- •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).
3. The etymological composition of the English lexicon. Words of native origin.
Etymology is a branch of linguistics that studies the origin and history of words.
English is a Germanic language; it belongs to the West German group.
According to the origin word-stock may be divided into 2 main sets: native and borrowed. Native words – words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles from the continent in the 5th c. by the Germanic tribes. Practically, however, the term is often used to describe words whose origin cannot be traced to any other language.
R.Z. Ginzburg: words of Anglo-Saxon origin and words coined later on their basis.
Native words constitute about 25 percent of the English vocabulary, but they make up 80 percent of the 500 most frequent words. Almost all native words belong to very important semantic groups:
auxiliary and modal verbs (shall, will, may, can, etc.); pronouns (I, you, he, who, etc.);
prepositions (in, out, on, under); numerals (one, two, three); conjunctions (and, but, till, as, etc.). Notional words: parts of body (head, hand, arm, back); members of the family and closest relatives (father, mother, son); natural phenomena and plants (snow, rain, star); animals (horse, cow, sheep); qualities, properties (old, young, cold, hot).
Features of native words: wide collocability; high frequency value; developed polysemy. Most of the native words have undergone great changes in their semantic structure, and as a result are polysemantic (finger, head, hand, to go). often monosyllabic structure. The formation of great words is greatly facilitated by the fact that most Anglo-Saxon words are root-words. New words have been coined from Anglo-Saxon simple word-stems by means of affixation, word-composition and conversion. The great stability of Anglo-Saxon words accounts for their great derivational potential. Most words of native origin make up large clusters of derived and compound words in the present-day language. E.g. wood is the basis for – wooden, woody, woodcraft, woodcutter, woodwork, etc. wide spheres of application.
4. Borrowings: their causes and criteria.
The causes for borrowing are historical:
Latin was used in England as the language of learning and religion.
Old Norse was the language of conquerors who were on the same level of development and who merged easily with the local population in the 9th, 10th, 11th centuries.
French was the language of other conquerors, it was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from 11th to 14th c.
The greatest number of borrowings is French. They refer to various fields of social, political, scientific and cultural life.
Borrowings enter the language in two ways:
- through oral speech (by immediate contact between the peoples);
- through written speech (through books, etc.).
The source of borrowing is the language from which the borrowing was taken into English.
The origin of borrowing is the language to which the word may be traced.
Criteria to identify borrowings:
the pronunciation of the word, its spelling and the correlation between sounds and letters (psychology, waltz).
the morphological structure of the word and its grammatical forms
the lexical meaning of the word (ricksha(w), pagoda, samovar).