i'm a catholic whore
читать дальше1. Lexicology (from Gr lexis ‘word’ and logos ‘learning’) is the part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of the language and the properties of words as the main units of language. The term v o c a b u l ar y is used to denote the system formed by the sum total of all the words and word equivalents that the language possesses.
The object of Lexicology is a words-stock (vocabulary) of the particularly language. The term word denotes the basic unit of a given language resulting from the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment. A word therefore is simultaneously a semantic, grammatical and phonological unit.
Task of lexicology– 1. Is to give systematic description of the English vocabulary, its etymological peculiar features and its classifications. 2. to study the rules of enriching the vocabulary
Lexicology as a part of general linguistics is divided into several branches that study different aspects of words, word-combination and the vocabulary:
The general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of the specific features of any particular language, is known as general lexicology.
Linguistic phenomena and properties common to all languages are generally referred to as language universals. Special lexicology devotes its attention to the description of the characteristic peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given language. It goes without saying that every special lexicology is based on the principles of general lexicology, and the latter forms a part of general linguistics.
Historical lexicology (etymology) – studies the evolution of separate words and the vocabulary in general. The evolution of any vocabulary, as well as of its single elements, forms the object of historical lexicology or etymology. This branch of linguistics discusses the origin of various words, their change and development, and investigates the linguistic and extra-linguistic forces modifying their structure, meaning and usage. Historical lexicology has been criticised for its atomistic approach, i.e. for treating every word as an individual and isolated unit. This drawback is, however, not intrinsic to the science itself. Historical study of words is not necessarily atomistic. In the light of recent investigations it becomes clear that there is no reason why historical lexicology cannot survey the evolution of a vocabulary as an adaptive system, showing its change and development in the course of time.
Descriptive lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development. It studies the functions of words and their specific structure as a characteristic inherent in the system. The descriptive lexicology of the English language deals with the English word in its morphological and semantical structures, investigating the interdependence between these two aspects.
Applied lexicology deals with translation, lexicography, pragmatics of speech.
Lexicology is closely connected with other branches of linguistics: phonetics, for example, investigates the phonetic structure of language & is concerned with the study of the outer sound-form of the word. Grammar is the study of the grammatical structure of language. It is concerned with the various means of expressing grammatical relations between words as well as with patterns after which words are combined into word-groups & sentences. There is also a close relationship between lexicology & stylistics, which is concerned with a study of a nature, functions & styles of languages.
2. Lexical system is a set of words and word combinations associating and functioning together according to certain laws. It is an adaptive system because it is constantly adjusting itself changes of the society.
Syntagmatic relations are linear sequence (линейная последовательность) relations of LU when they are used in speech (are possibilities of combinations). Can be presented as a horizontal line. They are important for determining the meaning of a poly-semantic word because different senses of poly-semantic words are revealed in the context (yellow dress — yellow press).
Context is the main stretch of speech which determines each individual sense of a poly-semantic word. Contexts are:
1. Linguistic. Lexical valence of the word — the lexical contexts that a word may be used in.
a. Lexical — includes LU combined with the poly-semantic word which helps to determine its senses or meaning (heavy box, heavy rain, heavy industry).
b. Grammatical — is the grammatical structure of the phrase that helps to determine the sense of a poly-semantic word (to make a cake, to make smb do smth, to make a splendid actress).
c. Semantic — is a common use of words in certain repeatedly used environment (to solve the problem, to identify the problem, a complicated problem).
2. Extra-linguistic — is constituted by the speech situation in which the word is used (I'll give you a ring — позвоню, подарю кольцо)
Paradigmatic relations — the relations of a word within the lexical system of a language (functional contrasts). It is the basis for semantic classifications of words.
1) The first classification is based on the common concept that a word expresses. Words are subdivided into lexical-semantic groups and lexical-semantic fields. Both are closely knit sectors or vocabulary-united by a common concept. But a L-S group consists of words belonging to one part of speech (red-blue-black; mother-father-sister; to walk-to run-to go) and a L-S field — may comprise words belonging to different parts of speech (field of space: in,out, space, room, to extend)
2) The second classification is based on hierarchal paradigmatic relations. There are more general words (Hyperonym) (tree) and more specific (Hyponymy) (tree, old tree, oak, pine-tree).
Words in language form lexical-grammatical groups united by hypero-hyponymic relations.
Hyponymy is the mostly widely spread relation among LU. It is found in various parts of speech (more often in nouns). The hypero-hyponymic relations rreflect the way we see the world, its arrangement.
The word may be described as the basic unit of language. Uniting meaning and form, it is composed of one or more morphemes, each consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation.
Thomas Hobbes - words are not mere sounds but names of matter/a materialistic approach to the problem of nomination / universal signal that can substitute any other signal from the environment in evoking a response in a human organism- Pavlov
E. Sapir - the syntactic and semantic aspects - the word “one of the smallest completely satisfying bits of isolated ‘meaning’, into which the sentence resolves itself
“the minimum sentence” by H. Sweet
Bloomfield as “a minimum free form”
The semantic-phonological approach - Gardiner’s definition: “A word is an articulate sound-symbol in its as-pect of denoting something which is spoken about."
Meillet combines the semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria - A word is defined by the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment."
some modifications, adding that a word is the smallest significant unit of a given language capable of functioning alone and characterised by positional mobility within a sentence, morphological uninterruptability and semantic integrity.
All these criteria are necessary because they permit us to create a basis for the oppositions between the word and the phrase, the word and the phoneme, and the word and the morpheme: their common feature is that they are all units of the language, their difference lies in the fact that the phoneme is not significant, and a morpheme cannot be used as a complete utterance.
3. A functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. A functional style is thus to be regarded as the product of a certain concrete task set by the sender of the message. Functional styles appear mainly in the literary standard of a language.
The literary standard of the English language, like that of any other developed language, is not so homogeneous as it may seem. In fact the standard English literary language in the course of its development has fallen into several subsystems each of which has acquired its own peculiarities which are typical of the given functional style. The members of the language community, especially those who are sufficiently trained and responsive to language variations, recognize these styles as independent wholes. The peculiar choice of language means is primarily predetermined by the aim of the communication with the result that a more or less closed system is built up. One set of language media stands in opposition to other sets of language media with other aims, and these other sets have other choices and arrangements of language means.
What we here call functional styles are also called registers (In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, when speaking in a formal setting, an English speaker may be more likely to adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal (e.g. "walking", not "walkin'"), choose more formal words (e.g. father vs. dad, child vs. kid, etc.), and refrain from using contractions such as ain't, than when speaking in an informal setting.) or d i s с о u r s e s.
In the English literary standard we distinguish the following major functional styles (hence FS):
1) The language of belles-lettres.
2) The language of publicistic literature.
3) The language of newspapers.
4) The language of scientific prose.
5) The language of official documents.
As has already been mentioned, functional styles are the product of the development of the written variety of language. Each FS may be characterized by a number of distinctive features, leading or subordinate, constant or changing, obligatory or optional. Most of the FSs, however, are perceived as independent wholes due to a peculiar combination and interrelation of features common to all (especially when taking into account syntactical arrangement) with the leading ones of each FS.
Stylistically marked lexicon.
In accordance with the already-mentioned division of language into literary and colloquial, we may represent the whole of the word-stock of the English language as being divided into three main layers: the literary layer, the neutral layer and the colloquial layer.
The literary and the colloquial layers contain a number of subgroups each of which has a property it shares with all the subgroups within the layer.
This common property, which unites the different groups of words within the layer, may be called its aspect. The aspect of the literary layer is its markedly bookish character. It is this that makes the layer more or less stable. The aspect of the colloquial layer of words is its lively spoken character. It is this that makes it unstable, fleeting.
The aspect of the neutral layer is its universal character. That means it is unrestricted in its use. It can be employed in all styles of language and in all spheres of human activity. It is this that makes the layer the most stable of all.
The literary layer of words consists of groups accepted as legitimate members of the English vocabulary. They have no local or dialectal character. '
The colloquial layer of words as qualified in most English or American dictionaries is not infrequently limited to a definite language community or confined to a special locality where it circulates.
The literary vocabulary consists of the following groups of words: 1. common literary; 2. terms and learned words; 3. poetic words; 4. archaic words; 5. barbarisms and foreign words; 6. literary coinages including nonce-words.
The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups: 1. common "colloquial words; 2. slang; 3. jargonisms; 4. professional words; 5. dialectal words; 6. vulgar words; 7. colloquial coinages.
The common literary, neutral and common colloquial words are grouped under the term standard English vocabulary. Other groups in the literary layer are regarded as special literary vocabulary those in the colloquial layer are regarded as special colloquial, (non-literary) vocabulary.
Stylistic Classification of the English vocabulary.
English language is divided into three main layers: the literary layer, the neutral layer and the colloquial layer. The literary and the colloquial layers contain a number of subgroups each of which has a property it shares with all the subgroups within the layer. This common property, which unites the different groups of words within the layer, may be called its aspect. The aspect of the literary layer is its markedly bookish character. It is this that makes the layer more or less stable. The aspect of the colloquial layer of words is its lively spoken character.
The aspect of the neutral layer is its universal character. That means it is unrestricted in its use. It can be employed in all styles of language and in all spheres of human activity.
The literary layer of words consists of groups accepted as legitimate members of the English vocabulary. They have no local or dialectal character.
The colloquial layer of words as qualified in most English or American dictionaries is not infrequently limited to a definite language community or confined to a special locality where it circulates.
The literary vocabulary consists of the following groups of words:
1. common literary; 2. terms and learned words; 3. poetic words; 4. archaic words; 5. barbarisms and foreign words; 6. literary coinages including nonce-words.
The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups: 1. common colloquial words; 2. slang; 3. jargonisms; 4. professional words; 5. dialectal words; 6. vulgar words; 7. colloquial coinages.
The common literary, neutral and common colloquial words are grouped under the term standard English vocabulary. Other groups in the literary layer are regarded as special literary vocabulary and those in the colloquial layer are regarded as special colloquial (non-literary) vocabulary
4. Neutral layer of the vocabulary.
The aspect of neutral layer is its universal character – unrestricted in its use. It can be employed in all styles of language and in all spheres of Human activity what makes the neutral layer the most stable of all.
Neutral words, which form the bulk of the English vocabulary, are used in both literary and colloquial language. Neutral words are the main source of synonymy and polysemy. It is the neutral stock of words that is so prolific in the production of new meanings.
The neutral vocabulary is invariant of the Standard English vocabulary.
The neutral words are not emotionally colored, and are regarded as an abstraction, don’t mean any concreteness.
The most of English neutral word are monosyllabic.
5. The literary layer contains a number of subgroups each of which has a property it shares with all the subgroups within the layer. This common property, which unites the different groups of words within the layer, may be called its aspect. The aspect of the literary layer is its markedly bookish character. It is this that makes the layer more or less stable.
The literary layer of words consists of groups accepted as legitimate members of the English vocabulary. They have no local or dialectal character.
Common literary words are chiefly used in writing and in polished speech. One can always tell a literary word from a colloquial word.
The literary vocabulary consists of the following groups of words: 1. common literary; 2. terms and learned words; 3. poetic words; 4. archaic words; 5. barbarisms and foreign words; 6. literary coinages including nonce-words. Common literary words are chiefly used in writing and in polished speech. One can always tell a literary word from a colloquial word.
TERMS.
They are used in special works dealing with the notions of some branch of science. They belong to the language study. They have highly conventional character. They are usually easy coined and easily accepted; new coinages is easily replaced out-date ones. One of the most characteristic feature is its direct relevance to the system or set of terms used in a particular science, discipline, art to its nomenclature. A term is directly connected with the concept it denotes,directs the mind to the essential quality of the thing. The function is to indicate the technical peculiarities of the subject dealt with or to make some reference to the occupation of a character whose language would naturally contain special words and expressions. + Reterminalization.
ARCHAISMS
- Absolescent are in the stage of gradually passing out of general usage (pronouns: thee, thy, verb forms: thou makest/wilt, ending –(e)th instead od –(e)s he maketh)
- Obsolete – which are completely gone out of use but still recognizable (methinks – it seems to me; nay – no)
- Archaic proper - which are no longer recognizable (troth – faith, losel – lazy fellow)
- Historical words – describe institutions, customs, material objects which are no longer in use ( Thane, goblet, Mace)
Functions – creation of realistic background, in the style of official documents – terminological character, create an evaluative effect, satirical purpose.
POETICAL WORDS
- Mostly archaic or very rarely used highly literary words which aim is to produce an elevated effect. (qouth – speak, eftsoon – again)
- Sustain the special elevated atmosphere of poetry, or satirical function, are not freely built, create by compounding.
FOREIGNISMS AND BARBARISMS
Barbarisms – of foreign origin which have not entirely been assimilated, have already become facts of the language, have the appearance of something alien, generally given in the body of dictionaries, it is a historical category
Foreignisms don’d belong to the English vocabulary, usually italized in the text (udarnik)
6. The aspect of the colloquial layer of words is its lively spoken character. It is this that makes it unstable, fleeting.
The colloquial layer of words as qualified in most English or Amer¬ican dictionaries is not infrequently limited to a definite language community or confined to a special locality where it circulates.
The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups: 1. com¬mon "colloquial words; 2. slang; 3. jargonisms; 4. professional words; 5. dialectal words; 6. vulgar words; 7. colloquial coinages.
Colloquial words are always more emotionally coloured than literary ones.
Both literary and colloquial words have their upper and lower ranges.
The same may be said of the upper range of the colloquial layer: it can very easily pass into the neutral layer.
Synonyms of neutral words, both colloquial and literary, assume a far greater degree of concreteness.
The term literary colloquial is used to denote the vocabulary used by educated people in the course of ordinary conversation or when writing letters to intimate friends. A good sample may be found in works by a number of authors, such as J. Galsworthy, E.M. Forster, C.P. Snow, W.S. Maugham, J.B.Priestley, and others.
Familiar colloquial is more emotional and much more free and careless than literary colloquial. It is also characterised by a great number of jocular or ironical expressions and nonce-words. Low colloquial is a term used for illiterate popular speech.
It is very difficult to find hard and fast rules that help to establish the boundary between low colloquial and dialect, because in actual communication the two are often used together. Moreover, we have only the evidence of fiction to go by, and this may be not quite accurate in speech characterisation. The basis of distinction between low colloquial and the two other types of colloquial is purely social. The chief peculiarities of low colloquial concern grammar and pronunciation; as to the vocabulary, it is different from familiar colloquial in that it contains more vulgar words, and sometimes also elements of dialect. Other vocabulary layers below the level of standard educated speech are, besides low colloquial, the so-called slang and argot.
Unlike low colloquial, however, they have only lexical peculiarities. Argot should be distinguished from slang: the first term serves to denote a special vocabulary and idiom, used by a particular social or age group, especially by the so-called underworld (the criminal circles). Its main point is to be unintelligible to outsiders. The boundaries between various layers of colloquial vocabulary not being very sharply defined, it is more convenient to characterise it on the whole.
Colloquial (Conversational) Style. The main function of this style is communicative. We use this style in everyday life. There are some extra-linguistic features characteristic of this style: e.g. informality, spontaneous character of speech, interpersonal contact. When we use the colloquial style we attract gestures, different facial expression, body movements. Stylistic features of this style include: familiarity, ellipsis, concrete character of speech, interruption and logical inconsistency of the speech, emotiveness, efficacy. Secondary stylistic features may include: idiomatic and patterned character, “personal” type of speech presentation. There are oral and written varieties of this style. In it we distinguish between two forms of speech: dialogue (simple dialogue, when 2 people participate in the conversation and polylogue) and monologue. Colloquial style has substyles and genres: literary conversational style (talks, conversations, interviews), familiar-conversational style (communication between family members – mummy, daddy, granny…, friends – hey, chap!, children's talk-mummy, granny, doggy…), low colloquial (quarrels, scandal). We use non-bookish means of the language and colloquial elements on all language levels.
There are several language means peculiar colloquial style:
graphic means. Here we find graphic signals of the change of communicative roles;
phonetic means, such as intensive modification of sounds in fluent speech, positional phonemic interchange (in a word - at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the word, stressed or unstressed position, and so on). Positional changes: reduction or weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables and partial devoicing of consonants at the end of the word before a pause. Complete reduction: apokopa (the drop of the final consonant or final part of the word), synkopa (there is a drop of a vowel or several sounds in other positions, e.g. I`m I`ve it isn`t, and so on).
Vocabulary means: conversational or everyday life vocabulary, wide use of non-literary vocabulary, expressive-emotional vocabulary, means of verbal imagery, wide use of stylistic devices, including pun (There isn`t a single man in the hotel);
grammatical means: in morphology there are a lot of pronouns and particles, wide use of variety of aspect and tense forms of the verb (Present Continuos, Present Indefinite, Present Perfect), in syntax: variety in the use of communicative types of the sentence, priority of short sentences, wide use of expressive constructions (e.g. in familiar-conversational style we can use “how, when, where” with the word “ever” or with “the hell” “the devil” and so on. E.g. Why the hell do you ask?);
compositional peculiarities: different types of dialogue (question - answer, exclamation - reply, an so on).
7. Slang 1: language peculiar to a particular group: as a: the special and often secret vocabulary used by class (as thieves, beggars) and usu. felt to be vulgar or inferior: argot; b: the jargon used by or associated with a particular trade, profession, or field of activity; 2: a non-standard vocabulary coin-posed of words and senses characterized primarily by connotations of extreme informality and usu. a currency not limited to a partic¬ular region and composed typically of coinages or arbitrarily changed words, clipped or shortened forms, extravagant, forced or facetious figures of speech, or verbal novelties usu. experiencing quick popularity and relatively rapid decline into disuse. The "New Oxford English Dictionary" defines slang as follows:"a) the special vocabulary used by any set of persons of a low or disreputable character; language of a low and vulgar type. (Now merged in c. /cant/)', b) the cant or jargon of a certain class or period; c) language of a highly colloquial type considered as below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words or of current words employed in some special sense."
In the non-literary vocabulary of the English language there is a group of words that are called jargonisms. Jargon is a recognized term for a group of words that exists in almost every language and whose aim is to preserve secrecy within one or another social group. Jargonisms are generally old words with entirely new meanings imposed on them. The traditional meaning of the words is immaterial, only the new, improvised meaning is of importance. Most of the Jargonisms of any language, and of the English language too, are absolutely incompre¬hensible to those outside the social group which has invented them. They may be defined as a code within a code, that is special meanings of words that are imposed on the recognized code—the dictionary mean¬ing of the words. (Piou-Piou—'a French soldier, a private in the infantry'. According to Eric Partridge this word has already passed from military jargon to ordinary colloquial speech; Humrnen—a false arrest* (American); Dar—(from damned average raiser)—'a persevering and assidu¬ous student'. (University jargon); Matlo(w)—'a sailor' (from the French word 'matelof); Man and wife—'a knife' (rhyming slang); Manany—'a sailor who is always putting off a job or work' (nautical jargon) (from the Spanish word 'mamma'—4o-morrow')
Professionalisms, as the term itself signifies, are the words used in a definite trade, profession or calling by people connect¬ed by common interests both at work and at home. They commonly designate some working process or implement of labour. Professional¬isms are correlated to terms. Terms, as has already been indicated, are coined to nominate new concepts that appear in the process of, and as a result of, technical progress and the development of science. Professional words name anew already-existing concepts, tools or instruments, and have the typical properties of a special code. The main feature of a professionalism is its technicality. Professionalisms are spe¬cial words in the non-literary layer of the English vocabulary. (tin-fish (submarine); block-buster (= a bomb especially designed to destroy blocks of big buildings); piper (=a specialist who decorates pastry with the use of a cream-pipe); a midder case (=a midwifery case); outer (=& knockout blow).
Dialectal words are those which in the process of integration of the English national lan¬guage remained beyond its literary boundaries, and their use is gener¬ally confined to a definite locality. We exclude here what are called social dialects or even the still looser application of the term as in ex¬pressions like poetical dialect or styles as dialects. With reference to this group there is a confusion of terms, particu¬larly between the terms dialectal, slang and vernacular. In order to ascertain the true value and the stylistic functions of dialec¬tal words it is necessary to look into their nature. (locality, breeding, education) – (lass – girl, daft – silly, hinney – honey)
The term vulgarism, as used to single out a definite group of words of non-standard English, is rather misleading. The ambiguity of the term apparently proceeds from the etymology of the word. Vulgar, as explained by the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, means a) words or names employed in ordinary speech; b) common, familiar; c) commonly current or prevalent, generally or widely disseminated. These two submeanings are the foundation of what we here name vul¬garisms. So vulgarisms are: 1) expletives and swear words which are of an abusive character, like 'damn', 'bloody', 4o hell', 'goddam' and, as some dictionaries state, used now as general exclamations; 2) obscene words. These are known as four-letter words the use of which is banned in any form of .intercourse as being indecent. Historians tell us that in Middle-JVges and down into the 16th century they were accepted in oral speech Јnd after Caxton even admitted to the printed page. All of these words are of Anglo-Saxon origin. Vulgarisms are often used in conversation out of habit, without any thought of what they mean, or in'imitation of those who use them in or¬der not to seem old-fashioned or prudish. Unfortunately in modern fiction these words have gained legitimacy. The most vulgar of them are now to be found even in good novels. This lifting of the taboo has given rise to the almost unrestrained employment of words which soil the literary language. However, they will never acquire the status of standard Eng¬lish vocabulary and will always remain on the outskirts.
The function of expletives is almost the same as that of interjections, that is to express strong emotions, mainly annoyance, anger, vexation and the like. They are not to be found in any functional style of language except emotive prose, and here only in the direct speech of the characters.
8. Native words
An important distinctive feature which has not been discussed so far in this book is that of origin. According to this feature the word-stock may be subdivided into two main sets. The elements of one are native, the elements of the other are borrowed.
A native word is a word which belongs to the original English stock, as known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. A loan word, borrowed word or borrowing is a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language.
The native words are further subdivided by diachronic linguistics into those of the Indo-European stock and those of Common Germanic origin. The words having cognates in the vocabularies of different Indo-European languages form the oldest layer. It has been noticed that they readily fall into definite semantic groups. Among them we find terms of kinship: father, mother, son, daughter, brother, words naming the most important objects and phenomena of nature: sun, moon, star, wind, water, wood, hill, stone, tree-, names of animals and birds: bull,cat, crow, goose, wolf; parts of the human body: arm, ear, eye, foot, heart,etc. Some of the most frequent verbs are also of Indo-European common stock: bear, come, sit, stand and others. The adjectives of this group denote concrete physical properties: hard, quick, slow, red, white. Most numerals also belong here.
A much bigger part of this native vocabulary layer is formed by words of the Common Germanic stock, i.e. of words having parallels in German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, etc., but none in Russian or French. It contains a greater number of semantic groups. The following list may serve as an illustration of their general character. The nouns are: summer, winter, storm, rain, ice, ground, bridge, house, shop, room, coat, iron, lead, cloth, hat, shirt, shoe, care, evil, hope, life, need, rest; the verbs are bake, bum, buy, drive, hear, keep, learn, make, meet, rise, see, send, shoot and many more; the adjectives are: broad, dead, deaf, deep. Many adverbs and pronouns also belong to this layer.
Together with the words of the common Indo-European stock these Common Germanic words form the bulk of the most frequent elements used in any style of speech. They constitute no less than 80% of the 500 most frequent words listed by E.L. Thorndike and I.Lorge.
Words belonging to the subsets of the native word-stock are for the most part characterized by a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency, high frequency value and a developed polysemy; they are often monosyllabic, show great word-building power and enter a number of set expressions.
For example, watch
9. BORROWINGS
Borrowing words from other languages is characteristic of English throughout its history More than two thirds of the English vocabulary are borrowings. Mostly they are words of Romanic origin (Latin, French, Italian, Spanish). Borrowed words are different from native ones by their phonetic structure, by their morphological structure and also by their grammatical forms. It is also characterisitic of borrowings to be non-motivated semantically.
English history is very rich in different types of contacts with other countries, that is why it is very rich in borrowings. The Roman invasion, the adoption of Cristianity, Scandinavian and Norman conquests of the British Isles, the development of British colonialism and trade and cultural relations served to increase immensely the English vocabulary. The majority of these borrowings are fully assimilated in English in their pronunciation, grammar, spelling and can be hardly distinguished from native words.
English continues to take in foreign words , but now the quantity of borrowings is not so abundunt as it was before. All the more so, English now has become a «giving» language, it has become Lingva franca of the twentieth century.
Borrowings can be classified according to different criteria:
a) according to the aspect which is borrowed,
b) according to the degree of assimilation,
c) according to the language from which the word was borrowed.
(In this classification only the main languages from which words were borrowed into English are described, such as Latin, French, Italian. Spanish, German and Russian.)
CLASSIFICATION OF BORROWINGS ACCORDING TO THE BORROWED ASPECT
There are the following groups: phonetic borrowings, translation loans, semantic borrowings, morphemic borrowings.
Phonetic borrowings are most characteristic in all languages, they are called loan words proper. Words are borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and meaning. Then they undergo assimilation, each sound in the borrowed word is substituted by the corresponding sound of the borrowing language. In some cases the spelling is changed. The structure of the word can also be changed. The position of the stress is very often influenced by the phonetic system of the borrowing language. The paradigm of the word, and sometimes the meaning of the borrowed word are also changed. Such words as: labour, travel, table, chair, people are phonetic borrowings from French; apparatchik, nomenklatura, sputnik are phonetic borrowings from Russian; bank, soprano, duet are phonetic borrowings from Italian etc.
Translation loans are word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme ) translations of some foreign words or expressions. In such cases the notion is borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical units, «to take the bull by the horns» (Latin), «fair sex» ( French), «living space» (German) etc. Some translation loans appeared in English from Latin already in the Old English period, e.g. Sunday (solis dies). There are translation loans from the languages of Indians, such as: «pipe of peace», «pale-faced», from German «masterpiece», «homesickness», «superman».
Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have two relative languages which have common words with different meanings, e.g. there are semantic borrowings between Scandinavian and English, such as the meaning «to live» for the word «to dwell’ which in Old English had the meaning «to wander». Or else the meaning «дар» , «подарок» for the word «gift» which in Old English had the meaning «выкуп за жену».
Semantic borrowing can appear when an English word was borrowed into some other language, developed there a new meaning and this new meaning was borrowed back into English, e.g. «brigade» was borrowed into Russian and formed the meaning «a working collective«,»бригада». This meaning was borrowed back into English as a Russian borrowing. The same is true of the English word «pioneer».
Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in the language when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from one language into another, so that the morphemic structure of borrowed words becomes familiar to the people speaking the borrowing language, e.g. we can find a lot of Romanic affixes in the English word-building system, that is why there are a lot of words - hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin, e.g. «goddess», «beautiful» etc.
CLASSIFICATION OF BORROWINGS ACCORDING TO THE DEGREE OF ASSIMILATION
The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a) from what group of languages the word was borrowed, if the word belongs to the same group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is assimilated easier, b) in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written form, words borrowed orally are assimilated quicker, c) how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated, d) how long the word lives in the language, the longer it lives, the more assimilated it is.
Accordingly borrowings are subdivided into: completely assimilated, partly assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms).
Completely assimilated borrowings are not felt as foreign words in the language, cf the French word «sport» and the native word «start». Completely assimilated verbs belong to regular verbs, e.g. correct -corrected. Completely assimilated nouns form their plural by means of s-inflexion, e.g. gate- gates. In completely assimilated French words the stress has been shifted from the last syllable to the last but one.
Semantic assimilation of borrowed words depends on the words existing in the borrowing language, as a rule, a borrowed word does not bring all its meanings into the borrowing language, if it is polysemantic, e.g. the Russian borrowing «sputnik» is used in English only in one of its meanings.
Partly assimilated borrowings are subdivided into the following groups: a) borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed, e.g. sari, sombrero, taiga, kvass etc.
b) borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, e.g. nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus - bacilli, phenomenon - phenomena, datum -data, genius - genii etc.
c) borrowings non-assimilated phonetically. Here belong words with the initial sounds /v/ and /z/, e.g. voice, zero. In native words these voiced consonants are used only in the intervocal position as allophones of sounds /f/ and /s/ ( loss - lose, life - live ). Some Scandinavian borrowings have consonants and combinations of consonants which were not palatalized, e.g. /sk/ in the words: sky, skate, ski etc (in native words we have the palatalized sounds denoted by the digraph «sh», e.g. shirt); sounds /k/ and /g/ before front vowels are not palatalized e.g. girl, get, give, kid, kill, kettle. In native words we have palatalization , e.g. German, child.
Some French borrowings have retained their stress on the last syllable, e.g. police, cartoon. Some French borrowings retain special combinations of sounds, e.g. /a:3/ in the words : camouflage, bourgeois, some of them retain the combination of sounds /wa:/ in the words: memoir, boulevard.
d) borrowings can be partly assimilated graphically, e.g. in Greak borrowings «y» can be spelled in the middle of the word (symbol, synonym), «ph» denotes the sound /f/ (phoneme, morpheme), «ch» denotes the sound /k/(chemistry, chaos),«ps» denotes the sound /s/ (psychology).
Latin borrowings retain their polisyllabic structure, have double consonants, as a rule, the final consonant of the prefix is assimilated with the initial consonant of the stem, (accompany, affirmative).
French borrowings which came into English after 1650 retain their spelling, e.g. consonants «p», «t», «s» are not pronounced at the end of the word (buffet, coup, debris), Specifically French combination of letters «eau» /ou/ can be found in the borrowings : beau, chateau, troussaeu. Some of digraphs retain their French pronunciation: ‘ch’ is pronounced as /sh/, e.g. chic, parachute, ‘qu’ is pronounced as /k/ e.g. bouquet, «ou» is pronounced as /u:/, e.g. rouge; some letters retain their French pronunciation, e.g. «i» is pronounced as /i:/, e,g, chic, machine; «g» is pronounced as /3/, e.g. rouge.
Modern German borrowings also have some peculiarities in their spelling: common nouns are spelled with a capital letter e.g. Autobahn, Lebensraum; some vowels and digraphs retain their German pronunciation, e.g. «a» is pronounced as /a:/ (Dictat), «u» is pronounced as /u:/ (Kuchen), «au» is pronounced as /au/ (Hausfrau), «ei» is pronounced as /ai/ (Reich); some consonants are also pronounced in the German way, e.g. «s» before a vowel is pronounced as /z/ (Sitskrieg), «v» is pronounced as /f/ (Volkswagen), «w» is pronounced as /v/ , «ch» is pronounced as /h/ (Kuchen).
Non-assimilated borrowings (barbarisms) are borrowings which are used by Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, e.g. addio (Italian), tete-a-tete (French), dolce vita (Italian), duende (Spanish), an homme a femme (French), gonzo (Italian) etc.
Celtic borrowings
5th A. D. Several Germanic tribes (the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes) migrated across the sea to the British Isles. There they were confronted by the Celts, the original inhabitants of the Isles. The Celts desperately defended but lost=> retreated to the North and South-West. Through their numerous contacts with the defeated Celts, the conquerors got to know and assimilated a number of Celtic words (Mod. E. bald, down, glen, druid, bard, cradle). Especially numerous among the Celtic borrowings were place names, names of rivers, bills, etc. The Germanic tribes occupied the land, but the names of many parts and features of their territory remained Celtic. For instance, the names of the rivers Avon, Exe, Esk, Usk, Ux originate from Celtic words meaning "river" and "water". Even the name of the English capital originates from Celtic Llyn + dun in which llyn is another Celtic word for "river" and dun stands for "a fortified hill", the meaning of the whole being "fortress on the hill over the river". Some Latin words entered the Anglo-Saxon languages through Celtic, among them such widely-used words as street (Lat. strata via) and wall (Lat. vallum).
Moors – boloto, wiski- water in kelt, car (cardiv) castle, coil – forest, loch-lake, bun- kind of bread, skirt, kilt
Latin
55 BC - Caesar
Food: peer, pepper, pound, milk, beat, sirel, wine. Burgen, campus(camp), vallum(wall), vinum(wine), portus(port), street, grinwitch, woolwitch.
Church: devil, scholl, apostal, christ, saint, pope, bishorp.Animals/plants: tiger, plant, oil, palm, rose, elephant. instruments:folk, spade, sickle, History, noon, mill, days of weak.
The seventh century A. D. This century was significant for the christianisation of England. Latin was the official language of the Christian church, and consequently the spread of Christianity was accompanied by a new period of Latin borrowings. These no longer came from spoken Latin as they did eight centuries earlier, but from church Latin. Also, these new Latin borrowings were very different in meaning from the earlier ones. They mostly indicated persons, objects and ideas associated with church and religious rituals. E. g. priest (Lai. presbyter), bishop (Lai. episcopus), monk (Lat. monachus), nun (Lai. nonna), candle (Lai. candela).
Additionally, in a class of their own were educational terms. It was quite natural that these were also Latin borrowings, for the first schools in England were church schools, and the first teachers priests and monks. So, the very word school is a Latin borrowing (Lat. schola, of Greek origin) and so are such words as scholar (Lai. scholar(-is) and magister (Lat. ma-gister).
7th A. D. Acceptance of Christianity - Latin was the official language of the Christian church, => a new period of Latin borrowings. These no longer came from spoken Latin as they did eight centuries earlier, but from church Latin, very different in meaning from the earlier ones. They mostly indicated persons, objects and ideas associated with church and religious rituals. E. g. priest (Lai. presbyter), bishop (Lai. episcopus), monk (Lat. monachus), nun (Lai. nonna), candle (Lai. candela). + educational terms (church schools). school is a Latin borrowing (Lat. schola, of Greek origin), scholar (Lai. scholar(-is) and magister. Food: peer, pepper, pound, milk, beat, sirel, wine. Burgen, campus(camp), vallum(wall), vinum(wine), portus(port), street, grinwitch, woolwitch.
Church: devil, scholl, apostal, christ, saint, pope, bishorp.Animals/plants: tiger, plant, oil, palm, rose, elephant. instruments:folk, spade, sickle, History, noon, mill, days of weak
Late.
Adjectives:
-ant, ent-important
-al, dental
-ar-popular
-ior, or- major
Verbs:
-ute-conclude
-ete-complete
-ct-select
-ate-create
They usualy came through French Prefixes:
-ad-admit
-de-denote
-ex-explain
-con-convince
The degree of adjectives:major, supirior
1. sience: noun, verb, conjuction, numeral
2. ling: phonetics, lin-cs, lexicology, case, number
3. directly taken: visa-virsa, nb, homosapies, lingva
GREEK
1. k- architacture, diachrinic
2. f- telephone, phenomenon, phrasiologe
3. i: symbol, syllible
4. z: zero, zerox
A great many Greek words introduced into English came in chiefly through the medium of Latin, for the Latin language itself was largely indebted to Greek. Borrowings from Greek like those from Latin go back to an early period. These are mostly bookish borrowings. Here are a few of the hundreds of Greek terms used in modern medicine: adenoids,pediatrics, psychiatry, psychoanalysis. Greek borrowings were more or less latinized in form. They are spelt and pronounced not as in Greek but as the Romans spelt and pronounced them. Among numerous Greek borrowings in the English vocabulary we find the following: analysis,botany,comed,ydemocrat,democracy, dialogue, philosophy,problem,rhythm. Quite a number of proper names are also Greek in origin, e. g. George, Eugene, Helenw, Sophie, Peter, Nicholas, Theodor. Here are some loan-words which linguistics owes to Greek: antonym, dialect, etymology, euphemism, homonym, metaphor, metonymy, neologism, polysemy,synonym, etc. A lot of English terms In rhetoric and grammar originated in Greece. The punctuation mark called a comma originates from the Greek word. There are numerous English compounds coined from such Greek roots, as: autos - self, chroma - colour, ge - earth, logos - discourse, phone - voice, e.g. autograph, geography, geology, phonograph, telegraph, telephone.
CONTACTS WITH
French- attache, etiquette, caprir, ballet, ensemble, machine
Italian- scenario, cartoon, fresco, concorto, opers, gondola, lagoon, grotto, balcony
Spain – armada, parade, castanet, matador
Portuguesse- verandah
Dutch- sketch, easel, cruise
Indian: alligator, cacao, potato, tomato
The scandinavian borrowings in the english vocabulary.
The Danish invasion in 878 resulted in the occupation of a great part of the country. The effect of the Danish conquest was a contribution of many Scandinavian words in the english vocabulary. Scandimavian words were borrowed most freely between the 9th and 12th century. It is supposed that the Scandinavian element in Modern English amounts to 650 root-words. Scandinavian loan-words denote objects and actions of the most commonplace description and do not represent any new set of ideas hither to unknown to the people adopting them. We find here such everyday words as: (n) bull, cake, crop, egg, fellow, guest, kid, root, sky, sister, window; (adj) flat, low, mean, odd, wrong; (v) call, die, get, give, scream, scrape, take, want. Scand. borrowings are numerous is geographical place names in Northern England, such as: Braithwaite, Whitby. Scand. elements survive in such hybrid compounds as: lawful, lawless, greyhound. It is of interest to note that there are words in the english vocabulary that exist side by side for a long time, sometimes for centuries, two slightly different forms for the same word, one the original english form and the other scandinavian. (whole - hale, from - fro, shirt - skirt, shot - scot, true - trig, neat, tidy).
Wind+auza-winows, fe+lawe-fellow. Byr-village(derby-vallage of dear, kirby, holmby), dale-plane (avondale, danesdale), gate- way(newsgate), holm(home)-island-holmby, longholm, thorp-farm(carthorp)
1. then, them, both, their
2. niman-to take,sweltan-to die, swestor-sister
3. new meaning. bread was any kind of food, stuff-to die, dream-to sleep.
4. sk – skate, skill, skirt(in eng was palatalization- ship)
5. fisc-fish
6. jetan-to get, y- yet, yeild – began to be spelled in one letter.
7. k- kettle, key.
French borrowings
9-15-early period
14-20late period
1066. With the famous Battle of Hastings, when the English were defeated by the Normans under William the Conqueror, we come to the eventful epoch of the Norman Conquest. The epoch can well be called eventful not only in national, social, political and human terms, but also in linguistic terms. England became a bi-lingual country, and the impact on the English vocabulary made over this two-hundred-years period is immense: French words from the Norman dialect penetrated every aspect of social life. Here is a very brief list of examples of Norman French borrowings. Meals, art/entertaiment,family, professions(trade, painter, maison)
Administrative words: state, government, parliament, council, power.
Legal terms: court, judge, justice, crime, prison.
Military terms: army, war, soldier, officer, battle, enemy.
Educational terms: pupil, lesson, library, science, pen, pencil.
Everyday life was not unaffected by the powerful influence of French words. Numerous terms of everyday life were also borrowed from French in this period: e. g. table, plate, saucer, dinner, supper, river, autumn, uncle, etc.
-ard, avangard
-cy, tendency
-ate, comunoicate
-able, readable.
Shift of stress(changed): courage.
Early french b took all grammatical categories.
Late:
1. stress on the last sbl
2. Ch is pronounced like ch: chef, champaigne
3. g- garage, rouge, regime…bridge, edge, badge
4. mute ending: ballet, banque, restaurant.
5. The Renaissance was a period of extensive cultural contacts between the major European states. Therefore, it was only natural that new words also entered the English vocabulary from other European languages. The most significant once more were French borrowings. This time they came from the Parisian dialect of French and are known as Parisian borrowings. Examples: regime, routine, police, machine, ballet, matinee, scene, technique, bourgeois, etc.
10. Loan words. The term loan-word is equivalent to borrowing. Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language (the source language). A loanword can also be called a borrowing. The abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakers adopting words from a source language into their native language. "Loan" and "borrowing" are of course metaphors, because there is no literal lending process. By translation-loans we indicate borrowings of a special kind. They are not taken into the vocabulary of another language more or less in the same phonemic shape in which they have been functioning in their own language, but undergo the process of translation.
Assimilation of borrowings. Assimilation is the process of change that a borrowed word undergoes while being adopted to the phonetic, grammatical and semantic structure of the host language:
1) Phonetic — includes changes in sound-form and in stress (царь-tzar); or they just simplified (psychology-Greek). In Old English the stress was always on the first syllable of the root (reason-French).
2) Grammatical — the acquisition of new grammatical forms on analogy with other English words (sputnik, kindergarten)
3) Lexical — usually means the development of new senses in the borrowed word (discus -> disc -> dish, to move). There, are 543 pairs of doublets.
Assimilation is the process and we should mind that it has different stages:
1. complete — words undistinguished from native words(cheese, happy,old, street, husband).
2. partial:
• not assimilated phonetically – special sounds, stress(police, garage, soprano, sonato)
• not assimilated grammatically – some nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek which preserves their plural form (datum-data)
• not assimilated semantically – these words denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed(sari, sombrero, kvass, pizza, tzar, ruble)
• not assimilated graphically – letter y in the middle, ph[f], ch[k], x z j in the initial position
3. non-assimilated words (barbarisms)– belong to the English language but not assimilated in any way and for which there are corresponding English equivalents(ad-lib, ciao, tet-a-tet)
The object of Lexicology is a words-stock (vocabulary) of the particularly language. The term word denotes the basic unit of a given language resulting from the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment. A word therefore is simultaneously a semantic, grammatical and phonological unit.
Task of lexicology– 1. Is to give systematic description of the English vocabulary, its etymological peculiar features and its classifications. 2. to study the rules of enriching the vocabulary
Lexicology as a part of general linguistics is divided into several branches that study different aspects of words, word-combination and the vocabulary:
The general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of the specific features of any particular language, is known as general lexicology.
Linguistic phenomena and properties common to all languages are generally referred to as language universals. Special lexicology devotes its attention to the description of the characteristic peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given language. It goes without saying that every special lexicology is based on the principles of general lexicology, and the latter forms a part of general linguistics.
Historical lexicology (etymology) – studies the evolution of separate words and the vocabulary in general. The evolution of any vocabulary, as well as of its single elements, forms the object of historical lexicology or etymology. This branch of linguistics discusses the origin of various words, their change and development, and investigates the linguistic and extra-linguistic forces modifying their structure, meaning and usage. Historical lexicology has been criticised for its atomistic approach, i.e. for treating every word as an individual and isolated unit. This drawback is, however, not intrinsic to the science itself. Historical study of words is not necessarily atomistic. In the light of recent investigations it becomes clear that there is no reason why historical lexicology cannot survey the evolution of a vocabulary as an adaptive system, showing its change and development in the course of time.
Descriptive lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development. It studies the functions of words and their specific structure as a characteristic inherent in the system. The descriptive lexicology of the English language deals with the English word in its morphological and semantical structures, investigating the interdependence between these two aspects.
Applied lexicology deals with translation, lexicography, pragmatics of speech.
Lexicology is closely connected with other branches of linguistics: phonetics, for example, investigates the phonetic structure of language & is concerned with the study of the outer sound-form of the word. Grammar is the study of the grammatical structure of language. It is concerned with the various means of expressing grammatical relations between words as well as with patterns after which words are combined into word-groups & sentences. There is also a close relationship between lexicology & stylistics, which is concerned with a study of a nature, functions & styles of languages.
2. Lexical system is a set of words and word combinations associating and functioning together according to certain laws. It is an adaptive system because it is constantly adjusting itself changes of the society.
Syntagmatic relations are linear sequence (линейная последовательность) relations of LU when they are used in speech (are possibilities of combinations). Can be presented as a horizontal line. They are important for determining the meaning of a poly-semantic word because different senses of poly-semantic words are revealed in the context (yellow dress — yellow press).
Context is the main stretch of speech which determines each individual sense of a poly-semantic word. Contexts are:
1. Linguistic. Lexical valence of the word — the lexical contexts that a word may be used in.
a. Lexical — includes LU combined with the poly-semantic word which helps to determine its senses or meaning (heavy box, heavy rain, heavy industry).
b. Grammatical — is the grammatical structure of the phrase that helps to determine the sense of a poly-semantic word (to make a cake, to make smb do smth, to make a splendid actress).
c. Semantic — is a common use of words in certain repeatedly used environment (to solve the problem, to identify the problem, a complicated problem).
2. Extra-linguistic — is constituted by the speech situation in which the word is used (I'll give you a ring — позвоню, подарю кольцо)
Paradigmatic relations — the relations of a word within the lexical system of a language (functional contrasts). It is the basis for semantic classifications of words.
1) The first classification is based on the common concept that a word expresses. Words are subdivided into lexical-semantic groups and lexical-semantic fields. Both are closely knit sectors or vocabulary-united by a common concept. But a L-S group consists of words belonging to one part of speech (red-blue-black; mother-father-sister; to walk-to run-to go) and a L-S field — may comprise words belonging to different parts of speech (field of space: in,out, space, room, to extend)
2) The second classification is based on hierarchal paradigmatic relations. There are more general words (Hyperonym) (tree) and more specific (Hyponymy) (tree, old tree, oak, pine-tree).
Words in language form lexical-grammatical groups united by hypero-hyponymic relations.
Hyponymy is the mostly widely spread relation among LU. It is found in various parts of speech (more often in nouns). The hypero-hyponymic relations rreflect the way we see the world, its arrangement.
The word may be described as the basic unit of language. Uniting meaning and form, it is composed of one or more morphemes, each consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation.
Thomas Hobbes - words are not mere sounds but names of matter/a materialistic approach to the problem of nomination / universal signal that can substitute any other signal from the environment in evoking a response in a human organism- Pavlov
E. Sapir - the syntactic and semantic aspects - the word “one of the smallest completely satisfying bits of isolated ‘meaning’, into which the sentence resolves itself
“the minimum sentence” by H. Sweet
Bloomfield as “a minimum free form”
The semantic-phonological approach - Gardiner’s definition: “A word is an articulate sound-symbol in its as-pect of denoting something which is spoken about."
Meillet combines the semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria - A word is defined by the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment."
some modifications, adding that a word is the smallest significant unit of a given language capable of functioning alone and characterised by positional mobility within a sentence, morphological uninterruptability and semantic integrity.
All these criteria are necessary because they permit us to create a basis for the oppositions between the word and the phrase, the word and the phoneme, and the word and the morpheme: their common feature is that they are all units of the language, their difference lies in the fact that the phoneme is not significant, and a morpheme cannot be used as a complete utterance.
3. A functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. A functional style is thus to be regarded as the product of a certain concrete task set by the sender of the message. Functional styles appear mainly in the literary standard of a language.
The literary standard of the English language, like that of any other developed language, is not so homogeneous as it may seem. In fact the standard English literary language in the course of its development has fallen into several subsystems each of which has acquired its own peculiarities which are typical of the given functional style. The members of the language community, especially those who are sufficiently trained and responsive to language variations, recognize these styles as independent wholes. The peculiar choice of language means is primarily predetermined by the aim of the communication with the result that a more or less closed system is built up. One set of language media stands in opposition to other sets of language media with other aims, and these other sets have other choices and arrangements of language means.
What we here call functional styles are also called registers (In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, when speaking in a formal setting, an English speaker may be more likely to adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal (e.g. "walking", not "walkin'"), choose more formal words (e.g. father vs. dad, child vs. kid, etc.), and refrain from using contractions such as ain't, than when speaking in an informal setting.) or d i s с о u r s e s.
In the English literary standard we distinguish the following major functional styles (hence FS):
1) The language of belles-lettres.
2) The language of publicistic literature.
3) The language of newspapers.
4) The language of scientific prose.
5) The language of official documents.
As has already been mentioned, functional styles are the product of the development of the written variety of language. Each FS may be characterized by a number of distinctive features, leading or subordinate, constant or changing, obligatory or optional. Most of the FSs, however, are perceived as independent wholes due to a peculiar combination and interrelation of features common to all (especially when taking into account syntactical arrangement) with the leading ones of each FS.
Stylistically marked lexicon.
In accordance with the already-mentioned division of language into literary and colloquial, we may represent the whole of the word-stock of the English language as being divided into three main layers: the literary layer, the neutral layer and the colloquial layer.
The literary and the colloquial layers contain a number of subgroups each of which has a property it shares with all the subgroups within the layer.
This common property, which unites the different groups of words within the layer, may be called its aspect. The aspect of the literary layer is its markedly bookish character. It is this that makes the layer more or less stable. The aspect of the colloquial layer of words is its lively spoken character. It is this that makes it unstable, fleeting.
The aspect of the neutral layer is its universal character. That means it is unrestricted in its use. It can be employed in all styles of language and in all spheres of human activity. It is this that makes the layer the most stable of all.
The literary layer of words consists of groups accepted as legitimate members of the English vocabulary. They have no local or dialectal character. '
The colloquial layer of words as qualified in most English or American dictionaries is not infrequently limited to a definite language community or confined to a special locality where it circulates.
The literary vocabulary consists of the following groups of words: 1. common literary; 2. terms and learned words; 3. poetic words; 4. archaic words; 5. barbarisms and foreign words; 6. literary coinages including nonce-words.
The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups: 1. common "colloquial words; 2. slang; 3. jargonisms; 4. professional words; 5. dialectal words; 6. vulgar words; 7. colloquial coinages.
The common literary, neutral and common colloquial words are grouped under the term standard English vocabulary. Other groups in the literary layer are regarded as special literary vocabulary those in the colloquial layer are regarded as special colloquial, (non-literary) vocabulary.
Stylistic Classification of the English vocabulary.
English language is divided into three main layers: the literary layer, the neutral layer and the colloquial layer. The literary and the colloquial layers contain a number of subgroups each of which has a property it shares with all the subgroups within the layer. This common property, which unites the different groups of words within the layer, may be called its aspect. The aspect of the literary layer is its markedly bookish character. It is this that makes the layer more or less stable. The aspect of the colloquial layer of words is its lively spoken character.
The aspect of the neutral layer is its universal character. That means it is unrestricted in its use. It can be employed in all styles of language and in all spheres of human activity.
The literary layer of words consists of groups accepted as legitimate members of the English vocabulary. They have no local or dialectal character.
The colloquial layer of words as qualified in most English or American dictionaries is not infrequently limited to a definite language community or confined to a special locality where it circulates.
The literary vocabulary consists of the following groups of words:
1. common literary; 2. terms and learned words; 3. poetic words; 4. archaic words; 5. barbarisms and foreign words; 6. literary coinages including nonce-words.
The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups: 1. common colloquial words; 2. slang; 3. jargonisms; 4. professional words; 5. dialectal words; 6. vulgar words; 7. colloquial coinages.
The common literary, neutral and common colloquial words are grouped under the term standard English vocabulary. Other groups in the literary layer are regarded as special literary vocabulary and those in the colloquial layer are regarded as special colloquial (non-literary) vocabulary
4. Neutral layer of the vocabulary.
The aspect of neutral layer is its universal character – unrestricted in its use. It can be employed in all styles of language and in all spheres of Human activity what makes the neutral layer the most stable of all.
Neutral words, which form the bulk of the English vocabulary, are used in both literary and colloquial language. Neutral words are the main source of synonymy and polysemy. It is the neutral stock of words that is so prolific in the production of new meanings.
The neutral vocabulary is invariant of the Standard English vocabulary.
The neutral words are not emotionally colored, and are regarded as an abstraction, don’t mean any concreteness.
The most of English neutral word are monosyllabic.
5. The literary layer contains a number of subgroups each of which has a property it shares with all the subgroups within the layer. This common property, which unites the different groups of words within the layer, may be called its aspect. The aspect of the literary layer is its markedly bookish character. It is this that makes the layer more or less stable.
