1. Lexicology is a branch of linguistics, which studies the word and a system of words in a

particular language. Lexiсolоgу is ‘the science of the word’

The term is composed of 2 words of Greek origin - lexis meaning ‘word, phrase’ (hence lexicos ‘having to do with words’) and logos which denotes ‘learning, a department of knowledge’. Thus, the literal meaning of the term. It’s applied to that part of linguistics which deals with the studying of the voc-ry of the language and the properties of the words as the main units of the language. Lex-gy is a branch of linguistics which has its own main aims and tasks. Modern English lex ivestigates the problem of w. structure and w.formation, the classification of voc.units

Lex-gy is concerned with words, variable word-groups, phraseological units, and with morphemes which make up words. As a science it has both theoretical and practical use. Theoretical value: the theory of meaning was originally developed within the philosophical science. The relationship between the name and the thing, that this name names, constitutes one of the key questions of Gnostic theories. Theory of lex-gy came into being to meet the needs of many different sciences (lexicography, literary criticism, foreign language teaching).

The main nominative units in Lex-gy are: a word, a morpheme, a word-group. The word is a basic unit of a language system. It’s the largest on a morphological and the smallest on the syntactic level. It’s the most typical central, two-facet , ready-made unit which is easily apprehended by native-speakers phsyhologically and perceptually. Every word has definite grammar qualities that serve to unite words into larger units. The system showing a word in all its word-forms is called its paradigm. The morpheme is the smallest indivisible two-facet language unit that is a part of a word, into which words may be analyzed (to undo- to redo-a doer). There are distinguished root morphemes and derivational (word-building) morphemes. The word-group, phraseological unit: it’s two-facet, ready-made unit listed in a special dict.; consists of at least 2 ws and the meaning of each word is dif.from the meaning of the whole. “as loose as a goose” – “clumsy” and is used in a sentence as a predicative.

2. Lexicology deals with:

MORFOLOGY (word formation or word building)

SEMANTICS OR SEMASIOLOGY (semantics, meaning),

FRASIOLOGY (word groups, that are idiomatic) LEXICOGRAPHY(the principles of making up dictionaries and reference books) ETIMOLOGY(origin of the word)

3. The word and the morpheme. Types of morphemes

Morpheme is the smallest indivisible bilateral meaningful language unit

Morphemes may be classified: a) from the semantic point of view, b) from the structural point of view.

A)Semantically morphemes fall into 2 classes: root-morphemes and non-root or affixational morphemes. Root is the lexical nucleus of a word, it has an individual lexical meaning.(fortune,teach)

Affixational - which are added to roots to modify their mn, cannot stand alone) acc to the place of the affix in the w. they are classified into prefixes and suffixes: a prefix precedes the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it. (teach -teacher)

B) Structurally mrphs fall into 3 types: free, bound and semi-free (semi-bound) morphemes.

A free morpheme is defined as one that coincides with some word-forms independently functioning in speech (a stem) – heart – hearts; hearty- heartier..

A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a word (affixes, unique roots and pseudo-roots: theor- in theory, theoretical).

Semi-bound morphemes are morphemes that can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme (sleep well – well-known, half an hour – half-eaten).

A special class of morphemes of Greek and Latin origin should be mentioned. They are used to make up international words. They are called combining forms (telephone, telegraph; the morphemes tele-, graph-, scope-, micro-). And also the morpheme –man as the last component may be qualified as semi-bound (fisherman – man-made).

4. Basic unit in morphemic analysis

The morph. anal. has the aim of knowing about etymology of the words, their translation to the other languages and knowing about how they are formed. The morphemic analysis is directed on studying of structure of a word. It develops of two stages – exarticulations(вычленения) of components making it at concrete (standard) level and their identification at abstract (system) level. The morphemic analysis may be carried out on the basis of 2 principles: the root principle and the affix principle. According to the affix principle the segmentation of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of an affixational morpheme within a set of words for example( -less leads to the segmentation of words like useless, hopeless, merciless), the root-morphemes within a word-cluster; the identification of the root-morpheme (agree- in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree makes it possible to split these words into the root -agree- and the affixational morphemes -able, -ment, dis-.

The morphemic analysis can be spent in free sequence (последовательность). The order of its carrying out depends on in what sequence related and one-structural words will steal up(подбираться) to an analyzed word