2. Factors facilitating the typological study of lexicon

Like any other language aspect constituting a level of stratification lexical units are systematically arranged. Тhe systemic organisation of lexicon is conditioned in all languages by both lingual and extralingual factors which are of universal nature Among the extra lingual factors predermining the systemic organization of lexicon the following should be pointed out: 1) the physical and mental factors, 2) the environmental factors, and 3) the social factors.

A. It is only due to the physical needs of human beings and to a great extent due to those of living beings in general, that all languages have a great number of common notions designated by words such as live, eat, drink, sleep, wake, walk, run, jump, etc. And it is only due to the common mental activity of man that every single language of the world has the notions designated by such words as speak, think, ask, answer, decide, realize, understand and many others. Only as a result of a common natural environment, all languages have many common notions designated by words reflecting the many objects and phenomena surrounding us (the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky, thunder, lightning, rain), various species of living beings, plants, trees, fruits, colours, etc.

An equally important role in the formation of a common lexicon in all languages is played by the social factor which involves various social phenomena as well as relationships and activities of man.

These come to being already at the family level with its relationships (тоther, father, child, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, etc). All words and combinations of words designating the many notions, which appear due to the above-mentioned principles, constitute a large typologically common class referred to as universal lexicon.

Apart from this, all developed languages of the world have some other common layers of lexicon which came to being under the influence mainly of social, economic historical and other extralingual factors. The layers form dialectal, international, specifically national etc. lexicons.

Each of them has its distinctive characteristic features in common. Thus, the functioning of dialectal lexicons in any language is restricted to a definite territory (cf. the Scottish dialect, London cock­ney, the Western Ukrainian dialect, etc.).

The international lexicon, on the other hand, exists in all languages in two typologically distinct subgroups: 1) genuine internationalisms of a common linguistic form and identical lexical meaning, eg: parliament, poet, theatre, molecule, waltz, sword of Damocles, to pass the Rubicon, Pandora's box etc.; and 2) lexical loan internationalisms which have the same lexical meaning but exist only in national lingual forms. These are usually terms like specific gravity/weight питома вага, the law of gravitation закон земного тяжіння, agreement (gram.) узгодження, the composite sentence - складне речення, etc.

In contrast to internationalisms are units of nationally specific lexicon (words and different collocations) such as the English farthing, shilling, dollar, Chartist, haggis, Yorkshire pudding, to cut off with a shilling, to accept the Chiltern Hundreds, etc. Or in Ukrai­nian: кутя. вареники, думи, бандурист, кобзар, запорожець, ставати на рушник., козацькому роду нема переводу, на городі бузина, а в Києві дядько.

В. The linguistic principles of typological classification of lexicon are based in all languages on the following distinguishing features of words: a) on their common lexico-grammatical nature; b) on their belonging to a common lexico-semantic group; c) on their peculiar stylistic function and meaning; d) on their denotative or connotative (or both) meanings, etc.

1. In accord with the most general implicit lexico-grammatical meaning of words they are grouped in all languages into a) notionals and b) functionals.

The notionals (повнозначні слова) serve as principal means of nomination and constitute the bulk of English and Ukrainian lexicon. They have, apart from their often complicated semantic structure, different morphological, syntactic and stylistic features of their own. The last of these are not of equal importance in the contrasted lan­guages. In English, for example, it is not always possible to say what part of speech a word belongs to, as in: blue, hand, house or even man. Each of them may be a verb (to blue smth., to man ships, to hand smth over); a noun: (the blue of the sky, the man, two hands) or an adjective (the blue sky), etc.

It is mostly not so in Ukrainian, whose words, when even out of a microtext, clearly display their lexico-grammatical nature (cf. хліб, синій, синь, праця, небо, ясний, добре, синити).

The often indistinct lexico-grammatical meaning of many English notionals does not in the least discard the existence of the same classes of them in both languages. Words may express the most general implicit meanings of substantivity, verbiality, deictic properties, adverbiality, etc., thus representing nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, verbs, adverbs and statives that are parts of speech performing the same functions in English and Ukrainian sentences.

As to functionals, they are common except for the articles (the, a/an). Namely: prepositions — прийменники, conjunctions — сполуч­ники, particles — частки, interjections — вигуки, modal words and modal phrases — модальні слова та вирази.

