Leikologie (Lexicology)

Sources of words in English (word-formation: types of word-formative processes and their manifestation in English and in Czech, borrowing into English over time)

Lexikologie 

• The rules by which are words constructed help us to recognize heir grammatical class
• Word formation has limited productivity (after we apply the rules not all words acceptable)
• The rules themselves undergo changes as well

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Anglická lexikologie – zpracovaná otázka

Changes of lexical meaning (widening, narrowing, deterioriation/pejoration, amelioration/elevation, euphemism; literal and figurative meaning, transfer of meaning, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, folk etymology, faux amis)

Vocabulary

• Grows by absorbing new words or by giving new additional meaning to the existing ones; the old meaning or the old word is sometimes replaced by the new one, but very often they coexist and so the word can become polysemic

Processes
1. widening

• shift from animal to the adult, e.g. bird, pig used to refer only to offspring X now it?s a general term
• shift from particular specie to the animal in general, e.g. dog was originally a special breed (the general term used to be a hound)
• shift from a smaller object to the larger one – box was originally only a small container
• shift from lexical to grammatical meaning, e.g. ‚have‘ used to have only lexical meaning X now it has also grammatical (perfect tenses)
• other shifts: ‚ready‘ used tom mean only ‚ready for a ride‘

2. narrowing

• a general term stopped being a general term and refers to a race or breed only
• deer – originally: all animals X now: vysoká
• fowl – or: all birds X now: only water fowl
• hound – or: all dogs X now: dogs for hunting

3. deterioration

•  terms which developed in a negative way (usually ethnic terms)
• cunning – originally: leading X now: cunning as a fox (lstivý)
• villain – or: a man of a low social class X now: antihero (padouch)
• propaganda or: spreading news X now zkreslené informace

4. amelioration

• terms which developed in a positive way
• duke – used to meant ‚leader‘
• luxury – used to meant ‚extravagance‘
• nice – used to meant ‚ignorant‘

5. transfer

• a degree of similarity between two denotations

• a) metaphor – a transfer of meaning on the basis of exterior feature, the similarity may involve:
• I. shape – mouth (mouth of a person + of the river)
• II. colour – chocolate
• III. function – hand
• IV. mount – drop

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Lexikologie – anglická filologie

Vocabulary as a system (centre, periphery, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations in the lexicon; collocations, idioms, clichés; polysemy, homonymy (homograph, homophone); synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, hyperonymy; lexical subsystems, semantic fields). Types of dictionaries.

Vocabulary

• Grows by absorbing new words or by giving new additional meaning to the existing ones; the old meaning or the old word is sometimes replaced by the new one, but very often they coexist

Centre

• Words with very high frequency and stability
• Majority are nouns

Periphery

• Words limited in frequency
• 1. archaism – extra linguistic reality has changed ? highway man X robber; they are sometimes surviving in phrases, e.g. Merry Christmas X gay, cheerful
• 2. dated voc – schoolmaster replaced by teacher
• 3. emotional words – top hole
• 4. neologism – every 10 years a new generation of words enter the vocabulary, e.g. in 1980s in was the word yuppie
• 5. nonce words – words created by a writer, e.g. whiskey, pábitelé

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Lexikologie – anglická filologie

Lexical meaning and its analysis (word, word form, lexeme, lexical unit; onomasiology, semasiology; concept, denotation, connotation, reference, components of meaning / seme, sememe; ambiguity vs vagueness; word as a sign, arbitrariness, iconicity, motivation, onomatopoeia, sound symbolism)

Lexical meaning
Extra linguistic reality

•  its main feature and characteristic is vagueness X ambiguity = e.g. red can in English mean red colour (the opposite of blue), the colour of Soviet flag, the colour of hair, to contrast it with Czech: červená, rudá, zrzavé -> red is polysemy

Concept

• human perceiving of extra linguistic reality, changes with the development of knowledge

Motivation

• Sort of iconicity 

a) constructional iconicity  majority of words have constructional iconicity , e.g. noun’s plural

b) Irregularity – e.g. man->men

• Motivation of vocabulary is partly clear – suffixes, prefixes

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