Linguistics term for word

This article is about the unit of speech and writing. For the computer software, see Microsoft Word. For other uses, see Word (disambiguation).

A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible.^[1] Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial.^[2] Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition.^{[3]: 13:618} Some specific definitions of the term «word» are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations.^[4]: 6

The concept of «word» is distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own.^[1] Words are made out of at least one morpheme. Morphemes can also be joined to create other words in a process of morphological derivation.^[2]: 768 In English and many other languages, the morphemes that make up a word generally include at least one root (such as «rock», «god», «type», «writ», «can», «not») and possibly some affixes («-s», «un-«, «-ly», «-ness»). Words with more than one root («[type][writ]er», «[cow][boy]s», «[tele][graph]ically») are called compound words. In turn, words are combined to form other elements of language, such as phrases («a red rock», «put up with»), clauses («I threw a rock»), and sentences («I threw a rock, but missed»).

In many languages, the notion of what constitutes a «word» may be learned as part of learning the writing system.^[5] This is the case for the English language, and for most languages that are written with alphabets derived from the ancient Latin or Greek alphabets. In English orthography, the letter sequences «rock», «god», «write», «with», «the», and «not» are considered to be single-morpheme words, whereas «rocks», «ungodliness», «typewriter», and «cannot» are words composed of two or more morphemes («rock»+»s», «un»+»god»+»li»+»ness», «type»+»writ»+»er», and «can»+»not»).

Definitions and meanings

Since the beginning of the study of linguistics, numerous attempts at defining what a word is have been made, with many different criteria.^[5] However, no satisfying definition has yet been found to apply to all languages and at all levels of linguistic analysis. It is, however, possible to find consistent definitions of «word» at different levels of description.^[4]: 6 These include definitions on the phonetic and phonological level, that it is the smallest segment of sound that can be theoretically isolated by word accent and boundary markers; on the orthographic level as a segment indicated by blank spaces in writing or print; on the basis of morphology as the basic element of grammatical paradigms like inflection, different from word-forms; within semantics as the smallest and relatively independent carrier of meaning in a lexicon; and syntactically, as the smallest permutable and substitutable unit of a sentence.^[2]: 1285

In some languages, these different types of words coincide and one can analyze, for example, a «phonological word» as essentially the same as «grammatical word». However, in other languages they may correspond to elements of different size.^[4]: 1 Much of the difficulty stems from the eurocentric bias, as languages from outside of Europe may not follow the intuitions of European scholars. Some of the criteria for «word» developed can only be applicable to languages of broadly European synthetic structure.^[4]: 1-3 Because of this unclear status, some linguists propose avoiding the term «word» altogether, instead focusing on better defined terms such as morphemes.^[6]

Dictionaries categorize a language’s lexicon into individually listed forms called lemmas. These can be taken as an indication of what constitutes a «word» in the opinion of the writers of that language. This written form of a word constitutes a lexeme.^{[2]: 670-671} The most appropriate means of measuring the length of a word is by counting its syllables or morphemes.^[7] When a word has multiple definitions or multiple senses, it may result in confusion in a debate or discussion.^[8]

Phonology

One distinguishable meaning of the term «word» can be defined on phonological grounds. It is a unit larger or equal to a syllable, which can be distinguished based on segmental or prosodic features, or through its interactions with phonological rules. In Walmatjari, an Australian language, roots or suffixes may have only one syllable but a phonologic word must have at least two syllables. A disyllabic verb root may take a zero suffix, e.g. luwa-ø ‘hit!’, but a monosyllabic root must take a suffix, e.g. ya-nta ‘go!’, thus conforming to a segmental pattern of Walmatjari words. In the Pitjantjatjara dialect of the Wati language, another language form Australia, a word-medial syllable can end with a consonant but a word-final syllable must end with a vowel.^[4]: 14

In most languages, stress may serve a criterion for a phonological word. In languages with a fixed stress, it is possible to ascertain word boundaries from its location. Although it is impossible to predict word boundaries from stress alone in languages with phonemic stress, there will be just one syllable with primary stress per word, which allows for determining the total number of words in an utterance.^[4]: 16

Many phonological rules operate only within a phonological word or specifically across word boundaries. In Hungarian, dental consonants /d/, /t/, /l/ or /n/ assimilate to a following semi-vowel /j/, yielding the corresponding palatal sound, but only within one word. Conversely, external sandhi rules act across word boundaries. The prototypical example of this rule comes from Sanskrit; however, initial consonant mutation in contemporary Celtic languages or the linking r phenomenon in some non-rhotic English dialects can also be used to illustrate word boundaries.^[4]: 17

It is often the case that a phonological word does not correspond to our intuitive conception of a word. The Finnish compound word pääkaupunki ‘capital’ is phonologically two words (pää ‘head’ and kaupunki ‘city’) because it does not conform to Finnish patterns of vowel harmony within words. Conversely, a single phonological word may be made up of more than one syntactical elements, such as in the English phrase I’ll come, where I’ll forms one phonological word.^{[3]: 13:618}

Lexemes

A word can be thought of as an item in a speaker’s internal lexicon; this is called a lexeme. Nevertheless, it is considered different from a word used in everyday speech, since it is assumed to also include inflected forms. Therefore, the lexeme teapot refers to the singular teapot as well as the plural, teapots. There is also the question to what extent should inflected or compounded words be included in a lexeme, especially in agglutinative languages. For example, there is little doubt that in Turkish the lexeme for house should include nominative singular ev or plural evler. However, it is not clear if it should also encompass the word evlerinizden ‘from your houses’, formed through regular suffixation. There are also lexemes such as «black and white» or «do-it-yourself», which, although consist of multiple words, still form a single collocation with a set meaning.^{[3]: 13:618}

Grammar

Grammatical words are proposed to consist of a number of grammatical elements which occur together (not in separate places within a clause) in a fixed order and have a set meaning. However, there are exceptions to all of these criteria.^[4]: 19

Single grammatical words have a fixed internal structure; when the structure is changed, the meaning of the word also changes. In Dyirbal, which can use many derivational affixes with its nouns, there are the dual suffix -jarran and the suffix -gabun meaning «another». With the noun yibi they can be arranged into yibi-jarran-gabun («another two women») or yibi-gabun-jarran («two other women») but changing the suffix order also changes their meaning. Speakers of a language also usually associate a specific meaning with a word and not a single morpheme. For example, when asked to talk about untruthfulness they rarely focus on the meaning of morphemes such as -th or -ness.^[4]: 19-20

Semantics

Leonard Bloomfield introduced the concept of «Minimal Free Forms» in 1928. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves.^[9]: 11 This correlates phonemes (units of sound) to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written words are not minimal free forms as they make no sense by themselves (for example, the and of).^[10]: 77 Some semanticists have put forward a theory of so-called semantic primitives or semantic primes, indefinable words representing fundamental concepts that are intuitively meaningful. According to this theory, semantic primes serve as the basis for describing the meaning, without circularity, of other words and their associated conceptual denotations.^[11][12]

Features

In the Minimalist school of theoretical syntax, words (also called lexical items in the literature) are construed as «bundles» of linguistic features that are united into a structure with form and meaning.^{[13]: 36–37} For example, the word «koalas» has semantic features (it denotes real-world objects, koalas), category features (it is a noun), number features (it is plural and must agree with verbs, pronouns, and demonstratives in its domain), phonological features (it is pronounced a certain way), etc.

Orthography

In languages with a literary tradition, the question of what is considered a single word is influenced by orthography. Word separators, typically spaces and punctuation marks are common in modern orthography of languages using alphabetic scripts, but these are a relatively modern development in the history of writing. In character encoding, word segmentation depends on which characters are defined as word dividers. In English orthography, compound expressions may contain spaces. For example, ice cream, air raid shelter and get up each are generally considered to consist of more than one word (as each of the components are free forms, with the possible exception of get), and so is no one, but the similarly compounded someone and nobody are considered single words.

Sometimes, languages which are close grammatically will consider the same order of words in different ways. For example, reflexive verbs in the French infinitive are separate from their respective particle, e.g. se laver («to wash oneself»), whereas in Portuguese they are hyphenated, e.g. lavar-se, and in Spanish they are joined, e.g. lavarse.^[a]

Not all languages delimit words expressly. Mandarin Chinese is a highly analytic language with few inflectional affixes, making it unnecessary to delimit words orthographically. However, there are many multiple-morpheme compounds in Mandarin, as well as a variety of bound morphemes that make it difficult to clearly determine what constitutes a word.^[14]: 56 Japanese uses orthographic cues to delimit words, such as switching between kanji (characters borrowed from Chinese writing) and the two kana syllabaries. This is a fairly soft rule, because content words can also be written in hiragana for effect, though if done extensively spaces are typically added to maintain legibility. Vietnamese orthography, although using the Latin alphabet, delimits monosyllabic morphemes rather than words.

Word boundaries

The task of defining what constitutes a «word» involves determining where one word ends and another word begins, that is identifying word boundaries. There are several ways to determine where the word boundaries of spoken language should be placed:^[5]

• Potential pause: A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly, allowing for pauses. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries. However, this method is not foolproof: the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words, or fail to separate two or more closely linked words (e.g. «to a» in «He went to a house»).
• Indivisibility: A speaker is told to say a sentence out loud, and then is told to say the sentence again with extra words added to it. Thus, I have lived in this village for ten years might become My family and I have lived in this little village for about ten or so years. These extra words will tend to be added in the word boundaries of the original sentence. However, some languages have infixes, which are put inside a word. Similarly, some have separable affixes: in the German sentence «Ich komme gut zu Hause an«, the verb ankommen is separated.
• Phonetic boundaries: Some languages have particular rules of pronunciation that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be. For example, in a language that regularly stresses the last syllable of a word, a word boundary is likely to fall after each stressed syllable. Another example can be seen in a language that has vowel harmony (like Turkish):^[15]: 9 the vowels within a given word share the same quality, so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. Nevertheless, not all languages have such convenient phonetic rules, and even those that do present the occasional exceptions.
• Orthographic boundaries: Word separators, such as spaces and punctuation marks can be used to distinguish single words. However, this depends on a specific language. East-asian writing systems often do not separate their characters. This is the case with Chinese, Japanese writing, which use logographic characters, as well as Thai and Lao, which are abugidas.

Morphology

Morphology is the study of word formation and structure. Words may undergo different morphological processes which are traditionally classified into two broad groups: derivation and inflection. Derivation is a process in which a new word is created from existing ones, often with a change of meaning. For example, in English the verb to convert may be modified into the noun a convert through stress shift and into the adjective convertible through affixation. Inflection adds grammatical information to a word, such as indicating case, tense, or gender.^[14]: 73

In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example, love) may inflect to have a number of different forms (for example, loves, loving, and loved). However, for some purposes these are not usually considered to be different words, but rather different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes.

