1)Lexicology as a science. Lexicology and other sciences. Main units stud' d in lexicology

Lexicology is the part of linguistics which studies words , their nature and meaning , words' elements relations between words (semantical relations), word groups and the whole lexicon .The term first appeared in the 1820s, though there were lexicologists in essence before the term was coined.Computational lexicology as a related field (in the same way that computational linguistics is related to linguistics) deals with the computational study of dictionaries and their contents. An allied science to lexicology is lexicography, which also studies words in relation with dictionaries - it is actually concerned with the inclusion of words in dictionaries and from that perspective with the whole lexicon . Therefore lexicography is the theory and practice of composing dictionaries. Sometimes lexicography is considered to be a part or a branch of lexicology, but the two disciplines should not be mistaken: only lexicologists who do write dictionaries are lexicographers. It is said that lexicography is the practical lexicology, it is practically oriented though it has its own theory, while the pure lexicology is mainly theoretical.

Other sciences

Phraseology

Another branch of lexicology, together with lexicography is phraseology . It studies compound meanings of two or more words, as in "raining cats and dogs". Because the whole meaning of that phrase is much different from the meaning of words included alone, phraseology examines how and why such meanings .come in everyday use and what possibly are the laws governing these word combinations. Phraseology also investigates idioms.

Etymology

Since lexicology studies the meaning of words and their semantic relations, it often explores the origin and history of a word, i.e. its etymology. Etymologists analyse related languages using a technique known as the comparative method. In this way,word root have been found that can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the Proto Indo-European language .

Etymology can be helpful in clarifying some questionable meanings, spellings, etc., and is also used in lexicography. For example, etymological dictionaries provide words with their historical origins, change and development.

Lexicography

A good example of lexicology at work, that everyone is familiar with, is that of dictionaries and thesaurus . Dictionaries are books or computer programs (or databases) that actually represent lexicographical work; they are opened and purposed for the use of public.

As there are many different types of dictionaries, there are many different types of lexicographers.Questions that lexicographers are concerned with are for example the difficulties in defining what simple words such as 'the' mean, and how compound or complex words, or words with many meanings can be clearly explained. Also which words to keep in and which not to include in a dictionary.

Lexicology studies various lexical units . They are : morphemes , word, variable word-groups & phraseological units.The word is the basic unit of the language system. The word is a structural & semantic entity within the language system . The word as well as any linguistic sign is a two-faced unit possessing both form & content or , to be more exact , sound-form & meaning.

Each separate word has been traditionally thought to have a “concept” associated with it. The ways in which the dev-t of meaning is influenced by reality deserve attention as well. Things that are connected in reality come to be naturally connected in language too. The word and the notion constitute dialectial unity. This unity does not presuppose their absolute identity. One notion can find its expression in a single word as well as in a group of words. blue eyes – blue of eye, kind-hearted – kind of heart.

2. Morphological structure of words. Types of morphemes. Morphological classification of words

A morpheme is also an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. But unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes may consist of a single morpheme. That is why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language unit.According to the role they play in constructing words, morphemes are subdivided into roots and affixes. The latter are further subdivided, according to their position, into prefixes, suffixes and infixes.

When a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word, what remains is astem (or astern base). The stem expresses the lexical and the part of speech meaning. hearty and for the paradigm heart (sing.) - hearts (pi.)1 the stem may be represented as heart-. This stem is a single morpheme, it contains nothing but the root, so it is a simple stem. It is also a free stem because it is homonymous to the word heart.Bound stems are especially characteristic of loan words. The point may be illustrated by the following French borrowings: arrogance, charity, courage, coward, distort, involve, notion, legible and tolerable, to give but a few.2 After the affixes of these words are taken away the remaining elements are: arrog-, char-, com-, cow-, -tort, -volve, not-, leg-, toler-, which do not coincide with any semantically related independent words.

We shall now present the different types of morphemes starting with the root.It will at once be noticed that the root in English is very often homonymous with the word.A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class, c f. -en, -y, -less in hearten, hearty, heartless. For instance, both -ify and -er are verb suffixes, but the first characterizes causative verbs, such as horrify, purify, rarefy, simplify, whereas the second is mostly typical of frequentative verbs: flicker, shimmer, .twitter and the like.

