Lexical meaning of a word это

Unlike
the grammatical meaning this component of meaning is identical in all
the forms of the word. e.g.: the words write – writes – wrote –
written possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person but
in each of these forms we find the same semantic component denoting
the process of putting words on the paper. This is the lexical
meaning of the word which may be described as a linguistic unit
recurrent in all the forms of the word and in all possible
distributions of these forms.

The
difference between the lexical and the grammatical component of
meaning is not to be sought in the difference of the concepts
underlying the two types of meaning rather in the way they are
conveyed. The concept of plurality, for example, may be expressed by
the lexical meaning of the word plurality. It may also be expressed
in the forms of different words irrespective of their lexical meaning
(girls, boards).

The
interrelation of the lexical and the grammatical meaning and the role
played by each varies in different word classes and even in different
groups of words within one and the same class. In some parts of
speech the prevailing component is the grammatical type of meaning.
The lexical meaning of prepositions is, as a rule, relatively vague
(to think of somebody, independent of somebody, some of the
students). The lexical meaning of some prepositions is however
comparatively distinct (in, on, under the table).

The
lexical meaning of the word can be of two types: denotational and
connotational.

One
of the functions of the words is to denote things, concepts, etc.
Users of a language cannot have any knowledge or thought of the
objects or phenomena of the real world around them unless this
knowledge is ultimately embodied in words which have essentially the
same meaning for all speakers of that language. This is the
denotational meaning, i.e. that component of the lexical meaning
which makes communication possible. There is no doubt that a doctor
knows more about pneumonia than a dancer does but they use the word
and understand each other.

The
second component of the lexical meaning is the connotational
component which has some stylistic value of the word, the emotive
charge.

Words
contain an element of emotive evaluation as part of the connotational
meaning. The word hovel denotes a small house or cottage and besides
implies that it is a miserable dwelling place, dirty, in bad repair
and unpleasant to live in.

Many
connotations associated with names of animals, birds, insects are
universally understood and used.

e.g.:
calf
(теля)–
a young inexperienced person;

donkey
(осел)–
a foolish person;

monkey
(мавпа)–
a mischievous child;

serpent
(змія)–
a treacherous, malicious person.

But
it should be mentioned here that different peoples structure the
world differently. E.g.: the word bug
has
such figurative meanings in the English language as a crazy, foolish
person and an enthusiast, the word shark
means
a swindler. In the Ukrainian language the words жук
and
акула
do
not have such meanings.
Sometimes
words in different languages can have different meanings. E.g.: the
word gull
means
a fool, a swindler, in the Ukrainian language the word чайка
can be applied to a woman or a girl. The word hawk
possesses a negative meaning in the English language (a deceiver),
the word сокіл
is applied to a handsome and strong young man.

Metals
possess well-established connotations, derived from their individual
qualities. The word gold is associated with great worth. Iron and
steel connote strength, brass — audacity, lead – sluggishness or
weight.

Words
may also contain an element of emotive force as part of the
connotational meaning. This is in fact one of the objective semantic
features proper to some words as linguistic units and forming part of
the connotative value. Such are, for example, stylistically coloured
words synonymous with their neutral counterparts: child
– kid – kiddie; girl – lass – girlie – lassie.

In
interjections this meaning is known to prevail.

We
must naturally distinguish between the emotive element as inherent in
some words forming part of the connotation and the subjective use of
words that are not otherwise emotionally coloured.

In
actual speech expressive nuances may be obtained in different ways.
In various contexts, linguistic or situational, words devoid of any
emotive element may be endowed with a distinct expressive function
depending on the speaker’s attitude towards his interlocutor or to
the thing spoken about.

There
are some other types of lexical meaning. They are abstract and
concrete (hope,
love — window, book);
primary and secondary (wall
of the room — wall of misunderstanding);
bookish and colloquial (young
man — chap, lad).

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Vocabulary is a very important part of language science. She learns words and their meanings. It’s no secret: the richer the language reserve of a person, the more beautiful and imaginative is his speech. Most new words can be gleaned from reading. Often it happens that a new word is found in a book or magazine, in this case a dictionary of lexical meanings will help, and it is also called an explanatory one. The most common — issued by VI Dalem and SI Ozhegov. It is they who are trusted by the modern science of language.

Vocabulary wealth of the Russian language

Language, including Russian, is a phenomenondeveloping. There are new cultures, inventions of science and technology, one civilization replaces another. Of course, all this is reflected in the language. Some words appear, some disappear. It is the vocabulary that reacts vividly to these changes. All this is the wealth of the language. K. Paustovsky gave a very colorful explanation of the totality of words, saying that each surrounding phenomenon or object has a corresponding «good» word, and even not one.

Scientists have proved that for one to understandit is enough for another person to have 4-5 thousand words in stock, but this is not enough for a beautiful, imaginative speech. The Russian language is one of the most beautiful, therefore it is necessary to use its wealth. And the knowledge of individual words with their interpretations is not enough (for this you can simply learn the dictionary of lexical meanings). It is much more important to know related words, their figurative meaning, to understand and use antonyms, to use homonymous units.

