Lexical semantics studies the meanings of words and how they represent meaning. Lexicology studies lexical units beyond meanings, while etymology studies the origin of vocabulary. Lexical chains provide overall meaning, while classification separates words by meaning or function. Word decomposition occurs when words lose their original meaning. Lexical semantics also compares and contrasts meanings across languages.
Lexical semantics is the study of the meanings of words. Beyond the simple meaning of a lexical unit, lexical semantics studies how a word represents the meaning it carries. In this sense, he studies the existence of the word as a whole. While grammar is acquired as a child, an individual can expand their lexicography throughout their lives.
A lexical unit is a single word or set of words that makes up the most basic level of a language’s lexicon or vocabulary. The study of these units is called lexicology. The examination of lexical units goes beyond meanings, as seen in lexical semantics, and moves on to the structures and substructures of words. The study of the origin of lexical units and vocabulary in general is called etymology. These studies are distinct from lexical semantics, which focuses only on meanings.
The basic lexical units do not take into account more complex word compounds. Two lexical units, sometimes more, can combine to form a compound with a new meaning. Sometimes this meaning is related to both words, but other times it is metaphor. Each compound is considered a unit in lexical semantics because it provides a different meaning.
A set of lexical units that combine to provide overall meaning is called a lexical chain. Lexical chains ignore the grammatical features of a sentence and, in fact, remove them to leave only the words that provide meaning. By removing the function words, or vocabulary, the information words can be put together in a chain.
Classification is the process by which words are separated from each other. These classifications are usually by meaning or function. Once classified into broad categories, words are then subdivided within the category. Of course, there are many words with multiple meanings, known as polysemy, that can fit into more than one category.
Words can also decompose. Word decomposition is the phenomenon where words lose their original meaning over time. This is a separate element of lexical semantics from classification, because the old meanings of words have now become relics or fossils. Rather than morphing into a new meaning, true word decomposition occurs when the word has lost its recognizable meaning, as is the case with Old English words like “ascylfan,” which means to destroy. Others are half-decayed as an atomic half-life, so people understand the meaning of “disheveled” and “ruthless”, but don’t know the meaning of “messy” and “ruth”.
The study of lexical semantics also extends to the study of a single language. It is also an element of comparative and contrastive linguistics. In this sense, lexical semantics compares and contrasts the meanings of identical words across languages. There are more cases of words that cross languages, but have their meanings altered, and there are also cases of words that form from different origins that appear to be the same on the surface, but have totally different meanings.
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