- •1.Lexicology as a branch of linguistics. Aims and the object of Lexicology. Two approaches to language studies.
- •2. Links of Lexicology with other branches of Linguistics. The course of modern English Lexicology, its theoretical and practical significance.
- •3. The etymological composition of the English lexicon. Words of native origin.
- •4. Borrowings: their causes and criteria.
- •5. Assimilation of borrowings.
- •6. Classifications of borrowings: according to the borrowed aspect, according to the language from which they were borrowed.
- •8. The morpheme as the smallest meaningful language unit. Classifications of morphemes.
- •9. The word as the basic unit of the language system. Characteristics of words. Structural types of words. Word-groups. The notion of a lexeme.
- •10. Types of designation (nomination).
- •12. Types of word-meaning.
- •13. Polysemy: its nature, the main causes and sources. Meaning and context.
- •14. Polysemy. Semantic structure of words.
- •15. Change of word-meaning: the causes, nature and results.
- •16. Homonymy. Sources of homonyms.
- •17. Classifications of homonyms.
- •18. Polysemy and homonymy: etymological, semantic, distribution and spelling criteria.
- •24. Groups of words based on several types of semantic relations: conceptual (semantic or lexical) fields, lexical-semantic groups
- •25. Word-structure and morphemes. Morphemic types of words.
- •26. Segmentation of words into morphemes. Types of word segmentability. The procedure of morphemic analysis.
- •27. Derivative structure of words. The basic derivational units.
- •28. Affixation as a way of word formation. Prefixation. Classifications of prefixes.
- •29. Suffixation. Productivity of suffixes. Classifications of suffixes.
- •30.Conversion as a way of word formation. Typical semantic relations. Productivity of conversion.
- •31. Word-composition as a type of word formation. Features of compound-words. Classifications of compound-words.
- •32. Secondary types of word-formation: lexicalization, sound-imitation, reduplication, back-formation (reversion), sound and stress interchange.
- •33. Secondary types of word-formation: shortening (contraction), abbreviation, acronyms, blends, clippings.
- •34. Ways and means of enriching the vocabulary.
- •35. Neologisms: semantic groups, ways of forming.
- •36.Phraseological units and their properties. Criteria of phraseology.
- •37. Classifications of phraseological units.
- •38.Phraseological units: ways of formation. The sources of phraseology.
- •39. Historical development of British and American lexicography.
- •40. Encyclopedic dictionaries. Linguistic dictionaries: their basic features and criteria of classification.
- •41. Types of linguistic dictionaries.
- •42. Basic problems of dictionary-compiling: selection of lexical units, arrangement of entries, selection and arrangement of meanings, definition of meanings.
- •43. Basic problems of dictionary-compiling: illustrative examples, choice of adequate equivalents, setting of the entry, structure of the dictionary.
- •45. Variant vs. Dialect. General characteristics of the English language in different parts of the English-speaking world.
- •48. Methods of lexicological analysis (contrastive analysis, statistical analysis, immediate constituents analysis, distributional analysis, transformational analysis, componential analysis).
24. Groups of words based on several types of semantic relations: conceptual (semantic or lexical) fields, lexical-semantic groups
Words may be classified according to the concepts underlying their meaning.
Semantic Fields: closely knit sectors of vocabulary each characterized by a common concept. blue, red, yellow, black – semantic field of color; mother, father, brother – kinship terms.
We cannot possibly know the meaning of the word if we do not know the structure of the semantic field to which the word belongs.
The meaning of captain - cannot be properly understood until we know the semantic field in which this term operates – the navy, the army or merchant service: we know what captain means only if we know if his subordinate is called mate or first officer (merchant service), commander (navy), lieutenant (army). Words making up semantic fields may belong to different parts of speech.
space – nouns: expanse, extent, surface; verbs: extend, spread, span; adjectives: roomy, vast, broad. There may be comparatively small lexical groups of words belonging to the same part of speech and linked by a common concept.
concept of food – bread, cheese, milk.
Lexico-semantic Groups: smaller lexical groups consisting of words of the same part of speech.
Different meanings of polysemantic words make it possible to refer the same word to different lexico-semantic groups.
25. Word-structure and morphemes. Morphemic types of words.
The Morpheme: the smallest indivisible two-facet language unit. Close observation and comparison of words clearly shows that a great many words have a composite structure at are made up of morphemes.
Meaning of word building morphemes:
lexical meaning:
- denotational (serves a linguistic expression for a concept or a name for an individual object) Especially revealed in root-morphemes. E.g. -girl-; -ly, -like, -ish – similarity
- connotational (an emotional content of the morpheme) E.g. the suffix in piglet has a diminutive meaning.
Word building morphemes do not possess grammatical meaning.
Meaning of word building morphemes:
2. part-of-speech meaning (is proper only to affixes) (govern-ment, teach-er)
Specific meaning of word building morphemes:
Differential: serves to distinguish words having the same morphemes (over-cook, undercook, pre-cook)
Distributional (the meaning of morpheme arrangement in a word: certain morphemes usually follow or precede the root) (un-effective, speech-less)
Semantic Classification of Morphemes:
root morpheme (the lexical center of words, has an individual meaning)
non-root or affixational morpheme.
Affixational Morphemes:
1. form building, or inflectional morphemes (only grammatical meaning and only for the formation of word-forms); smiled, smiles, is smiling
2. derivational morphemes (the smallest meaningful stem building or word building lexical units); reason-able, un-reason-able
Derivational morphemes: prefixes, suffixes
Structural classification:
1. free morphemes (may function independently. Most roots are free) friend- in the word friendship
2. bound morphemes (function only as a constituent part of a word). Affixes are bound morphemes.
3. semi-free (semi-bound) morphemes (can function both as an affix and as a free morpheme).
According to the Number of the Morphemes: monomorphic words, polymorphic
Monomorphic or root-words: only one root-morpheme. small, dog.
Polymorphic Words:
1) Monoradical (one-root words): monoradical suffixal (teacher); monoradical prefixal (overteach); radical prefixal-suffixal (superteacher, beheaded).
2) Polyradical (consist of two or more roots): polyradical proper (headmaster); polyradical suffixal (head-teacher, boarding-school); polyradical prefixal (super-headmaster); polyradical prefixal-suffixal (super-headteacher).