1. Historical lexicology deals with the historic change of words in the course of lang. development.
2. Comparative lexicology studies closely relative languages from the point of view of their identity and differentiation.
3. Contrastive - both relative and unrelative languages establishes differences and similarity.
4. Applied lexicology - translation, lexicography, pragmatics of speech.
Lexicology investigates various meaning relations existing in the lang., how the lexicon words to provide and support meaningful communication.
Each word is a part of entire system language vocabulary. Every item of a language stands closely with 2 other items.
· the sintagmatic level
· the paradygmatic level.
On the sintagmatic level the semantic structure of a word is analyzed in it’s linear relationships with neighbouring words.
On the paradigmatic level - relationship with other words in the vocabulary system: synonyms, polysemantic words, antonyms.
Lexicology (from Gr lexis ‘word’ and logos ‘learning’) is the part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of the language and the properties of words as the main units of language. The term v o c a b u l a-r y is used to denote the system formed by the sum total of all the words and word equivalents that the language possesses. The term word denotes 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.
Thus, in the word boy the group of sounds [bOI] is associated with the meaning ‘a male child up to the age of 17 or 18’ (also with some other meanings, but this is the most frequent) and with a definite grammatical employment, i.e. it is a noun and thus has a plural form — boys, it is a personal noun and has the Genitive form boy’s (e. g. the boy’s mother), it may be used in certain syntactic functions.
The term word will be discussed at length in chapter 2.
The general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of the specific features of any particular language, is known as general lexicology. Linguistic phenomena and properties common to all languages are generally referred to as language universals. Special lexicology devotes its attention to the description of the characteristic peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given language. This book constitutes an introduction into the study of the present-day English word and vocabulary. It is therefore a book on special lexicology.
It goes without saying that every special lexicology is based on the principles of general lexicology, and the latter forms a part of general linguistics. Much material that holds good for any language is therefore also included, especially with reference to principles, concepts and terms. The illustrative examples are everywhere drawn from the English language as spoken in Great Britain.
A great deal has been written in recent years to provide a theoretical basis on which the vocabularies of different languages can be compared and described. This relatively new branch of study is called contrastive lexicology. Most obviously, we shall be particularly concerned with comparing English and Russian words.
The evolution of any vocabulary, as well as of its single elements, forms the object of historical lexicology or etymology. This branch of linguistics discusses the origin of various words, their change and development, and investigates the linguistic and extra-linguistic forces modifying their structure, meaning and usage. In the past historical treatment was always combined with the comparative method. Historical lexicology has been criticised for its atomistic approach, i.e. for treating every word as an individual and isolated unit. This drawback is, however, not intrinsic to the science itself. Historical study of words is not necessarily atomistic. In the light of recent investigations it becomes clear that there is no reason why historical lexicology cannot survey the evolution of a vocabulary as an adaptive system, showing its change and development in the course of time.
Descriptive lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development. It studies the functions of words and their specific structure as a characteristic inherent in the system. The descriptive lexicology of the English language deals with the English word in its morphological and semantical structures, investigating the interdependence between these two aspects. These structures are identified and distinguished by contrasting the nature and arrangement of their elements.
It will, for instance, contrast the word boy with its derivatives: boyhood, boyish, boyishly, etc. It will describe its semantic structure comprising alongside with its most frequent meaning, such variants as ‘a son of any age’, ‘a male servant’, and observe its syntactic functioning and combining possibilities. This word, for instance, can be also used vocatively in such combinations as old boy, my dear boy, and attributively, meaning ‘male’, as in boy-friend.
Lexicology also studies all kinds of semantic grouping and semantic relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, semantic fields, etc.
Meaning relations as a whole are dealt with in semantics — the study of meaning which is relevant both for lexicology and grammar.
The distinction between the two basically different ways in which language may be viewed, the historical or diachronic (Gr dia ‘through’ and chronos ‘time’) and the descriptive or synchronic (Gr syn ‘together’, ‘with’), is a methodological distinction, a difference of approach, artificially separating for the purpose of study what in real language is inseparable, because actually every linguistic structure and system exists in a state of constant development. The distinction between a synchronic and a diachronic approach is due to the Swiss philologist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).1 Indebted as we are to him for this important dichotomy, we cannot accept either his axiom that synchronic linguistics is concerned with systems and diachronic linguistics with single units or the rigorous separation between the two. Subsequent investigations have shown the possibility and the necessity of introducing the historical point of view into systematic studies of languages.
