Types of word meaning. Word meaning and motivation.
Lexicology as a branch of linguistics. Lexical units.
Lexicology as a branch of linguistics.
Lexicology is the part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of the language and the properties of words as the main units of language.
Lexicology as a branch of linguistics is concerned with meaning, history and use of words and also with lexicographic descriptions of lexical items in dictionaries. One of the major tasks of lexicology is to reveal how lexicon is organized, structured, systematized and how it is used for the purposes of communication.
Lexicology is distinguished in:
v General and special
v Contrastive and comparative
v Descriptive (the synchronic approach) and historical (the diachronic approach).
The general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of the specific features of any particular language, is known as general lexicology.
Special lexicology devotes its attention to the description of the characteristic peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given language.
The importance of English lexicology is based on the fact that at present it is the world’s most widely used language. It is spoken as a native language by nearly three hundred million people in Britain, the United States, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and some other countries. The knowledge of English is widely spread geographically — it is in fact used in all continents. It is also spoken in many countries as a second language and used in official and business activities there. This is the case in India, Pakistan and many other former British colonies.
Lexical units.
Lexicology is associated with such term as lexical item or unit. Lexical units are morphemes, words, word-groups, phraseological units.
General characteristics the English lexicon
Of all the language components lexicon is the most sensitive to man's social life, its development is influenced by different extralinguistic factors.
1) One of the specific characteristics of the lexicon in modem English is that it is very extensive. Though it is not possible to give the exact amount of lexical units. But dictionary makers estimate that in English there are somewhere from 450,000 to 3,000 000 words.
The English language vocabulary development is very dynamic. The characteristic feature is steady replenishment of the vocab.
2) There exists a great number of variants and dialects of English. The existing varietiesare made by lexical differences, differences in phonetic and grammatical systems.
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3) English has mixed etymological character. English borrowed up to 70% of its total vocabulary from more than 50 languages of the world. Examples: baguette [Fr], sushi [Jap]. Loan words radically changed the structure of the OE lexicon.
4) numerous word groups that semantically cannot be reduced to the meanings of their components and are characterized by functional integrity (to break the ice, in the long run, mare's nest, etc.). Such idiomatic word groups are part of the English lexicon.
Etymological survey of the English lexicon.
Etymology – a branch of linguistics, which deals with the facts of origin & primary meaning of the word.
As for English language many scientist consider the foreign influence to be the most important factor in the development of the Eng. language. There are more borrowed words in English than in any other European language. So we speak of the mixed character of the English vocabulary. It contains the native element and the borrowed elements. The number of native words is rather small, about 30%. About 70% of words are borrowed. The native element include Indo-European, Germanic and English proper words. Indo-European words: day, night, mother, father, son, daughter, moon, sun. Germanic words have cognates in modern Germanic languages. EG: parts of human body: hand, head, arm, bone. Animals: fox, bear. English proper words (words which were not borrowed from other languages): lord, lady, boy, girl.
Borrowings
The number of borrowings from different languages is different. Latin (butter, plum), Spanish (potato, tomato), French, Russian etc. Special types of borrowings: translation-loans, doublets, international words.
Assimilation.Borrowings can be completely (butter, husband), partially (machine, sombrero) and non-asssimilated (radio, television, coffee).
Types of word meaning. Word meaning and motivation.
Lexical - is the meaning proper to the given linguistic unit in all its forms and distributions. L. meaning is the realization of concept or emotion by means of a definite language system. L. meaning is the same in different grammatical forms of the same word (Listen, listening, listener). Two components of lexical meaning: Denotative - part of meaning gives objective information about an object, it is the conceptual content of a word. Connotative- part of the lexical meaning is what the word conveys about the speaker's attitude to different situations. Types of connotative meaning: Stylistic - connotation is what the word conveys about the speaker's usage of a certain functional style, situation, relationships between speakers, purpose of communication; Emotional - connotation is what the word conveys about the speaker's emotions: cold weather - beastly weather; Intensifying - connotation ex-presses degree or intensity of lexical meaning: splendid vs gorgeous, magnificent; Grammatical - meaning is abstract and generalized, it is recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words. Lexico-grammatical meaning is common for all the meanings of words belonging to a lexico-grammatical class of words, it is the feature according to which they are grouped together (the words 'team, crew, staff, brigade' have common meaning of 'group'). Direct - meaning nominates the referent in isolation, without certain context; Figurative - meaning nominates the referent giving some additional characteristics. Primary /main- meaning stands first; Secondary / derived - meaning is formed from the primary.
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Motivation isthe suggestion of the meaning of the word by the lexical form of the word.
1. Morphological motivationimplies a direct connection between the lexical meaning of the component morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and the meaning of the word. (The words finger-ringand ring-finger,e.g., contain two morphemes, the combined lexical meaning of which is the same; the difference in the meaning of these words can be accounted forby the difference in the arrangement of the component morphemes).
2. Phonetical motivationimplies a direct connection between the phonetic structure of the word and its meaning.
3. Semantic motivationimplies a direct connection between the central and marginal meanings of the word. This connection may be regarded as a metaphoric extension of the central meaning based on the similarity of different classes of referents denoted by the word. (For example, a woman who has given birth is called a mother + mother country, mother tongue, etc)
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