Дипломная работа: The problem of polysemy in the English language

Meaning should always be understood as involving the relation of language to the rest of the world and such meaningfulness is an essential part of the definition of language.

The distributional analysis of meaning makes it possible to reveal a great deal about the total functioning and use of words in a language. It gives sufficient evidence to recognize that part of the total meaning of many words in all languages is to be determined by their relations with other words in both the basic dimensions of linguistic analysis, syntagmatic and paradigmatic. Words as individual lexical items are structurally related to each other [14; 129 ].

A special interest is presented by the polysemic words whose meaning is based on a wide notional basis. Such lexical units can be used as function words revealing the tendence to partial or complete semantic depletion.

The first to be mentioned here are the verbs to be, to do, to get, to have, to make, to set, to take. The semantic value and functional use of these polysemic verbs offers difficulties in language learning and lexicography.

As it has been pointed out, componential analysis presupposes the revealing of differential and integral semantic features of lexical units and their variant meanings, in other words, semantic oppositions on the lexico-grammatical level.

Compare, for illustration, the semantic group of verbs which, besides the verb to be in its locative meaning ‘бути, знаходитись’, includes at least such verbs as: to live, to stay, to dwell, to reside.

The distinctive features of the members of the group observed in their meaning reveal themselves in the information which they carry about the duration of the action.

The verbs to live and to dwell, for instance, do not show any special contrast in this respect. In spoken English ‘dwell’ is now usually replaced by ‘live’.

But if we compare such verbs as to be, to stay and to live, we shall see that they differ essentially in expressing the durative character of the action and are not always interchangeable. For example,

She is in the house.

She stays in the house.

She lives in the house.

The verb to reside is stylistically marked member of the synonymic group characterized by its use in formal English.

It is of interest to note that transferred meanings of words in different languages do not always coincide. By the way of illustration:

1) back — спина;

2) the back of a chair — спинка стільця;

3) the back of a hand — титульна поверхня руки;

4) the back of a ship — кіль судна.

A variety of associated meanings which appear in varying degrees of prominence determined by the context may be illustrated by the semantic value of the adjective great which implies ‘being much above the average in size’, magnitude or intensity; in certain contexts of its use great comes to mean: eminent, important: great writers, great scholars, great musicians. In colloquial use great often suggests distinction of proficiency [11; 102-103 ].

The problem of polysemy in grammar is one of the most important, the one which is very complex and seems to be relevant to a number of aspects. Like words which is very complex and seems to be relevant to a number of aspects. Like words which are often signs not of one but of several things, a single grammatical form can also be made to express a whole variety of structural meanings. This appears to be natural and is a fairly common development in the structure of any language. This linguistics mechanism works naturally in many ways to prevent ambiguity in patterns of grammatical structure. Orientation towards the content will generally show which of the possible meanings is to be attached to polysemantic grammatical form [ 7; 236 ].

Most grammatical forms are polysemantic. On this level of linguistic analysis distinction should be made between synchronic and potential polysemy. Thus, for instance, the primary denotative meaning of the Present Continuous is characterized by three semantic elements:

1) present time;

2) something progressive;

3) contact with the moment of speech.

The three elements make up its synchronic polysemy. So thus, we can clearly see importance of researches of polysemy in grammar.

1.2 Historical Development of the Polysemy

The modern term polysemy was popularized by Bréal in 1887. Most modern linguistics dealing with the topic of polysemy refer to the crucial date , but they rarely look further back into the past.

The “roots” of the concept of polysemy lie in the Greek philosophy, that is, the debate surrounding the problem of naturalness or arbitrariness of signs as debated in Plato’s (429-347B.C.) Cratylus. In his account of Plato’s contribution to linguistics, Fred Householder points out that Democritus (460-mid-4th century B.C.) offered four arguments in favour of arbitrariness:

1) homonymy or polysemy — the same sequence of phonemes may be associated with two or more unrelated meanings;