ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY

LECTURE 1.

THEME: Introduction.The object of Lexicology

Lexicology (from Greek“lexis”= word and‘logos'=learning) is the part of linguistics dealing with vocabulary of a language and the properties of words as the main units of language.

The word 'vocabulary is used to denote the system formed by the sum total of all the words that the language possesses.

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 andphonological unit.

The general study of words and vocabulary is known as ' general lexicology.

'Special lexicology' devotes its attention to the description of the characteristic peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given language.We are going to study the present day English words and vocabulary.Thus well dwell on the problems of^“special lexicology".

It goes without saying that every special lexicology is based on the principles of general lexicology, and the latter, forms a part of general linguistics.

The evolution of any vocabulary, as well as of its single elements, formsthe object of"historical lexicology”. This branch of linguistics discusses the origin of various words, their change and development.

'Descriptive lexicology"deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development. It deals with the English word in its morphological and semantical structures,investigating the interdependence btw.these two aspects. The distinction btw. the two basically different ways in which language may be viewed; the historical or diachronic (Greek “dia”=through +”chromos”=time) and the descriptive or synchronic (Greek “syn”=together+”chronos”=time) is a methodological distinction, a difference of approach,artificially separating for the purpose of study what in real language is inseparable because actually every linguistic structure and system exists in a state of constant development.

This distinction btw.a synchronic and diachronic approach was put forwardby the Swiss philologist Ferdinand de Saussure(1857-1918).But we cannot accept either the rigorous separation btw. the two or his axiom thatsynchronic linguistics is concerned with system and diachronic linguistics with single units. Subsequent investigations have shown the possibility and the necessity of introducing the historical point of view into semantic studies.

Language is the reality of thought and thought develops together with the development of society. Therefore language and its vocabulary must be studied in the light of social history.

Thus, the important distinction btw.adiachronic and synchronic approach must be borne in mind, but in language reality the two aspectsare interdependent and cannot be understood without one another. Everylinguistic investigation must strike a reasonable balance btw. the two.

This course of English Lexicology falls intotwo main parts: the treatment of the English wordas a structure and the treatment of English vocabulary as a system. The theoretical value of lexicology becomes obvious if we realize thatit forms the study of one of the three main aspects of language: i.e. its vocabulary, its grammar and sound system.

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Lexicology came into being to meet the needs of many different branches of applied linguistics,namely of lexicography,literary criticism,and foreign language teaching .Lexicology plays a prominent part in the general linguistic training of every philologist by summing up the knowledge acquired at the English lessons. It also imparts the necessary skills of using different kinds of dictionaries and reference books and prepares for future independent work on the language.

LECTURE 2.

THEME: Some general problems of the theory of the word.

The definition of every basic notion is a very hard task; 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; when used in actual speech, it may occur in different word-forms, 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, philosophy and psychology. All attempts to characterize the word are necessarily specific for each domain of science, and therefore considered one-sided by the representatives of all other domains and criticized for incompleteness.

Within the scope of linguistics the word has been defined syntactically, semantically, phonologically and by combining various approaches. »

It has been syntactically defined for ex. as "the minimum sentence” by H.Sweet and much later by L.Bloomfield as 'a minimum free form’. 'Free forms’ are later defined as "forms which occur as sentences'.E.Sapir 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 ". Sapir,also points out one more very important characteristics of the word, itsindivisibility: "It cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning.

The essence of indivisibility will be clear from a comparison of the article “a” and the prefix ‘a’ in "alion”and^“alive”."A lion"is a word group because, we can separate its, elements and insert other words btw.them: "a living lion, a dead lion. 'Alive’ is a word: it is indivisible, i.e. structurally impermeable: nothing can be inserted btw. its elements. John Lyons points out that internal cohesion of the word,should be discussed in terms of two criteria: “positional mobility “ and“uninterruptability”.

Summing up the review of different definitions we can conclude that they are bound to be strongly dependent upon the line of approach, the aim the scholar has in view.

For a comprehensive word theory, therefore a description seems more appropriate than a definition.

The problem of creating a word theory based upon the materialistic understanding of the relationship btw. word and thought, on the one hand, and language and society, on the other , has been one of the most discussed for many years. The efforts of many eminent scholars such as V. Vinogradov, A. Smirnitsky, O. Ahmanova- to name but a few, resulted in throwing light on this problem and achieved a clear exposition of the word as a basic unit of the language. Let’s summarize the main points.

1. The word is one of the fundamental units of language .

2. It is a dialectical unity of form and content. Its content or meaning is not identical to notion , but .it may reflect human notions and this sense may be considered as the form of their existence. Notions fixed m the meanings of words are formed as generalized and approximately correct reflections of reality, therefore in signifying them words reflect reality in their content.

3. The acoustic aspect of the word serves to name the objects of reality not to reflect them. In this sense the word may be regarded as a sign. That is to say ,when a word first comes into existence it is always built out of the elements already existing in the language and according to the existing patterns, otherwise it cannot be understood and will be useless in the process of communication.

LECTURE 3.

THEME: The Etymology of English Words.

1. The Origin of English Words.

According to this feature the word stock may be subdivided into two main sets. The elements of one are native,the elements of the other areborrowed.

A native word is a word which belongs to the original English stock.

A loan (borrowed) word is a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape,spelling,paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language.

The native words are further subdivided by diachronic linguists into those of theIndo - European stock and those ofCommon Germanic origin. They fall into definite semantic groups. Among them we findterms of kinship: father,mother,son,daughter,brother; words namingthe most important objects and phenomena of nature: sun,moon, star, wind, water, wood,hill, stone, tree;names of animals and birds:bull,cat,crow,goose,wolf;parts of the human body: ear, arm, eye, foot, he art;most frequent verbs: bear,come,sit,stand;most numerals also belong here.

A much bigger part of this native vocabulary layer is formed by words of theCommon Germanic stock, i.e. of wordshavingparallelsinGerman,Norwegian,Dutch,etc. but none in Russian or French. The following list may serve as an illustration of their general character. The nouns are: summer, winter, storm,rain,ice,ground, bridge, house, shop, room, cloth, hat, shirt, shoe, life, rest; the verbs :bake,burn,buy,drive,hear,keep, learn, make,meet;the adjectives:broad, dead, deaf, deep.

Together with the words of the common Indo - European stock these Common Germanic words form the bulk of the most frequent elements used in any style of speech. They constitute no less than 80% of the 500 most frequent words.

The part played by borrowings in the vocabulary of a language depends upon the history of each given language conditioned by direct linguistic contacts and political,economic and cultural relationship btw. nations. The very fact that up to 70% of the English vocabulary consist of loan words,only 30% of the words are native is due to specific conditions of the English language development.

The Roman invasion, the introduction of Christianity,the Danish and Norman conquests and in modern times the specific featuresof British colonialism combined to cause important 1 changes in the vocabulary.