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SPECIFIC FEATURES OF POLYSEMANTIC WORDS IN
ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND THEIR VERBALIZATION IN
THE CONTEXT
Eshonova Aida Otabekovna
Student of Andijan State Institute of Foreign Languages (Uzbekistan)
Supervisor: Kurbanov Muzaffar Abdumutalibovich, Professor of Andijan
State Institute of Foreign Languages (Uzbekistan)
Abstract: The article is about Specific features of polysemantic words in the
English language and their verbalization in the context. The importance of studying
the phenomenon of polysemy is obvious because it is the object of confusion and
provides a quantitative and qualitative growth of the language’s expressive
resources. It is extremely important to investigate the semantic changes in the system
of meanings in the English language
Keywords: Lexicology, scientific definition of meaning, transference of
meaning, linguistics, semantic change, semantic meaning, polysemantic word
Аннотация: Статья посвящена специфическим особенностям
полисемантических слов в английском языке и их вербализации в контексте.
Важность изучения феномена полисемии очевидна, так как она является
источником лексической неоднозначности и играет ключевую роль в
количественном и качественном обогащении выразительных средств языка.
Чрезвычайно важно исследовать семантические изменения в системе
значений английского языка.
Ключевые слова: лексикология, научное определение значения, перенос
значения, лингвистика, семантическое изменение, семантическое значение,
полисемантическое слово.
INTRODUCTION
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There are plenty of languages in the world. There are a lot of words in the
language, and almost every (except scientific) word has 2 or more meanings. At the
same time, context appeared. Only with the help of the context do we know which
of the meanings is more suitable in that situation or text where we are or have. That
is why it is necessary to study the polysemy and more importantly to know so many
meanings of one word as it is possible. Definition Lexicology deals with words,
word-forming morphemes (derivational affixes), and word-groups or phrases.
All these linguistic units may be said to have meaning of some kind: they are
all significant and therefore must be investigated both as to form and meaning. The
branch of lexicology that is devoted to the study of meaning is known as
Semasiology. Words, however, play such a crucial part in the structure of language
that when we speak of Semasiology without any qualification, we usually refer to the
study of word meaning proper, although it is very common to explore the semantics
of other elements, such as suffixes, prefixes, etc. is one of the most controversial
terms in the theory of language.
METHODS
At first sight, the understanding of this term seems to present no difficulty at
all - it is freely used in teaching, interpreting, and translation. The scientific definition
of meaning however just as the definition of some other basic linguistic terms, such
as word, sentence, etc., has been the issue of interminable discussions. Since there is
no universally accepted definition of meaning we shall confine ourselves to a brief
survey of the problem as it is viewed in modern linguistics both in our country and
elsewhere.
The systems of meanings of polysemantic words evolve gradually. The older
a word is, the better developed is its semantic structure. The normal pattern of a
word’s semantic development is from monosemy to a simple semantic structure
encompassing only two or three meanings, with a further movement to an
increasingly more complex semantic structure are two causes of the development of
new meanings. First is the historical one: different kinds of changes in a nation’s
social life, in its culture, knowledge, technology, and arts lead to gaps appearing in
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the vocabulary that beg to be filled. Newly created objects, new concepts, and
phenomena must be named: word-building and borrowing foreign ones. New
meanings can also be developed due to linguistic factors - the second cause.
Linguistically speaking, the development of new meanings, and also a complete
change of meaning, may be caused by the influence of other words, mostly synonyms
process of development of a new meaning (or a change of meaning) is traditionally
termed transference.
Some scholars mistakenly use the term “ transference of meaning" which is
a serious mistake. It is very important to note that in any case of semantic change, it
is not the meaning but the word that is being transferred from one referent into
another (from a horse-drawn vehicle into a railway car). The result of such a
transference is the appearance of new meanings are two types of transference based
on resemblance and contiguity type of transference is also referred to as linguistic
metaphor. A new meaning appears as a result of associating two objects (phenomena,
qualities, etc) due to their outward similarity. The noun eye, for instance, has for one
of its meanings ‘hole in the end of a needle’ which also developed through
transference based on resemblance meanings formed through this type of
transference are frequently found in the informal strata of the vocabulary, especially
in slang. A red-headed boy is almost certain to be nicknamed carrot or ginner by his
schoolmates, and the one who is given to spying and sneaking gets the derogatory
nickname of rat.
Both these meanings are metaphorical, though, of course, the children using
them are quite unconscious of this fact type is linguistic metonymy. The association
is based upon subtle psychological links between different objects and phenomena,
sometimes traced and identified with much difficulty. The two objects may be
associated together because they often appear in common situations, and so the image
of one is easily accompanied by the image of the other; or they may be associated on
the principle of cause and effect, of common function, of some material and an object
which is made of it, etc. The Old English adjective glad meant “bright, shining" (it
was applied to the sun, to gold and precious stones, to shining armor, etc.). the later
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(and more modern) meaning “joyful" developed on the basis of the usual association
(which is reflected in most languages) of light with joy.
