LEXICOLOGY 1

UNIT 1

LEXICOLOGY-is an overall study of a language’s vocabulary

GENERAL LEXICOLOGY-is the general study of words and vocabulary , irrespective of the
specific features of any particular language.

SPECIAL LEXICOLOGY- is when the study of words devotes its attention to the description
of the peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given language.

CONTRASTIVE LEXICOLOGY-is when the vocabularies of different languages are

compared and described.

SYNCHRONIC LEXICOLOGY- deals with the study of the words and the vocabulary of a
given language at a given stage of its development. A’’ state ‘’ of a language vocabulary is
described, disregarding whatever lexical changes might be taking place.

DIACHRONIC LEXICOLOGY- deals with the evolution of a vocabulary, as well as its single
units, the words.

SOCIOLINGUISTICS-is the branch of linguistics which studies the relationship between

language and society, the relation between the way the language works and develops , on the one
hand, and the facts of social life, on the other.

LEXICOLOGY&PHONOLOGY- the importance of the connection between LEXICOLOGY

and PHONOLOGY, stands explained if we remember that phonemes have no meaning on their
own but serve to distinguish between meanings. Their function is to built up morphemes.
Furthermore , words are often distinguished by stress. The word ‘record is recognized as a noun
and distinguished from the verb re’cord due to the position of stress. Stress also distinguishes
compounds from the corresponding syntactic phrases ( ‘blackboard vs. ‘black’ board)

LEXICOLOGY&SYNTAX-the connection between lexicology and syntax can be explained

with the fact that the form of a word is often affected by the syntactic construction in which the
word is used. For instance, the verb walk has a number of forms including walk, walks and
walked. The selection of a particular form of this verb in a given occasion is dependent on the
syntactic construction in which it appears. Thus, in the present tense, the choice between the
forms walks and walk depends on whether the subject of the verb is third person singular (in
which walks is selected) or not (in which case walk is selected). In the past tense, walk is realised
as walked.

SEMANTICS-is the system and study of meaning. Its relationship with lexicology stands in the
well known rule that the major role of the lexicon is to list meanings of words. This is so
because, normally, the relationship between a word and its meaning is arbitrary, that is, there is
no reason why a word has the particular meaning it has.

PRAGMATICS- deals with the contextual meaning of words. Words are studied from the point
of view of the words in social interaction, and the effects their use of words has on the other
participants in an act of communication.

LEXICOGRAPHY- the art of making dictionary.

UNIT 2

LEXEME-refers to the abstract form of a word.

WORD-FORM-refers to the phonological or graphical realization of a wprd.

CITATION FORM- refers to the basic forms, appearing as headwords of dictionary entries.

GRAMMATICAL WORDS- If we take as example the word visiting in two cases like, a
visitng relative and in the sentence They are visiting a relative, we can conclude that we have
two different lexemes involved: and adjective VISITING in the former example and a verb
VISIT in the latter. Consequently, the first visiting as such is a different grammatical unit from
the secodn visiting. In technical terms we can say that we have two different GRAMMATICAL
WORDS.

MORPHEME-the smallest meaningful and functioning unit in the composition of words.

MORPH-is a physical form representing some if the morphemes in a language.

ALLOMORPHS- are different morphs that represent the same morpheme.

DISTRIBUTION-the total set of contexts in which a particular linguistic form occurs.

Morphs are said to be in COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION if they never occur in the

same contexts, but instead divide up some set of contexts between them, and, of course, they
should represent the same meaning or grammatical fucntion.

If a morpheme has several allomirphs, the choice of allomorph used in a given context is
PHONOLOGICALLY CONDITIONED.This means that the allomorph selected to represent
the morpheme in a particular context is one whose phonological properties are similar to those of
sounds found in its neighbourhood.
ASSIMILATION- is the change as a result of which the phonemes of a given morpheme agrere
with some features of the context.

PROGRESSIVE ASSIMILATION- is when the affix agrres with the root.

REGRESSIVE ASSIMILATION- is when the consonant of the root tends to agree with the
consonant of the affix

The choice of an allomorph may be dependent on the presence of a particular grammatical

element, in which case the allomorphy is GRAMMATICALLY CONDITIONED.

The choice of allmorphy may be LEXICALLY CONDITIONED. A particular allomorph is

lexically conditioned if its use is obligatory in the presence of a specific lexical word.

ORTHOGRAPHICALLY CONDITIONED allomorphy has to do with spelling, or rather not

spelling of particular morphs.

FREE MORPHEME- is the type of morpheme which can constitute a word itself

BOUND MORPHEME- is the type of morpheme which must be attached to another element.

BASE- the basic part of a word, any part of a word to which affixes are added.

ROOT- is the base form of a word which cannot be further analysed without total loss of
identity.

STEM- is the part of a word to which inflectional affixes are added.

AFFIX-the bound morpheme which often constitute the added part is a morpheme combination

PREFIX- the affix which is added to the beginning of the word.

SUFFIX- is the affix which follows the base

INFIX- is the affix which occurs within the base.

