The grammatical meaning of the word and the ways of its formation.

Words have lexical and grammatical meanings. Lexical meanings are studied by lexicology, grammatical meanings are studied by grammar - morphology and syntax.

Lexical meaning words are a reflection in the word of one or another phenomenon of reality (object, event, quality, action, relationship, etc.).

grammatical meaning words is a characteristic of it as an element of a certain grammatical class (for example, table- masculine noun), as an element of the inflectional series ( table, table, table etc.) and as an element of a phrase or sentence in which the word is associated with other words ( table leg, put the book on the table).

Lexical meaning of the word individually: it is inherent in the given word and by this delimits the given word from others, each of which has its own, also individual meaning.

On the other hand, grammatical meaning characterizes entire categories and classes of words; it is categorical .

Compare words table, house, knife. Each of them has its own lexical meaning, denoting different objects. At the same time, they are characterized by common, the same grammatical meanings: they all belong to the same part of speech - the noun, to the same grammatical gender - masculine and have the form of the same number - the singular.

An important sign of grammatical meaning, which distinguishes it from the meaning of the lexical one, is the obligation of the expression: we cannot use the word without expressing its grammatical meanings (with the help of endings, prepositions, etc.). So, speaking the word table, we not only name a certain object, but also express such features of this noun as gender (masculine), number (singular), case (nominative or accusative, cf .: There was a table in the corner. - I see a table). All these signs of form table the essence of its grammatical meanings, expressed by the so-called zero inflection.

Pronouncing the word form table (for example, in a sentence Blocked the passage with a table), we use the ending -om to express grammatical meanings instrumental case (cf. endings used to express case meanings: table-a, table-y, table-e), masculine (cf. the ending that feminine nouns have in the instrumental case: water-oh), singular (cf. table-ami). The lexical meaning the words table- "a piece of home furniture, which is a surface of hard material, mounted on one or more legs, and serving to put or put something on it" - in all case forms of this word remains unchanged. In addition to the root table-, which has the indicated lexical meaning, there are no other means of expressing this meaning, similar to the means of expressing the grammatical meanings of case, gender, number, etc.

TYPES OF LEXICAL MEANINGS OF WORDS IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

Comparison of various words and their meanings makes it possible to single out several types of lexical meanings of words in the Russian language.

1. By way of nomination direct and figurative meanings of words are distinguished.

direct(or the main, main) meaning of a word is a meaning that directly correlates with the phenomena of objective reality.

For example, words table, black, boil have the following main meanings:

1. "A piece of furniture in the form of a wide horizontal board on high supports, legs."

2. "Colors of soot, coal."

3. "Bubbling, bubbling, evaporating from strong heat" (about liquids).

These values ​​are stable, although they may change historically. For example, the word table in the Old Russian language it meant "throne", "reign", "capital".

The direct meanings of words less than all others depend on context, on the nature of connections with other words. Therefore, direct meanings are said to have the greatest paradigmatic conditionality and the least syntagmatic coherence.

portable(indirect) meanings of words arise as a result of the transfer of a name from one phenomenon of reality to another based on the similarity, commonality of their features, functions, etc.

Yes, the word table has several figurative meanings:

1. "Item of special equipment or part of a machine of similar shape": operating table, raise machine table.

2. "Food, food": rent a room with a table.

3. "A department in an institution in charge of some special range of affairs": information desk.

At the word black such portable values:

1. "Dark, as opposed to something lighter, called white": blackbread.

2. "Taking a dark color, darkened": blackfrom sunburn.

3. "Kurnoy" (only full form, obsolete): blackhut.

4. "Gloomy, bleak, heavy": blackthoughts.

5. "Criminal, malicious": blacktreason.

6. "Not the main, auxiliary" (only the full form): blackmove in the house.

7. "Physically heavy and unskilled" (long form only): blackWork etc.

Word boil has the following metaphors:

1. "To manifest in a strong degree": work is in full swing.

2. "To manifest something with force, to a strong extent": boilindignation.

As you can see, indirect meanings appear in words that are not directly related to the concept, but approach it through various associations that are obvious to speakers.

Portable meanings can preserve figurativeness: black thoughts, black betrayal, boil with indignation. Such figurative meanings are fixed in the language: they are given in dictionaries when interpreting a lexical unit.