In Indo-European languages in particular, the morphemes distinguished are:

• The root.
• Optional suffixes.
• A inflectional suffix.

Thus, the Proto-Indo-European *wr̥dhom would be analyzed as consisting of

1. *wr̥-, the zero grade of the root *wer-.
2. A root-extension *-dh- (diachronically a suffix), resulting in a complex root *wr̥dh-.
3. The thematic suffix *-o-.
4. The neuter gender nominative or accusative singular suffix *-m.

Philosophy

Philosophers have found words to be objects of fascination since at least the 5th century BC, with the foundation of the philosophy of language. Plato analyzed words in terms of their origins and the sounds making them up, concluding that there was some connection between sound and meaning, though words change a great deal over time. John Locke wrote that the use of words «is to be sensible marks of ideas», though they are chosen «not by any natural connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark of such an idea».^[16] Wittgenstein’s thought transitioned from a word as representation of meaning to «the meaning of a word is its use in the language.»^[17]

Classes

Each word belongs to a category, based on shared grammatical properties. Typically, a language’s lexicon may be classified into several such groups of words. The total number of categories as well as their types are not universal and vary among languages. For example, English has a group of words called articles, such as the (the definite article) or a (the indefinite article), which mark definiteness or identifiability. This class is not present in Japanese, which depends on context to indicate this difference. On the other hand, Japanese has a class of words called particles which are used to mark noun phrases according to their grammatical function or thematic relation, which English marks using word order or prosody.^{[18]: 21–24}

It is not clear if any categories other than interjection are universal parts of human language. The basic bipartite division that is ubiquitous in natural languages is that of nouns vs verbs. However, in some Wakashan and Salish languages, all content words may be understood as verbal in nature. In Lushootseed, a Salish language, all words with ‘noun-like’ meanings can be used predicatively, where they function like verb. For example, the word sbiaw can be understood as ‘(is a) coyote’ rather than simply ‘coyote’.^{[19][3]: 13:631} On the other hand, in Eskimo–Aleut languages all content words can be analyzed as nominal, with agentive nouns serving the role closest to verbs. Finally, in some Austronesian languages it is not clear whether the distinction is applicable and all words can be best described as interjections which can perform the roles of other categories.^{[3]: 13:631}

The current classification of words into classes is based on the work of Dionysius Thrax, who, in the 1st century BC, distinguished eight categories of Ancient Greek words: noun, verb, participle, article, pronoun, preposition, adverb, and conjunction. Later Latin authors, Apollonius Dyscolus and Priscian, applied his framework to their own language; since Latin has no articles, they replaced this class with interjection. Adjectives (‘happy’), quantifiers (‘few’), and numerals (‘eleven’) were not made separate in those classifications due to their morphological similarity to nouns in Latin and Ancient Greek. They were recognized as distinct categories only when scholars started studying later European languages.^{[3]: 13:629}

In Indian grammatical tradition, Pāṇini introduced a similar fundamental classification into a nominal (nāma, suP) and a verbal (ākhyāta, tiN) class, based on the set of suffixes taken by the word. Some words can be controversial, such as slang in formal contexts; misnomers, due to them not meaning what they would imply; or polysemous words, due to the potential confusion between their various senses.^[20]

History

In ancient Greek and Roman grammatical tradition, the word was the basic unit of analysis. Different grammatical forms of a given lexeme were studied; however, there was no attempt to decompose them into morphemes. ^[21]: 70 This may have been the result of the synthetic nature of these languages, where the internal structure of words may be harder to decode than in analytic languages. There was also no concept of different kinds of words, such as grammatical or phonological – the word was considered a unitary construct.^[4]: 269 The word (dictiō) was defined as the minimal unit of an utterance (ōrātiō), the expression of a complete thought.^[21]: 70

See also

• Longest words
• Utterance
• Word (computer architecture)
• Word count, the number of words in a document or passage of text
• Wording
• Etymology

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Barton, David (1994). Literacy: an introduction to the ecology of written language. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. p. 96. ISBN 0-631-19089-9. OCLC 28722223.
• The encyclopedia of language & linguistics. E. K. Brown, Anne Anderson (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier. 2006. ISBN 978-0-08-044854-1. OCLC 771916896.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
• Crystal, David (1995). The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-40179-8. OCLC 31518847.
• Plag, Ingo (2003). Word-formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-511-07843-9. OCLC 57545191.
• The Oxford English Dictionary. J. A. Simpson, E. S. C. Weiner, Oxford University Press (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989. ISBN 0-19-861186-2. OCLC 17648714.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

School of Computer Science

Dr Peter Coxhead

Warning: This web page was originally constructed to help computer science students who were taking my module on natural language processing. Some terms may be used differently by different authors. Unless otherwise stated, definitions are based on the English language.

If you find any errors, please e-mail me at peter.coxhead@bcs.org.

A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
H |
I |
J |
K |
L |
M |
N |
O |
P |
Q |
R |
S |
T |
U |
V |
W |
X |
Y |
Z

A

accusative  See case.

active  An active sentence is one which has a basic pattern like the man is running or the dog bit the cat, i.e. it describes what one thing (the subject) does, often to another thing (the object). The verb in an active sentence can be said to be in the active voice. See also passive.

adjective  A word which qualifies or further describes a noun or noun phrase. Examples are colourless and green which qualify ideas in Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. Adjectives can also appear after verbs like be, e.g. The apples were green.

adjunct theta-role  See theta role.

adverb  A word which qualifies or further describes a verb, adjective or adverb. Examples are furiously which qualifies the verb sleep in Colourless green ideas sleep furiously, or intensely which qualifies stared in He stared at me intensely. Adverbs can also qualify adjectives, e.g. astonishingly qualifies the adjective vivid in an astonishingly vivid colour, or other adverbs, e.g. extremely qualifies the adverb slowly in the phrase extremely slowly. Many English adverbs are formed from an adjective plus the ending -ly. Words like very, which can only qualify adjectives or adverbs but not verbs, are sometimes called adverbs, but are perhaps best put in a separate category.

affix  An affix is a morpheme which is added to a root morpheme in the formation of a word. In its broadest sense, an affix can be a prefix, a suffix, or an infix. More narrowly, infixes are sometimes treated separately. See also morphology.

affricative  An affricative is a phone which can be thought of as a very rapid, blended sequence of a stop and a fricative. The stop and fricative must be produced in a very similar positions in the mouth. An English example is the ‘ch sound’ in choose, which is like a sequence of a ‘t sound’ (a stop) and a ‘sh sound’ (a fricative). The phrases white shoes and why choose? sound very similar when spoken rapidly (but only in those dialects of English in which the [t] is not replaced by a glottal stop). In the IPA an affricative is represented by the corresponding stop symbol followed by the fricative symbol. It is important to note that the two symbols represent a SINGLE phone.

Agent  See theta role.

agreement  The syntax of a natural language often requires some words in a sentence to share certain grammatical features, which can show up as changes in the morphology of the words. This is called agreement; the words are said to agree in the relevant feature(s). For example, in English, determiners and nouns must agree in number within a noun phrase. Thus this cat is acceptable since this and cat are singular, but these cat is unacceptable since these is plural but cat is singular.

allophone  Each of the set of phones which correspond to a single phoneme of a language is called an allophone. Allophones of the same phoneme generally occur in different contexts and never distinguish one word from another. As an example, the ‘t sounds’ in tea and tree constitute allophones of one English /t/ phoneme. The production of the two sounds differs in that speaker’s tongue is in a slightly different place. A speech spectrograph will show a resulting sound difference. However, no English words differ ONLY in the substitution of one of these ‘t sounds’ for the other. Allophones are written in square brackets (e.g. [t]) where it is necessary to distinguish them from phonemes (e.g. /t/).

alveolar  A phone produced when the tongue touches the tooth ridge behind the teeth (alveolus). See the diagram of a head for the location of the tooth ridge. The ‘t sound’ in English is an alveolar stop, produced by stopping and then releasing the air flow out of the mouth by closing the tongue onto the tooth ridge.

anaphora  Some words in a sentence have little or no meaning of their own but instead refer to other words in the same or other sentences. This process is called anaphora. Pronouns are a good example. Consider the sentences: London had snow yesterday. It fell to a depth of a metre. To understand the second sentence it is necessary to identify it with snow rather than London or yesterday. English allows various forms of anaphora with verbs. For example, in I wanted to finish today, but I couldn’t do it, the words do it refer to finish today and hence can be called anaphoric.

approximant  An approximant is a phone in which the tongue partly closes the airway, but not enough to cause a fricative. Examples in English are the phones that begin lap and woo. Approximants can be divided into liquids and glides. Approximants (especially glides) have some similarities to vowels.

argument theta-role  See theta role.

article  In English, a / an and the are called the indefinite and definite articles respectively. See also determiner.

aspect (of a verb)  Verbs can show not only the time location of an action (by grammatical tense), but also features such as whether the action is thought of as completed or continuing. A change in a verb which shows such a feature is often called an aspect of the verb. Compare ate with was eating in He ate rapidly when I came in and He was eating rapidly when I came in. Both refer to events in the past time; the difference lies in the implied relationship between the actions of ‘eating’ and ‘coming in’. Syntactically, English has two marked aspects: progressive and perfect. The progressive aspect is formed by using the auxiliary be and the verb ending -ing. For example, I am eating it now implies both that the time is the present and that the ‘eating’ is currently in progress. The perfect aspect is formed by using the auxiliary have and the appropriate verb ending (usually -en or -ed): e.g. I have eaten it now, which implies both that the time is the present and that the ‘eating’ is finished. An English verb can show no aspect (e.g. runs or ran), progressive aspect (e.g. is running or was running), perfect aspect (e.g. has run or had run) or both perfect and progressive aspects (e.g. has been running or had been running). The table below shows the possible combinations of tense and aspect in English verbs.

aspiration  If a phone is accompanied by a ‘puff of air’ it can be said to be aspirated. The ‘p sound’ in the English word pit is aspirated and is thus slightly different from the ‘p sound’ in spit, which is not aspirated.

assimilation  Particularly in rapid speech there is a tendency for neighbouring phones to become more similar, presumably to make pronunciation easier. For example, although the words Aston and Asda are both written with an s, the second word is normally pronounced as if spelt Azda. The reason seems to be that [s] and [t] are both voiceless, whereas [z] and [d] are both voiced. The sequence fricative followed by stop is easier to say if both have the same voicing.

ATN = Augmented Transition Network.

auxiliary  In English, one of a small set of verb-like words which can precede a main verb in a verb phrase. The auxiliaries and verbs are sometimes said to form a ‘verb group’ or ‘compound verb’. Examples of auxiliaries are do in I really do not know, or may in I may see him tomorrow. Auxiliaries have verb-like properties, and may show changes in number, person and tense. Some words (e.g. have) can be either an auxiliary (e.g. I have seen him) or a verb (e.g. I have a car).

