LEXICOLOGY

1. The Aim and Object of discipline Lexicology

Lexicology is a branch of linguistics, the science of language. The term Lexicology is composed of two Greek morphemes: lexis meaning ‘word, phrase’ and logos which denotes ‘learning, a department of knowledge’. Thus, the literal meaning of the term Lexiсolоgу is ‘the science of the word’. The literal meaning, however, gives only a general notion of the aims and the subject-matter of this branch of linguistic science, since all its other branches also take account of words in one way or another approaching them from different angles. Phonetics, for instance, investigating the phonetic structure of language, i.e. its system of phonemes and intonation patterns, is concerned with the study of the outer sound form of the word. Grammar, which is inseparably bound up with Lexicology, is the study of the grammatical structure of language. It is concerned with the various means of expressing grammatical relations between words and with the patterns after which words are combined into word-groups and sentences.

Lexicology as a branch of linguistics has its own aims and methods of scientific research, its basic task being a study and systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use. Lexicology is concerned with words, variable word-groups, phraseological units, and with morphemes which make up words.

The term first appeared in the 1820s, though there were lexicologists in essence before the term was coined. Computational lexicology as a related field (in the same way that computational linguistics is related to linguistics) deals with the computational study of dictionaries and their contents.

An allied science to lexicology is lexicography, which also studies words, but primarily in relation with dictionaries – it is actually concerned with the inclusion of words in dictionaries and from that perspective with the whole lexicon. Sometimes lexicography is considered to be a part or a branch of lexicology, but properly speaking, only lexicologists who actually write dictionaries are lexicographers. Some consider this a distinction of theory vs. practice.

The Aim of Lexicology

• To study and describe vocabulary of languages with respect to their

– ORIGIN & DEVELOPMENT (diachronic approach)

– CURRENT USE (synchronic approach)

• Investigates the problems of word-structure and word-formation in Modern English

• The semantic structure of English words

• Studies the relations between various lexical layers of the English vocabulary

• The specific laws and regulations that govern development of the vocabulary

• The source and growth of the vocabulary and changes it has undergone

The term «word» denotes the main lexical unit of a language resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning. This unit is used in grammatical functions. It is the smallest unit of a language which can stand alone as a complete utterance. The term «word-group» denotes a group of words which exists in the language as a ready-made unit, has the unity of meaning, the unity of syntactical function, For example. the word-group «as loose as a goose» means «clumsy» and is used in a sentence as a predicative. He is as loose as a goose. Lexicology can study the development of the vocabulary, the origin of words and word-groups, their semantic relations and the development of their semantic structure, change of meaning.

Thus, the literal meaning of the term "Lexicology" is "the science of the word". Lexicology as a branch of linguistics has its own aims and methods of scientific research. Its basic task - is a study and systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and its current use. Lexicology is concerned with words, variable word-groups, phraseological units and morphemes which make up words.