Lexicology

              The term lexicology is of Greek origin (from lexis – word & logos – science). Lexicology is the part of linguistics, which deals with the vocabulary & characteristic features of words & word-groups.

              The term vocabulary is used to denote the system of words & word-groups that the language possesses.

              The term word denotes the main lexical unit of a language resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning. This unit is used in grammatical functions characteristic of it. It is the smallest unit of a language, which can stand alone as a complete utterance.

              The term word-group is a combination of at least two notional words which do not constitute the sentence but are syntactically connected.

           According to some other scholars (the majority of Western scholars and professors B. Ilyish and V. Burlakova – in Russia), a combination of a notional word with a function word (on the table) may be treated as a word-group as well.

The term phraseological unit denotes a group of words, which exists in the language as a ready-made unit, has the unity of meaning, the unity of syntactical function, e.g. the word-group as loose as a goose means clumsy & is used in a sentence as a predicative (He is a loose as a goose).

              Lexicology can study the development of the vocabulary, the origin of words & word-groups, their semantic relations & the development of their sound form & meaning. In this case it is called historical lexicology.

              Another branch of lexicology is called descriptive & studies the vocabulary at a definite stage of its development.

 

Language units

 

A Word

              The definition of the word is one of the most difficult in linguistics. There have been many attempts to define the word. The efforts of many prominent scholars threw light on this problem. Linguists define the word as the basic unit of language. It is a unity of form and content. «Слово – это единица наименования, характеризующаяся цельнооформленностью (фонетической и грамматической) и идиоматичностью» (Шмелев Д.Н. Проблемы семантического анализа лексики. М., 1973. С. 55). Every word is a semantic, grammatical and phonological unity. The French linguist A. Meillet wrote that ”a word used for the purposes of human communication, resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning, capable of grammatical employment”. (A. Meillet. Linguistique generale. Paris, 1929. V. 1 P.30.) We can accept this definition and add that a word is characterized by positional mobility within a sentence and indivisibility.

              Word has also been defined as “minimum sentence” by H. Sweet and as “a minimum free form” by L. Bloomfield. There is no great difference between the two definitions because free forms occur in a sentence as its constituent parts, and they may also occur as sentences. That’s why, being the largest units on the morphologic level of analysis, words are the smallest language units on the syntactic level. Being the smallest meaningful units of a language, words are used in speech in one of their forms, e.g. “he has taken my book”. The system showing a word in all its grammatical forms is called its paradigm (cf. to take, took, taken, takes, taking or boy, boy’s, boys’, boys). Each part of speech is characterized by a paradigm of its own. Nouns are declined, verbs are conjugated; adjectives and adverbs may have degrees of comparison. In some cases a paradigm consists of different root-forms: go – went – gone, good – better – best.

              Some scholars draw the difference between the terms “word-form” and “word-variant”. Word-variants may be phonetic, as in “often”: 1) o:fn, 2) o:ftn; graphic, as in 1) organization and 2) organisation; morphological (learned and learnt) and lexico-semantic. Lexico-semantic variants of a word make up its semantic structure.

 

Morphemes

                             A word, however, can be divided into smaller sense units – morphemes. The morpheme is the smallest meaningful language unit. The morpheme consists of a class of variants, allomorphs, which are phonologically or morphologically conditioned, e.g. please, pleasant, pleasure.

               By the role they play in making up words morphemes are divided into root morphemes, or roots, and affixational morphemes or affixes.

              The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of the word, i.e. the base form which is common to a set of words making up a word-cluster, e.g. walk is the root of walks, walked, walking and walker.

              Affixational morphemes are initials or final elements which are attached to a root morpheme in forming words. An affixational morpheme preceding the root and modifying its meaning in coining a new word is called a prefix, e.g. polite – impolite. An affixational morpheme following the root in forming a new word is called a suffix, e.g. worker.

               Morphemes are divided into two large groups: lexical morphemes & grammatical (functional) morphemes. Both lexical & grammatical morphemes can be free & bound. Free lexical morphemes are roots of words, which express the lexical meaning of the word; they coincide with the stem of simple words. Free grammatical morphemes are function words: articles, conjunctions & prepositions (the, with, &).

               Bound lexical morphemes are: prefixes (dis-), suffixes (-ish). Bound grammatical morphemes are inflexions (endings), e.g. –s for the Plural of nouns, -ed for the Past Indefinite of regular verbs, -ing for the Present Participle, -er for the Comparative degree of adjectives. A suffix is a morpheme following the stem & forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class, c.f. –en, -y, -less in hearten, hearty, heartless. When both the underlying & resultant forms belong to the same part of speech, the suffix serves to differentiate between lexico-grammatical classes. For example, both –ify & -er are verb-forming suffixes, e.g. horrify, purify & flicker, shimmer, twitter etc. A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before a stem & modifying its meaning, e.g. hearten – dishearten. A prefix can distinguish one part of speech from another, e.g. earth is a noun, to unearth is a verb. It can also express the difference between a transitive & an intransitive verb, e.g. to stay & to outstay.

             Along with suffixes and prefixes some linguists single out infixes, which are placed within a word, like –n- in stand. This type is not productive.

 

Structural types of words

               According to the nature & number of morphemes constituting a word there are different structural types of words in English: simple, affixed, compound, compound-affixed.

