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The Lexicon As A System

Excrept from lexicological study

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10 views2 pages

The Lexicon As A System

Excrept from lexicological study

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ig9817742953
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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The lexicon as a system. The lexeme vs the lexical unit.

A lexicon, to put it simple, is the vocabulary of a given language, serving as a


catalogue of possible meanings of all of the words used in the language. It is one of
the two crucial parts of a language, as opposed to grammar as a system that allows
to express these meanings by combining words in meaningful sentences. In
linguistics, the lexicon can be studied by means of two approaches: descriptive or
synchronic and historical or diachronic. The synchronic approach is concerned
with the vocabulary of a language at the given stage of its development while the
diachronic approach deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in
course of time. There is a basic stock of neutrally marked, daily used words in a
lexicon, which is “a stable layer of words, which changes very slow, if it changes
at all, and comprises the basis for the further growth of the vocabulary” (Babich,
2005). It’s hard to set the borderline there, however, as words have a tendency to
change their meaning and usage over time. Along with the basic stock, language
comprises of stylistically marked words and expressions, which can be divided to
literary or conversational. Literary words can be further divided to general literary
words, which are used in all functional styles and common to all fields of
knowledge, and special literary words, which denote concepts linked to a
professional sphere. Conversational words and expressions may be colloquialisms
(literary, familiar or low), slang, dialectisms, vulgarisms, jargonisms. Neologisms
belong to both literary and conversational groups and are newly coined words, or
words that have acquired a new meaning because of social, economic, political or
cultural changes in society.
The units of a vocabulary or lexical units are two-facet elements possessing form
and meaning. The basic unit forming the bulk of the vocabulary is the word. Other
units are morphemes that is parts of words, into which words may be analyzed, and
set expressions or groups of words into which words may be combined. Words are
the central elements of language system, they face both ways: they are the biggest
units of morphology and the smallest of syntax, and they embody the main
structural properties and functions of the language. Words can be separated in an
utterance by other such units and can be used in isolation. Unlike words,
morphemes cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units and are functioning in
speech only as constituent parts of words. Words are thought of as representing
integer concept, feeling or action or as having a single referent. The meaning of
morphemes is more abstract and more general than that of words and at the same
time they are less autonomous. Set expressions are word groups consisting of two
or more words whose combination is integrated so that they are introduced in
speech, so to say, ready-made as units with a specialized meaning of the whole that
is not understood as a mere sum total of the meanings of the elements. The term
word-group denotes a group of words that exists in the language as a ready-made
unit, has the unity of meaning and of syntactical function.
Besides the term ‘word’ there exists a scientific term “lexeme”. This term emerged
from the necessity to differentiate a word-form and the word as a structural
element of the language. A lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set
of lexical units related through inflection. For example, “lives” and “lived” are two
words, but simultaneously they are two grammatic variants of the same lexeme.
The lexeme is the concept as a whole and not its individual applications, therefore
in the two sentences “My brother is a good musician” and “The musician made a
slight mistake during performance” both words are considered one lexeme, despite
the fact that in the first sentence it serves as a descriptor and in the second it
denotes a subject. Therefore, lexico-semantic variants of the same lexeme are also
possible. Other types of division include phonetic or graphical variants, when the
words of the same lexeme are pronounced or spelled differently, respectively, and
morphological variants, which are different in morphological composition but not
in meaning.

G. N. Babich, “Lexicology: a current guide”


И. В. Арнольд, «Лексикология современного английского языка»

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