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

Phraseological units based on folklore and literary sources:

-national folklore, e.g. to rain cats and dogs, to have nine lives etc.; proverbs, e.g. the last straw, to catch at a straw etc.;

-antique myths and legends, e.g. a swan song (Ancient Greece); the Trojan horse (Rome); crocodile tears (Egypt); the lion’s share, a dog in the manger (Aesop’s fables) etc.;

-the Bible, e.g. an eye for an eye; a wolf in sheep’s clothing etc.;

-literature, e.g. to be as busy as a bee (G. Chaucer); to fight the windmills (M. de Cervantes); an albatross around one’s neck (S. T. Coleridge); something is rotten in the state of Denmark (W. Shakespeare); to grin like a Cheshire cat (L. Carroll) etc.;

-film production, e.g. Elementary, my dear Watson! home alone.

39. Dialectology as a branch of linguistics, its aim and basic notions. A dialect vs a variant.

Dialectology is a linguistic subdiscipline concerned with dialects. Its origin — apart from a few early glossaries and dialect dictionaries — can be traced back to the early 19th c. historical and comparative linguistics.

In 1876 Georg Wenkersent postal questionnaires out over Northern Germany. These postal questionnaires contained a list of sentences written in Standard German, which were then transcribed into the local dialect, reflecting dialectal differences. Many studies proceeded from this, and over the next century dialect studies were carried out all over the world.

During the Romantic era the ‘dialects of the common people,’ which were up to then held in low esteem, were elevated to the position of ‘more original’ linguistic forms; the comparative method was used to reconstruct the earlier stages of a language from its dialects.

In the investigation of general historical linguistic principles by the Neogrammarians, the dialects were even seen as being superior to the written language, since it was here that ‘consistencies in sound formation’ were genuinely apparent.