B

bilabial  A phone produced by the closure or partial closure of both lips. See the diagram of a head. The English sounds represented by the letters p in pit and b in bad are bilabial stops, produced by stopping and then releasing the air flow out of the mouth by closing the lips. Bilabial and labiodental phones are together classed as labial.

C

case  Nouns, noun phrases and pronouns play different syntactic roles in sentences. These roles correspond to changes of case in many languages. Consider, for example, the sentences She saw him and He saw her. The words she and he are used when they form the subject of the sentence and are said to be in the nominative case. She and he must be changed to her and him respectively when they form the object of the sentence and are said to be in the accusative case. Changes due to case are restricted to pronouns in English, but in other languages (e.g. Russian, Modern Greek), most nouns, pronouns, articles, adjectives, etc. will vary according to case.

circumstantial theta-role  See theta role.

consonant  (1) A phone which is produced other than by allowing lung air to pass over the vibrating vocal cords and then freely out of the mouth, i.e. a phone other than a vowel. Consonants include stops, fricatives, affricatives and approximants. (2) A letter of the alphabet usually pronounced using a consonant phone is also called a consonant.

Be careful to distinguish these two usages. In a language with non-phonemic spelling, such as English, they can be quite different. The word mute, for example, begins with a single consonant letter, but in many British English dialects is pronounced with two opening consonant phones ([m] and [j] in IPA).

D

dental  A phone produced when the tongue touches the teeth. See the diagram of a head. The English sounds beginning the words this and think are alveolar fricatives, produced by partially stopping the air flow out of the mouth by touching the tongue on the teeth.

derivational morphology  See morphology.

determiner (det)  The definite and indefinite articles plus a small set of other similar words (e.g. genitive pronouns) which qualify nouns or noun phrases can be grouped as determiners. Examples of determiners are this, that, my. An English noun phrase always contains at most one determiner; singular noun phrases generally require exactly one determiner. Semantically, they determine that a particular instance of the noun is being referred (back) to. For example, There’s a man at the door — the word a introduces a man into the conversation. Tell the man I’ll come in a minute — the word the refers back to the previously mentioned man.

Noun phrases in the genitive act as determiners. Thus in I saw the old lady’s cat, the genitive noun phrase the old lady’s can be replaced by the single word determiner her.

dialect  Generally dialects of a language are more similar than different languages. However, what is a dialect and what is a language is often a political rather than a linguistic question. The division of Serbo-Croat, the common language of former Yugoslavia, into two languages, Serbian and Croatian, shows this rather sharply. A further example of very similar languages which might be called dialects of the same language are Dutch (spoken in the Netherlands) and Flemish (spoken in north-western Belgium). On the other hand, in China there are languages which are mutually un-intelligible when spoken but are often called dialects of one Chinese language. It is important to note that although some dialects have more social prestige in a country than others, this says nothing about their linguistic qualities.

diphthong  If the tongue moves significantly during the production of a vowel phone, the result is a diphthong. A diphthong sounds like a rapid, blended sequence of two separate vowels. An example in English is the vowel sound in the word kite, which is like a rapid combination of a kind of ‘a sound’ and a kind of ‘i sound’. In the IPA a diphthong is represented by two vowel symbols. It is important to note that the two symbols represent a SINGLE phone.

direct object  See object.

E

ellipsis  A technical term for leaving out words in sentences. For example, in Brian ate the ice-cream and Judy the peaches, there is ellipsis, since the word ate is omitted after Judy.

F

feature  See semantic feature. (There are other uses of the term not covered here.)

feminine  See gender.

fricative  If during the production of a phone, air is made to pass through a narrow passage, a ‘friction’ sound or fricative is produced (i.e. a more-or-less ‘hissing’ sound). English examples are the ‘f sound’ in fee or the ‘sh sound’ in she.

G

gender  In some languages (but not English), nouns fall into a small number of classes which require changes in the articles, adjectives, etc. which qualify them. In Indo-European languages, these classes are traditionally called genders and labelled according to whether nouns for males (masculine gender), females (feminine gender) or neither (neuter gender) fall into these classes. French has two genders, masculine and feminine, shown for example by the use of le or la for the; German and Modern Greek have three genders, having neuter as well. Note that grammatical gender is not tied to biological sex, since, for example, the nouns meaning ‘a young girl’ are neuter in both German and Modern Greek. Thus as with number, grammatical gender is not the same as semantic gender.

genitive  See also case. Genitive is an alternative word for possessive, i.e. the genitive case marks the noun or pronoun as the possessor of something. In English, the genitive case of a noun is shown in writing by adding an s together with an appropriately positioned apostrophe. Thus of the boy becomes boy’s, of the boys becomes boys’. The genitive or possessive pronouns are my, your, his, her, its [without an apostrophe!], our, their. Genitive noun phrases act as determiners.

glide  A glide is an approximant in which the tongue and lips move during the production of the sound. English examples are the initial phones in woo [w] and you [j].

glottal  A phone produced by closing or partially closing the vocal cords (or glottis). See the diagram of a head for the location of the vocal cords. The ‘h sound’ in English is a glottal fricative, produced by a strong air flow over partially open vocal cords.

grammar (1)  The word grammar is used as a collective word for morphology and syntax, i.e. for patterns both within and between words.

grammar (2)  The word grammar is also used a technical term for a rule-based approach which generates a particular set of sentences. Formally, a grammar consists of a set of nonterminal symbols (one of which is the start symbol), a set of terminal symbols and a set of productions or re-writing rules. Terminals (e.g. words) are the basic units of the sentences which the grammar generates. Nonterminals are symbols used only in the grammar itself. A production is a rule which says that the symbols on the left-hand side can be re-written as those on the right-hand side. One of the nonterminals must be the start symbol, i.e. the symbol from which re-writing starts.

grapheme  A grapheme is a ‘spelling unit’. For example, in Spanish the combination ll represents a different sound from a single l. Thus these are two graphemes. In English, graphemes may be quite complex. For example -tion behaves more-or-less as a single grapheme in words like function.

H

I

idiolect  The language used by one individual is sometimes called an idiolect. A dialect or language can then be regarded as a collection of mutually intelligible idiolects.

indirect object  See object.

Indo-European  Linguists divide languages into a number of families, based on similarity and shared descent. Indo-European languages were natively spoken in a broad band through Europe to northern India and Bangladesh. Historically, the only major non-Indo-European languages spoken in this area were Finnish/Estonian, Hungarian, Basque and Turkish. It is believed that all the Indo-European languages are descended from one language spoken around 4,000 BC. It is important to be aware that different language families may be based on quite different principles, both in their sounds and in their grammar.

infix  A strong definition of an infix might be a morpheme which is added inside a root morpheme in the formation of a word. In a language like English, infixes, so defined, do not occur, since the root morpheme is indivisible. In Semitic languages, the root morpheme consists only of consonants — usually three in, e.g., Arabic or Hebrew. A particular set of vowels and/or affixes combines with this root to form a word. Thus in Hebrew the root sgr has a basic meaning connected with «close» or «closed». Adding the vowels -a-a- (where the dashes mark the position of the root consonants) forms the active verb sagar; adding the prefix ni and the vowel —a- forms the passive verb nisgar. The inserted components can be called infixes, so that nisgar = prefix ni + infix —a- + root sgr.

A weaker definition of an infix might be one or more morphemes which are added inside a word to form another word. Such infixes are said to occur in English since, in colloquial speech, swear words can be inserted into other words, e.g. I hate this bloody university can become I hate this uni-bloody-versity. In English, such ‘infixes’ can apparently only be inserted before a stressed syllable.

See also morphology.

inflectional morphology  See inflection and morphology.

inflection  A grammatical change in the form of a word (more accurately of a lexeme), which leaves the ‘base meaning’ and the grammatical category of the word unchanged. In English, inflections are restricted to the endings of words (i.e. suffixes). Other languages may show changes elsewhere. As an example, the suffix s is the usual written plural inflection in English. Inflections in nouns may show changes of number, gender, case, etc.; in verbs, of number, person, tense, aspect, etc. See also morphology.

intonation  Intonation refers to changes in the tone or frequency of sounds during speech. For example, in English the tone usually falls at the end of a statement and rises at the end of a question, so that You want some coffee. and You want some coffee? can be distinguished by tone alone. In some languages (e.g. Chinese, Thai), sequences containing the same phones but with different intonation patterns correspond to different words.

IPA  The International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA is a set of symbols which can be used to represent the phones and phonemes of natural languages. A subset which can be used to represent ‘Standard English English’ (roughly the dialect of middle-class people from the south east of England) is given in a separate table.

J

K

L

labial  Bilabial and labiodental phones are together classed as labial.

labiodental  A phone produced by the partial closure of the lower lip on the upper teeth. See the diagram of a head. The English sounds represented by the letters f in fit and v in van are labiodental fricatives, produced by restricting the air flow out of the mouth by touching the lower lip on the upper teeth. Bilabial and labiodental phones are together classed as labial.

language  See natural language and dialect.

length  Length refers to the time duration of a phone. The English words beat and bead differ the length of the vowel as well as the voicing of the terminal stop; the vowel is longer in bead than in beat. In some languages the length of consonants may also be important.

lexeme  The four words eat, eats, eating and eaten are morphological variants of the word eat. The past tense ate is not so obviously morphologically connected to eat, but nevertheless has the same underlying meaning. Thus we may say that the five words eat, eats, eating, eaten and ate form a single lexeme, i.e. a single ‘meaning entity’. A dictionary would be expected to contain only one definition for all five words. A lexeme is thus equivalent to what is often called a ‘head word’ in a dictionary.

lexicon  Often used as a technical term for the list of words and their types which is used with a grammar.

liquid  A liquid is a kind of approximant. English examples are the initial phones in lap and rap.

Location  See theta role.

M

masculine  See gender.

mood  A verb may be in one of several moods. The ‘base’ mood of a verb is the indicative or declarative, where the verb (and hence the sentence which contains it) states what is the case. The imperative mood is used to give instructions or commands. Compare The cat chases the mouse (indicative) with Chase the mouse! (imperative). The subjunctive mood, used to show hypothetical conditions, is rarely shown grammatically in Modern English. (If I were to tell you rather than If I was to tell you is one of the few uses which are at all common.) Languages vary widely in their use of moods.

