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An exact knowledge of the vocabulary system is also necessary in connection with technical teaching means.

Lexicology plays a prominent part in the general linguistic training of every philologist by summing up the knowledge acquired during all his years at the foreign language faculty. It also imparts the necessary skills of using different kinds of dictionaries and reference books, and prepares for future independent work on increasing and improving one’s vocabulary.

39 Speak on elevation and degradation of meanings and give examples.

A change in the connotational meaning may be subdivided into pejoration or degradation of meaning and amelioration or elevation or improvement of the connotational component of meaning. Semantically speaking deterioration or pejoration means the second meaning develops a negative evaluative connotation which was absent in the first meaning. They seem to imply that meanings can become worse which is neither logical nor plausible. Amelioration or elevation is a transfer of the meaning when becomes better in the course of time.

Elevation or amelioration of meaning is a transfer of the meaning when it becomes better in the course of time, e.g. knight – originally meant a boy, then a young servant, then a military servant, then a noble man. Now it is a title of nobility given to outstanding people; marshal originally meant a horse man., now it is the highest military rank.

Degradation or pejoration of meaning is a transfer of the meaning when it becomes worse in the course of time. It is usually connected with nouns denoting common people, e.g. villain-originally meant working on a villa, now it means a scoundrel.

40 Speak on narrowing and extension of meanings, give examples.

Narrowing of meaning. This happens when a word with a general meaning is by degrees applied to something much more specific. The word litter, for example, meant originally (before 1300) 'a bed,' then gradually narrowed down to 'bedding,' then to 'animals on a bedding of straw,' and finally to things scattered about, odds and ends. . . . Other examples of specialization are deer, which originally had the general meaning 'animal,' girl, which meant originally 'a young person,' and meat, whose original meaning was 'food. The extension of a general term (also called the denotation of the term) denotes the several objects to which it may correctly be applied. The collection of these objects constitutes the extension of the term.

41 State out main problems of Lexicology according to the system it deals with.

The problems of Lexicology:

1. Word-formation

2. Semasiology and types of word meaning

3. Paradigmatic (synonymy and functional style) and syntagmatic relations of words

4. Phraseology

5. Lexicography. Types of dictionaries.

6. The study of vocabulary as a system.

The problem of word-building is associated with prevailing morphological word-structures and with processes of making new words. Semantics is the study of meaning. Modern approaches to this problem are characterized by two different levels of study: syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

On the syntagmatic level, the semantic structure of the word is analysed in its linear relationships with neighbouring words in connected speech. In other words, the semantic characteristics of the word are observed, described and studied on the basis of its typical contexts.

On the paradigmatic level, the word is studied in its relationships with other words in the vocabulary system. So, a word may be studied in comparison with other words of similar meaning.

Phraseology is the branch of lexicology specializing in word-groups which are characterized by stability of structure and transferred meaning.

One further important objective of lexicological studies is the study of the vocabulary of a language as a system. The vocabulary can be studied synchronically, that is, at a given stage of its development, or diachronically, that is, in the context of the processes through which it grew, developed and acquired its modern form.

Lexicography is the branch of lexicology that deals with the problems of dictionary compiling.

42 Show the difference between lexical and grammatical types of word-meaning.

Meaning is the inner form of the word. Word-meaning is made up various components. These components are usually described as types of meaning. They are grammatical, lexical, part-of-speech, denotational, connotational, differential, distributional.

1) The Grammatical meaning may be defined as the component of meaning recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words, as, e.g. the tense meaning in the word forms of verbs (asked, thought, walked) or the case meaning in the word forms of various nouns (girl’s, boy’s night’s). when we distinguish between the functional meaning which operates at various levels as the interrelation of various linguistic units and referential meaning as the interrelation of linguistic units and referents (or concepts). By grammatical meaning we designate the meaning proper to sets of word forms common to all words of a certain class.

