Топик: Лекции Л. И. Городнего по лексикологии английского языка

Moral or intellectual force, energy

8. A person of influence (he is a power in the town)

11) An effective quality of style in writing (a writer of great power)

12) Personal influence (a man's power means the readiness of other; men to obey him)

The elements of the semantic structure.

There arу no universally acsepfed criteria for differentiating these variants within one polysemantic word.The following terms may be found with different authors:

the meaning is direct or nominative when it nominates the object without the help of context,in insolation, i.e., in one,word sentences for example the "Rain" etc.

The meaning is figurative when the object is named and at the same time characterized. through its similarity, with - another object, while naming the object the word simultaneously describes it.

Other oppositions are:

Main or primary – secondary

Central - periphery

Narrow - extended

General – particular

Concrete - Abstract, etc.

Take, for example, the noun "screen". We find it in its direct meaning when it names a movable piece of furniture" used to hide smth. or protect smb, as in case of "fire screen" placed in front of a fireplace. The meaning is figurative when the word is applied to anything which protects by hiding, I as in "smoke screen". We define this meaning as figurative comparing it to the first that we called direct. Again,- when by a "screen" a speaker means "a silver-coloured sheet on which pictures are shown, this meaning in comparison with the first will be secondary. When the same word is used attributitively in such combinations as "screen actor", "screen star", "screen version", etc., it comes to mean "pertaining to the ci­nema" and is abstract to comparison with the first meaning which is called concrete. The main meaning is that which possesses the highest frequency, at the present stage of development all these terms reflect, relationship existing between different meanings of a word at the same period, so the classification may be called synchronic and. paradigmatic, although the terms are borrowed from historical lexicology and stylistics.

Homonymy in English

The learning objectives: after you have studied the lecture you should be able to speak on the following:

1. Homonyms, its etymology, definition.

2. Classification of homonyms.

3. Sources of homonyms.

4. Relationship among polysemy, homonymy and synonymy.

Seminar on Homonymy and Polysemy:

Consider your answer to the following:

1. Antrushina G.B. and others “English lexicology”, M., 1999. Pp. 166-182.

Do exercises 1, 2, (8 sent), 4, 5, 7, (6 sent), 8 p. 182

2. Kasheeva “Practical Lexicology”, pp. 39-40