Lexicology Is a Branch of Linguistics Which Deals with a Systematic Description and Study

Lesson #1

Lexicology is a branch of linguistics which deals with a systematic description and study of the vocabulary of the language as regards its origin, development, meaning and current use. The term is composed of 2 words of Greek origin: lexis + logos. A word about words, or the science of a word. It also concerns with morphemes, which make up words and the study of a word implies reference to variable and fixed groups because words are components of such groups. Semantic properties of such words define general rules of their joining together. The general study of the vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of a particular language is known as general lexicology. Therefore, English lexicology is called special lexicology because English lexicology represents the study into the peculiarities of the present-day English vocabulary.

If lexicology deals with the evolution of the vocabulary in the course of time, it is called historical lexicology and the approach which is focused on the origin of the vocabulary and the linguistic and extralinguistic factors that influence its devlopment is called diachronic.

Descriptive lexicology is concerned with the lexical system at the given stage of development. It gives a synchronic analysis of the morthologic and semantic strictures of the English vocabulary units and their semantic grouping. However, the division of approaches is important only for scientific investigation.

Comparative linguistics and Contrasted linguistics are of great importance in classroom teaching and translation.

Lexicology is inseparable from: phonetics, grammar, and linguostylistics b-cause phonetics also investigates vocabulary units but from the point of view of their sounds. Grammar- grammatical peculiarities and grammatical relations between words. Linguostylistics studies the nature, functioning and structure of stylistic devices and the styles of a language.

Language is a means of communication. Thus, the social essence is inherent in the language itself. The branch of linguistics which deals with relations between the language functions on the one hand and the facts of social life on the other hand is termed sociolinguistics.

Lexicology is a sociolinguistic science because the word stock of a language directly and immediately reacts to changes in social life.

Lexicology studies the vocabulary of the language. The term "vocabulary" in this case denotes the national vocabulary. The vocabulary is made up of words, morphemes and set-expressions. The word is considered to be the basic unit of national vocabulary. It's difficult to give a precise description of a word. It has been defined syntactically by Henry Sweet and Bloomfild, semantically- by Ullman, and phonologically - by Charles Hockett. There is as well a combination of various approaches: by Sapir, Lyons and Gardiner. The investigations carried out by Russian scientists (Vinogradov, Smirnitsky, Sherba, Akhmanova, Stepanova and others) allow us to make the following conclusions:

(a) A word is a two-facet unit. It is a dialectical unity of sound form and meai-ing.

(b)A word is a structural and semantic entity within the language system and it exists in this system as a system and unity of all its forms and variants. The system showing a word in all its wordforms is called a paradigm. The lexical meaning of a word within its paradigm is the same while the grammatical meaning varies from form to form. (Ex. write- writes - writing - wrote = > they make up the word's paradigm. Therefore we use the term "word" CQ-ventionally1, because in a speech utterance it exists only in one form. In actual speech a polysemantic word is used in one of its meanings which is described as lexico-semantic variant Syntagmatic relations between lexical units in speech help to select the necessary lexico-semantic variant of a word. A word may also have phonetic or morphological variants (issue, schedule). Variants of words are identified in the process of communication as making up one and the same word.

(c) The word is the basic unit of the language system,the largest of the morphological and smallest on the syntactic level of linguistic analysis. Unlike words, morphemes cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units. B-sides, they function in speech only as constituent parts of words. The meaning of morphemes is more abstract and more general than that of words (Ex. misunderstand: the prefix mis- conveys negative meaning; homeless: the postfix-less makes us believe there is absence of something.- These meanings are more general).

Phraseological units (set expressions) are word groups consisting of two or more components. They are highly integrated and they are reproduced in speech read-made. They have a specialized meaning of the whole which is not a mere sum of the meanings of components (Ex. "to talk through one's hat). The meaning of set expressions is usually transferred.

Modern English lexicology investigates the problems of word structure and word formation; it also investigates the word structure of English, the classification of vocabulary units, replenishment3 of the vocabulary; the relations between different lexical layers4 of the English vocabulary and some other. Lexicology came into being to meet the demands of different branches of applied linguistic!. Namely, lexicography - a science and art of compiling dictionaries. It is also important for foreign language teaching and literary criticism.

The course of English lexicology contains much useful information on the English word-stock and the laws that govern its function and formation. And it is of great importance for a teacher, because it develops a systematic approach to vocabulary and regulations that govern it.

Lesson #2

SEMASIOLOGY

There are different approaches to meaning and types of meaning

Meaning is the object of semasiological study -> semasiology is a branch of Linguistics which is concerned with the study of the semantic structure of vocabulary units. The study of meaning is the basis of all linguistic investigations.

However, at present there is no universally accepted definition of meaning that would reflect all the characteristic features of meaning on the one hand and on the other hand would be operational. The majority of linguists remain pessimistic as far as the possibility of any definition of meaning is concerned.

Russian linguists have also pointed to the complexity of the phenomenon of meaning (Потебня, Щерба, Смирницкий, Уфимцеваидр.)

