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The semantic structure of the word ‘man’ in english and ukrainian languages

A person's brain represents the meaning of the word and reflects it grammatically.

The context as the result of language activity is the source of information about the performed valencies of language units. The study of the features of valency and the features of context are united. Word valency is the word's feature in language memory, opportunities for semantic-grammatical combination with other words and substitution of the syntactical function in a sentence. Grammatical valency represents the word's ability to be syntactically situated and to be combined with the appropriate parts of a sentence.

Lexical valency is the word's ability to be combined with other words semantically in grammatical valency. Besides, the type component in the word's meaning should be used as the basis for the theory of valency.

The type component of meaning is the reserve of forming new combinations, not fixed in expressions before. It is the potential source of the functional reorientation of language units. It creates an opportunity for a word to be combined with other words.

The following combinations are rather difficult to imagine in use, aren't they? A clever chair; a memory table, etc.

Language memory blocks are formed by using combinations from prior language experience. So a word is able to be combined with other words that have already been used in the context. There is no contradiction between usual and occasional valencies (occasional valency is based on person's ability to produce new expressions). Occasional valency is based on language experience but the combination has not been produced before.

From this point of view the type component of meaning gives a splendid opportunity to display occasional valency. Besides a word's relevant and type features and different components, a word acquires some contextual components of its structure. This idea can be well illustrated by the following: the situation when the narrator introduces a new character under a certain name in the novel. First we can distinguish him only by his name, later we are able to do this by his features, his behavior, speech, etc. The sounding of the name is contextual, as it is concretized by the semantics of the context. When two words are combined their meanings are mutually restricted. It causes the re-formation of both the entire combination and its separate elements. As a result lexical meanings of adjoining words are mutually restricted. So the denotate can be defined as a certain imagination of what's meant by this language expression as a whole. In such situations words can extend their valencies, that means that they can be used in new microtexts, in order to connect with other signs to form in a way great values. All the main models of the contemporary English word-building are fixed in microtext. They are the result of functional reorientation. Word-building is one of the basic ways of the functional extension of language. It is connected with a person's communicative activity. Many word-building processes based on functional reorientation, can be explained by means of an expression. They are: conversion, functional transposition, lexicalization of plural forms of nouns, substantivation, adverbialization, adjectivation, pronominalization, forming new words with the help of prepositions and postpositions, syntactic word-building. These can be defined as morphological-syntactic and the syntactic types of word-building.

This is determined by the fact that such a functional reorientation concerns syntactical structures. Its fixation is therefore not possible on the morphological level of language system alone. Word-building models are activated according to the necessity of organizing expression itself that predetermines the generation of new dictionary units despite the fact that there are a lot of words to express each meaning in the lexical system of language.

Native-speakers often create new lexical units. The reason is the necessity of verbalizing a meaning that hasn't been reduced to a word before or not fully according to the producer's intention. Contextual words are very often the result of word-creating (contextual words are units that create and realize their potential only in a certain context).

The unusual syntactic function of a language unit can also be considered contextual. This is based on the fact that the syntactic function of a certain unit without any morphological adjustment can be specified in the context. The functional reorientation of nominative units might be understood by taking into account various "narrow" contexts, while communicating within one "wide context. The external form of any English word in itself conveys no meaning. It is not the form but the meaning of a word, it's own semantics that limits acceptable varieties of a word usage. The syntactic form of a word doesn't set any formal indexes characterizing these words as they are used in an expression.

Such special features which are given to a word syntactically are reflected in its lexical form and semantic structure. Words in a contemporary English sentence acquire various qualities in accordance with their syntactical form and their functions. Thus the syntactic function turns the syntactic index of a word into the lexical one. The relationships between words so positioned within a narrow context get more complicated on account of the fact that some words perform their basic function in the sentence, the function of others is an unusual one. This case complicates the process of decoding a message, e.g.: "Then I started horsing around a little bit (J. Salinger); He had chosen not to think about money, knowing that it was un-American, natural and in a way ridiculous not to think about money.(J.Krantz); Well, you little so-and-so ; I kept thinking about that beat-up old straw basket they went around collecting money with which they were not teaching school ".