Content
Introduction
Chapter 1. Theword as the basic unit of language
Chapter 2. Themeaning of the word
2.1 Grammaticalmeaning of the word
2.2 Lexicalmeaning of the word
2.2.1 Parf-of-SpeechMeaning
2.2.2 Denotationaland Connotational meaning of the word
2.2.3 EmotiveCharge
2.2.4 StylisticReference
2.2.5 EmotiveCharge and Stylistic Reference
Chapter 3. Wordmeaning and motivation
Chapter 4. Wordmeaning and meaning in morphemes
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
word languagemeaning speech
The word is one of thefundamental units of language. It is a dialectal unity of form and content. Itscontent or meaning is not identical to notion, but it may reflect human notionand is considered as the form of their existence. So the definition of a wordis one of the most difficult in linguistics, because the simplest word has manydifferent aspects: a sound form, its morphological structure, it may occur indifferent word-forms and have various meanings.
E. Sapir takes into consideration the syntactic andsemantic aspects when he calls the word “one of the smallest completelysatisfying bits of isolated “meaning”, into which the sentence resolvesitself.” Sapir also points out one more, very important characteristic of the word,its indivisibility: “It cannot be cut into without a disturbance ofmeaning, one or two other or both of the several parts remaining as a helplesswaif on our hands.”
A unit which most peoplewould think of as ‘one word’ may carry a number of meanings, by associationwith certain contexts. Thus pipe can be any tubular object, a musicalinstrument or a piece of apparatus for smoking; a hand can be on a clockor watch as well as at the end of the arm. Most of the time, we are able todistinguish the intended meaning by the usual process of mental adjustment tocontext and register.
Word meaning is not homogeneous, but it is made up ofvarious components, which are described as types of meaning. There are 2 typesof meaning to be found in words and word forms:
1) the grammatical meaning;
2) the lexical meaning.
Asthe world’s global language, English has played a very important role inbringing people from different countries closer and closer, thus yielding greatmutual understanding. The author argues that the mastering of the grammaticalfeatures of English words together with that of their semantic structures helpsto make the communication in English successful. The study on English words interms of grammar and semantics is, therefore, hoped to be of great value toteachers and learners of English as well as translators into and out ofEnglish. In this essay, English words are discussed in terms of their meaning,which poses several problems for the teachers, learners and translators.
Chapter 1. The word as the basic unit of language
The word may be describedas the basic unit of language. Uniting meaning and form, it is composed of oneor more morphemes, each consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their writtenrepresentation. The combinations of morphemes within words are subject tocertain linking conditions. When a derivational suffix is added a new word isformed, thus, “listen” and “listener” are different words.
When used in sentences together withother words they are syntactically organized. But if we look at the language“speech”, it becomes apparent that words are not neatly segmented as they areby spaces in graphological realization. The pauses in speech do notconsistently correspond with word-endings; many languages, including English,do not make it clear to a foreign listener where the utterance is divided intowords.
The definition of a word is one ofthe most difficult in linguistics because the simplest word has many aspects.The variants of definitions were so numerous that some authors collecting themproduced works of impressive scope and bulk.
A few examples will suffice to showthat any definition is conditioned by the aims and interests of its author.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), one ofthe great English philosophers, revealed a materialistic approach to theproblem of nomination when he wrote that words are not mere sounds but names ofmatter. Three centuries later the great Russian physiologist I.P. Pavlov(1849-1936) examined the word in connection with his studies of the secondsignal system, and defined it as a universal signal that can be substitute anyother signal from the environment in evoking a response in a human organism.One of the latest developments of science and engineering is machinetranslation. It also deals with words and requires a rigorous definition forthem. It runs as follows: a word is a sequence of graphemes which can occurbetween spaces, or the representation of such a sequence on morphemic level.
Within the scope of linguistics theword has been defined syntactically, semantically, phonologically and bycombining various approaches.
According to John Lyons “One of the characteristics ofthe word is that it tends to be internally stable (in terms of the order of thecomponent morphemes), but positionally mobile (permutable with other words inthe same sentence)”.
A purely semantic treatment will be found in StephenUlmann’s explanation: with him connected discourse, if analyzed from thesemantic point of view, “will fall into a certain number of meaningful segmentswhich are ultimately compose of meaningful units. These meaningful units arecalled words.”
