The Functional Approach to Meaning

The functional approach to meaning has taken shape in structural linguistics. The functional approach maintains that the meaning of a linguistic unit may be studied only through its relation to other linguistic units. It focuses on the analysis of distribution, i.e. the position of a linguistic unit in relation to other linguistic units in the language system. If the distribution of the two words is different, their meanings are different and they belong to different classes of words, e.g. to move can be followed by a noun (move the chair), preceded by a personal pronoun (we move), etc. and the word movement may be followed by a preposition (movement of something), preceded by an adjective (slow movement), etc.

In the functional approach semantic investigation is directed at analysing the function of a word in linguistic contexts and comparing these contexts to define the difference or sameness of meaning.

ТЕМА 2 (2): word meaning

The modern approach to the study of semasiology is based on the assumption that the inner form of the word (i.e. its meaning) presents a structure which is called the semantic structure of the word. It is investigated at two levels: the level of different meanings (лексематический анализ смысловой структуры слова - treated in detail in the paragraph on polysemy) and the level of semantic components within each separate meaning (семантический анализ семной организации значения - treated in detail in this paragraph).

Word meaning is not homogeneous but is made up of various components, which are described as types of meanings. The occurence of words in different contexts of their use gives sufficient evidence to distingush them. The two main types of word meaning that are readily observed are the grammatical and the lexical meanings.

Grammatical (or structural) meaning is defined as the component of meaning recurrent in identical sets of individual word forms common to all words of a certain class (e. g. time relations as expressed by the tense-forms of the English verb). Grammatical meaning is normally expressed:

1) by means of inflexion, e.g. goes - writes -asks; asked - played - stopped; girl - girls - girl’s - girls’;

2) syntactically, by the position of the linguistic unit in relation to other linguistic units, i.e. by its distribution (cf. They often talk about old days:: He is the talk of the town.);

3) with the help of function words, e.g. a leg of the table; a boy and a girl, etc.

Lexical meaning is the meaning proper to the given linguistic unit in all its forms and distributions, which reflects the concept the given word expresses and the basic properties of the thing (phenomena, quality, state) the word denotes, e.g. the lexical meaning of the word book ‘a literary composition or treatise, written or printed’ or ‘a number of sheets of paper bound together,’ etc.

Both the lexical and the grammatical meanings make up the word-meaning (its referential aspect) and neither can exist without the other.

The interrelation of the lexical and 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 (cf. notional words:: functional words; common nouns:: proper nouns, etc.).

The combination of the lexical and grammatical meaning is language specific and is different in different languages, e.g. the Russian word ‘совет / советы’ is not semantically identical with the English word ‘advice’ because unlike the Russian word the English word does not possess the grammatical meaning of plurality which is part of the semantic structure of the Russian word.

The lexical meaning of a word is not homogeneous but falls into two components - the denotational meaning and the connotational meaning. The notional content of a word is expressed by the denotational meaning, which is itself a combination of more elementary components. The denotational meaning of the word adore consists of several semantic components: feeling, attachment, intensity, respect - which is revealed in the word definiton ‘to feel a great attachment and respect, to worship’. The emotional content of a word is expressed by the connotational meaning, cf. daddy and father; clique, gang and group; to adore, to worship and to love; etc. The connotational meaning comprises the emotive charge and the stylistic value of the word. The emotive charge is one of the objective semantic features proper to words as linguistic units which reflects all sorts of emotional, expressive, evaluative overtones, e.g. profiteer derog to make unfairly large profits, esp. by selling things at very high prices in time of trouble; bonny apprec., esp. Scot E pretty and healthy. When analyzing the words of a synonymic set one can observe the difference in the emotive charge of its members. The emotive charge of the word spacious, for instance, is heavier than that of the word large. In speech words may acquire emotive implications which are to a great extent subjective, as they lie outside the semantic structure of words. Stylistic reference of the words reflects the language specific subdivision of the vocabulary into literary, neutral and colloquial layers, e.g. guy infml, esp. AmE a man; fellow; telemeter tech an instrument that measures quantities, esp. distances, and sends the results by radio to a home station. All words are stylistically coloured as neutral, colloquial, bookish.

Stylistic reference or emotive charge are closely connected and to a certain degree interdependent, e.g. velocipede obs or humor the bicycle; terpsichorean lit or pomp of or related to dances. Words belonging to literary and colloquial layers possess a considerable emotive charge.

In terms of componential analysis (treated in detail in the paragraph on modern methods of semantic research)each separate meaning is defined as a set of semantic components (i.e. elements of meaning).

Meaning in morphemes

The types of meaning proper both to words and morphemes:

It is generally assumed that morphemes are devoid of grammatical meaning. Lexical meaning is found in all types of morphemes. Lexical meaning in morphemes may be analysed into denotational and connotational components. Cf. lexical meaning in root-morpheme boy - in boy, boyhood, boyish. The connotational component of meaning may be found in both root- and affixational morphemes, e.g. endearing and diminutive suffixes -ette, -ie, -ling in kitchenette, girlie, duckling, bear a heavy emotive charge. In the words womanly, womanlike, womanish the morphemes -ly, like, -ish have the denotational meaning of similarity, however, the connotational component differs and ranges from the positive evaluation in - ly to the derogatory in -ish. Stylistic reference may be found in morphemes of different types, e.g. the stylistic value of morphemes -ine and -oid in chlorine and rhomboid is perceived to be scientific.

The lexical meaning of the affixal morphemes is, as a rule, of a more generalizing character. Some affixal morphemes possess only the functional meaning (part-of-speech) meaning, e.g. - ice in justice. In some derivational morphemes the lexical and part-of-speech meaning are blended, e.g. -less denotes lack or absence of something and the part-of-speech meaning (hopeless, parentless).

The types of meaning proper to morphemes:

Differential meaning is the semantic component that serves to distinguish one word from all others containing identical morphemes, e.g. the morpheme note- distinguishes notebook from exercisebook, copybook, etc. The differential component comes to the fore when it is impossible to assign any denotational meaning to the morpheme, e.g. cran- in cranberry (cf. cranberry and blackberry, gooseberry).

Distributional meaning is the meaning of the order and arrangement of morphemes making up the word. A different arrangement of the component morphemes would turn the word into a meaningless string of sounds (cf. * ersing and singer) or change its meaning (cf. ring finger and finger ring or dog-house and house-dog).

This outline does not exhaust the description of the semantic structure of the word, but gives a sufficiently clear picture of different types of meaning.