Lecture 4. Lexicological level and its composition.

The content of the lecture: In this lecture the subject matter concerns the structural and functional properties of the units presenting the lexicological level. There are illustrations of a dynamic character which distinguishes the linguistic signs in a composition of the level in question. Also are given different views upon the nature of a word.

The key terms of the lecture: lexicological level; lexeme; nominative unit; nomination; designation; sublevel; intermediate levels / units; nominalized complexes; phraseological collocations / unities / fusions; semantic motivation; semantic isolation;

The objectives and tasks of the lecture:

After completing your work over the material of this lecture you are to be able to speak on the following problems:

The material of the lecture:

§ 1. It is relevant in Modern Linguistics to distinguish a lexicological level the main unit of which is a lexeme / in common usage a word/.

1.1.In spite of the tendency to use the two terms in their interchange, it seems more correct to use the term ‘lexeme’ which is more specialized and means

a fundamental unit of the vocabulary of a language that may exist in a number of different paradigmatic grammatical or semantic forms, e.g. "make" exists as "makes, making, maker, made" or 'go' as 'went' and 'gone' and 'going'. Here are included all the examples of systemic interation as synonyms, hyperonyms, polysemantic words, etc.

1.2. The word had too long been under scrupulous attention of different scholars. There had been suggested different criteria to define it. We shall try to analyze them:

a) In the works of American structuralists ‘ word is a minimum free form possessing an ability to function as a sentence' / L. Bloomfield/. But if even to take separately some notional units it is hardly possible to state that any of them has acquired some sentence status. The only function that can and is discerned in a word is its nominative character: to look, to smile, beautiful, nice, people, friendship,etc..So to ascribe syntactical characteristics to a word is a mistake.

b) A convenient dictionary definition explains a word as ' the smallest unit of speech that has the meaning taken by itself.' Yet the last phrase is not entirely clear. For instance , in Modern English the morpheme 'anti-' taken from the Greek is bound, hence it isn't a word as we can see on examples; antibody, antitoxin, antihero, etc. Nevertheless this element may occasionally appear as a free form as in: 'What's about going to a dance tonight? – Very anti!' ' He is very ‘anti' means ‘very opposed’ Another example with the Indo- European element –self : 'Lady Gordon looked at her beautiful self in a long mirror' , or, 'He cares most of his self ', illustrates that -self is a dependent derivational morpheme of agglutinative type acquired the properties of a free form. But these examples are sooner the questions of stylistics.

c) Academician Vinogradov V.V., an outstanding Soviet philologist taking into account language dichotomy ‘Speech is a real communicative activity" and 'Language is a system of means’ thinks a word as a central language nominative unit on that ground that it fulfils the most important functions of nomination, reference and designation .

d) F. de Saussure, a famous Swiss scientist, regarded a word as 'a central mechanism of language ', distinguishing its double essence as belonging to the system of linguistic means and a system of communicative acts.