What does the lexicology study
What does the lexicology study
WHAT IS LEXICOLOGY?
Outline
Lexicology and its tasks
Two principal approaches
Branches of Lexicology
Lexicology and its tasks
Lexicology is the study of lexis i.e. its vocabulary or lexicon.
Greek lexis is ‘word’ and logos denotes ‘learning, a department of knowledge’. Vocabulary = lexis = lexicon is the total word stock of the language.
Lexiсolоgу is ‘the science of the words’. Lexicology studiesnot only the simple words in all their aspects, but it deals with complex and compound words, the meaningful units of the language, etymology, the study of the origin of words.
Lexicology as a branch of linguisticshas its own aims and methods of scientific research.Its basic task is a study and systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use. Lexicologyis concerned withwords, variable word-groups, phraseological units, with morphemes which make up words.
Two principal approaches
In the framework of lexicology, both synchronic(Gr. syn “together”,“with” and chronos “time”) and diachronicor historical(Gr. dia“through”) suggested by the Swiss philologist Ferdinand de Saussure are applied.
The synchronic approachis concerned with the vocabulary of a language as it exists at a given time, for instance, at the present time. It is special Desсriptive Lexicology that deals with the vocabulary and vocabulary units of a particular language at a certain time. A Course in Modern English Lexicology is a course in specialDescriptive Lexicology, as its object of study is the English vocabulary as it exists at the present time.
The diachronic approachdeals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the course of time. It is special Historical Lexicology that deals with the evolution of the vocabulary units of a language as time goes by.An English Historical Lexicologyfocuses on the origin of English vocabulary units, their change and development, the linguistic and extralinguistic factors modifying their structure, meaning and usage within the history of the English language.
Lexicology as a science. Branches of lexicology. The word as the basic unit of language.
Lexicology as a science. Branches of lexicology. The word as the basic unit of language.
Lexicology is the part of linguistics which deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups. The term word denotes the main lexical unit of a language resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning. This unit is used in grammatical functions characteristic of it. It is the smallest unit of a language which can stand alone as a complete utterance. The term word-group denotes a group of words which exists in the language as a ready-made unit, has the unity of meaning, the unity of syntactical function, e.g. the word-group as loose as a goose means clumsy and is used in a sentence as a predicative (He is as loose as a goose). Lexicology can be general and special. General lexicology is the lexicology of any language, part of General Linguistics. It is aimed at establishing language universals – linguistic phenomena and propeties common to all languages. Special lexicology is the lexicology of a particular language (English, German, Russian, etc.). Lexicology can study the development of the vocabulary, the origin of words and word-groups, their semantic relations and the development of their sound form and meaning. In this case it is called historical lexicology. Another branch of lexicology is called descriptive and studies the vocabulary at a definite stage of its development.
Types of morphemes.
Morphemes are the smallest indivisible two-facet units composite words are made of, e.g. teach-er, kill-joy. A morpheme can occur in speach only as a constituent part of the word. It may have different phonetic variants (allomorphs): decision – attention; inactive – illegal. Its meaning varies too: childish – reddish; encircle – enrich.
Morphemic analysis of word.
The morphemic analysis (sometimes also called morphological) is one of possible methods of analyzing word structure along with the word-building analysis. The morphemic analysis is a process of singling out morphs in a word and stating their meaning. To state the borders between morphemes correctly, it is necessary to study the word in a row of words which are structurally similar (words with the same root and suffixes). The procedure of the morphemic analysis states the morphemic structure of the word. The procedure consists of two operations: 1) the stem is separated from the inflection by means of comparing word- forms of the word; 2) relations between morphemes in the stem are stated by means of comparing cognate words.
The morphemic analysis based on the distributional analysis gave rise to such notions as morph, allomorph, morpheme, etc.
Derivational analysis.
According to the derivative structure all words fall into two big classes: simple, non-derived words and complexes or derivatives. Simplexes are words which derivationally cannot’ be segmented into ICs. Derivatives are words which depend on some other simpler lexical items that motivate them structurally and semantically, i.e. the meaning and the structure of the derivative is understood through the comparison with the meaning and the structure of the source word. The basic elementary units of the derivative structure of words are: derivational bases, derivational affixes and derivational patterns and degree Derivational base: is defined as the constituent to which a rule of word-formation is applied. Structurally derivational bases fall into three classes:
1) bases that coincide with morphological stems of different degrees of complexity, e.g. dutiful, dutifully; day-dream, to day-dream, daydreamer. Derivationally the stems may be:
1. ü simple, which consist of only one, semantically non motivated constituent (pocket, motion, retain, horrible).
