Typology of ms.:

• actual m. – opp. to virtual (systemic) m., actualized in speech, specified by linguistic and situational context;

• associative m. – similar to connotation (q.v.), weak implication, a conceptual entity to which the systemic m. of a given word merely hints, indirectly implies, which is triggered by association;

• basic m. – see nominative m.

• bound m. – actualised by a word in a given phrase or context, predetermined by semantic or morphosyntactic combinability (or collocationally and colligationally bound) – See Collocation; Colligation;

• broad m. – resulting from generalization of m. (q.v.), when a word develops the broadest referential capacity possible (e.g. way. thing, body, do, have); further stage is deemantization and loss of purely lexical m., transformation of a lexical unit into a grammatical morpheme – grammaticalization (q.v.);

• categorial m. – part-of-speech meaning;

• cognitive m. – a) same as conceptual or denotative or nominative or main meaning; b) the conceptual core, significative part of m. reflecting essential features of the referent conceptualised by our cognition; distinct from pragmatic m.;

• colligationally and collocationally conditioned m. (Acad. V.V. Vinogradov's term) – are not 'free' but 'bound' ones in the sense that they are determined by morphosyntactic and lexical-phraseological combinability. Some meanings are realised only within a given morpho-syntactic pattern (colligation), e.g. the verb to tell when used in a passive construction displays its colligationally conditioned meaning 'to order, to direct – You must do what you are told'. Similarly, there are meanings which depend on the word's association with other lexical units (collocation). Here the idiom principle is the leading one because the co-occurrence range of the word is determined not only by its meaning, but also, to a great extent, by the conventions of its use: e.g. milk is never rancid, but sour (see secondary signification). The verb to raise acquires a collocationally bound meaning ('to grow plants' or 'keep animals') when used in combinations, such as raise wheat/ pigs / cattle. When combine with the nouns hopes / consciousness / awareness, its meaning changes: The conference is intended to raise people's awareness of Aids. – See bound m.

• conceptual m. - same as cognitive or denotative or nominative or main meaning;

• connotative (connotational) m. – See Connotation

• contentional m. – reflects the structure of essential features of a notion, name.

• contextual (contextually-bound) m. – triggered/brought in by the contextual (both verbal and non-verbal) environment of the word; acquired on a definite occasion only;

• core m. – same as cognitive or denotative or nominative or main meaning;

• denotative (denotational) m. – See Denotation

• derived (derivational) m. – See nominative-derivative m;.

• direct m. – the main meaning of the word which appears in the act of primary semiosis; opp. to transferred (derived, figurative) m. which appears as a result of semantic derivation/semantic development processes (q.v.) and secondary nomination (q.v.). – See nominative m.;

• dynamic m. – actually, any m. is characterized by certain dynamism – ability to change either synchronically or diachronically, so that it would not be correct to discriminate between systemic (dictionary, virtual) m. as being static and speech (actual, actualized) m. as dynamic, although in a current speech event m. is necessarily subject to contextual (both linguistic and extralinguistic) influence hence actual is more dynamic than virtual/systemic m.;

• emotive m. – See Connotation, emotive;

• encyclopaedic m. – opp. to naive m. (q.v.), conveys the exhaustive information about an object, event or phenomenon, expert's knowledge of the denotatum which only professionals possess (cf. the meaning of the word 'atom' as understood by a physicist and by a actress). Lexical m. does not cover the e.m., actually, lexical m. has nothing to do with the e.m. To understand the m. of the word 'salt' you are not obligatorily to be an expert in chemistry and remember that NaCl is the chemical formula for salt and 'salts' are quite peculiar chemical substances not necessarily intended for cooking purposes. – See next m., further m.

• etymological m. – original m. of a word, which later on underwent semantic changes;

• evaluative m. – See Connotation, evaluative

• expressive m. – See Connotation,expressive

• extensional m. – a number of denotata to which a certain name refers to.

• further m. – m. or meanings within the prospective scope of semantic changes (only vaguely) predetermined by the current semantics of the word, the prospective sphere of its semantic variation; - see next m.;

• figurative m. – See direct m.; Figurative language

• free m. – nominative m. (q.v.) can be regarded as 'free' as distinct from the collocational and colligational meanings as bound (q.v.) ones;

• functional m. – grammatical meaning of a word (word-like unit) as an element of syntax, predetermined by its categorial (q.v.), subcategorial and individual lexical m.;

• generic m. – reflection in lexical m. of a generic concept, concept of the higher level of abstraction;

• grammatical m. – m. of a grammatical form of a word;

• idiomatic m. – m., actualized within a certain idiomatic expression only, idiomatically bound m.;

• lexical m. – m. of a lexical unit, comprises categorial m., subcategorial m. and individual m. of a lexeme; reflects a certain part of a corresponding concept on the level of language;

• lexico-grammatical m. – same as categorial m. (q.v.), part-of-speech m.;

• main m. – See nominative m;

• naive m. – lexical m. as represented in the mind of a common native speaker, not an expert in the field which includes the denotatum of the word – see encyclopaedic m.

