Read the excerpt and answer the questions.

HOW LARGE IS THE ENGLISH LEXICON?

The two biggest dictionaries suggest around half a mil­lion lexemes – a total approached by the unabridged Webster's Third New International (which claimed over 450,000 entries in 1961) and by the integrated edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (which claimed over 500,000 entries in 1992). The true figure is undoubt­edly a great deal higher.

A comparison of these two dictionaries – or of any other group of dictionaries of comparable size – shows a remarkable lack of identity between headword lists. Discrepancies are usually caused by differing edito­rial emphases. The Oxford has far more historical ref­erences and British dialect items than does the Webster, which in turn has far more local American items. On the other hand, neither work would claim to be comprehensive in its coverage of the vocabulary of the new Englishes in such parts of the world as India, Singapore, and Nigeria, where thousands of new lex­emes are coming into the language. And because the tradition in lexicography is to use the written language as the test for inclusion, much local spoken nonstandard vocabulary will be omitted. There must be thousands of slang expressions currently in com­mon use which have never been recorded, such as all the lexemes which express the concept of 'being drunk' – canned, blotto, squiffy, jagged, paralytic, smashed, etc.

Even if we restrict the issue to standard vocabulary, there are many items which could be included as part of the lexicon, but which are not usually found in a dictionary. There are some half a million abbreviated forms in English, many of which have a clear lexical status (BA, FBI, NATO, etc.); and fauna and flora also provide a vast lexical resource. For example, there are apparently some million insects already described, with several million more awaiting descrip­tion. This means that there must be at least a million designations enabling English-speaking entomologists to talk about their subject. Should all of these be allowed into the word-count as well?

It is difficult to see how even a conservative estimate of the English vocabulary could go much below a million lexemes. More radical accounts, allowing in all of sci­entific nomenclature, could easily double this figure. Only a small fraction of these totals, of course, is learned by any one of us. (From: D. Crystal. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 1995. Р. 119)

Questions

·What linguistic items do lexicologists study?

·What is the minimal meaningful unit of language?

·What accounts for numerous and different definitions of the term word? Compare various definitions of the word and state on what properties (phonological, morphological, syntactic, etc.) of the word they are based.

·What are the main problems connected with the concept of the word in English?

·Why is the word considered the basic lexical unit?

·How do you define the term lexeme?

·How large is the English lexicon?

·How many lexical items are registered in The Oxford English Dictionary/Webster’s Third New International Dictionary?

·How large is the lexicon of a native speaker? Does it vary within different age groups/professional groups?

·How large is your lexicon?

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 991