The notion of the linguistic sign

Central in our representation of the linguistic coding system is the notion of the linguistic sign. This represents the connection between a content (meaning) and an expression (form, code), e.g. our mental representation of what a dog is (content) and the word dog (or ; either italics or phonemic transcription will be used to represent the expression side of the linguistic sign).

Figure 1. The linguistic sign.

The linguistic sign is conventional in the sense that the speakers of a language must use the same expression to represent the same content (otherwise the receiver's decoding would not recover the content encoded by the sender, and we would not understand each other).

At the same time we can say that the particuar expression we connect with a particular content is in the vast majority of cases arbirary: as long as the members of a speech community agree on what expression to use, it makes no difference exactly what that expression is. Consider, in this connection, the words meaning 'dog' in a few languages: Norwegian bokmål/nynorsk hund, trøndersk dialect hoinn, German Hund, French chien, Czech pes, Russian sobaka, Bulgarian kuche, Swahili mbwa. This principle of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign is to some extent contradicted by the fact that all languages have words that imitate non-lingustic sounds: the whisper of the wind, the babbling of a brook, the growling of a dog, etc. But note that different languages represent the same non-linguistic sound in different ways, so that we find a certain arbitrariness at work here as well: the crowing of a cock is represented as cock-a-doodle-doo in English, as kykkeliky in Norwegian and as kikeriki in German.

A simple linguistic sign such as is usually referred to as a morpheme. It is a unit which cannot be further subdivided (if we consider the sounds /d/, / / and /g/ separately, we lose the connection with the content and we are thus no longer dealing with the morpheme).

A morpheme like is called a free morpheme: it can be used as a word on its own (She saw a dog). A morpheme like -s (meaning 'more than one') is a bound morpheme (more specifically, a suffix), since it must be combined with a free morpheme to form a word (She saw two dogs).

2.The connection of lexicology with other linguistic disciplines. Methods of lexicological research. Lexicology is closely connected with Phonetics, Grammar and Stylistics.

Lexicology and phonetics. The meaning of the word depends upon phonemes it consists of. It can be easily proved (hop - hope). The stress is also very important.

Lexicology and grammar. Lexicology and grammar are closely connected. Woreds confirm to the grammatical system of the language. The characteristics features of English word building, the morphologucal structure of the English word depend upon the peculiarities of the English grammatical system.

Lexicology and stylistics. Stylistics treats many problems studied in lexicology. They are: problems of meaning, synonymy, antonymy, lexical strata. Lexicology and history of language. Many problems in lexicology may be understood only on the basis of historical study, e.g. changes in the vocabulary, its development. Modern English lexicology is a part of the theoretical course of Modern English. Its other parts are: phonetics, grammar, stylistics, history of the English language. Lexicology and methods. The course in MEL is of great significance for learner and helps to form the learner’s vocabulary. The knowledge of lexicology gives him an understanding all the laws of the vocabulary and summarizes the practical lexical material known to the student and helps the student to develop his skills and habits of generalizing the linguistic phenomena. This student will apply this knowledge to language teaching.

There are 2 principal approaches to the study of the l-ge material in lexicology.:

- synchronic

- diachronic

With regard to L. the synchronic approach is concerned with the V. of the l-ge and its existence at a given time. The diachronic approach deals with the change and the development of the V. in the course of time, that is in the context of the processes through which it grew, developed and acquired its modern form:

e.g. diachronically the words ”country” and ”follow” are borrowed, but sinchronically they are regarded as being English.

In the course of time differnt methods of structural study of meaning appeared and developed:

One of them is distributional analysis.

- disributional analyses – it is the study of the possible variants of the immediate lexical, grammatical, and phonetical environment of a given language unit. In this analysis linguists apply to coding (N., Adj., V etc.).

I want some water. I water the flowers every day.