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':