Lexicology is defined as “the study of lexis , understood as a stock of words in a given language, i.e. its vocabulary or lexicon” (Jackson Amvela, 2007)Lexicology deals with simple words in all their aspects, but also with complex and compound words, the meaningful units of language.Four fields related to lexicology: Semantics, morphology, etymology, lexicography.
LEXICOLOGY UNIT The word lexicology derives from Greek with lexis meaning word, or the total stock of words and logos meaning science or theory discourse Thus, lexicology, a branch of linguistics, is the study of words Lexicology is defined as “the study of lexis , understood as a stock of words in a given language, i.e its vocabulary or lexicon” (Jackson & Amvela, 2007) Lexicology deals with simple words in all their aspects, but also with complex and compound words, the meaningful units of language Four fields related to lexicology: Semantics, morphology, etymology, lexicography MORPHOLOGY Morphology is the study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units which may constitute words or parts of words They are „smallest‟ or „minimal‟ in the sense that they cannot be broken down further on the basis of meaning the morpheme is “the smallest unit that has meaning or serves a grammatical function in a language Morphemes are the atoms with which words are built.” (Katamba 2005: 29) They are „meaningful‟ because we can specify the kind of relationship they have with the non-linguistic world im-, in-, il-, ir- are variants of the same morpheme Free morphemes are morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words Business English Page of 10 Ex: open, boy, desire, man, cat, chair, farm, etc lexical morphemes: girl, man, house, tiger, yellow, etc functional morphemes: and, but, when, because, near, etc Bound morphemes which are the forms that cannot normally stand alone and are typically attached to another form - Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes to make new words or to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem Derivational affixes" serve to alter the meaning of a word by building on a base, eg –s in writes helps to form the present tense form of the verb “to write” or when it is the predicate of a third person singular subject List of derivational morphemes includes suffixes such as –ish, -ly, -ment List of derivational morphemes includes prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, un- Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word There are only eight "inflectional affixes" in English, and these are all suffixes English has the following inflectional suffixes, which serve a variety of grammatical functions when added to specific types of words These grammatical functions are shown to the right of each suffix • -s noun plural: girl – girls; boy – boys; flower – flowers; • -'s noun possessive: boy‟s; child‟s; student‟s; • -s verb present tense third person singular: eats; sings; works; • -ing verb present participle/gerund: eating; singing; working; Business English Page of 10 • -ed verb simple past tense: worked; played; occured; • -en verb past perfect participle: eaten; taken; written; • -er adjective comparative: colder; older; happier; • -est adjective superlative: coldest; oldest; happiest; Inflectional affixes are relational markers that fit words for use in syntax English has over sixty common derivational affixes There are kinds of derivational affixes A root may or may not stand alone as a word It is not further divisible into smaller parts that have a meaning Root creation refers to the building of a word that has no relationship whatsoever with any previously existing word If roots are equivalent to a word in the language and carry the notional meaning of this word into all the new words they form, they are considered free roots (eg civil in civility, region in regional or person in personify) A bound root is combined with other morphemes to form a meaningful word (receive, conceive, perceive, deceive share the same bound root which is –ceive) They are totally barred from occurring independently Any concrete realization of a morpheme in a given utterance is called a „morph‟ Hence, the forms caf, chair, farm, -ing, -s, and -er are all morphs Morphs are the actual forms used to realize morphemes Ex: cats: morphs (cat +s) Allomorphs are versions of one morpheme Ex: -s and –es are two allomorphs of the same morpheme “plural” Business English Page of 10 Complex words: a morpheme root + one or more affixes Morphs should not be confused with syllables The basic difference between the two is that while morphs are manifestations of morphemes and represent a specific meaning, syllables are paris of words which are isolated only on the basis of pronunciation Simple words are all free morphemes Complex (or derived) words are formed from simpler words by the addition of affixes or some other kind of morphological modification Compound words, or simply compounds, are formed by combining two or more words (free morphemes) with or without morphological modification, e.g doorknob, cheeseburger, pound saver, wild-animal-tamer The construction of words and parts of words, and the distinction between the different types of words are all based on morphological analysis SEMANTICS Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences Pragmatic semantics studies the meaning of utterances in context Sentence semantics handles the meaning of sentences as well as meaning relations between sentences Lexical semantics deals with the meaning of words and the meaning relations that are internal to the vocabulary of a language Semantics is usually approached from one of two perspectives: philosophical or linguistic Business English Page of 10 Philosophical semantics is concerned with the logical properties of language, the nature of formal theories and the language of logic Linguistic semantics involves all aspects of meaning in natural language, from the meaning of complex utterances in specific contexts to that of individual sounds in syllables Conceptual meaning covers the basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed by the literal use of a word Associative meaning/connotation covers the components of a word These components would be part of the conceptual meaning Ex: connotations of the word „needle‟ are pain, illness, blood, drugs, thread (a very thin fibre) or knitting Semantic features: basic elements in differentiating the meaning of each word in a language from every other word Ex: child: [+human], [-adult]/[-mature],[ +_male] Hen: [+animate], [+bird], [+fowl], [+grown], [+female] „Acceptability‟ and „meaningfulness‟, belong more to the area of sentence semantics, are distinct but related