1. Lexicology – 'science of the word', a branch of linguistics, which basic task is a study and systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use.

general lexicology – part of general linguistics, is concerned with the study of vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language;

special lexicology – the lexicology of a particular language, i.e. the study and description of its vocabulary and vocabulary units, primarily words as the main units of language.; special lexicology is based on the principles worked out and laid down by general lexicology, a general theory of vocabulary. Special lexicology employs synchronic (q.v.) and diachronic (q.v.) approaches:

- special descriptive lexicology (synchronic lexicology) – deals with the vocabulary and vocabulary units of a particular language at a certain time

- special historical lexicology (diachronic lexicology) – deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the course of time.

Lexicology presents a wide area of knowledge.

Historical lexicology deals with the historic change of words in the course of lang. development.

Comparative lexicology studies closely relative languages from the point of view of their identity and differentiation.

Contrastive lexicology - both relative and unrelative languages establishes differences and similarity.

Applied lexicology - translation, lexicography, pragmatics of speech.

Lexicology investigates various meaning relations existing in the lang., how the lexicon words to provide and support meaningful communication.

Each word is a part of entire system language vocabulary. Every item of a language stands closely with 2 other items.

the sintagmatic level

the paradygmatic level.

On the sintagmatic level the semantic structure of a word is analyzed in it’s linear relationships with neighbouring words.

On the paradigmatic level - relationship with other words in the vocabulary system: synonyms, polysemantic words, antonyms.

Lexicology is closely connected with other branches of linguistics:

Phonetics – phonemes participate in signification of the word (live - leave)

Phonology – the position of stress helps to distinguish the words (Absent – to absent)

Grammar – the meaning of the word is determined by the grammatical context in which the word occurs

Stylistics – the proper selection of words helps to produce a particular effect of emotional colouring of speech

3. Peculiarities of the English vocabulary:

- high percentage of borrowings;

- the discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling;

- high percentage of homonyms;

- high percentage of words that are non-motivated;

- stylistically neutral words;

- polisemantic words;

- wide range of lexical and grammatical valency.

The most characteristic features, of English is said to be its mixed character. While it is wrong to speak of the mixed character of the language as a while, the composite nature of the English vocabulary cannot be denied.

The term native in linguistic literature is used to denote word of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the Britain from the continent in the 5th century by Germanic tribes (the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes) - Practically, the term is often applied to words, whose origin cannot be traced to any other language, for example, the word path.

The term borrowing is used to denote the process of adopting we words from other languages and also the resulting of this process, the language material itself. Not only words, but also word-building affixes were borrowed into English such as -able, -ment, -ity, etc. As well as some word-groups: coup d'etatⁱ, vis-à-visⁱⁱ.

In its secщnd meaning the term borrowing is sometimes used in wider sense. It is extended into the so-called translation-loans or loan-translation) and semantic borrowing. Translation-loans are words and expressions formed from the material available in he language after the patterns characteristic of the given language, but under the influence of some foreign words and expressions (e.g. mother tongue/ Latin lingua maternaⁱⁱⁱ; wall newspaper /Russian стенгазета

Distinction should be made between true borrowings and words made up of morphemes borrowed from Latin and Greek, e.g. telephone, phonogram. Such words were never part, of those languages.

There is also certain confusion between the terms "source of borrowings" and "origin of borrowed words". The term source of borrowings should be applied to the language from which this or that particular word was taken Into English. So when describing words as Latin, French or Scandinavian borrowing we point out their source,but not their origin. The term origin of the word should be applied to the language the word may be traced to. Thus the French borrowing table is Latin by origin (L. tabula), the Latin borrowing school came into Latin from the Greek language (Gr. scole - досуг).

4. Words of Native Origin

Words of native origin consist for the most part of very ancient elements (Indo-European, Germanic and West Germanic cognates). The bulk of the Old English word-stock has been preserved, although some words have passed out of existence.

To assign the native element its true place it's not so im­portant to count the number of Anglo-Saxon words as to study their semantic and stylistic character, frequency value, collocability^iv, their word-building ability, the productivity of the word-building patterns.

As we know almost all words of Anglo-Saxon origin belong to very important semantic groups. They include

Most of the auxilary and modal verbs: shall, will, should, would, must, can, may, etc.

Pronouns: I, you, he, my, your, his, who, whose.

Prepositions: in, out, on, under, etc.

