Lexicology and Morphology: The Study of Words and Their Meaning and Structure, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Linguistica Inglese

Scarica Lexicology and Morphology: The Study of Words and Their Meaning and Structure e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity! CAP. 1 Lexicology Lexicology is the study of LEXIS, understood as the STOCK OF WORDS IN A GIVEN LANGUAGE, like its vocabulary or lexicon. Word: used sequence of letters bounded by spaces. - Vocabulary, lexicon and lexis: refer to the total word stock of the language - Dictionary: selective recording of that word stock at a given point in time. Lexicology relies on: 1. MORPHOLOGY: the study of the forms of words and their components 2. SEMANTICS: the study of their meaning 3. ETYMOLOGY: the study of the origins of words. 1. MORPHOLOGY: Is the study of the morphemes and their arrangements in forming words (internal structure of words). Morphemes are the SMALLEST MEANINGFUL UNITS which may constitute words or part of words. Smallest= they cannot be broken down further on the basis of meaning. Meaningful= we can specify the kind of relationship they have with the non-linguistic world. FREE MORPHEMES: they occur alone as individual words. BOUND MORPHEMES: they occur only with another morpheme. Indicated by the hyphen (-). MORPH= concrete realization of a morpheme in a given utterance (morphs are manifestations of morphemes and represent a specific meaning; on the contrary, syllables are parts of the words which are isolated only on the basis of pronunciation). ALLOMORPHS= morphs which are different representations of the same morpheme. Distribution: the total set of distinct linguistic contexts in which a given form occurs, sometimes under different morphological shapes. Complex (or derived) words are formed from simpler words by the addition of AFFIXES or some other kind of morphological modification. The limit case is that of ZERO MODIFICATION: words that can be nouns, verbs or adjectives either; without the addition of further sounds/ letters. COMPOUND WORDS: formed by combining 2 or more words (free morphemes) with or without morphological modification. 2. SEMANTICS: (Jackson) ● PRAGMATIC: studies the meaning of utterances ● SENTENCE: studies the meaning of sentences and the relation between them ● LEXICAL: studies the meaning of words and the meaning relations that are internal to the vocabulary of language. 3. ETYMOLOGY: Study of the whole history of the words, not just of the origins. It’s often difficult to identify the origin of words. Cognates (parole imparentate in altre lingue) LEXICOGRAPHY: Writing and compilation of dictionaries. Lexicology is only one level of language analysis, others being phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics (sono tutti collegati). The structure of English vocabulary: Every word is involved in a network of associations which connect it with other terms in the language. De Saussure represents these associations with a diagram: the line has no limit and that an infinite number of 1 words can be added to those suggested in the diagram. Any word chosen from a given context will suggest other words to us —> pragmatic relations. The words involved are co-occurent items —> syntagmatic relations. Lexical fields: named area of meaning in which lexemes interrelate and define each other in specific ways. The vocabulary is always changing because of the disappearance of previously existing lexemes, or the broadening (ampliamento) or narrowing (restringimento) of the meaning of some lexemes. Difficulties: - Some lexemes tend to belong to fields that are vague - Some may be validly be assigned to more than 1 field - What’s the best way to define a lexical field in relation to the other fields? What are its constituent lexemes? Word families: Words are grouped into families on the basis of their morphology. A family constitution on: ● A BASE FORM ● ITS POSSIBLE INFLECTIONAL FORM ● THE WORD DERIVED from its prefixation and suffixation. Set of levels into which families are divided: 1. Frequency 2. Productivity 3. Regularity 4. Predictability World classes: The structure of the vocabulary as a whole. The closed classes contain the “grammatical” or “function” words; the open classes contain the “content” words, which carry the main meaning of a sentence. CAP. 2 Origins The languages of the world can be grouped into about 300 language families, which are: - the Indo-European languages: most languages of Europe, the Near East, the North India. One of its branches is called ITALIC. - The Germanic languages have 3 branches: North Germanic, East Germanic, West Germanic. English derived from West Germanic. Celts were the first people known for have inhabited actual England in the middle of of V millennium BC. Most of the island was occupied by Roman legions. When the Empire began to crumble, Romans withdrew, leaving behind military settlements. The English vocabulary: - The Old English period OE (450-1066): the first manuscripts were a few scattered (sparsi) inscriptions written in the alphabet brought in by the Anglo-Saxons. Most of the texts were written 2 Polysemy: the same word has 2 or more different meanings. In most cases, only one of the meanings will fit into a given context, but occasionally ambiguity