concepts ETYMOLOGY Etymology can be defined as the study of the whole history of words, not just their origin Some difficulties faced by etymological studies: Some words are not etymologically related to ancient forms difficult to indicate their origin Business English Page of 10 Some terms can not be specified the exact time they entered the language There can be no true or original meaning Etymology also makes reference to cognates (i.e words related in form) in other languages For borrowed words: - Gives the source language, the date when the borrowing took place - Supplies the previous history of the words LEXICOGRAPHY Lexicography has been defined as “A special technique, the writing and compilation of dictionaries” lexicographical compilation may be considered as derived from lexicological theory (Jackson 1988: 248) It is in this sense that lexicography can be regarded as ‘applied lexicology’ It also refers to the principles that underlie the process of compiling and editing dictionaries Lexicography is the compilation and writing of dictionaries Lexicography refers to a technique, the writing and compilation of dictionaries Lexicology is not only the branch of linguistics providing an input to lexicography morphology, syntax and phonology Sociolinguistics contributes too (language variety, information on style and registers) Lexicology is only one possible level of language analysis, others being phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics Lexicology and phonology: Business English Page of 10 Ex: pill and bill, sheep and ship, meat and meal > they differ only in one sound unit Suprasegmental or prosodic features such as stress can be phonological difference between words Ex: ex‟port (v) vs „export (n) Stress in compounds also shows the relevance of phonology and lexicology Ex: a) compound b) Noun phrase blackboard black board blackbird black bird greyhound grey hound White house white house Lexicology and syntax: Syntax is concerned with the relationships between words in constructions and the way these words are put together to form sentences Q: Are people able to speak or understand the language if they know the meanings of all the words in a large dictionary? If we say someone knows English, it means that they‟ve acquired a set of rules (the rules of syntax) to produce English sentences, the rules that help them understand the sentences of another person speaking the language “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” proposed by Chomsky (1957) This sentence is built according to the rules of English syntax but it is unacceptable on lexical grounds Syntax: general (deals with rules and regularities); lexicology: particular (the way individual words operate and affect other words in the same context) THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY Business English Page of 10 Every word is involved in a network of associations which connect it with other terms in the language These associations similarity of meaning, purely formal (forms), forms and meaning Paradigmatic relations (relations in absentia) The terms involved consist of a word present in the utterance and others that are not actually in the same utterance but that are substitutable for it in that context Ex: difficult is paradigmatically related with „easy‟, „ funny‟ or „silly‟ in the expressions such as „an easy question‟, a funny question‟, „a silly question‟ Syntagmatic relations: the words involved are actually co-occurrent items (relations in praesentia) „Semantic field‟ or „semantic domain‟ are used alternatively for the terms „lexical field‟ or „lexical set‟ A semantic field is a set of words with identifiable semantic affinities Ex: The lexical/semantic field of kinship terms: father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, etc The lexical/ssemantic field of color terms: green, blue, red, black, white, etc A lexical field or lexical set can be defined as „a named area of meaning in which lexemes interrelate and define each other in specific ways.‟ (Crystal, 1995) Ex: lexical field of kinship terms: father, mother, son, daughter, cousin, nephew, etc The vocabulary of a language is essentially a dynamic and well-integrated system of lexemes structured by relationships of meaning Business English Page of 10 http://buihoaivn.blogspot.com/2011/10/semantics-everyday.html WORD FAMILIES Words are grouped into „families‟ on the basis of their morphology, both their inflections and their derivations Words are grouped in fields on the basis of an element of shared meaning A family consists of a base form, its possible inflectional forms, and the words derived from it by prefixation and suffixation Bauer and Nation (1993) develop the notion of word families by proposing a set of levels into which families are divided The levels are established on a number of criteria relating to the fequency, productivity, regularity and predictability of the affixes in English Bauer and Nation (1993) establish seven levels of family relationship WORD CLASSES Traditional grammars of English distinguish eight parts of speech: noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection More modern grammarians have elaborated these parts of speech into further classes For example, Quirk et al (1985: 67) distinguish the following: (a) closed classes: preposition, pronoun, determiner, conjunction, auxiliary verb; The closed classes contain the so-called „grammatical‟ or „function‟ words, which generally serve the grammatical construction of sentences They are smal! classes, with a restricted and largely unchanging membership (b) open classes: noun, adjective, verb, adverb; Business English Page of 10 The open classes, by contrast, are large, and they are constantly being added to The members of the open classes are the „content‟ words, carrying the main meaning of a sentence; they are the words likely to be retained in a telegram or a headline (c) lesser categories: numeral, interjection; (d) a small number of words of unique function: the particle not and the infinitive marker to A word may belong to more than one word class Business English Page 10 of 10 ... The open classes, by contrast, are large, and they are constantly being added to The members of the open classes are the „content‟ words, carrying the main meaning of a sentence; they are the. .. Page of 10 Philosophical semantics is concerned with the logical properties of language, the nature of formal theories and the language of logic Linguistic semantics involves all aspects of meaning... „families‟ on the basis of their morphology, both their inflections and their derivations Words are grouped in fields on the basis of an element of shared meaning A family consists of a base form,