40.

The So-called "Degeneration" ("Degradation") and "Elevation" of Meaning

I. "Degeneration" of meaning.

These examples show that the second meaning, in contrast with the one from which it developed,
denotes a person of bad repute or character. Semantically speaking, the second meaning developed a
negative evaluative connotation which was absent in the first meaning.

Such a readjustment in the connotative structure accompanying the process of transference can be
sometimes observed in other parts of speech, and not only in nouns.

E. g. Silly: | happy | > | foolish |

II. "Elevation" of meaning.

Fond: | foolish] > | loving, affectionate |

Nice: | foolish] > | fine, good |

In these two cases the situation is reversed: the first meaning has a negative evaluative connotation, and
the second meaning has not. It is difficult to see what is actually "elevated" here. Certainly, not the
meaning of the word. Here are two more examples.

Tory: | brigand, highwayman | > | member of the Tories |

Knight: | manservant | > |"noble, courageous man]

In the case of Tory, the first meaning has a pronounced negative connotation which is absent in the
second meaning. But why call it "elevation"? Semantically speaking, the first meaning is just as good as
the second, and the difference lies only in the connotative structure.

The case of knight, if treated linguistically, is quite opposite to that of Tory: the second meaning
acquired a positive evaluative connotation that was absent in the first meaning. So, here, once more, we
are faced with a mere readjustment of the connotative components of the word.

There are also some traditional examples of "elevation" in which even this readjustment cannot be
traced.
In these three words the second meaning developed due to the process of transference based on
contiguity. Lord and lady are also examples of narrowing of meaning if we compare the range of the
original and of the resultant meanings. No connotations of evaluation can be observed in either of the
meanings. The fact that in all these three cases the original meaning denoted a humble ordinary person
and the second denotes a person of high rank is absolutely extralinguistic.

All that has been said and the examples that have been given show that the terms "degradation" and
"elevation" of meaning are imprecise and do not seem to be an objective reflection of the semantic
phenomena they describe.

It would be more credible to state that some cases of transference based on contiguity may result in
development or loss of evaluative connotations.
41. Polysemy

Polysemy is certainly not an anomaly. Most English words are polysemantic. It should be noted that the
wealth of expressive resources of a language largely depends on the degree towhich polysemy has
developed in the language. Sometimes people who are not very well informed in linguistic matters claim
that a language is lacking in words if the need arises for the same word to be applied to several different
phenomena. In actual fact, it is exactly the opposite: if each word is found to be capable of conveying,
let us say, at least two concepts instead of one, the expressive potential of the whole vocabulary
increases twofold. Hence, a well-developed polysemy is not a drawback but a great advantage in a
language.

On the other hand, it should be pointed out that the number of sound combinations that human speech
organs can produce is limited. Therefore at a certain stage of language development the production of
new words by morphological means becomes limited, and polysemy becomes increasingly important in
providing the means for enriching the vocabulary. From this, it should be clear that the process of
enriching the vocabulary does not consist merely in adding new words to it, but, also, in the constant
development of polysemy.

The system of meanings of any polysemantic word develops gradually, mostly over the centuries, as
more and more new meanings are either added to old ones, or oust some of them (see Ch. 8). So the
complicated processes of polysemy development involve both the appearance of new meanings and the
loss of old ones. Yet, the general tendency with English vocabulary at the modern stage of its history is
to increase the total number of its meanings and in this way to provide for a quantitative and qualitative
growth of the language's expressive resources.

When analysing the semantic structure of a polysemantic word, it is necessary to distinguish between
two levels of analysis.

On the first level, the semantic structure of a word is treated as a system of meanings. For example, the
semantic structure of the noun fire could be roughly presented by this scheme (only the most frequent
meanings are given):
The above scheme suggests that meaning I holds a kind of dominance over the other meanings
conveying the concept in the most general way whereas meanings П—V are associated with special
circumstances, aspects and instances of the same phenomenon.

Meaning I (generally referred to as the main meaning) presents the centre of the semantic structure of
the word holding it together. It is mainly through meaning I that meanings II—V (they are called
secondary meanings) can be associated with one another, some of them exclusively through meaning I,
as, for instance, meanings IV and V.

