LEXICOLOGY I – Lectures

LECTURE 1 - INTRODUCTION
OUTLINE OF THE TERM
Word-formation processes:
 Derivation
 Conversion
 Compounding
 Other processes (coinage, backformation, blending, etc.)
Phraseology
Lexicalization
What is lexicology?
 léxis = word
 lógos = study
What does lexicology study?
 lexicology is the study of lexicon or lexis
 it studies the history and structure of the vocabulary of a language, NOT just a
list of isolated elements
What is its status in linguistics?
 lexicology is a theoretical linguistic discipline
 it cannot function in isolation, for example lexicology and morphology greatly
overlap in the area of word formation
Morpheme
word is a type of linguistic sign, however, not every linguistic sign has to be a
word
the smallest linguistic sign is a morpheme
 morpheme – a class of allomorphs
 morph –realisation of a morpheme
 allomorph – variants of a realisation of a morpheme (morphs)
 phoneme, phone, allophone in phonology
 application of this method
 singers
 sing – free lexical morpheme
 -er – bound lexical morpheme
 -s – bound grammatical morpheme
Morpheme definition:
 1) It is the smallest linguistic unit with meaning – the smallest linguistic sign.
 2) It consists of allomorphs, which are phonologically or morphologically
conditioned.
 3) It is an abstract unit of the system (plural {Z₁}; genitive {Z₂}; 3rd person
singular present {Z₃}).
Lipka’s clasification of morpheme:
1) lexical morphemes – also called semantic morphemes
 Denote extralinguistic objects and states of affairs: actions, situations,
relations, events, etc.
 open class (set)
 precede grammatical morphemes
 combination with other lexical morphemes often restricted
 result of their combination are new lexemes (this process is called word
formation or sometimes lexeme formation)
2) grammatical morphemes – also called functional morphemes
  denote grammatical functions: tense, aspect; syntactic relations: concord of
gender, number
 closed class (inventory)
 follow lexical morphemes
 combination with lexical morphemes relatively unrestricted
 results of this combination are new word forms (this process is called
inflection)
Further clasification:
1) free morphemes
 these can occur alone and independently
2) bound morphemes
 these occur almost exclusively in conjunction with other morphemes
 front-positioned – prefixes
 back-positioned – suffixes
unique or blocked morphemes (Marchand)
 occur only once (Fri-day, cran-berry)
LIPKA:

LIEBER:

WORD
as Matthews (1991) states, the term word can be used in three different senses
 1) phonological/orthographic = word form
 a sequence of sounds, syllables and letters
 dies/died, man/men
  2) abstract unit = lexeme
 dies and died are both the same lexeme: DIE
 3) grammatical = word
 the same sequence of sounds/letters may represent a different
grammatical word
 hit can be a) present, b) past simple, c) past participle
WORD TYPE, WORD TOKEN, LEXEMES
word token is an every single occurrence of a word in a text
if we only count the word once and disregard every other occurrence of the
same form, we are counting word types – therefore, if the word live occurs three
times, lives twice and lived once, we are dealing with six word tokens but only three
word types
if we talk about lexemes, we are concerned with the meaning of the word,
not its form; live, lives, lived are still only one lexeme: LIVE
My friend and I walk to class together, because our classes are in the same building and we
dislike walking alone.
 word tokens: 21
 word types: 20 (and occurs twice)
 lexemes: 16 (class/classes, walk/walking, I/my, our/we)
Word formation processes and their productivity:
Marchand (1969) defines word formation this way:
 […]that branch of the science of language which studies the patterns on which
a language forms new lexical units, i.e. words.
 Lyons (1977) introduced a distinction between:
 productivity – a rule-governed process of creating new words
 creativity – a non-rule-governed (unpredictable) process of creating new
words
Tournier‘s (1985) productivity patterns:
1) morpho-semantic neologisms
 construction
 affixation – prefixation (refill), suffixation (powerful), backformation
(babysit)
 composition – juxtaposition (fireman), amalgamation (bromance)
2) semantic neologisms
 class transfer – conversion
 metasemantic processes
 metaphor (chicken)
 metonymy (tongue)
3) morphological neologisms
 reduction of the word (signifiant)
 aphaeresis (for-clipping)
 apocope (back-clipping)
 acronymy (sigliaison)
LOANWORDS
adopting loanwords is an external process and, therefore, remains outside these three
categories
‘word-formation proper’, as Tournier calls it, is:
 Compounding
 Affixation
 Clipping
 Abbreviation (general use of the term)
PRODUCTIVITY PROCESSES
1) The combination of full signs resulting in grammatical syntagma:
  compounding, prefixation, suffixation, derivation by a zero-morpheme
(conversion), backformation
2) The combination of other elements not resulting in syntagma (sometimes labelled
non-grammatical word-formation):
 expressive symbolism, blending, clipping, rime and ablaut gemination,
word-manufacturing
LECTURE 2 - DERIVATION
 What is derivation?
 A process of formation of a new word from an existing one.
Types of derivation:
1) in most cases, the process involves adding an affix to an existing word (root)
 this process is called affixation
2) derivation without affixation, in some cases also called zero-derivation
conversion, prosodic morphology (truncation, -y diminutives, clippings,
blends, abbreviations and acronyms)
Affixation:
 What is an affix?
 It is a type of a bound morpheme which can be further divided into 3 main categories
 1) prefix – added to the beginning (prefixation)
 2) suffix – added to the end (suffixation)
 3) other types, not essential to English (interfix, infix, transfix, circumfix,
simulfix, etc.) for more info see Lieber (2015)
 affixation = word-formation process where an affix (bound morpheme) is added to
an existing word (or root) to form a new word
problem 1
 It is not always easy to say whether the morpheme is free or bound.
 consider the following examples:
 sugar-free, lifelike, school-wise, flawless
problem 2
 It may be difficult to recognize if we are dealing with a root or an affix.
 consider the following examples:
 biorhythm, photoanalysis, physiology, regicide
PHONOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE
prefixation
 consider the following words:
 balance and imbalance
 kind and unkind
 build and rebuild
 compose and decompose
 prefixes do not alter stress placement, nor change the form of the base word
suffixation
 consider the following words:
 courage and courageous
 productive and productivity
 realize and realization
 fruit and fruition
 some suffixes have a pronunciation-altering effect, not to mention they often
change the form of the base word (clear -> clarity)
THE PROCESS OF AFFIXATION
the whole process of adding prefixes or suffixes is far from arbitrary and there are
usually special requirements that govern which bases allow which affixes
 there are three requirements the base may impose
 1) Phonological requirements of the base
look at two almost identical suffixes -ize/-ise and -ify
 same base category requirement – both attach to nouns or adjectives
 they make words with more or less the same meaning – both produce a
verb with the meaning ‘make/put into [Bᵐ]’
 hospital -> hospitalize
 emphasis -> emphasize
 penal -> penalize
 scar -> scarify
 just -> justify
 diverse -> diversify
 mummy -> mummify
 -ize/-ise attaches to bases with multiple syllables where the final syllable
does not carry primary stress
 -ify attaches to monosyllabic bases, bases that end with –y, and
multisyllabic bases whose final syllable carries the primary stress
 but solid -> solidify
2) Semantic requirements of the base
for example: prefix un-
 it attaches to adjectives and verbs, but there are semantic restrictions
unhappy, unkind, unintelligent, unfriendly
*unsad, *unugly, *unbad
 un- has a tendency to attach to adjectives with a positive or neutral
meaning
 the result of this prefixation is a negative adjective
 it is rarely attached to negative adjectives in order to make them
somewhat positive
unselfish, unhostile
o unload, untie, unfold
o *unpull, *unrun, *unbomb
 un- attaches to verbs that imply a result of an action which is not
permanent and can be reverted
 the product of this prefixation is a counteraction to the verb (do and
undo)
3) Syntactic: part of speech or word category
 this is the most basic requirement as the word category of a base largely
governs which affixes are allowed to be attached
 generally, prefixes can attach to multiple word categories while suffixes
are much more restricted to specific categories of bases
 some prefixes can attach to nouns, adjectives, and verbs
 under- : underpass, underrated, undergo
 pre- : preschool, prehistoric, pre-select
 dis- : disinformation, disloyal, disconnect
 some are restricted to only one or two word categories they can attach to
WORD STRUCTURE OF COMPLEX WORDS
 analysis of its components (morphemes) on the linear level is not enough
 we also have to look at the so-called layers
 unhappiness – un- + happy + -ness
  the tree shows that there are two different layers in the word
unhappiness
 1) the innermost layer un-happy
 2) the outermost layer unhappi-ness
 a couple more examples
 unbelievable
 rebuilding
 withdrawal
 misunderstanding
 antidisestablishmentarianism
PREFIXES VS SUFFIXES
o looking at prefixes, they usually do not change the pronunciation or the shape of
the base word
o suffixes on the other hand have the tendency to change both the pronunciation
and the form of the base word

SEMANTIC CATEGORIES OF AFFIXES

personal – they create ‘people nouns’ from nouns or verbs
 -er – agent nouns (writer, runner)
 -ee – patient nouns (employee, trainee)
negative and privative – negative affixes mean ‘not’, privative mean ‘without X’
  un- unorthodox
 in- indecisive
 non- non-functional
 -less hopeless, headless
 de- debug, decompose
prepositional and relational – these often convey notions of space and/or time
 over- overcast, overcrowded
 out- outrun, outside
quantitative – they are often related to amount or repeated actions
 -ful mouthful, pocketful
 multi- multinational, multimillionaire
 re- repaint, retell
evaluative – these consist of diminutives (often endearment, affection) and
augmentatives (can be pejorative)
 -let piglet, booklet
 mega- megastore, megahit

LECTURE 3 – SUFFIXATION
SUFFIXES

 two main ways of approaching classification

1) word category of the base word to which the suffix attaches
2) word category resulting from the suffixation process
1) WORD CATEGORY OF THE BASE
1) de-nominal suffixes
o attach to a nominal base
2) de-adjectival suffixes
o attach to an adjectival base
3) deverbal suffixes
o attach to a verbal base
4) de-adverbial suffixes
o attach to an adverbial base
2)THE RESULTING WORD CATEGORY
1) nominal suffixes
o form nouns
2) adjectival suffixes
o form adjectives
3) verbal suffixes
o form verbs
4) adverbial suffixes
o form adverbs
NOMINAL SUFFIXES

 -age
 an activity or its result
o coverage, coinage
 a collective entity/quality
 o voltage, yardage
 locations
o orphanage
 relationships
o parentage
 base words are often monosyllabic verbs or nouns
 -al
 a Latinate suffix, denotes an action or a result of an action
o arrival, renewal, denial
 stress is always on the final syllable of the base
 the resulting noun is usually abstract
 -ance (variants -ence, -ancy,- ency)
 action
o riddance, absorbance
 state or condition
o dependence
 closely related to -cy/-ce which attaches to adjectives ending in the suffix
-ant/-ent
o dependency: depend-ency or depend-ent-cy
 -ance/ence is rather deverbal; -ancy/-ency de-adjectival
 -ant
 persons
o applicant, defendant
 substances in processes
o attractant, dispersant, deodorant
 most bases are of Latinate origin
 -cy/-ce
 attaches to
 adjectives in -ant/-ent
o convergence, efficiency
 nouns ending in -ant/-ent
o agency, presidency
 adjectives ending in -ate
o adequacy, intimacy
 states, properties, qualities, office or institution
 nominal bases have the tendency to take the -cy variant (but
reluctance/reluctancy)
 -dom
 a Germanic suffix, semantically closely related to -hood, and -ship
 ‘state of being X’
o apedom, clerkdom, stardom, freedom
 collective entities
o professordom
 domains, realms or territories
o kingdom
 -ee
  persons involved in an event as participants, also patients of the verb (object
role)
o employee, trainee, pickpocketee, amputee
 -ee is an auto-stressed suffix, it carries the main stress of the derivative (not
always reliable)
 mostly deverbal, sometimes also de-nominal
 -eer
 a person noun forming suffix, ‘person who deals in, is concerned with, or has
to do with X’
o auctioneer, mountaineer, engineer
 it is auto-stressed and attaches almost exclusively to bases that are stressed
penultimately
 -er (variant -or)
 ‘performer of an action’ (agent of the verb; subject role), closely related to
-ee (patient)
o killer, singer, writer
 instrument nouns
o blender, mixer
 nouns denoting entities associated with an activity
o diner, winner (‘winning shot’)
 person nouns indicating place of origin or residence
o Londoner, New Yorker
 generally, -er is semantically very heterogeneous, one of the possibilities is to
simply underspecify it
o ‘persons or things having to do with X’
 it is often described as a deverbal suffix, but there are numerous forms that
are derived on the basis of nouns
o whaler, tenner
 the variant -or occurs mainly with Latinate bases ending in /s/ or /t/
o conductor, compressor
 some words fluctuate
o conquerer (obsolete) or conqueror
 -(e)ry
 ‘place where a specific activity is carried out’
o bakery, brewery
 ‘place where a service is available’
o Pottery
 collectivity
o cutlery, machinery
 act or practice
o bribery, robbery
 -ess
 used for forming nouns of female gender (humans and animals)
o princess, stewardess, waitress, lioness, goddess
 -ful
 measure partitive nouns similar to a lot of, a bunch of
o cupful, handful
 -full* is not an orthographic variant
  -hood
 similar to –dom
 ‘state’
o adulthood, childhood
 ‘collectivity’
o Christianhood, companionhood
 -an (variants -ian, -ean)
 ‘person having to do with X’
o technician, historian
 ‘being from X’ or ‘being of X origin’
o Bostonian, Scandinavian
 surgery
o Caesarean birth
 ‘being the follower or supporter of X’
o Anglican, Chomskyan
 stems with this suffix are stressed on the syllable immediately preceding the
suffix, causing stress shifts where necessary
o Canada vs Canadian
 -ing
 it is deverbal suffix that denotes processes
o running, sleeping
 results
o building, stuffing
 this suffix is primarily used as a verbal inflectional suffix forming present
participles (it can attach to almost every verb)
 however, aspect is not a nominal category, so we cannot consider it an
inflectional suffix in nouns
 -ion
 a Latinate sufix that describes actions, processes and their results
o completion, creation, rejection
 when attached to a verb in -ify, the verbal suffix and -ion together form
-ification
o notification, glorification
 the allomorph -ation is attached in all other cases (starvation, colonization)
 all -ion derivatives have primary stress on the penultimate syllable, therefore
–ion is a stress shifting suffix
 -ism
 it forms abstract nouns from other nouns and adjectives
 state, condition, attitude, system of beliefs or theory
o racism, conservatism, Marxism
 -ist
 derives nouns denoting persons, mostly from nominal and adjectival bases
o balloonist, minimalist
 nouns with -ism which denote attitudes, beliefs or theories have -ist
counterparts
 underspecified definition is ‘person having to do with X’
 -ity
  nouns denoting qualities, states or properties
 usually derived from Latinate adjectives
o curiosity, productivity, animosity
 many -ity derivatives are lexicalized, i.e. they have become permanently
incorporated into the mental lexicons of speakers, thereby often adopting
idiosyncratic meanings
o curiosity ‘quality of being curious‘ and ‘curious thing’
 the suffix is capable of changing the stress pattern of the base, all -ity
derivatives are stressed on the antepenultimate syllable
 -ment
 processes or results, mainly from verbs
 strong preference for monosyllabic or disyllabic base words with stress on the
final syllable
o assessment, involvement, deployment
 -ness
 likely the most productive suffix of English
 -ness is much less restrictive than -ity
 attaches to almost all adjectives
o greediness, blackness
 also de-nominal (thingness) pronouns (us-ness) and phrases (over-the-top-
ness, all-or-nothing-ness)
 -ship
 ‘state’ or ‘condition’, similar to derivatives in -age, -hood and -dom
 base words are mostly person nouns
o apprenticeship, friendship, membership
 ‘office’
o postmastership
 ‘activity’
o courtship, censorship
VERBAL SUFFIXES

