Foundations of the lexical constructions of foreign words

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LECTURE

The foundations of the lexical constructions of foreign words

The contents

1. Lexicology as a branch of linguistics. Subject matter. Links with other branches. Problems

2. Word as a language unit

3. Meaning. Different approaches to the problem

4. Types of Meaning. The semantic structure

5. Motivation. Types of Motivation

6. Notion and meaning

7. Semantic change. Causes of Semantic Change

8. Types of Semantic change. Result

1. Lexicology as a branch of linguistics. Subject matter. Links with other branches. Problems

Lexicology is a science about words. It studies the vocabulary of the language which consists of words and word combinations. The subject matter of lexicology is separate words, their morphological and semantic structure, and the vocabulary of the language, which includes words, word combinations, their origin, developement and current use.

Lexicology has lots of connections with other branches which also have word as a central unit. If lexicology studies the meaning of the word, Grammar studies grammatical problems. Both study roots, morphemes, affixes. But, unlike grammar, lexicological function is to name objects.Word is the smallest part of the sentence, and the sentence in its turn is the smallest communicative unit.

Also it lexicology has connections with Phoenetics. If we change the stress, we change the meaning of the word and even part of the speech: rEcord - recOrd, cOment - comEnt, blackboard - black board, blackbird - black bird. Also it has some links with Stylistics. One of the problems of lexicology is stylistic characteristics. Stylistics studies different stylistic styles. The reflection of the style is in the text. E.g. bookish style we often can find in classical fiction or textbooks, collocations - in speech. And the last connection is with Social Lingusitics (Cultural Studies): language is a part of the culture, it's a reflection of the mentality of people. There are some specific word combinations and associations in every language. E.g. professions: kindness is associated with social workers.

There are some special Problems in lexicoogy: word formation and word combination. Phraseology (science about phrases) studies it. When we start studying a new language, we try to know all the words and their meaning. And especially collocations that are unique in every language: wash hair - мыть голову, wash head - “намылить шею“. Specific feature of English is the Polysemy and Homonymy. Why?

1) It has a great number of mono-syllabic words;

2) Its analytical character.

Word order is also very important. Lexicology studies words.

A word has a meaning and a form. The approaches to find the meaning of the word are the following:

1) Syntagmatic - surrounding, neighbouring words help to deduce the meaning;

2) Paradigmatic - with the help of synonyms and antonyms.

Word formation:

1) Compounding (Composition) - joining of several stems;

2) Convertion - one part of speech into another;

3) Affixation. One more problem - Stylistic characteristics.

General lexicology studies general rules of lexicology, irrespectively of other more specific problems. Special lexicology studies one specific language, description of its vocabulary, vocabulary units, the main units of the language.

But every special lexiclology is based on principles of general lexicology, a general theory of vocabulary.

Historical lexicology studies the development of the words (vocabulary) - Diachronic approach. Modern lexicology (descriptive) studies the words and their development at the given stage - Synchronic approach. Dia - through, syn - together, chronos - tome. Contrastive (comparative) lexicology compares mother tongue with other languages.

2. Word as a language unit

Language consists of units which are interrelated. These units are: phoneme, morpheme, word and sentence. Each of them has some functions. Phoneme has a function of distinction one sound from another, it's a distinctive unit. Morpheme is the smallest significant unit of the language, cause it has the meaning. Word has nominative function, it's the smallest nominative unit. Sentence is the smallest communicative unit of the language.

Words are the main unit of language system. They are the biggest units of morphology and the smallest of syntax.

Word is two-faced unit, it consists of morphemes which have sound forms and written forms of sound expression.

In the 17th century there was a great discovery in linguistics. Thomas Hobbs found out that a word possesses indivisibility.

He proposed to compare two words of different parts of speech: “alive” and “a live”. He said that the word “a live” consists of two words and some other words can be added, word “alive” is indivisible. In the 18th century John Lines, who was agree with Hobbs, added one more feature of the word - its positional mobility. E.g. the boys walked slowly.

He proposed to write it with dashes to indicate morphemes: the-boy-s-walk-ed-slow-ly. He proved that a word possesses indivisibility and positional mobility. But as a word, not as morphemes: we can't put it like this: walk-ly-the-s-boy-slow-ed. Other linguist Neilet took into account all the theories and stated that the word possesses semantic integrity. In a word group each word has its own meaning.

But one phraseological unit - one meaning: to pull one's legs - to deceive. He next his discover - word can function alone.

So, we can define word as the smallest nominative unit of the language which can be characterized by morphological indevisibility, functioning alone, positional mobility and semantic integrity.

3. Meaning. Different approaches to the problem

This notion is one of the most controvertial i the lingustics. More or less meaning can be desribed as a component of word through which concept is communicated.

Approaches:

a) Linguistic triangle was first proposed by the mathematician Gotlib Gill. Then this idea was adopted, and now it's called Richard and Ogden Triangle. It's a referential approach to the problem, cause the top is devoted to the concept/notion (left angle - sound form/symbol, right angle - referent). Referent is a thing of reality: table (drawn) - тэйбл - транскрипция. This theory has lots of rivals: they don't understand the system, the referent may be the same as notion. Each national language may have equal sound forms, but the meaning of words is different: cot - звучит, как “кот”, но означает “колыбель”;

b) Functional approach is less concerned with what meaning is than with how it works. The word possesses meaning only in the sentence: book (книга) - I booked two tickets. It has one lexical meaning.

But we must take into accoint both approaches, cause they are both right and correspond in dialectical meaning.

