Branches of linguistics. Synchronic vs diachronic approaches to the language study. Lexicology – ‘the science of the word’ Lexicon

What do words consist of?

Morphemic analysis is the analysis limited to stating the number and types of morphemes that make up a word regardless of their role in the formation of this word, viz. it only defines the morphemes comprising a word, but does not reveal their hierarchy.

How are words formed?

Derivational analysis explores the derivative types of words, their construction and their interrelation.

interchange, n

interview, v
General description of word-formation in Modern English. Productive and nonproductive means.

Word-formation (word-building) is the creation of new words from the material available in the language on certain formulas and patterns.

Functions of word-formation:

nominative function;

communicative function.

Word-formation results in:

development of the vocabulary (92,5% of neologisms in Modern English result from word-formation);

re-categorisation (derivatives belong to different word classes).

Word-family is a set of words that all share a common root, e.g. graceful, ungraceful, gracefulness, to disgrace, disgracefully, disgraceful, disgrace, disgracefulness, gracelessly, graceless etc.

Productivity is the ability to form new words after existing patterns which are readily understood by speakers of a language.