The semantic-phonological approach may be illustrated byA.H. Gardiner’s definition: “A word is an articulate sound-symbol in itsaspect of denoting something which is spoken about.”
The eminent French linguist A. Meillet combines thesemantic, phonological and grammatical criteria and gives the followingdefinition of the word:“A word is defined by the association of aparticular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particulargrammatical employment.”
This formula can be accepted with some modifications adding that aword is the smallest significant unit of a given language capable of functioningalone and characterized by positional mobility within a sentence, morphologicaluninterruptability and semantic integrity. All these criteria are necessarybecause they permit us to create basis for the oppositions between the word andthe phrase, the word and the phoneme, and the word and the morpheme: theircommon feature is that they are all units of the language, their differencelies in the fact that the phoneme is not significant, and a morpheme cannot beused as a complete utterance.
The weak point of all the above definitions is that they do notestablish the relationship between language and thought, which is formulated ifwe treat the word as a dialectical unity of form and content, in which the formis the spoken or written expression which calls up specific meaning, whereasthe content is the meaning rendering the emotion or the concept in the mind ofthe speaker which he intends to convey to the listener.
Still, the main point can be summarized: “The word is thefundamental unit of language. It is a dialectal unity of form and content.”
Its content or meaning is not identical to notion, but it mayreflect human notions, and in this sense may be considered as the form of theirexistence. Concepts fixed in the meaning of words are formed as generalized andapproximately correct reflections of reality, therefore in signifying themwords reflect reality in their content.
Chapter 2. The meaning of the word
2.1 Grammatical meaning of the word
Every word has two aspects: the outer aspect (its soundform) and the inner aspect (its meaning). Sound and meaning do not alwaysconstitute a constant unit even in the same language.
It is more or less universallyrecognised that word-meaning is not homogeneous but is made up of variouscomponents the combination and the interrelation of which determine to a greatextent the inner facet of the word. These components are usually described astypes of meaning. The two main types of meaning that are readily observed arethe grammatical and the lexical meanings to be found in words and word-forms.
We notice, e.g.,that word-forms, such as girls, winters, joys, tablesetc. thoughdenoting widely different objects of reality have something in common. Thiscommon element is the grammatical meaning of plurality which can be found inall of them.
Thus grammaticalmeaning may be defined ,as the component of meaning recurrent in identical setsof individual forms of different words, as, e.g., the tense meaning in theword-forms of verbs (asked, thought, walked, etc.) or the case meaningin the word-forms of various nouns (girl’s, boy’s, night’s etc.).
Ina broadsense it may be argued that linguists who make a distinction between lexicaland grammatical meaning are, in fact, making a distinction between thefunctional (linguistic) meaning which operates at various levels as theinterrelation of various linguistic units and referential (conceptual) meaningas the interrelation of linguistic units and referents (or concepts).
In modernlinguistic science it is commonly held that some elements of grammaticalmeaning can be identified by the position of the linguistic unit in relation toother linguistic units, i.e. by its distribution. Word-forms speaks, reads,writeshave one and the same grammatical meaning as they can all befound in identical distribution, e.g. only after the pronouns he, she, itand before adverbs like well, badly, to-day,etc.
It follows that acertain component of the meaning of a word is described when you identify it asa part of speech, since different parts of speech are distributionallydifferent (cf. my work and I work).
2.2 Lexical meaning of the word
Comparing word-forms of one and thesame word we observe that besides grammatical meaning, there is anothercomponent of meaning to be found in them. Unlike the grammatical meaning thiscomponent is identical in all the forms of the word. Thus, e.g. the word-forms go,goes, went, going, gonepossess different grammatical meanings oftense, person and so on, but in each of these forms we find one and the samesemantic component denoting the process of movement. This is the lexicalmeaning of the word which may be described as the component of meaning properto the word as a linguistic unit, i.e. recurrent in all the forms of this word.
The differencebetween the lexical and the grammatical components of meaning is not to besought in the difference of the concepts underlying the two types of meaning,but rather in the way they are conveyed. The concept of plurality, e.g., may beexpressed by the lexical meaning of the world plurality;it mayalso be expressed in the forms of various words irrespective of their lexicalmeaning, e.g. boys, girls, joysetc. The concept of relation maybe expressed by the lexical meaning of the word relationand alsoby any of the prepositions, e.g. in, on, behindetc.