The literary layer of words consists of groups accepted as legitimate members of the English vocabulary. They have no local or dialectal character.
Common literary words are chiefly used in writing and in polished speech. One can always tell a literary word from a colloquial word.
The literary vocabulary consists of the following groups of words: 1. common literary; 2. terms and learned words; 3. poetic words; 4. archaic words; 5. barbarisms and foreign words; 6. literary coinages including nonce-words. Common literary words are chiefly used in writing and in polished speech. One can always tell a literary word from a colloquial word.
TERMS.
They are used in special works dealing with the notions of some branch of science. They belong to the language study. They have highly conventional character. They are usually easy coined and easily accepted; new coinages is easily replaced out-date ones. One of the most characteristic feature is its direct relevance to the system or set of terms used in a particular science, discipline, art to its nomenclature. A term is directly connected with the concept it denotes,directs the mind to the essential quality of the thing. The function is to indicate the technical peculiarities of the subject dealt with or to make some reference to the occupation of a character whose language would naturally contain special words and expressions. + Reterminalization.
ARCHAISMS
- Absolescent are in the stage of gradually passing out of general usage (pronouns: thee, thy, verb forms: thou makest/wilt, ending –(e)th instead od –(e)s he maketh)
- Obsolete – which are completely gone out of use but still recognizable (methinks – it seems to me; nay – no)
- Archaic proper - which are no longer recognizable (troth – faith, losel – lazy fellow)
- Historical words – describe institutions, customs, material objects which are no longer in use ( Thane, goblet, Mace)
Functions – creation of realistic background, in the style of official documents – terminological character, create an evaluative effect, satirical purpose.
POETICAL WORDS
- Mostly archaic or very rarely used highly literary words which aim is to produce an elevated effect. (qouth – speak, eftsoon – again)
- Sustain the special elevated atmosphere of poetry, or satirical function, are not freely built, create by compounding.
FOREIGNISMS AND BARBARISMS
Barbarisms – of foreign origin which have not entirely been assimilated, have already become facts of the language, have the appearance of something alien, generally given in the body of dictionaries, it is a historical category
Foreignisms don’d belong to the English vocabulary, usually italized in the text (udarnik)
6. The aspect of the colloquial layer of words is its lively spoken character. It is this that makes it unstable, fleeting.
The colloquial layer of words as qualified in most English or Amer¬ican dictionaries is not infrequently limited to a definite language community or confined to a special locality where it circulates.
The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups: 1. com¬mon "colloquial words; 2. slang; 3. jargonisms; 4. professional words; 5. dialectal words; 6. vulgar words; 7. colloquial coinages.
Colloquial words are always more emotionally coloured than literary ones.
Both literary and colloquial words have their upper and lower ranges.
The same may be said of the upper range of the colloquial layer: it can very easily pass into the neutral layer.
Synonyms of neutral words, both colloquial and literary, assume a far greater degree of concreteness.
The term literary colloquial is used to denote the vocabulary used by educated people in the course of ordinary conversation or when writing letters to intimate friends. A good sample may be found in works by a number of authors, such as J. Galsworthy, E.M. Forster, C.P. Snow, W.S. Maugham, J.B.Priestley, and others.
Familiar colloquial is more emotional and much more free and careless than literary colloquial. It is also characterised by a great number of jocular or ironical expressions and nonce-words. Low colloquial is a term used for illiterate popular speech.
It is very difficult to find hard and fast rules that help to establish the boundary between low colloquial and dialect, because in actual communication the two are often used together. Moreover, we have only the evidence of fiction to go by, and this may be not quite accurate in speech characterisation. The basis of distinction between low colloquial and the two other types of colloquial is purely social. The chief peculiarities of low colloquial concern grammar and pronunciation; as to the vocabulary, it is different from familiar colloquial in that it contains more vulgar words, and sometimes also elements of dialect. Other vocabulary layers below the level of standard educated speech are, besides low colloquial, the so-called slang and argot.
Unlike low colloquial, however, they have only lexical peculiarities. Argot should be distinguished from slang: the first term serves to denote a special vocabulary and idiom, used by a particular social or age group, especially by the so-called underworld (the criminal circles). Its main point is to be unintelligible to outsiders. The boundaries between various layers of colloquial vocabulary not being very sharply defined, it is more convenient to characterise it on the whole.
Colloquial (Conversational) Style. The main function of this style is communicative. We use this style in everyday life. There are some extra-linguistic features characteristic of this style: e.g. informality, spontaneous character of speech, interpersonal contact. When we use the colloquial style we attract gestures, different facial expression, body movements. Stylistic features of this style include: familiarity, ellipsis, concrete character of speech, interruption and logical inconsistency of the speech, emotiveness, efficacy. Secondary stylistic features may include: idiomatic and patterned character, “personal” type of speech presentation. There are oral and written varieties of this style. In it we distinguish between two forms of speech: dialogue (simple dialogue, when 2 people participate in the conversation and polylogue) and monologue. Colloquial style has substyles and genres: literary conversational style (talks, conversations, interviews), familiar-conversational style (communication between family members – mummy, daddy, granny…, friends – hey, chap!, children's talk-mummy, granny, doggy…), low colloquial (quarrels, scandal). We use non-bookish means of the language and colloquial elements on all language levels.
There are several language means peculiar colloquial style:
graphic means. Here we find graphic signals of the change of communicative roles;
phonetic means, such as intensive modification of sounds in fluent speech, positional phonemic interchange (in a word - at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the word, stressed or unstressed position, and so on). Positional changes: reduction or weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables and partial devoicing of consonants at the end of the word before a pause. Complete reduction: apokopa (the drop of the final consonant or final part of the word), synkopa (there is a drop of a vowel or several sounds in other positions, e.g. I`m I`ve it isn`t, and so on).
Vocabulary means: conversational or everyday life vocabulary, wide use of non-literary vocabulary, expressive-emotional vocabulary, means of verbal imagery, wide use of stylistic devices, including pun (There isn`t a single man in the hotel);
grammatical means: in morphology there are a lot of pronouns and particles, wide use of variety of aspect and tense forms of the verb (Present Continuos, Present Indefinite, Present Perfect), in syntax: variety in the use of communicative types of the sentence, priority of short sentences, wide use of expressive constructions (e.g. in familiar-conversational style we can use “how, when, where” with the word “ever” or with “the hell” “the devil” and so on. E.g. Why the hell do you ask?);
compositional peculiarities: different types of dialogue (question - answer, exclamation - reply, an so on).
7. Slang 1: language peculiar to a particular group: as a: the special and often secret vocabulary used by class (as thieves, beggars) and usu. felt to be vulgar or inferior: argot; b: the jargon used by or associated with a particular trade, profession, or field of activity; 2: a non-standard vocabulary coin-posed of words and senses characterized primarily by connotations of extreme informality and usu. a currency not limited to a partic¬ular region and composed typically of coinages or arbitrarily changed words, clipped or shortened forms, extravagant, forced or facetious figures of speech, or verbal novelties usu. experiencing quick popularity and relatively rapid decline into disuse. The "New Oxford English Dictionary" defines slang as follows:"a) the special vocabulary used by any set of persons of a low or disreputable character; language of a low and vulgar type. (Now merged in c. /cant/)', b) the cant or jargon of a certain class or period; c) language of a highly colloquial type considered as below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words or of current words employed in some special sense."
In the non-literary vocabulary of the English language there is a group of words that are called jargonisms. Jargon is a recognized term for a group of words that exists in almost every language and whose aim is to preserve secrecy within one or another social group. Jargonisms are generally old words with entirely new meanings imposed on them. The traditional meaning of the words is immaterial, only the new, improvised meaning is of importance. Most of the Jargonisms of any language, and of the English language too, are absolutely incompre¬hensible to those outside the social group which has invented them. They may be defined as a code within a code, that is special meanings of words that are imposed on the recognized code—the dictionary mean¬ing of the words. (Piou-Piou—'a French soldier, a private in the infantry'. According to Eric Partridge this word has already passed from military jargon to ordinary colloquial speech; Humrnen—a false arrest* (American); Dar—(from damned average raiser)—'a persevering and assidu¬ous student'. (University jargon); Matlo(w)—'a sailor' (from the French word 'matelof); Man and wife—'a knife' (rhyming slang); Manany—'a sailor who is always putting off a job or work' (nautical jargon) (from the Spanish word 'mamma'—4o-morrow')
Professionalisms, as the term itself signifies, are the words used in a definite trade, profession or calling by people connect¬ed by common interests both at work and at home. They commonly designate some working process or implement of labour. Professional¬isms are correlated to terms. Terms, as has already been indicated, are coined to nominate new concepts that appear in the process of, and as a result of, technical progress and the development of science. Professional words name anew already-existing concepts, tools or instruments, and have the typical properties of a special code. The main feature of a professionalism is its technicality. Professionalisms are spe¬cial words in the non-literary layer of the English vocabulary. (tin-fish (submarine); block-buster (= a bomb especially designed to destroy blocks of big buildings); piper (=a specialist who decorates pastry with the use of a cream-pipe); a midder case (=a midwifery case); outer (=& knockout blow).
Dialectal words are those which in the process of integration of the English national lan¬guage remained beyond its literary boundaries, and their use is gener¬ally confined to a definite locality. We exclude here what are called social dialects or even the still looser application of the term as in ex¬pressions like poetical dialect or styles as dialects. With reference to this group there is a confusion of terms, particu¬larly between the terms dialectal, slang and vernacular. In order to ascertain the true value and the stylistic functions of dialec¬tal words it is necessary to look into their nature. (locality, breeding, education) – (lass – girl, daft – silly, hinney – honey)
The term vulgarism, as used to single out a definite group of words of non-standard English, is rather misleading. The ambiguity of the term apparently proceeds from the etymology of the word. Vulgar, as explained by the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, means a) words or names employed in ordinary speech; b) common, familiar; c) commonly current or prevalent, generally or widely disseminated. These two submeanings are the foundation of what we here name vul¬garisms. So vulgarisms are: 1) expletives and swear words which are of an abusive character, like 'damn', 'bloody', 4o hell', 'goddam' and, as some dictionaries state, used now as general exclamations; 2) obscene words. These are known as four-letter words the use of which is banned in any form of .intercourse as being indecent. Historians tell us that in Middle-JVges and down into the 16th century they were accepted in oral speech Јnd after Caxton even admitted to the printed page. All of these words are of Anglo-Saxon origin. Vulgarisms are often used in conversation out of habit, without any thought of what they mean, or in'imitation of those who use them in or¬der not to seem old-fashioned or prudish. Unfortunately in modern fiction these words have gained legitimacy. The most vulgar of them are now to be found even in good novels. This lifting of the taboo has given rise to the almost unrestrained employment of words which soil the literary language. However, they will never acquire the status of standard Eng¬lish vocabulary and will always remain on the outskirts.
The function of expletives is almost the same as that of interjections, that is to express strong emotions, mainly annoyance, anger, vexation and the like. They are not to be found in any functional style of language except emotive prose, and here only in the direct speech of the characters.
8. Native words
An important distinctive feature which has not been discussed so far in this book is that of origin. According to this feature the word-stock may be subdivided into two main sets. The elements of one are native, the elements of the other are borrowed.
A native word is a word which belongs to the original English stock, as known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. A loan word, borrowed word or borrowing is a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language.
The native words are further subdivided by diachronic linguistics into those of the Indo-European stock and those of Common Germanic origin. The words having cognates in the vocabularies of different Indo-European languages form the oldest layer. It has been noticed that they readily fall into definite semantic groups. Among them we find terms of kinship: father, mother, son, daughter, brother, words naming the most important objects and phenomena of nature: sun, moon, star, wind, water, wood, hill, stone, tree-, names of animals and birds: bull,cat, crow, goose, wolf; parts of the human body: arm, ear, eye, foot, heart,etc. Some of the most frequent verbs are also of Indo-European common stock: bear, come, sit, stand and others. The adjectives of this group denote concrete physical properties: hard, quick, slow, red, white. Most numerals also belong here.
A much bigger part of this native vocabulary layer is formed by words of the Common Germanic stock, i.e. of words having parallels in German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, etc., but none in Russian or French. It contains a greater number of semantic groups. The following list may serve as an illustration of their general character. The nouns are: summer, winter, storm, rain, ice, ground, bridge, house, shop, room, coat, iron, lead, cloth, hat, shirt, shoe, care, evil, hope, life, need, rest; the verbs are bake, bum, buy, drive, hear, keep, learn, make, meet, rise, see, send, shoot and many more; the adjectives are: broad, dead, deaf, deep. Many adverbs and pronouns also belong to this layer.
Together with the words of the common Indo-European stock these Common Germanic words form the bulk of the most frequent elements used in any style of speech. They constitute no less than 80% of the 500 most frequent words listed by E.L. Thorndike and I.Lorge.
Words belonging to the subsets of the native word-stock are for the most part characterized by a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency, high frequency value and a developed polysemy; they are often monosyllabic, show great word-building power and enter a number of set expressions.
For example, watch
9. BORROWINGS
Borrowing words from other languages is characteristic of English throughout its history More than two thirds of the English vocabulary are borrowings. Mostly they are words of Romanic origin (Latin, French, Italian, Spanish). Borrowed words are different from native ones by their phonetic structure, by their morphological structure and also by their grammatical forms. It is also characterisitic of borrowings to be non-motivated semantically.
English history is very rich in different types of contacts with other countries, that is why it is very rich in borrowings. The Roman invasion, the adoption of Cristianity, Scandinavian and Norman conquests of the British Isles, the development of British colonialism and trade and cultural relations served to increase immensely the English vocabulary. The majority of these borrowings are fully assimilated in English in their pronunciation, grammar, spelling and can be hardly distinguished from native words.
English continues to take in foreign words , but now the quantity of borrowings is not so abundunt as it was before. All the more so, English now has become a «giving» language, it has become Lingva franca of the twentieth century.
Borrowings can be classified according to different criteria:
a) according to the aspect which is borrowed,
b) according to the degree of assimilation,
c) according to the language from which the word was borrowed.
(In this classification only the main languages from which words were borrowed into English are described, such as Latin, French, Italian. Spanish, German and Russian.)
CLASSIFICATION OF BORROWINGS ACCORDING TO THE BORROWED ASPECT
There are the following groups: phonetic borrowings, translation loans, semantic borrowings, morphemic borrowings.
Phonetic borrowings are most characteristic in all languages, they are called loan words proper. Words are borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and meaning. Then they undergo assimilation, each sound in the borrowed word is substituted by the corresponding sound of the borrowing language. In some cases the spelling is changed. The structure of the word can also be changed. The position of the stress is very often influenced by the phonetic system of the borrowing language. The paradigm of the word, and sometimes the meaning of the borrowed word are also changed. Such words as: labour, travel, table, chair, people are phonetic borrowings from French; apparatchik, nomenklatura, sputnik are phonetic borrowings from Russian; bank, soprano, duet are phonetic borrowings from Italian etc.
Translation loans are word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme ) translations of some foreign words or expressions. In such cases the notion is borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical units, «to take the bull by the horns» (Latin), «fair sex» ( French), «living space» (German) etc. Some translation loans appeared in English from Latin already in the Old English period, e.g. Sunday (solis dies). There are translation loans from the languages of Indians, such as: «pipe of peace», «pale-faced», from German «masterpiece», «homesickness», «superman».
Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have two relative languages which have common words with different meanings, e.g. there are semantic borrowings between Scandinavian and English, such as the meaning «to live» for the word «to dwell’ which in Old English had the meaning «to wander». Or else the meaning «дар» , «подарок» for the word «gift» which in Old English had the meaning «выкуп за жену».
Semantic borrowing can appear when an English word was borrowed into some other language, developed there a new meaning and this new meaning was borrowed back into English, e.g. «brigade» was borrowed into Russian and formed the meaning «a working collective«,»бригада». This meaning was borrowed back into English as a Russian borrowing. The same is true of the English word «pioneer».
Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in the language when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from one language into another, so that the morphemic structure of borrowed words becomes familiar to the people speaking the borrowing language, e.g. we can find a lot of Romanic affixes in the English word-building system, that is why there are a lot of words - hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin, e.g. «goddess», «beautiful» etc.
CLASSIFICATION OF BORROWINGS ACCORDING TO THE DEGREE OF ASSIMILATION
The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a) from what group of languages the word was borrowed, if the word belongs to the same group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is assimilated easier, b) in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written form, words borrowed orally are assimilated quicker, c) how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated, d) how long the word lives in the language, the longer it lives, the more assimilated it is.
Accordingly borrowings are subdivided into: completely assimilated, partly assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms).
Completely assimilated borrowings are not felt as foreign words in the language, cf the French word «sport» and the native word «start». Completely assimilated verbs belong to regular verbs, e.g. correct -corrected. Completely assimilated nouns form their plural by means of s-inflexion, e.g. gate- gates. In completely assimilated French words the stress has been shifted from the last syllable to the last but one.
Semantic assimilation of borrowed words depends on the words existing in the borrowing language, as a rule, a borrowed word does not bring all its meanings into the borrowing language, if it is polysemantic, e.g. the Russian borrowing «sputnik» is used in English only in one of its meanings.
Partly assimilated borrowings are subdivided into the following groups: a) borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed, e.g. sari, sombrero, taiga, kvass etc.
b) borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, e.g. nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus - bacilli, phenomenon - phenomena, datum -data, genius - genii etc.
c) borrowings non-assimilated phonetically. Here belong words with the initial sounds /v/ and /z/, e.g. voice, zero. In native words these voiced consonants are used only in the intervocal position as allophones of sounds /f/ and /s/ ( loss - lose, life - live ). Some Scandinavian borrowings have consonants and combinations of consonants which were not palatalized, e.g. /sk/ in the words: sky, skate, ski etc (in native words we have the palatalized sounds denoted by the digraph «sh», e.g. shirt); sounds /k/ and /g/ before front vowels are not palatalized e.g. girl, get, give, kid, kill, kettle. In native words we have palatalization , e.g. German, child.
Some French borrowings have retained their stress on the last syllable, e.g. police, cartoon. Some French borrowings retain special combinations of sounds, e.g. /a:3/ in the words : camouflage, bourgeois, some of them retain the combination of sounds /wa:/ in the words: memoir, boulevard.
d) borrowings can be partly assimilated graphically, e.g. in Greak borrowings «y» can be spelled in the middle of the word (symbol, synonym), «ph» denotes the sound /f/ (phoneme, morpheme), «ch» denotes the sound /k/(chemistry, chaos),«ps» denotes the sound /s/ (psychology).
Latin borrowings retain their polisyllabic structure, have double consonants, as a rule, the final consonant of the prefix is assimilated with the initial consonant of the stem, (accompany, affirmative).
French borrowings which came into English after 1650 retain their spelling, e.g. consonants «p», «t», «s» are not pronounced at the end of the word (buffet, coup, debris), Specifically French combination of letters «eau» /ou/ can be found in the borrowings : beau, chateau, troussaeu. Some of digraphs retain their French pronunciation: ‘ch’ is pronounced as /sh/, e.g. chic, parachute, ‘qu’ is pronounced as /k/ e.g. bouquet, «ou» is pronounced as /u:/, e.g. rouge; some letters retain their French pronunciation, e.g. «i» is pronounced as /i:/, e,g, chic, machine; «g» is pronounced as /3/, e.g. rouge.
Modern German borrowings also have some peculiarities in their spelling: common nouns are spelled with a capital letter e.g. Autobahn, Lebensraum; some vowels and digraphs retain their German pronunciation, e.g. «a» is pronounced as /a:/ (Dictat), «u» is pronounced as /u:/ (Kuchen), «au» is pronounced as /au/ (Hausfrau), «ei» is pronounced as /ai/ (Reich); some consonants are also pronounced in the German way, e.g. «s» before a vowel is pronounced as /z/ (Sitskrieg), «v» is pronounced as /f/ (Volkswagen), «w» is pronounced as /v/ , «ch» is pronounced as /h/ (Kuchen).
Non-assimilated borrowings (barbarisms) are borrowings which are used by Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, e.g. addio (Italian), tete-a-tete (French), dolce vita (Italian), duende (Spanish), an homme a femme (French), gonzo (Italian) etc.
Celtic borrowings
5th A. D. Several Germanic tribes (the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes) migrated across the sea to the British Isles. There they were confronted by the Celts, the original inhabitants of the Isles. The Celts desperately defended but lost=> retreated to the North and South-West. Through their numerous contacts with the defeated Celts, the conquerors got to know and assimilated a number of Celtic words (Mod. E. bald, down, glen, druid, bard, cradle). Especially numerous among the Celtic borrowings were place names, names of rivers, bills, etc. The Germanic tribes occupied the land, but the names of many parts and features of their territory remained Celtic. For instance, the names of the rivers Avon, Exe, Esk, Usk, Ux originate from Celtic words meaning "river" and "water". Even the name of the English capital originates from Celtic Llyn + dun in which llyn is another Celtic word for "river" and dun stands for "a fortified hill", the meaning of the whole being "fortress on the hill over the river". Some Latin words entered the Anglo-Saxon languages through Celtic, among them such widely-used words as street (Lat. strata via) and wall (Lat. vallum).
Moors – boloto, wiski- water in kelt, car (cardiv) castle, coil – forest, loch-lake, bun- kind of bread, skirt, kilt
Latin
55 BC - Caesar
Food: peer, pepper, pound, milk, beat, sirel, wine. Burgen, campus(camp), vallum(wall), vinum(wine), portus(port), street, grinwitch, woolwitch.
Church: devil, scholl, apostal, christ, saint, pope, bishorp.Animals/plants: tiger, plant, oil, palm, rose, elephant. instruments:folk, spade, sickle, History, noon, mill, days of weak.
The seventh century A. D. This century was significant for the christianisation of England. Latin was the official language of the Christian church, and consequently the spread of Christianity was accompanied by a new period of Latin borrowings. These no longer came from spoken Latin as they did eight centuries earlier, but from church Latin. Also, these new Latin borrowings were very different in meaning from the earlier ones. They mostly indicated persons, objects and ideas associated with church and religious rituals. E. g. priest (Lai. presbyter), bishop (Lai. episcopus), monk (Lat. monachus), nun (Lai. nonna), candle (Lai. candela).
Additionally, in a class of their own were educational terms. It was quite natural that these were also Latin borrowings, for the first schools in England were church schools, and the first teachers priests and monks. So, the very word school is a Latin borrowing (Lat. schola, of Greek origin) and so are such words as scholar (Lai. scholar(-is) and magister (Lat. ma-gister).
7th A. D. Acceptance of Christianity - Latin was the official language of the Christian church, => a new period of Latin borrowings. These no longer came from spoken Latin as they did eight centuries earlier, but from church Latin, very different in meaning from the earlier ones. They mostly indicated persons, objects and ideas associated with church and religious rituals. E. g. priest (Lai. presbyter), bishop (Lai. episcopus), monk (Lat. monachus), nun (Lai. nonna), candle (Lai. candela). + educational terms (church schools). school is a Latin borrowing (Lat. schola, of Greek origin), scholar (Lai. scholar(-is) and magister. Food: peer, pepper, pound, milk, beat, sirel, wine. Burgen, campus(camp), vallum(wall), vinum(wine), portus(port), street, grinwitch, woolwitch.
Church: devil, scholl, apostal, christ, saint, pope, bishorp.Animals/plants: tiger, plant, oil, palm, rose, elephant. instruments:folk, spade, sickle, History, noon, mill, days of weak
Late.
Adjectives:
-ant, ent-important
-al, dental
-ar-popular
-ior, or- major
Verbs:
-ute-conclude
-ete-complete
-ct-select
-ate-create
They usualy came through French Prefixes:
-ad-admit
-de-denote
-ex-explain
-con-convince
The degree of adjectives:major, supirior
1. sience: noun, verb, conjuction, numeral
2. ling: phonetics, lin-cs, lexicology, case, number
3. directly taken: visa-virsa, nb, homosapies, lingva
GREEK
1. k- architacture, diachrinic
2. f- telephone, phenomenon, phrasiologe
3. i: symbol, syllible
4. z: zero, zerox
A great many Greek words introduced into English came in chiefly through the medium of Latin, for the Latin language itself was largely indebted to Greek. Borrowings from Greek like those from Latin go back to an early period. These are mostly bookish borrowings. Here are a few of the hundreds of Greek terms used in modern medicine: adenoids,pediatrics, psychiatry, psychoanalysis. Greek borrowings were more or less latinized in form. They are spelt and pronounced not as in Greek but as the Romans spelt and pronounced them. Among numerous Greek borrowings in the English vocabulary we find the following: analysis,botany,comed,ydemocrat,democracy, dialogue, philosophy,problem,rhythm. Quite a number of proper names are also Greek in origin, e. g. George, Eugene, Helenw, Sophie, Peter, Nicholas, Theodor. Here are some loan-words which linguistics owes to Greek: antonym, dialect, etymology, euphemism, homonym, metaphor, metonymy, neologism, polysemy,synonym, etc. A lot of English terms In rhetoric and grammar originated in Greece. The punctuation mark called a comma originates from the Greek word. There are numerous English compounds coined from such Greek roots, as: autos - self, chroma - colour, ge - earth, logos - discourse, phone - voice, e.g. autograph, geography, geology, phonograph, telegraph, telephone.
CONTACTS WITH
French- attache, etiquette, caprir, ballet, ensemble, machine
Italian- scenario, cartoon, fresco, concorto, opers, gondola, lagoon, grotto, balcony
Spain – armada, parade, castanet, matador
Portuguesse- verandah
Dutch- sketch, easel, cruise
Indian: alligator, cacao, potato, tomato
The scandinavian borrowings in the english vocabulary.
