№1

1. Место лексикологии в системе других лингвистических дисциплин. Разделы и отрасли лексикологии

“Lexicology” is of Greek origin (“lexis” – word, “logos” – science).

• is a branch of linguistic

• deals with words, word-groups, phraseological units and morhemes.

• the main task: to study and to describe the vocabulary (its origin, development and current use)

• General (is a part of general linguistics; studies the vocabulary without dealing with specific features of the language)

• Special (is the lexicology of a particular language; studies the vocabulary of a particular language):

  • Descriptive (studies the vocabulary of a language at a given time; Modern English Lexicology)

  • Historical (deals with the evolution of the vocabulary units of a language; English Historical Lexicology)

Lexicology consists of several parts:

• Lexicography

• Semantics

• Phraseology

1. Lexicology and Phonetics

• Phonetics studies the phonemes and the phonemes build the words (fat – cat)

• Phonetics deals with stress and stress can change the word (import (n,v))

2. Lexicology and Stylistics

They have similar problems to study:

• meaning;

• connotations;

• synonymy;

• functional differentiation of vocabulary, etc.

Stylistics deals with these problems to study style, imagery etc.

3. Lexicology and Grammar

• words can belong to different parts of speech: an exercise – to exercise

• a form that originally expressed grammatical meaning, for example, the plural of nouns, can become a basis for a new grammatically conditioned lexical meaning (arm – arms (weapon))

• one and the same word may in some of its meanings function as a notional word, while in others it may be a form word (do, have…)

• all grammatical meanings have a lexical counterpart that expresses the same concept (tomorrow, future, by and by = shall, will)

2. Способы образования новых слов. Сокращение. Аббревиация.

Word-building

• processes of producing new words from the resources of this particular language;

• provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language.

Types:

1. Affixation

2. Conversion

3. Composition

4. Shortening (Contraction)

5. Sound-Imitation (Onomatopoeia)

6. Reduplication

7. Back-formation (reversion)

8. Sound-interchange

9. Stress-interchange

10. Blends

Shortening (Contraction)

• new way of word-building;

• a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English;

• these words are found not only among formal words but also among colloquialisms and slang;

• both types of shortenings are characteristic of informal speech in general and of uncultivated speech particularly;

• sometimes shortenings can be explained by their brevity

• but it takes the speakers some time to clarify the misunderstanding.

Shortening:

1. Shortening - to make a new word from a syllable (rarer, two) of the original word (exam = examination)

2. Abbreviation - to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group (U.N.O. = the United Nations Organization)

* okay - originally this initial shortening was spelt O.K. = all correct.

The purely oral manner in which sounds were recorded for letters resulted in O.K. whereas it should have been AC. or aysee

Shortening:

1. aphaeresis/apheresis/aphesis - an initial clipping (phone = telephone)

2. apocope - a final clipping (vac = vacation)

3. syncope - a medial clipping (hols = holidays)

4. fore-and-aft clipping - an initial and final clipping (fridge = refrigerator)

Informal shortenings

• movie (from moving-picture),

• gent (from gentleman),

• specs (from spectacles),

• circs (from circumstances, e. g. under the circs),

• O. Y. (a written acknowledgement of debt, made from I owe you),

• lib (from liberty, as in May I take the lib of saying something to you?).

Undergraduates' informal speech abounds in words of the type:

• lab, prof, vac, hol, co-ed (a girl student at a coeducational school or college).

№2

1. Проблема определения слова.

Many scholars have attempted to define the word as a linguistic phenomenon. None of the definitions can be considered totally satisfactory. Despite the achievements of science, essential aspects of the nature of the word escape us.

We don’t know much about:

• the origin of language and the origin of words

• the mechanism by which a speaker's mental process is converted into sound groups called “words”

• the process where a listener's brain converts the acoustic phenomena into concepts and ideas

• the nature of relations between the word and the referent (object, quality, action denoted by the word)

We know that the word:

• is a unit of communication

• can be perceived as the total of the sounds which comprise it

• viewed structurally, possesses several characteristics

• The modern approach is based on distinguishing between the external (morphological (prefixes, root, suffixes)) and the internal (semantic) structures of the word.

The word possesses both external (formal) and semantic unity.

*Blackbird (word) – a single grammatical framing (blackbirds); conveys only one concept (the type).

*Black bird (word-group) – each constituent can acquire grammatical forms of its own (the blackest birds); each of the meaningful words conveys a separate concept (a creature; a colour).

• in speech words can be used in different grammatical forms in which their interrelations are realised (susceptibility to grammatical employment)

Conclusion: the word is a speech unit used for the purposes of human communication, materially representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning, susceptible to grammatical employment and characterised by formal and semantic unity.

2. Способы образования новых слов. Звукоподражание. Редупликация. Дезаффиксация.

Word-building

• processes of producing new words from the resources of this particular language;

• provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language.

Types:

1. Affixation

2. Conversion

3. Composition

4. Shortening (Contraction)

5. Sound-Imitation (Onomatopoeia)

6. Reduplication

7. Back-formation (reversion)

8. Sound-interchange

9. Stress-interchange

10. Blends

Sound-Imitation (onomatopoeia, echoism) – words are made by imitating different kinds of sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, human beings and inanimate objects. Sounds produced by the same kind of animal are frequently represented by different sound groups in different languages:

• in E. ducks quack and frogs croak; in R. крякать said about ducks and квакать said about frogs

• the E. cock cries cock-a-doodle-doo; the R. ку-ка-ре-ку

Some names of animals, birds and insects are also produced by sound-imitation: crow, cuckoo, cricket.

There’s also sound-imitation words reproducing sounds made by modern machinery (engine has to ding and fizz and spit and pant…)

Reduplication – new words are made by doubling a stem

• without any phonetic changes (bye-bye)

• with a variation (ping-pong) – gradational reduplication

This type is greatly facilitated in Modern E. by the vast number of monosyllables. Stylistically speaking, most words represent informal groups: colloquialisms, slang (walkie-talkie (“a portable radio”)).

Back-formation (reversion). The earliest examples are:

• to beg <– beggar,

• to burgle <– burglar.

In the case of the verbs to beg, to burgle the process was reversed: instead of a noun made from a verb by affixation (as in painter from to paint), a verb was produced from a noun by subtraction.

Later examples are:

• to baby-sit <– baby-sitter,

• to force-land <– forced landing.

№3

1. Системные отношения между лексическими единицами словарного состава языка.

Lexicology studies words as a system. Groups of words, which make a system, can be different in syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels.

• Syntagmatic – relationship with other words in connected speech.

The semantic structure of the word is analysed in its linear relationships with neighbouring words in connected speech. In other words, the semantic characteristics of the word are observed, described and studied on the basis of its typical contexts.

• Paradigmatic – with other words in the vocabulary system.

The word is studied in its relationships with other words in the vocabulary system. A word may be studied in comparison with other:

• of similar meaning (work, n. – labour, n.; to refuse, v. – to reject v. – to decline, v)

• of opposite meaning (busy, adj. – idle, adj.; to accept, v – to reject, v)

• of different stylistic characteristics (man, n – chap, n – guy, n)

Consequently, the main problems of paradigmatic studies are synonymy, antonymy, functional styles.

2. Семасиология. Референтный и функциональный подходы

Semasiology studies the meaning (there is no universally accepted

definition of meaning). The meaning can be in:

• words/groups of words

• morphemes

• sentences

• texts

The main objects of semasiological study are: semantic development of words, its classification, distinctive features and types of lexical meaning, polysemy, semantic structure of word, synonyms, antonyms.

Meaning can be studied from: