Types of meaning of the word

The analysis of meaning shows that it is not homogeneous. It is made up of grammatical and lexical types of meaning.

Grammatical type of meaning is typical of word-forms and it expresses the relationship of words in speech, that is their position in the utterance, relationship with other words, their belonging to a definite part of speech. Grammatical meaning is the component of meaning recurrent in identical word-forms, common to all words of a certain class.

Comparing word-forms of one and the same word, for example: go, goes, went, going, gone we see that they possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person and so on, but in each of these forms we find one and the same semantic component denoting the process of movement. This is the lexical type of meaning of the word that is the component of meaning proper to the word, recurrent in all the forms of this word and in all the possible distributions of these forms.

Both the lexical and the grammatical meaning make up the word meaning as neither can exist without the other. The difference between the lexical and the grammatical components of meaning is in the way they convey the meaning.

In the semantic structure of the lexical meaning two components are singled out: 1) denotational (denotative, referential, extensional) and 2) connotational (connotative).

Denotational component expresses the conceptual content of a word. It denotes an object of the reality to which the sound form refers. It makes communication possible. People use different words and understand each other.

The connotational component comprises the emotive charge and the stylistic reference proper to the word. If we compare the following synonyms: to look, to glance, to glare, to stare we will discover that the verb to look is common semantic denominator. It expresses denotative meaning. And this type of meaning is felt in all other synonyms, but each of the synonyms possesses connotational type of meaning which describes the way we look at other people and by this look we express our attitude to people.

Connotational component may have an element of emotive evaluation. For example, in the words tremendous, worship, and girlie it is heavier than that of the words large, like and girl. And this does not depend on the “feeling” of the individual speaker but it is true for all speakers of English.

Connotational component may have also stylistic reference.

Thus, connotations may be expressive, emotive, evaluatory and stylistic.

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