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4. Михайлова Е.В. Интертекстуальность в научном дискурсе (на материале статей): автореф. дисс. ... канд. филол. наук. - Волгоград, 1999. - 22 с.
5. Ракитина С.В. Научный текст: когнитивно--дискурсивные аспекты: монография. - Волгоград: Перемена, 2006. - 278 с.
6. Швецова О.А. К проблеме становления научного стиля в английском языке / О.А. Швецова // Язык научной литературы : сб. науч. тр. - М., 1985. - С. 3-27.
7. Шмелева Т.В. Модель речевого акта // Жанры речи: Межвуз. сб. науч. тр. - Саратов, 1997. - Вып. 1. - С. 68-79.
A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO SEMANTICS
© Nazari K.B.*
Islamic Azad University, Iran, Astara
Semantics is the study of meaning. Seen by Breal, in the late 19th century, as an emerging science opposed to phonetics as a science of sounds: similarly, for Bloomfield in the 1930, it was a field covering both grammar, as one account of meaningful forms, and the lexicon. Also seen more narrowly, in a traditional lasting into the 1960s, as the study of meaning in the lexicon alone, including changes in word meaning. Later, in accounts in which the study of distributions was divorced from that of meanings, opposed either to grammar in general; or, within grammar and especially within a generative grammar from the 1960s onwards, to syntax specifically of the uses current at the beginning of the 21st century, many restrict semantics to the study of meaning in abstraction from the contexts in which words and sentences are uttered: in opposition, therefore, to pragmatics. Others include pragmatics as one of its branches.
1. Definition
Semantics is the study of meaning in language. We know that language is used to express meanings which can be understood by others. But meanings exist in our minds and we can express what is in our minds through the spoken and written forms of language. The sound patterns of language are studied at the level of phonology and the organization of words and sentences is studied at the level of morphology and syntax. These are in turn organized in such a way that we can convey meaningful messages or receive and understand messages. Semantics is the level of linguistic analysis where meaning is analyzed. It is the most abstract level of linguistic analysis, since we cannot see or observe mean-
* Аспирант кафедры Общего языкознания Бакинского государственного университет (республика Азербайджан, г. Баку).
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ing as we can observe and record sounds. Meaning is related very closely to the human capacity to think logically and to understand. So when we try to analyze meaning, we are trying to analyze our own capacity to think and understand our own ability to create meaning. Semantics concerns itself with «giving a systematic account of the nature of meaning» [Leech, 1981].
2. Words and Meanings
What words mean is not always easy to pin down. Meanings change over time, and people often use the same words to mean different things. We should not be misled by the constant expansion of the vocabulary of English, or by the evident fact that individual words develop new meanings, into thinking that we can make any word mean anything we like. Apart from anything else, if the meaning is to be recognized by somebody else, it has to be related to an existing sense in some way or other. Words mean certain things by, conversion and this we have to respect, to some degree at least, if we want to put language to effective communicative use.
A second factor which limits the freedom we have to create new meanings - whether idiosyncratic or not - is a strong disposition on the part of speakers, when faced with a recurring situation or event, to deal with it in familiar language. Creativity in our use of words tends to be reserved for special occasions. By contrast, much-used words in well-worn meanings - often within conventional phrases - reflect our most ordinary domestic routines. We «lay the table», «dry the dishes», «take in the mail», and «put out the cat».
As ordinary speakers of a language, of course, we are constantly brought up against our ignorance of specific meanings of simple words - those that consist of only one meaningful part (words in English like glitch, butt, crpher, dress, and so on). One reason for our difficulty is that leaving aside onomatopoeic words -those which like cuckoo and rattle are formed from a sound associated with the thing or action they refer to - the shapes of simple words, what they sound like or look like in writing, do not resemble what they mean.
The same point can be made with reference to words in other languages. Fromage, partly because of the long «aah» and soft «g» at the end, sounds much softer than cheese - a point that advertising copywriters have been quick to exploit. The fact remains, though, that some French cheeses are hard, and some English ones soft.
The essential arbitrariness between the written or spoken form of a word and its meaning is also illustrated by the story of the former learning over his pigsty and remarking of its occupants: «Ah, rightly is they called pigs!» Yet there is in fact no necessary connection between the smell and unpleasant feeding habits of the pig and the group of letters used to refer to it. This is borne out by listing the closely similar big, dig, fig, jig, tig, and wig, and possibly too by reflecting that, in Danish, smukke pigges means «pretty girls».
So we can see that the relationship between words and meanings is far from straightforward: when the words are short, the links are usually arbitrary. Of course, there are in English very many words whose meanings seem to be systematically connected to ways in which the words can be broken up. But of course these are not simple words: they are complex words such as systematic (a derivative) and bookcase (a compound).
3. Sense and Reference Signs refer to concepts as well as to other signs.
A sign is a symbol that indicates a concept. This concept is the reference, which refers in turn to some object in the real world called the referent. The relationship between linguistic items (e.g. words, sentences) and the non-linguistic world of experience is a relationship of reference. It can be understood by the following diagram given by Ogden and Richards (1923):
Concept (Reference)
Word (Symbol) - Object (Referent)
The objects in the real world are referents, the concept which we have of them in our minds is the reference and the symbol we use to refer to them is the word, or linguistic item.
We can explain the meaning of a linguistic item by using other words. The relation of a word with another word is a sense-relation. Therefore, sense is the complex system of relationships that holds between the linguistic item themselves. Sense is concerned with the intra-linguistic relations, i.e. relations within the system of the language itself, such as similarity between words, opposition, inclusion and pre-supposition.
