A new type of linguistic sign

Abstract A new type of morphological expressive linguistic means and the corresponding linguistic sign are described: metasemy 1 — an expressive linguistic means that is an operation on the signified of the target lexeme; and metasemy 2 — a sign whose signifier is a metasemy 1 . Thus, the English metasemy 2 painting , when applied to a human proper name, such as, e.g., T urner , produces a derived lexeme, in this case, painting ( T urner) = [ a ] Turner ‘[a] painting by Turner’ ( I have seen two excellent Turners ). A formal description of the Russian metasemy 2 pomeščenie ‘place 2 ’ is presented, based on the analysis of the Russian phrase u otca ‘at father’s’ = ‘at father’s place 2 ’, where the underlying lexeme otec ‘father’ and the derived lexeme pomeščenie (otec) are involved, the meaning ‘place 2 ’ being expressed by the metasemy 2 pomeščenie . The English and French translational equivalents of this phrase, Eng. at father’s and Fr. chez le père , are shown to have different organizations: in at father’s , the meaning ‘place 2 ’ is carried by the ’s -form, and in chez le père , by the preposition chez . A tentative list of known Russian metasemies 2 is supplied, as well as the similar lists for English and French. A metasemy 2 always expresses a metonymic semantic relation between the underlying lexeme and the resulting derived lexeme; it is a derivational morphological means, parallel to derivational affixes. Metasemy 2 seems to exist universally.