Lexicology is a branch of linguistics

Lexicology is a branch of linguistics – the science of language. The term “lexicology” is composed of two Greek morphemes “lexic” – word,  phrase & “logos” which  denotes  learning  a  department  of  knowledge.  Thus  theliteral meaning of the term “lexicology”  is “the  science  of  the  word”.Lexicology as a branch  of  linguistics  has its  own  aims  &  methods  of scientific  research.  Its  basic  task  –  being  a  study   &   systematic description of vocabulary in  respect  to  its  origin,  development  &  its current use. Lexicology  is  concerned  with words,  variable  word-groups,phraseological units & morphemes which make up words.

general lexicology – part of general linguistics, is concerned with the study of vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language;

special lexicology – the lexicology of a particular language, i.e. the study and description of its vocabulary and vocabulary units, primarily words as the main units of language.; special lexicology is based on the principles worked out and laid down by general lexicology, a general theory of vocabulary. Special lexicology employs synchronic (q.v.) and diachronic (q.v.) approaches:

- special descriptive lexicology (synchronic lexicology) – deals with the vocabulary and vocabulary units of a particular language at a certain time

- special historical lexicology (diachronic lexicology) – deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the course of time.

Descriptive   lexicology  deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development. It studies the functions of words and their specific structure as a characteristic inherent in the system. The  descriptive   lexicology  of the English language deals with the English word in its morphological and semantical structures, investigating the interdependence between these two aspects. These structures are identified and distinguished by contrasting the nature and arrangement of their elements. It will, for instance, contrast the word boy with its derivatives: boyhood, boyish, boyishly, etc. It will describe its semantic structure comprising alongside with its most frequent meaning, such variants as ‘a son of any age’, ‘a male servant’, and observe its syntactic functioning and combining possibilities. This word, for instance, can be also used vocatively in such combinations as old boy, my dear boy, and attributively, meaning ‘male’, as in boy-friend.

Historical lexicology deals with the historic change of words in the course of language development.

Etymology is a branch of lexicology studying the origin of words. Etymologically, the English vocabulary is divided into native and loan words, or borrowed words. A native word is a word which belongs to the original English word stock and is known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. A borrowed word is a word taken over from another language and modified according to the standards of the English language.

The Word is the fundamental unit  of language.  It is a dialectical unity of form and content. Its content or meaning is not identical to notion, but it may   reflect human notions and in this sense may be considered as the form of their existence.

Native and Borrowed Words in English Etymology is a branch of lexicology studying the origin of words. Etymologically, the English vocabulary is divided into native and loan words, or borrowed words.

The borrowing process as the reflection of cultural contacts. The impact of historical events on the development of English vocabulary.

Words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source are called international words.

Etymological doublets – are pairs of words, which have one and the same original form, but which have acquired different forms and even different meanings during the course of linguistic development.

Assimilation of borrowed words is a partial or total conformation to the phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and its semantic system.  There are three types of assimilation: grammatical, lexical and phonetic assimilation.

Grammatical assimilation - usually as soon as words from other languages were introduced into English they lost their former grammatical categories and paradigms and acquired new categories and paradigms.

Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words but not independently. Morphological classification of words includes two classifications: structural and semantic

Free morpheme is a morpheme which may stand alone without changing its meaning (e.g. sport).

Bound morpheme is a morpheme which is always bound to smth else and never occurs alone.  (sportive: sport - free morpheme, ive - bound morpheme).

Semi-free morpheme is a morpheme which can function both as an affix and as a free-morpheme (well, half - may occur as free morphemes in utterance sleep well, half an hour and as bound morpheme in words like well-known, half-eaten)

Root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of a word which has an individual definite lexical meaning. (hearten, dishearten, heartly, heartless - heart is a root).

Stem is a single morpheme which remains after an affix is slipped from the word and expresses the lexical and the part of speech meaning (hearty, courage, involve, legible).

Affixes are morphemes having abstract meaning. Affixes are classified into prefixes, suffixes and infixes

Prefixes are morphemes which stand before the root and modify the meaning (mispronounce, unsafe).

Suffixes are morphemes which follow the root and form a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class (hearty, heartless).

Infix is a morpheme placed within the word (stand)

This raises the question of productivity of affixes which means the ability of being used to form new words.

By productive affixes (словообразующие) we mean affixes which take part in deriving new words  (-er, -ing, -ism, -ist, -ance, -ish, -able, -less, -ate, -ize/ise, -ly,  un-, re-, anti-, non-).

By non-productive affixes (формоизменительные) we mean affixes which are used for changing the grammatical form of the word and can’t form new words. Non-productive affixes are recognized as separate morphemes and possess clear-cut semantic characteristics. (-ed, -th, -hood, -ship, -ful, -some, -en, -ous). It is worthy of note that an affix may lose its productivity and then become productive again in the process of word-formation.

The morphological stem of simple words, i.e. the part of the word which takes on the system of grammatical inflections is semantically …

Compounds are words that are made up of two immediate constituents which are both derivative bases.

According to the derivative structure all words fall into two big classes: simplexes or simple, non-derived words and complexes or derivatives. Derived word — a word formed or originated from another or from a root in the same or another language.  2   Back  derivation — the formation of a word from the stem (base) of another word, i.e. by means of cutting off suffixes (prefixes) from the source word. See also the formation of the words: to burgle from the word burglar; to enthuse from enthusiasm, to legislate from legislator.

In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. The boundary between word formation and semantic change can be difficult to define: a new use of an old word can be seen as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form (see conversion). Word formation can also be contrasted with the formation of idiomatic expressions, although words can be formed from multi-word phrases

Productive (main) ways of word-formation

Affixation is the formation of words by adding affixes to root-morpheme. There are two ways of affixation: suffixation and prefixation.