Language is the reality of thought, and thought develops together with the development of society, therefore language and its vocabulary must be studied in the light of social history. Every new phenomenon in human society and in human activity in general, which is of any importance for communication, finds a reflection in vocabulary. A word, through its meaning rendering some notion, is a generalised reflection of reality; it is therefore impossible to understand its development if one is ignorant of the changes in social, political or everyday life, production or science, manners or culture it serves to reflect. These extra-linguistic forces influencing the development of words are considered in historical lexicology. The point may be illustrated by the following example:
Post comes into English through French and Italian from Latin. Low Latin posta — posita fern. p.p. of Latin ponere, posit, v. ‘place’. In the beginning of the 16th century it meant ‘one of a number of men stationed with horses along roads at intervals, their duty being to ride forward with the King’s “packet” or other letters, from stage to stage’. This meaning is now obsolete, because this type of communication is obsolete. The word, however, has become international and denotes the present-day system of carrying and delivering letters and parcels. Its synonym mail, mostly used in America, is an ellipsis from a mail of letters, i.e. ‘a bag of letters’. It comes from Old French male (modern malle) ‘bag’, a word of Germanic origin. Thus, the etymological meaning of mail is ‘a bag or a packet of letters or dispatches for conveyance by post’. Another synonym of bag is sack which shows a different meaning development. Sack is a large bag of coarse cloth, the verb to sack ‘dismiss from service’ comes from the expression to get the sack, which probably rose from the habit of craftsmen of old times, who on getting a job took their own tools to the works; when they left or were dismissed they were given a sack to carry away the tools.
In this connection it should be emphasised that the social nature of language and its vocabulary is not limited to the social essence of extra-linguistic factors influencing their development from without. Language being a means of communication the social essence is intrinsic to the language itself. Whole groups of speakers, for example, must coincide in a deviation, if it is to result in linguistic change.
The branch of linguistics, dealing with causal relations between the way the language works and develops, on the one hand, and the facts of social life, on the other, is termed sociolinguistics. Some scholars use this term in a narrower sense, and maintain that it is the analysis of speech behaviour in small social groups that is the focal point of sociolinguistic analysis. A. D. Schweitzer has proved that such microsociological approach alone cannot give a complete picture of the sociology of language. It should be combined with the study of such macrosociological factors as the effect of mass media, the system of education, language planning, etc. An analysis of the social stratification of languages takes into account the stratification of society as a whole.
Although the important distinction between a diachronic and a synchronic, a linguistic and an extralinguistic approach must alwaysbe borne in mind, yet it is of paramount importance for the student to take into consideration that in language reality all the aspects are interdependent and cannot be understood one without the other. Every linguistic investigation must strike a reasonable balance between them.
The lexicology of present-day English, therefore, although having aims of its own, different from those of its historical counterpart, cannot be divorced from the latter. In what follows not only the present status of the English vocabulary is discussed: the description would have been sadly incomplete if we did not pay attention to the historical aspect of the problem — the ways and tendencies of vocabulary development.
Being aware of the difference between the synchronic approach involving also social and place variations, and diachronic approach we shall not tear them asunder, and, although concentrating mainly on the present state of the English vocabulary, we shall also have to consider its development. Much yet remains to be done in elucidating the complex problems and principles of this process before we can present a complete and accurate picture of the English vocabulary as a system, with specific peculiarities of its own, constantly developing and conditioned by the history of the English people and the structure of the language.
THE CONNECTION OF LEXICOLOGY WITH PHONETICS, STYLISTICS, GRAMMAR AND OTHER BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS
The treatment of words in lexicology cannot be divorced from the study of all the other elements in the language system to which words belong. It should be always borne in mind that in reality, in the actual process of communication, all these elements are interdependent and stand in definite relations to one another. We separate them for convenience of study, and yet to separate them for analysis is pointless, unless we are afterwards able to put them back together to achieve a synthesis and see their interdependence and development in the language system as a whole.
The word, as it has already been stated, is studied in several branches of linguistics and not in lexicology only, and the latter, in its turn, is closely connected with general linguistics, the history of the language, phonetics, stylistics, grammar and such new branches of our science as sociolinguistics, paralinguistics, pragmalinguistics and some others.1
The importance of the connection between lexicology and phonetics stands explained if we remember that a word is an association of a given group of sounds with a given meaning, so that top is one word, and tip is another. Phonemes have no meaning of their own but they serve to distinguish between meanings. Their function is building up morphemes, and it is on the level of morphemes that the form-meaning unity is introduced into language. We may say therefore that phonemes participate in signification.
Word-unity is conditioned by a number of phonological features. Phonemes follow each other in a fixed sequence so that [pit] is different from [tip]. The importance of the phonemic make-up may be revealed by the substitution test which isolates the central phoneme of hope by setting it against hop, hoop, heap or hip.
An accidental or jocular transposition of the initial sounds of two or more words, the so-called spoonerisms illustrate the same point. Cf. our queer old dean for our dear old queen, sin twister for twin sister, May I sew you to a sheet? for May I show you to a seat?, a half-warmed fish for a half-formed wish, etc.1
Discrimination between the words may be based upon stress: the word ‘import is recognised as a noun and distinguished from the verb im'port due to the position of stress. Stress also distinguishes compounds from otherwise homonymous word-groups: ‘blackbird:: ‘black ‘bird. Each language also possesses certain phonological features marking word-limits.
