1. “Semantic explosion”

2. Proposition

3. Special status of a verbal word

4. The theory of speech acts

Terms: semantics, seme, denotatum, proposition, names, predicates, actants, valency, speech act, constatives, performatives, illocutive power, locution, perlocutive effect.

1. “Semantic explosion”

In the 50s of the 20^th century there was a linguistic process which was called “semantic explosion”, i.e. linguists turn to the meaning of language units which had been investigated only from formal positions. It was the time when componential analysis appeared, introducing the notion “seme” (semantic feature, semantic factor, semantic component) and trying to describe the meaning of great number of words through the combination of limited number of semes (For example, the word bachelor has the set of 4 semantic features: 1) human being, 2)male, 3) adult, 4)unmarried).

The idea that the found methods of the lexicon investigation can be also applied to syntax began to materialize in linguistic research works in 60s and 70s of the 20^th century. It was the period when the ability of the sentence to nominate was discovered. The sentence as a word was considered to be a language sign though the nature of the sentence sign was acknowledged to be different from the nature of word. From the point of view of designation the sentence is more complicated formation and can include words. But the most important difference is that the denotatum of the word is an object, and of the sentence is extralingual situation. The sentence is connected with the situation not directly but through mental essence which is called proposition.

Proposition

Under proposition we understand the typicalized mental reflection of onthological situation, its mental correlate. The ability of a man to form proposition is based on the ability to categorize the apprehended and cognizable world, to divide it into separate classes, to generalize the infinite diversity of its fragments into finite and observable number of types. Coming across a great variety of different situations, a man understands that in the end all of them can be united on the basis of dominating feature into several groups. For example:

Someone performs the action upon somebody/something. (The boy hit the ball; The woman picked up a flower. The man threw his hat away). Though all these sentences indicate different denotational situations, they’ll come up the same proposition.

    Another example: He is hungry. The girl is ill. Mother was nervous. Farther was angry. These sentences also come from one proposition which is the mental analogue of similar situations, united by classifying ability of human mind into one type.

    Proposition is a binary structure. It consists, from one side, from a relative predicate, which is a mental correlate of relations in reality, and, from the other side – from a number of predicate actants (semantic roles, semantic cases) which are mental correlates of objective world being in some relation to each other.

    As we know sentences can be extended and non-extended, complete and elliptical, simple and composite, compound and complex. Sentences can be complicated by different elements. For realization of the proposition on the word level it is necessary that a special type of a lexeme should be its correlate. In semantic syntax such a correlate is called a name of propositional semantics. Such nouns are not those which denotata are objects with space limits but which denotata are events with time limits and their meaning is very close to verbal. (revolution, simile, attack, explosion, war, negotiations, applause, departure, birth, death and others). On the level of word combination, it’s necessary that it should include the name of propositional semantics. Such word combination is able to nominate not only an event, but also its participants: Tom’s death, the teacher’s departure, the uprising of slaves.