Slide The scope of lexicology

Lexicology is defined as “the study of lexis , understood as a stock of words in a given language, i.e. its vocabulary or lexicon” (Jackson Amvela, 2007)Lexicology deals with simple words in all their aspects, but also with complex and compound words, the meaningful units of language.Four fields related to lexicology: Semantics, morphology, etymology, lexicography.

What is lexicology?

LEXICOLOGY

 The word lexicology derives from Greek with lexis meaning word,

or the total stock of words and logos meaning science or theory discourse Thus, lexicology, a branch of linguistics, is the study of words

of words in a given language, i.e its vocabulary or lexicon”

(Jackson & Amvela, 2007)

with complex and compound words, the meaningful units of

language

etymology, lexicography

Lexicology deals with simple words in all their aspects, but also with complex and compound words, the meaningful units of language

Four fields related to lexicology

morphology semantics

etymology

lexicography

Morphology is the study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words

Morphology is the study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words

Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units which may constitute words or parts of words They are „smallest‟ or „minimal‟ in the sense that they cannot be broken down further on the basis of meaning

the morpheme is “the smallest unit that has meaning or serves a grammatical function in a language Morphemes are the atoms with which words are built.” (Katamba 2005: 29)

They are „meaningful‟ because we can specify the kind of relationship they have with the non-linguistic world

im-, in-, il-, ir- are variants of the same morpheme

Free morphemes are morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words

Ex: open, boy, desire, man, etc

-lexical morphemes Ex: girl, man, house, tiger, yellow, etc

-functional morphemes Ex: and, but, when, because, near, etc

Bound morphemes which are the forms that cannot normally stand alone and are typically attached to another form

-Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes to make new words or to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem

List of derivational morphemes includes suffixes such as – ish, -ly, -ment

List of derivational morphemes includes prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, un-

-Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word

Ex: -s, -ed, -ing, -er

Bound morphemes which are the forms that cannot normally stand alone

and are typically attached to another form

Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes to make new words or to

make words of a different grammatical category from the stem

Derivational affixes" serve to alter the meaning of a word by building on a base, eg –s in writes helps to form the present tense form of the verb “to write” or when it is the predicate of a third person singular subject

List of derivational morphemes includes suffixes such as –ish, -ly, -ment List of derivational morphemes includes prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, un-

Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes to indicate aspects of the grammatical

function of a word

There are only eight "inflectional affixes" in English, and these are all suffixes English has the following inflectional suffixes, which serve a variety of grammatical functions when added to specific types of words These grammatical functions are shown to the right of each suffix

• -s noun plural: girl – girls; boy – boys; flower – flowers;

• -'s noun possessive: boy‟s; child‟s; student‟s;

• -s verb present tense third person singular: eats; sings; works;

• -ing verb present participle/gerund: eating; singing; working;

• -ed verb simple past tense: worked; played; occured;

• -en verb past perfect participle: eaten; taken; written;

• -er adjective comparative: colder; older; happier;

• -est adjective superlative: coldest; oldest; happiest;

A root may or may not stand alone as a word It is not further divisible

into smaller parts that have a meaning

Root creation refers to the building of a word that has no relationship whatsoever with any previously existing word

If roots are equivalent to a word in the language and carry the notional meaning of this word into all the new words they form, they are

considered free roots (eg civil in civility, region in regional or person in

personify)

A bound root is combined with other morphemes to form a meaningful

word (receive, conceive, perceive, deceive share the same bound root which is –ceive) They are totally barred from occurring independently

Any concrete realization of a morpheme in a given utterance is called a

„morph‟ Hence, the forms caf, chair, farm, -ing, -s, and -er are all

Morphs should not be confused with syllables The basic difference between the two

is that while morphs are manifestations of morphemes and represent a specific meaning, syllables are pairs of words which are isolated only on the basis of pronunciation

Simple words are all free morphemes

Complex (or derived) words are formed from simpler words by the addition of

affixes or some other kind of morphological modification

Compound words, or simply compounds, are formed by combining two or more

words (free morphemes) with or without morphological modification, e.g door-knob, cheeseburger, pound saver, wild-animal-tamer

The construction of words and parts of words, and the distinction between the different types of words are all based on morphological analysis

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences

Pragmatic semantics studies the meaning of utterances in context

Sentence semantics handles the meaning of sentences as well as

meaning relations between sentences

Lexical semantics deals with the meaning of words and the meaning relations that are internal to the vocabulary of a language

