The process of word evolution

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LECTURE 1

1.1.Lexicology as a branch of linguistics. Its interrelations with other sciences

1.2.The word as the fundamental object of lexicology. The morphological structure of the English word

1.3.Inner structure of the word composition. Word building. The morpheme and its types. Affixation

1.1.Lexicology as a branch of linguistics. Its interrelations with other sciences. Lexicology (from Gr lexis “word” and logos “learning”) is a part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of a language and the properties of words as the main units of the language. It also studies all kinds of semantic grouping and semantic relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, semantic fields, etc.

In this connection, the term vocabulary is used to denote a system formed by the sum total of all the words and word equivalents that the language possesses. The term word denotes the basic unit of a given language resulting from the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment. A word therefore is at the same time a semantic, grammatical and phonological unit. So, the subject-matter of lexicology is the word, its morphemic structure, history and meaning.

There are several branches of lexicology. The general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of the specific features of any particular language, is known as general lexicology. Linguistic phenomena and properties common to all languages are referred to as language universals. Special lexicology focuses on the description of the peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given language. A branch of study called contrastive lexicology provides a theoretical foundation on which the vocabularies of different languages can be compared and described, the correlation between the vocabularies of two or more languages being the scientific priority.

Vocabulary studies include such aspects of research as etymology, semasiology and onomasiology.

The evolution of a vocabulary forms the object of historical lexicology or etymology (from Gr. etymon “true, real”), discussing the origin of various words, their change and development, examining the linguistic and extra-linguistic forces that modify their structure, meaning and usage.

Semasiology (from Gr. semasia “signification”) is a branch of linguistics whose subject-matter is the study of word meaning and the classification of changes in the signification of words or forms, viewed as normal and vital factors of any linguistic development. It is the most relevant to polysemy and homonymy.

Onomasiology is the study of the principles and regularities of the signification of things / notions by lexical and lexico-phraseological means of a given language. It has its special value in studying dialects, bearing an obvious relevance to synonymity.

Descriptive lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a language at a given stage of its evolution. It studies the functions of words and their specific structure as a characteristic inherent in the system. In the English language the above science is oriented towards the English word and its morphological and semantic structures, researching the interdependence between these two aspects. These structures are identified and distinguished by contrasting the nature and arrangement of their elements.

Within the framework of lexicology, both synchronic (Gr syn “together”, “with” and chronos “time”) and diachronic or historical (Gr dia “through”) approaches to the language suggested by the Swiss philologist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) are effectively realized. Language is the reality of thought, and thought develops together with the development of a society, thus the language and its vocabulary should be studied in the light of social history. Every new phenomenon in a human society in general, which is of any importance for communication, finds a reflection in the corresponding vocabulary. A word is considered to be a generalized reflection of reality; therefore, it is impossible to understand its development if one is ignorant of the changes in socio-political or everyday life, manners and culture, science of a linguoculture it serves to reflect. These extra-linguistic forces influencing the evolution of words are taken into the priority consideration in modern lexicology.

With regard to special lexicology the synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as it exists at a certain time (e.g., a course in Modern English Lexicology). The diachronic approach in terms of special lexicology deals with the changes and the development of the vocabulary in the course of time. It is special historical lexicology that deals with the evolution of vocabulary units as time goes by.

The two approaches should not be contrasted, as they are interdependent since every linguistic structure and system actually exists in a state of constant development so that the synchronic state of a language system is a result of a long process of linguistic evolution.

As every word is a unity of semantic, phonetic and grammatical elements, the word is studied not only in lexicology, but in other branches of linguistics, too, lexicology being closely connected with general linguistics, the history of the language, phonetics, stylistics, and grammar.

