English semantics

Semantics (from other Greek: σημαντικός “denoting”) is a section of linguistics that studies the semantic meaning of language units.

As a study tool, semantic analysis is used. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, semantics was often also called semitiology (from other Greek: σημασία “sign; indication”). Scientists involved in semantics are still commonly called semasiologists. Also, “semantics” can mean the circle of meanings of a certain class of linguistic units (for example, “semantics of verbs of movement”).

Semantic problems were posed and discussed by philosophical thought in ancient times. Such are the disputes about the origin of the meanings of words and their relation to being and thinking, which were conducted by analogists and anomalists in antiquity and nominalists, realists, conceptualists in the Middle Ages; such is the doctrine of suppositions, that is, of changes in the meaning of a word depending on the context and the specific situation, developed by medieval scholasticism; such are the problems of the adequacy of the linguistic expression of thinking and the origin of the contradictions between them, the problems of the development of thinking and language, put forward by the philosophy of the XVII-XVIII centuries. But all these problems were discussed without regard to the development of linguistic disciplines proper, for example, grammar. In the linguistic proper, up to the 19th century, inclusively, only one discipline -etymology - touched on the problems of semantics, because, explaining the formation of some words from others, it was forced to register and explain changes in the meanings of words. Only in the second half of the 19th century, in connection with the increasing interest not only in the sound, but also in the “psychological” side of the language, the question arose of the need to highlight semantics as a doctrine of changes in meaning, initially only words (see Semantic property). The term "semantics" was coined by the French linguist Breal. One of the applied problems in the study of language semantics appeared with the need to adequately search for information on the Internet at the user's request (see: Relevance). The theory of semantic analysis is aimed at solving problems related to the possibility of understanding the meaning of a phrase and submitting a request to the search system in the necessary form.

The process of activating borrowed vocabulary has become one of the most significant phenomena for the modern Russian language. This is due to the fact that at the turn of the XX - XXI centuries borrowing lexical units, including from English, is one of the main sources of the Russian language system. The Anglicisms that entered the recipient language entail changes affecting various levels of the language: phonetic, lexical, morphological, etc. Such phenomena are constantly under the scrutiny of linguists.

Meanwhile, at the present stage, as noted by E.V. Marinov, semantic adaptation of borrowing has its own characteristics, which is due to the general situation of linguistic instability at the turn of the century: first, the formation of the semantics of new borrowing is accelerating, secondly, foreign words that have just entered the language are involved in the accompanying lexical processes occurring in Russian dictionary at the turn of the century: deideologization of vocabulary, actualization of words that are previously on the periphery, the transformation of semantics and the active development of a polysemy of words of some of those aticheskih groups and others.

The semantic transformations of anglicisms appear to be the most significant, since they indicate qualitative changes in the Russian language system.

Along with the semantic transformations of material borrowings, the lexical-semantic side of the Russian language at the turn of the century is rather actively enriched by semantic borrowings from English.

The modern stage of the English-Russian language contacts is characterized by a number of specific features, among which one can name a new way of borrowing - through electronic media and the Internet as a whole; transformation of the reasons for borrowing, namely: the prevalence of psychological, euphemistic, social factors of foreign language influence, which led to the frequency of entering into the recipient language of anglicisms, which have Russian analogues; activation of semantic borrowing.

In general, the modern stage of the Anglo-Russian language connections should be viewed in the context of global bilingualism “mother tongue + English”. In addition, speaking of the nature of the relationship between the Russian and English languages in the field of spiritual culture, science and technology, it can be argued that today English pretends to be the role of peristress in relation to the Russian language.

Borrowing is the most important mechanism for the renewal of the structure (primarily with material borrowing) and the language system (with semantic borrowing). The concept of a “borrowed word” should be considered in two ways, differentiating the positions of synchrony and diachrony. In the modern context, it seems legitimate to interpret borrowing as a foreign language unit of any degree of development and use the terms “borrowing”, “foreign word”, “foreign word” as synonymous. If we consider this issue from the position of time, then it is possible to divide foreign-language units into mastered (borrowing) and undeveloped (foreign) ones.

From the point of view of semasiological mechanisms, the lexical-semantic adaptation of English borrowings is due to their paradigmatic and syntagmatic connections in the recipient language system, which in turn determines the active emergence of new lexical-semantic variants of borrowed anglicisms under the influence of the dictionary system of the Russian language. Consideration of the structure of the lexical meaning of the word as a field and the use of component analysis allows to identify various dynamic models of the development of semantics of modern Anglicism, among which the most productive is the metonymy, less common among Russians. Along with this type of semantic derivation, the following processes are observed in the semantics of English borrowings: metaphorical transfer, expansion of meaning, semantic shift, narrowing of meaning, a number of English borrowings demonstrate complex formation of meaning (metaphor + metonymy, metonymy + expansion of value, semantic shift + metonymy, metaphor + semantic shift, semantic shift + value expansion).

Borrowing should be understood broadly, including in its composition as direct borrowing, as well as derivational and semantic copying of foreign language material. In this case, there is a clear correlation of the genus

(borrowing) and its types (forms of borrowing). To designate a process other than semantic cliché, the term “secondary borrowing” is introduced, which seems to be legitimate, first of all, on the basis of the originality / noninconsistency of the lexeme, which receives a new meaning: when calculating, the meaning is transferred to the material shell of the original word, and in the secondary borrowing - a previously borrowed lexical unit. Thus, it seems expedient to distinguish the following genus-specific components: semantic borrowing is a generic concept, it is differentiated by semantic calking and secondary borrowing, which in the Russian language system demonstrate fairly wide areas of functioning and different types of lexical meanings.