2. ü derived stems are semantically and structurally motivated, and are the results of the application of word-formation rules (girlish-girlishness)
3. ü compound stems are always binary and semantically motivated (weekend,match-box, letter-writer)
Derivational affixes: Derivational affixes are ICs of numerous derivatives in all parts of speech. Derivational affixes possess two basic functions: 1) that of stem-building and 2) that of word-building. In most cases derivational affixes perform both functions simultaneously. It is true that the part-of-speech meaning is proper in different degrees to the derivational suffixes and prefixes. It stands out clearly in derivational suffixes but it is less evident in prefixes; some prefixes lack it altogether. Prefixes like en-, un-, de-, out-, be-, unmistakably possess the part-of-speech meaning and function as verb classifiers. The prefix over-evidently lacks the part-of-speech meaning and is freely used both for verbs and adjectives, the same may be said about non-, pre-, post-.
Derivational patterns: A derivational pattern is a regular meaningful arrangement, a structure that imposes rigid rules on the order and the nature of the derivational bases and affixes that may be brought together.
There are two types of DPs — structural that specify base classes and individual affixes, and structural-semantic that specify semantic peculiarities of bases and the individual meaning of the affix. DPs of different levels of generalisation signal: 1) the class of source unit that motivates the derivative and the direction of motivation between different classes of words; 2) the part of speech of the derivative; 3) the lexical sets and semantic features of derivatives.
The criteria of compounds.
Composition is the way of word-building when a word is formed by joining two or more stems to form one word. The structural unity of a compound word depends upon:
a) A unity of stress. As a rule, English compounds have one uniting stress, e.g. ‘best-seller. We can also have a double stress in an English compound: ‘blood-‚vessel. The main stress may be on the second component: ‚sky-‘blue.
b) Solid or hyphenated spelling. Spelling in English compounds is not very reliable because they can have different spelling even in the same text, e.g. war-ship, blood-vessel can be spelt through a hyphen and also with a break. Insofar, underfoot can be spelt solidly and with a break.
c) Semantic unity. It is often very strong. in such cases we have idiomatic compounds where the meaning of the whole is not a sum of meanings of its components, e.g. to ghostwrite, skinhead, brain-drain. In non- idiomatic compounds semantic unity is not strong, e.g. airbus, astrodynamics.
d) Unity of morphological and syntactical functioning. They are used in a sentence as one part of it and only one component changes grammatically: These girls are chatter-boxes.
There are two characteristic features of English compounds:
a) both components in an English compound can be used as words with a distinctive meaning of their own, e.g. a ‘green-house and a ‘green ‘house;
b) English compounds have a two-stem pattern, with the exception of compound words which have form-word stems in their structure, e.g. middle-of-the-road, off-the-record.
II. Ways of Forming Compound Words
English compounds can be formed not only by means of composition but also by means of:
a) reduplication: too-too – sentimental;
b) partial conversion from word-groups: to micky-mouse, can-do;
c) back formation from compound nouns or word-groups: to fingerprint (fingerprinting), to baby-sit (baby-sitter);
d) analogy: lie-in (on the analogy with sit-in);
e) contrast: brain-gain (in contrast to brain-drain).
Polysemy and context.
II. Semantic Structure of Polysemantic Words. Synchronically, the problem of polysemy ie the problem of interrelation and interdependence of different meanings of the same word. The semantic structure of a polysemantic word is the sum total of relations between its lexico-semantic variants. The analysis of the semantic structure of a polysemantic word is based on the following set of oppositions:
1. Direct-derived meaning: rat – animal like, but larger than a mouse; rat – cowardly person; strike-breaker.
2. Extended-restricted meaning: to knock – strike, hit; to knock – of a petrol engine – make a tapping or thumping noise.
3. Free-bound meaning: hat – cover for the head; hat – nonsense (to speak through one’s hat).
4. General-specialized meaning: case – instance or example of the occurence of smth; case – (med.) person suffering from a disease.
5. Neutral-emotional meaning: nut – fruit consisting of a hard shell enclosing a kernel that can be eaten; nut – (slang) head of a human being.
