The semantic structure of words

Word-meaning is not homogeneous but is made up of various components, or types of meaning. They are as follows. The grammatical meaning is the component of meaning in identical sets of individual forms of different words, as, for example, the tense meaning in the word-forms of verbs (asked, thought) or the meaning of plurality (books, intentions).Grammatical meanings can be expressed: (1) synthetically (within one word), with the help of: (a) postfixal inflections/inflexions, i.e. bound grammatical morphemes attached to stems to express different grammatical categories such as tense, mood, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, case, or degree of comparison. Cf. nice – nicer – the nicest; mechanical adding of one or more affixes to the root is called agglutination; (b) internal inflections, which are the result of vowel change, cf. foot – feet, bring – brought, (c) suppletivity —using different forms to express opposed grammatical meaning: cf. good – better – best, (2) analytically, employing more than one word: cf. important – more important – most important. The lexico-grammatical meaning (the part-of-speech meaning) is the common meaning of words belonging to a lexico-grammatical class of words; it is the feature according to which they are grouped together. The lexical meaning is the component of meaning proper to the given linguistic unit in all its forms and distributions. E.g., in the forms go – goes – went – gone we find one and the same semantic component denoting the movement or process.Both the lexical and the grammatical meanings make up the word-meaning as neither can exist without the other.Lexical meaning includes denotative and connotative components. The denotative component of lexical meaning expresses the conceptual content of a word. Fulfilling the nominative and the communicative functions of the word, it is present in every word and may be regarded as the central factor in the functioning of the language. Denotative words include the so-called nomenclature words and word-groups, which are various terms and professionalisms of unique meaning. For example, electron, motor, football, etc. Similarly in Ukrainian where these notionals are the same. Most denotative words (and not only in the contrasted languages) are stylistically neutral. The latter may be represented by whole lexico-grammatical classes such as: pronouns (he, she, we, you), numerals (five, ten, twenty), most of verbs (be, live, love), nouns (mother, sister, cow, horse), adjectives (blue, white), all adverbs (today, soon). The connotative component of lexical meaning expresses the pragmatic communicative value the word receives depending on where, when, how, by whom, for what purpose, and in what contexts it is used. Unlike the denotative component, the connotative component is optional.There are four main types of connotation. They are stylistic, emotive, evaluative and expressive, or intensifying. The connotation is stylistic when associations concern the situation in which the word is uttered (formal, familiar, etc.), the social relationships between the interlocutors (polite, rough, etc.), the purpose of communication (poetic, official, etc.). E.g., parent (bookish) – father (neutral) – dad (colloquial). An emotional connotation is acquired by the word if the referent named in the denotative meaning is associated with emotions (). In the synonyms, like – love – worship the emotive charge of the words tremendous and worship is heavier than that of the other words. An evaluative connotation expresses approval or disapproval.,. the intensifying connotation (also expressive, emphatic). Thus, magnificent – splendid – superb, are all used colloquially as terms of exaggeration.Many words in English both denotative and connotative meanings. Thus, the nouns bear, fox, pig, goose, parrot, rat and some others in their stylistically neutral meaning designate definite animals or birds, but when figuratively reinterpreted, they often acquire a vituperative (abusive) connotation. From the semasiological side, words may be monosemantic or polysemantic. Monosemantic words are sometimes represented by a whole lexico-grammatical class, as it is in case of all pronouns, numerals, conjunctions, and various nomenclature words (terms). E.g.: we, she, nobodyy, (1) the direct meaning, subdivided into: the primary (etymological) meaning (e.g., wall (n.) fromLatin vallum “rampart, fortification”) and the derived meaning (e.g., wall “upright structure, forming part of a room or building”) and (2) the secondary meaning, subdivided into: the secondary denotative meaning (e.g., wall “inside surface of a cavity or vessel”: walls of the heart, reactor wall) and the figurative meaning (e.g., wall of partition (between persons), wall of fire, wall of hostility).