f polysemy and context we have seen that one of the ways of discriminating between different meanings of a word is the interdivitation of these meanings in terms of their synonyms, eg the two meanings of the adjective handsome are synonymously interdivted as handsome-'beautiful' (usually about men) and handsome-'considerable, ample' (about sums, sizes, etc.). it seems impossible to "speak of identity or similarity of lexical meaning as a whole as it is only the denotation component that may be described as identical or similar. If we analyse words that are usually considered synonymous, eg to die, to pass away; to begin, to commence, etc., we find that the connotation component or, to be more exact, the stylistic reference of these words is entirely different and it is only the similarity of the denotation meaning that makes them synonymous. The words, e.g. to die, to walk, to smile, etc., may be considered identical as to their stylistic reference or emotive charge, but as there is no similarity of denotation meaning they are never felt as synonymous words.it does not seem possible to speak of identity of meaning as a criterion of synonymy as identity of meaning is very rare even among monosynaptic words. In fact, cases of complete synonymy are very few and are, as a rule, confined to technical nomenclatures where we can find monosynaptic terms completely identical in meanings as, for example, spirant and fricative in phonetics. Words in synonymic sets are in general differentiated because of some element of opposition in each member of the set. The word handsome, eg, is distinguished from its synonym beautiful mainly because the former implies the beauty of a male person or broadly speaking only of human beings, whereas beautiful is opposed to it as having no such restrictions in its semantic structure. [2] Thus it seems necessary to modify the traditional definition and to word it as follows: synonyms are words different in sound-form but similar in their denotational meaning or meanings. Synonymous relationship is observed only between similar denotational meanings of phonemically different words. Differentiation of synonyms may be observed in different semantic components-denotational or connotation.should be noted, however, that the difference in denotation meaning cannot exceed certain limits and is found only as a variation of some common denotational component. The verbs look, seem, appear, eg, are viewed as members of one synonymic set as all three of them possess a common denotational semantic component "to be in one's view . Semantic similarity of affixation morphemes is treated in more detail in the chapter about Word-Formation in Prof. Ginsburg s textbook on lexicology, judgment, but not necessarily in fact "and come into comparison in this meaning (cf. he seems (looks) (appears) tired). A more detailed analysis shows that there is a certain d...
