Lexicology

   Assalamu’alaikum wr.wb…I hope you always be protected by ALLAH brothers. like usually,in this chance, I wanna continue our lesson about linguistics exactly about Lexicology. 

As we know that lexicology is the study of words. Words are only one of the strands in language, strand that has, in the past, been given too much attention and a strand that, because of our familiarity  with it, we have often failed to study as rigorously and as objectively as other aspects of language. We shall then consider word-formation and word classes.

What do we mean by ‘word’ ?
 

A better approach to defining words is to acknowledge that threre is no one totally satisfactory definition, but that we can isolate four of the most frequently implied meanings of ‘word’ :

·         An orthographic word is one which has a space on either side of it.

·         A morphological word is a unique form. It considers form only and not meaning.

·         A lexical word comprehends the various forms of items which are closely related by meaning.

·         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 the methods of word-formation in English. These can be summarised as follows :

·         Suffixation : man+ly > manly

·         Prefixation : un +true > untrue

·         Affixation : dis+taste+ful > distasteful

Other parts of speech can be cambined 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, backformation, blend and acronyms. Words can be coined from existing material to represente a new inventionor development :

Wireless

Television

Backformation involve the use of analogy to create forms that are similar to ones already  inexistence in the language. Thus, recently we have derived :

Gatecrash from gatecrasher

Pop from popular

Blends involve joining two words together by taking parts of both words and welding the parts intoa new whole :

Breakfast + luch > brunch

Chuckle + snort > chortle

Motor + hotel > motel

Word classes

 

We have looked at the form of some English words and we shall now sort these words into classes according to the way they function. Words in English can be function in many different ways. Thus ‘round’ can be:

 A noun in : he won the first round

An adjective in : she bought a round table for the dining room

A verb in : they rounded the corner at eighty miles an hour

And a preposition in :

He went round the track in four minutes.

   In spite of the flexibility of English words, we can use test frames to distinguish a number of word classes which we shall list and then describe :

A noun has often been defined as the name of a person, animal, place, concept or thing.

A determiner is an adjective like word which precedes both adjectives and nouns,For example : I ate some bread.

A pronoun is, as its name suggest, similar to a noun in that it can take the placeof a noun or a noun phrase such as : john met his future wife on a train.

Pronouns in English can reflect number, case and person :

Person                               singular                                           plural

                       Nominative             accusative        nominative        accusative

First                      I                            me                     we                     us

Second                you                         you                    you                   you

Third                   he                           him

                            She                         her                     they                  them

                            It                             it

In English also has a set of seven possessive pronouns :

Person        singular       plural

First            mine            ours

Second        yours           yours

Third           his

                    Hers            theirs

                    Its

English has six other tyoes of pronoun: reflexives such as myself, themselves; demonstatives this,that,these,those and others.

An adjective is a descriptive word that qualifies and describes nouns as in :

a cold day

he is tall

a verb is pften defined as a ‘doing’ word, a word that expresses an action:

 jhon climbed a tree

an adverb is used to modify a verb, an adjective, a sentence or another adverb:

jhon talked strangely

a preposition is a function word, such as at, by, for, from, to and with. For example:

he talked to jhon

a conjuction is, its name suggest, a ‘joining’ word. There are two types of conjunctions: co-ordinating conjunction such asand, but, and so. For example :

jhon and mary ran upstairs

and subordinating conjunctions which join subordinate clauses to a main clause: he said that he was tired.

An exclamation may be described asan involuntary utterance expressing fear, pain, surprise:

Oh dear !

Heavens above !

Those a few my explanations and for more explanation, i also had added a video to you, I hope they can help you to understand about lexicology.

After words, thank you very much, see you.. :D