R. S. Ginzburg, S. S. Khidekel, G. Y. Knyazeva, A. A. Sankin a course in modern english

§ 26. Semantic Structure of Polysemantic Words


The word table, e.g., has at least nine meanings in Modern English: 1. a piece of furniture; 2. the persons seated at a table; 3. sing. the food put on a table, meals; 4. a thin flat piece of stone, metal, wood, etc.; 5. pl. slabs of stone; 6. words cut into them or written on them (the ten tables); ² 7. an orderly arrangement of facts, figures, etc.; 8. part of a machine-tool on which the work is put to be operated on; 9. a level area, a plateau. Each of the individual meanings can be described in terms of the types of meanings discussed above. We may, e.g., analyse the eighth meaning of the word table into the part-of-speech meaning — that of the noun (which presupposes the grammatical meanings of number and case) combined with the lexical meaning made up of two components The denotational semantic component which can be interpreted

¹ For details see ‘Semasiology’, §29, p. 36.

² десять заповедей (библ.)

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as the dictionary definition (part of a machine-tool on which the work is put) and the connotational component which can be identified as a specific stylistic reference of this particular meaning of the word table (technical terminology). Cf. the Russian планшайба, стол станка.

In polysemantic words, however, we are faced not with the problem of analysis of individual meanings, but primarily with the problem of the interrelation and interdependence of the various meanings in the semantic structure of one and the same word.