Polysemy. Semantic Structure of the Word. Context

Words are able to have more than one meaning, the structure of such words is viewed in terms of polysemy. Polysemy (from Greek polus – ‘many’ and sema – ‘meaning’) means a plurality, diversity of meanings, the existence within one word of several connected meanings as the result of the development of its original meaning. The bulk of English words are polysemantic ones, e.g. horse 1. an animal …7. (slang) heroine. For the first 1,000 of the most frequent words registered in the New English Dictionary 25,000 meanings are numbered. Monosemantic words are few in number, they are mostly terms: liquidity, adhocracy, benchmarking.

Polysemy is more characteristic for English as compared with Russian, due to fixed stress and reduction of glammatical suffixes, as a result, the predominance of root words. For example, the word man has more than 10 meanings (See Table 4):

Table 4.

1) a human being straight man, grown man; 2) a member of a profession maintenance man, man of law; 3) an adult male human being a man child; 4) an courageous or virile adult male human being be a man, a man of character; 5) human beings collectively, mankind the development of man; 6) servant, or employee Hire a man to take care of the garden; 7) a husband, boyfriend, etc. man and wife; 8) a member of the armed forces officers and men; 9) a vassal of a feudal lord the man of the Duke of Normans; 10) a movable piece in chess, draughts, etc.

1) человек straight man, grown man; 2) представитель к.-л. профессии maintenance man, man of law; 3) мужчина a man child; 4) мужественный человек be a man, aman of character; 5) человечество the development of man; 6) слуга, рабочий Hire a man to take care of the garden; 7) муж man and wife; 8) солдат, рядовой officers and men; 9) вассал the man of the Duke of Normans; 10) пешка, шашка, кость …

The system of meanings ofany polysemantic word develops gradually, mostly over the centuries. These complicated processes of polysemy development involve both the appearance of the new meanings and the loss of old ones. Yet, the general tenden­cy with the English vocabulary at the modern stage of its history is to increase the total number of its meanings and to provide for a quantitative and qualitative growth of the expressive resources of the language.

Lexico-semantic variant is one of the individual meanings of a polysemantic word. They are registered in dictionaries as different meaning of one and the same word. The number of lexico-semantic variants makes a lexeme. Lexeme is a word in all its meanings and forms, i.e. a word as a structural element of language (invariant). LSVs are cases of content variation within a word deprived of formal expression. There’s a contradiction: lexico-semantic variant is a unit of content in language, but it becomes a unit of expression in speech. For example, saw – пила, пилить; видел.

The semantic structure of a word is a structured set of interrelated lexico-semantic variants (the major (or basic) meaning of a word and the minor (derived) meanings). The semantic structure of a word is the system and hierarchical unity of all the types of meaning that a certain word possesses. In ordinary conversation we can draw a borderline between LSVs without difficulty considering valency, syntactic function, paradigmatic and morphologic (number, case, etc.) peculiarities: I ran home (intransitive verb) VS I ran this office (transitive verb). To define the semantic structure of a word means to establish the order of chaining and subordination of nonhomogeneous meanings and define the means of semantic discrimination between LSVs within one word. For example:

GEAR

1. in cars etc [uncountable and countable] the machinery in a vehicle such as a car, truck, or bicycle that you use to go comfortably at different speeds: His mountain bike had 18 gears. Andy drove cautiously along in third gear.

2. [uncountable and countable] used to talk about the amount of effort and energy that someone is using in a situation: During this period, Japan's export industries were in top gear (=were as active as they could be).

3. American English to start doing something in a different way, especially using more or less energy or effort: The boss expects us to be able to change gear just like that.

4. equipment [uncountable] a set of equipment or tools you need for a particular activity: He's crazy about photography - he's got all the gear. We'll need some camping gear.

5. clothes [uncountable] a set of clothes that you wear for a particular occasion or activity: Bring your rain gear.

6. machinery [uncountable] a piece of machinery that performs a particular job: the landing gear of a plane, heavy lifting gear.

7. drugs [uncountable] British English informal a word meaning illegal drugs, used by people who take drugs.

Diagram 3.

The semantic structure has national character. The semantic structure of correlated words of two different languages can never cover each other. The major meaning is in most cases identical in two languages but others usually differ. The meaning ‘the machinery in a vehicle’ can be found both in the English word gear and in its Russian equivalent “привод, шестерня” but the meaning ‘clothes’ can’t be found in the word привод.

Radial polysemy is the type of polysemy in which the primary meaning of a word stands in the centre and the secondary meanings proceed out of it like rays. Each secondary meaning can be traced to the primary meaning. Diagram 4 below shows this type of polysemy.

Diagram 4.

In the word tube the primary meaning is ‘1) a long hollow and typically cylindrical object, used for the passage of fluids or as a container: tubes of glue, toothpaste, mayonnaise’. Each secondary meaning developed directly from the primary one.

2) any hollow cylindrical structure or organ in the body: Eustachian tube, Fallopian tube, the bronchial tube;

3) in electronics another name for valve: electron tube, cathode-ray tube, television tube (> tube (TV) – ellipsis,e.g. YouTube);

4) slang a bottle or can of beer: a tube of lager.

Chain polysemy is the type of polysemy in which the secondary meanings of a word develop like chain. In such cases it may be difficult to trace some meanings to the primary ones. This type of polysemy can be represented with the help of Diagram 5.

Diagram 5.

In the word crust the primary meaning is 1) ‘the hard brown outer surface of bread: sandwiches with the crusts cut off ’. Out of this meaning its secondary meanings are 2) ‘the baked outer part of foods such as pies or pizzas: a thin crust pizza ’, 3) ‘a thin hard dry layer on the surface of something: A hard gray crust had formed on the bottom of the tea kettle ’, 4) ‘the hard outer layer of the Earth: deep within the Earth’s crust ’.