Historical phonetics and historical phonology can be of great use in the diachronic study of synonyms, homonyms and polysemy. When sound changes loosen the ties between members of the same word-family, this is an important factor in facilitating semantic changes.
The words whole, heal, hail, for instance, are etymologically related.2 The word whole originally meant ‘unharmed’,;unwounded’. The early verb whole meant 4to make whole’, hence ‘heal’. Its sense of ‘healthy’ led to its use as a salutation, as in hail! Having in the course of historical development lost their phonetic similarity, these words cannot now exercise any restrictive influence upon one another’s semantic development. Thus, hail occurs now in the meaning of ‘call’, even with the purpose to stop and arrest (used by sentinels).
Meaning in its turn is indispensable to phonemic analysis because to establish the phonemic difference between [ou] and [o] it is sufficient to know that [houp] means something different from [hop].
All these considerations are not meant to be in any way exhaustive, they can only give a general idea of the possible interdependence of the two branches of linguistics.
Stylistics, although from a different angle, studies many problems treated in lexicology. These are the problems of meaning, connotations, synonymy, functional differentiation of vocabulary according to the sphere of communication and some other issues. For a reader without some awareness of the connotations and history of words, the images hidden in their root and their stylistic properties, a substantial part of the meaning of a literary text, whether prosaic or poetic, may be lost.
Thus, for instance, the mood of despair in O. Wilde’s poem “Taedium Vitae” (Weariness of Life) is felt due to an accumulation of epithets expressed by words with negative, derogatory connotations, such as: desperate, paltry, gaudy, base, lackeyed, slanderous, lowliest, meanest.
An awareness of all the characteristic features of words is not only rewarded because one can feel the effect of hidden connotations and imagery, but because without it one cannot grasp the whole essence of the message the poem has to convey.
The difference and interconnection between grammar and lexicology is one of the important controversial issues in linguistics and as it is basic to the problems under discussion in this book, it is necessary to dwell upon it a little more than has been done for phonetics and stylistics.
A close connection between lexicology and grammar is conditioned by the manifold and inseverable 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. Words seldom occur in isolation. They are arranged in certain patterns conveying the relations between the things for which they stand, therefore alongside with their lexical meaning they possess some grammatical meaning. Сf. head of the committee and to head a committee.
The two kinds of meaning are often interdependent. That is to say, certain grammatical functions and meanings are possible only for the words whose lexical meaning makes them fit for these functions, and, on the other hand, some lexical meanings in some words occur only in definite grammatical functions and forms and in definite grammatical patterns.
For example, the functions of a link verb with a predicative expressed by an adjective cannot be fulfilled by every intransitive verb but are often taken up by verbs of motion: come true, fall ill, go wrong, turn red, run dry and other similar combinations all render the meaning of ‘become sth’. The function is of long standing in English and can be illustrated by a line from A. Pope who, protesting against blank verse, wrote: It is not poetry, but prose run mad.1
On the other hand the grammatical form and function of the word affect its lexical meaning. A well-known example is the same verb go when in the continuous tenses, followed by to and an infinitive (except go and come), it serves to express an action in the near and immediate future, or an intention of future action: You're not going to sit there saying nothing all the evening, both of you, are you? (Simpson)
Participle II of the same verb following the link verb be denotes absence: The house is gone.
In subordinate clauses after as the verb go implies comparison with the average:... how a novel that has now had a fairly long life, as novels go, has come to be written (Maugham). The subject of the verb go in this construction is as a rule an inanimate noun.
The adjective hard followed by the infinitive of any verb means ‘difficult’: One of the hardest things to remember is that a man’s merit in one sphere is no guarantee of his merit in another.
Lexical meanings in the above cases are said to be grammatically.
conditioned, and their indicating context is called syntactic or mixed. The point has attracted the attention of many authors.1
The number of words in each language being very great, any lexical meaning has a much lower probability of occurrence than grammatical meanings and therefore carries the greatest amount of information in any discourse determining what the sentence is about.
W. Chafe, whose influence in the present-day semantic syntax is quite considerable, points out the many constraints which limit the co-occurrence of words. He considers the verb as of paramount importance in sentence semantic structure, and argues that it is the verb that dictates the presence and character of the noun as its subject or object. Thus, the verbs frighten, amuse and awaken can have only animate nouns as their objects.
The constraint is even narrower if we take the verbs say, talk or think for which only animate human subjects are possible. It is obvious that not all animate nouns are human.
This view is, however, if not mistaken, at least one-sided, because the opposite is also true: it may happen that the same verb changes its meaning, when used with personal (human) names and with names of objects. Compare: The new girl gave him a strange smile (she smiled at him) and The new teeth gave him a strange smile.
