LEXICOLOGY

UNIT 1

The word lexicology derives from Greek with lexis meaning word, or the total
stock of words and logos meaning science or theory discourse. Thus, lexicology, a
branch of linguistics, is the study of words.

Lexicology is defined as “the study of lexis , understood as a stock of words in a

given language, i.e. its vocabulary or lexicon” (Jackson & Amvela, 2007)

Lexicology deals with simple words in all their aspects, but also with complex and
compound words, the meaningful units of language.

Four fields related to lexicology: Semantics, morphology, etymology,

lexicography.

MORPHOLOGY

Morphology is the study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words.

Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units which may constitute words or parts
of words. They are „smallest‟ or „minimal‟ in the sense that they cannot be broken
down further on the basis of meaning.

the morpheme is “the smallest unit that has meaning or serves a grammatical
function in a language. Morphemes are the atoms with which words are built.”
(Katamba 2005: 29)

They are „meaningful‟ because we can specify the kind of relationship they have
with the non-linguistic world.

im-, in-, il-, ir- are variants of the same morpheme.

Free morphemes are morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words.

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Ex: open, boy, desire, man, cat, chair, farm, etc.

 lexical morphemes: girl, man, house, tiger, yellow, etc.

 functional morphemes: and, but, when, because, near, etc.

Bound morphemes which are the forms that cannot normally stand alone and are
typically attached to another form.

- Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes to make new words or to

make words of a different grammatical category from the stem.

Derivational affixes" serve to alter the meaning of a word by building on a base,

eg. –s in writes helps to form the present tense form of the verb “to write” or when
it is the predicate of a third person singular subject.

List of derivational morphemes includes suffixes such as –ish, -ly, -ment

List of derivational morphemes includes prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-,
un-

- Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes to indicate aspects of the

grammatical function of a word.

There are only eight "inflectional affixes" in English, and these are all suffixes.
English has the following inflectional suffixes, which serve a variety of
grammatical functions when added to specific types of words. These grammatical
functions are shown to the right of each suffix.

• -s noun plural: girl – girls; boy – boys; flower – flowers; ...

• -'s noun possessive: boy‟s; child‟s; student‟s; ...

• -s verb present tense third person singular: eats; sings; works; ...

• -ing verb present participle/gerund: eating; singing; working; ...

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• -ed verb simple past tense: worked; played; occured; ...

• -en verb past perfect participle: eaten; taken; written; ...

• -er adjective comparative: colder; older; happier; ...

• -est adjective superlative: coldest; oldest; happiest; ...

Inflectional affixes are relational markers that fit words for use in syntax.

English has over sixty common derivational affixes. There are 2 kinds of
derivational affixes.

A root may or may not stand alone as a word. It is not further divisible into smaller
parts that have a meaning.

Root creation refers to the building of a word that has no relationship whatsoever
with any previously existing word.

If roots are equivalent to a word in the language and carry the notional meaning of
this word into all the new words they form, they are considered free roots (eg.
civil in civility, region in regional or person in personify).

A bound root is combined with other morphemes to form a meaningful word

(receive, conceive, perceive, deceive share the same bound root which is –ceive).
They are totally barred from occurring independently.

Any concrete realization of a morpheme in a given utterance is called a „morph‟.

Hence, the forms caf, chair, farm, -ing, -s, and -er are all morphs.

Morphs are the actual forms used to realize morphemes. Ex: cats: 2 morphs (cat +-
s)

Allomorphs are versions of one morpheme. Ex: -s and –es are two allomorphs of
the same morpheme “plural”

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