PREFACE. Language is not an isolated phenomenon; it is a part of society and a part of usLanguage is not an isolated phenomenon; it is a part of society and a part of us. It is a prerequisite for the development of any society. No branch of linguistics can be studied without presupposing at least the study of other aspects of society. We see the development of quite distinct interdisciplinary subjects such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics,mathematical linguistics and others.
Lexicology is the part of linguistics which studies words. This may include their nature and function as symbols their meaning, the relationship of their meaning to epistemology in general, and the rules of their composition from smaller elements (morphemes such as the English -ed marker for past or un- for negation; and phonemes as basic sound units). Lexicology also involves relations between words, which may involve semantics (for example, love vs. affection), derivation (for example, fathom vs. unfathomably), usage and sociolinguistic distinctions (for example, flesh vs. meat), and any other issues involved in analyzing the whole lexicon of a language(s). The term first appeared in the 1820s, though there were lexicologists in essence before the term was coined. Computational lexicology as a related field (in the same way that computational linguistics is related to linguistics) deals with the computational study of dictionaries and their contents. An allied science to lexicology is lexicography, which also studies words, but primarily in relation with dictionaries – it is actually concerned with the inclusion of words in dictionaries and from that perspective with the whole lexicon. Sometimes lexicography is considered to be a part or a branch of lexicology, but properly speaking, only lexicologists who actually write dictionaries are lexicographers. Some consider this a distinction of theory vs. practice. As regards the learning of specific foreign languages, there has never been a time in the world when the ability of growing numbers of people to speak one another’s language really well has been of such significance as now. The hope one has is that this coursework will be able to help for students, not only to make them a better and more confident speaker of the English language, but also hoped that this work will spur them to delve into the interesting world of lexicology and lexicological study of languages around them.
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