It would hardly be possible to establish any logical associations between some of the meanings of the
noun bar except through the main meaning:

Meanings II and III have no logical links with one another whereas each separately is easily associated
with meaning I: meaning II through the traditional barrier dividing a court-room into two parts; meaning
III through the counter serving as a kind of barrier between the customers of a pub and the barman.
42. Homonymy

Homonymy is the relation between words with identical forms but different meanings—that is, the
condition of being homonyms. A stock example is the word bank as it appears in "river bank" and
"savings bank."

Homonyms are illustrated from the various meanings of the word bear (= animal, carry) or ear (of body,
of corn). In these examples, the identity covers both the spoken and written forms, but it is possible to
have partial  homonymy (or heteronymy), where the identity is within a single medium, as
in homophony and homography. When there is ambiguity between homonyms (whether non-deliberate
or contrived, as in riddles and puns), a homonymic clash or conflict is said to have occurred."

"The reason that there is confusion and a lack of clarity over homonym is that it is closely related to two
other words, homograph and homophone. I shall, therefore, define these words first.
 

1. A homograph is a word that is spelt identically to another word but none the less has a different
meaning and probably a different origin. You will doubtless be annoyed if you tear your trousers
while climbing over a fence. Indeed, you may be so upset that you shed a tear. As you can see,
'tear' and 'tear' are spelt identically, but they are pronounced differently and have entirely
different meanings. They are good examples of a homograph. Many homographs are not even
pronounced differently. Thus the word 'hide' sounds exactly the same whether you are talking
about the skin of an animal, a measure of land or the verb meaning to conceal or keep out of
sight.

2. A homophone is a word that sounds exactly like another word, but has a different meaning and
a different spelling. If you stand on the stair and stare at the picture, you have a good example
of a couple of homophones. . . .

It is possible for a word to be a homograph or a homophone. However, whatever the word may be, it is
also, by definition, a homonym. In other words, homonym is a conceptual word that embraces both
homographs and homophones. . . . 
43. Synonymy

A synonym – is a word of similar or identical meaning to one or more words in the same language. All
languages contain synonyms but in English they exist in superabundance.

They’re no two absolutely identical words because connotations, ways of usage, frequency of an
occurrence are different.

Senses of synonyms are identical in respect of central semantic trades but differ in respect of minor
semantic trades.

Classification:

1. Total synonyms

 an extremely rare occurence

 Ulman: “a luxury that language can hardly afford.”

 M. Breal spoke about a law of distribution in the language (words should be synonyms, were
synonyms in the past usually acquire different meanings and are no longer interchangeable).

 Ex.: бегемот – гиппопотам

2. Ideographic synonyms.

 They bear the same idea but not identical in their referential content.

 Ex.: to ascent – to mount – to climb

 To happen – to occur – to befall – to chance

 Look – appearance – complexion – countenance

3. Dialectical synonyms.

 Ex.: lift – elevator

 Queue – line

 Autumn – fall 

4. Contextual synonyms.

 Context can emphasize some certain semantic trades & suppress other semantic trades; words
with different meaning can become synonyms in a certain context.

 Ex.: tasteless – dull

 Active – curious

 Curious – responsive

 Synonyms can reflect social conventions.

 Ex.:
clever bright brainy intelligent Dever-clever

Only speaking
Is not used by the
about younger Positive Stylistically
neutral higher educated
people by older connotation remarked
people
people

5. Stylistic synonyms.

 Belong to different styles.

child Infant Kid

neutral elevated colloquial

To die To kick the bucket

Synonymic condensation is typical of the English language.

It refers to situations when writers or speakers bring together several words with one & the same
meaning to add more conviction, to description more vivid.

Ex.:

 Safe & sound

 Lord & master

 First & foremost

 Safe & secure

 Stress & strain

 By force & violence 

It is deeply rooted in the history of English language

It was customary to use French borrowings together with their native synonyms. They are very often
characterized by alliteration, rhymes, idioms, etc.

Synonymy – the coincidence in the essential meanings of linguistic elements which (at the same time)
usually preserve their differences in connotations and stylistic characteristics.

Synonyms – two or more words belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more
identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable in some contexts. Their distinctive
features can be connotations, stylistic features, distributional or depending on valency. The difference
between some synonyms can be marked for register subject-field, mode, and style (tenor) or their
combinations.

