The object of lexicology кратко

Обновлено: 28.06.2024

These famous lines reflect one of the fundamental problems of linguistic research: what is in a name, in a word? Is there any direct connection between a word and the object it represents? Could a rose have been called by “any other name” as Juliet says?

These and similar questions are answered by lexicological research. Lexicology,a branch of linguistics, is the study of words.

“Lexicology(from Gr lexis ‘word’ and logos ‘learning’) is the part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of a language and the properties of words as the main units of language. The term vocabularyis used to denote the system formed by the sum total of all the words that the language possesses.

The term worddenotes the basic unit of a given language resulting from the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment. A word therefore is simultaneously a semantic, grammatical and phonological unit.”

(I. Arnold, Lexicology, p.9)

We do not know much about the origin of language and, consequently, of the origin of words. We know almost nothing about the mechanism by which a speaker’s mental process is converted into sound groups called “words”, nor about the reverse process whereby a listener’s brain converts the acoustic phenomena into concepts and ideas, thus establishing a two-way process of communication.

We know very little about the nature of relations between the word and the referent (i.e. object, phenomenon, quality, action, etc. denoted by the word). If we assume that there is a direct relation between the word and the referent it gives rise to another question: how should we explain the fact that the same referent is designated by quite different sound groups in different languages.

We do knowby now that there is nothing accidental about the vocabulary of the language (the total sum of its words);that each word is a small unit within a vast, efficient and perfectly balanced system.

What do we know about the nature of the word?

First, we know that the word is a unit of speech which serves the purposes of human communication. Thus, the word can be defined as a unit of communication.

Secondly, the word can be perceived as the total of the sounds which comprise it.

Third, the word, viewed structurally, possesses several characteristics.

The structure of the word

The modern approach to word studies is based on distinguishing between the externaland theinternalstructures of the word.

By external structure of the wordwe mean its morphological structure. For example, 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. All these morphemes constitute the external structure of the word post-impressionists.

The internal structure of the word,or its meaning,is commonly referred to as 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 specializing in the semantic studies 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. Formal unity of the word is sometimes interpreted as indivisibility. The example of post-impressionists has already shown that the word is not indivisible. Yet, its component morphemes are permanently linked together in opposition to word-groups, both free and with fixed contexts, whose components possess a certain structural freedom, e.g. bright light, to take for granted.

The formal unity of the word can best be illustrated by comparing a word and a word-group comprising identical constituents. The difference between a blackbird and a black bird is explained by their relationship with the grammatical system of the language. The word blackbird, which is characterized by unity, possesses a single grammatical framing: blackbird/s. The first constituent black is not subject to any grammatical changes. In the word-group a black bird each constituent can acquire grammatical forms of its own: the blackest birds I’ve ever seen. Other words can be inserted between the components: a black night bird.

The same example may be used to illustrate what we mean by semantic unity.

In the word-group a black bird each of the meaningful words conveys a separate concept: bird – a kind of living creature; black – a colour.

The word blackbird conveys only one concept: the type of bird. This is one of the main features of any word: it always conveys one concept, no matter how many component morphemes it may have in its external structure.

A further structural feature of the word is its susceptibilityto grammatical employment. In speech most words can be used in different grammatical forms in which their interrelations are realized.

All that we have said about the word can be summed up as follows.

The wordis 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.

1.2.General and special lexicology. Historical and descriptive lexicology.

1.3.Links of lexicology with other branches of linguistics.

1.4.The word as the main language unit.

1.5.Main approaches to the study of lexical units.

1.1.The term "lexicology" is comprised of two Greek morphemes: lexis "word, phrase" and logos "learning, word". Thus the literal meaning of the term "lexicology" is "the study of the word".

Lexicology as a branch of linguistics studies the vocabulary of a language as a system of lexical units, primarily words. Another term for vocabulary is "word-stock", i.e. the word store, the sum total of words.

Traditionally, vocabulary units include words, e.g. dog, get, silly; morphemes, e.g. unfairly consists of the morphemes un-, -fair-, -ly; phraseological units, e.g. red tape, to break the ice.

The English vocabulary is enormous, it includes more than 600.000 words.

1.2. Distinction is made between general and special lexicology.

General lexicology is a part of general linguistics, it studies universal features of vocabularies of all or most languages,

Special lexicology is concerned with the vocabulary of a particular language,

e.g. Russian, English, French, etc.

