Учебное пособие: Brief course on lexicology

- pejorative development (derogatory emotive charge)

- ameliorative development (the improvement of the con. component)

Causes, nature and result of semantic changes should be regarded as 3 essentially different but closely connected aspects of the same linguistic phenomenon.

Lecture 2

Polysemy The main problem is the problem of interrelation and interdependence of the various meanings of the same word.

Diachronically it is ahistorical change in the semantic structure resulting in disappearance of some meanings or/and in new meanings being added to the ones already existing also in the rearrangement of these meanings in its semantic structure.

Synchronically it is co-existence of the various meanings of the same word at a certain historical period and the arrangement of these meanings in the semantic structure of the word.

Diachronically: primary (original) and secondary (derived) meanings viewed chronically.

Synchronically: central (basic) and marginal (minor) meanings according to their relative frequency in speech.

The semantic structure is never static. The relationship between the diachronic and synchronic evaluation of individual meanings of the same word may be different in different periods of the historical development of language.

The whole of the semantic structure of correlated polysemantic words of different languages can never be identical. Words are felt as correlated if their basic (central) meanings coincide.

Lecture 3

Homonymy Full homonymy – of words belonging to the same part of speech.

Partial homonymy – of individuals word-forms of different part of speech.

Homonyms may be:

- lexical (differ in lexical meaning)

- lexico-grammatical (both in lexical and grammatical)

- grammatical (in grammatical meaning only)

Homonyms may be classified on the basis of 3 aspects as well:

1. sound form

2. graphic form

3. meaning (dew to the meaning they are derived into homograpgs, homophones, perfect (absolute) homonyms)

The sources of homonymy:

- diverging meaning development of a polysemantic word

- convergent sound development of 2 or more different words (most potent factor)

The criteria used in the synchronic analysis of homonyms:

1. semantic 2. spelling 3. distribution

The problem of discriminating between polysemy and homonymy in theoretical linguistics is closely connected with the problem of the basic unit at the semantic level of analysis.

Word-meaning in syntagmatics and paradigmatics