Lexicology
The term lexicology is of Greek origin, from “lexis” – word and “logos” – science. It is a part of linguistics which deals with a vocabulary of the language and characteristic feature of words and word groups.
Lexicology can study the development of vocabulary, the origin of words and word groups, the semantic relations and the development of the sound form and meaning.
It helps to stimulate a systematic approach to the facts of vocabulary and organized comparison of the foreign and native languages.
It furnishes (serves) a tool helping the student to guess and retain his memory the meaning of new words on the bases of their motivation and by comparing and contrasting them with the previously learned elements and patterns.
This knowledge is important when literary texts are used. It helps students to master the literary standard of word usage.
Formal and informal language
The word is a unit of speech which serves the purpose of human communication. The modern approach to word studies is based on distinguishing between the external and internal structures of the word. By external structure of the word we mean its morphological structure. For example, post-im-press|ion|ist|s the following morphemes can be distinguished; the prefixes post- and im-, the root –press-, the noun-forming suffixes –ion, -ist and grammatical suffix of plurality –s.
The internal structure of the word or its meaning is the word’s semantic structure. It is the words main aspect.
Then words may belong to formal or informal speech.
Informal words are divided into 3 types: colloquial, slang, dialect words.
The Oxford English dictionary defines slang as “language of highly colloquial style considered as below the level of standard educated speech and consisting either of new words or current words employed in some special sense”.
The scientists define a dialect as a variety of a language which prevails in a district with local peculiarities of vocabulary and pronunciation.
Formal style is restricted to formal situations. Formal words fall into 2 main groups: words associated with professional communications and so-called learned words which are mainly associated with the printed page.
Archaic
;
archaism
Archaic words and obsolete words stand close to the learned words because they also associate with printed page. This words are partly or fully out of circulation (e.g. thou, thy, aye, nay).
Historicisms are the words denoting objects and phenomena that are the things of the past and no longer exist.
Professional terminology are words that belong to special scientific professional or trade terminological systems.
Basic vocabulary words are stylistically neutral. Their stylistic neutrality makes it possible to use them in all kinds of situation both formal and informal.
Analysis of word-meaning
The linguistic science at present is not able to put forward a definition of meaning which is conclusive. But the very function of the word as a unit of communication is made possible by its possessing a meaning. Therefore among the word’s various characteristics meaning is certainly the most important. Meaning can be described as a component of a word through which a concept is communicated.
The branch of linguistics, which specializes in the study of meaning, is called semantics. The modern approach to semantics is based on the assumption that the inner form of the word (its meaning) presents a structure, which is called the semantic structure of the word.
The semantic structure of the word does not present an indissoluble unit nor does it necessarily stand for one concept. Most words convey several concepts and thus possess the corresponding number of the meanings.
A word having several meanings is called polysemantic and the ability of words to have more than one meaning is described by the term polysemi.
Most of English words are polysemantic. At a certain stage of language development the production of new words by morphological means becomes limited, and polysemi becomes increasingly important in providing the means for enriching the vocabulary.
When analyzing the semantic structure of a polysemantic word it is necessary to distinguish between two levels of analysis. On the first level the semantic structure is treated as a system of meanings. Meaning one generally referred to as the main meaning, presents the centre of the semantic structure holding it together. But not in every polysemantic word such a centre can be found. The second level of analysis shows that the semantic structure is divisible at the deeper level. That’s why the semantic structure of the word should be investigated at both levels.
The leading semantic component is termed (named) denotative component. It expresses the conceptual content of the word. To give more or less full picture of the meaning of a word it is necessary to include into the scheme of analysis, editial semantic component or connotative components. By singling out denotative and connotative components one can get a clear picture of what the word clearly mean.
Causes of development of new meaning are historical or extra-linguistic and linguistic factors through the influence of other words mostly of synonyms. It collided with a borrowed word animal and changed its meaning.
