WORD-MEANING. MEANING AND MOTIVATION. I.Answer these questions
I.Answer these questions.
1) What is “semaseology”?
2) Why is the term “semantics” ambiguous?
3) Why is meaning one of the most controversial terms in linguistics?
4) How does Prof. Smirnitsky define meaning?
5) What are the main approaches to the study of meaning? What are their advantages and disadvantages?
6) What is “the semiotic triangle”? What does it show?
II.What does the diagram below prove? Explain your answer.
MAN
GUY
 |
CHAP
FELLOW
FATHER
BOSS
HE
III.True or false? Correct the wrong statements.
1) Meaning is the component of the word through which a concept is communicated.
2) Meanings are subjective as they exist in the minds of individuals.
3) Meaning enables the word to name real-world objects.
4) Meaning is an inherent property of the word and thus it is a linguistic category.
5) Meaning is a certain kind of information or knowledge of real-world objects and phenomena.
6) Meaning enables words to be used in communication.
7) Word meaning is closely connected but not identical with either the sound-form or the referent.
IV.Could you define these terms?
denotation, connotation, emotive charge, evaluation, stylistic reference, emotive implications.
V.Identify the components of the meaning of the following words. In which word is the content primarily evaluative or primarily referential?
dog, fascist, typewriter; wife-spouse-consort; child-brat-urchin;
stubborn-mulish; horse-steed
VI.There are a lot of words whose content is largely emotive. Emotion or evaluation can be a major part of the word’s meaning, if not the whole of it,
e.g. marvellous, monstrous, glorious.
Could you give 3 more examples of “emotive language”?
Use the words in context,
e.g. You look fabulous! Horrendous prices!
Why are such words called “loaded language”?
VII.Can you match the colours with their connotations in English? Are any of these the same in Russian?
1. blue purity
2. green evil
3. yellow miserable
4. red inexperienced
5. white danger
6. black cowardly
VIII.What personal association do the words below have for you? What are their connotations for English speakers in general?
shark, scar, diamond.
IX.What is the stylistic reference of the words in italics?
1) Subsequently, three people were arrested.
2) Give me that thingy there, yea, that bottle opener.
3) I saw him conversing with a woman in a red car.
How can you make these sentences more formal/informal?
X.Do you agree with the following statement? Why or why not?
"The relationship between the form of the word and its meaning is conventional and arbitrary".
XI.Are these words motivated? If they are, state the type of motivation and its degree,
ding-dong, dragonfly, handbag, to spam, gooseberry, rat-a-tat-tat, antiglobalism, spanner, flame “an angry email”, bluebottle, porter, jungle “a garden or other places with a lot of plants which are not under control”, phonaethesia.
XII.Find the odd-one-out. Explain your decision.
1) butterfly, buttercup, butterknife, butter-fingers;
2) buzz, swish, crunch, splash, bang, slide;
3) wrapper, feeder, ginger, sleeper, printer;
4) a sweet smile, a sweet face, a sweet apple, a sweet voice.
CHANGE OF MEANING
I.What are the three aspects of semantic change?
II.1) What causes the development of new meaning? Give examples.
2) State the cause of the semantic change:
microwave, n., mobile, n., consumer durables, portable, n.
III.Could you explain/define the following terms?
Transference, figurative extension, metaphor, metonymy, broadening/generalization, narrowing/specialization, pejoration/degeneration of meaning, melioration/elevation of meaning.
IV.Metaphor or metonymy? Explain your answer.
1. the foot of the mountain - the foot of the bed
the legs of the trousers - the legs of a chair
the arms of an arm-chair - the arms of a coat
the hour hand - factory hands
in the heart of English countryside - to have a kind heart
heads of government - the head of a nail
eyes of a potato - a good eye for detail
2. a Romeo, a diesel, a Winchester, a limerick, a Balaclava, jersey, Jekyll and Hyde, a Monte Christo, Smith and Wesson, mackintosh
V.Find metaphors and say what they are based on.
1. The book throws a great deal of light on the history of the period.
2. Try to keep cool even if he argues with you.
3. Police tried to control the flow of the fans as they left the concert.
4. The city at night is a jungle.
VI.Can you identify metonymy in the following sentences? State the type of logical associations it is based on.
