Лексикология

Министерство сельского хозяйства РФ Федеральное государственное образовательное учреждение

высшего профессионального образования «Мичуринский государственный аграрный университет»

Кафедра иностранных языков

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Утверждено Протокол № 6

методической комиссии социально-гуманитарного факультета от 20 февраля 2007 г.

КРАТКИЙ КУРС ЛЕКЦИЙ ПО ЛЕКСИКОЛОГИИ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА ДЛЯ СТУДЕНТОВ НЕЯЗЫКОВЫХ ВУЗОВ

Мичуринск 2007

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Составитель: доцент кафедры иностранных языков

Е.В. Москалёва

Рецензенты:

доктор филологических наук, профессор Л.Г. Попова, кандидат педагогических наук, доцент Г.В. Кретинина

Рассмотрено на заседании кафедры педагогики протокол № 5 от 15 января 2007 г.

Пособие даёт представление об основах лексикологической теории применительно к материалу английского языка, описывает методы и принципы лексикологического анализа, знакомит с постулатами учебной лексикологии.

В пособие включены вопросы и тесты для проверки усвоения предложенного материала.

Пособие предназначено для студентов неязыковых вузов, изучающих английский язык как вторую специальность, а также для широкого круга лиц, интересующихся английским языком.

©Издательство Мичуринского государственного аграрного университета, 2007

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Lecture 1

General Characteristics of the Lexicology

Plan

I.The value of lexicology.

II.The connection of lexicology with other branches of Linguistics.

III.Synchronic and Diachronic Lexicology.

IV. Modern methods of vocabulary investigation.

I. The term “lexicology” is of Greek origin / from “lexis” – “word” and “logos” - “science”/. Lexicology is the part of linguistics which deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups.

The term “vocabulary” is used to denote the system of words and word-groups that the language possesses.

The term “word” denotes the main lexical unit of a language resulting from association of a group of sounds with a meaning. This unit is used in grammatical functions characteristic of it. It is the smallest unit of a language which can stand alone as a complete utterance.

The term “word-group” denotes a group of words which exists in the language as a ready-made unit, has the unity of meaning, the unity of syntactical function, e.g. the word group “as loose as 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 and meaning is the central problem of philosophy as well. That means that lexicology helps to study philosophical problems.

The practical value of lexicology is important for language teaching. It helps to enrich vocabulary. Studying lexicology is very important for lexicography, the science which studies dictionaries.

Lexicology can study the development of the vocabulary, the origin of words and word-groups, their semantic relations and the development of their sound form and meaning. In this case it

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is called historical lexicology. Another branch of lexicology is called descriptive and studies the vocabulary at a definite stage of its development.

Distinction is made between GENERAL LEXICOLOGY & SPECIAL LEXICOLOGY.

General lexicology is a 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 (Russian, German, French, etc.).

II. Lexicology is closely connected with other branches of linguistics: phonetics, for example, investigates the phonetic structure of language and is concerned with the study of the outer sound-form of the word. If we change some sounds in the word, we receive the word with the different meaning (read – rod; ship – sheep; cow – bow etc).

Grammar is the study of the grammatical structure of the language. It is concerned with the various means of expressing grammatical relations between words as well as with patterns after which words are combined into word-groups and sentences. The grammatical form of the word is changed and the meaning is changed as well (picture - pictures; work – works; colour – colours; look – looks; arm – arms etc).

The part of speech can be changed as well: pocket – to pocket; name – to name; plug – to plug; plot – to plot; suit – to suit etc.

There is also a close relationship between lexicology and stylistics which is concerned with a study of a nature, functions and styles of languages .

Lexicology connects with the history of the language. Thus in old English the word “stool” meant any kind of seats. Later on the French borrowing – word “chair” came and the word “stool” changed its meaning. Now “stool” means the seat without back. The word “readen” lost its inflexion. That is why due to these changes English vocabulary has very many homonymous forms.

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III. There are two principle approaches in linguistic science to the study of language material: synchronic and diachronic. With regard to Special lexicology the synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as it exists at a given time. It’s Special Descriptive lexicology that deals with the vocabulary and vocabulary units of a particular language at a certain 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 evaluation of the vocabulary units of a language as the time goes by.

The two approaches shouldn’t be set one against the other. In fact, they are interconnected and interrelated because every linguistic structure and system exists in a state of constant

comparison.

IV. The science is said to be formed when it has at its disposal certain methods of investigation. The process of scientific investigation may be subdivided into several stages:

* Observation is an early and basic phase of all modern scientific investigations including linguistics and is the center of what is called “the inductive method of inquiry “. The cardinal role of all inductive procedures is that the statements of fact must be based on observation not on unsupported authority, logical conclusions or personal preferences.

