The lexical meaning and the notion

The term notion is introduced into linguistics from logic and psychology. It denotes the reflection in the mind of real objects and phenomena in their essential features and relations. The relationship between the linguistic lexical meaning and the logical notion deserves special attention, not only because they are often confused, but also comparing them it is possible to understand them better.

a) The relationship between notion and meaning may vary. A word may have a notion for its referent. In the example: A good laugh is sunshine in the house, every word evokes general idea, a notion referring to no particular object in reality, the significative meaning and that of the notion coincide, they cover the same area. The problem of proper names is rather complicated. They do not convey any generalized notion; the only name human beings, cities, countries and etc. And yet names like Moscow, The Thames, and Byron evoke notion. And it is clear that there is a great difference between the proper names, like those given above and serve to denote unique objects and conventional names for different people, animals and places, like Tom, Bill and High street. So the logical notion is the referent of lexical meaning quite often, but not always.

b) Notions are always emotionally neutral as they are a category of thought. The meaning of many words not only conveys some reflection of objective reality, but also speaker’s state of mind and his attitude to what he is speaking.

c) Lexical meaning of many words depends on the context, whereas a notion has no ties with any stylistic sphere as it belongs to abstract logic.

d) The next difference is based upon the fact that notions are mostly international, especially for nations with the same level of cultural development, and meaning may be nationally determined and limited. The grouping of meanings is determined by the whole system of every language, its grammar and vocabulary, history of the language and people.

E.g. ‘Go’. Its Russian equivalent is ‘идти’. The main meaning ‘move or pass from place to place’ is common to Russian and English. But there are a considerable number of meanings that do not coincide. It is partly due to the existence in the English vocabulary the words ‘come’ and ‘walk’. E.g. Here he comes– Вот он идет. On the other hand the Russian language makes a distinction between ‘ехать и идти’. So ‘to go by train’ can’t de translated as идти на поезде.

The number of notions doesn’t correspond to their number of words:

In Russian – мужчина, человек. In English – man.

Summing up all the points of difference between the notion and the meaning, we can say, that the lexical meaning of the word may be defined as the realization or naming of a notion, emotion or an object by means of a definite language system. Words that express notion may have some emotional or stylistic coloring.

Morphological structure of English word.

A word is an independent unit of language in which a particular meaning is associated with a particular sound complex and which is capable of a particular grammatical employment and able to form a sentence by itself. Structurally words are divisible to smaller units which are called morphemes.

Morpheme is the minimum meaningful language unit. Unlike words they are not independent, they occur in speech as constituent parts of words and they are indivisible into smaller meaningful units. The term morpheme is derived from Greek morphi – ‘form’ and eme – ‘the smallest unit’.

According to the role they play in constructing words, morphemes are subdivided into roots and affixes. Affixes are subdivided into prefixes, suffixes and infixes according to their position; and according to their function and meaning they are divided into derivational and functional affixes, the latter are also called endings or outer formatives.

When a derivational or functional affix is stripped out from the word, what remains is a stem. The stem expresses lexical and the part of speech meaning. For the word hearty and for the paradigm heart-hearts the stem may be represented as heart. This stem is a single morpheme; it contains nothing but the root so it is a simple stem. It is also a free stem because it is homonymous to the word heart.

A stem may also be defined as the part of the word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. The stem of the paradigm hearty-heartier-heartiest is hearty. It is a free stem, but as it consists of a root morpheme and an affix, it is not simple but derived. Thus a stem containing one or more affixes is a derived stem. If after deducing the affix the remaining stem is not homonymous to a separate word of the same root, we call it a bound stem. For example, in the word cordial, the adjective-forming suffix can be separated and the remaining stem can’t be a separate word, so it is bound. Bound stems are characteristic of loan words. For example, French borrowings: charity, courage, distort, involve, notion and etc.

Roots are main morphemic vehicles of a given idea in a given language at a given stage of its development. A root may also be regarded as the ultimate constituent element which remains after the removal of all functional and derivational affixes and doesn’t admit any further analysis. Heart is the common root of the following series of words: heart, heartless, sweetheart, and heart-broken. Roots are capable of producing new words. In the English language most roots are productive.

A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class: en, y, less. E.g. hearty, hearten, heartless.

A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying meaning: hearten-dishearten.

An infix is a derivational morpheme placed within the word, like n in the word stand. The type is not productive.

There exist derivational and functional affixes. What is the difference between them?

Functional affixes serve to convey grammatical meaning. They form different forms of one and the same word.

Derivational affixes serve to supply the stem with components of lexical and lexico-grammatical meaning and thus form different words.

E.g. (- y) bushy, cloudy, stony – having the quality of something, or full of something.

