Лексикология

missing word is easily identified as a verb. It may be “came, ran, went, goes”, but not as an adverb or a noun, or an adjective.

Thus, we see that the component of meaning that is distributionally identified is actually the part-of-speech meaning. It is also observed that in a number of cases words have

The interdependence of distribution and meaning can be also observed at the level of word-groups.

e. g. It is only the distribution of completely identical lexical

between words and consequently the meaning may be different.

e.g. A pattern “possessive pronoun”+”noun” (his car, his failure, his arrest, his kindness). According to transformational analysis the meaning of each word-group may be represented as:

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he has a car, he failed, he was arrested, he is kind. In each of the cases different meaning is revealed: possession, action, passive action, quality.The rules of transformation are rather strict and shouldn’t be identified with paraphrasing in the usual sense of the term. There are many restrictions both on syntactic and lexical levels. These are:

1) Permutation – the repatterning on condition that the basic subordinative relationships between words and word-stems

excellently“. In the example given the relationships between

is senseless. That is accounted by the difference in the meaning of adjectives denoting inherent (tall) and non-inherent (happy) qualities.

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4) Deletion – a procedure which shows whether one of the words semantically subordinated to the other.

e. g. The word-group “red flowers” may be deleted and transformed into “flowers” without making the sentence senseless: I like red flowers or I like flowers. The other wordgroup“red tape” means “bureaucracy” and it can’t be divided into two parts.

Componental analysis.

In this analysis linguists proceed from the assumption that the smallest units of meaning are sememes or semes.

e. g. In the lexical item “woman” several sememes may be singled out, such as human, not an animal, female, adult. The analysis of the word “girl” will show the following sememes: human, female, young. The last component of the two words differentiates them and makes impossible to mix up the words in the process of communication. It is classical form of revealing the work of componental analysis to apply them to the so called closed systems of vocabulary, for example, colour terms. The analysis as a rule was formalized only as far as the symbolic representation of meaning components it is concerned with. Each sememe in the terms of colours acquires or is given a certain letter (A, B, C, D…) and the meaning of the terms may be given in a formalized form.

e. g. Red and scarlet will differ only in one component and that is intensity of colour and by the letter it may be illustrated as A B C Under the letter C the intensity is meant. The formalized representation of meaning helps to find out different semantic components which influence collocability of words (during the day but not during the stairs, down the stairs but not down the day). Componental analysis is practically always combined with transformational procedures or statistical analysis. The combination makes it possible to find out which of the meanings should be represented first of all in the dictionaries of different types and how the words should be combined in order to make your speech sensible.

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Method of semantic differential

A word has not only one meaning and even one word usually implies some additional information which differentiates

was singled out by the semantic differential – the method which was worked out by a group of American psycholinguists. Their technique requires the subjects to judge – a series of

The meaning of the divisions is that each of the quality may be gradated.

Representing extremely good, very good, neither good nor bad, slightly bad, extremely bad and these grades can be marked by a plus. And the horse may be very good, not bad, etc.

The revealed gradations showing some portion of quality helps to singled out such words which are usually referred to as neutral, expressive, archaic and new words proper – neologisms. All the methods of analysis are applied in one and the same

attention what parts of words represent the distributional structure. The combination of different methods of analysis helps to classify the vocabulary as a whole and each lexical unit

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taken separately. It should be said that practically no procedures function independently and separately from each other. It is only for study aims that we separate one procedure from another. In fact, being a two-faced unit a lexical item provides to be an indivisible unit of form and content. That is why you cannot investigate one side of the item paying no attention to the other one .

Questions:

1.What does the term “lexicology” mean?

2.What does the term “word” denote?

3.What is the distinction between General and Special Lexicology?

4.What branches of Linguistics is Lexicology connected

with?

5.What are two principle approaches in linguistic science to study?

6.What methods of vocabulary investigation do you

know?

Test 1

1. The term “lexicology” is of

a)Greek origin

b)Latin origin

c)French origin

d)Russian origin

2. The central problem of lexicology is

a)word

b)word-group

c)sentence

d)meaning

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3. The two main approaches in studying language material

are

a)special and descriptive

b)historical and comparative

c)synchronic and diachronic

d)contrastive and general

4. The word-group “as loose as a goose” means

a)clumsy

b)kind

c)stupid

d)greedy

5. The science is said to be formed when it ahs at its disposal

a)certain methods of investigation

b)money

c)two principal approaches

d)inductive procedures

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Lecture 2

General Characteristics of English Vocabulary.

Plan

I. Lexico-Symantic system.

II. The volume of the vocabulary. The basic word-stock. III. Archaisms.

IV. Neologisms.

I. Lexicology studies the recurrent patterns of semantic relationships, and of any formal phonological, morphological or contextual means by which they may be rendered. It aims at systematization.

It has been claimed by different authors that, in contrast to grammar, the vocabulary of a language is not systematic but chaotic. In the light of recent investigations in linguistic theory, however, we are now in a position to bring some order into the “chaos”. We call vocabulary systematic because the sum total of all words in it may be considered as a structured set of interdependent and interrelated elements.