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2) The Lexical meaning is identical in all the forms of the word. They possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person and so on, but in each of these forms we find one and the same semantic component denoting the process of movement. By lexical meaning we designate the meaning proper to the given linguistic unit in all its forms and distributions

44 Show the difference between free and bound lexical, grammatical types of morphemes.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. It is also an association of given meaning with a given sound form, but unlike a word it isn’t autonomous. M. are divided into two: lexical and grammatical. A form is said to be free if it may stand alone without changing its meaning; if not, it is a bound form, so called because it is always bound to smth else. Ex: if we compare the words sportive alone as utterances, whereas eleg- -ive, -ant are bound forms because they never occur alone. Free lexical m are roots of the words which express the lexical meaning of the word, the coincide with the stem of the simple words. Bound lexical m are affixes (prefixes, suffixes). Free grammatical m are function words (articles, conjunctions, prepositions). Bound grammatical m are endings (-ing, -ed, -s) – inflection.

46 State out the functions of paragigmatic and syntagmatic relations.

There are two introlinguistic relations that exist between words.They are:paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. In paradigmatic relations we

define the word meaning with the help of synonyms and lexical semantic groups.In syntagmatic relations we define the word meaning

with the help of different contexts

47 Speak on English word-formation system

Word formation is the system of derivative types of words and the process of creating new words from the material available in the lang. after certain structural and semantic formulas andpatterns. Word-building or formation is the process of creating words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic patterns. There are productive (major or basic, principle) and non-productive (minor or secondary) ways of creating words in the English language. The main and productive types of word-building in English are affixation, word-compounding, conversion, shortening; the minor types of creating words are back-formation, reduplication, blending, sound-interchange, stress-interchange, sound-imitation.

Major types of word-formation - Affixation and types of affixation, Prefixation, Conversion(is a characteristic feature of the English word-building system. It is also called affixless derivation or zero-suffixation. Verbs and Nouns), Compound words and their types, Shortening.

Minor types – Blending(Blends are words formed from a word-group or two synonyms. In blends two way of word-building are combined: abbreviation and composition. To form a blend we clip the end of the first component and the beginning of the second component. As a result we have a compound-shortened word. One of the first blends in English was the word “smog” from two synonyms smoke and fog which means smoke mixed with fog. Cinemadict from cinema addict, chunnel from canal and channel, dramedy from drama and comedy, faction from fact fiction-fiction based on real facts, informecial from information commercial, medicare from medical care, slanguist from slang linguist), Back-formation (It is the way of word-building when a word is formed by dropping the final morpheme to form a new word (reversion). Instead of a noun made from a verb by affixation, a verb was produced from a noun by substraction. It is opposite to suffixation that is why it is called back-formation. At first it appeared in the language as a result of misunderstanding the structure of a borrowed word. F: to collocate from collocation, to compute from computer, to emote from emotion, to televise from television, painter from to paint, to baby sit from baby sitter.), Reduplication (New words are made by doubling a stem either without any phonetic changes or with a varation of the root vowel or consonant as in ping-pong, chit-chat, bye-bye, stylistically speaking most words are made by reduplication represent informal groups colloquialisms and slang.

Reduplication is the morphological process by which a morpheme is repeated, thereby creating a new word with a different word class. There are two types of reduplication: partial which reduplicates only part of the morpheme and full in which the entire morpheme is reduplicated), Sound-interchange (Some sounds are changed to form a new word. It is non-productive in Modern English, it was productive in old English and can be met in other Indo-European languages. In many cases we have vowel and consonant interchange. In nouns we have voiceless consonants and in verbs we have corresponding voiced consonants because in old English these consonants in nouns were at the end of the word and in verbs in the intervocal position. F: life-to live, blood-to bleed, hot-to heat, to sing-song.), Sound imitation (Words are made by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, insects, human beings and inanimated objects. It is the way of word-building when a word is formed by imitating different sounds. a) sounds produced by human beings, to whisper, to giggle, to mumble, to sneeze, to whistle; b) sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, to hiss, to buzz, to bark, to moo; c) sounds produced by nature and objects, to splash, to rustle, to clatter, to bubble, to tinkle.), Stress interchange (They can be mostly met in verbs and nouns of Romanic origin: nouns have the stress on the first syllable and verbs on the last syllable. F: ‘accent-to ac’cent, to con’flict –‘conflict, to ex’port- ‘export.)