may occur. We cannot determine exactly how many meanings a polysemous word has. A word may have a “literal'' meaning and one more “transferred” meaning. Homonymy: several words with the same shape, spelling and/or pronunciation. Dictionaries have to decide whether a particular item is to be handled in terms of polysemy or homonymy. Although the same shape, homonyms are considered distinct lexemes, because of the unrelated meanings and different etymologies. - Homograph: same spelling - Homophone: same sound Homonyms have syntactic differences (ex: different classes). Homonym clashes/ conflicts: 2 different Homonyms with totally different meanings may both make sense in the same utterance (homograph or homophone). Complementary distribution (cap. 4): when a member of the pair appears, the other cannot occur. English has a non-phonetic writing system, so spelling will often help to differentiate between words that are identical, and this will reduce the number of homonyms. There’s no clear-cut dividing line between polysemy and homonymy. Multiword lexemes: A le mie may consist of one or more words (exam away from, brother-in-law). In most cases, the headword is the base form or citation form of the word, from which all other related words forms may be derived. Multiword verbs: a lexemes composed by more than one orthographic word. Transitivity is NOT used as a distinctive feature. 1. Prepositional verbs are always followed by an object so they are all transitive (call for, look at). The object cannot occur between the participle and the main verb. 2. Phrasal verbs may be followed by an object and they may be either transitive (the participle can either precede or follow the object)* or intransitive (main verb followed by a participle; most of the particles are adverbials of place which can be modified by intensifiers—> come right back). 3. Transitive phrasal verbs: the object that may occur between the main verb and the participle (bring them up). They are transitive. They constitute a bridge between prepositional and phrasal verbs. *General rule: the participle tends to precede the object if the object is long or if the intention is that the object should receive end-focus. Idioms: a more or less fixed expression with a non-lexical meaning (ex: face the music). It can be treated as a type of collocation involving 2 or more words in context. The meaning of an idiom cannot be predicted from the meanings of its constituents —> idioms as a type of multiword lexeme. Most idioms are recognized as “frozen” metaphors. “Partial idioms”: some of the words have their usual meaning, while others have meanings that are peculiar to that particular structure. - Make up a story: used in its literal meaning - Make up a fire: partial idiom - Make up one’s face: fully idiomatic. Most idioms are constructed from morphemes that may have either literal or idiomatic meaning, hence their ambiguity. CAP. 4 Word formation Word formation process: different devices which are used to build new words from existing ones. 1. INFLECTION is a grammatical process which combines words and affixes (always suffixes in English) to produce alternative grammatical forms or words (alternative grammatical forms of the same word). Once the inflection is added to a stem, that stem doesn’t change class, but its distribution is limited in the syntactic structure. Inflectional suffixes tend to lend themselves to paradigms which apply to the language as a whole. The paradigm of a major class consists of a single stem of that class with the inflectional suffixes which the stem may take. English pronouns (they constitute a class of function words. They do NOT add suffixes which are inflections, but their respective forms fit the noun inflectional paradigm) and auxiliary verbs may be characterized by the noun and verb inflectional paradigms respectively, while some adverbs may be 5 characterized by the adjective paradigm. The paradigms are mutually exclusive: when one occurs, the other one doesn’t occur (complementary distribution). Auxiliaries constitute a closed sub-class of verbs. They can take certain forms of the verb paradigm but not all. They only have 2 forms )instead, the majority of the verbs have 4 or 5). Ex: BE is the most polymorphic word with 8 different forms; MUST (modal auxiliary verb) only gets 1. Regular inflections: formed according to a common pattern. Irregular inflections: do not follow this pattern and usually apply to one or a small number of members of the word class concerned. 2. DERIVATION is a lexical process which actually forms a new word out of an existing one by the addition of a derivational affix (creation of new vocabulary items). Derivational affixes: there’s no theoretical limit to them. They can change the word class of the item they are added to + establish words as members of the various word classes. If derivation and inflection co-occur, derivations are inner/ closer to the stem, while inflections are outer/ furthest from the stem. Derivational affixes do not always cause change in grammatical class. A change in word class without the affix is called conversion. Sometimes a word of 2 or more syllables may undergo a change of word class: indicator= stress pattern. Stress’s a derivational affix. Exception: effect, which is both a noun and a verb without any corresponding change in stress pattern. 