Lexicology is a branch of linguistic – l 1
Lexicology is a branch of linguistics the science of language. The term lexicology is composed of 2 Greek morphemes: -lexis and –logos. Lexis means a word/a phrase and –logos denotes learning a department of knowledge. So the literal meaning of the term lexicology is the study of words. But the literal meaning gives only a general notion of the aims and the content of this branch of linguistics. Lexicology as a branch of linguistic has its own aims and methods of scientific research. Its basic task is a study and a systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use. Lexicology is concerned with words variable veb-groups, phraseological units and with morphemes which make up words. Lexicology is traditionally subdivided into general lexicology and special lexicology.
General lexicology is a part of general linguistics which studies vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language.
Special lexicology is a lexicology of a particular language. It deals with the study and description of its vocabulary and vocabulary units. Special lexicology devotes its attention to the description of the characteristic peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given language. We can also speak about contrastive and comparative lexicology the aims of which are to study the correlation between the vocabularies of two / more languages and find out the correspondences between the vocabulary units of the languages under comparison.
The evolution of every vocabulary forms of the object of historical lexicology/etymology. This branch of linguistics discuss the origin of various words, their change and development and investigates the linguistic and extra linguistic courses modified their structure meaning and usage.
Descriptive lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a given language at given stage of its development. It studies the functions of words and their specific structure. The descriptive lexicology of English deals with English words and their morphological and semantical structure and investigates the interdependence between these 2 aspects. Lexicology also studies all kind of semantic groups and semantic relations – synonymy, antonym, hyponymy and semantic fields. Meaning relations are studied in semantic. That is the branch of lexicology which deals with meaning.
Approaches to language studies.
There are 2 principal approaches in linguistics to the study of language. The synchronic and diachronic. The term synchronic is of Greek origin and syn – means “together with” and chronos – means “time”. The word diachronic is of Greek origin too: dia – means “through” and chronos – “time”. With regard to special lexicology the synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language at a given time for instance at the present time. It is special descriptive lexicology that deals with the vocabulary and the vocabulary units of a particular language at a certain time. A course in modern English lexicology is a course in special descriptive lexicology. Its object of study is the English vocabulary as it exist at the present time. The diachronic approach in terms of special lexical deals with the evolution of the vocabulary units of a language as time goes by. An English historic lexicology is concerned with the origin of English vocabulary units, their change and development.
The connection of lexicology with phonetics, stylistic, grammar and other.
The treatment of words in lexicology can’t be devoiced from the study of all the other elements of the language system on which words belong. It’s well understood that in reality in the actual process of communication all this elements are interdepended and stand in different relations in one another we separate them only for the convenience of study. The word is studied in several branches of linguistic and note in lexicology only. Lexicology is closely connected with general linguistic, the history of the language, phonetics, stylistics, grammar and such new branches of science as a social linguistic, paralinguistic, pragmalinguistic and some others. Paralinguistic is the study of non-verbal means of communication. Pragmalinguistic is the branch of linguistic concerned with the relations of speech and its uses and the influence of speech upon listeners. The importance of the connection between lexicology and phonetics is understood. If we remember that a word is an association of a giving group of sounds with a giving meaning.
Phonemes have no meaning of their own, but it served to distinguish English between meanings (bad-bed). Stylistic although from different angle studies many problems treated in lexicology. These are problems of meaning, connotation, synonymy, functional differentiation of vocabulary according to this sphere of communication and some other problems. A close connection between lexicology and grammar is condition by the manifold types between the objects of their study. Words seldom, occur in isolation there are arranged in certain partners conveim the relations between the things on which they stand. Alongside with a lexical meaning, words poses, grammatical meanings.
Lexicology is closely connected with social linguistic. It is well-known that the vocabulary of any language is never stable, never static, but it constantly changing, growing and decading. The changes in the vocabulary of language are due both to linguistic and extra-linguistic possess or to combination of both. The extra-linguistic possess are determint by the social nature of the language. In this respect there is a tremendous difference between lexicology on the one hand and phonology, morphology and the syntax on the other. Words to a far greeted degree of sounds grammatical forms/syntactical arrangements are subject to change. It is explained by a fact that the words-stock of a language directly and immediately directs to changes in social life.
Lexical units.
Lexicology studies various lexical units’ morphemes words, variable word groups and phraseological units. The word is the basic unit of language system the largest unit of the morphologic plane and the smallest unit on the syntactic plane of linguistic analyses. The word is a structural and semantic enterty with in a language system. The word is the unit of speech which service the purposes of human communication. The word can be understood as a total of the sounds which comprised it. The word viewed structurally poses several characteristics. The modern approach to word studies is based on distinguishing between the external and internal structure of the word. By external structure of the word is meant its morphological structure. E.g. in the world post impressionists the following morphemes can be distinguished the prefaces. –Post, -in, the route press, the noun –ion, -ist, the grammatical suffixes of priority –s. all this morphemes constitute the external structure of the word post impressionists. The internal structure of the word is commonly referred to as the words semantic structure. This is the words main aspects. Words can serve the purposes of human communication solely due to their meanings. Another structure of aspect of the word is its unity. The word poses both external / formal unity and semantic unity. The formal unity of the word can be best illustrated by comparing a word and a word group comprising identical components. For example the different between a black bird and blackbird is best explained by their relationship by their grammatical system of the language. The word blackbird which is characterised by unity possess a single grammatical framing. Black birds in the possessive. The first component black is not subject to any grammatical changes in the word group a black bird each component can get grammatical forms of its own. Other words can be inserted between the components which is impossible so far as the word is conserved as it would violate its unity. The same example may be used to illustrate what we mean by semantic unity. In the word group a black bird each of the meaningfull words conveys a separate concept. A bird means a kind of a living creature, black – color. The word conveys only one concept the type of the bird. This is one of the main features of any word it always conveys one concept. No matter how many component morphemes it may have in its external structure. Another structure of features of the word is its susceptibility to grammatical employment. In speech most words can be used in different grammatical forms in which their interrelations are realized. The word is a speech unit used for the purposes of the human communications materially representing a group of sound possessing a meaning susceptible to grammatical employment and characterized by formal and semantic unity.