 |
|
Lexicology and other branches of science
§ Lexicology and sociolinguistics
The vocabulary of any language quickly reacts to any changes in social life and every new phenomenon is reflected in vocabulary. Every new object or notion created by the speech community gets a new name, that is why the vocabulary of any language is never rigid, stable, but always growing and changing. In this way,sociolinguistics is a branch of science which deals with correlations between the facts of social life and linguistic facts, the system of the language and its development. Lexicology also should take into account the stratification of society and find points of contact between the social life and the language. The development of science and technology, latest political reality have given rise to many new words and phraseological units. The influence of extralinguistic forces or the development of words may be traced in the content and form of many words and phraseological units. Besides, we see a lot of borrowings from other languages.
§ Lexicology and phonetics (phonology)
The points of contact between them are numerous. Words consist of sounds or phonemes which build up morphemes in their turn. Phonemes perform the distinctive function differentiating words (‘chum’ - ‘much’). A different sound sequence results in a different word. Besides, sometimes stress is used for differentiating words (parts of speech, n. ‘record’ - v. ‘record’). On the historical plane phonology helps us to differentiate between homonyms and polysemy or to explain the connection between such words as ‘history’ and ‘story’, ‘flower’ and ‘flour’, which historically were one word.
§ Lexicology and grammar
Every word belongs to some part of speech and it follows certain grammar rules. Alongside with lexical, words have grammatical meanings, and any word can perform a grammatical function or occur in certain grammatical patterns, if their lexical meaning enables them to do so. For example, words denoting substances have only one form and category of number. Objects consisting of two halves are always plural (‘scissors’). Sometimes a grammatical form becomes a basis for new word (he looks - his looks). This is called the process of lexicalisation of grammatical forms. Besides, the existence of two grammatical forms of the same word leads to their semantic differentiation: ‘brothers’ - ‘brethren’, ‘cows’ - ‘kine’. One and the same word may function as a notional word and a form word: ‘to go wrong’ - ‘to go to the cinema’.
§ Lexicology and stylistic
Lexicology is closely connected to it, and linguostylistic is defined as a branch of linguistics dealing with the investigation of the styles of speech and stylistic expressive means with relation to the contents expressed. Both lexicology and linguostylistic treat of differentiation of vocabulary to the sphere of communication, the type of transference of meaning, semantic structure of words and connotations which can be found in this structure.