A I TRODUCTIO TO E GLISH LEXICOLOGY Course book for the 1st year English students enrolled in the long-distance programme

Elena Buja

2010

Introduction
This course in English lexicology is the second stept in Contemporary English Language and is meant to present some of the most relevant aspects related to the vocabulary of the language. We start by introducing some basic terms concerning the structure of the lexicon and of the lexical items. Then, we approach the treasure of the English vocabulary both diachronically, pinpointing the languages from which English borrowed extensively during the three main periods of its evolution, and synchronically, presenting the lexicon not as a closed set of items, but as a network of productive processes (such as word-formation, metaphor and metonymy). Last but not least, we shall investigate the lexical strata in Contemporary English, focusing on Colloquial English. Aims of the course The course aims, first of all, at familiarizing students with the elements of the English lexicon, pointing out that the vocabulary of the English language is made up of both diachronic and synchronic layers. Going then deeper, it will help students find out what means of enriching one languages lexicon there are. Further on, students will be offered an insight in the constituent elements of the English words, i.e. their form, as well as their meaning, drawing their attention upon the fact that the latter is subject to changes in various directions, and due to various factors. Additionally, students will be shown what kinds of relations can be established among words on the basis of their meanings. Finally, a brief incursion in the most appropriate lexical items for specific registers will be made. Competences By the end of the course, the student should have an awareness of the internal structure of words and of the systematic relationships among words in English have a basic understanding of the history of the English language, with particular reference to the major periods of vocabulary expansion that it has undergone and how those periods are reflected in the modern lexicon understand some basic principles of language change that have affected the English language, including principles of sound change and meaning change

 know the basic stock of Classical roots and affixes that recurrently appear in English words; be able to interpret newly encountered words incorporating elements of that stock be familiar with a wide range of words and their origins, meanings, and domains of use; be able to apply the knowledge gained so as to be able to say something about the origin and/or meaning of unfamiliar words understand how the study of words can be used as an access point into knowledge and history of an entire culture, and be able to further pursue such knowledge via the study of words have a good working knowledge of the incredibly rich lexical resources available in the English language, providing a basis for increased mastery of the spoken and written language Resources For this course you may need: access to the internet as you will have to send your assignments by e-mail. You will also have to access online dictionaries in order to solve some of the tasks contained in the units; a good English monolingual dictionary. a whole bunch of MOTIVATIO

Structure of the course - The material is structured in 10 units, each of them being covered in about 21/2 hours. - The students will have to write 3 assignments, which will be handed in as follows: -assignment 1 after unit 5; -assignment 2 after unit 7; -assignment 3 after unit 10. - The assignments should be handed in in a printed form. To be on the safe side, students should also send them via e-mail. The teachers feedback on the students work will be provided by mail. Prerequisites

In order to fully grasp the material contained in this course, students should have some basic knowledge of linguistics.

Disciplines the material in this course contributes to Knowledge of lexicology will prove useful in approaching other subjects such as semantics, morphology, stylistics, or pragmatics, as there is no clearcut border between these branches of linguistics. Average time for individual study Each unit could be covered by the students in about 2 or 4 hours, depending on the length of the material and on the evaluation test.

Evaluation The final mark will consist of: the mark in the end-of term examination: 55% - the mark obtained for the three assignments: 45%. (each assignment represents 15% of the final mark).

Contents
Preliminary questionnaire.......................................................................................................... 9 Unit 1 Lexicology: definition and object.................................................................................. 10 1.1. Introduction........................................................................................................... 10 1.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 10 1.3. Lexicology: definition ............................................................................................ 10 1.4. The structure of the English lexicon ...................................................................... 11 1.5. Early studies in lexicology ..................................................................................... 17 1.6. Relation of lexicology to other branches of linguistics.......................................... 18 1.7. Summary .............................................................................................................. 19 1.8. Evaluation test........................................................................................................ 19 Unit 2 Lexical units: structure and classification ................................................................... 20 2.1. Introduction............................................................................................................ 20 2.2 Competences ........................................................................................................... 20 2.3. Definition and classification of lexical units ......................................................... 20 2.4. Roots, stems, bases, and affixes ............................................................................. 24 2.5. Words vs. phrases .................................................................................................. 27 2.6. Summary ................................................................................................................ 28 2.7. Evaluation .............................................................................................................. 28 Unit 3 The diachronic approach to the English vocabulary: the Old English period. ............ 31 3.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 31 3.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 31 3.3. Why English .......................................................................................................... 32 3.4. The diachronic approach ....................................................................................... 32 3.4.1. Old English ........................................................................................................ 35 3.4.1.1. The Old English vocabulary ............................................................................ 36 3.4.1.2. Means of enriching the English vocabulary ................................................... 37 3.4.1.2.1. Word-building ............................................................................................... 37 A. Affixation ...................................................................................................... 37 A. 1. Suffixation............................................................................................ 37 A. 2. Prefixation .......................................................................................... 37 B. Composition ................................................................................................... 38 3.4.1.2.2. Borrowings.................................................................................................... 38 A. Celtic loan words............................................................................................. 38 B. Latin loan words ............................................................................................. 39 C. Scandinavian loan words ................................................................................ 41 5

3.5. Summary ................................................................................................................ 44 3.6. Evaluation.......................................................................................................... 44 Unit 4 The diachronic approach to the English vocabulary: the Middle English period ....... 46 4.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 46 4.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 46 4.3. Middle English: Introduction ................................................................................ 46 4.4. French borrowings................................................................................................. 48 4.5. Latin borrowings ................................................................................................... 52 4.6 .Greek borrowings .................................................................................................. 53 4.7. Flemish and Dutch borrowings ............................................................................ 55 4.8. Arabic borrowings ................................................................................................. 55 4.9. Summary ................................................................................................................ 56 4.10. Evaluation ............................................................................................................ 56 Unit 5 The diachronic approach to the English vocabulary: the Modern English period ..... 57 5.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 57 5.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 57 5.3. The Modern English Period: Introduction ........................................................... 57 5.4. Latin and Greek borrowings.................................................................................. 58 5.5. French borrowings ................................................................................................ 61 5.6. Italian borrowings ................................................................................................. 62 5.7. Spanish and Portuguese loan-words .................................................................... 63 5.8. Dutch borrowings .................................................................................................. 63 5.9. German borrowings ............................................................................................... 64 5.10. Indian borrowings................................................................................................ 65 5.11. Borrowings from other languages ...................................................................... 65 5.12. Summary .............................................................................................................. 66 5.13. Evaluation ........................................................................................................... 67 Homework I................................................................................................................... 68 Unit 6 The synchronic approach to the English vocabulary ................................................... 69 6.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 69 6.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 69 6.3. Introduction to the unit .......................................................................................... 69 6.4. Region .................................................................................................................... 71 6.5. Education and social standing............................................................................... 73 6.6. Subject matter ........................................................................................................ 73 6.7. Medium ................................................................................................................. 74 6.8. Attitude................................................................................................................... 76 6.9. Interference ......................................................................................................... 77

6.10. Summary .............................................................................................................. 77 6.11. Evaluation 78 Unit 7 Word-formation rules .................................................................................................. 80 7.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 80 7.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 80 7.3. Affixation ............................................................................................................... 81 7.3.1. Prefixes ............................................................................................................... 81 7.3.1. 1. Class-changing prefixes.................................................................................. 82 7.3.1.2. Class-preserving prefixes................................................................................. 82 7.3.2. Suffixes ................................................................................................................ 88 7.3.2.1. oun-forming suffixes...................................................................................... 88 7.3.2.2. Verb-forming suffixes....................................................................................... 89 7.3.2.3. Adjective-forming suffixes................................................................................ 90 7.3.2.4. Adverb-forming suffixes .................................................................................. 92 7.4. Composition ........................................................................................................... 93 7.5. Conversion (zero-derivation)................................................................................. 96 7.6. Clipping.................................................................................................................. 98 7.7. Blending ............................................................................................................... 100 7.8. Abbreviation......................................................................................................... 102 7.9. Reduplication ....................................................................................................... 104 7.10. Eponymous words .............................................................................................. 105 7.11. Deliberate coinages ........................................................................................... 106 7.12. Summary ............................................................................................................ 107 7.13. Evaluation .......................................................................................................... 107 Homework II .............................................................................................................. 110 Unit 8 Meaning ...................................................................................................................... 111 8.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 111 8.2. Competences ........................................................................................................ 111 8.3. The linguistic sign ............................................................................................... 112 8.3.1. Models of the linguistic sign ............................................................................. 112 8.4. The meaning of linguistic signs............................................................................ 114 8.5. Causes of changes of meaning ............................................................................. 114 8.6. Directions in which changes of meaning occur .................................................. 118 8.6.1. Extension of meaning........................................................................................ 118 8.6.2. arrowing of meaning ...................................................................................... 119 8.6.3. Degradation of meaning ................................................................................... 120 8.6.6. Elevation of meaning ........................................................................................ 122 8.7. Summary .............................................................................................................. 123

8.8. Evaluation ........................................................................................................... 123 Unit 9 Semantic relations ...................................................................................................... 125 9.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 125 9.2. Competences ........................................................................................................ 125 9.3. Incompatibility .................................................................................................... 127 9.4. Antonymy.............................................................................................................. 128 9.5. Hyponymy (meaning inclusion) ........................................................................... 131 9.6. Synonymy ............................................................................................................. 132 9.7. Homonymy and Polysemy ................................................................................... 136 9.8. Summary .............................................................................................................. 138 9.9. Evaluation ........................................................................................................... 138 Unit 10 Lexical strata in Contemporary English .................................................................. 143 10.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 143 10.2. Competences ...................................................................................................... 143 10.3. Diachronic lexical strata .................................................................................. 144 10.3.1. Archaisms........................................................................................................ 144 10.3.2. eologisms ..................................................................................................... 146 10.4. Synchronic lexical strata.................................................................................... 149 10.4.1. Technical words ............................................................................................. 150 10.4.2. Slang ............................................................................................................... 151 10.4.2. 1.Sociolinguistic aspects of slang ................................................................... 152 10.4.2.2. Cant.............................................................................................................. 154 10.4.2.3. Argot ............................................................................................................ 154 10.4.2.4. Jargon .......................................................................................................... 155 10.4.3. Vulgar terms.................................................................................................... 156 10.4.4. Dialecticisms................................................................................................... 156 10.5. Summary ............................................................................................................ 157 10.6. Evaluation ......................................................................................................... 157 10.7. Homework ........................................................................................................... 159 Bibliography........................................................................................................................... 161

Questionnaire
This short questionnaire is meant to check what you know about lexicology. Choose the correct answer for the following statements: 1. Lexicology is a) a sub-branch of linguistics b) an independent science c) a sub-branch of morphology d) a sister of semantics. 2. Lexicology deals with: a) the study of the meaning of words; b) the study of the form of words; c) the evolution of the meaning of words; d) the study of the meaning and form of words. 3. Lexicology is related to: a) semantics; b) phonology; c) morphology; d) pragmatics. 4. A lexical item is a) a word b) a set of words c) a phrase d) none of these. 5. The word down-towner is: a) a compound b) an abbreviation; c) a derived compound d) an eponymous word. 6. The relationship that holds between enemy and foe is called: a) synonymy; b) antonymy; c) hyponymy; d) polysemy. 7. In the development of the English languages, words: a) have preserved their original meaning; b) have changed their original meaning; c) some have preserved their original meaning, whereas other have changed it. 8. The vocabulary of the English language contains: a) words from a large number of languages; b) mainly Celtic words; c) more Latin and Greek terms than Germanic terms; d) mainly French terms.