Philosophical semantics is concerned with the logical properties of language, the nature of formal theories and the language of logic

Linguistic semantics involves all aspects of meaning in natural language, from the meaning of complex utterances in specific contexts to that of individual sounds in syllables

 Conceptual meaning covers the basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed

by the literal use of a word

 Associative meaning/connotation covers the components of a word These components would be part of the conceptual meaning

 Ex: connotations of the word „needle‟ are pain, illness, blood, drugs, thread (a very thin fibre ) or knitting

Semantic features: basic elements in differentiating the meaning

of each word in a language from every other word

Ex: child: [+human], [-adult]/[-mature],[ +_male]

Hen: [+animate], [+bird], [+fowl], [+grown], [+female]

Acceptability Meaningfulness

Ex: That woman is a man

That doll is a bomb

That walking-stick is a gun

Some words are not etymologically related to ancient forms  difficult to indicate their origin

Some terms can not be specified the exact time they entered the language

There can be no true or original meaning

Etymology also makes reference to cognates (i.e words

related in form) in other languages

For borrowed words:

- Gives the source language, the date when the borrowing

took place

- Supplies the previous history of the words

 Lexicology is not only the branch of linguistics providing an input

to lexicography => morphology, syntax and phonology do

Sociolinguistics contributes too (language variety, information on style and registers)

Lexicology as a level of language analysis

Ex: pill and bill, sheep and ship, meat and meal > they differ only in one

sound unit

Suprasegmental or prosodic features such as stress can be phonological difference between words

Ex: ex‟port (v) vs „export (n)

Stress in compounds also shows the relevance of phonology and

lexicology

Ex: a) compound b) Noun phrase

blackboard black board

blackbird black bird

greyhound grey hound

White house white house

1 Lexicology and phonology

2 Lexicology and syntax

 Syntax is concerned with the relationships between words in constructions and the way these words are put together to form sentences

Q: Are people able to speak or understand the language if they know the meanings of all the words in a large dictionary?

If we say someone knows English, it means that they‟ve acquired a set

of rules (the rules of syntax) to produce English sentences, the rules that help them understand the sentences of another person speaking the language

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” proposed by Chomsky (1957)

This sentence is built according to the rules of English syntax but it is

unacceptable on lexical grounds

Syntax: general (deals with rules and regularities); lexicology: particular (the way individual words operate and affect other words in the same context)

1.3 The structure of English vocabulary

 Every word is involved in a network of associations which connect

it with other terms in the language

 These associations => similarity of meaning, purely formal (forms), forms and meaning

1.3.1 The word and its associative field

Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations

Paradigmatic relations (relations in absentia)

The terms involved consist of a word present in the utterance and others that are not actually in the same utterance but that are

substitutable for it in that context

Ex: difficult is paradigmatically related with „easy‟, „ funny‟ or

„silly‟ in the expressions such as „an easy question‟, a funny

question‟, „a silly question‟

syntagmatic relations: the words involved are actually co-occurrent items (relations in praesentia)

Lexical fields

 A lexical field or lexical set can be defined as „a named area of

meaning in which lexemes interrelate and define each other in

specific ways.‟ (Crystal, 1995)

 Ex: lexical field of kinship terms: father, mother, son, daughter,

cousin, nephew, etc

 The vocabulary of a language is essentially a dynamic and

well-integrated system of lexemes structured by relationships of meaning

1.3.3 Word families

Words are grouped into „families‟ on the basis of their morphology, both their inflections and their derivations

Words are grouped in fields on the basis of an element of shared meaning

A family consists of a base form, its possible inflectional forms, and the words derived from it by prefixation and suffixation

Bauer and Nation (1993) develop the notion of word families by proposing a set of levels into which families are divided The levels are established on a number of

criteria relating to the frequency, productivity, regularity and predictability of the

affixes in English

(a) closed classes: preposition, pronoun, determiner, conjunction, auxiliary verb;

The closed classes contain the so-called „grammatical‟ or „function‟ words, which generally serve the grammatical construction of sentences They are small classes, with a restricted and largely unchanging membership

(b) open classes: noun, adjective, verb, adverb;

The open classes, by contrast, are large, and they are constantly being added to The members of the open classes are the „content‟ words, carrying the main meaning of a sentence; they are the words likely to be retained in a telegram or a headline

(c) lesser categories: numeral, interjection;

(d) a small number of words of unique function: the particle not and the infinitive marker to