Outlines of english lexicology

Introduction

Lexicology is a branch of linguistics, the science of language. The literal meaning of the term Lехiсоlоgу is 'the science of the word'. Lexicology is concerned with words, variable word-groups, phraseological units, and with morphemes which make up words.

Two Approaches to Language Study

There are two principal approaches in linguistic science to the study of language material: the synchronic and the diachronic approach.

- The synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as it exists at a given time, for instance, at the present time.

- The diachronic approach deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the course of time.

A good example illustrating both the distinction between the two approaches and their interconnection is furnished by the words to beg and beggar.

Synchronically, the words to beg and beggar are related as a simple and a derived word, the noun beggar being the derived member of the pair (the derivative correlation between the two is the same as in the case of to sing—singer, to teach—teacher, etc.). When we approach the words diachronically, however, we learn that the noun beggar was borrowed from Old French (1225, from O.Fr. begart, originally a member of the Beghards, lay brothers of mendicants in the Low Countries, from M.Du. beggaert "mendicant," with pejorative suffix) and only presumed to have been derived from a shorter word, the verb to beg, as in the English language agent nouns are commonly derived from verbs with the help of the agent suffix -er.

Lexical Units

Lexicology studies various lexical units but the basic unit it investigates is the word. Other units are morphemes - parts of words into which words may be analysed, and set expressions (idioms) or groups of words into which words may be combined.

Words are the central elements of a language system. They are:

- the biggest units of morphology and the smallest of syntax.

- units that can be separated in an utterance by other such units and can be used in isolation.

- linguistic structures possessing a regular stress pattern.

- uninterruptible units – the elements that are added to a word to modify its meaning are never included within that word: they are added either at the beginning as prefixes of the word or at the end as suffixes.

- linguistic structure that may consist of one or more morphemes. When a word consists of one morpheme only, then it cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units, e.g. dog, hand, man, out, work, Such words are called 'simple' words, (minimum free forms) in the sense that they may stand by themselves and yet act as minimally complete utterances, e.g. in answer to a question. If they consist of more than one morpheme they are called complex words and may be broken down into one free form and one or more bound forms: e.g. happi-ly, quick-er, work-ing,

- linguistic structures that may occurs typically in the structure of phrases (morphemes are used to build words, words to build phrases, phrases to build clauses, and clauses to build sentences)

- written as a sequence of letters bounded by spaces on a page

Unlike words, morphemes cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units: they function in speech only as constituent parts of words. The meaning of morphemes is more abstract and more general than that of words and at the same time they are less autonomous.

Idioms or Set expressions are word groups consisting of two or more words whose combination is integrated so that they are introduced in speech ready-made as units with a specialised meaning of the whole that is not understood as a mere sum total of the meanings of the elements.

WORD MEANING

There are mainly two schools of thought in present-day linguistics representing the main lines of contemporary thinking on the problem of meaning - the one is the referential approach, which seeks to formulate the essence of meaning by establishing the interdependence between words and the things or concepts they denote, and the functional approach, which studies the functions of a word in speech and is less concerned with what meaning is than with how it works.