I.V.Arnold

The English Word

(extract)

§ 3.4 THE SEMANTIC STRUCTURE OF POLYSEMANTIC WORDS 2

SHORTENED WORDS AND MINOR TYPES OF LEXICAL OPPOSITIONS 6

§ 7.1 SHORTENING OF SPOKEN WORDS AND ITS CAUSES 6

§ 7.3 GRAPHICAL ABBREVIATIONS. ACRONYMS 12

CONVERSION AND SIMILAR PHENOMENA 15

8.1 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 15

§ 8.2 THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OP CONVERSION 17

§ 8.3 CONVERSION IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH 18

§ 8.4 SEMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS IN CONVERSION 20

§ 8.5 SUBSTANTIATION 23

SET EXPRESSIONS 25

§ 9.1 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. DEFINITIONS 25

§ 9.2 SET EXPRESSIONS, SEMI-FIXED COMBINATIONS AND FREE PHRASES 26

§ 9.3 CLASSIFICATION OF SET EXPRESSIONS 29

NATIVE WORDS VERSUS LOAN WORDS 32

§ 13.1 THE ORIGIN OF ENGLISH WORDS 32

§ 13.2 ASSIMILATION OF LOAN WORDS 35

§ 13.3 ETYMOLOGICAL DOUBLETS 39

THE OPPOSITION OF STYLISTICALLY MARKED AND STYLISTICALLY NEUTRAL WORDS 40

§ 12.1 FUNCTIONAL STYLES AND NEUTRAL VOCABULARY 40

§ 12.3 LEARNED WORDS AND OFFICIAL VOCABULARY 43

This phenomenon of co-occurrence has often led scholars not to differentiate connotations but taking them together call all of them stylistic or emotional, or some other term. If we take into consideration that all semantic analysis presupposes segmenting meanings that come together (grammatical and lexical meaning, for instance), and also that each of the types may occur separately and in various combinations with two or three others producing different effects, it becomes clear that they should be differentiated.

The interdependence of connotations with denotative meaning is also different for different types of connotations. Thus, for instance, emotional connotation comes into being on the basis of denotative meaning but in the course of time may tend to supersede it and even substitute it by other types of connotation with general emphasis, evaluation and colloquial stylistic overtone. E.g. terrific which originally meant ‘frightening’ is now a colloquialism meaning ‘very, very good’ or ‘very great’: terrific beauty, terrific pleasure.

The evaluative connotation, when based on the denotative meaning, does not always supersede it but functions together with it, though changing it as we have seen in the above example. This type of connotation is strongly dependent upon the functional style. It is almost absent in learned literature and very frequent in colloquial speech and newspapers. Intensification may become the denotative meaning of a word and occur without other types of meaning (ever, quite, absolutely).

A connotation may form the usual feature of a word as it exists in the vocabulary or appears occasionally in some context and be absent in the same word in other contexts. In every case it is actualized and takes part in the sense of the utterance. It differs in this from the implicational meaning of the word. Implicational meaning (see p. 41) is the implied information associated with the word by virtue of what it refers to and what the speakers know about the referent. It remains a potential, a possibility until it is realized in secondary nomination — in some figurative meaning or in a derivative. A wolf is known to be greedy and cruel but the denotative meaning of this word does not necessarily include these features. We shall understand the intensional if we are told that it is a wild animal resembling a dog that kills sheep and sometimes even attacks men. Its figurative meaning is derived from what we know about wolves — ‘a cruel greedy person’, also the adjective wolfish means ‘greedy’.¹