Lexicology Flashcards
Lexicology
The study of the lexicon (inventory of words in language). In simple terms, vocabulary.
Lexeme
A words or phrase with a specific meaning.
E.g. ‘blue’, ‘me too’, ‘down to earth’, ‘down’
Word classes
nouns and pronouns
verbs (auxiliaries, modals, regular, irregular)
adjectives
adverbs
conjunctions
prepositions
determiners
interjections
nouns definition
Word that give names to: people, places, things, qualities or actions.
common nouns (concrete)
i. count
ii. non-count
i. Count: Can be counted/made plural (e.g. coin, book).
ii. Non-count: Cannot be counted/made plural (e.g. traffic, information).
common nouns (abstract)
Nouns that cannot be touched e.g. ideas, concepts, emotions (e.g. truth, bravery, justice, friendship).
proper nouns
Always capitalised and name specific things – usually places or people (e.g. Sydney, Yarra River, Bob, Highvale Secondary College)
collective nouns
Collective name for groups of animals (swarm, murder), people (parliament, police, family, people) and things.
adjectives definition
Define or modify nouns – essentially, they are providing additional information about nouns.
adjectives characteristics
Qualities – red, round, shiny.
Size – small, huge.
Judgements – beautiful, wicked, kind.
Degree of comparison – faster, slow, cleverest.
main verbs definition
Denote actions (to run), processes (to think) and states (to be).
Verbs have a complex morphological makeup – can vary in presentation according to person (who is ‘performing’ the verb), number (how many are ‘performing’ the verb) and tense (past, present, future etc.)
verbs (regular)
REGULAR: All use the suffix –ed in their past tense (e.g. ‘dance’, ‘marry’, ‘search’)
verbs (irregular)
IRREGULAR: Will form their past tense in a variety of ways that will change the stem of the word (e.g. ‘learn’, ‘run’, ‘swim’)
verbs (auxiliary)
- Modify and change something about the main verb.
- indicate information such as tense, mood, voice and other grammatical aspects of the action.
- can come before a noun, verb, adjective or adverb.
The primary auxiliary verbs are:
‘to be’ (e.g. I am, you were, he/she/they will)
‘to have’ (e.g. I have, you had)
‘to do’ (e.g. I did, you do)
verbs (modal)
A type of verb that indicates the modality (an attitude towards certainty, possibility, willingness or necessity of a verb occurring).
There are only nine modal verbs: can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might and must.
difference btwn aux and modal verbs
modal verbs are not subject to inflection whereas auxiliary verbs change according to tense, case, voice, aspect, person, and number.
adverbs
Usually modify (give additional information about) verbs, but can also modify adjectives or even some adverbs.
Time: soon, later
Frequency: always, occasionally, never
Manner: unconvincingly, slowly, torrentially
Place: around, everywhere, here, there
Degree: completely, totally, very, somewhat
determiners and examples
Determiners are used in front of noun phrases and work to modify something about the noun.
a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’ ‘my’, ‘your’, ‘our’, ‘their’, ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘each’, ‘every’, ‘all’, ‘some’.
prepositions
- function words that show the relationship between nouns/pronouns (and sometimes other words) in a sentence.
- tell us where a noun is, when a noun is taking place, or describe the manner in which a verb is being performed.
pronouns
- words that replace nouns in a sentence.
- help to reduce the density and repetitiveness of a text.
- Some pronouns are also determiners.
E.g. I, we, they, you, she, he, it, me, us, them, you, her, him, mine, ours, theirs, yours, his, its, that, who, whoever, whom, which, this, that, these, those.
interjections
Interjections are words/phrases that express a sudden or strong emotional or feeling.
They can stand alone or be placed before or after a sentence.
They are not grammatically related to the rest of the sentence.
conjunctions
joins two words, ideas, phrases or clauses together in a sentence and shows how they are connected.
coordinating conjunctions
- connect words, phrases and clauses.
- seven coordinating conjunctions. and, but, for, nor, or, so and yet (FANBOYS)
Subordinating Conjunctions
- provides a necessary transition between the two ideas in the sentence
- reduces the importance of one clause so that a reader understands which of the two ideas is more important.
- many subordinating conjunctions, including because, since, if, then, unless, while, whereas.
function words
- exist to explain or create grammatical or structural relationships into which thecontent wordsmay fit.
- refer tofunction wordsas a “closed” class.
Content Words
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs arecontent parts of speech
Open class.
initialisms
- an abbreviation that consists of the first letter or letters of words in a phrase
- Unlike acronyms,initialismsare not spoken as words; they are spoken letter by letter.
E.g. CSIRO + VCE
Acronyms
Anacronymis a word or name formed as an abbreviation from the initial components of a phrase or a word, usually individual letters.
E.g. NASA + NATO.
blends
*one of the many ways new words are made in English. *refers to joining the beginning of one word and the end of another
*to make a new word with a new meaning.
Shortenings
- involves the shortening of a longer word, often reducing it to one syllable. Manyexamplesare very informal or slang.
- E.g. Maths, which is aclippedform of mathematics,
Compounding
a lexeme that consists of more than one stem.
Contractions
a word or phrase that’s been shortened bydroppingone or more letters.
eg. (that’s = that has)
collocations
Words with phrases so closely associated with one another that when we hear one we almost automatically provide the other.
They can be clichés – i.e. ‘safe and sound’
neologisms
A newly coined word, expression or usage.
The use of a new word or the use of an existing word but given a new meaning.
borrowing
In linguistics,borrowing is the process by which a word from one language is adapted for use in another.
commonisations
- development of common, everyday words from words that began life as proper nouns (names of people, places or brands)
archaism
Words that are no longer used in everyday life. They may be preserved in special contexts but are no longer common.
E.g. “To thine own self be true” (Hamlet, by William Shakespeare)
morphological over-generalisation
*occurs when we incorrectly apply patterns we already know to new words.,
*particularly common among young children and people learning English as a second language.
