Lecture 1.
LEXICOLOGY AS A SCIENCE.
FUNDAMENTALS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY.
1. The object of lexicology. Kinds of lexicology. Connection of lexicology with other branches of linguistics.
2. Principal approaches to the study of language material in linguistic science.
3. Methods of linguistic investigations.
4. Basic linguistic problems in lexicology.
5. Word as the basic unit of the language. Problems of definition.
6. Lexicography. Main problems of lexicography.
7. History of English and American lexicography.
8. Types of dictionaries.
BASIC NOTIONS OF THE LECTURE.
Lexicology is a branch of linguistics, which studies words, word groups, word equivalents and morphemes, which make up words.
There are:
General lexicology – which deals with the general study of words and vocabulary.
Special lexicology – which deals with the description of characteristic peculiarities of the vocabulary.
Historical lexicology – which deals with the evolution of the vocabulary, describing its change and development in the course of time.
There are 2 principal approaches to the study of language material in linguistic science:
Diachronic – deal with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the course of time.
Synchronic – is concerned with the vocabulary of the language and its existing at a given time.
E.g.: diachronically words “country”, “fellow” are borrowed. Synchronically they are regarded as being English, but different from native words like “child”, “foot”, “stone”.
Words “childhood”, “freedom”, “friendship” were regarded once as compounds. Now they are divided into root and suffix and are regarded as derived words.
Lexicology is closely connected with such brunches of linguistics as grammar, phonology, stylistics, history of the language.
Methods of linguistic investigations.
Distributional analysis – is used on different levels of language analysis. The identification of lexical and structural meaning of the word is based on its corresponding distribution.
Distribution – possible variants of the immediate lexical, grammatical and phonetical environment of a linguistic unit.
Transformational analysis – changing of a sentence, phrase or formula according to a certain model and following certain rules.
Component analysis – attempt to describe the meaning of words in terms of a universal inventory of semantic components and their possible combinations.
Contextual method – is based on assumption that difference in meaning of linguistic units is always indicated by the difference in environment. It concentrates its attempts on determining minimum stretch of speech and the conditions, necessary to reveal in which of its individual meanings the word is used.
Context is subdivided into lexical, syntactical and mixed.
As a rule, indication comes from syntactic, lexical and sometimes morphological factors combined.
Statistical method– describes how things are on the average.
This method supplies research workers with formulas showing the necessary scope of material depending on the amount they are going to analyze.
Statistical approach is most helpful when we have large masses of data to analyze (for example, in vocabulary study).