Personal and Impersonal Passive

Personal Passive simply means that the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence. So every verb that needs an object (transitive verb) can form a personal passive.

Example: They build houses. – Houses are built.

Verbs without an object (intransitive verb) normally cannot form a personal passive sentence (as there is no object that can become the subject of the passive sentence). If you want to use an intransitive verb in passive voice, you need an impersonal construction – therefore this passive is called Impersonal Passive.

Example: he says – it is said

Impersonal Passive is not as common in English as in some other languages (e.g. German, Latin). In English, Impersonal Passive is only possible with verbs of perception (e. g. say, think, know).

Example: They say that women live longer than men. – It is said that women live longer than men.

Although Impersonal Passive is possible here, Personal Passive is more common.

Example: They say that women live longer than men. – Women are said to live longer than men.

The subject of the subordinate clause (women) goes to the beginning of the sentence; the verb of perception is put into passive voice. The rest of the sentence is added using an infinitive construction with 'to' (certain auxiliary verbs and that are dropped).

Sometimes the term Personal Passive is used in English lessons if the indirect object of an active sentence is to become the subject of the passive sentence.

Methods of teaching foreign languages пәні бойынша сұрақтар:

1. Aims, content, principles of teaching foreign language

2. Teaching pronunciation

Teaching Grammar

4. Teaching reading

5.Teaching Listening

Testing

7.Error treatment

8. Planning a lesson

9. Teaching speaking

10. Role-play

11. Teaching Vocabulary

12. Error correction

Developing oral skills

15. Presenting and practicing speaking structures

16. Developing reading skills

17. Developing writing skills.

18. Placement test

19. Diagnostic test

20. Multiple choice test

21. Achievement test

22. Formative assessment

23. Summative assessment

24. Types of test

25. Types of reading

26. Productive skills

27. Nonproductive skills

28. Types of writing

29. Direct methods

30. Communicative approach

 

Lexicology пәні бойынша сұрақтар:

Lexicology is the branch of linguistics.

The Object of Lexicology. Lexicology is a branch of linguistics (the science of language) dealing with the vocabulary of a language. Thus, the literal meaning of the term Lexiсolоgу is ‘the science of the word’. The term vocabulary 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.

Phonetics, for instance, investigating the phonetic structure of language, i.e. its system of phonemes and intonation patterns, 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 and with the patterns after which words are combined into word-groups and sentences.

Lexicology has its own aims and methods of scientific research. Its basic task is a study and systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use. Lexicology is concerned with words, variable word-groups, phraseological units, and with morphemes which make up words.

Distinction is naturally made between General Lexicology and Special Lexicology. General Lexicology is a part of General Linguistics; it is concerned with the study of vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language. Special Lexicology is the Lexicology of a particular language (e.g. English, Kazakh, Turkish, etc.). Special Lexicology is based on the principles worked out and laid down by General Lexicology, a general theory of vocabulary.

The evolution of any vocabulary forms the object of Historical Lexicology. This branch of linguistics discusses the origin of various words, their change and development, and investigates the linguistic and extralinguistic forces modifing their structure, meanibg and usage. Descriptive Lexicology deals with vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development. Thus, there are two approaches in a study of vocabulary units as Diachronic and Synchronic approaches. These two approaches should not be contrasted or set one against the other. They are intrinsically interconnected and interdepended.

 

The etymology of English words

English history is very rich in different types of contacts with other countries, that is why it is very rich in 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 characteristic of borrowings to be non-motivated semantically.

 

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.

 

It is known that the word-stock of the English language is one of the most extendible among other world languages. Each time there appeared a majority new words and word combination enriching the English vocabulary. The process of neologisms depends on various factors, as we had mentioned before – of an inner linguistic rules, and extralinguistic factors.

However, the English word-stock contains an immense number of words of foreign origin. Due to results of some investigators, there is only 30% of the English word-stock has its native English origin and its 70% is borrowed words and word combinations. The term “ borrowing ” is used in linguistics to denote the process of adopting words from other languages and also the result of this process, the language material itself.