Lexical meaning of a word

The word is the most important unit of any language. It is from them that the combinations and subsequently the sentences that people communicate with each other are made up. How to distinguish one word from another? With the help of phonetic design. Also, lexical meaning will help in this. This separates the words. They can denote, for example, objects, people or living beings (table, teacher, wolf); natural phenomena (wind, frost), actions (run, watch), signs (beautiful, pink).

Over the course of centuries, words can change their lexical meaning. Take for example the word garden. Until the twentieth century, this word also denoted the garden. In modern times the same lexical meaning has changed: garden now it’s a fenced place where vegetables are grown.

There are words in which lexical meaning is a certain image that is easy to imagine and portray: tree, cupboard, flower. In others, it is very abstract: love, grammar, music. The lexical meaning of the Russian language is generalized in explanatory dictionaries. There are several ways of interpreting words with the same meaning. For example, the way is the road. Some dictionaries offer a detailed explanation: way — a certain place in the space through which they move.

Why you need to know the lexical meaning

It is very important to know the lexical meaning — this will save you from some spelling mistakes. For example:

• Trying on wedding dresses is a tedious but pleasant process.
• It was always good to reconcile the enemies.

In the first example, the word «try on» is used in the sense of «fitting», so at the root it is necessary to write e. The second sentence deals with peace, so the letter and fundamentally.

Lexical meaning differs not only words, but also morphemes. So, the prefix at— is used when it comes to incompleteness of action, close proximity, approaching or joining; pre— in cases where the highest degree of something (amusing — very funny, but: to push in (attach), sit down (incompleteness), seaside (close to the sea).

There are also roots with different lexical meanings. These are such as —poppy— / —wet-; —equal— / —flat-. If the word means immersion in a liquid, it should be written —poppy— (dunk cookies in milk), another matter is the meaning of «skipping, absorbing liquid», in this case it is necessary to write —wet— (the feet got wet). Root —equal— should be written when it comes to equality (the equation); —flat— is used in the sense of something smooth, smooth (to straighten a bang).

Unambiguous and polysemantic words

The wealth of the words of the Russian language is made up of those units that have several or only one lexical meaning. These are single-valued and polysemantic words. The former have only one interpretation: birch, scalpel, Moscow, pizza. As can be seen from the examples, to the group of single-valuedwords include their own names, newly emerged or foreign words, also narrowly focused. These are all kinds of terms, the names of professions, the names of animals.

Much more in the language of many-valued words, that isthose that have several meanings. As a rule, interpretations unfold around a certain sign or meaning. The fact that the word is multi-valued will be explained by an explanatory dictionary. The values ​​of such tokens are listed below the digits. For an example, let’s look at the word «earth». He has several interpretations:

1. One of the planets of the solar system.
2. Susha is an opposition to the concepts of «water» and «heaven.»
3. The soil is a fertile layer that allows cultivating all kinds of crops.
4. A territory belonging to someone.
5. For some countries — a federative unit.

The direct and portable meaning of a word

All multi-valued words can containdirect or portable interpretation. If the task «Explain the lexical meaning of words» occurs, you need to look at the explanatory dictionary. There next to the value will be indicated whether it is direct or portable. The first is basic; the second was formed on the basis of the basic principle of similarity.

For example, consider the word «hat». The first, its main value is a headdress with fields of small size. On the basis of similarity, a figurative interpretation was formed: the upper part of an object, enlarged and flat, a mushroom or nail head.

It is portable values ​​that give speech a special imagery, on their basis created such trails as a metaphor (hidden comparison: sheaf of hair), metonymy (contiguity of signs: silver plate) and the synecdoche (a part is used instead of the whole: the peasant was actually a slave).

Sometimes there are cases when the language appearsonly a portable value, and to perform a task, such as «Define the lexical meaning of words,» you will need not only an explanatory, but also an etymological dictionary. For example, it was with the adjective «red». Its direct meaning is «beautiful» preserved only in the ancient toponyms («Red Square») or folklore (proverbs).

Homonyms

The meanings of words can be compared,to be contrasted. Studying such relations the program for 5-6 class. The lexical meaning of homonyms, synonyms and antonyms is very interesting. Consider all these kinds of words.

Homonyms are those words that are identical in pronunciation or spelling, but their meaning is completely different. So, words carnations (flowers) and carnations (pointed rods for bonding materials) are equally written and pronounced differently. Another example: spit — type of hairdo, and spit — agricultural implements. They can be homonymous and grammatical. So, in the phrases «flood the stove» and «bake pies». Word bake is a noun in the first case andverb in the second. Do not confuse the concept of homonymy and polysemy. The former does not imply any similarity between concepts, whereas the second is based on the principle of the similarity of a feature.

Synonyms

Synonyms — words with identical lexicalvalue. For example, the words «friend, friend, comrade, shirt-guy» have the value of a close, trusted person. However, synonyms still differ in shades of meaning. Friend, for example, denotes a particularly close person.

