Semantic theories in Comparative historical and structural paradigms

Comparative historical linguistics
Focus: connection between the meaning and defining the laws of semantic change
Contribution: concreate, abstract, usual and occasional meaning, semantic change( generalization, specialization, shift of meaning, metaphorixation)
Historical linguistics is the study of language change It has five main concerns:

  1. to study changes in particular languages
  2. to discover the pre-history of languages, and group them into language families (comparative linguistics)
  3. to develop theories about how and why language changes
  4. to describe the history of speech communities
  5. to study the history of words, i.e. etymology.

Structural linguistics
Structural linguistics is an approach to linguistics originating from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and is part of the overall approach of structuralism.
Principals: manipulability, i.e selecting and analyzing separate language units and operating with them
Contribution: classification of semantic change, the causes of semantic change, understanding of lexical semantics as a system
The account of meaning given by Ferdinand de Saussure implies the definition of a word as a linguistic sign. He calls it ‘signifiant’ (signifier) and what it refers to — ‘signifie’ (that which is signified). By the latter term he understands not the phenomena of the real world but the ‘concept’ in the speaker’s and listener’s mind. The situation may be represented by a triangle (see Fig. 1).

A solid line between reference and referent shows that the relationship between them is linguistically relevant, that the nature of what is named influences the meaning. This connection should not be taken too literally, it does not mean that the sound form has to have any similarity with the meaning or the object itself. The connection is conventional.

English scholars C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards

We reproduce it for the third time to illustrate how it can show the main features of the referential approach in its present form. All the lines are now solid, implying that it is not only the form of the linguistic sign but also its meaning and what it refers to that are relevant for linguistics. The scheme is given as it is applied to the naming of cats.

+ Trapezium of meaning( 1 лекция с Бабиной)

A Psychosemiotic Tetrahedron—Model for the Structure of Images in Consciousness.(лекция)

21) Semantic theories in Generative and Cognitive paradigms
Generative linguistics
Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. The term "generative grammar" is used in different ways by different people, and the term "generative linguistics" therefore has a range of different, though overlapping, meanings.
Generative linguistics is that school of thought, which deals with the study and application of grammar in fully explicit way, with a range of different, overlapping meanings by different people . Formally, a generative grammar is defined as one that is fully explicit. It is a finite set of rules that can be applied to generate all those and only those sentences (often, but not necessarily, infinite in number) that are grammatical in a given language. This is the definition that is offered by Noam Chomsky, who invented the term,[1] and by most dictionaries of linguistics. Generate is being used as a technical term with a particular sense. To say that a grammar generates a sentence means that the grammar "assigns a structural description" to the sentence
The principle of compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them. This principle is also called Frege's principle
The principle of compositionality states that in a meaningful sentence, if the lexical parts are taken out of the sentence, what remains will be the rules of composition. Take, for example, the sentence "Socrates was a man". Once the meaningful lexical items are taken away—"Socrates" and "man"—what is left is the pseudo-sentence, "S was a M". The task becomes a matter of describing what the connection is between S and M.
Cognitive linguistics
Cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the school of thought within linguistics that interprets language in terms of the concepts, sometimes universal, sometimes specific to a particular tongue, which underlie its forms. Cognitive linguistics takes an opposing position to the historically prominent position of Noam Chomsky and others in the field of generative grammar.
Cognitive theories of meaning(лекция)
1) prototypical meaning(A prototypical example of something is a first example from which all later forms can be developed)
2) figure and ground model(type of perceptual grouping which is a vital necessity for recognizing objects through vision. For example, you see words on a printed paper as the "figure" and the white sheet as the "ground".)