Дослідження ЛСГ “Cat” в поетичній збірці Т.С. Еліота “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”

Semantic change, also known as semantic shift or semantic progression describes the evolution of word usage — usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage. In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. Every word has a variety of senses and connotations which can be added, removed, or altered over time, often to the extent that cognates across space and time have very different meanings. Semantic change is one of three major processes to find a designation for a concept. The study of semantic change can be seen as part of etymology, onomasiology, semasiology and semantics [3,16].

Trier's theory assumes that lexical fields are easily definable closed sets, with no overlapping meanings or gaps. These assumptions have been questioned and the theory has been modified since its original formulation.

A set of words (or lexemes) related in meaning. Linguist Adrienne Lehrer has defined semantic field more specifically as "a set of lexemes which cover a certain conceptual domain and which bear certain specifiable relations to one another"

"The most illuminating way of defining a lexeme is to provide a hypernym along with various distinguishing features - an approach to definition whose history can be traced back to Aristotle. For example, a majorette is 'a girl' (the hypernym) 'who twirls a baton and accompanies a marching band.' It is usually possible to trace a hierarchical path through a dictionary, following the hypernyms as they become increasingly abstract, until we arrive at such general notions (essence, being, existence) that clear sense-relations between the lexemes no longer exist." [15, 212]

A hypernym is a word with a general meaning that has basically the same meaning of a more specific word. For example, dog is a hypernym, while collie and chihuahua are more specific subordinate terms. The hypernym tends to be a basic-level category that is used by speakers with high frequency; speakers usually refer to collies and chihuahuas as dogs, rather than using the subordinate terms, which are consequently of relatively low frequency.

The meaning of a word is clarified when it i s analyzed within the lexical fields to which the different lexical entries of that word belong. In this sense, the lexical field seemed a suitable start for a subsequent study and analysis of each word within it, as it is the relationship between all the words of the whole field what shows the distinctive features of them and lets us determine the identity and the exact meaning of each word.

The first step is therefore choosing a lexical-semantic field and selecting 10 or 15 words belonging to it. The second step is classifying those words according to their frequency of use, and analysing the items included in the group formed by the most frequently used terms [5,8].

1.2.Sourses of Lexical-semantic Field

1.2.1.Typology of meanings

According to different approaches in linguistic and semantic studies, next types of meanings can be distinguished:

- actual m. - actualized in speech, specified by linguistic and situational context;

- associative m. - weak implication, a conceptual entity to which the systemic m. of a given word merely hints, indirectly implies, which is trigged by association;

- bound m. - actualized by a word in a given phrase or context, predetermined by semantic or morphosyntactic combinability (or collocationally or colligationally bound);

- broad m. - resulting from generalization of meaning, when word develops the broadest referential capacity possible; further stage is deemantization and loss of purely lexical meaning, transformation of a lexical unit into a grammatical morpheme;

- categorial m. - part-of-speech meaning;

- cognitive m. –

a) same as conceptual or denotative or nominative or main meaning;

b) the conceptual core, significative part of m. reflecting essential features of the referent conceptualized by our cognition; distinct from pragmatic m.; 
- colligationally and collocationally conditioned m.;

- connotative m. - emotional, suggestive meaning of the word;

- contentional m. - reflects the structure of essential features of a notion, name;

- contextual m. - brought in by the contextual (both verbal and non-verbal) environment of the word; acquired on a definite occasion only; 
- derived m.;

- direct m. - the main meaning of the word, which appears in the act of primary semiosis;

- dynamic m. - actually, any m. is characterized by certain dynamism - ability to change either synchronically or diachronically, so that it would be correct to discriminate between dictionary meaning as being static and speech meaning as dynamic, although in a current speech event meaning is necessarily subject to contextual influence hence actual is more dynamic that virtual meaning;

- etymological m. - original m. of a word, which later on underwent semantic changes;

- expressive m.;

- further m. - meaning or meanings within the prospective scope of semantic changes (only vaguely) predetermined by the current semantics of the word, the prospective sphere of its semantic variation;

- figurative m.;

- free m. - nominative meaning can be regarded as 'free' as distinct from the collocational and colligational meanings as bound ones;

- functional m. - grammatical meaning of a word (word-like unit) as an element of syntax, predetermined by its categorical, subcategorial meaning and individual lexical m.;

- generic m. - reflection in lexical m. of a generic concept, concept of the higher level of abstraction;