The Danish invasion in 878 resulted in the occupation of a great part of the country. The effect of the Danish conquest was a contribution of many Scandinavian words in the english vocabulary. Scandimavian words were borrowed most freely between the 9th and 12th century. It is supposed that the Scandinavian element in Modern English amounts to 650 root-words. Scandinavian loan-words denote objects and actions of the most commonplace description and do not represent any new set of ideas hither to unknown to the people adopting them. We find here such everyday words as: (n) bull, cake, crop, egg, fellow, guest, kid, root, sky, sister, window; (adj) flat, low, mean, odd, wrong; (v) call, die, get, give, scream, scrape, take, want. Scand. borrowings are numerous is geographical place names in Northern England, such as: Braithwaite, Whitby. Scand. elements survive in such hybrid compounds as: lawful, lawless, greyhound. It is of interest to note that there are words in the english vocabulary that exist side by side for a long time, sometimes for centuries, two slightly different forms for the same word, one the original english form and the other scandinavian. (whole - hale, from - fro, shirt - skirt, shot - scot, true - trig, neat, tidy).
Wind+auza-winows, fe+lawe-fellow. Byr-village(derby-vallage of dear, kirby, holmby), dale-plane (avondale, danesdale), gate- way(newsgate), holm(home)-island-holmby, longholm, thorp-farm(carthorp)
1. then, them, both, their
2. niman-to take,sweltan-to die, swestor-sister
3. new meaning. bread was any kind of food, stuff-to die, dream-to sleep.
4. sk – skate, skill, skirt(in eng was palatalization- ship)
5. fisc-fish
6. jetan-to get, y- yet, yeild – began to be spelled in one letter.
7. k- kettle, key.
French borrowings
9-15-early period
14-20late period
1066. With the famous Battle of Hastings, when the English were defeated by the Normans under William the Conqueror, we come to the eventful epoch of the Norman Conquest. The epoch can well be called eventful not only in national, social, political and human terms, but also in linguistic terms. England became a bi-lingual country, and the impact on the English vocabulary made over this two-hundred-years period is immense: French words from the Norman dialect penetrated every aspect of social life. Here is a very brief list of examples of Norman French borrowings. Meals, art/entertaiment,family, professions(trade, painter, maison)
Administrative words: state, government, parliament, council, power.
Legal terms: court, judge, justice, crime, prison.
Military terms: army, war, soldier, officer, battle, enemy.
Educational terms: pupil, lesson, library, science, pen, pencil.
Everyday life was not unaffected by the powerful influence of French words. Numerous terms of everyday life were also borrowed from French in this period: e. g. table, plate, saucer, dinner, supper, river, autumn, uncle, etc.
-ard, avangard
-cy, tendency
-ate, comunoicate
-able, readable.
Shift of stress(changed): courage.
Early french b took all grammatical categories.
Late:
1. stress on the last sbl
2. Ch is pronounced like ch: chef, champaigne
3. g- garage, rouge, regime…bridge, edge, badge
4. mute ending: ballet, banque, restaurant.
5. The Renaissance was a period of extensive cultural contacts between the major European states. Therefore, it was only natural that new words also entered the English vocabulary from other European languages. The most significant once more were French borrowings. This time they came from the Parisian dialect of French and are known as Parisian borrowings. Examples: regime, routine, police, machine, ballet, matinee, scene, technique, bourgeois, etc.
10. Loan words. The term loan-word is equivalent to borrowing. Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language (the source language). A loanword can also be called a borrowing. The abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakers adopting words from a source language into their native language. "Loan" and "borrowing" are of course metaphors, because there is no literal lending process. By translation-loans we indicate borrowings of a special kind. They are not taken into the vocabulary of another language more or less in the same phonemic shape in which they have been functioning in their own language, but undergo the process of translation.
Assimilation of borrowings. Assimilation is the process of change that a borrowed word undergoes while being adopted to the phonetic, grammatical and semantic structure of the host language:
1) Phonetic — includes changes in sound-form and in stress (царь-tzar); or they just simplified (psychology-Greek). In Old English the stress was always on the first syllable of the root (reason-French).
2) Grammatical — the acquisition of new grammatical forms on analogy with other English words (sputnik, kindergarten)
3) Lexical — usually means the development of new senses in the borrowed word (discus -> disc -> dish, to move). There, are 543 pairs of doublets.
Assimilation is the process and we should mind that it has different stages:
1. complete — words undistinguished from native words(cheese, happy,old, street, husband).
2. partial:
• not assimilated phonetically – special sounds, stress(police, garage, soprano, sonato)
• not assimilated grammatically – some nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek which preserves their plural form (datum-data)
• not assimilated semantically – these words denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed(sari, sombrero, kvass, pizza, tzar, ruble)
• not assimilated graphically – letter y in the middle, ph[f], ch[k], x z j in the initial position
3. non-assimilated words (barbarisms)– belong to the English language but not assimilated in any way and for which there are corresponding English equivalents(ad-lib, ciao, tet-a-tet)
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23.06.2013 в 00:29Sometimes a word is borrowed twice from the same language. As the result, we have two different words with different spellings and meanings but historically they come back to one and the same word. Such words are called etymological doublets. In English there are some groups of them:
• Latino-French doublets.
• Latin English from Latin English from French
• uncia inch ounce
• moneta mint money
• camera camera chamber
• Franco-French doublets
• doublets borrowed from different dialects of French.
• Norman Paris
• canal channel
• captain chieftain
• catch chaise
• Scandinavian-English doublets
• Scandinavian English
• skirt shirt
• scabby shabby
There are also etymological doublets which were borrowed from the same language during different historical periods, such as French doublets: gentil - любезный, благородный, etymological doublets are: gentle - мягкий, вежливый and genteel - благородный. From the French word gallant etymological doublets are : ‘gallant - храбрый and ga’llant - галантный, внимательный.
Sometimes etymological doublets are the result of borrowing different grammatical forms of the same word, e.g. the Comparative degree of Latin «super» was «superior» which was borrowed into English with the meaning «high in some quality or rank». The Superlative degree (Latin «supremus»)in English «supreme» with the meaning «outstanding», «prominent». So «superior» and «supreme» are etymological doublets. Etymological doublets.
Doublets are two words which were derived from the same basic word but by different routs. They differ in sound-form and meaning. The main source of etymological doublets in English is Latin language.
There are two reasons of the process:
1. One word was borrowed directly from Latin and the other – from French (major)
2. Words borrowed twice (discus → disc → dish, disk) (camera-chamber) (skirt-shirt)
Etymological hybrids
Hybrids are words that consist of etymologically different morphemes:
1. A native root + borrowed word-building morphemes ((to like – to dislike (Latin))
2. Borrowed root + native affix (peaceful (French))
3. Both elements are borrowed but from different languages (violinist (Italian+Greek))
By translation-loans we indicate borrowings of a special kind. They are not taken into the vocabulary of another language more or less in the same phonemic shape in which they have been functioning in their own language, but undergo the process of translation. It is quite obvious that it is only compound words (i. e. words of two or more stems) which can be subjected to such an operation, each stem being translated separately: masterpiece (from Germ. Meisterstück), wonder child (from Germ. Wunderkind), first dancer (from Ital. prima-ballerina), collective farm (from R. колхоз), five-year plan (from R. пятилетка). The Russian колхоз was borrowed twice, by way of translation-loan (collective farm) and by way of direct borrowing (kolkhoz). The case is not unique. During the 2nd World War the German word Blitzkrieg was also borrowed into English in two different forms: the translation-loan lightning-war and the direct borrowings blitzkrieg and blitz.
International words. It is often the case that a word is borrowed by several languages, and not just by one. Such words usually convey concepts which are significant in the field of communication. Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin. Most names of sciences are international, e. g. philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, linguistics, lexicology. There are also numerous terms of art: music, theatre, drama, tragedy, comedy, artist, primadonna. Political terms frequently occur in the international group of borrowings: politics, policy, revolution, progress, democracy, communism, anti-militarism. 20th c. scientific and technological advances brought a great number of new international words: atomic, antibiotic, radio, television, sputnik. The latter is a Russian borrowing, and it became an international word (meaning a man-made satellite) in 1961, immediately after the first space flight by Yury Gagarin. The English language also contributed a considerable number of international words to world languages, such as sports terms: football, volley-ball, baseball, hockey, cricket, rugby, tennis, golf, etc. Fruits and foodstuffs imported from exotic countries often transport their names too and, being simultaneously imported to many countries, become international: coffee, cocoa, chocolate, coca-cola, banana, mango, avocado, grapefruit. International words are mainly borrowings.
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23.06.2013 в 00:30 Thomas Hobbes - words are not mere sounds but names of matter/a materialistic approach to the problem of nomination / universal signal that can substitute any other signal from the environment in evoking a response in a human organism- Pavlov
E. Sapir - the syntactic and semantic aspects - the word “one of the smallest completely satisfying bits of isolated ‘meaning’, into which the sentence resolves itself
“the minimum sentence” by H. Sweet
Bloomfield as “a minimum free form”
The semantic-phonological approach - Gardiner’s definition: “A word is an articulate sound-symbol in its as-pect of denoting something which is spoken about."
Meillet combines the semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria - A word is defined by the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment."
some modifications, adding that a word is the smallest significant unit of a given language capable of functioning alone and characterised by positional mobility within a sentence, morphological uninterruptability and semantic integrity.
All these criteria are necessary because they permit us to create a basis for the oppositions between the word and the phrase, the word and the phoneme, and the word and the morpheme: their common feature is that they are all units of the language, their difference lies in the fact that the phoneme is not significant, and a morpheme cannot be used as a complete utterance.
Motivation – 3 types:
1. morphological motivation implies a direct connection between the exact meaning of the components morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement & the meaning of the word. The main criterion in morphological motivation is the relationship between morphemes. Hence all one-morpheme words, e.g. sing, tell, eat, are by definition non-motivated. In words composed of more than one morpheme the carrier of the word-meaning is the combined meaning of the component morphemes and the meaning of the structural pattern of the word. (finger ring\ ring-finger - the difference in the meaning of these words can be accounted for by the difference in the arrangement of the component morphemes.);
2. phonetical motivation implies a direct connection between phonetical environment of the word & its meaning. It is argued that a speech sound may suggest special & visual dimensions: shape, size… Experiments carried out by the group of linguists showed by the back open sounds associates with hard weight. Such words as scissors, swithch may be defined as phonetically motivated , because the sound clusters are a direct imitation of the sound this w-s denote. It is also suggested that sounds themselves may be emotive exp ring, sing, swing, fling – swift movement, fiddle – negative feelings;
3. semantic motivation implies a direct connection between the central & marginal meanings of the words. This connection may be regarded as a metaphor of the central meaning, based on the similarity of different classes of refer denoted by the word.
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23.06.2013 в 00:31Semasiology (from Gr . semasia - "signification") deals not with every kind of linguistic meaning only. This does not mean that we need not pay attention to the grammatical meaning. On the contrary, grammatical meaning must be taken into consideration in so far as it bears a specific influence upon lexical meaning.
The main objects of semasiological study are as follows: semantic development of words, its causes and classification, relevant distinctive features and types of lexical meaning, polysemy and semantic structure of word, semantic groupings and connections in the vocabulary system, i.e. synonyms, antonyms, etc.
Meaning is one of the most controversial terms in the theory of language. An exact definition of lexical meaning becomes especially difficult due to complexity of the process, by which language and human consequence serve to reflect outward reality. Since there is no universally accepted definition meaning we shall give a brief survey of the problem as it is viewed in modern linguistics.
There are 2 approaches to the problem: 1) the referential approach, which formulates the essence of meaning as the interdependence between words and things or concepts they denote; 2) the functional approach, which studies the functions of a word in speech. This approach is (sometimes described as contextual) based on the analysis of various contexts.
The essential feature of the first approach is that in distinguishes between the three components, connected with meaning:
1) the sound form of the linguistic sign (sign or symbol);
2) the concept underlying this sound form (meaning; thought or reference).
3 ) the actual referent, i.e. the part or the aspect of reality to which the linguistic sign refers (thing meant).
The best known referential model of meaning is so-called "basic triangle", which may be represent in a simplified form: (SEMANTIC TRIANGLE – the illustration of the referential approach: Concept => referent + sound form)
• Concept (meaning, thought, referent)
• Sound form
• referent (thing meant)(sign, symbol)
As we can see from the diagram, the sound form of the linguistic sign, for instance [kot] is connected with our concept of a small which it denotes, and though it with the referent, i.e. the actual thing. The common feature of the referential approach is the implacation that meaning in some form or other connected with referent.
Let us examine the interrelation between:
1-Meaning and sound form
The sound-form of the word is not identical with, its meaning namely [kot] is the sound form, used to denote a bed for a child There are inherent connections between this sound form, used to denote a bed for a child. There are inherent connections between this sound form and the meaning of the word "cot", but they are conventional and arbitrary. We may prove it by comparing the sound-forms of different languages, conveying one and the same meaning, cf. English [kot] and Russian [krovatka]. On the contrary, the sound-cluster [kot] in the English language is almost identical to the sound form in Russian language possessing the meaning "male-cat".
2-Meaning and concept
When we examine a word, we see that its meaning, though connected with the underlying concept is not identical with it. To begin with, concept is a category of human cognition. Concept is the thought of the object that singles out its essential features. Our concepts abstracts and reflect the most common and typical features of the different objects and phenomena of the world. Being the result of abstraction the concepts are thus almost the same for the whole of humanity. The meanings of worlds, however, are different in different languages. In other words, words expressing identical concepts may have different semantic structures in different languages. The concept of "a building for human habitation” is expressed in English by the word house, in Russian by the word дом, but the meaning of the English word is not identical with that of the Russian as house does not possess the meaning of "fixed residence of family or household", which that of the Russian as house does not possess the meaning of the Russia word дом; it is expressed by another English word, namely home.
The difference between meaning and concept can also be observed by comparing synonymous words and word-groups expressing the same concepts, but possessing linguistic meaning, which is felt as different in each of the units under considerations:
Big - large;
To die - to pass away - kick the bucket - join the majority;
Child - baby-babe-infant;
Daddy - father - governor - etc.
3-Meaning and referent
To distinguish meaning from the referent, i.e. from the thing denoted by the linguistic sign is of the utmost importance. To begin with, meaning is a linguistic phenomenon whereas the denoted object or the referent is beyond the scope of language. We can denote one and the same object by more than one word of a different meaning. For example, an apple can be denoted by the words apple, fruit, smth, this, etc. So far as all these words have the same referent.
Functional approach to Meaning
In recent years a new and entirely different approach to meaning has appeared in structural linguistics. This approach maintains that a linguistic study of meaning is the investigation of the relation of sign to sign only. In other words, they hold the view that the meaning of a linguistic unit may be studied only through its relation to other linguistic units and not through its relation to either concept or referent. Thus, the meaning of the 2 words move and movement is different because they function in speech differently. Really, they occupy different positions in relation to other words. (To) move can be followed by a noun (move the chair), preceded by a pronoun (we move), etc. The position occupied by the word movement is different: it may be followed by a preposition (movement of smth) preceded by an adjective (slow movement) and so on. As the distribution ("the position of a linguistic sign in relation to other linguistic signs) of the 2 words is different they cone to the conclusion that not only they belong to different classes of words, but that that not only meanings are different too.
It follows that in the functional approach meaning may be viewed as the function of distribution: 1) semantic investigation is confined to the analysis of the different or sameness meaning; 2)meaning is understood essentially as the function or the use of linguistic signs.
Relation between the 2 approaches
When comparing the two approaches in terms of methods of linguistic analysis, we may see that the functional approach should not be considered an alternative, but rather a valuable complement to the referential theory. It is only natural that linguistic investigation must start by collecting an adequate number of samples of context. Once this phase had been completed, it seems but logical, to pass on to the referential phase and try to formulate the meaning thus identified. There is absolutely no need to set the two approaches against each other; each handles - its is side of the problem and neither is complete without the other.
One more – operational approach. The operational definitions of meaning are centered on defining meaning through its role in the process of communication. This approach studies words in action and is more interested in how meaning works than in what it is. It began to take shape with the growing interest of linguistics in the communicative aspect of the language when the object of study was shifted to relations between the language we use and the situations within which it is used, thus exploring the capacity of human beings to use the language appropriately.
Within the framework of the trend described meaning is defined as information conveyed from the speaker to the listener in the process of communication. This definition is applicable both to words and sentences. The problem is that it is more applicable to sentences than to words and even as such fails to draw a clear distinguishing line between the direct meaning and implication.
The direct information conveyed by the units constituting the sentence may be referred to as meaning while the information added to the extralinguistic situation may be called sense.
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23.06.2013 в 00:33The system of meanings of any polysemantic word develops gradually, mostly over the, centuries. These complicated processes of polysemy development involve both the appearance of the new meanings and the loss of old ones. Yet, the general tenden¬cy with English vocabulary at the modern stage of its history is to increase the total number of its meanings and to provide for a quantative and qualitative growth of the expressive resources of the language.
The elements of the semantic structure.
There are no universally accepted criteria for differentiating these variants within one polysemantic word. The following terms may be found with different authors:
the meaning is direct or nominative when it nominates the object without the help of context, in insolation, i.e., in one, word sentences for example the "Rain" etc.
The meaning is figurative when the object is named and at the same time characterized. through its similarity, with - another object, while naming the object the word simultaneously describes it.
Other oppositions are: Main or primary – secondary Central - periphery Narrow - extended General – particular Concrete - Abstract, etc.
Take, for example, the noun "screen". We find it in its direct meaning when it names a movable piece of furniture" used to hide smth. or protect smb, as in case of "fire screen" placed in front of a fireplace. The meaning is figurative when the word is applied to anything which protects by hiding, I as in "smoke screen". We define this meaning as figurative comparing it to the first that we called direct. Again,- when by a "screen" a speaker means "a silver-coloured sheet on which pictures are shown, this meaning in comparison with the first will be secondary. When the same word is used attributitively in such combinations as "screen actor", "screen star", "screen version", etc., it comes to mean "pertaining to the ci¬nema" and is abstract to comparison with the first meaning which is called concrete. The main meaning is that which possesses the highest frequency, at the present stage of development all these terms reflect, relationship existing between different meanings of a word at the same period, so the classification may be called synchronic and. paradigmatic, although the terms are borrowed from historical lexicology and stylistics.
The meaning of the word, its components
The word is one of the fundamental units of language. It is a dialectal unity of form and content. Its content or meaning is not identical to notion, but it may reflect human notion, but it may reflect human notion and is considered as the form of their existence. So the definition of a word is one of the most difficult in linguistics, because the simplest word has many different aspects: a sound form, its morphological structure, it may occur in different word-forms and have various meanings.
It is universally recognized that word meaning is not homogeneous, but it is made up of various components, which are described as types of meaning. There are 2 types of meaning to be found in words and word forms:
1. the grammatical meaning;
2. the lexical meaning.
Such word forms as “girls”, “writers”, “tables”, etc., though denoting different objects of reality have smth in common, namely the grammatical meaning of plurality, which can be found in all of them. Thus, the grammatical meaning is the component of meaning in the word forms of verbs (asked, thought, walked, etc.) or the case meaning in the word forms of various nouns (girls, boys, nights).
Word forms “speaks”, “reads”, “writers” have one and the same grammatical meaning as they can all be found in identical distributation, only after pronouns “she”, “he”, “they” and before such adverbs and adverbal phrases as “yesterday”, “last years”, “two hours ago”, etc.
The grammatical aspect of the part of speech meaning is conveyed as a rule by individual sets of word forms expressing the grammatical meaning of singularity (e.g. table) plurality (tables) and so on.
A verb is understood to possess sets of forms expressing, for instance, tense meaning (works-worked), mood meaning (work – I work).
The part of speech meaning of the words that possess but one form, e.g. prepositions, some adverbs, etc., is observed only in their disrtibutations (c.f. to come in (here, there) and in (on, under) the table).
Lexical meaning
Besides the grammatical meaning, there is another component of meaning. Unlike the grammatical meaning this component is identical in all the forms of the word. Thus the word-forms “go”, “goes”, “went”, “going” possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person and so on, but in each of these forms we find one and the same semantic component denoting the process of movement. This is the lexical meaning of the word, which may be described as the component of meaning proper to the word as a linguistic unit.
Thus, by lexical meaning we designate1 the meaning proper to the given linguistic unit in all its forms and disrtibutations, while by grammatical meaning we designate the meaning proper to sets of word forms common to all words of a certain class.
Both lexical and the grammatical meanings make up the word meaning as neither can exist without the other.
The interrelation of the lexical and the grammatical meaning and the role, played by each varies in different word classes and evening different groups of words within one and the same class. In some parts of speech the prevailing component is the grammatical type of meaning. The lexical meaning of prepositions is, as a rule, relatively vague2 (cf. to think/speak of smb., independent of smb., one of the friends, the room of the house). The lexical meaning of some preposition, however, may be comparatively distinct (cf. in/on/under the table). In verbs the lexical meaning usually comes to the fore3, although in some of them, the verb “to be”, e.g. the grammatical meaning of a linking element prevails (cf. “he works as a teacher”).
The grammatical meaning is defined as an expression in speech of relationships between words based on contrastive features of arrangements in which they occur. The grammatical meaning is more abstract and more generalised than the lexical meaning, it unites words into big groups such as parts of speech or lexico-grammatical classes. It is recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words. E. g. parents, books, intentions, whose common element is the grammatical meaning of plurality This being a book on lexicology and not on grammar, it is permissible not to go into more details though some words on lexico-grammatical meanings are necessary.
The lexiсo-grammatical meaning is the common denominator of all the meanings of words belonging to a lexico-grammatical class of words, it is the feature according to which they are grouped together. Words in which abstraction and generalisation are so great that they can be lexical representatives of lexico-grammatical meanings and substitute any word of their class are called generic terms. For example the word matter is a generic term for material nouns, the word group — for collective nouns, the word person — for personal nouns.
Denotational meaning
Proceeding with the semantic analysis we observe that lexical meaning may be analyzed as including denotational and connotational components. One of the functions of words is to denote things, concepts and so on. Users of a language cannot have only knowledge or thought of the object or phenomena of the real world around them, unless this knowledge is ultimately embodied in words, which have essentially the same meaning for all speakers of the language. This is the denotational meaning, i.e. that component of which the lexical meaning makes the communication possible.
Connotational meaning
The connotational meaning4 is the second component of lexical meaning. This component or the connotation includes the emotive charge and the stylistic value of the word.
Emotive charge is a part of the connotational meaning of a word; e.g. a hovel5 denotes “a small house or cottage” and besides implies6 that it is a miserable dwelling place, duty in bad repair and, in general, unpleasant place to live in.
When examing such groups of words as “large”, “big”, “tremendous” and “like”, “love”, “worship” and “girl”, “girlie” we observe the difference in the emotive charge of the words “tremendous”, “worship” and “girlie” is heavier than those of words “large”, “like” and “girl”.
The emotive charge does not depend on the “feeling” of the individual speaker, but is true for all speakers of English. The emotive charge is one of the objective semantic features of word as linguistic units and forms part of the connotational component of meaning.
But it should be confused with emotive implication that the words may acquire in speech. The emotive implication of the word is to a great extent selective as it greatly depends on the personal experience of the speaker, the mental imagery7 the word evokes in him.
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23.06.2013 в 00:34A word is which has several meanings is called polysemantic.
Polysemy as a language phenomenon is characteristic of most words in many languages.
Fire – 1. flame
2. an instant of destructive burning
3. burning material in a stove fireplace
4. the shooting of guns
5. strong feeling, passion, enthusiasm
The scientific term for these meaning is lexico-grammatical or lexico-semantical variant. Eg.The semantic structure of the word fire consists of 5 lexico-grammatical variants.
The main source of the development of regular polysemy is the metaphoric and metonymic transference, which is commonplace and appears to be fundamental in living language.
Polysemy is a result of:
1. Shifts in application (сдвиг в употреблении)
Ex.: adj. red
red ink (is really red)
red hair
red deer
red cabbage
red Indian
2. Specialization
Ex.: partner
Basic meaning; a type of relationship between 2 or more people.
- business partner
- marriage partner
- partner in crime
3. Metaphorical extension (a fundamental feature of any language)
Ex.:
leaf of a tree – leaf of a book
hands of a person – hands of a clock
Polysemy has been complicated by the tendency of words to pick up the meanings from other dialects, languages & slang.
Ex.: executive
Semantic structure of a polysemantic words
The bulk of English words are polysemantic, that is to say possess more than one meaning. The actual number of meanings of the commonly used words ranges from five to about a hundred. In fact, the commoner the word the more meanings it has.
The word table, e.g., has at least nine meanings in Modern English: 1. a piece of furniture; 2. the persons seated at a table; 3. sing. the food put on a table, meals; 4. a thin flat piece of stone, metal, wood, etc.; 5. pl. slabs of stone; 6. words cut into them or written on them (the ten tables); 2 7. an orderly arrangement of facts, figures, etc.; 8. part of a machine-tool on which the work is put to be operated on; 9. a level area, a plateau. Each of the individual meanings can be described in terms of the types of meanings discussed above. We may, e.g., analyse the eighth meaning of the word table into the part-of-speech meaning — that of the noun (which presupposes the grammatical meanings of number and case) combined with the lexical meaning made up of two components The denotational semantic component which can be interpreted as the dictionary definition (part of a machine-tool on which the work is put) and the connotational component which can be identified as a specific stylistic reference of this particular meaning of the word table (technical terminology). Cf. the Russian планшайба, стол станка. In polysemantic words, however, we are faced not with the problem of analysis of individual meanings, but primarily with the problem of the interrelation and interdependence of the various meanings in the semantic structure of one and the same word.
Classifications of lexico-grammatical variants
Direct meaning – nominates the referent without the help of a context.
Figurative meaning – the object is characterised through its similarity with other objects.
