English Lexicology and Lexicography 1

Courseplan winter term 2013/2014

Week 1 Sep 30 Words, Words, Words

Topics:
Introduction to the course, organizational matters
Introduction to lexicology
Basic terms and definitions

Before-class readings: none

In-class readings:
Crystal, David: CEEL: How Large is the English Lexicon?, p. 119
Crystal, David: CEEL: The Sources of the Lexicon, pp. 124-125 (extracts)
Crystal, David: CEEL: Foreign Borrowings, pp. 126-127 (extracts)
After-class readings (optional):
Crystal, David: CEL: Language Change, pp. 330-335
Jackson – ZeAmvela: Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: What is Lexicology?, pp. 1-23
Jackson – ZeAmvela: Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: Investigating the Vocabulary,
pp. 167-186

Exercises: none

Week 2 Oct 7 Words in Dictionaries

Topic: Lexicography – „harmless drudgery“

Before-class readings:
Crystal, David: CEEL: Johnson’s Dictionary, pp. 74-75
Crystal, David: CEEL: New Nation, New Themes, pp. 80-82
Crystal, David: CEL: Dictionaries pp. 108-112
Crystal, David: CEEL: The Thesaurus, pp. 158-159
In-class readings:
Johnson: Plan for a Dictionary (extract)
Johnson: Preface to the Dictionary (extract)
After-class reading (optional):
Mugglestone, Lynda (2000). Lexicography and the OED: Pioneers in the Untrodden
Forest. Oxford: OUP

Presentation: OED/Johnson’ Dictionary/ comparison of the two of them

Questions to readings:

Johnson’s Dictionary
What was the first attempt at writing a general English dictionary? What kinds of dictionaries
were there before this one?
What was Johnson’s aim when he started to write his dictionary? How did it change?
Describe Johnson’s method of compiling the dictionary. Which features are still used in
dictionary-making today?

New nation, new themes

Why was it considered necessary to write an American English dictionary?
How was the first Webster’s dictionary received?
In what ways was his second attempt improved? Was it received in a different way?

The Thesaurus
What is the purpose of thesauri?
Describe the way Roget’s Thesaurus was organized.
What are the inconveniences of using a thesaurus?

Dictionaries
What is a dictionary?
What kinds of dictionaries are there?
Describe the first dictionaries – their form, place of origin, purpose.
Who was James Murray?
What was the Scriptorium?
What is ‘dord’?
Describe the way dictionaries are made today.

Exercises:

Exercise 1 Translate the following words into English or into Slovak and note your sources.
What can we infer from this situation?

prevažovačka, hladké očko, cedidlo, kutáč, kraslica, bokombrady, drdol, francúzsky kľúč,
dreň, nechtík (rastlina), bryndzové halušky, krstné meno, materinský jazyk, rohožka, dečka,
koleso na plávanie, tykadlá slimáka, biologické termíny: kmeň, trieda, čeľaď, rod, druh;
kosák, zverák, traky, dupačky, podbradník, puklica

politainer, gentrify, spin doctor, nonversation, house (music), naggravate, noughties, nimby,
power dressing, textorist, phone-in, prime time, kindergarchy, glocalize, name and shame,
metrosexual, foodie, hangry, prepregnant, microwave mentality

Exercise 2 As future teachers, think about how dictionaries can be used in English teaching
practice and prepare an activity (or activities) based on the use of a dictionary.

Week 3 Oct 14 Words in History

Topics: Etymology – a science in which vowels count for nothing and consonants for a little
more

Before-class reading:
Durkin, Philip: The Oxford Guide to Etymology: Introduction, pp. 1-35
In-class readings:
Crystal, David: CEEL: Folk Etymology, p. 139
After-class reading (optional):
Večerka, Radoslav (2006). K pramenům slov. Uvedení do etymologie. Lidové noviny
Presentation: Language Change
Presentation: How Far Can You Go? The Theories of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-
Nostratic Language Families

Questions to reading:

Introduction
What does etymology deal with?
What are cognates?
What is a language family?
Name Germanic languages.
Give the advantages and disadvantages of tree diagrams as a method of representing the
genetic relationship of languages
What methods of work does an etymologist use?
Explain what is meant under the words „etymological fallacy“.

