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

Standard English - the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognised as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialecticisms.
Stem is what remains when a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word. The stem expresses the lexical and the part of speech meaning. A stem may also be defined as the part of the word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm.
‘Stone-wall’ problem concerns the status of the complexes like stone wall, cannon ball or rose garden. Noun premodifiers of other nouns often become so closely fused together with what they modify that it is difficult to say whether the result is a compound or a syntactical free phrase. Even if this difficulty is solved and we agree that these are phrases and not words, the status of the first element remains to be determined.
Suffix is a derivational morpheme standing after the root and modifying meaning, e.g. childish, quickly, worker.
Suffixation is the formation of words with the help of suffixes. Suffixes usually modify the lexical meaning of the base and transfer words to a, different part of speech. There are suffixes however, which do not shift words from one part of speech into another; a suffix of this kind usually transfers a word into a different semantic group, e.g. a concrete noun becomes an abstract one, as is the case with child — childhood, friend — friendship, etc.
Synchronic (Gr. syn — ‘together, with’ and chronos — ‘time’) approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as it exists at a given time, for instance, at the present time.
Synonymic dominant is the most general term of its kind potentially containing the specific features rendered by all the other members of the group, as, for instance, hope in the corresponding series of synonymous verbs and verbal set expressions: hope, anticipate, expect, look forward to.
Synonyms are words different in sound-form but similar in their denotational meaning (or meanings) and interchangeable at least in some contexts.
Technical terms and terminology is the greatest part of every language vocabulary. It is also its most intensely developing part, i.e. the class giving the largest number of new formations. Terminology of a. language consists of many systems of terms.

Term is any word or word-group used to name a notion characteristic of some special field of knowledge, industry or culture. It is a very peculiar type of word. An ideal term should be monosemantic and, when used within its own sphere, does not depend upon the micro-context, provided it is not expressed by a figurative variant of a polysemantic word. Its meaning remains constant until some new discovery or invention changes the referent or the notion.
Thematic groups deal with contexts on the level of the sentence. Words in thematic groups are joined together by common contextual associations within the framework of the sentence and reflect the interlinking of things or events. Common contextual association of the words, e.g. tree — grow — green; journey — train — taxi — bags — ticket or sunshine — brightly — blue — sky, is due to the regular co-occurrence of these words in a number of sentences. Words making up a thematic group belong to different parts of speech and do not possess any common denominator of meaning.
Toponyms are the names of places.
Total synonymy, i.e. synonymy where the members of a synonymic group can replace each other in any given context, without the slightest alteration in denotative or emotional meaning and connotations, is a rare occurrence. Examples of this type can be found in special literature among technical terms peculiar to this or that branch of knowledge. Thus, in linguistics the terms noun and substantive; functional affix, flection and inflection are identical in meaning.
Transformations, explanatory is a more or less simple, if not very rigorous, procedure based on purely synchronic data may be prompted by analysis of dictionary definitions.
Translation-loans are words and expressions formed from the material available in the language after the patterns characteristic of the given language, but under the influence of some foreign words and expressions (e. g. mother tongue<L. lingua materna; it goes without saying < Fr. cela va sans dire; wall newspaper < Russ. стенгазета).
Umlaut: see Vowel mutation
Understatement: see Litotes
Unique correlation is characteristic of proper names which have some unique object for referent (e. g. the Thames); words whose referents are generalised in a notion have notional correlations (e. g. river).
Unit means one of the elements into which a whole may be divided or analysed and which possesses the basic properties of this whole. The units of a vocabulary or lexical units are two-facet elements possessing form and meaning. The basic unit forming the bulk of the vocabulary is the word. Other units are morphemes that is parts of words, into which words may be analysed, and set expressions or groups of words into which words may be combined.
Valency or collocability is the aptness of a word to appear in various combinations.

