Telescopy, back-formation, abbreviation.

The term blending is used to the method of merging parts of words (not morphemes) into one new word; the result is a blend, also know as a portmanteau word. The noun smog is an example in point. It is composed of the parts of the nouns smoke and fog (sm/oke+f/og). Thus blending is in fact compounding by means of clipped words The result of blending is an unanalysable, simple word, for the parts of words blended by the word - coiner (for instance, sm and og in smog) are not morphemes at all in terms of the English language. Many blends are short-lived. A fair proportion, however, have become established in the vocabulary: clash=clap+crash, dash; brunch= breakfast + lunch; slanguage= slang+language; smaze=smoke+haze. In most cases blends belong to the colloquial layer of words sometimes bordering on slang: smaze, brunch, slanguage. There are numerous blends, however, in the terminological sector of the vocabulary: racon= radar+ beacon, transistor=transfer+resistor. B.F. In considering the diachronic and the synchronic approach to language study reference was made to the verb to beg derived from the noun beggar was later presumed to have been derived from from a shorter word on the analogy of the derivative correlation of the “speak - speaker” type. This process of word-formation is called backformation and has diachronic relevance only. The examples are numerous: to burgle from burglar, to edit - editor, to enthuse - enthusiasm, to sculpt - sculptor. At the present time backformation combined with conversion seems to be active in the formation of verbs from compound nouns mostly of a terminological character: to blood - transfuse from blood - transfusion, to rush - develop(ment), to baby - sit(ter).. The term abbreviation may be also used for a shortened form of a written word or phrase used in a text in place of the whole, for economy of space and effort. Abbreviation is achieved by omis­sion of letters from one or more parts of the whole, as for instance abbr for abbreviation, bldg, for building, govt for government, cdr for commander, doz or dz for dozen, ltd for limited, N.Y. for New York State. Sometimes the part or parts retained show some alteration, thus oz denotes ounce and Xmas denotes Christmas. Doubling of initial letters shows plural forms as for instance pp for pages, ll for lines or cc for chapters. These are in fact not separate words but only graphic signs or symbols repre­senting them. 1. If the abbreviated written form can be read as though it were an ordinary English word it will be read like one. Many examples are furnished by political and technical vocabulary. U. N. E. S. C. O., al United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; U. N. O., also Uno - United Nations Organization. Words belonging to this group are often isolated from the prototypes. 2. The opposite subgroup consists of initial abbreviations with the alphabetic reading retained. They also retain correlation with prototypes. The examples are well-known: B. B. C. - the British Broadcasting Corporation; G. I. - for Govern­ment Issue, a widely spread metonymical name for American sol­diers on the items of whose uniforms these letters are stamped.

 

DIALECTS in English

Standard English - the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, sub­stantially uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialectisms belonging to various local dialects. Local dialeсts - are varieties of the English language peculiar to some dis­tricts and having no normalized 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. One of the best known Southern dialects is Cockney, the regional dialect of London. 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 in pronunciation, vocabulary, morphology and syntax. Dialects are now chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. Their boundaries have become less stable than they used to be; the distinctive features are tending to disappear with the shifting of population due to the migration of working-class families in search of employment and the growing influence of urban life over the countryside. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of Standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television and cin­ema. Words from dialects and variants may penetrate into Standart English.

 

Metonymy

The transfer based upon the associa­tion of contiguity. It is the device in which the name of one thing is changed for that of another to which it is related by association of ideas, as having close relationship to one another. (I had no head for names, I have an ear for music, She’s the hope of the family).1) giving the part for the whole (synec­doche): house may denote the Members of the Parliament; The White House, The Pentagon can mean its staff and policy; 2) the sign for the thing signified: 'gray hair' - old age; 3) the instrument for the agent: the best pens of the day (best writers); 4) the container for the thing con­tained: the kettle is boiling (water); 5) geographical names turning into common nouns (to name the goods ex­ported or originating there): china, cham­pagne, burgundy, cheddar; 6) the material substitutes the thing made of: glass, iron, copper, nickel; 7) symbol for thing symbolized: 'the crown' for monarchy.

 