LEXICAL MORPHEME- is a morpheme used for construction of new words

GRAMMATICAL MORPHEME- is a type of morpheme which expresses grammatical

relationship between the word and its context, such as ‘plurality’, ‘ tense’ etc.

FUNCTION WORDS- are grammatical units which are separated items.

A single phonological form may be used to represent different different morphemes. For
instance, the same phoneme (spelled –er) can represent either the comparative degree of
adjectives , as in tall-er or the nomina agentis suffix –er as in teacher, which is formed from the
verb teach. The ending –s in English verbs (e.g. walk-s) signals three morphemes cumulatively,
namely, ’third person’, ‘present tense’ , ‘singular number’. A morpheme like this, that encodes
more tha one grammatical contrast, is called PORTMANTEAU MORPHEME.

ZERO MORPH- is analysed where there is no overt marker of a particular morpheme, evem
though one would be expected on the basis of parallel examples in the language.

EMPTY MORPH- is a recurrent form in a langauge that does notappear to be related to any
element of meaning.

A morph which only acquires meaning in collocation with other specific morphs is called a
UNIQUE MORPH OR CRANBERRY MORPH.

The impossibility to show a relationship between allomorphs through a general rule, because the
forms involved have different roots is called SUPPLETION like go/went , better/best etc.

UNIT 3

UTTERANCE- is any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is silence on
the part of that person. Thus, it is the USE by a particular speaker, on a particular occasio, of any
piece of language.

PROPOSITION-is that part of the meaning of the UTTERANCE of a simple declarative

sentence which describes some state of affair.

By means of REFERENCE, a speaker indicates which thing in the world (including persons)
are being talked about.

SENSE- of an expression is its place ina system of semantic relationships with other
expressions in the language.

REFERRING EXPRESSION – is any epxression used in an utterance to refer to somone or

something (or a clearly delimited collection of people or things), i.e. used with a particular
referent in mind, then it is clear that indefinbite noun phrases can be referrring expressions as
well.

PREDICATORS- are the expressions which we identify by stripping away referring

expressions and the verb be from the utterance.
PREDICATES are certain words (i.e. verbs, adjectives, prepositions or nouns) that can function
as the predicator of an utterance, whereas ARGUMENTS are the obligatory semantic roles of
the propositions, palyed by the referring expressions.

UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE- is defined for any utterance as the particular world, real or
imaginary (or partly real, partly imaginary) that the speakers assume they are talking about at the
time.

UNIT 4

NATURE (PHYSIS) argument leaned on onmatopoeia and sound symbolysm in the

phonological structure of some words in in the search for the ‘’natural source’’.

The CONVENTION (NOMOS ) argument was quite to the contrary: the forms of the words
people use to refer to things are not naturrally connected with the objects referrred to, butr rather
these word forms are arbitrarily chosen by custom and convention.

The impossibility of equiating a word’s meaning with its referents has led to a distinction
between extension and intetntion, as a lot of semanticists realised that there has to be something
else about word meaning in addition to mere reference. Whereas word’s EXTENSION
corresponds to the potential set of entities that it picks out in the world, its INTENSION
corresponds to its iherent sense, the concepts that it evokes,

Ex: The capital of Macedonia, Skopje, city containing the state legislature or a Stone Bridge over
the Vardar river

Woman , a set of female individuals , ‘’adult’ ‘female’ ‘human’

UNIT 5

LEXICAL FIELD- has been defined as a group of lexical items which are associated in
meaning by occuring together in similar contexts.

PARADIGMATIC RELATIONS- are the relations the (lexical) item has to competing items
that might have occurred in its place, otherwise known as choice relations. For instance, in such
contexs as in the sentence She had a ___of beer the choice we have is semantically restricted to
words such as pint, glass,bottle,can,mug,stein,gallon, etc and we can fill the slot in this structure
only by selecting a lexical item from the above lexical field of ‘quantities’ or ‘containers’.

SYNTAGMATIC RELATIONS- are the relations the (lexical) item has to its neighbours in the
stream of speech or writing, otherwise known as chain relations. For instance, in a sentence as
He had a false____ the noun that would spring readily to mind to fill the slots in this structure
might include: beard, eye, nose, expectation, passport.

CLICHES-are ossified collocations, which have become meaningless through excessive use.

PROVERBS- are fixed expressions with an incongruity between the literal meaning and the
context to which they refer. They represent a common cultural fudn of folk knowledge and
wisdom . Ex: Birds of a feather flock together

IDIOMS- are fixed expressions , consisiting of more than one word, whose meaning cannot be
inferred from the meaning of the individualk words.

LEXICAL GAP- is the absence of a lexical item at the expected structural place in a lexical
field.

UNIT 6

PARAPHRASE-is a sentece which expresses the same proposition as another sentence.

Ex: The polcie chased Lolita.

Lolita was chased by the police.

ENTAILMENT- is a relation in which the trutth of one sentenbce necessarily implies the truth
of another.

Ex: The police wounded Lolita.

Lolita is iunjured.

PRESUPPOSITIONS- are assumptiosn implied by the speaker in a particular sentence, as

opposed to what (s)he has actually asserted.The sense of an utterance may depend on these
implicit assumptions made often by the speakers about the real world.