In terms of reproducibility and stability, figurative meanings differ from metaphors that are created by writers, poets, publicists and are of an individual nature.

However, in most cases, when transferring meanings, imagery is lost. For example, we do not perceive as figurative such names as pipe elbow, teapot spout, clock and under. In such cases, they speak of extinct figurativeness in the lexical meaning of the word, dry metaphors.

Direct and figurative meanings are distinguished within one word.

2. According to the degree of semantic motivation values ​​are highlighted unmotivated(non-derivative, primary), which are not determined by the meaning of morphemes in the composition of the word, and motivated(derivatives, secondary), which are derived from the meanings of the generating stem and derivational affixes. For example, words table, build, white have unmotivated meanings. Words canteen, desktop, canteen, completion, perestroika, anti-perestroika, whiten, whiten, whiteness motivated meanings are inherent, they are, as it were, “produced” from the motivating part, word-building formants and semantic components that help to comprehend the meaning of a word with a derivative stem.

For some words, the motivation of the meaning is somewhat obscured, since in modern Russian it is not always possible to single out their historical root. However, etymological analysis establishes the ancient family ties of the word with other words, makes it possible to explain the origin of its meaning. For example, etymological analysis allows you to highlight the historical roots in the words fat, feast, window, cloth, pillow, cloud and establish their connection with words live, drink, eye, twist, ear, drag(envelop). Thus, the degree of motivation of one or another meaning of the word may not be the same. In addition, the meaning may seem motivated to a person with a philological background, while the semantic connections of this word seem lost to a non-specialist.

3. Possibly lexical compatibility the meanings of words are divided into free and non-free. The first are based only on the subject-logical connections of words. For example, the word drink combined with words denoting liquids ( water, milk, tea, lemonade etc.), but cannot be combined with words such as stone, beauty, running, night. The compatibility of words is regulated by the subject compatibility (or incompatibility) of the concepts they denote. Thus, the "freedom" of the compatibility of words with unrelated meanings is relative.

The non-free meanings of words are characterized by limited possibilities of lexical compatibility, which in this case is determined by both subject-logical and proper linguistic factors. For example, the word win matches with words victory, top, but does not match the word defeat. One can say bow your head (look, eyes, eyes), but you can't lower your hand» ( leg, briefcase).

Non-free meanings, in turn, are divided into phraseologically related and syntactically conditioned. The former are realized only in stable (phraseological) combinations: sworn enemy, bosom friend(you can not swap the elements of these phrases).

Syntactically conditional values words are realized only if it performs a syntactic function unusual for itself in a sentence. Yes, the words log, oak, hat, acting as the nominal part of the compound predicate, they get the meanings " stupid man"; "stupid, stupid person"; "sluggish, uninitiated person, bungler". V. V. Vinogradov, who first singled out this type of values, called them functionally-syntactically conditioned. These meanings are always figurative and, according to the method of nomination, are among the figurative meanings.

As part of the syntactically conditioned meanings of the word, there are also meanings structurally limited, which are implemented only under the conditions of a certain syntactic construction. For example, the word vortex with a direct meaning "gusty circular motion of the wind" in a construction with a noun in the form of the genitive case gets a figurative meaning: whirlwind of events- "the rapid development of events."

4. By the nature of the functions performed lexical meanings are divided into two types: nominative, the purpose of which is the nomination, naming of phenomena, objects, their qualities, and expressive-synonymous, in which the emotional-evaluative (connotative) feature is predominant. For example, in the phrase tall man word high indicates great growth; this is its nominal value. And the words lanky, long combined with the word human, not only indicate a large growth, but also contain a negative, disapproving assessment of such growth. These words have an expressive-synonymous meaning and are among the expressive synonyms for a neutral word. high.

5. By the nature of the relationships of some values ​​with others in the lexical system of the language can be distinguished:

1) autonomous the meanings possessed by words that are relatively independent in the language system and designate mainly specific objects: table, theater, flower;

2) correlative meanings that are inherent in words that are opposed to each other on some grounds: close - far, good - bad, youth - old age,

3) deterministic values, i.e. such, "which are, as it were, determined by the meanings of other words, since they represent their stylistic or expressive variants ...". For example: nag(cf. stylistically neutral synonyms: horse, horse), beautiful, wonderful, magnificent (cf. good).