The English word-stock was being compiled for a long time since the very early periods of its beginning up to nowadays. We should consider the native English word as of the Anglo-Saxon origin and loan ones from the 1^st, 5^th and 7^th centuries.

As the first borrowings come to the English language from written manuscripts were the Latin scholastic notions; other ones as French origin - during the Norman invasion; and others are Old Norse (as Scandinavian ones). There is a postulate: when two or more nations are close to each other their languages come to so-called interrelation. There one can see the process of adoption of words by one people from their neighbors. As long these nations coexist side by side for so many words and phrases of their languages will insert each other on a mutual base.

 

Words of native origin

For its most part WNO consist of very ancient elements – Indo-European, Germanic and West Germanic cognates.

Almost all words of Anglo-Saxon origin belong to very important semantic groups. They include most of the auxiliary and modal verbs (as shall, will, must, can, may, etc.), pronouns (I, you, he, my, his, who, etc.), prepositions (in, out, on, under, etc.), numerals (one, two, three, four, etc.) and conjunctions (and, but, till, as, etc.). Notional words of Anglo-Saxon origin include such word denoting parts of a human body (head, hand, foot, eyes, etc.), members of a family (mother, farther, brother, sister, son, etc.), natural phenomena and space objects (snow, rain, wind, sun, etc.), animals (horse, cow, sheep, cat, etc.), qualities and properties (old, young, cold, hot, light, dark, etc.).

Here we can mention that some of these words that have common Germanic features as the words of the modern German Language – eins, drei, fier, sechs, sieben, Ich, mein, konnen, unter, Mutter, Bruder, Swister, etc.

Most words of native origin have their great derivational potential and make up large clusters (groups) of derived and compound words in the present-day language. E.g. the word “ wood ” is the basis of the following words as wooden, woody, wooded, woodcraft, woodcutter, and many others. Thus, the most of Anglo-Saxon words are root-words in the process of new words formation.

During its 15 century long history the written English language has so many borrowed words from different languages which were in close contact for that period.

The most numerous and important groups of borrowings in English are formed by Latin borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings and French borrowings. Celtic borrowings are of primary historical importance for the English language. There are also borrowings from Greek, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and other languages.

Translation loans are words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the language but according to the patterns taken from another language by way of literal morpheme-for-morpheme or word-for-word translation, e.g. wall-newspaper.

Semantic borrowing is the expansion of the semantic structure of a word under the influence of a correlated foreign one.

Assimilation is a process of partial or total conformation of a borrowed word to the phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and its lexico-semantic system. Types of assimilation: phonetical, grammatical, lexical, graphic. According to the degree of assimilation borrowings may be subdivided into completely assimilated, partially assimilated and unassimilated loan words (barbarisms).

The change or the corruption of a borrowed word on the basis of fancied analogy with some well-known word or phrase is called folk or false etymology:
Fr cote lette > cut let.

International words are words borrowed from one language into several others simultaneously or at short intervals one after another, e.g. student, balalaika.

Etymological doublets are two or more words of the same language derived originally from the same root but having entered the vocabulary at different periods of time or from different sources, e.g. price – prize – praise.

You can consider the following English words originated from some other languages:

Latin: tabula (table), strata (street), port, wall, alibi, memorandum, vaccine

French: giant, vase, restaurant, zero, empire, state, bureau

Italian: volcano, violoncello, solo, duet, trio, quartet

German: waltz, zinc, iceberg, lobby, rucksack, Kindergarten

Greek: schole (school), kaio (ink), neurosis (nerve), architect,

Hindi: jungle, samosa,

Chinese: Catsup (Ketchup), Feng shui, Kung fu, Nunchaku, soy

Russian: taiga, tundra, steppe, Duma, Komsomol, perestroika

Arabic: algebra, azimuth, caliber, candy, carat, cipher, mohair, safari

The degree of borrowed words assimilation depends on the time of borrowings, the extent to which the word is used in the language and the way of borrowing.