Lecture 3

Semasiology (part 1)

Semasiology is a science and part of lexicology which studies the meaning

of lexical (and syntactical) units, their denotations, connotations, implications, and
ambiguities1.
The term semasiology, as well as the term semantics2, comes from the Greek
word sēmasia - “signification”, which in turn is derived from “sēma” – “sign” and
sēmantikos – “significant”).
Diachronically, semasiology studies different shifts in meaning that words
undergo in the process of their historic development. Synchronically, semasiology
focuses on the semantic aspect of linguistic units regarding their typical rather than
individual characteristics in the given language.
The objectives of this lecture on semasiology are to give a brief description
of such areas of semantics as: the essence of meaning and its types, semantic
development of words and phrases, causes and results of semantic change in
English vocabulary, the phenomena of polysemy and homonymy, also, various
kinds of semantic relations among English words and lexical groupings made on
their basis.
Two approaches to the problem of meaning
Meaning is one of the most controversial terms in the theory of language.
Broadly, it stands for “the purport or message conveyed by words, phrases,
sentences, signs, symbols and the like” [McCarthur T., 2003: 647].
The two approaches that are most commonly applied to the study of the
essence of meaning are referential and functional.
The referential approach seeks to formulate the essence of meaning by
establishing the interrelation between words as linguistic entities, on the one hand,
and their conceptual contents and extra-linguistic referents, on the other. This
interrelation is illustrated by the so-called triangle of reference (also known as

1
Ambiguity – from Latin ambiguitas – acting both ways.
2
Semasiology is a narrower term than semantics. While the former stands for a study of meaning alone, the latter
covers many aspects and areas of meaning.

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the triangle of meaning, triangle of signification, referential triangle, and semiotic

triangle).
Concept (mental representation)

Word (symbol) Referent

Fig. 1. The referential triangle
First suggested by Ogden and Richards in their work ‘The Meaning of
Meaning’ (1923), this triangle has become a typical model of how linguistic
symbols are related to the objects they represent3.
Through this schematic triangle we can see that words (linguistic signs) are
related to the things or entities of extra-linguistic reality (referents) by way of
mental representations kept of them in our minds. The dashed line between word
and referent is meant to indicate that this relation is indirect.
Let’s see how this connection happens on the example of the word ‘dove’.

‘The bird of the pigeon family, but lighter and smaller that the pigeon’
(Concept/mental representation)

‘Dove’
(Word/symbol) (Referent)
Fig. 1.1. The referential triangle of the word ‘dove’

3
It is believed that Ogden and Richards’s triangle was in some way developed from the phonetic triangle
introduced by the Russian linguist L.V. Scherba.

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What this triangle illustrates is that when a human being hears or sees the
linguistic sign (word) ‘dove’, there occurs exact mental representation – ‘the bird
of the pigeon family” –which is based on our knowledge of the actual entity – this
very bird that we call a dove. Thus, the meaning of the word ‘dove’ appears to be
the connection between word itself, the conceptual idea of it in the mind of an
individual, and the actual referent that as he/she knows is identified by this word.
This interrelation that seems to be quite logical and clear, in some cases,
may become questionable or even inconsistent.
For example, in cases of synonyms, different words refer to the same
referent, while their mental representations vary, e.g. child, kid, babe, infant. Or in
cases of homonyms, we have the same word that nevertheless refers to different
referents and reflects different concepts in our minds, e.g. seal 1. a piece of wax,
lead, etc. stamped with a design, 2. a sea animal.
Besides, there are words in the language which denote referents nonexistent
in the surrounding reality, yet we have mental images of them in our minds, hence
they have meanings for us. E.g. angel, phoenix.
There may also be entities in our life, constant or occasional, that we can
easily conceptualize but cannot find words for them. Such cases are called lexical
gaps, or accidental gaps, or lacunas. For example, there is a lacuna in English for
to not look, although we all know how it is when we intentionally avoid looking.
Another example is the lexical gap for a parent who has lost a child (while there is
a special word for the child who has lost the parent – orphan). The gaps that exist
in one language may be well ‘filled’ in another. For example, the complex action
that happens when people part with each other saying words, making gestures,
exchanging looks, etc. is not adequately identified by the English expression to say
goodbye. While in Russian, the word ‘прощаться’ describes this phenomenon
quite precisely and fully. Because this or that kind of lacuna may occur in
everybody’s speaking, people have elaborated the so-called ‘magical words’ that
can universally substitute lexical gaps, e.g. thing, stuff, this, etc.
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Thus, paradoxical as it may seem, we sometimes know the meanings of