These are by no means the only relations of vocabulary and grammar. We shall not attempt to enumerate all the possible problems. Let us turn now to another point of interest, namely the survival of two grammatically equivalent forms of the same word when they help to distinguish between its lexical meanings. Some nouns, for instance, have two separate plurals, one keeping the etymological plural form, and the other with the usual English ending -s. For example, the form brothers is used to express the family relationship, whereas the old form brethren survives in ecclesiastical usage or serves to indicate the members of some club or society; the scientific plural of index, is usually indices, in more general senses the plural is indexes. The plural of genius meaning a person of exceptional intellect is geniuses, genius in the sense of evil or good spirit has the plural form genii.
It may also happen that a form that originally expressed grammatical meaning, for example, the plural of nouns, becomes a basis for a new grammatically conditioned lexical meaning. In this new meaning it is isolated from the paradigm, so that a new word comes into being. Arms, the plural of the noun arm, for instance, has come to mean ‘weapon’. E.g. to take arms against a sea of troubles (Shakespeare). The grammatical form is lexicalised; the new word shows itself capable of further development, a new grammatically conditioned meaning appears, namely, with the verb in the singular arms metonymically denotes the military profession. The abstract noun authority becomes a collective in the term authorities and denotes ‘a group of persons having the right to control and govern’. Compare also colours, customs, looks, manners, pictures, works which are the best known examples of this isolation, or, as itis also called, lexicalisation of a grammatical form. In all these words the suffix -s signals a new word with a new meaning.
It is also worthy of note that grammar and vocabulary make use of the same technique, i.e. the formal distinctive features of some derivational oppositions between different words are the same as those of oppositions contrasting different grammatical forms (in affixation, juxtaposition of stems and sound interchange). Compare, for example, the oppositions occurring in the lexical system, such as work:: worker, power:: will-power, food:: feed with grammatical oppositions: work (Inf.):: worked (Past Ind.), pour (Inf.):: will pour (Put. Ind.), feed (Inf.):: fed (Past Ind.). Not only are the methods and patterns similar, but the very morphemes are often homonymous. For example, alongside the derivational suffixes -en, one of which occurs in adjectives (wooden), and the other in verbs (strengthen), there are two functional suffixes, one for Participle II (written), the other for the archaic plural form (oxen).
Furthermore, one and the same word may in some of its meanings function as a notional word, while in others it may be a form word, i.e. it may serve to indicate the relationships and functions of other words. Compare, for instance, the notional and the auxiliary do in the following: What you do’s nothing to do with me, it doesn’t interest me.
Last but not least all grammatical meanings have a lexical counterpart that expresses the same concept. The concept of futurity may be lexically expressed in the words future, tomorrow, by and by, time to come, hereafter or grammatically in the verbal forms shall come and will come. Also plurality may be described by plural forms of various words: houses, boys, books or lexically by the words: crowd, party, company, group, set, etc.
The ties between lexicology and grammar are particularly strong in the sphere of word-formation which before lexicology became a separate branch of linguistics had even been considered as part of grammar. The characteristic features of English word-building, the morphological structure of the English word are dependent upon the peculiarity of the English grammatical system. The analytical character of the language is largely responsible for the wide spread of conversion1 and for the remarkable flexibility of the vocabulary manifest in the ease with which many nonce-words2 are formed on the spur of the moment.
This brief account of the interdependence between the two important parts of linguistics must suffice for the present. In future we shall have to return to the problem and treat some parts of it more extensively.
THE THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL VALUE OF ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY
The importance of English lexicology is based not on the size of its vocabulary, however big it is, but on the fact that at present it is the world’s most widely used language. One of the most fundamental works on the English language of the present — “A Grammar of Contemporary English” by R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartvik (1978) — gives the following data: it is spoken as a native language by nearly three hundred million people in Britain, the United States, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and some other countries. The knowledge of English is widely spread geographically — it is in fact used in all continents. It is also spoken in many countries as a second language and used in official and business activities there. This is the case in India, Pakistan and many other former British colonies. English is also one of the working languages of the United Nations and the universal language of international aviation. More than a half world’s scientific literature is published in English and 60% of the world’s radio broadcasts are in English. For all these reasons it is widely studied all over the world as a foreign language.
The theoretical value of lexicology becomes obvious if we realise that it forms the study of one of the three main aspects of language, i.e. its vocabulary, the other two being its grammar and sound system. The theory of meaning was originally developed within the limits of philosophical science. The relationship between the name and the thing named has in the course of history constituted one of the key questions in gnostic theories and therefore in the struggle of materialistic and idealistic trends. The idealistic point of view assumes that the earlier forms of words disclose their real correct meaning, and that originally language was created by some superior reason so that later changes of any kind are looked upon as distortions and corruption.
