Lexicology of the English Language
МOCКОВСКИЙ ПЕДАГОГИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ
Курс лекций и планы семинарских занятий
по лексикологии английского языка
(для студентов третьего курса)
Cocтавитель : Э. М. Дубенец, к.ф.н., доц.
This course of lexicology which forms a part of the
curriculum for the English sections of linguistic departments of
teacher-training colleges is intended for students of the third
year of the day department. It includes 15 lectures and 12
seminars which cover the main themes of Modern English
lexicology: wordbuilding, semantic changes, phraseology,
borrowings, semasiology, neology, lexicography. The material for
seminars includes topics to be discussed, test questions and
lexical units to be analized. Lexical units for the analysis
were chosen mainly among neologisms. There is also a brief list
of recommended literature.
The aim of the course is to teach students to be word-conscious, to be
able to guess the meaning of words they come across from the meanings of
morphemes, to be able to recognize the origin of this or that lexical unit.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Language units
Wordbuilding
Affixation
Compound words
Conversion
Substantivization
«Stone wall» combinations
Abbreviations
Seconadary ways of wordbuilding
Semantic changes
Specialization
Generalization
Metaphor and metonymy
Phraseology
Ways of forming phraseological units
Semantic classification of phraseological units
Structural classification of phraseological units
Syntactical classification of phraseological units
Borrowings
Classification of borrowings according to the borrowed
aspect
Classification of borrowings according to the degree of
assimilation
Classification of borrowings according to the language
from which they were borrowed.
Romanic borrowings/ Latin, French, Italian, Spanish/.
Germanic borrowings /Scandinavian, German, Holland/ .
Russian borrowings.
Etymological doublets.
Semaciology.
Word - meaning.
Lexical meaning - notion.
Polysemy.
Homonyms.
Synonyms .
Antonyms .
Local varieties of English.
British and American English.
Archaisms.
Neologisms.
Lexicography.
LEXICOLOGY
The term «lexicology» is of Greek origin / from «lexis» - «word» and
«logos» - «science»/ . Lexicology is the part of linguistics which deals
with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups.
The term «vocabulary» is used to denote the system of words and word-
groups that the language possesses.
The term «word» denotes the main lexical unit of a language resulting
from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning. This unit is used
in grammatical functions characteristic of it. It is the smallest unit of a
language which can stand alone as a complete utterance.
The term «word-group» denotes a group of words which exists in the
language as a ready-made unit, has the unity of meaning, the unity of
syntactical function, e.g. the word-group «as loose as a goose» means
«clumsy» and is used in a sentence as a predicative / He is as loose as a
goose/.
Lexicology can study the development of the vocabulary, the origin of
words and word-groups, their semantic relations and the development of
their sound form and meaning. In this case it is called historical
lexicology.
Another branch of lexicology is called descriptive and studies the
vocabulary at a definite stage of its development.
LANGUAGE UNITS
The main unit of the lexical system of a language resulting from the
association of a group of sounds with a meaning is a word. This unit is
used in grammatical functions characteristic of it. It is the smallest
language unit which can stand alone as a complete utterance.
A word, however, can be divided into smaller sense units - morphemes. The
morpheme is the smallest meaningful language unit. The morpheme consists of
a class of variants, allomorphs, which are either phonologically or
morphologically conditioned, e.g. please, pleasant, pleasure.
Morphemes are divided into two large groups: lexical morphemes and
grammatical (functional) morphemes. Both lexical and grammatical morphemes
can be free and bound. Free lexical morphemes are roots of words which
express the lexical meaning of the word, they coincide with the stem of
simple words. Free grammatical morphemes are function words: articles,
conjunctions and prepositions ( the, with, and).
Bound lexical morphemes are affixes: prefixes (dis-), suffixes (-ish) and
also blocked (unique) root morphemes (e.g. Fri-day, cran-berry). Bound
grammatical morphemes are inflexions (endings), e.g. -s for the Plural of
nouns, -ed for the Past Indefinite of regular verbs, -ing for the Present
Participle, -er for the Comparative degree of adjectives.
In the second half of the twentieth century the English wordbuilding
system was enriched by creating so called splinters which scientists
include in the affixation stock of the Modern English wordbuilding system.
Splinters are the result of clipping the end or the beginning of a word
and producing a number of new words on the analogy with the primary word-
group. For example, there are many words formed with the help of the
splinter mini- (apocopy produced by clipping the word «miniature»), such as
«miniplane», «minijet», «minicycle», «minicar», «miniradio» and many
others. All of these words denote obects of smaller than normal dimensions.
On the analogy with «mini-» there appeared the splinter «maxi»- (apocopy
produced by clipping the word «maximum»), such words as «maxi-series»,
«maxi-sculpture», «maxi-taxi» and many others appeared in the language.
When European economic community was organized quite a number of
neologisms with the splinter Euro- (apocopy produced by clipping the word
«European») were coined, such as: «Euratom» «Eurocard», «Euromarket»,
«Europlug», «Eurotunnel» and many others. These splinters are treated
sometimes as prefixes in Modern English.
There are also splinters which are formed by means of apheresis, that is
clipping the beginning of a word. The origin of such splinters can be
variable, e.g. the splinter «burger» appeared in English as the result of
clipping the German borrowing «Hamburger» where the morphological structure
was the stem «Hamburg» and the suffix -er. However in English the
beginning of the word «Hamburger» was associated with the English word
«ham», and the end of the word «burger» got the meaning «a bun cut into
two parts». On the analogy with the word «hamburger» quite a number of new
words were coined, such as: «baconburger», «beefburger», «cheeseburger»,
«fishburger» etc.
The splinter «cade» developed by clipping the beginning of the word
«cavalcade» which is of Latin origin. In Latin the verb with the meaning
«to ride a horse» is «cabalicare» and by means of the inflexion -ata the
corresponding Participle is formed. So the element «cade» is a combination
of the final letter of the stem and the inflexion. The splinter «cade»
serves to form nouns with the meaning «connected with the procession of
vehicles denoted by the first component», e.g. «aircade» - «a group of
airplanes accompanying the plane of a VIP» , «autocade» - «a group of
automobiles escorting the automobile of a VIP», «musicade» - «an orchestra
participating in a procession».
In the seventieths of the twentieth century there was a political scandal
in the hotel «Watergate» where the Democratic Party of the USA had its pre-
election headquarters. Republicans managed to install bugs there and when
they were discovered there was a scandal and the ruling American government
had to resign. The name «Watergate» acquired the meaning «a political
scandal», «corruption». On the analogy with this word quite a number of
other words were formed by using the splinter «gate» (apheresis of the
word «Watergate»), such as: «Irangate», »Westlandgate», »shuttlegate»,
»milliongate» etc. The splinter «gate» is added mainly to Proper names:
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