Type of word meaning

Lexical - is the mean­ing proper to the given lin­guistic unit in all its forms and distributions. L. meaning is the realiza­tion of concept or emotion by means of a definite language system. L. meaning is the same in different gram­matical forms of the same word: Listen, listens, listening, listened, listener, listeners, listerner's, lis­teners'. Two components of lexical meaning: Denotative - part of meaning gives objective information about an object, it is the con­ceptual content of a word: terms (nudeous, para­digm). Connotative - part of the lexical meaning is what the word con­veys about the speaker's atti­tude to different situations: stomach vs belly. Four types of connotative meaning: Stylistic - connotation is what the word conveys about the speaker's usage of a certain functional style, situation, re­lationships between inter­locutors, purpose of commu­nication: house (neutral), resi­dence (formal), hut (in­formal); Evaluative - connotation is about the speaker's approval or disapproval of the object spoken: catholics vs papists. Emotional - connotation is what the word conveys about the speaker's emotions: cold weather - beastly weather; Intensifying - connotation ex-presses degree or intensity of lexical meaning: splendid vs gorgeous, magnificent; Grammatical - meaning is ab­stract and generalized, it is recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words: the common element in the words 'kids, tables, types' is the grammati­cal meaning of plurality; Lexico-grammatical meaning is common for all the mean­ings of words belonging to a lexico-grammatical class of words, it is the feature ac­cording to which they are grouped together: the words 'team, crew, staff, brigade' have common lexico-gram­matical meaning of 'group'; Implicational - meaning is the implied information associ­ated with the speaker's knowl­edge about the referent: in the utterance “This classy woman has long been a Hollywood staple' the word 'staple' has an implicational meaning; Direct - meaning nominates the referent in isolation, without certain context: pig's head; Figurative - meaning nominates the referent giving some addi­tional characteristics: He is pig-headed; Primary /main - meaning stands first, usually it is the earliest: 'Field⁷ primary meaning as in 'green fields'; Secondary / de­rived - meaning is formed from the primary: field"derived meaning (secondary) as in "in the field of our history; in the field of physics'.

 

NON-SEMANTIC GROUPING

For different purposes of study different types of grouping may prove effective: synchronic or diachronic, semantic or formal, depending on possible distribution or taking words as isolated units. The simplest, most obvious non-semantic grouping, extensively used in all branches of applied linguistics is the alphabetical organ­ization of written words, as represented in most dictionaries. It is of great practical value as the simplest and the most universal way of facilitating the search for the necessary word. The rhyming, i. e. inverse, dictionary presents a similar non-semantic grouping of isolated written words differing from the first in that the sound is also taken into consideration and in that the grouping is done the other way round and the words are arranged according to the similarity of their ends. The practical value of this type is much more limited. These dictionaries are intended for poets. They may be also used, if but rarely, by teachers, when making up lists of words with similar suffixes. A third type of non-semantic grouping of written words is based on their length, i. e. the number of letters they contain. This type, worked out with some additional details, may prove useful for communication engineering, for automatic reading of messages and correction of mistakes. The shorter words occur more frequently and accumulate a greater number of meanings. Finally, a very important type of non-semantic grouping for isolated lexical units is based on a statistical analysis of their frequency. Frequency counts carried out for practical purposes of lexicography, language teaching and shorthand enable the lexicographer to attach to each word a number showing its importance and range of occurrence. Large figures are, of course, needed to bring out any inherent regularities, and these regularities are, naturally, statistical, not rigid. But even with these limitations the figures are fairly reliable and show important correlations between quan­titative and qualitative characteristics of lexical units, the most frequent words being polysemantic and stylistically neutral.

 

Russian borrowings.

There were constant contacts between England and Russia and they borrowed words from one language into the other. Among early Russian borrowings there are mainly words connected with trade relations, such as: rouble, copeck, pood, sterlet, vodka, sable, and also words relating to nature, such as: taiga, tundra, steppe. There is also a large group of Russian borrowings which came into English through Rushian literature of the 19-th century, such as: Narodnik, moujik, duma, zemstvo, volost, ukase and also words which were formed in Russian with Latin roots, such as: nihilist, intelligenzia, Decembrist etc. After the Great October Revolution many new words appeared in Russian connected with the new political system, new culture, and many of them were borrowed into English, such as: collectivization, udarnik, Komsomol and also translation loans, such as: shock worker, collective farm, five-year plan. One more group of Russian borrowings is connected with perestroika, such as: glasnost, nomenklatura, apparatchik.

Homonyms - in case of homonymy the different meanings of words are mutually independent, there is no connection between such words, they have only the same pronunciation and spelling. (son-sun, bear-bear, ear-ear, meet-meat, piece-peace). The classify:1) perfect homonyms (or words identical both in pronunciation, spelling but different in meaning): bear-bear. 2) homographs or heteronyms (identical in spelling but different in sound and meaning):row-row. 3) homophones (words identical in sound but different in spelling and meaning):son-sun, pair-pear. 4) homoforms (different in meaning but identical in some of their grammatical forms): found (find) - to found. Characteristics: Lexical - differ in their lexical meaning but belong to the same part of speech (to lie - to lye); Grammatical - differ in their grammatical meaning and forms if any. They are different grammatical forms of the same word (two sisters /plurality/ - my sister's book /posessivity/. Lexico - grammatical - differ in lex.-gram. meaning that is they belong to different parts of speech. The are partial, but they may be also complete if these parts of speech have no paradigme (nose - knows, may /v./ - May). Sources of hom.: 1) diverging meaning development: story - store, case - case); 2) converging sound development. The coinsidence of the sounding of words is the course of their historical development (seon - see, eazan - eye); 3) borrowings (bark - barque); 4) word - building (pop - pop /popular/).