The materialistic approach considers the origin, development and current use of words as depending upon the needs of social communication. The dialectics of its growth is determined by its interaction with the development of human practice and mind. In the light of V. I. Lenin’s theory of reflection we know that the meanings of words reflect objective reality. Words serve as names for things, actions, qualities, etc. and by their modification become better adapted to the needs of the speakers. This proves the fallacy of one of the characteristic trends in modern idealistic linguistics, the so-called Sapir-Whorf thesis according to which the linguistic system of one’s native language not only expresses one’s thoughts but also determines them. This view is incorrect, because our mind reflects the surrounding world not only through language but also directly.
Lexicology came into being to meet the demands of many different branches of applied linguistics, namely of lexicography, standardisation of terminology, information retrieval, literary criticism and especially of foreign language teaching.
Its importance in training a would-be teacher of languages is of a quite special character and cannot be overestimated as it helps to stimulate a systematic approach to the facts of vocabulary and an organised comparison of the foreign and native language. It is particularly useful in building up the learner’s vocabulary by an effective selection, grouping and analysis of new words. New words are better remembered if they are given not at random but organised in thematic groups, word-families, synonymic series, etc.
A good knowledge of the system of word-formation furnishes a tool helping the student to guess and retain in his memory the meaning of new words on the basis of their motivation and by comparing and contrasting them with the previously learned elements and patterns.
The knowledge, for instance, of the meaning of negative, reversative and pejorative prefixes and patterns of derivation may be helpful in understanding new words. For example such words as immovable a, deforestation n and miscalculate v will be readily understood as ‘that cannot be moved’, ‘clearing land from forests’ and ‘to calculate wrongly’.
By drawing his pupils’ attention to the combining characteristics of words the teacher will prevent many mistakes.1 It will be word-groups falling into patterns, instead of lists of unrelated items, that will be presented in the classroom.
A working knowledge and understanding of functional styles and stylistic synonyms is indispensable when literary texts are used as a basis for acquiring oral skills, for analytical reading, discussing fiction and translation. Lexicology not only gives a systematic description of the present make-up of the vocabulary, but also helps students to master the literary standards of word usage. The correct use of words is an important counterpart of expressive and effective speech.
An exact knowledge of the vocabulary system is also necessary in connection with technical teaching means.
Lexicology plays a prominent part in the general linguistic training of every philologist by summing up the knowledge acquired during all his years at the foreign language faculty. It also imparts the necessary skills of using different kinds of dictionaries and reference books, and prepares for future independent work on increasing and improving one’s vocabulary.
The GENERAL PROBLEM of the THEORY of the WORD
Plan:
1. Theoretical principles of the study of the vocabulary.
2. The word as a speech unit. The phonetic, grammatical and
semantic characteristics of the word.
3. Word and phrase.
4. The notion of lexical system.
5. Modern methods of a structural study of meaning.
6. The application of statistic methods in language study.
Theoretical Principles of the Vocabulary Study
As we know the aim of lexicology is the study of words. Words are not only the units of the vocabulary but also the main units of language. But we haven’t a definition of the word which could combine in itself all its main features. The cause lies in the fact that word being the association of sounding and meaning is a focus in which the problem of linguistics, philosophy and psychology are gathered. Being a fundamental unit of language, word is a very complicated unity of grammatical and lexical meaning.
The important point to be remembered about definitions is that they should indicate the most essential characteristic features expressed by the term under discussion, the features by which this notion is distinguished from other similar notions.
e.g. in defining the word one can distinguish it from other linguistic units such as the phoneme, the morpheme or the word-group.
The definition of the word is a very hard task because even the simplest word has many different aspects. It has a sound form (as a certain arrangement of phonemes), its morphological structure (being also a certain arrangement of morphemes), when used in actual speech it may occur in different word-forms and single various meanings:
e.g. It was a dull winter evening.
It was a dull knife which he couldn’t use.
He is a dull boy. (dense)
All attempts to characterize the word are necessarily specific for one domain of science and are considered one-sided and criticized for incompleteness.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), an English philosopher revealed a materialistic approach to the problem when he wrote that “words are not mere sounds but names of matter”.
Henry Sweet and later L. Bloomfield defined it as “the minimum sentence “, “a minimum free form”. This is a syntactical definition.
E. Sapir, an American linguist, takes into consideration the syntactic and semantic aspects when he calls the word ”one of the smallest, completely satisfying bits of isolated meaning, into which the sentence resolves itself”
(in Russian: «слово есть одно из мельчайших, самодовлеющих кусочков изолированного смысла, к которому сводится предложение»).
Sapir also points out one more very important characteristic of the word, its indivisibility. “It cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning”.
e.g. a lion and alive. A lion is a word-group, because we can separate its elements and insert other words between them
(a dead lion). Alive is a word. It is indivisible, i.e. structurally impermeable: nothing can be inserted between its elements.
The eminent French linguist A. Meillet gave the following definition of the word: “A word is defined as the association of a given meaning with a given group of sounds susceptible of a given grammatical employment”. We can only add that word is the smallest significant unit of a given language capable of functioning alone.
