Lexicology as the science about the word

Before considering Lecture 1, try and answer the following questions. It is not necessary that all your answers should be correct. You may not know the answer. That is not a problem: the purpose of this questionnaire is to make you familiarised with some basic issues of the course. At the next lecture we will discuss them together.

 

1. Decide, which of the offered definition of the word is wrong:

1. the fundamental unit of language, presenting the integrity of the form and content;
2. the total of the sounds which comprises the word;
3. a unit of speech which serves the purposes of human communication;
4. a single unit of language which has meaning and can be spoken or written.

 

2. What common feature do the following words have: bull, cock, man, boy, stallion?

3. Does the word smart have the same meaning in the following expressions: smart Alec, smart pace, smart answer, to be smart with smb.?

4. How many parts does the word unbelievable consist of?

5. What is the difference between the following words: inflammable, invariable?

6. What does the verb greek out mean?

7. How does a person look with the hell-you-will-catch-me look?

8. What part of speech is the word the injured is?

9. What is the difference between the old and the new meaning of the verb rip off?

10. What is IMHO?

11. What’s wrong with the following combinations: to do a mistake, very brilliant, to work good?

12. What do the following lexical units: a week ago, tomorrow, 2008, at 5 o’clock, hour have in common?

13. What is the difference between the following words: dull, stupid, intellectually challenged, idiotic?

14. How the word privacy can be translated?

15. What is the difference between the words in the following pairs: can – tin; candy – sweets; truck – lorry?

 

Lecture 1

Lexicology as the science about the word. Definition of the word as the basic unit of English lexical system. Types of lexical units. Basic tasks of lexicology

Lexicology as the science about the word. The ISSUE of the word definition

What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet...

(W. Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Sc. 2)

These famous lines reflect one of the fundamental problems of linguistic research: what is in a name, that is in a word? Is there any direct connection between a word and the object it represents? Could a rose have been called by "any other name" as Juliet says?

These and similar questions are answered by lexicological research. Lexicology, a branch of linguistics, is the study of words.

It is significant that many scholars have attempted to define the word as a linguistic phenomenon. Yet none of the definitions can be considered totally satisfactory in all aspects. It is equally surprising that, despite all the achievements of modern science, certain essential aspects of the nature of the word still escape us. Nor do we fully understand the phenomenon called "language", of which the word is a fundamental unit.

We do not know much about the origin of language and, consequently, of the origin of words. It is true that there are several hypotheses, some of them no less fantastic than the theory of the divine origin of language.

We know nothing — or almost nothing — about the mechanism by which a speaker's mental process is converted into sound groups called "words", nor about the reverse process whereby a listener's brain converts the acoustic phenomena into concepts and ideas, thus establishing a two-way process of communication.

We know very little about the nature of relations between the word and the referent (i. e. object, phenomenon, quality, action, etc. denoted by the word). If we assume that there is a direct relation between the word and the referent — which seems logical — it gives rise to another question: how should we explain the fact that the same referent is designated by quite different sound groups in different languages.

We do know by now — though with vague uncertainty — that there is nothing accidental about the vocabulary^* of the language; that each word is a small unit within a vast, efficient and perfectly balanced system. But we do not know why it possesses these qualities, nor do we know much about the processes by which it has acquired them.

The list of unknowns could be extended, but it is probably high time to look at the brighter side and register some of the things we do know about the nature of the word.

First, we do know that the word is a unit of speech, which, as such, serves the purposes of human communication. Thus, the word can be defined as a unit of communication.

Secondly, the word can be perceived as the total of the sounds, which comprise it.

Third, the word, viewed structurally, possesses several characteristics.

The modern approach to word studies is based on distinguishing between the external and the internal structures of the word.

By external structure of the word we mean its morphological structure. For example, in the word post-impressionists the following morphemes can be distinguished: the prefixes post-, im-, the root press, the noun-forming suffixes -ion, -ist, and the grammatical suffix of plurality -s. All these morphemes constitute the external structure of the word post-impressionists.

The external structure of words (its morphemic structure), and also typical word-formation patterns, will be considered in the lectures on word-building.

