Semasiology is the branch of Linguistics which studies the meaning of words, called semantics. The name comes from the Greek sēmasiā ‘signifi cation’ (from sēma ‘sign’ sēmantikos ‘signifi cant’ and logos ‘learning’). The main objects of semasiological study treated in this book are as follows: semantic development of English words, its causes and classifi cation, relevant distinctive features and types of meaning, polysemy and the semantic structure of the English polysemantic words and compounds, semantic grouping and connections in the vocabulary system. There are two main types of meaning: grammatical meaning and lexical meaning.

The grammatical meaning is defi ned as an expression in speech of relationship between words and unites words into big groups such as parts of speech or lexico-grammatical classes. It is recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words. For example, the tense meaning in the word-forms of the verbs: worked, told, bought; the meaning of plurality: analyses, boys, types; the case meaning of nouns: women’s, the greengrocer’s, the optician’s.

The lexical meaning of the word is the meaning proper to the given linguistic unit in all its forms. The word forms of the verb: to talk, talks, talked, talking possess different grammatical meanings, but in each form they have one and the same semantic component denoting “the process of speaking”. 

Semasiology is the branch of Linguistics which studies the meaning of words, called semantics. The name comes from the Greek sēmasiā ‘signifi cation’ (from sēma ‘sign’ sēmantikos ‘signifi cant’ and logos ‘learning’). The main objects of semasiological study treated in this book are as follows: semantic development of English words, its causes and classifi cation, relevant distinctive features and types of meaning, polysemy and the semantic structure of the English polysemantic words and compounds, semantic grouping and connections in the vocabulary system. There are two main types of meaning: grammatical meaning and lexical meaning.

The grammatical meaning is defi ned as an expression in speech of relationship between words and unites words into big groups such as parts of speech or lexico-grammatical classes. It is recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words. For example, the tense meaning in the word-forms of the verbs: worked, told, bought; the meaning of plurality: analyses, boys, types; the case meaning of nouns: women’s, the greengrocer’s, the optician’s.

The lexical meaning of the word is the meaning proper to the given linguistic unit in all its forms. The word forms of the verb: to talk, talks, talked, talking possess different grammatical meanings, but in each form they have one and the same semantic component denoting “the process of speaking”.