Ex:Zoran doesn’t write poems anymore.

AMBIGUITY – arises when a string of words is associated in the language system with more
than one meaning.

Ex:Competent women and men hold all the good jobs in the firm.
This sentece shows a simple kind of structural(syntactic) ambiguity. One interpretation entails
that the men holding jobs are competent, whereas the other does not.

SOURCES OF SYNONYMY

a) Borrowings ex: (to) gather, (to) assemble (to) collect

b) Dialcets :ex: autumn –fall
c) Level of formality ex: adolescent-youth
d) Level of technicallity ex; cardiologist-heart doctor
e) Replacement of single verbs by phrasal verbs ex: abandon-give up
f) Compounding ex: arrangement-layout
g) Generic verbs combined with a deverbal noun ex: to look- to take a look
h) Clipping ex:-bys-omnibus
i) Loss of affixes, lexical variants, alternative derivations ex: amongs, commandment,
luxurious
j) Euphemisms ex; die-pass away-drop dead

HYPONYMY- is a sense relation that holds between lexemes such that the meaning/sense of
one lexeme is included into the meaning/sense of another lexeme. As hyponymy refers to the
semantic relation of inclusion we need to have two terms: one for the subordinate element
included-a hyponym –and the other for the superordinate element that includes- a
hypernym.

Hyponyms Hypernym

Ex: cat,dog,wolf animal

MERONYMY – is a special type of hyponymy that refers to a part-whole relationship

between lexical items.

UNIT 7

ANTONYMY-is sesnse relation between two or more words of the same language belonging to
the same lexical field and to the same part of speech , related in all other features but different or
incompatible in one feature of meaning which renders conflict between notions of various kinds.
Ex: come-go; dark-light; in-out

GRADABLE ANTONYMY-we say that two words are gradable antonyms if the are at the
opposite ends of a continuous scale of values. Between these two opposite ends of continuum
there may be a number of intermediate items.
Ex: good-bad; old young

COMPLEMENTARY ANTONYMY- are those antonyms which come in pairs and between
them exhaust all possibilities. Complementarity means that if one member of the pair is
applicable, then the other cannot be, and vice versa.

Ex: alive-dead; awake-asleep; present-absent

RELATIONAL ANTONYMY- are pairs of antonyms in which one describes a relationship

between two objects and the other describes the same relationship with a reversal of the order of
participants and their roles.

Ex: above-below; buy-sell; employer-employee;

TAXONOMIC SISTERS- are multi-member systems of antonyms, because they are used to
describe words which are at the same level in a taxonomy.

Ex: ‘’colour words’’: white, black, red, green, brown, blue, yellow, pink

DERIVATIONAL ANTONYMY- are those antonyms which is based on seconfary word

formation: rrot words from absolute antonyms (righ-wrong) whereas the addition of negative
affixes creates derivational antonymns (fair-unfair)

In cases when the reference plane of the antonmymy is very well defined, the extreme points of
the opposite directions of the antonymy pair are called ANTIPODALS.

Ex: cradle-grave; top-bottom; zenith-nadir

When we want to describe a movement in opposite directions like between two terminal states
(come/go), or pairs of antonyms like up/down, in/out , or by extension when we want to refer to
any process which can be reversed (fill/empty), we call those antonyms REVERSES.

Although not very often, we have antonymic pairs not of words but of phrases or set of
expressions. This kind of antonymy we can call PHRASAL ANTONYMY.

Ex: by accident-on purpose; in front of- at the back of

UNIT 8

An expression is said to be ambiguous if more than one meaning can be assigned to it.

POLYSEMY-when a word has two or more meanings that are at least vaguely related to each
other, this is called POLYSEMY.

Ex: diamnod-a precious stone ; a baseball field (in the shape of a diamond0
 Ear- the organ of hearing; sense of hearing (music, language, etc)

Eye- the organ of seeing ; the ability, power to see; something like an eye

When a word has two or more meanings that are far apart and are not obviously related to each
other in any way, this is called HOMONYMY.

Ex: bank-‘’ a financial account’’ ; ‘’side of a river or a stream’’

Club- ‘’ a social organisation’’ ; ‘’ a blunt weapon’’

Pen- ‘’a writing instrument’’ ; ‘’ a small cage’’

HOMOPHONY-is a special case of homonymy in which we have two or more words whose
pronunciation is identical but they have different spelling and meaning.

Ex: heir vs air

Rain vs reign

Write vs rite

HOMOGRAPHY – is a special case of homonymy in which we have two or more words whose
spelling is identical but they have different pronunciation and meaning.

Ex: bow (bou) vs bow (bau)

Lead (li:d) vs lead (led)

Tear (te:r ) vs tear (ti:r)

Homonymy that differs mostly grammatically, but possesses some lexical invariant is called
PATTERNED HOMONYMY.

Ex: above (prep; adj; adv)

Act (n; v)

Back ( prep; adv; conj)

Homonymy that is restricted to only one word form from the paradigms of the homonymous pair
is called PARTIAL HOMONYMY.

Ex: Light, lights vs light, lighter, lightest

Might (power) vs may, might

Lie, lay, lain, lying vs lie, lied, lied, lying