Suffixation is the formation of words with the help of suffixes. Suffixes usually modify the lexical meaning of the base and transfer words to a different part of speech. There are also suffixes which don’t shift words from one part of speech into another. They transfer a word into a different semantic group (friend - friendship).

Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes. Prefixes are derivational morphemes affixed before the base. They modify the lexical meaning of the base.

Conversion is the formation of new words from some existing words by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged.

There are 4 types of conversion: verbalization (the formation of  verbs: a water - to water, dust - to dust, yellow - to yellow), substantivation (the formation of nouns: to answer – an answer, to walk - a walk), adjectivation (the formation of adjectives: down - down), adverbalization (the formation of adverbs: home - home). The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs. Verbs converted from nouns are called denominal verbs. Nouns converted from verbs are called deverbal substantives.

Shortening is a process of word-formation in which a part of the original word is taken away. There are two ways of shortening: clipping and abbreviation.

Using the first way of shortening you make a new word from the syllable of  original words. Clipping (сокращение, урезание) is the cutting of one or several syllables from a word.

Composition or compounding is the process of word-formation in which new word produced by combining of two or more stems and such new word is called compound word. There are 3 ways of composition:

1. composition without connecting element (neutral) - heartache, heartbreak

2. composition with a vowel or a consonant as a linking element (morphological) - speedometer, statesman

3. composition with a preposition, a pronoun or a conjunction as a linking element (syntactical) - son-in-law, forget-me-not

Hybrids are words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different languages (read (Eng.) + able (Lat.) = readable, black (Eng.) + guard (Fr.) = blackguard, bi (Lat.) + cycle (Gr.) = bicycle, school (Lat.) +boy (Eng.)= schoolboy)

Blending is a result of creation of words by merging elements of several words (smoke + fog = smog, breakfast + lunch = brunch, television broadcast = telecast)

Back-formation is a creation of new words by substracting a real or supposed affix from existing words through misinterpretation of their structure (to compute from a computer, to typewrite from typewriter, to baby-sit from baby-sitter, to beg from beggar).

Reduplication is the morphological process by which a morpheme is repeated thereby creating a new word with a different class. We should distinguish partial and full reduplication. Partial reduplication in which only one part of the morpheme is reduplicated (walkie-talkie, riff-raff, ping-pong). Full reduplication in which the entire morpheme is reduplicated (bye-bye, fifty-fifty, pooh-pooh).

Sound imitation is a reproduction of a sound associated with it (bubble, splash, gurgle)

Homonyms are words which are identical in sound-form and spelling or in one of these aspects but different in meaning Bank 1. a shore

homophones are words identical in sound-form but different both in spelling and in meaning. Ex. Sea – see, son – sun

2. homographs are words identical in spelling but different both in their sound-form and meaning. Ex. Tear [ti  ] – tear [t      ]; lead [li:d] – lead [led]

3. perfect homonyms or homonyms proper are words identical both in spelling and in sound-form but different in meaning (homographs - homophones).

Phraseology is a branch of linguistics which deals with phraseological subsystem of language.

The term “phraseological units” is not clearly defined. Phraseological units or idioms (set expressions, set-phrases, fixed word-groups) represent the most picturesque colourful and expressive part of the language’s vocabulary. Phraseological units are characterized by a double sense. The current meanings of constituent words build up a certain picture, but the actual meaning of the whole unit has a little or nothing to do with that picture and creates a new image.

Free word-group is a combination of two or more words and their meanings stand a separate notion.

Word-groups can be described as lexically motivated if the combined lexical meaning of the group is deducible from the meaning of their components. Word-groups are said to be lexically non-motivated (structurally motivated) if the meaning of the pattern is deducible from the order and arrangement of the member-words of the group. (catch at a straw, go in at one ear and out of the other)

Vocabulary is the total word-stock of the language. The exact number of vocabulary units in Modern English can't be stated with any degree of certainty for many reasons, the most obvious of them being the constant growth of Modern English word-stock especially technical terms of the science.

Lexicography, the science of dictionary-compiling, is closely connected with Lexicology, both dealing with the same problems – the form, meaning, usage and origin of vocabulary units - and making use of each other's achiviements.

The term dictionary is used to denote a book listing words of a language with their meaning and often with data regarding pronunciation, usage and/or origin.

1. Encyclopaedic dictionaries, the biggest of which are sometimes called simply encyclopaedias are books, that give information about the extra-linguistic world, they deal with concepts (objects and phenomena), their relations to other objects and phenomena. The most famous encyclopedias are The Encyclopedia Britannica which has 24 volumes and The Encyclopedia Americana which has 30 volumes.

2. Linguistic dictionary is a book of words in a language, usually listed alphabetically, with definitions, pronunciations, etymologies and other linguistic information or with their equivalents in another language.

General dictionaries represent the vocabulary as a whole with a degree of completeness depending upon the scope and bulk of the book in question. (explanatory dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries, etymological dictionaries, thesaurus, frequency dictionaries, phonetical dictionaries).

Special dictionaries whose stated aim is to cover only a certain specific part of the vocabulary (abbreviations dictionaries, new words dictionaries, borrowings dictionaries, synonyms dictionaries, toponyms dictionaries, dictionaries of slag, proverbs dictionaries, glossaries, phraseological dictionaries)

Standard English is the language taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and  the television, spoken by educated people and may be defined as that form of language which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken and understood.

There are five main territorial variants of the English language. They are British English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English and New Zealand English. We will consider variants and dialects of British and American English. Variants are regional varieties of a standard literary language characterized by some minor peculiarities in the sound system, vocabulary and grammar and by their own literary norms. Dialects are varieties of the language peculiar to some districts and having no literary form.  

Dialects are now chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. They are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television, cinema.