A new type of linguistic sign

A new type of morphological expressive linguistic means and the corresponding linguistic sign are described: metasemy1 — an expressive linguistic means that is an operation on the signified of the target lexeme; and metasemy2 — a sign whose signifier is a metasemy1. Thus, the English metasemy2 painting, when applied to a human proper name, such as, e.g., Turner, produces a derived lexeme, in this case, painting(Turner) = [a] Turner ‘[a] painting by Turner’ (I have seen two excellent Turners). A formal description of the Russian metasemy2 pomeščenie ‘place2’ is presented, based on the analysis of the Russian phrase u otca ‘at father’s’ = ‘at father’s place2’, where the underlying lexeme otec ‘father’ and the derived lexeme pomeščenie(otec) are involved, the meaning ‘place2’ being expressed by the metasemy2 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 ‘place2’ is carried by the ’s-form, and in chez le père, by the preposition chez. A tentative list of known Russian metasemies2 is supplied, as well as the similar lists for English and French. A metasemy2 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. Metasemy2 seems to exist universally.