BRIEF COURSE ON LEXICOLOGY
Lecture1
Lexicologyisthe science of the word and distinguished in:
v Generaland special
v Contrastiveand comparative
v Descriptive(the synchronic approach) and historical (the diachronic approach).
Contrastiveand comparative, descriptive and historical are closely connected.
Lexical unitsare morphemes, words, word-groups, phraseological units.
Paradigm– thesystem showing a word in all its word-forms. The lexical meaning is the same;the grammatical meaning varies from one form to another (to take, takes, taken,took, taking).
Semasiology– thebranch of lexicology that is devoted to the study of the meaning. There are 2schools with their own approaches to the problem of the words meaning: referentialand functional.
Types ofthe meaning
v Grammaticalmeaning
v Partof speech meaning
v Lexicalmeaning – may be denotational (making the communication possible) and connotational(the emotive charge and the stylistic value).
Stylisticvalue is subdivided into neutral, bookish and colloquial. The last maybe pointed out like slang, common colloquial, vulgarisms, dialectical words,professionalisms, jargonisms.
Meaning is the inner facet of theword, inseparable from its outer facet (sound form) which is indispensable tothe existence of meaning and to intercommunication.
Motivation:
/> Morphological(-able, -less, re-, anti-)
/> Phonetical(boom, splash, cuckoo, pooh!)
/> Semantic
Change ofmeaning
Word-meaningis liable to change in the course of the historical development of language.
Causes ofsemantic change
v Extra-linguistic
v Linguistic(ellipsis, discrimination of synonyms, linguistic analogy)
The kindsof association involved in semantic changes are:
1. similarityof meanings
2. contiguityof meanings
Results ofsemantic change:
1. changesin denotational meaning (specialization, extension (generalization[specialized, common]))
2. changesin connotational meaning:
v pejorativedevelopment (derogatory emotive charge)
v ameliorativedevelopment (the improvement of the con. component)
Causes, natureand result of semantic changes should be regarded as 3 essentially differentbut closely connected aspects of the same linguistic phenomenon.
Lecture 2
PolysemyThemain problem is the problem of interrelation and interdependence of the variousmeanings of the same word.
Diachronicallyit is ahistorical change in the semantic structure resulting in disappearance ofsome meanings or/and in new meanings being added to the ones already existingalso in the rearrangement of these meanings in its semantic structure.
Synchronicallyit isco-existence of the various meanings of the same word at a certain historicalperiod and the arrangement of these meanings in the semantic structure of theword.
Diachronically: primary (original) andsecondary (derived) meanings viewed chronically.
Synchronically: central (basic) andmarginal (minor) meanings according to their relative frequency in speech.
The semanticstructure is never static. The relationship between the diachronic andsynchronic evaluation of individual meanings of the same word may be differentin different periods of the historical development of language.
The whole ofthe semantic structure of correlated polysemantic words of different languagescan never be identical. Words are felt as correlated if their basic (central)meanings coincide.
Lecture3
HomonymyFull homonymy – of words belonging to the same part of speech.
Partialhomonymy– of individuals word-forms of different part of speech.
Homonyms may be:
ü lexical(differ in lexical meaning)
ü lexico-grammatical(both in lexical and grammatical)
ü grammatical(in grammatical meaning only)
Homonyms may be classified on thebasis of 3 aspects as well:
1. soundform
2. graphicform
3. meaning(dew to the meaning they are derived into homograpgs, homophones, perfect(absolute) homonyms)
The sources of homonymy:
ü divergingmeaning development of a polysemantic word
ü convergentsound development of 2 or more different words (most potent factor)
The criteriaused in the synchronic analysis of homonyms:
1. semantic 2.spelling 3. distribution
The problem ofdiscriminating between polysemy and homonymy in theoretical linguistics isclosely connected with the problem of the basic unit at the semantic level ofanalysis.
Word-meaningin syntagmatics and paradigmatics
Intralinguisticrelations of words are basically of 2 types: syntagmatic andparadigmatic.
Syntagmaticrelationsdefine the meaning the word possesses when it is used in combination with otherwords in the flow of speech.
Paradigmaticrelationsare those that exist between individual lexical items which make up one of thesubgroups of vocabulary items (sets of synonyms, lexico-semantic groups, etc.).
Syntagmatic relations
Paradigmatic relations
He got a letter.
I received a note.
She obtained an epistle.
Lecture4
Contextmaybe regarded in aspects as following:
ü linguistic
ü lexical
ü grammatical
ü extra-linguistic(of situation)
Conceptual(semantic) fields.
Hoponymic(hierachia) structures.
Classificationof vocabulary into thematic groups is based on common contextualassociations (the result of regular co-occurrence of words in similar,repeatedly used contexts).
The maincriterion underlying semantic classification of vocabulary items on theparadigmatic axis is type of meaning relationships between words.
The criterionof common concept serves to classify words into semantic fields andlexico-semantic groups.
Semanticrelationship of inclusion is the main feature of hyponymic hierarchical structure.Semantic similarity and semantic contrast is the type of relationship whichunderlies the classification of lexical items into synonymic and antonymicseries.
Synonymyand antonymy are correlative and sometimes overlapping notions. Synonymousrelationship of the denotational meaning is in many cases combined with thedifference in the connotational (mainly stylistic) component.
Synonyms — words different in sound-form but similar in their denotational meaning ormeanings and interchangeable at least in some contexts.
Antonyms — words different in sound-form characterized by different types of semanticcontrast of the denotational meaning and interchangeable at least in somecontexts.
