SEMASIOLOGY
· Semasiology is a branch of semantics which studies meaning in the direction from the linguistic form to its meaning or meanings. The objective of semasiology is to explain the meanings designated by word sound forms and to demonstrate the difference between these meanings. Semasiological studies of words explore the phenomena of polysemy, homonymy, and paronymy.
· Polysemy means that one and the same sound form signifies several meanings (LSV), and these meanings are interrelated, as they have something in common. E.g. Engl. chair n: 1. ‘a piece of furniture to sit on’. 2. ‘a person who presides at the meeting’. 3. AE ‘the head of a university department’. 4. ‘the position of Professor’. Typically, each word, except terms, has several lexical semantic variants. For some words, they outnumber 30.
· Homonymy means that one and the same sound and/or written form is used to signify two different meanings not related to each other. Homonyms can be complete and partial. Complete homonyms coincide in both spelling and pronunciation, E.g. Engl. seal n: ‘a sea animal’; seal n: ‘a stamp attached to documents’; Ukr. коса ‘заплетене волосся’, коса ‘інструмент’. Partial homonyms coincide either in their spelling or pronunciation. Homonyms coinciding in spelling are called homographs, e.g. Engl. tear / ti / n: ‘a drop of liquid from the eye’; tear /te / v: ‘to put apart into pieces by force’. Homonyms coinciding in pronunciation are called homophones, e.g. Engl. meat / mi:t/ n: ‘edible flesh’; meet / mi:t/ v: ‘to come together’; Russ. компания ‘группа людей’, кампания ‘целенаправленное общее действие’. Besides, there are grammatical homonyms, the words whose material form is the same, but whose grammatical meanings differ, e.g. Engl. back n, back a, back adv, back v; Russ. руки, руки.
· Paronymy is partial similarity of word sound forms: their root morphemes are identical, but their affixational morphemes are different, which causes different meanings, e.g. Engl. historic vs. historical, childish vs. childlike; Russ. эффектный vs. эффективный, драматичный vs. драматический, песочный vs. песчаный.
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