LEXICOLOGY & LEXICOGRAPHY

I. LEXICOLOGY

→ It is important to make a distinction between:

– Lexicology: the theoretical study of vocabulary and lexical groups (newer)
– Lexicography: the study of dictionaries and lexical development (older field of study)
→ The French dominated linguistics at the beginning of the twentieth century, and a Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de
Saussure, created structuralism in 1916.
→ Other fields are phonology (the study of speech sounds) and lexicology (vocabulary, or how words come to have
significance or meaning).
→ The second half of the twentieth century was dominated by formal Grammar and syntax (the arrangement of words
into phrases and phrases into sentences) under American influences.

A. STRUCTURALISM (Ferdinand de Saussure)

→ Structuralism defines language as not being a nomenclature (list of words).

– 40% of the English language is Latin and Greek based.
– Words are composed in a system or a structure, such as the alphabet. A language is a system where
‘everything hangs together’.
→ Vocabulary: a repertoire of words.
→ Lexicon (lexique): a system of signs. Nobody knows more than 60,000 words (most people know 5,000). The Oxford
English Dictionary (20 volumes) has 450,000 words.
– French: voiture, auto, bagnole, caisse, titine, etc.
 The French language has a tendency to create many words for one item. These are called ‘stylistic
synonyms’
– English: automobile, car, motor, banger, etc.
– Chinese: qì chē (systematic building of words)
→ Sign: an item that could be a word, sentence or more
→ Lexeme: minimal unit of vocabulary (item found in a dictionary) – an abstraction.
– A word is different from a lexeme, which is different from a term. A term is a lexeme with a specific
meaning in a specific domain.
– A general word can become a technical term (metaphors)

B. SEMANTICS (The study of meanings in a language)

→ Here, one should differentiate between:

– Lexical family: group of words with similar origin (char, car, cart, charette, etc.)
– Semantic field: group of words related in terms of meaning (tree, wood, forest; Baum, Holz, Wald; ball,
bullet, bowl; ballon, balle, boule)
 Polysemy: multiple word meaning.

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  Mail: n. postal system
 Mail: v. send (by mail)
 Synonym: words or phrases with the same meaning as another of the same language.
 To mail: to send
 Homonym: two or more words with the same written form but different meaning or origin.
 Mail: i.e. a letter
 Mail: metallic armour
 Hypernym: word whose meaning is implied by another and in terms of which the other word can
be defined (e.g.: building is the hypernym of hotel)
 Hyponym: word whose meaning implies or is included in that of another (e.g.: tulip is a hyponym
of flower)

C. SYNTAX (The order of words in which they convey meaning)

→ Constructions are the syntaxical relationship between words in a sentence; the action of arranging words in
accordance with established usage so as to convey the desired sense.
– The Jabberwocky principle: words that on their own do not mean anything, when put together in a certain
way enable the reader to grasp the overall significance of the text:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the momeraths outgrabe…’
→ Expressions: the syntax itself can create meaning:
– Idioms: a form of expression, grammatical construction, phrase, etc., peculiar to a person or a language. The
meaning cannot be predicted from the meaning of the separate words.
– Proverbs: concise sentence, often metaphorical or alliterative in form, held to express some general truth.
– Collocation: juxtaposition or association of a particular word with other particular words, a group of words
so associated.
– Locutions: form of expression; phrase.

D. PRAGMATICS (The study of the use of sentences in actual situations)

→ Pragmatics determines the meaning and relevance that is related to the context.
→ Conversational maxims (Paul Grice, 1957): oral proposition, expressing a general truth drawn from science, law or
experience.
– e.g.: Do not move!
→ Acts of speech (John Austin, 1962): performative utterances.
– e.g.: I hereby declare you Man and Wife – this needs a context in order to have the desired effect (i.e. needs to
be uttered during a wedding by a priest)

E. “LES MOTS, LES CHOSES… ET NOUS”

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 1. Definitions

→ Réaliste : la signification renvoie avec une propriété ou une réalité objective.

→ Realism: the doctrine that universals have an objective or absolute existence.
– Language is an obstacle.
→ Nominaliste : les relations entre langage et réalité sont régies par l’arbitraire.
→ Nominalism: the doctrine that universals or abstract concepts are mere names without any corresponding reality.
– Language is a medium.