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48 Write about minor types of word-formation, give examples.

MINOR MEANS OF WORD-FORMATION – NON-PRODUCTIVE MEANS OF WORD FORMATION IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH: SOUND INTERCHANGE, REDUPLICATION, BACK-FORMATION, BLENDING, DISTINCTIVE STRESS (Q.V.), ETC. CLIPPINGConsists in the reduction of a word to one of its parts.

Mathematics – maths

Laboratory – lab

Captain – cap

Gymnastics – gym

3 types:

1) The first part is left (the commonest type)
    advertisement – ad

2) The second part is left
    telephone – phone
    airplane – plane

3) A middle part is left
    influenza – flu
    refrigerator – fridge

Accepted by the speakers of the language clipping can acquire grammatical categories (used in plural forms)

BLENDING

Is blending part of two words to form one word (merging into one word)

Smoke + fog = smog

Breakfast + lunch = brunch

Smoke + haze = smaze (дымка)

- addictive type: they are transformable into a phrase consisting of two words combined by a conjunction “and”

smog → smoke & fog

- blending of restrictive type: transformable into an attributive phrase, where the first element serves as modifier of a second.

Positron – positive electron

Medicare – medical care

WORD MANUFACTURING A word or word combination that appears or especially coined by some author. But it doesn’t name a new object or doesn’t express a new concept

Sentence – sentenceness

“I am English & my Englishness is in my vision” (Lawrence)
Word manufacturing by children:

Влюбчивый – вьбчивый

Барельеф – баба рельеф

SOUND INTERCHANGE

Sound interchange is the way of word building when some sounds are changed to form a new word. It is non-productive in Modern English; it was productive in Old English and can be met in other Indo-European languages.

The causes of sound interchange can be different. It can be the result of Ancient Ablaut which cannot be explained by the phonetic laws during the period of the language development known to scientists., e.g. to strike - stroke, to sing - song etc. It can be also the result of Ancient Umlaut or vowel mutation which is the result of palatalizing the root vowel because of the front vowel in the syllable coming after the root (regressive assimilation), e.g. hot - to heat (hotian), blood - to bleed (blodian) etc.

In many cases we have vowel and consonant interchange. In nouns we have voiceless consonants and in verbs we have corresponding voiced consonants because in Old English these consonants in nouns were at the end of the word and in verbs in the intervocal position, e.g. bath - to bathe, life - to live, breath - to breathe etc.

STRESS INTERCHANGE

Stress interchange can be mostly met in verbs and nouns of Romanic origin: nouns have the stress on the first syllable and verbs on the last syllable, e.g. `accent - to ac`cent. This phenomenon is explained in the following way: French verbs and nouns had different structure when they were borrowed into English; verbs had one syllable more than the corresponding nouns. When these borrowings were assimilated in English the stress in them was shifted to the previous syllable (the second from the end) . Later on the last unstressed syllable in verbs borrowed from French was dropped (the same as in native verbs) and after that the stress in verbs was on the last syllable while in nouns it was on the first syllable. As a result of it we have such pairs in English as: to af`fix -`affix, to con`flict- `conflict, to ex`port -`export, to ex`tract - `extract etc. As a result of stress interchange we have also vowel interchange in such words because vowels are pronounced differently in stressed and unstressed positions.

