Рахматуллоева М., ПД-3-18

Срс 1. The object of lexicology

Lexicology (of Greek origin: lexis «word» + logos «learning») (ca.1828) is a branch of linguistics concerned with words. It is a study of words or lexemes. The term lexeme, introduced by Benjamin Lee Whorf in 1938, has been used for the lexical word.

All the words of a language make up its vocabulary or lexicon (1603). To study the lexicon of English is to study all aspects of the vocabulary of language - how words are formed, how they have developed, how they are used, how they relate in meaning to each other, and how they are handled in dictionaries.

Lexical study is a wide-range domain, involving such diverse areas as the sense relationships between words, the use of abbreviations, puns and euphemisms, the compilation of dictionaries and many others. Thus, lexicology deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups.

The word is the basic unit of the lexical system of a language resulting from the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment. It is the smallest language unit that can stand alone as a complete utterance. From the lexical aspect the word may express one or several notions being in different relations among themselves.

The term word-group denotes a group of words that exists in the language as a ready-made unit, has the unity of meaning and of syntactical function.

Modern approaches to the word are characterized by two different levels of study: syntagmatic and paradigmatic (we owe this 2-dimensional model of language structure to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.) On the paradigmatic (substitution) level the word is studied in its relationship with other words in the vocabulary system. On the syntagmatic (sequence) level the word is analyzed in its linear relationships with words in connected speech.

One further important objective of lexicological studies is the study of the vocabulary as a system. The vocabulary can be studied by means of two approaches: descriptive or synchronic (from Greek 'syn' - «together with» and 'chronos' - «time») and historical or diachronic ('dia-' «through»), i.e. the synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language at the given stage of its development the diachronic approach deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in course of time.

Рахматуллоева М., ПД-3-18

Срс 2. The morphemes and their classification

Morphemes are the smallest indivisible two-facet language units. They are not independent sense units as words or sentences are. It is the minimum meaningful language unit. Morphemes in various texts can have different phonemic shapes. All the representatives of the given morpheme are called allomorphs (from Greek alios 'other') of that morpheme.

An allomorph is a positional variant of that or this morpheme occurring in a specific environment. For example: catastrophe consists of the two morphemes having different forms; each morpheme has two allomorphs and they occur in particular combinations. Consider the allomorphic contrasts in halfpenny and twopence, poor and poverty, autumn and au­tumnal, divide and divisible, profane and profanity, serene and serenity, receive and receptive.

There are different types of morphemes in English. Semantically morphemes fall into root morphemes and affixational morphemes. The root is the morpheme that expresses the lexical meaning of the word, for example: teach - teacher - teaching. Affixes are morphemes that modify the meaning of the root. The affix that comes before the root is called prefix (un­ending). The affix that comes after the root is called suffix.

Structurally morphemes fall into free morphemes and bound morphemes. A free morpheme coincides with the stem or a word-form. A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a word (bound morphemes often signify borrowings). Affixes are bound morphemes, for they always make part of a word.

Depending on the morphemes used in the word there are four structural types of words in English:

1. simple (root) words consist of one root morpheme and an inflexion (boy, warm, law, tables, tenth);

2. derived words consist of one root morpheme, one or several affixes and an inflexion (unmanageable, lawful);

3. compound words consist of two or more root morphemes and an inflexion (boyfriend, outlaw);

4. compound-derived words consist of two or more root morphemes, one or more affixes and an inflexion (left-handed, warm-hearted, blue-eyed).

Рахматуллоева М., ПД-3-18