Nomination is the process of giving names to things. The branch of linguistics which studies the nominative function of lexical units is termed onomasiology.
There are two main participants in the process of nomination; (1) the nominator, i.e. one who names an object, (2) the referent, i.e. the named object, which is the starting point in the process of nomination.
The process of nomination begins with forming a concept of a referent.
The concept is a generalized idea of a class of objects, summing up the most essential characteristics of the given class that help to distinguish it from any other class of objects.
Concepts are basically similar for all people - speakers of different languages because (1) the formation of concepts is determined by cognitive abilities of Man, (2) all people live in the same real world, whose features concepts abstract, generalize and reflect. There is a real world we share irrespective of the language we use.
Some factors that influence the formation of concepts and may account for some differences in concepts in different language communities are as follows:
1) the objective reality itself,
e.g. Eng. "to drink soup" because in England soup is liquid; in Rus. "есть суп" as in Russia the dish is half-liquid and half-solid
2) the level of knowledge about the nature of a referent,
e.g. the knowledge about the universe, and thus the concepts of a star, space, etc. in the 11th century and today.
3) the general system of notions of a given language community,
man -мужчина, человек
Speakers of different languages clearly have different pictures of the world.
e.g. the Eskimos have three different words for snow
The second stage of nomination is the formation of meaning.
The meaning of the word is closely connected with the concept but is not identical with it.
A.I.Smirnitskiy defined meaning as "a certain reflection in our mind of objects, phenomena or relations that makes part of the linguistic sign - its so-called inner facet, whereas the sound-form functions as its outer facet." Meaning is always connected to a certain sound-form.
There are three possibilities of forming the sound-form of a word:
(1) to invent a new sound-form;
(2) to borrow one from another language;
(3) to use already existing units of the given language.
The latter is secondary nomination, while in (1) and (2) we deal with primary nomination. Secondary nomination is much more important than primary nomination, as most units are secondary nominations.
Ways of nomination in modern English can be classified as follows:
The external way of nomination is borrowing, i.e. taking over units from other languages. Borrowing has always been important in the English language. The English vocabulary contains an immense number of words of foreign origin (70 - 75%);
An existing word may develop a new meaning, e.g. box - "a TV set";
Existing words may combine and give rise to new word-groups, e-book
Word-formation is the formation of new words out of morphemes existing in the language. The main ways of forming new words in English are derivation, compounding, conversion, shortening.
Derivation (suffixation and prefixation) consists in adding prefixes and suffixes to stems. Currently thriving prefixes and suffixes include de-, ex-, anti-, un-, -er, -ion, - age, etc.
Word-composition (compounding) is producing new words by combining two or more stems, e.g. -aholic "addicted to": bookaholic, chocoholic;
Conversion is the reallocation of a word to a different part of speech without changing its morphemic structure or sound form
Shortening (abbreviation) may be of different types.
Clipping is making a new word from a syllable (or two) of the original word, e.g. teen "a teenager",
acronyms means that a new word is made up of the initial letters of the derivational base that may be a word or a word-group,nato- читаю как одно слово
abbriviation-dont read as a word BBC
Blending is making a new word from two or more other words, by fusion, e.g. (brunch) or by putting together syllables of other words (Oxbridge, alcoholiday).
Coinage is inventing a new word or phrase. hobbit homo-rabbit
Split of polysemy is the splitting of one polysemantic word into two or more words, e.g. OE wācian gave birth to the verbs to wake, and to watch.
Lexicalzation means that a grammatical form of a word becomes a separate word, e.g. looks "appearance".
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Types of context and their role in realization of meaning.