Typology of synonyms:
 - cognitive synonyms – s. which differ in respect of the varieties of discourse in which they
appear; the distinction between such items lies not so much in their inner lexical meaning, but in
the sphere of their actual application or usage, as besides the referential basis (referential
meaning – q.v.) the actual meanings of the words as found in utterances reflect relations which
hold between lexical items within the communicative space, i.e. the functional differentiation of
discourse.

 - contextual/context-dependent synonyms – similar in meaning only under some specific

distributional conditions, when the difference between the meanings of two words is
contextually neutralized: e.g. buy and get;

 - dialectal synonyms – pertaining to different variant of language from dialectal stratification

point of view;

 - functional synonyms – the term is not lexicological proper as it refers to different syntactic
units capable of performing one and the same syntactic function (e.g. Subordinate Object Clause
and Complex Object constructions are functional synonyms;

 - ideographic synonyms – differ in shades of meaning, i.e. between which a semantic different is
statable;

 - stylistic synonyms– are distinguished stylistically, i.e. in all kinds of emotional, expressive and
evaluative overtones without explicitly displaying semantic difference;

 - referential synonyms – a vague term, concerns coreferential expressions, when one

denotatum can be defined differently from different points of view and in different aspects: e.g.
names Walter Scott and the author of 'Ivanhoe' are coreferential because they refer to one and
the same denotatum – Sir Walter Scott;

 - terminological synonyms – two existing terms for one denotatum: e.g. borrowing and loan-
word; concept and notion (the difference between them is not discriminated by some linguists);

 - total synonyms - can replace each other in any given context, without the slightest alteration
in denotative or emotional meaning and connotations (e.g. noun and substantive, functional
affix, flection and inflection); is a rare occasion.
43. Antonymy

Antonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or
contradictory notions.

V.N. Comissarov classified antonyms into two groups: absolute (root) antonyms (late - early) and
derivational antonyms (to please – to displease, honest - dishonest). Absolute antonyms have different
roots and derivational antonyms have the same roots but different affixes. In most cases negative
prefixes form antonyms (un-, dis- non-). Sometimes they are formed by means of antonymous suffixes:
-ful and –less (painful - painless).

The difference between derivational and root antonyms is also in their semantics. Derivational
antonyms express contradictory notions, one of them excludes the other: active-inactive. Absolute
antonyms express contrary notions. If some notions can be arranged in a group of more than two
members, the most distant members of the group will be absolute antonyms: ugly, plain, good-looking,
pretty, beautiful, the antonyms are ugly and beautiful.

Not every word in a language can have antonyms. This type of opposition can be met in qualitative
adjectives and their derivatives: beautiful-ugly, to beautify-to uglify. It can be also met in words denoting
feelings and states: to respect-to scorn, respectful-scornful and in words denoting direction in space and
time: here-there, up-down, before-after.

If a word is polysemantic, it can have several antonyms, e.g. the word bright has the antonyms dim,
dull, sad.
44. Euphemism

A 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. 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.
46. Informal vocabulary
47. Colloquial Words

The colloquial layer of vocabulary can be divided into the following groups: literary colloquial words,
slang, vulgar words, dialectal words.

Literary Colloquial Words

         This group is the nearest to the neutral layer of vocabulary. There is nothing ethically improper in
their stylistic colouring, except that they cannot be used in formal speech. This group of words is
numerous and includes various subgroups.

         a) Colloquial words proper are colloquial synonyms of neutral words – chap, guy (fellow), kid
(child), molly-coddle (effeminate man or boy).

         b) Diminutives of neutral words – daddy, sonny, piggy, pussy. Diminutives of proper names –

Bobby, Becky, etc.

         с) Phonetic variants of neutral words – feller, baccy (tobacco). Phonetic contractions of auxiliary

and modal verbs also belong to this layer – haven’t, mustn’t, can’t.

         d) Words whose primary meaning refers to neutral layer while their figurative meaning refers them
to colloquial layer: pretty (rather), terrific (fine), cool (great), spoon (person with low mentality) – like in
Ukrainian (баклан, чайник); hedgehog (not an animal, but unmanageable person).

         e) Typical for colloquial layer is the wide use of intensifiers which have partially or completely lost
their primary meaning – awfully, terribly, million, hundred. These words are used for emphatic purpose:

                   I am terribly glad to see you.

                   I’ve got a hundred things I want to ask.

         f) Most interjections belong to the colloquial group: Jee! Er? Wow!

         g) Фрази kind of (kinda), sort of are often used to reduce the categorical character of
utterance:  You’ll be sort of working for me now (Hellman).

