ГЛОССАРИЙ

ГЛОССАРИЙ

Lexicology is one of the branches of science dealing with different properties of words and the vocabulary of a language.

The term “word” denotes the basic unit of a language resulting from the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment. The word is a structural and semantic entity within the language system. The word is a dialectical unity of form and content in which the form is the spoken or written expression which calls up a specific meaning, whereas the content is the meaning rendering the con­cept or emotion in the mind of the speaker which he intends to convey to his listener.

The term “vocabulary” is used to denote the system formed by the total sum of all the words that the language possesses.

Special Lexicology is the lexicology of a particular language (e.g. English, Russian, etc.), i.e. the study and description of its words and vocabulary. Special Lexicology may be historical and descriptive.

Historical Lexicology is the branch of linguistics which deals with the origin of various words, their change and development, and investigates the linguistic and extra-linguistic forces modifying their structure, meaning and usage.

Reflection is a specific product of the interaction between two material systems: objective reality and the language system representing a more or less adequate reproduction of some peculiarities of the original sys­tem.

Consciousness is the highest form of reflection of objective reality.

The term “synchronic” is composed of two Greek morphemes syn meaning “together, with” and chronos which denotes “time”. Thus, with regard to special lexicology the synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as it exists at a given period of time, e.g. at the present time.

The term “diachronic” is composed of the Greek morphemes dia meaning “through” and chronos meaning “time”. Thus, the diachronic approach in terms of special lexicology deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the course of time.

The system showing a word in all its word-forms is called its paradigm.

Syntagmatic relations are the relationships that a linguistic unit has with other units in the stretch of language in which it occurs.

Paradigmatic relations are the relationships that a linguistic unit has with units by which it may be replaced.

The term motivation is used to denote the rela­tionship existing between the morphemic or phonemic and structural pattern of the word on the one hand, and its meaning on the other.

The phonetical motivation implies a direct connection between the phonetic structure of the word and its meaning.

The morphological motivation implies a direct connection between the lexical meaning of the component morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and the meaning of the word.

The semantic motivation implies a direct connection between the central and marginal meanings of the word.

Semasiology is a branch of lexicology which deals not with every kind of linguistic meaning but with lexical meaning only.

The grammatical meaning is defined as an expression in speech of relationship between words.

Lexical meaning is the realization of the notion by means of definite language system.

The denotational aspect of lexical meaning is the part of lexical meaning which establishes correlation between the name and the object, phenomenon, process or characteristic feature of concrete reality (or thought as such), which is denoted by the given word.

The connotational aspect of lexical meaning is the part of meaning which reflects the attitude of the speaker towards what he speaks about.

The pragmatic aspect of lexical meaning is the part of meaning, that conveys information on the situation of communication.

Similarity of meanings or metaphor may be described as the semantic process of associating two referents, one of which in some way resembles the other.

Contiguity of meanings or metonymy may be described as the semantic process of associating two referents one of which makes part of the other or is closely connected with it.

Polysemy is a phenomenon which has an exceptional importance for the description of a language system and for the solution of practical tasks connected with an adequate understanding of the meaning of a word and its use.

In lexical contexts of primary importance are the groups of lexical items combined with the polysemantic word under consideration.

In grammatical contexts it is the grammatical (syntactic) structure of the context that serves to determine various individual meanings of a polysemantic word.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form.

Root-morphemes (or radicals) are the lexical nucleus of words.

All the representations of the given morpheme are called allomorphs or morpheme variants.

Non-root morphemes include inflectional morphemes (or inflections) and affixational morphemes (or affixes).

A prefix is a derivational morpheme preceding the root-morpheme and modifying its lexical meaning.

A free morpheme is defined as one that coincides with the stem or a word-form.

A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a word.

Semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes are morphemes that can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme.

Root stems consist of only one, semantically non-motivated constituent.

Derived stems are semantically or structurally motivated formed by means of different word-building processes such as affixation, conversion, abbreviation, types of shortenings.

Compound stems are always binary formed by combining two free stems.

A derivational pattern (DP) is a regular meaningful arrangement, a structure that imposes rigid rules on the order and the nature of the derivational bases and affixes that may be brought together.

Word-formation is the system of derivative types of words and the process of creating new words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic formulas and patterns.

Affixation is generally defined as the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to different types of stems.

Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes. Prefixes modify the lexical meaning of the base.

We define a word-building meaning as a compo­nent of the lexical meaning of any derived word deter­mined by the type of the semantic relationship of a de­rived word and its base.

Conversion is as a mor­phological-syntactic word-building means of a word of one part of speech from the stem or wordform of an­other part of speech by means of changing its paradigm (if any) and environment characteristic of a word of a definite part of speech.

Any compound word is created by means of joining together only two stems which are free stems.

Shortening is the formation of a word by cutting off a part of the word.

Blending is the formation of a new word by combining parts of two words.

Graphical abbreviation is the formation of a word from the initial letters of a word combination.

Back-formation is the formation of a new word by subtracting a real or supposed suffix from the existing words.

Sound-interchange is the formation of a word due to an alteration in the phonemic composition of its root.

Sound imitation (or onomatopoeia) is the naming of an action or a thing by a more or less exact reproduction of the sound associated with it Distinctive stress is the formation of a word by means of the shift of the stress in the source word

The term system denotes a coherent homogeneous whole constituted by interdependent elements of the same order related in certain specific ways.

A lexical opposition is the semantically relevant relationship of partial difference between two partially similar words.

Two or more words identical in sound form, spelling but different in meaning, distribution and in many cases in origin are called homonyms.

Synonyms are usually defined as words belonging to one part of speech, close in meaning and interchangeable at least in some contexts.

Words describing different sides of one and the same general notion are united in a lexico-semantic group.

Words denoting different things correlated on extralinguistic grounds form lexical sets.

Semantic field – is the extensive organization of related words and expressions into a system which shows their relations to one another.

Antonyms — a class of words grouped together on the basis of the semantic relations of opposition.

A phraseological unit can be defined as a reproduced and idiomatic (non-motivated) or partially motivated unit built up according to the model of free word-groups (or sentences) and semantically and syntactically brought into correlation with words.