The internal structure of the word, or its meaning, is nowadays commonly referred to as the word's semantic structure. This is certainly the word's main aspect. Words can serve the purposes of human communication solely due to their meanings, and it is most unfortunate when this fact is ignored by some contemporary scholars who, in their obsession with the fetish of structure tend to condemn as irrelevant anything that eludes mathematical analysis. And this is exactly what meaning, with its subtle variations and shifts, is apt to do.

The area of lexicology concentrated on the semantic studies of the word is called semantics.

Another structural aspect of the word is its unity. The word possesses both external (or formal) unity and semantic unity. Formal unity of the word is sometimes inaccurately interpreted as indivisibility. The example of post-impressionists has already shown that the word is not, strictly speaking, indivisible. Yet, its component morphemes are permanently linked together in opposition to word-groups, both free: bright light and those with fixed contexts, whose components possess a certain structural freedom: to take for granted.

The formal unity of the word can best be illustrated by comparing a word and a word-group comprising the same constituents. The difference between a blackbird and a black bird is best explained by their relationship with the grammatical system of the language. The word blackbird, which is characterized by unity, possesses a single grammatical framing: blackbird\s. The first constituent black is not subject to any grammatical changes. In the word-group a black bird each constituent can acquire grammatical forms of its own: the blackest birds I've ever seen. Other words can be inserted between the components which is impossible so far as the word is concerned as it would violate its unity: a black night bird.

The same example may be used to illustrate what we mean by semantic unity.

In the word-group a black bird each of the meaningful words conveys a separate concept: bird — a kind of living creature; black — a colour.

The word blackbird conveys only one concept: the type of bird (чорний дрізд). This is one of the main features of any word: it always conveys one concept, no matter how many component morphemes it may have in its external structure.

A further structural feature of the word is concluded in the fact that in speech most words can be used in different grammatical forms in which their interrelations are realized.

So far we have only singled out the word's major features, but this suffices to convey the general idea of the difficulties and questions faced by the scholar attempting to give a detailed definition of the word. The difficulty does not merely consist in the considerable number of aspects that are to be taken into account, but, also, in the essential unanswered questions of word theory which deal with the nature of its meaning.

All that we have said about the word can be summed up as follows.

The word is a speech unit used for the purposes of human communication, materially representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning, usually subject to grammatical changes and characterized by morphological and semantic unity.

TYPES OF LEXICAL UNITS

The term unit means one of the elements into which a whole may be divided or analyzed and which possesses the basic properties of this whole. The unit s of a vocabulary or lexical units are two-facet elements possessing form and meaning. The basic unit forming the bulk of the vocabulary is the word. Other units are morphemes that is parts of words, into which words may be analyzed, and set expressions or groups of words into which words may be combined.

Words are the central elements of language system, they face both ways: they are the biggest units of morphology and the smallest of syntax, and what is more, they embody the main structural properties and functions of the language. Words can be separated in an utterance by other such units and can be used in isolation. Unlike words, morphemes cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units and are functioning in speech only as constituent parts of words. Words are thought of as representing; integer concept (remember the blackbird?), feeling or action or as having a single referent. The meaning of morphemes is more abstract and more general than that of words and at the same time they are less autonomous.

Set expressions are word groups consisting of two or more words whose combination is integrated so that they are introduced in speech, so to say, ready-made as units with a specialized meaning of the whole that is not understood as a mere sum total of the meanings of the elements: a bean pole (дуже висока людина).

It is really a problem to define a lexical unit, departing form the definition of the word. For this purpose the following types of units have been singled out.

Orthographic words are written as a sequence of letters bounded by spaces on a page. Yet, there exist in the English vocabulary lexical units that are not identical with orthographic words but equivalent to them. Almost any part of speech contains units indivisible either syntactically or in terms of meaning, or both, but graphically divided. A good example is furnished by complex prepositions: along with, as far as, in spite of, except for, due to, by means of, for the sake of, etc.