In this way, the modern typology of lexical meanings is based, firstly, on the conceptual and subject relations of words (i.e. paradigmatic relations), and secondly, derivational (or derivational) connections of words, thirdly, the relationship of words to each other ( syntagmatic relations). The study of the typology of lexical meanings helps to understand the semantic structure of the word, to penetrate deeper into the systemic connections that have developed in the vocabulary of the modern Russian language.

Not all words have a lexical meaning, that is, an internal meaning, but only those that can express concepts. Such words are called full-valued or independent. From a grammatical point of view, these include: nouns, adjectives, numerals, verbs, adverbs, pronouns.

Functional words, modal words and interjections do not designate concepts, and they are not connected with objects of reality. These words have special meanings: they express finding attitudes and feelings towards something: certainly, fortunately, etc. The lexical meaning, which only full-meaning words have, is based on the concept, but there is no equality between the lexical meaning and the concept . A concept is a copy of the subject of reality in our thinking. The concept in a word is always one, but there can be several meanings. For example, the concept of green can have the following meanings:

Green pencil (color characteristic);
Green fruit (degree of ripening, compare: ripe fruit);
Green face (characteristic of ill health, degree of fatigue);
Green age (degree of social maturity).

Only if the word is a term does the concept coincide with the meaning. For example: suffix, root, phoneme, etc. The main difference between the concept and meaning is that the concept is a copy, an exact designation, and the meaning always includes an emotionally expressive coloring (modality). For example: the word sun - there is a diminutive connotation here; the word grandmother is a derogatory connotation. There cannot be these shades in the concept (compare: the use of the words morphemochka, phonemochka is illiterate).

Every word also has a grammatical meaning. Grammatical meanings complement lexical meanings and reflect the belonging of a word to a certain grammatical category. Grammatical categories are the meanings of gender, number, case, declension, voice, aspect, etc. Grammatical meanings help to classify the vocabulary of the Russian language. For example, the words plane, school, walking have nothing in common in terms of lexical meaning, that is, content, but their grammatical meanings are the same and allow them to be attributed to nouns in the singular, nominative case.

Not a single word in the Russian language remains without grammatical meaning. Lexical meanings in all languages ​​are formed in exactly the same way (subject -> concept -> sound shell -> name). Grammatical meanings are formed differently in different languages. That's why Russian has 6 cases, German has 4 cases, and French and English don't have them at all. The carrier of lexical meaning is the basis of the word. For example: high, height. The grammatical meaning is expressed with the help of endings, suffixes, prefixes, stresses, auxiliary words. For example, in the word side, the ending -a shows that it is a feminine noun, singular, nominative, 1 declension. When the lexical meaning changes, the grammatical meaning of the word also changes. This is especially noticeable when one part of speech passes into another (on horseback, around, dining room - these words now have different grammatical meanings than before).

Thus, the word, which is the unity of form and content, that is, the unity of the sound shell and meaning, thereby represents the unity of lexical and grammatical meanings. Each word, naming this or that object or phenomenon, always informs. For example: Pick this flower for me. The word flower performs two functions in this sentence: it denotes a specific object that I need at a given moment, and it denotes an object in general, that is, an object with some specific features, thanks to which a person recognizes it among Other objects. Thus, each word performs two functions in the language.

grammatical meaning.

Ways of expressing grammatical meanings.

Grammar word categories

Grammar as a science.

Word forms are constructed by means of inflectional morphemes. Thus, the morpheme can be considered a separate unit of the grammatical structure of the language. Grammar is a science that studies the regular and general features of the structure of linguistic signs and their behavior. The object of grammar is 1) the patterns of word changes and 2) the principles of their combination when constructing an utterance. According to the duality of the object, the traditional sections of grammar are distinguished - morphology and syntax. Everything related to the abstract grammatical meanings of a word and its form change belongs to morphology. All phenomena associated with the syntagmatics of a word, as well as with the construction and syntagmatics of a sentence, belong to the syntactic sphere of the language. These subsystems (morphology and syntax) are in the closest interaction and interweaving, so that the assignment of certain grammatical phenomena to morphology or syntax often turns out to be conditional (for example, the category of case, voice).