The importance of studying the phenomenon of polysemy is obvious because
it is the object of confusion and in order to provide a quantitative and qualitative
growth of the language’s expressive resources. It is extremely important to
investigate the semantic changes in the system of meanings in the English language.
Theoretical problems of linguistic form and meaning relating to the progressive
development of language have been attracted by scholars, philosophers and
grammarians since the times of Plato and Aristotle. From those times sameness of
meaning was not very easy to deal with but there seemed nothing inherently difficult
about difference of meaning.
The situation is the same at present. Not only do different words have
different meanings; but it’s also the case that the same word may have a set of
meanings. This phenomenon is called polysemy. Polysemy is the ability of words to
have more than one meaning and the words having several meanings are called
polysemantic. Most words in English are polysemantic. Highly developed polysemy
is one of the characteristic features of the English language system.
RESULTS
It should be mentioned that the wealth of expressive resources of a language
largely depends on the degree to which polysemy has developed in the language.
Sometimes people who are not fully informed in linguistic matters claim that a
language is lacking in words if the need arises for the same word to be applied to
several different phenomena. However, it is exactly the opposite: if each word is
found to be capable of conveying at least two concepts instead of one, the expressive
potential of the whole vocabulary increases two fold. Hence, a well-developed
polysemy is a great advantage in a language.[1]
Lexical transformations are also caused by the necessity to concretize
polysemantic words while translating. It is characteristic to the English language the
availability of polysemantic words with widespread meaning. They can be nouns,
adjectives and verbs, for example: thing, point, stiff; nice, fine, bad; to say, to go, to
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come, to get. The term context comprises both the narrow or micro context and the
wide or macro context. The narrow context implies a sentence or even a word
combination, e.g.: bright star- very light star, bright day – shiny day, bright reply –
clever answer; a bright boy – smart child. The following examples illustrate the
importance of the context in translation. [5]
The example can be the verb “keep”. The first meaning is “to save” while
another is “to continue”, keep speaking” means “continue speaking”. Another
English word is “book”. a text reproduced and distributed (thus, someone who has
read the same text on a computer has read the same book as someone who had the
actual paper volume) to make an action or even a matter of record (e.g. "Unable to
book a hotel room, a man sneaked into a nearby private residence where police
arrested him and later booked him for unlawful entry.")
On the other hand, it should be pointed out that the number of sound
combinations which human speech organs can produce is limited. Therefore, at a
certain stage of language development, the production of new words by
morphological means is limited as well, and polysemy becomes increasingly
important for enriching the vocabulary. From this point, it must be clear that the
process of enriching the vocabulary does not only consist merely of adding new
words to it but also in the constant development of polysemy. The system of
meanings of any polysemantic word develops gradually, mostly over the centuries,
as more and more new meanings are added to old ones, or out some of them. So the
complicated processes of polysemy development involve both the appearance of new
meanings and the loss of old ones. Yet, the general tendency with the English
vocabulary system at the modern stage of their history is to increase the total number
of its meanings and in this way to provide for a quantitative and qualitative growth
of the language's expressive resources. There are two causes of the development of
new meanings.
First is the historical one: different kinds of changes in a nation’s social life,
in its culture, knowledge, technology, and arts lead to gaps appearing in the
vocabularies which beg to be filled Newly created objects, new concepts, and
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phenomena must be named: word building and borrowing foreign ones.[6] New
meanings can also be developed due to linguistic factors - the second cause.
Linguistically speaking, the development of new meanings, and also a complete
change of meaning, may be caused through the influence of other words, mostly
synonyms.
DISCUSSION
The process of development of a new meaning is traditionally termed
transference. Some scholars mistakenly use the term “transference of meaning"
which is a serious mistake. It is very important to note that in any case of semantic
change, it is not the meaning but the word that is being transferred from one referent
into another (from a horse-drawn vehicle into a railway car). The result of such
transference is the appearance of new meaning.
Words often sign not of one but of several things. The linguistic mechanism
works naturally in many ways to prevent ambiguity and provide the clue to
distinguish the necessary meaning.[8] It’s also important to take into consideration
the significance of the context, linguistic or nonlinguistic; many ambiguities are
never noticed because the various possible meanings are excluded by the situation.
Important observations in this area of the vocabulary have been made by contextual,
distributional and transformational analysis. The majority of the contributors have
rightly appreciated the importance of a huge database in the form of meaning in the
whole process of sense disambiguation of polysemantic words. In general, both
English and Uzbek linguists examined polysemy, contrasted a range of approaches,
and highlighted many unresolved problems in the theoretical understanding of
polysemy and the present computational challenges. In essence, their works will be
highly useful for those who are working in the area of polysemy and word sense
disambiguation.
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