11. Describe the historical lexicology.

Special Lexicology is further subdivided into Synchronic/Descriptive and Diachronic/Historical. 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 vocabulary in the course of time. It is special Historical Lexicology that deals with the evolution of the vocabulary units of a language as time goes by. An English Historical Lexicology would be concerned, therefore, with the origin of English vocabulary units, their change and development, the linguistic and extra-linguistic factors modifying their structure, meaning and usage within the history of the English language. Historical lexicology has been criticised for its atomistic approach, i.e. for treating every word as an individual and isolated unit. Historical study of words is not necessarily atomistic. In the light of recent investigations it becomes clear that there is no reason why historical lexicology cannot survey the evolution of a vocabulary as an adaptive system, showing its change and development in the course of time.

12. Write peculiarities of Conversion and its types

Conversion, one of the principal ways of forming words in Modern English is highly productive in replenishing the English word-stock with new words. The term conversion, which some linguists find inadequate, refers to the numerous cases of phonetic identity of word-forms, primarily the so-called initial forms, of two words belonging to different parts of speech. This may be illustrated by the following cases: work — to work; love — to love; paper — to paper; brief — to brief, etc. As a rule we deal with simple words, although there are a few exceptions, e.g. wireless — to wireless.

There are 5 patterns of conversion:

l. Noun > Verb (display, n > display, v);

2. Verb > Noun (walk, v > walk, n);

3. Noun >Adjective (lemon, n >lemon);

4. Adjective >Verb (narrow, adj >narrow, v);

5. Adjective > Noun (rich, adj > rich, n).

There are two types of conversion: complete (a word is included in a new paradigm and is characterized by new grammatical categories, accepts another syntactic function and a new lexical-grammatical meaning) and partial (at first a noun is formed by conversion from a verbal stem, and then this noun is combined with such verbs as: give, make, have, take and a few others to form a verbal phrase: to have a smoke; to take a walk; to give a ride)

13. Give general notion of the lexicography

Lexicography is the study of the meaning, evolution, and function of the vocabulary units of a language for the purpose of compilation in book form-in short, the process of dictionary making. The fundamental paper in lexicographic theory was written by L.V. Shcherba as far back as 1940.

The term dictionary is used to denote a book listing words of a language with their meanings and often with data regarding pronunciation, usage and/or origin.

There are many different types of English dictionaries. First of all they may all be roughly divided into two groups — encyclopaedic and linguistic.

Encyclopaedic dictionaries contain information about/ on objects, notions, things and events, being explained by language units. Encyclopaedic dictionaries do not concentrate on words, one may say that objects, things, events are explained and connected with a certain word. Many nouns, proper names are included there.

Linguistic dictionaries (lexicons) give information about language units in various aspects. In linguistic dictionaries the word itself is described, the word is characterized as a language unit, its meaning, grammar, orthographic, orthoepical and stylistic peculiarities are reflected.

There are also dictionaries that concentrate their attention upon only one of these aspects: pronouncing dictionaries and etymological dictionaries. For dictionaries in which the words and their definitions belong to the same language the term unilingual or explanatory is used, whereas bilingual or translation dictionaries are those that explain words by giving their equivalents in another language. Multilingual or polyglot dictionaries are not numerous; they serve chiefly the purpose of comparing synonyms and terminology in various languages.