Questions and Tasks:

1. Translate the sentences paying attention to the metaphorical extension of the word back:

She sat at the back of the class. My back aches from all work. The index is in the back of the book. I’m tired, I want to go back. The back of the chair is broken. The back of your jacket is stained. Open the back of the camera to put the film in.

2. What word/phrases do you associate with these metaphors in English: Love is madness. She is in her second childhood. Emotion is a physical experience. It's a dear old town, but it's a rough diamond?

3. Suggest some possible interpretations for these metaphors: The new proposal is a hot coal on the carpet of our educational system. I was standing on the lampshade of a new relationship with her.

4. (a) Which words were taken from each of the following person’s names [Odysseus, Alessandro Volta, James Watt, Captain Charles C. Boycott, Luigi Galvani, Ferdinand von Zepplelin, Louis Pasteur, John L. McAdam, Samuel Maverick, The god Pan, the philosopher Plato, Mrs. Malaprop, W.A. Spooner]? (b) Write a word for each definition [to kill bacteria by heating; confusion of words; person characterised by a spirit of independence; long, wandering journey; cigar-shaped lighter-than-air craft; transposing the first sounds of words]

5. In this news report of the beginning of a legal inquest into the deaths of three terrorists, metaphors are used. Identify them and consider an interpretation for them. Note any that may cause particular problems in terms of cultural knowledge.

Now we are gathered here, hundreds of us, to report on the deliberations into the deaths of Farrell, Savage and McCann. After only four days and eleven witnesses, it is to early to say if the circumstances of their killing will eventually join a Polish general and a Victorian sailing ship high in the league table of the unknowable. But at least the outline of a new spectral barque is

showing up through the legal mists. This is the government’s case. At present only the sails and rigging are visible, in the shape of court-room curtains and radio aerials. The hull may yet prove remarkably sound and smooth. There are already signs, however, of incipient unseaworthness. (Observer, 11 September 1988)

Lesson 5.

Semantic structure of a word

When speaking about the development of the word-meaning, we should take into consideration the relationship between the expression and the content. In natural human languages as N.B.Gvishiani puts it, very often we deal with the violation of the law of the sign which prescribes the direct correspondence of expression and content. The examples of such violations are polysemy (singleness of form and multiplicity of content, homonymy (identity of expression and differentiation of content), synonymy (presumed singleness of content and variability of expression).

There are also cases when the law of the sign is not violated entirely, but nevertheless some departures from the presumed agreement of expression and content are seen. The identity-of-unit problem (проблема тождества слова) touches upon the subject of variants (graphical, phonetic, morphological, lexical, semantic).

Graphical variants comprise multiple spellings of the same word (whisky-whiskey).

Phonetic variation includes the modification of the outer form of a word depending on its position in the utterance (N.B. Gvishiani gives the examples of the reduction of the conjunction and to a prolonged nasal consonant in the following expressions: normal and natural, now and then). There are several other types of phonetic change: accentual variation (the co-existence of some stress-patterns of the same word ‘contrary/con’trary, territory/terri’tory), emic variation (multiple pronunciations of the same word (direct [dai’rekt], [di’rekt]; often [ofn], [oftn], etc).

Morphological variation is the alternative use of some derivational morphemes without changing the word’s meaning (academic/academical).

A communicative situation (formal/informal, written/spoken) conditions on the choice of lexical variants (examination – exam, mathematics-math, etc).

Semantic variation constitutes a complex problem and is discussed in terms of lexical-semantic variants which following A.I. Smirnitskey, are various meanings of a given word that is called a polysemantic one.

According to V.V. Vinogradov, one should speak about nominative, nominative-derivative, colligationally and collocationally conditioned and phraseologically bound meanings.

The nominative meaning (in other linguistic sources referential, denotative, factual, objective, essential, central, primary, focal, usual) is a free meaning that refers to objects in extra-linguistic reality in a direct way, it is the semantic centre of a word associated with the given sound-form when the word stands by itself without any contextual support.

The nominative-derivative meaning (secondary, derived, figurative, transferred) appears to name new objects and phenomena on the base of associations of either metaphorical or metonymical nature.

Colligationally and collocationally conditioned meanings are bound ones determined by morpho-syntactic patterns (colligation) or by the association with other lexical units (collocation).

Colligation is a relationship observable between items when they are arranged in certain morpho-syntactic patterns [the verb to tell in the Passive voice has the meaning to order: He was told to close the door.]

Collocation is a relationship observable between items when they are arranged in texts, spoken or written, in other words it is the ability of a word to enter different combinations and fulfil different stylistic functions. [ we can say she has a beige car but not she has beige hair; one can say she has blond hair but not she has blond car. Blond and beige, although both describing colour, are restricted of what words they may combine with, so they have different collocations.]

The relationship of collocation may be strong [ given blond one can hardly be talking of anything else but hair] or weak [in the pair brown hair, for example, as brown and hair may both combine with a large number of other words]. Collocations may be typical or untypical, which are part of the creativity and the imaginative dimension we find in literature [The puffins sit in a book: the muffins are molten], in advertising language and other sorts of persuasive language [compare typical collocation sky-blue with untypical galaxy-blue, the name of one of the shades of blue currently available for Ford cars].

Phraseologically bound meaning which is realised only in some phrases is based on the idiom principle that implies that certain meanings belong only to a given collocation.

Diachronically the meanings can also be classified into etymological (the earliest known meanings), archaic (meaning replaced at present day by a newer one but still remaining in some collocations [the quick and the dead, quick - живой в противовес мертвому]), obsolete (gone out of use), present-day (the most frequent in the present day usage). Meanings may be opposed as neutral and stylistically colored latter further subdivided into bookish and colloquial. Another opposition is concrete - abstract meanings [the meaning of the word screen is abstract when it denotes something referring to the cinema - screen-actor, screen-star; it is concrete when the speaker means «a sheet on which pictures are shown»].