The subject and aim of lexicology. The branches of lexicology.
Lexicology is a branch of linguistics, it is study of words.
The term is composed of two Greek morphemes: logos learning, Lexus word, phrase. Thus the literal meaning of the term is the science of the word.
LG is a branch of linguistics and has its own aims and methods of scientific research. Its basic task is to study and descript systematically the vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use.
LG is concerned with words, variable workgroups, phrasiological units and with morphemes. Modern English LG investigates the problems of word structure and word formation in modern English.
The semantic structure of English words, the main principles underline the classification of vocabulary units into various groupings, the laws, governing, and the development of the vocabulary.
It also studies the variation, existing between various lexical layers of the English vocabulary and the specific laws and regulations that govern its development at the present time. The source and the growth of the EV and the changes.
Branches:
The General LG the general study of words and vocabulary. Linguistic phenomena and properties common to all languages are generally referred as language universals.
The Special LG is the LG of a particular language. Thats the study of and description of its vocabulary and vocabulary units.
The Historical LG the evolution of any vocabulary. It discusses the origin of various words, their change and development, investigates linguistics and extra linguistics forces. The object - its single elements, modifying their structure, meaning and usage.
The Contrastive and Comparative LG - their aims are to study the correlation between the vocabularies of 2 or more languages and find out the correspondences between the vocabulary units.
The descriptive LG deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development.
LG also studies all kinds of semantic grouping and semantic relations such as synonymy, antonymy, homonymy, semantic fields. Meaning relations as a whole are dealed within semantics the Study of meaning.
There are two principal approaches in linguistic science to the study of language material:
The synchronic (historical). Concerned with the study and description of a language system at a certain time.
The diachronic. Deals with the changes and the development of the vocabulary on the course of time.
The two approaches are interconnected and interdependent. The synchronic state of a language is the result of a long process of linguistic evolution of its historical development.
Eg: to bag bagger (closely connected with the history, bagger is borrowed from Old French).
LG and other branches of science
LG and Phonetics. A word is then association of a given group of sounds with the given meaning (tip-top). A word unity is conditioned by a number of phonological units. Phonemes follow each other in a fixed sequence (tip-top)/ the discrimination between words may be based upon stress (import). Stress also distinguishes compounds from homonymies of the group (blackbird black bird). Ph-cs helps in the studying of synonyms, homonyms, polysemy.
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LG and Stylistics. The problem of meaning, connotations, synonymy, functional differention of the vocabulary according to the sphere of communication and some issues.
LG and Grammar are connected in the object of their study. Even isolated words bare a definite relation to the grammatical system, because they belong to some part of speech & conform to some lexical, grammatical characteristics of the word class to which they belong. The ties between lexicology and grammar are particularly strong in the sphere of word formation. The characteristic features of English word building, the morphological structure of the English word are depended on the peculiarity of the grammatical system.
LG and Social Linguistics SL is the branch of Linguistics dealing with the causal relations between the way a word develops and facts of social life. The changes of the language are due to the linguistic and extra linguistic courses, or to a combination of both. Biocomputer , .
The English Vocabulary.
There are different principles underlining the grouping words.
1. according to their morphological structure.
2. to the type of morphemes. This is the basic division of LG.
3. word-families (can be grouped according to a common root, affix, prefix)
4. Grouping notional and form words. Words can be divided into part of speech, can be further subdivided into lex-grammatical group which a common lexical-grammatical meaning and common paradigm. They have the same substitute elements: nouns can be personal, names, proper names, etc.
5. emotionally collored and emotionally neutral words.
6. etymological structure. From the point of view of etymology, English vocabulary can be divided into 2 parts: 70% of borrowings in English language, 30% of native words. Borrowings usually take place under 2 circumstances: 1) when people have a direct contact with another people; 2) when there is a cultural need to borrow a word from another languages.
ROMANIC BORROWINGS.
Latin borrowings: they are divided into 3 periods:
1) 5 century, words are connected with trade (pound, inch, kitchen, wall, port);
2) The time of Christianity, words are connected with religion (Latin words: alter, cross, dean; Greek words: church, angel, devil, anthem);
3) Time of renaissance, words were borrowed after great vowel shift (17 century) (item, superior, zoology, memorandum, vice versa, AM, PM).
French: the largest group of borrowings is French borrowings. Most of them came into English during the Norman Conquest. Normans belong to the race of scand. origin but during their residence in Normandy they had given up the native language and adopted the French dialect. During 3 centuries after the Norman Conquest French was the language of the court, of the nobility. There are following semantic groups of French borrowings:
1) words relating to government (administer, empire, state);
2) ~military affairs (army, war, battle);
3) ~jurisprudence (advocate, petition, sentence);
4) ~fashion (luxury, coat, collar);
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5)~jewelry (topaz, pearl);
6)~ food and cooking (lunch, cuisine, menu);
7)~literature and music (pirouette, ballet).