1. After the death of his wife he took to the bottle.
2. She’s written a number of things for the stage.
3. The whole stadium rose to cheer/greet the team.
4. Some important papers are missing from the file.
VII.Analyze the semantic change.
1. pigeon "young bird" - "young dove" - "all dove-like birds";
2. brand "branding-iron" - "permanent mark deliberately made by hot iron" - "trade mark";
3. fowl "bird" - "farmyard bird, for ex. a chicken or a duck";
4. crafty "strong" - "wily";
5. cunning "knowledgeable" - "sly";
6. pretty "capricious" - "clever" - "good-looking";
7. gossip "godfather or godmother" - "a close friend" - "a woman friend invited to be present at a birth" - "someone who enjoys talking about other people";
8. digital "using digits to represent quantities" - "of computers and computerization".
VIII.When JamesII first saw St. Paul’s Cathedral he called it amusing, awful and artificial.
What did he mean? Can you analyze the semantic change the words have undergone since that time?
POLYSEMY
I.Answer the following questions.
1) What is polysemy?
2) Are most English words polysemantic? If so, why?
3) What is the semantic structure of a word?
4) How are separate meanings of a polysemantic word related?
5) How can polysemy be viewed synchronically and diachronically? What are the main sources of polysemy?
6) What is the national character of a semantic structure?
What are specific characteristics of the semantic structures of English polysemantic words?
7) What are the relations between the semantic structures of English and Russian correlated words?
II.Choose a polysemantic word. Prove that its meanings are related one to another.
III.Could you define these terms?
The primary meaning, a secondary meaning, a derived meaning, the central (basic) meaning, a minor meaning, a direct meaning, a figurative (transferred meaning), a free meaning, a bound meaning, a nominative meaning, an evaluative meaning.
IV.How can we identify the central meaning? What criteria can be used? Are they all equally important and reliable?
V.Analyze the semantic structure of the following words identifying the types of their meanings:
mouse, glass, flame, green, meat, fair (a)
VI.The underlined words in the sentences below are polysemantic. Characterize their meaning in the contexts of these sentences.
1) What does polysemy mean?
2) Make a note of any special register characteristics that a word has.
3) We had a light lunch.
4) The judge increased the sentence to life imprisonment.
5) Where does the stress go on the noun "phonographer".
6) There are a lot of points to think about when considering the meaning of words.
VII.Compare the semantic structures of green and зеленый, glass and стекло , meat and мясо, explain the differences.
VIII. A lot of nouns in English have both uncountable and countable meanings. Make sure you can explain the difference:
drink/a drink,
cloth/a cloth,
fish/a fish,
work/a work,
chocolate/a chocolate,
pepper/a pepper,
iron/an iron,
rubber/a rubber.
Give five more nouns with countable and uncountable meanings.
6. WORD MEANING AND CONTEX
I.Explain how you understand the following statements. How far would you agree or disagree with them?
1) Meaning is the use of language in context.
2) "You shall know a word by the company it keeps".(J. R. Firth)
3) A word depends in the realization of its meaning on its syntagmatics, i.e. collocability.
4) Meanings are determined both colligationally and collocationally.
II.Complete these definitions.
1) Meanings determined by lexical context are …
2) The meaning that the word has in isolation is …
Give examples to illustrate these types of meaning.
III.Fill in the diagram TYPES OF CONTEXT.
IV.What meanings of these polysemantic words are realized in the given context?
Explain your answer.
1. HEAVY Be careful! That box is rather heavy.
The traffic is really heavy on the bypass.
2. HANDY The arrangement was handy for both of us.
The house was near Drury Lane, very handy for the theatre.
3. MIX When the rice is cooked, mix in all the other ingredients.
She mixes happily with the other children.
V.Analyze the type of context that determines the meaning of the underlined words.
1) He asked her a question.-I’ve asked some friends for dinner.-The job asks a great deal of me.
2) You’ll answer me.-You’ll answer to me.
3) He propped his elbows upon a greasy counter.-The roads are greasy with rain.-I mistrust Dave, he’s greasy.
