Semasiology. Semantic Structure of Words. Denotational and Connotational Meaning

Lecture 5 Semasiology

• Irina S.Kirichenko
• Associate Professor

TWO PERSPECTIVES ON THE LEXICON

• Semasiological approach: one departs from a word and asks what it means, or what concepts the word refers to.
• word → meaning
• Aim: to identify the concepts that the linguistic form refers to.

• The opposite approach is onomasiological: one departs from a concept referring to an object, a quality, an activity etc. and asks for its linguistic expressions.
• concept → form
• Aim: to find the linguistic forms (lexical units) that can stand for a given concept.

SEMASIOLOGY AND ONOMASIOLOGY

• Semasiology, syn. semiology (from the Greek semasia (sēma “sign”, semantionos “signification”). Semasiology (Gr. sēmasia ‘signification, meaning’ and lógos ‘study’) is a sundiscipline of lexical semantics concerned with the studies of the word meaning in the direction: ‘from the sound form – to its meaning (or meanings)’.

SEMASIOLOGY AND ONOMASIOLOGY

• Onomasiology (from Gr. onoma ‘name’ and logos ‘study of’); “the study of designations”. Onomasiology (Gr. ònomasía ‘name, designation’, logos ‘study’) is a subdiscipline of lexical semantics that studies the word meaning in the direction ‘from the concept – to a sound form (or forms)’. Thesauruses are compiled according to onomasiological principles.
• Onomasiological approach underlines theory of nomination, which aims to show how objects and notions receive their names and what features are chosen to represent them.

MODELS OF MEANING:

1. Saussure’s “egg”
2. signified (semantic side) / concept
3. signifier (formal side) / sound image
4. the linguistic sign is binary
5. the connection between signified and signifier is arbitrary
6. extralinguistic objects denoted by linguistic signs are not included
7. linguistic signs are abstracted from their functions and users

2. Semantic Triangle (C.K.Ogden and I.A.Richards in The Meaning of Meaning (1923) Reference Symbol Referent

Thought or Reference (Ogden, Richards) / Concept (Pierce) / Interpretant A small domesticated carnivorous mammal kept as a pet and existing in a variety of breeds Symbol (Ogden, Richards) / Referent (Ogden, Richards) / Sound-form / Sign (Pierce) Object (Pierce)/Phenomenon CAT [ kæt]

3. “Organon” (instrumental) model (Plato; Bühler in Linguistic Theory (1934); later Jakobson)

APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF MEANING

• REFERENTIAL approach seeks to formulate the essence of meaning by establishing the interdependence between words and the things or concepts they denote:
• Meaning is the relation between the object or phenomenon named and the name itself
• The sound-form & the referent are connected indirectly:
• More than one word for the same referent, e.g. cat – mouser, pet, animal, creature, this, mine.
• The same sound-form can refer to different objects, e.g. seal ‘animal’ and seal ‘stamp’; book in English and бук in Ukr.
• Changes in the sound-form do not necessarily affect its meaning: OEn heorte – ModEn heart.

APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF MEANING

• Strong point: an attempt to link the notion of meaning with the process of naming objects or phenomena of objective reality.
• Week points:
• The reference of words outside their context may be unclear: a particular referent vs. a class of referents
• The referential definition does not consider connotations: That’s very clever.
• One word may denote different objects & phenomena (homonymy and polysemy); or one & the same object may be denoted by different words (synonymy).

• The FUNCTIONAL APPROACH maintains that the meaning of a linguistic unit may be studied only through its relation to other linguistic-units and not through its relation to either concept or referent.
• In the functional approach
• semantic studies are confined to the analysis of the difference or sameness of meaning;
• meaning is understood essentially as the function of the use of linguistic units. As a matter of fact, this line of semantic investigation is the primary concern, implied or expressed, of all structural linguists.

SEMANTIC STRUCTURE OF WORDS

• TYPES OF MEANING:
• Direct meaning (primary meaning) is the meaning which characterises the referent without the help of a context, in isolation.
• Indirect meaning (figurative / secondary / derived meaning) is the meaning formed from the direct meaning according to the models of semantic derivation; it is realised only in definite contexts.
• Main meaning possesses the highest frequency at the present stage of vocabulary development.

• Etymological meaning is the earliest known meaning, e.g. urchin, n. ‘a mischievous or naughty child, esp. a boy’ < ‘a hedgehog’.
• Archaic meaning is the meaning superseded at present by a newer