The generalizing nature of grammar allows it to reveal the most essential features of the structure of the language, so grammar is rightly considered the central part of linguistics. In the process of development of grammar as a science, the understanding of its object has changed. From the study of word forms, scientists moved on to the connection between grammar and the vocabulary of the language, as well as to the study of speech functioning.

Vladimir Alexandrovich Plungyan: Cognition is always asymmetrical: only fragments

reality, a person tends to perceive as if through a magnifying

glass, while others - as if through inverted binoculars. “Cognitive

deformation” of reality is one of the main properties of human cognition.

Grammatical meanings are exactly those meanings that fall into the field

view of a magnifying glass; this is the most important for the user

given linguistic system of meaning.

2. Grammatical meaning.

The focus of grammar is grammatical meanings and ways of expressing them. Grammatical meaning is 1) a generalized meaning inherent in 2) a number of words or syntactic constructions, which finds its regular and typed 3) expression in the language. For example, in a sentence Petrov - student the following grammatical meanings can be distinguished:

the meaning of a statement of some fact (the meaning inherent in a number of syntactic constructions is regularly expressed by falling intonation)

the meaning of the fact being related to the present time (expressed by the absence of a verb; cf.: Petrov was a student, Petrov will be a student)

singular meaning (the meaning inherent in a number of words is expressed by the absence of an ending ( Petrovs, students),

as well as a number of others (the meaning of identification, the meaning of the unconditional reality of the fact, masculine).

The grammatical meaning of a word includes the following types of information:

information about the part of speech to which the word belongs

information about the syntagmatic relationships of the word

information about the paradigmatic relationships of the word.

Let us recall the famous experimental phrase of L.V. Shcherby: The glistening kuzdra shteko bobbed up the bokra and curls the bokra. It includes words with artificial roots and real affixes that express the whole complex of grammatical meanings. It is clear to the listener, for example, to which parts of speech all the words of this phrase refer, what between budlanula and bokra there is a relationship between object and action, that one action has already taken place in the past, while the other actually continues in the present.

The grammatical meaning is characterized by the following main features:

generality

obligatory: if a noun, for example, has the meaning of a number, then it is consistently expressed in each word in one way or another, regardless of the goals and intentions of the speaker.

Prevalence for a whole class of words: for example, all verbs in Russian express the meanings of aspect, mood, person and number.

The list is closed: if the lexical system of each language is open and constantly updated with new units and new meanings, then the grammar is characterized by a strictly defined, relatively small number of grammatical meanings: for example, in Russian nouns, these are the meanings of gender, number and case.

Expression typing: grammatical meanings are transmitted in languages ​​in strictly defined ways - with the help of means specially assigned to them: affixes, service words, etc.

Languages ​​differ from each other in what meanings they choose as grammatical. Thus, the meaning of a number is, for example, grammatical in Russian and English, but non-grammatical in Chinese and Japanese, since in these languages ​​a name can serve as the name of one or several objects. The meaning of certainty/uncertainty is grammatical in English, German, French and many other languages ​​and non-grammatical in Russian, where there are no articles.

3. Ways of expressing grammatical meaning

The ways of expressing grammatical meanings are varied. There are two leading methods: synthetic and analytical, and each method includes a number of private varieties.

The synthetic way of expressing grammatical meanings implies the possibility of combining several morphemes (root, derivational and inflectional) within one word. The grammatical meaning in this case is always expressed within the framework of the word. The synthetic way of expressing grammatical meanings includes:

affixation (use of various types of affixes: I go - you go);

reduplication (full or partial repetition of the stem: fari - white, farfaru - whites in the Hausa language in Africa);

internal inflection (grammatically significant change in the phonemic composition of the root: foot-feet in English);

suppletivism (combining heterogeneous words into one grammatical pair to express grammatical meanings (I go - went)

The analytical way of expressing grammatical meanings involves the separate expression of the lexical and grammatical meanings of a word. Grammatical forms are a combination of fully significant morphologically invariable lexical units and service elements (functional words, intonation and word order): I will read, more important, let me go). The lexical meaning is expressed by an unchangeable full-valued word, and the grammatical meaning is expressed by a service element.