As with other properties of verbs, it is important to distinguish between grammatical form and meaning. In the sentence I had finished my coursework before John came home, had finished is indicative in meaning, showing that the action was completed in the past before John came home. In the sentence If I had finished my coursework, I would have got a better mark, had finished is subjunctive in meaning, showing that the action was never completed.

morphology  The structure of words and the study of this structure. For example, a morphological analysis of the English word unknowingly might yield four components, called morphemes. These are the root know and three affixes, the prefix un indicating negation, and two suffixes ing and ly. Note that both spelling and pronunciation changes can take place when morphemes are combined. Thus the root happy plus the affix ly yields happily not *happyly. Many English words appear to contain morphemes, but resist neat division. For example, the suffix ish often indicates that the word refers to a language (e.g. English, Spanish, Danish, Swedish), but removing the suffix does not always leave a clear root morpheme (e.g. Spanish = ?Span(e) + ish). In other cases, it may be that a word was in the past created from distinct morphemes, but that this is not obvious to a contemporary speaker as the morphemes are no longer used in forming new words.

When an affix morpheme is an inflection, the word can be said to show inflectional morphology. Thus the word chased (= chase + ed) shows inflectional morphology. In many languages, including English, inflectional morphology is relatively predictable, and can be handled by rules.

In other cases, the word can be said to show derivational morphology. Thus the word output = out + put shows derivational morphology: adding the prefix out to the verb put creates a noun with the approximate meaning «that which was put out». In many languages, including English, derivational morphology is unpredictable, and so cannot easily be handled by rules. Thus there’s no noun *outgo meaning «that which went out» (although there is a noun, most often used in the plural, outgoings = out + go + ing + s).

MT = Machine Translation

N

nasal  A nasal is a phone made by allowing air to flow out of the nose while possibly stopping it in the mouth. Allowing air to flow out of the mouth is achieved by opening the uvula (see the diagram of a head). English has three such phones: the nasal stops which end the words rum, run and rung.

In many languages (e.g. French, Punjabi), there are also nasal vowels, produced by allowing air to flow out of both the mouth and the nose.

natural language  Any language naturally used by people, i.e. not a man-made language like a programming language or Esperanto.

neuter  See gender.

NL = Natural Language.

NLP = Natural Language Processing.

nominative  See case.

nonterminal  See grammar.

noun  Semantically, a noun can be described as a word standing for the ‘name of something.’ A more useful test is that a noun or a noun phrase can be replaced by a pronoun, e.g. it or her. Examples of nouns are people, cats and intelligence in Many people think that cats have considerable intelligence. The strings of words many people and considerable intelligence are noun phrases in this example.

NP = Noun Phrase. See also phrase.

number  In English, nouns and verbs can be described as singular or plural, generally depending on whether the reference is to one or to many. Thus in the cat runs, cat is singular as is runs, whereas in cats run, cats is plural as is run. English nouns are generally clearly marked as singular or plural; verbs are clearly singular only in the third person singular of the present tense. However, grammatical number must be distinguished from semantic number; trousers is grammatically plural in English (since e.g. we must say my trousers are here and not *my trousers is here), but is clearly semantically singular. Some languages have dual number as well as singular and plural. For example, in Arabic, a special form of the noun corresponds to two rather than one or many. Other languages lack grammatical number (e.g. the Chinese languages).

O

object (of a sentence)  The direct object of an active sentence is a noun, noun phrase or pronoun which suffers the action of the verb. Thus in Those people dislike cats, cats is the object of the sentence. In English, only pronouns show case, and become accusative when forming the object of a sentence: thus, e.g., cats in the sentence above must be replaced by them rather than they. In other languages, nouns, adjectives, articles, etc. may all change case. The indirect object of a sentence in English is a noun or equivalent which, if the sentence were re-worded, would require a to (or sometimes a for). Thus in Your mother gave my brother a cake, a cake is the direct object and my brother the indirect object, since if we reverse brother and cake we need a to giving Your mother gave a cake to my brother. Direct and indirect objects may take different cases in some languages; e.g. in German, me is mich (accusative) when it is the direct object, but mir (dative) when it is the indirect object. See also subject.

P

palatal  A phone produced when the top of the tongue touches the hard palate. See the diagram of a head for the location of the hard palate. The English sounds represented by the letters sh in ship and s in measure are palatal fricatives, produced by partially stopping the air flow out of the mouth by touching the top of the tongue on the hard palate.

parse  To analyse a sentence using a grammar, including deciding whether it is valid and what its structure is according to the grammar.

participant theta-role  See theta role.

passive  A passive sentence is one which has a basic pattern like The cat was killed or The cat was killed by the dog, i.e. it describes what one thing (the subject) has done to it, often by another thing. The verb in an passive sentence can be said to be in the passive voice. See also active.

Patient  See theta role.

person (of a verb)  Verbs (in Indo-European languages at least) often vary depending on whether the subject of the verb is in the first person (singular = I, plural = we), the second person (singular and plural = you in modern English), or the third person (singular = he, she or it, plural = they). Only the verb be in the singular shows a full set of changes due to person in modern English: I am, you are, it is.

phone  A phone is a ‘unit sound’ of a language in the sense that it is the minimal sound by which two words can differ. For example, the English word feed contains three phones since each can be independently substituted to form a different word. In the IPA, the three phones can be written as [f], [i] and [d]. Examples of substitutions are: [fid] — [f] + [s] gives [sid], i.e. seed; [fid] — [i] + [u] gives [fud], i.e. food; [fid] — [d] + [t] gives [fit], i.e. feet. The whole of each phone must be substituted to change one word into another. It is important to note that whether or not speakers can distinguish between sounds is not a test of whether they constitute distinct phones. The word tea could be represented as [ti] and the word tree as [tri]. However, the two ‘t sounds’ are not quite the same: the tongue is further back in the mouth when pronouncing the [t] in [tri] than when pronouncing the [t] in [ti]. How far to divide up sounds into phones is essentially a pragmatic question. Using more phones will enable speech to represented more accurately but at a cost in terms of complexity. See also allophone, phoneme.

phoneme  A phoneme is a minimally distinctive set of sounds in a language; sound sequences which differ in a single phoneme can constitute different words. Thus the pairs tip-dip and trip-drip show that English has two distinct phonemes, which we can write as /t/ and /d/, since substituting one for the other produces a different word. However, the pronunciation of /t/ (and /d/) is not the same in each pair: the tongue is further back in the mouth when /t/ is followed by /r/. Hence there are at least two phones corresponding to the /t/ phoneme. However there are no two English words in which the ONLY difference is that the ‘t sound in trip’ is replaced by the ‘t sound in tip’ — these two sounds are allophones of the same phoneme. English speakers do not need to recognize the difference between them.

phonetics  Phonetics is the study of the sounds of speech (i.e. the study of phones). It can be distinguished from phonology which is more concerned with the underlying theory (i.e. the phonemes which underlie phones and the rules which govern the conversion of phonemes to phones and vice versa).

phonological rule  At some theoretical level, words can be considered to be composed of phonemes. The actual sound of a word then depends on which allophone is chosen for each phoneme. The context-sensitive rules which determine this are called phonological rules. Thus the word input can be considered to contain the phoneme /n/. However in fast speech in many dialects of English, the phone used will be [m]. The relevant phonological rule for English is that a nasal becomes articulated at the same position as a following stop.

phonology  See phonetics.

phrase  A string of words can often act as an exact grammatical substitute for a single word; such a string is called a ‘phrase’. Thus e.g. a noun can be replaced by a noun phrase — compare Whiskers is over there with That appalling pet of yours is over there, in which That appalling pet of yours is a noun phrase equivalent to the noun Whiskers.

plosive  See stop.

plural  See number.

possessive  See genitive.

pragmatics  A technical term meaning, roughly, what the person speaking or writing actually meant, rather than what the words themselves mean.

prefix  A prefix is a morpheme which is added before a root morpheme in the formation of a word. See morphology.

preposition  A preposition is one of a finite set of words (e.g. at, from, by) which in English must usually be followed by a noun or its equivalent. A prepositional phrase (PP) consists of a preposition followed by a noun, pronoun or noun phrase. Two major uses of prepositional phrases are to show location (e.g. on the mat in the cat sits on the mat) and motion (e.g. into the house in the cat runs into the house). The word preposition comes from pre plus position. In other languages (e.g. Japanese), there are postpositions: words which come after a noun or its equivalent.

production  See grammar.

pronoun  A pronoun is one of a small set of words which can substitute for a noun or noun phrase. It usually refers back to a previous occurrence of the noun or noun phrase. Thus, e.g., it in the previous sentence is a pronoun which refers back to A pronoun in the sentence before. The process of referring is sometimes called anaphora.

Q

R

Recipient  See theta role.

referential semantics  A system where the meaning of a word just is the thing it refers to.

RTN = Recursive Transition Network.

S

semantic feature  A semantic feature is a ‘primitive’ which a language processor (human or computer) is assumed to be able to determine independently of the language system. The meaning of words such as nouns or adjectives can then be described in terms of sets of these features. For example we might describe the meaning of words such as boy, man, girl and woman in terms of the features YOUNG, MALE and HUMAN. Boy would be [+YOUNG, +MALE, +HUMAN], woman would be [-YOUNG, -MALE, +HUMAN].

semantics  Used as a technical term for the meaning of words and sentences (see also pragmatics).

singular  See number.

start symbol  See grammar.

stop  Some phones are produced by completely stopping and then releasing the flow of air out of the mouth. These sounds are called stops. In most dialects of English there are three stop positions, corresponding to the initial phones in pale, tale and kale, or the terminal nasal phones in rum, run and rung. Some dialects of English (for example those spoken in England around London) also have a glottal stop, used, for example, instead of the ‘t sound’ in words like bottle.

[The current tendency is to use the term plosive instead of stop. I resist this for the following reason. A stop actually consists of two phases: closure (when air pressure builds up) and release (when air explodes out). These phases can be separated: in many languages, stops are often not released (e.g. in the Bahasa language spoken in Malaysia and Indonesia, or at the end of words in many dialects of English spoken in northern England). The term ‘unreleased stop’ makes sense, whereas an ‘unreleased plosive’ is a contradiction.]

stress  Words can be divided into syllables, usually centred around a vowel. In many languages, including English, the duration and relative loudness of a syllable — its stress — are important. Thus only stress distinguishes the noun PROcess (as in the sentence This process is called assimilation) from the much less common verb proCESS (as in the sentence I usually process at the degree ceremony). The noun is stressed on the first syllable, the verb on the second.

STT = Speech To Text.

subject (of a sentence)  The subject of a sentence is the noun or noun equivalent which governs the verb, in the sense that if the language has agreements, the verb has to agree with the subject in number (as in English) or in gender (as in Arabic). Thus in English we have to say The dog chases the cats not The dog chase the cats; the verb chases agrees in number with the subject the dog rather than the object the cats. In the semantically equivalent passive sentence, The cats are chased by the dog, the fact that the cats is now the subject is shown by the need to use the plural auxiliary, are.

In an active sentence, the subject is often the entity which performs the action of the verb; in a passive sentence the subject is the entity which is in some sense the recipient of the action.