Colloquial speech is characterized by the wide use of polysemantic words, such as verbs do, have, get.

         I got flu last month. I did not get what you said. 
48. Slang

The Oxford English dictionary defines slang as “language of highly colloquial style considered as below
the level of standard educated speech and consisting either of new words or current words employed in
some special sense”.

  According to the types of creating slang four devices can be singled out: 1) lexical-semantical; 2) lexical-
morphological; 3) borrowings; 4) new formations.

1.     It can be metonymic or metaphoric word (s): chicken (colonel), zebra (helicopter); amelioration of
the meaning – killer (excellent thing), liberate (rob), wolf (seducer – спокусник), or degradation of the
meaning.

2.     It can be created by affixation (nogoodnik, biggie), abbreviation – exes (expenses), P.G. (pregnant),
G. I., telescopy – kidvid (kid’s video).

3.     Borrowings – gelt, shekels (money), dona (woman, sweetheart).

4.     New formations, e.g. rhymed slang – ham and beef (chief), dog and bone (phone)

The psychological reason for appearance and existence of slang is the striving for novelty of expression.
This tendency is especially strong with the younger generation. H.Bradley remarks that it is used
because it’s the wrong word, the different word. Later the slang word can become  common – and it
becomes a colloquial word, sometimes a neutral one. Here are some examples of words which first
appeared as slang, but are quite neutral today: 

         skyscraper, bus, taxi, piano, pub, movies, photo, dandy, mob.    

Actual loss of novelty brings about constant change in slang: words come and go, appear and are
replaced by new ones. Of course, old and new words coexist for a while, which makes slang very rich in
synonyms.
49. Dialect Words

Dialectal words – those words which in the process of integration of the English national language
remain beyond its literary boundaries and their usage is generally confined to a definite locality. When
these words are used in emotive prose they are meant to characterize the speaker as a person of a
certain local origin, breeding and education. Some dialectal words have become familiar in a good and
standard colloquial English and are universally accepted. e.g. lass (Scottish)– beloved girl; lad – young
man; daft – silly mind; fash – trouble; cutty – naughty girl; tittie – sister; hinny – honey; Australian:
brekky – breakfast, mossie – mosquito, Oz – Australia, Pommie – a Britisher, postie – postman. Among
other dialects used for stylistic purposes in literature one should mention Southern dialect
(Somersetshire, in particular). It has a phonetic peculiarity: initial [s] and [f] are voiced and written in the
direct speech as [z] and [v]: e.g. folk – volk, found – vound, see – zee, sinking – zinking. Dialectal words
are only to be found in the style of emotive prose and very rarely in other styles. The unifying tendency
of the literary language is so strong that dialects are doomed to vanish except those which are met in
fiction. Some writers make an unrestrained use of dialects in the effort to color both the narration and
the speech of characters thus making the reading and comprehending difficult. Others - use dialectisms
sparingly, introducing only words understandable to the average intelligent reader.
50. Formal vocabulary

Formal style is restricted to formal situations. Formal words fall into 2 main groups: words associated
with professional communications and so-called learned words which are mainly associated with the
printed page.

51. Learned Words

These words are mainly associated with the printed page. It is in this vocabulary stratum that poetry and
fiction find their main resources.

The term "learned" is not precise and does not adequately describe the exact characteristics of these
words. A somewhat out-of-date term for the same category of words is "bookish", but, as E. Partridge
notes, "'book-learned' and 'bookish' are now uncomplimentary. The corresponding complimentaries are
'erudite', 'learned', 'scholarly'. 'Book-learned' and 'bookish' connote 'ignorant of life', however much
book-learning one may possess".

The term "learned" includes several heterogeneous subdivisions of words. We find here numerous
words that are used in scientific prose and can be identified by their dry, matter-of-fact flavour (e.
g. comprise, compile, experimental, heterogeneous, homogeneous, conclusive, divergent,  etc.).

To this group also belongs so-called "officialese" (cf. with the R. канцеляризмы).  These are the words of
the official, bureaucratic language. E. Partridge in his dictionaryUsage and Abusage  gives a list of
officialese which he thinks should be avoided in speech and in print. Here are some words from
Partridge's list: assist  (for help), endeavour(for try), proceed  (for go), approximately  (for about),
sufficient  (for enough), attired  (for dressed), inquire  (for ask).