Classification of synonymy.
Synonyms are two or more words of the same language, belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical meanings, interchangeable, at least in some contexts without any considerable alteration in sense, but differing in morphemic composition, phonemic shape, shades of meaning, connotations, style, valency and idiomatic use. Example: strange – queer – odd – quaint.
Synonymic, adj [sInenImik].
Synonymous, adj [sinOnimes].
Synonymic dominant is the central term of a synonymic set possessing the following characteristic features:
1. high frequency of usage
2. broad combinability, ability to be used in combinations with various classes of words
3. broad general meaning
4. lack of connotations (this goes for stylistic connotations as well, so that stylistic neutrality is also a typical feature of the dominant synonym)
5. it may substitute for other synonyms at least in some contexts
6. it is often used to define other synonyms in dictionary definitions.
In the synonymic set strange – queer – odd – quaint, the synonymic dominant is strange.
Ideographic synonyms are words conveying the same concept, but differing in shades of meaning. For instance, the verbs cry – weep – sob – wail – whimper are ideographic synonyms. These verbs mean “to make inarticulate sounds of grief, unhappiness, or pain”. Cry has the widest use and may be a result of unhappiness, joy or, especially with babies, of physical discomfort. Cry and weep both imply the shedding of tears, but cry more strongly implies accompanying sound. In comparison with cry, weep can suggest stronger emotions. Sob describes crying or a mixture of broken speech and crying marked by irregular and noisy breathing. Wail indicates long noisy crying in grief or complaint. Whimper refers to low, broken or repressed cries; children whimper with fear or in complaint.
Stylistic synonyms are words differing in their stylistic characteristics, sky (neutral) – welkin (bookish), head (neutral) – attic (slang).
Absolute synonyms are words coinciding in all their shades of meaning and in all their stylistic characteristics, word-building – word-formation.
Contextual synonyms are words which are similar in meaning only under some specific contextual conditions. The verbs to buy and to get are not synonymous, but they are synonyms in the examples offered by J. Lyons: I’ll go to the shop and buy some bread and I’ll go to the shop and get some bread.
Triple scale of synonyms is a set of synonyms in which one word is native, the second word is French and the third synonym is Latin or Greek. In most of such sets, the native synonym is the simplest and most common of the three terms, the Latin or Greek one is learned, abstract, whereas the French one stands between the two extremes. Examples: to begin – to commence – to initiate; to end – to finish – to conclude.
Antonyms.
a) complementarity: male – female. The denial of the one implies the assertion of the other, and vice versa;
b) antonyms: good – bad. It is based on different logical relationships;
c) converseness: to buy – to sell. It is mirror-image relations or functions: husband-wife, above-below, pupil-teacher.
L. Lipka also gives the type which he calls directional oppositions: up-down, consequence opposition: learn-know, antipodal opposition: North-South, East- West. L. Lipka also points out non-binary contrast or many-member lexical sets. In such sets of words we can have outer and inner pairs of antonyms: excellent, good, average, fair, poor. Not every word in a language can have antonyms. This type of opposition can be met in qualitative adjectives and their derivatives: beautiful-ugly, to beautify-to uglify. It can be also met in words denoting feelings and states: to respect-to scorn, respectful-scornful and in words denoting direction in space and time: here-there, up-down, before-after. If a word is polysemantic, it can have several antonyms, e.g. the word bright has the antonyms dim, dull, sad.
Classification of homonyms.
a) perfect homonyms which are identical in their spelling, pronunciation and their grammar form: spring in the meanings the season of the year, a leap, a source;
b) homoforms which coincide in their spelling and pronunciation but have different grammatical meaning: reading – Present Participle, Gerund, Verbal noun; to lobby-lobby.
I.V. Arnold pointed out the following groups of homonyms:
a) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings, basic forms and paradigms and different in their lexical meanings: board – a council and board – a piece of wood sawn thin;
b) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings and basic forms, but different in their lexical meanings and paradigms: to lie – lied – lied, and to lie – lay – lain;
c) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, paradigms, but coinciding in their basic forms: light (lights) – light (lighter, lightest);
d) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, in their basic forms and paradigms, but coinciding in one of the forms of their paradigms: a bit and bit (from to bite);
e) patterned homonyms differ from other homonyms, having a common component in their lexical meanings. They are formed either by means of conversion, or by levelling of grammar inflexions. These homonyms are different in their grammatical meanings, in their paradigms, but identical in their basic forms: warm – to warm.