 -ate
 chemical substances as base
o ‘provide with X’ fluorinate
o ‘make into X’ methanate
 in a lot of cases, -ate is no more than an indicator of verbal status
o backformations (formate <- formation)
 local analogies
o stereoregular – stereoregulate; regular – regulate
 -ate almost exclusively attaches to words that end in one or two unstressed
syllables
o nitrosate, mercurate
 if the base ends in two unstressed syllables, the last syllable is truncated
 -en
 it is a Germanic suffix, it attaches to monosyllabic words that end in a
plosive, fricative or affricate
 ‘make (more) X’
 bases are mostly adjectives
o blacken, hasten
 sometimes also nouns
 o strengthen, lengthen
 -ify
 attaches to either monosyllabic words, stressed on the final syllable or end
in unstressed /І/
 neologisms usually do not show stress shift, older forms do
o humid – humidify, solid – solidify
 it is very similar to -ize, -ify is preferred by words ending in [І]
o nazify
 ize/-ise
 both -ize and -ify are polysemous suffixes and can express a whole range of
related concepts
o locative ‘put into X’ hospitalize
o ornative ‘provide with X’ youthify
o causative ‘make (more) X’ randomize
o resultative ‘make into X’ carbonize
o inchoative ‘become X’ aerosolize
o performative ‘perform X’ anthropologize
o simulative ‘act like X’ cannibalize
ADJECTIVAL SUFFIXES

1) relational – they simply relate to its base

 colonial, adverbial
 they almost exclusively occupy the attributive position (prenominal modifiers)
2) qualitative – they express more specific concepts

-able (variant -ible)

 combines with transitive and intransitive verbal bases
o ‘capable of being Xed’
 breakable, readable
o ‘liable or disposed to X’
 agreeable, variable
o in both cases it behaves as a patient of the verb
 also combines with nouns
o ‘characterised by X’
 fashionable, reasonable
 the stress shift occurs in some lexicalized derivatives
o compare but comparable
 verbal bases ending in -ate are often truncated (but it is not a rule)
o irritable, operable but cultivatable, confiscatable
 the orthographic variant -ible can be found in loan words
o comprehensible, flexible, edible, audible

 -al (variants -ial, -ual, -ar)

 a relational suffix which attaches mostly to Latinate words
o accidental, colonial, federal
 stress is always on the antepenultimate or penultimate syllable and is shifted if
need be
o colony but colonial
 this suffix also displays allomorphy (-ar) in words that end in [l] or [n]
o pole -> polar
 o module -> modular
o line -> linear
 two other variants:
o -ial confidential, racial
o -ual contextual, visual
 when the base ends in [s] or [t], -ial triggers assimilation of the final [ʃ]
o facial, presidential
 bases ending in -ant/ance (and their variants) and -or take -ial
o potential, purgatorial

 -ary
 a relational suffix which usually attaches to nouns
o complementary, legen(wait for it)dary
 stress shift occurs only in polysyllabic base nouns ending in -ment
o compliment but complimentary
 -ed
 ‘having X, being provided with X’
o open-minded, windowed
 the majority of derivatives are from phrases and/or non-canonical compounds
o empty-headed, close-minded
 -esque
 attaches to common and proper nouns with the meaning ‘in the manner or style
of X’
o Hemingwayesque, picturesque
 it strongly prefers polysyllabic bases
 -ful
 ‘having X, being characterized by X’
 typically attaches to abstract nouns
o beautiful, tactful
 also verbal bases
o forgetful, resentful, mindful, hurtful
 -ic (variant -ical)
 a relational suffix which attaches to foreign bases
 a lot of these derivatives have variants in -ical
o magic / magical, historic / historical, economic – economical
o these words often differ in meaning but it is not always clear
 it is a stress-shifting suffix, these derivatives are always stressed penultimately
 -ing
 originally a verbal inflectional suffix whose primary function is to form present
participle
 it is used for adjectives in the attributive positions
o -ing in the predicative position is a bit problematic
o the situation is changing (a changing situation)
o the book is interesting (an interesting book)
 -ish
 with the meaning ‘somewhat X, vaguely X’
 it attaches to adjectives
o freeish, sharpish, greenish
  numerals
o fiveish, threehundredfourtyish
 adverbs
o soonish, downish
 syntactic phrases
o out-of-the-wayish, silly-little-me-late-again-ish)
 ‘of the character of X, like X’, when it refers to person nouns
o monsterish, townish
 with some forms having pejorative connotation
o childish
 -ive (variant -ative)
 forms adjectives from Latinate verbs and bound roots that end in /t/, /d/ or /s/
o connective, explosive, corrosive, offensive, passive, primitive
 also from nominal bases
o instinctive, massive
 usually no stress shift apart from some exceptions
o alternate – alternative, instinct – instinctive
 a number of systematic base alternations
o conclude -> conclusive
o receive -> receptive
o produce -> productive
 some forms feature the variant -ative without an existing verb ending in -ate,
which is likely a result of an analogy with a great number of verbs ending in -ate
o argumentative, quantitative, representative
 -less
 semantically, -less is the opposite of -ful
 ‘without X’
o hopeless, speechless
 -ly
 appended to nouns and adjectives
 with base nouns denoting persons, it usually has the notion of ‘in the manner of
X’ or ‘like an X’
o brotherly, womanly
 commonly also bases denoting temporal concepts
o daily, monthly
 and less commonly directions
o easterly, south-westerly
 -ous (variants -eous, -ious,-uous)
 adjectives from nouns and bound roots, most of which are of Latinate origin
o curious, famous, synonymous, tremendous)
 same as derivatives in -al, -ous formations are stressed either on the penultimate
or antepenultimate syllable (stress shifts there, if necessary)
o courage -> courageous, advantage -> advantageous
 variants of the suffix
o -eous homogeneous
o -ious gracious
o -uous continuous
 -ward
 forms adjectives usually from adjectives or nouns
  it expresses directional or spatial meaning
o backward, homeward
 in adjectives, the form -ward does not have a variant (compare with adverbs
forward vs forwards)

ADVERBIAL SUFFIXES

 -ly
 exclusively de-adjectival
 often considered inflectional because it is syntactically triggered
 BUT consider the semantic difference
o short vs shortly
o hard vs hardly
o dry vs dryly
 in addition, hotly, coldly and darkly are used exclusively figuratively
 inflectional suffixes cannot change the semantic meaning, therefore, it is NOT
inflectional
 -wise
 denominal, with two distinguishable sub-groups:
 manner/dimension adverbs. i.e. ‘in the manner of X, like X’
o lengthwise, crosswise
 view-point adverbs, i.e. ‘with respect to, in regard to, concerning X’
 the scope of the view-point adverbs is the whole clause or sentence
o They have no special requirements age-wise.
 -wards (variant -ward)
 forms adverbs usually from adjectives or nouns
 these adverbs usually show direction
o upwards, downwards
o afterwards or afterward are always an adverb (never an adjective)
o towards or toward are always a preposition (never an adverb or an adjective)

LECTURE 4 – PREFIXES, CONVERSION

Semantic classification of prefixes (Plag 2002)

1) Quantifying
2) Locative
3) Temporal
4) Negation

QUANTIFYING PREFIXES:

 ‘one’ uni- unilateral, unification

 ‘two or twice’ bi-/di- bilateral, disyllabic
 ‘many’ multi-/poly- multiverse, polysemy
 ‘half’ semi- semi-finals
 ‘all’ omni- omnipotent
 ‘small’ micro- microwave
 ‘large’ macro- macroeconomics
 ‘to excess’ hyper- hypersensitive
over- overestimate
 ‘not enough’ under- underpay
LOCATIVE PREFIXES

 ‘around’ circum- circumcision

 ‘against’ counter- counterargument
 ‘internal to X’ endo- endocentric
 ‘on, over’ epi- epicentre
 ‘between’ inter- international
 ‘inside’ intra- intramuscular
 ‘along with’ para- paramedic
 ‘back,backwards’ retro- retrospection
 ‘across’ trans- transsexual

TEMPORAL PREFIXES

 ‘before’ ante-/pre-/fore- antechamber, predate, foresee

 ‘after’ post- postmodern
 ‘new’ neo- neoclassical

NEGATION PREFIXES
- the most complex category semantically
 a(n)- ‘without what is referred to by the nominal base’ achromatic
‘not X’ asymmetrical
 anti- ‘against, opposing’ anti-war
‘the opposite of an X’ anti-hero
 de- ‘reverse or undo’ dethrone, deselect
 dis- ‘reverse’ disassemble
‘absence of X’ disfluency
‘not X’ dishonest
 compare to dys- (‘abnormal, faulty, difficult’)
 in- ‘not’ inactive, inability, involuntary
 mis- ‘inaccurately, wrongly’ misunderstand, misbehave, misplace
 non- ‘not X’ non-verbal
‘absence of X’ non-profit
 unlike un-/in-, non- is not evaluative (irrational vs non-rational)
 un- ‘remove X’ unwrap
‘opposite of X’ unhappy
‘absence of X’ unease

CONVERSION
 It is a derivation of a new word from an existing one without any overt
marking.
 i.e. the word form remains the same
MOST COMMON TYPES
four most common types of conversion:
 1) noun → verb
 2) verb → noun
  3) adjective → verb
 4) adjective → noun
other types are marginal (to up sail)
noun → verb conversion
 a bottle to bottle
'a vessel' 'to fill into a bottle'
 skin to skin
'a membranous tissue' 'to remove skin from'
 sugar to sugar
'a sweet substance‘ 'to add/coat with sugar'
verb → noun conversion
 to call a call
'to say in a loud voice' 'a loud cry'
 to spy a spy
'to watch secretly‘ 'sb who spies on sb'
 to drink a drink
'to swallow a liquid' 'a liquid that is fit for drinking'
adjective → verb conversion
 empty to empty
'having nothing inside' 'to make sth empty'
 open to open
'accessible to all' 'to make sth open'
 rustproof to rustproof
'resistant to rusting' 'to make sth rustproof'
adjective → noun conversion
 wicked the wicked
'evil or immoral' 'wicked people'
 deaf the deaf
'unable to hear' 'deaf people'
 poor the poor
'without money' 'poor people'
NOMINALIZATION BY STRESS SHIFT
 a common process in words of predominantly Latinate origin
 originally verbs stressed on the final syllable -> derived nouns stressed on the first
syllable
 decrease, discount, insult, produce, project, record, rewrite, upset, etc.
NOMINALIZATION BY DEVOICING OF A FINAL CONSONANT
 also mostly in Latinate words, nouns are created from verbs by devoicing of a final
consonant
 abuse, excuse, use
 ascend:ascent, believe:belief, descend:descent, extend/extent
 sometimes greater stem alternation (from Latin)
 defend:defense, expand:expanse, transcribe:transkript
PROBLEMS OF CONVERSION
A) The problem of directionality
 4 ways of determining the direction of conversion
1) history of the language
 etymology of the word
 often goes against present-day intuition
o to crowd → a crowd
 complex semantic changes may overwrite the original direction of
conversion
o a moan → to moan
2) semantic complexity of the two words
 derived words tend to be semantically more complex
o analogy with affixation – a new meaning is added to the
original word
o a talk vs to talk
 the derived word often employs the base word in its simple
definition
o to bottle = 'to fill into a bottle'

3) formal properties of a word

o 3a) grammatical behaviour – inflection

 derived verbs must be regularly inflected

 if one of the two words is inflected irregularly, it is most likely the
base form
o hit, drink, shake

o 3b) phonological behaviour – stress

 to construct a construct
 to permit a permit
 to contract a contract
 the original word is stressed on the semantically key element (stem)
while the derived word is stressed on the (original) prefix
 This is not a proper type of conversion as there is overt marking of
the PoS shift.
 a similar thing happens with prepositional verbs and nouns derived
from them (Plag 2002)
  These again are not proper cases of conversion as the derived forms
do bear overt marking.
4) frequency of occurrence
 in general, derived words will occur less frequently than their base
words
 corpus research usually provides us with a clear indication of which
word is the base word
 in Spoken BNC2014
o water (noun) 2710 tokens
o water (verb) 16 tokens

only a handful of words can be problematic in terms of directionality interpretation

 love and to love
(871) (3937)
 the application of the 4 rules almost always allows us to determine the
direction of conversion
B) The problem of zero-morphs
 the question is whether the existence of a zero-moph is justified
 many linguists argue that zero form is only justified when there is also a non-
zero (overt) form that expresses the same meaning/function – overt
analogue criterion
 overt analogue criterion
o Balteiro (1974)
 coverN : [Ø coverN]V because chainN : [enchainN]V
'put cover on‘ 'put chains on‘
but
 coverV : [coverV Ø]N because cleaveV : [cleavV er]N
'instrument for covering' 'instrument for cleaving'

 some linguists claim that all derivational processes are in fact affixational
 A) pros
o only one central mechanism, other mechanisms are purely surface
phenomena and are of very little theoretical importance
 B) cons
o we have to provide affixation analysis for words that do not seem to
have any affix, and failing to do so forces us to reject this theory
 for more on this topic see Plag (2002: 140-143)

C) The problem of morphology-syntax

 there are theories that define conversion as a purely syntactic mechanism
 = a word is used in a syntactic position that it normally does not occupy → it
takes on the properties of items that usually occupy this position

 John watered the plants once a week, which was far from enough.
 water, commonly a noun, is placed in a verbal slot = this is a
syntactic operation
 it is generally believed that words have a clear category – this
information is necessary before the syntactic rules are applied
 but there are also views suggesting that the lexical category (POS)
may be underspecified and its full specification comes in syntactic
context only
 LECTURE 5 – COMPOUNDING
COMPOUNDING
 sometimes also called composition
 these days arguably the most productive way of creating new words in English
 What is compounding?
o A process of creating a new word by combination of two already existing
items.
 two important assumptions
o 1) there are two elements in the word – not more
o 2) these elements are words (?)
 How do we recognize a compound?
 compounds have a binary structure, i.e. there are always two constituents
o binary structure does NOT mean that they have only two words
o recursivity = we can keep adding elements to the compound, especially
when it is a noun-noun compound
RECURSIVITY
 {[ice-(hockey)] championship} winner
 1) hockey
 2) ice-hockey
 3) ice-hockey championship
 4) ice-hockey championship winner
 Lieber (2009) suggests a test to help us recognize a compound:
 “We can test for whether a sequence of bases is a compound by seeing if a
modifying word can be inserted between the two bases and still have the
sequence make sense.”
o pretty boy vs pretty boy
o try inserting a modifier for either pretty or boy

THE STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH COMPOUNDS

 compounds have a binary structure (modifier and head)
 headedness as in Plag 2002
 dogfights
[ X Y ]y
X = { root, word, phrase }
Y = { root, word }
y = grammatical properties inherited from Y
 players party
 the compound is a singular noun
 this template shows that English compounds always have a grammatical
head on the right-hand side lexeme (Y)
POTENTIAL ISSUES
 How do we classify the expressions good-for-nothing or jack-of-all-trades?
o 1) Is it one word?
o 2) What is the word category?
o 3) Is it a compound?
 good-for-nothing or jack-of-all-trades
  such words are lexicalized phrases

THE STRESS PATTERN

 compounds are different from noun phrases, mainly because a compound is a single
unit
 the stress pattern is different
o compounds are stressed on the first lexeme = compound stress rule; noun
phrases on the final lexeme = nuclear stress rule
 noun phrase is not a single unit, i.e. the concept is different
o a blackbird vs a black bird
o greenhouse vs a green house
 there are, of course, exceptions to the compound stress ‘rule‘
o a silk tie, Austin hospital, Boston marathon, winter night
o compare compounds with the right-hand elements street and avenue
 the bottom line is that compounds follow the compound stress rule and that there
are systemic exceptions (rightward stress)