According to S. Ullmann, lexicology forms next to phonology, the second basic division of linguistic science (the third is syntax). Consequently, the interaction between vocabulary and grammar is evident in morphology and syntax. Grammar reflects the specific lexical meaning and the capacity of words to be combined in human actual speech. The lexical meaning of the word, in its turn, is frequently signaled by the grammatical context in which it occurs. Thus, morphological indicators help to differentiate the variant meanings of the word (e.g., plural forms that serve to create special lexical meaning: colors, customs, etc.; two kinds of pluralization: brother → brethren — brothers; cloth → cloths — clothes). There are numerous instances when the syntactic position of the word changes both its

function and lexical meaning (e.g., an adjective and a noun element of the same group can change places: library school — school library).

The interrelation between lexicology and phonetics becomes obvious if we think of the fact that the word as the basis unit in lexicological study cannot exist without its sound form, which is the object of study in phonology. Words consist of phonemes that are devoid of meaning of their own, but forming morphemes they serve to distinguish between meanings. The meaning of the word is determined by several phonological features: a) qualitative and quantitative character of phonemes (e.g. dog-dock, pot-port); b) fixed sequence of phonemes (e.g. pot-top, nest-sent-tens); 3) the position of stress (e.g. insult (verb) and insult (noun)).

Summarizing, lexicology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the study of words as individual items and dealing with both formal and semantic aspects of words; and although it is concerned predominantly with an in-depth description of lexemes, it gives a close attention to a vocabulary in its totality, the social communicative essence of a language as a synergetic system being a study focus.

1.2. The word as the fundamental object of lexicology. The morphological structure of the English word. A word is a fundamental unit of a language. The real nature of a word and the term itself has always been one of the most ambiguous issues in almost every branch of linguistics. To use it as a term in the description of language, we must be sure what we mean by it. To illustrate the point here, let us count the words in the following sentence: You can’t tie a bow with the rope in the bow of a boat. Probably the most straightforward answer to this is to say that there are 14. However, the orthographic perspective taken by itself, of course, ignores the meaning of the words, and as soon as we invoke meanings we at least are talking about different words bow, to start with.

Being a central element of any language system, the word is a focus for the problems of phonology, lexicology, syntax, morphology, stylistics and also for a number of other language and speech sciences.

Within the framework of linguistics the word has acquired definitions from the syntactic, semantic, phonological points of view as well as a definition combining various approaches. Thus, it has been syntactically defined as “the minimum sentence” by H.Sweet and much later as “the minimum independent unit of utterance” by L.Bloomfield.

E. Sapir concentrates on the syntactic and semantic aspects calling the word

“one of the smallest completely satisfying bits of isolated meaning, into which the sentence resolves itself”.

A purely semantic treatment is observed in S. Ullmann’s explanation of words as meaningful segments that are ultimately composed of meaningful units.

The prominent French linguist A. Meillet combines the semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria: “A word is defined by the association of a given meaning with a given group of sounds susceptible of a given grammatical employment”.

Our native school of linguistics understands the word as a dialectical doublefacet unit of form and content, reflecting human notions, and in this sense being considered as a form of their existence. Notions fixed in word meanings are formed as generalized and approximately correct reflections of reality, thus, signifying them words objectivize reality and conceptual worlds in their content.

So, the word is a basic unit of a language resulting from the association of a given meaning with a given cluster of sounds susceptible of a certain grammatical employment.

Taking into consideration the above, let us consider the nature of the word. First, the word is a unit of speech which serves the purposes of human communication. Thus, the word can be defined as a unit of communication.

Secondly, the word can be perceived as the total of the sounds which comprise it.

Third, the word, viewed structurally, possesses several characteristics.

a)The modern approach to the word as a double-facet unit is based on distinguishing between the external and the internal structures of the word. By the external structure of the word we mean its morphological structure. For example, in the word post-impressionists the following morphemes can be distinguished: the prefixes post-, im-, the root –press-, the noun-forming suffixes -ion, -ist, and the grammatical suffix of plurality -s. All these morphemes constitute the external structure of the word post-impressionists.