Exercise:
Try to guess whether the following etymologies are true or not and consult a dictionary to
check your answers.

Treacle
mid-14c., "medicinal compound, antidote for poison," from Old French triacle "antidote"

Crap
19th c., back-formation of British plumber and sanitaryware producer Thomas Crapper's
surname. From American war slang: American servicemen stationed in England during World
War I saw his name on cisterns and used it as army slang, i.e. "I'm going to the crapper",
hence the meaning of crap „bodily waste“.

Picnic
19th c., an abbreviation of "pick a nigger", a phrase claimed to have been used by white
families at community lynchings

Bonnet
late 14c., Scottish bonat "brimless hat for men,"

Pretty
Old English prættig (West Saxon), pretti (Kentish), *prettig (Mercian) "cunning, skillful,
artful, wily, astute,"

Tips
Late 19th c., from the acronym "To Insure Prompt Service"

Marmalade
16th c., from the phrase „Marie est malade“. Mary, Queen of Scots, ate marmalade when she
had a headache, and that the name is derived from her maids' whisper of "Marie est malade"
(Mary is ill).

Sirloin
17th c., when the English king Charles II conferred knighthood on a beef roast, saying "Rise,
Sir Loin!"

Cheat
mid-15c., a shortening of Old French escheat, legal term for revision of property to the state
when the owner dies without heirs, literally "that which falls to one". The royal officers
evidently had a low reputation. Meaning evolved through "confiscate" (mid-15c.) to "deprive
unfairly" (1580s).

Naughty
late 14c., naugti "needy, having nothing," from Old English nawiht. Sense of "wicked, evil,
morally wrong" is attested from 1520s; specific meaning "sexually promiscuous" is from
1869. The more tame main modern sense of "disobedient" (especially of children) is attested
from 1630s. Related: Naughtily; naughtiness. A woman of bad character c.1530-1750 might
be called a naughty pack (also sometimes of men and later of children).

Week 4 Oct 21 Words Abroad

Topic: Borrowing – and not giving back

Before-class reading:
Durkin, Philip: The Oxford Guide to Etymology: Lexical Borrowing, pp. 132-154
In-class readings:
Crystal, David: CEEL: Threatening English, pp. 114
Crystal, David: CEEL: English Threatened, p. 115
Crystal, David: CEEL: The Sources of the Lexicon, pp. 124-125 (extracts)
Crystal, David: CEEL: Foreign Borrowings, pp. 126-127 (extracts)
After-class reading (optional):
Dixon, R.M.W. (1997). The Rise and Fall of Languages, Oxford: OUP

Presentation: Mechanisms of Borrowing

Questions to reading:
Lexical Borrowing
Explain the statement that the metaphor of borrowing is not very appropriate.
Give the typology of borrowed words.
What is the difference between Fremdworter and Lehnworter?
„Borrowing is not a simple, once-and-for-all process.“ Explain, give supportive examples.
What are the reasons for borrowing? Give examples for each.
What are the difficulties with the concepts of borrowing out of need and borrowing for
prestige?
Read the quotation from Smithers 1968 on p. 153. Based on your knowledge of the history of
English language, can you say why „... so long as we are dealing with anyone Middle English
work, the influence of French vocabulary on the ‚language‘ is an abstraction“?