The same point may be illustrated by phrasal verbs, so numerous in English: bring up 'to educate', call on 'to visit', make up 'to apply cosmetics', 'to reconcile after a disagreement' and some other meanings, put off 'to postpone'. The semantic unity of these verbs is manifest in the possibility to substitute them by orthographically single-word verbs. Though formally broken up, they function like words and they are integrated semantically so that their meaning cannot be inferred from their constituent elements. The same is true about phrasal verbs consisting of the verbs give, make, take and some others used with a noun instead of its homonymous verb alone: give a smile, make a promise, take a walk (c.f. to smile, to promise, to walk).

All these are, if not words, then at least word equivalents because they are indivisible and fulfil the functions as words do.

To sum up: the vocabulary of a language is not homogeneous. If we view it as a kind of field, we shall see that its bulk, its central part is formed by lexical units possessing all the distinctive features of words, i.e. semantic, orthographic and morphological integrity as well as the capacity of being used in speech in isolation. The marginal elements of this field reveal only some of these features, and yet belong to this set too. Thus, phrasal verbs, complex prepositions, some compounds, phraseological units, etc. are divided in spelling but are in all other respects equivalent to words. Morphemes, on the other hand, a much smaller subset of the vocabulary, cannot be used as separate utterances and are less autonomous in other respects but otherwise also function as lexical items.

TASKS OF LexicologY

Two of these have already been considered.

The first is the issue of studying the external structure of the word or word-building is concluded in the study of prevailing morphological word-structures and in the processes of making new words.

The second, semantics, as it has already been defined, is the study of the internal word (or the other lexical unit) structure, its meaning. Modern approaches to this problem are characterized by two different levels of study: syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

At syntagmatic level, the semantic structure of the word is analysed in terms of its linear relationships with neighbouring words in speech. In other words, the semantic characteristics of the word are observed, described and studied on the basis of its typical contexts: e.g. the word smart is studied in terms of its relationship with the following nouns. e.g. answer, Alec, preceding verb: e.g. to get, etc.

At paradigmatic level, the word is studied in its relationships with other words in the vocabulary system. For example, a word may be studied in comparison with other words of similar meaning (e. g. work, n. — labour, n.; to refuse, v. — to reject, v. — to decline, v.), of opposite meaning (e. g. busy, adj. — idle, adj.; to accept, v. — to reject, v.), of different stylistic characteristics (e. g. man, n. — chap, n. — bloke, n. — guy, n.). Consequently, the issues of paradigmatic studies are synonymy, antonymy and functional styles.

Since a lexical unit is not only the word but also a word-group, the next group of issues is comprised by phraseology as the branch of lexicology focused on word-groups which are characterized by stability of structure and rendered meaning, e. g. to take the bull by the horns, to see red, birds of a feather, etc.

One further important objective of lexicological studies is the study of the vocabulary of a language as a system. The vocabulary can be studied synchronically, that is, at one given stage of its development, or diachronically, that is, in its development by comparing its two different stages of development. The latter is especially important since the vocabulary, as well as the word, which is its fundamental unit, is not only what it is now, at this particular stage of the language's development, but, also, what it was centuries ago and has been throughout its history.

Yet another big issue is the regional variants of English (British, American, etc.), since vocabulary makes the basic differences among them, reflecting specific vision of the world by different nations using, at the first sight, the same language.

Finally, it is crucial for lexicology to reflect the stages of vocabulary development. This function is fulfilled by its special branch, lexicography. It deals with the ways of making dictionaries of different types.  

Answer the following questions:

1. Why is it so difficult to give an exhaustive definition of a word?

2. What is external and internal structure of a word?

3. Explain why the word blackboard can be considered a unity and why the combination of words a black board does not possess such a unity.

4. Give a brief account of the main characteristics of a word.

5. What are the types of lexical units?

7. What are the main tasks of lexicology?

8. What are the main differences between studying words syntagmatically and paradigmatically?

9. What is the difference between synchronic and diachronic study of vocabulary?

10. Look at the questionnaire, which you dealt with at the beginning. Can you associate its questions with the basic issues of lexicology presented above?

^* By the vocabulary of a language is understood the total sum of its words. Another term for the same is the stock of words