Part two English vocabulary as a system

Chapter 10. Homonyms. Synonyms. Antonyms.......................... 182

§ 10.1 Homonyms...................................................................... 182

§ 10.2 The Origin of Homonyms............................................... 188

§ 10.3 Homonymy Treated Synchronically.................................... 191

§ 10.4 Synonyms....................................................................... 194

§ 10.5 Interchangeability and Substitution................................. 200

§ 10.6 Sources of Synonymy.......................................................... 203

§ 10.7 Euphemisms.................................................................... 207

I 10.8 Lexical Variants and Paronyms........................................ 207

§ 10.9 Antonyms and Conversives............................................. 209

Chapter 11. Lexical Systems........................................................... 216

§ 11.1 The English Vocabulary as an Adaptive System. Neologisms... 216

§ 11.2 Morphological and Lexico-Grammatical Grouping.......... 221

§ 11.3 Thematic and Ideographic Groups. The Theories of Semantic Fields.

Hyponymy.......................................................................... 226

§ 11.4 Terminological Systems...................................................... 229

§ 11.5 The Opposition of Emotionally Coloured and Emotionally Neutral

Vocabulary....................................................................... 233

§ 11.6 Different Types of Non-Semantic Grouping................... 238

Chapter 12. The Opposition of Stylistically Marked and Stylistically Neutral

Words........................................................................... 240

§ 12.1 Functional Styles and Neutral Vocabulary....................... 240

§ 12.2 Functional Styles and Registers........................................... 241

§ 12.3 Learned Words and Official Vocabulary......................... 243

§ 12.4 Poetic Diction.................................................................. 244

§ 12.5 Colloquial Words and Expressions.................................. 245

§ 12.6 Slang............................................................................... 249

Chapter 13. Native Words Versus Loan Words............................ 252

§ 13.1 The Origin of English Words........................................... 252

§ 13.2 Assimilation of Loan Words................................................ 255

§ 13.3 Etymological Doublets......................................................... 259

§ 13.4 International Words......................................................... 260

Chapter 14. Regional Varieties of the English Vocabulary............... 262

§ 14.1 Standard English Variants and Dialects........................... 262

§ 14.2 American English............................................................ 265

§ 14.3 Canadian, Australian and Indian Variants....................... 270

Chapter 15. Lexicography............................................................ 272

§ 15.1 Types of Dictionaries...................................................... 272

§ 15.2 Some of the Main Problems of Lexicography................. 276

§ 15.3 Historical Development of British and American Lexicography.. 281

Conclusion........................................................................................ 286

Recommended Reading............................................................... 289

Subject Index.................................................................................... 293

PREFACE

This book is meant as a textbook in lexicology forming part of the curricula of the Foreign Language faculties in Teachers’ Training Colleges and Universities. It is intended for students, teachers of English, postgraduates and all those who are interested in the English language and its vocabulary.

The main tool throughout the book is the principle of lexical opposition, i.e. the application of N.S. Trubetzkoy’s theory of oppositions to the description of lexical phenomena.

The existence of lexicology as an independent discipline forming part of the curriculum in our Colleges and Universities implies that the majority of Soviet linguists consider words and not morphemes to be the fundamental units of language. Another implication is that I think it possible to show that the vocabulary of every particular language is not a chaos of diversified phenomena but a homogeneous whole, a system constituted by interdependent elements related in certain specific ways.

I have attempted as far as possible to present at least some parts of the material in terms of the theory of sets which in my opinion is a very convenient interpretation for the theory of oppositions. This very modest and elementary introduction of mathematical concepts seems justified for two main reasons: first, because it permits a more general treatment of and a more rigorous approach to mass phenomena, and it is with large masses of data that lexicology has to cope; secondly, there is a pressing need to bridge the gap between the method of presentation in special linguistic magazines and what is offered the student in lectures and textbooks. A traditionally trained linguist is sometimes unable to understand, let alone verify, the relevance of the complicated apparatus introduced into some modern linguistic publications.

On the other hand, it is the linguistic science developed before structuralism and mathematical linguistics, and parallel to them, that forms the basis of our knowledge of lexical phenomena. Much attention is therefore given to the history of linguistic science as it deals with vocabulary.

With the restrictions stated above, I have endeavoured to use standard definitions and accepted terminology, though it was not always easy, there being various different conventions adopted in the existing literature.

