes bordering on slang: slanguage = slang + language, pollutician = pollute + politician.

The process when the final part of one word and the initial part of another coincide is called telescoping because the words seem to slide into one another like sections of a telescope: infanticipate = infant + anticipate.

9. Sound Interchange

Another term for sound interchange is gradation. It is the feature that is characteristic of all Indo-European languages. In English sound interchange used to play a certain role in word-building: sit – sat, fall – fell. Vowel interchange is the most widespread case: food – feed, tooth – teeth, стіл – стола. Consonant interchange is a more rare case: advice – advise, сів - сіла. In other cases both vowel and consonant interchange takes place: bath – to bathe, grass – to graze, сидіти - село. Sometimes sound interchange is accompanied by affixation: deep – depth, long – length.

10. Stress Interchange

Many English verbs of Latin-French origin are distinguished from the corresponding nouns by the position of the stress: 'conduct – to con'duct, 'present – to pre'sent, 'export – to ex'port, 'import – to im'port. Stress interchange is not restricted to pairs of words consisting of a noun and a verb. Adjectives and adverbs can undergo this process: 'frequent - to fre'quent, 'absent – to ab'sent. Stress distinction is, however, neither productive nor regular. There are many denominal verbs that are forestressed and thus homonymous with the corresponding nouns: 'figure – to 'figure, 'programme – to 'programme. There is a large group of disyllabic loan words that retain the stress on the second syllable both in nouns and verbs: ac'count – to ac'count, de'feat – to de'feat.

In the Ukrainian language homonyms can also be formed by means of stress interchange: до'рога – доро'га, дере'вина – дереви'на.

It is worth noting that stress alone, unaccompanied by any other differentiating factor, does not seem to provide a very effective means of distinguishing words and that is, probably, the reason why oppositions of this kind are neither regular nor productive.

11. Sound Imitation

Other terms for sound imitation are onomatopoeia and echoism. Words coined by this type of word building are made by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, human beings and inanimate objects.

Dogs bark, cocks cock-a-doodle-doo, ducks quack, frogs croak, cats mew (miaow, meow), cows moo (low). Гав-гав, кукуріку, кря-кря, ква-ква, мяу: промовляють українські тварини та птахи.

There is a hypothesis that sound imitation as a way of word building should be viewed as something much wider than just the production of words by the imitation of purely acoustic phenomena. Some scholars suggest that words may imitate through their sound form certain acoustic features and qualities of inanimate objects, actions or that the meaning of the word can be regarded as the immediate relation of the sound group to the object. If a young chicken or kitten is described as fluffy there seems to be something in the sound of the adjective that conveys softness. To glance, to glide, to slide, to slip convey the meaning of an easy movement over a slippery surface. To rush, to dash, to flash render the meaning of brevity, swiftness.

Some scholars have given serious consideration to this theory. However, it has not yet been properly developed.

THE SEMANTIC STRUCTURE OF WORDS

1. Semasiology as a branch of Linguistics.

2. The word and its meaning.

3. Types of meaning.

4. Polysemy of English and Ukrainian words.

5. The main semantic processes.

1. Semasiology as a Branch of Linguistics

The branch of the study of language concerned with the meaning of words and word equivalents is called semasiology. The name comes from the Greek word semasia meaning signification. As semasiology deals not with every kind of meaning but with the lexical meaning only, it may be regarded as a branch of Lexicology.

This does not mean that a semasiologist need not pay attention to the grammatical meaning. On the contrary, the grammatical meaning must be taken into consideration in so far as it bears a specific influence upon the lexical meaning.

If treated diachronically, semasiology studies the change in meaning which words undergo. Descriptive synchronic approach demands a study not of individual words but of semantic structures typical of the language studied and of its general semantic system.

Sometimes the words semasiology and semantics are used indiscriminately. They are really synonyms but the word semasiology has one meaning, the word semantics has several meanings.

Academic or pure semantics is a branch of mathematical logic originated by Carnap. Its aim is to build an abstract theory of relationships between signs and their referents. It is a part of semiotics – the study of signs and languages in general, including all sorts of codes (traffic signals, military signals). Unlike linguistic semantics which deals with real languages, pure semantics has as its subject formalised language.

Semasiology is one of the youngest branches of linguistics, although the objects of its study have attracted the attention of philosophers and grammarians since the times of antiquity. A thousand years before our era Chinese scholars were interested in semantic change. We find the problems of word and notion relationship discussed in the works of Plato and Aristotle and the famous grammarian Panini.

For a very long period of time the study of meaning formed part of philosophy, logic, psychology, literary criticism and history of the language.

Semasiology came into its own in the 1830’s when a German scholar Karl Reisig, lecturing in classical philology, suggested that the studies of meaning should be regarded as an independent branch of knowledge. Reisig’s lectures were published by his pupil F. Heerdegen in 1839 some years after Reisig’s death. At that time, however, they produced but little stir. It was Michel Breal, a Frenchman, who played a decisive part in the creation and development of the new science. His book “Essai de semantique” (Paris, 1897) became widely known and was followed by a considerable number of investigations and monographs on meaning not only in France, but in other countries as well.