See also object.

suffix  A suffix is a morpheme which is added after a root morpheme in the formation of a word. See morphology.

syntax  The syntax of a language comprises, roughly speaking, the patterns into which its words can be validly arranged to form sentences. The combination of morphology and syntax is sometimes called the grammar of a language.

T

tense (of a verb)  The tense of a verb specifies the time at which its action occurs. The clearest examples in English are the present and past tenses. When saying I am eating an apple the speaker refers to the present; when saying I was eating an apple, s/he refers to the past. In its morphology, an English verb shows tense and aspect independently (see the table under aspect). Semantically, tense and aspect are not so easy to separate in English. I have eaten the apple is described morphologically as ‘present perfect’, but semantically is partly a reference to the past, and partly a reference to the action’s being complete rather than continuing.

The future tense in English is formed by the use of the auxiliary will or sometimes shall. Morphologically, these auxiliaries can show ‘past tense’; thus I would have been eating is the ‘future past perfect progressive’ of eat. Semantically, the combination of ‘future’ and ‘past’ is used to express ‘conditionality’, so that this form of the verb is usually called ‘conditional’.

terminal node  A node in a transition network at which parsing can stop.

terminal  See grammar.

thematic role  See theta role.

theta role  (Often written as θ-role.) Verbs require a number of other components to be present in a sentence to complete their meaning. These components can be said to act as arguments to the verb, i.e. to be argument theta roles (or, alternatively, to play participant theta roles in relation to the action of the verb). For example, in the sentence The girl put the bottles on the table, the action of ‘putting’ involves three necessary thematic roles. These are Agent, the entity doing the putting; Patient, the entity which suffers the action of being put; and Location, where the Agent puts the Patient. A sentence containing the verb put will involve these three roles, even if they occur in different positions due to the syntax of the sentence. Thus exactly the same entities play exactly the same theta roles in the sentence The bottles were put on the table by the girl although the syntax is different from the previous sentence.

Another common θ-role is Recipient, the entity which receives something, typically the Patient. Thus the boy is the Recipient in both The girl gave the bottles to the boy and The boy was given the bottles.

In addition to argument or participant theta roles, there are adjunct or circumstantial theta roles. These show additional, non-required components. For example, in the kitchen plays an argument theta role in He was putting apples in the kitchen but only an adjunct theta role in He was eating apples in the kitchen. In both cases in the kitchen is a location, but put requires this role, eat merely allows it to be present.

TN = Transition Network.

TTS = Text To Speech.

U

unvoiced  See voicing.

V

velar  A phone produced when the top of the tongue touches the soft palate or velum. See the diagram of a head for the location of the soft palate. The English sounds represented by the letters k in kit and g in got are velar stops, produced by stopping and then releasing the air flow out of the mouth by touching the top of the tongue on the soft palate.

verb  A verb is traditionally described as a ‘doing’ word; thus in the sentences Colourless ideas sleep furiously and The dog bit the cat, sleep and bit are verbs. A more useful test is that a verb combines with an auxiliary in structures such as I can _ or I can _ them. English makes extensive use of ‘verb groups’ or ‘compound verbs’, such as has been eating in He has been eating fish in which one or more auxiliaries is combined with a verb.

Verbs may show a wide range of grammatical properties, including gender, person, tense, aspect, voice and mood. There are major differences among languages in the way these properties are shown grammatically and in their associated meanings.

voice  A verb may be in the active or passive voice, and hence so may the sentence in which the verb appears. Compare The dog chased the cat (active) with The cat was chased by the dog (passive). This use of the term ‘voice’ has no connection with ‘voiced’ or ‘voiceless’.

In English, the grammatical voice of a verb is closely related to its meaning. In a sentence with an active verb the subject is typically the Agent, whereas in a sentence with a passive verb the subject is typically the Patient or the Recipient. Compare the active sentence The girl gave her mother a present, in which the girl is the subject and the Agent, with the passive sentences A present was given to her mother, in which a present is the subject and the Patient, and Her mother was given a present, in which her mother is the subject and Recipient.

In other languages, grammatical voice and meaning are less well aligned. For example, in Greek, both Classical and Modern, verbs which are passive in form may have active meanings, usually when the agent and patient are the same. Thus in Modern Greek, χτενίζω means «I comb» or «I am combing» but is only used when the patient (the thing being combed) is not the subject. The passive form χτενίζομαι normally means «I am combing [my hair]» rather than «I am being combed».

voiced  See voicing.

voiceless  See voicing.

voicing  Voicing refers to whether or not the vocal cords are vibrated during the production of a phone. Phones such as vowels or [b] or [d] in which the vocal cords are vibrated are said to be voiced. Phones such as [s] or [p] in which the vocal cords are not vibrated are said to be voiceless or unvoiced.

vowel  (1) A phone which is produced by allowing lung air to pass over the vibrating vocal cords and then freely out of the mouth. Thus vowels can be continued until you run out of breath. The positions of the lips and tongue alter the size and shape of the resonating cavity to produce different sounds. (2) A letter of the alphabet usually pronounced using a vowel phone is also called a vowel.

Be careful to distinguish these two usages. In a language with non-phonemic spelling, such as English, they can be quite different. The word site, for example, contains two vowel letters but only one vowel phone since the terminal e is not pronounced.

See also consonant.

W

X

Y

Z

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B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
H |
I |
J |
K |
L |
M |
N |
O |
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Q |
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T |
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Z

Before we examine the most common terms used in the discussion of word meaning, we shall first define ‘linguistic sign’ and then discuss the word as a linguistic sign.

Following de Saussure, the linguistic sign is a mental unit consisting of two faces, which cannot be separated: a concept and an acoustic image. The term ‘sign’ is quite a general expression which can refer to sentences, clauses, phrases, words, or morphemes. De Saussure later referred to ‘concept’ as ‘signifie’ or ‘thing meant’ and to ‘acoustic image’ as ‘signifiant’ or ‘signifier’. These have since become accepted technical terms in modern linguistics. De Saussure pointed out that an alteration in the acoustic image must make a difference in the concept and vice versa. But this view does not appear to take homonyms into account. However, since the linguistic sign has both form and meaning, it follows that, when dealing with words, we can focus either on the form or on the meaning.

Since the word is a linguistic sign, a discussion of ‘word meaning’ focuses on the relationship between the two faces of the sign, the acoustic image or ‘signifiant’, the signifier, on the one hand, and the concept or ‘signifie’, the thing meant, on the other. A major diffi­ culty in this task is how to accommodate both the fuzzy nature of meaning and the ambiguity inherent in the notion of word. We cannot go into the intricacies of the various aspects of meaning in an introductory book of this nature. Instead, we shall limit our discussion to an examination of some of the most common terms associated with word meaning; those that will be useful not only in our discussion of the different types of relationship that exist between words, but also in our study of sense relations. We shall consider in turn denotation, connotation, reference and sense. However, to ease comparison and cross-references, we shall discuss these terms in pairs as follows: denotation and reference, denotation and sense, and finally denotation and connotation.

We need the concept of ‘lexeme’ to clarify the distinction between denotation and reference. This concept, which was coined by Lyons in analogy to ‘phoneme’ and ‘morpheme’, is considered an abstract linguistic unit (spelt in capitals) with different variants (e.g. SING as against sang, sung). Thus, the relation of denotation holds between a lexeme and a whole class of extra-linguistic objects. For example, Lyons defines the denotation of a lexeme as ‘the relationship that holds between that lexeme and persons, things, places, properties, processes and activities external to the language system’. It is therefore difficult to give concrete examples of denotation since this relation holds between an abstract linguistic unit and a whole class of extra-linguistic objects. As opposed to denotation, the relationship of reference holds between an expression and what that expression stands for on particular occasions of its utterance. Lyons further points out that reference depends on concrete utterances, not on abstract sentences. It is a property only of expressions. It cannot relate single lexemes to extra-linguistic objects, since it is an utterance dependent notion. Furthermore, reference is not generally applicable to single word forms and it is never applicable to single lexemes. For example, expressions such as the computer, John’s computer, or the two portable computers on the table may be used to establish a relationship of reference with specific items as referents. In this case, the reference of these expressions containing computer is partly determined by the denotation of the lexeme COMPUTER in the overall system of the English language.

We have already defined denotation following. His definition of sense also evolved with time. Initially, he defined the sense of a word as its ‘place in a system of relationships which it contracts with other words in the vocabulary’. Later, he defines sense as a relationship ‘between the words or expressions of a single language, independently of the relationship, if any, which holds between those words or expressions and their referents or denotata’. It follows that sense is a relationship which is internal to the language system, a language-immanent relationship. Both individual lexemes and larger expressions have sense. However, the sense of an expression is a function of the sense of thelexemes it contains and their occurrences in a particular grammatical construction. The sense of the word table will vary in the following sentences: ‘Don’t put your feet on the table and ‘It was finalized under the table.’ A comparison between denotation and sense shows that the two relations are dependent on each other. According to Lyons, some words may have no specific denotation and still have sense. To use an often quoted example, consider the following pair of sentences:

There is no such animal as a unicorn.

There is no such book as a unicorn.

While the first is perfectly acceptable, the second is semantically odd. Furthermore, this double observation proves that, whereas the lexemes book and unicorn are incompatible, animal and unicorn are somehow related in sense. Such examples can be multiplied easily. The important point here is that a word may have sense but have no denotation.

Polysemy

We shall first define polysemy, before discussing some of the problems inherent in the concept of polysemy.Polysemy refers to the situation where the same word has two or more different meanings (from Greek poly, ‘many’ + semeion, ‘sign’). For instance, the noun board is said to be polysemous because it may mean: (1) a long thin flat piece of cut wood, (2) a flat surface with patterns, used for playing a game on, (3) a flat piece of hard material used for putting food on, (4) a flat piece of hard material fastened to the wall in a public place to pin notices on, (5) the cost of meals, (6) a committee or association, as of company directors or government officials, set up for a special responsibility. Similarly, the word flight is defined in at least the following ways: (1) the act of flying, (2) the distance covered or course followed by a flying object, (3) a trip by plane, (4) the aircraft making the journey, (5) a group of birds or aircraft flying together, (6) an effort that goes beyond the usual limits, (7) a set of stairs as between floors, (8) swift movement or passage.

In most cases, only one of the meanings of a polysemous word will fit into a given context, but occasionally ambiguity may also arise. For instance, consider the words bat and bank in the following contexts:

Look at that bat under the tree.

Susan may go to the bank today.

Ambiguity results from the fact that bat may mean either ‘flying mammal’ or ‘implement used to hit the ball in cricket’, while bank may mean either ‘river bank’ or ‘the place that deals with money’.