Italian: cultural and trade relations between England and Italy in the epoch of renaissance brought in many Italian words:
1) musical terms: concert, solo, opera, piano, trio;
2) political terms: manifesto;
3) geological terms: volcano, lava.
Among the 20th century Italian borrowings, we can mention: incognito, fiasco, and graffiti.
Spanish: a large number of such words was penetrated in English vocabulary in 1588 when Phillip 2 sent a fleet of armed ships against England (armada, ambuscade); trade terms: cargo, embargo; names of dances and musical instruments: tango, rumba, guitar; names of vegetables and fruits: tomato, tobacco, banana, ananas.
GERMANIC BORROWINGS:
Scandinavian: By the end of the Old English period English underwent a strong influence of Scandinavian due to the Scandinavian conquest of the British Isles. As a result of this conquest there are about 700 borrowings from Scandinavian into English (pronouns: they, them, their; verbs: to call, to want, to die; adj: flat, ill, happy; noun: cake, egg, knife, window. German: in the period of Second World War such words were borrowed as: luftwaffe (. ); bundeswehr ( ). After the Second World War the following words were borrowed: Volkswagen, berufsverbot ( ( )), and some other words (cobalt, wolfram, iceberg, rucksack ). Dutch: Holland and England have had constant interrelations for many centuries and more then 2000 Dutch words were borrowed into English. Many of them are nautical terms and were mainly borrowed in the 14th century, such as: skipper, pump, keel, dock; and some words from everyday life: luck, brandy, and boss. Russian: Among early Russian borrowings there are mainly words connected with trade relations, such as: rubble, kopeck, sterlet, vodka, and words relating to nature: taiga, tundra, steppe. After the October revolution many new words appeared in Russia, connected with the new political system, new culture, and many of them were borrowed into English: collectivization, udarnik, Komsomol and also translation loans: five-year plan, collective farm. One more group of Russian borrowings is connected with perestroika, suck as: glasnost, nomenclature, and apparatchik.
Native words are divided into 3 basic groups:
1) The words which have cognates (words of the same etymological root, of common origin) in many Indo-European languages. For ex: family relations: father (Vater), mother, daughter, son; parts of human body: foot, heart, nose; wolf, cow, cat; numerous verbs: stand, sit; the numerals from 1 to 100; heavenly bodies: sun, moon, star.
2) The words, which have cognates with words of the language of the Germanic group. Some of the main groups of Germanic words are the same as in the I-E group/ For ex: parts of human body: head, hand, arm, finger; animals: bear, fox; natural phenomena: rain, frost; human dwellings and furniture: house, bench; adj: green, blue, old, good, small, high; verbs: see, hear, tell, say, drink, give.
3) the English element proper. Ex.: bird, boy, girl, woman, lord, always. Assimilation the process of adaptation phonetic, gram. and semantic features of language. 3 basic types: phonetical sounds are adopted; grammatical when a borrowed word occurs (); semantic connected with the meaning of the word.
International words.
It is often the case that a word is borrowed by several languages and not just by one. Such words usually convey concepts, which are significant in the field of communication. Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin. Most names of sciences are international, e.g. philosophy, chemistry, biology; sports terms: football, baseball, tennis; foodstuffs and fruits imported from exotic countries: coffee, chocolate, banana, grapefruit; clothing: pullover, shorts.
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Etymological doublets are pairs of words, which have one and the same original form, but which have acquired different forms and even different meanings during the course of linguistic development. Ex: the words shirt and skirt etymologically descend from the same root. Shirt is a native word, skirt is a Scandinavian borrowings. Their phonetic shape is different, and yet there is a certain resemblance, which reflects their common origin. Their meanings are also different but easily associated: they both denote articles of clothing. Etymological triplets (groups of three words of common root) hospital (Lat) hostel (Norm. Fr) hotel (Par. Fr).
Translation-Loans. This term is equivalent to borrowing. They are not taken into the vocabulary of another language more or less in the same phonetic shape in which they have been functioning in their own language, but undergo the process of translation. It is obvious that it is only compound words, which can be subjected to such an operation, each stem being translated separately. Ex: collective farm (); wonder child (Wunderkind); five-year plan ()
The meaning of the word.
The meaning of the word is made up of the grammatical and lexical meaning.
GM is the component of meaning, recurrent in identical sects of individual forms of different words. Eg.: the tense meaning in the word forms asked, thought, worked, or the case meaning in the word forms of various nouns girls-boys, so the GM unites words in the big groups such as parts of speech or lexical grammatical clauses.
LM (semantical component) comparing word forms of one word we observe that LM is indentical in all forms of the words. Eg.: the word forms go, goes, went, going, gone possess different GM of tense, person..., but one and the same component denoting the process of movement.