2 types of derivational affix: 1. Class-changing: they change the word class of the word to which they are added. They form a derivative which is marked by that affix as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb. They are mainly SUFFIXES in English. - Noun derivational affixes (normalizers): may be derived from either verbs or adjectives. - Verb derivational affixes (verbalizers): derived from either nouns or adjectives. They’re used to form verbs from other stems. Most of them are causatives. - Adjective derivational affixes (adjectivizers): from either nouns or verbs (more rarely). - Adverb derivational affixes (adverbializers): from adjectives, rarely by nouns. Once it’s formed, the adverb can no longer be used to form words of other classes such as nouns, verbs or adjectives. 2. Class-maintaining: they do not change the word class of the stem to which they are added but they do change the meaning of the derivative (the word which results from the derivation). Ex: child (noun) + -hood = childhood, a noun, but now an abstract rather than a concrete noun. They are mainly PREFIXES. 3. COMPOUNDS= stems consisting of more than one root. Ex: bedside, black market, car-wash, waste paper basket. The orthographic treatment of compounds is by no means consistent (non importa): some are written in 1 word, some in 2 or more. Compounds are often characterised by stress pattern and lack of juncture. Compounds are non-interruptible: in normal use their constituent parts are not interrupted by extraneous elements —> compounds are single lexical units. 6 Moification; the use of other words to modify the meaning of a compound. Since a compound it’s a single unit, it’s constituent elements cannot be modified independently. However, a compound as a whole may indeed be modified by other words. Inflectibility: use of inflections to modify the grammatical function of compounds. The compound may be inflected according to its grammatical class, even if its constituent elements may not be inflected. Ex: baby-sat for baby-sit. Compounds tend to acquire specialized meanings. Only in rare cases is the meaning of a compound derived from that of its constituents in literal sense. Compounds consisting of 2 roots are the simplest type of compound. Initial elements: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Neo-classical compounds: formed from Latin and Greek roots, by the combination of 2 bound root morphemes. They don’t occur as simple words and are not generally compounds in classical Latin and Greek. They’re “learned” vocabulary and form the international vocabulary of science, medicine and technology. Classification of compounds: generally, the word class of the last element of the compound determines the class of the compound. ● Noun compounds: any root + noun ● Verb compounds: any root + verb ● Adjective compounds: any root (except verbs) + adjectives ● Adverb compounds: adverb + adverb ● Special noun compound: verb + adverb = noun compound. It’s the only one composed of 2 roots in which the compound is not a member of the same class as the second root. Syntactic compounds: 1. Endocentric: one or both roots is the head of the compound - Co-ordinate: 2 head roots (boyfriend: a boy who’s a friend/ a friend who is a boy) - Subordinate: only one head root (armchair: a chair with arms) 2. Exocentric: neither root is the head (pick-pocket: one who picks pockets). Non-syntactic compounds don’t follow the rules of syntax, so they cannot be classified systematically. 4. CONVERSION is the process by which a word belonging to one word class is transferred to another word class without any con-comitant change of form, either in pronunciation or spelling. It may involve a change within the same word class. Adverbs, prepositions, interjections and affixes can all act as bases for conversion. Even a whole phrase can undergo conversion and act as a noun (forget-me-not). 5. BLENDS is a new lexeme built from parts of two (or even more) words in such a way that the constituent parts are usually easily identifiable, though in some instances, only one of the elements may be identifiable. 7 Lexical connotation is a relation of mutual expectancy or habitual association. Mutual expectancy of 2 words could be stronger or weaker, depending on the direction of expectancy and the number of alternative predictable words). CAP. 6 Words in use In the dictionary there’re LABELS: number of sets of words with a restricted use. Distinction between COMMON CORE and SPECIALIST SUBSETS of language. Variations: 1. Historical: OBSOLETE (no longer in current use) and ARCHAIC words (old-fashioned words) 2. Geographical: DIALECTS (regional d./ national d.). McArthur has made a diagram which represents an “international English”: the larger circle stands for the regional and national standards of English; outside the circle there’re the regional varieties (language/ dialects) of these standards. a. American Eng: a dominant variety of English nowadays, a consequence to its political, cultural and economical dominance. b. Australian Eng: names borrowed from the aboriginal languages + coined from English. c. New Zealand Eng: Australian Eng + Maori language/ culture d. African Eng: South African Eng (Afrikaans + African languages + English words); West African Eng; East Africans English. e. Indian Eng: since 17th century. Words have been borrowed from local languages/ Portuguese/ Arabic and Persian languages. Some items (compounds*) are composed from one element of English origin and one from a local language. Some English words have developed new senses or been adapted to new forms. 