Metonymy is transference of a name of one object to another object. Metonymic transference of names is based upon the principle of conti­guity of the two objects.

Assigned features. As a rule, metonymy is expressed by nouns, less fre­quently - by substantivized numerals. That is why the syntactic functions and positions of metonymic words are those of the subject, object and predicative.

Classification. Metonymy may be lexical and contextual (genuine). Lexical metonymyis a source of creating new words or new meanings: table's leg, teapots nose, a hand (instead of a worker), the press (instead of people writing for newspapers), grave (instead of death), the cradle (instead of infancy), etc. Such metonymic meanings are registered in dictio naries. It is obvious that lexical metonymy is devoid of stylistic information. Contextual metonymyis the result of unexpected substitution of one word for another in speech. It is fresh and expressive:

This pair of whiskers is a convinced scoundrel. Communicative functions. Stylistic metonymy builds up imagery, points out

this or another feature of the object described, and makes speech eco­nomical. More examples:

The sword is the worst argument in a situation like that.

The other voice shook his head and went away.

The messenger was followed by a pair of heavy boots.

The fish swallowed her death and the float went down.

I wish you had Gary's ears and Jack's eves.

Linda gave her heart to the grocer's young man.

Окуляри сьогодні були дуже прискіпливі: на зборах дивилися

суворо як на молодий ентузіазм, так і на обачливу старість.

Язик до Києва доведе.

Нам треба більше робочих рук.

Чого ти, чуєш, розсівся перед моїми літами, перед моїм смутком

і сивиною?

А повз неї тупали тисячі ніг, дихали тисячі грудей, ревіли баси і

танцювали, як божевільні, дзвони.

> metonymy

• Metonymy can be seen as a specific kind of symbolism by which the most essential component of the subject is abstracted to represent it. This component acts as a single symbol for something larger and usually more complex.

• For instance, a crown is the most essential material component of the trappings of royalty, and so it serves well in representing the whole sys­tem of monarchy.

• Similarly, the stage is a material component of acting as a profession. This too serves to represent symbolically something abstract and dynamic.

• The 'cloth' symbolises the religious profession, and the 'bar' represents the legal profession. Both these items are essential material objects and are used to refer to the abstract concept of a profession.

• In a statement such as 'Shakespeare depicts monarchs as human' the name is actually symbolising the total collection of his works. This form of metonymy is useful as a very graphic kind of shorthand.

• This pragmatic explanation could also apply to the example of 'Whitehall announced today ...', although we could ascribe more political and even ulterior functions to this usage. [Remember, 'Whitehall' represent the civil service in the UK.]

• To refer to Whitehall as having issued a statement is to generalise the source of the communication. This may be in the political interest of the Establishment. It is a form of social control to promote an image of a corporate mass of civil servants, rather than suggesting that one per­son or even a small hierarchical group makes significant and powerful

decisions.

• Whitehall as a material location stands for something abstract, in this
case an institution. This symbolic use depersonalises the source of the
statement, perhaps thereby giving it more authority.

• This political interpretation is merely speculation, but the mechanical anal­ysis of metonymy as a symbolic device stands on firmer ground.

• [Pedants who collect terms enjoy distinguishing metonymy from synech-doche, which is its figurative bedfellow.]

25.Polysemy (source, types of meaning).

Polysemy is inherent in the very nature of words and concepts as every object and every notion has many features and a concept reflected in a word always contains a generalisation of several traits of the object. Some of these traits or components of meaning are common with other objects. Hence the possibility of using the same name in secondary nomination for objects possessing common features which are sometimes only implied in the original meaning. A word when acquiring new meaning or meanings may also retain, and most often retains the previous meaning.

E. g. birth — 1) the act or time of being born, 2) an origin or beginning, 3) descent, family.

The classification of meanings within the semantic structure of one polysemantic word will be discussed in § 3.4.

If the communicative value of a word contains latent possibilities realised not in this particular variant but able to create new derived meanings or words we call that implicational.¹ The word bomb,

for example, implies great power, hence the new colloquial meanings ‘great success’ and ‘great failure’, the latter being an American slang expression.

The different variants of a polysemantic word form a semantic whole due to the proximity of the referents they name and the notions they express. The formation of new meanings is often based on the potential or implicational meaning. The transitive verb drive, for instance, means ‘to force to move before one’ and hence, more generally, ‘to cause an animal, a person or a thing work or move in some direction’, and more specifically ‘to direct a course of a vehicle or the animal which draws it, or a railway train, etc.’, hence ‘to convey in a vehicle’ and the intransitive verb: ‘to go in a vehicle’. There are also many other variants but we shall mention only one more, namely — the figurative — ‘to mean’, as in: “What can he be driving at?” (Foote)

All these different meanings can be explained one with the help of one of the others.