It follows that bylexical meaning we designate the meaning proper to the given linguistic unit inall its forms and distributions, while by grammatical meaning we designate themeaning proper to sets of word-forms common to all words of a certain class.Both the lexical and the grammatical meaning make up the word-meaning asneither can exist without the other. That can be also observed in the semanticanalysis of correlated words in different languages. E.g. the Russian word сведенияis not semantically identical with the English equivalent informationbecause unlike the Russian сведенияtheEnglish word does not possess the grammatical meaning of plurality which ispart of the semantic structure of the Russian word.
2.2.1 Part-of-Speech Meaning
It is usual toclassify lexical items into major word-classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives andadverbs) and minor word-classes (articles, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.).
All members of amajor word-class share a distinguishing semantic component which though very abstractmay be viewed as the lexical component of part-of-speech meaning. For example,the meaning of “thingness” or substantiality may be found in all the nouns e.g.table, love, sugar, though they possess different grammatical meaningsof number, case, etc. It should be noted, however, that the grammatical aspectof the part-of-speech meanings is conveyed as a rule by a set of forms. If wedescribe the word as a noun we mean to say that it is bound to possess a set of forms expressing the grammaticalmeaning of number (table— tables), case (boy, boy’s) and soon. A verb is understood to possess sets of forms expressing, e.g., tensemeaning (worked — works),mood meaning (work! — (I) work)etc.
The part-of-speechmeaning of the words that possess only one form, e.g. prepositions, someadverbs, etc., is observed only in their distribution (to come in (here,there)).
One of the levelsat which grammatical meaning operates is that of minor word classes likearticles, pronouns, etc.
Members of theseword classes are generally listed in dictionaries just as other vocabularyitems, that belong to major word-classes of lexical items proper (e.g. nouns,verbs, etc.).
One criterion fordistinguishing these grammatical items from lexical items is in terms of closedand open sets. Grammatical items form closed sets of units usually of smallmembership (e.g. the set of modern English pronouns, articles, etc.). New itemsare practically never added.
Lexical itemsproper belong to open sets which have indeterminately large membership; newlexical items which are constantly coined to fulfil the needs of the speechcommunity are added to these open sets.
The interrelation of the lexical andthe grammatical meaning and the role played by each varies in differentword-classes and even in different groups of words within one and the sameclass. In some parts of speech the prevailing component is the grammatical typeof meaning. The lexical meaning of prepositions for example is, as a rule,relatively vague (one of the students, the roof of the house).Thelexical meaning of some prepositions, however, may be comparatively distinct (in/on,under the table).In verbs the lexical meaning usually comes to thefore although in some of them, the verb to be,e.g., thegrammatical meaning of a linking element prevails (he works as a teacher andhe is a teacher).
2.2.2 Denotational and Connotational meaning of theword
Proceeding with the semantic analysiswe observe that lexical meaning is not homogenous either and may be analysed asincluding denotational and connotational components.
As was mentionedabove one of the functions of words is to denote things, concepts and so on.Users of a language cannot have any knowledge or thought of the objects orphenomena of the real world around them unless this knowledge is ultimatelyembodied in words which have essentially the same meaning for all speakers ofthat language. This is the denotational meaning, i.e. that component ofthe lexical meaning which makes communication possible. There is no doubt thataphysicist knows more about the atom than a singer does, or that anarctic explorer possesses a much deeper knowledge of what arctic ice is likethan a man who has never been in the North. Nevertheless they use the words atom,Arctic,etc. and understand each other.
The secondcomponent of the lexical meaning is the connotational component, i.e.the emotive charge and the stylistic value of the word.
2.2.3 Emotive Charge
Words contain anelement of emotive evaluation as part of the connotational meaning; e.g. ahoveldenotes ‘a small house or cottage’ and besides implies that itis a miserable dwelling place, dirty, in bad repair and in general unpleasantto live in. When examining synonyms large, big, tremendousand like,love, worshipor words such as girl, girlie; dear,deariewe cannot fail to observe the difference in the emotivecharge of the members of these sets. The emotive charge of the words tremendous,worshipand girlieis heavier than that of the words large,likeand girl.This does not depend on the “feeling”of the individual speaker but is true for all speakers of English. The emotivecharge varies in different word-classes. In some of them, in interjections,e.g., the emotive element prevails, whereas in conjunctions the emotive chargeis as a rule practically non-existent.
