Main branches of lexicology

The present course concentrates on the following aspects of English lexicology:

1) Semasiology or semantics, including the semantic classification of English words;

2) The study of word-structure and word-formation;

3) The study of word-equivalents, or idioms and phraseological units;

4) A brief etymological survey of the English word-stock;

5) Fundamentals of English lexicography.

Let us now take each of these subjects in more detail.

1) Semasiology is the branch of lexicology devoted to the study of meaning. Its name comes from the Greek " semantikos" which means " significant". In English-speaking countries, this field of linguistic study is also known as semantics which is less precise, since the word " semantics" may also be used as a synonym for " meaning" – we can, for example, speak of the " semantics of a word". Semasiology may use both the synchronic and diachronic approaches to the study of meaning. In the first case, it studies types of meaning found in present-day English, providing a classification of English words according to their meaning; in the second case, it deals with changes that the meanings of words undergo in the course of the development of the language.

Semasiology is closely connected with another branch of linguistics, onomasiolog y (from the Greek " onoma" – " name"), which also studies meaning but from, as it were, the direction opposite to semasiology. While semasiology proceeds from the word to its meaning, onomasiology proceeds from the object of naming to its name, i.e. it studies the ways in which things are named in a language. (Another name for onomasiology, much used by Soviet linguists in the recent past, is the " theory of nomination".) Proper names – i.e. names of people, geographical names – are studied by the branch of onomasiology called onomastics. Both onomasiology and onomastics are highly specialized branches of lexicology and therefore outside the scope of the present course.

2) Word-structure and word-formation in English are studied by a branch of lexicology known as word-building, which studies both the formation of new words and the structure of the existing ones. Word building investigates: how new words are formed; how they are related to the existing ones; what material they are made of (including the typical word-production patterns and components, as well as a study of their productivity).

There’s no unity of opinion among linguists whether word-building should be considered under lexicology or grammar (as morphology), since in many cases it is the syntactic properties of the words, not their structure, that determine their functioning in the language. In Chinese, for example, it is very hard to tell a word from a morpheme, as Chinese is an analytical language. In English, which also has analytic tendencies, a word may start functioning as a different part of speech without any apparent changes in its morphological structure, by changing its syntactical distribution alone. This is known as conversion and will be discussed in detail later.

3) Word-equivalents in English, i.e. units of language that seem to consist of several words but function as an inseparable unity, are studied by a branch of lexicology called phraseology. To these belong idioms, set expressions, phraseological unities and other traditional units in the vocabulary. The meaning of such a unit is not usually the sum of the meanings of its parts; thus a white elephant need not be either white or an elephant, but is anything hard to keep and harder to get rid of. Neither is a red herring a fish or red, but is something used to deceive, or distract attention from what is really important. For obvious reasons, this aspect of the language gets less attention from native linguists than from foreign learners. Phraseology studies the classification of phraseological units, their structure, origin and use in the language.

4) The origin and history of words in English is studied by a branch of lexicology called etymology (from the Greek " etymon", meaning " the truth"). Originally it set forth to determine the " true" or " original" meanings of words, uncorrupted by later use. At present it mainly deals with motivations of words, tracing their use back to the earliest known forma and meanings. Etymology may be thus compared to archaeology: both try to reconstruct the past by its surviving fragments. Apart from that, etymology investigates borrowing of words (source language, method of borrowing, relation to native words, etc.). The approach it uses is of necessity diachronic.

5) Lexicography (from the Greek " lexicon", meaning " a dictionary", and " grapho" – " to write") is perhaps the most important branch of applied lexicology, dealing with the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries. It studies, among other things, the classification of dictionaries, their structure and general principles of dictionary-making.