The properties of the words as the basic units of the language

11.What is a word?
It is more or less universally recognised that word-meaning is not homogeneous but is made up of various components the combination and
the interrelation of which determine to a great extent the inner facet of the
word. These components are usually described as types of meaning. The
two main types of meaning that are readily observed are the grammatical
and the lexical meanings to be found in words and word-forms.
We notice, e.g., that word-forms, such as girls,
winters, joys, tables, etc. though denoting
widely different objects of reality have something in common. This
common element is the grammatical meaning of plurality which can be
found in all of them.
Thus grammatical meaning may be defined ,as the component of meaning
recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words, as, e.g.,
the tense meaning in the word-forms of verbs (asked, thought, walked,
etc.) or the case meaning in the word-forms of various nouns (girl’s,
boy’s, night’s, etc.).
12.Connotative and denotative meanings of a word.
Proceeding with the semantic analysis we
observe that lexical meaning is not homogenous either and may be analysed as including denotational and connotational components.
As was mentioned above one of the functions of words is to denote
things, concepts and so on. Users of a language cannot have any knowledge or thought of the objects or phenomena of the real world around them
unless this knowledge is ultimately embodied in words which have essentially the same meaning for all speakers of that language. This is the d e -
n o t a t i o n a l m e a n i n g , i.e. that component of the lexical meaning which makes communication possible. There is no doubt that a physicist knows more about the atom than a singer does, or that an arctic explorer possesses a much deeper knowledge of what arctic ice is like than a
man who has never been in the North. Nevertheless they use the words
atom, Arctic, etc. and understand each other.
The second component of the lexical meaning is the c o n n o t a -
t i o n a l c o m p o n e n t , i.e. the emotive charge and the stylistic
value of the word.
13Specialization and generalization of meaning.
“Specialisation” and “generalisation” are thus identified on the evidence
of comparing logical notions expressed by the meaning of words. If, on the
other hand, the linguist is guided by psychological considerations and has to
63go by the type of association at work in the transfer of the name of one object to another and different one, he will observe that the most frequent
transfers are based on associations of similarity, or of contiguity. As these
types of transfer are well known in rhetoric as figures of speech called
m e t a p h o r (Gr metaphora < meta change’ and pherein ‘bear’) and
m e t o n y m y (Gr metonymia < meta ‘change’ and onoma/onytna
‘name’), the same terms are adopted here. A metaphor is a transfer of name
based on the association of similarity and thus is actually a hidden comparison. It presents a method of description which likens one thing to another
by referring to it as if it were some other one. A cunning person for instance
is referred to as a fox. A woman may be called a peach, a lemon, a cat, a
goose, a bitch, a lioness, etc.
In a metonymy, this referring to one thing as if it were some other one is
based on association of contiguity (a woman —a skirt). Sean O'Casey in his
one-act play “The Hall of Healing” metonymically names his personages
according to the things they are wearing: Red Muffler, Grey Shawl, etc.
Metaphor and metonymy differ from the two first types of semantic change,
i.e. generalisation and specialisation, inasmuch as they do not result in hyponymy and do not originate as a result of gradual almost imperceptible
change in many contexts, but come of a purposeful momentary transfer of a
name from one object to another belonging to a different sphere of reality.