Unit 1. LEXICOLOGY: DEFI ITIO A D OBJECT

Contents 1.1. Introduction........................................................................................................... 10 1.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 10 1.3. Lexicology: definition ............................................................................................ 10 1.4. The structure of the English lexicon ...................................................................... 11 1.5. Early studies in lexicology ..................................................................................... 17 1.6. Relation of lexicology to other branches of linguistics.......................................... 18 1.7. Summary .............................................................................................................. 19 1.8. Evaluation test........................................................................................................ 19

1.1. Introduction In this unit we shall introduce the basic terms related to lexicology and we shall place lexicology in the domain of linguistics and show its relations to other branches of linguistics. At the same time, some of the major methods of linguistic analysis will be presented.

1.2. Competences After having read this chapter, the students should be able to distinguish between the structure of the lexicon and the structure of lexical items, to identify types of lexical structures.

Time envisaged for covering Unit 1: 2 hours.

1.3. Lexicology: a possible definition Surprisingly enough, the term lexicology is not to be found in most medium-sized dictionaries and in various handbooks (e.g. LYONS: 1977) and English grammars. Only lexicography, explained as dictionary-making or the writing and making of dictionaries, is usually mentioned. Apparently this situation is now changing. Lexicology might be defined as

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the study of the lexicon or lexis (specified as the vocabulary or total stock of words of a language). The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1987) has the following entry: lexicology ... n [U] tech the study of the meaning and uses of words. What is most important, however, is that in lexicology the stock of words or lexical items is not simply regarded as a list of isolated elements. Lexicologists try to find out generalizations and regularities and especially consider relations between elements. Lexicology is therefore concerned with structures, not with a mere agglomeration of words.

1.4. The structure of the English lexicon In what sense can we say that the lexicon of English is structured, or has structure? What does the term lexicon mean in the technical sense in which it is used here? Why do we not simply speak of the vocabulary of English? What does one understand by lexical structure? Lexicon is defined in the LDCE 1978 as a dictionary, esp. of an ancient language and in the CONCISE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (COD) -1976 as dictionary, esp. of Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, or Arabic; (fig.) vocabulary of a person, of a language, of a branch of knowledge, etc. Obviously, the first definition is rather narrow and does not cover the way the term lexicon has been used so far. The second part of the definition in the COD comes close to it; the first part, containing the synonym dictionary, is not of much use. We need to point out that both terms, lexicon and dictionary have been used as technical terms in the literature, and there is no single correct use of lexicon or dictionary. In what follows, the term lexicon will be used in two senses that are not always sharply distinguished: a) for a metalinguistic level, or a sub-component in a linguistic model (basically compatible with a variety of theories of language); To illustrate this sense, we shall rely on the classical structuralist model in Ullmanns Principles of Structural Semantics (1957:39), in which lexicology has a certain position. It is certainly true that lexicology must include both the study of individual words and their structure and the overall structure of the vocabulary as a whole. At the same time, it cannot be described from a purely formal point of view, without considering semantic aspects and relations.

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Phonology

Lexicology

Diachronic Syntax Synchronic Morphology Semantics

Figure 1.1. Ullmanns linguistic model.

In this linguistic model, lexicology, as the discipline concerned with lexis (Gk. word) or the lexicon (Gk. inventory of words), is represented as a level between phonology and syntax. All three levels, phonology, lexicology, and syntax are subsystems of the entire language system. They may be described at a particular point in time, i.e. synchronically, or in their historical evolution, i.e. diachronically. Phonology, which is concerned with the sound system of the language, has a formal, but not semantic aspect. Lexicology has both a morphological and a semantic dimension, and both may be regarded from a diachronic or a synchronic point of view. The same holds for syntax, which is concerned with larger linguistic units. b) in the sense of vocabulary as seen from a systematic, synchronic point of view. This second sense of the term lexicon focuses on the systematic and synchronic description of the vocabulary of English. Here the focus is on the etymological heterogeneity of the English language, on the problem of mixing of languages with its causes and consequences, and on the specific forms of the English vocabulary and its stratification. According to Ernst Leisi (1985), contemporary English is a unique mixture of Germanic and Romance elements and this mixing has resulted in the international character of the vocabulary. Its great richness allows for finer differentiation in comparison with other languages. For example, the German word Tier corresponds to either animal or beast in English. Wagen can be rendered by a series of English translations, such as car, cart, carriage and chariot. Clearly, the structure of the vocabulary is different in both languages. This is also true for the negative consequences of the mixing of languages. 12

It is certainly true that all languages are mixtures to a greater or lesser extent. Presentday English is unique in this respect. A brief look at the various historical strata may perhaps be in order here. Through cultural contact with the Romans, partly already on the Continent, and also through the influence of Christianity, a very early stratum of Latin-Greek words entered the language. This origin is no longer felt by the normal speaker today in words such as dish, cheese, mint, pound, and devil. The same holds for some Scandinavian words from about the 10th century that today belong to the central core of the vocabulary. This means that their frequency is very high. The stratum contains such words as they, them, their, sky, skin, skull, ill, die, cast and take. A more radical change and profound influence on the English vocabulary occurred in the wake of the Norman Conquest of 1066. Until the 15th century a great number of French words was adopted that belonged especially to the areas of court, state, law, and church. The influx was strongest before 1400 but continued up to the 17th century. More details related to the historical strata will be presented in chapter 3. Apart from the various historical strata, the English vocabulary also presents synchronic stratification. The following represents a traditional synchronic survey of the structure of the English vocabulary based on a diagram given in the introduction to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED, 1973:X).

FOREIGN

AI

TE

N CH

SL AN

Figure 1.2. Synchronic survey of the structure of the English vocabulary.

The representation starts out from the assumption that the vocabulary of English contains a large central area, which is common to all media, styles, and social classes. This concept of common English, symbolized by COMMON, is equivalent, with respect to the

SC
IC

IE NT
AL

IF IC

written

COMM ON
spoken

m edium

DI

AL

EC

TA

VU LG AR

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lexicon, to the common core which is present in all varieties of English. The editors of the SOED label this central area, which contains words like come, father, chair, good, bad, very, common English. Above and below we have the neighbouring areas of literary and colloquial. Connected with these in a radial manner are further areas of the vocabulary, which are also related to each other in content, according to the opinion of the editors of the abovementioned dictionary. The literary vocabulary contains scientific, foreign and archaic words, such as Weltanschauung and blas. The transition from other literary words such as firmament, similitude, whence, whither to the outer areas is gradual and fluid. On the other side, the colloquial vocabulary contains dialectal and vulgar elements, as well as words from slang and technical language. We should add that the term slang is often used for special languages of specific groups, e.g. in army slang, public school slang, navy slang, RAF slang. There are, thus, no clear boundaries between slang in this sense and technical language. It is true that all categories used in this diagram have no sharp boundaries. Thus, colloquial, slang and vulgar cannot be precisely and unambiguously defined. In the diagram they are close neighbours and the areas of vocabulary denoted by them merge and interpenetrate. The radial lines connect the peripheral and the central areas of the vocabulary. The further we get to the periphery, the more we depart from the common vocabulary of common English. The synchronic lexical strata will be discussed in details in chapter 8. Although it is true that, historically speaking, the vocabulary of a language is an accumulation of words, this is not merely a list of items. It is certainly possible to make a number of important generalizations. The lexicon is not simply an inventory of unconnected, isolated elements, but it definitely has a structure. There are various types of relations and connections between the elements (paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations) and we may establish (at least partial) regularities and recognize clear, if partly incomplete, patterns. If we consider language as a system of signs, or, following Saussure, as a structure of independent elements, then we may distinguish at least two types of structure in the lexicon: external (to the word) and internal structure. Full words may substitute for each other, i.e. be in opposition, or they may combine with each other. Such paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations constitute the external structure. We may look at the internal structure of lexical items, which are either morphologically complex (such as compounds, or prefixal and suffixal derivatives), or simple. In the last case, although there is no superficial, morphological regularity visible, we may, nevertheless find and postulate underlying semantic structure. 14

Let us now linger for a while on an example of the general treatment of lexical structure, which is not restricted to the vocabulary of English. The model has been adopted from Coseriu (1970) (quoted in Lipka, 1990:11), who basically proposes the following:

Lexical Structures

a) paradigmatic (oppositional)

b) syntagmatic (combinatorial)

primary

secondary

solidarities [collocation]

word-field word class

word-formation (compounding & derivation)

Figure 1.3 Coserius model for describing and analysing lexical structure.

Paradigmatic structures comprise words that can be substituted for each other in a specific slot in a sentence. They necessarily belong to the same syntactic class. Syntagmatic structures (which Coseriu labels solidarities) comprise the relationships between words, which are systematically and conventionally combined in a sentence. Primary paradigmatic structures cover word-fields. These are structures consisting of lexical items that share a common zone of meaning and are in direct opposition to each other (e.g. the field of furniture objects). Secondary paradigmatic structures comprise the traditional field of word formation. Let us now have a closer look at the fundamental distinction between paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships in the lexicon. The distinction basically derives from the linear nature of the linguistic substance. This linearity goes back to the fact that speech sounds follow each other in time. Successive linguistic elements that are combined are called syntagma or syntagm. Elements that are in opposition or contrast in the same position in a syntagm are said to be in a paradigmatic relationship. One can also say that they can be substituted for each other and form a paradigm. The different relationships and the resulting

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two dimensions may be illustrated with the following example adopted from David Crystal (1985:163): Example 1 He can she may I will go tomorrow syntagmatic relationships

come soon ask next paradigmatic relationships

you could sleep now

This example only shows syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations between words, i.e. between full linguistic signs. But these relations also obtain between smaller linguistic units such as morphemes and phonemes, as well as between higher units, such as clauses and sentences, as illustrated below: Example 2 pit /i/ On the phonological level, the English phonemes /i/, /e/, / / and pet /e/ pot // pat // // stand in paradigmatic relation, since they may be substituted for each other.

On the lexical level the distinction can be illustrated as in example 3 below:

Example 3 the old man the tall man the nice woman

The adjectives old, tall, nice as well as the nouns man and woman are in a paradigmatic relationship. The article, the adjective and the noun, however, are syntagmatically related in all three cases.

The next example shows that two (or more) sentences can be paradigmatically related (i.e. one can replace the other) in different styles. Example 4 a. They cast stones at the police. (formal)

b. They

chucked stones at the cops. (slang) 16

The relation between the italicized verbs and nouns marked by vertical arrows is paradigmatic; the relation between the verbs and the nouns in both sentences, however, is a syntagmatic one.