Sense relations include homonymy, polysemy, synonymy, and antonymy. Homonyms are different items (lexical) items or structure words) with the same phonetic form. They differ only in meaning, e.g. the item «ear» meaning «organ of hearing» is a homonym of the item «ear» meaning «a stem of wheat». Ho-monymy may be classified as:
- homography: a phenomenon of two or more words having the same spelling but different pronunciation or meaning, e.g. lead /led/ = metal; lead /li:d/ = verb;
- homophony: a phenomenon of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings or spellings, e.g. sea / see, knew, new, some / sum, sun / son.
It is difficult to distinguish between homonymy and polysemy as in polysemy, the «same» lexical item has different meanings, e.g. «bank», «face»: Two
lexical items can be considered as synonyms if they have the same denotative, connotative and social meaning and can replace each other in all contexts of occurrence. Only, then can they be absolutely synonymous. For example, «radio» and «wireless» co-existed for a while as synonyms, being used as alternatives by speakers of British English. But now, «wireless» is not used frequently. What we consider as synonyms in a language are usually near-equivalent items, or descriptive items. For example, «lavatory», «toilet», «WC», «washroom» are descriptive or near-equivalent synonyms in English.
Antonyms are lexical items which are different both in form as well as meaning. An antonym of a lexical item conveys the opposite sense, e.g. single-married, good-bad. But this gives rise to questions of what is an opposite or contrasted meaning. For example, the opposite of «woman» could be «man» or «girl» since the denotation of both is different from that of «woman». Thus we need to modify our definition of antonym. We can say that some items are less incompatible than other items. There can be nearness of contrast or remoteness of contrast. Thus «man» or «girl» is contrasted to «woman» but less contrasted than «woman «and «tree». In this sense, «woman» and «man» are related, just as «girl» and «boy» are related, in spite of being contrasted. Other meaning-relations of a similar nature are: mare / stallion, cow / bull, ram / ewe etc., all based on gender distinctions. Another set of meaning relations can be of age and family relationship: father / son, uncle / nephew, aunt / niece. In this, too, there differences in the structures of different languages.
Another kind of sense-relationship is hyponymy. Hyponymy is the relation that holds between a more general and more specific lexical item. For example, «flower» is a more general item, and «rose», «lily», etc. are more specific. The more specific item is considered a hyponym of the more general item - «rose» is a hyponym of «flower». The specific item includes the meaning of the general. When we say «rose», the meaning of «flower» is included in its meaning. «Rose» is also hyponymous to «plant» and «living thing» as these are the most general categories.
4. Conclusion
Contributions to the theory of semantics have come from two main sources: from linguists, who have traditionally been interested in the core meaning or sense of linguistic expressions (specially words), and from philosophers, who have traditionally been concerned with the reference of linguistic expressions and the truth of sentences.
Список литературы:
1. Cowie A.P. Semantics. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
2. Leech G.N. Semantics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
3. Mathews P.H. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. - 2nd ed. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
4. Ogden C.R., Richards I.A. The Meaning of Meaning. - London: Rout-ledge and Kegan Paul, 1923.
5. Parker F. and Riley K. Linguistics for Non-linguists: A premier with Exercises. - New York: Pearson, 2005.
6. Syal P., Jindal D.V. An Introduction to Linguistics: Language, Grammar and semantics. - New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India Private Limited, 2007.
ОБ ОСОБЕННОСТЯХ РУССКОГО И ЯКУТСКОГО РЕЧЕВОГО ЭТИКЕТА
© Федорова В.С.*
Северо-Восточный федеральный университет им. М.К. Аммосова,
г. Якутск
The progress achieved in the field of the speech communication at the ru-sistic created the solid base to the learning the etiquette side of the speech relations of other people living in Russia, in the particular, the people of the Republic Sakha. In this article the reader of the North-Eastern federal university Fyodorova Vera Sergeevna tries to compare and correlate the Russian and yakut speech relations within the limits of the category of the politeness.
Универсальность категории вежливости позволяет заметить как большие сходства в русском и якутском речевом поведении, так и безусловные различия. В русском РЭ (речевой этикет) предпочтительны Вы-формы общения по возрастному статусу, незнакомому лицу или в официальной обстановке. В данной ситуации в якутском РЭ предпочтительны Ты-формы общения.
Обращения к незнакомым в русском РЭ разнороднее и многообразнее, чем в якутском, сопровождаясь специальными актуализаторами вежливости. В якутском РЭ в обращении к незнакомым адресатам применяются номинации родства с изменением семантического компонента родственности. Система русского обращения по именам также богаче и разнообразнее, чем в якутском. Специфические особенности таких обращений вытекают из тройного собственного имени, тогда как у саха раньше осуществлялось исключительно по собственному имени. Характерной особенностью русских обращений по именам являются, с одной стороны, наличие парадигматического ряда, по-разному ориентированного на степень вежливости, с другой, обилие диминутивных суффиксов, придающих различные оттенки вежливости. В русском РЭ со стороны родителей по отношению к детям применяются ласковые обращения с диминутивными суффиксами. В данной ситуации в обиходе саха применяются модально-оценочные слова, типа Оgом эрэйдээх! Оgом барахсан!
Анализ соотношения факторов, обусловливающих речевую реализацию формул приветствия, в конкретных ситуациях общения также показы-
* Доцент кафедры Стилистики якутского языка и русско-якутского перевода.