Despite its apparent simplicity, the concept of polysemy is complex and involves a certain number of problems. We shall consider in turn the number of meanings, transference of meanings, and difficulty in recognizing polysemy. Since one meaning cannot always be delimited and distinguished from another, it is not easy to say without hesitation whether two meanings are the same or different. Consequently, we cannot determine exactly how many meanings a polysemous word has. Consider the verb eat. Most dictionaries distinguish the ‘literal’ sense of ‘taking in through the mouth and swallowing’ and the derived meaning of ‘use up, damage, or destroy something, especially by chemical action’, which tends to suggest that the verb may have at least two different meanings. However, in the literal sense, we can also distinguish between eating nuts and eating soup, the former with fingers and the latter with a spoon. Moreover, we can talk of drinking soup as well as eating it. It may therefore be said that in this sense at least, eat corresponds to drink, since the latter involves the ‘swallowing of liquids’. We can push the analysis further by asking whether eating an orange (which can involve sucking) is the same thing as eating an apple (which involves only chewing). It goes without saying that if we push this analysis too far, we may end up deciding that the verb eat has a different meaning for every type of food that we ‘eat’. The above discussion shows that there is no clear criterion for either difference or sameness of meaning. Consequently, it would seem futile to attempt an exhaustive count of the number of possible meanings which a given word may have. The point of view adopted in this book is that the meaning of a given word is bound to vary according to the specific context in a wide semantic field, part of which overlaps with that of other words. For instance, the semantic field of eat overlaps with that of drink when referring to a soup, since you can either eat or drink a soup, but there is no overlapping when dealing with nuts, since nuts can only be eaten, not drunk. As suggested in the case of the verb eat, a word may have both a ‘literal’ meaning and one or more ‘transferred’ meanings, although we cannot determine with precision how many different meanings a given word may have altogether. We shall first discuss metaphor, which is the most familiar kind of transference, before turning to other kinds of transference. The basic difference between metaphor on the one hand and the other types of transference on the other is that metaphor is ‘irregular’, because it applies to individual lexical items, whereas the other kinds may be considered more ‘regular’, in the sense that they do not apply just to individual lexical items but to several members of a specific class, e.g. a group of nouns or adjectives. These characteristics will be made more explicit below. The term ‘metaphor’ refers to cases where a word appears to have both a ‘literal’ and a ‘transferred’ meaning. The words for parts of the body provide the best illustration of metaphor. For example, we speak of the hands and face of a clock, the foot of a bed or of a mountain, the leg of a chair or table, the tongue of a shoe, the eye of a needle, etc. Intuitively, we assume that words such as eye, face, foot, hand, leg and tongue apply first to the body, from which they derive their literal sense. This intuition is supported by the fact that the whole set of words applies only to the body, while only some of them can be transferred to certain objects. For instance, the clock has no tongue, the bed no eyes, the chair no feet and the mountain no legs. It should, however, be said that metaphor is rather haphazard not only within specific languages, but also when we compare the use of the same metaphor across languages. It is from these two points of view that metaphor is considered ‘irregular’. For example, it may seem obvious that foot is appropriate to a mountain, or eye to a needle, but a look at French will show that, although a mountain also has a ‘foot’ (French pied), the needle does not have an ‘eye’, but a ‘hole’ (trou); furthermore, a clock does not have ‘hands’, but ‘needles’ (aiguilles), chairs and tables do not have ‘legs’ but ‘feet’ (les pieds de la table/chaise). The label ‘metaphor’ can also be applied to other cases of transference, but only in a rather loose sense, because it is not always clear which meaning should be considered literal and which transferred. However, this second kind of transference is fairly productive because it involves the transfer of meaning in a predictable manner. Thus, many adjectives may be used either literally for the quality they refer to or with the transferred meaning of being the source of the quality. For instance, in the literal sense, we may say that ‘John is sad’ (he feels Mildness), ‘a blanket is warm’ (it is of a certain degree of temperature). But in the transferred sense, when we say that a book or film or story is sad, we do not imply that ‘it feels sadness’, rather, we mean that it causes someone else to feel sad. Note that this possibility of transfer of moaning may result in ambiguity. For instance, a blanket or a coat may be warm in two senses: either that it is of a certain temperature as mentioned above, or that it keeps one warm.

Similarly, many nouns may have a concrete and an abstract meaning. Thus, we may compare ‘The thesis is on the desk’ and ‘The thesis is not supported by objective evidence’. The word thesis has, of course, a concrete meaning in the first sentence and an abstract one in I ho second. Similar contrasts may be established for bible, book, score mid table, for instance.

As a final observation, it must be said that far from being a defect of language, polysemy is an essential condition for its efficiency. If it were not possible to attach several senses to the same word, this would moan a crushing burden on our memory; we would have to possess separate terms for every conceivable ‘object’ we might wish to talk about, and be absolutely precise in our choice of words. Consequently, polysemy must be considered an invaluable factor of economy and flexibility in language.

To sum up we `ve shown the central importance of the world in lexicology. In so doing, it has first provided an answer to the fundamental question: “What exactly is meant by “word” in lexicology?”. Secondly, we have examined the notion of “word meaning”.

References:

1. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) (1978, 1987, 1995, 2003) Longman.
2. Lyons, J. (1977) Semantics, Vols1 and 2, Cambridge University Press.
3. De Saussure, (1959) A Course in General Linguistics, ed. C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, Peter Owen.

1. Lexicology is the part of linguistics which studies words, their nature(?) and meaning, words’ elements(?), relations between words (semantical relations), word groups and the whole lexicon.

The word «lexicology» derives from the Greek «λεξικόν» (lexicon), neut. of «λεξικός» (lexikos), «of or for words»,[1] from «λέξις» (lexis), «speech», «word»,[2] (in turn from «λέγω» lego «to say», «to speak»[3]) + «-λογία», (-logia), «the study of», a suffix derived from «λόγος» (logos), amongst others meaning «speech, oration, discourse, quote, study, calculation, reason»,[4] it turn also from «λέγω».

The term first appeared in the 1820s, though there were lexicologists in essence before the term was coined.

1. General — the general study of words, irrespective of the specific features of any particular language

Special — the description of the vocabulary of a given language

Historical — the study of the evolution of a vocabulary as well as of its elements. This branch discusses the origin of words, their change and development.

Descriptive — deals with the description of the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development.

1. English vocabulary as a system

   Modern English Lexicology aims at giving a systematic description of the word-stock of Modern English. It treats the following basic problems:

  — Basic problems

  — Semasiology;

  — Word-Structure;

  — Word-Formation;

  — Etymology of the English Word-Stock;

  — Word-Groups and Phraseological Units;

  — Variants, dialects of the E. Language;

  — English Lexicography.

   System is a set of competing possibilities in language, together with the rules for choosing them.

   Structuralism recognized that a language is best viewed as a system of elements, with each element being chiefly defined by its place within the system, by the way it is related to other elements.

   Language systems:

  — speech

  — syntactic

  — lexical

  — morphological

  — phonetical

   Modern approaches to the problem of study of a language system are characterised by two different levels of study: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. 

   Paradigmatic relations are the relation between set of linguistic items, which in some sense, constitute choices, so that only one of them may be present at a time in a given position. On the paradigmatic level, the word is studied in its relationships with other words in the vocabulary system.

   So, a word may be studied in comparison with other words of similar meaning (e. g. work, n. — labour, n.; to refuse, v. — to reject v. — to decline, v.), of opposite meaning (e. g. busy, adj. — idle, adj.; to accept, v, — to reject, v.), of different stylistic characteristics (e. g. man, n. — chap, n. — bloke, n. — guy, n.).

   Consequently, the main problems of paradigmatic studies of vocabulary are:

  — synonymy

  — hyponymy

  — antonymy

  — functional styles

   Syntagmatic relations 

   On the syntagmatic level, the semantic structure of the word is analysed in its linear relationships with neighbouring words in connected speech. In other words, the semantic characteristics of the word are observed, described and studied on the basis of its typical contexts, in speech:

  — phrases

  — collocations

   Some collocations are totally predictable, such as spick with span, others are much less so: letter collocates with a wide range of lexemes, such as alphabet and spelling, and (in another sense) box, post, and write.

   Collocations differ greatly between languages, and provide a major difficulty in mastering foreign languages. In English, we ‘face’ problems and ‘interpret’ dreams; but in modern Hebrew, we have to ‘stand in front of problems and ‘solve’ dreams.

   The more fixed a collocation is, the more we think of it as an ‘idiom’ — a pattern to be learned as a whole, and not as the ‘sum of its parts’.

   Combination of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations in lexical system determines vocabulary as a system. 

1. One of the earliest and most obvious non-semantic grouping is the alphabetical organization of the word-stock, which is represented in most dictionaries. It is of great practical value in the search for the necessary word, but its theoretical value is almost null, because no other property of the word can be predicted from the letter or letters the word begins with.

Morphological groupings.

On the morphological level words are divided into four groups according to their morphological structure:

1)   root or morpheme words (dog, hand);

2)   derivatives, which contain no less than two morphemes (dogged (ynpямый), doggedly; handy, handful);

3)   compound words consisting of not less than two free morphemes (dog-cheap-«very cheap», dog-days — «hottest part of the year»; handbook, handball)

4)   compound derivatives (dog-legged — «crooked or bent like a dog’s hind leg», left-handed).

This grouping is considered to be the basis for lexicology.

Another type of traditional lexicological grouping as known as word-families such as: hand, handy, handicraft, handbag, handball, handful, hand-made,handsome, etc.

A very important type of non-semantic grouping for isolated lexical units is based on a statistical analysis of their frequency. Frequency counts carried out for practical purposes of lexicology, language teaching and shorthand show important correlations between quantative and qualitative characteristics of lexical units, the most frequent words being polysemantic and stylistically neutral. The frequency analysis singles out two classes:

1) notional words;

2) form (or functional) words.

Notional words constitute the bulk of the existing word-stock, according to the recent counts given for the first 1000 most frequently occurring words they make up 93% of the total number.

All notional lexical units are traditionally subdivided into parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Nouns numerically make the largest class — about 39% of all notional words; verbs come second — 25% of words; they are followed by adjectives — 17% and adverbs — 12%.

Form or functional words — the remaining 7% of the total vocabulary — are prepositions, articles, conjunctions, which primarily denote various relations between notional words. Their grammatical meaning dominates over their lexical meaning. They make a specific group of about 150 units.

Lexico-grammatical grouping.

By a lexico-grammatical group we understand a class of words which have a common lexico-grammatical meaning, a common paradigm, the same substituting elements and possibly a characteristic set of suffixes rendering the lexico-grammatical meaning.

Lexico-grammatical groups should not be confused with parts of speech. For instance, audience and honesty belong to the same part of speech but to different lexico-grammatical groups because their lexico-grammatical meaning is different.