Synonyms have different stylistic colors. So, shirt-guy is used in colloquial speech. As a rule, synonyms are words of one part of speech, however they can be stable combinations. Knowledge of the phenomenon of synonymy helps to avoid spelling errors. So, to find out the correct spelling of a particle not with nouns or adjectives, it is necessary to follow the algorithm: «Define the lexical meaning and try to find a synonym without not: the enemy is the enemy«.

Antonyms

Antonyms are words that differ in terms of lexical meaning: friend is an enemy; to go-to run; deep — shallow; up down. As we see, the phenomenon of antonymy is characteristic forany parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. The use of such words gives speech a special expressiveness, helps to convey to the listener or reader especially important thoughts, so very often the opposite in meaning words are found in folk sayings — proverbs. For example, «Softly steklet, but hard to sleep.» In this case, «soft — hard» — antonyms.

As you can see, the Russian language is very diverse,therefore the topic of the interpretation of words has been studied for several years. In addition, she was taken to the main school exams, where, for example, the task «Explain the lexical meaning of words» or «Choose a synonym / antonym / homonym for a word» occurs, etc.

Lexical meaning refers to the sense (or meaning) of a word (or lexeme) as it appears in a dictionary. Also known as semantic meaning, denotative meaning, and central meaning. Contrast with grammatical meaning (or structural meaning).

The branch of linguistics that’s concerned with the study of lexical meaning is called lexical semantics.

Examples and Observations

«There is no necessary congruity between the structural and lexical meanings of a word. We can observe a congruity of these meanings, for example, in the word cat, where both structural and lexical meaning refer to an object. But often the structural and lexical meanings of a word act in different or even diametrically opposite directions. For example, the structural meaning of protection refers to an object, while its lexical meaning refers to a process; and conversely, the structural meaning of (to) cage refers to a process, while its lexical meaning refers to an object.

«The tension between structural and lexical meanings I call the antinomy between grammar and the lexicon…

«The essential aspect of the interrelation between structural and lexical meanings is that lexical meanings constrain grammatical rules. Yet, in stating the laws of grammar we must abstract from the lexical constraints on the rules of grammar of individual languages. The laws of grammar cannot be stated in terms of the lexical constraints on the rules of grammar of individual languages. These requirements are captured in the following law:

Law of Autonomy of Grammar From the Lexicon

The meaning of the structure of a word or a sentence is independent of the meanings of the lexical signs that instantiate this structure.»

(Sebastian Shaumyan, Signs, Mind, and Reality. John Benjamins, 2006)

The Sense Enumeration Model

«The most orthodox model of lexical meaning is the monomorphic, sense enumeration model, according to which all the different possible meanings of a single lexical item are listed in the lexicon as part of the lexical entry for the item. Each sense in the lexical entry for a word is fully specified. On such a view, most words are ambiguous. This account is the simplest conceptually, and it is the standard way dictionaries are put together. From the perspective of a typed theory, this view posits many types for each word, one for each sense. . . .

«While conceptually simple, this approach fails to explain how some senses are intuitively related to each other and some are not. . . . Words or, perhaps more accurately, word occurrences that have closely related senses are logically polysemous, while those that do not receive the label accidentally polysemous or simply homonymous. . . . Bank is a classic example of an accidentally polysemous word . . .. On the other hand, lunch, bill, and city are classified as logically polysemous.» (Nicholas Asher, Lexical Meaning in Context: A Web of Words. Cambridge University Press, 2011)

The Encyclopedic View

«Some, though by no means all, semanticists have proposed that lexical meanings are encyclopedic in character (Haiman 1980; Langacker 1987). The encyclopedic view of lexical meaning is that there is no sharp dividing line between that part of a word’s meaning which is ‘strictly linguistic’ (the dictionary view of lexical meaning) and that part which is ‘nonlinguistic knowledge about the concept.’ While this dividing line is difficult to maintain, it is clear that some semantic properties are more central to a word’s meaning than others, particularly those properties that apply to (almost) all and only the instances of the kind, which are intrinsic to the kind, and which are conventional knowledge of (almost) all of the speech community (Langacker 1987: 158-161).» (William Croft, «Lexical and Grammatical Meaning.» Morphologie / Morphology, ed. by Geert Booij et al.  Walter de Gruyter, 2000)

The Lighter Side of Lexical Meaning

Special Agent Seeley Booth: I’m glad that you apologized to the Canadian. I’m proud of you, Bones.

Dr. Temperance «Bones» Brennan: I didn’t apologize.

Special Agent Seeley Booth: I thought . . ..

Dr. Temperance «Bones» Brennan: The word «apology» derives from the Ancient Greek «apologia,» which means «a speech in defense.» When I defended what I said to him, you told me that wasn’t a real apology.

Special Agent Seeley Booth: Why don’t you think of a word that means you feel bad for making someone else feel bad?

Dr. Temperance «Bones» Brennan: Contrite.

Special Agent Seeley Booth: Ah!

Dr. Temperance «Bones» Brennan: From the Latin «contritus» meaning «crushed by a sense of sin.»

Special Agent Seeley Booth: There. That’s it. Contrite. Okay, I’m happy that you contrited to the Canadian.

(David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel in «The Feet on the Beach.» Bones, 2011)