Учебно-методический комплекс дисциплины «Лексикология» для специальности 5В021000 «Иностранная филология» учебно-методические материалы

Denotative meaning is essentially cognitive: it conceptualises and classifies our experience and names for the listener some objects spoken about. Fulfilling the significative and the communicative functions of the word it is present in every word and may be regarded as the central factor in the functioning of language.
Derivational affixes serve to supply the stem with components of lexical and lexico-grammatical meaning, and thus form⁴different words.
Derivational compounds are words in which the structural integrity of the two free stems is ensured by a suffix referring to the combination as a whole, not to one of its elements: kind-hearted, old-timer, schoolboyishness, teenager. In the coining of the derivational compounds two types of word-formation are at work. The essence of the derivational compounds will be clear if we compare them with derivatives and compounds proper that possess a similar structure.
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.
Determinant and determinatum a determining and a determined part. The second stem, in our case beam, is the basic part, the determinatum. The determinant sun serves to differentiate it from other beams. The determinatum is the grammatically most important part which undergoes inflection, cf. sunbeams, brothers-in-law, passers-by.
Diachronic (Gr. dia — ‘through’) approach deals 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 Lexicology would be concerned, therefore, with 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.
Dialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalised literary form.
Dictionaries, bilingual or translation are those that explain words by giving their equivalents in another language.



Dictionaries, explanatory are dictionaries in which the words and their definitions belong to the same language.



Dictionaries of slang contain elements from areas of substandard speech such as vulgarisms, jargonisms, taboo words, curse-words, colloquialisms, etc.
Dictionaries of word-frequency inform the user as to the frequency of occurrence of lexical units in speech, to be more exact in the “corpus of the reading matter or in the stretch of oral speech on which the word-counts are based.
Dictionary is the term used to denote a book listing words of a language with their meanings and often with data regarding pronunciation, usage and/or origin. There are also dictionaries that concentrate their attention upon only one of these aspects: pronouncing (phonetical) dictionaries (by Daniel Jones) and etymological dictionaries (by Walter Skeat, by Erik Partridge, “The Oxford English Dictionary").
Diminutive suffixes are emotionally coloured suffixes rendering also endearment differ from the derogatory suffixes in that they are used to name not only persons but things as well. This point may be illustrated by the suffix -y/-ie/-ey (auntie, cabbie (cabman), daddy), but also: hanky (handkerchief), nightie (night-gown). Other suffixes that express smallness are -kin/-kins (mannikin); -let (booklet); -ock (hillock); -ette (kitchenette).
Disintegration of polysemy: see Split of polysemy
Distinctive features are features capable of distinguishing a word in morphological form or meaning from an otherwise similar word or variant.
Distribution, the aptness of a word in one of its meanings to collocate or to co-occur with a certain group, or certain groups of words having some common semantic component.
Echoism, echo words: see Sound imitation
Elevation: see Amelioration
Ellipsis is a deliberate omission of at least one member of the sentence, e.g. What! all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop? (W.Shakespeare) or omission of certain members of the sentence: it is typical phenomenon in conversation, always imitates the common features of colloquial language, e.g. So Justice Oberwaltzer – solemnly and didactically from his high seat to the jury. (Dreiser)

Emotional tone (colouring, connotation, component, force): see Connotations
Emotive charge is one of the objective semantic features proper to words as linguistic units and forms part of the connotational component of meaning.
Emotive speech is any speech or utterance conveying or expressing emotion. This emotive quality of discourse is due to syntactical, intonational and lexical peculiarities. By lexical peculiarities we mean the presence of emotionally coloured words. The emotional colouring of the word may be permanent or occasional.
Equivalence is the relation between two elements based on the common feature due to which they belong to the same set.
Equonyms are the specific names wolf, dog or mouse.
Etymological dictionaries trace present-day words to the oldest forms available, establish their primary meanings and give the parent form reconstructed by means of the comparative-historical method. In case of borrowings they point out the immediate source of borrowing, its origin, and parallel forms in cognate languages.
Etymology or historical lexicology. 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.
Euphemism (Gr euphemismos < eu ‘good’ and pheme ‘voice’) has been repeatedly classed by many linguists as tabоо, i.e. a prohibition meant as a safeguard against supernatural forces. From the semasiological point of view euphemism is important, because meanings with unpleasant connotations appear in words formerly neutral as a result of their repeated use instead of words that are for some reason unmentionable, cf. deceased ‘dead’, deranged ‘mad’.