How new meaning develop:
The process of developing a new meaning is termed transference. Transference based on resemblance is a process with a new meaning, appears as a result of associating two objects.
Sometimes the process of transference may result in a considerable change in range of meanings leading to broadening or generalization of meanings (the girl in Middle English had the meaning of a small child) or to narrowing or specialization of meaning (meat in Old English had the meaning of any food).
The terms “degeneration” or “degradation” and “elevation” of meaning imply that meanings can become better and worse.
e.g. villain – farm servant (раньше)
villain – bad person (сейчас)
Morphological structure of the english word
If we describe a w o r d as an autonomous unit of language in which a particular meaning is associated with a particular sound complex and which is capable of a particular grammatical employment and able to form a sentence by itself , we have the possibility to distinguish it from the other fundamental language unit, namely, the morpheme.
A morpheme is also an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. But unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Nor are they divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language unit.
According to the role they play in constructing words, morphemes are subdivided into roots andaffixes. The latter are further subdivided, according to their position, into prefixes, suffixes and infixes, and according to their function and meaning, into derivational and functional affixes, the latter also called endings or outer formative s.
When a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word, what remains is a stem (or astern base). The stem expresses the lexical and the part of speech meaning. For the word hearty and for the paradigm heart (sing.) – hearts (pi.)1 the stem may be represented as heart-. This stem is a single morpheme, it contains nothing but the root, so it is a simple stem. It is also a free stem because it is homonymous to the word heart.
A stem may also be defined as the part of the word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. The stem of the paradigm hearty – heartier – (the) heartiest is hearty-. It is a free stem, but as it consists of a root morpheme and an affix, it is not simple but derived. Thus, a stem containing one or more affixes is a derived stem. If after deducing the affix the remaining stem is not homonymous to a separate word of the same root, we call it abound stem. Thus, in the word cordial ‘proceeding as if from the heart’, the adjective-forming suffix can be separated on the analogy with such words as bronchial, radial, social. The remaining stem, however, cannot form a separate word by itself, it is bound. In cordially and cordiality, on the other hand, the derived stems are free.
Bound stems are especially characteristic of loan words. The point may be illustrated by the following French borrowings: arrogance, charity, courage, coward, distort, involve, notion, legible and tolerable, to give but a few.2 After the affixes of these words are taken away the remaining elements are: arrog-, char-, com-, cow-, -tort, -volve, not-, leg-, toler-, which do not coincide with any semantically related independent
words.
Roots are main morphemic vehicles of a given idea in a given language at a given stage of its development. A root may be also regarded as the ultimate constituent element which remains after the removal of all functional and derivational affixes and does not admit any further analysis. It is the common element of words within a w o r d-f a m i 1 y. Thus, -heart- is the common root of the following series of words: heart, hearten, dishearten, heartily, heartless, hearty, heartiness, sweetheart, heart-broken, kind-hearted, whole-heartedly, etc. In some of these, as, for example, in hearten, there is only one root; in others the root -heart is combined with some other root, thus forming a compound like sweetheart.
We shall now present the different types of morphemes starting with the root. It will at once be noticed that the root in English is very often homonymous with the word.
A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class, c f. -en, -y, -less in hearten, hearty, heartless. When both the underlying and the resultant forms belong to the same part of speech, the suffix serves to differentiate between lexico-grammatical classes by rendering some very general lexico-grammatical meaning. For instance, both -ify and -er are verb suffixes, but the first characterizes causative verbs, such as horrify, purify, rarefy, simplify, whereas the second is mostly typical of frequentative verbs: flicker, shimmer, .twitter and the like.
A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying meaning, c f. hearten – dishearten. It is only with verbs and statives that a prefix may serve to distinguish one part of speech from another, like in earth n -unearth v, sleep n – asleep (stative). It is interesting that as a prefix en- may carry the same meaning of being or bringing into a certain state as the suffix -en, c f. enable, encamp, endanger, endear, enslave and fasten, darken, deepen, lengthen, strengthen.