4. Types of Meaning. The semantic structure

The words are not monosemantic, they are polysemantic. Each meaning is called lexical meaning.And this number of meanings form semantic structure of the word. Generally we distinct grammatical and lexical meanings: time flies - grammatical meaning, time fly - lexical meaning, “flies” possesses lexico-grammatical meaning.

Lexical meaning within itself possesses connotational and denotational meanings. Denotational is the main meaning - word-denotative. Connotational is the shades of this meaning.

Denotational (referential) meaning can be:

1) Significative;

2) Stylistic;

3) Expressive;

4) Emotional;

5) Evaluative.

Communicative: we express approval, disapproval - stylistic connotation. Expressive: try to show not only attitude, but also to emphasize it.

5. Motivation. Types of Motivation

Motivation is the reationship between morphemic structure and meaning. There are 4 types of Motivation:

1) Phoenetic Motivation - the similarity between the sound the word made of and the meaning of the word: bees - buzz, sakes - hiss. In English initial “p” means disapproval: phy - фу. Sound symbolism - some combinations of letters may mean smth other: sting - a quick movement, initial “fl” - also: flop, “gl”: glare, glited - associated with fire;

2) Morphological motivation: there can be Fully motivated, Partially motivated and Non-motivated words: blackbird - fully motivated, because all the morphemes are clear, repeat is non-motivated: all one-syllable words are non-motivated, strawberry - partially motivated, cause straw has no connections with berries, also: T-shirt, U-turn;

3) Semantic motivation: there can be Direct and Figurative meaning. Figurative: a foot of the mountain, a mouth of the river. Direct meaning: flowers and colours: pink - розовый, гвоздика. Humming bird - roduces this long coninuous sound;

4) Graphical motivation - mathematicians. Or - more or less.

6. Notion and meaning

Meaning (a component of a word through which a concept is communicated) belongs to linguistics, while Notion (concept) belongs to the category of logic. Logic is international category, but the meaning is national. Notions may be represented with different meanings: man, человек.

Notion is neutral, but meaning may express people attitude to what they are talking about. E.G. with the help of synonyms: look, stare...

There are also some words in English, which have meaning but no notion: Articles, Prepositions, Interjections.

7. Semantic change. Causes of Semantic Change

Semantic change is the development of the word and its semantic structure. The language is a system, its body develops and all the units too. If we try to compare the meaning of the word of different languages or of different times, they are different: I'm fond of reading: In O.E. fond meant foolish - no connection.

Linguists payed a great attention on Semantic change. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the Af20th century Brill and Poll investigated Semantic change and noticed that some words specialize their meaning and some - generalize. Specialize means narrowing: case (event) - becomes case in medicine. Generalize - when a word extends its meaning: to fly - to move with the help of wings - becomes to move quickly, without any wings.

As any problem, Semantic change has its nature, reasons, problems and as a result - Causes. There are two types of Semantic changes:

1) Linguistic;

2) Extra-linguistic (any change in the society which results the change in naming objects: inventing a new word (on the basis of existing linguisitcs), borrowing, to name with the help of existing word-association): a box (ложа) - association, cause it looks like a box, black box - mysterious: in real it's orange.

Linguistic cause may be:

a) Syntagmatic;

b) Paradigmatic.

Syntagmatic. There is a term - ellipsis, when instead of two components we use only one: to starve, to propose.

Paradigmatic level - discrimination of synonyms. It means that there existed two or more synonymic words but in the course of time they changed their meaning: deer denoted any beast, then a word animal appeared.

First, the coincided, but then they became two different words: deer - special beast, animal - general beast. lexicology semantic language

8. Types of Semantic change. Result

There are Direct and Figurative meanings of the word, so we try to figure out all the changes of meanings and its pecularities. It's closely connected to the stylistics, it states figurative meaning.

We destinguish:

1) Similarity;

2) Contiguity of meanings:

2.1) Similarity of meanings - metaphor, based on the shape, position, duration: head - the head of department (position);

2.2) Contiguity:

a) Metonymy - also transform the meaning, but we use part for a whole: a plate of soup;

b) Instrumental metonymy - we use an instrument: the writers are the best pen.

3) Positional metonymy - the name of the place instead of people: Kyiv's reply;

4) Synecdoche - pert for the whole, name of the inventor or head of the company for the whole company: Macentosh, Diesel, Xerox;

5) Hyperbole - exaggeration: hundred years;

6) Litote - minimize: I hate it - it's not good;

7) Euphemism - to milder the situation - figurative meaning;

8) Zoozemy: when we try to find out similarity between an animal and a person: deer party - мальчишник, hen party - девичник, a fox, a snake...

The Results of Semantic change are the followings: First of all we observe the changes in denotational and connotational meaning.

These changes are in the focus of linguistics, it notices the changes in denotational meaning first of all.

The change results in the restrictional meaning or extentional meaning: queen - first of all denotes a woman, a squaw was the synonym of it, to write - O.E. to scratch - handwirtings, writings now. Generalization of the meaning (extention) - to fly.

Connotational component:

1) amelioration of the meaning;

2) degradation of the meaning.

Ameliorating development - the meaning is improved: minister now is high-rank position, O.E. - boy, servant, knight helped and defended his master, bad fellow meant a villager or peasant.

Degradation. In the course of time some old meanings died out, we can't find them in the dictionary: a spoon was a thing of wood. There are some words with lots of meaning, and it's very difficult to find the first one.

While speaking about semantic change, there is a qualitative change - appearance of polysemantic words, qualitative words are lost, dead, so appered homonymy. Semantic change is the universal problem, in each language, it is researched diachronically: how, what is the result of this change.

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