The 3rd edition follows the theoretical concepts of the previous books, the main innovation being the stress laid on the features of the vocabulary as an adaptive system ever changing to meet the demands of thought and communication. This adaptive system consists of fuzzy sets, i.e. sets that do not possess sharply defined boundaries. English is growing and changing rapidly: new words, new meanings, new types of lexical units appear incessantly. Bookshelves are bursting with new publications on lexical matters. The size of the manual, however, must not change. To cope with this difficulty I have slightly changed the bias in favour of actual description and reduced the bibliography to naming the authors writing on this or that topic. The student has to become more active and look up these names in catalogues and magazines. The debt of the author of a manual to numerous works of scholarship is heavy whether all the copious notes and references are given or not, so I used footnotes chiefly when quotations seemed appropriate or when it seemed specially important for a student to know about the existence of a book. In this way more space was available for describing the ever changing English vocabulary.

Another departure from the previous patterns lies in a certain additional attention to how the material is perceived by the student: the book is intended to be as clear and memorable as possible.

Lexicology is a science in the making. Its intense growth makes the task of a textbook writer extremely difficult, as many problems are still unsettled and a synthesis of many achievements is a thing of the future. I shall be greatly indebted for all criticism and correction.

My warmest thanks are due to my fellow-philologists who reviewed the two former editions for their valuable advice and suggestions and the interest they have shown in this book, and to all those who helped me with the MS. I would also like to thank Messieurs William Ryan and Colin Right, who went through the MS and suggested improvements in language and style.

I am very grateful to the Department of English Philology of Orenburg Pedagogical Institute and their head prof. N.A. Shekhtman who reviewed this third edition.

I.Arnold
Leningrad, 1986

ABBREVIATIONS

A words belonging in Ch. Fries’s classification to Class III, i. e. adjectives and words that can occupy the position of adjectives

a adjective

adv adverb

AmE American English

COD The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English

Engl English

Germ German

Goth Gothic

Gr Greek

Fr French

IC’s immediate constituents

It Italian

Lat Latin

ME Middle English

ModE Modern English

N words belonging in Ch. Fries’s classification to Class I, i. e. nouns and words that can stand in the same position

n noun

NED New English Dictionary (Oxford)

OE Old English

OED The Oxford English Dictionary

OFr Old French

ON Old North

pl plural

prp preposition

Russ Russian

Scand Scandinavian

sing singular

V words belonging in Ch. Fries’s classification to Class

II, i. e. verbs, except the auxiliaries v verb

LIST OF SYMBOLS

< 'changed from’ or ‘derived from'

> 'changed to’ or ‘becomes'

:: between forms denotes opposition

/ between forms denotes alternation or allophones

* indicates a reconstructed or hypothetical form

→ denotes transformation

<- denotes that transformation is impossible

II cognate to

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 FUNDAMENTALS

THE OBJECT OF LEXICOLOGY

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 a-r y is used to denote the system formed by the sum total of all the words and word equivalents that the language possesses. 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.

Thus, in the word boy the group of sounds [bOI] is associated with the meaning ‘a male child up to the age of 17 or 18’ (also with some other meanings, but this is the most frequent) and with a definite grammatical employment, i.e. it is a noun and thus has a plural form — boys, it is a personal noun and has the Genitive form boy’s (e. g. the boy’s mother), it may be used in certain syntactic functions.

The term word will be discussed at length in chapter 2.

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. This book constitutes an introduction into the study of the present-day English word and vocabulary. It is therefore a book on special lexicology.

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. Much material that holds good for any language is therefore also included, especially with reference to principles, concepts and terms. The illustrative examples are everywhere drawn from the English language as spoken in Great Britain.

A great deal has been written in recent years to provide a theoretical basis on which the vocabularies of different languages can be compared and described. This relatively new branch of study is called contrastive lexicology. Most obviously, we shall be particularly concerned with comparing English and Russian words.

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. In the past historical treatment was always combined with the comparative method. 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. These structures are identified and distinguished by contrasting the nature and arrangement of their elements.

It will, for instance, contrast the word boy with its derivatives: boyhood, boyish, boyishly, etc. It will describe its semantic structure comprising alongside with its most frequent meaning, such variants as ‘a son of any age’, ‘a male servant’, and observe its syntactic functioning and combining possibilities. This word, for instance, can be also used vocatively in such combinations as old boy, my dear boy, and attributively, meaning ‘male’, as in boy-friend.