The emotive charge is one of theobjective semantic features proper to words as linguistic units and forms partof the connotational component of meaning. It should not be confused with emotiveimplications that the words may acquire in speech. The emotive implicationof the word is to a great extent subjective as it greatly depends of thepersonal experience of the speaker, the mental imagery the word evokes in him.Words seemingly devoid of any emotional element may possess in the case ofindividual speakers strong emotive implications as may be illustrated, e.g. bythe word hospital. What is thought and felt when the word hospitalis used will be different in the case of an architect who built it, theinvalid staying there after an operation, or the man living across the road.
2.2.4 Stylistic Reference
Words differ notonly in their emotive charge but also in their stylistic reference.Stylistically words can be roughly subdivided into literary, neutral andcolloquial layers.1
The greater part ofthe literаrуlayer of Modern English vocabulary arewords of general use, possessing no specific stylistic reference and known as neutralwords. Against the background of neutral words we can distinguish two majorsubgroups – standardcolloquial words and literary or bookishwords. This may be best illustrated by comparing words almost identical intheir denotational meaning, e. g., ‘parent — father — dad’.Incomparison with the word fatherwhich is stylistically neutral, dadstands out as colloquial and parentis felt as bookish. Thestylistic reference of standard colloquial words is clearly observed when wecompare them with their neutral synonyms, e.g. chum — friend, rot — nonsense, etc. This is also true of literary orbookish words, such as, e.g., to presume (to suppose), to anticipate (toexpect)and others.
Literary (bookish)words are not stylistically homogeneous. Besides general-literary (bookish)words, e.g. harmony, calamity, alacrity,etc., we may single outvarious specific subgroups, namely: 1) terms orscientific words such as, e g., renaissance,genocide, teletype,etc.; 2) poetic words and archaisms such as, e.g., whilome — ‘formerly’, aught — ‘anything’, ere — ‘before’, albeit — ‘although’, fare — ‘walk’, etc., tarry — ‘remain’, nay — ‘no’; 3) barbarisms and foreign words, such as,e.g., bon mot — ‘a clever or witty saying’, apropos, faux pas, bouquet, etc.The colloquial words may be subdivided into:
1)Common colloquial words.
2)Slang, i.e. words which are often regarded as aviolation of the norms of Standard English, e.g. governorfor‘father’, missusfor ‘wife’, a gagfor ‘a joke’, dottyfor ‘insane’.
3)Professionalisms, i.e. words used in narrowgroups bound by the same occupation, such as, e.g., labfor‘laboratory’, abusterfor ‘a bomb’ etc.
4)Jargonisms, i.e. words marked by their usewithin a particular social group and bearing a secret and cryptic character,e.g. a sucker – ‘a person who is easily deceived’, a squiffer– ‘a concertina’.
5)Vulgarisms, i.e. coarse words that are notgenerally used in public, e.g. bloody, hell, damn, shut up,etc.
6)Dialectical words, e.g. lass, kirk,etc.
7)Colloquial coinages, e.g. newspaperdom,allrightnik,etc.
2.2.5 Emotive Charge and Stylistic Reference
Stylistic referenceand emotive charge of words are closely connected and to a certain degreeinterdependent. As a rule stylistically coloured words, i.e. words belonging toall stylistic layers except the neutral style are observed to possess aconsiderable emotive charge. That can be proved by comparing stylisticallylabelled words with their neutral synonyms. The colloquial words daddy,mammyare more emotional than the neutral father, mother;theslang words mum, bobare undoubtedly more expressive than theirneutral counterparts silent, shilling,the poetic yonandsteedcarry a noticeably heavier emotive charge than theirneutral synonyms thereand horse. Words of neutralstyle, however, may also differ in the degree of emotive charge. We see, e.g.,that the words large, big, tremendous,though equally neutral asto their stylistic reference are not identical as far as their emotive chargeis concerned.
Chapter 3. Word meaning and motivation
From what was saidabout the distributional meaning in morphemes it follows that there are caseswhen we can observe a direct connection between the structural pattern of theword and its meaning. This relationship between morphemic structure and meaningis termed morphological motivation.