The internal structure of the word, or its meaning, is nowadays commonly referred to as the word’s semantic structure. This is the word’s main aspect. Words can serve the purposes of human communication solely due to their meanings.

b)Another structural aspect of the word is its unity. The word possesses both its external (or formal) unity and semantic unity. The formal unity of the word is sometimes inaccurately interpreted as indivisibility. The example of postimpressionists has already shown that the word is not, strictly speaking, indivisible, though permanently linked. The formal unity of the word can best be illustrated by comparing a word and a word-group comprising identical constituents. The difference between a blackbird and a black bird is best explained by their relationship with the grammatical system of the language. The word blackbird, which is characterized by unity, possesses a single grammatical framing: blackbirds. The first constituent black is not subject to any grammatical changes. In the word-group a black bird each constituent can acquire grammatical forms of its own: the blackest birds I’ve ever seen. Other words can be inserted between the components which is impossible so far as the word is concerned as it would violate its unity: a black night bird.

The same example may be used to illustrate what we mean by semantic unity. In the word-group a black bird each of the meaningful words conveys a separate concept: bird – a kind of living creature; black – a color. The word blackbird conveys only one concept: the type of bird. This is one of the main features of any

word: it always conveys one concept, no matter how many component morphemes it may have in its external structure.

c) A further structural feature of the word is its susceptibility to grammatical employment. In speech most words can be used in different grammatical forms in which their interrelations are realized.

So, the formal/structural properties of the word are 1) isolatability (words can function in isolation, can make a sentence of their own under certain circumstances); 2) inseparability/unity (words are characterized by some integrity, e.g. a light – alight (with admiration); 3) a certain freedom of distribution (exposition in the sentence can be different); 4) susceptibility to grammatical employment; 5) a word as one of the fundamental units of the language is a double facet unit of form (its external structure) and meaning (its internal/semantic structure).

To sum it up, a word is the smallest naming unit of a language with a more or less free distribution used for the purposes of human communication, materially representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning, susceptible to grammatical employment and characterized by formal and semantic unity.

There are 4 basic kinds of words: 1)orthographic words – words distinguished from each other by their spelling; 2) phonological words – distinguished from each other by their pronunciation; 3) word-forms which are grammatical variants; 4) words as items of meaning, the headwords of dictionary entries, called lexemes. A lexeme is a group of words united by the common lexical meaning, but having different grammatical forms. The base forms of such words, represented either by one orthographic word or a sequence of words called multi-word lexemes which have to be considered as single lexemes (e.g. phrasal verbs, some compounds) may be termed citation forms of lexemes (sing, talk, head etc), from which other word forms are considered to be derived.

Any language is a system of systems consisting of two subsystems: 1) the system of words’ possible lexical meanings; 2) the system of words’ grammatical forms. The former is called the semantic structure of the word; the latter is its paradigm latent to every part of speech (e.g. a noun has a 4 member paradigm, an adjective – a 3 member one, etc)

As for the main lexicological problems, two of these have already been highlighted. The problem of word-building is associated with prevailing morphological word-structures and with the processes of coining new words. Semantics is the study of meaning. Modern approaches to this problem are characterized by two different levels of study: syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

On the syntagmatic level, the semantic structure of the word is analyzed in its linear relationships with neighboring 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.

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 a similar meaning (e. g. work, n. – labor, 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 key problems of paradigmatic studies are synonymy, antonymy, and functional styles.

One further important objective of lexicological studies is the study of the vocabulary of a language as a system. Revising the issue, the vocabulary can be studied synchronically (at a given stage of its development), or diachronically (in the context of the processes through which it grew, developed and acquired its modern form). The opposition of the two approaches is nevertheless disputable as the vocabulary, as well as the word which is its fundamental unit, is not only what it is at this particular stage of the language development, but what it was centuries ago and has been throughout its history.