- grammatical m. - meaning of the grammatic form of a word;

- idiomatic m. - meaning, actualized within certain idiomatic expression only, idiomatically bound meaning;

- lexical m. - meaning of a lexical unit, comprises categorical meaning, subcategorical meaning and individual meaning of a lexeme; reflects a certain part of corresponding concept on the level of language;

- lexico-grammatical m. - categorial meaning;

- main m. - nominative m.;

- naive m. - lexical meaning as represented in the mind in common native speaker, not an expert in the field which includes the denotatum of the word;

- next m. - meaning or meanings within the actual scope of semantic derivation of a lexeme, easily predetermined or expected by the core semantics (lexical prototype) of the word;

- nominative m. - also basic, main, direct, conceptual, cognitive meaning of the word, referring to objects, phenomena, actions and qualities in extralinguistic reality (referent) and reflecting their general understanding by the speaker (can be correlated with referential denotative, descriptive, factual, objective meaning.); realization of the word's nominative capacity (to serve as a name for some extralinguistic entity). The nominative meaning also has the following 'free' authentic equivalents in English: essential, central, domain, primary, focal, pivotal, common, usual - which are mostly used to avoid repetition in speech and not as technical terms;

- nominative-descriptive m. - comes into being when the word is stretched out semantically as a result of semantic derivation to cover new facts and phenomena of extralinguistic reality;

- original m. - etymological m.;

- phraseological m. (phraseological bound meaning) - also idiomatic meaning - the meaning which is realized only in some phrases and belongs only to a given collocation - when a word is habitually associated together with another word to form a 'natural-sounding' combination: e.g. to raise becomes part of the phrase meaning 'to show surprise' in to raise one's eyebrows (at smb.);

- pragmatic m. - semantic component of lexical m. (as distinct from conceptual meaning)which reflects the attitudes, emotions of the speakers (either personal or communal), so it can be regarded a correlative term to connotation;

- primary m. - which to the greatest degree is dependent upon or conditioned by its paradigmatic links, while such meanings as display a greater degree of syntagmatic ties are secondary;

- referential m.;

- secondary m.;

- significative m.;

- situational m.;

- specific m. - meaning of the specific term, correlates with the specific concept, a subordinate one in the hierarchical taxonomy;

- usual m. - meaning, accepted by the language-speaking community, fixed

in dictionaries, reproduced in speech actualizations of the word [9, 235-241].

 

1.3.Development of Lexical-semantic Field

1.3.1.Lexical Meaning: Notion

The lexical meaning of a word is the realization of a notion by means of a definite language system. A word is a language unit, while a notion is a unit of thinking. A notion cannot exist without a word expressing it in the language, but there are words which do not express any notion but have a lexical meaning. Interjections express emotions but not notions, but they have lexical meanings, e.g. Alas! /disappointment/, Oh,my buttons! /surprise/ etc. There are also words which express both, notions and emotions, e.g. girlie, a pig /when used metaphorically/. The term "notion" was introduced into lexicology from logics. A notion denotes the reflection in the mind of real objects and phenomena in their relations. Notions, as a rule, are international, especially with the nations of the same cultural level. While meanings can be nationally limited. Grouping of meanings in the semantic structure of a word is determined by the whole system of every language. E.g. the English verb "go" and its Ukrainian equivalent "йти" have some meanings which coincide: to move from place to place, to extend /the road goes to London/, to work /Is your watch going?/. On the other hand, they have different meanings: in Ukrainian we say :"Ось він йде" , in English we use the verb "come" in this case. In English we use the verb "go" in the combinations: "to go by bus", "to go by train" etc. In Ukrainian in these cases we use the verb "їхати". The number of meanings does not correspond to the number of words, neither does the number of notions. Their distribution in relation to words is peculiar in every language. Development of lexical meanings in any language is influenced by the whole network of ties and relations between words and other aspects of the language [4, 3-6].

In the process of nomination only the lexical meaning of a word is formed, unlike the grammatical meaning which is not always conditioned. We can define that reason for the generation of such units as to hand, to water, to face is the nomination of their original nouns. Their existence is caused by the nominative productivity and the syntactical function in the expression that is a characteristic of it. But such units as "coke" that means either Coca-Cola or coal derivative or cocaine can be decoded correctly only in the context.