The typical patterns according to which different meanings are united in one polysemantic word often depend upon grammatical meanings and grammatical categories characteristic of the part of speech to which they belong.

Depending upon the part of speech to which the word belongs all its possible meanings become connected with a definite group of grammatical meanings, and the latter influence the semantic structure of the word so much that every part of speech possesses semantic peculiarities of its own.

26.Homonyms (definition, sources, classification).

Two or more words identical in sound and spelling but different in meaning, distribution and (in many cases) origin are called homonyms. The term is derived from Greek homonymous (homos ‘the same'

and onoma ‘name’) and thus expresses very well the sameness of name combined with the difference in meaning.

There is an obvious difference between the meanings of the symbol fast in such combinations as run fast ‘quickly’ and stand fast ‘firmly’. The difference is even more pronounced if we observe cases where fast is a noun or a verb as in the following proverbs: A clean fast is better than a dirty breakfast; Who feasts till he is sick, must fast till he is well. Fast as an isolated word, therefore, may be regarded as a variable that can assume several different values depending on the conditions of usage, or, in other words, distribution. All the possible values of each linguistic sign are listed in dictionaries. It is the duty of lexicographers to define the boundaries of each word, i.e. to differentiate homonyms and to unite variants deciding in each case whether the different meanings belong to the same polysemantic word or whether there are grounds to treat them as two or more separate words identical in form. In speech, however, as a rule only one of all the possible values is determined by the context, so that no ambiguity may normally arise. There is no danger, for instance, that the listener would wish to substitute the meaning'quick’ into the sentence: It is absurd to have hard and fast rules about anything (Wilde), or think that fast rules here are ‘rules of diet’. Combinations when two or more meanings are possible are either deliberate puns, or result from carelessness. Both meanings of liver, i.e. ‘a living person’ and ‘the organ that secretes bile’ are, for instance, intentionally present in the following play upon words: “Is life worth living?” “It depends upon the liver.” Сf.: “What do you do with the fruit?” “We eat what we can, and what we can’t eat we can.”

Very seldom can ambiguity of this kind interfere with understanding. The following example is unambiguous, although the words back and part have several homonyms, and maid and heart are polysemantic:

Maid of Athens, ere we part,

Give, oh give me back my heart (Byron).

Homonymy exists in many languages, but in English it is particularly frequent, especially among monosyllabic words. In the list of 2540 homonyms given in the “Oxford English Dictionary” 89% are monosyllabic words and only 9.1 % are words of two syllables. From the viewpoint of their morphological structure, they are mostly one-morpheme words.

Classification of Homonyms.The most widely accepted classification is that recognising homonyms proper, homophones and homographs. Homonyms proper are words identical in pronunciation and spelling, like fast and liver above. Other examples are: back n ‘part of the body’ : : back adv ‘away from the front’ : : back v ‘go back’; ball n ‘a round object used in games’ : : ball n ‘a gathering of people for dancing’; bark n ‘the noise made by a dog’ : : bark v ‘to utter sharp explosive cries’ : : bark n ‘the skin of a tree’ : : bark n ‘a sailing ship’; base n ‘bottom’ : : base v ‘build or place upon’ : : base a ‘mean’; bay n ‘part of the sea or lake filling wide-mouth opening of land’ : : bay n ‘recess in a house or a room’ : : bay v ‘bark’ : : bay n ‘the European laurel’. The important point is that homonyms are distinct words: not different meanings within one word.

Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning: air : : heir; arms : : alms; buy : : by; him : : hymn; knight : : night; not: : knot; or: : oar; piece : : peace; rain: : reign; scent: : cent; steel : : steal; storey : : story; write : : right and many others.

In the sentence The play-wright on my right thinks it right that some conventional rite should symbolise the right of every man to write as he pleases the sound complex [rait] is a noun, an adjective, an adverb and a verb, has four different spellings and six different meanings. The difference may be confined to the use of a capital letter as in bill and Bill, in the following example: “How much is my milk bill?¹¹ “Excuse me, Madam, but my name is John.¹¹ On the other hand, whole sentences may be homophonic: The sons raise meat : : The sun’s rays meet. To understand these one needs a wider context. If you hear the second in the course of a lecture in optics, you will understand it without thinking of the possibility of the first.

Homographs аrе words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling: bow [bou] : : bow [bau]; lead [li:d] : : lead [led]; row [rou] : : row [rau]; sewer [’souэ] : : sewer [sjuэ]; tear [tiэ] : : tear [tea]; wind [wind] : : wind [waind] and many more.

It has been often argued that homographs constitute a phenomenon that should be kept apart from homonymy as the object of linguistics is sound language. This viewpoint can hardly be accepted. Because of the effects of education and culture written English is a generalised national form of expression. An average speaker does not separate the written and oral form. On the contrary he is more likely to analyse the words in terms of letters than in terms of phonemes with which he is less familiar. That is why a linguist must take into consideration both the spelling and the pronunciation of words when analysing cases of identity of form and diversity of content.