 

French borrowings

The largest group of borrowings are French. Most of them came into English during the Norman conquest. Fr. influenced not only the vocabulary of English but also its spelling, because documents were written by Fr. scribes as the local population was mainly illiterate. Runic letters remaining in English after the Latin alphabet was borrowed were substituted by Latin letters and combinations of letters, e.g. «v» was introduced for the voiced consonant /v/ instead of «f» in the intervocal position /lufian - love/, the digraph «ch» was introduced to denote the sound /ch/ instead of the letter «c» / chest/ before front vowels where it had been palatalized, the digraph «sh» was introduced instead of the combination «sc» to denote the sound /sh/ /ship/, the digraph «qu» substituted the combination «cw» to denote the combination of sounds /kw/ /queen/, the digraph «ou» was introduced to denote the sound /u:/ /house/. There are the following semantic groups of French borrowings: a) words relating to government: administer, empire, state, government; b) to military affairs: army, war, banner, soldier, battle; c) to jury: advocate, inquest, sentence; d) to fashion: luxury, coat, collar, pleat, embroidery; e) to jewelry: topaz, emerald, ruby, pearl; f) to food and cooking: lunch, dinner, appetite, to roast, to stew. Words were borrowed from French into English after 1650, mainly through French literature, but they were not as numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated. There are the following semantic groups of these borrowings: a) relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatorie, brochure, nuance, piruette, vaudeville; b) to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage, manouvre; c) to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau; d) to food and cooking: ragout, cuisine.

 

AMERICAN ENGLISH

American English begins its history at the beginning of the 17-th century when first English-speaking settlers began to settle on the Atlantic coast of the American continent. The language which they brought from England was the language spoken in England during the reign of Elizabeth the First. In the earliest period the task of Englishmen was to find names for places, animals, plants, customs which they came across on the American continent. They took some of names from languages spoken by the local population - Indians, such as:chipmuck/an American squirrel/, igloo /Escimo dome-shaped hut/, squaw / an Indian woman/, wigwam /an American Indian tent made of skins and bark/. The second period of American English history begins in the 19-th century. Immigrants continued to come from Europe to America. When large groups of immigrants from the same country came to America some of their words were borrowed into English. Italians brought with them a style of cooking which became widely spread and such words as: pizza, spaghetti. From the great number of German-speaking settlers the following words were borrowed: delicatessen, hamburger, noodle, schnitzel. During the second period of A.E. history there appeared quite a number of words and word-groups which were formed in the language due to the new political system, liberation of America from the British colonialism, its independence: USA, assembly, congress, Senate, congressman, President, senator. Besides these political terms many other words were coined in American English in the 19-th century: influential, department store, telegram, telephone. Differences of spelling. a) the delition of the letter «u» in words ending in «our», e.g. honor, favor; b) the delition of the second consonant in words with double consonants, e.g. traveler, wagon, c) the replacement of «re» by «er» in words of French origin, e.g. theater, center, d) the delition of unpronounced endings in words of Romanic origin, e.g. catalog, program, e) the replacement of «ce» by «se» in words of Romanic origin, e.g. defense, offense, d) delition of unpronounced endings in native words, e.g. tho, thro.

 

ANTONYMS

Words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or contradictory notions. (young - old, early - late, good - bad). A. may denote: 1) quality (good - bad), 2) state (clean - dirty, health - illness), 3) manner (quickly - slowly, well - badly), 4) direction (up - down, forward - back), 5) position (top - bottom, here - there), 6) features (tall - short, thick - thin). May be divided: 1) which formed with the help of negative affixes: (unhappy, unimportant, impossible, disappear, misunderstanding, hopeful, hopeless, useful, useless). 2) which are of different roots: (day - light, rich - poor, hot - cold). May also be divided: absolute, phraseological, complex. Absolute: are diametrically opposite in meaning and remain antonyms in any word - combinations. These are mostly found among negative affix - formed antonys: (fruitless - fruitful, happy - unhappy).

 

AFFIXATION

Is one of the most productive ways of word-building throughout the history of English. It consists in adding an affix to the stem of a definite part of speech. Affixation is divided into suffixation and prefixation.

Suffixation. 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).

Prefixation 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-.

 

Polysemy - it is a means of qualitative enrichment of the vocabulary. There are two types of polysemy: 1) radiation, in which the primary meaning is at the centre and secondary meanings come out it like rays (paper - document, wall paper, bills, scientific paper). Secondary meaning may drop out of use and it doesn’t affect the primary meaning. 2) chain in which each secondary meaning depends on the previous one and it intermediate meanings drop out of use, then the first and the last meanings may become homonyms. (game (дичь) - game as an object of huntig - hunting - hunting as entertainment - entertaining game). Each of the meanings of the polysemantic word is called a lexical semantic variant.