Common therefore are 12 lexico-grammatical classes of words each of which has mostly the same properties in the contrasted languages.

2. The second class of words distinguished on linguistic principles represents their common in the contrasted languages lexico-semantic groups (the LSGs). Words of a LSG may often have a regular syno­nymic relationship in English and Ukrainian. For example, the notion of "dwelling" unites the following row of nouns denoting different kinds of shelter: dug-out (печера, землянка), shanty (халупа), mud-house (глинянка), cabin (хатина), house, cottage, bungalow, villa, palace, apartment, etc. There may be dwellings characteristic of some ethnic groups, such as wigwam or tepee of the North American Indians or the igloo of the indigenous people in Greenland.

Common lexico-semantic groups can be observed among English and Ukrainian adjectives denoting dimension (cf. big, large, great. huge, gigantic, enormous, small, tiny, etc.) or beauty (beautiful, nice, handsome, pretty, smart, good-looking, etc.), colour (red, yellow, green, blue, pink, brown, azure, orange, violet, white, black, gray, hazel, etc.). There are also verbal LSGs: verbs of saying (say, tell, converse, talk, speak, retort), verbs denoting mental or physical perceptions (comprehend, understand, know, think, see, hear, taste, touch), verbs denoting motion with or without the help of a vehicle (cf. jump, walk, roam, wave, wander, paddle, bicycle, etc.).

Separate LSGs are formed by functionals. Thus, among preposi­tional LSGs there may be local prepositions (on, in, at, over, above, under, below, behind, etc.); prepositions denoting direction (to, into, from, towards, up, down, etc.) which have their corresponding equiva­lents also in Ukrainian.

3. In recent decades one more classification of lexicon has been put forward. It is based on a wider approach than the previous classifi­cations and involves global semiotic classes of words belonging to a certain lexico-grammatical class. According to this semiological classi­fication, as it was called, all nouns which denote substances fall into several major classes subdivided in their turn into some semio­tic subclasses. Among the major semiotic classes of nouns are:

1) Concrete, countable life nouns denoting non-persons, i. e., animals, birds, beasts, cattle, livestock, game, wild animals, table birds, flock and herds, poultry, birds of prey, including metaphorically used animals and birds names that are usually common in the contrasted languages.

2) Concrete, countable life nouns denoting persons. Their number is estimated to be, in English and Ukrainian, over 6,000. They include proper names, names of nations, races, ancestral and modifying names (leader, chairman, robber). Here also belong such jargonisms as boob, dully, etc. that are well represented in Ukrainian (бувзь, тупак тощо).

3)Concrete, countable, non-person, inanimate nouns representing plant names, celestial bodies, parts of human body, names of arts, means of communication, names of unique unreal bodies, metaphorical names, eg.: stick (дубина, колода), block («довбешка»), the heart (серце), the sun (сонце), the ship (судно), etc.

4) Concrete, life nouns, non-person, represented in the contrasted languages by different common collective nouns (names of multitu­des): nation, race, family, crew, staff, gang, company, police, militia, forces, troops, etc. Some of these nouns in Ukrainian have somewhat different properties, being used, for example, in singular only (мілі­ція, поліція).

5) Collective life nouns representing species of animals (cattle, sheep or poultry, fish) and nouns denoting a mass of some living beings: swarm of bees, school of fish, pack of dogs/wolves, flock of sheep/herd, of cattle (cf. рій бджіл, косяк риби, зграя вовків; отара овець).

6) Concrete, inanimate, uncountable non-person nouns that include all singularia tantum group denoting mass or material as well as different abstract nouns: butter, bread, sugar, snow, silver, gas, glue, steam, soot, etc.

7) Various abstract nouns whose number in the contrasted langua­ges is numerous.

The second large semiotic superclass consists of the identifying subclasses of words which are as follows: 1) verbal, 2) adjectival, 3) pronominal, 4) adverbial, 5) numerical.

It is easy to notice, therefore, that the identifying classes of words, like the global classes are singled out on the basis of their most general lexico-grammatical meaning. Consequently, the global seman­tic classification of words is based not only on their generalized seman­tic characteristics but also on their most general implicit grammatical meanings.