Lexicology as a science. Branches of lexicology. The word as the basic unit of language.
Lexicology is the part of linguistics which deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups. The term word denotes the main lexical unit of a language resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning. This unit is used in grammatical functions characteristic of it. It is the smallest unit of a language which can stand alone as a complete utterance. The term word-group denotes a group of words which exists in the language as a ready-made unit, has the unity of meaning, the unity of syntactical function, e.g. the word-group as loose as a goose means clumsy and is used in a sentence as a predicative (He is as loose as a goose). Lexicology can be general and special. General lexicology is the lexicology of any language, part of General Linguistics. It is aimed at establishing language universals – linguistic phenomena and propeties common to all languages. Special lexicology is the lexicology of a particular language (English, German, Russian, etc.). Lexicology can study the development of the vocabulary, the origin of words and word-groups, their semantic relations and the development of their sound form and meaning. In this case it is called historical lexicology. Another branch of lexicology is called descriptive and studies the vocabulary at a definite stage of its development.
Types of morphemes.
Morphemes are the smallest indivisible two-facet units composite words are made of, e.g. teach-er, kill-joy. A morpheme can occur in speach only as a constituent part of the word. It may have different phonetic variants (allomorphs): decision – attention; inactive – illegal. Its meaning varies too: childish – reddish; encircle – enrich.
Morphemic analysis of word.
The morphemic analysis (sometimes also called morphological) is one of possible methods of analyzing word structure along with the word-building analysis. The morphemic analysis is a process of singling out morphs in a word and stating their meaning. To state the borders between morphemes correctly, it is necessary to study the word in a row of words which are structurally similar (words with the same root and suffixes). The procedure of the morphemic analysis states the morphemic structure of the word. The procedure consists of two operations: 1) the stem is separated from the inflection by means of comparing word- forms of the word; 2) relations between morphemes in the stem are stated by means of comparing cognate words.
The morphemic analysis based on the distributional analysis gave rise to such notions as morph, allomorph, morpheme, etc.
Derivational analysis.
According to the derivative structure all words fall into two big classes: simple, non-derived words and complexes or derivatives. Simplexes are words which derivationally cannot’ be segmented into ICs. Derivatives are words which depend on some other simpler lexical items that motivate them structurally and semantically, i.e. the meaning and the structure of the derivative is understood through the comparison with the meaning and the structure of the source word. The basic elementary units of the derivative structure of words are: derivational bases, derivational affixes and derivational patterns and degree Derivational base: is defined as the constituent to which a rule of word-formation is applied. Structurally derivational bases fall into three classes:
1) bases that coincide with morphological stems of different degrees of complexity, e.g. dutiful, dutifully; day-dream, to day-dream, daydreamer. Derivationally the stems may be:
1. ü simple, which consist of only one, semantically non motivated constituent (pocket, motion, retain, horrible).
2. ü derived stems are semantically and structurally motivated, and are the results of the application of word-formation rules (girlish-girlishness)
3. ü compound stems are always binary and semantically motivated (weekend,match-box, letter-writer)
Derivational affixes: Derivational affixes are ICs of numerous derivatives in all parts of speech. Derivational affixes possess two basic functions: 1) that of stem-building and 2) that of word-building. In most cases derivational affixes perform both functions simultaneously. It is true that the part-of-speech meaning is proper in different degrees to the derivational suffixes and prefixes. It stands out clearly in derivational suffixes but it is less evident in prefixes; some prefixes lack it altogether. Prefixes like en-, un-, de-, out-, be-, unmistakably possess the part-of-speech meaning and function as verb classifiers. The prefix over-evidently lacks the part-of-speech meaning and is freely used both for verbs and adjectives, the same may be said about non-, pre-, post-.
Derivational patterns: A derivational pattern is a regular meaningful arrangement, a structure that imposes rigid rules on the order and the nature of the derivational bases and affixes that may be brought together.
There are two types of DPs — structural that specify base classes and individual affixes, and structural-semantic that specify semantic peculiarities of bases and the individual meaning of the affix. DPs of different levels of generalisation signal: 1) the class of source unit that motivates the derivative and the direction of motivation between different classes of words; 2) the part of speech of the derivative; 3) the lexical sets and semantic features of derivatives.
