3. Word as the main unit studied in lexicology. Its main characteristic features

A word is the smallest free form (an item that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic (content) in a language , in contrast to a morpheme, the smallest unit of meaning. A word may consist of only one morpheme (e.g. so, very), but a single morpheme may not be able to exist as a free form (e.g. the English plural morpheme -s).

Typically, a word will include a root or stem , and it may also include one or more affixes . Words can be combined to create other units of language, such as phrases ,clauses , and or sentences . A word consisting of two or more stems joined together form a compound .

Word may refer to a spoken word or a written word, or sometimes, the abstract concept behind either. Spoken words are made up of phonemes ten words of graphemes .

Features

In the Minimalist school of theoretical syntax , words (also called lexical items in the literature) are construed as "bundles" of linguistic features that are united into a structure with form and meaning. For example, the word "bears" has semantic features (it denotes real-world objects,bears ),category features (it is a noun),number features (it is plural and must agree with verbs, pronouns, and demonstratives in its domain),phonological features (it is pronounced a certain way), etc.

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4. Derivational structure of words

There are two types of Word Formation Rules (aside from merely expanding the lexicon with new words): Lexical Derivation and Compounding.

Words created by word-derivation have in terms of word-formation analysis only one derivational base and one derivational affix, e.g. cleanness (from clean), to overestimate (from to estimate), chairmanship (from chairman), openhandedness (from openhanded), etc. Some derived words have no derivational affixes, because derivation is achieved through conversion , e.g. to paper (from paper), a fall (from to fall), etc.

There are 2 ways of forming words in word-derivation:

1) AFFIXATION – is generally defined as the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to different types of bases. Derived words formed by affixation may be the result of one or several applications of word-formation rule and thus the stems of words making up a word-cluster enter into derivational relations of different degrees.

In conformity with the division of derivational affixes into suffixes and prefixes affixation is subdivided into suffixation and prefixation.

Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes.

According to the available word-counts of prefixal derivatives the greatest number are verbs — 42.4%, adjectives comprise 33,5% and nouns make up 22.4%. To give some examples.-

prefixal verbs: to enrich, to coexist, to disagree, to undergo, etc.;

prefixal adjectives: anti-war, biannual, uneasy, super-human, etc.;

prefixal nouns: ex-champion, co-author, disharmony, subcommittee, etc.

Two types of prefixes are to be distinguished:

1) those not correlated with any independent word (either notional or functional), e.g. un-, dis-, re-, pre-, post-, etc.; and

2) those correlated with functional words (prepositions or preposition like adverbs), e.g. out-, over-, up-, under-, etc.

Suffixation is the formation of words with the help of suffixes. Suffixes usually modify the lexical meaning of the base and transfer words to a, different part of speech. There are suffixes however, which do not shift words from one part of speech into another; a suffix of this kind usually transfers a word into a different semantic group, e.g. a concrete noun becomes an abstract one, as is the case with child — childhood, friend — friendship, etc.

Words like reappearance, unreasonable, denationalise, are often qualified as prefixal-suffixal derivatives. The reader should clearly realise that this qualification is relevant only in terms of the constituent morphemes such words are made up of, i.e. from the angle of morphemic analysis. From the point of view of derivational analysis such words are mostly either suffixal or prefixal derivatives, e.g. sub-atomic = sub- + (atom + + -ic), unreasonable = un- + (reason + -able), denationalise = de- + + (national + -ize), discouragement = (dis- + courage) + -ment.

2) CONVERSION – transformation of one part of speech into another where the word paradigm (set of grammatical forms belonging to a word as a part of speech) serves as the only means of WB.

a) noun-verb conversion (anger->to anger, auction->to auction, a pocket->to pocket)

b) verb-noun conversion (to contest->contest, to fall->fall, to catch->catch)

100. adjective-noun conversion (provincial, intellectual, principle->principal)