SOUND IMITATION

It is the way of word building when imitating different sounds forms a word. There are some semantic groups of words formed by means of sound imitation

a) Sounds produced by human beings, such as: to whisper, to giggle, to mumble, to sneeze, to whistle etc.

b) Sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, such as: to hiss, to buzz, to bark, to moo, to twitter etc.

c) Sounds produced by nature and objects, such as: to splash, to rustle, to clatter, to bubble, to ding-dong, to tinkle etc.

49 Write about Lexicology, types of Lexicology and object of investigation.

Lexicology (from Greek origin lexis – “word” and logos – “science”) is the brunch or part of linguistics which deals with the vocabulary of a language and the properties of words as the main units of language. The term “vocabulary” is used to denote the system of words and word-groups that the language possesses. The literal meaning of the term Lexicology is “the science of the word”. The basic task of Lexicology is the study and systematic description of the vocabulary of some particular language in respect to its origin, development and current use. In other words, Lexicology is concerned with words and word-combinations (or word-groups), phraseological units and morphemes which make up words.

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Lexicology must be separated from the rest of the linguistic disciplines. In contrast with phonology, morphology and syntax, it is essentially a socio-linguistic discipline. Lexicology, then is the part of linguistics which is concerned with the “lexis” or the study and analysis of words.

The object of Lexicology is a word and word-combinations or word-groups. When we study Lexicology we should research the word and word-combinations in different sides, for example, its origin, meaning or semantics, development, multilevel structure.

As the main object a word has many functions. The term “word” denotes the main lexical unit of a language resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning. It is the smallest unit of a language which can stand alone as a complete utterance.

A word is a language unit has a particular sound complex, has a particular meaning, is capable of a particular grammatical employment and able to form a sentence by itself.

A word is a unit of speech which serves the purposes of human communication.

The definition of a word is one of the most difficult in linguistics because the simplest word has many different aspects. Being the central element of any language system the word is a sort of focus for the problems of phonology, lexicology, syntax, morphology and also for some other sciences that have to deal with language and speech, such as philosophy, psychology and probably quite a few other branches of knowledge. Any definition that was given to word is conditioned by the aims and interests of its author.

The complete correct definition of the word is a speech unit used for the purposes of communication, materially representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning, belong to grammatical employment and characterised by formal and semantic unity.

The modern approach to word studies is based on distinguishing between the external and internal structures of the word.

On Lexicology course we analyze the word according to three structures: the morphological, semantic, stylistic. There are several linguistic functions of a word: nominative, significative (polysemantic), expressive, communicative, descriptive, pragmatic.

The types of Lexicology

Lexicology is divided into General, Special, within Special Historical and Descriptive, Comparative and Contrastive types.

1) General Lexicology is part of General Linguistics, it is concerned with the study of vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language.

2) Special Lexicology is the Lexicology of a particular language, i.e. the study and description of its vocabulary and units, primarily words as the main units of language. It goes without saying that every special lexicology has its own inner branches as historical and descriptive lexicology.

Historical (Diachronic) Lexicology is a branch of linguistics discusses the origin of different words, their change and development, their semantic relations and the development of their sound form and meaning. (Greek dia-“through” and chronos – “time”)

Descriptive (Synchronic) Lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development. It studies the vocabulary at a definite stage of its development. The Descriptive Lexicology of the English language deals with the English word in its morphological and semantic structures, investigating the interdependence between these two aspects. (Greek syn-“together, with” and chronos – “time”)

3) Comparative and Contrastive Lexicology aims to study the correlation between the vocabularies of two or more languages and find out the correspondences between the vocabulary units of the languages under comparison. The difference between the terms comparative and contrastive is that comparative methods give the similarities and differences of vocabulary of related languages and contrastive aims to investigate the vocabulary of non-related languages.

50 Write about the types of shorteed words according to their importance.

Word-building or formation is the process of creating words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic

patterns. . There are productive (major or basic, principle) and non-productive (minor or secondary) ways of creating words in the English language.

Shorteed word – major type.

Shortening (contraction)

Shortening is a comparatively new way of word-building has achieved a high degree of productivity, especially in American English.