The weak point of all definitions mentioned above is that they do not establish the relationship between language and thought. We treat the word as a dialectical unity of form and content in which the form is the spoken or written expression which calls up a specific meaning, whereas the content is the meaning rendering the emotion or concept in the mind of the speaker which he intends to convey to his listeners.
To reflect many-sided character of the word our scientists give not the definition but the description of a word.
The problem of creating a word theory based upon the materialistic understanding of the relationship between word and thought, on the one hand and language and society on the other hand, has been one of the most discussed for many years.
Conclusion
The word is one of the fundamental units of language. It is a dialectical unity of form and content. Its content or meaning is not identical to notion, but it may reflect human notions, and in this sense may be considered as the form of their existence. Notions, fixed in the meaning of words are formed as generalized and approximately correct reflections of reality, therefore in signifying them, words reflect reality in their content.
The acoustic aspect of the word serves to name the objects of reality, not to reflect them. In this sense the word may be regarded as a sign. However, this sign is not arbitrary (произвольный) but motivated by the whole process of its development. It means that when a word first comes into existence it is always build out of the elements already existing in the language and according to the existing patterns, otherwise it cannot be understood and will be useless in the process of communication. A word consists of phonemes which fall into morphemes.
A morpheme is also an association of a given meaning with a given pattern. But unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. They are not divisible into smaller meaningful units. The term morpheme is derived from Greek - morphe (form), eme – suffix, denoting the smallest linguistic unit.
Motivation
This term 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. Every object of reality has many distinctions, but when we name this object, we choose one of them, usually most noticeable but not obligatory most essential which in future is the representative of the whole.
The bird “снегирь” in English is called “bullfinch” because it follows cattles.
General for many small birds “finch” is probably a sound imitation. The scientific Latin name for the same bird is Pyrrhula - from the Greek “pyrrhos” (огненный) is given to it, taking into consideration its colour. Other birds received their names by their typical movements. Duck(from OE ducan – нырять), by the typical sound they produce; cuchoo (кукушка) and by other characteristic features. There are three main types of motivation:
1. Phonetical
Morphological
Semantic
The word “hiss” is motivated by a certain similarity between the sound which makes it up, and those referred to by the sense: its phonetical motivation.
e.g. bang, buzz, giggle, gurgle, whistle, purr
In the word re-think we clearly see the idea of thinking again - morphological motivation. Its constituents ”re” and “think” are not motivated.
Semantic motivation is based on co-existence of direct and figurative meaning of the old sense and the new one within the same synchronic system.
e.g. “mouth” continues to denote a part of the human face and at the same time it can mean metaphorically any opening or outlet: the mouth of the river. In its direct meaning the word “mouth” is not motivated.
Semantic motivation is relative. When the connection between the phonetical and morphological structure of the word and its meaning is conventional and synchronously perceptive reason for the word having the phonemic shape and morphological composition it has is lost, the word is said to be non-motivated.
From the historical point of view motivation changes in the course of time. Words which are not motivated at present may have lost their motivation due to changes in the vocabulary.
It’s rather interesting to note that for words with not distinct motivation the speaking community tries to find its own explanation trying to restore the system which disappeared.
e.g. the explanation of the word cockney (East part of London born – уроженцы) and the language they use.
It is said that the word appeared because people of London had no notion of country life. So when one little Londoner got to the village and heard the horse, he cried: “The horse is barking“. He was corrected: “The horse is neighing”. Soon after that he cried out: “The cock neighs”. After that he was nicknamed: cockneys. The Oxford dictionary gives another explanation in which it is said that the word appeared out of Old English COXKEN – (петушиное яйцо) – so were little and disfigured eggs called. This name was used for spoilt children, - then Londoners, underlying their indelicacy. You can find a lot of examples in Russian and Ukrainian (of folk etymology).
The Notion of Lexical System
There has been much discussion of late, concerning different problems of the systematic nature of a language vocabulary. “The term system denotes a coherent homogeneous whole constituted by interdependent elements of the same order related in certain specific ways”.
Lexicology studies this (system) whole by determining the properties of its elements and the different relationships existing between them within a language, as well as the ways in which they are influenced by extra-linguistic reality.
The extra-linguistic relationships refer to the connections of words with elements of objective reality they serve to denote. The existence of different words in different languages proves that in different languages the name of the object may be taken from different characteristic features.
The Russian word “стол” is connected with the verb «стлать». The English verb “table” - with the Latin “tabula”, доска.
Linguistic relationships between words are classified into syntagmatic and paradigmatic.
| парадигматика |
Я à идуà в кино the scheme presents the
Тыà идёшьà в театр relationship between
Он à идетà домой syntagmatic and
Мыà идём à к знакомым paradigmatic
| синтагматика |
Syntagmatic is something said in the language. It may be measured in time and has a linear character of speech. Context influences it greatly. Paradigmatic is understood as the vocabulary of something said in the language which consists not only of words, but other elements as well.