The term “system” as applied to vocabulary should not be taken rigidly. The vocabulary system cannot be completely and exactly characterized by deterministic functions; that is for the present state of science it is not possible to specify the system’s entire future by its status at some one instant of its operation. In other words, the vocabulary is a probabilistic system, or rather a set of interrelated probabilistic systems. An approximation is always made possible by leaving some things out of account. But we have to remember that the rules of language are mostly analogies. Where different analogies are in conflict, one may appear as a constraint on the working of another. The following simple example illustrates this point: the regular, that is statistically predominant, pattern for adjective stems is to form abstract nouns by means of the suffix –ness: shortness, narrowness, shallowness. All the antonyms of the abovementioned words, however, follow a different pattern: they have a

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dental suffix: length, width, depth. This second analogy becomes a constraint on the working of the first. Moreover, the relationship of the adjective big with the rest of the system is even more unpredictable, as it is mostly correlated with the noun size. The semantic correlation then is as follows:

Short/shortness=narrow/narrowness=shallow/shallowness= long/length = wide/width=deep/depth=big/size.

At this point it will be helpful to remember that it is precisely the most frequent words that show irregular or suppletive derivation and inflection.

Having in view all these restrictions, we, nevertheless regard vocabulary as a lexico-semantic system because all its elements are in some relations of equivalence and contrast which hold between them, and are grouped into sets according to various features of equivalence.

So, lexico-semantic system is a combination of interdependent elements. A change in one part of the system brings a change into another one. (reed – камыш; read –

читать).

II. Nowadays in English there are 450 000 words. Passive vocabulary is 30 000 to understand. Active vocabulary is 4-5 000 to speak.

The basic word-stock implies our practical vocabulary. The words in it are neutral and frequent. The basic word-stock includes root words, derivatives and compounds. The basic wordstock includes different parts of speech, native and borrowed words.

The basic word-stock is a good building material for phrases: to go mad, to go on strike, to go one’s way, to go out of fashion; to make a date, to make friends, to make a long story short, to make a scene. The words from the basic word-stock are usually pollysemantic.

III. Archaisms are words which are no longer used in everyday speech, which have been ousted by their synonyms.

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Archaisms remain in the language, but they are used as stylistic devices to express solemnity. Most of these words are lexical archaisms and they are stylistic synonyms of words which ousted them from the neutral style. Some of them are: steed /horse/, slay /kill/, behold /see/, perchance /perhaps/, woe /sorrow/ etc.

Sometimes a lexical archaism begins a new life, getting a new meaning, then the old meaning becomes a semantic archaism, e.g. fair in the meaning “beautiful” is a semantic archaism, but in the meaning “blond” it belongs to the neutral style.

Sometimes the root of the word remains and the affix is changed, then the old affix is considered to be a morphemic archaism, e.g. beauteous / ous was substituted by ful/, bepaint /be was dropped/, darksome / some was dropped, oft / en was added/ etc.

IV. At the present moment English is developing very swiftly and there is so called “neology blowup”. R. Berchfield who worked at compiling a four-volume supplement to NED says that averagely 800 neologisms appear every year in Modern English. It has also become a language-giver recently, especially with the development of computerization. New words, as a rule, appear in speech of an individual person who wants to express his idea in some original way. This person is called “originator”. New lexical units are primarily used by university teachers, newspaper reporters, by those who are connected with mass media.

Neologisms can develop in three main ways: a lexical unit existing in the language can change its meaning to denote a new object or phenomenon. In such cases we have semantic neologisms, e.g. the word “umbrella” developed the meanings: “авиационное прикрытие”, “политическое прикрытие”. A new lexical unit can develop in the language to denote an object or phenomenon which already has some lexical unit to denote it. In such cases we have transnomination, e.g. the word “slum” was first substituted by the word “ghetto” then by the word group “inner town”. A new lexical unit can be introduced to denote a

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new object or phenomenon. In this case we have “a proper neologism”, many of them are cases of new terminology.

Here we can point out several semantic groups when we analyze the group of neologisms connected with computerization, and here we can mention words used:

1)to denote different types of computers: PC, supercomputer, multi-user, neurocomputer /analogue of a human brain/;

2)to denote parts of computers: hardware, software, monitor, screen, data, vapourware / experimental samples of computers for exhibition, not for production/;

3)to denote computer languages: BASIC, Algol FORTRAN etc;

4)to denote notions connected with work on computer: computerman, computerization, computerize, to troubleshoot, to blitz out /to ruin data in computer’s memory/.

There are also different types of activities performed with the help of computers, many of them are formed with the help of morpheme “tele”: telework, to telecommute /to work at home having a computer which is connected with the enterprise for which one works/. There are also such words as telebanking, telemarketing, teleshopping /when you can perform different operations with the help of your computer without leaving your home, all operations are registered by the computer at your bank/, videobank /computerized telephone which registers all information which is received in your absence/.

In the sphere of linguistics we have such neologisms as: machine translation, interlingual /an artificial language for machine translation into several languages/ and some others.

In the sphere of biometrics we have computerized machines which can recognize characteristic features of people seeking entrance: finger-print scanner /finger prints/, biometric eyescanner / blood-vessel arrangements in eyes/, voice verification /voice patterns/. These are types of biometric locks. Here we can

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