THE ACT OF NAMING AND MEANING PREDICTABILITY IN THE PROCESS OF LANGUAGE PRODUCTION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32689/maup.philol.2022.1.6Keywords:
act of naming, meaning predictability, language production, onomasiological salience, semasiological salience, entrenchmentAbstract
Meaning predictability and its products, as well as the act of naming, are in fact complex phenomena that need to be studied in detail. The nature and characteristics of a particular instance of linguistic productivity and its products are actually determined by a combination of completely different factors. The purpose of this study is an examination of the predictability of meaning(s) of novel naming units under the conditions of their context-free interpretation. Meaning predictability is defined in relation to all the possible meanings of a new naming unit, in particular, as the degree of probability that a particular meaning of a naming unit, encountered for the first time by a language user, will be picked up in preference to other possible meanings of that naming unit. Therefore, the focus will be on the listener’s/reader’s (meaning the interpreter’s) side of the communication channel. The more we know about the sources and processes of meaning predictability, the better our chances of coping with new vocabulary and its usage in general. The novelty of the research stands for the facr, that the meaning predictability of naming units have not yet been paid adequate attention, and therefore represent an unfathomed area. The study of onomasiological salience and entrenchment is also relatively new, and there are a number of open issues constitute a challenge that may guide the further development of the field. Methodology. The main linguistic methods used in this research are : descriptive, comparative and normative-stylistic. The conclusion is that this research proved that within multiple possible readings, a new naming unit is always coined (obviously) with one specific meaning in the coiner’s mind, that becomes the best candidate for the interpretation of that naming unit from the listener’s/reader’s point of view. Meaning predictability is therefore defined in relation to all the possible meanings of a new naming unit, in particular, as the degree of probability that a particular meaning of a naming unit, encountered for the first time by a language user, will be picked up in preference to other possible meanings of that naming unit.
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