Modern English Lexicology

Problems for discussion
The notion of “collocability” (valency);
The notion of “word-group”;
The role of lexical and grammatical valency in uniting words into word-groups;
The norm of lexical and grammatical valency;
Linguistic properties of word-groups:
structure;
meaning;
motivation;

Valency and word-group studies in Linguistics
The problems of valency and collocability:
С.Д. Кацнельсон
Л. Теньер
Г. Хельбиг
The «word-group theory»:
А.А. Шахматов
Л.В. Щерба
Ф.Ф. Фортунатов
Н.С. Трубецкой
Дж. Лайонз
Ш.Балли
В.В. Виноградов
В.Г. Гак

What is collocability?
Collocability (also valency, distributional characteristics, colligation, collocation) is the ability of the units of the language - phonemes, morphemes, words - to form units of higher level.

В.Г. Гак: «Сочетаемость – свойство языковых единиц сочетаться при образовании единиц более высокого уровня; одно из фундаментальных свойств языковых единиц, отражающее синтагматические отношения между ними» [БЭС «Языкознание», стр. 483]

What is a word-group?
A word group is the largest two facet lexical unit comprising more than one word.
red tape
beautiful girl
to walk slowly

Words are united into word-groups thanks to the following linguistic factors
Lexical valency (collocability)
Grammatical valency (collocability)

Lexical valency
Lexical valency is the ability of a word to appear in various combinations:
vital
pressing question
urgent
But not: sweet question
green question

The norm of lexical valency
The range (norm) of lexical valency is determined by the semantic agreement – the semes of the combining words should not disagree (violate the logical norms).
For example, a verb, denoting an action characteristic of a living being agrees only with an animate noun.

Example 1: a dog barks
Dog - an animal kept as a pet, for guarding buildings, or for hunting.
to bark - to make the short loud sound that a dog makes

Example 2: a pen barks
Pen - an object that you use for writing or drawing with ink
Object - a thing that you can see and touch that is not alive and is usually solid ? an inanimate object can’t produce sounds.

Grammatical valency
Grammatical valency is the aptness of a word to appear in specific grammatical (syntactic) structures.

The norm of grammatical valency
The norm of grammatical valency is determined by the part of speech of the word:
The property of the object ? Adj. + N
a green apple

The structure of the word-group influences on its meaning:
keen + N - keen sight, hearing "острый“
keen + on + N - keen on sports "увлеченный“
keen + inf. - keen to know "сильно желающий“.

Linguistic properties of the word-group
structure meaning motivation
lexical grammatical
lexical structural

Structure of word-groups
(1) the order of the components:
• a verbal - nominal group:
to sew a dress, to read a book;
• a verbal - prepositional - nominal group
to look at something;

Structure of word-groups
(2) the criterion of distribution:
(distribution - the sum of contexts of the language unit):
• endocentric - have one central member functionally equivalent to the whole word-group, while all other members of the group are subordinated to it:
I saw a red flower – I saw a flower;
• exocentric - having no central member:
become older, side by side;

Structure of word-groups
(3) according to the part of speech of the headword:
• nominal (beautiful garden);
• verbal (to fly high);
• adjectival (lucky from birth);

Structure of word-groups
(4) according to the syntactic pattern:
• predicative - have a syntactic structure similar to that of a sentence (he went);
• non-predicative are subdivided according to the type of syntactic relations between the components into:
(a) subordinative (modern technology);
(b) coordinative (husband and wife).

Meaning of word-groups
The meaning of a word group is derived
from the combined lexical meanings of its components – lexical meaning,
from the meaning of the pattern of their arrangement – grammatical\structural meaning,
from the extra-linguistic situation in which word-groups are habitually used by native speakers

Lexical meaning
The Lexical meaning of the word-group may be defined as the combined lexical meaning of the component words.
Blind man
Blind type

Grammatical meaning
Grammatical \ structural meaning is conveyed by the order and arrangement of member words:
grammar school
school grammar

The most frequent patterns of word-groups in English
Adj. + N
nice cap
V + N
to built houses
V + N + V (Inf.)
to make somebody work
V + Prep. + N
to rely on somebody
V + N +Prep. + N
to hold something against somebody
V + V (Inf.)
to get to know

Lexical motivation
Word-groups are lexically motivated if the combined lexical meaning of the groups is deducible from the meaning of their components:
red flower
tall boy
beautiful carpet

Structural motivation
Word-groups are structurally motivated if the meaning of the pattern is deducible from the order and arrangement of the member-words of the group
The word-group: yellow bag
The pattern: Adj + N
The meaning: «quality - substance»

Degree of motivation
Complete motivation:
Black dress – dress of black colour
Partial motivation:
Black market – illegal market
Non motivated:
Black death - a disease that killed millions of people in Europe and Asia in the 14th century. Its medical name is bubonic plague.