COMPOUND MAKE-UP
 structure of compounds:
o modifier and head
 grammatical and semantic perspective

TYPES OF COMPOUNDS
 two types based on the word class of its constituents according to Lieber (2009):
 synthetic (deverbal) – the head lexeme is derived from a verb, the non-head
lexeme is then its argument
o truck driver, limb-splitter, homemade
 root – consist of nouns, adjectives, or verbs; the interpretation of the
semantic relation between the head and the non-head is fairly free
 three types according to Bisetto and Scalise (2005):
 attributive – the non-head is a modifier of the head
 coordinative – semantically, both elements are heads
 subordinative – the non-head is the argument (usually an object) of the head
o -er truck driver, beast handler
o -ing food shopping, sky diving
o -ation home invasion, exam preparation
o -ment performance improvement
 endocentric (semantic head inside)
 the second element is the head of the compound and defines its
morphological features
 exocentric (semantic head outside)
 the meaning of the compound is not just a combined meaning of the two
elements (smartarse)
 these compounds are, however, exocentric only in terms of their semantic
properties, because they still behave like endocentric in terms of grammar
 copulative
 What is the head?
o bittersweet, punk-rock
 coordinative or appositional
 o father-son relationship vs singer-songwriter

COMPOUNDING PATTERNS

  Noun Adjective Verb Preposition

Noun Cupboard colour-blind babysit -

Adjective Darknet light-green whitelist -

Verb dancefloor - dry-clean follow-through*

Preposition Inmate withheld* up-vote* onto*

 withheld – inflection (from withhold)

 up-vote – inversion (from vote up)
 onto – frequently co-occurring prepositions can cause unitary semantic processing,
therefore two prepositions in sequence are often treated as one word (consider
*upin, *fromunder)
 follow-through – derivation (from follow through)

LECTURE 6 – COMPOUNDING PART TWO

FORMAL CLASSIFICATION
 closed compounds
o armchair, sunflower
 hyphenated
o front-runner, she-devil
 open compounds
o side salad, bank manager
NOMINAL COMPOUNDS
 the head of the compound is a noun
 noun-noun compounds are the most common in English
 other variants: adjective-noun, verb-noun
THE INTERPRETATION OF NOMINAL N-N COMPOUNDS
 it can be done in isolation or within the surrounding discourse
 sortal nouns vs relational nouns
o sortal nouns are classifying entities
 desk, door, car
o relational nouns denote a relation between two entities, i.e. one cannot exist
without a relation to another
 a mother of a child, a mother of dragons
 the necessary entity (child, dragons) is an argument and it fills the argument
structure (slots governed by the head)
 the process of assigning arguments to nouns is called argument linking
 ARGUMENT LINKING
 argument linking is also applied to synthetic compounds
 taxi driver, beer drinker, shop clearance, soccer-playing
 underlined items (above) are arguments of their heads (deverbal
nouns)
 however, argument linking is not always the explanation
 a night driver – the driver does not drive a night
 computer surgery – not a surgery performed on
computers
 analysing compounds in discourse opens up multiple interpretation possibilities
 stone wall can either be:
 a wall made of stone
 a wall put up as protection against thrown stones
 a wall painted with graffiti showing stones

ADJECTIVE-NOUN COMPOUNDS
 semantically exocentric A-N compounds are fairly productive – they almost
exclusively refer to people and/or animals
 smartass, greybeard, loudmouth
 a high number of A-N compounds are lexicalized and, therefore, this class is
not very productive
 greenhouse, blueprint, blackbird
VERB-NOUN COMPOUNDS
 exocentric V-N compounds are very rare in English
 spoilsport, pickpocket
 endocentric V-N compounds (the right-hand lexeme is NOT an argument of the
verbal lexeme)
 swearword, playboy

PREPOSITION-NOUN COMPOUNS
 the existence of P-N compounds as a result of compounding is debatable (compare
with derivation)
 they are almost exclusively of the modifier-head structure
 P-N compounds mainly involve after, out, under
 afterlife, afterbirth
 outpost, outbuilding
 underarm, underbrush (but underdog)

ADJECTIVAL COMPOUNDS
 the head of the compound is an adjective
 their non-head lexemes are either nouns or adjectives
 the non-head can either be a modifier or an argument of the head

NOUN-ADJECTIVE COMPOUNDS
 comparison
o ruby-red, knee-deep
 intensifier
o dog-lean (means very lean)
 argument
 o sugar-free, structure-dependent (syntactic structure: free of sugar, dependent
on structure)

ADJECTIVE-ADJECTIVE COMPOUNDS
 modifier
 icy-cold, greenish-white
 copulative appositional
 sweet-sour, bittersweet
 copulative coordinative
 the high-low alternation, English-Czech dictionary
 similar to deverbal synthetic compounds – their head is a derived adjective (-ed/-ing)
 blue-eyed, police-controlled, jaw-dropping

THE STRESS PATTERN IN ADJECTIVAL COMPOUNDS

 adjectival compounds show both leftward and rightward stress
 rightward stress occurs in copulative adjectival compounds
o Slovak-Czech, bittersweet (but bittersweet is also possible)
 but also
o knee-deep, dog-lean, sugar-free
 leftward stress
o footloose, threadbare
 this variability does not prevent us from recognizing adjectival compounds
VERBAL COMPOUNDS
 the head of the compound is a verb
 the non-head lexeme can be a noun, an adjective, or a verb
 a problem: the majority of compounds with a verbal head are best analysed as a
result of backformation or conversion rather than compounding
NOUN-VERB COMPOUNDS
 proof-read (from proof-reading)
 chain-smoke (from chain-smoker)
 babysit (from babysitter)
ADJECTIVE-VERB COMPOUNDS
 shortcut (from the noun shortcut)
 blindfold (from blindfold)
but
 broadcast – semantically, this word is a bit more complicated (idiosyncrasy)

VERB-VERB COMPOUNDS
 these seem to be a result of proper compounding
 copulative, two events that occur/happen simultaneously
 stir-fry, dry-clean
THE STRESS PATTERN IN VERBAL COMPOUNDS
 like in the case of adjectival compounds, the stress in verbal compounds is not
systematic
 deep-fry (GE) vs deep-fry (GA), dry-clean, freeze-dry, chain-smoke
 this variability does not prevent us from recognizing verbal compounds
NEOCLASSICAL COMPOUNDS
  formed by a combination of lexemes of Latin or Greek origin
 these combinations do not exist in the original language, hence NEOclassical
 biology, photograph, bureaucracy, genocide
 neoclassical compounds consist of combining forms (alternatively called bound
bases)
form meaning example

astro- space astrology, astrophysics

bio- life biodegradable, biocracy

biblio- book bibliography, bibliotherapy

electro- electricity electro-cardiograph, electrography

geo- earth geographic, geology

hydro- water hydro-electric, hydrology

morpho- figure morphology, morpho-genesis

philo- love philotheist, philo-gastric

retro- backwards retroflex, retro-design

tele- distant television, telepathy

theo- god theocratic, theology

-cide murder suicide, genocide

-cracy rule bureaucracy, democracy

-graphy write sonography, bibliography

-itis disease laryngitis, lazyitis

-logy science of astrology, neurology

-morph figure anthropomorph, polymorph

-phile love anglophile, bibliophile

-phobe fear anglophobe, bibliophobe

-scope look at laryngoscope, telescope

 even though these combining forms usually cannot stand alone, they carry an
independent semantic meaning
COMBINATORIAL PROPERTIES AND THE POSITION OF COMBINING FORMS
 they can combine with bound roots (scientology), other combining forms
(morphology), or whole words (television) to create a new word
 initial combining forms
 they occupy the initial position in a compound (bio-, geo-)
 final combining forms
 these occupy the final position in a compound (-cide, -scope)
 both initial and final
 these can occupy either the initial or the final position in a compound
 morph-/-morph, phil-/-phile
THE STRESS PATTERN IN NEOCLASSICAL COMPOUNDS
 the stress pattern is not unitary
 initial combining forms behave differently when combined with free forms or other
combining forms
 astro-physics vs astrology
 biblio-therapy vs bibliography
 -graphy, -cracy, and -logy carry antepenultimate stress (same as the suffix -ity), i.e.
they force stress to the syllable in front of them
 geography, monography, democracy, bureaucracy, biology, psychology

THE -O- LETTER IN NEOCLASSICAL COMPOUNDS

 it is interpreted as a linking element
 morph-o-logy, laryng-o-scope, gen-o-cide
 in other forms, it is thematic and thus, phonologically governed
 bio-logy (not *bi-o-logy), geo-graphy (not *ge-o-graphy)

LECTURE 7 – MINOR PROCESSES

CLIPPING
 What is clipping?
 It is a process of reducing a form of an existing word in order to create a new word
describing the same entity.
 the restrictions are not as tight as in the case of proper names
 tendency to be monosyllabic, alternatively disyllabic
 one form can often represent multiple expressions
o rep – reputation, representative, repetition
 usually based on the first element, less commonly on the second element
o ad(vert)
o demo
o disco
o fax
o phone
o photo
o porn
o ref
o rep
 clippings are used to express familiarity (of the speaker) with the base word
 they are mostly part of the informal register but may occasionally enter the neutral
register
  sometimes they become widely known and used, sometimes they remain used only
by a handful of speakers
INITIAL CLIPPING (APHERESIS)
 the initial part of the word is cut off
o gator <- alligator
o bot <- robot
o phone <- telephone
o net <- internet

FINAL CLIPPING (APOCOPE)

 the final part of the word is cut off
o gas <- gasoline
o croc <- crocodile
o exam <- examination
o pop <- popular

INITIAL + FINAL CLIPPING

 initial and final clipping can often be combined
 fridge <- refrigerator
 flu <- influenza
 shrink <- head-shrinker
MEDIAL CLIPPING
 the middle part is cut off
 a) result of a gradual process of elision
o ma‘am <- madam
o fancy <- fantasy
 b) the final stem is clipped while the word retains the functional morpheme
o maths <- mathematics
o stats <- statistics
COMPLEX CLIPPING
 the result of complex clipping is a clipped compound
 these are very common in slangs or professional jargons
o cablegram (cable telegram), pulmotor (pulmonary motor)

BLENDING OR COMPLEX CLIPPING

 How is blending different from complex clipping?
 1) according to Bauer: if the word has a single-word stress, it is a blend; if it
has a compound stress, it is clipping
 2) in a blend, the two original elements may have independent meaning
(boatel); in a clipped compound, the two original elements already functioned
as a compound (pulmotor)
BLENDING
 What is blending?
 Blending is a process of creating a new lexeme by combination of parts of lexemes
that are not themselves morphemes
 blending is also prosodically motivated
 a great loss of phonetic material (also orthographic)
 it can be found mostly in advertising or product-naming
  semantically, the two elements are not an attested compound (unlike in the case of
a clipped compound)
o the relationship of its constituents can be described as that of the elements in
a copulative compound (singer-songwriter)
 the two elements are almost always two nouns
o smog, Czenglish, modem, guesstimate (also a verb), brunch
 Plag argues that despite a popular belief that blends are irregular, we can find a
certain degree of regularity
 a general rule is that the first part of the first element is combined with the second
part of the second element
 A B + C D -> A D
 either B or C can appear in its full form
 guesstimate
o B is fully represented both phonologically and orthographically
o C is fully represented phonologically
 blends that do not respect the A D structure are rare (only about 4-6% according to
Kubozono 1991)

BLENDING PATTERN IN MONOSYLLABIC WORDS

BLENDING PATTERN IN POLYSYLLABIC WORDS

SIZE OF THE BLEND

 size of the blend is another important aspect to look at
 it is the second element that defines the length of the blend
 boatel
 guesstimate
 smog
 brunch
 Czenglish

ABBREVIATION
 What is abbreviation?
 The general definition is: A process of shortening an existing word .
 strictly speaking, abbreviation is a general process which can result in various
products
 1) abbreviations – abbr., no., prof.
 2) acronyms – NATO, radar, laser
 3) initialisms – FBI, CD, TV, CEO
 4) contractions – ltd, Revd, Dr
 it is a shortened form of an existing word
o “Brevity is your friend.“ – Sheldon Lee Cooper
 prof., no., vol., ed., co., inc.
 abbreviations are usually ended with a full stop (period)

ACRONYMS
 acronyms are words created by combination of first letters of its constituents (words)
 NATO, laser (originally light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), asap,
START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks)
 regular reading rules are applied, i.e. they are read as a proper word

INITIALISMS
 initialisms are words created by combination of first letters of its constituents (words)
 CIA, ID, VIP, RAF
 these words are read as individual letters
  compare:
o ASAP vs asap, VAT vs vat

CONTRACTIONS
 contractions are shortened forms of words created by omission of internal
letters/sounds
 Dr, -n‘t, Mrs,
 they end with the last letter of the original word, therefore usually no full stop

LATIN ABBREVIATIONS
 latin abbreviations are common in scientific writing, they are sometimes ambiguous
 main examples:
 etc, etc. = et cetera (and so on, and more)
 eg; e.g. = exempli gratia (for example)
 ie; i.e. = id est (that means, in other words, that is (to say))
 the desired production is realizing them as whole words; alternatively, they can be
read as individual letters
LECTURE 9 – PHRASEOLOGY
 What is phraseology?
 It is a study of set/fixed word groups or multi-word units (phrases).

PHRASEMES
 What is a phraseme?
 Phrasemes are multi-word expressions that are comprised of smaller units which
carry a meaning different from the meaning of its individual components.
 e.g. idioms, phrasal verbs
LEXICAL VALENCY
 best described as the aptness of a word to enter combinations with other words
 also called collocability
 it is restricted by the inner structure of the word-stock
 compare near-synonyms lift and raise
o lift: a curse, sb up, sb‘s mood
o raise: the bet, one‘s arm, children
 it can also be restricted in the meanings of the polysemantic items of word groups
 heavy ‘difficult to digest‘
o food, meal, dinner
o *not ham or cheese
 collocations that o ccur frequently (or are even overused) are called cliché
 this tendency can also be called ‘habitual collocation‘
o fallen angel, spoilt brat
 lexical word-patterns can be different in each language
 compare:
o common sense zdravý/selský rozum
o real deal skutečná věc

GRAMMATICAL VALENCY
 the aptness of a lexical item (word) to enter a specific syntactic structure
 also called colligation
 justify: sth or doing sth (not *to do sth)
  clever at sth (but not *intelligent at sth)
 these structures are called word-group patterns
 word-group patterns can be different in each language
 compare:
o to discuss sth diskutovat o něčem
(verb)+(noun) (verb)+(prep.)+(noun)
o to operate on sb operovat někoho
(verb)+(prep.)+(noun) (verb)+(noun)
1) SYNTACTIC FORMULA
syntactic formula is the arrangement of members in word groups based on their part
of speech
a useful instrument an important task
(det.) A + N (det.) A + N
to see a man to trust a plan
V + (det.) N V + (det.) N
2) SYNTACTIC PATTERN
syntactic pattern assumes a head-word of the whole word group around which the
rest of the members are organised
to see a man to trust a plan
to see + (det.) N to trust + (det.) N
 according to syntactic pattern, word groups are classified as predicative or non-
predicative