1.3. Inner structure of the word composition. Word building. The morpheme and its types. Morphemic analysis of words. Affixation. The word consists of morphemes. The term morpheme is derived from Greek morphe (form) + -eme. The Greek suffix -eme has been adopted by linguists to denote the smallest significant or distinctive unit. The morpheme may be defined as the smallest meaningful unit which has a sound form and meaning, occurring in speech only as a part of a word. In other words, a morpheme is an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. But unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Nor are they divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is why the morpheme may also be defined as the minimum double-facet (shape/meaning) meaningful language unit that can be subdivided into phonemes (the smallest single-facet distinctive units of language with no meaning of their own). So there are 3 lower levels of a language – a phoneme, a morpheme, a word.

Word building (word-formation) is the creation of new words from elements already existing in a particular language. Every language has its own patterns of word formation. Together with borrowing, word-building provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language.

A form is considered to be free if it may stand alone without changing its meaning; if not, it is a bound form, so called because it is always bound to something else. For example, comparing the words sportive and elegant and their parts, we see that sport, sortive, elegant may occur alone as utterances, whereas eleg-, -ive, -ant are bound forms because they never occur alone. A word is, by L. Bloomfield’s definition, a minimum free form. A morpheme is said to be either bound or free. This statement should be taken with caution because some morphemes are capable of forming words without adding other morphemes, being homonymous to free forms.

Words are segmented into morphemes with the help of the method of morphemic analysis whose aim is to split the word into its constituent morphemes and to determine their number and types. This is most effectively accomplished by the procedure known as the analysis into immediate constituents (IC’s), first suggested by L. Bloomfield. The procedure consists of

several stages: 1) segmentation of words; 2) identification of morphs; 3) classification of morphemes.

The procedure generally used to segment words into the constituting morphemes is the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. It is based on a binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents (ICs) Each IC at the next stage of the analysis is in turn broken into two smaller meaningful elements. This analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of any further division, i.e. morphemes. In terms of the method employed these are referred to as the Ultimate Constituents (UCs).

The analysis of the morphemic structure of words reveals the ultimate meaningful constituents (UCs), their typical sequence and arrangement, but it does not show the way a word is constructed. The nature, type and arrangement of the ICs of the word are known as its derivative structure. Though the derivative structure of the word is closely connected with its morphemic structure and often coincides with it, it cardinally differs from it. The derivational level of the analysis aims at establishing correlations between different types of words, the structural and semantic patterns being focused on, enabling one to understand how new words appear in a language.

Coming back to the issue of word segmentability as the first stage of the analysis into immediate constituents, all English words fall into two large classes: 1) segmentable words, i.e. those allowing of segmentation into morphemes, e.g. information, unputdownable, silently and 2) non-segmentable words, i.e. those not allowing of such segmentation, e.g. boy, wife, call, etc.

There are three types of segmentation of words: complete, conditional and defective. Complete segmentability is characteristic of words whose the morphemic structure is transparent enough as their individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word lending themselves easily to isolation. Its constituent morphemes recur with the same meaning in many other words, e.g. establishment, agreement.

Conditional morphemic segmentability characterizes words whose segmentation into constituent morphemes is doubtful for semantic reasons. For instance, in words like retain, detain, or receive, deceive the sound-clusters [ri], [di], on the one hand, can be singled out quite easily due to their recurrence in a number of words, on the other hand, they sure have nothing in common with the phonetically identical morphemes re-. de- as found in words like rewrite, reorganize, decode, deurbanize; neither the sound-clusters [ri], [di] nor the soundclusters [-tein], [si:v] have any lexical or functional meaning of their own. Therefore, the morphemes making up words of conditional segmentability differ from morphemes making up words of complete segmentability in that the former do not reach the full status of morphemes for the semantic reason and that is why a special term is applied to them – pseudo-morphemes or quasi-morphemes.

Defective morphemic segmentability is the property of words whose unique morphemic components seldom or never recur in other words (e.g. in the words

cranberry, gooseberry, strawberry defective morphemic segmentability is obvious due to the fact that the morphemes cran-, goose-, straw- are unique morphemes).