Summary of the structure of the lexicon paradigmatic

1. structure of the lexicon (external) syntagmatic

relations

lexical structure (and relations) complex (morphological) 2. structure of lexical items (internal) simple (semantic) items

1.5. Early studies in lexicology The first important studies of English lexicology may be traced back to the middle of the 19 century, when Richard Chevenix Trench (1807 1866) delivered a series of lectures to students. These lectures appeared in two volumes entitled On the Study of Words (1850) and English Past and Present (1855). He was mainly interested in what is now termed the semantic evolution of English words. He started basically from the statement of an American poet, Ralph Emerson, who said that language is fossil poetry. R. Chevenix added something to this statement, namely that language may be and is fossil poetry, bur it may be affirmed of it, with exactly the same truth that it is fossil ethics or fossil history; words quite often embody facts of history.
th

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1.6. Relations of lexicology to other branches of linguistics Though linguistics has its own definite range of problems, there is a close relation between lexicology, grammar, phonetics and stylistics. a) Lexicology & phonetics: word-formation gives numerous examples of separable compounds generated by shifting the stress. Thus, `greenhouse (a building, chiefly of glass, with controlled temperature, used for cultivating plants), a compound with stress on the first element will differ in meaning from green `house (a house painted green), a free combination of words in which the second element bears primary stress. b) Lexicology & grammar: the points of contact between vocabulary and grammar are very numerous and varied. Grammar is not indifferent to the lexical meaning of words, and the lexical meaning of words is very often signaled by the grammatical context in which it occurs: the plural can serve to form special lexical meanings: damage = injury glass = hard, brittle, transparent substance spirit = the general meaning of something damages = compensation glasses = spectacles; spirits = alcoholic drinks; state of mind

lexical meaning of the direct object may change the meaning of the verb: to strike the table to lay an egg to grow potatoes vs. vs. vs. to strike a bargain to lay the table to grow a beard

the syntactic position of a word can change both its function and its lexical meaning: girl-school vs. schoolgirl window-shop.

shop-window vs.

c) Lexicology & stylistics: this relation reveals itself in the selection among linguistic units. The selection of lexical units adapted to style and purpose is a factor of great significance in the act of communication, and every language register has its own lexical means: Example The knight mounted his stallion. (in historical writings) The child climbed his gee-gee. (in children narrative) *The knight mounted his gee-gee (stylistically improper).

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In brief, every word is a complex unit containing semantic, phonetic and grammatical elements. At the same time, every word presents a special availability as to the register/style in which it is being used. Let's remember... Lexicology is a sub-branch of linguistics that is related to most of the other subbranches, such as phonetics, morphology, and stylistics, as all of them deal with words from various perspectives.

1.7. Summary This unit has defined lexicology and has shown its relationship to other branches of linguistics. We have also tackeld the syntagmatic and paradigmatic structures words contribute to. Whereas in this unit we have presented words as being whole entities, in the following unit we shall investigate the internal structure of words, i.e we shall break them down into their structural and semantic constituents.

1.8. Evaluation 1. Both lexicology and semantics deal with words and their meaning. What, in your opinion, is the difference between these two branches of linguistics? 2. How is lexicology related to phonology and syntax? Give examples. 3. What are paradigmatic structures and syntagmatic structures? Give examples for each type of structure. 4. Analyze the way in which the lexical environment affects the meaning of the lexical item 'high' in the following examples. Try to give some distributional formulae. a) The Tower of London is not very high. b) One day, a high official came to my place. c) The driver changed into a high gear. d) Prices are very high nowadays. e) Yesterday the wind was very high. f) He drove fast along the highway. g) She seems to speak in a high tone.

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Unit 2. LEXICAL U ITS: STRUCTURE A D CLASSIFICATIO

Contents 2.1. Introduction............................................................................................................ 20 2.2 Competences ........................................................................................................... 20 2.3. Definition and classification of lexical units ......................................................... 20 2.4. Roots, stems, bases, and affixes ............................................................................. 24 2.5. Words vs. phrases .................................................................................................. 27 2.6. Summary ................................................................................................................ 28 2.7. Evaluation .............................................................................................................. 28 2.1. Introduction This unit aims at presenting some problems related to word identification and definition. We shall also show the differences between lexical and grammatical morphemes, and give a classification of both types of morphemes. Finally, we will make an attempt at classifying words.

2.2. Competences Having covered the material in this unit, the students will be able to identify the types of morphemes in complex words, to determine the order in which morphemes combine in order to form complex words, to make the distinction between roots and stems, and to distinguish between complex lexemes and phrases.

Average time for covering this unit: 2 hours

2.3. Definition and classification of lexical units In the previous chapter we defined lexicology as the study of the meaning and uses of words. But what is a word? The definition of the word has been, for a long time, a major problem for linguistic theory because, no matter how the term word is defined, there are some items in some languages which speakers of those languages call words, but which are not covered by the

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definition. Despite the difficulties in providing a definition of a word, there are good reasons for operating with such a notion. The first of these is that speakers of a language, even illiterate speakers, have a feeling for what is, or is not, a word. There are other reasons for assuming that the word has some kind of linguistic reality. As Mathews (1972, quoted in Bauer, 1991:8) points out, morphological conditioning, when it occurs, takes place within the words. So, for example, irregular plural forms in English are determined by the word in question, and only occur with that word: thus, the only word in English that makes its plural by adding en is ox, but this en does not affect markers of plurality anywhere else in a sentence in which it occurs. Another argument is that the ordering of elements within a word is frequently independent of, and even compulsorily different from, the ordering of strings of words: for example, in English the genitive can be marked by 's or by a separate word of; while 's is a part of a word and comes after the possessor (the planes wings), of, a separate word, comes before the possessor (the wings of the plane). The same point can be made with respect to the comparative of the adjectives in English: when the comparative is marked by a separate word more, this comes in front of the adjective being compared (more curious), but when it is marked by er, this comes at the end of the adjective being compared (curiouser). All these factors argue for there being a unit, which might be termed a 'word'. Here are some definitions of the term word: -word: a unit of expression which has universal intuitive recognition by NATIVE SPEAKERS, in both spoken and written language (Crystal, 1991: 379); -word: a linguistic form that can meaningfully be spoken in isolation; -word: an element of human speech to which meaning is attached, which is apt to be used grammatically and which can be understood by a human collectivity constituted in a historical community. There are several difficulties in arriving at a consistent use of the term in relation to other categories of linguistic description, and in the comparison of languages of different structural types. These problems relate mainly to word identification and definition. They include, for example, decisions over word boundaries (e.g. is a unit such as washing machine two words, or is it one, to be written washing-machine?), as well as decisions over status (e.g. is the a word in the same sense as is chair?). Regular definitions of words as units of meaning, or ideas are of no help, because of the vagueness of such notions as idea. As a result, several theoretical distinctions have been made.

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Lets remember A word is defined as an element of human speech to which meaning is attached, which is apt to be used grammatically and which can be understood by a human collectivity constituted in a historical community.

Three main senses of word are usually distinguished (though terminology varies). (1) Words are the physical definable units which one encounters in a stretch of writing (bounded by spaces) or speech (where identification is more difficult, but where there may be PHONOLOGICAL clues to identify boundaries, such as a PAUSE, or JUNCTURE features). Word in this sense is often referred to as the orthographic word (for writing), or the phonological word (for speech). A neutral term often used to subsume both is word form. (2) There is a more abstract sense, referring to the common factor underlying the set of forms which are plainly VARIANTS of the same unit, such as walk, walks, walking, walked. The 'underlying' word unit is often referred to as a lexeme. Lexemes are the units of VOCABULARY, and as such would be listed in a dictionary. (3) This, then, leaves the need for a comparably abstract unit to be set up to show how words work in the GRAMMAR of a language, and word, without qualification, is usually reserved for this role (alternatively, one may spell out this implication, referring to MORPHEMIC/ MORPHOSYNTACTIC/ GRAMMATICAL word, though the latter has an alternative sense). A word, then, is a grammatical unit, of the same theoretical kind as MORPHEME and SENTENCE. In a hierarchical model of analysis, sentences (clauses, etc.) consist of words, and words consist of morphemes (minimally, one free morpheme). Let us illustrate the three senses of the term word on the basis of an example: Example SHOOT shooting, shoots, shot {shoot}, {ing}, {s} {preterite} (lexeme) (word forms of the lexeme SHOOT) (morphemes free & bound)

The example above emphasizes further distinctions in the description of morphemes. Thus, morphemes can be divided into two great classes, namely into: - lexical morphemes (also called semantic morphemes): these are morphemes which, through affixation help in the formation of new words; they can be either class-changing or class-preserving morphemes, e.g. from count (verb) to counter (noun) or recount (verb);

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- grammatical morphemes (also called functional) like -ing in working or ed in wanted; they perform a grammatical function in that they help in the formation of new wordforms. In spite of the fact that there are difficulties with definition and overlap in some areas, the two large classes can be characterized on the basis of certain features or attributes in the following way: lexical morphemes denote (particular) extralinguistic objects & states of affairs: events, situations, relations. grammatical morphemes denote: - (general) grammatical functions: e.g. plural, tense. - syntactic relations: concord of gender, number. open class (set). precede grammatical morphemes (in Germanic languages) combination (with other lexical morphemes) often restricted result of combination: new lexemes forms. WORD-FORMATION INFLECTION closed class (inventory) follow lexical morphemes (in Germanic languages) combination (with other lexical morphemes)relatively unrestricted result of combination: word-

It is customary to refer to the combination of lexical and grammatical morphemes with the term inflection. On the other hand the combination of lexical morphemes with each other is usually labelled word-formation. It is sometimes difficult to draw the distinction between lexical and grammatical morphemes, because there are borderline cases and the limits of an individual morpheme may be vague or fuzzy (e.g. ic /-al / -er). Furthermore, it may be hard to assign a single specific meaning to a particular constant form (e.g. -er in worker and longer). But basically, the distinction is sound and useful and can be easily made in most cases. The two large groups of morphemes can be further sub-classified on the basis of other criteria. First and foremost, morphemes may occur either alone or independently (e.g. sun, beach, on), or in conjunction with others. This leads to the distinction between free and bound morphemes. Free morphemes are such items as sun, flower, man, day, etc. Bound morphemes, in their turn, are of 4 types: - suffixes: -ment, -ish, -ly, etc.; 23

- prefixes: anti-, un-, mis-, etc.; - bound bases: -sist (in consist, insist, resist, persist), -ceive (in conceive, receive, deceive, perceive,), -tain (in pertain, contain, retain), -duce (in adduce, produce, induce, reduce), -mit (in remit, demit, commit, transmit, submit, admit) and -sume (in resume, consume, presume, subsume. These examples suggest stems like sist, -duce, -ceive, -tain which do not exist formally and are not easy to characterize semantically, unless one takes into account the Latin component of the English morphology. - blocked morphemes, such as Fri in Friday or cran in cranberry.

Lets remember A word can consist of: -a minimum free morpheme: dog, sun, go; -a free morpheme + a bound morpheme: sunny (sun+y), bookish (book+ish); -a union of free morphemes: sun+shine, book+worm; -a series of bound forms: re+tain, per+ceive. Words have meanings or lexical values. Generally speaking, we divide words from this point of view into: -content words (open-class items): they carry full lexical values; they are open in the sense that they are indefinitely extendable. This class of words includes verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs. The class is open to the penetration of new verbs, adverbs, adjectives and adverbs into the language, which makes it difficult to keep pace with the ongoing process of lexical acquisition and formation. -function words (closed-class items): they have incomplete lexical values. They just point out relations. This is the case of prepositions, conjunctions, and articles. They are closed in the sense that they hardly allow any new lexical production, i.e. they are non-creative. Identify the constituent morphemes of the following words: a) impoverish b) anticipative c) anticlimatical 2.4. Roots, stems, bases and affixes On the basis of their constituent elements, lexical items can be classified into roots, stems, bases and affixes. The first three terms are used in the literature to designate that part of a word that remains when all affixes have been removed. 24 d) utilitarianism e) catchword f) impermeability

A root is a form which is not further analysable, either in terms of derivational or inflectional morphology. It is that part of a word-form that remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed. A root is the basic part always present in a lexeme. In the form untouchables, for example, the root is touch, to which first the suffix able, then the prefix un-, and finally the suffix s have been added.