PREDICATIVE WORD GROUPS

 syntactic structure of predicative word groups resembles that of a sentence
 Kate speaks, a table stands
NON-PREDICATIVE WORD GROUPS
 the majority of the word groups is non-predicative
 1) subordinate
 a man of his word, a yellow umbrella
 2) coordinate
 apples and pears, peace and quiet
STRUCTURAL CLASSIFICATION
1) endocentric word groups
 there is a central member whose distribution is identical to the distribution of
the whole word group
 bad at sports – an adjectival phrase
 a catchy song – a noun phrase
2) exocenctric word groups
 they don‘t have any central member and their distribution is different from its
members
 side by side (N + Prep. + N) = Adv.
TYPES OF MEANING OF WORD GROUPS
1) the lexical meaning
 ‘combined lexical meaning‘ of the member-words
 the meaning of the word group is more dominant than the meaning of its
components
 a long day
 2) the structural meaning
 it is the meaning conveyed by the arrangement of its member-words, i.e.
pattern
 male alpha vs alpha male
 ring finger vs finger ring
THE MEANING OF WORD GROUPS
 the lexical and structural meanings are inseparable and interdependent
 consider:
 all day long, all night long, all season long, all nightmare long, all the sun long
 all function as ‘a unit of time‘ but all the nouns still carry their semantic
meaning also included in other word-groups
 The meaning of word groups (phrases) is derived from both the meaning of its
member-words and their pattern of arrangement.
SEMANTIC MOTIVATION IN WORD GROUPS
 1) when a word group is lexically motivated, the meaning is deducible from the
meaning of its constituents
o light weight, a strong guy, a difficult task
 2) when a word group is lexically non-motivated, the meaning is not deducible from
the meaning of its components
o grey area, take place, thin ice

THE DEGREE OF MOTIVATION

 the degree of motivation varies with each phrase
 consider:
 black market, black death, black widow, black dress
 the degree of motivation is also based on the interpretation of the speaker/listener
 certain word groups can be seen as either motivated or non-motivated
 walk in the park, get lucky
 lexically motivated word groups are usually called free word groups
 word-groups that are only partially motivated or completely non-motivated are
referred to as phraseological units or idioms

LECTURE 10 – PHRASEOLOGY – PART TWO

PHRASEOLOGICAL UNIT
 What is a phraseological unit?
 It is a non-motivated (idiomatic) or partially motivated unit constructed analogically
to free word groups and brought into corellation with words, both semantically and
syntactically.
 Corpus perspective: Any combination of words, no matter how loose.
SIMILARITY AND DIFFERENCE
 syntactic and semantic similarity and/or difference between the following units
 A) phraseological units vs words
 B) phraseological units vs free word groups

STRUCTURAL CRITERION
  1) Divisibility
 similarity between phraseological units and free word groups
 both are comprised of structurally separate elements
 each element can change its grammatical form – but there are limitations,
especially in phraseological units
o cold fish -> coldest fish or cold fishes
 2) Integrity
 words, on the other hand, are structurally integral
 adding a new grammatical element applies to the word as a whole
o teacup -> teacups (not *teascup or *teascups)
 3) Structural invariability
 phraseological units offer very limited to no variability when it comes to their
structure
o run (a)round like a headless chicken
 adding elements to an existing phraseological unit or changing the
grammatical structure of any of its components may destroy the meaning
o call to arms vs call me to arms
 free word groups are usually fully variable
SEMANTIC CRITERION
 1) Figurativeness
 the meaning of phraseological units is constructed by the combination of all
the elements and conveys a more or less stable concept
o simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche (= types of transference)
 the degree of transference varies and it may affect either single elements or
the whole unit
o the small hours, swan song
 cultural component is also important in phraseological units
 they often mirror unique or historical experience of that particular nation
o red tape, heads or tails
 free word groups show great semantic independence
 the meaning of the whole word-group is built by all the elements which keep
their meaning – no transference
o to blow the whistle (can also be idiomatic), a nice room
 2) Semantic unity
 phraseological units can often be replaced by a single word with a similar (or
identical) semantic concept
o to feed the fish (with sb) = to kill (sb esp. on sea)
o thick in the head = stupid
o good for nothing = worthless

SYNTACTIC CRITERION
 syntactically, phraseological units are very similar to words and word-groups
 they can occupy various clause-element slots

SYNTACTIC FUNCTIONS
 1) Subject
 narrow escape, first night
 2) Predicate
  to act a fool, to sleep with the fishes
 3) Attribute
 high and mighty, as good as dead
 4) Adverbial
 off the record, hand in hand
SYNTACTIC CLASSIFICATION
 classification of phraseological units
 1) substantive, verbal, adjectival, adverbial, interjectional
 2a) coordinative
o nice and easy, neck and crop, out and about
 2b) subordinative
o too big for your breeches, to lose your patience

SYNTACTIC FEATURES
 Phraseological units are:
 a ready-made reproduction,
 morphologically stable,
 structurally divisible,
 lexically permanent (construction),
 semantically united,
 syntactically fixed.
SEMANTIC STRUCTURE
 in phraseological units, the semantic structure consists of macrocomponents of
meaning
 There are 7 principal macrocomponents according to Zykova (2008).
MACROCOMPONENTS OF MEANING
 1) Denotational (descriptive)
 the information about the objective reality (denotatum – the thing it refers
to)
 also called the ‘literal meaning‘
 2) Evaluational
 what value the speaker sees in the object or phenomenon of reality
o a) positive: home sweet home
o b) negative: the lion‘s den
o c) neutral: in the flesh
 it depends on our perspective and empathy
 3) Motivational
 notion of ‘the inner form‘
 the relation between the literal meaning and figurative – transference
 to have broad shoulders
 4) Emotive
 subjective modality, feeling-relation to denotatum
 the range is usually approval-disapproval
o a leading light in sth (approval)
o to lead a cat and dog life (disapproval)
 5) Stylistic
 the communicative register in which the phraseological unit is used
 o sick at heart (formal)
o pass by on the other side (neutral)
o be bored to death (informal, casual)
 6) Grammatical
 contains the information about all possible forms of the phraseological unit
o Achilles‘ heel, the heel of Achilles
o to be in deep water, to be in deep waters
o to take sb‘s breath away, to take away sb‘s breath
 7) Gender
 determined by the structure or semantics of the phraseological unit
o every Ed, John and Harry
o to wash one‘s dirty linen in public
o to feel like royalty

GENERAL CLASSIFICATION
 phraseological fusions
 very little motivation (synchronically)
o white elephant
o as mad as a hatter
 phraseological unities
 partially non-motivated
 the meaning can be understood through the metaphoric meaning
o to bend the knee
o to beat around the bush
 phraseological collocations
 motivated, one of the members often keeps the literal meaning
 here substitution of the literal element may be possible
o to meet the requirements (demand, needs)
o to attain success (have, lose)

CLASSIFICATION BASED ON ORIGIN

 1) native phraseological units
 terminological and professional
o fall in(to) line
 British literature
o How goes the enemy?
 British traditions and customs
o baker‘s dozen
 superstitions and legends
o a black sheep
 historical facts and events
o to do a Thatcher
 facts of everyday life
o to get out of wood
 2) borrowed phraseological units
 the Holy Script
o the kiss of Judas
 ancient legends and myths (religion, culture)
o to cut the Gordian knot
  facts and events of world history
o to meet one‘s Waterloo
 variants of English (dialects)
o a heavy hitter
 other languages (translations)
o second to none

LECTURE 11 – PHRASEOLOGY PART THREE

PROBLEMS WITH DEFINITION: PHRASEOLOGY
 the term phraseology is used with three main meanings each of which is unique in its
own regard
 it is usually easy to understand which meaning is employed in the text
1) PHRASEOLOGY: SUBFIELD OF LINGUISTICS
 Phraseology: ‘The study of the structure, meaning and use of word combinations.‘
(Cowie: 1994)
 ‘phraseology has only in recent years become acknowledged as an academic
discipline in its own right (see Cowie 2006; Granger and Paquot 2008)‘ (Ebeling and
Hasselgard: 2015)

2) PHRASEOLOGY: STRUCTURAL PROPERTY OF LANGUAGE

 Phraseology: ‘Combinations of words that customarily occur.’ (Kjellmer: 1991)
 ‘Phraseology is a very general term used to describe the tendency of words, and
groups of words, to occur more frequently in some environments than in others.
(Hunston: 2011)
 also called phrasicon (compare to lexicon)

3) PHRASEOLOGY: THE USE OF MULTI-WORD UNITS

 Phraseology: ‘phraseology is one of the aspects that unmistakably distinguishes native
speakers of a language from L2 learners’ (Granger and Bestgen: 2014)
 ‘Although no other phraseology is anywhere near as frequent, other noticeable
phraseologies include MAKE the assumption that (five instances) and a set of
instances that indicate a negative evaluation of the assumption.‘ (Hunston: 2011)
APPROACHES TO PHRASEOLOGY
 there are two distinct approaches to phraseology:
o 1) the phraseological approach, also called taxonomic approach
o 2) the frequency-based approach, also called probabilistic approach

TAXONOMIC APPROACH
 Phraseology = subfield of linguistics
 taxonomic = developing formal taxonomies of phraseological units
 notable linguists: Cowie, Čermák, Mel‘čuk, and many others
PROBLEMS WITH THE TAXONOMIC APPROACH
 What is the difference between figurative and pure idioms?
 categorization is often problematic
 What is the degree of fixedness?
 Are free combinations really free?
 acceptability judgements: you can/cannot say *this*
 unreliable, no account for change

A KEY QUESTION
 Is it possible to distinguish between phraseological and non-phraseological units?
 YES IF:
 You are a generativist (language is generated by grammar rules).
 You believe in a traditional two-way system: ‘Words and rules‘.
 NOT IF:
 You are a cognitive/usage-based linguist (rules are generalizations about what
people do with the language)
 You believe in a one-way system that is incompatible with the traditional
view.
THE PROBALISTIC APPROACH
 Phraseology = a characteristic feature of language (not a subfield of linguistics)
 probabilistic = the tendency of words to occur in preferred sequences (sometimes
against the rules)
 Sinclair (1966): ‘There are virtually no impossible collocations, but some are much
more likely than others‘
 notable linguists: Sinclair, Hunston, Granger…
 this approach has very little interest in working with taxonomies of phraseological
units –> no formal division
 terminology:
o phraseologies
o units of meaning
o collocational frameworks
o N-grams
o lexical bundles
o clusters
 evaluation of what is acceptable is absent
 using a statistical scale based on corpus data:
o frequent
o statistically significant
o attested
o rare
o not attested
 impossible to fully reject the two-way system theory
 Hunston (2002): ‘Phraseology alone cannot account for how sentences or utterances
are made up.‘
 Sinclair (1991): ‘The model of a highly generalized formal syntax, with slots into
which fall neat lists of words, is suitable only in rare uses and specialized texts.‘
LEXICAL PRIMING
 ‘collocation is a psychological association between words … and is evidenced by their
occurrence together in corpora more often than is explicable in terms of random
distribution‘
 ‘(…) the semantic and grammatical relationships a word or word sequence
participates in are particular to that word or word sequence and do not derive from
prior self-standing semantic and grammatical systems, though they do contribute to
the posterior creation of those systems‘
 Hoey does not use the term phraseology, he works with the term naturalness
CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR
 is an alternative one-way system approach to language
 langauge is seen as a large inventory of constructions
 a construct-i-con
 it is a usage-based theory
 everything is phraseological – makes phraseology look like a meaningless concept
SUMMARY
 all the possible views are useful and important to understand
 it is up to every individual to choose their own view about language (fundamental
beliefs) and use terms consistently with that view
 LECTURE 12 – LEXICALIZATION
LEXICALIZATION
 What is lexicalization?
 numerous ideas and approaches
 often mixed up with institutionalization
 Lipka: “I (…) define lexicalization as the phenomenon that a complex lexeme once
coined tends to become a single complete lexical unit, a simple lexeme.“ (Lipka,
1992a: 95)
 Kastovsky sees lexicalization as a process where: “…complex lexemes (or WF
syntagmas) or syntactic groups may become fixed parts of the vocabulary with
formal and/or semantic properties which cannot be completely derived or predicted
from their constituents or the pattern of formation.“ (Lipka, 1992b: 6)
 Leech: “‘Lexicalization‘ is the process of ‘finding words‘ for particular sets of semantic
features, and has the psychological role […] of ‘packaging‘ a certain semantic
content, so that it can be manipulated syntactically as an undivided unit.“ (Leech,
1981: 188)
 It is a term that possibly describes a different phenomenon in various sub-disciplines.
 in Generative Semantics, it is the process of choosing lexemes to represent an
abstract semantic idea
o a person who loves dogs = a dog-lover
 It is a diachronic process in which the complex lexeme or syntagmatic unit undergoes
demotivation and idiomatization (semantic change).
 frequent use is important for lexicalization to take place
 diachronic approach is necessary to describe the synchronic state of the lexeme –
‘lexicalizedness‘

IDOMATIZATION
 the process of a word establishing a certain meaning that is not retrievable from its
morphological components (Bauer et. al. 2015)
 the loss of semantic link; compare:
 child vs childhood
 heal vs health
RESULTS OF LEXICALIZATION
 often words that are difficult to analyse using the synchronic approach
 warmth – the suffix -th is no longer productive
 in general, lexicalization is a process that essentially stems from a natural tendency to
describe a single abstract notion with a single lexical unit
 the degree if idiomaticity (or non-motivation) is a scale and is individual for every
lexeme
 a) phonological changes
 fireman, cupboard, Wednesday
 b) semantic changes
 blackbird, pain in the neck, holiday
 c) graphemic changes
 i.e., fo‘c‘sle

SEMANTIC CHANGES
 the addition of general or idiosyncratic semantic features
  HABITUAL, PROFESSIONAL features
 gambler, writer, sleepwalker
 but
 streetwalker
 loss of features is also possible
 saddler
 metaphor and metonymy
 tick, dogfight
EXTRALINGUISTIC CHANGES
 changes in the world cause the demotivation
 blackboard, sail, ship
LOAN WORDS
 loan words also become demotivated and are often changed in terms of
pronunciation
 robot, nice
INSTITUTIONALIZATION
 What is institutionalization?
 Lipka: “The integration of a lexical item, with a particular form and meaning, into the
existing stock of words as a generally acceptable and current lexeme.“ (Lipka, 1992b:
8)
 Generally, it is the process in which the language, and mainly its (native) speakers,
accepts the lexeme as an attested expression, which then becomes a part of the lexis
of that language.
 It may appear as a single unit in dictionaries of idioms, phrases, or as an alternative
figurative meaning to already established meanings of an existing word.
 it is more restricted to regional variants, but also social and stylistic varieties
 this definition may vary based on whether the language is managed by a legal
institution or not
THE CONCEPT OF „NORM“
 lexicalized complex lexemes are difficult to assign to the levels of language
established by Saussure
 1) they don‘t belong to langue (systemic word-formation types)
 2) they also don‘t belong to parole (specific, concrete realizations of the
system)
 Coseriu proposed an intermediate level: a norm of the language
 this level is not restricted to the lexis – irregular inflections, unsystemic realization of
sounds (conventional)
 LEXICOLOGY II
1) FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS
1) Communication
2) Semiotics
3) Communicative channels
4) Study of meaning

1) COMMUNICATION
 Meaning is studied in the context of communication; person-person, driver-car,
programmer-computer.
 ‘stimulus-response pattern‘ (Cruse: 2004)
 The main idea is the transfer of information.
A SIMPLE MODEL

 The signal is always transmitted through a chosen channel:

 a) Auditory channel (speaking)
 b) Visual channel (writing, sign language)
 c) Tactile (hmatový) channel (Braille)
TRANSMITTED VS RECEIVED SIGNAL
 Since the signal travels, it practically cannot reach the receiver without any change
 Changes to the signal are called noise.
 distortion, fading, other sounds, irrelevant stimuli, etc.
DEGREE OF REDUNDANCY
 Cruse: “Language is roughly 50 per cent redundant.“
 The information is predictable and reconstructable even with a significant loss.
 The information appears more than once within a single signal.
 We are able to predict or understand without some information
THREE MANDATORY LEVELS
 Leech argues that three levels are necessary to achieve linguistic competence, i.e. to
be able to construct and understand utterances.
 ENCODE: semantics -> syntax -> phonology
  DECODE: phonology -> syntax -> semantics
LINGUISTIC UTTERANCE BY LEECH

