Branches of lexicology

Lexical semantics studies meanings of words, in other words, the content, information rendered by lexical units.

Semasiology is a branch of semantics that is concerned with the meaning of words and phrases, used in nomination, studies the types of meaning, the change of meaning, the semantic structure of words, semantic groupings, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, etc. So semasiology studies what it is the name points out. For instance, the word star has two meanings ‘celestial object’ & ‘celebrity’.

Terminologically semasiology is opposed to onomasiology which studies nomination, or means and ways of naming the elements.The theory of nomination has to show how the objects receive their names and what features are chosen to represent them. Onomasiology is a branch of semantics which studies the process of naming and lexical objectification of notions. For example, some extralinguistic properties of the phenomenon led to the onomatopoeic nomination to sizzle. The difference between the two approaches is illustrated by Diagram 1 below.

Diagram 1.

Word formation studies all possible ways of the formation of new words and models according to which new words are built. For example, nowadays suffixation is a highly productive way of word formation: singlehood, nationhood, leaflet, flatlet, stardom, fandom, oldster, bankster.

Phraseology studies set-expressions with transferred meaning or phraseological units such as a bull in a china shop, a lame duck, stick and carrot policy, a pipe dream.

Etymology studies the origin of words. For example, the noun beggar was borrowed from Old French and the verb to beg appeared in the English language as a result of back derivation by analogy with worker and work.

Lexicography – an applied branch – deals with science of compiling dictionaries.

There are two principal approaches to the study of language material in linguistic science, namely the synchronic (or descriptive) and the diachronic (or historical) approach. The study of a language at a certain period of its development is called a synchronic one. The study of historical development of language elements is called diachronic. According to the synchrony/ diachrony criteria English lexicology correspondingly falls into historical lexicology which studies the origin and development of the English vocabulary, and descriptive lexicology of Modern English, which studies the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development.

Contrastiv e and comparative lexicology study the correlation between the lexical units of two or more languages. The aim of such studies is to find out the correspondences between the vocabulary units of the languages under comparison. The difference between the comparative and contrastive studies is as follows:

- the comparative lexicology aims to find both similarity and difference in two or more languages, while the contrastive lexicology aims at finding differences in the native and foreign languages;

- the comparative lexicology compares the lexical subsystems of the languages under study, while the contrastive lexicology compares one language unit of the native language with all possible ways of its expression in the foreign language, or vice versa.

Contrastive lexicology establishes how many lingual units of language B are equivalent to the lingual unit of language A. For example, one lingual unit of language A corresponds to two lingual units of language B: рука – hand, arm; girl – девочка, девушка.

Let’s compare the word книга and its English equivalent book. Only one collocation of the English word book is equivalent to Russian книга, which is a book on/about birds – книга о жизни птиц. The rest of the meanings of the word book correlate with words other than книга, cf. a reference book – справочник, a ration book – карточки, to do the books – вести счета, our order books are full – мы больше не принимаем заказов, to be in smb's good/bad books – быть на хорошем/плохом счету, I can read her like a book – я вижу её насквозь, we must stick to/go by the book – надо действовать по правилам, I'll take a leaf out of your book – я последую твоему примеру, Не was brought to book for that – за это его привлекли к ответу. The same concerns Russian-English word pairs: закрытый – closed, закрытое заседание – private meeting, закрытое голосование – secret ballot, закрытое помещение – indoors.

Knowledge of lexicology promotes systemic and successive comprehension of the peculiarities of foreign language words as compared with the native words. One can indicate discrepancies in the semantic structure, take into consideration peculiarities of collocation, morphological structure, show specific features of synonymic usage, provide for the stylistic characteristics. All mentioned things help to avoid literal translation and employ the deliberate language acquisition.

The course of Modern English Lexicology is of great practical importance as the language learner will obtain much valuable information concerning the English word stock and the laws and regulations governing the formation and usage of English words and word groups which makes second language acquisition much easier.

Lexicology has close ties with other branches of linguistics as they also take into account words in one way or another but approach them from different angles.

There is a relationship between lexicology and phonetics since phonetics is also concerned with the study of the word, i.e. with the sound form of the word. A close connection between lexicology and grammar is conditioned by the manifold ties between the objects of their study. Even isolated words as presented in a dictionary bear a definite relation to the grammatical system of the language because they belong to some part of speech and conform to some lexico-grammatical characteristics of the word class to which they belong. Lexicology is linked with the history of a language since the latter investigates the changes and the development of the vocabulary of a language. There is also a close relationship between lexicology and stylistics. Stylistics studies many problems treated in lexicology. These are the problems of meaning, synonymy, differentiation of vocabulary according to the sphere of communication and some other issues. Lexicology is bound up with sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics investigates the extralinguistic or social causes of the changes in the vocabulary of a language. The word stock of a language directly and immediately reacts to changes in social life. The intense development of science and technology, which is a social, i.e. an extralinguistic factor, has lately given birth to a great number of new words.

Problem of connection of language and thinking is a multi-faceted one. There’s an assumption that words of the language represent our knowledge of the world which is the result of cognitive process. It’s a well-known fact that the issue of how a language helps to segment material world and its people social experience has been the main one. The process of giving a name to an object is called nomination. Nomination is forming lingual units for the purposes of segmenting and naming outward reality and corresponding concepts.

There are two main participants in the process of nomination: the one who gives a name to an object (the nominator) and the object which is given a name (the referent). The process of giving a name to an оbject consists of several stages.

1. Forming a concept of the object. The concept is a generalized idea of a class of objects, summing up the most essential features of the given class thus distinguishing it from other classes.

2. Designation of class of objects under nomination with the help of linguistic means. The features chosen as the basic characteristics of the object form the denotatum. For example, the denotatum of the word freak is “a person regarded as strange because of their unusual appearance or behaviour”.

The denotational part of meaning is relatively stable as it stands to represent all the basic characteristics of the object.

3. Addition to the denotatum the information concerning functional significance of a lingual unit (the positive or negative attitude of the nominator to the object or some other information). Thereby the word freak is of disapproving character and appertains to informal subset of lexis.

4. Correlation with certain sound form and graphic form.

Naming activity of a human being results in fixing human experience in the words he uses. In fact, the very existence of the word ‘tree’ means that a human mind can segment corresponding objects from reality and identify them as belonging to the class of trees.

Segmentation of reality is specific to every culture. It reflects the reality like a map of the world on this or that scale. Judging by the way the given piece of reality is segmented by language, a researcher can conclude which attributes of things are considered relevant, and which are disregarded. For example, Russian word-combinations высокая трава, крепкий чай, сильный дождь, есть суп correspond to the English long grass, strong tea, heavy rain, drink soup.

In this case linguists speak of the linguistic map of the world, or representation of the world which is covered by each separate language. Different languages conceptualize the knowledge of the world differently: northern peoples associate beauty and good things with the sun красна девица, красно солнышко, while southern peoples – with the moon луноликая, as torrid heat means death to all living beings in the desert. The issue of different linguistic maps of the world is often raised in case of language lacunas such as душа, тоска, авось, privacy, self-reliance, challenge, efficiency, deadline, sorority.