Common Denominator of Meaning, Semantic Fields.

Words may also be classified according to the concepts underlying their meaning. This classification is closely connected with the theory of semantic fields. By the term «semantic fields» we understand closely knit sectors of vocabulary each characterized by a common concept. The words blue, red, yellow, black, etc. may be described as making up the semantic field of colours, the words mother, father, sister, cousin, etc. — as members of the semantic field of kinship terms, the words joy, happiness, gaiety, enjoyment, etc. as belonging to the field of pleasurable emotions, and so on.

The members of the semantic fields are not synonymous but all of them are joined together by some common semantic component — the concept of colours or the concept of kinship, etc. This semantic component common to all members of the field is sometimes described as the common denominator of meaning. All members of the field are semantically interdependent as each member helps to delimit and determine the meaning of its neighbours and is semantically delimited and determined by them. It follows that the word meaning is to a great extent determined by the place it occupies in its semantic field.

It is argued that we cannot possibly know the exact meaning of the word if we do not know the structure of the semantic field to which the word belongs, the number of the members and the concepts covered by them, etc. The meaning of the word captain, e.g. cannot be properly understood until we know the semantic field in which this term operates — the army, the navy, or the merchant service. It follows that the meaning of the word captain is determined by the place it occupies among the terms of the relevant rank system. In other words we know what captain means only if we know whether his subordinate is called mate or first officer (merchant service), commander (navy) or lieutenant (army).

Semantic dependence of the word on the structure of me field may be also illustrated by comparing members of analogous conceptual fields in different languages. Comparing, e.g. kinship terms in Russian and in English we observe that the meaning of the English term mother-in-law is different from either the Russian тёща or свекровь, as the English term covers the whole area which in Russian is divided between the two words. The same is true of the members of the semantic field of colours (cf. blue — синий, голубой), of human body (cf. hand, arm — рука) and others.

The theory of semantic field is severely criticized by Soviet linguists mainly on philosophical grounds as some of the proponents of the semantic-field theory hold the idealistic view that language is a kind of self-contained entity standing between man and the world of reality (Zwischenwelt). The followers of this theory argue that semantic fields reveal the fact that human experience is analysed and elaborated in a unique way, differing from one language to another. Broadly speaking they assert that people speaking different languages actually have different concepts, as it is through language that we see the real world around us. In short, they deny the primacy of matter forgetting that our concepts are formed not only through linguistic experience, but primarily through our actual contact with the real world. We know what hot means not only because we know the word hot, but also because we burn our fingers when we touch something very hot. A detailed critical analysis of the theory of semantic fields is the subject-matter of general linguists. Here we are concerned with the theory only as a means of semantic classification of vocabulary items.

Two more points should be discussed in this connection. Firstly, semantic groups may be very extensive and may cover big conceptual areas, e.g. man-universe, etc. There may be, however, comparatively small lexical groups of words linked by a common denominator of meaning. The words bread, cheese, milk, meat, etc. make up the semantic field with the concept of food as the common denominator of meaning. Such smaller lexical groups seem to play a very important role in determining individual meanings of polysemantic words in lexical contexts. Analysing polysemantic verbs we see that the verb take, e.g. in combination with the lexical group denoting means of transportation is synonymous with the verb go (take the tram, the bus, etc.). When combined with members of another lexical group possessing another semantic denominator, the same verb is synonymous with to drink (to take tea, coffee, etc.). Such word-groups are often used not only in scientific lexicological analysis, but also in practical class-room teaching. In a number of textbooks we find words with some common denominator of meaning listed under the headings Flower, Fruit, Domestic Animals, and so on.

In other words lexical or semantic field is the organization of related words and expressions into a system which shows their relationship to one another.

For example, kinship terms such as father, mother, sister, brother, uncle, aunt belong to a lexical field whose relevant features include generation, sex, membership of the father’s or mother’s side of the family, etc.

The absence of a word in a particular place in a lexical field of a language is called a lexical gap.

For example, in English there is no singular noun that covers both cow and bull as hoarse covers stallion and mare.

Common Contextual Associations. Thematic Groups.

Another type of classification almost universally used in practical class-room teaching is known as thematic grouping. Classification of vocabulary items into thematic groups is based on the co-occurrence of words in certain repeatedly used contexts.

In linguistic contexts co-occurrence may be observed on different levels. On the level of word-groups the word question, e.g., is often found in collocation with the verbs raise, put forward, discuss, etc., with the adjectives urgent, vital, disputable and so on. The verb accept occurs in numerous contexts together with the nouns proposal, invitation, plan and others.

As a rule, thematic groups deal with contexts on the level of the sentence (or utterance). Words in thematic groups are joined together by common contextual associations within the framework of the sentence and reflect the interlinking words, e.g. tree-grow-green; journey-train-taxi-bags-ticket or sun-shine-brightly-blue-sky, is due to the regular co-occurrence of these words in similar sentences. Unlike members of synonymic sets or semantic fields, words making up a thematic group belong to different parts of speech and do not possess any common denominator of meaning.

Contextual associations formed by the speaker of a language are usually conditioned by the context of situation which necessitates the use of certain words. When watching a play, e.g., we naturally speak of the actors who act the main parts, of good (or bad) staging of the play, of the wonderful scenery and so on. When we go shopping it is usual to speak of the prices, of the goods we buy, of the shops, etc. (In practical language learning thematic groups are often listed under various headings, e.g. At the Theatre, At School, Shopping, and are often found in text-books and courses of conversational English).

Thematic and ideographic organization of a vocabulary.

It is a further subdivision within the lexico-grammatical grouping. The basis of grouping is not only linguistic but also extra-linguistic. The words are associated because the things they name occur together and are closely connected in reality, e.g., terms of kinship. Names of parts of the human body, colour terms, etc.

The ideographic groupings are independent of classification into parts of speech, as grammatical meaning is not taken into consideration. Words and expressions are here classed not according to their lexico-grammatical meaning but strictly according to their signification, i.e. to their system of logical notions. These subgroups may compare nouns, verbs adjectives and adverbs together, provided they refer to the same notion. Under alphabetical order the words which in the human mind go close together (father, brother, uncle, etc.) are placed in various parts of a dictionary. So, some lexicographers place such groups of lexical units in the company they usually keep in every day life, in our minds. These dictionaries are called ideographical or ideological.

Synonymic grouping is a special case of lexico-grammatical grouping based on semantic proximity of words belonging to the same part of speech. Taking up similarity of meaning and contrasts of phonetic shape we observe that every language in its vocabulary has a variety of words kindred (родственный) or similar in meaning but distinct in morphemic composition, phonetic shape and usage. These words express the most delicate shades of thought, feelings and are explained in the dictionaries of synonyms.

Antonyms have been traditionally defined as words of opposite meaning. Their distinction from synonyms is semantic polarity. The English language is rich in synonyms and antonyms, their study reveals the systematic character of the English vocabulary.

Special terminology.

Sharply defined extensive semantic fields are found in terminological systems. Terminology constitutes the greatest part of every language vocabulary. A term is a word or word-group used to name a notion characteristic of some special field of knowledge, e.g., linguistics, cybernetics, industry, culture, informatics. Almost every system of terms is nowadays fixed and analyzed in numerous special dictionaries of the English language. ?

Hyponymy (включение).

Another type of paradigmatic relation is hyponymy. The notion of hyponymy is traditional enough; it has been long recognized as one of the main-principles in the organization of the vocabulary off all languages. For instance, animal is a generic term as compared to the specific names: wolf, dog, mouse. Dog, in its tern, may serve as a generic term for different breeds such as bull-dog, collie, poodle.

In other words, this type of relationship means the «inclusion» of a more specific term in a more general term, which has been established by some scientists in terms of logic of classes*. For example, the meaning of tulips is said to be included in the meaning of «flower», and so on.

So, the word-stock is not only a sum total of all the words of a language, but a very complicated set of various relationships between different groupings, layers, between the vocabulary as a whole and isolated individual lexical units.

1. The importance of English lexicology is based not on the size of its vocabulary, however big it is, but on the fact that at present it is the world’s most widely used language. One of the most fundamental works on the English language of the present — «A Grammar of Contemporary English” by R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartvik (1978) — gives the following data: it is spoken as a native language by nearly three hundred million people in Britain, the United States, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and some other countries. The knowledge of English is widely spread geographically — it is in fact used in all continents. It is also spoken in many countries as a second language and used in official and business activities there. This is the case in India, Pakistan and many other former British colonies. English is also one of the working languages of the United Nations and the universal language of international aviation. More than a half world’s scientific literature is published in English and 60% of the world’s radio broadcasts are in English. For all these reasons it is widely studied all over the world as a foreign language. The theoretical value of lexicology becomes obvious if we realise that it forms the study of one of the three main aspects of language, i.e. its vocabulary, the other two being its grammar and sound system. The theory of meaning was originally developed within the limits of philosophical science. The relationship between the name and the thing named has in the course of history constituted one of the key questions in gnostic theories and therefore in the struggle of materialistic and idealistic trends. The idealistic point of view assumes that the earlier forms of words disclose their real correct meaning, and that originally language was created by some superior reason so that later changes of any kind are looked upon as distortions and corruption. The materialistic approach considers the origin, development and current use of words as depending upon the needs of social communication. The dialectics of its growth is determined by its interaction with the development of human practice and mind. In the light of V. I. Lenin’s theory of reflection we know that the meanings of words reflect objective reality. Words serve as names for things, actions, qualities, etc. and by their modification become better adapted to the needs of the speakers. This proves the fallacy of one of the characteristic trends in modern idealistic linguistics, the so-called Sapir-Whorf thesis according to which the linguistic system of one’s native language not only expresses one’s thoughts but also determines them. This view is incorrect, because our mind reflects the surrounding world not only through language but also directly. Lexicology came into being to meet the demands of many different branches of applied linguistics, namely of lexicography, standardisation of terminology, information retrieval, literary criticism and especially of foreign language teaching. Its importance in training a would-be teacher of languages is of a quite special character and cannot be overestimated as it helps to stimulate a systematic approach to the facts of vocabulary and an organised comparison of the foreign and native language. It is particularly useful in building up the learner’s vocabulary by an effective selection, grouping and analysis of new words. New words are better remembered if they are given not at random but organised in thematic groups, word-families, synonymic series, etc. A good knowledge of the system of word-formation furnishes a tool helping the student to guess and retain in his memory the meaning of new words on the basis of their motivation and by comparing and contrasting them with the previously learned elements and patterns. The knowledge, for instance, of the meaning of negative, reversative and pejorative prefixes and patterns of derivation may be helpful in understanding new words. For example such words as immovable a, deforestation n and miscalculate v will be readily understood as ‘that cannot be moved’, ‘clearing land from forests’ and ‘to calculate wrongly’. By drawing his pupils’ attention to the combining characteristics of words the teacher will prevent many mistakes.1 It will be word-groups falling into patterns, instead of lists of unrelated items, that will be presented in the classroom. A working knowledge and understanding of functional styles and stylistic synonyms is indispensable when literary texts are used as a basis for acquiring oral skills, for analytical reading, discussing fiction and translation. Lexicology not only gives a systematic description of the present make-up of the vocabulary, but also helps students to master the literary standards of word usage. The correct use of words is an important counterpart of expressive and effective speech. An exact knowledge of the vocabulary system is also necessary in connection with technical teaching means. Lexicology plays a prominent part in the general linguistic training of every philologist by summing up the knowledge acquired during all his years at the foreign language faculty. It also imparts the necessary skills of using different kinds of dictionaries and reference books, and prepares for future independent work on increasing and improving one’s vocabulary.