The treatment of meaning throughout the 19th century and in the first decade of the 20th was purely diachronistic. Attention was concentrated upon the process of semantic change and the part semantic principles should play in etymology. Semasiology was even defined at that time as a science dealing with the changes in word meaning, their causes and classification. The approach was “atomistic”, i.e. semantic changes were traced and described for isolated words without taking into account the interrelation of structures existing within each language. Consequently, it was impossible for this approach to formulate any general tendencies peculiar to the English language.

As to the English vocabulary, the accent in its semantic study, primarily laid upon philosophy, was in the 19th century shifted to lexicography. The Golden age of English Lexicography began in the middle of the 19th century, when the tremendous work on the many volumes of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language on Historical Principles was carried out. The English scholars R.C. Trench, J. Murray, W. Skeat constantly reaffirmed the primary importance of the historical principle, and at the same time elaborated the contextual principle. They were firmly convinced that the complete meaning of a word is always contextual, and no study of meaning apart from a complete context can be taken seriously.

Since that time indications of semantic change were found by comparing the contexts of words in older written records and in contemporary usage, and also by studying different meanings of cognate words in related languages.

In the 20th century the progress of semasiology was uneven. The 1930’s were said to be the most crucial time in its whole history. After the work of F. de Saussure the structural orientation came to the forefront of semasiology when Jost Trier, a German philologist, offered his theory of semantic fields, treating semantic phenomena historically and within a definite language system at a definite period of its development.

In the list of current ideas stress is being laid upon synchronic analysis in which present-day linguists make successful efforts to profit by structuralist procedures combined with mathematical statistics and symbolic logic.

2. The Word and its Meaning

There are broadly speaking two schools of thought in present-day linguistics representing the main lines of contemporary thinking on the problem: the referential approach which seeks to formulate the essence of meaning by establishing the interdependence between words and things or concepts they denote, and the functional approach, which studies the functions of a word in speech and is less concerned with what meaning is than with how it works.

All major works on semantic theory have so far been based on referential concepts of meaning. The essential feature of this approach is that it distinguishes between the three components closely connected with meaning: the sound form of the linguistic sign, the concept underlying this sound form and the referent, i.e. that part or that aspect of reality to which the linguistic sign refers. The best known referential model of meaning is the so-called “basic triangle”.

                                           CONCEPT

                         SOUND FORM –––––––––– REFERENT

As can be seen from the diagram the sound form of the linguistic sign, e.g. [teibl] , is connected with our concept of the piece of furniture which it denotes and through it with the referent, i.e. the actual table. The common feature of any referential approach is the implication that meaning is in some form or other connected with the referent.

Meaning and Sound Form

The sound form of the word is not identical with its meaning, e.g. [d v] is the sound form used to denote a pearl-grey bird. There are no inherent connections, however, between this particular sound cluster and the meaning of the word dove. The connections are conventional and arbitrary. This can be easily proved by comparing the sound forms of different languages conveying the same meaning: стіл- стол- table – tisch.

It can also be proved by comparing almost identical sound forms that possess different meanings in different languages. E.g.: [ ni:s] - a daughter of a brother or a sister (English); ніс - a part of a face (Ukrainian).

For more convincing evidence of the conventional and arbitrary nature of the connection between sound form and meaning all we have to do is to point to homonyms. The word case means something that has happened and case also means a box, a container.

Besides, if meaning were inherently connected with the sound form of a linguistic unit, it would follow that a change in the sound form of the word in the course of its historical development does not necessarily affect its meaning.

Meaning and Concept

When we examine a word we see that its meaning though closely connected with the underlying concept or concepts is not identical with them.

Concept is the category of human cognition. Concept is the thought of the object that singles out its essential features. Our concepts reflect the most common and typical features of different objects. Being the result of abstraction and generalisation all concepts are thus almost the same for the whole of humanity in one and the same period of its historical development. That is to say, words expressing identical concepts in English and Ukrainian differ considerably.

e.g.: The concept of the physical organism is expressed in English by the word body, in Ukrainian by тіло, but the semantic range of the English word is not identical with that of Ukrainian. The word body is known to have developed a number of secondary meanings and may denote: a number of persons and things, a collective whole (the body of electors) as distinguished from the limbs and the head; hence, the main part as of an army, a structure of a book (the body of a book). As it is known, such concepts are expressed in Ukrainian by other words.

The difference between meaning and concept can also be observed by comparing synonymous words and word-groups expressing the same concepts but possessing a linguistic meaning which is felt as different in each of the units under consideration.

e.g.: - to fail the exam, to come down, to muff;

- to be ploughed, plucked, pipped.

Meaning and Referent

Meaning is linguistic whereas the denoted object or the referent is beyond the scope of language. We can denote the same object by more than one word of a different meaning.

e.g.: a table can be denoted by the words table, a piece of furniture, something, this as all these words may have the same referent.

Meaning cannot be equated with the actual properties of the referent. The meaning of the word water cannot be regarded as identical with its chemical formula H2O as water means essentially the same to all English speakers including those who have no idea of its chemical composition.

