2.1. Lexicology and Non-linguistic Disciplines.

Psychology. There exists a branch of linguistics, psycholinguistics, which studies mental processes through the language, mostly through the vocabulary used by this or that person. But in the proc­ess of study, it investigates the language phenomena deeper.

Social history. The vocabulary of a language is never stable. It undergoes numerous changes because of both linguistic factors (processes of word-building, of change and development of meaning, etc.) and extralinguistic factors (new objects and phenomena of life demand new names). Most of all, and in the quickest way, the vocabulary re­acts when something new appears in life (for instance, new terms appear: computer, car, sputnik). Thus, lexicology is not only a purely linguistic science, but it is a sociolinguistic science at the same time.

Phi­losophy. Although lexicology is a new science, many lexicological problems were studied long ago in works by ancient Greek philoso­phers. Aristotle and Plato studied the relationship of the name and the thing which is one of the key questions in gnostic theories and in the struggle of materialistic and idealistic, religious trends of philosophy. i.e. which was at the beginning of everything: matter or the word, information.

2.2. Lexicology and Linguistic Disciplines.

Lexicology studies only one side of linguistic units. The other sides are studied by other linguistic disciplines. But as the linguistic unit exists as a whole, all its sides are connected with the other sides and they influence each other. So, the linguistic sciences studying different sides of linguistic signs are necessarily connected.

Lexicography. It is the science and practice of compiling diction­aries; lexicology works out a serious scientific foundation for it.

Terminology. It studies different sides of terms and lexicology gives methods and the scientific apparatus for that. In fact terminol­ogy now is a part of lexicology, just like lexicography.

Phonetics. It studies the sounding of the language, which is in­evitably connected with the lexical meaning: meaning changes if you change the sounding of a word: smell, small, smile;

thick, sick, kick, lick, pick;

'export –ex'port.

Stylistics. It studies vocabulary, but from a different point of view:

farewell (poet.), good-bye (neutral), bye-bye (coll.), so long (coll.), ta-ta (low coll.). All these words are synonyms, but they are stylistic synonyms and stylistics analyses their stylistic peculiarities: we see that the object of studies in lexicology and stylistics is the same, but the investiga­tion takes place from a different point of view.

Grammar. As words possess grammatical meaning side by side with lexical meaning, we conclude that grammar and lexicology are in­evitably closely connected. Sometimes a form that originally expressed some grammatical meaning (e.g. plural of nouns) becomes the basis of a new lexical meaning: arms – weapon, colours – banner, works – factory, looks – appearance, customs – import duties or the department that collects import du­ties, taxes on imported goods.

In addition, new grammatical forms and new words are some­times formed on the basis of the same ways of word-building or changing grammatical forms of words:

foot –feet (plural);

food – to feed (new word, new part of speech);

teacher, singer (noun suffixes);

shorter, longer (the inflexion showing the compara­tive degree of adjectives).

Linguistic engineering. As for the present, lexicology is connected with developing linguistic engineering, and provides material for computer pro­grammes and machines, taking part not only in lexicological investi­gation but also in gathering linguistic material for electronic and tra­ditional dictionaries.

So, lexicology does not exist in a vacuum and it is closely connected with many other sci­ences (both linguistic and non-linguistic) as its object and its prob­lems are studied in different ways by other sciences.