The main criterionin morphological motivation is the relationship between morphemes. Hence allone-morpheme words, e.g. sing, tell, eat,are by definitionnon-motivated. In words composed of more than one morpheme the carrier of theword-meaning is the combined meaning of the component morphemes and the meaningof the structural pattern of the word. This can be illustrated by the semanticanalysis of different words composed of phonemically identical morphemes withidentical lexical meaning. The words finger-ringand ring-finger,e.g., contain two morphemes, the combined lexical meaning of which is thesame; the difference in the meaning of these words can be accounted forbythe difference in the arrangement of the component morphemes.
If we can observe adirect connection between the structural pattern of the word and its meaning,we say that this word is motivated. Consequently words such as singer,rewrite, eatable,etc., are described as motivated. Ifthe connection between the structure of the lexical unit and itsmeaningis completely arbitrary and conventional, we speak ofnon-motivated oridiomatic words, e.g. matter, repeat.
It should be notedin passing that morphological motivation is “relative”, i.e. the degree ofmotivation may be different. Between the extremes of complete motivation andlack of motivation, there exist various grades of partial motivation. The word endless,e.g., is completely motivated as both the lexical meaning of the componentmorphemes and the meaning of the pattern is perfectly transparent. The word cranberryisonly partially motivated because of the absence of the lexicalmeaning in the morpheme cran-.
One more pointshould be noted in connection with the problem in question. A synchronicapproach to morphological motivation presupposes historical changeability ofstructural patterns and the ensuing degree of motivation. Some Englishplace-names may serve as an illustration. Such place-names as Newtownsand Wildwoodsare lexically and structurally motivated andmay be easily analysed into component morphemes. Other place-names, e.g. Essex,Norfolk, Sutton,are non-motivated. To the average English speakerthese names are non-analysable lexical units like singor tell.However, upon examination the student of language history will perceivetheir components to be East+Saxon, North+Folk and South+Townwhichshows that in earlier days they .were just as completely motivated as Newtownsor Wildwoodsare in Modern English.
Motivation isusually thought of as proceeding from form or structure to meaning. Morphologicalmotivation as discussed above implies a direct connection between themorphological structure of the word and its meaning. Some linguists, however,argue that words can be motivated in more than one way and suggest another typeof motivation which may be described as a direct connection between thephonetical structure of the word and its meaning. It is argued that speechsounds may suggest spatial and visual dimensions, shape, size, etc. Experimentscarried out by a group of linguists showed that back open vowels are suggestiveof big size, heavy weight, dark colour, etc. The experiments were repeated manytimes and the results were always the same. Native speakers of English wereasked to listen to pairs of antonyms from an unfamiliar (or non-existent)language unrelated to English, e.g. ching– chungand then to try to find the Englishequivalents, e.g. light– heavy, big– small,etc.), which foreign word translateswhich English word. About 90 percent of English speakers felt that chingis the equivalent of theEnglish light(small) and chungof its antonym heavy(large).
It is also pointed out that this typeof phonetical motivation may be observed in the phonemic structure of somenewly coined words. For example, the small transmitter that specialises in highfrequencies is called ‘a tweeter’, the transmitter for low frequences ‘awoofer’.
Another type of phonetical motivationis represented by such words as swish, sizzle, boom, splash,etc.These words may be defined as phonetically motivated because the soundclusters[swi∫, sizl, bum, splæ∫] are a direct imitation of the soundsthese words denote. It is also suggested that sounds themselves may beemotionally expressive which accounts for the phonetical motivation in certainwords. Initial [f] and [p], e.g., are felt as expressing scorn, contempt,disapproval or disgust which can be illustrated by the words pooh! fie!fiddle-sticks, flim-flamand the like. The sound-cluster [iŋ] is imitative of sound or swiftmovement as can be seen in words ring, sing, swing, fling, etc.Thus, phonetically such words may be considered motivated.
