Lexicology. General characteristics of Modern English Vocabulary 1. 2. Lexicology as a science. The theoretical value of lexicology. Lexicology and other branches of linguistics. General characteristics of Modern English vocabulary as a system. The problem of the classification of the vocabulary.
Lexicology as a science. • Lexicology – a branch of linguistics which deals with the vocabulary of the language and aims at study and systematic description of the vocabulary: its meaning, structure, origin, development and usage. • The term «lexicology» is of Greek origin «lexis» - «word» «logos» - «science» .
The theoretical value of lexicology • As a theoretical science Modern English lexicology investigates problems of word structure, word formation in Modern English, the semantic structure of words, main principles of classification of vocabulary units into various groups, synonymy, hyponymy, semantic fields etc.
Branches of lexicology • General lexicology – a part of general linguistics. It is concerned with the study of vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language.
• Special lexicology – the lexicology of a particular language, i. e. the study and description of its vocabulary and vocabulary units. It is based on the principles worked out by general lexicology. • Special lexicology employs synchronic and diachronic approaches: - special descriptive lexicology (synchronic lexicology) – deals with the vocabulary and vocabulary units of a particular language at a certain time; - special historical lexicology (diachronic lexicology) – deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the course of time.
• Historical lexicology deals with the historic change of words in the course of lang. development. • Comparative lexicology studies closely relative languages from the point of view of their identity and differentiation. • Contrastive - both relative and unrelative languages establishes differences and similarity. • Applied lexicology - translation, lexicography, pragmatics of speech.
• Phraseology is the branch of lexicology specializing in word groups which are characterized by stability of structure and transferred meaning.
Lexicology and other branches of linguistics. Lexicology and phonetics: • A word is a group of sounds with the given meaning (ex. Tip-top ). • The function of phonemes is building up morphemes. • The meaning is introduced on the level of morphemes.
Lexicology and grammar. • The difference and interconnection between grammar and lexicology is a controversial problem in linguistics. • We should point out that words seldom occur in isolation, they are arranged in certain patterns, conveying the relations between the things for which they stand, thus with a lexical meaning they possess some grammatical meaning.
2. English vocabulary as a system • The main unit of English vocabulary system is a word. • The word is a unit of speech which serves for the purposes of human communication. • The word has a sound form that consists of number of phonemes. • The word viewed structurally possesses several characteristics. It has a particular morphological structure. Here we should distinguish between the external and internal structure. By the external structure – the morphological structure is meant; by the internal- semantic (the main aspect of the word)
• The word is fundamental unit of the language. It is the unity of form and content. • Another structural aspect of the word is its unity. The word possesses both external and semantic unity. E. g. Blackbird - black bird • Susceptibility to grammatical employment. Every word is used in different grammatical groups when it is necessary. The system of all forms of the word is called a paradigm. The lexical meaning of the word is the same throughout the paradigm. E. g. : girl, girls, girl's, girls' ; a child, children’s toys, a child’s ball.
The word is a speech unit used for purposes of human communication materially representing a group of sounds possessing a meaning susceptible to grammatical employment and characterized by formal and semantic unity.
General characteristics of English vocabulary • The total word-stock of a language is immense and openended. The exact number of vocabulary units in Modern English cannot be stated with any degree of certainty for a number of reasons: a) Constant growth of Modern English word-stock. b) Intrinsic heterogeneity of Modern English vocabulary. c) Divergent views concerning the nature of basic vocabulary units connected with some crucial debatable problems of lexicology: homonymy, polysemy, phraseology, nonce-words. d) The absence of a sharp and distinct border-line between English and foreign words and between modern and outdated English vocabulary units.
OED 500. 000 lexical units.
Historically, we distinguish several groups of words: • Neologisms - newly coined words. E. g. : smartcard, bridge-building, golden handcuffs • Archaisms - words that were once common but are now replaced by their synonyms. E. g. : ney-no; maiden – girl; to slay-to kill; morn-morning; billow –wave, evening; betwixt-between, ere-before. • Historisms - words denoting objects and phenomena which are things of the past and no longer exist. OEwunden- stefna a curved-stemmed ship. • Obsolete words - words dropped from the language. E. g. : zyxt (see)
Two aspects of the growth of the language I. the appearance of the new lexical items (vocabulary extension) q 1. productive or patterned ways of word-formation; q 2. non-patterned ways of word-creation; q 3. borrowing from other languages. II. the appearance of new meanings of old words ( semantic extension). q 1. polysemy ; q 2. homonymy.
1. productive or patterned ways of word-formation: qaffixation (prefixation mainly for verbs and adjectives, suffixation for nouns and adjectives); qconversion (giving the greatest number of new words in verbs and nouns). E. g. : work – to work; pale – to pale; qcomposition (most productive in nouns and adjectives). E. g. : brain-washer, a double-talker, a sit-inner, to hi-fi.
2. non-patterned ways of wordcreation: A. Lexicalisation B. Shortening q a non-patterned way of • shortening which results in word-formation when a new lexical items; grammatical form of a word • graphical abbreviations develops a new lexical (e. g. : RD for Road and St for meaning. Street; tu for tube, aer for q E. g. : arms, customs, aerial) colours
II. semantic extension q. Polysemy. ( She runs two km a day. The law runs for 7 years. ) q Homonymy. ( back- a part of the human body and back - a direction). q. E. g. : beehive — ‘a woman’s hair style’; lungs (n pl. ) — ‘breathing spaces, such as small parks that might be placed in overpopulated or trafficcongested areas’; a bird — ‘any flying craft’; a vegetable — ‘a lifeless, inert person’; clean (sl. ) — free from the use of narcotic drugs’;
The classification of the English vocabulary • Two groups of classification I. Semantic II. Non semantic
I. Non-semantic classifications 1. 2. 3. 4. the alphabetical organization of words; The classification based on the length of the words; According to the frequency; according to the morphological structure of the words (root-words, derivatives, compound words, compoundderivatives); 5. according to word families (according to the common root -morpheme); 6. Into notional words and form words; 7. the division into parts of speech (the words of one or the same part of speech may be subdivided into lexical and grammatical groups).
• Word family - a type of traditional lexicological grouping according to the root morpheme. • Lexico-grammatical group - a class of words which have a common lexico-grammatical meaning, a common paradigm, the same substituting elements and possibly a characteristic set of suffixes rendering the lexicogrammatical meaning.
II. Semantic classification 1. According to semantic similarities of morphemes we subdivide words into word families and words with semantically similar or identical affixational morphemes (waterproof, organization); 2. According to the semantic similarity or polarity of words (synonyms and antonyms); 3. According to the common denominator of meaning (it is observed in lexical groups making up semantic fields);
• Semantic field is closely connected sectors of the vocabulary characterized by a common concept.
4. According to common contextual associations we distinguish thematic groups. A thematic group deals with contexts on the level of the sentence. The words are joined with one thematic group. 5. According to the stylistic principle of the word we distinguish different layers in the language (standard vocabulary, non-standard).
Modern methods of lexicological research • • Contrastive Analysis Statistical analysis Distributional analysis Transformational analysis
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