TYPOLOGY OF SUBSTANTIVE EURYSEMY

Abstract

The article is aimed to consider the classifications of lexemes with wide meaning (eurysemes) based on substantive units of different languages. Linguists note the heterogeneous character of the respective lingual signs and appropriately they represent the types of substantive eurysemy. The article also reveals that most eurysemantic lexemes can denominate either generic meaning (having a low level of lexical abstraction) or categorical meaning (having the highest level of abstraction). 
Foreign scholars associate the words of concrete semantics with hypero-hyponymy rather than with eurysemy. Eurysemic substantives of generalized generic type are traditionally considered as hyperonyms or umbrellaterms relative to hyponyms.
Preference for lexemes of generalized categorical type in studying nouns of wide meaning caused the existing classifications of eurysemic substantives to cover either abstract or concrete ones, and rarely both.
Thereafter we offer our own classification of English nouns of wide semantics based on singling out the types of referents that eurysemic unit can signify. Under the referent we mean a concrete subject, to be corresponded with the linguistic unit in the process of its contextual use. On this basis the eurysemes have different degrees of referential correlation (high, average, low) which are distinguished on the basis of referential types. Notably words of wide meaning can acquire the traits of multi-, poly- and monoreference.