...un

touch ......able

In a compound word like sunflower there are two roots, sun and flower. A stem is of concern only when dealing with inflectional morphology. It may be but need not be complex, either in that it contains derivational affixes (as does govern + ment) or in that it contains more than one root (as does red + skin). Inflectional (but not derivational) affixes are added to it: it is that part of the word-form which remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed. In the form untouchables, the stem is untouchable, although in the form touched the stem is touch; in the form sunflowers, the stem is sunflower, even though the stem contains two roots. A base is any form to which affixes of any kind can be added. This means that any root or stem can be termed a base, but the set of bases is not exhausted by the union of the set of roots and the set of stems: a derivationally analysable form to which derivational affixes are added can only be referred to as a base. That is, touchable can act as a base for prefixation to give untouchable, but in this process touchable could not be referred to as a root because it is analysable in terms of derivational morphology, nor as a stem since it is not the adding of inflectional affixes which is in question. In the following figures this terminology is applied to the various stages in the build-up of the word-form untouchables, to show how it is used:

unanalysable root (or base)

(derivational) suffix

touch Figure 2.1.

able

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derivational prefix

analysable base

un Figure 2.2.

touchable

stem (or base)

inflectional suffix

untouchable Figure 2.3.

root, stem or base

inflectional suffix

.touch. Figure 2.5.

ed

Make a similar analysis of the word (the) indomitables. Affixes are bound morphs that always appear with a base. Affixes can be divided into: -prefixes: bound forms attached before a base; they alter the meaning and sometimes they also alter the morphological status of the word; e.g. dislike, becalm (calm = adj; becalm = verb); -suffixes: bound forms attached after the base, functioning as derivative or inflectional elements. They modify the meaning and often enough the morphological status of the newly formed word, as well: e.g. freedom, peaceful, latinize. The criteria for defining and distinguishing morphemes can be summed up by the following diagram:

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Lets remember
morphemes

1. lexical (semantic) morphemes (open class)

2. grammatical (functional) morphemes (closed inventory) 2.1. free (function words) 2.2.bound (inflectional) -s ED ING (e.g. Plural) (e.g. Past) (Progressive)

1.1. free

1.2. bound (affixes)

{TABLE} {WRITE} {GREEN}

{THE} {AND} {TO}

1.2.1.

1.2.2.

1.2.3.

1.2.4. blocked morphemes {FRI }day {CRAN}berry INFLECTION (morphology in narrow sense)

prefixes suffixes bound bases {RE-} {-ISH} {-CEIVE}

{DIS-} {-LY} .{-TAIN} {UN-} {-MENT}{-DUCE}

Word-formation (complex lexemes)

Declension

Conjugation

2.5. Words vs. phrases From the point of view of their structure words (lexical units) can be classified into: a) simple and complex words A word is termed as simple when it cannot be decomposed into other morphemes (e.g. cat, book, smoke); it is termed complex when it can be decomposed into other morphemes (free or/and bound) (e.g. sun+flower, smoke+er). Phrasal verbs (i.e. verbs + particle) also belong to this group. b) phrases The interpretation of the term phrase is often misleading. In lexicology, it stands for a wordcombination discharging the functions specific of a certain lexical category. The following examples illustrate the difference between complex constructions and phrases. Complex lexemes -complex verbs: to leave alone, to break loose; -complex adverbs: now and then, here and there, to and fro;

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-complex prepositions: because of, due to; -complex conjunctions: as though, as if. Phrases -prepositional phrases: in the middle of; -verbal phrases: to come to ones senses, to do ones best; -adverbial phrases: side by side, arm in arm: -conjunctional phrases: no matter how. As seen above, a phrase necessarily contains a noun or a noun equivalent (middle, senses, side, matter), a verb (do, come), a modifying adjective/adverb in its structure (one or more content words, i.e. words of full lexical value).

Complete the following with the suitable words: An Adj P (adjectival phrase) consists of ............ and a possible .............. . An .......................consists of an adverb and a ................... . A PP (prepositional phrase) consists of a noun phrase and a .................... 2.6. Summary Summary This unit has taken us deeper into the study of words. We have seen that the term word is pretty vague or unclear; and that in order to get a clearer picture we have to consider the elements that make up the so-called words. Thus, we may have a number of word forms that contain the same lexeme (ixxxx), but which differ in the number and type of morphemes attached to the simplest form. The unit has also shown that the English language has the capacity of building complex words and that each element in the hierarchy has a certain denomination (root, stem, base). This distinction is particularly important for a further chapter in this material, namely chapter 7 dedicated to word-formation rules, but it will also help students understand how the English words were built in the older times and the way they have changed their forms in time. 2.7. Evaluation 1. Divide the following words into the component morphemes. Use hyphens and the traditional spelling, according to the model: MODEL: enlighten en - light - en a) dishearten f) vertebrally b) burlesquely g) downtowner c) dishonestly h) telescopic 28

d) undeceivable e) wholesaler

i) sanitize j) volubility

2. Divide the words into their constituent morphemes, specifying the nature of each morpheme, according to the model. MODEL: impersonalism: im- = prefix, person = noun stem, -al = suffix, -ism = suffix a) foolishly i) glove maker b) multinational j) trans-European c) deepen k) vulgarism d) rosy l) non-didactic e) beautify m) preconceivable f) industrialization n) post-modernism g) ex-president o) overdone h) impressionism p) underestimated 3. Analyse the following words in terms of roots, stems, lexical suffixes, grammatical suffixes and prefixes. Indicate the order in which morphemes appear within words. MODEL: disagreements a) agree = root; -ment = lexical (derivational) suffix; -s = grammatical (inflectional) suffix; dis- = prefix; disagreement = stem; b) agree + -ment; dis- + agreement; disagreement + -s. uneatable, productiveness, transformational, indecipherability 4. Some derived words consist of an affix attached to a root which is itself a word, i.e. a free morpheme (e.g. (i)). In other cases the stem is a bound morpheme (e.g.(ii)). (i) Word + affix [[read]V er]N (ii) Root + affix [[electris]Aity]N (the root electric- never appears as a word on its own). For each of the nine relationships given below provide two affixes (prefixes or suffixes) which express that category relationship. Choose your affixes such that one attaches to free morpheme roots and the other to bound morpheme roots. For each affix give at least 2 words containing that affix with the given function. This means that you have to provide 18 affixes and 36 words. NV VN AN NA VA AV NN VV AA (Hint: try looking through a book or newspaper and analysing all the words you suspect of being derivationally complex). 5. Take a dictionary of English and collect all the words beginning with im- / in-. Check whether im- / in- is a morpheme for each of your words. For instance, comparing input with output, you should conclude that in- is a morpheme, whereas it should seem considerably harder to find evidence that in- is a morpheme in inane. a) How many distinct (homonymous) im-/ in- are there? b) Why is input misspelled (as imput) so often?

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6. Consider carefully the words in (a -c). To what extent do the words in a given list contain the same morpheme? a) analysis, anabasis, anachronism, analogy, anaconda, anabaptist, anarchy, anarak. b) nominal, nominate, gnomic, nomic, nomenclature, noun. c) pedal, peduncle, pediform, p(a)ederast, p(a)edagogue, peddle, pedant. 7. What do AdjP, AdvP and PP have in common?

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Unit 3. The diachronic approach to the English vocabulary: the Old English period
Contents 3.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 31 3.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 31 3.3. Why English .......................................................................................................... 32 3.4. The diachronic approach ....................................................................................... 32 3.4.1. Old English ........................................................................................................ 35 3.4.1.1. The Old English vocabulary ............................................................................ 36 3.4.1.2. Means of enriching the English vocabulary ................................................... 37 3.4.1.2.1. Word-building ............................................................................................... 37 A. Affixation ...................................................................................................... 37 A. 1. Suffixation............................................................................................ 37 A. 2. Prefixation .......................................................................................... 37 B. Composition ................................................................................................... 38 3.4.1.2.2. Borrowings.................................................................................................... 38 A. Celtic loan words............................................................................................. 38 B. Latin loan words ............................................................................................. 39 C. Scandinavian loan words ................................................................................ 41 3.5. Summary ................................................................................................................ 44 3.6. Evaluation .............................................................................................................. 44 3.1. Introduction Unit 3 presents some major events in the history of Britain and the ways in which these influenced the development of the English language, especially in the field of vocabulary. We shall investigate the three main periods in the development of English, and the foreign words the English language borrowed from various languages it came in contact with during each period. Our focus in this unit will be the first period in the development of English, i.e. the Old English period.

3.2. Competences After having covered the material in this chapter, the students should be able to identify the words of foreign origin in the English language, to mention the period in which the respective words penetrated the English language, as well as to

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read and interpret some texts within the socio-historical framework when they were written. Average time for covering this unit: 2 hours

3.3. Why English? What exactly entitles English to claim for a lingua franca status? Since linguists have already identified richer (hence more expressive) and better grammatically structured languages, it is obvious that neither the linguistic, nor the aesthetic arguments would make a satisfactory plea. The most realistic explanation lies in the contemporary evolution of the political, economic and demographic phenomena throughout the world, which dictate the linguistic priorities, and ultimately establish the hard currency in the field of human inter-relations. Considering the above-mentioned criteria, what explicitly emerges about English is that, be it a native, a second or a foreign language, it always appears as prominent or at least pre-eminent among other international languages, such as French, German or Spanish. The how's and the whys of this social and linguistic reality fall beyond our scope; nevertheless, it is noteworthy that in the meandering course of history English shouldered its way through challenging influences of German and especially French, the irrefutable linguistic embodiment of the worlds spiritual life. A comprehensive account of the complex, century-old process of the making of a language could be properly carried out only by submitting the English language as a whole to the crossfire of two approaches, i.e. the diachronic and the synchronic ones.

3.4. The Diachronic Approach We now look at the way the English language has changed over the centuries, from the days when it first arrived in Britain to its current status as a world language. This will help us get a picture of the evolution of the language, its main characteristics, its relation to other languages, the ways it has enriched its vocabulary, and the social and historical pressures which affected the language. English has its source in the large Indo-European family of languages, and it is therefore related to most of the other languages of Europe and Western Asia from India to Iceland, and to this vast region we must add Australia and New Zealand on the east, North and South

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America on the west, and parts of Africa on the south. These languages, nearly or distantly related, all derive and descend from that parent language the hypothetical language now referred to as Indo-European or Aryan which must have been spoken about five thousand years ago by a people or peoples living in a relatively limited geographical area. For a long time, this area was believed to have been in Asia, but in the 20th century, linguistic, archeological and anthropological research has disfirmed this idea, tending to prove that the Indo-European home was in Europe, probably in its central or south-eastern part. The Indo-European family is composed of the following main branches of languages: Indian, Iranian, Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Hellenic, Albanian, Armenian, Hittite and Tokharian. Most of them have a number of subdivisions, generally referred to as groups of languages. The Germanic languages, in their turn, fall into three groups: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic, the latter being further divided into High German and Low German. English together with Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, Modern Low German and Afrikaans belong to the Low German sub-branch of Germanic languages. The Indo-European Languages have two main common characteristics: a. an inflectional structure, i.e. a grammatical system based on changes in the forms of words by means of endings and vowel modifications, for indicating case, number, mood, tense, etc.; b. a common word-stock, i.e. words that resemble one another in form and meaning (e.g. Greek nuktos, Latin noctis, French nuit, Italian notte, Spanish noche, Romanian noapte, German acht, English night, etc.) This common word-stock includes the names of parts of the body, like arm, ear, eye, tooth, heart, foot, nail, natural phenomena, like wind, snow, thunder, dew, animals: cow, goat, goose, mouse, ox, plants, the numerals from one to ten, etc. Words denoting the closest family relationships, father, mother, brother, sister, son and daughter also go back to the parent language. Try to find the equivalent for the word brother in a number of languages. What conclusion can you draw concerning the forms you have encountered? The changes in the evolution of any language cannot be other than gradual and continuous. The English language has been growing and changing for the past 1500 years. In its uninterrupted evolution, it has been passing from insignificant quantitative changes to obvious, fundamental qualitative changes. Each period merges by very slight gradations into