words that don’t exist.
The functional approach studies the word meaning through the word’s
syntagmatic relations, i.e. through the word’s relations to other linguistic units in
its immediate distributional environment in the sentence. In other words, we
understand the exact meaning of words through their syntactical functions. E.g. the
meaning of the word ‘take’ becomes clear in the distribution I take a bus when I go
to work (take + noun expressing means of transport); which becomes different in
the distribution I never take what is not mine, although the grammatical context is
the same (take +N); or the meaning changes even more drastically in the
distribution I think I took this quality after my father.
Although the referential and functional approaches treat the word meaning
quite differently, there is no contradiction between them. On the opposite, these
two approaches complement each other, one being an alternative to the other.

Types of meaning and the semantic structure of words

The word meaning is not homogeneous, but composed of several
components. These constituent parts of meaning are usually called types of
meaning or semantic components.
There are two main types of meaning distinguished in English lexicology:
lexical and grammatical, and one secondary type: functional or part-of-speech
meaning.
Grammatical meaning is defined as the component of meaning recurrent in
identical sets of individual forms of different words. E.g. asked, walked, and
thought are different words with the same grammatical meaning of the simple past
tense or girl’s, night’s, man’s are united by the common possessive case meaning.
The component that is, though, much more important for Lexicology and for
verbal communication as a whole is the lexical meaning, which is usually defined
as ‘realization of the notion by means of language’.

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Lexical meaning consists of two important parts: denotative meaning (also

called referential or extensional) and connotative meaning (also referred to as
emotional, intentional or expressive).
The denotative meaning expresses the notional content of the word, i.e. it
gives a name to the actually existing object. Depending on how the word functions
in speech, its denotative meaning may be of two types: significative or identifying/
demonstrative. If the word’s function in speech is to signify, i.e. to be a sign or
symbol of something else, we speak about realization of the word’s significative
meaning. Symbolic words, aphorisms, proverbs, advertisements possess
significative meanings. When the word’s function is to identify the individual
objects of reality, to name its exact referents, it realizes its demonstrative meaning.
The connotative or expressive counterparts of the denotative meaning, also
referred to as connotations, are optional, i.e. they may be altogether absent in some
words or may exist in a wide range of proportions. The connotational component
of meaning consists of a large variety of associations of which the speaker and the
listener are aware. Among most frequently occurring connotations a word can
contain there are: 1. connotation of emotion, e.g. daddy cf. father; 2. connotation
of evaluation, e.g. crowd cf. group; 3. that of intensity, e.g. adore cf. love; 4. a
stylistic colouring connotation, e.g. kid cf. child, 5. connotation of imagery, e.g.
out of the blue cf. suddenly.
All connotations are subdivided into positive (arousing positive
associations), negative (arousing negative associations), and neutral (arousing no
associations at all). E.g. big (neutral) – tremendous (positive) – unlimited
(negative).
Connotations can support, increase, vary or contradict the word’s denotative
meaning.
Thus, the semantic structure of a word is not homogeneous. It is manifold
and consists of several elements known as types of meaning.
Besides the complex lexical and grammatical meanings, it also possesses
functional or part-of-speech meaning, which is a distinguishing semantic
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component shared by all words of the same word-class. E.g. all nouns have the
functional meaning of “substance or thingness”, i.e. in the nouns tables, love’s,
sugar both the lexical and grammatical meanings are different, but they all have
the meaning of “substance”.
Meaning in morphemes
It is generally assumed that morphemes do not possess any grammatical
meaning. If we compare the word man and the corresponding morpheme -man- in,
let’s say, the word manly, we can easily observe the grammatical meaning of case
and number with the former and none of such with the latter.
Because all English words have lexical meanings and many of them consist
of root-morphemes only, it is natural to suppose that morphemes can have lexical
meanings too. E.g. the word boy and the morpheme -boy- in the words boyhood,
boyish.
Lexical meaning is a semantic component of many affix-morphemes, too.
E.g. the lexical meaning of affix -less is “devoid of”, - ful – “full of”.
The lexical meaning in morphemes is also comprised of denotative and
connotative elements. The connotative meaning is most commonly found in root-
morphemes, but can also appear in affixational morphemes: e.g. the endearing –
diminutive suffixes – ette (kitchenette), - ie (deraie, girlie), - ling (duckling), which
clearly bear a heavy emotive charge. Such morphemes as – ine (chlorine [klorin] -
хлор), - oid (rhomboid), - escence (effervescence) render a vivid stylistic bookish
coloring.
The functional or part-of-speech meaning can be exposed in morphemes
with different degrees of intensiveness. E.g. in affixes -er, -less the lexical meaning
dominates over the part-of-speech meaning (“the action doer, agent”; “lack or
absence of something”), whereas in affixes -ment or -ous the part-of-speech
meaning is more vivid than the lexical one.
Unlike words, morphemes can have two more components of meaning:
differential and distributional.