(morphemes)
A very difficult problem of the border between a word and a phrase interested many scientists. Prof. Smirnitsky contributed a lot to its solution. A very important criterion helping to distinguish between a word and a phrase is the unity (целестность) of the word which makes any insertion in the word impossible.
For instance: turn to account (обратить в свою пользу) may be enhanced if we insert “ Good”.
day after day - изо дня в день
day after useless but precious day (Wilson) – (от одного бесполезного, но драгоценного дня до другого).
But what can we insert in, alive, bird or any other word?
Synchronous and Diachronic Study
of the Lexical System of a Language
The research methods used in Lexicology have been closely connected with the general trends in linguistics.
The principles of comparative linguistics have played an important role in the development of a scientific approach to historical word study. This comparative-historic method consisted in observation of speech, mostly written, collection and classification of data, hypotheses, and systematic statements.
The comparative-historic method also consisted in observing words and comparing them in time. Such scientists as H. Sweet, O. Jesperson, contributed a lot to the comparative-historic method. The greatest contribution of the followers of the comparative-historic method was the Oxford English Dictionary. It reflects the development of the English vocabulary by recording the history of form and meaning for every word registered.
Thus at the beginning of the present century vocabulary study was still mainly concentrated on historical problems. Several lexicological monographs concentrated their attention on the etymological ties of vocabulary units. Many linguists still pursue this historical interest.
Above we spoke of diachronic or historical approach to the study of the lexical system of a language.
A different direction, however, has become increasingly important and widespread. The traditional methods have been severely criticized for a confusion of linguistics and history, linguistics and psychology. After Swiss scientist Ferdinand de Saussure an entirely new approach to language had been evolved, it came to be understood as a system of synchronous symbols deriving their meaning and significance from differences and oppositions within this system. The centre of interest has shifted to the synchronic level of the spoken utterance and structure. Lexicologists are now describing what the vocabulary of the language is like, rather than how it came to be that way.
The new trend has received the name of structural linguistics
(or descriptive). Its methodological principles can be summarized as follows:
1) Language is to be analyzed by specifically linguistic methods, according to specific linguistic criteria, not as a combination of psychological, physiological, logical and physical phenomena.
2) Descriptive linguistics cannot give simply a list of the elements, it must show how these elements are combined.
Structural linguistics has many varieties and schools. The main schools are those of Prague, the USA, Copenhagen and later, London and Moscow.
Czech linguists have produced the Prague school which has contributed to the development of Modern structural linguistics on a Word-wide level.
A major achievement of the Prague school is represented in
N.S. Trubetskoy’s classical work and means a particular approach to phonology. Trubetskoy’s theory of oppositions is of primary importance. First used in phonology the theory proved fruitful for other branches of linguistics as well. The principle of oppositions is of paramount importance because no unit has any significance by itself. Its significance can arise only out of its contrast with other units in the structural patterns that function as signals in a particular language system.
Examples of phonetic opposition: Сена-река
Сеня- name
p - b nib - nip
The typically American developments of linguistic theory resulted from practical tasks: the study of the American Indian languages, teaching foreign languages and recently, machine translation.
Books by L. Bloomfield, B. Bloch, G. Z. Trager, Z. Harris and N. Chomsky mark stages in the development of structuralist theory in the USA. The main achievements of the American school as far as research procedures are concerned are the analysis into immediate constituents, substitution, distributional and transformational analysis.
Immediate constituents (usually symbolized by IC) are the two meaningful parts forming a larger linguistic unity. The IC of “bluish” are “blu” and “ish”.
Substitution is testing of similarity by placing into identical environment. (It is reddish. It is somewhat red.). Substitution is also useful in determining classes of words. Thus the words family, boy and house belong to different classes of nouns because they are differently substituted.
I like this family. - I like them.
I like this boy. - I like him.
I like this house. - I like it.
The term distribution is used to denote the possible variants of the immediate lexical, grammatical and phonetical environment of a linguistic unit. In other words distribution is the sum of all possible surroundings.
e.g. to try + Inf. (I tried to get there in time.)
to try + Gerund (I try reading it.)
N pr. + seem (s, ED) + Inf. (He seems to be a dreamer.)
As a classical example we can take the verb “make“. Patterns with “make”:
make + a + N = make a bow
make + the + N + V = make the machine go
make + A = make sure
In all these examples the meaning of “make” is different. It depends on the surrounding the verb is in.
Another modern method of investigation is called transformational analysis. We call transformation the changing of a sentence, or formula according to a prescribed model and following certain rules. You dealt with transformations, (changing Active into Passive, Singular into Plural, Grammar transformations).
Paraphrasing of a sentence in which some word is replaced by its semantic equivalent or definition is a lexical transformation. The lexical transformation keeps the meaning unchanged.
The application of statistical methods in Language study. The meaning of the word statistics is counting, computation.
Figures can tell us a lot if we can ask them properly. For a modern linguist it is not enough to know that this or that structure is allowable to appear, he is also interested in its frequency.
