“Semantic Extension”: Volume and Content of the Term

The need to clarify the understanding of the term “semantic expansion” as a special type of change occurring in the meanings of words during the historical evolution of language and society is associated with frequent cases of its incorrect use in articles by modern Russian linguists describing the process of increasing the number of meanings of a word. The relevance of the study is determined by the intensification of these semantic processes in the modern linguistic situation. The fundamental linguistic and lexicographic works on the problems of semantics, which contain the canonical representation of the sense invested by scientists into this term, were used as material. As a result of applying the methods of analysis and synthesis, as well as definitional and contextual analysis, the main criterion was identified that makes it possible to distinguish the process of semantic expansion from other types of semantic transformations. It is proved that the specificity of generalization of the meaning is based on the classification generic relations. It is shown that extralinguistic factors play a crucial role in the use of an existing linguistic sign that corresponds to one denotation as a common generic name. The diversification of the field of designated objects leads to the development of a generic meaning of the word, which is qualified in academic sources as a “semantic extension”. The rapid changes taking place in the surrounding reality since the beginning of the 21st century, the increasing variety of artefacts, the emergence of a parallel, virtual form of human existence - all this creates an objective basis for activating the processes of semantic extension in the vocabulary of the modern Russian language. In the study of these processes a special place should be taken by functional-semantic analysis of innovative contexts of the use of lexical units in relation to their primary area of reference.