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The differential meaning is the semantic component that serves to

distinguish one word from all other words containing identical morphemes. In such
words as e.g. bookshelf the morpheme -shelf serves to distinguish this word from
other words that have this morpheme: bookcase, book-counter, etc.
The distributional meaning is the component regulating the order and
arrangement of morphemes making up the word. Any disregard of this semantic
component may result in destroying the lexical meaning of the whole word. E.g.
sing + -er = singer; er + sing makes the word meaningless; ring-finger – the
finger for the ring, a finger-ring – the ring that is worn on a finger.
Semantic Change
Word meaning is liable to change in the course of the historical development
of language. Changes in the lexical meaning of many currently used English words
can be investigated through a diachronic semantic analysis, which often reveals
considerable discrepancies between what the word means today and its semantic
structure in the past. E.g. the word glad in OE used to mean “bright», «shining”.
Causes of Semantic Change may be roughly divided into two groups:
a) extra- linguistic-внеязыковые and b) linguistic-языковые.
By extra-linguistic causes we understand various alterations in the life of the
speech community: changes in the economic, political, social, cultural, scientific
spheres, which, in this or that way, can and do affect the word meaning. Notably,
while the word’s semantic structure changes, its morphology, in most cases, stays
unaltered. E.g. the English word car goes back to the Latin carrus which originally
defined “a four-wheeled wagon”. Due to the technical revolution, people today do
not use wagons for transportation as broadly as they did centuries ago. As the
result, the word car is now applied to other means of transport and its meanings
today are “a motorcar”, “a railway carriage”, etc.
Linguistic causes are the ones facilitated by the language itself, i.e. when the
changes that happen inside the language appear to be the reason for the alterations
in the words’ semantic structure we call these changes linguistic causes.