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another. Within the steady development of English, three main periods are to be distinguished, each of them having certain broad characteristics. Naturally, the transition from the first to the second and from the second to the third was a very slow one, but certain conventional dividing lines had to be adopted, and certain approximated dates agreed upon. They are the following: -Old English (OE) from about 450 (the first Germanic invasions) or, according to certain linguists, 700 (the approximate date of the first available texts) to about 1100. -Middle English (MidE) from about 1100 to about 1500, and -Modern English (ModE) - from about the 1500 to the present time. It may be subdivided into: -Early Modern English (16th 17th century); -Late Modern English (17th 18th century); -Modern English Period proper (from the 18th century onwards). Old English is generally referred to as the period of full endings or full inflections, Middle English as the period of levelled endings or levelled inflections, and Modern English as the period of lost endings or lost inflections. The evolution of the inflectional system in English entitles us to say that Old English was a synthetical language (i.e. one in which the relations between words are expressed by inflections), whereas Modern English is an analytical language (i.e. one in which such relations are expressed by form words and word order). From Indo-European to Modern English by way of Common Germanic, West Germanic, Old English and Middle English, the English language has shown a gradual process of simplification and of the breaking of inflections. The development has been in one direction all the time: from synthesis to analysis. There have been both gain and loss. Lets remember English belongs to the Indo-European languages; it stems from the Western Low branch of the Germanic branch of languages of IndoEuropean; In its evolution, the English language has lost most of the inflections encountered in its beginnings; it turned from a synthetical into an analytical language. The study of the English language is divided into 2 periods: Old English, Middle English and Modern English, each of these periods having its characteristics.

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3.4.1. Old English (450 - 1100)

Certain movements or events stand out in the history of English: the settlement in the island of Jutes, Saxons and Angles in the fifth and sixth centuries; the coming of St. Augustine in 597 and the subsequent conversion of England to Latin Christianity; the Scandinavian invasions in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries; the Norman Conquest in the eleventh; the revival of learning in the sixteenth; and the migration of English speaking people to North America, Australia, and South Africa mainly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Of all these movements the first was clearly the most decisive. Our knowledge of it is derived from The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which was written in Latin by the Venerable Bede about 730, nearly three centuries after the first Jutes landed in the Isle of Thanet in 449. Bede drew a fairly clear picture of the settlement of Britain by these three related nations or tribes: the Jutes, who came first and settled in Kent, Southern Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight, the Saxons, who afterwards occupied the rest of England south of the Thames, and then the Angles or English, who founded homes in regions north of the Thames. These tribes came from the regions now known as the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. The invaders were first called Saxons, but Latin writers later began to refer to them as Angles (Angli), regardless of which tribe they belonged to. Until around AD 1000, the nation was called Angelcynn (i.e. nation of the Angles, Angle-race). After that date Englaland (land of the Angles) was used to denote collectively the Germanic peoples in Britain: Angles, Saxons and Jutes alike. The language was always referred to as Englisc (the sc spelling was used for the sound sh), and this has led to the modern name. During those early centuries, the name Anglo-Saxon did not exist. This label began to be used after the Renaissance, when it referred to all aspects of the period people, culture, and language. It is still the usual way of talking about the cultural history, but since the nineteenth century, when the history of languages came to be studied in detail, Old English has been preferred for the name of the language. This name emphasizes the continuing development of the language from the Anglo-Saxon times through Middle English to the present day. So, do we call the language Old English or Anglo-Saxon? If we want to stress the continuity, the points of similarity between the modern and older periods of the language, we will use the first term. If we want to stress the contrast between Anglo-Saxon and present-day culture, and the linguistic differences, we will use the second.

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Before the Anglo-Saxon invasions, the language of Britain was Celtic, spoken in many dialects by people who had themselves invaded the islands several centuries before. Many Celtic tribes had in turn been subjugated by the Romans, who invaded the island in 44 B.C., but it is not known just how much Latin if any was spoken in daily life in the province. When the Roman legions left, in the early fifth century, the only permanent linguistic sign of their presence proved to be the place names of some of their major settlements such as the towns ending in chester (derived from the Latin word for camp, castra). The linguistic effects of the Anglo-Saxon wars were just as clear-cut. Many Celtic communities were destroyed, assimilated, or gradually pushed back westwards and northwards, into the areas we now know as Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria, and perhaps also Scotland. Here the Celtic dialects were to develop in separate ways, resulting in such modern languages as Welsh and Gaelic. We do not know if many Celts stayed in the east and south, but if they did, they would soon have lost their identity within the dominant Anglo-Saxon society. One thing is clear: the Celtic language of Roman Britain had hardly any influence on the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons. Only a handful of Celtic words came into English at the time, as we shall see later on in this chapter. Lets remember The Old English period is marked by a number of historical events: the invasion of the Anglo-Saxon tribes (the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons) in the 5th and 6th cent,. the conversion of the British people to Latin Christianity at the end of the 6th century, the invasion of the Scandinavian trives (the Normans and the Danes) between the 8th and the 10th cent., and the Norman (French) invasion at the end of the period. Each of these influenced the English vocabulary .

3.4.1.1. The Old English Vocabulary Referring to the Old English vocabulary as a whole, it should be pointed out that it included: a. words also existing in other Indo-European languages: mother, father, night; b. words found only in the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages: earth, land, sand, sea, to sleep (slaepan), to die (steorfan), etc.; c. specifically English words (not to be found in any other language): clipian (to call, to speak). They are very few in number. The sum of these linguistic assets stands for the OE native words whereas all the foreign influences have been regarded as loan-words, irrespective of their degree of 36

assimilation into the OE vocabulary. Old English should be regarded as consisting of a basic Anglo-Saxon word-stock plus several foreign sources which contributed to the general mass of the vocabulary with fully or partially assimilated words.

3.4.1.2. Means of Enriching the Vocabulary in Old English The principal means of enriching the vocabulary in Old English were word building and borrowing.

3.4.1.2.1. WORD BUILDI G The two main types of word building were affixation and composition. A. Affixation A.1. Suffixes: noun-forming suffixes: Example 1 -ere was generally used to form masculine nouns denoting professions, e.g. fiscere (fisher), writere (writer); -estre was used for feminine nouns denoting professions, e.g. spinnestre (woman who spins); adjective-forming suffixes: Example 2 -iZ was used to form adjectives from nouns and from adjectives, e.g. mistiZ from mist; -en served to form adjectives from nouns, with vowel-interchange, e.g. Zylden (golden) from Zold (gold), wyllen (woolen) from wulle (wool); -full was used to build adjectives from nouns, e.g. carfull (careful), sorZfull (sorrowful), synnfull (sinful); -lic was used to form adjectives from nouns and adjectives, e.g. eorlic (earthly), frondlic (friendly), luftic (lovely); verb-forming suffixes: Example 3 -sian, e.g. clnsian (to clean, to cleanse, to purify), bletsian (to bless); -lcan, e.g. gerihtlcan (to justify): -ettan, e.g. bliccettan (to sparkle), cohhettan (to cough). A.2. Prefixes:

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Example 4 - means out of, from: We find it in verbs such as beran (to bear), risan (to arise), wacan (to awake); be-, meaning by, near, about, is linked to nouns and verbs, e.g. bedelfan (to dig), bewerian (to protect from, to defend against); for- indicates destruction, e.g. fordn (to kill, to destroy), forsettan (to obstruct).

B. Composition Word-composition (the process by which new words are formed by combining two or more free morphemes) was extremely productive in Old English, where it gave birth to a large number of nouns, adjectives and verbs. compound nouns: folcstede (peoples place, battle field), rihtlaZu (just law, equity), heahcrft (high art, excellent, skill), bli-heort (having a happy heart), MonandZ (Monday), EnZlaland (England', i.e. the land of the Angles); compound verbs were usually derived from compound nouns and adjectives: efenrwian.

3.4.1.2.2. BORROWI GS There were three main sources of loan words in Old English: Celtic, Latin and Scandinavian

A. Celtic loan-words From the fact that the original language of Britain was Celtic, it might be expected that numerous Celtic elements would have become absorbed into Old English, but actually very few were. They survive chiefly in place names in what is now southern and eastern England (though these are much more common in Cornwall and Devon, and of course in Wales and Scotland). Thus the kingdom of Kent owes its name to the Celtic word Canti whose meaning is unknown. The first syllable of Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Worcester is Celtic. The Celtic word cumb (deep valley) is to be traced in names like Duncombe, Holcombe, Morecombe. Torr (high rock, peak) appears in names such as Torr, Torcross. Pen (meaning top in Welsh) is preserved in place-names such as Pendle, Penrith, Penburg, Pendleton, Penhill, and Pentridge.

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Besides place names, we find various Celtic words for river or water in the names of Avon, Exe, Esk, Usk, Dover, Ouse, Trent, Wye. Certain river-names are descriptive: Cald(er) violent, Cam -crooked, Dee holy, Dove black. Apart from place-names and river-names, the influence of Celtic upon Old English was an extremely slight one, probably because the Germanic conquerors had enough terms to denote the various notions existing at the time. The few words of Celtic origin to be found in Old English are bin(n) (basket, crib), brocc (badger), bratt (cloak), crag and cross.

B. Latin loan words Contact with Roman civilization lasted throughout many centuries, and it was always renewed. It had begun long before the English came to Britain. Several hundred Latin words found in the various Germanic languages at an early date prove the intercourse of the Germanic tribes with the Romans.

B.1. The first period of Latin borrowings The words brought over by the Germanic tribes from the Continent covered a number of semantic fields. Thus we have: a. Terms connected with military life: camp (battle), pil (pointed stick, javelin), pytt pit (from Lat puteus), strt paved road, street (Lat. [via] strta), weall wall (Lat. vallum), etc. b.Terms connected with trade: cap (bargain), pund pound (Lat. pond measure of weight), mynet (coin from Lat. moneta), ynce inch (Lat. uncia) etc. c. Terms connected with domestic life, clothing, food: cytel kettle (Lat. catillus little pot) cycene kitchen (Lat. coquna), scamol (stool, bench), pyle (pillow), cese cheese (Lat. cseus), cisten (chestnut-tree), win (wine), butere butter (Lat.butyrum), pise (pea), disc dish (Lat. discus) etc. d. Terms connected with the building arts: cealc chalk (Lat. calc), copor copper (Lat. cuprum), tiele tile (Lat. tegula). The first period of Latin borrowings also comprises a few words adopted by Celtic during the Roman occupation and transmitted to Old English by the Britons. Although the latter had taken over several hundreds of Latin words, only a few of these were passed on. Thus, the Latin word castra (camp) acquired in the Old English the meaning of town or enclosed community. It is also to be found in various Old English place-names ending in

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ceaster. In Modern English, in the North and East of England, it became caster (as in Lancaster, Doncaster, Tadcaster), in the Midlands, under the Norman influence, cester (as in Leicester, Gloucester, Worcester, Towcester) and in the West and South -chester (as in Chester, Chesterfield, Colchester, Dorchester, Manchester, Winchester).