Depending on whether synthetic or analytical ways of expressing grammatical meanings prevail in the language, two main morphological types of languages ​​are distinguished: the synthetic type of language (in which the synthetic way of expressing grammatical meanings dominates) and the analytical type (in which the tendency to analyticism prevails). The nature of the word in it depends on the predominance in the language of the tendency to analyticism or synthetism. In synthetic languages, the word retains its grammatical characteristics outside the sentence. In analytical languages, a word acquires a grammatical characteristic only in a sentence.

Grammatical meaning is revealed as a result of the opposition of one linguistic unit to another. So, the meaning of the present tense is revealed by contrasting several forms of the verb: knew - knows - will know. Grammatical contrasts or oppositions form systems called grammatical categories. A grammatical category can be defined as a series of homogeneous grammatical meanings opposed to each other, expressed by formal indicators (affixes, functional words, intonation, etc.). In the above definition, the word “homogeneous” is very important. In order for the meanings to be opposed on some basis, they must also have some common attribute. Thus, the present can be contrasted with the past and the future, since they all relate to the sequence of events described. In this regard, another definition of the grammatical category can be given: it is the unity of a certain grammatical meaning and the formal means of its expression that actually exists in the language. These definitions do not contradict each other. If we compare them, it becomes clear that the grammatical category includes a generalized grammatical meaning (for example, the meaning of time), particular grammatical meanings (for example, the present tense, past tense, future tense), they are called grammes, and the means of expressing these meanings (for example , suffix, function word, etc.)

Classification of grammatical categories

by the number of opposing members. There are two-member categories (number in modern Russian: singular-plural), three-member (person: first-second-third), polynomial (case). The more grammes in a given grammatical category, the more complex the relationship between them, the more features in the content of each gramme.

Form-building and classifying. In formative categories, grammatical meanings belong to different forms of the same word. For example, the category of case. Every noun has a nominative, genitive, etc. form. case: table, table, table, table, table, about the table. In classifying categories, grammatical meanings belong to different words. The word cannot change according to the classifying attribute. For example, the gender category of nouns. A noun cannot change by gender, all its forms belong to the same gender: table, table, table - masculine; but bed, bed, bed is feminine. Nevertheless, the gender of a noun is important from the point of view of grammar, since the forms of concordant adjectives, pronouns, verbs, etc. depend on it: a large table, this table, the table stood; but: the bed stood, a large bed.

By the nature of the transmitted values

Objective (reflect real connections and relationships that exist in reality, for example, the number of a noun)

Subjective-objective (reflect the point of view from which reality is viewed, for example, the pledge of a verb: workers build a house - a house is being built by workers)

Formal (do not reflect objective reality, indicate a connection between words, for example, the gender of adjectives or inanimate nouns)

5. Grammar categories of words

Grammar categories of words must be distinguished from grammatical categories. A grammatical category necessarily has a system of grammatical forms opposed to each other with a homogeneous meaning. The lexico-grammatical category does not have such a system of forms. Lexico-grammatical categories are divided into semantic-grammatical and formal.

The semantic-grammatical category has semantic features that distinguish it from other categories and affect the grammatical features of the words of this category. The largest of these categories are parts of speech. Thus, a noun has the meaning of objectivity and is combined with an adjective. The verb has the meaning of action and is combined with an adverb. Within the parts of speech, smaller groupings are distinguished, for example, among nouns - animate and inanimate, countable and uncountable, concrete and abstract.

Formal categories differ in the way in which the grammatical forms of the words they contain are formed. These are groupings of words according to the type of conjugation (conjugation classes), according to the type of declension (declination classes). Between formal categories, in principle, there are no relations of semantic opposition: these are parallel ways of expressing the same grammatical meanings. The assignment of a word to one of the categories is determined by tradition.

Words are the building blocks of any language. Sentences and phrases are built from them, with their help we convey thoughts, communicate. The ability of this unit to name or designate objects, actions, etc. is called a function. The suitability of a word for communication, the transmission of thoughts is called its

Thus, the word is the main, main structural unit of the language.

Every word in Russian has a lexical and grammatical meaning.

Lexical is the ratio of the sound (phonetic) design of the word, its sound with the phenomena of reality, images, objects, actions, etc. To put it simply: it makes sense. From a lexical point of view, the words "barrel", "bump", "point" are different units, because they denote different objects.

The grammatical meaning of a word is the meaning of its forms: gender or number, case or conjugation. If the words "barrel", "point" are considered grammatically, then they will be exactly the same: creatures. feminine, standing in the nominative case and unity. number.