Evaluative connotation or affective connotation is acquired by the word as a result of its frequent use in contexts corresponding to emotional situations or because the referent conceptualised and named in the denotative meaning is associated with emotions. For example, the verb beseech means 'to ask eagerly and also anxiously'. E. g.: He besought a favour of the judge (Longman). Evaluative connotation expresses approval of disapproval.
Evaluatory words, words which, when used in a sentence, pass a value judgment differ from other emotional words in that they can not only indicate the presence of emotion but specify it. In evaluatory words the denotative meaning is not superseded by the evaluative component, on the contrary they co-exist and support each other. For example: Oh, you're not a spy. Germans are spies. British are agents (Rattigan). A few more examples will not be amiss. The verb fabricate has not lost its original neutral meaning of ‘manufacture’, but added to it the meaning of ‘invent falsely’. When using this word, the speaker is not indifferent to the fact but expresses his scorn, irony or disgust. Scheming is a derogatory word (cf. planning), it means ‘planning secretly, by intrigue or for private ends’.
False etymology is an attempt to find motivation for a borrowed word: gillyflower from OFr giroflé, crayfish (small lobster-like fresh-water crustacean, a spiny lobster) from OFr crevice, and sparrow-grass from Latin asparagus.
Form words, also called functional words, empty words or auxiliaries (the latter term is coined by H. Sweet), are lexical units which are called words, although they do not conform to the definition of the word, because they are used only in combination with notional words or in reference to them. This group comprises auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions and relative adverbs. Primarily they express grammatical relationships between words. This does not, however, imply that they have no lexical meaning of their own.
Free forms are the forms which may stand alone without changing their meaning.
Functional affixes serve to convey grammatical meaning. They build different forms of one and the same word.
Functional change: see Conversion
Functional styles - a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim of communication. Includes: official style, scientific style, publicist style, newspaper style, belles-lettres style, the co-ordination of the language means and stylistic devices which shapes the distinctive features of each style, and not the language means or stylistic devices themselves, a patterned variety of literary text characterized by the greater or lesser typification of its constituents, supra-phrasal units, in which the choice and arrangement of interdependent and interwoven language media are calculated to secure the purport of the communication
Fusions or portmanteau words: see Blends
General slang includes words that are not specific for any social or professional group.
Generalisation is the process reverse to specialisation. generalisation, i.e. the collection of data and their orderly arrangement must eventually lead to the formulation of< a generalisation or hypothesis, rule, or law.
Generic terms are words in which abstraction and generalisation are so great that they can be lexical representatives of lexico-grammatical meanings and substitute any word of their class. For example the word matter is a generic term for material nouns, the word group — for collective nouns, the word person — for personal nouns.
Glossaries are highly specialised dictionaries of limited scope which may appeal to a particular kind of reader. They register and explain technical terms for various branches of knowledge, art and trade: linguistic, medical, technical, economical terms, etc. Unilingual books of this type giving definitions of terms.
Historism it is the name of the thing which is no longer used. Historisms are very numerous as names for social relations, institutions and objects of material culture of the past. The names of ancient transport means, such as types of boats or types of carriages, ancient clothes, weapons, musical instruments, etc. can offer many examples.
Holophrasis is a type of a phrase whose elements are united by their attributive function and become further united phonemically by stress and graphically by a hyphen, or even solid spelling. Cf. common sense and common-sense advice; old age and old-age pensioner; the records are out of date and out-of-date records; the let-sleeping-dogs-lie approach (Priestley). Cf.: Let sleeping dogs lie (a proverb). The speaker (or writer, as the case may be) creates those combinations freely as the need for them arises: they are originally nonce-compounds. In the course of time they may become firmly established in the language: the ban-the-bomb voice, round-the-clock duty.
Homographs аrе words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling: bow [bou] : : bow [bau]; lead [li:d] : : lead [led]; row [rou] : : row [rau]; sewer [’souэ] : : sewer [sjuэ]; tear [tiэ] : : tear [tea]; wind [wind] : : wind [waind] and many more.
Homonyms and homonymy two or more words identical in sound and spelling but different in meaning, distribution and (in many cases) origin are called homonyms. The term is derived from Greek homonymous (homos ‘the same' ‘name’) and thus expresses very well the sameness of name combined with the difference in meaning.
Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning: air : : heir; arms : : alms; buy : : by; him : : hymn; knight : : night; not: : knot; or: : oar; piece : : peace; rain: : reign; scent: : cent; steel : : steal; storey : : story; write : : right and many others.
Hybrids are words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different languages. English contains thousands of hybrid words, the vast majority of which show various combinations of morphemes coming from Latin, French and Greek and those of native origin. Thus, readable has an English root and a suffix that is derived from the Latin -abilis and borrowed through French.
Hyperbole (from Gr hyperbolē ‘exceed’) is an exaggerated statement not meant to be understood literally but expressing an intensely emotional attitude of the speaker to what he is speaking about. E. g.: A fresh egg has a world of power (Bellow). The emotional tone is due to the illogical character in which the direct denotative and the contextual emotional meanings are combined.
Hyperonyms or superordinates. The word sheep is the superordinate for ram, ewe and lamb. The word dog is in a sense its own superordinate, because there is no special word for a male dog, although there is a special term for the female and for the little dog, i.e. bitch and pup. Some scholars treat this phenomenon as presupposition, because if we say that some stuff is scarlet it implies that it is red.
Hyponyms are names of the species.
Hyponymy, the relationship existing between elements of various levels is logically that of inclusion. The term is of comparatively recent creation. J. Lyons stresses its importance as a constitutive principle in the organisation of the vocabulary of all languages. For example, the meaning of scarlet is “included” in the meaning of red. So scarlet is the hyponym of red, and its co-hyponym is crimson, as to red — it is the superordinate of both crimson and scarlet
Ideographic dictionaries designed for English-speaking writers, orators or translators seeking to express their ideas adequately contain words grouped by the concepts expressed.
Ideographic groups are independent of classification into parts of speech. Words and expressions are here classed not according to their lexico-grammatical meaning but strictly according to their signification, i.e. to the system of logical notions. These subgroups may comprise nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs together, provided they refer to the same notion. Thus, V.I. Agamdzhanova unites into one group such words as light n, bright a, shine v and other words connected with the notion of light as something permitting living beings to see the surrounding objects.
Ideolect, is the language as spoken by one individual.
Idioms, the term generally implies that the essential feature of the linguistic units under consideration is idiomaticity or lack cf. motivation. This term habitually used by English and American linguists is very often treated as synonymous with the term phraseological unit universally accepted in our country.
Implicational is the communicative value of a word contains latent possibilities realised not in this particular variant but able to create new derived meanings or words.
Indivisibility: “It cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning, one or two other or both of the several parts remaining as a helpless waif on our hands”. The essence of indivisibility will be clear from a comparison of the article a and the prefix a- in a lion and alive. A lion is a word-group because we can separate its elements and insert other words between them: a living lion, a dead lion. Alive is a word: it is indivisible, i.e. structurally impermeable: nothing can be inserted between its elements. The morpheme a- is not free, is not a word.
Integrity is the state of being whole and not divided.
Intensifiers convey special intensity to what is said, they indicate the special importance of the thing expressed. The simplest and most often used of these are such words as ever, even, all, so.
Intensifying connotation (also expressive, emphatic). Thus magnificent, gorgeous, splendid, superb are all used colloquially as terms of exaggeration. We often come across words that have two or three types of connotations at once, for example the word beastly as in beastly weather or beastly cold is emotional, colloquial, expresses censure and intensity.
International words are words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source. International words play an especially prominent part in various terminological systems including the vocabulary of science, industry and art. The etymological sources of this vocabulary reflect the history of world culture. A few examples of comparatively new words due to the progress of science will suffice to illustrate the importance of international vocabulary: algorithm, antenna, antibiotic, automation, bionics, cybernetics, entropy, gene, genetic code, graph, microelectronics, microminiaturisation, quant, quasars, pulsars, ribosome, etc. All these show sufficient likeness in English, French, Russian and several other languages.
Irony, the term is taken from rhetoric, it is the expression of one’s meaning by words of opposite sense, especially a simulated adoption of the opposite point of view for the purpose of ridicule or disparagement. One of the meanings of the adjective nice is ‘bad’, ‘unsatisfactory’; it is marked off as ironical and illustrated by the example: You’ve got us into a nice mess! The same may be said about the adjective pretty: A pretty mess you’ve made of it!
