Contrastive analysis reveals sameness and difference in the lexical meaning
and semantic structure of correlated words. Thus, English kinship terms do not always differentiate between male and female: cousin – двоюродный брат, двоюродная сестра. The semantic structures of correlated polysemantic words do not coincide, e.g. in English zhe word head is used to denote the head of a person, bed or match, whereas in Russian different words have to be used: голова человека, изголовье кровати, сторона монеты. The number and meaning in the correlated sets differ: pitiful – жалкий, жалостливый – pitiful. Correlated words also differ in their valency: new and новый are correlated only in some collocations: новое платье – a new dress; others have to be specially learnt by
Russian students: new potatoes - молодая картошка, new bread - свежий хлеб.
3.Statistical Methods of Analysis.Statistical linguistics deals with the quantitative study of language phenomena. Its results can be used for verification.
Statistical methods are applied in the analysis of different structural types of words, affixes and the vocabularies of great writers. They also help to select the most frequent items for teaching purposes. Statistical regularities can be observed only if the phenomena are numerous and their occurrence frequent, e.g. it was found that about 1,300 – 1,500 most frequent words make up 85% of the text.
Statistical methods of analysis have been also applied to various theoretical problems of meaning, e.g. G.K. Zipf discovered that the number of the word‘s meanings is equal to the square root of its relative frequency.
Statistical approach is quantitative, while most linguistic problems are qualitative. We should Know what to count. Even if we just want to count the number of lexical units, we have to define what a lexical unit is – whether we must count the following as one or more units: work n – work v; by chance; at large,etc.
4.Immediate Constituent Analysis. Immediate Constituents analysis (IC) is used to study the structure and lexical syntagmas. Sentences or word-groups are segmented into hierarchally arranged sets of binary constructions (ICs): a black dress in severe style – a black dress/in severe style. Successive segmentation results in Ultimate Constituents (UCs) – two-facet units that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units: a/black/dress/in/severe/ style. Immediate Constituents analysis depends on the meaning of the whole complex: fat major‘s wife – fat major‘s/wife – fat/major‘s wife. Its also represent the word‘s derivational structure: denationalize v – de- + nationalize, snow-covered – snow + covered; blue-eyed – blue + eye + -ed. Ucs show the word‘s morphemic structure: de/nat/ion/al/ize; snow/cover/ed; blue/eye/ed.
5. Distributional Analysis.Distribution is the position which linguistic units may occupy in the flow of speech, or the co-occurrence of units of the same level.
Distributional anlysis helps to describe the word’s meaning. the word has different meanings in different patterns: to treat smb well (treat + N + Adv) – to behave towards; to treat smb to ice-cream (treat + N + to + N) – to supply with sth at one’s own expence.
The interdependence of distribution and meaning is also observed at the level of word-groups: water tap – tap water. A distributional pattern as such has its own meaning: to coax smb into accepting the suggestion – make smb do smth by means of smth. The pattern retains this meaning no matter what verb is used in the structure V + N + into + V-ing: to coax/talk/kiss/flatter/ beat smb into doing smth.
Productivity depends on the word’s distributional meaning. We can make up and understand any nonce-word whose pattern is familiar to the speaker and the hearer: smiler, kissable.
6.Transformational Analysis.Transformational analysis consists in repatterning identical distributional patterns in order to discover difference or sameness of their meaning. It is used to investigate polysemantic patterns, e.g. compounds which have the same pattern (n+ n) may have different lexical meanings. This is shown by transformational procedure: dogfight – a fight between dogs; dogcart – a cart drawn by dogs.Transformational analysis is a kind of intraligual translation, a kind of paraphrasing: his work is excellent – his excellent work – the excellence of his work– he works excellently.
7. Componental Analysis.In Componental analysis linguists proceed from the assumption that the smallest units of meaning are sememes (or semes) and that sememes and lexemes (or lexical items) are usually not in one-to-one but in one-to-many correspondence.
For example, in the lexical item woman several components of meaning or sememes may be singled out and namely: human, female, adult.
The analysis of the word girl would also yield the sememes human and female, but instead of the sememe adult we shall find the sememe young distinguishing the meaning of the word woman from that of girl.