There are 3 main types of definition of meaning:

(a) Analytical or referential definition

(b) Functional or contextual approach

REFERENTIAL APPROACH

Within the referential approach linguists attempt at establishing interdependence between words and objects of phenomena they denote. The idea is illustrated by the so-called basic triangle

REFERENT...... SYMBOL

(concrete object) . (in which this object is reflected)

sound or letter form in which this concept is reflected)

THOUGHT OF REFERENT

(or concept)

There is no direct connection between the referent "table" and the sound form "table". This connection is conventional.

The diagram illustrates the correlation between the sound form of a word, the concrete object it denotes and the underlying concept. The dotted line suggests that there is no immediate relation between sound form and referent + it testifies to the fact that this connection is conventional.

Relation can be established through the concept, which belongs to the human cognition, and the concept is the result of abstraction. The diagram fails to show what meaning really is. The concept, the referent, or the relations between the name and the concept.

Trying to solve this problem, Russian linguists precede from the assumption that the linguistic sign is the so-called two-facet union. They view meaning as a certain reflection in our mind of objects, phenomena or relations, which makes the inner facet of the word. And the sound form is its outer facet. Themerits of this approach are as follows: it links the notion of meaning to the process of namegiving to objects, processes or concepts.The drawbacks are:

1. Referential definition cannot be applied to sentences and additional meanings arising in communication.

2. It fails to account for polysemy and synonymy.

3. It operates with subjective and intangible mental processes, because neither reference nor objects belong to linguisticdata.

FUNCTIONAL (CONTEXTUAL) APPROACH *

The supporters of this approach define meaning as the use of word in a language. They assume that meaning should be studied through context. If the distribution of two words is different we can conclude that heir meanings are different too (Ex. He looked at me in surprise; He's been looking for it...)

However, it is hardly possible to collect all meanings of the word and in practice linguist is guided by his experience and intuition. On the whole, this approach may be considered complimentary to the referential definition and it is applied mainly in structural linguistics.

* OPERATIONAL APPROACH *

It studies words in action. It describes meaning as information conveyed from the speaker to the listener in the process of communication. But though it can be applied both to words and sentences, it fails to distinguish between the direct sense (or meaning proper) and implications (or additional information) (Ex John came at six o'clock. Depending on situation it may have some additional meanings: he was punctual as usual, or he came two hours later, he didn't keep his promise and so on).

In each case the implication would depend on concrete situation, and considering the importance of two layers of information thee were suggested two terms: MEANING for direct meaning and SENSE for implications.

3. The word "meaning" is not homogeneous. Its components are called "types of meaning". The two main types of meaning are grammatical and lexical meaning.

The grammatical meaning is the component of meaning, recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of words

(goes, loves, reads - 3rd person singular. Books, tables, apples - the recurrent meaning of plurality).

The lexical meaning is the meaning proper to the linguistic unit in all its forms and distribution. That's why "buy, buys" have different grammatical meaning. But in all of them we find the semantic component "male child".

The grammatical meaning and lexical meaning make up the word meaning and neither of them can exist without the other.

The grammatical meaning is more abstract and generalized. In some word classes it is the lexical meaning that is rather vague (Ex. in prepositions / link verbs).

Third type of meaning is called lexical-grammatical meaning (or part-of-speech meaning). It is the common denominator of all the meanings of words belonging to a lexical-grammatical class (class of nouns, verbs etc.)

The meaning of thingness is characteristic of all nouns. This type of meaning is observed through a set of forms (Ex. all nouns have forms denoting number and case). Some parts of speech are observed through their distribution (Ex. prepositions).

4. The lexical meaning comprises two main components the denotational aspect of meaning and the connotational aspect of meaning. The term "denotational aspect of meaning" is derived from "to denote" and it is through this component of meaning that the main information is conveyed in the process of communication. Besides, it helps to insure8 references to things common to all the speakers of the given language (Ex. "chemistry"- I'm not an expert in it, but I know what it is about).

The connotational aspect may be called "optional". It conveys additional information in the process of communication. And it may denote the emotive charge and the stylistic value of the word. The emotive charge is the emotive evaluation9 inherent in the connotational component of the lexical meaning (Ex. "notorious" => [widely known] => for criminal acts, bad behaviour, bad traits of character; "famous" => [widely known] => for special achievement in science etc.).

Positive/Negative evaluation; emotive charge/stylistic value.

"to love"

"to adore" - to love greatly => the emotive charge is higher than in "to love"

"to shake" - neutral.

"to shiver" - is stronger => higher emotive charge.

Mind that the emotive charge is not a speech characteristic of the word. It's a language phenomenon => it remains stable and it is repeatedly reproduced.

If associations with the lexical meaning concern the situation, the social circumstances (formal/informal), the social relations between the interlocutors (polite/rough), the type or purpose of communication (poetic/official)the connotation is stylistically coloured. It is termed as stylistic reference. The main stylistic layers of vocabulary are:

Literary "parent"

Neutral "father"

Colloquial "dad"

But the denotational meaning is the same!!!