Word-groups– wordsput together to form lexical units make up phrases or word-groups. Come dew tolexical and grammatical valency of the components.
Lexicalvalency isthe aptness of a word to appear in various collocations. Restriction of thelexical valency are to be accounted for by the inner structure of thevocabulary of the English language.
Differentmeanings of a polysemantic word may be described through its lexical valency.
Grammaticalvalencyis the aptness of a word to appear in various grammatical structures.Restriction of the grammatical valency are to be accounted for by thegrammatical structure of the language. The range of the grammatical valency ofthe word is delimited by the part of speech the word belongs to.
Structurally, word-groups may beclassified by the criterion of distribution into exocentric and endocentric(they according to the head-word are distinguished nominal, adverbial,verbal, adjectival).
Semantically,word-groupsmay be classified into motivated and non-motivated(phraseological units)
Lecture5
Phraseologicalunits – non-motivatedword-groups that cannot be freely made up in speech but are reproduced as readymade units.
Classification:
1. phraseologicalfusions – completely non-motivated
2. phraseologicalunities – partially non-motivated
3. phraseologicalcollocations – motivated but made up of words possessing specific lexicalvalency. That’s why there is a certain degree of stability in such group.
The criterionof idiomaticity;
The criterionof function;
The criterionof context;
Phraseologicalunitsmight also be shared to:
v phrasemes – two-member word-groupsin which one of the members has specialized meaning dependent on the secondcomponent: “small hours”.
v Idioms– theidiomaticity of the whole word-group; unusualness of collocability or logicalincompability of member-words; usually homonymous with corresponding variableword-groups: red tape, to let the cat out of the bag.
Thedistinguishing feature of the new approach is that phraseology is regarded as aself-contained branch of linguistics and not as a part of lexicology. Accordingto this approach phraseology deals with all types of set expressions which aredivided into 3 classes:
1. phraseologicalunits
2. phraseomaticunits
3. border-linecases
Lecture6
Wordstructure
There are 2levels of approach to the study of word-structure:
v thelevel of morphemic analysis
v thelevel of derivational or word-formation analysis
The basic unitof morphemic level is the morpheme defined as the smallestindivisible two-facet language unit.
Three typesofmorphemic segmentability of words are distinguished:
· complete
· conditional
· defective
Words of conditionaland defective segmentability are made up of full morphemes and pseudo(quasi) morphemes. The latter do not rise to the status of full morphemeseither for semantic reasons or because of their unique distribution.
Semanticallymorphemesfall into:
1. root-morphemes
2. affixational morphemes
Structurallymorphemesfall into:
1. free
2. bound
3. semi-free (semi-bound)
The structuraltypes of words at the morphemic level are described in terms of the number andtype of their ICs (immediate constituents) as monomorphic and polymorphicwords.
Derivationallevel of analysis aims at finding out the derivative types of words, theinterrelation between them and at finding out how different types ofderivatives are constructed.
Derivationatelyall words form 2 structural classes:
1. simplexes(non-derived)
2. complexes(derivatives) which in their turn may be divided into:
· sufficial
· prefixal
· conversions
· compounds
Each structuraltype of complexes shows preference for one or another part of speech. Withinpart of speech derivative structures are characterized by a set of derivationalpatterns.
Derivationalbasis differ from stems both structurally and semantically. Derivational basesare built on the following language units:
· stemsof various structure
· word-forms
· word-groupor phrases
Each class andsubset bases has its own range of collocability and shows peculiar ties withdifferent parts of speech.
Derivationalaffixes form derived stems by repattering derivational bases. Semanticallyderivational affixes present a unity of lexical meaning and other types ofmeaning: functional, distributional and differential unlike non-derivationalaffixes which lack lexical meaning.
Derivationalpatterns (DP) are meaningful arrangements of various types of ICs that can beobserved in a set of words based on their mutual interdependence. DPs can beviewed in terms of collocability of each IC.
There are 2types of DPs: 1) structural that specify base classes and individualaffixes.
2) structural-semanticthat specify semantic peculiarities of bases and the individual meaning of theaffix.
DPs ofdifferent levels of generalization signal:
· theclass of source unit that motivates the derivative and the direction ofmotivation between different classes of words.
· Thepart of speech of the derivative.
· Thelexical sets and semantic features of derivatives.
Lecture7
Ways offorming words (according to A.I. Smirnitskiy):
Word-formation is the system ofderivative types of words and the process of creating new words from thematerial available in the language after certain structural and semanticformulas and patterns.
As a subjectof study English word-formation is that branch of English lexicology whichstudies the derivative structure of words and the patterns on which the Englishlanguage builds new words. Like any other linguistic phenomenon, word-formationmay be studied synchronically and diachronically.
There are 2types of word-formation in Modern English:
1. word-derivation being of 2 kinds like affixationand conversion
2. word-composition
There is everyreason to exclude the shortening of words, lexicalization, blending, acronymyfrom the system of word-formation and regard them and other word-formingprocesses as specific means of vocabulary refreshment. Sound-and-stressinterchange in Modern English are a means of distinguishing between differentwords, primarily between words of different pa5rts of speech.
The degree ofproductivity and factors favouring it make an important aspect in synchronicdescription of every derivational pattern within the 2 types of word-formation.
Threedegrees of productivity are distinguished for derivational patterns and individualderivational affixes:
1. highlyproductive
2. productiveor semi- productive
3. non-productive