What role do learned words play in the language learning and language-teaching process? Should they
be taught? Should they be included in the students' functional and recognition vocabularies?

As far as passive recognition is concerned, the answer is clear: without knowing some learned words, it
is even impossible to read fiction (not to mention scientific articles) or to listen to lectures delivered in
the foreign language.

It is also true that some of these words should be carefully selected and "activized" to become part of
the students' functional vocabulary.
52. Archaic and Obsolete Words
53. Professional Terminology

Hundreds of thousands of words belong to special scientific, professional or trade terminological

systems and are not used or even understood by people outside the particular speciality. Every field of
modern activity has its specialised vocabulary. There is a special medical vocabulary, and similarly
special terminologies for psychology, botany, music, linguistics, teaching methods and many others.

Term,  as traditionally understood, is a word or a word-group which is specifically employed by a

particular branch of science, technology, trade or the arts to convey aconcept peculiar to this particular
activity.

There are several controversial problems in the field of terminology. The first is the puzzling question of
whether a term loses its terminological status when it comes into common usage. Today this is a
frequent occurrence, as various elements of the media of communication (TV, radio, popular magazines,
science fiction, etc.) ply people with scraps of knowledge from different scientific fields, technology and
the arts. It is quite natural that under the circumstances numerous terms pass into general usage
without losing connection with their specific fields.

There are linguists in whose opinion terms are only those words which have retained their exclusiveness
and are not known or recognised outside their specific sphere. From this point of view, words associated
with the medical sphere, such as unit  ("доза лекарственного
препарата"),theatre("операционная"),contact  ("носитель инфекции")are no longer medical terms as
they are in more or less common usage. The same is certainly true about names of diseases or
medicines, with the exception of some rare or recent ones only known to medical men.

There is yet another point of view, according to which any terminological system is supposed to include
all the words and word-groups conveying concept peculiar to a particular branch of knowledge,
regardless of their exclusiveness. Modern research of various terminological systems has shown that
there is no impenetrable wall between terminology and the general language system. To the contrary,
terminologies seem to obey the same rules and laws as other vocabulary strata. Therefore, exchange
between terminological systems and the "common" vocabulary is quite normal, and it would be wrong
to regard a term as something "special" and standing apart.

Two other controversial problems deal with polysemy  andsynonymy.

According to some linguists, an "ideal" term should be monosemantic  (i. e. it should have only one
meaning). Polysemantic  terms may lead to misunderstanding, and that is a serious shortcoming in
professional communication. This requirement seems quite reasonable, yet facts of the language do not
meet it. There are, in actual fact, numerous polysemantic terms. The linguistic term semantics  may
mean both the meaning of a word and the branch of lexicology studying meanings. In the terminology of
painting, the term colour  may denote hue  ("цвет")and, at the same time, stuff used for
colouring("краска").

The same is true about synonymy in terminological systems. There are scholars who insist that terms
should not have synonyms because, consequently, scientists and other specialists would name the same
objects and phenomena in their field by different terms and would not be able to come to any
agreement. This may be true. But, in fact, terms do possess synonyms. In painting, the same
term colour  has several synonyms in both its meanings: hue, shade, tint, tinge  in the first meaning
("цвет")and paint, tint, dye  in the second ("краска").
54. Basic vocabulary

These words are stylistically neutral, and, in this respect, opposed to formal and informal words
described above. Their stylistic neutrality makes it possible to use them in all kinds of situations, both
formal and informal, in verbal and written communication.

Certain of the stylistically marked vocabulary strata are, in a way, exclusive: professional terminology is
used mostly by representatives of the professions; dialects are regional; slang is favoured mostly by the
young and the uneducated. Not so basic vocabulary. These words are used every day, everywhere and
by everybody, regardless of profession, occupation, educational level, age group or geographical
location. These are words without which no human communication would be possible as they denote
objects and phenomena of everyday importance (e. g. house, bread, summer, winter, child, mother,
green, difficult, to go, to stand,  etc.).

The basic vocabulary is the central group of the vocabulary, its historical foundation and living core. That
is why words of this stratum show a considerably greater stability in comparison with words of the other
strata, especially informal.

Basic vocabulary words can be recognised not only by their stylistic neutrality but, also, by entire lack of
other connotations (i. e. attendant meanings). Their meanings are broad, general and directly convey
the concept, without supplying any additional information.