4) She wants to go to Germany.- My hair wants cutting.
5) A good breakfast will set you up for the day.- She set up a boarding house in Liverpool.
VI.Non-linguistic context is often referred to as situation.
1) In what situation can you hear the following sentence? What meanings of the noun report is realized in these situations?
I didn’t hear the report.
2) Suggest speech situations for the nouns disk, record. How do these situations determine their meaning?
VII.Meaning may be affected by context, e.g. a word may acquire emotive implications or evaluative connotations.
An advertisement for an Indian firm of builders took the slogan:
You’ve tried the cowboys. Now try the Indians.
What meaning has the word cowboy acquired in such expression as cowboybuilders or cowboy plumbers? What connotation does it have? What associations does the word "Indians" have for the speakers of the English language? What evaluative connotation has it acquired in the slogan? Explain why.
VIII.What is the difference between “meaning” and “use”, i.e. systemic, "dictionary" meaning and " functional", "occasional" meaning? How do words acquire "extended" meanings? Give examples to illustrate your explanation.
What is the “occasional” meaning of the word dull in the following sentence? Explain your answer.
I don’t like mutton, it’s so dull.
HOMONYMY
I.Answer the following questions.
1) What are homonyms? Why is English so rich in homonyms?
2) A. What are the main sources of homonymy?
Illustrate your answer with examples.
B. Could you explain the origin of these homonyms?
night – knight,
a football fan – an electric fan,
need – knead,
food ads – to add,
compound "an enclosure" – compound "a mixture of elements",
cage – to cage.
II.How are homonyms classified?
1) Find homonyms proper for the following words:
band "a company of musicians",
to bore "make a long round hole, esp. with a pointed tool which is turned round",
to hail "greet, salute",
draw "something that attracts attention",
fall "act of falling".
2) Find homophones for the following words, explain their meanings:
weather, dye, peace, sight, steel, hare, coarse.
3) Find homographs of the following words and define their meanings, transcribe both homonyms:
wind "air in motion",
to bow "to bend the head or body",
to tear "pull apart by force",
to desert "go away from a person or place",
row "a number of persons or things in a line".
4) Classify the following homonyms:
A.We eat what we can; what we can't we can;
B.A mean person – to mean business;
C.To bark a tree – to bark loudly at a stranger;
D.To write letters – to turn to the right – a solemn rite – political rights.
III.Can you explain these jokes?
1) Which bank has no money? – The bank of the river.
2) Which is the strongest day of the week? – Sunday, because all the others are week-days.
IV. 1) What is the essential difference between homonymy and polysemy? What do
they have in common?
2) What criteria are used to distinguish between polysemy and homonymy? Are they reliable? Why or why not?
3) Do we deal here with polysemy or homonymy? How many words (one, two or three) do we have below? Explain your answer.
custom¹ "something done becaus it is traditional";
custom² "(fml) the practice of regularly using a particular shop or business";
custom³ "(pl) the place where luggage is checked for illegal drugs, guns, etc. when you enter a country".
4) The noun custom has only one entry in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and three entries in the Cambridge International Dictionary of English. How would you explain it?
V.Polysemy or homonymy?
1) They live in a third-floor flat.
The countryside here is terribly flat and boring.
To join the Fitness Club you pay a flat fee of £ 500.
He erected the tent in 5 minutes flat.
2) He struck a match and looked around the cave.
The teenage cooks in the competition were a match for any of the adults.
Their marriage has been called a match made in heaven.
3) It's only fair that we should share the housework.
The Frankfurt Book Fair is an important event for most publishers.
They marched on through fair weather or foul.
His marks in the final exams were fair to disappointing.
I've got fair eyelashes that look awful without mascara.
4) The capital of the country is Vienna.
I need a lot of capital to set up a private practice.
5) There are 26 letters in the alphabet.
He writes her letters every week-end.
6) The MS dates back to the 16th century.
Jane has been dating Peter for a year now.
They've got a date next Sunday.
It's a date palm, isn't it?
They agreed to discuss the contract at a later date.
The document was dated June 16, 2003.