• next m. – m. or meanings within the actual scope of semantic derivation of a lexeme, easily predetermined or expected by the core semantics (lexical prototype) of the word;

• nominative m. – also basic, main, direct, conceptual, cognitive m. of the word, referring to objects, phenomena, actions and qualities in extralinguistic reality (referent) and reflecting their general understanding by the speaker (can be correlated with referential, denotative, descriptive, factual, objective m.); realization of the word's nominative capacity (to serve as a name for some extralinguistic entity). The n.m. also has the following 'free' authentic equivalents in English: essential, central, domain, primary, focal, pivotal, common, usual – which are mostly used to avoid repetition in speech and not as technical terms;

• nominative-derivative m. – comes into being when the word is 'stretched out' semantically as a result of semantic derivation to cover new facts and phenomena of extralinguistic reality – See secondary m.; derivative m.; Variation, semantic v.; Semantic development; Semantic derivation; Lexico-semantic variant;

• occasional m. – see contextual meaning;

• original m. – same as etymological m.

• part-of-speech m. – see categorial m..

• phraseological m. (phraseologically bound meaning) – also idiomatic m. (q.v.) the meaning which is realised only in some phrases and belongs only to a given collocation – when a word is habitually associated together with another word to form a 'natural-sounding' combination: e.g. to raise becomes part of the phrase meaning 'to show surprise' in to raise one's eyebrows (at smb.)

• pragmatic m. – semantic component of lexical m. (as distinct from conceptual m.) which reflects the attitudes, emotions of the speakers (either personal or communal), so it can be regarded a correlative term to connotation (q.v.);

• primary m. – see nominative m., direct m.; m. which to the greatest degree is dependent upon or conditioned by its paradigmatic links, while such meanings as display a greater degree of syntagmatic ties are secondary;

• prototypical m. (or core m.) – opp. to peripheral m.;

• referential m. – see Reference;

• secondary m. – see nominative-derivative m.;

• significative m. – see Signification;

• situational m. – see contextual m.;

• specific m. – opp. to generic m. (q.v.), m. of a specific term, correlates with the specific concept, a subordinate one in the hierarchical taxonomy;

• static m. – opp. to dynamic m. (q.v.)

• usual m. – m., accepted by the language-speaking community, fixed in dictionaries, reproduced in speech actualizations of the word;

• virtual m. - as opp. to actual m., systemic (fixed in dictionaries) m.

Means of word-formation – specific language devices with the help of which new words appear in a language. Basic means of word formation in English are derivation and composition (q.v.).

Meronyms – words which semantics reflects the concept of a part; opp. to holonyms (q.v.). E.g. chapter, faculty, atom. – See Systemic relationships in lexis

Metalanguage – a language of the second order, a specific semiological system which is used to speak about language, i.e. a language the subject of which is the content and the expression of a human language.

Metalinguistic – pertaining to metalanguage (q.v.).

Metaphor – semantic transference (q.v.), figure of speech that implies comparison between two unlike entities, as distinguished from simile, an explicit comparison signalled by the words "like" or "as." The distinction is not simple. The metaphor makes a qualitative leap from a reasonable, perhaps prosaic comparison, to an identification or fusion of two objects, to make one new entity partaking of the characteristics of both. Many critics regard the making of ms. as a system of thought antedating or bypassing logic, a figure of speech in which two things are explicitly identified, although they are really only being compared. The remark, "This man is a pig" is understood, of course, to mean that the man resembles a pig. In analyzing ms. we use the terms tenor to denote the primary subject ("this man") and vehicle to designate the image introduced for comparison ("pig"). Some metaphors consist only of the vehicle while the tenor is left implicit, as if one were to say of the man, "That pig". Such ms. are variously described as implicit, submerged, truncated. – See Semantic changes; Figurative language. Typology of ms.:

• cognitive/conceptual metaphor (q.v.);

• dead m.;

• moribund m.;

• new n.;

• original m.;

• poetic m.;

• stock m.;

• sustained m.

Metaphorization – 1) the process and principle of cognizing new entities through already acquired empirical experience; 2) semantic process of transference of names on the basis of 1). – See Cognitive metaphor; Metaphor

Methods of linguistic research in lexicology:

• combinatorial analysis – analysis of semantic/syntactic combinability of words;

• componential analysis (q.v.);

• contextual analysis (q.v.);

• contensive analysis – analysis of meaning (q.v.);

• derivational analysis – analysis of derivational evolution of a word;

• distributional analysis – analysis of morphemic distribution (q.v.);

• etymological analysis – analysis of the word origin;

• lexicographic analysis – analysis of a word as a dictionary unit;

• morphemic analysis – analysis of the morphemic structure of the word;

• onomasiological analysis (q.v.);

• semasiological analysis (q.v.);

• transformational analysis (q.v.).