1. The treatment of words in lexicology cannot be divorced from the study of all the other elements in the language system to which words belong. It should be always borne in mind that in reality, in the actual process of communication, all these elements are interdependent and stand in definite relations to one another. We separate them for convenience of study, and yet to separate them for analysis is pointless, unless we are afterwards able to put them back together to achieve a synthesis and see their interdependence and development in the language system as a whole. The word, as it has already been stated, is studied in several branches of linguistics and not in lexicology only, and the latter, in its turn, is closely connected with general linguistics, the history of the language, phonetics, stylistics, grammar and such new branches of our science as sociolinguistics, paralinguistics, pragmalinguistics and some others.1 The importance of the connection between lexicology and phonetics stands explained if we remember that a word is an association of a given group of sounds with a given meaning, so that top is one word, and tip is another. Phonemes have no meaning of their own but they serve to distinguish between meanings. Their function is building up morphemes, and it is on the level of morphemes that the form-meaning unity is introduced into language. We may say therefore that phonemes participate in signification. Word-unity is conditioned by a number of phonological features. Phonemes follow each other in a fixed sequence so that [pit] is different from [tip]. The importance of the phonemic make-up may be revealed by the substitution test which isolates the central phoneme of hope by setting it against hop, hoop, heap or hip. An accidental or jocular transposition of the initial sounds of two or more words, the so-called spoonerisms illustrate the same point. Cf. our queer old dean for our dear old queen, sin twister for twin sister, May I sew you to a sheet? for May I show you to a seat?, a half-warmed fish for a half-formed wish, etc.1 Discrimination between the words may be based upon stress: the word ‘import is recognised as a noun and distinguished from the verb im’port due to the position of stress. Stress also distinguishes compounds from otherwise homonymous word-groups: ‘blackbird : : ‘black ‘bird. Each language also possesses certain phonological features marking word-limits. Historical phonetics and historical phonology can be of great use in the diachronic study of synonyms, homonyms and polysemy. When sound changes loosen the ties between members of the same word-family, this is an important factor in facilitating semantic changes. The words whole, heal, hail, for instance, are etymologically related.2 The word whole originally meant ‘unharmed’, ;unwounded’. The early verb whole meant 4to make whole’, hence ‘heal’. Its sense of ‘healthy’ led to its use as a salutation, as in hail! Having in the course of historical development lost their phonetic similarity, these words cannot now exercise any restrictive influence upon one another’s semantic development. Thus, hail occurs now in the meaning of ‘call’, even with the purpose to stop and arrest (used by sentinels). Meaning in its turn is indispensable to phonemic analysis because to establish the phonemic difference between [ou] and [o] it is sufficient to know that [houp] means something different from [hop]. All these considerations are not meant to be in any way exhaustive, they can only give a general idea of the possible interdependence of the two branches of linguistics. Stylistics, although from a different angle, studies many problems treated in lexicology. These are the problems of meaning, connotations, synonymy, functional differentiation of vocabulary according to the sphere of communication and some other issues. For a reader without some awareness of the connotations and history of words, the images hidden in their root and their stylistic properties, a substantial part of the meaning of a literary text, whether prosaic or poetic, may be lost. Thus, for instance, the mood of despair in O. Wilde’s poem «Taedium Vitae” (Weariness of Life) is felt due to an accumulation of epithets expressed by words with negative, derogatory connotations, such as: desperate, paltry, gaudy, base, lackeyed, slanderous, lowliest, meanest. An awareness of all the characteristic features of words is not only rewarded because one can feel the effect of hidden connotations and imagery, but because without it one cannot grasp the whole essence of the message the poem has to convey. The difference and interconnection between grammar and lexicology is one of the important controversial issues in linguistics and as it is basic to the problems under discussion in this book, it is necessary to dwell upon it a little more than has been done for phonetics and stylistics. A close connection between lexicology and grammar is conditioned by the manifold and inseverable ties between the objects of their study. Even isolated words as presented in a dictionary bear a definite relation to the grammatical system of the language because they belong to some part of speech and conform to some lexico-grammatical characteristics of the word class to which they belong. Words seldom occur in isolation. They are arranged in certain patterns conveying the relations between the things for which they stand, therefore alongside with their lexical meaning they possess some grammatical meaning. Сf. head of the committee and to head a committee. The two kinds of meaning are often interdependent. That is to say, certain grammatical functions and meanings are possible only for the words whose lexical meaning makes them fit for these functions, and, on the other hand, some lexical meanings in some words occur only in definite grammatical functions and forms and in definite grammatical patterns. For example, the functions of a link verb with a predicative expressed by an adjective cannot be fulfilled by every intransitive verb but are often taken up by verbs of motion: come true, fall ill, go wrong, turn red, run dry and other similar combinations all render the meaning of ‘become sth’. The function is of long standing in English and can be illustrated by a line from A. Pope who, protesting against blank verse, wrote: It is not poetry, but prose run mad.1 On the other hand the grammatical form and function of the word affect its lexical meaning. A well-known example is the same verb go when in the continuous tenses, followed by to and an infinitive (except go and come), it serves to express an action in the near and immediate future, or an intention of future action: You’re not going to sit there saying nothing all the evening, both of you, are you? (Simpson) Participle II of the same verb following the link verb be denotes absence: The house is gone. In subordinate clauses after as the verb go implies comparison with the average: … how a novel that has now had a fairly long life, as novels go, has come to be written (Maugham). The subject of the verb go in this construction is as a rule an inanimate noun. The adjective hard followed by the infinitive of any verb means ‘difficult’: One of the hardest things to remember is that a man’s merit in one sphere is no guarantee of his merit in another. Lexical meanings in the above cases are said to be grammatically conditioned, and their indicating context is called syntactic or mixed. The point has attracted the attention of many authors.1 The number of words in each language being very great, any lexical meaning has a much lower probability of occurrence than grammatical meanings and therefore carries the greatest amount of information in any discourse determining what the sentence is about. W. Chafe, whose influence in the present-day semantic syntax is quite considerable, points out the many constraints which limit the co-occurrence of words. He considers the verb as of paramount importance in sentence semantic structure, and argues that it is the verb that dictates the presence and character of the noun as its subject or object. Thus, the verbs frighten, amuse and awaken can have only animate nouns as their objects. The constraint is even narrower if we take the verbs say, talk or think for which only animate human subjects are possible. It is obvious that not all animate nouns are human. This view is, however, if not mistaken, at least one-sided, because the opposite is also true: it may happen that the same verb changes its meaning, when used with personal (human) names and with names of objects. Compare: The new girl gave him a strange smile (she smiled at him) and The new teeth gave him a strange smile. These are by no means the only relations of vocabulary and grammar. We shall not attempt to enumerate all the possible problems. Let us turn now to another point of interest, namely the survival of two grammatically equivalent forms of the same word when they help to distinguish between its lexical meanings. Some nouns, for instance, have two separate plurals, one keeping the etymological plural form, and the other with the usual English ending -s. For example, the form brothers is used to express the family relationship, whereas the old form brethren survives in ecclesiastical usage or serves to indicate the members of some club or society; the scientific plural of index, is usually indices, in more general senses the plural is indexes. The plural of genius meaning a person of exceptional intellect is geniuses, genius in the sense of evil or good spirit has the plural form genii. It may also happen that a form that originally expressed grammatical meaning, for example, the plural of nouns, becomes a basis for a new grammatically conditioned lexical meaning. In this new meaning it is isolated from the paradigm, so that a new word comes into being. Arms, the plural of the noun arm, for instance, has come to mean ‘weapon’. E.g. to take arms against a sea of troubles (Shakespeare). The grammatical form is lexicalised; the new word shows itself capable of further development, a new grammatically conditioned meaning appears, namely, with the verb in the singular arms metonymically denotes the military profession. The abstract noun authority becomes a collective in the term authorities and denotes ‘a group of persons having the right to control and govern’. Compare also colours, customs, looks, manners, pictures, works which are the best known examples of this isolation, or, as it is also called, lexicalisation of a grammatical form. In all these words the suffix -s signals a new word with a new meaning. It is also worthy of note that grammar and vocabulary make use of the same technique, i.e. the formal distinctive features of some derivational oppositions between different words are the same as those of oppositions contrasting different grammatical forms (in affixation, juxtaposition of stems and sound interchange). Compare, for example, the oppositions occurring in the lexical system, such as work :: worker, power :: will-power, food :: feed with grammatical oppositions: work (Inf.) :: worked (Past Ind.), pour (Inf.) :: will pour (Put. Ind.), feed (Inf.) :: fed (Past Ind.). Not only are the methods and patterns similar, but the very morphemes are often homonymous. For example, alongside the derivational suffixes -en, one of which occurs in adjectives (wooden), and the other in verbs (strengthen), there are two functional suffixes, one for Participle II (written), the other for the archaic plural form (oxen). Furthermore, one and the same word may in some of its meanings function as a notional word, while in others it may be a form word, i.e. it may serve to indicate the relationships and functions of other words. Compare, for instance, the notional and the auxiliary do in the following: What you do’s nothing to do with me, it doesn’t interest me. Last but not least all grammatical meanings have a lexical counterpart that expresses the same concept. The concept of futurity may be lexically expressed in the words future, tomorrow, by and by, time to come, hereafter or grammatically in the verbal forms shall come and will come. Also plurality may be described by plural forms of various words: houses, boys, books or lexically by the words: crowd, party, company, group, set, etc. The ties between lexicology and grammar are particularly strong in the sphere of word-formation which before lexicology became a separate branch of linguistics had even been considered as part of grammar. The characteristic features of English word-building, the morphological structure of the English word are dependent upon the peculiarity of the English grammatical system. The analytical character of the language is largely responsible for the wide spread of conversion1 and for the remarkable flexibility of the vocabulary manifest in the ease with which many nonce-words2 are formed on the spur of the moment. This brief account of the interdependence between the two important parts of linguistics must suffice for the present. In future we shall have to return to the problem and treat some parts of it more extensively.