Every lexicological research is based on collecting examples. Mathematical linguistics supplies research workers with formulae showing the necessary scope of material.
There has been a considerable growth of interest and activity in statistical linguistics in the present decade. Statistical approach is most helpful in vocabulary study. It is growing with every year. One of the most prominent representatives of statistical linguistics Pierre Guirand has counted that the passive vocabulary of an average educated person comprises 200, 000 words. Only a small part of them is often used. If we take a text, we’ll see that the first 100 most frequently used words make up 60 % of any text; 1000 – 85%; 4000 – 97, 5%.
It follows that the rest of the words about 150,000 take only 2,5 percent and thus occur very rarely. The most frequent words are form-words, on the average they take about 33% of a text and sometimes even 50%. In writing (e.g.) the most frequent word is “the”, in telephone conversation - 1. Of course, figures depend on the type of speech analyzed.
Thus some linguists find that in colloquial speech it is only 50 most frequent words that account for about 60 percent of any conversation. What words are mostly used? According to the American scientist Zipf the majority of commonly used words are polysemantic monosyllables.
Statistical method is very helpful in compiling school-books and manuals. We must know what words we are to teach our pupils first. For this purpose in our country and abroad they issue frequency dictionaries.
| 4. Etymological classification of the English vocabulary. Vocabulary – 1) the totality of words in a language; 2) individual vocabulary: · - active vocabulary; · - defining vocabulary; · - distinctive vocabulary; · - 'dramatic'/ distinctive vocabulary; · - general vocabulary; · - marginal vocabulary; · - passive vocabulary; · - specialised vocabulary; · - working vocabulary; Native words– words of the English word-stock which belong to the following etymological layers of the English vocabulary: · - words of common Indo-European origin; · - words of Common Germanic word-stock; · - purely Anglo-Saxon words. |
BORROWINGS
Contemporary English is a unique mixture of Germanic & Romanic elements. This mixing has resulted in the international character of the vocabulary. In the comparison with other languages English possesses great richness of vocabulary.
All languages are mixtures to a greater or lesser extent, but the present day English vocabulary is unique in this respect.
A brief look on various historical strata of the English vocabulary:
1) Through cultural contacts with Romans partly already on the continent and all through the influence of Christianity a very early stratum of Latin-Greek words entered the language.
Their origin is no longer felt by the normal speaker today in such word: pound, mint, mustard, school, dish, chin, cleric, cheese, devil, pepper, street, gospel, and bishop.
The same can be said about some Scandinavian words (from about the 10th century) that today belong to the central core of the vocabulary.
It means that their frequency is very high.
They, their, them, sky, skin, skill, skirt, ill, dies, take...
They partly supersede the number of OE words
OE
· heofon – heaven (sky)
· Niman – take
· Steorfan – die
A more radical change & profound influence on the English vocabulary occurred on 1066 (Norman Conquest). Until the 15th cent., a great number of French words were adopted. They belong to the areas of court, church, law, and state.
Virtue, religion, parliament, justice, noble, beauty, preach, honour...
The influx of the words was the strongest up to the 15th cent., but continued up to the 17th cent.
Many French borrowings retained their original pronunciation & stress
· Champagne, ballet, machine, garage...
· Separate, attitude, constitute, introduce...
Adjectives in English – arrogant, important, patient
Sometimes with their derivatives:
· Demonstrative – demonstration
· Separate – separation
17-18 cc. due to the establishing of cultural, trade relations many words were borrowed from Italian, Spanish, Dutch, French.
Italian: libretto, violin, opera
Spanish: hurricane, tomato, tobacco
Dutch: yacht, dog, landscape
French: bouquet, buffet
From the point of view of their etymology formal words are normally of classical Romanic origin, informal – Anglo-Saxon.
Nowadays many Americanisms become familiar due to the increase of transatlantic travel & the influence of broadcast media.
Even in London (Heathrow airport) “baggage” instead of “luggage”
The present day English vocabulary is from being homogeneous.
Borrowing – 1) (process) resorting to the word-stock of other languages for words to express new concepts, to further differentiate the existing concepts and to name new objects, etc.; 2) (result) a loan word, borrowed word – a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language. – See Assimilation, Source of borrowing, Origin of borrowing. The following types of borrowings can be distinguished:
· - loan words proper – words borrowed from another language and assimilated to this or that extent;
· - loan translation – 1) (process) borrowing by means of literally translating words (usu. one part after another) or word combinations, by modelling words after foreign patterns; 2) (result) translation loans (calques) – words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the English language but according to patterns taken from another language by way of literal word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme translation: e.g. chain smoker::Germ Kettenraucher; goes without saying::Fr. va sans dire; summit conference:: Germ. Gipfel Konferenz, Fr. conférence au sommet;
· - semantic borrowings/loans – the term is used to denote the development in an English word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language (e.g. policy).