Among the adherents of the referential approach there are some who hold that the meaning of a linguistic sign is the concept underlying it, and consequently they substitute meaning for concept in the basic triangle. Others identify meaning with the referent. Meaning is closely connected but not identical with the sound form, concept or referent. Yet, even those who accept this view disagree as to the nature of meaning. Some linguists regard meaning as the interrelation of the three points of the triangle within the framework of the given language, but not as an objectively existing part of the linguistic sign. Others proceed from the basic assumption of the objectivity of language and meaning and understand the linguistic sign as a two-facet unit. They view meaning as a certain reflection in our mind of objects, phenomena or relations that makes part of the linguistic sign – its so-called inner facet, whereas the sound form functions as its outer facet.

Functional Approach to Meaning

The functional approach maintains that a linguistic study of meaning is the investigation of the relation of sign to sign only. In other words, they hold the view that the meaning of a linguistic unit may be studied only through its relation to either concept or referent.

e.g.: We know that the meaning of the two words a step and to step is different because they function in speech differently. To step may be followed by an adverb, a step cannot, but it may be proceeded by an adjective.

The same is true of the different meanings of the same word. Analysing the function of a word in linguistic contexts and comparing these contexts, we conclude that meanings are different (or the same): to take a tram, taxi as opposed to to take to somebody. Hence, meaning can be viewed as the function of distribution.

When comparing the two approaches described above we see that the functional approach should not be considered as alternative, but rather a valuable complement to the referential theory. There is absolutely no need to set the two approaches against each other; each handles its own side of the problem and neither is complete without the other.

3. Types Of Meaning

The two main types of meaning are the grammatical and lexical meanings.

Grammatical Meaning

We notice, for example, that word-forms such as tables, chairs, bushes though denoting widely different objects of reality have something in common. This common element is the grammatical meaning of plurality.

Thus, grammatical meaning may be defined as the component of meaning recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words. e.g.: the tense meaning in the word-forms of verbs (asked, spoke) or the case meaning in the word-forms of various nouns (the girl’s, the night’s).

In modern linguistic science it is commonly held that some elements of grammatical meaning can be identified by their distribution. The word-forms asks, speaks have the same grammatical meaning as they can all be found in identical distribution (e.g. only after the pronouns he, she but before such adverbs and phrases as yesterday, last month, etc.). It follows that a certain component of the meaning of a word is described when you identify it as a part of speech, since different parts of speech are distributionally different. The part-of-speech meaning of the words that possesses but one form, as prepositions, is observed only in their distribution (cf: to come in (here) and in (on, under) the table.

Lexical Meaning

Unlike the grammatical meaning this component of meaning is identical in all the forms of the word. e.g.: the words write – writes – wrote – written possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person but in each of these forms we find the same semantic component denoting the process of putting words on the paper. This is the lexical meaning of the word which may be described as a linguistic unit recurrent in all the forms of the word and in all possible distributions of these forms.

The difference between the lexical and the grammatical component of meaning is not to be sought in the difference of the concepts underlying the two types of meaning rather in the way they are conveyed. The concept of plurality, for example, may be expressed by the lexical meaning of the word plurality. It may also be expressed in the forms of different words irrespective of their lexical meaning (girls, boards).

The interrelation of the lexical and the grammatical meaning and the role played by each varies in different word classes and even in different groups of words within one and the same class. In some parts of speech the prevailing component is the grammatical type of meaning. The lexical meaning of prepositions is, as a rule, relatively vague (to think of somebody, independent of somebody, some of the students). The lexical meaning of some prepositions is however comparatively distinct (in, on, under the table).

The lexical meaning of the word can be of two types: denotational and connotational.

One of the functions of the words is to denote things, concepts, etc. Users of a language cannot have any knowledge or thought of the objects or phenomena of the real world around them unless this knowledge is ultimately embodied in words which have essentially the same meaning for all speakers of that language. This is the denotational meaning, i.e. that component of the lexical meaning which makes communication possible. There is no doubt that a doctor knows more about pneumonia than a dancer does but they use the word and understand each other.

The second component of the lexical meaning is the connotational component which has some stylistic value of the word, the emotive charge.

Words contain an element of emotive evaluation as part of the connotational meaning. The word hovel denotes a small house or cottage and besides implies that it is a miserable dwelling place, dirty, in bad repair and unpleasant to live in.

Many connotations associated with names of animals, birds, insects are universally understood and used.

e.g.: calf (теля)– a young inexperienced person;

donkey (осел)– a foolish person;

monkey (мавпа)– a mischievous child;

serpent (змія)– a treacherous, malicious person.

But it should be mentioned here that different peoples structure the world differently. E.g.: the word bug has such figurative meanings in the English language as a crazy, foolish person and an enthusiast, the word shark means a swindler. In the Ukrainian language the words жук and акула do not have such meanings. Sometimes words in different languages can have different meanings. E.g.: the word gull means a fool, a swindler, in the Ukrainian language the word чайка can be applied to a woman or a girl. The word hawk possesses a negative meaning in the English language (a deceiver), the word сокіл is applied to a handsome and strong young man.

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