Methodology of lexicological analysis: analytical survey

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METHODOLOGY OF LEXICOLOGICAL ANALYSIS: ANALYTICAL SURVEY

Soroka T., Candidate of Science (Linguistics), Associate Professor, Department of the English Language and Translation, Izmail State University of Humanities

ANNOTATION

Key words: English vocabulary, lexicological analysis, methods.

АНОТАЦІЯ

МЕТОДОЛОГІЯ ЛЕКСИКОЛОГІЧНОГО АНАЛІЗУ: АНАЛІТИЧНИЙ ОГЛЯД

Сорока Т., кандидат філологічних наук, доцент кафедри англійської мови та перекладу Ізмаїльського державного гуманітарного університету

Статтю присвячено аналітичному огляду методів і процедур лексикологічного аналізу. Методологічна концепція представлення таких різновидів як контрастивний аналіз, аналіз мовних одиниць за безпосередньо складовими, дистрибутивний аналіз, трансформаційний аналіз, компонентний аналіз націлена на їхнє застосування в лінгвістичних дослідженнях лексичної семантики словникового складу сучасної англійської мови.

Ключові слова: англійський вокабуляр, лексикологічний аналіз, методи.

АННОТАЦИЯ

МЕТОДОЛОГИЯ ЛЕКСИКОЛОГИЧЕСКОГО АНАЛИЗА: АНАЛИТИЧЕСКИЙ ОБЗОР

Сорока Т., кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры английского языка и перевода Измаильского государственного гуманитарного университета

Статья посвящена аналитическому обзору методов и процедур лексикологического анализа. Методологическая концепция представления таких разновидностей как контрастивный анализ, анализ языковых единиц по непосредственно составляющим, дистрибутивный анализ, трансформационный анализ, компонентный анализ нацелена на их применение в лингвистических исследованиях лексической семантики словарного состава современного английского языка.

Ключевые слова: английский вокабуляр, лексикологический анализ, методы

In recent years problems of Semasiology have come to the fore in the research work of linguists of different schools of thought and a number of attempts have been made to find efficient procedures for the analysis and interpretation of meaning. All methods of linguistic analysis are traditionally subdivided into formalized and non-formalized procedures.

The methods and procedures briefly discussed below are as follows: contrastive analysis, immediate constituents analysis, distributional analysis and co-occurrence, transformational analysis, componental analysis. Naturally, the selection of this or that particular procedure largely depends on the goal set before the investigator.

Contrastive analysis is applied to reveal the features of sameness and difference in the lexical meaning and the semantic structure of correlated words in different languages. Linguistic scholars working in the field of applied linguistics assume that the most effective teaching materials are those that are based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the learner. They proceed from the assumption that the categories, elements, etc. on the semantic as well as on the syntactic and other levels are valid for both languages, i.e. are adopted from a possibly universal inventory. For example, linking verbs can be found in English, in French, in Ukrainian, etc. Linking verbs having the meaning of `change', `become' are differently represented in each of the languages. In English, e.g., become, come, fall, get, grow, run, turn, wax, in French - devenir, in Ukrainian - ставати. The task set before the linguist is to find out which semantic and syntactic features characterize 1) the English set of verbs (cf. grow thin, get angry, fall ill, turn traitor, run dry, wax eloquent), 2) the French (Ukrainian, etc.) set of verbs, 3) how the two sets compare. Cf., e.g., the English word-groups grow thin, get angry, fall ill and the Ukrainian verbs схуднути, розсердитися, захворіти [1, p. 207].

Statistical analysis is used in different branches of linguistics including lexicology as a means of verification and as a reliable criterion for the selection of the language data provided qualitative description of lexical items is available. It should be pointed out, however, that the statistical study of vocabulary has some inherent limitations.

Firstly, statistical approach is purely quantitative, whereas most linguistic problems are essentially qualitative. For example, even simple numerical word counts presuppose a qualitative definition of the lexical items to be counted. In connection with this different questions may arise, e.g. is the orthographical unit work to be considered as one word or two different words: work n - (to) work v. Are all word-groups to be viewed as consisting of so many words or are some of them to be counted as single, self- contained lexical units? We know that in some dictionaries word-groups of the type by chance, at large, in the long run, etc. are counted as one item though they consist of at least two words, in others they are not counted at all but viewed as peculiar cases of usage of the notional words chance, large, run, etc. Naturally the results of the word counts largely depend on the basic theoretical assumption, i.e. on the definition of the lexical item. We also need to use qualitative description of the language in deciding whether we deal with one item or more than one, e.g. in sorting out two homonymous words and different meanings of one word. It follows that before counting homonyms one must have a clear idea of what difference in meaning is indicative of homonymy. That's why an exact and exhaustive definition of the linguistic qualitative aspects of the items under consideration should precede the statistical analysis.

Secondly, we must admit that not all linguists have the mathematical equipment necessary for applying statistical methods. In fact what is often referred to as statistical analysis is purely numerical counts of this or that linguistic phenomenon not involving the use of any mathematical formula, which in some cases may be misleading.