ASPECTS OF MEANING
 a) Speaker‘s meaning
 intended message
 b) Hearer‘s meaning
 inferred message
 c) Sign meaning
 properties of the signal that make it more apt (výstižný) for conveying
(sdělení) the desired message/meaning
 the ‘objective‘ meaning
2) SEMIOTICS
 It is a theoretical discipline that deals with creating meanings.
 Study of signs, sign processes, shifts of meaning (figurativeness, symbolism, etc.)
 Also studies non-linguistic sign systems.
SIGN ICONICITY
 a) Iconic = the unit somehow reflexes the meaning.
 b) Arbitrary = there is no correspondence between the meaning and the form of the
sign.
 Compare Arabic 3 and Roman III.
 To some degree, it is always arbitrary.
 Onomatopoeic words (zvukomalebná slova) - express iconicity through sounds
(meow, roar, chirp, boom, tick) (click, meow, shoot, boom)
 Arbitrariness in the vocabulary is necessary because it helps the language achieve
universal expressivity. (Cruse: 2004)
NATURAL SIGNS
 Genetically inherited – they do not have to be learnt (maturation may be required
before they appear).
 Facial expressions (výrazy obličeje), postural and proxemic signs, vocal indications of
emotions – cross-cultural.
DISCRETENESS
  Continuous signs vary in their form, it gradually changes with the evolution of
meaning.
 iconic signs are continuous
 no linguistically explicit discrete signs
 Discrete signs have fixed shapes/forms, they cannot change form – limited inventory.
 arbitrary signs are discrete
 most of the words (save onomatopoeic) are arbitrary
3) COMMUNICATIVE CHANNELS
 Language is the obvious channel used for communication between/among people.
 The accompanying signs fall into two main categories:
a. a) paralinguistic – we need language for the interpretation
b. b) non-linguistic – we don’t need language for the interpretation
PARALINGUISTIC SIGN
 1) Modulation
 added emotive and/or attitudinal aspect (we add some emotions)
 2) Punctuation
 used to segment the speech, allows easier processing (we divide and separate
the text)
 3) Illustration
 depicting the key element in the message – gestures supporting words (we
add some gestures which support our words)
4) STUDY OF MEANING

 Plenty of disciplines concern themselves with meaning, each in its own way.
 A lot of notions overlap but can at the same time be principally different.
VARYING APPROACH
 Philosophy asks how it is possible for X to mean Y and how such connection is
achieved.
 Psychology deals with mental processes involved in encoding/decoding messages and
how meaning is represented in our mind.
 Semiotics treats language as one of many sign systems and is concerned with
marginal aspects of signification.
 Linguistics sees native speakers and their semantic intuition as the key element;
relates meaning to varied surface forms
2) SEMANTICS
GOALS OF LINGUISTICS IN THE FIELD OF SEMANTICS
 Specify and describe meaning of words
 Types of meaning
 New vs old meaning
 Result of combination of meanings
 Variability of meaning in utterances/situations
 Systematicity and structure of lexis
 Role of context
LEXICAL SEMANTICS content + lexicon, vocabulary
A field of study based on meaning but also relation of between them!! And
how i tis developed.

=lexicosemantics (lexical - words, semantics - meaning)

- it studies words with lexical meaning, not grammatical

 Also called Lexicosemantics.

 Lexical = related to words.
 Semantics = study of meaning.
 Focus on content words rather than grammatical words.
 A sub-branch of semantics as it deals with lexical items within the lexicon.
 Syntax-semantic interface – relation between meaning of lexical units and the
syntactic structure.
GRAMMATICAL SEMANTICS
 It focuses on the meaning of grammatical units.
 Grammatical elements must be of general nature and offer high degree of
collocability (wide distribution).
 In general, grammar ought to be universally applicable while individual lexical items
prefer certain combinations.
GRAMMATICAL VS LEXICAL UNITS
 Grammatical units are therefore closed-set items. They don’t carry the lex. Meaning.
They just help us to specify the relation between the units.
 Lexical units are open-set items. They carry the lex. Meaning.
 Although presented as a dichotomy, it is more a varying scale in reality (e.g.
prepositions).
INTERACTION OF LS WITH OTHER LINGUISTIC DISCIPLINES
 Theoretical
 phonology, morphology, lexicology*, syntax, semantics, pragmatics,
orthography, semiotics, stylistics
 Descriptive
 etymology, sociolinguistics, historical l.
 Applied and Experimental
 computational l.(NLP), internet l. (Crystal), language acquisition, language
education (EFL, ESL), etc.
TASKS OF LEXICAL SEMANTICS
 1) Description of content
 The meaning of a lexical item.
 2) Contextual variation
 The meaning can vary with context; it is not random.
 This area is further explored in more detail in pragmatics.
 3) Sense relations and structures
 structured groupings of words (lexical fields)
 recurring meaning relations (relational semantics)
 4) Word meaning + syntactic properties
  Are syntactic properties controlled by their meanings or are they independent
of them?
WORD
 A precise definition is almost impossible.
 Various aspects and different uses of the term make it difficult for a single definition
to encompass every possible sense the term is used to represent across disciplines.
 The basic notion of people is that certain meaning is bound to a specific word – not
wrong, but drastically simplified.
 This notion may negatively affect vocabulary acqusition and subsequently hinder the
ability to actively use lexical items.
SEMASIOLOGY VS ONOMASIOLOGY
 Two opposite approaches to lexis:
 1) Semasiology explores the meaning of a word.
 Question: What does this word mean?
 2) Onomasiology looks for the word that best expresses a certain concept.
 Question: What is the word for *this*?
PROTOTYPICAL WORD
- = the basic word which can be repositioned and which has one lexical root
 A minimal permutable element (Cruse, 2004).
 It can be repositioned in a sentence (as far as syntactic restrictions allow).
Paul sat on the couch.
On the couch sat Paul.
It was the couch where Paul sat.
 It is uninterruptible, i.e. cannot be reordered.
 It has one lexical root.
recovery
 Compounds may have multiple lexical roots but are generally not seen as
prototypical words but rather a combination of two or more prototypical
words.
THE TERM ‘WORD’
 As Matthews (1991) states, the term word can be used in three different senses.
 1) phonological/orthographic = word form
 a sequence of sounds, syllables and letters
 dies/died, man/men
 2) abstract unit = lexeme
 dies and died are both the same lexeme: die
 Lexemes are the main focus of Lexical Semantics.
 Lexical items with semantic meaning are called content words.
 nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs
 3) grammatical = word
 the same sequence of sounds/letter may represent different
grammatical word
 hit can be a) present, b) past simple, c) past participle cost
WORD IN LS
 It is enough to distinguish between lexemes and word forms.
 The difference between derivational and inflectional affixes is crucial here.
  Compare:
 build, builds, building, built (lex: BUILD)
 rebuild, rebuilds, rebuilding, rebuilt (lex: REBUILD)
WORD MEANING
 While words carry certain meaning, they can hardly communicate a message
individually (unless the rest of the message is implicit, i.e. recoverable from the
context).
 Words are thus ‘blocks‘ used for ‘building‘ a proposition which is semantically
complex (argument + predicate).
‘POSSIBLE’ WORD MEANING
 When forming a proposition, words enter what is called semantic combination.
 Words become components of this combination.
 a) independent components
 b) dependent components (subordination)
CHAIN OF DEPENDENCY
 An independent component determines the semantic combination of the whole
proposition – it is the most important member.
 fairly difficult question
 fairly -> difficult -> question
 fairly difficult; difficult question; *fairly question
CHAIN OF DEPENDENCY
 Dependent members are attached to the independent element based on semantic
compatibility.
 The chain has to be continuous.
 Compare:
a big car a very --- car
a very big car *a very car
a huge car *a very huge car
WORD MOTIVATION
 The relationship between the structure (phonological and morphemic) and the
meaning.
 There are three main types of motivation.
 1) Phonetic motivation – a direct connection between the meaning of the word and
its phonetic form. (Relation between the form of the unit and its meaning)
 purr, cuckoo, click (boom, pop, click, shoot, meow)
 Some sounds are emotionally expressive.
 the cluster –sh (swush, rush, dash) and –ing (swing, ring, fling)
 2) Morphological motivation – a direct connection between the lexical meaning of
the morphemes, their arrangement and the word‘s meaning. Relation between the
lexical meaning of the morphemes, their order and the word’s meaning)
finger-ring vs ring-finger
overtake vs takeover (turn-down, down-turn, lookout-outlook)
 3) Semantic motivation – a direct connection between the central and marginal
meanings of the word. The relation between the central and marginal meanings of
the word
foot of a mountain brainwash
 neck of a bottle chicken leg of a table, mouth of the river

3) TYPES OF MEANING

COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
 The analysis of semantic features of a lexical unit.
 cat
 Components: [+animate] [+mammal] [+feline] [+adult] … [-canine] [-juvenile] …
[+reserved?] [+cunning?] [+opportunistic?]
GEOFFREY LEECH
 Aside from intended and interpreted meaning based on Grice‘s pragmatic account
(1975), Leech classified 3 basic types of meaning: conceptual, associative and
thematic.
 Associative meaning is further divided into 5 categories, therefore we are looking at a
total of 7 types of meaning in this framework.
1) CONCEPTUAL MEANING
- Also called denotative or cognitive.
- It is an integral part of every lexical item and it is fairly stable, which
cannot be said about the other types.
- Meaning which we can find in dictionaries and which is almost stable.
- king = [+human] [+male] [+ruler] [+adult]/[-adult]?
- wife = [+human] [+female] [+married] (to a man?) [+adult]/[-adult]?
2) ASSOCIATIVE MEANING (it’s based on our experience and is unstable)
 Unlike conceptual meaning, associative meaning is unstable.
 It is based on our cognitive networking, experience, attitudes, views, etc.
satan = [+fallen angel]? [+demon]? [+male]? [+ruler]? [+evil]? [+real]?
 Associative is a harbouring term for a lot of phenomena.
CONNOTATIVE MEANING (the real world experience)
- What the word refers to, also called the real world experience.
- The set of connotative meanings is very individual – an open set.
- woman = [+having a womb]
- [+subject to maternal instincts]?
- [+experienced in cooking]?
- [+likes gossiping]?
- ?[+emotional] [+irrational] [+bad driver] [+empathetic]?
SOCIAL MEANING
 Conveys social circumstances of the word or utterance.
 Notable pronunciation differences, word selection, etc.
 Crystal and Davy (1995) list 6 basic subtypes of social meaning.
 1) dialect – regional differences, also sociolect
 2) time – language of a specific time period
 3) province – science, law, sport
 4) status – polite, colloquial, slang
 5) modality – lecture, presentation, joke
 6) singularity – language of a specific author/person
 Compare:
They chucked a stone at the cops, and then did a bunk with the loot.
 They threw a stone at the officers, and then ran away with the money.
After casting a stone at the police, they absconded with the stolen money.
ILLOCUTIONARY MEANING sth what transforms statement to command or request.
 Primarily a pragmatic matter, but sometimes included in the social meaning.
It‘s getting very hot in here.
 The conceptual meaning here is a mere assertion, but in social
communication, it is often a request or even a command.
AFFECTIVE MEANING (It depends on the speaker, what are his attitudes and feelings -
polite / impolite)
 How the word or utterance reflects the speaker‘s attitude or personal feelings.
 We can approach the expression of our feelings differently.
I‘m sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if you would be so kind and lower your voice a
little. Thank you.
Will you shut the fuck up already!
REFLEXIVE MEANING (It’s hard to recognize the meaning, especially when one of the
meaning is taboo)
 Applies to words with multiple conceptual meanings.
 It relies on concepts the speaker associates with one of the conceptual meanings.
 Certain words can be strongly suggestive, especially when one of the concepts is
taboo.
erection, intercourse, wood, junk, sausage, pussy
COLLOCATIVE MEANING (1 meaning is common for more words, it depends of the usage)
pretty x handsome
 It is based on associations drawn from the word‘s combination with other words –
lexical valency and semantic prosody (Sinclair, 1991).
 pretty vs handsome
 Both mean ‘good-looking‘ but imply slight differences in meaning.
pretty: girl, boy, village,
flower
handsome: boy, car, man,
coat
 Style is also fairly restrictive in
collocations, but all across the board
in general.
mount a steed, get on a horse, mount a
horse?, get on a steed?
 Generally, we can say that
collocative meaning is often
idiosyncratic (i.e. there is little logic
to be sought).
3) THEMATIC MEANING
 The way the speaker/writer
organises the message – order,
focus, emphasis. This is directly
related to the theme-rheme clause
organisation (FSP).
  Passive and active voice are often conceptually identical, but differ in meaning.
Nokia invented text-messaging.
Text-messaging was invented by Nokia.
 Focus and emphasis can be achieved with different grammatical constructions or
intonation and stress manipulation.
I love John. = It‘s John who I love.
I love John. = Love is what I feel towards John.
He did it. He did it.

D. ALLAN CRUSE
 Cruse lists two general types of meaning: descriptive and non-descriptive.
 This is in the broadest sense possible.
1) DESCREPTIVE MEANING
Descriptive non-descriptive

Descriptive – describes something, literal meaning (ve slovníku, nezávislý na kontextu) (snowy,
sunny) COCK

Non-descriptive – don’t descript anything (interjections etc. – hmm, oops) (našich asociací,
urážlivý x nicneříkající) COCK, PUSSY (one of them offensive, rude)

describes something, it carries literal meaning (snowy, sunny), non-descriptive don’t

describe anything (interjections etc. – hmm, oops)
- Originally introduced by Lyons.
- Also labeled conceptual (Leech), ideational (Halliday), referential, logical or
propositional (various linguists).
CHARACTERISTICS OF DESCREPTIVE MEANING
1) The proposition is true or false.
2) The expression refers to what we have in mind.
3) It is objective – displaced = not tied to here-and-now (context or situation).
4) It is fully conceptualized.
5) It is subject to negation and question.
DIMENSIONS
A) Intrinsic
 QUALITY (time, quality, quantity, place, thing, state, action, manner, etc.)
 INTENSITY (big vs huge, tired vs exhausted)
 SPECIFICITY (dog vs animal, red vs colour)
 VAGUENESS (middle-aged vs 40, form a circle)
 BASICNESS (concrete vs abstract, basic vocabulary)
 VIEWPOINT (it‘s in front of me)
B) Relative
 NECESSITY and EXPECTEDNESS (dog ‘animal, barks, brown, sings, fish‘)
 SUFFICIENCY (‘has feathers‘ is sufficient to describe a bird, ‘breathes‘ is not)
 SALIENCE (foregrounding and backgrounding information: I read a book while
eating. vs I ate while reading a book.)
2) NON-DESCRIPTIVE MEANING
- EXPRESSIVE
 o expresses emotional state
o Some words have only expressive meaning and no descriptive meaning –
these are called expletives (ouch, damn, bloody)
o With stress, expressivity can be added to words which do not contain it
inherently (still, yet, already, tiny, huge, etc.)
o Inherently expressive words are usually pronounced emphatically.
- DIALECT
o a) Geographical
o b) Temporal
o c) Social
- REGISTER
o a) Field
o b) Mode
o c) Style