B.2. The second period of Latin borrowings The year 597 marks the coming of St. Augustine and his forty monks to the island and the subsequent conversion of England to Latin Christianity. The Christian missionaries not only introduced literacy. They also brought a huge Latin vocabulary, some of which were taken over into Old English. The missionary influence resulted in around 45o new words coming into the language, mainly to do with the church and its services, but including many domestic and biological words. The vast majority has survived in modern times. At the same time, many Old English words were given new meanings - heaven, hell, God, gospel (good news), Easter, Holy Ghost - and there were several other usages most of which have not survived (such as Scyppend shaper meaning Creator). Here are some Latin borrowings in the Old English period: Ecclesiastical terms: abbot, alms, altar, angel, apostle (Lat. apostolus), bishop (from episcopus), candle (Lat. candela), canon, cedar, chalice, cleric, creed, deacon, dmon (Lat. daemon), disciple, hymn, idol, litany, martyr, mass (from Missa), monk (from

monachus), nun (from nunna), pope (from papa), priest (from presbyter), prophet, psalm, shrine, temple (from Lat templum). Miscellaneous words: balsam (Lat. balsamum), cell, cucumber, crystal, fever, fers verse (Lat. versus) giant, laurel, lentil, lily, lobster, oyster, paper, place, plant, radish, rule, school, scorpion, tiger, verse. In Old English, a foreign word was not always readily accepted to express a new idea. Old words were often applied and sometimes adapted to new concepts. Thus, patriarch was rendered by hhfaeder (high father). Sometimes, the people even used English words belonging to the pagan religion in order not to adopt the Latin word, e.g. Eastron (Easter), for the Latin Pascha. Eastron had been a great spring festival celebrating Eastru, the goddess of dawn. The two periods of Latin borrowings mentioned introduced about 500 Latin words into Old English. About 100 were purely learned or remained more or less foreign words. Of the remaining 400 that may be really considered part of the English vocabulary, some came

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into wider use later, when they were reintroduced. But most of them were widely accepted and assimilated.

C. Scandinavian loan-words Another big linguistic invasion came as a result of the Danish (Viking) raids on Britain, which began in AD 787 and continued at intervals until the beginning of the eleventh century. The Vikings were cruel and relentless sea rovers who honoured three virtues above all: courage, loyalty, and generosity. These were the qualities that had been esteemed by the pagans of the Germanic Heroic Age (AD 325-575) commemorated in the Old English Beowulf, and later in the Old Norse sagas. The Vikings consisted of both Norwegians and Danes and they were near akin in both race and language to the Angles, Jutes, Saxons and Frisians who had preceded them in crossing to Britain. The early settlers were the Danes, who within a century controlled most of Eastern Europe. King Alfred prevented them from further gain by their defeat in 878 at Edington, in Wiltshire. A treaty was then drawn up in which the Danes agreed to settle only in the north-east third of the country east of a line running roughly from Chester to London an area that was subject to Danish law, and which thus became known as the Danelaw. Later, the Danes were joined by the Norwegians from Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Hebrides, who founded homes in Cumberland and Westmorland, in the western dales of Yorkshire, and in Lancashire and Cheshire. The place-name ormanby, i.e. Nor-man-by, derives from

ormanna br (village of the Northmen, Norsemen or Norwegians). Now ormanby is the name of four villages in Lincolnshire and of three villages in the North Riding. These seven communities were so named by their neighbours because they were Norwegian settlements in a countryside predominantly Danish. Conversely, Denby and Denaby in the West Riding, from Dena br (village of the Danes) like Denby in Derbyshire and Denver in Norfolk were the names of Danish communities in districts predominantly Norwegian and English. The result of this prolonged period of contact was a large number of settlements with Scandinavian names. There are over 1,500 place-names of Scandinavian origin in England, especially in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Scandinavian endings are easy to recognize in the names of towns and villages, homesteads, dairy farms, and pastures. The most distinctive is by, the Danish word for farm, or town. There are over 600 places ending in by: Derby, Grimbsby, Rugby, Whitby, Selby, and Thoresby. About 300 names like Althorp, Linthorpe, Cleethorpes, Gawthorpe, orthorpe, Scunthorpe, Thorpe contain the Scandinavian words

thorp meaning village. There are a little less than 300 place-names containing the word 41

thwaite (clearing, piece of land): Applethwaite, Bassenthwaite Braithwaite, Cowperthwaite, Langthwaite, etc. Other place-names end or start with: -toft (a piece of ground): Brimtoft, Eastoft, Langtoft, Lowestoft, and ortoft; -beck (brook): Beckford, Birkbeck, Holbeck, Troutbeckl, Wansbeck; -brack, breck, brick (slope): Haverbrack, orbreck, and Scarisbreck; -dal (dale, 'valley'): Avondale, Scarsdale, Danesdale; -fell (hill): Scafell, Snafell Whinfell; -garth (yard): Applegarth, Arkengarthdale; -gill (ravine): Gaisgill, Garrigill; -keld (spring): Hallikeld, Trinkeld; -kirk (church): Kirkby, Kelkirk etc. Take a map of the United Kingdom and study the place names in the central part of England. Identify the borders of the territory inhabited by the Scandinavian people on the basis of the place names containing the suffixes indicated above. Many good old Scandinavian words live in personal names. Surnames ending in son, such as Davidson, are also found in the areas inhabited by the Vikings. In the long term, over 1,800 words of definite or probable Scandinavian origin entered the language during this period and are still to be found in present-day Standard English. Several thousand more continued to be used in regional dialects, especially those of the northeast. Some of these ancient words, like addle (to earn), ettle (to strive), buksit (dressed, prepared), toom (empty), wight (valiant), store (great), heppen (neat, tidy) still live in dialect from Leicester to Northumberland. The Scandinavians of the Danelaw left their marks on manorial organization, local government, and law. Legal terms were borrowed by the English people quite early. The word law is itself Scandinavian and signifies that which is laid down. So by-law is village or local law and outlaw is a man outside the law. Other Scandinavian terms associated with law, which have displaced their English counterparts are husband (from husbonda, housedweller, one who dwells in, and so manages, a house irrespective of marriage), fellow (from felaga/flagi, one who lays down f or money and so partner, shareholder); grith guaranteed security, sanctuary, asylum, husting (assembly) from hs ing originally meeting-in-a house.

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Snare and net are Norse words, which suggest that the Vikings may have been able to teach the Britons a thing or two in the poaching line. Ransack is another which might be described as in character. Ugly comes from the Norse verb ugga to fear. Names of certain parts of the body also come from Scandinavian: calf, leg, skin and skull. Among names of animals we find bull, kid and rein(deer). The greatest number of Scandinavian loan words refer to every-day life, to commonplace objects, actions and feelings: anger, awe, awkward, band, bank, birth, brink, bull, call, clip, crawl, crook, crop, dirt, dregs, egg, flat, freckle, gap, gasp, gate, get, give, glitter, guess, guest, harbour, haven, hit, ill, keel, kid, knife, lift, link, loan, loft, low, meek, odd, race, raise, root, rotten, rugged, scab, scare, score, scowl, scrap, scant, sly, seat, sky, slaughter, steak, take, their, thrust, tight, trust, want, weak, window, etc. Besides nouns, adjectives and verbs, Scandinavian prepositions penetrated into the English vocabulary. These are fro, till and until (from und as far as + til fixed point, goal). The pronominal adjectives both and same have also come into English from Scandinavian. Scandinavian also left its mark upon the English language in its extensive use of verbs with adverb-prepositions of the type take up, down, in, out, off, on, from, to. These phrasal verbs were commonly used in Middle English but they were later scorned by the classicists. They have multiplied exceedingly in recent years, especially in America. It almost goes without saying that there are scores of common words in daily use which would be identical in form whether they came from English or Scandinavian: words like father, mother, man, wife, town, gate, house, room, ground, land, tree, grass, life, folk, summer, winter, cliff, dale. Many verbs are the same, especially simple monosyllabic verbs like bring, come, hear, meet, ride, see, set, sit, smile, spin, think; adjectives like full and wise, and the names of colours, grey, green, white; disjunctive possessives mine and thine (but not ours and yours); north and south (but not west and east); and the prepositions over and under. The criteria for recognizing Scandinavian words are sometimes quite simple, one of the simplest being the development of the group [sk]. In Old English it was early palatalized to [S], whereas in the Scandinavian languages it preserved its [sk] sound. While words of English origin have sh in Modern English, e.g. ship, shall, fish, words of Scandinavian origin have sk, e.g. sky, skill, scrape, scrub, bask, whisk. The Old English scyrte has become shirt, while the corresponding Old Norse skyrta has become skirt.

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No less far-reaching was the influence of Scandinavian upon the inflectional endings of English in hastening that wearing away and levelling of grammatical forms which gradually spread from north to south. According to Potter (1990:33) "it was, after all, a salutary influence. The gain was greater than the loss. There was a gain in directness, in clarity, and in strength. Think of as many words as you can that begin with the letter combination sk-. Look up the words in an etymological dictionary (try the internet) and see how many of them have been borrowed from the Scandinavian tribes. The Anglo-Saxon age was a time of enormous upheaval. Each invasion, whether physical or spiritual, was followed by a long period of social change which left its mark on the language, especially on the vocabulary. But none of the linguistic changes were as great as those which followed the famous invasion of all, led by Duke William of Normandy in 1066, and which came to identify the second main period in English language history, MIDDLE E GLISH which we shall investigate in the following unit.. Lets remember In the Old English period, just like today, there existed two basic ways of enriching the vocabulary: by internal means (basically by using affixation and composition); by external means (borrowings from other languages, i.e. Latin, Scandinavian languages).

3.5. Summary This unit has introduced the students to the historical approach of the English vocabulary. First and foremost, it has shown the Indo-European origin of the English language, specifying that it is part of the Germanic sub-branch of this ancient language. Then, it has pointed out the main foreign influences upon the vocabulary as well as the internal means of creating new words. The English lexicon was later on influenced by a number of other languages, as we shall see in the next unit. 3.6. Evaluation 1. What people inhabited the British Isles before the coming of the Anglo-

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Saxons? 2. Where did the Anglo-Saxons live on the Continent? 3. How many waves of Latin borrowings are encountered in the Old English period 4. Divide the words into sets according to their meanings (e.g. domestic, household articles, etc.). Consider what these sets of borrowed words might suggest about the relationship between the Germanic tribes and the Romans. Latin balteus benna episcopus butyrium cattus calx caseus cuprum cuppa discus furca uncia catillus cucina milea molinum moneta mortarium catillus OE belt bin biscop butere catt cealc cese copor cuppe disc forca ynce cetel cycene mil mylen mynet mortere cetel ModE belt bin bishop butter cat chalk cheese copper cup dish fork inch kettle kitchen mile mill mint mortar (vessel) kettle

5. What was the influence of the Scandinavian settlement on the English language? 6. What was the chief influence of the Norman Conquest on the English language?

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Unit 4. The diachronic approach to the English vocabulary: the Middle English period
Contents 4.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 46 4.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 46 4.3. Middle English: Introduction ................................................................................ 46 4.4. French borrowings................................................................................................. 48 4.5. Latin borrowings ................................................................................................... 52 4.6 .Greek borrowings .................................................................................................. 53 4.7. Flemish and Dutch borrowings ............................................................................ 55 4.8. Arabic borrowings ................................................................................................. 55 4.9. Summary ................................................................................................................ 56 4.10. Evaluation ............................................................................................................ 56 4.1. Introduction Unit 4 presents some other events in the history of Britain that left an important trace on the English lexicon. The second period in the evolution of the language will be investigated, namely Middle English. We will mention the foreign words the English language borrowed from various languages it came in contact with during this period and we will point out that although the English language did have words for certain concepts/referents, it nevertheless borrowed other words that are nowadays employed in certain registers.

