LEXICOLOGY

Meaning

1. The study of the history and structure of the vocabulary of a language.

2.the study of the meanings of words and of idiomatic combinations.

3.Lexicology is the part of linguistics which studies words.

Lexicology is a part of linguistics.

 The term first appeared in the 1820s and it

composed of two Greek morphemes, “lexis”- which means “word, phrase” and “logos” –

 which denotes “learning a department of knowledge”. Thus, the literal meaning of the term “lexicology” is the science of the word.

The aim of lexicology is to define the essence of words.

 Lexicology studies word formation, semasiology, etymological characteristics of words,phraseological units, lexicography and so on.

Lexicology deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups 

The term “vocabulary” is used to denote the system of words and word-groups that the language possesses.

The term “word” denotes the main lexical unit of a language resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning.

The term ‘word-group” denotes a group of words  which exists in the language as a ready-made unit,has the unity of meaning, the unity of syntactical function.

 

General lexicology and special lexicology

1.General lexicology is concerned with the study of vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language.

2.Special lexicology is the lexicology of a particular language (Azerbaijani, English, Russian, German, French, etc.). It is based on the principals of general lexicology and laid down by general lexicology of vocabulary.

According to the theorotical basis of the vocabularies of different languages there are three types of them:

1.Historical lexicology

 deals with the historic change of words in the course of language development.

2.Descriptive lexicology

deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a period of time.

3.Contrastive lexicology

 studies languages from the point of view of their identity and differentation

Lexicology is closely connected with other branch

of linguistics:

The history of the language

Phonetics

Stylistics

Grammar

Sociolinguistics

Paralinguistics and others

For example:

 Phonetics

 investigates the phonetic structure and is concerned with the study of out or sound-form of the word: pit-pot, tip-tap-top. Phonemes haave no meaning of their own, but they serve to distinguish between meanings. Stress also plays an important role in the discrimination between the words: “ `import” is a noun, but “im`port” is a verb due to the position of stress.

Stylistics

 studies the problem of meaning, synonymy, functional differentation of vocabulary according to the sphere of communication.

Grammar

 is concerned with the various means of expressing grammatical relations between words as well as with patterns after which words are combined into word-groups and sentences 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicology

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lexicology