ANOMALY IN MEANING
 It is important to separate semantic anomaly from grammatical.
 Corrigibility – we know what the correct version should look like.
*I be hungry. -> I am hungry.
It‘s so big that I can‘t see it. (???)
 Also called semantic anomaly.
 Grammatically, the proposition is correct.
 It‘s so big that I can‘t see it.
 It is on the lexical level where we have to look for issues with the proposition.
It‘s so big that I can‘t see it. -> It‘s so tiny that I can‘t see it.
 Semantic anomaly can often be remedied or at least partially removed by adding or
manipulating context.
The table hit me! (I am unlucky and things around me often attack me in
order to cause me harm = my spatial awarness is bad.)
 Pure syntactic anomaly cannot usually be cured because we don‘t know where to
start.
TYPES OF ANOMALY
 Pleonasm – feeling of redundancy. (There is a very very big dog.)
Lucy punched him with her fist.
The car was stolen illegally.
 Dissonance – ill-matched meanings. (Pretty man)
He was only slightly dead.
They were shouting quietly.
 Zeugma – (one expression which relates to different semantic meanings - I took my
coat and my vacation)
 a single expressions to carry two semantic meanings (often punning).
Our dog expired on the same day as the milk.
The farmer grew potatoes, carrot, and bored.
 Improbability – something we do not believe or see as possible.
We have a giant ashtray for a president.
My computer is high again.
4)WORD MEANING BASED ON CONTEXT
CONTEXT = situation in which we interpretate the meaning.
 What is context?
 Cambridge dictionary: “The text or speech that comes immediately before and after a
particular phrase or piece of text and helps to explain its meaning.“
 It is a communicative event (focal event) around which the speakers organise their
utterances and which determines the interpretation of such utterances.
THE MEANING OF A WORD
 What is the (conceptual) meaning of a word?
 A seemingly simple question.
 Meaning can vary from context to context, sometimes greatly. The conceptual
meaning serves as a point of departure for any extension caused by the context.
 Consider:
dogs bark tree bark
a local bank a bank of a river
England wins England win
a winding forest path a path leading to my house
The baby can talk already! Talk to me, please!
DISTINCTNESS = To distinct the possible meanings of one unit.
 Words with possible multiple interpretations are subject to multiple readings.
 Is there a clear semantic boundary between the two possibilities? (discreteness)
 Are they mutually exclusive? (antagonism)
DISCRETENESS = semantic boundary between the possible options.
 How to tell which meaning is employed?
 1) The identity test. Finding the limitation which doesn’t allow one option)
 2) Independent truth conditions. Asking closed questions
 3) Independent sense relations. We can use antonyms to find out if it makes sense.
 4) Autonomy. (One of them is denied)
1) THE IDENTITY TEST
 A test to see if there are any contraints that do not allow different types of
interpretation.
 Light can mean ‘light in weight‘ or ‘light in colour‘.
John is carrying a light suitcase, and so is Jeff.
- We decide on one of the possible readings and apply it to both instances of
light – this is called identity constraint (an ‘either…or‘ situation).
- Compare with:
Our baby is smart, and so is theirs.
2) INDEPENDENT TRUTH CONDITIONS
 Discreteness of two readings can also be tested by asking a closed question.
 Was John carrying a light suitcase?
 Is it true that you have adopted a child?
3) INDEPENDENT SENSE RELATION
 Looking at sense relations of the word light, each of its meanings has a different
antonym: dark and heavy.
 Bark can be a meronym of tree (along with trunk, branch, leaf, etc.); or a
hyponym of ‘sounds made by dogs‘ (along with sniff, growl, whine, etc.)
 4) AUTONOMY
 One of the senses is usable when the other is explicitly denied.
o I prefer dogs to bitches.
o I prefer cats to dogs.
o *I prefer dogs to animals.

ANTAGONISM units which allow more readings - ambiguous

 Sentences that allow both readings can be ambiguous.
 In real-life communication, we apply ‘pragmatic disambiguation‘ to single out the
intended reading = context should provide enough clues.
 If it is impossible to choose between two readings, the sentence is deemed
unsatisfactory and clarification is sought.
We finally reached the bank.
SENSE
 One word can have multiple senses.
 bark, light, date
 Certain senses are more prominent without context (prototype theory) – we apply
those by default unless prompted to look for a non-prototypical sense.
ESTABLISHEMENT
 Established senses = centrwe can find them in dictionaries
 senses found in the dictionary, isolated.
Men are wearing roses, women tulips.
 Non-established senses = dictionary can’t tell us which meaning is participated
 senses obtained in context, not inherent to the word and not retrievable
outside that specific proposition in its context.
The roses will sit on the right.
LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
 Words are described as potentially ambiguous as long as they have at least two
established senses.
 There are two phenomena behind lexical ambiguity: polysemy and homonymy.
NON-LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
 Syntactic ambiguity (ambiguity within the syntactic structure - The chicken is ready
to eat)
I killed the man with the knife.
 Pragmatic ambiguity
Ginny saw a man with a suitcase. (The police are coming – for me? Down the
street?)

POLYSEMY
the relation between two or more units is motivated (mouth - of the river,
tongue - of a shoe, ring – shape, jewellery)
Homonymy - there is no relation (bow - knot, front of a ship, rose - flower x

rise)
 What is polysemy?
 It is a motivated paradigmatic sense relation between two or more senses.
 The relation can be linear or non-linear.
AUTOHYPONOMY
 The word has a general and a contextually restricted sense.
dog ‘a canine animal‘ or ‘a male dog‘
to drink ‘to swallow liquid‘ or ‘to drink alcohol‘
AUTOMERONYMY (řeknu část, myslím celek)
 Similar to autohyponymy, the narrow meaning refers to a subpart of the general
meaning.
door ‘the whole set-up‘ or ‘the leaf panel‘
AUTOSUPERORDINATION
 The narrow meaning is more common than the general one.
man ‘male person‘ or ‘person‘ or ‘human‘
cow ‘female bovine‘ or ‘bovine‘
AUTOHOLONYMY (řeknu celek, myslím část)
 The opposite to automeronymy.
arm ‘the part without a hand‘ or ‘the whole arm‘
body ‘the trunk‘ or ‘the whole body‘
NON-LINEAR POLYSEMY
 Metaphor (resemblance)
position, step, fight
 Metonymy (association)
I‘ve got mouths to feed.
Jane has her own wheels.
 Other cases
month ‘January‘ or ’31 days‘
SENSE MODULATION
 Central and peripheral senses are ready-made ‘concepts‘ which are selectively
activated by contexts.
SELECTION
 One of the concepts is selected while others supressed because of semantic clash
with the context.
 The other senses usually do not come to mind of the speaker or hearer.
COERCION (if we don’t know the sense, we try to guess the meaning based on literal
meaning)
 If none of the established senses is compatible with the context, we browse through
potential meaning extensions for a compatible reading – figurative language
(metaphor, metonymy, etc.)
 The new reading applied to the context is called coerced.
MODULATION
 If the sense modulation does not go beyond a single sense, it is called contextual
modulation.
 Two subtypes:
 Enrichment = adding meaning
 Impoverishment = removing meaning
HYPONYMIC ENRICHMENT
  The context adds features which are not explicitly expressed by the original meaning.
Our teacher gave birth to a baby.
The tea burnt my tongue.
They took all my stuff!
MERONYMIC ENRICHMENT
 Specification applies to a part of what the lexical item normally refers to.
The car has a puncture.
The tree is very dense.
IMPOVERISHMENT
 The lexical item is used in a vague sense.
The children stood in a circle.
We saw a couple of people.

5) LEXICAL FIELDS
STRUCTURAL SEMANTICS= it introduces the theory of lexical fields
 The idea of lexical fields goes back to the roots of structural semantics.
 A lexicon of a language is NOT a random collection of words loosely scattered
around.
STRUCTURE OF THE VOCABULARY
 There are two major types of structure.
 Linguistic – semantic structures.
 Psycholinguistic – associative links, priming characteristics.
 Linguistic and psycholinguistic techniques are complementary, they cannot exist
without one another.
 This idea was refused by structural semantics, embraced by cognitive semantics.
STRUCTURE
 Phonology structures phonemes into consonants and vowels; monophthongs,
diphthongs, triphthongs.
 Grammatical structuring are word families and word classes (derivational
morphology).
 Lexical structuring are lexical fields (also word fields).
HIERARCHIES
 Branching hierarchy is a paradigmatic structure in the vocabulary.
 The prototypical form:
TWO TYPES OF RELATION
 Relation of dominance – vertical:
o between A and B or C and F
o animal -> tiger; tiger -> tigress
 Relation of differentiation – horizontal:
 between B and C or D and E
TAXONOMIES
 Used to categorize our experience with the extralinguistic reality.
 Starting from general, going down to more specific concepts.
TAXONOMIC HIERARCHIES
 The topmost element is called the beginner, the levels below are then called
technical levels.
 We can also look at the distinctiveness of items at different levels: substantive level
(also called the basic level or the generic level).
THE BASIC LEVEL = the level where we can find the basic words, they are almost
morphologically simple, and common among people (gloves, t-shirt (clothes))
 Similarity of two members but also their difference.
 Going up means losing internal resemblance, going down external distinctiveness.
 This level is the most efficient for speakers in everyday conversation – used for
reference.
 Speakers form a clear visual image related to the word at a basic level.
 The words at this level tend to be morphologically simple and usually not
metaphorical.
OTHER LEVELS
 The levels above the basic one are often mass nouns:
 cutlery (silverware), furniture, underwear
 The levels below the basic one are often compounds:
 steak knife, armchair, paper towel
NUMBER OF LEVELS
 Anthropologists claim that six levels are usually the maximum – four levels are the
most frequent ‘depth‘.
 Technical vocabularies are not limited, the number of ‘deeper‘ levels can vary.
REAL-LIFE TAXONOMIES
 Far less straightforward, depends on the perspective.
o shoe is a hyponym of footwear; tennis shoe of sportswear
o Compare footwear and underwear to lingerie; evening wear, nightwear;
sportswear.
TAXONOMIES IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
 The English word animal in its everyday sense contrasts with fish or bird – French
does not have this distinction (Czech is similar to English).
 The English word nut falls in the category ‘dry fruit‘ – French does not have this
category, Czech?
 Compare also marmalade and jam.
MERONYMIC HIERARCHIES
  Called meronomy (partonomy).
 Meronymy is ‘a part of‘ relation of dominance, co-meronymy is the relation of
differentiation among meronyms.
 Certain details can be disputable.
 Is shoulder a part of the arm or the trunk or both?

LEVELS OF MERONOMY
 Unlike taxonomy, meronomy usually does not have clear generalized levels.
 A palm of a hand can be likened to a sole of a foot, but what about a belly button?
LEXICAL GAPS = word which could exist because it follows all the grammatical rules, but it doesn’t
exist (male cousin, female cousin; mother + father => parents, uncle + aunt (nothing)

Taxonomies often lack the beginner, meronomy never does.

 Lexical gaps occur in characteristic positions – often the main functional part.
 spoon: handle and ???
 Automeronymy – body, wheel.
CONTRASTS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
 Compare:
 arm, hand, palm vs paže, ruka, dlaň
LINEAR STRUCTURES
1) bipoles – complementaries
2) bipolar chains – antonymy
3) monopolar chains – degrees, stages, measures, ranks, sequences
4) grids – componential analysis, analogues
5) clusters – synonymy (centred and non-centred clusters)
6) word families – derivatives

6) PARADIGMATIC RELATIONS
Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations

Paradigmatic – we choose one of the available units, they can replace each other (synonymy,
antonymy, taxonomy, hyponymy)

Syntagmatic – sequence of signs => they together create a meaning, there are some
established structures (I’m looking forward to – we expect sth positive)
 SYNONYMS = units with similar meaning (handsome x pretty)

ANTONYMS = units with opposite meaning (happy x sad)

MERONYMS - = parts of the holonyms (arm x elbow)

RELATION SEMANTICS = relations among the units

 The concept of relational semantics came to existence in the structuralist era.
 This approach was designed to describe relations between lexical units within lexical
fields.
SENSE RELATIONS
 There are various types of sense relations:
 synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy
 It is important to establish when a sense relation becomes significant.
RECURRENCE (we suppose the relation between these words – teacher – school)
 Sense relations that recur frequently are prominent, i.e. readily observed by speakers
of that language.
 army and soldier vs soldier and wall
DISCRIMINATION
 Sense relations should be specific.
This film is great.
This film is good.
This film is new. (?)
LEXICALIZABILITY
 If the concept is easy to understand and verbalize, it is significant.
Football is a type of sport.
Do you prefer to drink red or white?
CONCRETE VS ABSTRACT
 Abstract difference – the one only specifies the other one
banana and fruit (only specificity)
 Concrete difference – clear difference
man and woman (semantically clearer)
MULTIPLE SIMULTANEOUS RELATIONS
 Obvious with polysemy, but also possible with other types of sense relations.
 different meaning
 mother/nurse; green/yellow; big/small; true/false
 cannot both be true
 green/yellow; big/small; true/false
 opposites
 big/small; true/false
 cannot both be false
 true/false
VARIETIES OF RELATIONS
 1) Paradigmatic – within a theoretical system. We choose from the available units,
they can replace each other
 quick is a near-synonym of fast
2) Syntagmatic – within a specific utterance or sentence. sequence of signs => they together
create a meaning, there are some established structures (I’m looking forward to – we expect sth
positive)

 commit a crime is a predicate-object syntagmatic relation

 3) Derivational – morphological relation.
 driver is a derivate of drive
PARADIGMATIC RELATIONS
 Semantic choices at a particular structure point in a sentence – we choose one of the
‘available‘ units.
My favourite drink is X. (X can be juice, beer, vodka, etc.)
I prefer X wine. (X can be red, white, pink)
He X home. (X can be ran, walked, crept, etc.)
SYNTAGMATIC RELATIONS
 Relations of co-occurring units – combinability
He walked across the road.
He walked across the pool. ???
The bird kept singing.
The chair kept singing. ???
DERIVATIONAL RELATIONS
 Relations between words that are derived from a single root.
I can‘t cook.
My brother is a decent cook.
The chicken is cooking.
We‘ve bought a new cooker.
I love my mum‘s cooking.
SYNONYMY (handsome x pretty)
Near synonyms:

Brave – courageous, heroic

Adult – full-grown, mature (grown-up)

Hard – difficult, tricky (tough, difficult, firm, strict)

Wild – mad, crazy (untamed, ferocious, crazy)

 One of the most prominent lexical relations, attracts a lot of linguistic attention.
 Informally, it is used as a term for words with similar meaning.
ABSOLUTE SYNONYMY
 Also called total synonymy.
 Complete interchangeability, all of the possible senses match.
 This relation is extremely rare.
everybody/everyone, anyhow/anyway (FULLY/TOTALLY, SWEATER/PULLOVER)
PRINCIPLE OF CONTRAST “Every two forms contrast in their meaning)
 ‘Every two forms contrast in meaning.‘
 Therefore any total synonymy tends to disappear over time.
 From Norman English:
 sheep/mouton, pig/porc
COGNITIVE SYNONYMY (buy – purchase)
 Interchangeability without any change to the truth value.
 The difference is non-denotational.
 style, register, connotational senses
die, pass away, kick the bucket, sleep with the fishes
PLESIONYMS (it’s hard to distinguish the difference) (run – jog, typ – write)
 Words that differ only slightly in their denotational meaning – it is often difficult to
describe how these words differ in their denotation.
bog, marsh, fen, swamp
NEAR-SYNONYMS
 Edmonds (1999) proposed a three-level system that describes near-synonyms.
 1) ‘Generic-error‘
 2) Near-synonyms that can represent the meaning in 1): error, blunder, slip, mistake,
lapse, howler.
 3) Syntactic properties of each near-synonym is different, they enter different
phrases, idioms and collocations.
HYPONYMY = is a relation of subordination (hyponymy is subordinate to hypernymy) –
people – woman - girl
 Hyponymy is a sense relation of subordination (hyperonymy superordination).
 Concerns nouns and can form what is called a taxonomy (taxonyms) – but not
always.
 A superordinate term is naturally broader in meaning than its subordinates.
animal -> mammal -> dog -> bitch
 The hyponym always contains all the senses of its hyperonym.
TROPONYMY =relations of verbs – run – jog - sprint
 Describes ‘manner‘ relations of verbs.
walk: stroll, march, prowl
MERONYMY = partonymy – meronym is a part of something (a holonym) (arm x elbow)
house x roof, tree x root)
 Meronymy expresses a ‘part-of‘ relation, also sometimes called partonymy.
 The words trunk and branch are meronyms of the word tree (which is their holonym).
- DISTINCTION:
- Cruse (2004) points out that certain parts and features are not transitive from
meronyms to higher level holonyms.
- Compare:
- The jacket has sleeves. The sleeves have cuffs. The jacket has cuffs.
- The house has a door. The door has a handle. *The house has a handle.
- CLASSIFICATION:
- Cruse (2004) suggests a sentence frame test:
- A finger is a part of a hand. A hand has fingers.
- Conceptual classification:
- 1) ‘component-integral object‘ (engine/vehicle)
- 2) ‘member-collection‘ (tree/forest, card/deck)
- 3) ‘portion-mass‘ (slice/pie, grain/salt)
 - 4) ‘stuff-object‘ (gin/martini, wood/door)
- 5) ‘feature-activity‘ (paying/shopping)
- 6) ‘place-area‘ (oasis/desert, Daytona Beach/Florida)

7) PARADIGMATIC RELATIONS OF EXCLUSION AND OPPOSITION

SEMANTIC OPPOSITENESS = opposition on semantic level, = contrast between units
Blackx white, happy x sad, up x down)

Opposition Antonymy x complementary pairs

= contrast between words two units

- Paradigmatic sense relation (we choose from the set)

- Complementary pairs – presence of one unit negates the other one (there is no third
option) – existing x non-existing
- Antonymy – presence of one unit doesn’t mean the negation of the other (there can
be more options) – happy x sad

 Also called semantic contrast.