So to be on coke in the expression 'they are on coke' might denote either they are drinking Coca-Cola or they have solid-fuel heating or they use cocaine. Despite the fact that to be on coke is the derivative from coke, its meaning in the new function is comparatively simple to explain. The example A Buy Nothing Day is similar. It's easy to decode in spite of the fact that the meaning of the components differs in a certain way from the original one and demonstrates some combination which is not typical [2, 50].

Though in the abstract we don't make much of the fact that the context itself influences the function of a unit, it should be stressed that it's the context that is important for the decoding of verbalized information. The meaning or its change, intended by a producer of expression, can be illuminated by its context. G. V. Kolshansky defined the problem and the ways of solving it as follows: "Every word has the typical context that is predetermined by it, but not the other way round as is sometimes thought...". In this case the context is given the role of turning some standard into its varieties. On account of that every abstract standard of speech can be transformed and validated by: "its sound from the new stylistic point of view"

From what has been said above we can derive the conclusion that the perceived meaning is decoded mainly with the help of context. If it is so, we can consider the context generating or changing its meaning. Though the role of the context is rather essential, we have to consider it as not so important, taking into account N.Chomsky's words: "Reference to context in phrase structure rules is restricted to rules such as that assign lexical items to their syntactical categories".

The contextual predetermination of the syntactical form is displayed in its orientation towards macro- and microstructure of the expression (in other words, the so called "wide" and "narrow" context).

The category of foreseeing realized through the correlativeness and valency of language units in the structure of expression is relevant. The syntactical connections are considered from the point of view of how they reflect the features of lexical units. The syntactical features of a phrase mainly reflect the meaning of the words that are the central components of these phrases. Correlation between the difference of meaning of a word and the difference in syntactical construction including that word is also important [6, 32].

A person's brain represents the meaning of the word and reflects it grammatically.

The context as the result of language activity is the source of information about the performed valencies of language units. The study of the features of valency and the features of context are united. Word valency is the word's feature in language memory, opportunities for semantic-grammatical combination with other words and substitution of the syntactical function in a sentence. Grammatical valency represents the word's ability to be syntactically situated and to be combined with the appropriate parts of a sentence.

Lexical valency is the word's ability to be combined with other words semantically in grammatical valency. Besides, the type component in the word's meaning should be used as the basis for the theory of valency.

The type component of meaning is the reserve of forming new combinations, not fixed in expressions before. It is thepotential source of the functional reorientation of language units. It creates an opportunity for a word to be combined with other words.

The following combinations are rather difficult to imagine in use, aren't they? A clever chair; a memory table, etc.

Language memory blocks are formed by using combinations from prior language experience. So a word is able to be combined with other words that have already been used in the context [8, 96]. There is no contradiction between usual and occasional valencies (occasional valency is based on person's ability to produce new expressions). Occasional valency is based on language experience but the combination has not been produced before.

From this point of view the type component of meaning gives a splendid opportunity to display occasional valency. Besides a word's relevant and type features and different components, a word acquires some contextual components of its structure. This idea can be well illustrated by the following: the situation when the narrator introduces a new character under a certain name in the novel. First we can distinguish him only by his name, later we are able to do this by his features, his behavior, speech, etc. The sounding of the name is contextual, as it is concretized by the semantics of the context. When two words are combined their meanings are mutually restricted. It causes the re-formation of both the entire combination and its separate elements. As a result lexical meanings of adjoining words are mutually restricted. So the denotate can be defined as a certain imagination of what's meant by this language expression as a whole. In such situations words can extend their valencies, that means that they can be used in new microtexts, in order to connect with other signs to form in a way great values. All the main models of the contemporary English word-building are fixed in microtext. They are the result of functional reorientation. Word-building is one of the basic ways of the functional extension of language. It is connected with a person's communicative activity. Many word-building processes based on functional reorientation, can be explained by means of an expression. They are: conversion, functional transposition, lexicalization of plural forms of nouns, substantivation, adverbialization, adjectivation, pronominalization, forming new words with the help of prepositions and postpositions, syntactic word-building. These can be defined as morphological-syntactic and the syntactic types of word-building [10, 56].

This is determined by the fact that such a functional reorientation concerns syntactical structures. Its fixation is therefore not possible on the morphological level of language system alone. Word-building models are activated according to the necessity of organizing expression itself that predetermines the generation of new dictionary units despite the fact that there are a lot of words to express each meaning in the lexical system of language.

Native-speakers often create new lexical units. The reason is the necessity of verbalizing a meaning that hasn't been reduced to a word before or not fully according to the producer's intention. Contextual words are very often the result of word-creating (contextual words are units that create and realize their potential only in a certain context).

