Part I: Introduction

1. The Object of Lexicology and Its Relationship to Other Branches of Linguistics

Lexicology is derived from the Greek lexikós “of words” and -logia “study.” A branch of linguistics, lexicology has the goal of “systematisation revealing characteristic features of words” (Arnold, 1986, p. 272). It deals not only with lexemes and their aspects but also with compound words and phraseological units. Stephen Ullman places semantics and etymology within the scope of lexicology; however, he views lexicology as the study of words as individual units rather than the overall study of the structure of the vocabulary (Collins English Dictionary). Leonhard Lipka defines lexicology “as the study of lexicon or lexis (specified as the vocabulary or total stock of words of a language) (2002, p.9). According to Witold Doroszewski, lexicology is “the branch of linguistics investigating words as regards their meaning and use, the science of vocabulary, the theoretical and scientific basis of lexicography” (1973, p.36). Ullman’s definition draws a connection between lexicology and semantics, while Doroszewski connects lexicology to lexicography. Howard Jackson restricts lexicology to the study of words as individual items (1991, p. 244). Christopher Hall, Patrick H. Smith, and Rachel Wicaksono describe lexicology as “the academic study of words: their spoken and written forms, their syntactic and morphological properties, and their meanings; in a particular language or in human language in general; both at a fixed point in history and as they change through time” (2011, p. 249). Analyzing all the aspects of lexicology, we define lexicology as the study of the lexicon, or word-stock, its meaning, the relations among lexemes, the structure of lexemes, their etymology and lexical units, and relations between lexicology and other areas of the language: phonology, morphology, phraseology, lexicography, and syntax.

As the eminent British linguist M. A. K. Halliday (2004) presents it, the goal of lexicology is to produce descriptions of the words of a language, and these descriptions are then published as dictionaries and thesauri. Thus, dictionary- or thesaurus- making starts as lexicology, the study and description of a body of words, and ends as lexicography, the compilation of these descriptions into a single reference work (Halliday & Yallop, 2004, p. 5).

Several kinds of lexicology are identified such as general lexicology, special lexicology, contrastive lexicology, historical lexicology, or etymology, and descriptive lexicology. General lexicology, being a part of general linguistics, studies vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language and the meaning of words and word-combinations in isolation and in context. Special lexicology studies words and word-combinations, and describes the vocabulary and vocabulary units of a particular language. It is a part of general lexicology. Contrastive lexicology studies the relations between etymologically related words and word-combinations in different languages. It deals with the contrastive analysis of the lexicon, lexico-semantic relationships, thesauri of entire vocabularies, classification of lexical hierarchies, and taxonomic structure of specialized terminology. The origin of words and phrases, their change and development, and the linguistic and extra-linguistic influences on words’ structure, meaning, and usage are the subject matter of historical lexicology, or etymology. Descriptive lexicology studies the lexicon and lexico-semantic relationships of a certain language at a given stage of its development.

Comparatists and neogrammarians of the nineteenth century believed that linguistic science is just the study of the evolution and comparison of languages. Ferdinand de Saussure opposed this view, stating that scientific methods are applicable to the descriptive and the historical study of language, and since then, two main approaches have been applied to the study of language material: diachronic and synchronic. Synchronic (or static or descriptive) studies deal with the make-up of the language, its words, combinations, and lexico-semantic relationships at a given moment of time, while diachronic (or evaluative, or historical) studies deal with the transformations the lexicon undergoes in the course of time.

Lexicology is closely related to phonology, which studies what sounds a language has and how these sounds combine to form words; to syntax, which studies how words can be combined into sentences; and semantics, which is the study of the meanings of words and sentences. Mostly, lexicology studies words and word-combinations. An exception is made when we study phraseological units. V. Kunin includes proverbs into the phraseological stock of language, mostly because proverbs, like idiomatic phrases, have fully or partially figurative meanings. Lexicology is related to semiotics, which studies the types of relationship that may be held between a sign and the object it represents, or in de Saussure’s terminology between a signifier and its signified (1959, pp.111-117). Lexicology is connected with other branches of linguistics such as neurolinguistics, which deals with the biological and neural foundations of language; psycholinguistics, which is concerned “with linguistic performance — how we use our linguistic competence, our knowledge of language, in speech (or sign) production and comprehension” (Fromkin & Hummel, p. 409). Lexicology is related to computational linguistics that deals with the analysis of written texts and spoken discourse, the translation of text and speech from one language into another, the use of human (not computer) languages for communication between people and computers, and computer modeling and testing of linguistic theories (p. 431). There is a connection between lexicology and pragmatics, which studies the relationship between speaker, hearer, utterance, and context (Austin, 1975); and between lexicology and sociolinguistics, whose subject matter is the relationship between language and society (p. 483).

Lexicology is connected to applied linguistics, which is “a discipline concerned with the role a language or languages play in perceived problems of communication, social identity, education, health, economics, politics and justice, and in the development of ways to remediate or resolve these problems” (Hall, Smith, & Wicaksono, 2011, p.15). Corpus linguistics, which is the creation and analysis of (normally large, computerized) collections of language composed of actual texts (speech and writing), and their application to problems in descriptive and applied linguistics (p. 15), has connections with lexicology.