A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying meaning, c f. hearten - dishearten. It is only with verbs and statives that a prefix may serve to distinguish one part of speech from another,like in earth n -unearth v, sleep n - asleep (stative). It is interesting that as a prefix en- may carry the same meaning of being or bringing into a certain state as the suffix -en, c f. enable, encamp, endanger, endear, enslave and fasten, darken, deepen, lengthen, strengthen.

In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest component of word, or other linguistic unit, that has semantic meaning.

The concept of word and morpheme are different, a morpheme may or may not stand alone. One or several morphemes compose a word. A morpheme is free if it can stand alone (ex:"one", "possible"), or bound if it is used exclusively alongside a free morpheme ex:"im" in impossible). Its actual phonetic representation is the morphmorph , with the different morphs ("in-", "im-") representing the same morpheme being grouped as its allomorphs.

Types

• Free morphemes , like town and dog, can appear with other lexemes(as in town hall or dog house) or they can stand alone, i.e., "free".

Bound morphemes like "un-" appear only together with other morphemes to form a lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and suffixes. Unproductive, non-affix morphemes that exist only in bound form are known as"cranberry" morphemes, from the "cran" in that very word.

Derivational morphemes can be added to a word to create (derive) another word: the addition of "-ness" to "happy," for example, to give "happiness." They carry semantic information.

Inflectional morphemes modify a word's tense, number, aspect, and so on, without deriving a new word or a word in a new grammatical category (as in the "dog" morpheme if written with the plural marker morpheme "-s" becomes "dogs"). They carry grammatical information.

Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme, e.g., the plural marker in English is sometimes realized as /-z/,/-s/ or /-ɨz/.

The morphemic structure of all the other words in this word-family is obvious — they are segmentable as consisting of at least two distinct morphemes. They may be further subdivided into: 1) those formed by affixation or affixational derivatives consisting of a root morpheme and one or more affixes: hearten, dishearten, heartily, heartless, hearty, heartiness; 2) compounds, in which two, or very rarely more, stems simple or derived are combined into a lexical unit: sweetheart, heart-shaped, heart-broken or 3) derivational compounds where words of a phrase are joined together by composition and affixation: kind-hearted. This last process is also called phrasal derivation ((kind heart) + -ed)).There exist word-families with several tmsegmentable members, the derived elements being formed by conversion or clipping. The word-family with the noun father as its centre contains alongside affixational derivatives fatherhood, fatherless, fatherly a verb father ‘to adopt’ or ‘to originate’ formed by conversion. We shall now present the different types of morphemes starting with the root. It will at once be noticed that the root in English is very often homonymous with the word. This fact is of fundamental importance as it is one of the most specific features of the English language arising from its general grammatical system on the one hand, and from its phonemic system on the other. The influence of the analytical structure of the language is obvious. The second point, however, calls for some explanation. Actually the usual phonemic shape most favoured in English is one single stressed syllable: bear, find, jump, land, man, sing, etc. This does not give much space for a second morpheme to add classifying lexico-grammatical meaning to the lexical meaning already present in the root-stem, so the lexico-grammatical meaning must be signalled by distribution. In the phrases a morning’s drive, a morning’s ride, a morning’s walk the words drive, ride and walk receive the lexico-grammatical meaning of a noun not due to the structure of their stems, but because they are preceded by a genitive. An English word does not necessarily contain formatives indicating to what part of speech it belongs. This holds true even with respect to inflectable parts of speech, i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives. Not all roots are free forms, but productive roots, i.e. roots capable of producing new words, usually are. The semantic realisation of an English word is therefore very specific. Its dependence on context is further enhanced by the widespread occurrence of homonymy both among root morphemes and affixes. Note how many words in the following statement might be ambiguous if taken in isolation: A change of work is as good as a rest. The above treatment of the root is purely synchronic, as we have taken into consideration only the facts of present-day English. But the same problem of the morpheme serving as the main signal of a given lexical meaning is studied in etymology. Thus, when approached historically or diachronically the word heart will be classified as Common Germanic. One will look for cognates, i.e. words descended from a common ancestor. The cognates of heart are the Latin cor, whence cordial ‘hearty’, ‘sincere’, and so cordially and cordiality, also the Greek kardia, whence English cardiac condition. The cognates outside the English vocabulary are the Russian cepдце, the German Herz, the Spanish corazon and other words. To emphasise the difference between the synchronic and the diachronic treatment, we shall call the common element of cognate words in different languages not their root but their radical element.