              Simple words consist of one root morpheme & an inflexion (in many cases the inflexion is zero), e.g. seldom, chairs, longer, asked.

              Affixed words consist of one root morpheme, one or several affixes & an inflexion, e.g. derestricted, unemployed.

              Compound words consist of two or more root morphemes & an inflexion, e.g. baby-moons, wait-&-see (policy).

              Compound-affixed words consist of two or more root morphemes, one or more affixes & an inflexion, e.g. middle-of-the-roaders, jop-hopper, autotimer, hydroskimmer.

              Taking into account the morphemic structure of English words we may divide them into two classes.

              To class I belong non-segmentable words consisting of a root morpheme only: a girl, a table, a hat, a cap, etc. Such words are traditionally called primary or simple, and, synchronically, they are non-motivated signs.

             Along with these some linguists (e.g. L. Bloomfield) include into this class the so-called derived primary words containing only bound forms: re-ceive, de-ceive, con-ceive, re-tain, de-tain, con-tain, etc. But nowadays this segmentation is irrelevant, because the morphemes –ceive, -tain, con- are devoid of any meaning, which contradicts the definition of a morpheme as “a meaningful unit of a language”. That’s why such morphemes are often termed pseudo-morphemes. So the segmentation of words “receive”, “conceive”, as well as the term “derived” applied to them, have etymological relevance only. In present-day English these words should be classified along with the words “table, cat, etc” as consisting of one morpheme only.

              Class II comprises the so-called secondary or derived words. They can be segmented into either free morphemes or free and bound ones. These morphemes underlie the motivation of the words they make up. It is evident, therefore, that secondary words are motivated signs. The underlying form of a secondary (or derived) word is usually a free morpheme. This morpheme imparts its individual lexical meaning to the word, while a derivational affix modifies this meaning, e.g. work-er > worker, i.e. somebody who works.

             Secondary words of class II can be divided into (a) compound words, i.e. words containing more than one free form, e.g. door-knob, pocket-book, etc., (b) derived words, in which a free form is combined with a bound form, e.g. driv-er, read-er, un-just, and (c) compound derivatives, in which two or more free morphemes combine with a bound form, e.g. old-maidish, blue-eyed, etc.

               The stem is the part of the word, which remains unchanged throughout the paradigm of the word, e.g. the stem hop can be found in the words: hop, hops, hopped, hopping. The stem house can be found in the words: house, houses, house’s, houses’. The stem job-hop can be found in the words: job-hop, job-hops, job-hopped, jop-hopping.

              So, stems can be simple, compound & compound-affixed. Stems haven’t only the lexical meaning but also grammatical (part-of-speech) meaning, they can be noun stems (girl in the adjective girlish, adjective stems (girlish in the noun girlishness etc. They differ from words by the absence of inflexions in their structure; they can be used only in the structure of words.

 

Immediate constituents

               A synchronic morphological analysis is most effectively accomplished by the analysis into immediate constituents. It was first suggested by L. Bloomfield. Immediate constituents are any of the two meaningful parts forming a larger linguistic unity. The main constituents are an affix & a stem. For example, L. Bloomfield analyzed the word ungentlemanly. The listener can recognize the morpheme un- as a negative prefix because one has often come across words built on the pattern un- + adjective stem: uncertain, unconscious etc. & the adjective gentlemanly exists in the language. There are many adjectives with the pattern: noun stem + ly, e.g. womanly, masterly etc. with the same semantic relationship having the quality of the person denoted by the stem, there is also the noun gentleman in English. In the first two stages of the analysis we separated a free & a bound forms: un- + gentlemanly & gentleman + ly. The third subdivision has its peculiarities; the cut is gentle + man. A similar pattern can be found in the word nobleman. The element man may be classified as a semi-bound affix or as a variant of the free form man. To sum up: as we break the word we obtain at any level only two immediate constituents (IC), one of which is a stem. All the time the analysis is based on the patterns characteristic of the English vocabulary. As a result, we get the following formula: un- + (gentle + man) + ly.

              Sometimes it is rather difficult to distinguish between simple & affixed words, especially in the cases of phonetic borrowings from other languages & of native words with blocked (unique) root morphemes, e.g. perestroika, cranberry, absence etc.

 

Block compounds & nominative binomials

              In the English language of the second half of the twentieth century there developed so called block compounds, that is compound words which have a uniting stress but a split spelling, such as chat show (a TV programme showing a talk with a VIP), penguin suit (a suit for cosmonauts) etc. Such compound words can be easily mixed up with word-groups of the type stone wall, so called nominative binomials. Such linguistic units serve to denote a notion, which is more specific than the notion expressed by the second component & consist of two nouns, the first of which is an attribute to the second one. If we compare a nominative binomial with a compound noun with the structure N + N we shall see that a nominative binomial not always has a uniting stress. The change of the order of its components will change its lexical meaning, e.g. vidkid is a kid who is a video fan while kid vid means a video-film for kids, lamp oil means oil for lamps & oil lamp means a lamp, which uses oil for burning.

                                           

Word-combinations

              Among language units we can also point out word combinations of different structural types of idiomatic & non-idiomatic character, such as the first fiddle, old salt & round table, high road. There are also sentences, which are studied by grammarians.

              Thus, we can draw the conclusion that in Modern English the following language units can be mentioned: morphemes, words, block compounds, nominative binomials, non-idiomatic & idiomatic word-combinations, sentences.