
- •Lexicology as a branch of linguistics. Its aims and tasks. Subject structure. Links with other branches of linguistics.
- •Borrowings. Translation loans. Semantic loans.
- •Norman-French element in the English vocabulary system. Periods of borrowings from French.
- •Morpheme. Meaning in morphemes.
- •Classification of words according to the number and types of morphemes.
- •Derivational and morphemic levels of analysis
- •Productive ways of word-formation in Modern English. Principal ways of word-derivation.
- •Semasiology. Types of meaning. Meaning of a morpheme.
- •Antonyms. Definition. Morphological and semantic classification of antonyms.
- •Types of synonyms:
- •Homonymy. Classification of homonyms.
- •Sources of Homonyms:
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Antonyms. Definition. Morphological and semantic classification of antonyms.
Antonyms – words of the same category of parts of speech which have contrasting meanings such as hat – cold, light – dark, happiness – sorrow.
Morphological classification:
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? Root words form absolute antonyms.(write – wrong).
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? The presence of negative affixes creates – derivational antonyms(happy – unhappy).
Semantical classification:
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? Contradictory notions are mutually opposed and denying one another, i.e. alive means “not dead” and impatient means “not patient”.
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? Contrary notions are also mutually opposed but they are gradable; e.g. old and young are the most distant elements of a series like: old – middle – aged – young.
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? Incompatibles semantic relations of incompatibility exist among the antonyms with the common component of meaning and may be described as the relations of exclusion but not of contradiction: to say “morning” is to say “not afternoon, not evening, not night”.
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Synonyms. Types of synonyms. Sources of synonyms.
Synonyms – are two or more words belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable in some context.
Types of synonyms:
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Ideographic – synonyms which differ in the denotational component of meaning i.e. between which a semantic difference is statable.
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Stylistic – which differ in the connotational component of meaning, i.e. all kinds of emotional, expressive and evaluative overtones.
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Absolute – which can each other in any given context, without the slightest alteration in denotative or emotional meaning and connotations.
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Contextual – are synonyms which are similar in meaning only under some specific distributional conditions.
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Dominant – the notion common to all synonyms of the group without contributing any additional information as to the manner, intensy, duration or any attending feature of the referent.
The sources of synonyms: borrowings, shift of meaning, dialectical words, compounds, shortenings, conversion, euphemisms.
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Homonymy. Classification of homonyms.
Homonyms – words identical in their spelling or/and sound form but different in their meaning.
Sources of Homonyms:
Phonetic changes which words- undergo in the course of their historical development. Night and knight,
Borrowing. A borrowed word may, in the final stage of its phonetic adaptation, duplicate in form either a native word or another borrowing. rite, n. – to write, v.-right, adj. the second and third words are of native origin whereas rite is a Latin borrowing (< Lat. ritus).
Conversion – comb, n.- to comb, v., pale, adj.- to pale, v., to make, v,- make, n. Homonyms of this type, which are the same in sound and spelling but refer to different categories of parts of speech, are called lexico-grammatical homonyms.
Shortening. E.g. fan, n. in the sense of “an enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer, etc.” is a shortening produced from fanatic.
Classification of Homonyms
The subdivision of homonyms into:
homonyms proper – words same in sound and in spelling. 1.fit – perfectly fitting clothes. 2. fit – nervous spasm.
homophones -the same in sound, different in spelling.1. been 2.bean
homographs -the sane in spelling, different in sound 1.to lead – go before, show the way 2. lead – a heavy rather soft metal.
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Neologisms and international words. Their place in the vocabulary system of the English language.
A neologism is the name for a newly coined term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not yet been accepted into mainstream language.
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Relations of hyponymy
In linguistics, a hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is included within that of another word, its hyperonym or hypernym.
Hyponymy shows the relationship between the more general terms (hypernyms) and the more specific instances of it (hyponyms). A hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is more specific than its hypernym.
Hypernyms and hyponyms are asymmetric. Hyponymy can be tested by substituting X and Y in the sentence ‘X is a kind of Y’ and determining if it makes sense.
Colour – hypernym, red, blue – hyponyms.
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The theory of semantic field. Thematic groups.
In linguistics, a semantic field is a set of words grouped semantically (that is, by meaning), referring to a specific subject.
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Word groups and their classification.
A word-group is the largest two-facet lexical unit comprising more than one word but expressing one global concept.
The lexical meaning of the word groups is the combined lexical meaning of the component words. The meaning of the word groups is motivated by the meanings of the component members and is supported by the structural pattern. But it’s not a mere sum total of all these meanings! Polysemantic words are used in word groups only in 1 of their meanings. These meanings of the component words in such word groups are mutually interdependent and inseparable (blind man – «a human being unable to see», blind type – «the copy isn’t readable).
Word-groups are classified according to their syntactical pattern into predicative and non-predicative groups. Such word-groups as he went, Bob walks that have a syntactic structure similar to that of a sentence are termed as predicative, all others are non-predicative ones.
Non-predicative word-groups are divided into subordinative and coordinative depending on the type of syntactic relations between the components. E.g., a red flower, a man of freedom are subordinative non-predicative word-groups, red and freedom being dependent words, while day and night, do and die are coordinative non-predicative word-groups.
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Free word groups. Definition. Classification.
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Context. Grammatical and lexical context.
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Valency. Lexical valency and grammatical valency.