What does lexicology study? Section of science that studies vocabulary
Lexicology is a science that focuses onin the vocabulary of a particular language. It has its own laws and categories. What does lexicology study? This science deals with various aspects of words, as well as their functions and development.
The concept of
Lexicology is a science that studies the vocabulary of a language and its features. The subject of this section of linguistics is the following:
This is not yet a complete list of what is being studiedlexicology. This science deals with issues of replenishment and expansion of vocabulary, and also considers the links and contradictions between lexical units.
Object of study
The word and its meaning are the basis for many sciences. Morphology deals with these questions, as well as various directions of word formation. However, if in these sciences words are a means of studying grammatical structures or studying various models for different variants of word formation, then what is learned by lexicology is used directly for understanding the specifics of the words themselves. Lexical units are viewed not simply as a collection of letters and sounds, but are an integral system that has its connections, functions, categories and concepts. This is the object of the study of lexicology. She does not consider individual words, but the whole vocabulary as something whole and inseparable.
This approach has its own peculiarities. This allows us to refer to the category of lexical units not only words, but also stable word combinations that have a certain analytical role.
Word problem
Lexicology of the modern Russian languagefocuses on the object and subject of its study. Since the word is regarded as a unit that has connections between its form and content, it is considered in three main aspects:
Definition of vocabulary
Lexicology regards words as a system,which consists of several subsystems. Lexical units form groups that are different in volume, form and content. This is part of what is learned by lexicology. At the same time, the vocabulary is explored in two aspects: as a group relationship between individual units and their proper location in relation to each other. Thanks to this vocabulary can be divided into separate categories. For example, homonyms, paronyms, synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, etc.
In addition, almost any sectionlinguistics, including Russian or English lexicology, is studying more voluminous groupings of words, which are called fields. Usually it is built on the basis of the field core, for example, a certain number of keywords, and the boundaries themselves, which are a variety of paradigmatic, semantic, grammatical or other types of relationships with given lexical units.
Sections of lexicology
Like any other science, lexicology has its own system of disciplines that are responsible for certain aspects of its object and subject of study:
Sections of lexicology have their owncategory, as well as the object and subject of study. In addition, there are some types of this science. In particular, we are talking about general, private, historical, comparative and applied lexicology. The first type is responsible for the general patterns of vocabulary, including its structure, stages of development, functions, etc. Private lexicology deals with the study of a specific language. The historical type is responsible for the development of words in connection with the history of names of objects and phenomena. Comparative lexicology examines words in order to identify the relationship between different languages. The latter type is responsible for such processes as the culture of speech, features of translation, linguistic pedagogy and lexicography.
Categories of lexical units
The vocabulary of any language is differentdiversity and heterogeneity. Accordingly, distinguish categories that have their own distinctive features and characteristics. Russian lexicology foresees the following subspecies:
Given the continuous development of the language, the boundaries between words are fuzzy, and they can move from one group to another.
Problems
Like any other science, lexicology deals with certain problems. Modern specialists distinguish the following:
Science also studies variants of the compatibility of words at different levels: semantic and lexical.
Ways to replenish the vocabulary
Lexicology is exploring optionsnominations. This means different ways and methods of expanding the vocabulary. For this, both the internal resources of a particular language can be used, as well as the use of lexical units from other languages. There are the following ways of replenishing the vocabulary:
These methods are typical for any language, but in each case have their own characteristics and distinctive features.
Methods
For its needs, lexicology uses general linguistic research methods. These include:
The information obtained with the help of these methods is also used in other sciences, including psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and a number of social disciplines.
The Object of Lexicology
Lecture № 1 on Lexicology
Lexicology (of Greek origin: lexis “word” + logos “learning”) is a branch of linguistics concerned with words. Lexicology is a study of words. All words of a language make up its vocabulary or lexicon. In lexicology we study such aspects of the vocabulary of language: how words are formed, how they have developed, how they are used, how they relate in meaning to each other, and how they are handled in dictionaries. Thus, lexicology deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups.
The word is a unit of speech which serves the purposes of human communication. Thus, the word is a unit of communication.
The word can be perceived at the total (сумма) of the sounds which comprise it.
