12. Types of word meaning: lexical, grammatical meanings. Denotational and connotational components of lexical meaning. Implicational meaning.

Grammatical meaning is defined as the expression in Speech of relationships between words. The grammatical meaning is more abstract and more generalised than the lexical meaning. It is recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words as the meaning of plurality in the following words students, boob, windows, compositions.

Lexical meaning. The definitions of lexical meaning given by various authors, though different in detail, agree in the basic principle: they all point out that lexical meaning is the realisation of concept or emotion by means of a definite language system.

1)The component of meaning proper to the word as a linguistic unit, i.e. recurrent in

all the forms of this word and in all possible distributions of these forms. / Ginzburg R.S., Rayevskaya N.N. and others.

2)The semantic invariant of the grammatical variation of a word / Nikitin M.V./.

3)The material meaning of a word, i.e. the meaning of the main material part of the word which reflects the concept the given word expresses and the basic properties of the thing (phenomenon, quality, state, etc.) the word denotes. /Mednikova E.M./.

Denotation. The conceptual content of a word is expressed in its denotative meaning. To denote is to serve as a linguistic expression for a concept or as a name for an individual object. It is the denotational meaning that makes communication possible. (ex: booklet –is a small thin book)

Connotation is the pragmatic communicative value the word receives depending on where, when, how, by whom, for what purpose and in what contexts it may be used. There are four main types of connotations stylistic, emotional, evaluative and expressive or intensifying.

Stylistic connotations is what the word conveys about the speaker's attitude to the social circumstances and the appropriate functional style (slay vs kill), evaluative connotation may show his approval or disapproval of the object spoken of (clique vs group), emotional connotation conveys the speaker's emotions (mummy vs mother), the degree of intensity (adore vs love) is conveyed by expressive or intensifying connotation.

The interdependence of connotations with denotative meaning is also different for different types of connotations. Thus, for instance, emotional connotation comes into being on the basis of denotative meaning but in the course of time may substitute it by other types of connotation with general emphasis, evaluation and colloquial stylistic overtone. E.g. terrific which originally meant 'frightening' is now a colloquialism meaning 'very, very good' or 'very great': terrific beauty, terrific pleasure.

Connotation differs from the implicational meaning of the word. Implicational meaning is the implied information associated with the word, with what the speakers know about the referent. A wolf is known to be greedy and cruel (implicational meaning) but the denotative meaning of this word does not include these features. The denotative or the intentional meaning of the word wolf is "a wild animal resembling a dog that kills sheep and sometimes even attacks men". Its figurative meaning is derived from implied information, from what we know about wolves - "a cruel greedy person", also the adjective wolfish means "greedy".