ТЕМА 1 (1): Lexicology as a branch of Linguistics

Lexicology (from Greek lexis ‘word’ and logos ‘learning’) is the branch of linguistics that deals with the vocabulary of a language and the properties of words as the main units of language. Lexicology aims at studying and systematic description of vocabulary as regards its origin, development and current use.

The term “vocabulary” is used to denote: (1) a collection of words in a dictionary, i.e. a national vocabulary; and (2) the number of words an individual has at his disposal, i.e. an individual vocabulary. Lexicology is concerned with the national vocabulary.

Distinction is made between General Lexicology concerned with the study of vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language and Special Lexicology which is based on the principles laid down by General Lexicology but describes the characteristic peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given language.

The evolution of any vocabulary, as well as of its single elements, forms the object of Historical Lexicology. It discusses the origin of various words, their change and development, and investigates the linguistic and extra-linguistic forces modifying their structure, meaning and usage. In the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries linguistics was mainly based on historical principals.

Descriptive Lexicology is concerned with the lexical system of a language as it exists at a given stage of its development. It studies the functions of the words and their specific structure as a characteristic inherent in the system, the interdependence between the morphological and semantic structure of the word.

The distinction between Historical and Descriptive Lexicology (introduced by the Swiss philologist Ferdinand de Saussure) reflects a methodological distinction between diachronic and synchronic approaches to the investigation of the lexical system.

Numerous varieties and schools of Descriptive Lexicology have contributed, among other things, to the methods of vocabulary research, the main being the analysis into immediate constituents, distributional analysis, the method of linguistic opposition and the statistical method.

Closely connected with Historical Lexicology is Contrastive and Comparative Lexicology, whose aims are to study the correlation between the vocabularies of two or more languages. Contrastive analysis is of great importance in classroom teaching of foreign languages and in translation as it calls for a detailed comparison of the structure of the foreign language with that of the mother tongue.

The word as a basic language unit is studied in several branches of linguistics separated from all the other elements in the language system for convenience of study, in the process of communication different aspects are interdependent. Lexicology is inseparable from Phonetics and Grammar that study the phonetic and grammatical structure of the language.

Word-unity is conditioned by a number of phonological features. The importance of phonemic sequence and arrangement may be revealed by a transposition of parts of words in phrases our qu eer old d ean and our d ear old qu een. The substitution test which isolates the central phoneme of tone by setting it against torn, tarn, turn, tine, town, teen, tin, ton, tun, ten, tan, illustrates the same point. Discrimination between the words may be based upon stress, distinguishing nouns from verbs or compounds from homonymous word-groups, e.g. ‘export:: ex’port; ‘import:: im’port; ‘blackbird:: ‘black ‘bird; ‘ greenhouse:: ‘green ‘house; ‘bluebottle:: ‘blue ‘bottle  etc.

Pronouns anyone, anybody, anything following a negative may have a different meaning according to their pitch pattern, e. g.

I ‘can’t ‘eat anything. — I can eat nothing.

I ‘can’t eat anything. — I can eat some things.

There are many cases of interdependence between grammatical and lexical meanings. For example, the function of a link verb with a predicative expressed by an adjective cannot be fulfilled by every intransitive verb but are often taken up by verbs of motion: come true, fall lame, go wrong, turn red, run dry.

The example of the grammatical form lexicalised may be illustrated by the following words: authority:: authorities (‘the power or right to control’ vs. ‘a group of persons having the right to control and govern’); colour:: colours (‘tint’ vs. ‘the official flag of a country, ship, part of army’; custom:: customs (‘habit’ vs. ‘taxes paid in accordance with the law on goods entering a country’; look:: looks (‘act of looking’ vs. ‘appearance’); damage:: damages (‘injury’ vs. ‘compensation for injury’); spectacle:: spectacles (‘sight’ vs. ‘eye-glasses’) etc.

Compare also two different kinds of pluralization — the older form and the -s form:

brother —   brethren and brothers (‘members of an association, or religious group’ vs. ‘male relatives with the same parents’)

cloth — cloths and clothes (‘fabric made by weaving or knitting and used for making garments and coverings’ vs. ‘garments worn on the body’)

fish — fish and fishes (‘creatures which live in water and use their fins and tail to swim’ vs. ‘different kinds of fish’)

genius — genii and geniuses (‘spirits guarding a place’ vs. ‘people having very great natural ability and talent, especially for a particular subject or activity’)

penny — pence and pennies (‘certain amount of money’ vs. ‘small coins’)

No rigid demarcation line can be drawn between grammatical and lexical meanings. Some concrete nouns may be used both as mass-nouns and as thing-nouns (cf. fruit used in the singular and the plural fruits meaning ‘different kinds of fruit’ or used figuratively in fruits of labour).

There is also a close relationship between Lexicology and Stylistics. Stylistics studies synonymy, antonymy, differentiation of vocabulary according to the sphere of communication and other problems treated in Lexicology, although from a different angle. Stylistics treats of the artistic modification of speech for the sake of securing a particular effect of emotional colouring in pictorial language.

Lexicology to a greater extent than Phonetics or Grammar is a sociolinguistic science, for in the vocabulary of a language are reflected, recorded and fixed the results of man’s knowledge of the world, the concepts and categories which his mind has evolved, e.g. the study of the shifts of meaning in different words shows that the content of words reflected the changes that were taking place in the life of the speech community.

Variations in language depending on social, geographical, educational, gender, age, etc. stratification, social evaluation of speech habits, correlation of linguistic facts with the life and attitudes of the speaking community also constitute a large part of problems dealt with in Lexicology.

The theoretical importance of Lexicology is determined by the fact that it studies one of the three main aspects of language – its vocabulary. Practically Lexicology meets the needs of such branches of applied linguistics as lexicography (the science of dictionary-compiling), language teaching, translation, etc.