The word, viewed structurally, possesses several characteristics: the external and internal structures of the word. By external structure of the word we mean its morphological structure: e.g. in the word post-impressionists the following morphemes can be distinguished: the prefixes post-, im-, the root press, the noun-forming suffixes –ion, – ist, and the grammatical suffix of plurality –s. The area of lexicology which studies the external structure of the word is called word-building. The internal structure of the word, or its meaning, is the word’s semantic structure. This is the word’s main aspect. Words can serve the purposes of human communication solely due to their meanings. The area of lexicology which studies the internal or semantic structure of the word is called semantics.
Another structural aspect of the word is its unity. The word possesses both external (or formal) unity and semantic unity. In the word post-impressionists the morphemes are permanently linked together while in word-groups bright light, to take for granted word components possess a certain structural freedom. The formal unity of the word can be best seen by comparing a word and a word-group with identical constituents: a blackbird (черный дрозд) and a black bird (черная птица). The word blackbird, which is characterized by unity, posses a single grammatical framing (structure): blackbird/s. The first component black is not subject to any grammatical changes. But in the word-group a black bird each component can acquire grammatical forms of its won: black – the blackest, bird – birds. E.g. “the blackest birds we’ve ever seen here.” In this word-group you can insert other words between the components: a black night bird. If we speak of semantic unity in the word-group a black bird the first component black means ‘a color’ and the second component means ‘a living creature’. In the word blackbird the concept conveys ‘a type of bird’. Another structural feature of the word is its susceptibility to grammatical employment (use). In speech most words can be used in different grammatical forms in which their interrelations are realized.
So, the word is a speech unit used for the purposes of human communication, materially representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning, susceptible to grammatical employment and characterized by formal and semantic unity.
Branches of lexicology
Lexical semantics studies meanings of words, in other words, the content, information rendered by lexical units.
Semasiology is a branch of semantics that is concerned with the meaning of words and phrases, used in nomination, studies the types of meaning, the change of meaning, the semantic structure of words, semantic groupings, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, etc. So semasiology studies what it is the name points out. For instance, the word star has two meanings ‘celestial object’ & ‘celebrity’.
Terminologically semasiology is opposed to onomasiology which studies nomination, or means and ways of naming the elements.The theory of nomination has to show how the objects receive their names and what features are chosen to represent them. Onomasiology is a branch of semantics which studies the process of naming and lexical objectification of notions. For example, some extralinguistic properties of the phenomenon led to the onomatopoeic nomination to sizzle. The difference between the two approaches is illustrated by Diagram 1 below.
Word formation studies all possible ways of the formation of new words and models according to which new words are built. For example, nowadays suffixation is a highly productive way of word formation: singlehood, nationhood, leaflet, flatlet, stardom, fandom, oldster, bankster.
Phraseology studies set-expressions with transferred meaning or phraseological units such as a bull in a china shop, a lame duck, stick and carrot policy, a pipe dream.
Etymology studies the origin of words. For example, the noun beggar was borrowed from Old French and the verb to beg appeared in the English language as a result of back derivation by analogy with worker and work.
Lexicography – an applied branch – deals with science of compiling dictionaries.
There are two principal approaches to the study of language material in linguistic science, namely the synchronic (or descriptive) and the diachronic (or historical) approach. The study of a language at a certain period of its development is called a synchronicone. The study of historical development of language elements is called diachronic. According to the synchrony/ diachrony criteria English lexicology correspondingly falls into historical lexicology which studies the origin and development of the English vocabulary, and descriptive lexicology of Modern English, which studies the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development.
Contrastive and comparative lexicology study the correlation between the lexical units of two or more languages. The aim of such studies is to find out the correspondences between the vocabulary units of the languages under comparison. The difference between the comparative and contrastive studies is as follows:
— the comparative lexicology aims to find both similarity and difference in two or more languages, while the contrastive lexicology aims at finding differences in the native and foreign languages;
— the comparative lexicology compares the lexical subsystems of the languages under study, while the contrastive lexicology compares one language unit of the native language with all possible ways of its expression in the foreign language, or vice versa.
Contrastive lexicology establishes how many lingual units of language B are equivalent to the lingual unit of language A. For example, one lingual unit of language A corresponds to two lingual units of language B: рука – hand, arm; girl – девочка, девушка.
