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Чрділелі Т.В.

Курс лекцій з дисципліни

“Порівняльна лексикологія англійської та української мов”

Для студентів денної та заочної форми навчання спеціальності 7.030507 “Переклад” Передмова

Збірник лекцій з порівняльної лексикології англійської та української мов призначається для студентів 3 курсу спеціальності 7.030507 “Переклад”.

Головна мета вивчення цієї дисципліни полягає у тому, щоб сформувати у студентів цілісне уявлення про одну з найважливіших частин лінгвістики – лексикологію; на матеріалі і за допомогою англійської та української мов представити основні категорії лексикології і типології та висвітлити специфічні властивості лексичної системи англійської мови у порівнянні з лексичними системами рідної мови та споріднених мов. Курс закладає основи наукового підходу до порівняльного аспекту лексичних явищ та категорій рідної та іноземної мови.

Цей предмет має велике пізнавальне та навчально-виховне значення, адже його вивчення, яке грунтується на всебічному порівнянні та співвіднесенні мовних одиниць, засобів їх поєднання та функціонування в словосполученні незаперечно переконує студентів у тому, що українська мова за своїм лексичним багатством і різноманітністю засобів вираження стоїть врівень з англійською та іншими світовими мовами.

Lecture 1

Contrastive typology, its aims and methods of investigation

Typology as a branch of linguistics aims at establishing similar general linguistic categories serving as a basis for the classification of languages of different types, irrespective of their genealogical relationship.

Contrastive typology (порівняльна типологія), as the notion itself reveals, represents a linguistic subject of typology based on the method of comparison. Like typology proper, which has hitherto been practiced, contrastive typology also aims at establishing the most general structural types of languages on the basis of their dominant or common phonetical, morphological, lexical and syntactic features. Contrastive typology may equally treat dominant or common features only, as well as divergent features / phenomena only, which are found in languages of the same structural type (synthetic, analytical agglutinative, etc) or in languages of different structural types, (synthetic and analytical, agglutinative and incorporative, etc).

The number of different languages which may be simultaneously subjected to typological contrasting at a time is not limited and is always predetermined by the aim pursued. The latter may be either theoretical or practical and involve the investigation of common or both common and divergent features/phenomena in the соrresponding planes /aspects of the contrasted languages. The typological study of such features/phenomena, which usually represent certain regularities in the structure of different languages may be facilitated (or made more difficult ) by the existence or absence of some result hitherto obtained in the languages concerned for some other purpose and by means of other methods of linguistic investigation.

Contrastive typological investigations may be focused on various linguistic phenomena ranging from separate signs of the phonological, morphological, lexical or syntactic plane to several languages. Any of these signs, features/phenomena or languages may be contrasted either synchronically or diachronically. But whatever the language features/phenomena or the planes/aspects to which they belong and irrespective of the number of languages involved, the final aims of major typological investigations are the following 1) to identify аnd classify accordingly the main common and divergent features chara­cteristic of the languages under investigation; 2) to draw from these common or divergent features respectively the isomorphic regularities (закономірності) and the allomorphic singularities (відмінності) in the languages contrasted; 3) to establish on the basis of the obtained isomorphic features the typical language structures and the types of languages; 4) to perform on the basis of the obtained practical data a truly scientific classification of all languages of the world; 5) to establish on this basis the universal features/phenomena which are pertaining to each single language of the world.

Contrastive typological investigations are manifold and they are often referred to as separate typologies, the main of which are as follows:

1. Universal typology which treats all languages of the world and aims at singling out in them such features/phenomena which are common in all languages. These features are referred to as absolute universals. Their identification is carried out not only on the basis of the existing (living) languages but also on the basis of dead lan­guages like Sanskrit, ancient Greek or Latin. Also the hypothetic abstract etalon language created by typologists for the sake of investi­gation is widely made use of. This "language" plays a very impor­tant role in foreseeing the quantitative representation of various features/phenomena in different languages. Universal typology provi­des the etalon language with all necessary data concerning the quantitative representation of various phonetical, lexical and gramma­tical features or means of expression.

2. Special or charactereological typology, in contrast to universal typology, usually treats concrete languages, one of which is, as a rule, the native tongue. The language in which the description of com­mon and divergent features is performed is usually referred to as metalanguage. In our case the metalanguage is English.

3. General typology has for its object the most general phone­tic, morphological, lexical or syntactic features. This typological approach to the morphological structure of words in different langua­ges enabled the German scholar W. Humboldt to suggest the first ever typological classification of languages on the morphological basis.

4. Partial typology treats a restricted range of language features/ phenomena, for example, the system of vowels/consonants, the means of word-formation, and the syntactic level units. As a result, several level typologies are distinguished: a) typology of the phonetic/phonological level units; b) typology of the morphological level units; c) typo­logy of the lexical level units; d) typology of the syntactic level units.

5. Areal typology (ареальна типологія) investigates common and divergent features in languages of a particular geographical area with respect to their mutual influence of one language upon the other.

A scientific generalization of such long-term influences in the phonetic/ phonological, lexical or even grammatical aspects of different langua­ges of multinational areas like Dagestan, the Balkans, Transcarpathia, Transcaucasia and others is of considerable theoretical and practical value.

6. Structural typology has for its object the means of gramma­tical expression, the order of constituent parts at the level of words, word-combinations and sentences. Structural typology aims at identi­fying mainly the dominant features which characterize the structural type of each of the contrasted languages.

7. Functional typology, as can be understood from its name, treats the frequency of language units in speech, the regularities and parti­cularities of their use with the aim of expressing different meanings.

8. Content typology investigates the types of possible meanings expressed by different language units and their forms in the contrasted languages

Worth mentioning are also qualitative typology, investiga­ting predominant features (phonetic, morphological, syntactic) in the contrasted languages, quantitative typology (introduced by J. Greenberg), onomasiological, semasiological and some other typologies.