Various types of classification for homonyms proper have been suggested.

A comprehensive system may be worked out if we are guided by the theory of oppositions and in classifying the homonyms take into consideration the difference or sameness in their lexical and grammatical meaning, paradigm and basic form. For the sake of completeness we shall consider this problem in terms of the same mapping technique used for the elements of vocabulary system connected with the word sound.

Sources of homonymy

· divergent development (there was one word and then two completely different words developed)

one and the same word with 2 meanings- their diversion

once ME flour 2 meanings – flour and flower

· convergent is prevailing because of too many borrowings

27.Synonyms. Euphemisms. Antonyms.

Taking up similarity of meaning and contrasts of phonetic shape, we observe that every language has in its vocabulary a variety of words, kindred in meaning but distinct in morphemic composition, phonemic shape and usage, ensuring the expression of most delicate shades of thought, feeling and imagination. The more developed the language, the richer the diversity and therefore the greater the possibilities of lexical choice enhancing the effectiveness and precision of speech.

Thus, slay is the synonym of kill but it is elevated and more expressive involving cruelty and violence. The way synonyms function may be seen from the following example: Already in this half-hour of bombardment hundreds upon hundreds of men would have been violently slain, smashed, torn, gouged, crushed, mutilated (Aldington).

The synonymous words smash and crush are semantically very close, they combine to give a forceful representation of the atrocities of war. Even this preliminary example makes it obvious that the still very common definitions of synonyms as words of the same language having the same meaning or as different words that stand for the same notion are by no means accurate and even in a way misleading. By the very nature of language every word has its own history, its own peculiar motivation, its own typical contexts. And besides there is always some hidden possibility of different connotation and feeling in each of them. Moreover, words of the same meaning would be useless for communication: they would encumber the language, not enrich it. If two words exactly coincide in meaning and use, the natural tendency is for one of them to change its meaning or drop out of the language.

Thus, synonyms are words only similar but not identical in meaning. This definition is correct but vague. E. g. horse and animal are also semantically similar but not synonymous. A more precise linguistic definition should be based on a workable notion of the semantic structure of the word and of the complex nature of every separate meaning in a polysemantic word. Each separate lexical meaning of a word has been described in Chapter 3 as consisting of a denotational component identifying the notion or the object and reflecting the essential features of the notion named, shades of meaning reflecting its secondary features, additional connotations resulting from typical contexts in which the word is used, its emotional component and stylistic colouring. Connotations are not necessarily present in every word. The basis of a synonymic opposition is formed by the first of the above named components, i.e. the denotational component. It will be remembered that the term opposition means the relationship of partial difference between two partially similar elements of a language. A common denotational component forms the basis of the opposition in synonymic group. All the other components can vary and thus form the distinctive features of the synonymic oppositions.

Synonyms can therefore be defined in terms of linguistics as two or more words of the same language, belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable, at least in some contexts without any considerable alteration in denotational meaning, but differing in morphemic composition, phonemic shape, shades of meaning, connotations, style, valency and idiomatic use. Additional characteristics of style, emotional colouring and valency peculiar to one of the elements in a synonymic group may be absent in one or all of the others.

The definition is of necessity very bulky and needs some commenting upon.

To have something tangible to work upon it is convenient to compare some synonyms within their group, so as to make obvious the reasons for the definition. The verbs experience, undergo, sustain and suffer, for example, come together, because all four render the notion of experiencing something. The verb and the noun experience indicate actual living through something and coming to know it first-hand rather than from hearsay. Undergo applies chiefly to what someone or something bears or is subjected to, as in to undergo an operation, to undergo changes. A source of synonymy also well worthy of note is the so-called euphemism in which by a shift of meaning a word of more or less ‘pleasant or at least inoffensive connotation becomes synonymous to one that is harsh, obscene, indelicate or otherwise unpleasant.¹ The euphemistic expression merry fully coincides in denotation with the word drunk it substitutes, but the connotations of the latter fade out and so the utterance on the whole is milder, less offensive. The effect is achieved, because the periphrastic expression is not so harsh, sometimes jocular and usually motivated according to some secondary feature of the notion: naked : : in one’s birthday suit] pregnant : : in the family way. Very often a learned word which sounds less familiar is therefore less offensive, as in drunkenness : : intoxication; sweat : : perspiration.

Euphemisms can also be treated within the synchronic approach, because both expressions, the euphemistic and the direct one, co-exist in the language and form a synonymic opposition. Not only English but other modern languages as well have a definite set of notions attracting euphemistic circumlocutions. These are notions of death, madness, stupidity, drunkenness, certain physiological processes, crimes and so on. For example: die : : be no more : : be gone : : lose one’s life : : breathe one’s last : : join the silent majority : : go the way of alt flesh : : pass away : : be gathered to one’s fathers.

