The language can be compared with a constructor in which the smallest details form larger ones, and those, in turn, form complex and thoughtful constructions. The smallest “cubes” or bricks are sounds and letters that display phonemes on the letter. These are the words that make up phrases, sentences, text. Phonetics makes sounds.
But the question of what
vocabulary is being studied by lexicology. In turn, lexicography deals with dictionaries, including the methodology for compiling them. So, the vocabulary of the Russian language is the totality of all its words, its entire
vocabulary. It is believed that it is formed by layers: that is, common and words of limited use can be distinguished. Separately, you can consider what vocabulary is, say, advertising, technical, medical, borrowed or outdated. Depending on the perspective from which we evaluate vocabulary, we can talk about active and passive use.
In the first case, we are talking about the most common words.
By the way, there are not so many for each language. Therefore, it is believed that mastery of one thousand words can provide 70% of understanding and communication. The vocabulary of an educated person consists of approximately several thousand (up to 20-30 thousand) words. Of these, only 4-5 are actively used in everyday life, and we are able to understand much more.
You can analyze the vocabulary at a given moment in time. For example, the vocabulary of the modern Russian language has its own groups, but it differs significantly from the corpus of words, say, of the eleventh or fifteenth century. Consideration of vocabulary for a specific time is a synchronous aspect.
In this case, certain layers can be distinguished. In addition to the general division into common and vocabulary of a limited sphere of use, it can be considered, for example, from the point of view of emotional coloring. In this case, stand out: neutral, emotive (emotional), sublime, poetic, familiar, vulgar, obscene language. If words without emotional coloring can be used in all styles and in any situation of verbal communication, then emotionally colored words are inherent only in colloquial speech. In books, of course, they can also be found, but precisely as a means of expressing a linguistic personality.
In the dissertation, in the report, in official documents, the use of vulgarisms or obscene language is unacceptable.
Vocabulary may be limited and territorially. In this case, the so-called dialectisms are distinguished, that is, the words inherent in the dialect of only a certain locality. For example, "eggplant" is a common word, but the "blue" ones are called by the residents of the Kursk region, Krasnodar Territory and southern Russia. Youth slang also operates with words of limited use - in this case, a certain age group. Medical or computer vocabulary is inherent to specific professional layers. Engineers operate with a technical vocabulary.
If we look at what vocabulary is, from the diachronic point of view - that is, in history - we can distinguish a new (neologisms), obsolete (historicisms and archaisms) and neutral groups. The vocabulary is enriched by income from other languages. Answering the question of what vocabulary is from the point of view of origin, we will call borrowed and native Russian. Moreover, you can further divide the words, taking into account mastery: most of them have fully taken root in the language. Say, for us, the words “notebook” and “pencil” are no longer aliens, although once they came from Greek and Turkic languages. If the words are not fully mastered, then they speak of barbarism ("windows") and exoticism ("signor", "bullfighter", "lunch").