Ι This classification is called synchronic and paradigmatic classification. Sometimes other terms are used for the same classification:
1. main/central
2. concrete/abstract
3. central/peripheric
4. general/special
II Stylistic classification. Lexico-grammatical variant may be:
1. bookish (lirerary)
1.1. scientific
1.2. archaic
1.3. etc
2. colloquial
2.1. slang
2.2. jargon
2.3. dialectal
2.4. etc
ΙΙΙ Etymological classification – neologisms, obsolete words etc. according to the historical development of the words.
Contextual meaning is the lexical meaning of the word in speech.
Contextual analysis. It is the method of linguistic investigation of semantic structure of a word. It is based on the assumption that differents in word meaning is always indicated by the differents in environment(context).
Minimal linguistic context – is the context which helps to understands the word meaning.
Chair – 1. set in a chair
2. has accepted a university chair
3. will chair the meeting
4. the electric chair
In contextual analyses context is subdivided into:
1. lexical
2. syntactical
3. mixed
In lexical context we understand the meaning of the word through the lexical meanings through other words in the context (electric chair – wooden chair).
Syntactical context. The indicative power belongs to the syntactic pattern (set in a chair – a piece of a furniture).
Mixed context – we deal with syntactic pattern and lexical meaning (has accepted a university chair – to have a special role on the work at the university)
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23.06.2013 в 00:35The factors accounting for semantic changes may be roughly subdivided into two groups: a) extra-linguistic and b) linguistic causes. By extra-linguistic causes we mean various changes in the life of the speech community, changes in economic and social structure, changes in ideas, scientific concepts, way of life and other spheres of human activities as reflected in word meanings.
1) Historical causes. Accor. historical principle, everything develops changes, social institutions change in course of time, words also change. Ex.: “car” which goes back to Latin “carfus” which meant a four wheeled (vehicle) wagon, despite of lack of resemblance.
2) Psychological causes. Taboos of various kinds. Words are replaced by other words, sometimes people don’t realize that they use euphemisms. Ex.: “lady’s room” instead of the “lavatory”.
3) Linguistic causes. Tendency of l-ge to borrow particular metaphorical development of word from another l-ge. Metaphor accounts for very considerable proportions of semantic changes. L-ge is full of so-called fossilized metaphors, which no longer call up image of object from which they were borrowed. Ex.: leaf of book; hands of clock; a clock face. A necessary condition of any semantic change, no matter what its cause, is some connection, some association between the old meaning and the new.
There are two kinds of association involved as a rule in various semantic changes namely: a) similarity of meanings, and b) contiguity of meanings.
Similarity of meanings or metaphor may be described as a semantic process of associating two referents, one of which in some way resembles the other. The word hand, e.g., acquired in the 16th century the meaning of ‘a pointer of a clock of a watch’ because of the similarity of one of the functions performed by the hand (to point at something) and the function of the clockpointer. Since metaphor is based on the perception of similarities it is only natural that when an analogy is obvious, it should give rise to a metaphoric meaning.
Contiguity of meanings or metonymy may be described as the semantic process of associating two referents one of which makes part of the other or is closely connected with it. This can be perhaps best illustrated by the use of the word tongue — ‘the organ of speech’ in the meaning of ‘language’.
Results of semantic change can be generally observed in the changes of the denotational meaning of the word (restriction and extension of meaning) or in the alteration of its connotational component (amelioration and deterioration of meaning).
Changes in the denotational meaning may result in the restriction of the types or range of referents denoted by the word. This may be illustrated by the semantic development of the word hound (OE. hund) which used to denote ‘a dog of any breed’ but now denotes only ‘a dog used in the chase’. If the word with the new meaning comes to be used in the specialised vocabulary of some limited group within the speech community it is usual to speak of specialisation of meaning. For example, we can observe restriction and specialisation of meaning in the case of the verb to glide (OE. glidan) which had the meaning ‘to move gently and smoothly’ and has now acquired a restricted and specialised meaning ‘to fly with no engine’ (cf. a glider). Changes in the denotational meaning may also result in the application of the word to a wider variety of referents. This is commonly described as extension of meaning and may be illustrated by the word target which originally meant ‘a small round shield’ (a diminutive of targe, сf. ON. targa) but now means ‘anything that is fired at’ and also figuratively ‘any result aimed at’. If the word with the extended meaning passes from the specialised vocabulary into common use, we describe the result of the semantic change as the generalisation of meaning. The word camp, e.g., which originally was used only as a military term and meant ‘the place where troops are lodged in tents’ (cf. L. campus — ‘exercising ground for the army) extended and generalised its meaning and now denotes ‘temporary quarters’ (of travellers, nomads, etc.).
There are other cases, however, when the changes in the connotational meaning come to the fore. These changes, as a rule accompanied by a change in the denotational component, may be subdivided into two main groups: a) pejorative development (degradation) or the acquisition by the word of some derogatory emotive charge, and b) ameliorative development (amelioration) or the improvement of the connotational component of meaning. The semantic change in the word boor may serve to illustrate the first group. This word was originally used to denote ‘a villager, a peasant’ (cf. OE. zebur ‘dweller’) and then acquired a derogatory, contemptuous connotational meaning and came to denote ‘a clumsy or ill-bred fellow’.
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23.06.2013 в 00:36Morphemes, free and bound forms. We describe a. word As an autonomous unit of language in which a particular meaning is associated with a particular sound complex and which is capable of a particular grammatical employment and able to form a sentence by itself, we have the possibility to distinguish it from the other fundamental unit, namely the morpheme.
A morpheme is also an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. But unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Morphemes are not divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is why morphemes: may be defined as the smallest meaningful units of form. The term morpheme is derived from Gr. Morphe - "form" + erne. The Greek suffix - eme has been adopted by linguists to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature (phoneme, sememe). The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form, (a form in these cases is recurring discrete unit of speech) (повторяющаяся отдельная самостоятельная единица речи).
A form is said to be free if it may stand alone without changing its meaning; if not, it is a bound form, because it always bound to something else: for example, if we compare the words sportive and elegant and their parts, we see that sport, sportive, elegant may occur alone as utterances, whereas eleg- -ive, -ant are bound forms because they never occur alone. A word is, by Bloomfield's definition, a minimum free form a morpheme is said to be either bound or free. This statement should be taken with caution. It means that some morphemes are capable of forming words without adding other morphemes: that is, thy are homonymous to free forms.
According to the role they play in constructing words morphemes are subdivided into: ROOTS and AFFIXES. The latter are further subdivided, according to their position, intoprefixes, suffixes and infixes, according to their function and meaning, into derivational and functional affixes, the latter are also called ending or outer formatives(словообразующий).
When a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word, what remains is a stem base. The stem expresses the lexical and the part-of-speech meaning. For the word hearty and for the paradigm heart-hearts (pl.) the stem may be represented heart. This stem is a single morpheme, it contains nothing but the root, so it a simple stem. It is also a free stem because it is homonymous to the word heart. A stem may also be defined as the part of the word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. The stem of the paradigm hearty - heartier - (the) heartiest is hearty. It is a free stem, but as it consists of a root morpheme and an affix, it is not simple but derived. Thus, a stem containing one or more affixes is a derived stem. If after deriving the affix the remaining stem is not homonymous to a separate word of the same root, we call it a bound stem. Thus, in the word cordial (proceeding as if from the heart); the adjective-forming suffix can be separated on the analogy with such words as bronchial [bronkial] radial, social. The remaining stem, however cannot form a separate word by itself: it is bound. In cordial-ly and cordial-ity, on the one hand, the stems are free. Bound stems are especially characteristic of loan words. The point may be illustrated by the following French borrowings: arrogance, charity, courage , coward, distort, involve; notion; legible and tolerable, to give but a few. After the suffixes of these words are taken away the remaining elements are: arrog-; char-; cour-, cow-, tort-, volve-, nat-, leg-, toler-, which don't with any semantically related independent words (p. 31 Arnold).
Roots are main morphemic vehicles of a given idea in a given language at a given stage of its development. A root may be also regarded as the ultimate constituent element which remains after removal of all functional and derivational affixes and don't admit any further analysis. It i the common element of words within a word - family. Thus heart- is the common root of the following series of words; heart, hearten, dishearten, heartily, heartless, hearty, heartiness, sweetheart, heart-broken, kind-hearted, whole¬heartedly, etc. In some of this, as, for example, in hearten, there is only one root; in others the word the root -heart- is combined with some other root, thus forming a compound like sweetheart. The root in English is very often homonymous with the word, which is one of the most specific features of the English language arising from its general grammatical system on the one hand, and from its phonetic system on the other. The influence of the analytical structure of the language is obvious. The second point, however, calls for some explanation. Actually the usual phonetic shape is one single stressed syllable: bear, find, jump, land, man, sing, etc.
Not all roots are free forms, but productive roots (roots capable of the producing new words) usually are. The semantic realization of an English, word is therefore very specific. Its dependence on distribution is further enhanced by the widespread occurrence of homonymy both among root morphemes ad affixes. Note how many words in this sentence might be ambiguous if taken in isolation: "A change of work is as good as a rest".
Unlike roots, affixes are always bound forms. The difference between affixes and prefixes is not confined to their respective position, suffixes being "fixed after" and
prefixes "fixed before" the stem. It also concerns their function and meaning. A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivative (производное слово) in a different part of speech or different word-class, if-en, -y, -less in hearten, hearty, heartless. A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying meaning: if to hearten - to dishearten. It is only the verbs and statives that a prefix may serve to distinguish one part of speech from another, like in earth n - unearth v, sleep n -asleep (Stative). Preceding a verb stem, some prefixes express the difference between a transitive and an intransitive verbs: stay v. and outstay (smb.) v. with a few exceptions prefixes modify the stem for time (pre-, post-) for example, pre-war, post-war, or express negation (un-, dis-) i.e. undress, disarm, etc. and remain rather independent of the stem.
An infix is an affix placed within the world, like -n- stand. The type isn't productive. An affix should not be confused with a combining form which can be distinguish from the affix historically; it is always borrowed from Latin or Greek in which it existed as a free form i.e. a separate word, or also as a combining form. Thus, cyclo- or its variant cyd- are derived from Greek word kuklos "circle" giving the English word cyclic.
Affixes may be derivational and functional.
Derivational- form a boundary area between lexicology and grammar and are therefore studies in both. D. Af. Serve to supply the stem with components of lexical and lexic- gram. Meaning, and thus form different words. The meanings of the same suf. Is somewhat variegated
(-y).
Functional affixes- serve to convey grammatical meaning. They build different forms of one and the same word . A word form or the form of the word is defined as one of the different aspects a word may take as a result of inflection.#near, neare, nearest.
Four main types of word-building:
1. affixation – is making a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme
2. conversion - The process of making a new word of different parts of speech without adding any derivative element the basic and derived forms are homonymous (a hammer, to hammer).
3. composition - It is a way of word building in which a word is formed by joining too or more stems
4. shortening - is the process and the result of forming a word out of the initial elements (letters, morphemes) of a word combination
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23.06.2013 в 00:37It has two types:
1. suffixation
2. prefixation
Derivational and functional affixes
Functional affixes serve to convey grammatical meaning. They build different forms of one and the same word. A word form, or the form of a word, is defined as one of the different aspects a word may take as a result of inflection. Complete sets of all the various forms of a word when considered as inflectional patterns, such as declensions or conjugations, are termed paradigms. A paradigm has been defined in grammar as the system of grammatical forms characteristic of a word, e. g. near, nearer, nearest; son, son’s, sons, sons’.
Derivational affixes serve to supply the stem with components of lexical and lexico-grammatical meaning, and thus form4different words. One and the same lexico-grammatical meaning of the affix is sometimes accompanied by different combinations of various lexical meanings. Thus, the lexico-grammatical meaning supplied by the suffix -y consists in the ability to express the qualitative idea peculiar to adjectives and creates adjectives from noun stems. The lexical meanings of the same suffix are somewhat variegated: ‘full of, as in bushy or cloudy, ‘composed of, as in stony, ‘having the quality of, as in slangy, ‘resembling’, as in baggy, ‘covered with’, as in hairy and some more. This suffix sometimes conveys emotional components of meaning. E.g.: My school reports used to say: “Not amenable to discipline; too fond of organising,” which was only a kind way of saying: “Bossy.” (M. Dickens) Bossy not only means ‘having the quality of a boss’ or ‘behaving like a boss’; it is also a derogatory word.
This fundamental difference in meaning and function of the two groups of affixes results in an interesting relationship: the presence of a derivational affix does not prevent a word from being equivalent to another word, in which this suffix is absent, so that they can be substituted for one another in context. The presence of a functional affix changes the distributional properties of a word so much that it can never be substituted for a simple word without violating grammatical standard.
Suffixation
The main function of suffixes in Modern English is to form one part of speech from another, the secondary function is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. ( e.g. «educate» is a verb, «educatee» is a noun, and « music» is a noun, «musicdom» is also a noun) .
There are different classifications of suffixes :
1. Part-of-speech classification. Suffixes which can form different parts of speech are given here :
a) noun-forming suffixes, such as : -er (criticizer), -dom (officialdom), -ism (ageism),
b) adjective-forming suffixes, such as : -able (breathable), less(symptomless), -ous (prestigious),
c) verb-forming suffixes, such as -ize (computerize) , -ify (micrify),
d) adverb-forming suffixes , such as : -ly (singly), -ward (tableward),
e) numeral-forming suffixes, such as -teen (sixteen), -ty (seventy).
2. Semantic classification . Suffixes changing the lexical meaning of the stem can be subdivided into groups, e.g. noun-forming suffixes can denote:
a) the agent of the action, e.g. -er (experimenter), -ist (taxist), -ent(student),
b) nationality, e.g. -ian (Russian), -ese (Japanese), -ish (English),
c) collectivity, e.g. -dom (moviedom), -ry (peasantry, -ship (readership), -ati ( literati),
d) diminutiveness, e.g. -ie (horsie), -let (booklet), -ling (gooseling), -ette (kitchenette),
e) quality, e.g. -ness (copelessness), -ity (answerability).
3. Lexico-grammatical character of the stem. Suffixes which can be added to certain groups of stems are subdivided into:
a) suffixes added to verbal stems, such as : -er (commuter), -ing(suffering), - able (flyable), ment (involvement), -ation(computerization),
b) suffixes added to noun stems, such as : -less (smogless), ful (roomful), -ism (adventurism), ster (pollster), -nik (filmnik), -ish (childish),
c) suffixes added to adjective stems, such as : -en (weaken), -ly (pinkly),-ish (longish), ness (clannishness).
4. Origin of suffixes. Here we can point out the following groups:
a) native (Germanic), such as -er,-ful, -less, -ly.
b) Romanic, such as : -tion, -ment, -able, -eer.
c) Greek, such as : -ist, -ism, -ize.
d) Russian, such as -nik.
5. Productivity. Here we can point out the following groups:
a) productive, such as : -er, -ize, --ly, -ness.
b) semi-productive, such as : -eer, -ette, -ward.
c) non-productive , such as : -ard (drunkard), -th (length).
Suffixes can be polysemantic, such as : -er can form nouns with the following meanings : agent,doer of the action expressed by the stem (speaker), profession, occupation (teacher), a device, a tool (transmitter). While speaking about suffixes we should also mention compound suffixes which are added to the stem at the same time, such as -ably, -ibly, (terribly,
reasonably), -ation (adaptation from adapt).
Prefixation
Prefixation is the formation of words by means of adding a prefix to the stem. In English it is characteristic for forming verbs. Prefixes are more independent than suffixes. Prefixes can be classified according to the nature of words in which they are used : prefixes used in notional words and prefixes used in functional words. Prefixes used in notional words are proper prefixes which are bound morphemes, e.g. un- (unhappy). Prefixes used in functional words are semi-bound morphemes because they are met in the language as words, e.g. over- (overhead) ( cf over the table ).
The main function of prefixes in English is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. But the recent research showed that about twenty- five prefixes in Modern English form one part of speech from another (bebutton, interfamily, postcollege etc).
Prefixes can be classified according to different principles :
1. Semantic classification :
a) prefixes of negative meaning, such as : in- (invaluable), non-(nonformals), un- (unfree) etc,
b) prefixes denoting repetition or reversal actions, such as: de-(decolonize), re- (revegetation), dis- (disconnect),
c) prefixes denoting time, space, degree relations, such as : inter-(interplanetary) , hyper- (hypertension), ex- (ex-student), pre- (pre-election), over- (overdrugging) etc.
2. Origin of prefixes:
a) native (Germanic), such as: un-, over-, under- etc.
b) Romanic, such as : in-, de-, ex-, re- etc.
c) Greek, such as : sym-, hyper- etc.
There are some prefixes which can be treated as root morphemes by some scientists, e.g. after- in the word afternoon. American lexicographers working on Webster dictionaries treat such words as compound words. British lexicographers treat such words as derived ones.
Semi-affixes
There are, however, some borderline cases that do not fit in, and so present difficulties. Some elements of the English vocabulary occurring as independent nouns, such as man, berry, land, have been very frequent as second elements of words for a long time. They seem to have acquired valency similar to that of affixes. They are unstressed, and the vowel sound has been reduced to [mэn], although the reduction is not quite regular: for instance, when the concept “man” is clearly present in the word, there is no reduction. As to land, the pronunciation [lænd] occurs only in ethnic names Scotland, Finland and the like, but not in homeland or fatherland. As these elements seem to come somewhere in between the stems and affixes, the term semi-affix has been offered to designate them. Though not universally accepted, it can be kept for convenience’s sake.
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23.06.2013 в 00:37The criteria of compounds
1 – Graphic – a written word is a piece of text from blank to blank
There are no strict spelling rules for English compounds (aline, a line, a-line)
2 – Phonological – there is a tendency in English to give compounds a heavy stress on first elements (ice-cream), but English compound adjectives have double stress (easy going) there are cases when stress differentiate the M. compound (`bookcase, book `case, man`kind (человечество), `mankind (человек)
3 - Semantic – compound is a combination forming a unit expressing a single idea, which is not identical of S. M. of meanings of its components in a free phrase (blackmail, black mail). In English there are many idiomatic compounds and many non-idiomatic compounds (long-legged (non-idiomatic))
4 – Morphological and Syntactic – Smirnitsky – formal integrity – each of compounds is independent and open to grammatic changes peculiar to its own parts of speech and it is not possible with a compound.
Specific Features of English Compounds
1 – Both components are free forms
2 – The regular feature for the English language is two – stem compound, but there are some syntactic compounds which have more than two stems.
Classification of compounds:
1 – According to the part of speech: Noun, adjective, verbs, preposition(without)
3 – Traditionally three types are distinguished according to the way components a joined together): neutral, morphological and syntactic
- neutral without any linking element . Simple neutral: they consist of simple affixless terms, derivational compounds, contracted compounds – a shortened stem in their structure (tv-set, v-day, g-man)
- Morphological – non-productive – two compounding stems acombined by a linking volvel oconsonant (anglosaxon, statesman)
- Syntactic compounds – are formed from segments of speech preserving in their structure numerous traces of syntagmatic relations: articles, prepositions, adverbs: mother-in-law, good-for-nothing, seat-at-home
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23.06.2013 в 00:38Types of conversion:
1 – Verbs from nouns (hammer, to-hammer)
semantic groups
1) – verbs with structural meaning – from nouns denoting part of a human body, tools, machines, instruments (to eye, to nail, to elbow)
2) – verbs denote an action characteristic of the living being denoting by the noun (to wolf, to crowd, )
3) – verbs denote acquisition or deprivation of some noun objects (to fish, to dust)
4) – verbs denote an action performed at the place denoted by the noun (to park, to corner, to pocket)
5) - verbs denote an action performed at the time denoted by the noun (to weekend, to winter)
2 – Nouns from verbs
semantic groups
1) – noun denotes process or estate (sleep, walk)
2) – instant of an action (a jump, a move)
3) – noun denote the result of an action (an act, a burn, a find)
4) – noun denote place of an action (a stop, a drive)
5) – agent of a verb expressed by the noun (a help, a flirt)
3 – Verbs from adjectives (to slim, to clean)
4 – Verbs from adverbs (to down)
5 – Noun from adverbs (ups and downs)
Substantivation of adjectives.
adj => N.
S. is the result of ellipsis when a word combination with a semantically strong attribute looses its semantically weak noun (a grown up person – a grown up, a musical comedy – a musical)
Two types of S.: Total and Partial
Total – Sub. Adj. acquires all the paradigms of a noun.
Partial: - nouns which have only the plural form and the meaning of collective nouns (finals, news, sweets)
Nouns which have only singular form uses with a definite article and they have collective meaning (the which, the poor)
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23.06.2013 в 00:39Shortenings are produced in 2 ways:
• To make a new word from a syllable (rarer two) of the original words. The latter may lose its beginning (telephone – phone, defence - fence), it’s ending (holidays – hols, advertisement- ad), or both the beginning and the ending (influenza – flu, refrigerator - fridge);
• To make a new word from the initial letters of a word group: U.N.O – United Nation Organization, B.B.C., etc.
2) Blending is the process of combining parts of two words to form one word. Blends (blended words, blendings, fusions) are formations, that combine 2 words, and include and include the letters or sounds, they have in common as a connecting element. It is not highly productive.
E.g. Smog = smoke + fog; Benelux = Belgium + Netherlands + Luxemburg;
Oxbridge = Oxford + Cambridge.
Types of blends:
1) additive. Blends of additive type can be transformed into a phrase with a conjunction “and”.
E.g.: Oxbridge is Oxford and Cambridge.
2) restrictive. Blends of restrictive types can be transformed into a phrase “adjective = noun”.
E.g.: medicare = medical care.
Abbreviation
In the process of communication words and word-groups can be shortened. The causes of shortening can be linguistic and extralinguistic. By extralinguistic causes changes in the life of people are meant. In Modern English many new abbreviations, acronyms, initials, blends are formed because the tempo of life is increasing and it becomes necessary to give more and more information in the shortest possible time.
There are also linguistic causes of abbreviating words and word-groups, such as the demand of rhythm, which is satisfied in English by monosyllabic words. When borrowings from other languages are assimilated in English they are shortened. Here we have modification of form on the basis of analogy, e.g. the Latin borrowing «fanaticus» is shortened to «fan» on the analogy with native words: man, pan, tan etc.
There are two main types of shortenings: graphical and lexical.
Graphical abbreviations
Graphical abbreviations are the result of shortening of words and word-groups only in written speech while orally the corresponding full forms are used. They are used for the economy of space and effort in writing.
The oldest group of graphical abbreviations in English is of Latin origin. In Russian this type of abbreviation is not typical. In these abbreviations in the spelling Latin words are shortened, while orally the corresponding English equivalents are pronounced in the full form, e.g. for example (Latin exampli gratia), a.m. - in the morning (ante meridiem), No - number (numero), p.a. - a year (per annum), d - penny (dinarius), Ib - pound (libra), i.e. - that is (id est), etc.
Some graphical abbreviations of Latin origin have different English equivalents in different contexts, e.g. p.m. can be pronounced “in the afternoon” (post meridiem) and “after death” (post mortem).
There are also graphical abbreviations of native origin, where in the spelling we have abbreviations of words and word-groups of the corresponding English equivalents in the full form.
We have several semantic groups of them:
a) days of the week, e.g. Mon - Monday, Tue - Tuesday etc;
b) names of months, e.g. Apr - April, Aug - August etc;
c) names of counties in UK, e.g. Yorks - Yorkshire, Berks - Berkshire etc;
d) names of states in USA, e.g. Ala - Alabama, Alas - Alaska etc;
e) names of address, e.g. Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr. etc;
f) military ranks, e.g. capt. - captain, col. - colonel, sgt - sergeant etc;
g) scientific degrees, e.g. B.A. - Bachelor of Arts, D.M. - Doctor of Medicine. (Sometimes in scientific degrees we have abbreviations of Latin origin, e.g., M.B. - Medicinae Baccalaurus).
h) units of time, length, weight, e.g. f./ft - foot/feet, sec. - second, in. -inch, mg. - milligram etc.
The reading of some graphical abbreviations depends on the context, e.g. «m» can be read as: male, married, masculine, metre, mile, million, minute, «l.p.» can be read as long-playing, low pressure.
Initial abbreviations.
Initialisms are the bordering case between graphical and lexical abbreviations. When they appear in the language, as a rule, to denote some new offices they are closer to graphical abbreviations because orally full forms are used, e.g. J.V. - joint venture. When they are used for some duration of time they acquire the shortened form of pronouncing and become closer to lexical abbreviations, e.g. BBC is as a rule pronounced in the shortened form.
In some cases the translation of initialisms is next to impossible without using special dictionaries.
There are three types of initialisms in English:
a) initialisms with alphabetical reading, such as UK, BUP, CND etc;
b) initialisms which are read as if they are words, e.g. UNESCO, UNO, NATO etc;
c) initialisms which coincide with English words in their sound form, such initialisms are called acronyms, e.g. CLASS (Computer-based Laboratory for Automated School System).
Some scientists unite groups b) and c) into one group which they call acronyms.
Some initialisms can form new words in which they act as root morphemes by different ways of word-building:
a) affixation, e.g. AWALism, ex-rafer, ex- ROW, AIDSophobia etc;
b) conversion, e.g. to raff, to fly IFR (Instrument Flight Rules);
c) composition, e.g. STOLport, USAFman etc;
d) there are also compound-shortened words where the first component is an initial abbreviation with the alphabetical reading and the second one is a complete word, e.g. A-bomb, U-pronunciation, V -day etc. In some cases the first component is a complete word and the second component is an initial abbreviation with the alphabetical pronunciation, e.g. Three -Ds (Three dimensions).
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23.06.2013 в 00:391) Sound-imitation(onomatopoeia) is formation of words from sounds that resemble those associated with the object or action to be named or that seem suggestive of its qualities.
