ABSTRACT
This chapter consists of four sections. The first short section deals with word formation in English, with particular focus on prefixes and suffixes. The second section is concerned with word meaning. Lexical and grammatical words are distinguished and focus restricted to the former as the proper preserve of vocabulary teaching. The basic distinction between citational and instantiated lexical meaning is then introduced before criterial attribute and prototype theories of word meaning are compared and contrasted. The phenomenon of words with ‘fuzzy edges’ is illustrated before the idea of polysemy is explored, with particular concentration on literal versus metaphorical meaning. The difference between referential and associational aspects of word meaning is then investigated. Next, the concept of language operating along paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes is explained, including the sense relations that a word enters into along the paradigmatic axis versus the collocational relations it enters into along the syntagmatic axis.
The third section of the chapter explores how lexical units, including both those below and those above the word, are stored in the mind and accessed for use. The shortcomings of container models of lexical storage are shown and it is suggested that spreading activation models help to explain how repeated encounters with, and use of, lexical items establishes them more firmly in storage and also makes them more easily accessible. Consideration is then given to the nature of information which may be available in the mental lexicon for a given lexical item. The section closes with a discussion of the mental links between the lexicon and the grammar, as illustrated by the phenomenon of stored lexicalised sentence stems.
The final part of the chapter is devoted to teaching vocabulary. It is first pointed out that learning a vocabulary item is an incremental process and that part of the task of the language teacher is to enhance informal acquisition in the classroom. Another part is, however, the explicit teaching of new vocabulary, especially for beginners, and ways of introducing new vocabulary are presented in detail and illustrated by examples. Ways of practising and consolidating vocabulary are also shown. The chapter closes with practical suggestions for teaching affixes, lexical collocation, multi-word lexical units and lexicalised sentence stems, respectively.
