Краткие конспекты ответов на экзаменационные вопросы по лексикологии

1.. The Word as the Central Unit of the Language

2. Free Word Combinations and Set Expressions. Their Classification and Stylistic Use

3.. Synonyms and Antonyms in the English Language

4. Types of Word-Formation in Modern English

5. The Semantic Structure of the Word. Polysemy. Homonymy

6. The Word-Stock of the English Language

1. The word as the ctntral unit of the language system.

The word is the basic unit of language, uniting meaning and form, consisting of one or more morphemes. Morphemes are also meaningful elements, but they cannot be used independently. Words can be used as a complete utterance (Listen!).

Word-meaning is not homogeneous; there are several types of meaning.

Grammatical meaning – can be found in identical sets of individual forms of different words (e.g. the tense meaning in the word-forms of words of verbs (worked, caught, asked…).

Lexical meaning – unlike the grammatical meaning it is identical in all the forms of the word.

Both the lexical and the grammatical meaning make up the word-meaning as neither can exist without the other.

A paradigm – is a system showing a word in all its word-forms. The lexical meaning is the same throughout the paradigm, the grammatical meaning varies from one form to another.

Part-of-speech meaning. Lexical units are classified into major word-classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) and minor classes (articles, prepositions, conjunctions…).

Denotational and Connotational meaning.

Denotational meaning – the component of meaning that makes communication possible, the leading one. Connotational meaning – the additional component.

E.g.: notorious → “widely known” + for criminal acts, (evaluative connotation,

bad traits of character negative)

to glance → “ to look” + briefly (connotation of duration)

Connotatonal meaning → stylistic reference (stylistically words can be roughly subdivided

↓ into literary, neutral and colloquial layers).

Emotive charge

(varies in different word-classes.

In interjections, for example, it prevails – Oh!)

Lexical meaning – notion.

A word is a language unit, while a notion is a unit of thinking. There are words which do not express any notion but have lexical meaning. Interjections express emotions, but not notions, but they have lexical meanings (Alas!) ← disappointment. Notions, as a ruleare international, meanings can be nationally limited. The number of meanings does not correspond to the number of words.

A word can be divided into smaller sense units – morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful language units.

Semantically morphemes fall into root and non-root morphemes.

Structurally morphemes fall into free (coincides with the stem or a word form – e.g. friend ); bound morphemes ( occurs only as a constituent part of a word. Here belong: affixes, prefixes, all unique roots and pseudo-roots. - e.g. –ceive in perceive, theor- in theory); semi-free or semi-bound (can function both as an affix and as a free morpheme – e.g. man).

Lexical	Grammatical
Roots of words which express the lexical meaning of the word , they coincide with the stem of simple words.	Function words: articles, conjunctions and prepositions (the, with, and).
Affixes: prefixes (dis-), suffixes (-ish), completives (combining forms –e.g.poly-clinic); blocked or unique root morphemes (Fri-day).	Inflexions(endings) –s for the plural of nouns.

Morphemes can also be lexical and grammatical.

Allomorphs (or morpheme variants) – morphemes that have different phonetic shapes (please, leasing, pleasure, pleasant).

Semi-affixes are both bases (основы) and derivational prefixes. (half- →half-broken, half-eaten;

ill- ill-fed).