This hypothesis seems to requireverification. This of course is not to deny that there are some words whichinvolve phonetical symbolism: these are the onomatopoeic, imitative or echoicwords such as the English cuckoo, splashand whisper: Andeven these are not completely motivated but seem to be conventional to quite alarge extent (cf. кукарекуand cock-a-doodle-doo).In any case words like these constitute only a small and untypical minorityin the language. As to symbolic value of certain sounds, this too is disprovedby the fact that identical sounds and sound-clusters may be found in words ofwidely different meaning, e.g. initial [p] and [f], are found in wordsexpressing contempt and disapproval (fie, pooh)and also in suchwords as ploughs fine,and others. The sound-cluster [in] whichis supposed to be imitative of sound or swift movement (ring, swing)isalso observed in semantically different words, e.g. thing, king,andothers.
The term motivationis also used by a number of linguists to denote the relationship between thecentral and the coexisting meaning or meanings of a word which are understood asa metaphorical extension of the central meaning. Metaphorical extension may beviewed as generalisation of the denotational meaning of a word permitting it toinclude new referents which are in some way like the original class ofreferents. Similarity of various aspects and/or functions of different classesof referents may account for the semantic motivation of a number of minormeanings. For example, a woman who has given birth is called a mother;by extension, any act that gives birth is associated with being amother, e.g.in Necessity is the mother of invention.Thesame principle can be observed in other meanings: a mother looks after a child,so that we can say She became a mother to her orphan nephew,or Romulusand Remus were supposedly mothered by a wolf.Such metaphoricextension may be observed in the so-called trite metaphors, such as burnwith anger, break smb’s heart, jump at a chance,etc.
Ifmetaphoricalextension is observed in the relationship of the central and a minor wordmeaning it is often observed in the relationship between its synonymic orantonymic meanings. Thus, a few years ago the phrases a meeting at thesummit, a summit meeting appeared in the newspapers.
Cartoonistsportrayed the participants of such summit meetings sitting on mountain tops.Now when lesser diplomats confer the talks are called foothill meetings.Inthis way both summitand its antonym foothillundergo the process of metaphorical extension.
Chapter 4. Word meaning and meaning in morphemes
In modernlinguistics it is more or less universally recognised that the smallesttwo-facet language unit possessing both sound-form and meaning is the morpheme.Yet, whereas the phono-morphological structure of language has been subjectedto a thorough linguistic analysis, the problem of types of meaning and semanticpeculiarities of morphemes has not been properly investigated. A few points ofinterest, however, may be mentioned in connection with some recent observationsin “this field.
It is generallyassumed that one of the semantic features of some morphemes which distinguishesthem from words is that they do not possess grammatical meaning. Comparing theword man, e.g., and the morpheme man-(in manful, manly, etc.) we see that wecannot find in this morpheme the grammatical meaning of case and numberobserved in the word man. Morphemes are consequently regarded asdevoid of grammatical meaning.
Many English wordsconsist of a single root-morpheme, so when we say that most morphemes possesslexical meaning we imply mainly the root-morphemes in such words. It may beeasily observed that the lexical meaning of the word boy and the lexicalmeaning of the root-morpheme boy — in such words as boyhood, boyish and others is very much thesame.
Just as in wordslexical meaning in morphemes may also be analysed into denotational andconnotational components. The connotational component of meaning may be foundnot only in root-morphemes but in affixational morphemes as well. Endearing anddiminutive suffixes, e.g. -ette (kitchenette), -ie(y) (dearie, girlie),-ling (duckling), clearly bear a heavy emotive charge. Comparing thederivational morphemes with the same denotational meaning we see that theysometimes differ in connotation only. The morphemes, e.g. -ly, -like, -ish,have the denotational meaning of similarity in the words womanly,womanlike, womanish, the connotational component, however, differs andranges from the positive evaluation in-ly (womanly)tothe derogatory in-ish (womanish): Stylistic reference may alsobe found in morphemes of different types. Thestylistic value of suchderivational morphemes as, e.g. -ine (chlorine), -oid (rhomboid), -escence(effervescence)is clearly perceived to be bookish or scientific.
The lexical meaningof the affixal morphemes is, as a rule, of a more generalising character. Thesuffix -er, e.g. carries the meaning ‘the agent, the doer of theaction’, the suffix-lessdenotes lack or absence ofsomething. It should also be noted that the root-morphemes do not “possess thepart-of-speech meaning (cf. manly, manliness, to man); inderivational morphemes the lexical and the part-of-speech meaning may be soblended as to be almost inseparable. In the derivational morphemes -erand -lessdiscussed above the lexical meaning is just asclearly perceived as their part-of-speech meaning. In some morphemes, however,for instance -mentor-ous (asin movementorlaborious), it is the part-of-speech meaning thatprevails, the lexical meaning is but vaguely felt.