The unusual syntactic function of a language unit can also be considered contextual. This is based on the fact that the syntactic function of a certain unit without any morphological adjustment can be specified in the context. The functional reorientation of nominative units might be understood by taking into account various "narrow" contexts, while communicating within one "wide context. The external form of any English word in itself conveys no meaning. It is not the form but the meaning of a word, it's own semantics that limits acceptable varieties of a word usage. The syntactic form of a word doesn't set any formal indexes characterizing these words as they are used in an expression. 
Such special features which are given to a word syntactically are reflected in its lexical form and semantic structure. Words in a contemporary English sentence acquire various qualities in accordance with their syntactical form and their functions. Thus the syntactic function turns the syntactic index of a word into the lexical one. The relationships between words so positioned within a narrow context get more complicated on account of the fact that some words perform their basic function in the sentence, the function of others is an unusual one. This case complicates the process of decoding a message, e.g.: "Then I started horsing around a little bit (J. Salinger); He had chosen not to think about money, knowing that it was un-American, natural and in a way ridiculous not to think about money [14, 73]. Well, you little so-and-so ; I kept thinking about that beat-up old straw basket they went around collecting money with which they were not teaching school ".

In all these sentences the unusual function of the underlined words combines with the traditional functions of other components the microtext consists of. 
Lexical unit might in some way influence context. It can be oriented to the following:

a) The choice of lexical unit according to its semantic features.

b) The choice of semantical position of a word within a context. 
The first is more typical of synthetic languages, the second one of analytical languages. In modern English the morphological features of a word take a back seat in context unlike some functional peculiarities connected with semantical and morphological-syntactic indexes [11, 39].

Thus the comprehension of the expression 'Thoughts father ideas' depends on the comprehension of the predicate. In other words, the regular syntagmatic word connections, predetermining its functional peculiarities are realized in context. The most important function of the context for clearing up the meaning is, that it predetermines the semantics, pragmatics and grammar realized in it. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of a word can't be considered in isolation, as all its syntagmatic relationships predetermine what paradigm it belongs to. In its syntagmatic relationships a word is also realized as a paradigmatic unit. This is the basis of the functional reorientation of nominative units.

Each seme of a word can be syntagmatically realized in contexts with the help of its actualization with adjusted words. The paradigmatic inequality in rights is reflected in its syntagmatics. The more important a seme is for a word, the sooner it will be realized in context. This realization is not always performed by using a person's communicative experience.

Even if two words are not connected with each other originally, a speaker makes the syntagmatic chain in his mind to reproduce it in a similar context. 
So a beginner as well as a native speaker has tocombine the semantic and the syntactic components in the structure of the meaning, based on his/her language experience.

As far as the structure of logical meaning is concerned, we should pay attention not only to how a certain language unit is used, but also to how it is used from the point of view of certain contextual adjustments. This raises the importance of the functional and the contextual aspects of word meaning.

It would be rather interesting to observe this mechanism from the point of view of the one who has to comprehend the statement, e.g.: a cracking good story causes a problem when decoding this expression, as the learner's experience is based mainly on some information he gets from dictionaries. In this case they are not enough. The position of "cracking" in the expression points out that the word functions as an adverb of degree. It helps to make clear its logical meaning, and the wider context helps to define the personal attitude, and some connotations the word introduces. When we are aware of the situation we can comprehend the textual meaning "behind the text", so we can define the contextual meaning of the language unit [7, 88].

The function of language is to represent language units on the basis of their potential forms and the intercommunication existing in language system. Being aware of system forms and their combinations means their occasional meanings or their functions in an expression can be construed.

Similar to grammatical categories that can be either objective or subjective, lexical units are also divided into objective and subjective units - language signs of full meaning and functional language signs.

So a person has some ideal representation of reality with the help of his imaginative world, some definitions or fancies. Thus the objective nature of a language unit is in representing the reality, expressing the two sides of a sign, defining some concepts and their combinations. To define the meaning of a word it's of great importance to make clear its connection with the person using such language units, and the relationships between the words themselves in the lexical system of language and in a certain sentence.

 

Conclusion to part I

Lexical-semantic field is a complex thing based on the procedure of reflecting the reality in a person's mind.

The choice of the necessary nominative units is always performed within a limited quantity of units and their forms. On account of that some variants of separate forms are possible.