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The most commonly observed linguistic phenomena that have affected the
semantic structure of the present-day English vocabulary are the so-called elliptical
clippings, or ellipsis, and discrimination of synonyms.
The history of the word “to starve” can serve as an example of the linguistic
ellipsis. In OE this verb had the meaning “to die”, but in speech it would very
commonly collocate with the nominal phrase of hunger (ME sterven of hunger –
ModE to starve of hunger). Gradually, the nominal part of this collocation dropped
out, but its meaning extended onto the remaining verb thus making the word to
starve denote the idea originally expressed by the entire expression to starve of
hunger. –элиптическре сокр-е
Discrimination of synonyms can be illustrated by the semantic development
of the word “land”. In OE it stood for both “solid part of the earth’s surface” and
“the territory of a nation”. After the French word “country” was borrowed into
English in the ME period, the words land and country became synonyms. Due to
this situation, the semantic structure of the English word “land” was eventually
narrowed to solely include “solid part of the earth’s surface”, while “the territory
of a nation” was now exceptionally denoted by the borrowed word country.
Nature of Semantic Change.
A necessary condition for any semantic change is a connection or
association between the word’s old and new meanings. There are two kinds of such
association: a) similarity of meanings, or metaphor-сходство and b) contiguity of
meanings, or metonymy. –метонимия, смежность
Суть метафоры в том, что я называю что-то так этим словом так как это
схоже-рука и стрелки часов, появилось новое значение путём переноса по
сходству(дверная ручка,здороваться,лиса-хитрость)
Смежность(близость в плане пространства, форхед-лоб,хед-голова,он
ударился не лбом, а головой
Similarity of meanings or metaphor may be described as a semantic process
of associating two referents, one of which in some way resembles the other. The
word hand, for example, in the 16th century acquired the meaning of “a pointer of a
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clock or a watch” because of the similarity between one of the functions performed
by the human hand and the function of a clock pointer. Besides similarity in
functions, semantic metaphors can also be based on similarities of forms, outlines,
colors, emotions, etc. E.g. the words cold and warm started to denote the qualities
of the human voice due to the similarity between these qualities and the real
temperatures.
Contiguity of meanings, or metonymy, may be described as the semantic
process of associating two referents, one of which makes part of the other or is
closely connected with it. This can be best illustrated by the use of the word tongue
– “the organ of speech” – in the meaning “a language”, as, e.g., in mother tongue.
Нет сходства,язык учавствует в процессе образования речи-смежность
Язык это система-(идеальное),а речь это реализация-(материальное)-они
взаимосвязаны
If compared from the point of view of their significance it is generally
recognized that the metaphor plays a more important role in the change of meaning
than metonymy.
Results of Semantic Change are generally observed in both denotative and
connotative meanings of words. The changes in the denotative meaning can either
result in its restriction-сужение or extension-расширение- обозначать больше
количесто рефрентов. By restriction of the word’s denotative meaning we
understand reduction of types or range of referents denoted by this word. The
semantic development of the word hound can illustrate restriction of word
meaning. Originally, hound was used to denote “a dog of any breed” whereas
today it normally stands for “a dog used in the chase”. Restriction of the denotative
meaning is usually accompanied by the process called specialization, i.e.
narrowing the word meaning to such an extent that it comes to be used in a
specialized vocabulary of some limited group of people within the speech
community. E.g. we can observe restriction and specialization of meaning in the
case of the verb to glide, which originally had the meaning “to move gently and

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smoothly” and now has acquired a restricted and specialized meaning “to fly with
no engine”.
In cases of extension of denotative meaning the number of referents denoted
by the word increases. E.g. the word target was originally used in the meaning “a
small round shield”, today it may stand for ‘anything that is fired at’. If the word
with the extended meaning passes from the specialized vocabulary into common
use the result of the semantic change is described as generalization of meaning.
Results of semantic change can also be observed in the connotative
component of the word meaning. They can be of two kinds:
amelioration(улучшение) or deterioration(ухудшение). Amelioration implies
improvement of the connotative component of meaning, i.e. the connotations of the
word become more positive than they used to be. E.g. the word minister originally
denoted ‘a servant’, today its meaning is ‘a civil servant of high rank, a person
administering a department of state’.
Deterioration (also called pejorative development) implies acquisition by the
word certain derogatory emotive charge, due to which the overall connotation of
the word becomes more negative than it used to be. E.g. the word boor was
originally used to denote ‘a peasant, a villager’, today this word reveals derogatory
connotation of ‘a clumsy, ill-bred fellow’.
Polysemy (многозначность)
Analyzing the word-meaning we can’t but observe that words as a rule are
not monosemous (having one meaning), but polysemous, i.e. possessing more than
one meaning.
The bulk of English words are polysemous, and the commoner the word is
the more meanings it normally has. The word ‘table’, for example, has over 15
meanings: 1) a flat horizontal slab or board, usually supported by one or more legs,
on which objects may be placed; 2) a) such a slab or board on which food is
served; 3) food as served in a particular household or restaurant; 4) such a piece of
furniture specially designed for any of various purposes; 5) a) a company of
persons assembled for a meal, game, etc; 6) any flat or level area, such as a
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plateau; 7) a rectangular panel set below or above the face of a wall; 8)