4.2. Competences After having covered the material in this chapter, the students should be able to identify the origin of the foreign words that entered the English vocabulary in the period between the 11th and the 15th centuries. They are expected to use the members of the synonymic series that appeared as a result of borrowing from French, Latin and Greek in the appropriate situation. Average time for covering this unit: 2 hours

4.3. MIDDLE E GLISH (1100 - 1500): Introduction The year 1066 marks the beginning of a new social and linguistic era in Britain, but it does not actually identify the boundary between Old and Middle English. It was a long time before

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the effects of the invasion worked their way into the language, and in the meantime Old English continued to be used. The period we call Middle English runs from the beginning of the twelfth century until the middle of the fifteenth, with the manuscripts at either end of this period showing the language in a state of change. The main influence on English was, of course, French the language introduced to Britain by the Normans. The Normans were mostly Norsemen who had completely shed their Scandinavian speech. They were the great-grandchildren of the fiord who had retained all the Viking energy in colonization and in war, but who had become converts to Latin culture. Following the accession of William of Normandy, French was rapidly established in the corridors of power. William appointed French-speaking barons, and this was rapidly followed up by the appointment of French-speaking abbots and bishops. The written records show that there was very little use of English among the hierarchy. After the conquest, the kings of England continued to be Dukes of Normandy, and many noblemen had estates on both sides of the Channel. There were new economic links, new fields of trade, new crafts, and all this naturally implied the continued use of French. The co-existence of the two languages in the country gave rise to their struggle, which lasted during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. It was made even more complicated by the fact that Latin was the language of the Church. During the first centuries after the Norman Conquest, official documents, treaties, private letters were generally written in Latin. In 1204 the situation changed. King John of England came into conflict with King Philip of France, and was obliged to give up control of Normandy. The English nobility lost their estates in France, and antagonism grew between the two countries (leading ultimately to the Hundred Years War, which began in 1337). The status of French diminished as a spirit of English nationalism grew. During the twelfth century, English became more widely used among the upper class. By the end ot the twelfth century, contemporary accounts suggest that some children of the nobility spoke English as a mother tongue, and had to be taught French in school. French continued to be used in Parliament, the courts and in public proceedings. In 1362 English was used for the first time at the opening of Parliament. By the end of the century, when Richard II was deposed, Henry IVs speeches at the proceedings were made in English. By about 1425 it appears that English was universally used in England, in writing as well as in speech.

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4.4. French loan-words Naturally, the struggle of the two languages did not result in a mixed language, but in the victory of English, which at the same time enriched its vocabulary by adopting many French words. According to one estimate, around 10,000 French words came into English. The importance of the French influence is not to be judged only by the number of words borrowed, but also by their frequency of use. Almost 1/3 of the words most frequently used in Modern English are of French origin.The words were largely to do with the mechanisms of law andministration, but they also included words from such fields as medicine, art and fashion. Many of the new words are quite ordinary, everyday terms. Most have stood the test of time, about three-quarter of them still being in use today. A general impression of the great range covered by this new vocabulary can be obtained from the brief selection below. Administration: bailiff, baron, castle, chancellor, coroner, council, court, domicile, duke, estate, exchequer, government, liberty, majesty, manor, mayor, minister, noble, parliament, peasant, prince, revenue, residence, royal, sir, sovereign, squire, tax, traitor, treasurer, treaty, tyrant, village. Religion: The fact that the major part of the higher clergy were of Norman origin accounts for words such as abbey, baptism, cardinal, cathedral, chant, charity, clergy, cloister, communion, confess, convent, creator, crucifix, friar (from frere), heresy, mercy, miracle, novice, ordain, prayer, religion, saint, salvation, sermon, solemn, trinity, vicar. Law: As French was the language of law courts for a very long time, many legal terms are of French origin. Law, as we have seen, is Scandinavian; right and righteousness from right-wise-ness are English; but accuse, adultery, arrest, arson, assize, attorney, bail, blame, convict, crime, decree, depose, evidence, felon, gaol, heir, inquest, judge, jury, justice, legacy, pardon, plaintiff, plea, prison, punishment, sue, summons, verdict, warrant are French. Moore (1961: 94) wrote the following: Legal terms became important to us, since we were often in trouble with our conquerors; in a short time we had not only learned but had taken into our language such words as plaintiff, defendant and distraint, while lawyers sought to impress us with tongue twisters like malfeasance and les-majest. Army and military life: The important part played by war in Feudalism, the control of the army and the navy in the French-speaking aristocracy all this contributed to the adoption of numerous French military terms:

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Example 1 army, ambush, archer, battle, besiege, captain, combat, defend, enemy, garrison, guard, lance, lieutenant, moat, navy, peace, retreat, regiment, sergeant, siege, soldier, spy. Food and drink: Readers of W. Scotts Ivanhoe will remember the conversation between the Saxon thralls Wamba, the fool, and Gurth, the swineherd, in the first chapter, where stress is laid on the fact that the names of the live animals ox, swine, sheep, calf are English, whereas those of cooked meats beef, pork, mutton, veal are French: And swine is good Saxon, said the Jester: but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels like a traitor? Pork, answered the swineherd. I am very glad every fool knows that too, said Wamba, and pork, I think is good Norman French and so when the brute lives and is in charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman and is called pork, when she is carried to the castle hall to feast among the nobles. (...) Nay, I can tell you more, said Wamba in the same tone, there is Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet while he is under change of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynherr Calf, too, becomes Monsieur Veau in the like manner; he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment. (Scott, quoted in Iarovici, 1973:108). Other culinary terms of French origin are: biscuit, fruit, mustard, peach, to boil, to broil, to fry, to grill, to roast, to toast, to mince. The names of meals dinner and supper are French (though breakfast is English). Trades: The older, fundamental trades, especially those belonging to the countryside, probably continued to be performed mainly by English people and therefore preserved their English names: baker, fisherman, miller, saddler, builder, shepherd, shoemaker, weaver and webber. But the new nobility brought many luxury trades from France, and this fact accounts for such French words as carpenter, draper, joiner, haberdasher, jeweller, mason, painter, tailor, etc. The words furniture, table chair are of French origin, while the humble stool maintained its English name. Fashion: The nobility introduced a large number of words connected with fashion: garment, robe, gown, attire, cape, coat, cloak, collar, veil, lace, button, garter, boot.

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Leisure: recreation, dance, dice (from dees), juggler (from jongleur) Learning and art: The cultural and scientific preoccupation of the time are reflected in words connected with arts, literature, and science, e.g. art, beauty, sculpture, colour, figure, image, poet, prose, medicine, music, painting, romance, story, poison, ointment. General: action, adventure, age, air, blue, brown, bucket, city, coast, carol, ceiling, certain, chess, chimney, curtain, cushion, debt, easy, flower, forest, foreign, gay, hour, joy, kennel, lamp, leisure, mountain, move, nice, ocean, people, piece, please, real, reason, river, scarlet, special, square, stomach, towel, use, wardrobe. As the new vocabulary arrived, there were many cases where it duplicated a word that existed already in English from Anglo-Saxon times. In such cases, there were two main outcomes. Either one word would supplant the other, or both would co-exist in the language, but with slightly different meanings. The first outcome was very common, in most cases the French word replacing an Old English equivalent. For example, Old English leod gave way to people, wlitig to beautiful, and herian to praise, lyft to air, wanhope to despair. Hundreds of Old English words were lost in this way. But at the same time, Old English and French words often both survived, and when this happened their meanings would begin to differ. Thus, the Old English doom and the French judgment no longer mean the same thing, nor do hearty and cordial, house and mansion, wish and desire. Sometimes the English word referred to everyday life and the French one had an official meaning, being used in documents, e.g. beginnen and commencen. Very often the English word had a concrete character and the French word an abstract one: life - existence, might - power, work labour, deep profound, lonely solitary, ask demand, to give to present. Generally, the English words had a stronger emotional colouring, they were more physical, and more human. We feel more at ease after getting a hearty welcome than after being granted a cordial reception (Potter, 1990:38). Example 2 freedom vs liberty, kingship vs royalty, friendship vs amity, happiness vs felicity, love vs charity. Sometimes the borrowed French word makes its English equivalent pass into another sphere of meaning. Thus, Old English hrfest was ousted by Mid.E. autumn (from the French automne), but it maintained itself in English with the sense of harvest. Certain French words which have died out or become obsolete in France have been preserved in Britain, e.g. able.

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This word was replaced in French by the learned new borrowing habile; certainty (Old French certainet) was replaced by the Mod.F. certitude. Alongside of French words, many French word-building elements entered the English language. When one and the same element appeared in various French loan-words, its meaning became clear to Englsih people, who were thus able to isolate it as a separate morpheme and use it to form new words from French and English stems (but most hybrids were formed later, in Modern English). French suffixes. A great number of French loan-words such a ignorance, arrogance, entrance, obedience contained the suffix ance, -ence, which English people soon came to realize as a means of deriving abstract nouns from adjectives and verbs. This accounts for the later formation of hybrids such as hindrance. The suffix ment which appeared in words such as government, parliament, treatment gave birth to the hybrids fulfilment, bereavement, amazement, bewilderment, etc. By consulting the dictionary, find out which of the following words containing French derivational elements are genuine borrowings or hybrids (English root + French derivational elements): importance, accordance, competence, clearance, indolence, commitment, involvement, abridgment, refreshment, department, development. The feminine-forming suffix ess, which entered the English language in words like princess, countess, baroness, combines with English stems, e.g. in shepherdess, goddess, etc. French prefixes. A few French prefixes became productive in English. Thus the prefix dis-, des- , which had a negative meaning, entered the English language in many French words like disdain, destroy, and it came to form new words with English roots, e.g. disown, disburden, dislike, etc. The prefix en-, which appeared in words such as enclose, enjoy, encircle, gave birth to hybrids like endear, enshroud, embed, embody. Lets remember -The French terms appeared in the English language as a result of the Norman Conquest (1066); -Most of the borrowings were terms that denominated things (referents) that had been not known by the English people, but some others were synonyms of the Anglo-Saxon terms; -The French loan-words were related to the basic fields of life (trade, military

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life, leisure, and fashion). -Most of these terms are still in use in present-day English. 4.5. Latin borrowings A great number of words were borrowed from Latin in the 14th and 15th centuries. This is quite natural, for Latin was the language of theology and learning. Besides, the influx of French words facilitated the adoption of Latin words. The new borrowings were learned words and they penetrated into the language through literature, especially through the numerous translations from Latin made at that time. The 1384 translation of the Bible by John Wyclif, for example, contained over 1,000 Latin words not previously known in English. Most of these were professional or technical terms, belonging to such fields as religion, medicine, law. Here are some examples of Latin borrowings (rendered in Modern English), belonging to this period: abject, adjacent, conspiracy, contempt, custody, distract, genius, history, immune, incarnate, include, incredible, incumbent, index, infancy, inferior, infinite, intellect, interrupt, legal, lucrative, lunatic, magnify, mechanical, minor, missal, moderate, necessary, nervous, ornate, picture, polite, private, prosecute, pulpit, quiet, rosary, scripture, solar, spacious, substitute, temperate, testimony, ulcer. Many of these words introduced into the language suffixes and prefixes which began to be used for forming English derivatives (some of these affixes reinforcing the corresponding French ones): able, -ible, -ent, -al, -ous, -ive; ab-, ad-, con-, dis-, im-, in-, pro-, re-, sub-. The richness of the English language in synonyms is largely due to the mingling of English, French and Latin elements (many of the latter were borrowed in Early Modern English). This may be easily seen in sets of three words which all express the same fundamental meaning, but which differ slightly in meaning or stylistic effect. Example 3 Old/Middle English rise ask kingly French mount question royal Latin ascend interrogate regal

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Find the French and Latin correspondents for the following Middle English words: Middle English holy time fire French Latin

The Old English word is often the more popular one, with the French word being literary, and the Latin word more learned. But more important than this, there are distinctions in the way the words are used. Thus we talk about royal blue, a royal flush, and the Royal avy, but a regal manner and a regal expression. There is no Kingly avy or Regal avy!