Variants or regional varieties. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In Great Britain there are two variants, Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects.
Vocabulary, the term is used to denote the system formed by the sum total of all the words and word equivalents that the language possesses.
Vowel gradation is a characteristic of Indo-European languages and consisting in a change from one to another vowel accompanying a change of stress. The phenomenon is best known as a series of relations between vowels by which the stems of strong verbs are differentiated in grammar (drink — drank — drunk and the like). However, it is also of great importance in lexicology, because ablaut furnishes distinctive features for differentiating words. The examples are: abide v : : abode n; bear v : : burden n; bite v : : bit n; ride v : : road n; strike v : : stroke n.
Vowel mutation otherwise called umlaut, a feature characteristic of Germanic languages, and consisting in a partial assimilation to a succeeding sound, as for example the fronting or raising of a back vowel or a low vowel caused by an [i] or [j] originally standing in the following syllable but now either altered or lost. This accounts for such oppositions as full a : : fill v; whole a : : heal v; knot n : : knit v; tale n : : tell v. The process will be clear if we follow the development of the second element in each pair. ModE fillælan <*hailjan cognate to the OE hal; tellis especially interesting, as OE cnotta is akin to ON knūtr, knot, knötr ‘ball’ and to the Russian кнут which is ‘a lash of knotted things’.
Vulgarisms, i.e. coarse words that are not generally used in public, e.g. bloody, hell, damn, shut up, etc.
Word building or derivational pattern is used to denote a meaningful combination of stems and affixes that occur regularly enough to indicate the part of speech, the lexico-semantic category and semantic peculiarities common to most words with this particular arrangement of morphemes.¹ Every type of word-building (affixation, composition, conversion, compositional derivation, shortening, etc.) as well as every part of speech have a characteristic set of patterns. Some of these, especially those with the derivational suffix -ish, have already been described within this paragraph. It is also clear from the previous description that the grouping of patterns is possible according to the type of stem, according to the affix or starting with some semantic grouping.
Word, definition of 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.
Word-family is a type of traditional lexicological grouping. For example: dog, doggish, doglike, doggy/doggie, to dog, dogged, doggedly, doggedness, dog-wolf, dog-days, dog-biscuit, dog-cart, etc.; hand, handy, handicraft, handbag, handball, handful, handmade, handsome, etc.
Word form, or the form of a word, is defined as one of the different aspects a word may take as a result of inflection. Complete sets of all the various forms of a word when considered as inflectional patterns, such as declensions or conjugations, are termed paradigms.
Word-formation is the system of derivative types of words and the process of creating new words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic formulas and patterns.



Word-formation, types of there are such types as affixation, conversion and word-composition.
Zero derivation: see Conversion

2 ЛЕКЦИИ
2.1 The subject matter of lexicology

1. Modern English Lexicology. Its aims and significance

2. Two approaches to language study

3. The connection of lexicology with other linguistic sciences
1. 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 Lexiсolоgу is ‘the science of the word’. The literal meaning, however, gives only a general notion of the aims and the subject-matter of this branch of linguistic science, since all its other branches also take account of words in one way or another approaching them from different angles. Phonetics, for instance, investigating the phonetic structure of language, i.e. its system of phonemes and intonation patterns, is concerned with the study of the outer sound form of the word. Grammar, which is inseparably bound up with Lexicology, is the study of the grammatical structure of language. It is concerned with the various means of expressing grammatical relations between words and with the patterns after which words are combined into word-groups and sentences.

Lexicology as a branch of linguistics has its own aims and methods of scientific research, its basic task being a study and systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use. Lexicology is concerned with words, variable word-groups, phraseological units, and with morphemes which make up words.

Distinction is naturally made between General Lexicology and Special Lexicology. General Lexicology is part of General Linguistics; it is concerned with the study of 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 vocabulary and vocabulary units, primarily words as the main units of language. Needless to say that every Special Lexicology is based on the principles worked out and laid down by General Lexicology, a general theory of vocabulary.
2. There are two principal approaches in linguistic science to the study of language material, namely the synchronic (Gr. syn — ‘together, with’ and chronos — ‘time’) and the diachronic (Gr. dia — ‘through’) approach. With regard to Special Lexicology the synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as it exists at a given time, for instance, at the present time. It is special Desсriptive Lexicology that deals with the vocabulary and vocabulary units of a particular language at a certain time. A Course in Modern English Lexicology is therefore a course in Special Descriptive Lexicology, its object of study being the English vocabulary as it exists at the present time.