The words of this group are made by imitating different types of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, human beings and inanimate objects(tools), sounds of nature. Sounds produced by the same kind of animals are frequently represented by different sound groups in different language:
The sound of the verbs to rush, to dash, to flash(sounds of nature), may be said to reflect the brevity, swiftness and energetic nature of their corresponding actions.
2) In Reduplications new words are made up by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic changes as in buy-buy or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant as in ping-pong, chit-chat (the second type is called gradational reduplication).
3) Back-formation is the derivation of new words by subtracting a real or supposed affix from existing words through misinterpretation of their structure. In these cases the verb was made from the noun by subtracting what was mistakenly associated with the English suffix “-er”. In the case of the verb to beg and to burgle the process was reversed: instead of a noun made from a verb by affixation (as in painter from to paint), a verb was produced from a noun by subtraction.
4) Sound-interchange is a change of a phoneme in a morpheme resulting in a new lexical meaning. The process is not active in the language at present.
E.g. Song – to sing, food – feed.
5) Some homographic, and mostly disyllabic nouns and verbs of Romanic origin have a distinctive stress pattern(accent shift). It is making a new part of speech by changing the stress position. The stress distinction is neither productive nor regular.
E.g. ’Conduct (n) (behavior) – con’duct (v) (to lead or guide in a formal way).
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23.06.2013 в 00:421. Homonyms proper (or perfect homonyms)
2. Homophones
3. Homographs
1. Homonyms proper are words identical in pronunciation and spelling:
1. “Ball” as a round object used in game, “ball” as a gathering of people for dancing;
2. “Bark” v to utter sharp explosive cries; “bark” n is a noise made by dog or a sailing ship, etc.
3. “Bay” v is to bark; “bay” n is a part of the sea or the lake filling wide mouth opening of the land, or the European laurel1, or гнедая лошадь.
You should remember, that homonyms are distinct words – not different meanings within one word.
2. Homophones are words of the same sound, but of different meaning, for example: “Air” – “heir”, “arms” – “alms”, “bye” – “buy” – “by”, “him” – “hymn”, “knight” – “night”, “rain” – “reign”, “not” – “knot”, “or” – “ore” – “oar”, “piece” – “peace”, “scent” – “cent”, “steal” – “steel” – “still”, “write” – “right”, “sea” – “see”, “son” – “sun”.
In the sentence: “The play-write on my right thinks it that some conventional rite2 should symbolize the right of every man to write as he pleases” the sound complex [rait] is noun, adjective, adverb and verb, has 4 different spellings and 6 different meanings.
The difference may be confined to the use of a capital letter as in “bill” and “Bill”: “How much is my milk bill?” – “Excuse me, madam, but my name is John”. On the other hand, whole sentences may be homophonic: “The sons raise meat” - “The sun’s rays meet”. To understand this one needs a wide context.
3. Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling:
Bow [bou] – лук / [bau] – поклон или нос корабля
Lead [li:d] – вести / [led] – свинец
Row [rou] – грести или ряд / [rau] – шум, скандал
Sever [sov ] – шея / [sjuv ] – сточная труба
Tear [tεe] – рвать / [ti ] – слеза
Wind [wind] – ветер / [waind] – заводить (часы)
Sources of homonyms
On of source of homonyms is a phonetic change, which a word undergoes3 in the course of it historical development. As a result of such changes, less or more words, which were formerly pronounced differently, may develop identical sound forms and thus become homonyms.
“Night” and “knight”, for instance, were not homonyms in Old English (O.E.) as the initial “k” in the second word was pronounced. The verb “to write” in O.E. had the form “to writan” and the adjective “right” had the form “reht” or “riht”.
Another source of homonyms is borrowing. A borrowed word may, in the final stage of the phonetic adaptation conclude the form either with a native word or another borrowing. So in the group of homonyms “rite n – to write – right adj.” The second and third words are of native origin, whereas “rite” is Latin borrowing (Latin “ritus”); “bank “ n (“a shore”) is a native word, and bank n (a financial institution) is an Italian borrowing.
Word building also contributes significantly to the growth of homonymy, the most important type of it being conversion. Such pairs of words as “comb” n – “comb” v; “pale” adj. – “pale” v; “make” v – “make” n, etc. are numerous in vocabulary. Homonyms of this type refer to different categories of parts of speech and called lexico-grammatical homonyms.
Shortening is a further type of word-building, which increases the number of homonyms. For example “fan” (an enthusiastic admirer of some sportsmen, actor, singer, etc.) is a shortening produced from “fanatic” [f nætik]. Its homonym is a Latin borrowing “fan” – an element for waving and produce some cool wind.4
The noun, for instance, “rep”, a kind of fabric, has 4 homonyms:
1. rep = repertory;
2. rep = representative;
3. rep = reputation;
4. rep = repetition (in school slang smth, need to know by hard)
A further course of homonyms is called split polysemy: 2 or more homonyms can originate different meanings of the same word, when for some reason the semantic structure of the word breaks into several parts. We may illustrate this by the 3 following homonyms of the word “spring”, means:
1. The act of springing, leap;
2. A place, where a steam of water comes up out to the sky;
3. A season of the year.
Historically all three originate from the same verb with meaning to jump, to leap. This is the Old English word “springun”6. So that the meaning of the first homonym is the oldest or the most etymological one. The meanings of the 2nd and the 3rd examples were originally made in metaphor. As the head of the strim, the water something lips out of the earth, so that metaphorically such a place could be described as a “leap”. On the other hand, the season of the year, following winter, could be poetically defined as a “leap” from the darkness and cold into sunlight and life.
Polysemy, synonymy and homonymy
One of the most complicated problems in semasiology is to define the place of homonyms among other relationships of words. In a simple code each sign has only one meaning and it’s meaning is associated with only one sign. But this ideal is not realized in natural language. When several related meanings are associated with the same form, the word is called polysemantic. When 2 or more unrelated meanings are associated with the same form, these words are homonyms. When 2 or more forms are associated with the same or nearly the same meaning, they are called the synonyms.
1 лавр
2 обряд
3 претерпевают
4 веер
5 расщепление
6 прыгать
A.I.Smirnitsky added to Skeat’s classification one more criterion: grammatical meaning.
1) perfect homonyms (identical in their spelling, pronunciation and grammar form (spring –1.весна, 2.источник.
2) homoforms (coincide in their spelling but have different grammatical meaning) to thin(v.) –thin(adj.)
I.V. Arnold classified only perfect homonyms and suggested 4 criteria for their classification: lexical meaning, grammatical meaning, basic forms and paradigms:
1) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings, basic forms and paradigms and different in their lexical meanings ( board - 1.совет; 2.доска)
2) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings and basic forms, but different in their lexical meanings and paradigms (to lie-lied-lied…. to lie-lay-lain)
3) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, paradigms, but coinciding in their basic forms ( light(lights) – light –lighter- the lightest)
4) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, in their basic forms and paradigms, but coinciding in one of the forms of their paradigms ( a bit and bit( from to bite))
Different causes by which homonymy may be brought about are subdivided into two main groups:
1) homonymy through convergent (сходящийся в одной точке) sound development, when two or three words of different origin accidentally coincide in sound; and
2) homonymy developed from polysemy through divergent (расходящийся) sense development. Both may be combined with loss of endings and other morphological processes.
Unlike the homonyms case and sound, all the homonyms of the box group due to disintegration or split of polysemy are etymologically connected. The sameness of form is not accidental but based on genetic relationship. They are all derived from one another and are all ultimately traced to the Latin buxus. “The Concise Oxford Dictionary” has five entries for box: box1 n ‘a kind of small evergreen shrub’; box2 n ‘receptacle made of wood, cardboard, metal, etc. and usually provided with a lid’; box3 v ‘to put into a box’; box4 n ‘slap with the hand on the ear’; box5 v — a sport term meaning ‘to fight with fists in padded gloves’.
Such homonyms may be partly derived from one another but their common point of origin lies beyond the limits of the English language. In these words with the appearance of a new meaning, very different from the previous one, the semantic structure of the parent word splits. The new meaning receives a separate existence and starts a new semantic structure of its own. Hence the term disintegration or split of polysemy.
It must be noted, however, that though the number of examples in which a process of this sort could be observed is considerable, it is difficult to establish exact criteria by which disintegration of polysemy could be detected. The whole concept is based on stating whether there is any connection between the meanings or not.1 Whereas in the examples dealing with phonetic convergence, i.e. when we said that case1 and case2 are different words because they differ in origin, we had definite linguistic criteria to go by; in the case of disintegration of polysemy there are none to guide us, we can only rely on intuition and individual linguistic experience. For a trained linguist the number of unrelated homonyms will be much smaller than for an uneducated person. The knowledge of etymology and cognate languages will always help to supply the missing links. It is easier, for instance, to see the connection between beam -‘a ray of light’ and beam -‘the metallic structural part of a building’ if one knows the original meaning of the word, i.e. ‘tree’ (OE beam||Germ Baum), and is used to observe similar metaphoric transfers in other words. The connection is also more obvious if one is able to notice the same element in such compound names of trees as hornbeam, whitebeam, etc.
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23.06.2013 в 00:42General specific
Superordinate subordinate
hyperonym hyponym
flower rose, plum, chrysanthemum
animal cow, horse, sheep, tiger
matter solid, gas, liquid
Hyponymy can be described in terms of tree-like graphs, with higher-order superordinates above the lower subordinates. But their status either as superordinate or subordinate is relative to other terms. For example, horse, dog, pig are subordinates in relation to animal, but superordinates of mare, hound and boar. Animal itself becomes a subordinate of creature. And creature in turn becomes a subordinate of living things. It would seem reasonable that the whole of the vocabulary could be organized in this way:
The sense relation of hyponymy is very helpful in both receptive and productive processing of language. In reading comprehension, coherence by hyponymy is an important key: There was a fine rocking-chair that his father used to sit in, a desk where he wrote letters, a nest of small tables and a dark, imposing bookcase. Now all this furniture was to be sold, and with it his own past. In this piece of discourse, the writer uses a set of hyponyms under furniture, which gives the writing coherence and provides the key to understanding the text. Of course, in some cases, the superordinate is not necessarily an immediate superordinate in the family tree of a particular word; it can be a general word. Instead of furniture there could have been items, objects, things, which are examples of general superordinates.
In production, knowing the semantic features of the hyponyms and their superordinates can help us achieve vividness, exactness, and concreteness.
Paronyms. Different authors suggest various definitions. Some define paronyms as words of the same root, others as words having the same sound form, thus equalising them with word-families or homonyms. Paronyms are words similar (though not identical) in sound, but different in meaning. This is the case with the adjectives ingenious and ingenuous. The first of these means ‘clever’ and may be used both of man and of his inventions and doings, e. g. an ingenious craftsman, an ingenious device. Ingenuous means ‘frank’, ‘artless’, as an ingenuous smile. Co-occurrence of paronyms is called “paronomasia”. Phonetically, paronomasia produces stylistic effects analogous to those of alliteration and assonance. (e.g. raven – never; poultry – politics).
Lexical variants, for instance, are examples of free variation in language, in so far as they are not conditioned by contextual environment but are optional with the individual speaker. E. g. northward / norward; whoever / whosoever. The variation can concern morphological or phonological features or it may be limited to spelling. Compare weazen/weazened ‘shrivelled and dried in appearance’, an adjective used about a person’s face and looks; directly which may be pronounced [di'rektli] or [dai'rektli] and whisky with its spelling variant whiskey. Lexical variants are different from synonyms, because they are characterised by similarity in phonetical or spelling form and identity of both meaning and distribution.
The cases of identity of stems, a similarity of form, and meaning combined with a difference in distribution should be classed as synonyms and not as lexical variants. They are discussed in many books dedicated to correct English usage. These are words belonging to the same part of speech, containing identical stems and synonymical affixes, and yet not permitting free variation, not optional. They seem to provoke mistakes even with native speakers. A few examples will suffice to illustrate the point. The adjectives luxurious and luxuriant are synonymous when meaning ‘characterised by luxury’. Otherwise, luxuriant is restricted to the expression of abundance (used about hair, leaves, flowers). Luxurious is the adjective expressing human luxury and indulgence (used about tastes, habits, food, mansions). Economic and economical are interchangeable under certain conditions, more often, however, economic is a technical term associated with economics (an economic agreement). The second word, i.e. economical, is an everyday word associated with economy; e. g. economical stove, economical method, be economical of one’s money.
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23.06.2013 в 00:44The most complicated problem is the definition of the term "synonyms". There are a great many definitions of the term, but there is no universally accepted one. Traditionally the synonyms are defined as words different in sound-form, but identical or similar in meaning. But this definition has been severely criticized on many points.
The problem of synonymy is treated differently by Russian and foreign scientists. Among numerous definitions of the term in our linguistics the most comprehensive and full one is suggested by I.V. Arnold: "Synonyms - are two or more words of the same meaning, belonging to the same part of speech, possessing one or more identical meaning, interchangeable at least in some contexts without any considerable alteration in denotational1 meaning, but differing in morphemic composition, phonemic shape2, shades of meaning, connotation, affective value, style, emotional coloring and valence3 peculiar to one of the elements in a synonymic group."
This definition describes the notion "synonymy", gives some criteria of synonymy (identity of meaning, interchangeability), shows some difference in connotation, emotive coloring, style, etc. But this descriptive definition as well as many others has the main drawbacks - there are no objective criteria of "identity" or "similarity" or sameness of meaning. They all are based on the linguistic intuitions of the scholars.
From the definition follows, that the members of the synonymic group in a dictionary should have their common denotational meaning and consequently4 it should be explained in the same words; they may have some differences in implication connotation, shades of meaning, idiomatic usage, etc.
Hope, expectation, anticipation are considered to be synonymous because they all mean "having smth in mind which is likely to happen..." But expectation may be either of good or of evil. Anticipation is as a rule an expectation of smth good. Hope is not only a belief but a desire that some event would happen. The stylistic difference is also quite marked. The Romance words anticipation and expectation are formal literary words used only by educated speakers, whereas the native monosyllabic hope is stylistically neutral. Moreover, they differ in idiomatic usage. Only hope is possible in such set expressions as to hope against hope, to lose hope, to pin one'shopes on smth. Neither expectation nor anticipation could be substituted into the following quotation from T.Eliot: "You don't know what hope is until you have lost it".
Criteria of Synonymy
Not a single definition of the term synonym provides for any objective criterion of similarity or sameness of meaning as far as it is based on the linguistic intuition of the scholars.
Many scholars defined synonyms as words conveying the same notion but differing either in shades of meaning or in stylistic characteristics. In "Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms" its authors used the semantic criterion along with the criterion of interchangeability5, which we may see from the definition.
1. Conceptual criteria. A synonym is one of two or more words which have the same or nearly the same essential6 (denotational) meaning. It is not a matter of mere likeness in meaning, but a likeness in denotation which may be expressed in its definition. The definition must indicate7 the part of speech and the relations of the ideas involved in a term's meaning.
2. Semantic criteria. Synonyms, therefore, are only such words as may be defined wholly8 or almost wholly in the same terms. Usually, they are distinguished from one another by an added implication or connotation, or may differ in their idiomatic use or in their implication9.
3. Criteria of interchangability. They usually are interchangeable within limits, but interchangeability is not the final test, since idiomatic usage is often a preventive of that. The only satisfactory test of synonyms is their agreement in connotation.
The Dominant Synonym
Most synonymic groups have a "central" word of this kind whose meaning is equal to the denotation common to a whole synonymic group. This word is called the dominant synonym.
Here are examples of other dominant synonyms with their groups:
To surprise — to astonish — to amaze — to astound.
To shout — to yell — to bellow — to roar.
The dominant synonym expresses the notion common to all synonyms of the group in the most general way, without contributing any additional information as to the manner, intensity, duration or any attending feature of the referent. So, any dominant synonym is a typical basic-vocabulary word. Its meaning, which is broad and generalised, more or less "covers" the meanings of the rest of the synonyms, so that it may be substituted for any of them. It seems that here, at last, the idea of interchangeability of synonyms comes into its own. And yet, each such substitution would mean an irreparable loss of the additional information supplied by connotative components of each synonym. So, using to look instead of to glare, to stare, to peep, to peer we preserve the general sense of the utterance but lose a great deal in precision, expressiveness and colour.
Summing up what has been said, the following characteristic features of the dominant synonym can be underlined:
I. High frequency of usage.
II. Broad combinability, i. e. ability to be used in combinations with various classes of words.
III. Broad general meaning.
IV. Lack of connotations. (This goes for stylistic connotations as well, so that neutrality as to style is also a typical feature of the dominant synonym.)
Classification of Synonyms
The outstanding Russian philologist Vinogradov suggested the classification of synonyms
into 3 types:
1. Ideographic synonyms - words conveying the same notion but differing in shades of
meaning: to understand - to realize
to expect - to anticipate
to look - glance - stare - peep - gaze healthy - wholesome - sound - sane
2. Stylistic - words differing only in stylistic characteristics:
to begin - to commence - to high
to think - to deem
enemy - opponent - foe - adversary
to help - to aid - to assist
courage - valour - dauntlessness - grit - guts
3. Absolute (perfect, complete) - words coinciding in all their shades of meaning and in
all their stylistic characteristics. Absolute synonyms are rare in a language. In Russian, f.e.: лётчик - пилот – авиатор; языкознание – языковедение; стерня – пожня.
In English: pilot - airman — flyer – flyingman; screenwriter - scriptwriter - scripter - сценарист semasiology – semantics.
4. Ideographic stylistic – difference in connotational component is accompanied by some variation of a denotational meaning: to ask(допрашивать) – to interrogate
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23.06.2013 в 00:46Contradictory notions are mutually (взаимно) opposed and denying one another, e. g. alive means ‘not dead’ and impatient means ‘not patient’. Contrary notions are also mutually opposed but they are gradable, e. g. old and young are the most distant elements of a series like: old : : middle-aged : : young, while hot and cold form a series with the intermediate cool and warm, which, as F.R. Palmer points out, form a pair of antonyms themselves. The distinction between the two types is not absolute, as one can say that one is more dead than alive, and thus make these adjectives gradable.
Another classification of antonyms is based on a morphological approach: root words form absolute antonyms (right : : wrong), the presence of negative affixes creates derivational antonyms (happy : : unhappy).
The important question of criteria received a new and rigorously (точное) linguistic treatment in V.N. Komissarov’s work. Keeping to the time-honoured classification of antonyms into absolute or root antonyms (love : : hate) and derivational antonyms, V.N. Komissarov breaks new ground by his contextual treatment of the problem. Two words, according to him, shall be considered antonymous if they are regularly contrasted in actual speech, that is if the contrast in their meanings is proved by definite types of contextual co-occurrence.
Absolute antonyms, then, are words regularly contrasted as homogenous sentence members connected by copulative (соединительный), disjunctive (разделительный) or adversative (противительный) conjunctions, or identically used in parallel constructions, in certain typical contexts.
A regular and frequent co-occurrence in such contexts is the most important characteristic feature of antonyms. Another important criterion suggested by V.N. Komissarov is the possibility of substitution and identical lexical valency. This possibility of identical contexts is very clearly seen in the following lines:
There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, That it hardly becomes any of us To talk about the rest of us (Hock).
Members of the same antonymic pair reveal nearly identical spheres of collocation (расположение, сочетание слов в предложении). For example the adjective hot in its figurative meaning of ‘angry’ and ‘excited’ is chiefly combined with names of
unpleasant emotions: anger, resentment, scorn, etc. Its antonym cold occurs with the same words.
The diagnostic force of valency is weaker than that of regular cooccurrence (смежность).
Unlike synonyms, antonyms do not differ either in style, emotional colouring or distribution. antonymic oppositions it may be helpful to treat antonyms in terms of “marked” and “unmarked” members. They are interchangeable at least in some contexts. The result of this interchange may be of different kind depending on the conditions of context. There will be, for instance, no change of meaning if ill and well change places within the sentence in the following: But whether he treated it ill or well, it loved nothing so much as to be near him (Wells). Or a whole sentence receives an opposite meaning when a word is replaced by its antonym, although it differs from its prototype in this one word only: You may feel he is clever : : You may feel he is foolish.
As antonyms do not differ stylistically, an antonymic substitution never results in a change of stylistic colouring.
The possibility of substitution and identical valency show that semantic polarity is a very special kind of difference implying a great deal of sameness.
In dealing with the unmarked member can be more widely used and very often can include the referents of the marked member but not vice versa. This proves that their meanings have some components in common. In the antonymic pair old : : young the unmarked member is old. It is possible to ask: How old is the girl? without implying that she is no longer young. W.C. Chafe says that we normally talk about a continuum of wideness as width and not about a continuum of narrowness. Thus, the usual question is: How wide is if? and not How narrow is it? which proves the unmarked vs marked character of wide vs narrow. In the antonymic opposition love : : hate, there is no unmarked element.
Some authors, J.Lyons among them, suggest a different terminology. They distinguish antonyms proper and complementary antonyms. The chief characteristic feature of antonyms proper is that they are regularly gradable. Antonyms proper, therefore, represent contrary notions. Grading is based on the operation of comparison. One can compare the intensity of feeling as in love — attachment — liking — indifference — antipathy — hate. Whenever a sentence contains an antonym or an antonymic pair, it implicitly or explicitly contains comparison.
The important point to notice is this — the denial of the one member of antonymic opposition does not always imply the assertion of the other — take, for instance W.H. Auden’s line: All human hearts have ugly little treasures. If we say that our hearts’ treasures are neither ugly nor little, it does not imply that they are beautiful or great.
It is interesting to note that such words as young : : old; big : : small; good : : bad do not refer to independent absolute qualities but to some-implicit norm, they are relative.
This example may also serve to show the difference and parallelism between antonyms proper and complementarity (expressing contradictory notions).
The semantic polarity in antonymy proper is relative, the opposition is gradual, it may embrace several elements characterised by different degrees of the same property. The comparison they imply is clear from the context. Large and little denote polar degrees of the same notion. The same referent which may be small as an elephant is a comparatively big animal, but it cannot be male as an elephant and female as an animal: a male elephant is a male animal.
Having noted the difference between complementary antonyms and antonyms proper, we must also take into consideration that they have much in common so that in a wider sense both groups are taken as antonyms. Complementaries like other antonyms are regularly contrasted in speech (male and female), and the elements of a complementary pair have similar distribution. The assertion (утверждение) of a sentence containing an antonymous or complementary term implies the denial of a corresponding sentence containing the other antonym or complementary:
The poem is good → The poem is not bad (good : : bad — antonyms proper)
This is prose → This is not poetry (prose : : poetry — complementaries)
So complementaries are a subset of antonyms taken in a wider sense.
If the root of the word involved in contrast is not semantically relative, its antonym is derived by negation. Absolute or root antonyms are on this morphological basis, contrasted to those containing some negative affix.
Thus, the second group of antonyms is known as derivational antonyms. The affixes in them serve to deny the quality stated in the stem. The opposition known : : unknown in the opening example from Shakespeare (see p. 209) is by no means isolated: far from it. It is not difficult to find other examples where contrast is implied in the morphological structure of the word itself. E. g. appear : : disappear; happiness : : unhappiness; logical : : illogical; pleasant : : unpleasant; prewar : : postwar; useful : : useless, etc. There are typical affixes and typical patterns that go into play in forming these derivational antonyms. It is significant that in the examples given above prefixes prevail (преобладают). The regular type of derivational antonyms contains negative prefixes: dis-, il-/im-/in-/ir-, поп- and un-. Other negative prefixes occur in this function only occasionally.
Not only words, but set expressions as well, can be grouped into antonymic pairs. The phrase by accident can be contrasted to the phrase on purpose. Cf. up to par and below par. Par represents the full nominal value of a company’s shares, hence up to par metaphorically means ‘up to the level of one’s normal health’ and below par ‘unwell’.
Antonyms form mostly pairs, not groups like synonyms: above : : below; absent : : present; absence : : presence; alike : : different; asleep : : awake; back : : forth; bad : : good; big : : little, etc. Cases when there are three or more words are reducible to a binary opposition, so that hot is contrasted to cold and warm to cool.
Polysemantic words may have antonyms in some of their meanings and none in the others. When criticism means ‘blame’ or ‘censure’ its antonym is praise, when it means ‘writing critical essays dealing with the works of some author’, it can have no antonym.
Semantic polarity presupposes the presence of some common semantic components in the denotational meaning. Thus, while ashamed means ‘feeling unhappy or troubled because one has done something wrong or foolish’, its antonym proud also deals with feeling but the feeling of happiness and assurance which also has its ground in moral values.
A synonymic set of words is an opposition of a different kind: its basis is sameness or approximate sameness of denotative meaning, the distinctive features can be stylistic, emotional, distributional or depending on valency.
There is one further type of semantic opposition we have to consider. The relation to which the name of conversives is usually given may be exemplified by such pairs as buy : : sell; give : : receive; ancestor : : descendant; parent : : child; left : : right; cause : : suffer; saddening : : saddened.
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23.06.2013 в 00:46A source of synonymy also well worthy of note is the so-called euphemism in which by a shift of meaning a word of more or less ‘pleasant or at least inoffensive connotation becomes synonymous to one that is harsh, obscene, indelicate or otherwise unpleasant.1 The euphemistic expression merry fully coincides in denotation with the word drunk it substitutes, but the connotations of the latter fade out and so the utterance on the whole is milder, less offensive. The effect is achieved, because the periphrastic expression is not so harsh, sometimes jocular and usually motivated according to some secondary feature of the notion: naked : : in one’s birthday suit] pregnant : : in the family way. Very often a learned word which sounds less familiar is therefore less offensive, as in drunkenness : : intoxication; sweat : : perspiration.
