Lecture 1 lexicology as a branch of linguistics

What is it – Modern English Lexicology?

It is the science of the English word;

It’s an important branch of general philology,

And it’s OK to give it a good thought.

It makes you a good expert in morphology

Because it treats the structure of the word.

In short, it turns you into a linguistic prodigy

For you just grasp the nature of the WORD!

L. Kulgavova

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1. General characteristics of Lexicology.

2. Branches of Lexicology.

3. The connection of Lexicology with other branches of Linguistics.

4. Synchronic and Diachronic Lexicology.

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1. General characteristics of Lexicology

The term “lexicology” is of Greek origin (from lexis – “word” + logos – “science, learning”). Lexicology is a branch of linguistics which deals with words. It is a study of words and word-groups. All the words of a language make up its vocabulary or lexicon. The term “vocabulary” is used to denote the system of words and word-groups that the language possesses. To study the lexicon of English is to study 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 the main smallest lexical unit of a language resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning. The word is used in grammatical functions characteristic of it.

The term “word-group” denotes a group of words that exists in the language as a ready-made unit, has the unity of meaning and 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.).

So, meaning is the central problem of Lexicology. Lexicology helps to enrich vocabulary. One of the important tasks of Lexicology is the study of the vocabulary as a system.

There can be distinguished General Lexicology and Special Lexicology. General Lexicology is concerned with the study of vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language. Special Lexicology studies the vocabulary of a particular language (English, Russian, German, French, etc.).

2. Branches of Lexicology

The sub-branches of Lexicology are: etymology, word-formation, semantics, phraseology, lexicography, etc., each of which has its own aim of study, its own object of investigation, and its own methods of linguistic research.

80 per cent of English vocabulary is foreign-born. For example, Arabic words that have passed into English: admiral, magazine, camel, giraffe, cotton, apricot, candy, coffee, orange, rice, sugar, sofa.

English vocabulary has words in common with every language in Europe: German, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

The list of a sample of borrowings into English:

French: army, elite, raffle.

Latin: cup, fork, pound, vice versa.

Greek: synonymy, chemistry, physics.

Spanish: junta, siesta, cigar.

German: rucksack, hamburger, seminar.

Scandinavian languages: law, saga, ski, them, they, their.

Italian: piano, soprano, confetti, spaghetti.

South Asian languages: bungalow, jungle, sandal, thing.

Dutch: cruise, dock, yacht.

Chinese: mandarin, tea.

Japanese: kimono, karate, judo.

In a survey of the 1,000 most frequently used words in English, it was found that only 61.7 per cent had old English origin. The other 38.3 per cent were borrowed from other languages: 30.9 per cent French, 2.9 per cent Latin, 1.7 per cent Scandinavian, 1.3 per cent mixed, and 0.3 per cent German and Dutch.

Thus, a branch of lexicology – etymology discovers earlier meanings of words and their origin.

By the native element we mean words which were not borrowed from other languages. The number of native words is rather small, about 25%-30%. About 70% of words are borrowed. This fact gave ground to the assumption that English is a Romanic-Germanic language. English is an analytical language. It tends to bring its units into complexes, rather than use morphological combination, which is typical of synthetic of flexion languages (Russian, French, German).

A word can consist of a prefix, a base, and a suffix. A prefix can be added to the front of the word or base, while a suffix can be added to the end. Their function is to change the meaning of the word. Many prefixes and suffixes come from Latin or Greek.

Thus, the study of the morphology of the word, or the parts of a word, and the patterns on which a language builds new words is the subject matter of word-formation.

English language is the richest in vocabulary of all the world’s languages (which now number some 2,700). The Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000 words; and a half million technical and scientific terms remain uncatalogued. German has a vocabulary of about 185,000 words and French fewer than 100,000.

Lexicography is also a branch of lexicology which studies dictionary making. In a dictionary you can find words or units of meaning. However, in a serious study of the lexicon the term lexeme is used (the term lexeme was introduced by Benjamin Lee Whorf in 1938). A lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning.

Thus, Lexicology deals with words, their meaning and vocabulary structure.

The area of Lexicology dealing with the study of meaning of the word is called Semantics.

A word may be studied in comparison with other words of similar meaning synonymy (e.g. work – labour – job); of opposite meaning antonymy (e.g. busy – idle); of different functional styles (e.g. father, официальный – dad, разговорный; man – guy – fellow).

Phraseology is the branch of lexicology specializing in word-groups which are characterized by stability of structure and transferred meaning (e.g. take the bull by the horns – действовать решительно, брать быка за рога; rain like cats and dogs – сильный дождь, льет как из ведра).