Jargonisms, i.e. words marked by their use within a particular social group and bearing a secret and cryptic character, e.g. a sucker — ‘a person who is easily deceived’, a squiffer — ‘a concertina’.
Learned words or literary words serve to satisfy communicative demands of official, scientific, high poetry and poetic messages, authorial speech of creative prose; mainly observed in the written form; contribute to the message the tone of solemnity, sophistication, seriousness, gravity, learnedness, e.g. I must decline to pursue this painful discussion, It is not pleasant to my feelings; it is repugnant to my feelings. (Dickens)
Lexical group is a subset of the vocabulary, all the elements of which possess a particular feature forming the basis of the opposition. Every element of a subset of the vocabulary is also an element of the vocabulary as a whole.
Lexical variants are examples of free variation in language, in so far as they are not conditioned by contextual environment but are optional with the individual speaker. E. g. northward / norward; whoever / whosoever. The variation can concern morphological or phonological features or it may be limited to spelling. Compare weazen/weazened ‘shrivelled and dried in appearance’, an adjective used about a person’s face and looks; directly which may be pronounced [di'rektli] or [dai'rektli] and whisky with its spelling variant whiskey. Lexical variants are different from synonyms, because they are characterised by similarity in phonetical or spelling form and identity of both meaning and distribution.
Lexicalisation, the term implies that the word-group under discussion develops into a word-equivalent, i.e. a phraseological unit or a compound word. These two parallel lines of lexicalisation of free word-groups can be illustrated by the diachronic analysis of, e.g., the compound word instead and the phraseological unit in spite (of). Both of them can be traced back to structurally identical free phrases. (Cf. OE. in stede and ME. in despit.)
Lexico-grammatical class or group is a class of words which have a common lexico-grammatical meaning, a common paradigm, the same substituting elements and possibly a characteristic set of suffixes rendering the lexico-grammatical meaning. These groups are subsets of the parts of speech, several lexico-grammatical groups constitute one part of speech. Thus, English nouns are subdivided approximately into the following lexico-grammatical groups: personal names, animal names, collective names (for people), collective names (for animals), abstract nouns, material nouns, object nouns, proper names for people, toponymic proper nouns.
Lexico-grammatical meaning: see Meaning, lexico-grammatical
Lexico-grammatical group, a class of words which have a common lexico-grammatical meaning, a common paradigm, the same substituting elements and possibly a characteristic set of suffixes rendering the lexico-grammatical meaning. These groups are subsets of the parts of speech, several lexico-grammatical groups constitute one part of speech. Thus, English nouns are subdivided approximately into the following lexico-grammatical groups: personal names, animal names, collective names (for people), collective names (for animals), abstract nouns, material nouns, object nouns, proper names for people, toponymic proper nouns.
Lexicography, that is the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries, is an important branch of applied linguistics. The fundamental paper in lexicographic theory was written by L.V. Shcherba as far back as 1940. A complete bibliography of the subject may be found in L.P. Stupin’s works. Lexicography has a common object of study with lexicology, both describe the vocabulary of a language. The essential difference between the two lies in the degree of systematisation and completeness each of them is able to achieve. Lexicology aims at systematisation revealing characteristic features of words.
Lexicology is a branch of linguistics, the science of language. The term Lexicology is composed of two Greek morphemes: lexis meaning ‘word, phrase’ (hence lexicos ‘having to do with words’) and logos which denotes ‘learning, a department of knowledge’. Thus, the literal meaning of the term Lexicology is ‘the science of the word’.
Linguo-stylistics (Linguistic Stylistics). Linguo-Stylistics is concerned with the study of the nature, functions and structure of stylistic devices, on the one hand, and with the investigation of each style of language, on the other, i.e. with its aim, its structure, its characteristic features and the effect it produces as well as its interrelation with the other styles of language.
Litotes (from Gr litos ‘plain’, ‘meagre’) or understatement. It might be defined as expressing the affirmative by the negative of its contrary, e. g. not bad or not half bad for ‘good’, not small for ‘great’, no coward for ‘brave’. Some understatements do not contain negations, e. g. rather decent; I could do with a cup of tea. It is, however, doubtful whether litotes should be considered under the heading of semantic change at all, because as a rule it creates no permanent change in the sense of the word used and concerns mostly usage and contextual meaning of words. Understatement expresses a desire to conceal or suppress one’s feelings, according to the code of reserve, and to seem indifferent and calm.