Euphemisms can also be treated within the synchronic approach, because both expressions, the euphemistic and the direct one, co-exist in the language and form a synonymic opposition. Not only English but other modern languages as well have a definite set of notions attracting euphemistic circumlocutions. These are notions of death, madness, stupidity, drunkenness, certain physiological processes, crimes and so on. For example: die : : be no more : : be gone : : lose one’s life : : breathe one’s last : : join the silent majority : : go the way of alt flesh : : pass away : : be gathered to one’s fathers.
A prominent source of synonymic attraction is still furnished by interjections and swearing addressed to God. To make use of God’s name is considered sinful by the Church and yet the word, being expressive, formed the basis of many interjections. Later the word God was substituted by the phonetically similar word goodness: For goodness sake\ Goodness gracious] Goodness knows! Cf. By Jovel Good Lord! By Gum! As in:
His father made a fearful row.
He said: “By Gum, you’ve done it now.” (Belloc)
A certain similarity can be observed in the many names for the devil (deuce, Old Nick). The point may be illustrated by an example from Burns’s “Address to the Devil":
О thou! Whatever title suit thee,
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie ...
Euphemisms always tend to be a source of new synonymic formations, because after a short period of use the new term becomes so closely connected with the notion that it turns into a word as obnoxious as the earlier synonym.
Political euphemisms
Many politically correct terms are euphemisms, created to avoid offence by being indirect about a sensitive issue, such as a person's race or disabilities, or to replace a more offensive phrase. This is the focus of many of the critics of political correctness, who claim that it is disingenuous and intended only to cloud language with pointless subtleties. In most cases, however, the new terms are coined because previous words or phrases have become unacceptable, via the process known as the "euphemism treadmill"
Subject sphere of euphemisms:
1. politics
2. disability and handicap
3. profanity
4. religion
5. excretion
6. sex
7. death and murdur
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23.06.2013 в 00:47The vocabulary of any language consists not only of words but also of different word groups. All word groups are subdivided into free word groups and set expressions. Set expressions (part and parcel, black sheep, to break the ice) are semantically non-motivated, reproduced in speech. They are the subject matter of phraseology. Free word groups (a beautiful flower, next week, to read a book) are produced, not reproduced in speech, semantically they are motivated.
To get a better insight into the structure and meaning of free word groups we must consider the main factors active in uniting words into word-groups – the lexical and grammatical valency of words. It is a fact that words are used in certain lexical contexts, in combination with other words.
Lexical valency, collocability
To get a better insight into the essentials of structure and meaning of word-groups we must begin with a brief survey of the main factors active in uniting words into word-groups. The two main linguistic factors to be considered in this connection are the lexical and the grammatical valency of words.
It is an indisputable fact that words are used in certain lexical contexts, i.e. in combination with other words.2 The noun question, e.g., is often combined with such adjectives as vital, pressing, urgent, disputable, delicate, etc. This noun is a component of a number of other word-groups, e.g. to raise a question, a question of great importance, a question of the agenda, of the day, and many others. The aptness of a word to appear in various combinations is described as its lexical valency or collocability.
The range of the lexical valency of words is linguistically restricted by the inner structure of the English word-stock. This can be easily observed in the selection of synonyms found in different word-groups. Though the verbs lift and raise, e.g., are usually treated as synonyms, it is only the latter that is collocated with the noun question. The verb take may be synonymically interpreted as ‘grasp’, ’seize’, ‘catch’, ‘lay hold of, etc. but it is only take that is found in collocation with the nouns examination, measures, precautions, etc., only catch in catch smb. napping and grasp in grasp the truth.
There is a certain norm of lexical valency for each word and any departure from this norm is felt as a literary or rather a stylistic device. Such word-groups as for example a cigarette ago, shove a question and the like are illustrative of the point under discussion. It is because we recognise that shove and question are not normally collocable that the junction of them can be effective.
The lexical valency of correlated words in different languages is not identical. Both the English word flower and its Russian counterpart — цветок, for example, may be combined with a number of other words all of which denote the place where the flowers are grown, e.g. garden flowers, hot-house flowers, etc. (cf. the Russian садовые цветы, оранжерейные цветы, etc.). The English word, however, cannot enter into combination with the word room to denote flowers growing in the rooms (cf. pot flowers — комнатные цветы).
One more point of importance should be discussed in connection with the problem of lexical valency — the interrelation of lexical valency and polysemy as found in word-groups.
Firstly, the restrictions of lexical valency of words may manifest themselves in the lexical meanings of the polysemantic members of word-groups. The adjective heavy, e.g., is combined with the words food, meals, supper, etc. in the meaning ‘rich and difficult to digest’. But not all the words with more or less the same component of meaning can be combined with this adjective. One cannot say, for instance, heavy cheese or heavy sausage implying that the cheese or the sausage is difficult to digest."
Secondly, it is observed that different meanings of a word may be described through the possible types of lexical contexts, i.e. through the lexical valency of the word, for example, the different meanings of the adjective heavy may be described through the word-groups heavy weight (book, table, etc.), heavy snow (storm, rain, etc.), heavy drinker (eater, etc.), heavy sleep (disappointment, sorrow, etc.), heavy industry (tanks, etc.), and so on.
From this point of view word-groups may be regarded as the characteristic minimal lexical sets that operate as distinguishing clues for each of the multiple meanings of the word.
Grammatical valency
The minimal grammatical context in which words are used when brought together to form word-groups is usually described as the pattern of the word-group. For instance, the adjective heavy discussed above can be followed by a noun (e.g. heavy storm or by the infinitive of a verb (e.g. heavy to lift), etc. The aptness of a word to appear in specific grammatical (or rather syntactic) structures is termed grammatical valency.
The grammatical valency of words may be different. To begin with, the range of grammatical valency is delimited by the part of speech the word belongs to. It follows that the grammatical valency of each individual word is dependent on the grammatical structure of the language.
This is not to imply that grammatical valency of words belonging to the same part of speech is necessarily identical. This can be best illustrated by comparing the grammatical valency of any two words belonging to the same part of speech, e.g. of the two synonymous verbs suggest and propose. Both verbs can be followed by a noun (to propose or suggest a plan, a resolution). It is only propose, however, that can be followed by the infinitive of a verb (to propose to do smth.); The adjectives clever and intelligent are seen to possess different grammatical valency as clever can be used in word-groups having the pattern: Adjective-Preposition at+Noun (clever at mathematics), whereas intelligent can never be found in exactly the same word-group pattern.
Specific linguistic restrictions in the range of grammatical valency of individual words imposed on the lexical units by the inner structure of the language are also observed by comparing the grammatical valency of correlated words in different languages. The English verb influence, for example, can be followed only by a noun (to influence a person, a decision, choice, etc.). The grammatical valency of its Russian counterpart влиять is different. The Russian verb can be combined only with a prepositional group (cf. влиять на человека, на выбор, . . ., etc.).
No departure from the norm of grammatical valency is possible as this can make the word-group unintelligible to English speakers. Thus e.g. the word-group mathematics at clever is likely to be felt as a meaningless string of words because the grammatical valency of English nouns does not allow of the structure Noun+at+Adjective.
From this point of view word-groups may be regarded as minimal syntactic (or syntagmatic) structures that operate as distinguishing clues for different meanings of a polysemantic word.
Classification of free word groups.
Free word groups can be classified by some criteria. All word groups may be also analyzed by the criterion of distribution into two big classes: endocentric and exocentric word groups. If the word group has the same linguistic distribution as one of its members, it is described as endocentric, i.e. having one central member functionally equivalent to the whole word group 9red flower, bravery of all kinds) If the distribution of the word-group is different from either of its members, it is regarded as exocentric, i.e. as having no such central member (side by side, grow smaller) and others where the component words are not syntactically substitutable for the whole word group.
Word groups may be classified according to their headwords into nominal groups or phrases (red flower), adjectival groups (kind to people), verbal groups (to speak well), etc. The head is not necessarily the component that occurs first in the word-group.
Word groups are also classified according to their syntactic pattern into predicative and non-predicative groups. Such word groups as John walks, he went that have a syntactic structure similar to that of a sentence, are classified as predicative, and all others as non-predicative. Non-predicative word groups may be subdivided according to the type of syntactic relations between the components into subordinate and coordinative. Such word groups as red flower, a man of wisdom and the like are termed subordinate because the words red and of wisdom are subordinated to flower and man respectively. Such phrases as women and children, day and night, do or die are classified as coordintive.
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23.06.2013 в 00:48Firstly, the restrictions of lexical valency of words may manifest themselves in the lexical meanings of the polysemantic members of word-groups. The adjective heavy, e.g., is combined with the words food, meals, supper, etc. in the meaning ‘rich and difficult to digest’. But not all the words with more or less the same component of meaning can be combined with this adjective. One cannot say, for instance, heavy cheese or heavy sausage implying that the cheese or the sausage "is difficult to digest."
Secondly, it is observed that different meanings of a word may be described through the possible types of lexical contexts, i.e. through the lexical valency of the word, for example, the different meanings of the adjective heavy may be described through the word-groups heavy weight (book, table, etc.), heavy snow (storm, rain, etc.), heavy drinker (eater, etc.), heavy sleep (disappointment, sorrow, etc.), heavy industry (tanks, etc.), and so on.
From this point of view word-groups may be regarded as the characteristic minimal lexical sets that operate as distinguishing clues for each of the multiple meanings of the word. (Ginzburg)
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23.06.2013 в 00:49Phraseology is a branch of lexicology studying phraseological units (set expressions, praseologisms, or idioms (in foreign linguistics). Phraseological units differ from free word-groups semantically and structurally: 1) they convey a single concept and their meaning is idiomatic, i.e. it is not a mere total of the meanings of their components 2) they are characterized by structural invariability (no word can be substituted for any component of a phraseological unit without destroying its sense (to have a bee in one’s bonnet (not capor hat). 3) they are not created in speech but used as ready-made units. Unlike a word, a phraseological unit can be divided into separately structured elements and transformed syntactically (On the instant he was thinking how natural and unaffected her manner was now that the ice between them had been broken. (Th. Dreiser, ‘An American Tragedy’). I... found this man in a kind of seizure, and went for help. This broke the ice between us, and we grew quite chatty, without either of us knowing the other's name. (H. Pollitt, ‘Serving My Time’).
Criteria of a phraseological unit:
a) Structural Criterion
The structural criterion brings forth pronounced features which on the one hand state a certain structural similarity between phraseological units and free word-combinations at the same time opposing them to single words, and on the other hand specify their structural distinctions.
b) Semantic criterion
The semantic criterion is of great help in stating the semantic difference/similarity between free word-groups and phraseological units, and between phraseological units and words.
c) Syntactic Criterion
The syntactic criterion reveals the close ties between single words and phraseological units as well as free word-groups. Like words (as well as word-combinations), phraseological units may have different syntactic functions in the sentence, e.g. the subject (narrow escape, first night, baker's dozen), the predicate (to have a good mind, to play Russian roulette, to make a virtue of necessity), an attribute (high and mighty, quick on the trigger, as ugly as sin), an adverbial (in full swing, on second thoughts, off the record). In accordance with the function they perform in the sentence phraseological units can be classified into: substantive, verbal, adjectival, adverbial, interjectional.
Like free word-groups phraseological units can be divided into coordinative (e.g. the life and soul of something, free and easy, neck and crop) and subordinative (e.g. long in the tooth, a big fish in a little pond, the villain of the piece).
Thus, the characteristic features of phraseological units are: ready-made reproduction, structural divisibility, morphological stability, permanence of lexical composition, semantic unity, syntactic fixity.
The etymological classification of phraseological units
According to their origin phraseological units are divided into native and borrowed.
Native phraseological units are connected with British realia, traditions, history:
By bell book and candle (jocular) – бесповоротно. This unit originates from the text of the form of excommunication (отлучение от церкви) which ends with the following words: ^ Doe to the book, quench the candle, ring the book!
To carry coal to Newcastle (parallells: Ехать в Тулу со своим самоваром, везти сов в Афины, везти пряности в Иран)
To native phraseological units also belong familiar quotations came from works of English literature. A lot of them were borrowed from works by Shakespeare: a fool’s paradise(“Romeo and Juliet”), the green-eyed monster (“Othello”), murder will out – шила в мешке не утаишь (“Macbeth”), etc.
A great number of native phraseological units originate from professional terminologies or jargons: one’s last card, the game is up/over lay one's cards on the table hold all the aces (terms of gambling).
Borrowed phraseological units come from several sources.
A number of units were borrowed from the Bible and were fully assimilated: to cast pearl before swine, the root of all evil, a woolf in sheep’s clothing, to beat swords into plough-shares.
A great amount of units were taken from ancient mythology and literature: the apple of discord, the golden age, the thread of Ariadne, at the greek calends ( до греческих календ, никогда), etc, They are international in their character.
A lot of phraseologisms were borrowed from different languages – let’s return to our muttons (revenons à nos moutons), blood and iron (принцип политики Бисмарка – Blut und Eisen), blue blood, to lose face (кит. tiu lien) and from the other variants of the English language (AmE) – a green light, bark up the wrong tree, to look like a million dollars, time is money (B. Franklin “Advice to a Young Tradesman”).
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23.06.2013 в 00:49In the classification proposed by acad. Vinogradov phraseological units are classified according to the semantic principle, and namely to the degree of motivation of meaning, i.e. the relationship between the meaning of the whole unit and the meaning of its components. Three groups are distinguished: phraseological fusions (сращения), phraseological unities (единства), phraseological combinations (сочетания).
1. Phraseological fusions are non-motivated. The meaning of the whole is not deduced from the meanings of the components: to kiss the hare’s foot (опаздывать), to kick the bucket (сыграть в ящик), the king’s picture (фальшивая монета)
2. Phraseological unities are motivated through the image expressed in the whole construction, the metaphores on which they are based are transparent: to turn over a new leaf, to dance on a tight rope.
3. Phraseological combinations are motivated; one of their components is used in its direct meaning while the other can be used figuratively: bosom friend, to get in touch with.
Prof. Smirnitsky classifies phraseological units according to the functional principle. Two groups are distinguished: phraseological units and idioms. Phraseological units are neutral, non-metaphorical when compared to idioms: get up, fall asleep, to take to drinking. Idioms are metaphoric, stylistically coloured: to take the bull by the horns, to beat about the bush, to bark up the wrong tree. Structurally prof. Smirnitsky distinguishes one-summit (one-member) and many-summit (two-member, three-member, etc.) phraseological units, depending on the number of notional words: against the grain (не по душе), to carry the day (выйти победителем), to have all one’s eggs in one basket.
Prof. Kunin’s classification is based on the function of the phraseological unit in communication. Phraseological units are classified into: nominative, nominative-communicative, interjectional, communicative.
1. Nominative phraseological units are units denoting objects, phenomena, actions, states, qualities. They can be:
a) substantive – a snake in the grass (змея подколодная), a bitter pill to swallow;
b) adjectival – long in the tooth (старый);
c) adverbial – out of a blue sky, as quick as a flash;
d) prepositional – with an eye to (с намерением), at the head of.
2. Nominative-communicative units contain a verb: to dance on a volcano, to set the Thames on fire (сделать что-то необычное), to know which side one's bread is buttered, to make (someone) turn (over) in his grave, to put the hat on smb’s misery (в довершение всех его бед).
3. Interjectional phraseological units express the speaker’s emotions and attitude to things: ^ A pretty kettle of fish! (хорошенькое дельце), Good God! God damn it! Like hell!
4. Communicative phraseological units are represented by provebs (An hour in the morning is worth two in the evening; Never say “never”) and sayings. Sayings, unlike provebs, are not evaluative and didactic: ^ That’s another pair of shoes! It’s a small world.
Phraseological units can be classified as parts of speech. This classification was suggested by I.V. Arnold. Here we have the following groups:
a) nominal phrases or noun phraseologisms denoting an object, a person or a living beingBullet train; The root of the trouble.
b) verbal phrases or verb phraseologisms denoting an action, a state or a feeling: To sing like a lark; To put one’s best foot forward.
c) adjectival phrases or adjective phraseologisms denoting a quality: As good as gold; Red as a cherry.
d) adverbial phrases or adverb phraseological units, such as:From head to foot; Like a dog with two tails.
e) prepositional phrases or preposition phraseological units:In the course of;On the stroke of.
f) conjunctional phrases or conjunction phraseological units:As long as;On the other hand.
g) interjectional phrases or interjection phraseological units:Catch me!;Well, I never!
In I.V.Arnold’s classification there are also sentence equivalents, proverbs, sayings and quotations: “The sky is the limit”, “What makes him tick”, “I am easy”. Proverbs are usually metaphorical: “Too many cooks spoil the broth”, while sayings are as a rule non-metaphorical: “Where there is a will there is a way”
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23.06.2013 в 00:50A proverb is a short familiar epigrammatic saying expressing popular wisdom, a truth or a moral lesson in a concise and imaginative way. Proverbs have much in common with set expressions, because their lexical components are also constant, their meaning is traditional and mostly figurative, and they are introduced into speech ready-made. Another reason why proverbs must be taken into consideration together with set expressions is that they often form the basis of set expressions. e.g. the last straw breaks the camel’s back : : the last straw. Both set expressions and proverbs are sometimes split and changed for humorous purposes. They are collected in special dictionaries. The typical features: rhythm, rhyme and alliteration. The most characteristic feature of a proverb or a saying lies in the content-form of the utterance. Proverb presupposes a simultaneous application of 2 meanings: primary and contextual.
A saying is a short, clever expression that usually contains advice or expresses some obvious truth. Many traditional sayings are still in general use today. Most of the sayings in this section are well known in English, though some of them come from other languages. The meaning or interpretation shown for each saying is believed to be the generally accepted interpretation of the saying, though for some sayings the interpretation may be more subjective than for others. Most sayings are effective thanks to their shortness and directness. They use simple, vivid language, often based on everyday domestic situations, making them easy to understand and remember. Sayings may be classified under a number of different terms, of which proverb is probably the best known. Other types of saying are adage, maxim, motto, epigram and aphorism, though frankly the distinction between them is often vague:
• proverb: a piece of common-sense wisdom expressed in practical, homely terms ("A stitch in time saves nine")
• adage: is a time-honored and widely known saying ("Where there's smoke, there's fire")
• maxim: a general rule of behaviour drawn from practical experience ("Neither a borrower nor a lender be")
• motto: a maxim adopted as a principal of conduct ("Honesty is the best policy")
• epigram: is a brief, witty, or satirical statement that often gains effect through paradox ("The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it")
• aphorism: similar to an epigram but more profound rather than witty ("He is a fool that cannot conceal is wisdom")
As to familiar quotations, they are different from proverbs in their origin. They come from literature but by and by they become part and parcel of the language, so that many people using them do not even know that they are quoting. Quotations from classical sources were once a recognised feature of public speech. They are usually marked off in the text by inverted commas, dashes, italics or other graphical means. Some quotations are so often used that they come to be considered clichés.
The cliché (the word is French) is a metal block used for printing pictures and turning them out in great numbers. The term is used to denote such phrases as have become hackneyed and stale. Being constantly and mechanically repeated they have lost their original expressiveness and so are better avoided.
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23.06.2013 в 00:50Local dialeсts are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalised literary form.
Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In Great Britain there are two variants, Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects.
In the British Isles there exist many speech varieties confined to particular areas. These local dialects traceable to Old English dialects may be classified into six distinct divisions: 1) Lowland (Scottish or Scotch, North of the river Tweed), 2) Northern (between the rivers Tweed and Humber), 3) Western, 4) Midland and 5) Eastern (between the river Humber and the Thames), 6) Southern (South of the Thames). Offsprings of the English national literary language, the British local dialects are marked off from the former and from each other by some phonetic, grammatical and lexical peculiarities. In this book we are naturally concerned only with the latter. Careful consideration of the national and the dialect vocabularies discloses that the most marked difference between them lies in the limited character of the dialect vocabularies. The literary language contains many words not to be found in dialects, among them technical and scientific terms.
One of the best known Southern dialects is Cockney, the regional dialect of London. According to E. Partridge and H.C. Wylde, this dialect exists on two levels. As spoken by the educated lower middle classes it is a regional dialect marked by some deviations in pronunciation but few in vocabulary and syntax. As spoken by the uneducated, Cockney differs from Standard English not only in pronunciation but also in vocabulary, morphology and syntax. Cockney is lively and witty and its vocabulary imaginative and colourful. Its specific feature not occurring anywhere else is the so-called rhyming slang, in which some words are substituted by other words rhyming with them.
Variants of English in the UK
Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is not the same as Scottish Gaelic, which is a Celtic language. The main, formal variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English, often abbreviated to SSE. SSE may be defined as "the characteristic speech of the professional class [in Scotland] and the accepted norm in schools." In addition to distinct pronunciation, grammar and expressions, Scottish English has distinctive vocabulary, particularly pertaining to Scottish institutions such as the Church of Scotland, local government and the education and legal systems. Scottish Standard English is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with focused broad Scots at the other. Scottish English may be influenced to varying degrees by Scots. Many Scots speakers separate Scots and Scottish English as different registers depending on social circumstances. Some speakers code switch clearly from one to the other while others style shift in a less predictable and more fluctuating manner. Generally there is a shift to Scottish English in formal situations or with individuals of a higher social status.
Irish English – also known as Anglo-Irish and Hiberno-English – is English as spoken in Ireland, partly the result of the interaction of the English and Irish languages. Modern Irish English derives from the plantations of the 16th and 17th cents. The standard spelling and grammar of Irish English are largely the same as common British English. However, some unique characteristics exist, especially in the spoken language, owing to the influence of the Irish language on the pronunciation of English.
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23.06.2013 в 00:51Canadian English is the variety of English spoken in Canada. English is the first language, or "mother tongue", of approximately 24 million Canadians (77%), and more than 28 million (86%) are fluent in the language. 82% of Canadians outside Quebec speak English natively, but within Quebec the figure drops to just 7.7%, as most residents are native speakers of Quebec French.
Canadian English contains elements of British English and American English in its vocabulary, as well as many distinctive Canadianisms. In many areas, speech is influenced by French. There are notable local variations. The phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon for most of Canada are similar to that of the Western and Midland regions of the United States. The Canadian Great Lakes region has similarities to that of the Upper Midwest & Great Lakes region and/or Yooper dialect (in particular Michigan which has extensive cultural and economic ties with Ontario), while the phonological system of western and central Canadian English is similar in some aspects to that of the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
The intonation and pronunciation of some vowel sounds have similarities to the dialects of Scotland and to accents in Northern England such as Geordie, for example the raising to "about" to sound roughly like "aboot" or "aboat", is also heard in Scotland and the Tyneside area of England.
Canadian English and American English are sometimes classified together as North American English, emphasizing the fact that many outsiders from English-speaking countries cannot distinguish Canadian English from American English by sound. Canadian English spelling is largely a blend of British and American conventions.
Australian English is a major variety of the English language and is used throughout Australia. Although English has no official status in the Constitution, Australian English is Australia's de facto official language and is the first language of the majority of the population.
Australian English started diverging from British English after the founding of the colony of New South Wales in 1788 and was recognised as being different from British English by 1820. It arose from the intermingling of children of early settlers from a great variety of mutually intelligible dialectal regions of the British Isles and quickly developed into a distinct variety of English.
Australian English differs from other varieties of English in vocabulary, accent, pronunciation, register, grammar and spelling.
Indian English is the group of English dialects spoken primarily in the Indian subcontinent.
As a result of British colonial rule until Indian independence in 1947, English is an official language of India and is widely used in both spoken and literary contexts. The rapid growth of India's economy towards the end of the 20th century led to large-scale population migration between regions of the Indian subcontinent and the establishment of English as a common lingua franca between those speaking diverse mother tongues.
With the exception of the relatively small Anglo-Indian community and some families of full Indian ethnicity where English is the primary language spoken in the home, speakers of English in the Indian subcontinent learn it as a second language in school. In cities this is typically at English medium schools, but in smaller towns and villages instruction for most subjects is in the local language, with English language taught as a modular subject. Science and technical education is mostly undertaken in English and, as a result, most university graduates in these sectors are fairly proficient in English.
Idiomatic forms derived from Indian literary and vernacular language have become assimilated into Indian English in differing ways according to the native language of speakers. Nevertheless, there remains general homogeneity in phonetics, vocabulary, and phraseology between variants of the Indian English dialect.
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23.06.2013 в 00:52An Americanism may be defined as a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA. E. g. cookie ‘a biscuit’; frame-up ‘a staged or preconcerted law case’; guess ‘think’; mail ‘post’; store ‘shop’.
The American variant of the English language differs from British English1 in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary.
Speaking about the historic causes of these deviations it is necessary to mention that American English is based on the language imported to the new continent at the time of the first settlements, that is on the English of the 17th century. The first colonies were founded in 1607, so that the first colonisers were contemporaries of W. Shakespeare, E. Spenser and J. Milton. Words which have died out in Britain, or changed their meaning may survive in the USA. Thus, I guess, was used by G. Chaucer for I think. For more than three centuries the American vocabulary developed more or less independently of the British stock and was influenced by the new surroundings. The early Americans had to coin words for the unfamiliar fauna and flora. Hence bullfrog ‘a large frog’, moose (the American elk), opossum, raccoon (an American animal related to the bears) for animals; and corn, hickory, etc. for plants.
Vocabulary
It's easy to point out the differences between the American and the English vocabulary: the differences seem quaint and there are comparatively so few that Americans can easily spot them. Many of the differences are merely a matter of preference: Americans prefer railroad and store while the English prefer the synonyms railway and shop, but all four words are used in both England and America. In addition, Americans know or can easily guess what braces, fishmonger's, or pram means, just as the English know or can figure out what innerspring mattress, jump rope, and ice water mean. Finally, many of the words that once separated American English from English English no longer do: American cocktail (1806), skyscraper (1833), and supermarket (1920s) are now heard around the world, and the English increasingly use radio, run (in a stocking), and Santa Claus instead of wireless, ladder, and Father Christmas. The following list gives some of the most interesting and typical differences between the American and English vocabulary, differ¬ences that may especially interest tourists and those who enjoy both American and English books and movies.