Exercises: none
Week 5 Oct 28 Words in the Mind

Topic: How vocabulary is learnt in first and second language acquisition

Before-class readings:
Crystal, David: CEL: Investigating Children’s Language, pp. 230-238
Crystal, David: CEL: Semantic Development, pp. 246-247

Presentation: Welcome to Dictionopolis: The Mental Lexicon

Questions to readings:
Investigating Children’s Language
Describe the ways the researchers have been gathering the information on child language
acquisition.
What is CHILDES?
Describe the development of language in a child. Can a single account be produced?
What does “acquiring a language” involve?
Explain the most important theories of language acquisition. Which of their elements can we
carry into the second language acquisition?
What is motherese?

Semantic Development
Which words are usually learnt first?
Describe the process of learning first language vocabulary.

Exercises: None

Week 6 Nov 4 Words in the Classroom

Topic: The methodology of vocabulary teaching

Before-class readings:
Crystal, David: CEL: Foreign Language Learning and Teaching, pp. 372-381
After-class readings (optional):
Carter-McCarthy: Vocabulary and Language Teaching

Presentation: L1 and L2 Lexicon Development – Similarities and Differences

Presentation: Lexical Approach
Presentation: Word-Wall Approach

Questions to readings:
Foreign Language Learning and Teaching
What is interlingual distance?
When should be a foreign language introduced in the study?
What factors influence successful foreign language learning?
Summarize the main theories of language learning.
Evaluate the teaching methods from the point of view of teaching vocabulary.
What four main types of test do we know? Do you think they really reflect the learner’s
knowledge? Can you think of alternative ways of testing (especially testing of vocabulary)?
Exercises: None

Week 7 Nov 11 Words in Mouths (and Computers)

Topics: Corpus linguistics and its usage in the language teaching

Before-class readings:
Bennett, Gena R.: Using Corpora in Language Classroom: Corpus Linguistics for
Teachers, available at http://www.nhlrc.ucla.edu/media/files/Using-corpora-in-the-
language-learning-classroom--Corpus-linguistics-for-teachers-my-atc.pdf
Materials at http://techinyourclass.webs.com/useofcorpuswebsites.htm

After-class readings (optional):

Biber, D. – Conrad, S. – Reppen, R. (1998) Corpus Linguistics: Investigating
Language Structure and Use, Cambridge: CUP

Questions to readings:
What is corpus linguistics?
What is a corpus?
What can we find out using a corpus?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a corpus in language teaching?
Give examples of exercises based on using a corpus.
What corpora do you know? Which of them would you (not) use in the classroom and why?
What are collocations?
What are lexical bundles?
What is a concordancer?
What does t mean that the corpus is principled?
What does it mean that the corpus is tagged?

Exercises: none

NOTE: Please note that in order to be able to participate in this seminar and the
exercises we will do, it is necessary for you to register for trial to WordBanks Online
Collins COBUILD Corpus at http://www.collinslanguage.com/content-
solutions/wordbanks#.UlnVlFIwCC4. Details on how to do that will be provided in the
previous seminar. Please do not leave it to the last day before the seminar as there may
be delays in registration processing. It is also necessary to bring your laptops to the
seminars (there should be at least one laptop per two students).

Week 8 Nov 18 Words in English

Topics: The development of the English lexicon, native words, borrowings from other
languages, standardization

Before-class readings:
Crystal, David: CEEL: Old English Vocabulary, pp. 22-23
Crystal, David: CEEL: Lexical Invasions, pp. 24-27
Crystal, David: CEEL: Middle English Vocabulary, pp. 46-49
Crystal, David: CEEL: English During the Renaissance, pp. 60-61
In-class readings:
Crystal, David: CEEL: Chaucerian Achievement, pp. 38-39
Crystal, David: CEEL: The Influence of Shakespeare, pp. 62-63
After-class readings (optional):
Jespersen, Otto (1912) Growth and Structure of the English Language, Leipzig,
available online, not in copyright

Presentation: Life in Anglo-Saxon Britain

Presentation: The Vikings
Presentation: The Fate of Celtic Languages in Britain

Questions to readings:

Old English Vocabulary

Give examples of OE words that remained in Modern English, but have now a different
meaning than in OE times.
What were the means of creating new words in OE? Which one of them was the most
productive?
What are kennings?