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Londoner). The same suffix also occurs in the words such as mother, father. The question is whether the words “mother, father “ have suffix. They haven’t, thus we can come to the conclusion that “-er” can be found in derived and nonderived words .

* The following stage is usually that of generalization, that is, the collection of data and their classification must eventually lead to the formulation of a hypotheses, rule, or law .

e. g. In the case with “-er” we can formulate the rule that derived words in “-er” may have either verbal or noun stems. The suffix “- er” in combination with adjectival or adverbial stems can’t produce nouns (bigger, longer, shorter are not nouns).

* Any linguistic generalization is to be followed by the very fine process – the linguist is required to seek verification of the generalizations that are the result of his inquires. For these aims different methods and procedures are used. They are: contrastive analyses, statistical methods of analyses, immediate constituents analyses, distributional analyses, transformational analyses, componential analyses and method of semantic differentiation .

Contrastive analysis .

Contrastive linguists attempt to find out similarities and differences in both related and non-related languages. Contrastive analysis grew as the result of the practical demands of a language-teaching methodology, where it was empirically shown that the errors which are made by foreign language students can be often traced back to the differences in structure between the target language and the language of the learner. This naturally implies the necessity of a detailed comparison of the

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structure of a native and a target language. This procedure has been named contrastive analysis.

People proceed from the assumption that the categories, elements on the semantic as well as on the syntactic and other levels are valid for both languages.

e. g. Linking verbs can be found in English, French, German, Russian, etc. Linking verbs having the meaning of “change and become” are differently represented in each of the languages. In English, for instance, “become, come, grow, fall, run, turn“; in Russian –“становиться “ is used. The task is to find out which semantic and syntactic features characterize the English set of linking verbs, the Russian linking verb and how they can be compared, how the English word-groups “ grow thin, get angry, fall ill “ correspond to Russian “похудеть,

рассердиться, заболеть“.

Contrastive analysis can be carried out at three linguistic levels: phonology, grammar (morphology and syntax) and lexis. Contrastive analysis is applied to reveal the features of sameness and difference in the lexical meaning and the semantic structure of correlated words in different languages. It is commonly assumed by non-linguists that all languages have vocabulary systems in which the words themselves differ in sound-form, but refer to reality in the same way. From this assumption it follows

irrespective of the language they speak, every language classifies reality in its own way by means of vocabulary units.

In English, for example, the word “foot” is used to denote the extremity of the leg. In Russian there is no exact equivalent for “foot”: “стопа” is a little bit smaller than foot, the word “нога” denotes the whole leg including the foot.

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Differences in the lexical meaning of correlated words account for the differences of their collocability in different languages.

e.g. Thus, the English adjective “new” and the Russian adjective”новый” when taken in isolation are felt as correlated

“новости, деньги, волосы ” have the grammatical meaning of plurality.

Contrastive analysis brings to light the essence of what is usually described as idiomatic English, idiomatic Russian, i. e.

similar word-groups and say “he learns fast/slowly”. The structure of idiomatic word-group in English is different. The structure is “adjective + deverbal noun”. It is really in English to say “he is a heavy smoker, poor learner, early riser”.

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Statistical analysis

Statistical linguistics is nowadays generally recognized as the one of the major branches of linguistics. Statistical inquiries have considerable importance because of their relevance to certain problems of communication engineering and information theory. Statistical approach proved essential in the selection of

English dictionary the active vocabulary of an educated Englishman comprises no more than 30 000 words and of these 4 000 - 5 000 are presumed to be amplisufficient for the daily needs of an average member of the English speech community. Thus, it is evident that the problem of selection of teaching vocabulary is of vital importance. Statistical techniques have been successfully applied in the analysis of various linguistic phenomena. Different structural types of words, affixes, the vocabularies of great writers and poets and even in the study of some problems of Historical Lexicology.

Statistical regularities can be observed only if the phenomena under analysis are sufficiently numerous. Thus, the first requirement of any statistic investigation is the size of the sample. It is known that comparatively small group of words makes up the bulk of any text. It was found that approximately 1300 – 1500 most frequent words make up 85% of all words occurring in the text. If however we analyze a sample of 60 words it is hard to predict the number of occurrences of most frequent words.

e. g. If we take the word “room” we can find some meanings of the word:

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different texts, 12% of all takes its first meaning – “space”, and only 2% takes the third meaning of the word.

Immediate constituents analysis

The theory of Immediate constituents was originally elaborated as an attempt to determine the ways in which lexical units are relevantly related to one another. It was discovered that

segmentation of immediate constituents results in ultimate constituents, which means that further segmentation is impossible for no meaning can be found.

e. g. The ultimate constituents of the phrase given are “a”,

Distributional analysis

Distributional analysis in its various forms is commonly used nowadays. By the term “distribution” we understand the

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