If we compare the lexical and grammatical meaning of a word, we can see that they are not the same, but are interconnected. The lexical meaning of each of them is universal, while the main one is fixed at the root. (For example: "son", "son", "son", "son").

The grammatical meaning of a word is conveyed with the help of word-forming morphemes: endings and formative suffixes. So, "forest", "forester", "forester" will be quite close: their meaning is determined by the root "forest". From a grammatical point of view, they are completely different: two nouns and an adjective.

On the contrary, the words "came", "arrived", "ran", "ran", "flew off", "shot down" will be similar in grammatical orientation. These are verbs in the past tense form, which are formed with the suffix "l".

The following conclusion follows from the examples: the grammatical meaning of a word is its belonging to a part of speech, the general meaning of a number of similar units, not tied to their specific material (semantic) content. "Mom", "dad", "Motherland" - creatures. 1 declensions, standing in the form of I.p., units. numbers. "Owl", "mice", "youth" - female nouns. kind, 3 declensions, standing in R.p. The grammatical meaning of the words "red", "huge", "wooden" indicates that these are adjectives in the form of a husband. kind, unique. numbers, I.p. It is clear that the lexical meaning of these words is different.

The grammatical meaning of a word is expressed in a certain form, corresponding to the position of words in a sentence (or phrase), expressed using grammatical means. Most often these are affixes, but often the grammatical form is formed with the help of auxiliary words, stress, word order or intonation.

From how the form is formed, its appearance (name) directly depends.

Simple (they are also called synthetic) grammatical forms are formed within the unit (with the help of endings or formative suffixes). The case forms (no) of mother, daughter, son, Motherland are formed with the help of endings. the verbs "wrote", "jumped" - using the suffix and and the verb "jumped" - using the suffix "l" and the ending "a".

Some forms are formed outside the lexeme, and not inside it. In this case, there is a need for service words. For example, the verbs "I will sing" and "let's sing" are formed using function words (verbs). The words "I will" and "let's" in this case have no lexical meaning. They are needed to create In the first case - the future tense, and in the second - the incentive mood. Such forms are called complex or analytical.

Grammatical meanings are defined into systems or clusters of gender, number, and the like.

Introduction:

Language is a set of words and the rules for their formation and change, as well as the rules for combining the forms of words in a sentence.

Language as a communicative system provides the transfer of information of various kinds. This includes information about objects, phenomena, states of affairs in external reality, and information about subjective acts of cognitive (cognitive) activity and personal experiences of the speaker, and information of a service nature regarding the methods used to construct coherent speech and the behavioral features of the language units used in it and their options. Thus, our speech is not a mechanical set of words. But to be understandable, one must not only choose the right words, but also put them in the appropriate grammatical form, skillfully combine and arrange the forms of words in a sentence.

The word is studied in different sections of linguistics, as it has sound design, meaning, grammatical characteristics, that is, it combines the features of different aspects of the language.

The word is a two-way unity: it combines form (a certain sound or letter complex) and meaning. A sound or letter sequence becomes a word only when it acquires a meaning. Distinguish between lexical and grammatical meaning.

Lexical meaning:

Lexical meaning - the content of the word, reflecting in the mind and fixing in it the idea of ​​an object, property, process, phenomenon, etc.

The lexical commonality of words lies, as a rule, in the root morpheme - the carrier of the conceptual idea. The lexical meaning, therefore, is the semantic side of the word and is devoid of a standard (regular) expression. According to the classical definition of V.V. Vinogradova, the lexical meaning of a word is “a subject-material content, designed according to the laws of the grammar of a given language and being an element of the general semantic system of the dictionary of this language”

In the semantic structure of the word, as in other aspects of the language, there are elements of the new, elements of the living, developing, and elements of the old, elements of the dying, receding into the past.

A word can have several free meanings, which directly reflect various objects and phenomena of reality (cf. hat - "headdress" and "headline in large print, common to several articles").

1) the subject for which the word serves to name (“the word is the most important structural and semantic unit of the language, which serves to name objects, processes, properties” - the definition of the word proposed by O.S. Akhmanova);

2) sound shell (the following definition: a word is a sound or a complex of sounds that have meaning and are used in speech as an independent whole - A.V. Kalinin);

3) the concept of a named object that arises in the mind of a person (cf. a word is the shortest unit of language expressing the concept of an object, process, phenomenon of reality, their properties or relationships between them - D.E. Rosenthal).