Numerals: one, two, three, four, etc.

Conjunctions; and, but, till, as, etc.

National words of Anglo-Saxon origin include: such groups as words denoting:

Parts of the body ( head, hand, arm, back, etc.)

Members of the family and closest relatives (father, mother, brother, son, wife)

Natural phenomena and planets (snow, rain, wind, frost, sun, the Moon)

Animals (horse, cow, sheep, cat)

Qualities and properties (old, young, cold, hot, heavy, light, white, long, etc.)

Common actions (do, make, go, come, see, hear, eat, etc.)

Most of the native words have undergone striking transformation in semantic structure and as a result are nowadays highly polysemantic. E.g. the word "finger" does not only denote a part of a hand as in Old English, but also: 1) the part of a glove covering one of the fingers; 2)a finger-like part in various machines; 3) a hand of a clock; 4)an index; 5) a unit of measurement

Most native words are stylistically neutral.

Most native words possess large clusters of derived and compound words in the present-day language, e.g. the word wood was the base for the formation of the following words: wooden, woody, wooded, woodcraft, woodcutter, woodwork, etc.

New words have been coined from Anglo-Saxon roots mainly by means of affixation, word-composition and conversion. Such affixes of native origin as -er, -ness, -ish, un-, -niss have been widely used to build numerous new words throughout the whole history of English.

5. The term source of borrowings should be applied to the language from which this or that particular word was taken Into English. So when describing words as Latin, French or Scandinavian borrowing we point out their source,but not their origin. The term origin of the word should be applied to the language the word may be traced to.

Borrowings in the English language

In its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to come in long close contacts; with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse (or Scandinavian). Due to the great influence of the Roman civilization/Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion.

Old Norse was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of social and cultural development and who merged rather easily with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th century.

French (to be more exact its Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors who brought with them a lot of new noti­ons of a higher-social system developed feudalism, it was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century.

The greatest number of borrowings has come from French. They referred to the various fields of social, scientific and cultural life. A large portion of them (41%) is scientific and technical terms,

Borrowings enter the language in two ways;

1) Through oral speech (by immediate contact between the peoples)

2) Through written speech (by indirect contact through books, etc.). 0ral borrowings took place chiefly in the early periods of history, whereas in recent times written borrowings' gained importance. Words borrowed orally (e.g. L. inch, mill, street) are usually short and they undergo more changes in the act of adoption. Written borrowings (e.g. Fr. communiqué, belletrist^v) preserve their spelling; they are often rather long and their assimilation, is a long and laborious.

Criteria of borrowings in English.

Though borrowed words undergo changers in the adopting langu­age, they preserve some of their former peculiarities for a comparatively long period.

In some cases the pronunciation of the word, it’s spelling and the correlation between sounds and letters show I waltz^vi[wo:lz] (Ger.), psychology (Gr.), souffle^vii(Fr.), buffet^viii(Fr.).

The initial position of the sounds [v, dз, з] of the letters (x, j, z) is a sure sign that the word has been borrowed, e. g. volcano (It.), vase (Fr.), vaccine^ix(L.); jungle (Hindi), gesture (L.), giant (O. Fr.); zeal^x(L.), zero (Fr.), zinc (Fr.), etc.

The morphological structure of the word and its grammatical forms may also bear witness to the word being adopted from another language. Thus, the suffixes in the words neurosis (Gr., pl. neurosis) and violoncello (It.) betray the foreign origin of the words. The same is true of the irregular plural forms: Fr. beau [bou] (sing.)- beaux [bouz] (pl.) ; Lat. bacterium (sing.)- bacteria (pl.); Gr. parenthesis (sing.) - parentheses^xi(pl.).

Last but not least is the lexical meaning of the word. Thus, the concept denoted by the words ricksha (w), pagoda (China) make us suppose that we deal with borrowings

Sometimes the form of the word and its meaning in Modern English enable us to tell the immediate source of borrowing. For instance, if the digraph ch is sounded as [ ], the word is a late French borrowing: echelon^xii, chaufeur^xiii, chauvinism, chief^xiv. Ifch stands for [k], it came through Greek: archaic, architect, chronology, chaos, Crimea. If ch pronounced as [t ], it is either early borrowing (chase (O. Fr),cherry (L.), Chime (Lat.) ,chauffer^xvor a word of Anglo-Saxon origin (choose, child, chin).