The theory of immediate constituents (IC) was originally elaborated as an attempt to determine the ways in which lexical units are related to one another. It is mainly to discover the derivational structure of words that IC analysis is used in lexicological investigations. For example, the verb denationalize has both a prefix de- and a suffix -ise (-ize). To decide whether this word is a prefixal or a suffixal derivative we must apply IC analysis. The binary segmentation of the string of morphemes making up the word shows that *denation or *denational cannot be considered independent sequences as there is no direct link between the prefix de- and nation or national. In fact no such sound-forms function as independent units in modern English. The only possible binary segmentation is de | nationalise, therefore we may conclude that the word is a prefixal derivative. There are also numerous cases when identical morphemic structure of different words is insufficient proof of the identical pattern of their derivative structure which can be revealed only by IC analysis. Thus, comparing, e.g., snow-covered and blue-eyed we observe that both words contain two root-morphemes and one derivational morpheme. IC analysis, however, shows that whereas snow-covered may be treated as a compound consisting of two stems snow + covered, blue-eyed is a suffixal derivative as the underlying structure as shown by IC analysis is different, i.e. (blue+eye)+-ed. It may be inferred from the examples discussed above that ICs represent the word-formation structure of polymorphic words.

Distribution defined as the occurrence of a lexical unit relative to other lexical units can be interpreted as co-occurrence of lexical items and the two terms can be viewed as synonyms. It follows that by the term distribution we understand the aptness of a word in one of its meanings to collocate or to co-occur with a certain group, or groups of words having some common semantic component. Thus, any collocation of the adjective blind with a noun denoting a living being (animate) (blind+N^an) will bring out the meaning `without the power to see' (blind man, cat. etc.). Blind followed by a noun denoting inanimate objects, or abstract concepts may have different meanings depending on the lexico-semantic group the noun belongs to. Thus, blind will have the meaning `reckless, thoughtless, etc.' when combined with nouns denoting emotions (blind passion, love, fury, etc.) and the meaning `hard to discern, to see' in collocation with nouns denoting written or typed signs (blind handwriting, blind type, etc.).

In the analysis of word-formation pattern the investigation on the level of lexico-semantic groups is commonly used to find out the word-meaning, the part of speech, the lexical restrictions of the stems, etc. For example, the analysis of the derivational pattern n+ish ^ A shows that the suffix -ish is practically never combined with the noun-stems which denote units of time, units of space, etc. (*hourish, *mileish, etc.). The overwhelming majority of adjectives in -ish are formed from the noun-stems denoting living beings (wolfish, clownish, boyish, etc.).

It follows that distribution may be viewed as the place of a lexical item relative to other lexical items on the level of semantic classes and subclasses.

Transformational analysis in lexicological investigations may be defined as repatterning of various distributional structures in order to discover difference or sameness of meaning of practically identical distributional patterns. As distributional patterns are in a number of cases polysemantic, transformational procedures are of help not only in the analysis of semantic sameness / difference of the lexical units under investigation but also in the analysis of the factors that account for their polysemy. For example, if we compare two compound words dogfight and dogcart, we'll see that the distributional pattern of stems is identical and may be represented as N+N. The meaning of these words broadly speaking is also similar as the first of the stems modifies, describes, the second and we understand these compounds as `a kind of fight' and `a kind of cart' respectively. The semantic relationship between the stems, however, is different and hence the lexical meaning of the words is also different. This can be shown by means of a transformational procedure which shows that a dogfight is semantically equivalent to `a fight between dogs', whereas a dogcart is not `a cart between dogs' but `a cart drawn by dogs'.

Transformational analysis may also be described as a kind of translation. If we understand by translation transference of a message by different means, we may assume that there exist at least three types of translation: interlingual translation or translation from one language into another which is what we traditionally call translation; intersemiotic translation or transference of a message from one kind of semiotic system to another. For example, we know that a verbal message may be transmitted into a flag message by hoisting up the proper flags in the right sequence, and at last intralingual translation which consists essentially in rewording a message within the same language - a kind of paraphrasing. Thus, e.g., the same message may be transmitted by the following his work is excellent ^ his excellent work ^ the excellence of his work.

The rules of transformational analysis, however, are rather strict and should not be identified with paraphrasing in the usual sense of the term. There are many restrictions both on the syntactic and the lexical level. We'll confine our brief survey to the transformational procedures commonly used in lexicological investigation. These are as follows:

1) permutation - the re-patterning of the kernel transform on condition that the basic subordinative relationships between words and the word- stems of the lexical units are essentially the same: cf. his work is excellent ^ he works excellently;

2) replacement - the substitution of a component of the distributional structure by a member of a certain strictly defined set of lexical units, e.g. replacement of a notional verb by an auxiliary or a link verb, etc. Thus, in the two sentences having identical distributional structure He will make a bad mistake, He will make a good teacher, the verb to make can be substituted for by become or be only in the second sentence (he will become, be a good teacher) but not in the first (*he will become a bad mistake) which is a formal proof of the intuitively felt difference in the meaning of the verb to make in each of the sentences;