All three elements are interconnected, forming the so-called semantic triangle, the top of which is the phonetic shell of the word, and the two opposite corners are the subject and the concept. The phonetic shell of a word (i.e., the sequence of its sounds) is connected in the human mind and in the language system, on the one hand, with the subject of reality (phenomenon, process, sign), and on the other hand, with the concept, with the idea of ​​this subject. The concept is the basis for the formation of the meaning of the word.

The meaning of a word is a reflection in the word of an idea about an object (phenomenon, process, sign), it is a product of human mental activity. It is associated with such types of thought processes as comparison, classification, generalization.

The meaning of the word as its content is connected with the concept as a reflection in the mind of a person of objects and phenomena of the external world. In this sense, the dialectical unity of linguistic and extralinguistic content is fixed in the meaning of the word. The lexical meaning of a word is thus determined through its correlation, on the one hand, with the corresponding concept, and, on the other hand, with the rest of the words of the language, i.e. through its place in the lexical system of the language. Meaning and concept are therefore closely related to each other.

The concept is a category of logic and philosophy. It is “the result of generalization and selection of objects (or phenomena) of a certain class according to certain general and, in the aggregate, specific features for them. From the point of view of linguistics, "a concept is a thought that reflects objects and phenomena of reality in a generalized form by fixing their properties and relationships." Both definitions indicate the generalizing nature of this category, since the concept captures the most general and essential features of cognizable objects (for example, the concept of “man” captures in the thinking of the cognizer such essential characteristics as the ability to think, morally evaluate one’s actions, create complex tools, etc.). The concept expressed by the word does not correspond to a separate, concrete object, but to a whole class of homogeneous objects, thus representing the highest form of generalization.

The meaning of the word can be wider than the concept, since the concept in the word is one, and there can be several meanings, especially for polysemantic words (the word core, for example, expressing the concept of “the inner part of something”, has several meanings: 1) the inner part of the fetus, enclosed in a hard shell (nut kernel)", 2) the inner, central part of something (the nucleus of an atom)", 3) the most important part of the cell of an animal and plant organism, etc.);

Grammar meaning:

Grammatical meaning is a generalized, abstract linguistic meaning inherent in a number of words, word forms, syntactic constructions and finding its regular expression in grammatical forms.

The grammatical meaning differs from the lexical one by a higher level of abstraction, because “this is an abstraction of features and relationships” (A.A. Reformatsky). The grammatical meaning is not individual, since it belongs to a whole class of words, united by a common morphological properties and syntactic functions. Some private grammatical meanings can change in a word in its different grammatical forms (for example, changing the meaning of number and case in nouns or tense in verb forms, while the lexical meaning of the word remains unchanged). In contrast to the lexical meaning, the grammatical meaning is not called the word directly, directly, but is expressed in it “in passing”, in a strictly defined way, with the help of grammatical means (affixes) specially assigned to it. It accompanies the lexical meaning of the word, being its additional meaning.

The grammatical meaning of a word often includes its derivational meaning (if the word is derivative), since word formation is part of the grammatical structure of the language. Word-building meaning is a generalized meaning inherent only in motivated words, expressed by word-building means.

Despite the fact that the grammatical meaning is, as it were, a side meaning of the word, it plays an essential role in creating a holistic meaning of the sentence (for example, I put a gift for a friend ... and I put a gift for a friend ...,), changing the grammatical meaning of the case in the word friend leads to a change in the meaning of the sentence.

Grammatical and lexical meanings are the main types of the plan for the content of language units. In a word, they act as a unity, and for some categories of words they are simply inseparable. For example, about the semantics of pronouns, it can be argued that it has an intermediate, transitional character between vocabulary and grammar.

The functional classification of word elements - morphemes - is based on the opposition of lexical and grammatical meanings. However, the division into roots, prefixes, suffixes, inflections, etc. requires a more detailed differentiation of meanings.

Some grammatical meaning may, over time, losing its obligatory nature and narrowing the scope of its application, turn into a lexical one.

In general, despite all the borderline and transitional cases, lexical and grammatical meanings retain their global opposition in the language system.