The diachronic approach in terms of Special Lexicology 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.

It should be emphatically stressed that the distinction between the synchronic and the diachronic study is merely a difference of approach separating for the purposes of investigation what in real language is inseparable. The two approaches should not be contrasted, or set one against the other; in fact, they are intrinsically interconnected and interdependent: every linguistic structure and system actually exists in a state of constant development so that the synchronic state of a language system is a result of a long process of linguistic evolution, of its historical development.

A good example illustrating both the distinction between the two approaches and their interconnection is furnished by the words to beg and beggar.

Synchronically, the words to beg and beggar are related as a simple and a derived word, the noun beggar being the derived member of the pair, for the derivative correlation between the two is the same as in the case of to sing — singer, to teach — teacher, etc. When we approach the problem diachronically, however, we learn that the noun beggar was borrowed from Old French and only presumed to have been derived from a shorter word, namely the verb to beg, as in the English language agent nouns are commonly derived from verbs with the help of the agent suffix -er.

Closely connected with Historical Lexicology is Contrastive and Comparative Lexicology whose aims are to study the correlation between the vocabularies of two or more languages, and find out the correspondences between the vocabulary units of the languages under comparison. Needless to say, one can hardly overestimate the importance of Contrastive Lexicology as well as of Comparative Linguistics in general for the purpose of class-room teaching of foreign languages. Of primary importance in this respect is the comparison of the foreign language with the mother tongue.

3. The word is studied in several branches in 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.

The importance of connection between lexicology and phonetics is explained if we remember that a word is an association of a given group of sounds with a given meaning, so that “tip” is one word, “top” another. Phonemes have no meaning of their own but they serve to distinguish between meanings. The differentiations between words may be based upon stress “import” – noun, “import” – verb.

Stylistics, although from a different angle, studies many problems of lexicology. These are problems of meaning, synonymy, connotation – the problem of semantic change of words.

A close connection between lexicology and grammar is conditioned by the inseparable 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.

2.2 Word as a basic unit of the language

1. Types of lexicological units.

2. The definition of the word.

3. Phonetic, morphemic, semantic motivation of words.
Aims:

teaching – To give the idea of a word as a basic unit of the language;

developing – To deepen the idea of the definition of the word;

educational (pedagogic) – To increase the willing to study a word.
1. The term “unit” means one of the elements into which a whole may be divided or analyzed. The units of vocabulary or lexicological units are two faced-elements possessing form and meaning. The basic unit forming the of vocabulary is the word. Other units are morphemes that are parts of words into which they may be divided and the set expression – groups of words, into which words may be combined.

Morpheme – word – set expression.

Words are the central elements of the language system. They are the biggest of morphology and smallest of syntax. They embody the main structural properties and the functions of the language. Words can be separated in an utterance by other units and can be used in isolation. Unlike words, morphemes cannot be divided into smaller meaningful feeling or action. The meaning of morphemes is more abstract, more general than that of words.

Set expressions are word groups consisting of two or more words, whose combinations is integrated, so that they are introduced as readymade units with the specialized meaning of the whole.

2. The most important point to remember about definition is that, it should indicate the most essential characteristic features of the notion, the features by which this notion is distinguished from other similar notion.

In defining the word we must distinguish it from other linguistic units, such as the phoneme, morpheme and the word group. In contrast with a definition, a description aims at enumerating all the essential features of a notion.

To make things easier we shall begin by a preliminary description, illustrating it with some examples.

The word may be described as the basic unit of language. Uniting meaning and form, it is composed of one or more morphemes, each consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation. Morphemes as we have already said are also meaningful units but they cannot be used independently, they are always parts of words whereas words can be used as a complete utterance.