For instance, the verb to walk  means merely "to move from place to place on foot" whereas in the
meanings of its synonymsto stride, to stroll, to trot, to stagger  and others, some additional information
is encoded as they each describe a different manner of walking, a different gait, tempo, purposefulness
or lack of purpose and even length of paces (see Ch. 10). Thus,to walk,  with its direct broad meaning, is
a typical basic vocabulary word, and its synonyms, with their elaborate additional information encoded
in their meanings, belong to the periphery of the vocabulary.

The basic vocabulary and the stylistically marked strata of the vocabulary do not exist independently but
are closely interrelated. Most stylistically marked words have their neutral counterparts in the basic
vocabulary. (Terms are an exception in this respect.) On the other hand, colloquialisms may have their
counterparts among learned words, most slang has counterparts both among colloquialisms and learned
words. Archaisms, naturally, have their modern equivalents at least in some of the other groups.

The table gives some examples of such synonyms belonging to different stylistic strata.

Basic Informal Formal

vocabulary

begin start, get started commence

continue go on, get on proceed

end finish, be through, be terminate

over

child, baby kid, brat, beam  (dial.) infant, babe  (poet.)

55. Ways of replenishment. Neologisms

At the present moment English is developing very swiftly and there is so called neology blowup. The two
greatest influences on the formation, adaptation and use of English words over the last forty years have
been the United States of America and the progress of different branches of science and means of
communication: television, cinema and printed material.

Neologisms can develop in three main ways. a lexical unit existing in the language can change its
meaning to denote a new object or phenomenon. In such cases we have semantic neologisms, e.g. the
word umbrella developed the meanings авиационное прикрытие, политическое прикрытие. A new
lexical unit can develop in the language to denote an object or phenomenon which already has some
lexical unit to denote it. In such cases we have transnomination, e.g. the word slum was first substituted
by the word ghetto, then by the word-group inner town. A new lexical unit can be introduced to denote
a new object or phenomenon. In this case we have a proper neologism, many of them are cases of new
terminology.

1. We can point out the group of neologisms connected with computerization:

a) new words used to denote different types of computers: PC, super-computer, multi-user;

b) new words used to denote parts of computers: hardwear, softwear, monitor, display, key-board;

c) new words used to denote computer languages: BASIC, Algol, FORTRAN;

d) new words used to denote notions connected with work on computers: to blitz out, to computerize,
computerization.

2. In the sphere of liguistics we have such neologisms as: machine translation, interligual and many
others.

3. In the sphere of biometrics we have computerized machines which can recognize characteristic
features of people seeking entrance: finger-print scanner, eye-scanner, voice verification.

4. In the sphere of machine computers we have the following neologism teleminatory unit.

5. With the development of social activities neologisms appeared as well. yuthquake, pussy-footer,
Euromarket, Eurodollar, Europol.

6. In the modern English society there is a tendency to social stratification, as a result there are
phraseologisms in this sphere as well: belonger – представитель среднего класса, приверженец
консервативных взгдядов. There are also abbreviations: muppie (middle-aged urban professional
people), gruppie (grown up …).

7. There are a lot of immigrants now in the UK. As a result neologisms partial and non-partial were
formed.

8. In the language of the teenagers there are the following neologisms: Drugs! (OK!), sweat, branch,
task.

9. With the development of professional jargons a lot of words ending in speak appeared in English:
artspeak, sportspeak, video-speak, cable-speak, education-speak.
10. There are semantic neologisms belonging to everyday life: starter, macrobiotics, longlife milk, fridge-
freezer, hamburgers (food); catsuit, slimster, string (clothing); thongs, backsters (footwear); bumbag,
sling bag, maitre (bags).

56. General Characteristics of the English Language

English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages and is therefore related to most other

languages spoken in Europe and western Asia from Iceland to India. The parent tongue, called Proto-
Indo-European, was spoken about 5,000 years ago by nomads believed to have roamed the southeast
European plains. Germanic, one of the language groups descended from this ancestral speech, is usually
divided by scholars into three regional groups: East (Burgundian, Vandal, and Gothic, all extinct), North
(Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish), and West (German, Dutch [and Flemish], Frisian,
and English). Though closely related to English, German remains far more conservative than English in its
retention of a fairly elaborate system of inflections. Frisian, spoken by the inhabitants of the Dutch
province of Friesland and the islands off the west coast of Schleswig, is the language most nearly related
to Modern English. Icelandic, which has changed little over the last thousand years, is the living language
most nearly resembling Old English in grammatical structure.

