UNIVERSITY OF GUJRAT
ENG-407: Lexical Studies
Course Code:ENG-407
Year: 2013
Instructor’s Name: Moazzam Ali Malik
E-mail: moazzam.ali@uog.edu.pk
Course Description
Course Type:
(Compulsory/Core/E
lective)
Pre-requisites
Goals
The course aims to make the students aware of the basic concepts
related to lexicology and lexicography. It also aims to enrich students’
vocabulary and introduce them to the process of word-formation and
compiling and editing dictionaries.
Elective
General reading of the topics like Lexis, Lexicology & Lexicography


Text Book
Additional Readings
Lectures
Course Title: Lexical Studies
Semester: Fall, 2013
Website: www.uogenglish.wordpress.com
Office Hours: 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
The students will develop in-depth understanding of key
concepts in lexicology and lexicography.
The students will be able to take issues of word-structure
critically and conduct practical thinking and analysis of our
native languages like Urdu & Punjabi.
Plag, Ingo (2003) Word-Formation in English, Cambridge University
Press.
Downloadable from the link:
http://englishstudentsforum.com/uploads/Vocabulary/advance/Word_Fo
rmation_In_English.pdf
Or download from the website: www.uogenglish.wordpress.com
Fontenelle, T. (Ed.), (2008). Practical Lexicography: A Reader. Oxford
University Press.
Hoey, M. (1991). Patterns of Lexis in Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Jackson, H. (1989). Words and their Meanings. London: Longman.
Jackson, H. (2002). Lexicography: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
Lipka, Leonhard (1992), An outline of English lexicology. Lexical
structure, ward semantics, and word-formation, 2nd ed,
Tubingen:Niemeyer
Downloadable from the link: http://epub.ub.unimuenchen.de/5104/1/5104.pdf
32 sessions of 45 minutes each
1
Attendance Policy
Grading
A minimum of 70% attendance is required for a student to be
eligible to take the final examination.
The students with less than 70% of the attendance in a course shall be
given the grade SA (Short Attendance) in such a course and shall not be
allowed to take its End Term Exams and will have to reappear in the
course to get the required attendance to be eligible to sit in the exam
when the course is offered the next time.
The course will be evaluated on the basis of the following percentage:
 Mid Term
25%
 Sessional work
25%
o
Presentation/Practical
10%
o
Assignment/Practical
10%
o
Quizzes
05%
Final term
50%
Session Schedule
Sessions/
Topics
Suggested Readings
Lectures
1&2
3& 4
5&6
7&8
An Introduction to Lexical Studies
Basic Concepts:
Lexicology, Lexicography, Lexeme, Lexis
Definition of a word (orthographic,
minimum meaningful unit, stress, forms of
words)
Studying word-formation
Inflection and derivation
Multi-word Lexemes/Complex words
Identifying morphemes; Allomorphy
Problems with the morpheme: the mapping
of form and meaning
Establishing word-formation rules
Multiple affixation
What is an affix?
How to investigate affixes: more on
methodology
General properties of English affixation
Suffixes
Prefixes
Infixation
Derivation without affixation
1st Chapter of the Text Book
Please see above to find the
name of the textbook and its
downloadable links
2nd Chapter of the Text Book
4th Chapter of the Text Book
5th Chapter of the Text Book
2
9&10
11&12
13&14
15&16
17&18
Conversion
The directionality of conversion
Conversion or zero-affixation?
Conversion: syntactic or morphological?
Prosodic morphology
diminutives and clippings
Blends
Productivity and the mental lexicon
Introduction: what is productivity?
Possible and actual words
Complex words in the lexicon
Measuring productivity
Constraining productivity
Pragmatic restrictions
Structural restrictions
Blocking
Compounding
Recognizing compounds
What are compounds made of?
More on the structure of compounds: the
notion of head
Stress in compounds
Presentations & Mid Term Examination
5th Chapter of the Text Book
3rd Chapter of the Text Book
3rd Chapter of the Text Book
6th Chapter of the Text Book
19&20
An inventory of compounding patterns
Nominal compounds
Headedness
Interpreting nominal compounds
6th Chapter of the Text Book
21&22
Adjectival compounds
Verbal compounds
Neoclassical compounds
Compounding: syntax or morphology?
6th Chapter of the Text Book
23&24
Lexicography; Kinds of Dictionaries
Historical Background of Lexicography
Types of Dictionaries: General, Academic,
Referential Dictionaries
Compiling Dictionaries
Role of User’s need and Prior Knowledge in
Compiling Dictionaries
Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction
Corpus as a source of Lexicography
Selection of Corpus Data for Lexicography
Corpus Data Preparation
Introduction to some online corpora (BNC,
CoBUILD etc)
Teacher’s notes
25&26
Or visit
www.uogenglish.wordpress.com
Teacher’s notes
Or visit
www.uogenglish.wordpress.com
3
27&28
29&30
31&32
Language Varieties, Language Shift
Lexical Shift
Analysis of the Lexis of Pakistani English
Newspapers
Semantic and Grammatical features of
Pakistani English (borrowing of Urdu
inflections in word formation, use of
English Lexis in their indigenous meanings,
etc)
Presentations & Quiz
Revision
 Discussion on Assignments
Teacher’s notes
Or visit
www.uogenglish.wordpress.com
Proposed Assignments:
1. Students can be asked to visit BNC or CoBuild online to search a given word (words) in
concordance. From the concordance data they can describe semantic and grammatical
features of the word.
2. Students may study Pakistani Newspaper English to find the inflectional borrowings,
compounding and the semantic features of different lexical items (Hint: Assembly-wala,
Taliban-ism, Thana-culture)
4