Lexicology also studies all kinds of semantic grouping and semantic relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, semantic fields, etc.

Meaning relations as a whole are dealt with in semantics — the study of meaning which is relevant both for lexicology and grammar.

The distinction between the two basically different ways in which language may be viewed, the historical or diachronic (Gr dia ‘through’ and chronos ‘time’) and the descriptive or synchronic (Gr syn ‘together’, ‘with’), is a methodological distinction, a difference of approach, artificially separating for the purpose of study what in real language is inseparable, because actually every linguistic structure and system exists in a state of constant development. The distinction between a synchronic and a diachronic approach is due to the Swiss philologist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).¹ Indebted as we are to him for this important dichotomy, we cannot accept either his axiom that synchronic linguistics is concerned with systems and diachronic linguistics with single units or the rigorous separation between the two. Subsequent investigations have shown the possibility and the necessity of introducing the historical point of view into systematic studies of languages.

Language is the reality of thought, and thought develops together

¹ Saussure F. de. Coursde linguistique générale. Paris, 1949.

with the development of society, therefore language and its vocabulary must be studied in the light of social history. Every new phenomenon in human society and in human activity in general, which is of any importance for communication, finds a reflection in vocabulary. A word, through its meaning rendering some notion, is a generalised reflection of reality; it is therefore impossible to understand its development if one is ignorant of the changes in social, political or everyday life, production or science, manners or culture it serves to reflect. These extra-linguistic forces influencing the development of words are considered in historical lexicology. The point may be illustrated by the following example:

Post comes into English through French and Italian from Latin. Low Latin posta — posita fern. p.p. of Latin ponere, posit, v. ‘place’. In the beginning of the 16th century it meant ‘one of a number of men stationed with horses along roads at intervals, their duty being to ride forward with the King’s “packet” or other letters, from stage to stage’. This meaning is now obsolete, because this type of communication is obsolete. The word, however, has become international and denotes the present-day system of carrying and delivering letters and parcels. Its synonym mail, mostly used in America, is an ellipsis from a mail of letters, i.e. ‘a bag of letters’. It comes from Old French male (modern malle) ‘bag’, a word of Germanic origin. Thus, the etymological meaning of mail is ‘a bag or a packet of letters or dispatches for conveyance by post’. Another synonym of bag is sack which shows a different meaning development. Sack is a large bag of coarse cloth, the verb to sack ‘dismiss from service’ comes from the expression to get the sack, which probably rose from the habit of craftsmen of old times, who on getting a job took their own tools to the works; when they left or were dismissed they were given a sack to carry away the tools.

In this connection it should be emphasised that the social nature of language and its vocabulary is not limited to the social essence of extra-linguistic factors influencing their development from without. Language being a means of communication the social essence is intrinsic to the language itself. Whole groups of speakers, for example, must coincide in a deviation, if it is to result in linguistic change.

The branch of linguistics, dealing with causal relations between the way the language works and develops, on the one hand, and the facts of social life, on the other, is termed sociolinguistics. Some scholars use this term in a narrower sense, and maintain that it is the analysis of speech behaviour in small social groups that is the focal point of sociolinguistic analysis. A. D. Schweitzer has proved that such microsociological approach alone cannot give a complete picture of the sociology of language. It should be combined with the study of such macrosociological factors as the effect of mass media, the system of education, language planning, etc. An analysis of the social stratification of languages takes into account the stratification of society as a whole.

Although the important distinction between a diachronic and a synchronic, a linguistic and an extralinguistic approach must always

be borne in mind, yet it is of paramount importance for the student to take into consideration that in language reality all the aspects are interdependent and cannot be understood one without the other. Every linguistic investigation must strike a reasonable balance between them.

The lexicology of present-day English, therefore, although having aims of its own, different from those of its historical counterpart, cannot be divorced from the latter. In what follows not only the present status of the English vocabulary is discussed: the description would have been sadly incomplete if we did not pay attention to the historical aspect of the problem — the ways and tendencies of vocabulary development.

Being aware of the difference between the synchronic approach involving also social and place variations, and diachronic approach we shall not tear them asunder, and, although concentrating mainly on the present state of the English vocabulary, we shall also have to consider its development. Much yet remains to be done in elucidating the complex problems and principles of this process before we can present a complete and accurate picture of the English vocabulary as a system, with specific peculiarities of its own, constantly developing and conditioned by the history of the English people and the structure of the language.