Modern English is analytic (i.e., relatively uninflected), whereas Proto-Indo-European, the ancestral

tongue of most of the modern European languages (e.g., German, French, Russian, Greek),
was synthetic, or inflected. During the course of thousands of years, English words have been slowly
simplified from the inflected variable forms found in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Russian, and German, toward
invariable forms, as in Chineseand Vietnamese. The German and Chinese words for the
noun man are exemplary. German has five forms: Mann, Mannes, Manne, Männer, Männern. Chinese
has one form: ren. English stands in between, with four forms: man, man’s, men, men’s. In English, only
nouns, pronouns (as in he, him, his), adjectives (as in big, bigger, biggest), and verbs are inflected.
English is the only European language to employ uninflected adjectives; e.g., the tall man, the tall
woman, compared to Spanish el hombre altoand la mujer alta. As for verbs, if the Modern English
word ride is compared with the corresponding words in Old English and Modern German, it will be
found that English now has only 5 forms (ride, rides, rode, riding, ridden), whereas Old English ridan had
13, and Modern German reiten has 16.

In addition to the simplicity of inflections, English has two other basic characteristics: flexibility of
function and openness of vocabulary.

Flexibility of function has grown over the last five centuries as a consequence of the loss of inflections.
Words formerly distinguished as nouns or verbs by differences in their forms are now often used as both
nouns and verbs. One can speak, for example, of planning a table or tabling a plan, booking a
place or placing a book, lifting a thumb or thumbing a lift. In the other Indo-European languages, apart
from rare exceptions in Scandinavian languages, nouns and verbs are never identical because of the
necessity of separate noun and verb endings. In English, forms for traditional pronouns, adjectives, and
adverbs can also function as nouns; adjectives and adverbs as verbs; and nouns, pronouns, and adverbs
as adjectives. One speaks in English of the Frankfurt Book Fair, but in German one must add the suffix -
er to the place-name and put attributive and noun together as a compound, Frankfurter Buchmesse. In
French one has no choice but to construct a phrase involving the use of two prepositions: Foire du Livre
de Francfort. In English it is now possible to employ a plural noun as adjunct (modifier), as in wages
board and sports editor; or even a conjunctional group, as in prices and incomes policy and parks and
gardens committee. Any word class may alter its function in this way: the ins and outs (prepositions
becoming nouns), no buts (conjunction becoming noun).

Openness of vocabulary implies both free admission of words from other languages and the ready
creation of compounds and derivatives. English adopts (without change) or adapts (with slight change)
any word really needed to name some new object or to denote some new process. Words from more
than 350 languages have entered English in this way. Like French, Spanish, and Russian, English
frequently forms scientific terms from Classical Greek word elements. Although a Germanic language in
its sounds and grammar, the bulk of English vocabulary is in fact Romanceor Classical in origin.

English possesses a system of orthography that does not always accurately reflect the pronunciation of
words; that phenomenon is discussed below in the section Orthography.
57. Lexical Differences of Territorial Variants

There are two types of language territorial varieties: variants and dialects. Regional variants of standard
language are used in large areas as means of oral and written communication: British, American,
Australian and Canadian English. Dialects are varieties of non-standard language used in small localities
for oral communication. The main variants of the English language are British and American. British,
American, Australian and Canadian English cannot be regarded as different languages as they have
essentially the same vocabulary, phonetic and grammar systems. They also cannot be referred to local
dialects: they serve all spheres of verbal communicationand have dialectal differences of their own.

Each regional variant has its phonetic, grammatical and lexical peculiarities. Phonetic differencies
include articulatory-acoustic characteristics and use of some phonemes, peculiar rhythm and intonation.
Grammatical differences consist in the preference of this or that grammatical category or form: the
preference of Past Indefinite to Present Perfect in American English, the formation of the Future Simple
with the auxiliary “will“ for all persons in American English, lexical peculiarities are not very numerous.
These are mainly divergencies in the semantic structure of words and their usage.

58. Local Dialects in the British Isles

There are six groups of English local dialects: Lowland (Scottish), Northern, Western; Midland, Eastern,
Southern. They are used in oral speech by local population. Only the Scottish dialect has its own
literature (R. Burns).

