Lexicology is the branch of
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
that analyzes the
lexicon of a specific
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
. A word is the smallest meaningful unit of a
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
that can stand on its own, and is made up of small components called
morphemes and even smaller elements known as
phonemes
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
, or distinguishing sounds. Lexicology examines every feature of a word – including
formation
Formation may refer to:
Linguistics
* Back-formation, the process of creating a new lexeme by removing or affixes
* Word formation, the creation of a new word by adding affixes
Mathematics and science
* Cave formation or speleothem, a secondar ...
,
spelling
Spelling is a set of conventions that regulate the way of using graphemes (writing system) to represent a language in its written form. In other words, spelling is the rendering of speech sound (phoneme) into writing (grapheme). Spelling is on ...
,
origin
Origin(s) or The Origin may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Comics and manga
* Origin (comics), ''Origin'' (comics), a Wolverine comic book mini-series published by Marvel Comics in 2002
* The Origin (Buffy comic), ''The Origin'' (Bu ...
,
usage
The usage of a language is the ways in which its written and spoken variations are routinely employed by its speakers; that is, it refers to "the collective habits of a language's native speakers", as opposed to idealized models of how a languag ...
, and
definition.
Lexicology also considers the relationships that exist between words. In linguistics, the
lexicon of a language is composed of
lexemes, 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.
Lexicology is associated with
lexicography, which is the practice of compiling
dictionaries.
Etymology
The term ''lexicology'' derives from the
Greek word λεξικόν ''lexicon'' (neuter of λεξικός ''lexikos'', "of or for words", from λέξις ''lexis'', "speech" or "word") and -λογία ''-logia'', "the study of" (a
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...
derived from λόγος ''
logos
''Logos'' (, ; grc, λόγος, lógos, lit=word, discourse, or reason) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric and refers to the appeal to reason that relies on logic or reason, inductive and deductive reasoning. Aris ...
'', amongst others meaning "learning, reasoning, explanation, subject-matter").
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 the
comparative method, which is a set of techniques that allow linguists to recover the ancestral phonological, morphological, syntactic, etc., components of modern languages by comparing their
cognate material.
This means many
word roots from different branches of the Indo-European
language family can be traced back to single words from the
Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
. The
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
, for instance, contains more
borrowed words (or loan words) in its
vocabulary
A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the ...
than native words. Examples include ''parkour'' from
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, ''karaoke'' from
Japanese, ''coconut'' from
Portuguese, ''mango'' from
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
, etc. A lot of
music terminology, like ''piano'', ''solo'', and ''opera'', is borrowed from
Italian. These words can be further classified according to the linguistic element that is borrowed: phonemes, morphemes, and semantics.
Approach
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 as
grammars
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...
.
Altogether lexicological studies can be approached two ways:
# Diachronic or historical lexicology is devoted to the evolution of words and
word-formation
In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either:
* the processes through which words can change (i.e. morphology), or
* the creation of new lexemes in a particular language
Morphological
A common method of word form ...
over time. It investigates the origins of a word and the ways in which its structure, meaning, and usage have since changed.
# 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.
These complementary perspectives were proposed by
Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure.
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.
Semantics
The
subfield of semantics that pertains especially to lexicological work is called
lexical semantics. In brief, lexical semantics contemplates the significance of words and their meanings through several lenses, including
synonymy,
antonymy
In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. For example, something that is ''long'' entails that it is not ''short''. It is referred to as a 'binary' relationship because there are two members ...
,
hyponymy, and
polysemy, among others. Semantic analysis of lexical material may involve both the
contextualization Contextualization may refer to:
* Contextualization (Bible translation), the process of contextualising the biblical message as perceived in the missionary mandate originated by Jesus
* Contextualization (computer science), an initialization phas ...
of the word(s) and
syntactic ambiguity.
Semasiology
Semasiology (from el, σημασία, ', "signification") is a discipline of linguistics concerned with the question "what does the word ''X'' mean?". It studies the meaning of words regardless how they are pronounced. It is the opposite of o ...
and
onomasiology are relevant linguistic disciplines associated with lexical semantics.
A word can have two kinds of meaning: grammatical and lexical. Grammatical meaning refers to a word's function in a language, such as
tense or
plurality, which can be deduced from
affixes
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
. Lexical meaning is not limited to a single form of a word, but rather what the word denotes as a base word. For example, the
verb
A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...
''to walk'' can become ''walks'', ''walked'', and ''walking –'' each word has a different grammatical meaning, but the same lexical meaning ("to move one's feet at a regular pace").
Phraseology
Another focus of lexicology is
phraseology, which studies multi-word expressions, or
idioms, 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.
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.
Lexicography
Lexicologists
*
Dámaso Alonso (October 22, 1898 - January 25, 1990): Spanish poet, literary critic, and
philologist
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined ...
*
Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 - March 25, 1980): French writer, critic, and
semiotician
*
Ghil'ad Zuckermann (born June 1, 1971): Israeli linguist and
language revivalist
See also
*
Lexicography
*
Lexicon
*
Lexeme
*
Calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...
*
Vocabulary
A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the ...
*
Computational lexicology
Computational lexicology is a branch of computational linguistics, which is concerned with the use of computers in the study of lexicon. It has been more narrowly described by some scholars (Amsler, 1980) as the use of computers in the study of '' ...
*
Lexicostatistics
*
Lexical semantics
*
Lexical analysis
*
English lexicology and lexicography English lexicology and lexicography is that field in English language studies which examines English lexicon, English word-formation, the evolution of vocabulary and the composition of English dictionaries
A dictionary is a listing of lexem ...
*
List of lexicographers
*
List of linguists
A linguist in the academic sense is a person who studies natural language (an academic discipline known as linguistics). Ambiguously, the word is sometimes also used to refer to a polyglot (one who knows several languages), or a grammarian (a scho ...
*
Lexical Markup Framework
References
External links
Societies
Association for Automatic Language Processing (ATALA), Paris, France
Theory
*
ttp://www.ciil-ebooks.net/html/lexico/link4.htm Lexicology vs. lexicography – an explanationLexicography, lexicology, lexicon theory
Glossary
'L' entries (from lexeme to lexicon) at SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics)'s glossary of linguistic terms
Teaching material
''English and General Historical Lexicology'' (by Joachim Grzega and Marion Schöner
Journals
''Lexis, E-Journal in English Lexicology'' (by Denis Jamet)
{{Authority control
+