Historical lexicology studies the origin and development of vocabulary as well as its separate units.

Descriptive lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a particular stage of its development,

e.g. lexicology of Modern English.

1.3. Lexicology is closely connected with other branches of linguistics, such as phonetics, grammar, stylistics, which also study words from various angles.

Lexicology is connected with Phonetics because the word is a two-facet unit which has both a form and meaning. Thus, the word can be defined as a series of sounds making up its form, and phonetics is concerned (among other things) with the study of the sound-form of words.

The link between phonetics and lexicology is based on the following:

(a) The recognition and understanding of a word is impossible without its proper pronunciation.

(b) The position of stress is used to distinguish words of identical sound-forms but different parts of speech,

e.g. 'rebel, n. - re'bel, v.; 'frequent, a. - fre'quent, v.

e.g. a 'dark 'room (a phrase, each component has its own stress),

a 'dark-room (a compound, only one stress).

Lexicology is linked with Grammar because the word is used in speech as a grammatical unit, in certain grammatical forms and functions. Grammar studies means of expressing grammatical relations between words in speech and patterns after which words are combined into word-groups and sentences.

The connection between lexicology and grammar is seen in the following:

(a) Each word belongs to some part of speech and has characteristics typical of it.

(b) The grammatical form and function of a word may determine its lexical meaning,

e.g. brother - brothers "sons of the same parents", brethren "fellow members of a religious society, trade union, regiment, guild, order, etc."

(c) A grammatical form of a word may split off and acquire a new lexical meaning, becoming a new word. This is called lexicalization of grammatical forms,

e.g. arm - arms (pl) , arms "weapons"; developments "events".

(d) Words are divided into notional words and form words. A word in one meaning may function as a notional word and in another as a form word,

e.g. He looked indifferently at the food. He looked indifferent.

(e) The morpheme is the central unit of morphology, a branch of grammar, and also a unit of which words are built, thus studied also in lexicology.

(f) The system of all grammatical forms of a word is called its paradigm. The paradigm is used as a derivational means in conversion, one of the ways of word-building.

There is also a close link between lexicology and Stylistics. Stylistics is concerned with the study of stylistic devices, on the one hand, and functional styles, on the other. Stylistics studies meaning, synonymy, antonymy, etc. not as such, but for the purpose of analysing texts, the effect they produce on the reader, in order to help the reader grasp the author's message.

1.4. The word is the basic unit of language. The principle characteristics of the word are as follows:

1) The word is a unity of the external and the internal structure, i.e. a unity of form and content; thus, it is a two-facet unit.

By the external structure of the word we mean its sound form, morphemic composition, and derivational structure.

The internal (or semantic) structure of the word is all its meanings together.

2) The word is characterized both by external (formal) unity and internal unity.

Its external unity means that a word possesses a single grammatical framing,

e.g. blackbird – blackbirds (pl). The first component black can't have any grammatical forms of its own, whereas in a word-group each constituent can have its own grammatical forms, e.g. the blackest birds I've ever seen.

In a word-group, other constituents can be inserted between its components,

e.g. a black night bird, which is impossible so far as the word is concerned. Its component morphemes are permanently linked together, unlike word-groups, whose components possess a certain amount of structural freedom.

Semantic (internal) unity means that each meaningful word conveys one concept,

e.g. in the word-group a green house each word conveys its own concept: green "coloured like grass", house "a building". The word greenhouse conveys only one concept "a building of glass for rearing delicate plants".

3) The word is a cluster of formsand variants:

a) phonetic variants, e.g. schedule ['skedju:l], again [ə'geın] ;ʒʒ ə

b) morphological variants, e.g. dreamed/dreamt, dived/dove (AmE);

c) parallel formations of the type geographic/geographical;

(but compare historic - historical, which are separate words);

d) lexico-semantic variants, by which we mean one polysemantic word in its different meanings,

e.g. bird 1) a feathered living creature

2) (sl) young woman

In speech, a certain variant of a word is used in every speech act, but all its variants are identified by language users as making up one and the same word.

4) The word is capable of grammatical employment. In speech, it is used in one of its grammatical forms, which are the smallest units at syntactic level, in a certain function.

1. The object of Lexicology. The definition of the word. General and special lexicology. Branches of Lexicology.

2. The connection of Lexicology with Phonetics, Stylistics and Grammar

1. Lexicology (from Greek lexis `word` and logos learning) is the part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of a language and the characteristics of words as the main units of language.

