Chapter 1 Introduction to English Lexicology

Chapter 1 Introduction to English Lexicology

I. Introduction

1. What is language?

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. It is a specific social action and a carrier of information.

2. What is linguistics?

?Generally speaking, linguistics can be defined as the scientific study of language.

Major branches of linguistics

phonetics (the study of the characteristics of speech sounds), phonology (the study of the sound patterns of languages), morphology (the study of the form of words), lexicology (the study of the vocabulary of a given language), syntax (the study of the rules governing the combination of words into sentences), semantics (the study of the meaning of language), pragmatics (the study of meaning in context of use) ……

3. What is lexicology?

?To put it simple, lexicology is a science of words.

?To be more exact, lexicology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the study of the vocabulary of a given language. It deals with words, their origin, development, history, structure, formation, meaning and usage (or application).

II. Lexicology and Words

1. The connection of lexicology with other branches of Linguistics

Morphology, Semantics, Etymology and Lexicography

2. What is a word?

It can be defined as (Jackson and Amvela 2000):

? A word is an uninterruptible unit of structure consisting of one or more morpheme.

Uninterruptible means that words are 'Internally stable', namely, a word, as a unit of structure can not be interrupted by other modifier elements.

Or:

A word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound, meaning and syntactic function.

And what does vocabulary refer to?

?The term ―vocabulary‖ is used in different senses.

→the total number of the words in a language;

→all the words used in a particular historical period;

→all the words of a given dialect, a given book, a given discipline and the words possessed by an individual person.

3. Major Features of Words

3.1 Arbitrariness

By arbitrariness, we mean there is no logical connection between sounds and meanings; the symbolic connection is almost always arbitrary.

However, there seems to be some association between sounds and meaning, since language is not entirely arbitrary though most words can be said to be non-motivated.

For instance, some words which imitate natural sounds and show a close relation of sound and meaning are phonetically motivated（语音理据）known as onomatopoeia（拟声）；some words are semantically motivated（语义理据）because of the mental associations based on the conceptual meaning of the words such as metaphor.

3.2 Duality（两重性）

By duality is meant ―the property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of element of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization‖ (Lyons, 1982:20).

A word consists of two sets, or two levels of structures, the basic level and the higher level. At the basic level is a structure of sounds —phonemes, which are basically meaningless. But the sounds can be grouped and regrouped into a large number of units of meaning —morphemes, which found at a higher level.

3.3 Displacement（不受时空限制的特性）

Displacement means that words enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication.

In this sense, animal communication systems are under immediate stimulus control, while human languages are stimulus free.

3.4 Uninterruptibility:

Uninterruptibility suggests the criteria of 'positional mobility' and 'internal stability':

1) Words are said to be 'positionally mobile' in the sense that they are not fixed to specific places in a sentence.

2) Words are said to be 'internally stable', namely, a word, as a unit of structure can not be interrupted by other modifier elements. Besides, 'internal stability' also refers to the fact that within words the order of morphemes remains consistent.

Sum-up:

1)What’s the relationship between sound and meaning?

→There is no logical connection between sounds and meanings; the symbolic connection is almost always arbitrary.

2)And what should be the relationship between sound and form?

→Written form = orthographical record of the oral form

→Naturally, the sound should be consistent with the form, i.e. the written form should agree with the oral form.

It is only true in Old English. With the development of the language, more and more differences arose between sound and form. Why?

?There are more phonemes than letters in English.

The English alphabet was adopted from the Romans, and it does not have a separate letter to represent each sound in the language so that some letters must work together in combination. 26 letters →48 phonemes

?Some of the differences were created by the early scribes（抄写员）.

–Before printing: everything was handwritten, so mistakes were made, for instance, i, u, v, m, w and n look alike, word spelling is free.

–To solve the problem, they change u into o: e.g., Sum, cum, wuman, wunder, munk→some, come, woman, wonder, monk

–They decided that no word should end with u or v, so they add e at the end, so we get live, have, due, true.

?Finally comes the borrowing.

–English borrowed words as well as the spelling.

–The early ones were assimilated, but the later ones do not conform to the rules of English pronunciation and spelling.

–Stimulus (L) kimono (J) blitzkrieg (G)

4. Classification of Words: （课本P 5）

?English words may fall into the basic word stock and non-basic vocabulary by use

frequency;

?Into content words and functional words by notion（概念）;

?Into native words and borrowed words by origin.

1)Basic word stock and non-basic vocabulary（基本词汇与非基本词汇）

The basic word stock is the foundation of the English vocabulary, forms the core of the language, and thus is used with a very high frequency. Its characteristics:

?All national character（全民性/ 全民通用性）：Words of the basic word stock denote the most common things and phenomena of the world around us, which are indispensable to all the people who speak the language

?Stability（稳定性）：As they denote the commonest things necessary to life, they are likely to remain unchanged.

?Productivity（能产性）：Words of the basic word stock are most root words or monosyllabic words. They can be used alone, and can also form new words with other roots and affixes.

?Polysemy（多义性）：Words belonging to the basic word stock often possess more than one meaning because most of them have undergone semantic changes in the course of use and become polysemous.

Non-basic vocabulary includes the words not belonging to the common core of the language.

?Words technical in sense (terminology)

?Slang:belongs to the sub-standard language

?Archaisms（古旧词语）are words or forms that were once in common use but are now restricted only to specialized or limited use.

?Neologisms（新词语）are newly-created words or expressions or words that have taken on new meanings.

2) Content words and functional words

Words can be divided into the following classes:

?Functional words: do not have notions of their own (preposition, pronoun, determiner, conjunction, auxiliary verb);

?Content words:denote clear notions (noun, adjective, verb, adverb, numeral);

? A small number of words of unique function: the particle not and the infinitive marker to. Functional words: restricted, largely unchanging (numerically stable), serving the grammatical construction of sentences.

Content words: open, large, constantly changing (numerically unstable, with new words constantly added), carrying the main meaning of sentences.

3. Native Words and Borrowed Words

?Native words are words brought to Britain in the 5th century by the Germanic tribes.

These Anglo-Saxon words:

a)Small in number — 50,000 to 60, 000

b)But form the mainstream of the basic word stock

c)In structure: Mostly monosyllabic

Thus, they have the characteristics of the basic word stock mentioned before.

?Words taken over from foreign languages are called borrowed words (loan words or borrowings). English is a heavy borrower (with 80 percent borrowed from other languages) They can be divided into four kinds: （教材p 12– p 13）

→Denizens（同化词）：words borrowed early from Latin, Greek, French and Scandinavian.

They are now well assimilated into the English language.

→Aliens（异化词）：words which have retained their original pronunciation and spelling.

These words are immediately recognizable as foreign in origin.

→Translation loans（译借词）：words and expressions formed from the existing material in the English language, but modeled on the patterns taken from another language.

→Semantic loans（借义词）：Words of this category are not borrowed with reference to the form, but to the meaning. Semantic borrowings refer to words which have acquired a new meaning under the influence of other languages.