Meaning

1. meaning

MEANING

2. denotative meaning

DENOTATIVE MEANING
• expresses the conceptual content of a word.
The denotative meaning may be:
signifiсative, if the referent is a concept,
demоnstrative, if it is an individual object.

3. connotative meaning

CONNOTATIVE MEANING
• the information communicated by virtue of what the word
refers to, often subject to complex associations originating in
habitual contexts (verbal or situational) of which the speaker
and the listener are aware.

4.

5.

The denotative meaning is essentially cognitive: it conceptualises and classifies our
experience and names for the listener some objects spoken about.
If the denotative meaning exists by virtue of what the word refers to, connotation is
the pragmatic communicative value the word receives by virtue of where, when, how,
by whom, for what purpose and in what contexts it is or may be used.

6. main types of connotations:

MAIN TYPES OF CONNOTATIONS:
• stylistic,
• emotional,
• evaluative,
• expressive (or intensifying).

7. stylistic connotation

STYLISTIC CONNOTATION
Associations concern the situation in which the word is uttered, the social
circumstances (formal, familiar, etc.), the social relationships between the
interlocutors (polite, rough), the type and purpose of communication
(learned, poetic, official, etc.)

8. emotional (or affective) connotation

EMOTIONAL (OR AFFECTIVE) CONNOTATION
• acquired by the word as a result of its frequent use in contexts corresponding
to emotional situations or because the referent conceptualised and named in
the denotative meaning is associated with emotions.
• For example, the verb beseech means 'to ask eagerly and also anxiously’.
E. g.: He besought a favour of the judge.

9. Evaluative connotation

EVALUATIVE CONNOTATION
• expresses approval or disapproval.

10. expressive (or intensifying) connotation

EXPRESSIVE (OR INTENSIFYING) CONNOTATION
Magic, witchcraft and sorcery - originally denote art and power of controlling
events by occult supernatural means.
These words are now used mostly figuratively:
• magic as compared to its synonyms will have glamorous attractive
connotations,
• witchcraft and sorcery will have rather sinister associations.

11. contextual meaning

CONTEXTUAL MEANING
• the lexical meaning of a word in speech.
• Contextual meanings include nonce usage. Nonce words are words
invented and used for a particular occasion.
Contextual meaning differs from the semantic structure of a word in
language.

12. onomasiology

ONOMASIOLOGY
the study of means and ways of naming the elements of reality.

13. contextual analysis

CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS
Context may be subdivided into:
• lexical,
• syntactical,
• mixed.

14. Lexical context

LEXICAL CONTEXT
• determines the meaning of the word black in the following examples:
Black denotes colour when used with the key-word naming some material or thing,
e. g. black velvet, black gloves.
When used with key-words denoting feeling or thought, it means ‘sad’, ‘dismal’, e. g.
black thoughts, black despair.
With nouns denoting time, the meaning is ‘unhappy’, ‘full of hardships’, e. g. black days,
black period.

15. syntactic context

SYNTACTIC CONTEXT
• the indicative power belongs to the syntactic pattern and not
to the words which make it up.
E. g. make means ‘to cause’ when followed by a complex object:
I couldn’t make him understand a word I said.

16. mixed context

MIXED CONTEXT
A purely syntactic context is rare.
As a rule the indication comes from syntactic, lexical and sometimes morphological factors
combined.
For example, late, when used predicatively, means ‘after the right, expected or fixed time’, as be late
for school.
When used attributively with words denoting periods of time, it means ‘towards the end of the
period’, e. g. in late summer.
Used attributively with proper personal nouns and preceded with a definite article, late means
‘recently dead’.

17. All lexical contexts are subdivided into:

ALL LEXICAL CONTEXTS ARE SUBDIVIDED INTO:
LEXICAL CONTEXTS OF THE FIRST
DEGREE
LEXICAL CONTEXTS OF THE
SECOND DEGREE
There is a direct syntactical connection
between the indicator and the dependent.
• there is no direct syntactical connection
between a dependent and the indicator.
E.g. He was arrested on a treason charge.
E.g.: I move that Mr Last addresses the meeting
(Waugh).
The dependent move is not directly connected
to the indicating minimum addresses the meeting.

18. speech situation

SPEECH SITUATION
Alongside the context N. N. Amosova distinguishes speech situation, in which the
necessary indication comes not from within the sentence but from some part of the
text outside it.
Speech situation may be of two types:
• text-situation;
• life-situation.
In text-situation it is a preceding description, a description that follows or some
word in the preceding text that help to understand the ambiguous word.

19. practical context

PRACTICAL CONTEXT
E. Nida distinguishes linguistic and practical context.
By practical context he means the circumstances of
communication: its stimuli, participants, their relation to one
another and to circumstances and the response of the listeners.

20. componential analysis

COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
• man, woman, boy, girl, bull, cow.
• We can arrange them as correlations of binary oppositions man : : woman = boy : : girl = bull : : cow.
The meanings of words man, boy, bull on the one hand, and woman, girl and cow, on the other, have something in common.
The distinctive feature - a semantic component (or seme).
In this case the semantic distinctive feature is that of sex — male or female.
• Another possible correlation is man : : boy = woman : : girl. The distinctive feature is that of age — adult or non-adult.
• If we compare this with a third correlation man : : bull = woman : : cow, we obtain a third distinctive feature contrasting
human and animal beings.

21.

Componential analysis is an attempt to describe the meaning of words in terms of a
universal inventory of semantic components and their possible combinations.

22. componential analysis

COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
• the distinctive features d1, d2, d3 as
containing the semantic elements ‘male’,
‘young’, and ‘human’

23.

The analysis shows that the dimensions of meaning may be
regarded as semantic oppositions because the word’s meaning is
reduced to its contrastive elements.
The segmentation is continued as far as we can have markers
needed for a group of words, and stops when a unique feature is
reached.

24. method of logical definition

METHOD OF LOGICAL DEFINITION
• A very close resemblance to componential analysis is the method of logical
definition by dividing a genus into species and species into subspecies
indispensable to dictionary definitions.
Lexicographic definitions lend themselves as suitable material for the analysis of
lexical groups in terms of a finite set of semantic components.
• cow – a full grown female of any animal of the ox family
• calf – the young of the cow.