JACKSON
Chapter 1) What is lexicology?
Lexicology may be defined as the study of lexis, understood as the stock of words in a given
language, i.e. its vocabulary or lexicon (from Greek lexis/word, lexikos/of-for words)
The notion of ‘word’ is central to lexicology: ‘word’ needs to be defined and discussed as a
technical term (ch. 3)
We use ‘word’ somewhat loosely, in the usual traditional sense of ‘a sequence of letters’.
A comparison of the words vocabulary, lexis and lexicon would show that the three items
may be considered more or less synonymous. However, vocabulary=more colloquial,
lexicon=more learned and technical, lexis=half-way between the two.
Dictionary: different from vocabulary, lexis and lexicon. Lexicology must not be confused
with lexicography, the writing or compilation of dictionaries, which is a special technique
rather than a level of language study.
Lexicology deals with simple words, compounds, and complex words: meaningful units of
language, semantics.
Lexicology relies on information derived from morphology: the study of the form of words
and their components.
Etymology: the study of the origins of words.
MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is the study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words.
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units which may constitute words or parts of
words: they are ‘smallest’ or ‘minimal’ in the sense that they cannot be broken down
further on the basis of meaning.
Examples:
- cat, child, with: cannot be analysed further into meaningful units
- sleeping, armchairs, farmer: can be analysed as: Sleep + ing/ Arm + chair + s/ Farm + er
-Some are simple words (cat, child, with, sleep, arm, farm), others are parts of words (-ing,
-s,-er)
Morphemes that can occur alone as individual words are free morphemes. Those that can
occur only with another morpheme are bound morphemes.
(Morphs should not be confused with syllables. The basic difference between the two is
that while morphs are manifestations of morphemes and represent a specific meaning,
syllables are parts of words which are isolated only on the basis of pronunciation.)
Any concrete realisation of a morpheme in a given utterance is called a ‘morph’ (cat, chair,
farm, -ing, -s, and –er are all morphs): Two or more morphs may vary a little but still have
the same meaning: ex. a/an, depending on the following sound.
Morphs which are the different representations of the same morpheme are referred to as
allomorphs.
Simple words: are all free morphemes (door, knob, wild)
complex words: are formed from simpler words by the addition of affixes or some other
kind of morphological modification (spoonful, mentally, farmer)
