Definitions in Lexicology.doc

Definitions in Lexicology (May 31)

1. Word: is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic funtion.
2. Vocabulary: used in different senses. It can refer to the total number of the words in a language, or stand for all the words used in a particular historical period.
3. Lexicology: is a branch of linguistics, inquiring into the origins and meanings of words.
4. Morphemes: the smallest meaningful unit.
5. Allomorphs: one of the variants that realize a morpheme.
6. free morpheme: morphemes which are independent of other morphemes are considered to be free.
7. Bound morpheme: morphemes which cannot occur as separate words are bound.
8. inflectional affixes: affixes attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationships are inflectional.
9. Derivational affixes: the affixes added to other morphemes to create new words.
10. Root: is the part of a wordform that remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes have b een removed.
11. Derivation: or affixation is generally defined as a word-formation process by which new words are created by adding a prefix.
12. Compounding: also called composition, is the formation of new words by combining two separate words.
13. Conversion: is a word-formation of new words by converting words of one class to another class.
14. Full conversion: a noun fully converted from an adjective has all the characteristics of nouns.
15. Partial conversion: nouns partially converted from adjectives do not possess all the qualities a noun does.
16. Blending: is the formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another word.
17. Clipping: is the word-formation of shortening a longer word by cutting a part off the original and using what remains instead.
18. Acronymy: is the process of forming new words by joining the initial letters of names of social and political organizations or special noun phrases and technical terms.
19. Initialisms: are words pronounced letter by letter.
20. Acronyms: are words formed from initial letters but pronounced as a normal word.
21. Back-formation: is considered to be the opposite process of suffixation.
22. Motivation: accounts for the connection between the linguistic symbol and its meaning.
23. Onomatopeic motivation: the formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actionsd they refer to.
24. Morphological motivation: Words which were formed by means of morphological structure.
25. Semantic motivation: refers to the mental associations suggested by the conceptual meaning of a word. It explains the connection between the literal sense and figurative sense of the word.
26. Etymological motivarion: the meanings of many words often relate directly to their origins. (The history of the word explains the meaning of the word.)
27. Grammatical meaning: refers to that part of the meaning of the word which indicates grammatical concept or relationships such as part of speech of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs), singular and plural meaning of nouns, tense meaning of verbs and their inflectional forms (forget, forgets, forgot, forgotten, forgetting).
28. Lexical meaning: is the meaning of an isolated word in a dictionary. It has two components: conceptual meaning and associative meaning.
29. Denotative meaning: also conceptual meaning, is meaning given in the dictionary and forms the core of word meaning.
30. Associative meaning: is the secondary meaning supplemented to the conceptual meaning. ( It differs from the conceptual meaning in that it is open-ended and indeterminate.)
31. Connotative meaning: refers to the associations suggested by the conceptrual meaning, traditionally known as connotations. (unstable, vrying considerably according to culture, historical period, and the experience of the individual.)
32. Affective meaning: indicates the speaker’s feelings and attitudes towards the person or thing under discussion.
33. Stylistic meaning: apart from their conceptual meanigns, many words have stylistic features, which make them appropriate for different contexts.
34. Sense relations: a word which is related to other words is related to them in sense.
35. Polysemy: the lexical item which has a range of different meanings.
36. Homonymy: words different in meaning but either identical both in sound and spelling or identical only in sound or spelling.
37. Perfect homonyms: are words identical both in sound and spelling, but different in meaning.
38. Homographs: are words identical only in spelling but different in sound and meaning.
39. Homophones: are words identical only in sound but different in spelling and meaning.
40. Synonymy: words different in sound and spelling but most nearly alike or exactly the same in meaning.
41. Antonymy: words which are opposite in meaning. (there are a variety of “oppositeness”.
42. Contradictory terms: the antonyms truly represent oppositeness of meaning. They are mutually exclusive and admit no possibility between them, and they are non-gradable)
43. Contrary terms: \the two opposites are in gradable and one exists in comparison with the other.
44. Relative terms: a type of relational opposites. [cf: man-woman(contradictory); husband-wife(relative)]
45. Hyponymy: deals with the relationship of semantic inclusion. (the meaning of a more specific word is included in that of another more general word)
46. Metronymy: part-whole relationship of two words.
47. Extension:also generalization, is the name given to the widening of meaning which some words undergo. It is a process by which a word with a specialized meaning has now become generalized.
48. Narrowing: also specialization, is a process by which a word of wide meaning acquires a narrower or specialized sense.
49. Elevation: the process by which words rise from humble beginnings to positions of importance.
50. Degradation: pejoration of meaning, a process whereby words of good origin fall into ill reputation or non-affective words come to be used in derogatory sense.
51. Semantic shift: a process by which a word denoting one thing changes to refer to a different but related thing.
52. Metaphor: A figure of speech containing an implied comparison based on association of similarity, in which a word or a phrase ordinarily and primarily used for one thing is applied to another.
53. Metonymy: Another important factor in semantic change or development. It is a figure of speech by which an object or idea is described by the name of something closely related to it.
54. Syncodochy: A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for the specific, or the material for the thing from which it is made.
55. Synaesthesia: a process whereby one sensory stilulus may also evoke a stimulus in a different sensory organ.
56. Idioms: consistof set phrases and short sentences, which are peculiar to the language in question and loaded with the native cultures and ideas.
57. Idoms nominal in nature: idioms of this class have a noun as the key word in each and function as a noun in sentences.
58. idioms adjectival in nature: idioms function as a adjectives but the constituents are not necessarily adjectives.