Metonymy – type of semantic shift (q.v.), figure of speech the essence of which is the substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant (e.g. crown for king, the turf for horse racing). – See Cognitive metonymy; Figurative language

Minor means of word-formation – non-productive means of word formation in present-day English: sound interchange, reduplication, back-formation, blending, distinctive stress (q.v.), etc.

Monosemy – linguistic phenomenon of monosemanticity, when a word possesses only one meaning; characteristic of primarily a term (q.v.) or a borrowing (mostly of a barbarism) (q.v.), otherwise a rare occasion in lexicon.

Morpheme – the smallest (ultimate) recurrent unit of the system of expression directly related to a corresponding unit of the system of content; a bound form (q.v.).

Morphemic analysis – the analysis of a word from the point of view of its morphemic structure. – See Affix; Morpheme

Morphological divisibility – See Divisibility, morphological; Analysability

Morphological segmentation – See Divisibility, morphological; Analysability

Morphotactics – study of processes taking place at morpheme junctures. – See Allo-emic theory; Allomorph; Variation, 'emic' v.

Motivation – predetermination of the meaning of a semantic, morphological, phraseological derivative by the meaning of the original stem (in morphological derivation) or original elements (in composition or phraseological derivation).

N

Name – any linguistic sign. – See Nomination 2)

Narrowing of meaning – See Specialization; Semantic changes; Semantic shift

Native words – words of the English word-stock which belong to the following etymological layers of the English vocabulary:

• words of common Indo-European origin;

• words of Common Germanic word-stock;

• purely Anglo-Saxon words.

Neologism – a word or a word combination that appears or is specially coined to name a new object or express a new concept.

Neology – a branch of lexicology studying newly-coined words. See Word, occasional, potential; Acceptability; Word-formation; Nonce-word

Neutralization, semantic (de-semantization) – loss by a lexical unit of its semantics, acquisition of grammatical features, a stage in the direction of grammaticalization (q.v.).

Nomen – a commercial name of a product (e.g. capuccino, xerox), always construed with certain advertising purposes, the properties of a n. (its connotations mostly and associative meaning) should help promote the product on the market. Often metonimically transferred to name the object itself.

Nominative-derivative meaning – See Meaning, nominative-derivative m.

Nomination – 1) the process of denoting ('naming') things, the linguistic part of which consists in the act of connecting a certain denotatum/designatum with a sign/designator. Typology of ns.:

1. according to the number of acts of n. a certain sign takes part in:

• primary n.;

• secondary nomination (q.v);

2. according to various linguistic means employed in n.:

• lexical n. – n. of a concept by means of lexical items as opposed to concepts expressed grammatically;

• propositive n. – expression of concepts of propositional nature by means of propositions.

2) a name; a linguistic unit denoting an extralinguistic entity. Typology of names:

According to the nature of extralinguistic entity denoted names/nominations can by subdivided into:

• names of classes vs. names of individual objects;

• names of objects vs. names of properties (qualities, features)

Nominative meaning – See Meaning, nominative m.

Non-contrastive distribution – See Distribution

Non-semantic grouping – grouping of words on non-semantic principles (alphabetical order, rhyming principle, morphological basis, etc.).

Nonce-word – an occasional word created for a current situation of communication and not appearing further on except for stylistic, quotational or advertizing purposes (e.g. alcoholiday, bagonize, clickability).

Norm/linguistic norm – standard variety of language; set of units, usage patterns, accepted by the majority of the community and called literary norm of the language. – See Variation; Variants

Notion – 1) a term, synonymous to concept (q.v.); 2) a type of concept (q.v.), reflects basic, essential features of an object – its objective, logically constructed features, logical pro forma. When you can't visualise the object" – mile, etymology, distance, time, kindness, etc.. – you give only a verbal definition of the n. Can not be represented by a picture. Such conceptual features can be also represented by proper names after they become common nouns – Don Quixote, Hitler, Robin Hood, Cicero, Don Juan.

O

Obsolete word – a word which dropped out from the language. – See Archaism; Historism; Obsolescent word.

Obsolescent word – a word which is on the verge of dropping out from current use by language speakers.

Occasional word – See Word, occasional

Onomasiological analysis/approach – the study of lexical units from the point of view of how certain conceptual content is reflected in lexical meanings; 'content  form' approach; analysis of cases of synonymy and antonymy; opposite to semasiological analysis (q.v.).

Onomasiology – branch of linguistics studying linguistic means and methods of nominating objects of reality, means of verbalization of conceptual entities.