Characteristic features of the modern English vocabulary.

The volume of the English vocabulary and its use, the total vocabulary of Modern English and the individual vocabulary. The changes in the vocabulary and their causes.

The total vocabulary of modern English is immense. It contains more than half a million words & set expressions. The latest edition of the dictionary contains 615.000 words (Oxford English Dictionary). But that is only part of the total. No one knows the entire vocabulary. 4/5^th of the vocabulary of English has a highly restricted character. The individual vocabulary of educated people comprises about 40.000 words. Of these, not all the words of equally importance. An average member of speech community uses 4 or 5.000 frequently accruing words. The number depends on person’s education, occupation, age, region and social background.

The exact number of words in modern English cannot be stayed with certainty for a number of reasons:

- The English vocabulary comprises not only words, but phraseological units (fall ill, give up)

- Words formed by means of conversion (e-mail, to e-mail)

- Besides, in English there are a lot of polysemantic words and homonyms (smart clothes, a smart answer, smart wine)

- Word variants, abbreviations (doc, exam, BBC)

- Besides, there are a lot of archaic words. They are dropped out the general use, but they are found in poetry, literature.

- Borrowings (perestroika, dejavu)

- Neologisms & occasional words (goodwillnik, super-man)

- Terms, names of plants & animals (there are over a million of insects, each has its name, so…)

- Regional dialectisms, slang & vulgar words (pie-eyed, money-mad)

- Proper names (geographical names, names of people)

Language as a product of human society changes with the change of society, it is in constant state of evolution. The vocabulary of a language is most sensitive to changes and never remains stable. The changes in the vocabulary are due to linguistic or extralinguistic causes, or to a combination of both. The extralinguistic causes are determined by the social nature of the language. By extralinguistic causes we mean historical events and changes of the life of society (social, economic, political, cultural) which are inevitably reflected spoken by their society. By linguistic causes we mean different relations between the words in the vocabulary and rearrangement of these relations.

The main changes that take place in the English vocabulary under the influence of linguistic and extralinguistic causes are the following:

- new words may be formed in the language with the help of word-building means, e.g. webcam, to text, to instant message, to channel-surf, sexism (discrimination), ageism etc.

- new words may be borrowed from other languages, e.g. perestroika, dejavu.

- some words may grow absolute and drop out of the language, they become archaic, as thou - you, sooth - truth, main - ocean/sea, troth - faith, twain - two.

- some other words become historical words because the notions they express are no longer related to the life of the people today, e.g. hoopskirt (кринолин), catapult, mail (кольчуга), vizor (забрало), halberd (алебарда).

- some words drop out of the language because they are ousted by synonyms which may be borrowed from other languages or created in the English languages, e.g. the old English word ‘ niman ’ was ousted by the Scandinavian borrowing ‘ to take ’.

- some words may develop their semantic structure and become polysemantic, e.g. the word ‘ earth ’ which has the meaning ‘ land ’ acquire the new meaning ‘ planet ’.

- the semantic structure of other words may split, as a result, more homonyms may appear in the language, e.g. the following homonyms originated from different meanings of the same word as a result of split polysemy, e.g.

board 1) a long and thin piece of timber;

2) daily meals, especially provided for you when you pay to stay somewhere (e.g. room and board);

3) a group of people who direct or supervise some activity, e.g. a board of directors, an examination board.

As it follows the English vocabulary system is dynamic, it is in the process of constant change and development.

 

The role of borrowing, polysemy and homonymy in English. The systematic character of the English vocabulary, different groupings of English words.

The English vocabulary, like a vocabulary of any other language is a system of words. There are 2 main types of relations b/w words: syntagmatic & paradigmatic.

Syntagmatic relations are linear relationships of words in connected speech. Syntagmatic relations are built b/w words.

Paradigmatic relations are the relations b/w words within the vocabulary as a system.

The systematic character of the English vocabulary can be proved by the possibility of classifying words in various ways:

1) Acc. to their meaning syntactical function & morphological characteristics, words are traditionally subdivided into lexico-gr. classes, which fall into: notional words & form words.

Notional words include: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.

Form words include: pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, link-verbs.

Notional words constitute the bulk of the vocabulary. They make up about 93% of the whole vocabulary. Form words make up about 7%, but the form words are the most frequent words in English.

The first 15 words in order of frequency are: the, be, of, and, a, in, to, have, it, for, I, that, you, he, on.

2) Words can be divided into native & borrowed words, acc. to their origin.

3) All words are divided into monosemantic & polysemantic, acc. to their ability to have more than 1 meaning.

4) Acc. to their morphological structure all words are divided into: root words (consist of only 1 morpheme – about 18%), derived words (consist of 1 root & some affixes – about 67%), compound words (consist of 2 or more roots & some affixes – about 15%).

5) Acc. to paradigmatic relations, most of words may be grouped of synonyms, antonyms, homonyms.

6) Words can form lexico-semantic groups are small groups of words belonging to the same part of speech & linked by common concept.

E.g. strong - mighty - powerful / weak - feeble - powerless (lexico-semantic groups of quality of strength & weakness).

7) Semantic fields consist of words which have some common semantic component in their meaning. This component may be called the common denominator of meaning. Semantic fields are clusters of related words. These words can belong to different parts of speech.

E.g. there may be the semantic field of space – surface - extend - spread - spacious - vast.

8) Besides, words form thematic groups. Thematic groups are words joined together by common associations. They refer to one sphere of reality. Thematic grouping is based on the co-occurrence of words in certain repeatedly used contexts. E.g. education/ medical care/ traveling, etc.