→ Realism: WORDS  THINGS; Nominalism: WORDS  IDEAS

2. De Saussure’s Theory

→ « Les relations entre le langage et la réalité sont régies par l’arbitraire et que la structuration du monde opérée par les langues
n’a d’autre fondement que les habitudes linguistiques. La signification d’un signe ne peut être valablement définie en termes
positifs à partir de ses relations avec la réalité. Elle ne peut l’être que par les relations d’opposition que ce signe entretient avec
les autres signes de la langue (sa valeur). Seule la totalité de la langue est désormais en mesure d’entrer en relation avec la
réalité. »
→ Makes translation or reformulation impossible.
→ Scientific discourse encounters difficulties.
→ Human actions are not efficient.

3. Critiques des Conditions Nécessaires et Suffisantes (CNS) / Prototype

→ CNS : « pour qu’un élément de l’expérience appartienne à une catégorie, il faut et il suffit qu’il partage un certain nombre de
traits avec l’ensemble des membres de cette catégorie : par exemple, tout membre de la catégorie chaise présente, au minimum,
un pied et un dossier, tout fauteuil a des accoudoirs. »
– Toutes les propriétés ne sont pas partagées dans la même catégorie (pas tous les oiseaux ne volent pas)
– On parle d’assimilation à la catégorie : quelque chose de nouveau qui ressemble à un autre sera attribué à
la catégorie de la chose plus ancienne – on l’appellera de la même manière et ses traits caractéristiques
deviennent des traits possibles pour toute cette catégorie.
→ Prototype : « la ressemblance avec un prototype central, ou ressemblance avec un exemplaire quelconque de la catégorie. »
– Certains traits débordent sur d’autres catégories : une chauve-souris vole, mais ce n’est pas un oiseau.

II. LEXICOGRAPHY

→ The very first dictionary was developed in the seventeenth century in France under Louis the Fourteenth.

A. STATISTICS AND DEFINITONS

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 → In each language there are usually around just 1,000 grammatical items (different from lexical items, which are
stand alone, grammatical items are not) that a person must know to be able to understand 85% of a text in the
language.
→ According to Zipf’s Law, 100 words equal 60%, while 4,000 words equal around 97.5%.
– Many words that are not commonly used are part of Languages for Specific Purposes.
→ Languages also intertwine a great deal; the English language derives its Grammar from Anglo Saxon origins, while
the vocabulary is Latin based. We can also find many words of Persian origin in ancient and Modern Greek.
→ We can also observe the interaction of vocabulary: differences in English between words such as ‘shut’ and ‘close’
require context so that we may be able to choose between them. Furthermore, in English, we can add extensions to
the verbs, so we can also create ‘shut tight’.
→ Vocabulary is quantification; it represents the brute number of words in a language.
– The most well known dictionaries in English are the New or Short Oxford English Dictionaries.
– In French, the Petit Robert has 60,000 lexemes, entries, while the Trésor de la Langue Française has 400,000
and the Sciences Physiques dictionary has 500,000.
→ Lexicon vs. Nomenclature (total list of words in a dictionary – traditionally, one can only use words in a dictionary
that are defined elsewhere in the same dictionary).
– One should distinguish between what is fundamental vocabulary and what is transformed into a term by
means of usage.
– One should also distinguish between ‘word’ and ‘term’:
 GDP is a word, which comprises of three terms (Gross domestic product)

B. THE EVOLUTION OF LEXIS

→ Celtic > Latin

– kar > carrus
→ Germanic > proto-roman
– werra > guerre
→ Latin > old French
– hospitalis > hôtel
→ Latin > middle French
– hospitalis > hôpital
→ Italian > classical French
– banca > banque

C. LAYERS OF LANGUAGE - NEOLOGY

→ Neology refers to the creation of words through various means:

– ‘Sex’, until 1929, did not mean sexual intercourse, it only meant gender.
→ Different forms of neology (néologie de sens):
– Analogy (metaphor): the process by which words or phrases are created or re-formed according to existing
patterns in the language.
 ‘mouse’ for a computer mouse.