Definition of every notion is a very hard task and the definition of a word is one of the most difficult in linguistics, because the simplest word has many different aspects. It has a sound form because it is a certain arrangement of phonemes; it has its morphological structure, being also a certain arrangement of morphemes; when used in actual speech, it may occur in different word forms, different syntactic functions and signal various meanings. Being the central element of any language system, the word is a sort of focus for the problems of phonology, lexicology, syntax, morphology and also for some other sciences that have to deal with language and speech, such as philosophy and psychology, and probably quite a few other branches of knowledge.

The authors, who investigated the word, gave the different variants of the definitions of the word. And they were very numerous.

(Th. Hobbs (1588-1671) one of the great philosophies reviewed materialistic approach to a formal problem of nomination when that “Words are not mere sounds, but names of matter”. Three centuries later the great Russian physiologist Pavlov I. V. examined the word in the connection with the studies of the second signal system. One of the latest developments of the science and engineering is machine. It also deals with words and requires the definition to them within the scope the linguistics. The word has been defined syntactically, semantically, phonologically and by combining different approaches. The word has been defined syntactically as “the minimum sentence” by Sweet and later by L. Bloomfield as “ a minimum free form”. L. Sappier 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”. He also points out one more important characteristics of a word – its indivisibility. The essence of indivisibility will be clear in forming comparison of an article “a”, “or” and prefix “a”. In the words “a lion – alive”: “a lion” – is a word group, because it can be divided into elements and we can insert some elements between them. Ex: “a beautiful lion”. “alive” is a word, because it is indivisible, because nothing can be inserted, because the morpheme “a” is not free, it is not a word.

J. Lyos points out that the word should be discussed in terms of two criteria: positional movelety and uninterruptibility.

Ex: The – boy – s – walk – ed – slow – ly – up – the – hill.

Slow – ly – the – boy – s – walk – ed – up – the – hill.

We can change word order, but we can’t “s – boy, ed – walk”.

The efforts of many eminent scholars Vinogradov, Smirnitsky, Ahmanov resulted in throwing light on the problem of the word as a basic unit of the language and they achieved definite results. The eminent French linguist A. Mallet combines the semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria and gives the following definition: “The word is defined by the association of the particular meaning with the particular group of sounds of a particular grammatical employment”. This definition doesn’t permit us to distinguish words from phonemes, because not only “a child”, but also “a pretty child” are combination of sound with particular meaning.)

We accept the formula that a word is the smallest significant unit of a given language capable of functioning alone and characterised by positional mobility within a sentence, morphological uninterruptability and semantic integrity.

The word is the fundamental unit of language. It is a dialectical unity of form and content.

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

When there is a certain similarity between the sounds that make up a word and those refer to by the sense, the motivation is phonemic. Ex: “bang, buzz, cuckoo, giggle, hiss, purr”, here the sounds of words are imitative of sounds in nature. Although there exists a certain arbitrary element on the resulting phonemes, one can see this type of motivation is determined by the phonological system of each language as shown by the difference of echo words for the same concept in different languages.

Ex: cuckoo – in English, kuckuck – in German, кукушка – in Russian, кокек – in Kazah. Words denoting noises produced by animals are most play sound imitative. In English they are motivated only phonetically, though nouns and verbs are exactly the same. In Russian motivation combines phonemic and morphological motivation.

Ex: bark, moo, purr.

The morphological motivation may be quite regular. Thus the prefix –ex means “former”. When added to human nouns ‘ex-president”, there is a general use of prefix –“ex” is unstressed and motivation is faded. Ex: “expect”, “export”.

The third type of motivation is called semantic motivation. It is based on the co-existence of direct and figurative meanings of the same word within the same synchronous system. Mouth continues to denote a part of the human face, and at the same time it can metaphorically apply to any opening or outlet: the mouth of a river, of a cave, of a furnace. Jacket is a short coat and also a protective cover for a book, a phonograph record or an electric wire. Ermine is not only the name of a small animal, but also of its fur, and the office and rank of an English judge because in England ermine was worn by judges in court. In their direct meaning neither mouth nor ermine is motivated.