The Object of Lexicology

Lecture № 1 on Lexicology

Lexicology (of Greek origin: lexis “word” + logos “learning”) is a branch of linguistics concerned with words. Lexicology is a study of words. All words of a language make up its vocabulary or lexicon. In lexicology we study such aspects of the vocabulary of language: how words are formed, how they have developed, how they are used, how they relate in meaning to each other, and how they are handled in dictionaries. Thus, lexicology deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups.

The word is a unit of speech which serves the purposes of human communication. Thus, the word is a unit of communication.

The word can be perceived at the total (сумма) of the sounds which comprise it.

The word, viewed structurally, possesses several characteristics: the external and internal structures of the word. By external structure of the word we mean its morphological structure: e.g. in the word post-impressionists the following morphemes can be distinguished: the prefixes post-, im-, the root press, the noun-forming suffixes – ion, – ist, and the grammatical suffix of plurality –s. The area of lexicology which studies the external structure of the word is called word-building. The internal structure of the word, or its meaning, is the word’s semantic structure. This is the word’s main aspect. Words can serve the purposes of human communication solely due to their meanings. The area of lexicology which studies the internal or semantic structure of the word is called semantics.

Another structural aspect of the word is its unity. The word possesses both external (or formal) unity and semantic unity. In the word post-impressionists the morphemes are permanently linked together while in word-groups bright light, to take for granted word components possess a certain structural freedom. The formal unity of the word can be best seen by comparing a word and a word-group with identical constituents: a blackbird (черный дрозд) and a black bird (черная птица). The word blackbird, which is characterized by unity, posses a single grammatical framing (structure): blackbird / s. The first component black is not subject to any grammatical changes. But in the word-group a black bird each component can acquire grammatical forms of its won: black – the blackest, bird – birds. E.g. “the blackest birds we’ve ever seen here.” In this word-group you can insert other words between the components: a black night bird. If we speak of semantic unity in the word-group a black bird the first component black means ‘a color’ and the second component means ‘a living creature’. In the word blackbird the concept conveys ‘a type of bird’. Another structural feature of the word is its susceptibility to grammatical employment (use). In speech most words can be used in different grammatical forms in which their interrelations are realized.

So, the word is a speech unit used for the purposes of human communication, materially representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning, susceptible to grammatical employment and characterized by formal and semantic unity.