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 – Melioration/Pejoration: semantic change in a word to a higher or lower, more or less approved, or more or
less respectable meaning:
 Terrible (melioration in French), maîtresse (pejoration)
– Assimilation (Copy)
 Réaliser / to realise
→ Different forms of neology (néologie de forme):
– A for Abbreviation:
 Acronym: a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or
series of words.
 AIDS, Radar
 Alphabetism: the expression of spoken sounds by an alphabet:
 UK, USA, SNCF
 Alternance (français):
 Verlan
 Apocope: loss or omission of the last letter, syllable, or part of a word.
 Bus, dico
– B for Borrowing:
 Adoption:
 Brunch, cappuccino
 Adaptation:
 Bifteck, Colissimo
 Assimilation (Copy):
 Coussin d’air
– C for Composition:
 Affixation: the process of inflection or derivation that consists of adding an affix
 bobologue, micro-ondes
 Agglutination: a process of word formation in which morphemes, each having one relatively
constant shape, are combined without fusion or morphophonemic change, and in which each
grammatical category is typically represented by a single morpheme in the resulting word, esp.
such a process involving the addition of one or more affixes to a base
 airbag, aujourd'hui
 Amalgam:
 bureautique, smog

D. KEY DATES IN THE HISTORY OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE: “LE FRANCAIS D’HIER ET
D’AUJOURD’HUI”

→ 813 : Concile des Evêques à Tours: semons en langue vulgaire.

→ 842 : Serments de Strasbourg. Texte officiel rédigé dans la langue du pays (plurilinguisme : langue
romane/germanique)

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 → 1066 : Conquête de l’Angleterre, où le français acquiert le statut de langue officielle d’administration, littérature et
justice.
→ 1460-70 : Naissance de l’imprimerie
→ 1531 : Ordonnance de Nîmes
→ 1539 : Edit de François Ier (qui fait du français la langue principale du pays)
→ 1520-30 : Elaboration de la grammaire de Palsgrave, puis Louis Meigret (plus orthodoxe), Ramus…
→ 1606 : Trésor de la langue françoyse tant ancienne que moderne (de Jean Nicot).
→ 1635 : Académie Française de Richelieu
→ 1637 : Le Discours de la Méthode (René Descartes)
→ 1694 : Arrivée des grands dictionnaires : Richelet, Furetière, Académie
→ 1882 : Scolarisation obligatoire.
→ On pourrait considérer que le Français est du Latin ultramoderne : le lexique garde des ressemblances, tandis que la
grammaire est complètement différente.
→ Le français se distingue des autres langues romanes de par l’existence d’un substrat celtique et d’un superstrat
germanique.
– L’emploi systématique du sujet.
– L’ordre du verbe et de l’objet nominal est très strict.
– L’absence d’accent de mot dans l’énoncé mais un accent de phrase.
– Les dislocations successives à l’oral.
– Les multiples possibilités de formulation pour une question.
– ‘Ne… pas’ devient ‘pas’
– L’antéposition et l’emploi des déterminants.

E. “DIS-MOI CE QUE TU PARLES, JE TE DIRAI COMMENT TU PENSES”

→ La thèse de Chomsky définit la langue comme étant universelle – la culture de l’individu influence sa capacité à
parler ; le langage est inné.
→ Selon la langue, les règles imposent une certaine réflexion avant de s’adresser à notre interlocuteur. Les langues
peuvent, par exemple, mettre en valeur la forme ou bien la matière des objets. En ce qui concerne le genre des mots,
il faut regarder les domaines abstraits où les informations sensorielles ne sont pas importantes (selon Boroditsky).
Ce que nous savons, nous l’avons appris par le langage. Selon Slobin, la langue que nous parlons influe sur notre
compréhension des choses : les aspects par ce que l’on peut observer (les couleurs, par exemple), pour les bateaux,
qui sont féminisés.
→ Les aspects psychologiques ne rentrent pas dans la neurologie ou la neurobiologie. Les aspects culturels et
sociologiques ne font pas partie de ces domaines. Parmi les domaines qui en font partie, on pourrait citer
l’ethnologie, l’anthropologie…