Examples: airfield—aerodrome. apartment; apartment house, apartment building ; block of flats (to an Englishman an apartment means a room). Our high-rise apartment (building) is the English tower block (of flats). barbershop—barber's shop. The English frequently use the possessive -V or -s' where we do not, as in dolts house, ladies' room, and shop.
can opener—tin opener, candy—sweets
There are, of course, hundreds of more terms that differ in American English and British English. American use of prepositions sometimes also differs: Americans live on a street, the English live in it; Americans chat with people, the English chat to them; Americans speak of an increase in something, the English of an increase on it; Americans get snowed in, they get snowed up; Americans say something is different/row something else, the English say it is different to it.
Pronounciation
The major difference in American and English pronunciation is in intonation and voice timbre. Americans speak with less variety of tone than the English. American voice timbre seems harsh or tinny to the English, their's gurgling or throaty to Americans. English conclusion: Americans speak shrilly, monotonously, and like a schoolboy reciting. American conclu¬sion: the English speak too low, theatrically, and swallow their syllables.
The more precise differences include: Americans pronounce the a in such words as ask, brass, can't, dance, fast, grass, half, last, and path as a short, fiat [a]; the English pronounce it more as the broad [a:] in father. American shorter, flatter [a] is just a continuation of the way first colonists from Southern England pronounced it; the English dropped this pronunciation in the 18th century and began to use the broad [a:] (this same change took place in parts of New England and the South, giving some Americans the pronuncia¬tion of aunt as "ahnt" and vase as "vahz").
On the other hand, most Americans sound the short [ o ] in such words as box, hot, lot, not, pot, and top almost as the broad [a: ] in father, while the English (and some New Englanders) give it a more open sound, with the lips rounded.
And some are just unique pronunciations of individual words. Such miscellaneous differences in pronunciations include: ate, Americans say "eight"—"et" is an accepted English pronunciation.
been, Americans say "bin"—the English say "bean." clerks- "dark."
either, neither, most Americans say, "e-ther, ne-ther"—"I-ther, ni-
ther" is the English pronunciation. issue, Americans say "ish-you"—the English say "is-sue." leisure, most Americans say "le-sure"—the English say "laysure."
lieutenant, Americans say "lew-tenant"—the English say "lef-tenant."
nephew, Americans say "nef-hew"—the English say "nev-hew."
schedule, Americans say "sked-ule"—the English say "shed-ule."
Spelling
When the colonists came to America, spelling was not a prob¬lem—if a man could write at all he was lucky. English spelling was not yet rule-ridden: i and y, as well as u and v, were often used interchangeably. Not until 135 years after the Pilgrims landed did English spelling have a guide in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. This monumental work froze much of English spelling and, among other things, decreed that such words as critick, loglck, musick, andpublick end in a final k and such words as colour, honour, etc., end in -our.
England, including its colonies, began to follow Johnson's spell¬ing; but, in 1758, three years after Johnson's dictionary was published, Noah Webster was born, in Hartford, Connecticut, and 21 years after Johnson's dictionary the American Revolution began—two events that were to help separate English English and American English. After graduating in law from Yale, Webster couldn't make a living doing legal work, so he became a teacher. He then found English schoolbooks hard to obtain, and unsatisfac¬tory, so he compiled his own three-part Grammatical Institute of the English Language, including an elementary spelling book (in 1783), a grammar (in 1784) and a reader (in 1785). Part I became the fantastically successful The American Spelling Book, which went through edition after edition and sold 80 million copies in its first hundred years, 1783-1883. It was one of the most influential books ever published in America: from the time America became a nation, past the Civil War, and almost into the Gay 90s, genera¬tions of Americans learned to spell and pronounce from it, spelling and pronouncing each syllable in every word over and over again under stern teachers. It was known to millions as Webster's Speller, the Blue-Backed Spelling Book (1853) and the Blue-Backed Speller.
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23.06.2013 в 00:52The English are also more conservative in using fewer abbrevia¬tions and more capital letters and commas than Americans do. They capitalize such words as the Bar, the Church, the Government, the Press, and Society. By doing away with such capital letters, Americans are closer to the fashion of the 18th century, when the months, the days of the week, and the names of religions were often not capitalized.
Written forms of American English are fairly well standardized across the United States. An unofficial standard for spoken American English has developed because of mass media and of geographic and social mobility. This standard is generally called a General American or Standard Midwestern accent and dialect, and it can typically be heard from network newscasters, although local newscasters tend toward more provincial forms of speech. Despite this unofficial standard, regional variations of American English have not only persisted, but have actually intensified, according to William Labov.
Regional dialects in the United States typically reflect the elements of the language of the main immigrant groups in any particular region of the country, especially in terms of pronunciation and vernacular vocabulary.
British and American English are the reference norms for English as spoken, written, and taught in the rest of the world. For instance, the English-speaking members of the Commonwealth often closely follow British English forms while many new American English forms quickly become familiar outside of the United States.
Grammar
American English has always shown a marked tendency to use nouns as verbs. Examples of verbed nouns are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in "exit the lobby"), factor (in mathematics), gun ("shoot"), author (which disappeared in English around 1630 and was revived in the U.S. three centuries later) and, out of American material, proposition, graft (bribery), bad-mouth, vacation, major, backpack, backtrack, intern, ticket (traffic violations), hassle, blacktop, peer-review, dope and OD, and, of course verbed as used at the start of this sentence.
Compounds coined in the U.S. are for instance foothill, flatlands, badlands, landslide (in all senses), overview (the noun), backdrop, teenager, brainstorm, bandwagon, hitchhike, smalltime, deadbeat, frontman, lowbrow and highbrow, hell-bent, foolproof, nitpick, about-face (later verbed), upfront (in all senses), fixer-upper, no-show; many of these are phrases used as adverbs or (often) hyphenated attributive adjectives: non-profit, for-profit, free-for-all, ready-to-wear, catchall, low-down, down-and-out, down and dirty, in-your-face, nip and tuck; many compound nouns and adjectives are open: happy hour, fall guy, capital gain, road trip, wheat pit, head start, plea bargain; some of these are colorful (empty nester, loan shark, ambulance chaser, buzz saw, ghetto blaster, dust bunny), others are euphemistic (differently abled (physically challenged), human resources, affirmative action, correctional facility).
Many compound nouns have the form verb plus preposition: add-on, stopover, lineup, shakedown, tryout, spin-off, rundown ("summary"), shootout, holdup, hideout, comeback, cookout, kickback, makeover, takeover, rollback ("decrease"), rip-off, come-on, shoo-in, fix-up, tie-in, tie-up ("stoppage"), stand-in. These essentially are nouned phrasal verbs; some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin (spell out, figure out, hold up, brace up, size up, rope in, back up/off/down/out, step down, miss out, kick around, cash in, rain out, check in and check out (in all senses), fill in ("inform"), kick in or throw in ("contribute"), square off, sock in, sock away, factor in/out, come down with, give up on, lay off (from employment), run into and across ("meet"), stop by, pass up, put up (money), set up ("frame"), trade in, pick up on, pick up after, lose out).
Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive. Some verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, itemize, editorialize, customize, notarize, weatherize, winterize, Mirandize; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, evolute, curate, donate, emote, upholster, peeve and enthuse). Among syntactical constructions that arose in the U.S. are as of (with dates and times), outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, convince someone to, not about to and lack for.
Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, pry (as in "pry open", from prize), putter (verb), buddy, sundae, skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in the U.S. are for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, grounded (of a child), punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "through train", or meaning "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky. American blends include motel, guesstimate, infomercial and televangelist.
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23.06.2013 в 00:53The province of lexicography, on the other hand, is the semantic, formal, and functional description of all individual words. Dictionaries aim at a more or less complete description, but in so doing cannot attain systematic treatment, so that every dictionary entry presents, as it were, an independent problem. Lexicologists sort and present their material in a sequence depending upon their views concerning the vocabulary system, whereas lexicographers have to arrange it most often according to a purely external characteristic, namely alphabetically.
Historical development of English and American lexicography
A need for a dictionary or glossary has been felt in the cultural growth of many civilised peoples at a fairly early period. The history of dictionary-making for the English language goes as far back as the Old English period where its first traces are found in the form of glosses of religious books with interlinear translation from Latin. Regular bilingual English-Latin dictionaries were already in existence in the 15th century.
The unilingual dictionary is a comparatively recent type. The first unilingual English dictionary, explaining words by English equivalents, appeared in 1604. It was meant to explain difficult words occurring in books. Its title was “A Table Alphabeticall, containing and teaching the true writing and understanding of hard usuall English words borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine or French”. The little volume of 120 pages explaining about 3000 words was compiled by one Robert Cawdrey, a schoolmaster. Other books followed, each longer than the preceding one. The first attempt at a dictionary including all the words of the language, not only the difficult ones, was made by Nathaniel Bailey who in 1721 published the first edition of his “Universal Etymological English Dictionary”. He was the first to include pronunciation and etymology.
Big explanatory dictionaries were created in France and Italy before they appeared for the English language. Learned academies on the continent had been established to preserve the purity of their respective languages. This was also the purpose of Dr Samuel Johnson’s famous Dictionary published in 1755.1 The idea of purity involved a tendency to oppose change, and S. Johnson’s Dictionary was meant to establish the English language in its classical form, to preserve it in all its glory as used by J. Dryden, A. Pope, J. Addison and their contemporaries. In conformity with the social order of his time, S. Johnson attempted to “fix” and regulate English. This was the period of much discussion about the necessity of “purifying” and “fixing” English, and S. Johnson wrote that every change was undesirable, even a change for the best.
As to pronunciation, attention was turned to it somewhat later. A pronouncing dictionary that must be mentioned first was published in 1780 by Thomas Sheridan, grandfather of the great dramatist. In 1791 appeared “The Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language” by John Walker, an actor. The vogue of this second dictionary was very great, and in later publications Walker’s pronunciations were inserted into S. Johnson’s text — a further step to a unilingual dictionary in its present-day form.
The Golden Age of English lexicography began in the last quarter of the 19th century when the English Philological Society started work on compiling what is now known as “The Oxford English Dictionary” (OED), but was originally named “New English Dictionary on Historical Principles”. It is still occasionally referred to as NED.
The first part of the Dictionary appeared in 1884 and the last in 1928. Later it was issued in twelve volumes and in order to accommodate new words a three volume Supplement was issued in 1933. These volumes were revised in the seventies. Nearly all the material of the original Supplement was retained and a large body of the most recent accessions to the English language added.
The principles, structure and scope of “The Oxford English Dictionary", its merits and demerits are discussed in the most comprehensive treaty by L.V. Malakhovsky. Its prestige is enormous. It is considered superior to corresponding major dictionaries for other languages. The Oxford University Press published different abridged versions. “The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles” formerly appeared in two volumes, now printed on thinner paper it is bound in one volume of 2,538 pages. It differs from the complete edition in that it contains a smaller number of quotations. It keeps to all the main principles of historical presentation and covers not only the current literary and colloquial English but also its previous stages. Words are defined and illustrated with key quotations.
“The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English” was first published in 1911, i.e. before the work on the main version was completed. It is not a historical dictionary but one of current usage. A still shorter form is “The Pocket Oxford Dictionary”.
Another big dictionary, also created by joined effort of enthusiasts, is Joseph Wright’s “English Dialect Dictionary”. Before this dictionary could be started upon, a thorough study of English dialects had to be completed. With this aim in view W.W. Skeat, famous for his “Etymological English Dictionary” founded the English Dialect Society as far back as 1873. Dialects are of great importance for the historical study of the language. In the 19th century they were very pronounced though now they are almost disappearing.
N. Webster realised the importance of language for the development of a nation, and devoted his energy to giving the American English the status of an independent language, distinct from British English. At that time the idea was progressive as it helped the unification of separate states into one federation. The tendency became reactionary later on, when some modern linguists like H. Mencken shaped it into the theory of a separate American language, not only different from British English, but surpassing it in efficiency and therefore deserving to dominate and supersede all the languages of the world. Even if we keep within purely linguistic or purely lexical concepts, we shall readily see that the difference is not so great as to warrant American English the rank of a separate language, not a variant of English. A complete revision of N. Webster’s dictionary is achieved with a certain degree of regularity. The recent “Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language” has called forth much comment, both favourable and unfavourable. It has been greatly changed as compared with the previous edition, in word selection as well as in other matters. The emphasis is on the present-day state of the language. The number of illustrative quotations is increased. To accommodate the great number of new words and meanings without increasing the bulk of the volume, the editors excluded much encyclopaedic material.
The other great American dictionaries are the “Century Dictionary", first completed in 1891; “Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary", first completed in 1895; the “Random House Dictionary of the English Language", completed in 1967; “The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language", first published in 1969, and C.L. Barnhart’s et al. “The World Book Dictionary” presenting a synchronic review of the language in the 20th century. The first three continue to appear in variously named subsequent editions including abridged versions. Many small handy popular dictionaries for office, school and home use are prepared to meet the demand in reference books on spelling, pronunciation, meaning and usage.
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23.06.2013 в 00:54There are many different types of English dictionaries. First of all they may all be roughly divided into two groups — encyclopaedic and linguistic.
The two groups of reference books differ essentially in the choice of items included and in the sort of information given about them. Linguistic dictionaries are wоrd-books, their subject’ matter is lexical units and their linguistic properties such as pronunciation, meaning, peculiarities of use, etc. The encyclopaedic dictionaries, the biggest of which are sometimes called simply encyclopaedias are thing-books, that give information about the extra-linguistic world, they deal with concepts (objects and phenomena), their relations to other objects and phenomena, etc.
It follows that the encyclopaedic dictionaries will never enter items like father, go, that, be, if, black, but only those of designative character, such as names for substances, diseases, plants and animals, institutions, terms of science, some important events in history and also geographical and biographical entries.
Although some of the items included in encyclopaedic and linguistic dictionaries coincide, such as the names of some diseases, the information presented in them is altogether different. The former give much more extensive information on these subjects.
Besides the general encyclopaedic dictionaries there are reference books that are confined to definite fields of knowledge, such as The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford Companion to Theatre, Cassell's Encyclopaedia of World Literature, etc.
There are also numerous ‘dictionaries presenting information about notable persons (scientists, writers, kings, presidents, etc.) often called Who’s Who dictionaries.
For practical purposes it is important to know that American dictionaries are characterised by encyclopaedic inclusion of scientific, technical, geographical and bibliographical items whereas it is common practice with British lexicographers to exclude from their dictionaries information of this kind to devote maximum space to the linguistic properties of words.
Classification of linguistic dictionaries
Thus a linguistic dictionary is a book of words in a language, usually listed alphabetically, with definitions, pronunciations, etymologies and other linguistic information or with their equivalents in another language (or other languages).
Linguistic dictionaries may be divided into different categories by different criteria. According to the nature of their word-list we may speak about general diсtiоnaries, on the one hand, and restriсted, on the other. The terms general and restricted do not refer to the size of the dictionary or to the number of items listed. What is meant is that the former contain lexical units in ordinary use with this or that proportion of items from various spheres of life, while the latter make their choice only from a certain part of the word-stock, the restriction being based on any principle determined by the compiler. To restricted dictionaries belong terminological, phraseological, dialectal word-books, dictionaries of new words, of foreign words, of abbreviations, etc.
Dictionaries with the same nature of word-lists may differ widely in the kind of information they afford, and the other way round, dictionaries providing data of similar nature may have a different kind of word-list. For example, dictionaries of unrestricted word-lists may be quite different in the type of information they contain (explanatory, pronouncing, etymological, ideographic, etc.), terminological dictionaries can also be explanatory, parallel, ideographic, presenting the frequency value of the items entered, etc. On the other hand, translation dictionaries may be general in their word-list, or terminological, phraseological, etc. Frequency dictionaries may have general and terminological word-lists.
All types of dictionaries, save the translation ones, may be mоnolingual or bilingual, i.e. the information about the items entered may be given in the same language or in another one.
Care should be taken not to mix up the terms monolingual and explanatory, on the one hand, and bilingual and translation dictionaries on the other. The two pairs of terms reflect different dimensions of dictionaries. The terms monolingual and bilingual pertain to the language in which the information about the words dealt with is couched. The terms explanatory and translation dictionaries characterise the kind of information itself.
It is important to realise that no dictionary, even the most general one, can be a general-purpose word-book, each one pursues a certain aim, each is designed for a certain set of users. Therefore the selection of material and its presentation, the language in which it is couched depend very much upon the supposed users, i.e. whether the dictionary is planned to serve scholarly users or students or the general public.
Thus to characterise a dictionary one must qualify it at least from the four angles mentioned above: 1) the nature of the word-list, 2) the information supplied, 3) the language of the explanations, 4) the prospective user.
Out of the great abundance of linguistic dictionaries of the English language a large group is made up of the so-called explanatory dictionaries, big and small, compiled in English-speaking countries. These dictionaries provide information on all aspects of the lexical units entered: graphical, phonetical, grammatical, semantic, stylistic, etymological, etc. Most of these dictionaries deal with the form, usage and meaning of lexical units in Modern English, regarding it as a stabilised system and taking no account of its past development. They are synchronic in their presentation of words as distinct from diachronic, those concerned with the development of words occurring within the written history of the language.
Translation dictionaries (sometimes also called parallel) are wordbooks containing vocabulary items in one language and their equivalents in another language. Many English-Russian and Russian-English dictionaries have been made in our country to meet the demands of language students and those who use English in their work. The most representative translation dictionaries for English are the New English-Russian Dictionary edited by Prof. I. R. Galperin, the English-Russian Dictionary by Prof. V. K. Müller and The Russian-English Dictionary under prof. A. I. Smirnitsky's general direction.
Phraseological dictionaries in England and America have accumulated vast collections of idiomatic or colloquial phrases, proverbs and other, usually image-bearing word-groups with profuse illustrations. But the compilers’ approach is in most cases purely empiric. By phraseology many of them mean all forms of linguistic anomalies which transgress the laws of grammar or logic and which are approved by usage. Therefore alongside set-phrases they enter free phrases and even separate words.1 The choice of items is arbitrary, based on intuition and not on any objective criteria. Different meanings of polysemantic units are not singled out, homonyms are not discriminated, no variant phrases are listed. An Anglo-Russian Phraseological Dictionary by A. V. Koonin published in our country has many advantages over the reference books published abroad and can be considered the first dictionary of English phraseology proper.
New Words dictionaries have it as their aim adequate reflection of the continuous growth of the English language.
Dictionaries of slang contain elements from areas of substandard speech such as vulgarisms, jargonisms, taboo words, curse-words, colloquialisms, etc.
Usage dictionaries make it their business to pass judgement on usage problems of all kinds, on what is right or wrong. Designed for native speakers they supply much various information on such usage problems as, e.g., the difference in meaning between words like comedy, farce and burlesque, illusion and delusion, formality and formalism, the proper pronunciation of words like foyer, yolk, nonchalant.
inform the user as to the frequency of occurrence of lexical units in speech, to be more exact in the “corpus of the reading matter or in the stretch of oral speech on which the word-counts are based.
A reverse dictionary is a list of words in which the entry words are arranged in alphabetical order starting with their final letters.
Pronouncing dictionaries record contemporary pronunciation. As compared with the phonetic characteristics of words given by other dictionaries the information provided by pronouncing dictionaries is much more detailed: they indicate variant pronunciations (which are numerous in some cases), as well as the pronunciation of different grammatical forms.
Etymological dictionaries trace present-day words to the oldest forms available, establish their primary meanings and give the parent form reconstructed by means of the comparative-historical method. In case of borrowings they point out the immediate source of borrowing, its origin, and parallel forms in cognate languages.
Ideographic dictionaries designed for English-speaking writers, orators or translators seeking to express their ideas adequately contain words grouped by the concepts expressed.
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23.06.2013 в 00:54The most burning issues of lexicography are connected with the selection of head-words, the arrangement and contents of the vocabulary entry, the principles of sense definitions and the semantic and functional classification of words.
In the first place it is the problem of how far a general descriptive dictionary, whether unilingual or bilingual, should admit the historical element. Dictionary-makers should attempt to improve and stabilise the English vocabulary according to the best classical samples and advise the readers on preferable usage. A distinctly modern criterion in selection of entries is the frequency of the words to be included.
When the problem of selection is settled, there is the second question as to which of the selected units have the right to a separate entry and which are to be included under one common head-word. These are, in other words, the questions of separateness and sameness of words. The first deals with syntagmatic boundaries of word-units and has to solve such questions as whether each other is a group of two separate words to be treated separately under the head-words each and other, or whether each other is a unit deserving a special entry (compare also: one another). Here the dictionary-maker is confronted with the problem of sameness. The arrangement of the vocabulary entry presents many problems, of which the most important are the differentiation and the sequence of various meanings of a polysemantic word. A historical dictionary (the Oxford Dictionary, for instance) is primarily concerned with the development of the English vocabulary. A descriptive dictionary dealing with current usage has to face its own specific problems. It has to apply a structural point of view and give precedence to the most important meanings. A synchronic dictionary should also show the distribution of every word. It has been traditionally done by labelling words as belonging to a certain part of speech, and by noting some special cases of grammatically or lexically bound meanings.
A third group of lexicographic problems is the problem of definitions in a unilingual dictionary. The explanation of meaning may be achieved by a group of synonyms which together give a fairly general idea; but one synonym is never sufficient for the purpose, because no absolute synonyms exist. Besides, if synonyms are the only type of explanation used, the reader will be placed in a vicious circle of synonymic references, with not a single word actually explained. Definitions serve the purpose much better. These are of two main types. If they are only concerned with words as speech material, the definition is called linguistic. If they are concerned with things for which the words are names, they are termed encyclopaedic.
One more problem is the problem of whether all entries should be defined or whether it is possible to have the so-called “run-ons” for derivative words in which the root-form is readily recognised (such as absolutely or resolutely). In fact, whereas resolutely may be conveniently given as a -ly run-on after resolute, there is a meaning problem for absolutely. One must take into consideration that in colloquial speech absolutely means ‘quite so’, ‘yes’ which cannot be deduced from the meaning of the corresponding adjective.
Corpus-based lexicography
Lexicon - computational the lexicon is in an electronic form. may be studied to discover patterns, usually for enriching entries. can be used computationally in a wide variety of applications; frequently, a lexicon may be constructed to support a specialized computational linguistic theory or grammar. written or spoken text may be studied to create or enhance entries in the lexicon.
Corpus-Oriented Lexicography An approach to dictionary-making based on the tools and techniques of Corpus Linguistics – a branch of Linguistics concerned with the application of computational corpus techniques to the solution of the problems of large-scale description. (Hartmann, James)
Corpus-based Lexicography Corpus, in this context, means a large collection of texts stored in a computer, which can be analyzed in many different ways. Typically, a corpus will contain written material taken from books, newspapers, magazines, journals, advertising leaflets and so on, the content of which will have been transferred into a database. Spoken material recorded from interviews, phone calls, radio programs, public meetings, academic lectures and so on is, in many cases, also transcribed, or transferred from digital sources, and included in the database.
Corpus (Biber, Conrad, Reppen, 1998) It is a principled collection of texts available for qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Electronic dictionaries.
An electronic dictionary is a dictionary whose data exists in digital form and can be accessed through a number of different media.Electronic dictionaries can be found in several forms, including:
• as dedicated handheld devices
• as apps on smartphones and tablet computers or computer software
• as a function built into an E-reader
• as CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs, typically packaged with a printed dictionary, to be installed on the user’s own computer
• as free or paid-for online products.
Most types of dictionary are available in electronic form. These include general-purpose monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, historical dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary, monolingual learner's dictionaries, and specialized dictionaries of every type, such as medical or legal dictionaries, thesauruses, travel dictionaries, dictionaries of idioms, and pronunciation guides.
Most of the early electronic dictionaries were, in effect, print dictionaries made available in digital form: the content was identical, but the electronic editions provided users with more powerful search functions. But soon the opportunities offered by digital media began to be exploited. Two obvious advantages are that limitations of space (and the need to optimize its use) become less pressing, so additional content can be provided; and the possibility arises of including multimedia content, such as audio pronunciations and video clips.
Electronic dictionary databases, especially those included with software dictionaries are often extensive and can contain up to 500,000 headwords and definitions, verb conjugation tables, and a grammar reference section. Bilingual electronic dictionaries and monolingual dictionaries of inflected languages often include an interactive verb conjugator, and are capable of word stemming and lemmatization.
Handheld electronic dictionaries, also known as "pocket electronic dictionaries" or PEDs, resemble miniature clamshell laptop computers, complete with full keyboards and LCD screens. Because they are intended to be fully portable, the dictionaries are battery-powered and made with durable casing material. Although produced all over the world, handheld dictionaries are especially popular in Japan, Korea, China, and neighbouring countries, where they are the dictionary of choice for many users learning English as a second language.
Dictionaries of all types are available as apps for smartphones and for tablet computers. The needs of translators and language learners are especially well catered for, with apps for bilingual dictionaries for numerous language pairs, and for most of the well-known monolingual learner's dictionaries such as the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and the Macmillan English Dictionary.
There are several types of online dictionary, including:
• Aggregator sites, which give access to data licensed from various reference publishers. They typically offer monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, one or more thesauruses, and technical or specialized dictionaries Examples include TheFreeDictionary.com and Dictionary.com
• 'Premium' dictionaries available on subscription, such as the Oxford English Dictionary
• Dictionaries from a single publisher, free to the user and supported by advertising. Examples include Collins Online Dictionary, Duden Online, Larousse bilingual dictionaries, the Macmillan English Dictionary, and the Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary.
• Dictionaries available free from non-commercial publishers (often institutions with government funding). Examples include the Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek (ANW), and Den Danske Ordbog.
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23.06.2013 в 01:41