A course In Modern English Lexicology

§ 19. Summary and Conclusions English language may be grouped by the following criteria: 1) the nature of their word-list, 2) the information they contain, 3) the language of the explanations, 4) the intended user.
2. The most important problems the lexicographer faces are: 1) the selection of items for inclusion and their arrangement, 2) the setting of the entries, 3) the selection, arrangement and definition of meanings, 4) the illustrative examples to be supplied, and 5) the supplementary material.
The choice among the possible solutions depends upon the type to which the dictionary will belong, the aim the compilers pursue, the prospective user of the dictionary, the linguistic conceptions of the dictionary-maker, etc.
3. Designed for foreign learners of English, learner’s dictionaries are characterised by their strictly limited word-list, the great attention given to the functioning of lexical units in speech and their strong perspective orientation.
X. Methods and Procedures of
Lexicological Analysis
It is commonly recognised that acquaintance with at least some of the currently used procedures of linguistic investigation is of considerable importance both for language learners and for prospective teachers as it gives them the possibility to observe how linguists obtain answers to certain questions and is of help in the preparation of teaching material. It also helps language learners to become good observers of how language works and this is the only lasting way to become better users of language.
The process of scientific investigation may be subdivided into several stages. O b s e r v a t i o n is an early and basic, phase of all modern scientific investigation, including linguistic, and is the centre of what is called the inductive method of inquiry.
The cardinal role of all inductive procedures is that statements of fact must be based on o b s e r v a t i o n , not on unsupported authority, logical conclusions or personal preferences. Besides, linguists as a rule largely confine themselves to making factual statements, i.e. statements capable of objective verification. In other words a linguist assumes that a question cannot be answered unless there are procedures by which reliable and verifiable answers can be obtained.
The next stage after observation is c l a s s i f i c a t i o n or orderly arrangement of the data obtained through observation. For example, it is observed that in English nouns the suffixal morpheme -er is added to verbal stems (speak + -er, writ(e) + -er, etc.), noun stem’s (village + -er, London + -er, etc.), and that -er also occurs in non-derived words such as mother, father, etc. Accordingly all the nouns in -er may be classified into two types — derived and simple words and the derived words may be subdivided into two groups according to their stems. It should be pointed out that at this stage the application of different methods of analysis is common practice.1
The following stage is usually that of g e n e r a l i s a t i o n , i.e.
the collection of data and their orderly arrangement must eventually lead to the formulation of< a generalisation or hypothesis, rule, or law.
In our case we can formulate a rule that derived nouns in -er may have either verbal or noun stems. The suffix -er in combination with adjectival or adverbial stems cannot form nouns (cf. (to) dig — digger but big —
bigger).
Moreover, the difference in the meaning of the suffixal nouns observed by the linguist allows him to infer that if -er is added to verbal stems, the nouns thus formed denote an active doer — teacher, learner, etc., whereas when the suffix -er is combined with noun-stems the words denote residents of a place or profession (e.g. villager, Londoner).
1 See ‘Word-Structure’, §§ 7-9, pp. 96 — 102; ‘Word-Formation’, § 9, p. 119. 234
One of the fundamental tests of the validity of a generalisation is whether or not the generalisation is useful in making reliable p r e d i c -
t i o n s . For example, proceeding from the observation and generalisation discussed above we may ‘predict’ with a considerable degree of certainty that if a new word with a suffix -er appears in modern English and the suffix is added to a verbal stem, the word is a noun denoting an active doer (cf., e.g., the new words of the type (moon-)crawler, (moon-)walker (lunar-)rouer which appeared when the Soviet moon car was launched.1
Moreover we may predict if we make use of statistical analysis that such words are more likely to be coined than the other types of nouns with the -
er suffix.
Any linguistic generalisation is to be followed by the v e r i f у i n g p r o c e s s . Stated, simply, the linguist is required, as are other scientists, to seek verification of the generalisations that are the result of his inquiries. Here too, various procedures of linguistic analysis are commonly applied.
It may be inferred from the above that acquaintance with at least some of the methods of lexicological investigation, is essential for classification, generalisation and above all for the verification of the hypothesis resulting from initial observation. We may also assume that application of various methods of analysis should be an essential part of the learning process and consequently of teacher’s training.
The metho_ds and procedures briefly discussed below are as follows: 1. Contrastive analysis, 2. Statistical methods of analysis. 3. Immediate Constituents analysis, 4 Distributional analysis and co-occurrence, 5.
Transformational analysis, 6. Componental analysis, 7. Method of semantic differential.2
All methods of linguistic analysis are traditionally subdivided into formalised and non-formalised procedures.
It is common knowledge that formalised methods of analysis proved to be in many cases inapplicable to natural languages and did not yield the desired results, nevertheless if not theoretical tenets at least some procedures of these methods of analysis have been used by linguists of different schools of thought and have become part of modern linguists’ equipment.
Naturally, the selection of this or that particular procedure largely depends on the goal set before the investigator.
I f , e.g., the linguist wishes to find out the derivational structure of the lexical unit he is likely to make use of the 1С analysis and/or the transformational analysis.3 If the semantic structure of two correlated words is compared, componental analysis will probably be applied.
Some of the methods of lexicological analysis are of primary importance for teachers of English and are widely used in the preparation of 1 See C. Barnhart, op. cit.
2 Method of contextual analysis suggested by Prof. N. N. Amosova is not discussed here because there is a monograph devoted to this procedure. See N. N. Amosova. English Contextology, L., 1968.
3 See ‘Word-Structure’, § 6, p. 95; .Word-Formation’, § 30, p. 146.
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teaching material, some are of lesser importance. The comparative value of individual methods for practicing teachers and also the interconnecttion of some of the procedures determined the order of their presentation. The first method discussed here is that of c o n t r a s t i v e a n a l y s i s as we consider it indispensable in teaching English as a foreign language. This is followed by a brief survey of s t a t i s t i c a l m e t h o d s of a n a l y s i s a s qua nt it a t i ve eva lua t i on is u sua ll y a n essential part of any linguistic procedure. The so-called formalised methods of analysis — the IC a n a l y s i s , d i s t r i b u t i o n a l a n d t r a n s f o r m a t i o n a l p r o c e d u r e s precede t h e c o m -
p o n e n t a l a n a l y s i s not because of their greater value in terms of teaching English, but because componental analysis may be combined with distributional and/or transformational procedures, hence the necessity of introducing both procedures before we start the discussion of t he comp onent a l a na lysis.
Contrastive linguistics as a systematic branch of