B. INTERACTION OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF LEXICAL MEANING

Words in context, as has been pointed out, may acquire addition­al lexical meanings not fixed in dictionaries, what we have called con­textual meanings. The latter may sometimes deviate from the

dictionary meaning to such a degree that the new meaning even becomes the opposite of the primary meaning, as, for example, with the word sophisticated (see p. 121). This is especially the case when we deal with transferred meanings.

What is known in linguistics as transferred meaning is practically the interrelation between two types of lexical meaning: dictionary and contextual. The contextual meaning will always depend on the dictionary (logical) meaning to a greater or lesser extent. When the deviation from the acknowledged meaning is carried to a degree that it causes an unexpected turn in the recognized logical meanings, we register a stylistic device.

The transferred meaning of a word may be fixed in dictionaries as a result of long and frequent use of the word other than in its primary meaning. In this case we register a derivative meaning of the word. The term 'transferred' points to the process of formation of the derivative meaning. Hence the term 'transferred' should be used, to our mind, as a lexicographical term signifying diachronically the development of the se­mantic structure of the word. In this case we do not perceive two meanings.

When, however, we perceive two meanings of a word simultaneously, we are confronted with a stylistic device in which the two meanings in­teract.

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