One of the best known dialects of British English is the dialect of London -Cockney. There are some
peculiarities of it: interchange of [v] and [w] – wery vell; interchange of [h] and [´] - ´eart for heart.

As compared with the national literary vocabulary dialectal vocabularies include a limited number of
words. They are mainly names for local customs, social life, natural conditions and farming: laird “landed
proprietor, kirk “church“. Many dialectisms are emotionally coloured: Scot. bonny, daffy. National words
may have a different meaning in dialects: Scot. call (to drive), short (rude). Some affixes are dialectal.
The Irish diminutive suffix –een can be added even to English stems: girleen, squireen. Besides, dialectal
vocabularies do not include scientific or technical terms.
59. History of lexicology

Prestructuralist semantics

Semantics as a linguistic discipline has its beginning in the middle of the 19th century, and
because linguistics at the time was predominantly diachronic, thus lexical semanticswas diachronic too –
it dominated the scene between the years of 1870 and 1930.[6] Diachronic lexical semantics was
interested without a doubt in the change of meaning with predominantly semasiological approach,
taking the notion of meaning in a psychological aspect: lexical meanings were considered to be
psychological entities), thoughts and ideas, and meaning changes are explained as resulting from
psychological processes.

Structuralist and neostructuralist semantics

With the rise of new ideas after the ground break of Saussure's work, prestructuralist diachronic
semantics was considerably criticized for the atomic study of words, the diachronic approach and the
mingle of nonlinguistics spheres of investigation. The study became synchronic, concerned with
semantic structures and narrowly linguistic structures.

Semantic structural relations of lexical entities can be seen in three ways:

 semantic similarity

 lexical relations such as synonymy, antonymy, and hyponymy

 syntagmatic lexical relations were identified

WordNet "is a type of an online electronic lexical database organized on relational principles, which now
comprises nearly 100,000 concepts" as Dirk Geeraerts[7] states it.

Chomskyan school

Followers of Chomskyan generative approach to grammar soon investigated two different types of
semantics, which, unfortunately, clashed in an effusive debate,[8] these were interpretative and
generative semantics.

Cognitive semantics

Cognitive lexical semantics is thought to be most productive of the current approaches.

60. Types of dictionaries

All dictionaries are divided into linguistic and encyclopaedic dictionaries. Encyclopaedic dictionaries
describe different objects, phenomena, people and give some information about them. Linguistic
dictionaries describe vocabulary units, their semantic structure , their origin, their usage. Words are
usually given in the alphabetical order.

Linguistic dictionaries are divided into general and specialized dictionaries. General dictionaries include
explanatory and translation dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include dictionaries of synonyms,
antonyms, collocations, word- frequency, neologisms, slang, pronouncing, etymological, phraseological
and others.

All types of dictionaries can be unilingual if the explanation is given in the same language, bilingual if the
explanation is given in another language and also they can be polylingual. There are a lot of explanatory
dictionaries: NED (New English Dictionary), SOD (Shorter Oxford Dictionary), COD (Concise Oxford
Dictionary). In explanatory dictionaries the entry consists of the spelling, transcription, grammatical
forms, meanings, examples, phraseology.

Translation dictionaries give words and their equivalents in the other language. There are English-
Russian dictionaries by I.R. Galperin (БАРС - Большой Англо-русский Словарь) consisting of two
volumes, by Y. Apresyan (three volumes) and others.

Specialized dictionaries of synonyms are also widely used. There are unilingual dictionaries: A Dictionary
of English Synonyms and Synonymous Expressions by R. Soule, Webster‘s Dictionary of Synonyms. The
best known bilingual dictionary is English Synonyms compiled by Y. Apresyan.

Phraseological dictionaries describe idioms and colloquial phrases, proverbs. Some of them have
examples from literature. The most famous bilingual dictionary of phraseology was compiled by A.V.
Koonin. It consists of one volume and contains a lot of data.

Etymological dictionaries trace present-day words to the oldest forms of these words and forms of these
words in other languages. One of the best etymological dictionaries was compiled by W. Skeat.

Pronouncing dictionaries record only pronunciation. The most famous is D. Jones‘s Pronouncing
Dictionary.

Dictionaries of neologisms are : a four-volume Supplement to NED by Burchfield, Beyond the Dictionary
by Brian Locket, Bloomsary Dictionary of New Words and others.