The constituent elements of connotation are closely linked together and they can be looked at separately only for the sake of scientific analysis:

To pass into the next world (= to die)- bookish, poetic

> To die - neutral, doesn't have emotive charge

> To kick the bucket- highly emotive and stylistically it is colloquial

5. The lexical meaning of the word can also be segmented into semantic components, which are called semes. The procedure of componentional analysis may be illustrated by the semantic field of kinship13:

• Father = male + parent

• Mother = female + parent

• Son = male + in relation to parent

• Daughter = female + in relation to parent

Semes are mostly determined with the help of dictionary definitions. To find semes one should consult an English-English dictionary.

6. A word may have several meanings, and these meanings are interconnected and form up its semantic structure.

The words of the kind are called polysemantic. The greater the relative fe-quency14 of the word is, the more meanings it has within its semantic structure.

Monosemantic words are mostly scientific terms. In case of a polysemantic word the unity of its form and meaning is kept in its lexical-grammatical variant. Ex. "Youth" has 3 lexical-grammatical variants

a) An abstract uncountable noun as in "a friend of one's youth".

b) A countable noun in the meaning of the young man.

c) A collective noun which implies men and women = > used only in plural.

7. Polysemy.

Diachronically, polysemy is understood as the growth and development of the semantic structure of the word and historically we differentiate between the primary and secondary meanings of words.

The relation between these meanings isn't only the one of order of appearance but it is also the relation of dependence = > we can say that secondary meaning is always the derived meaning.

Synchronically it is possible to distinguish between major (basic, central) meaning of the word and its minor meanings. Sometimes it is hard to grade individual meaning of the word in order of their comparative value.

To get the letter- получитьписьмо.

To get to London- прибытьвЛондон(minor).

The only more or less objective criterion in this case is the frequency of occurence in speech. The semantic structure is never static and the primary meaning of a word may become synchronically one of the minor meanings and vice versa. Stylistic factors should always be taken into consideration.

Polysemy of words: "yellow"- sensational (Am., sl.)

The meaning which has the highest frequency is the one representative of the whole semantic structure of the word. The Russian equivalent of "a table" which first comes to your mind and when you hear this word is 'cтол" in the meaning "a piece of furniture". And words that correspond in their major meanings in two different languages are referred to as correlated words though their semantic structures may be different.

Primary meaning- historically first.

Major meaning - the most frequently used meaning of the word synchronically.

Lesson #3

Semantic changes (sources, types)

Meaning and motivation

Hyponimy

Semantic subsistence of vocabulary

I. The set of meanings the word possesses isn't fixed. If approached diachronically, the polysemy reflects sources and types of semantic changes. The causes of such changes may be either extralinguistic including historical and social factors, foreign influence and the need for a new name, or linguistic causes, which are due to the associations that words acquire in speech (Ex. "atom" has Greek origin, was used to name a new pfenomenon - "indivisible" in Greek; "to engage" in the meaning "to invite" appeared in English due to foreign language [from the French language] = > to engage for a dance}.

Extralinguistic "to unleash dogs" => then "to unleash the dogs of war" = > then "dogs" disappeared => "to

unleash war".

The nature of semantic changes may be of two main types: 1) Similarity of meaning (metaphor). It implies a hidden comparison and it likens one thing to another as if it were some other (contiguity8 of meaning or metonymy). It is the process of associating two references, one of which is part of the other, or is closely connected with it. In other words, it is nearest in space and function (Ex. "table" in the meaning of food [metonymy]).

The semantic change may bring about following results: 1 4 Narrowing of meaning or specialization of meaning (Ex. Old English

"fuvol" (a bird) => "fowl" (a domestic bird in Modern English). г. * Widening of meaning (Ex. Old English "raede" (for a ride) = > "ready"(for anything in Modern English).

* Degeneration / acquisition by a word of some derogatory or negative emotive charge (Ex. "villain" - French borrowing; when it was borrowed it meant a "farm servant", but in Modern English it is "злодей"). H. * Melioration / elevation of meaning - acquisition by a word of some positive emotive charge (Ex. "kwen" in Old English meant "a woman" but in Modern English it is "queen").

2) The change of meaning can also be expressed through a change in the number and arrangement of word meanings without any other changes in the semantic structure of a word.

II. A new meaning of a word is always motivated. Motivation is the connection between the form of the word (i.e. its phonetic, morphological composition and structural pattern) and its meaning. Therefore a word may be motivated phonetically, morphologically and semantically.

Phonetically motivated words aren't numerous. They imitate the sounds they denote (Ex. crash, buzz). Or sometimes they imitate quick movement (Ex. rain, swing).

Morphological motivation is expressed through the relationship of morphemes => all one-morpheme words aren't motivated (Ex. rainbow, E-write). The words like "matter" are called nonmotivated or idiomatic while the words like "cranberry" are partially motivated because structurally they are transparent, but "cran" is devoid of lexical meaning; "berry" has its lexical meaning.

Semantic motivation is the relationship between the direct (major) meaning of the word and other coexisting meanings within the semantic structure of a polysemantic word (Ex. "root"—"the roots of evil" - motivated by its direct meaning "the fruits of peace" - is the result.