Thus, on the level of morphemic analysis there are basically two types of elementary units: full morphemes and pseudo- (quasi-)morphemes, the former being genuine structural elements of the language system in the prime focus of linguistic attention. At the same time, a significant number of words of conditional and defective segmentability reveal a complex nature of the morphological system of the English language, representing various heterogeneous layers in its vocabulary.

The second stage of morphemic analysis is identification of morphs. The main criteria here are semantic and phonetic similarity. Morphs should have the same denotational meaning, but their phonemic shape can vary (e.g. please, pleasing, pleasure, pleasant or duke, ducal, duchess, duchy). Such phonetically conditioned positional morpheme variants are called allomorphs. They occur in a specific environment, being identical in meaning or function and characterized by complementary distribution.(e.g. the prefix in- (intransitive) can be represented by allomorphs il- (illiterate), im- (impossible), ir- (irregular)). Complementary distribution is said to take place when two linguistics variants cannot appear in the same environment (Not the same as contrastive distribution by which different morphemes are characterized, i.e. if they occur in the same environment, they signal different meanings (e.g. the suffixes -able (capable of being): measurable and -ed (a suffix of a resultant force): measured).

The final stage of the procedure of the morphemic analysis is classification of morphemes. Morphemes can be classified from 6 points of view (POV).

1. Semantic POV: roots and affixes/non-roots. A root is the lexical nucleus of a word bearing the major individual meaning common to a set of semantically related words, constituting one word cluster/word-family (e.g. learn-learner- learned-learnable; heart-hearten, dishearten, hear-broken, hearty, kind-hearted etc.) with which no grammatical properties of the word are connected. In this respect, the peculiarity of English as a unique language is explained by its analytical language structure – morphemes are often homonymous with independent units (words). A morpheme that is homonymous with a word is called a root morpheme.

Here we have to mention the difference between a root and a stem. A root is the ultimate constituent which remains after the removal of all functional and derivational affixes and does not admit any further analysis. Unlike a root, a stem is that part of the word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm (formal aspect). For instance, heart-hearts-to one’s heart’s content vs. hearty-heartier-the heartiest. It is the basic unit at the derivational level, taking the inflections which shape the word grammatically as a part of speech.

There are three types of stems: simple, derived and compound.

Simple stems are semantically non-motivated and do not constitute a pattern on analogy with which new stems may be modeled (e.g. pocket, motion, receive, etc.).

Simple stems are generally monomorphic and phonetically identical with the root morphemes (sell, grow, kink, etc.).

Derived stems are built on stems of various structures, they are motivated, i.e. derived stems are understood on the basis of the derivative relations between their immediate constituents and the correlated stems. Derived stems are mostly polymorphic (e.g. governments, unbelievable, etc.).

Compound stems are made up of two immediate constituents, both of which are themselves stems, e.g. match-box, pen-holder, ex-film-star, etc. It is built by joining two stems, one of which is simple, the other is derived.

The derivational types of words are classified according to the structure of their stems into simple, derived and compound words.

Derived words are those composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes.

Compound words have at least two root-morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant.

So, there are 4 structural types of words in English: 1) simple words (singleroot morphemes, e.g. agree, child, red, etc.); 2) derivatives (affixational derived words) consisting one or more affixes: enjoyable, childhood, unbelievable). Derived words are extremely numerous in the English vocabulary. Successfully competing with this structural type is the so-called root word which has only a root morpheme in its structure. This type is widely represented by a great number of words belonging to the original English stock or to earlier borrowings (house, room, book, work, port, street, table, etc.). In Modern English, it has been greatly enlarged by the type of word-building called conversion (e. g. to hand, v. formed from the noun hand; to can, v. from can, n.; to pale, v. from pale, adj.; a find, n. from to find, v.; etc.); 3) compound words consisting of two or more stems (e. g. dining-room, bluebell, mother-in-law, good-for-nothing, etc.). Words of this structural type are produced by the word-building process called composition; 4) derivational compounds in which phrase components are joined together by means of compounding and affixation (e.g. oval-shaped, strong-willed, care-free); 5) phrasal verbs as a result of a strong tendency of English to simplification (to put up with, to give up, to take for, etc.)