In some cases thefunctional meaning predominates. The morpheme -icein theword justice, e.g., seems to serve principally to transfer thepart-of-speech meaning of the morpheme just – into another class and namely that ofnoun. It follows that some morphemes possess only the functional meaning, i.e.they are the carriers of part-of-speech meaning.
Besides the typesof meaning proper both to words and morphemes the latter may possess specificmeanings of their own, namely the differential and the distributional meanings.Differential meaning is the semantic component that serves todistinguish one word from all others containing identical morphemes. In wordsconsisting of two or more morphemes, one of the constituent morphemes alwayshas differential meaning. In such words as, e. g., bookshelf, themorpheme -shelfserves to distinguish the word from otherwords containing the morpheme book-, e.g. from bookcase,book-counterand so on. In other compound words, e.g. notebook,the morpheme note— will be seen to possess the differentialmeaning which distinguishes notebookfrom exercisebook,copybook, etc. It should be clearly understood that denotational anddifferential meanings are not mutually exclusive. Naturally the morpheme -shelfin bookshelfpossesses denotational meaning which is thedominant component of meaning. There are cases, however, when it is difficultor even impossible to assign any denotational meaning to the morpheme, e.g. cran — in cranberry, yet it clearly bears a relationship to themeaning of the word as a whole through the differential component (cranberryand blackberry, gooseberry)which in this particular casecomes to the fore. One of the disputable points of morphological analysis iswhether such words as deceive, receive, perceiveconsist of twocomponent morphemes. If we assume, however, that the morpheme -ceivemay be singled out it follows that the meaning of the morphemes re-,per, de— is exclusively differential, as, at least synchronically,there is no denotational meaning proper to them.
Distributional meaning is the meaningofthe order and arrangement of morphemes making up the word. It isfound in all words containing more than one morpheme. The word singer,e.g., is composed of two morphemes sing— and -erboth of which possess the denotational meaning and namely ‘to make musicalsounds’ (sing-)and ‘the doer of the action’ (-er). Thereis one more element of meaning, however, that enables us to understand the wordand that is the pattern of arrangement of the component morphemes. A differentarrangement of the same morphemes, e.g. *ersing, wouldmake the word meaningless. Compare also boyishnessand *nessishboyin which a different pattern of arrangement of the three morphemes boy-ish-nessturns it into a meaningless string of sounds.
Conclusion
So in this work word-meaning is viewedas closely connected but not identical with either the sound-form of the wordor with its referent. Proceedingfrom the basic assumption of the objectivity of language and from theunderstanding of linguistic units as two-facet entities we regard meaning as theinner facet of the word, inseparable from its outer facet which isindispensable to the existence of meaning and to intercommunication.
The two main types of word-meaning arethe grammatical and the lexical meanings found in all words. The interrelationof these two types of meaning may be different in different groups of words. Lexicalmeaning is viewed as possessing denotational and connotational components. The denotational component is actually whatmakes communication possible. The connotational component comprises thestylistic reference and the emotive charge proper to the word as a linguisticunit in the given language system. The subjective emotive implications acquiredby words in speech lie outside the semantic structure of words as they may varyfrom speaker to speaker but are not proper to words as units of language.
Lexical meaning with its denotationaland connotational components may be found in morphemes of different types. Thedenotational meaning in affixal morphemes may be rather vague and abstract, thelexical meaning and the part-of-speech meaning tending to blend.
It is suggested that in addition tolexical meaning morphemes may contain specific types of meaning: differential,functional and distributional.
We pointed out different motivations. Morphologicalmotivation implies a direct connection between the lexical meaning of thecomponent morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and the meaning of theword. The degree of morphological motivation may be different varying from the extremeof complete motivation to lack of motivation. Phonetical motivation implies a direct connection between thephonetic structure of the word and its meaning. Phonetical motivation is notuniversally recognised in modern linguistic science. Semantic motivation implies a direct connection between the centraland marginal meanings of the word. This connection may be regarded as ametaphoric extension of the central meaning based on the similarity ofdifferent classes of referents denoted by the word.
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