К ВОПРОСУ О СЕМАНТИЧЕСКОЙ И СЛОВООБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЙ ДЕРИВАЦИИ В СОВРЕМЕННОМ АНГЛИЙСКОМ И РУССКОМ ЯЗЫКАХ

ON THE PROBLEM OF SEMANTIC AND WORD-FORMING DERIVATIONS IN MODERN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN

As we know, many linguists believe that metaphor is one of the most wide-spread types of semantic derivation. Anthropocentricity of the metaphor is recognized by many linguists. So, J. Lakoff and M. Johnson, for example, in their popular work about metaphor, state that the processes of a man’s thinking are mostly metaphoric, i.e. conceptual system of a man is structured and determined with the help of metaphor [3, p. 90]. Others suppose that metaphor is “a component of a man’s conscience” [4, p. 89].

N.D. Arutyunova, in her turn, claims that metaphor began to be treated as the key to understanding of bases and processes of forming not only national specific vision of the world, but also its universal image [1, p. 39]. We should also note that modern research of metaphor are aimed at setting some general laws of development of the process of formation of figurative meanings, which can be seen in a lexical and semantic system of the language.

The term “semantic derivation” has appeared relatively late, but the interest to the process of formation of the meaning of the word had existed long ago.

What can be called realization of semantic derivation? Here we face the problem of identity as we consider the meaning only of one and the same word.  While dealing with a word in one language of a certain synchronic level, we don’t face much difficulty for analyses. Much more difficult it becomes while dealing with diachronic identity within the same language. Here we can see some certain problems, but if a word remained (physically) its identity brings no difficulty. Much more difficulties one can have while analyzing two meanings of the same word in relative languages.

Let’s consider, for example, a case of polysemy, i.e. the evident semantic relationship between two meanings of a word in a certain language, say, semantic derivation: ‘a woman’ ↔ ‘a wife', represented in French by lexeme femme, in German by Frau, etc.

Or, for instance, «a diachronic shift», i.e. the change of the meaning, for example, the same semantic derivation which we see in a Russian word /zhena/ “wife”.

In fact, it would be more exact to speak of not a semantic transformation, but of loss of meaning as in, for example, modern Russian lexeme “wife” lost its meaning of “woman”. However, as we know, an old meaning never is lost completely, it may appear, say, in word-forming (cf. womanish, women-loving, women-hating, woman-like - all these words correlate with the meaning of ‘a woman”, but not “a wife”. So, we can state that there is no an exact border between synchronic and diachronic derivation.

Sometimes we can face such a phenomenon: one word has two certain meanings in case of relative languages (so called “false friends of an interpreter”), for example:

‘to hope’ ↔ ‘to wait' based on French verb espérer ‘to hope’ and Spanish verb esperar ‘to wait’;

 Or, for example, another pair of meanings:

‘to hear’ ↔ ‘to understand' borrowed from French verb entendre ‘to hear’ and Spanish verb entender ‘to understand’.

In Russian there exists a specific problem of so called church Slavic etymologic doublets like a head (a leader) - a head (part of a body), part (a country) - part (some edge), which we sometimes tend to consider the same word. Then, we should ask, what can’t be called semantic derivation?

As the relations of semantic derivation are set within one word (or between the words based on the same source), they cannot be called cases of semantic derivation, as they originate from different sources, thus these are cases of homonymy.

In Russian we have such cases when some prefixes seem to be formed as semantic derivatives, but of course, are not such. For example, some cases of polysemy, exactly, polysemy of prefixes’ formations like in zalechit’ (to heal the wound) and zalechit’ (to do harm by treatment) [6]).

However, even among those levels, which we surely include into semantic derivation, we can differentiate nuclear and peripheral zones. 

As it is known, apart from semantic derivation the development of the English language during all its history was done by the two ways: first of all, due to word-forming means taking place in the language, and, secondly, due to borrowings from other languages. However, not all the borrowings come into English in a “pure” state. We mean the borrowings with semantic and word-forming derivation.  In case of semantic derivation the borrowed stem of the word develops one or more new meanings, depending on the extra-linguistic environment it appears in. in case of word-forming derivation root morphemes and affixes join each other due to some special linguistic models.

For example, let’s consider a case of semantic derivation of a lexeme poison based on a borrowed stem, which has such meanings in English as: 1.а. ‘a drink made with a special purpose, a medicine’ (1377); 2.а ‘a substance intruding an organism by any way, crushing living functions and doing great harm to one’s health; used in little portions with the aim of quick influencing living functions of an organism’  (1387); 2.б. (coll) ‘alcohol drink’ (1805) [5, p. 1057].

As we see, the last meaning was developed much later, than the first two meanings. As both of the lexical-semantic variants – poison ‘medicine’ and poison ‘poison’ – appeared in the English language almost simultaneously (see their first fixation in the language), we can learn which of them is prior only by turning to the donor-language - French - in which this word has the following meanings: 1.‘a drink’(~XI c); 1.1. ‘a substance which ruins the vitally important functions of an  organism if gets into it’ (1130); 1.2 ‘a drink with addition of some certain substances” (~1130); 1.3. ‘a fluid food product, a drink, not toxic in small portions, but influencing the organism and its functions badly for the long time ’ (~1695); 1.4. ‘a drink of a very low quality’ (1665); 1.5 ‘a chemical catalyst’ (1962) [2, p. 4417].

Thus, in spite of the fact that the meaning of “poison” is fixed in English much later, this very meaning becomes the main meaning and on its bases there was developed the next meaning “a medicine”, and much time later, in American English there appeared the meaning of “alcohol drink” as a result of the metaphor based on the comparison of its influencing the living being [5, p. 1057]. While speaking of the borrowings with word-forming derivation, let’s consider the lexeme bouse, bowse (1). At first the verb bouse, bowse  was borrowed in English from old Holland with the meaning ‘to drink, to drink very much, usu. for a toast for friendship or for pleasure, or just to drink alcohol’ (1300) [5, p. 1027]. Later on from a borrowed verb there was formed by conversion a noun bouse, bowse (1) with the meaning (coll) ‘a drink, liqueur; first dating has a meaning “a bowl for drinking” (1300) [5, p. 2004: 1027].

In 1786 for the first time was fixed the second meaning of this word “drunkard, or a state of being drunk” (1786) [5, p. 1027]. Here we can see that the development of the second meaning is made by metonymic transformation by the model “an object” => “action by this object”. On the example of the lexeme bouse we can observe a number of word-forming derivations: 1. Borrowing a verb into the English language; 2. Formation of a noun form a verb by means of conversion (word-forming derivation); 3. Development of the second meaning of a noun by means of metonymic transformation (semantic derivation).

As one more example of a word-forming derivation we can consider the word reboil with the meaning ‘a wine, fermented for the second time’ (1460)  [5, p. 223]. The lexeme was formed by means of conversion from the verb to reboil with the meanings 1. ‘to ferment for the second time (about wine)’,  2. ‘to boil again’ [5, p. 223], and this word in its turn, was borrowed from old French rebouillir. It is remarkable that this word was earlier borrowed into French from Latin (rebullī-re Lat ‘to boil’. During assimilation a French suffix was lost.  A new noun with the meaning ‘a wine, fermented for the second time’ appeared only in English.

In spite of the fact that borrowings appear in the language due to some extra-linguistic factors, assimilation of the word, following later, as well as a “life” of the word, i.e. its frequent use, mostly depend on internal lingual factors.