The morpheme, and therefore the affix, which is a type of morpheme, is generally defined as the smallest indivisible component of the word possessing a meaning of its own. Meanings of affixes are specific and considerably differ from those of root morphemes. Affixes have widely generalized meanings and refer the concept conveyed by the whole word to a certain category, which is all-embracing. So, the noun-forming suffix -er could be roughly defined as designating persons from the object of their occupation or labor (painter – the one who paints) or from their place of origin (southerner – the one living in the South). The adjectiveforming suffix -ful has the meaning of «full of», «characterized by» (beautiful, careful) whereas -ish may often imply insufficiency of quality (greenish – green, but not quite).

There are numerous derived words whose meanings can really be easily deduced from the meanings of their constituent parts. Yet, such cases represent only the first stage of semantic readjustment within derivatives. The constituent morphemes within derivatives do not always preserve their current meanings and are open to subtle and complicated semantic shifts (e.g. bookish: (1) given or devoted to reading or study; (2) more acquainted with books than with real life, i. e. possessing the quality of bookish learning).

The semantic distinctions of words produced from the same root by means of different affixes are also of considerable interest, both for language studies and research work. Compare: womanly (used in a complimentary manner about girls and women) – womanish (used to indicate an effeminate man and certainly implies criticism); starry (resembling stars) – starred (covered or decorated with stars).

There are a few roots in English which have developed a great combining ability in the position of the second element of a word and a very general meaning similar to that of an affix. These are semi-affixes because semantically, functionally, structurally and stylistically they behave more like affixes than like roots, determining the lexical and grammatical class the word belongs to (e.g. -man: cameraman, seaman; -land: Scotland, motherland; -like: ladylike, flowerlike; — worthy: trustworthy, praiseworthy; -proof: waterproof, bullet-proof, etc.)

2.Position POV: according to their position affixational morphemes fall into suffixes – derivational morphemes following the root and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class (writer, rainy, magnify, etc.), infexes – affixes placed within the word (e.g. adapt-a-tion, assimil-a-tion, sta-n-d etc.), and prefixes – derivational morphemes that precede the root and modify the meaning (e.g. decipher, illegal, unhappy, etc.) The process of affixation itself consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to a root morpheme. Suffixation is more productive than prefixation in Modern English.

3.Functional POV: from this perspective affixational morphemes include derivational morphemes as affixal morphemes that serve to make a new part of speech or create another word in the same one, modifying the lexical meaning of the root (e.g. to teach-teacher; possible-impossible), and functional morphemes, i.e. grammatical ones/inflections that serve to build grammatical forms, the paradigm of the word (e.g. has broken; oxen; clues), carrying only grammatical meaning and thus relevant only for the formation of words. Some functional morphemes have a dual character. They are called functional word-morphemes (FWM) – auxiliaries (e.g. is, are, have, will, etc). The main function of FWM is to build analytical structures.

As for word combinations, being two components expressing one idea (e.g. to give up – to refuse; to take in – to deceive) they are full fleshed words. Their function is to derive new words with new meanings. They behave like derivational morphemes with a functional form. They are called derivational word

Here, one starts to see the drift taking place in different directions. One who was innocent tended to elicit compassion, which slowly began to blur the fine line between eliciting compassion and seeming weak. With time, the fine line between being weak and being foolish further began to get blurred. As a result, step by step, a word that used to mean blessed came by to mean foolish, and at no point did anyone notice a major shift in language, which actually happened over generations.

Similarly, the word nice went through a semantic drift. In older sources, nice used to mean fine. Then, as time passed by, nice, which should have meant subdivided finely, began to get perceived differently, which made the word mean what it does today.