 It is the most prominent sense relation, even children are soon able to recognize
oppositeness in everyday language.
BINARITY = there are just two possible options
 Binarity = there cannot be more than just two in a set.
 dark vs light or long vs short
 Opposites are naturally incompatible.
 Semantic oppositeness can also be non-binary.
INHERENTNESS
 Binarity can be inherent or accidental.
 In the case of the accidental binarity, there are only two items but they are not
logical opposites.
 coffee vs tea; single-decker vs double-decker, beer vs wine
 Inherent binarity is caused by pragmatic reasons.
PATENCY
 Inherent binarity is not sufficient.
 The binarity has to be encoded in the meaning of the two opposites (patent
binarity).
 yesterday vs tomorrow
 Friday and Sunday? (latent binarity)
 Patent vs latent binarity.
BINARY OPPOSITION
 Geeraerts lists four types of binary opposition.
 1) Complementarity
 2) Antonymy
 3) Perspectival opposition
 4) Directional opposition
COMPLEMENTARY PAIRS
presence of one unit negates the other one (there is no third option) – existing x non-existing
  Complementaries are pairs of words such as:
 dead vs alive, even vs odd, inside vs outside
 Predication of one term means negation of the other.
 Negation of one automatically means presence of the other (no third option).
ANTONYMY
- presence of one unit doesn’t necessarily mean the negation of the other (there can
be more options) – happy x sad
 Antonymy is a paradigmatic sense relations of opposition or semantic contrast.
 This sense relation has been given a lot of attention, it is usually very clear-cut .
 Predication of one term means negation of the other, but negation of one of them
does not necessarily entail the presence of the other (unlike in complementaries).
 Consider:
 long vs short, hot vs cold (it is not ‘either … or‘)
 POLAR ANTONYMS (Comparative forms are impartial, how x is it?) (smart x stupid,
thick x slim)
 Fully gradable, incompatible but not complementaries.
 high vs low, heavy vs light, deep vs shallow
 Comparative forms are impartial.
 Higher doesn‘t mean it has to be high.
 Lower doesn‘t mean it has to be low.
 One of the terms is used in an impartial question:
 How X is it? e.g. How old are you?
 EQUIPOLLENT ANTONYMS (if we ask how X is it? We suppose it is X) (happy x sad,
comfortable x uncomfortable)
 None of the terms is impartial, both are committed.
 Both hotter and colder presuppose hot and cold.
 Mostly sensations and emotions.
 happy vs sad, painful vs pleasurable
PERSPECTIVAL OPPOSITIONS =shifting perspective
 Also called converseness.
 The terms are positively related, both are true and can be used with the same
meaning:
 X is a husband of Y = Y is a wife of X
 It is connected with a shift of perspective.
 buy vs sell, lend vs borrow
DIRECTIONAL OPPOSITIONS = it depends on the point of view
 Various forms of spatial orientation in relation to the point of reference.
 Static – north vs south, up vs down
 Dynamic – come vs go, ask vs answer, to be born vs to die
 Antipodals = two extremes of an axis.
 black vs white, top vs bottom
NON-BINARY OPPOSITION
 1) One-dimensional
 serially ordered opposition
 scale
  rank
 cycle
 2) Multidimensional
 directional opposition
 incompatibility
SCALE
 There is just one semantic dimension, which is continuously gradable – terms express
degrees.
 ‘temperature‘
 hot, warm, tepid, cool, cold
 ‘quality‘
 perfect, great, good, bad, terrible
RANK
 The single dimension is not gradable.
 ‘military ranks‘
 general, colonel, major, captain, lieutenant, private
CYCLE
 Again just a single dimension, not gradable, no polar structure (top and bottom).
 ‘days‘
 Monday, Tuesday, etc.
 ‘months‘
 January, February, etc.

DIRECTIONAL OPPOSITION the opposition is based on contradictory actions (recovery – fall

ill)
 Binary directional opposites are combined into a more complex system.
 ‘coordinates‘
 north, south, west, east
 up, down, before, behind, left, right
INCOMPATIBILITY = classes that don’t share any members
 Superordinate terms often have more than just one direct hyponym:
 flower: rose, tulip, daisy, sunflower, lily
 While hyponymy is a relation of inclusion, incompatibility is a relation of exclusion.
 Many co-hyponyms are mutually exclusive which is naturally caused by the
specification.
 flower = flower -> daisy ≠ tulip
INCOMPATIBLES
 Incompatibles denote classes that do not share any members.
 Taxonyms:
 A dog cannot be a cat, a lion, or a seal at the same time.
 Composite terms:
 horse = [animal] [equine]
 stallion = [animal] [equine] [male]
 mare = [animal] [equine] [female]
 Not all co-hyponyms have to be incompatible this way.
  King and father are both co-hyponyms of man, but they are not mutually exclusive.
 Consider:
 novel and hardback – both co-hyponyms of book

8) EXTENSIONS OF MEANING (metaphor, metonymy, semantic change)

LITERAL MEANING = state which means what it says, we can find it in dictionary
 Usually people recognize whether a word is used with a literal or non-literal meaning.
 The difference between literal and figurative is also quite easy to tell.
 It is, however, problematic to clearly define what ‘literal meaning‘ is (and this applies
to ‘figurative‘ as well).
HISTORICAL ASPECT
 Dictionaries often list literal meanings first, followed up by figurative meanings.
 Figurative meanings tend to be semantically more complex and logic dictates that
they developed from their literal meanings over time.
 Speakers often do not know much about the history of their language, so it does not
directly affect their current intuitions.
 When speaking of the current state of a language, we have to be careful
about factoring in historical changes – not to overvalue their impact.
FREQUENCY OF OCCURENCE
 In modern linguistics of corpus research, this would potentially seem like a good
candidate for establishing what literalness is, but certain words illustrate that this
too is insufficient.
 The verb see has these two main meanings:
 ‘have a visual experience‘
 ‘understand‘
THE DEFAULT READING
 Every word is said to have a default (výchozí) reading that comes to mind first when
the word is encountered (without context).
 Compare: see, walk, stand
 Still not a good explanation because:
 cock, pussy
THE MOST PLAUSIBLE PATH (relation between two words figurative  literal m.)
 When dealing with two or more readings of a word, interpreting figurativeness may
be explained by creating the most plausible path to the original literal meaning.
 position in a company; position on this issue; position to watch from
 to see a film; to see what sb means
 ??? expire; die
BASIC HUMAN EXPERIENCE
 There is a claim that most of our language and concepts are in fact metaphorical – in
a lot of cases an extension of our spatial experience.
 Basic experience will differ for every individual, especially the age of the individual
will play a prominent role.
 Meanings change over time and what might have seemed literal 50 years ago could
seem figurative today.
NATURALIZED EXTENSIONS = meanings which used to be figurative but became so common
=> literal)
  Certain figurative meanings have become so common that they are no longer
perceived as such.
 to be in love; put into words
ESTABLISHED EXTENSIONS
 Not naturalized yet, but they are well established and often have entries in the
lexicon.
 a couch potato; to swallow a story; an oddball
NONCE READINGS
 These are meanings/readings that are not yet represented in the mental lexicon.
 a heat-seeking look (like a missile)
 She wished she could stash her feelings and keep them locked away under her bed.
METAPHOR
- Using of a word, phrase, or sentence to express something which has a different
literal meaning
- Mapping – source domain – we use it (familiar to everyone), target domain – we
want to talk about (we want to mention)
- Break someone’s heart – hurt his feelings
- On the same boat – boat expresses the same situation
- Lion heart – brave
- Walking encyclopaedia – clever
- Feeling blue - sad

 A general definition is ‘the use of a word or phrase to mean something different from
the literal meaning‘ (OALD).
 This definition is extremely vague and not good enough in LS.
 Metaphor deserves a detailed look because it is a traditional phenomenon and
people keep using it every single day.
CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR THEORY
 Developed by George Lakoff (Metaphors We Live By).
 1) Metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon rather than just a purely lexical one. It
comes in patterns (established meaning) – we have to think about it
 2) Metaphor should by analysed as a mapping between two domains. source domain –
we use it (familiar to everyone), target domain – we want to talk about (we want to mention)
 3) Metaphor is experientially grounded. – based on experience, we understand one
concept in terms of another
PILLAR ONE: METAPHOR IS COGNITIVE
 It is a conceptual phenomenon that shapes the way we both talk and think.
 Metaphor comes in patterns that go beyond individual lexical items.
 Theories and arguments are BUILDINGS
 Is that the foundation of your theory? The theory needs more support. The
argument is shaky. Without more facts the argument will fall apart.
 other examples: love is a JOURNEY; more is UP, less is DOWN (also outside the
language)
PILLAR TWO: MAPPING BETWEEN TWO DOMAINS
 A source domain is the ‘vehicle‘ of the metaphor; a target domain is the ‘tenor‘;
mapping is the ‘ground‘.
  Kövecses (2002):
SOURCE TARGET
the travellers the lovers
the means of transport the relationship itself
the journey the evolution of the relationship
decisions about which way to go the difficulties experienced
the destination of the journey the goals of the relationship
PILLAR THREE: METAPHORS ARE GROUNDED
 Metaphors are grounded in experience – language is shaped by human experience.
 There is directionality in metaphor – we understand one concept in terms of
another.
 Johnson‘s image schemas (1987): ‘An image schema is a recurring dynamic pattern of
our perceptual interactions and motor programmes that gives coherence and
structure to our experience.‘
 enter into depression – the ‘emotional state‘ is seen as a ‘container‘
PERSONIFICATION
 Directly related to metaphor:
 death is often personified as a reaper, destroyer, devourer, etc.
 It is the agent of reaping, destroying, devouring that is personified – the success of
personification depends on how significant is the correspondence between the event
and the implied action.
METONYMY = based on association (metaphor is based on similarity)
Metonymy is based on association - not resemblence

The Czech republic won the championship. (Not the country but the team)

The Court sent him to the jail. (Not the Court but the Judge)

The bus turned. (the driver)

Our school won this prize. (students of our school)

 Metaphor is based on resemblance, metonymy is based on contiguity (sometimes

conveniently replaced with association).
 Typical examples of metonymy could be:
 head of the bed, back of the chair
 But are those clearly metonymy or could they be interpreted as metaphors?
PATTERNS OF METONYMY
 CONTAINER for CONTAINED
 The kettle‘s boiling. The car in front decided to pull over.
 POSSESSOR for POSSESSED/ATTRIBUTE
 Where are you parked? A: Peter Lee. B: That would be me!
 PART for WHOLE
 There are too many mouths to feed. I saw a few new face today.
 WHOLE for PART
 Do you need to use the bathroom? I‘m going to fill up the car (with petrol).
 REPRESENTED ENTITY for REPRESENTATIVE
 Canada won the championship. The government are going to decide soon.
 PLACE for INSTITUTION
 The House of Lords meets in the Palace of Westminster.
METONYMY VS DIRECT MODE OF REFERENCE
 Metonymy is sometimes preferred to a more direct mode of reference.
 Where are you parked? vs Where is your car parked?
 Ginnie stroked the cat. vs Ginnie‘s hand stroked the cat.
 The reasons why metonymy is often preferable:
 1) Economy,
 2) ease of access to referent,
 3) highlighting of the associative relation.
SEMANTIC CHANGE
 Semantic change is historical process (diachronic), with strong ties to synchronic
processes of meaning extension.
 A possible scenario of semantic change:
 1) Word W has established a literal sense – S1.
 2) A person uses W in a new figurative sense – S2.
 3) S2 is used by more speakers and becomes established – W becomes
polysemous, S1 is still literal and S2 figurative.
 4) S1 becomes obsolete – S2 begins to be seen as literal, S1 as figurative.
 5) S1 is lost – the meaning of W has changed from S1 to S2.
 Cruse uses the word expire as a good example of the scenario above.

9) COGNITIVE SEMANTICS
 Several underlying ideas and concepts date back to:
 Erdmann (1910): polysemy and vagueness are very common in the language.
 Gipper (1959): the borderline between concepts within a lexical field tends to
be diffuse.
 Cognitive semantics emerged in the 1980s as a theoretical movement that
opposed the generativist idea of ‘autonomous grammar‘ and the treatment of
semantics as a secondary discipline.
 Rosch was one of the main contributors in the late 1970s and it was her
psycholinguistic research into the internal structure of categories that gave
birth to the prototype-based conception of categorization.
THE THREE LEADING IDEAS
 1) Meaning is contextually and pragmatically flexible. Meaning is flexible on
pragmatic and context level.
 2) Meaning is a cognitive phenomenon that goes beyond the boundary of the word.
Dictionaries never tell you what the word is associated with (positive or negative)
 3) Meaning involves perspectivization. (depends on experience)
CS IN CONTEMPORARY LINGUISTICS
 Cognitive semantics is now the most popular framework for the study of the lexical
meaning (theoretical and descriptive linguistics).
PROTOTYPICALITY = there are always prototypical words – the first ones which come into
our mind, they are supposed to have some typical features for its branch
 Berlin and Kay‘s anthropological study of colours (1969)
  All languages have a primary set of eleven colours.
 A single morpheme, generally known by speakers, not part of a referential
domain of a different colour.
 Originally considered arbitrary, colours display cross-linguistic systematicity.
SALIENCE OF CERTAIN CONCEPTS
 Certain colour terms are more salient than others, this is also true for facial
expressions, or geometrical forms.
 the six basic emotions that are generally used as salient reference points are
happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise
 A focal member displays the most salient features, especially with categories naming
natural objects.
PROTOTYPE MEMBER
 What is the most typical member representing the concept bird?
 robin, sparrow, bluejay, bluebird, canary, blackbird, dove
 Other categories:
 sport (football, skating, checkers); clothing (pants, shoes, bracelet);
vegetables (carrot, potato, rice); fruit (apple, currant, coconut); weapons
(gun, bow, rope)
 The most typical members are learnt earlier, they are also easier to remember.
PROTOTYPICALITY IN THE CATEGORY ‚FRUIT‘
RADIAL NETWORKS AND POLYSEMY
 The basic reading of the word fruit is ‘the seed-bearing part of a plant or tree‘ (in its
technical sense).
 possible readings:
 A) sweet, juicy, used as a dessert
 B) seed-bearing part of a plant
 C) edible result of a vegetable process
 D) natural result of an organic process
 E) positive outcome of a process or activity
 F) outcome of a process or activity
RADIAL NETWORKS
 If we stay within a single meaning, we are dealing with literal and figurative
similarities – therefore generalization or metaphor.
 Once we introduce polysemy, we also include metonymy.
 Radial networks may give the atomistic impression, which is not accurate.
CENTRE-PERIPHERY STRUCTURE
 Prototypical members of a category are called focal terms, prototypes, core
members, or central members.
  The central members are the most common examples based on the ‘definitional
analysis‘.
 Robin fits all the typical definitions of the category ‘bird‘, therefore it is a central
member; ostrich or penguin do not fit the basic definition ‘can fly‘, hence seen as a
peripheral member.
CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR AND METONYMY
 Same as historical-philological semantics, cognitive semantics embraces the
psychological, encyclopedic conception of linguistic meaning.
 However, metaphor and metonymy are seen as synchronic phenomena rather than
diachronic.
 Metaphor = ‘seeing things in terms of another‘.
THE BASIC PILLARS
 1) Metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon rather than just a purely lexical one.
 2) Metaphor should by analysed as a mapping between two domains.
 3) Lexical semantics is experientially grounded.
CONCEPTUAL METONYMY
 Same as metaphor, metonymy is not purely linguistic:
 Lakoff and Johnson (1980):
 1) metonymic concepts allow us to think of one thing in terms of its relation
to something else
 The buses are on strike today.
 2) metonymies are systematic, they form patterns that apply to more than
just a single lexical item
 3) metonymic concepts also structure our thoughts, attitudes, and actions
 Nixon bombed Hanoi.
 4) metonymic concepts are grounded in experience
 Pearl Harbor still has an effect on our foreign policy.
CLASSIFICATION OF METONYMIC PATTERNS

FRAME SEMANTICS
 Fillmorean frame theory is interested in the way in which language may be used to
verbalize certain conceptual models in different ways.
  The idea that can be derived from this theory is that we speak in learnt patterns
(lexical bundles), therefore making the process of encoding much faster than if we
were to encode every single lexical item individually.
THE COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION FRAME

THE RISK FRAME

 Why should he risk his life to try to save Brooks?