A prominent source of synonymic attraction is still furnished by interjections and swearing addressed to God. To make use of God’s name is considered sinful by the Church and yet the word, being expressive, formed the basis of many interjections. Later the word God was substituted by the phonetically similar word goodness: For goodness sake\ Goodness gracious] Goodness knows! Cf. By Jovel Good Lord! By Gum! As in:

His father made a fearful row.

He said: “By Gum, you’ve done it now.” (Belloc)

A certain similarity can be observed in the many names for the devil (deuce, Old Nick). The point may be illustrated by an example from Burns’s “Address to the Devil":

О thou! Whatever title suit thee,

Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie ...

Euphemisms always tend to be a source of new synonymic formations, because after a short period of use the new term becomes so closely connected with the notion that it turns into a word as obnoxious as the earlier synonym.

Antonyms may be defined as two or more words of the same language belonging to the same part of speech and to the same semantic field, identical in style and nearly identical in distribution, associated and often used together so that their denotative meanings render contradictory or contrary notions.

Contradictory notions are mutually opposed and denying one another, e. g. alive means ‘not dead’ and impatient means ‘not patient’. Contrary notions are also mutually opposed but they are gradable, e. g. old and young are the most distant elements of a series like: old : : middle-aged : : young, while hot and cold form a series with the intermediate cool and warm, which, as F.R. Palmer points out, form a pair of antonyms themselves. The distinction between the two types is not absolute, as one can say that one is more dead than alive, and thus make these adjectives gradable.

Another classification of antonyms is based on a morphological approach: root words form absolute antonyms (right : : wrong), the presence of negative affixes creates derivational antonyms (happy : : unhappy).

The juxtaposition of antonyms in a literary text emphasises some contrast and creates emotional tension as in the following lines from “Romeo and Juliet” (Act I, Scene V):

My only love sprang from my only hate\ Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

One of the features enhancing the pathetic expressiveness of these lines is contrast based on such pairs as love : : hate; early : : late; unknown : : known. The opposition is obvious: each component of these pairs means the opposite of the other. The pairs may be termed antonymic pairs.

Antonyms have traditionally been defined as words of opposite meaning. This definition, however, is not sufficiently accurate, as it only shifts the problem to the question of what words may be regarded as words of opposite meaning, so we shall keep to the definition given at the beginning of the present paragraph.

The important question of criteria received a new and rigorously linguistic treatment in V.N. Komissarov’s work. Keeping to the time-honoured classification of antonyms into absolute or root antonyms (love : : hate) and derivational antonyms, V.N. Komissarov breaks new ground by his contextual treatment of the problem. Two words, according to him, shall be considered antonymous if they are regularly contrasted in actual speech, that is if the contrast in their meanings is proved by definite types of contextual co-occurrence.

Absolute antonyms, then, are words regularly contrasted as homogenous sentence members connected by copulative, disjunctive or adversative conjunctions, or identically used in parallel constructions, in certain typical contexts.

In the examples given below we shall denote the first of the antonyms — A, the second — B, and the words they serve to qualify — Xand Y, respectively.

28.Archaisms. Neologisms.

E is facing now an neological boom. The great influx of new words has boosred a new branch of li-cs-NEOLOGY

It’s a science concerned with investigation and discription of new words

THE PROBLEMS OF NEOLOGY

· ways of recognition of new words and new meanings

· accounting for the influx of new voc-ry items

· patterns after which the new words are built

· lexicographical study(record of new words in dictionaries)

· acceptance of neologisms in the society

Some linguists think that all innovations corrupt and must be omitted. According to the classical rhetorics, neologisms are forbidden in speech, it was supposed to be bad manner to use ne-ms. Not purists, modern li-ts don’t think that every enrichment is an advantage for the l-ge(sometimes neolo-ms can be superfluous) but unlike French purists, Russian, German and American lin-sts think it very important to study new enrichments to voc-ry from different l-ges and by different methods.

There are 3 groups of neologisms:

· neologism proper(new form+new meaning) * not absolutely new form but still

For e: Nylon- New York in London

acryl

interferon

· semantic neologisms(change of meaning while the form is old)(the changes are based on the metophorical and metonymical transfers, narrowing or widening of denotative meaning; pejoration or amelioration of connotational meaning; it’s a metaphor accompanied by pejoration that underlines most of the semantic changes )

· transnomination (new form, old meaning)

new forms are combined with meanings expressed in the l-ge already; so we may speak about more expressive, vivid synonyms to the existing ones

for e:

to be burnt-out (exhausted//run-out) – very strong form

to bail out- to help smb