Let’s compare the word книга and its English equivalent book.Only one collocation of the English word book is equivalent to Russian книга, which is a book on/about birds – книга о жизни птиц. The rest of the meanings of the word book correlate with words other than книга, cf. a reference book – справочник, a ration book – карточки, to do the books – вести счета, our order books are full – мы больше не принимаем заказов, to be in smb’s good/bad books – быть на хорошем/плохом счету, I can read her like a book – я вижу её насквозь, we must stick to/go by the book – надо действовать по правилам, I’ll take a leaf out of your book – я последую твоему примеру, Не was brought to book for that – за это его привлекли к ответу. The same concerns Russian-English word pairs: закрытый – closed, закрытое заседание – private meeting, закрытое голосование – secret ballot, закрытое помещение – indoors.
Knowledge of lexicology promotes systemic and successive comprehension of the peculiarities of foreign language words as compared with the native words. One can indicate discrepancies in the semantic structure, take into consideration peculiarities of collocation, morphological structure, show specific features of synonymic usage, provide for the stylistic characteristics. All mentioned things help to avoid literal translation and employ the deliberate language acquisition.
The course of Modern English Lexicology is of great practical importance as the language learner will obtain much valuable information concerning the English word stock and the laws and regulations governing the formation and usage of English words and word groups which makes second language acquisition much easier.
Lexicology has close ties with other branches of linguistics as they also take into account words in one way or another but approach them from different angles.
There is a relationship between lexicology and phonetics since phonetics is also concerned with the study of the word, i.e. with the sound form of the word. A close connection between lexicology and grammar is conditioned by the manifold ties between the objects of their study. Even isolated words as presented in a dictionary bear a definite relation to the grammatical system of the language because they belong to some part of speech and conform to some lexico-grammatical characteristics of the word class to which they belong. Lexicology is linked with the history of a language since the latter investigates the changes and the development of the vocabulary of a language. There is also a close relationship between lexicology and stylistics. Stylistics studies many problems treated in lexicology. These are the problems of meaning, synonymy, differentiation of vocabulary according to the sphere of communication and some other issues. Lexicology is bound up with sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics investigates the extralinguistic or social causes of the changes in the vocabulary of a language. The word stock of a language directly and immediately reacts to changes in social life. The intense development of science and technology, which is a social, i.e. an extralinguistic factor, has lately given birth to a great number of new words.
Problem of connection of language and thinking is a multi-faceted one. There’s an assumption that words of the language represent our knowledge of the world which is the result of cognitive process. It’s a well-known fact that the issue of how a language helps to segment material world and its people social experience has been the main one. The process of giving a name to an object is called nomination. Nomination is forming lingual units for the purposes of segmenting and naming outward reality and corresponding concepts.
There are two main participants in the process of nomination: the one who gives a name to an object (the nominator) and the object which is given a name (the referent). The process of giving a name to an оbject consists of several stages.
1. Forming a concept of the object. The concept is a generalized idea of a class of objects, summing up the most essential features of the given class thus distinguishing it from other classes.
2. Designation of class of objects under nomination with the help of linguistic means. The features chosen as the basic characteristics of the object form the denotatum. For example, the denotatum of the word freak is “a person regarded as strange because of their unusual appearance or behaviour”.
The denotational part of meaning is relatively stable as it stands to represent all the basic characteristics of the object.
3. Addition to the denotatum the information concerning functional significance of a lingual unit (the positive or negative attitude of the nominator to the object or some other information). Thereby the word freak is of disapproving character and appertains to informal subset of lexis.
4. Correlation with certain sound form and graphic form.
Naming activity of a human being results in fixing human experience in the words he uses. In fact, the very existence of the word ‘tree’ means that a human mind can segment corresponding objects from reality and identify them as belonging to the class of trees.
Segmentation of reality is specific to every culture. It reflects the reality like a map of the world on this or that scale. Judging by the way the given piece of reality is segmented by language, a researcher can conclude which attributes of things are considered relevant, and which are disregarded. For example, Russian word-combinations высокая трава, крепкий чай, сильный дождь, есть суп correspond to the English long grass, strong tea, heavy rain, drink soup.
In this case linguists speak of the linguistic map of the world, or representation of the world which is covered by each separate language. Different languages conceptualize the knowledge of the world differently: northern peoples associate beauty and good things with the sun красна девица, красно солнышко, while southern peoples – with the moon луноликая, as torrid heat means death to all living beings in the desert. The issue of different linguistic maps of the world is often raised in case of language lacunas such as душа, тоска, авось, privacy, self-reliance, challenge, efficiency, deadline, sorority.