3) addition (or expansion) - may be illustrated by the application of the procedure of addition to the classification of adjectives into two groups - adjectives denoting inherent and non-inherent properties. For example, if to the two sentences John is happy (popular, etc.) and John is tall (clever, etc.) we add, say, in Izmail, we'll see that *John is tall (clever, etc.) in Izmail is utterly nonsensical, whereas John is happy (popular, etc.) in Izmail is a well-formed sentence. Evidently this may be accounted for by the difference in the meaning of adjectives denoting inherent (tall, clever, etc.) and non-inherent (happy, popular, etc.) properties;

4) deletion - a procedure which shows whether one of the words is semantically subordinated to the other or others, i.e. whether the semantic relations between words are identical. For example, the word- group red flowers may be deleted and transformed into flowers without making the sentence nonsensical. Cf.: I love red flowers, I love flowers, whereas I hate red tape cannot be transformed into I hate tape or I hate red.

Transformational procedures are also used as will be shown below in componental analysis of lexical units.

In the componental analysis linguists proceed from the assumption that the smallest units of meaning are sememes (or semes) and that sememes and lexemes (or lexical items) are usually not in one-to-one but in one-to-many correspondence. For example, in the lexical item woman several components of meaning or sememes may be singled out and namely `human', `female', `adult'. The analysis of the word girl would also yield the sememes `human' and `female', but instead of the sememe `adult' we'll find the sememe `young' distinguishing the meaning of the word woman from that of girl. The comparison of the results of the componental analysis of the words boy and girl would also show the difference just in one component, i.e. the sememe denoting `male' and `female' respectively.

In its more elaborate form componental analysis also proceeds from the assumption that word-meaning is not an unanalysable whole but can be decomposed into elementary semantic components (semantic features) which may be classified into semantic markers presented also in the lexical meaning of other words and distinguishers - semantic features which are individual, i.e. which do not recur in the lexical meaning of other words. Thus, the distinction between markers and distinguishers is that markers refer to features which the item has in common with other items, distinguishers refer to what differentiates an item from other items. The componental analysis of the word, e.g., spinster runs: noun, count-noun, human, adult, female, who has never married. Noun of course is the part of speech, meaning the most inclusive category; count-noun is a marker, it represents a subclass within nouns and refers to the semantic feature which the word spinster has in common with all other countable nouns (boy, table, flower, idea, etc.) but which distinguishes it from all uncountable nouns, e.g. salt, bread, water, etc; human is also a marker which refers the word spinster to a subcategory of countable nouns, i.e. to nouns denoting human beings; adult is another marker pointing at a specific subdivision of human beings into adults & young or not grown up. The word spinster possesses still another marker - female - which it shares with such words as woman, widow, mother, etc., and which represents a subclass of adult females.

At last comes the distinguisher who has never married which differentiates the meaning of the word from other words which have all other common semantic features. Thus, the componental analysis may be represented as a hierarchical structure with several subcategories each of which stands in relation of subordination to the preceding subclass of semantic features.

Componental analysis is currently combined with other linguistic procedures used for the investigation of meaning. For example, contrastive analysis supplemented by componental analysis yields very good results as one can clearly see the lack of one-to-one correspondence not only between the semantic structure of correlated words (the number and types of meaning) but also the difference in the seemingly identical and correlated meanings of contrasted words. For example, the correlated meanings of the Ukrainian word товстий and the English words thick, stout, buxom though they all denote broadly speaking the same property (of great or specified depth between opposite surfaces) are not semantically identical because the word товстий is used to describe both humans and objects indiscriminately (cf., товста жінка, (книга), the English adjective thick does not contain the semantic component human. Conversely stout in this meaning does not contain the component object (cf. a thick book but a stout man). The English adjective buxom possesses in addition to human the sex component, and namely, female which is not to be found in either the English stout or in the Ukrainian товстий. It can be inferred from the above that this analysis into the components animate / inanimate, human male / female reveals the difference in the comparable meanings of correlated words of two different languages - Ukrainian and English - and also the difference in the meaning of synonyms within the English language [2, p. 257].

Thus, acquaintance with the currently used procedures of linguistic investigation shows that the selection of this or that particular procedure largely depends on the goal set before the investigator. The immediate constituent analysis is mainly applied to find out the derivational structure of lexical units. The distributional and the transformational procedures are of help in the investigation of sameness / difference of meaning of words and word-groups and also in the analysis of word-formation. Componental analysis brings to light the set of sememes which make up the denotational meaning of lexical units.

Application of various methods of analysis should be an essential part of the learning process and consequently of teacher's training.

REFERENCES

1. Левицкий А. Э., Славова Л. Л. Сравнительная типология русского и английского языков: учеб. пособ. 2-е изд., испр. и доп. Київ: Освіта України, 2007. 272 с.

2. Лексикология английского языка: [учебник для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз.] / Р. 3. Гинзбург, С. С. Хидекель, Г. Ю. Князева, А. А. Санкин. 2-е изд., испр. и доп. Москва: Высш. школа, 1979. 269 с.

3. Oxford English Dictionary / Being a corrected re-issue with an introduction, supplement and bibliography of a new English dictionary on historical principles / Ed. by: J. A. H. Murray: Vol. 1-12. Oxford: the Clarendon Press, 1970.

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