LEXICOLOGY, Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that studies the stock of words (the lexicon) in a given language. Adjective: lexicological
Sunday, July 15, 2018
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LEXICOLOGY
Lexicology is the study of words and
where as many readers will be new to the study of sounds or word segments, most
of us feel that we are very familiar with words, when we think of language we
tend to think about words.
WHAT
DO WE MEAN BY “WORD”??
In spite of our familiarity with words,
it is not always easy to say what a word is. Certain scholars have
suggested that a word can occur in isolation. A better approach to defining
words is to acknowledge that there is no one totally satisfactory definition,
but that we can isolate four of the most frequently implied meaning meanings of
word :
1. An
orthographic
Word
is one which has a space on either side of it.
2. A
morphology
Word
is unique form. It considers form only and not meaning.
3. A
lexical word
Comprehends
the various forms of items which are closely related by meaning. Example chair
and chairs are two morphological words, but one lexical word.
4. A
semantic
Word
involves distinguishing between items which may be morphologically identical
but differ in meaning.
WORD
FORMATION
We
have already looked at some of methods of word formation in English. These can
be summarised as follow :
Suffixation :
man + ly > manly
Prefixation :
un true > untrue
Affixation :
dis + taste + ful > distasteful
Compounding
frequently involves two nouns :
Book
+ case > bookcase
Sea
+ man > seaman
The
possessive form of the first noun is use although apostrophes are not found in
the compound:
Bull’s
+ eye > bullseye
Lamb’s
+ wool > lambswool
Other
part of speech can combine to form new words and we provide selective examples
of these below :
Noun
+ verb
Hair
+ do > hairdo
Blood
+ shed > bloodshed
Adjective
+ noun
Blue
+ bell > bluebell
Hot
+ house > hothouse
Adjective
+ verb
Easy
+ going > easygoing
Wide
+ spread > widespread
Verb
+ noun
Lock
+ jaw > lockjaw
Scare
+ crow > scarecrow
Verb
+ adverb
Come
+ back > comeback
Take
+ away > takeaway
Adverb
+ verb
Down
+ fall > downfall
Out
+ cry > outcry
New
words are formed in English by four other processes : coinages, backformations,
blends, acronyms.
When
the coinages refer to trade names, untraditional spellings are used :
Kleenex
(tissues)
Sqezy
(washing up liquid)
Backformation
involve the use of analogy to create forms that are similar to ones already in
existence in the language.
Gatecrash from gatecrasher
Pop from popular
Blends
involve joining two words together by taking parts of both words and welding
the parts in to a new whole:
Breakfast + lunch >brunch
Motor + hotel > motel
The
fourth technique involves creating words out of the initial letters of
well-known organization:
UNESCO from United Nations Educational Scientific
and Cultural Organization
WORD
CLASSES
Word in English can function in many
different ways.
Examples :
A noun
he
won the first round
An
adjective
She
bought a round table for the dining room
In English, it is always essential to see how
a word functions in a particular example before assigning it to a word class.
In spite of the flexibiliy of
English words, we can use test frames to distinguish a number of
word classes which we shall lis and then describe:
Nouns
Deterrmines
Pronouns
Adjectives
Verbs
Adverbs
Prepositions
Conjunctions
Exlamation/interjections
1. Nouns
A
noun has often been defined as the name of a person, animal, place, concept or
think. Thus, Jessica, rabbit, grass are nouns.
Test
frame as :
(The)…..
seemed nice
Little
….
Lovely
2. Determiner
A
determiner is an adjective like word which precedes both adjectives and nouns
and can fit into such frames as the following :
Have
you ….wool?
I
don’t want …cheese
There
are five main kinds of determiners: articles such as an/a and the; numbers when
they precedes noun as in one girl, first degree, seven hills; indefinite
determiner such as some, any, enough, both, each, few, much, more, most, less,
either, neither. Determiner always indicate a noun follows. Many indefinite
determiners can function as other parts of speech.
Examples
:
A B
I
ate some bread give
me some
Both
parents were late I saw both
A
pronoun can take the place of the place of a noun or a noun phrase :
John met a future wife in train
He met her on it/one
English
has six other types of pronoun: reflexives such as myself, themselves,
demonstratives this, that, these, those,; interrogatives what?,
which?, who?, whom?, whose?; relatives that, which,
who, whom, whose; distributive pronoun which are often followed by ‘of
you’: all (of you), both (of you), each ( of you).
There
are two main types of verbs in english, headverbs and auxiliaries. Examples :
he hasn’t seen me
He
was seen me
He
didn’t see me
see is
headverb and did, has is auxiliary.
3. A verb
is often defined as a ‘doing’ word, a word that expresses an action:
John clmbed a tree.
A process:
John turned green.
4. An
adverb is used to modify a verb, an adjective, a sentence or another adverb:
John talked strangely
He is dangerously ill.
He was, however, the best person
for the job.
He talked very strangely.
5. A
preposition is a function word, such as at, by, for, from, to and with.
Prepositions are always followed by a noun, a noun phrase or a pronoun.
He talked to John
He arrived with another man.
He did it for me.
6. A
conjunction is, as its name suggests, a ‘joining’ word. There are two types of
conjunctions: co-ordinating conjunctions such as and, but, so, which join units
of equal significance in a sentence:
John and Mary ran upstairs.
Give the parcel to John but give
the money to Mary.
And subordinating conjunctions which join
subordinate clauses to a main clause:
He wouldn’t tell me why he
did it.
He said that he was tired.
7. An
exclmation may be described as an involuntary utterance expressing fear, pain,
surprise:
Good lord!
Heavens above!
Oh dear!
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