Vocabulary - the system formed by the sum of all the words of a language.

Word - the basic unit of a language characterized by definite phonetic and grammatical form.

Each word has some aspects:

1) It has a sound form because it is a certain arrangement of phonemes;

2) It has its morphological structure, being also a certain arrangement of morphemes, when used in actual speech, it may occur in different word forms, and signal various meanings.

There are two types of Lexicology.

General Lexicology deals with the general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of the specific features of any particular language.

Special Lexicology is the lexicology of a particular language (e.g.English, Russian, etc.), i.e. the study and description of its words and vocabulary. Special Lexicology may be historical and descriptive.

Historical Lexicology discusses the origin of words, their change and development and investigates the forces modifying their structure and meaning.

Descriptive Lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development. It studies the functions of words, their structure.

2. The word is studied in other branches of Linguistics and not in Lexicology only. And Lexicology in its turn is closely connected with General linguistics, the History of the language, Phonetics, Stylistics, Grammar.

The connection of Lexicology with Phonetics is important. Because on the acoustic level words consist of phonemes, and phonemes participate in signification. They have no meaning of their own but they are used to build up morphemes which serve to distinguish between meanings.

E.g. Our queer old dean – our dear old queen (compare).

A close connection between lexicology and grammar is conditioned by the 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 have some lexicogrammatical 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, but from a different angle, studies many problems treated in lexicology. These are the problems of meaning, synonymy, polysemy, differentiation of vocabulary according to the sphere of communication and some other issues.

3. The term motivation is used to denote the relationship existing between the morphemic or phonemic composition and structural pattern of the word on the one hand, and its meaning on the other. There are three main types of motivation: phonetical motivation, morphological and semantic motivation.

E.g. The word hiss is motivated by a certain similarity between the sounds which make it up, and those referred to by the sense: its motivation is phonetical. Examples are also: bang, buzz, giggle, whistle etc.

The derived word rethink is motivated as its morphological structure suggests the idea of thinking again. Its motivation is morphological.

Semantic motivation is based on the co-existence of direct and figurative meanings.

E.g. Mouth denotes a part of the human face, and at the same time it can mean metaphorically any opening or outlet: the mouth of a river, for instance.

If there is no influence of other words on the word under discussion, the word under discussion is said to be non-motivated.

From the historical point of view, motivation changes in the course of time. Words that are non-motivated at present may have lost their motivation due to changes in the vocabulary.

E.g. The verb earn doesn’t suggest any necessary connection with agriculture at present. Historical analysis shows that it is derived from OE earnian “to harvest”. In ME this connection no longer exists, the motivation is lost and earn is now a non-motivated word.

Word – the basic unit of language, directly corresponds to the object of thought (referent) – which is a generalized reverberation of a certain 'slice', 'piece' of objective reality – and by immediately referring to it names the thing meant.

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Описание презентации по отдельным слайдам:

Lexicology as a branch of linguistics
Lexicology as a branch of linguistics. Its interrelations with other sciences
The word as the fundamental object of lexicology. The morphological structure of the English word.

(from Gr lexis “word” and logos “learning”) is a part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of a language and the properties of words as the main units of the language. It also studies all kinds of semantic grouping and semantic relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, semantic fields, etc.

The subject-matter of lexicology

word, its morphemic structure, history and meaning.

Branches of lexicology

General lexicology
Special lexicology
Contrastive lexicology
Historical lexicology (etymology)
Semasiology
Onomasiology
Descriptive lexicology

Approaches to the language within the framework of lexicology
The synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as it exists at a certain time (e.g., a course in Modern English Lexicology);

The diachronic approach deals with the changes and the development of the vocabulary in the course of time.

general linguistics,
the history of the language,
phonetics,
stylistics, and grammar.
Lexicology interrelations with other sciences

First, the word is a unit of speech which serves the purposes of human communication. Thus, the word can be defined as a unit of communication.
Secondly, the word can be perceived as the total of the sounds which comprise it.
Third, the word, viewed structurally, possesses several characteristics.
Word nature

The external structure of the word - its morphological structure. For example, 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 internal structure of the word - the word's semantic structure (its meaning). This is the word's main aspect.
Word Structures

orthographic words – words distinguished from each other by their spelling;
phonological words – distinguished from each other by their pronunciation;
word-forms which are grammatical variants;
words as items of meaning, the headwords of dictionary entries, called lexemes.
Kinds of words

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