3. Occupation: TECHNICAL and SCIENTIFIC words —> JARGON. JARGON: a specialist vocabulary associated with occupations (employment, leisure pursuit or other purposes). We’ve access to it actively or passively. The term has a pejorative connotation. It is impenetrable from the outsider, often deliberately: you can access it through professional training or an apprenticeship. Occupational j. = ● Medicine uses words based on Latin and Greek (neo-classical compounds). ● Computing: novel compounds formed from established English words or new meanings for ordinary words = abbreviations/ acronyms. ● Traditional industries: ordinary vocabulary extended in meanings or words taken from dialect on purpose + others from other languages (word-formation processes). Sports j. = from core vocabulary. Religious j. = Christianity language from Latin Vulgate and some religious Anglo-Saxon words. Green j. = ecology movement. Words from neo-classical compounds/ classical roots. Word formation: extension, blending, acronyms, derivation, borrowing. 4. Social and cultural groups: SLANG (youth culture, criminal underworld, internet surfaces…) shared sub-culture. SUB-CULTURES: people who regularly associate with each other because they have some characteristics or interest in common. - Youth culture: one set of adjectives to express approval or disapproval + a set of nouns to people who you approve or you despise + a small set of verbs for interpersonal attitudes or personal reactions. A set of adverbs to empathize or intensify an adjective. A set for the music, partying and dancing. Words and senses or words of a younth culture tend to be ephemeral and don’t appear in vocabularies. - Underworld slang: criminal sub-culture (long history). Rhyming slang (2-word phrase substitutes for a normal English word). - Rastafarian culture: they’re a group among the African Caribbean community who I regard an incarnation of God. Language = Afro-Lingua (from Jamaicans Creole and some characteristic features). 10 - CB talk: Citizen Band Radio (USA). Inform with each other on the roads using numerical messages for routine operating information. This is an example of RESTRICTED LANGUAGE *(developed to facilitate the communication of abbreviated language + private language). 5. Medium of communication: difference between spoken medium and written. This dimension is recognised only by a few linguists. - STYLE: it depends on the context => choice of vocabulary. Dictionaries tend to label words that are towards the extremes of the style: few words are marked as formal (legal texts, their hai al names derived often from the classical languages). Abbreviations from informal words (fridge from refrigerator). It has a distancing or euphemistic effect. Also a way of putting on airs. Colloquial and slang words are not clearly divided. Colloquial: abbreviated words for informal effect (champ for champion). Taboo are words that would be extremely offensive if spoken in most contexts. They stand for parts of the human anatomy associated with sex and excretion. Dictionaries don’t agree among themselves on which label is better to use! Political correctness: sensitiveness ihe use of words that refer to people from minorities. 6. Restricted languages CAP. 8 words in dictionaries No dictionary is totally comprehensive, in the sense that it contains all the words in a language. ● PHONOLOGY: the pronunciation of a word and its variants. Dictionaries give a transcription of the pronunciation of a word, including the accentual pattern, using the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)). The standard pronunciation is the RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION (RP). Differences between Southern and Midland/Northern British speech. ● MORPHOLOGY: a word’s morpheme composition and any regular inflection (rules of grammar, not stated in dictionaries). The irregularities arein the dictionaries. Derivation: morpheme structure not present. ● SYNTAX: the word class and particular structures a word may enter. Sentence structure: grammar books. Study of the word class, to which a lexeme belongs. ● SEMANTICS: the meanings of a word and the semantic structures it may have. Definitions: denotation (analytical definitions based on the schema of genus, assign a word to a class, and differentiae, distinguish the meaning of a word to the class). Collocations are more difficult to cover systematically. ● CONTEXT: restrictions on social context and style in which a word may be used ● SPELLING: the normal and any variant spelling of a word. Notice the addiction of a suffix and the “alternative spellings”. ● ETYMOLOGY: the origin and history of a word. Present in dictionaries with an amount of details. ● USAGE: frequency of use, when acquired, any taboos ● LEXICOLOGY: branch of linguistics that investigates, describes and theoriezes about vocabulary. ● LEXICOGRAPHY: concerned with the making of dictionaries. 11