Lexicology mainly deals with derivational affixes.

From the etymological point of view affixes are divided into native and borrowed.

Some native suffixes

Affixes can be also divided into productive and non-productive. By productive we mean affixes which take part in deriving new words. For example: -er, -ing, -ness, -ish, -ly, -able. Non-productive: -th, -hood, -some, -en.

Allomorphs. The combining form allo (Greek-other) is used in linguistic terminology to denote elements of a group whose members together constitute a structural unit of the language. They don’t differ in meaning or function, but show a slight difference in sound form, depending on the final phoneme of the preceding stem. They are considered as variants of one and the same morpheme and called its allomorphs.

E.g. ion/tion/sion/ation

2. Compound words – are words consisting of at least 2 stems which occur in the language as free forms. Compounding is one of the oldest methods of word formation, occurred in the European languages, especially in Germanic languages.

There are 2 important peculiarities distinguishing compounding in English from compounding in other languages.

a) both immediate constituents of an English compound are free forms. They can be used as independent forms with a distinct meaning of their own.

E.g. afternoon, anyway, looking-glass.

In Russian they are bound forms: руководство.

b) in English compounds usually consist of two stems, though there are some exceptions: good-for-nothing.

Classification of compounds. Compound words can be classified according to:

a) the type of composition and the linking element;

b) part of speech it belongs;

c) structural pattern.

1. The predominant type is connection without connecting elements:

E.g. heartache, sunflower, bedroom

2. Vowel or consonant as a linking element

E.g. speedometer, Anglo-Saxon, statesman, spokesman

3. Linking elements are represented by preposition or conjunction

E.g. matter-of-fact, good-for-nothing, mother-in-law

1. Simple stems

E.g. film-star, basket-ball

2. At least one of the constituents is a derived stem

E.g. blue-eyed, golden-haired, newcomer, early-riser

3. One of the constituents is a clipped stem

E.g. H-bag, math-mistress, V-day, TV-set

4. One of the constituents is a compound stem

E.g. wastepaper-basket, babysitter, double-decker

3. Shorteningis a word-building process involving not only qualitative but also quantitative change. If derivation and compounding represents addition, shortening may be represented as subtraction, in which part of an original word is taken away. E.g. doc- doctor, demo-demonstration.

There exist several classifications of shortened words:

The generally accepted one is based on the position of the clipped part: final clipping, initial clipping and medial clipping:

1. ad-advert-advertisement, coke-coca-cola;

2. fend-defend, phone-telephone

3. math’s - mathematics, ma’am – madam,

There exist another way of shortening. It is making new words from initial letters of a word group: U.N.O., UN, and BBC.

4. Conversion consists in making new words from some existing words by changing the category of a part of speech. The new word has the meaning which differs from the original one but it can be easily associated with it. E.g. face – to face, hand – to hand.

Conversion is not only a highly productive way but also a particularly English way of word-building. The analytical structure of modern English greatly facilitates processes of making words from one category of parts of speech from words of another.

The two categories of parts of speech are greatly affected by conversion are nouns and verbs. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous: to back, to stage, to screen, to blackmail, to eye, etc. Nouns are frequently made from verbs: run, cut, walk, show, move, etc. Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to cool, to pale.

It was said that a word made by conversion has a different meaning from that of the word from which it is made, though the two meanings can be associated. There are certain regularities in these associations, which can be classified. For instance, in the group of verbs made from nouns some regular semantic associations are indicated in the following list:

1. The noun is the name of a tool, the verb denotes an action performed by the tool: to hammer, to nail, to brush, to pin.

2. The noun is the name of an animal, the verb denotes the action or aspect of behavior considered typical of these animals: to fox, to rat, to monkey.

3. The noun is a part of a human body, an action performed by it: to hand, to eye.

4. The name of a profession – an activity typical of it: to nurse, to cook.

These groups represent the most obvious cases and illustrate the great variety of semantic interrelations within so-called converted pairs and the complex nature of the logical associations which specify them.

Blending

Blending is the word formation process in which parts of two or more words combine to create a new word whose meaning is often a combination of the original words. For example:

advertisement + entertainment → advertainment

biographical + picture → biopic

breakfast + lunch → brunch

chuckle + snort → chortle

cybernetic + organism → cyborg

guess + estimate → guesstimate

hazardous + material → hazmat

motor + hotel → motel

prim + sissy → prissy

simultaneous + broadcast → simulcast

smoke + fog → smog

Spanish + English → Spanglish

spoon + fork → spork

telephone + marathon → telethon

web + seminar → webinar

Blended words are also referred to as portmanteaus.

Semantic change

Specialization

Generalization

Metaphor

Metonymy