Lexical invasions
Characterize early Latin loans: what spheres of life did they belong to?
What is the difference between Latin and Norse influence?
Give examples of Norse loanwords.
Why the study of placenames is so important (in general and in case of Britain) and what do
placenames tell us?
Give examples of words borrowed from Old Norse and of Scandinavian placenames.

Middle English Vocabulary

What kinds of words were borrowed from French after the 13th century?
Give examples of words borrowed twice – both from Norman French and Parisian French.
What are the possible outcomes of their coexistence in language?
What effect did the simultaneous borrowing from French and Latin had upon English
vocabulary?
From what other languages did English borrow in this period?
Describe the changes in word formation.

English During the Renaissance

What was the reason of the extensive borrowing of new words during the Renaissance?
What languages did English borrow from? Give also examples of some borrowings.
What was the inkhorn controversy about?
What are Chaucerisms?

Exercises:
Analyze the assigned text according to the instructions. (The text will be provided in the
previous class.)

Week 9 Nov 25 Words with Stable Forms but Unstable Meanings

Topics: Semantic Change, Phraseology

Before-class readings:
Kvetko, Pavol: Idioms. In: English Lexicology in Theory and Practice. Trnava: Univerzita
sv. Cyrila a Metoda, 2009, pp. 103-109
Beekes, Robert S. P. (2011). Vocabulary Changes. In: Comparative Indo-European
Linguistics, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 85-92

Presentation: What Counts as Idiom?

Questions to readings:

Idioms
1) What are the characteristic features of idioms?
2) Are idioms absolutely unchangeable in form? Support your answer by examples.
3) What variations of idioms do you know?
4) Give classification of idioms according to their:
a. Fixedness
b. Construction
c. Semantic content
5) What are proverbs?
6) What are similes?
7) Do you think that social formulae should be treated as idioms? Why?
8) Give an example of
a. Homonymous idioms
b. Synonymous idioms
c. Antonymous idioms
9) What are absolute equivalents?
10) What are relative equivalents?
11) Why usually the majority of idioms in one language cannot be translated (by idioms)
into another language?

Vocabulary Changes
1) The author says that „I happen to agree with those who maintain that words have
meanings which are quite sharply defined.“ which implies that there are also linguists
who think that word meaning is vague and cannot be clearly defined. Can you think of
any arguments in favour of one or the other opinion?
2) Give the reasons for disappearance of words.
3) In what circumstances can new words appear in a language? Do you think all of the
cases mentioned in the text really are cases of NEW words appearing in the language?
4) Give a typology of changes of meaning.
5) What are the reasons for change of meaning?

Exercises:
Exercises 74, 75, 76, 77, 86-90 from Böhmerová, Adela (1985). Lexikológia angličtiny.
Cvičenia na semináre. Bratislava: UK
Exercises 8/4, 9/3, 10/6, 11/1, 12/2,3,4 from Kvetko, Pavol (2005). English Lexicology in
Theory and Practice, Trnava: UCM
Week 10 Dec 2 Words in So Many Words

Revision

Week 11 Dec 9 Words in Your Own Words

Test

Week 12 Dec 16 The Last Word

Wrap-up, credits

Notes:
Abbreviations:
CEL = The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, available in the department library, the
faculty library as well as in the University Library of Bratislava
CEEL = The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, available at the department
library and in the University Library

Relevant parts from books, which are not available in our library or may be hard to get at, will
be posted here.

Every student is expected to read Before-class reading materials and be prepared to discuss
them in the seminar. Questions to readings are there to help you with preparation for the
seminar. In-class readings will be provided in the seminar, you do not have to copy them in
advance. They are listed here for future reference. After-class readings are optional only, but
usually they are readable, informative texts that build up on the topics we discussed in the
seminar.