architecture another name for cordon; 9) an upper horizontal facet of a cut gem;
10) music the sounding board of a violin, guitar, or similar stringed instrument; 11)
a) an arrangement of words, numbers, or signs, usually in parallel columns, to
display data or relations; 12) a tablet on which laws were inscribed by the ancient
Romans, the Hebrews, etc; 13) palmistry an area of the palm's surface bounded by
four lines; 14) printing a slab of smooth metal on which ink is rolled to its proper
consistency; 15) a) either of the two bony plates that form the inner and outer parts
of the flat bones of the cranium b) any thin flat plate, esp. of bone.
Each of these individual meanings can be described in terms of the types of
meanings discussed above. When studying polysemous words, however, we are
more interested in how all these multiple meanings of polysemous words are
interrelated within one semantic unity.
Viewed diachronically, polysemy implies simultaneous presence in the
semantic structure of the word of its previous meaning(s), which are called
primary meanings, and of its new, more recent meanings, which are termed
derived, or secondary meanings. Secondary meanings are always dependent on the
primary meaning(s) and appear in the language after the primary meaning is in
existence. In the case of ‘table’, e.g., its primary meaning is “a flat horizontal slab
or board”, all the other meanings are secondary.
Synchronically, polysemy is understood as coexistence of various meanings
of one word at the given historical period of the English language development,
and the most recognizable and widely used meaning is recognized as its basic or
central one, all the other meanings being minor or secondary. Thus, the basic
meaning of the word ‘table’ is the one that comes to our mind first when we hear
or see this word, i.e. “a piece of furniture specially designed for any of various
purposes”.
The synchronic approach, however, lacks objectivity as in some cases it may
be difficult to single out one central meaning. If we analyze the verb ‘to get’, e.g.,

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it is not easy to define its sole basic meaning as either ‘to obtain’, or ‘to reach the
destination’.
A more objective criterion for identifying the basic meaning in polysemous
words seems to be the frequency of their occurrence in speech. In the case of the
word ‘table’, e.g., the meaning “a piece of furniture specially designed for any of
various purposes” possesses the highest frequency value and makes up 52% of all
meanings of this word, the meaning “an arrangement of words, numbers, or signs,
usually in parallel columns, to display data or relations” accounts 35%.
The diachronic and synchronic approaches to polysemy are not exclusive in
any way, but are viewed as supplementing each other in the linguistic analysis of
polysemous words. However, as the semantic structure is never static, the
relationship between the diachronic and synchronic evaluations of individual
meanings may be different in different periods of language development. The word
‘revolution’ e.g., has undergone the change of its semantic structure from
“revolting motion of celestial bodies” in ME to “an overthrow of the regime” in
Mod.E.

2 типа лексическое и граматичнеское значение

Грам.значение-можно наблюдать в единицах схожего характера,
значение рода,числа,вид,спряжение
Лексическое значение(логическое значение слова-читать-
инфинитив-граматическое значение,лексическое значение-
действе,которое заключается в воспроизведении слов при помоши
органов восприятия)
Денотативное значение- что я говорю,вырыжает
знаменателей,вызывает референт.2 типа-сигнификативный и
идентифицирующий-напрямую называется

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референт,денотативный) (голубая планета (и земля-нет

сигнификативного значение) (это знак,который нужно разгадать))
Конатотивное-мое отношение к примеру, конотация эмоции-
father,daddy,child,kid) подразделяются на позитивные и
нейтральные,негативные ассоциации

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