 Why should {he}Protagonist risk {his life}Possession {to try to save Brooks}Goal?
 Alternatively:
 Why should he risk falling down to try to save Brooks?
 Why should he put his life at risk to try to save Brooks?
 Why should he run the risk of falling down to help him?

10) SYNTAGMATIC RELATIONS

 Certain words go together naturally, others potentially clash. However, the reason is
not only the meaning.
 Why are certain combinations more acceptable than others and what determines
those constituents?
TWO TYPES OF INTERACTION
 A) Discourse interaction
 The interaction of units within a particular discourse.
 register clash, plausible scenarios, etc.
John and Mary will be joined in holy matrimony next week: who's going to get the
spuds? (stylistically inappropriate)
 B) Syntagmatic interaction (if it does make sense)
  The interaction of units in a string of words.
 Does it make sense?
 Is the combination (ab)normal?
colourless green ideas (???)
(AB)NORMALITY inappropriate combination of two or more units)
 A string of words itself may not be revealing enough, context is necessary to
determine (ab)normality of the string.
down all day
 Two basic types of abnormality are:
 1) Semantic clash
 2) Pleonasm
SEMANTIC CLASH = it doesn’t work together
 Lexical in nature.
 Meaning imposes certain conditions that need to be satisfied → the combination is
well formed semantically and easily interpretable.
 This clash often triggers alternative reading or interpretation (almost anything
becomes possible).
 Co-occurrence preferences (rather than restrictions).
COLLOCATIONAL PREFERENCES
 This is a somewhat less impactful clash.
My dog kicked the bucket. (we would expect human)
 The semantic clash occurs between dog and kick the bucket as the agent is/was
typically ‘human‘ – inappropriateness.
My dog died.
 This sentence is perfectly acceptable.
SELECTIONAL PREFERENCES = Words which are put together and which fit naturally
 A more serious clash, not only semantically, but also propositionally.
My computer kicked the bucket. (agent is not compatible)
 ‘Thing‘ agent is not compatible with kick the bucket.
My computer died.
 The above is acceptable, but it is already a metaphor (literal: broke down, crashed,
stopped working).
 Breaking selectional preferences is more serious, but still correctable – paradox.
The cat was barking all night.
It‘s too small to fit in.
 The most serious clash is incongruity.
fast grass of shouting milk
in lexical star telly
PLEONASM = something in the phrase is redundant
 Pleonasm appears when one of the elements is not adding anything new; it is
redundant.
I kicked the ball with my foot. but I kicked the ball with my left foot.
I saw the bird with my eyes. but I saw the bird with my own eyes.
 Consider:
This is very, very good.
He rushed quickly to the station.
SYNTAGMATIC SENSE RELATIONS
 1) Philonyms – words go together normally.
 hear the sound
 2) Xenonyms – words clash.
 a knowledgeable chair
 3) Tautonyms – words produce pleonasm.
 a barking dog
THE DIRECTIONALITY OF SYNTAGMATIC CONSTRAINTS
 There are two aspects when talking about syntagmatic constraints.
 The items that selects the item that goes with it is the selector; the items that is
selected is the selectee.
 The word match can combine with the following:
 hard, home, exciting, postponed, important, qualifying, etc.
 The word hard can combine with the following:
 game, work, exercise, choice, climb, etc.
SEMANTIC HEAD, DEPENDANT
 Every combination has a semantic head – the item that governs the semantic
relations of the combination.
 Semantic dependant is the item that is bound to the semantic head.
?The small table sneezed.
The small boy sneezed.
SYNTAGMATIC AND PARADIGMATIC RELATIONS INTERACTIONS
 Pleonasm – can be fixed by a hyponym or a hyperonym of one of the tautonyms.
 She punched him with her fist.
 She punched him with her right fist. (hyponym of fist)
 She struck him with her fist. (hyperonym of punched)
 Clash – the severity is determined by the simplicity of the fix.
 The building was annihilated. → The building was destroyed.
 The cat barked. → The dog barked. → The animal barked.
 gender wall → ???
CO-OCCURENCE PATTERNS
 Certain words prefer certain partners.
 The basic question is: What makes the word A prefer X to Y?
 Nowadays these preferences can be easily spotted in corpus data – frequency of co-
occurrence (esp. British linguistics).
EXTRALINGUISTIC FACTORS
 Real-life experience and common practice often decide which combination is more
typical.
fried eggs vs fried lettuce
old clothes vs old newspapers
 Experience, frequency of an activity, necessity to talk about it, significance,
plausibility, etc.
STEREOTYPIC COMBINATIONS = established statements ingrained in the culture (beautiful
flower)
 Important to set these apart from cliché.
  Stereotypic combinations are standardised combinations used to refer to certain
concepts – they are often ingrained in the culture rather than the language itself.
dear friend, beautiful flower
CLICHÉ = automatic choice
 Cliché = a default pattern.
 The degree of markedness and salience is very high – ‘automatic choices‘.
barefaced lie, intense pressure, massive undertaking
ARBITRARY COLLOCATIONAL RESTRICTIONS
 Certain selectional preferences are simply arbitrary and need to be learnt as such.
heavy rain, high wind, fast asleep, sound plan, grave danger

11) LEXICON AS A SYSTEM

 - Strang (1968: 215) said: ‘While grammar is the domain of systems, lexis is the
domain of vast lists of formal items about which rather little generalization can be
made.‘
 Lipka (1992: 4) countered: ‘The 'lexicon' is not simply an inventory of unconnected,
isolated elements, but it definitely has a structure.‘
ORIGIN OF WORDS IN ENGLISH LEXICON
 The word-stock of English can generally be subdivided into two main sets:
 1) Native words – further division needed.
 2) Loan words (borrowings).
NATIVE WORDS
 Speaking of native words, we first have to establish what is in fact native in the
context of English.
 Original settlers (???), conquerors, colonists…
INDO-EUROPEAN STOCK
 Words of the Indo-European stock are generally similar across various languages as
they commonly draw from the same base language.
 Very basic, old words:
 kinship – father, mother
 nature – sun, moon, water
 animals – bull, cat, wolf
 human body – arm, eye, foot
 most frequent verbs – come, sit, stand
GERMANIC STOCK
 A much larger part of the English lexicon.
 Words that are similar within languages of Germanic origin: English, Norwegian,
Swedish, Danish, Dutch, German, Icelandic.
 Usually words of general character:
 rain, bridge, summer, field, go, make
 These words are perceived as native by native speakers of English.
 Highly frequent in everyday communication – most of the phrasal verbs consist of
Germanic words.
 They often develop(ed) polysemy.
 They are often monosyllabic with a lot of derivatives.
 They are constituting elements of various phrases and set expressions.
LOAN WORDS
 Loan words are borrowed from other languages (usually historical reasons).
 the Roman invasion, the Germanic expansion, Viking raids, the Norman
conquest, Renaissance, British Colonialism
 Roughly 70% of the English lexicon are loan words.
 Loan words are usually modified to a certain extent: phonemic make-up, spelling,
meaning.
ASSIMILATION OF LOAN WORDS
 Assimilation of a loan word depends on:
 1) the length of the period over which the word was used;
 2) the importance of the word for communication;
 3) the frequency of the word‘s use.
 There are various degrees of assimilation.
DEGREE OF ASSIMILATION
 1) Completely assimilated words = they look English, difficult to recognize
their foreign origin; stylistically neutral, frequent.
 cheese, street, wine, husband, gate
 2) Partially assimilated words = some of the aspects have not been
assimilated.
 semantically (toreador, sheik), grammatically (formula, phenomenon),
phonetically (ballet, café, corps)
 3) Unassimilated words = the spelling and pronunciation remain the same as
in the original language.
 chauffeur, entrepreneur
CELTIC INFLUENCE
 Germanic tribes conquered the original Celtic inhabitants and forced their
language on them.
 Celtic influence is not a prominent one, but there is still a handful of words
that remain in the English lexicon.
 They often occur in regional dialects.
 carr = rock, torr = peak, loch = lake (all Scottish)
 Place and river names – Thames, Avon, London, Dover, Kent.
ROMAN INFLUENCE
 The first Roman occupation led be Ceasar in 55 BC; around 140 AD the whole
Britain was controlled by Romans (apart from northern Scotland) – this lasted
until ~410 AD.
 Romans built infrastructure and a lot of settlements, also brought Christianity.
 A lot of basic words are from this era.
 plant, wine, candle, cat
SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENCE
 After Romans left Britain, a lot of western Germanic tribes saw an opportunity
to settle there – this was more or less a peaceful process.
  In the late 700s through 800s, Vikings started raiding Britain – a bit more
aggressive than the original settlement but not much of new language coming
that way.
 Place names ending in –by, -toft, -thrope: Derby, Eastoft, Ashtonthrope.
 Surnames –son, -sen: Clarkson, Jansen
 The most imporant influence is the verb be (from Old Norse: am, are)
and the pronoun they.
NORMAN FRENCH INFLUENCE
 The Norman conquest in 1066 had a major impact on English – it is this date
that generally marks the end of the Old English period and the start of the
Middle English period.
 English became the language of the common folk, French was spoken by
aristocracy.
 A lot of new words were introduced to English along with cultural and
administrational changes.
 administration – state, reign, parliament
 housing – city, village, palace
 occupations and crafts – carpenter, painter, tailor
 military – war, peace, army, captain
 titles – baron, prince, princess
 economy and trade – money, tax, rent
 religion – religion, service, pray
LATIN AND GREEK INFLUENCE
 Latin and Greek and their various stages.
 Came in several waves – Roman occupation, Christianization, Renaissance, the
period of New Learning.
 French is originally also a Romance language.
 angel, altar, minister, nun, pope, psalm, organ, hymn
OTHER INFLUENCES
 Dutch – dock, gin, commodore and generally language of painting and drawing.
 Italian – business, architecture, classical music – bank, risk, opera, soprano,
stanza.
 Spanish – tortilla, macho, iguana; German – wunderkind, reich; Czech – robot;
Russian – vodka, tsar; Indian – pyjamas, cheetah, karma, juggernaut.
LEXICON AS A SYSTEM
 Lexicon of a language is fairly unstable as new words are introduced on a
regular basis and old words are dying out; certain words also keep drifting
between the two main sets – lexicon is a living and volatile entity.
 Lexicon can generally be divided into two areas:
 A) centre
 B) periphery
CENTRE
  The centre is occupied by stable items with a precisely defined meaning –
notional words.
 They are highly independent of the extralinguistic reality, which is changing all
the time.
 These words are also very frequent in everyday communication.
 Concrete nouns are the most typical example of central items.
PERIPHERY
 The periphery contains words with limited frequency.
 Special technical terms, slang, regionalisms, dialecticisms, archaisms,
neologisms.
 The extreme periphery is the nonce formation – spur-of-the-moment
expressions.
INTEGRATION VS DIVERSIFICATION
 Integration – the force that moves words from the periphery to the centre.
 Diversification – the force that produces finer distinctions in meaning, cutting
off morphological links (near, next; late, last) – thus pushing words to the
periphery.
 Both of the forces can be a result of changes in the extralinguistic reality.

12) LEXICOGRAPHY
 Theoretical lexicography
 Same as lexicology, the discipline that deals with paradigmatic and
syntagmatic relations within the lexicon.
 Practical lexicography
 Applied lexicology – design and compilation of dictionaries.
GOALS OF LEXICOGRAPHY
 Provide a list of lexical units of a language.
 A) Semantic content – meaning.
 B) Formal distribution – parts of speech, countability, valency, etc.
 C) Functionality – style (formal, informal, etc.) example sentences, collocations, etc.
WHAT IS STANDARD
 A basic question = how to define standard in English?
 What is the dominant region?
 What is the proper English?
 What to teach?
TWO BASIC APPROACHES
 1) Alphabetic
 Organising the dictionary according to the initial letter of the word.
 2) Thematic (topic)
 Organising the dictionary according to the semantic relations between words
(lexical fields).
 Often dictionaries of idioms – where semantic content is more important.
PRODUCT
 The dominant product of lexicography is a dictionary.
  A list of words that contains the following items of information (not all of them are
necessarily present):
 meaning
 pronunciation
 usage
 origin
CLASSIFICATION OF DICTIONARIES
 Dictionaries can be general or specific.
 Monolingual
 Bilingual
 Multilingual
THE NATURE OF ENTRIES
 Strictly lexical with possible usage examples.
 Thesaurus – contains encyclopaedic data.
AXIS OF TIME
 Synchronic
 Describing present-day state of the lexicon.
 Diachronic
 Etymological dictionaries
 Tracking language change over time, origin of words and their first attestation
(recorded use).
TYPES OF DICTIONARIES
 General – represents general lexicon of a language.
 Monolingual – explanatory, uses one language to explain meanings of words.
 Bilingual – uses translation, explains concepts by providing the corresponding term in
the second language.
 Multilingual – entries in multiple languages.
 Dialect – dictionaries that provide an overview of a dialect of a language.
 Special – encompass only a specific part of vocabulary; often focussed on a concrete
area.
 Technical – terminology, formed for specific purpose – usually prepared by
professional bodies.
 medical, sport, trade, profession, etc.
 Slang, jargon, argot – a closed set of words used by a particular group of
people.
 Orthographical – no definitions, just spelling variants, their phonetic representation
and alternations.
 Pronunciation – focussed on pronunciation, strong/weak forms, stress patterns.
 Of abbreviations and acronyms, grammatical, reverse (historically rhyming),
synonyms, antonyms, frequential, collocation, proverbs, idioms, neologisms, etc.
 Learner‘s – intended to aid learners, both native and foreign – they include grammar,
basic paradigmatic relations, provide examples of usage, helpful tips, often also basic
word families, irregular verbs, etc.