Lexicology also considers the relationships that exist between words. In linguistics, thelexicon of a language is composed oflexemes, which are abstract units of meaning that correspond to a set of related forms of a word. Lexicology looks at how words can be broken down as well as identifies common patterns they follow.[2]
The termlexicology derives from theGreek word λεξικόνlexicon (neuter of λεξικόςlexikos, "of or for words",[4] from λέξιςlexis, "speech" or "word"[5]) and -λογία-logia, "the study of" (asuffix derived from λόγοςlogos, amongst others meaning "learning, reasoning, explanation, subject-matter").[6]
Etymology as a science is actually a focus of lexicology. Since lexicology studies the meaning of words and their semantic relations, it often explores the history and development of a word. Etymologists analyze related languages using thecomparative method, which is a set of techniques that allow linguists to recover the ancestral phonological, morphological, syntactic, etc., components of modern languages by comparing theircognate material.[7] This means manyword roots from different branches of the Indo-Europeanlanguage family can be traced back to single words from theProto-Indo-European language. TheEnglish language, for instance, contains moreborrowed words (or loan words) in itsvocabulary than native words.[8] Examples includeparkour fromFrench,karaoke fromJapanese,coconut fromPortuguese,mango fromHindi, etc. A lot ofmusic terminology, likepiano,solo, andopera, is borrowed fromItalian. These words can be further classified according to the linguistic element that is borrowed: phonemes, morphemes, and semantics.[7]
General lexicology is the broad study of words regardless of a language's specific properties. It is concerned with linguistic features that are common among all languages, such as phonemes and morphemes.Special lexicology, on the other hand, looks at what a particular language contributes to its vocabulary, such asgrammars.[2] Altogether lexicological studies can be approached two ways:
Diachronic or historical lexicology is devoted to the evolution of words andword-formation over time. It investigates the origins of a word and the ways in which its structure, meaning, and usage have since changed.[9]
Synchronic or descriptive lexicology examines the words of a language within a certain time frame. This could be a period during the language's early stages of development, its current state, or any given interval in between.[10]
These complementary perspectives were proposed bySwiss linguistFerdinand de Saussure.[10] Lexicology can have both comparative and contrastive methodologies.Comparative lexicology searches for similar features that are shared among two or more languages.Contrastive lexicology identifies the linguistic characteristics which distinguish between related and unrelated languages.[9]
Thesubfield of semantics that pertains especially to lexicological work is calledlexical semantics. In brief, lexical semantics contemplates the significance of words and their meanings through several lenses, includingsynonymy,antonymy,hyponymy, andpolysemy, among others. Semantic analysis of lexical material may involve both thecontextualization of the word(s) andsyntactic ambiguity.Semasiology andonomasiology are relevant linguistic disciplines associated with lexical semantics.[9]
A word can have two kinds of meaning: grammatical and lexical.Grammatical meaning refers to a word's function in a language, such astense orplurality, which can be deduced fromaffixes.Lexical meaning is not limited to a single form of a word, but rather what the word denotes as a base word. For example, theverbto walk can becomewalks,walked, andwalking – each word has a different grammatical meaning, but the same lexical meaning ("to move one's feet at a regular pace").[11]
Another focus of lexicology isphraseology, which studies multi-word expressions, oridioms, like 'raining cats and dogs.' The meaning of the phrase as a whole has a different meaning than each word does on its own and is often unpredictable when considering its components individually. Phraseology examines how and why such meanings exist, and analyzes the laws that govern these word combinations.[12]
Idioms and other phraseological units can be classified according to content and/ or meaning. They are difficult to translate word-for-word from one language to another.[13]
Practical lexicography is the compiling, writing, and editing ofdictionaries.
Theoretical lexicography is the scholarly study ofsemantic,orthographic,syntagmatic, andparadigmatic features oflexemes of thelexicon (vocabulary) of alanguage, developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries, the needs for information by users in specific types of situations, and how users may best access the data incorporated in printed andelectronic dictionaries. This is sometimes referred to as "metalexicography" as it is concerned with the finished dictionary itself.[15]
There is some disagreement on the definition of lexicology, as distinct from lexicography. Some use "lexicology" as a synonym for theoretical lexicography; others use it to mean a branch oflinguistics pertaining to the inventory of words in a particular language.
^Babich, Galina Nikolaevna (2016).Lexicology : a current guide = Lexicologia angliskogo yazyka (8 ed.). Moscow: Flinta. p. 1.ISBN978-5-9765-0249-9.OCLC934368509.
^abDzharasova, T. T. (2020).English lexicology and lexicography : theory and practice (2 ed.). Almaty: Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. pp. 4–5.ISBN978-601-04-0595-0.
^Babich, Galina Nikolaevna (2016).Lexicology : a current guide = Lexicologia angliskogo yazyka (8 ed.). Moscow: Flinta. p. 133.ISBN978-5-9765-0249-9.OCLC934368509.
^λεξικός, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott,A Greek–English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
^λέξις, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott,A Greek–English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
^λόγος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott,A Greek–English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
^abJoseph, Brian D.; Janda, Richard D., eds. (2003),The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, p. 183,ISBN9780631195719
^Babich, Galina Nikolaevna (2016).Lexicology : a current guide = Lexicologia angliskogo yazyka (8 ed.). Moscow: Flinta. pp. 20–23.ISBN978-5-9765-0249-9.OCLC934368509.
^abcPopescu, Floriana (2019).A paradigm of comparative lexicology. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 19–20.ISBN978-1-5275-1808-7.OCLC1063709395.
^Dzharasova, T. T. (2020).English lexicology and lexicography : theory and practice (2 ed.). Almaty: Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. p. 41.ISBN978-601-04-0595-0.
^Halliday, M. A. K. (2007).Lexicology : a short introduction. Colin Yallop. London: Continuum. pp. 12–13.ISBN978-1-4411-5054-7.OCLC741690096.
^Dzharasova, T. T. (2020).English lexicology and lexicography : theory and practice (2 ed.). Almaty: Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. pp. 75–76.ISBN978-601-04-0595-0.