Shortenings are produced in two different ways. The first is to make a new word of syllable of the original word. The latter may lose its beginning

(as in phone made from telephone, fence from defence), its ending (as in hols from holidays, vac from vacation, ad from advertisement)

or both the beginning and ending (as flu from influenza, fridge from refrigerator).

The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group: U.N.O., B.B.C., M.P. this type is called initial shortenings.

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29.Define the ways of formation of affixation, compound words and conversion.

Affixation and types of affixation.

All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots (or radicals) and affixes. The latter, in their turn, fall into prefixes which precede the root in the structure of the word and suffixes which follow the root. Words which consist of a root and an affix are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word-building known as affixation or derivation.

The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme. From the etymological point of view affixes are classified into the same two large groups as words: native and borrowed.

Affixes can also be classified into productive and non-productive types. By productive affixes we mean the ones, which take part in deriving new words in this particular period of language development. The best way to identify productive affixes is to look for them among neologisms and so-called nonce-words, i.e. words coined and used only for this particular occasion. Non-productive affixes which do not give any new coinages.

Affixation:  adding a derivational affix to a word. Examples: abuser, refusal, untie, inspection, pre-cook. 

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a aword stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes. Affixation is, thus, the linguistic process speakers use to form new words (neologisms) by adding morphemes (affixes) at the beginning (prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words.

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes. Affixation is, thus, the linguistic process speakers use to form new words (neologisms) by adding morphemes (affixes) at the beginning (prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words.

Compounding

Compounds are possibly those multimorphemic words that we most readily identify as consisting of several parts. In a compound several free morphemes are combined, resulting in a word that often derives its meaning from the combination of its components.

classroom = class + room

skyscraper = sky + scraper

wallpaper = wall + paper

In English, compounds are often not written as single words but separated or combined by a hyphen (e.g. dry cleaner, on-line). In contrast to this, German compounds are usually spelled as a single word and compounding is an extremely productive word formation process in German (e.g. Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, Karnevalswochenende, …).

Note that while noun + noun compounds are frequent, other combinations also abound and the result must not be a noun.

talkshow
verb + noun = nountightrope
adjective + noun = noun
overshadowpreposition + noun = verb

Many compounds exhibit a so-called modifier-head structure, with one part specifying the other in terms of meaning. Thus a blackboard is a kind of board and a talkshow is a kind of show (not a kind of black or a kind of talk). The modifier may function in different ways, e.g. a raincoat is not a coat for but against rain.While the abovementioned examples are endocentric (i.e. the meaning of the compound is derived from the meaning of the parts) there are some compounds where this is not the case. A redhead is not a type of head but a person with red hair. Such compounds are called exocentric, because their meaning is not strictly contained in the components.

Conversion

Another highly productive word formation process is conversion, which is the term used to describe a word class change without any morphological marking.
party (noun) -> party (verb)
We will be at the partyThey like to partymust (verb) -> must (noun)
You must eat your soupIt is a must that you call him

Note that we only speak of conversion when it is clear that a word has been “copied” from one word class to another. Frequently words appear similar without having been converted (at least not recently) – for example, English like exists as a verb, a noun, an adjective or a filler/discourse marker.

30.Define the ways of formation of blending, reduplication and sound-interchange.

The term blending is used to designate the method of merging parts of words into one new word; the result is a blend, also known as a portmanteau word. Blends are words formed from a word-group or two synonyms. In blends two way of word-building are combined: abbreviation and composition. To form a blend we clip the end of the first component and the beginning of the second component. As a result we have a compound-shortened word. One of the first blends in English was the word “smog” from two synonyms smoke and fog which means smoke mixed with fog. Cinemadict from cinema addict, chunnel from canal and channel, dramedy from drama and comedy, faction from fact fiction-fiction based on real facts, informecial from information commercial, medicare from medical care, slanguist from slang linguist.

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