Radial-chain (mixed) polysemy is a combination of radial polysemy and chain polysemy. Here the configuration of a diagram depends on the word semantic structure, hence there’s a great variety of diagrams illustrating this type of polysemy. The meanings of the word gear make the polysemy of this type.

Due to the achievements of the componential analysis attempts have been made to establish the relationships between different meanings of a polysemantic word on the basis of a common semantic component through which they are connected with each other in synchrony. From this viewpoint there are three kinds of relations between the meanings of a polysemantic word: intersection, inclusion and semantic homonymy.

In case of intersection all meanings have one common semantic component which unites them, and at the same time each meaning has its own semantic part which is its differential feature. E.g. the adjective barren has five meanings:

1) incapable of producing offspring, seed, or fruit; sterile a barren tree, barren soil, barren woman;

2) unable to support the growth of crops, etc.; unproductive; bare barren land;

3) lacking in stimulation or ideas; dull a rather barren play, barren discussion;

4) not producing worthwhile results; unprofitable a barren period in a writer's life, barren scheme;

5) (followed by of) totally lacking (in); devoid (of) his speech was barren of wit, barren of ideas, barren of interest.

These meanings have a common semantic feature ‘not producing’, in which they are intersected. This type of polysemy can be represented with the help of Diagram 6.

Diagram 6.

Inclusion as a type of relationship between the meanings of a polysemantic word takes place in those cases when one of the meanings is more complicated and broader than the other: it includes the semantic features of that meaning and at the same time it has its own semantic part. The word skinhead has two meanings:

1) a closely cropped hairstyle;

2) a member of a group of White youths, noted for their closely cropped hair, aggressive behaviour, and overt racism.

Here the second meaning includes and presupposes the first one. This type of polysemy can be represented with the help of Diagram 7.

Diagram 7.

Semantic homonymy as a type of relationships between the meanings of a polysemantic words takes place when the meanings have lost a semantic connection between each other and have no common semantic features, but still remain to be the meanings of the same polysemantic word. In such cases the last secondary meanings have nothing to do with the primary ones, especially if there are very many other meanings between them. This phenomenon can be illustrated by the word pride. Its primary meaning is ‘a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements’. It’s very hard to find any semantic connection between this primary meaning and one of its secondary meanings – ‘a group of lions forming a social unit’ (OxfordDictionary (En-En) (for ABBYY Lingvo x 3 Multilingual), which gives grounds for some dictionaries LingvoUniversal (En-Ru) (ABBYY Lingvo x 3 Multilingual) to consider them as the meanings of two homonymous words.

Polysemy is created by social need for economy. Context helps to individualize the meanings and bring them out, however, it doesn’t create polysemy, but only reveals it: The translation has been faithfully made by a distinguished pen. Must I walk the dog now? Do you know how to work the photocopier?

Context – the semantically complete passage of speech sufficient to establish the meaning of a given word (phrase); the minimal stretch of speech determining each individual meaning of the word.

Contexts can be of two types: linguistic (verbal) and extra-linguistic (non-verbal).

Linguistic contexts may be subdivided into:

- phonetical context: there is;

- morphological context: studied, worked, listened;

- lexical (semantic) context – a semantic or thematic class of words used in combination with the key-word and reflecting the relationships between objects and phenomena existing in reality. For example, the meanings of heavy can be analyzed through its collocability with the words weight, safe, table, load (‘of great weight’); snow, wind, rain, storm (‘abundant, striking, falling with force’); industry, artillery, arms (‘the larger kind of smth’). More examples, hard life, hard stone; hostile looks, hostile troops.

The word meaning is established by the context analysis method. For example, the noun mouth is realized in the meaning ‘opening through which animals take food in; space behind this containing the tongue, etc.’ in combination with the semantic indicator dog, which embraces the semantic feature ‘animal’ in its lexical meaning. The other meaning of the word mouth ‘opening or outlet’ is realized together with the semantic indicators bag, cave, river, etc., united by the seme ‘inanimate’. Thus, the choice of meaning of the nucleus word depends on the lexical meanings of the indicating word;

- phrasal (phraseological) context – phraseological units in which the constituent words make up one semantic whole and usually do not realize any of their systemic (language) meanings but all together render some figurative meaning, e.g. to have a bee in one’s bonnet (‘to have some kind of obsession’), lose one’s heart to smb (‘fall in love with’);

- syntactic (grammatical) context – syntactic (grammatical) structure that serves to determine various individual meanings of a polysemantic word, for example, crooked (adj)man stood in my way VS. The road crooked (v) between the hills. The meaning of the verb to see – ‘to perceive with the eyes’ is found in the syntactic context possessing the syntactic structure ‘to see + direct object’: I shall see your h o u s e. Another meaning of this verb ‘to accompany or escort’ is observed in the context of different syntactic structure ‘to see + direct object + adverbial modifier of place’: I shall see y o u to y ou r h o us e. And the meaning ‘take care (of something)’ is realized in the syntactic structure ‘to see + indirect object with prepositions to or after’: I shall seet o your h o u s e.

There are cases when the meaning of a word is ultimately determined by the actual speech situation in which the word is used, i.e. by extra-linguistic context. Linguistic context is sometimes not enough to establish the word meaning, so some misunderstanding takes place, e.g. in the sentence He is perfectly sound,the meaning of the word sound is clearly ambiguous as it has two readings‘financially secure’ and ‘not damaged, injured, or diseased’. To establish one of the meanings some extension is required, like … and has a good credit history.