8. Semantic and non-semantic classification of English words.

Present days’ semantic theory focuses on synchronic relations in the language system. It’s concerned both with: 1. relations within language (sense relations = semantic relations = semasiology), 2. relations between language and the word. The major of linguistic agree on one point: vocabulary should be studied as a system or as a set of interrelated sub-system. No lexeme exists in isolation. There is no lexeme without relation.

What are these relations that connected words in the lexicon?

Semantic relations:

• polysemantic relations

• synonymic relations - there are no lexemes which have exactly the same meaning (linguistically)

Synonyms can be defined as two or more words of the same language, belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, they are interchangeable. Kinds of synonyms: ideographic, contextual (depend on the context), relative (like, love, adore), total synonymy (child, kid).

• antonymic relations - Antonyms - two or more words which have contrary meanings. Kinds of antonyms: gradable (capable of comparison, they don’t refer to absolute qualities: happy – sad), converses (sell – buy), contradictory (alive means ‘not dead’)

Another classification of antonyms is based on a morphological approach:

• root words form absolute antonyms (right : : wrong),

• the presence of negative affixes creates derivational antonyms (happy : : unhappy).

Hypero-hypenymic relations ( plant – tree (oak, apple tree (…)), flower…)

part-and-whole relations (body – face, eyes, nose; house – kitchen, sitting room, window, bathroom)

9. Stylistic classification of the English lexicon.

In accordance with the division of language into literary and colloquial, we can divide the whole word stock of the English language into 3 main layers: literary, neutral and colloquial.

The literary layer consists of words that have no local or dialect character. The literary vocabulary consists of the following groups of words: 1. common literary; 2. terms and learned words; 3. poetic words; 4. archaic words; 5. barbarisms and foreign words.

The aspect of the neutral layer is its universal character. It means that it can be employed in all styles and in all spheres of human activity.

The colloquial layer of words as qualified in most English or American dictionaries is not infrequently limited to a definite language community or confined to a special locality where it circulates. The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups: 1. common colloquial words; 2. slang; 3. jargonisms; 4. professional words; 5. dialect words; 6. vulgar words.

10. Word structure. Morphemic analysis of English words.

Most of the English lexicon is constituted by word which have several morphemes. (75 % English words – polymorphemic). According to the number of morphemes words are classified into monomorphemic and polymorphemic.

Monomorphemic words consist of only one root-morpheme – EX. pronouns (he, this) -small, dog.

A morpheme – the smallest meaningful language unit. Morphemes may be classified:

1. from the semantic point of view morphemes fall into two classes:

   • root morphemes - is the lexical nucleus of a word, it has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language. The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words making up a word-cluster, for example the morpheme teach-in to teach, teacher, teaching, theor- in theory, theorist, theoretical, etc.

   • non-root morphemes (or affixational) -include inflections and affixes. Roots and affixational morphemes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g., in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill, etc.: the root-morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, -fill are understood as the lexical centres of the words, as the basic constituent part of a word without which the word is inconceivable.

Affixes are classified into prefixes and suffixes: a prefix precedes the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it. Affixes besides the meaning proper to root-morphemes possess the part-of-speech meaning and a generalised lexical meaning.