Chapter: lexicology and its object subject matter of Lexicology

6. The correlation of different aspects of words
The words have different characteristic features: some words have many meanings and some of them have only one or two meanings. Some of them are more frequent in speech than the others. Some words give a lot of derivatives and others do not. Some of them may be a component of many phraseological units and some of them are not used in the formation of phraseological units. So we see that different words may have different activity in the language and speech. Thus, different words play different role in the language and in speech. And studying the interdependence and interrelation of these different aspects of words is very important.
The correlation is the interdependence of different aspects of words. Scientists paid attention to the interdependence of different pecularities of words for a long time. For example. George Zipf (The Meaning and Freguency Rela­tionship of Words. The Journal of General Psychology (U. S. A., vol 33, 1945) and French linguist Quiraud worked out the correlation of meaning of words and their frequency value. R. S. Ginzburg tried to study the interdependence of frequency value and the coliocability of words etc. The interdependence of different aspects of the word may be easily observed through a comparative analysis of these as­ pects in relation to each other.
The frequency value is very important feature of a word and it is, as a rule, a most reliable and objective factor indicating the relative value of the word in the language. The frequency value alone is in many cases enough to judge about structural, stylistic, semantic, and etymological pecula-rites of words. The frequency value singles out two classes of words: notional words and functional words.
The notional words have low frequency value but functional words are more frequent than the notional words in speech.
It is interesting to note that the words «the», «of», «and», «to», «a», «in», «that», «is», «was», «he» are the most frequent words. They often occur in the English texts.
There is a certain interdependence between the number of meanings in a word and its structural and derivational structure, its etymological character, its stylistic reference. The higher frequency, the more polysemantic is the word.
For example, change—790 fr.-more than 10 meanings
take—7008 fr-more than 10 meanings
serve—1744 fr-more than 10 meanings
The longer the word the fewer meanings it has For example. «man» has more than 10 meanings but «woman» has 4 meanings, the word «hand» has more than 12 meanings but the word «handshake» has only 1 meaning.
The latest linguistic investigations show that the number of meanings may be correlated with the number of morphemes the word consists of. Derived words have less meanings and frequency value than the root words.
For example. «heart» has 5 meanings, «hearty» has 3 «heart- felt — 1, heartily — 2, «girl» has 7 meanings, «girlhood» has 1, «girlish» — 2, girlishness has 1 meaning etc», «man» has more than 11 meanings but the derived words «manful», «manly», «manliness» have only one meaning each.
Derived words are as a rule poorer in the number of meanings and have lower frequency value than the simple words. For example the noun «hand» has 15 meanings while the derived verb «to hand» has only one meaning, «teach» has 5 meanings but the word «teacher» has only 2 meanings. We can see the interdependence between the number of meanings of h, word and its stylistic reference. The neutral style words with zero emotive char e have more meanings than the literary, stylistically coloured words of some ernotiv charge.
For example. «try» and «endeavour» are synonyms, the former is a neutral style word and it has 8 meanings, but «endeavour» a bookish word and it has only 1 meaning; «make» has 2 meanings but its literary synonym «manufacture» w only 2 meanings; «horse» has 5 meanings but its poetic synonym «steed» has only one meaning. We may also observe the interdependence between the number of meanings of the words and their word-building ability.
The more number of meanings the word has the more derivatives it gives
For example «divide» has 12 meanings and 24 derivatives (divi-dable dividant, divided, divider, dividing, division, dividedness, dividedly, undivided undividable, undividedly, undivi-dedness, misdivision etc, but the verb «joke» has only 2 meanings and can give 3 derivatives (joker, jokingly, joke). The verb «extend» has 8 meanings and it can be the stem for 14 derivatives (extendible, extendibility, extender, unextended, unextendedly, overextend etc). The verb «fix» has 14 meanings and it has 15 derivatives (fixer, fixation, fixative, unfix, fixity, fixedly, fixedness etc).
The frequency value, semantic activity of the words are connected with their phraseological activity too.
The greater frequency and number of meanings the word has, the greater number of phraseological units they are used in, For example, the following verbs have a
lot of meanings and a higher frequency value therefore they may be the components of a lot of phraseological units,

take—766, get—474, turn—108, -

pass — 75, carry — 81, serve—32,
raise — 57, push — 31,catch — 61
touch — 36, move — 29, change — 26,
lift—27, enter—21, cross—20.
Frequency value may also be used as a clue to the etymological character of the word and to its interrelation with number of meanings. The most frequently used words belong either to the native words or to the early borrowings which are fully assimilated in English. The verbs catch, change, take, get, give, call, serve, return etc are early borrowed words therefore they are very frequent. The verbs «build», «believe», «work», «begin», «go», «teach», understands, «stop», «help»> A answers, «write», «read», «come», «see», «open», «sing» etc are the native words. They were born in Great Britain therefore they have a lot of meanings and high frequency value.
Late borrowings as «regime», «bourgeoisie» etc have low frequency value and are very seldom polysemantic. Let's consider the synonyms «to ask», « to question, «to interrogate, «to demand or «to keep, «to preserve, «to retain». Among these words only «ask» and «keep» are polysemantic and are widely used in Modern English because the verbs «to ask» and «to keep» are of native origin but others are borrowings.
By systematically comparing the relative frequency of various words with the number of senses in which they are used, the late Q. K. Zipf, arrived at an interesting conclusion which he termed the principle of diversity of meanings. According to Zipf, there is a direct relationship between the number of different meanings of a word and its relative frequency of occurrences. He even tried to find a mathematical formula for this relationship. His calculations suggested that ((different meanings of a word will tend to be equal to the square root of its relative frequency ».
Frequency value of different meanings of polysemantic words may be different too. For example, the adjective «exact» has two meanings ( аник , озода ). The comparison of the frequency value of these meanings shows that they are not of equal importance in the semantic structure of the word. The first meaning of this word comprises 78 % of occurrences of the word and 18% belongs to the second meaning. Thus, as we see, different aspects of the word are interdependent and interrelated. Among them the frequency value or the semantic activity of the word are in most cases enough to judge about structural, stylistic, semantic, wordbuilding phraseological activities and etymological pecularities of words. If the word has a high frequency value or has a number of meanings one may suppose that it is monomorphemic, simple, monosyllabic, stylistically neutral, and active in word formation and can be a component of several phraseological units.
The analysis of the correlation of different aspects of the most frequent verbs in English showed the following result._________________

The aspects of activity of verbs	The coefficient of the correlation
frequency— semantic activity frequency —wordformational activity frequency — valancy frequency — phraseological activity semantic activity — wordformationa l activity semantic activity— phraseological activity semantic activity—valancy phraseological activity — wordformational activity phraseological activity—valancy	+ 0,625 + 0,518 + 0,886 + 0,978 + 0,835 +0,976 +0,879 +0,777 +0,510