Types of Semantic Components

The leading semantic component in the semantic structure of a word is usually termed denotative component. The denotative component expresses the conceptual content of a word.

Let us complete the semantic structures of some words introducing connotative components into the schemes of their semantic structures.

	Denotative components	Connotative components
lonely, adj.	alone, without company	melancholy, sad	Emotive connotation
notorious, adj	widely known	for criminal acts or bad traits of character	Evaluative connotation, negative
celebrated, adj	widely known	for special achievement in science, art, etc.	Evaluative connotation, positive
to glare, v.	to look	steadily, lastingly in anger, rage, etc.	1. Connotation of duration 2. Emotive connotation
to glance, v.	to look	briefly, passingly	Connotation of duration

The above examples show how by singling out denotative and connotative components one can get a sufficiently clear picture of what the word really means. The given examples do not exhaust all the types of connotations but present only a few: emotive, evaluative connotations, and also connotations of duration and of cause.

Meaning and Context

One of the most important "drawbacks" of polysemantic words is that there is sometimes a chance of misunderstanding when a word is used in a certain meaning but accepted by a listener or reader in another. It is only natural that such cases provide stuff of which jokes are made.

Context is a powerful preventative against any misunderstanding of meanings. For instance, the adjective dull, if used out of context, would mean different things to different people or nothing at all. It is only in combination with other words that it reveals its actual meaning: a dull pupil, a dull play, a dull razor-blade, dull weather, etc Scholars have established that the semantics of words characterised by common occurrences (i. e. words which regularly appear in common contexts) are correlated and, therefore, one of the words within such a pair can be studied through the other.

All this leads us to the conclusion that context is a good and reliable key to the meaning of the word. And here we are faced with two dangers. The first is that of sheer misunderstanding, when the speaker means one thing and the listener takes the word in its other meaning.

The second danger has nothing to do with the process of communication but with research work in the field of semantics. A common error with the inexperienced research worker is to see a different meaning in every new set of combinations. Here is a puzzling question to illustrate what we mean. Cf.: an angry man, an angry letter. Is the adjective angry used in the same meaning in both these contexts or in two different meanings? Some people will say "two" and argue that, on the one hand, the combinability is different (man — name of person; letter — name of object) and, on the other hand, a letter can-not experience anger. The task of distinguishing between the different meanings of a word and the different variations of combinability is actually a question of singling out the different denotations within the semantic structure of the word.