English has thousands of words which are almost synonymous, thanks to the co-existence of these parallel items, and it is because of this that English is said to have a larger core vocabulary than that of other modern languages. Lets remember -A new wave of Latin words entered the English vocabulary at the end of the Middle English period; -The borrowing process was enabled by literature; -Most of the Latin loan-words were related to religion and education.

4.6. Greek borrowings Why is it that so many of the English technical terms derive from Greek? Primarily, it is because Athens once led the world in art, science, and philosophy and because the Greek language is peculiarly well adapted to supply the need in English for precise and unambiguous terms with no inherited penumbra of meaning. Greek has, too, an unusual capacity for forming compounds by means of an extensive and regular system of suffixes. Greek words were borrowed: -through Latin by way of French; -through Latin; -directly from Greek. Latin and Greek words found their way into English because they were needed. The names of the 7 liberal arts of the medieval trivium and quadrivium had all been Greek-derived words: grammar, logic, and rhetoric; arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The word grammar itself is very interesting. It is a hybrid, being made up of elements of different languages. It comes by way of Old French from Latin ars grammatica, which itself is a translation of Greek grammatik tchn, the art of pertaining to literature, letters, or written

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marks. To the Greek root gram(m)- is added the Latin suffix -rius in this particular case, although the usual Latin-derived suffixes are -ous, - an and al.

Example 4 Here are some examples of Greek loan words: alphabet, drama, theatre, amphitheatre, comedy, tragedy, catastrophe, climax, episode, scene, dialogue, prologue epilogue, academy, atom, chorus, basis, epic, irony, theory, dilemma, etc. Scores of Greek words have made themselves so much at home that it is only by an effort that we recall their earlier significations. Etymologically, an acrobat is a point-walker, one who walks on tiptoe; an athlete is a 'contestant for an athlon or prize; a protagonist is the first actor of three; an atom is something uncut or indivisible and has come to mean an individual person in Modern Greek; a catastrophe is a 'down turn, a character, an engraving; a crisis is a selection or judgment. A cycle is merely a circle and an encyclopedia is a child-training or education in a circle. If one examines the prospectus of subjects taught in any European or American university, technical college, or technological institute, one will find that Greek-derived names preponderate. The omenclature of Disease, an important publication which is subject to constant revision by a special committee appointed by the Royal College of Physicians of London, is full of Greek terms. In modern medical usage certain Greek suffixes, like tis and sis, have acquired a new slant in order to meet new needs. The feminine adjectival suffix tis was frequently used with the feminine noun nsos disease expressed or understood: arthrtis (nsos) disease of the joints, nephrtis (nsos) disease of the kidneys. Later this suffix was used to denote exclusively those diseases which are characterized by inflammatory condition: appendicitis inflammation of the vermiform appendix, bronchitis of the mucous membrane of the bronchial tubes, etc. The feminine nominal suffix sis meant normal state, condition or process as in symbiosis a living together (of two dissimilar organisms for purposes of nutrition). In medical terminology, however, osis denotes disease, as in halitosis foul breath, neurosis functional disorder of the nerves, psychosis mental anxiety and tuberculosis disease caused by the tubercle bacillus, this last being a hybrid since the first component comes from Latin tuberculum, diminutive of tuber swelling.

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Lets remember -The terms borrowed from Greek were basically medical terms and words related to education.

4.7. Flemish, Dutch and Low-German borrowings Owing to the trade intercourse between England and the Low Countries, a large number of words were borrowed from Flemish, Dutch and Low German. Such words are (rendered in Modern English): to botch (to patch, to mend), brake (machine for breaking hemp), to curl (to press textiles into small folds or waves), to lash (to join a piece and make a seam), cambric, duck (strong linnen or cotton fabric) pack, scour, spool, tuck (fold), freight, guilder (Dutch silver coin), hawker, huckster, nap (surface of cloth), peg, prop, deck, dock, freight, lighter (boat carrying goods from ship to land), rover (pirate), skipper (schipper shipper, i.e. master of a ship), etc.

4.8. Arabic words The Crusades introduced generally through French a number of words of Arabic origin such as: -assassin from the Arabic hashshn eaters of hashish, one of the secret order of Muslims that at the time of the Crusades (the 13th century) terrorized Christians and other enemies by secret murder committed under the influence of hashish; -bedouin from the Arabic badwi French bdouin desert dweller, person wandering in the desert; -mattress from the Arabic matrah, anything hastily thrown down, something to lie upon, bed; -caravan from the Persian krwn; -orange through French, Italian, Arabic from Persian nrang. The Arabs have also given the English people the little-loved word algebra setting, reduction of fractions, and many more beginning with al, which is simply the Arabic article the: alkali, almanac, alambic, alcove, alfalfa, alchemy, alcohol (al kuhl, meaning the kohl, i.e. the powder of antimony for staining the eyelids). Some other words of Arabic origin still used in English are: amber, camphor, cotton, lute, saffron, caliber, candy, carat, fakir, magazine (ultimately an Arabic plural form meaning storehouses), minaret. 55

Middle English does not stop suddenly in 1500, but major changes do take place in the language after this date. Starting with the 15th century, the shifting process from a synthetic to an analytic language is almost completed: much simpler, yet less expressive. More than ever, the vocabulary was the object of constant foreign influences, due to the ever-developing international relations established between the British Isles and the rest of the world.

4.9. Summary This chapter has presented the major influences upon the English vocabulary in the Middle English period, among which the most relevant were French, Latin, Greek, Dutch and Arabic. In the majority of cases, the borrowed terms deonted realities not known to the English people. Apart from whole words, English also borrowed derivational elements. This is the case of a number of prefixes and suffixes that came into the language from Latin and French. Some more such elements entered English in the Modern English period, which we shall approach in the following chapter.

4.10. Evaluation 1. Below are 2 versions of one text. They date from 980 and 1380.. a) Match the letters of the texts with the dates: 980 (Old English) 1380 (Middle English) b) List some differences in vocabulary.

(A) Forsoth his eldere sone was in the feeld, and whanne he cam and neighede to the hous, he herde a symfonye and a croude. And he cleipide oon of the seruantis, and axide what thingis thes weren. And he seide to him, Thi brodir is comen, and thi fadir hath slayn a fat calf, for he resseyued him saf. (B) Solice his yldra sunu waes on aecere; and he com, and a he am huse genealaehte, he gehyrde aene sweg and Qt wered. a clypode he anne eow, and acsode hine hwaet Qt awere. a cwae he, in broor com, and im faeder ofsloth an faett cealf, foram e he hine halne onfeng.

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Unit 5. The diachronic approach to the English vocabulary: the Modern English period
Contents 5.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 57 5.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 57 5.3. The Modern English Period: Introduction ........................................................... 57 5.4. Latin and Greek borrowings.................................................................................. 58 5.5. French borrowings ................................................................................................ 61 5.6. Italian borrowings ................................................................................................. 62 5.7. Spanish and Portuguese loan-words .................................................................... 63 5.8. Dutch borrowings .................................................................................................. 63 5.9. German borrowings ............................................................................................... 64 5.10. Indian borrowings................................................................................................ 65 5.11. Borrowings from other languages ...................................................................... 65 5.12. Summary .............................................................................................................. 66 5.13. Evaluation ........................................................................................................... 67 5.14. Homework I.......................................................................................................... 68 5.1. Introduction Unit 5 ends the diachronic approach to the English lexicon.

5.2. Competences After having covered the material in this chapter, the students should be able to identify the words of foreign origin in the English language, to mention the period in which the respective words penetrated the English language, as well as to read and interpret some texts within the socio-historical framework when they were written. Average time for covering this unit: 4 hours

5.3. MODER E GLISH (1500 - up to the present): Introduction The beginnings of Modern English are at the same time the beginnings of the Renaissance in England the opening years of the 16th century. As a matter of fact, many of the characteristics of Modern English had already appeared in the 15th century, especially in its second half. This is quite natural, since the evolution of any living language is uninterrupted: changes in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary come about gradually, by 57

imperceptible degrees, from one generation to another, and even within the lifetime of one and the same generation. There are no sudden breaks with old traditions: there is a gradual, continuous and unperceived passage from the old quality to the new one. The elements of the former are slowly dying away, while the elements of the latter are accumulating little by little. That is how Modern English developed, in close connection with the development of capitalism and with the rise of the bourgeoisie. It was also greatly influenced by the better means of communications, by the momentous geographical discoveries resulting from the desire to find new sources of gold, as well as by the great cultural movement of the Renaissance. The pace of English language history quickens after William Caxton introduced the technology of printing in England in 1476. The new invention provided more opportunities for people to write, and gave their works much wider circulation. As a result, more texts of the period have survived. Within the following 150 years, nearly 20,000 English books appeared. The story of English thus becomes more definite in the 16th century, with more evidence available about the way the language was developing, both in the texts themselves, and in the growing number of observations dealing with grammar, vocabulary and writing system. The main factor promoting the flood of new publications in the 16th century was the renewed interest in the classical languages and literatures, and in the rapidly developing fields of science, medicine, and the arts a period lasting from the time of Caxton until around 1650, which came to be called the Renaissance. The focus of the interest was the vocabulary. There were no words in the language to talk accurately about new concepts, techniques, and inventions which were emerging in Europe, and so writers began to borrow them. Most of the words that came into the English language at that time were taken from Latin and a goodly number from Greek, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. But the period of worldwide explorations was well under way, and words came into English from over fifty languages, including several American Indian languages and the languages of Africa and Asia. Some words came into English directly; others came by intermediary languages. Many words came indirectly from Latin or Italian by way of French.

5.4. Latin and Greek borrowings Among the thousands of Latin and Greek words that were introduced into English during the Renaissance there were a large number which did not survive for a very long time. 58

These were generally too learned, too long and artificial. They were not only absolutely unnecessary, having very good equivalents, but they also went against the inherent laws of development of the English language. Here are a few examples of such words: uncounsellable, deruncinate (weed), disacquaint (the opposite of acquaint), obfuscate (hidden), illecebrous (delicate, alluring), ludibundness (love of sport). Some words were superseded by similar forms which were more adequate to the characteristics of the English language, e.g. discongruity by incongruity, to attemptate by to attempt, to denunciate by to denounce.

'Pickings and stealing' from Latin If certain borrowings sooner or later fell into disuse, thousands of new words were rapidly adopted and assimilated in the 16th and 17th centuries. Whereas some words like consolation, gravity, infernal, infidel, position might have come into English via French, many expressions like abacus, abecedarium, arbitrator, abdomen, area, compensate, data, denominate, explicit, folio, gradual, gratis, index, item, medium, memento, memorandum, notorious, proviso, ignoramus (we do not know) series, strict, transient, ultimate, urban were taken straight from Latin without change. Zeal for classical learning led men to reshape French-derived words on Latin models. Thus, peynture was changed into picture, avys into advice, and aventure into adventure. Love of Latin caused the English to borrow once more words which had already come into the language in a modified form by way of French. These resulting word-pairs or doublets seldom remained synonymous. In meaning, as in form, they are no longer associated in the mind of the speaker: assoil - absolve, benison benediction, chance cadence, chapter capital, frail fragile, poor pauper, ray radius, reason ration. Some Latin words retained their original meaning in Elisabethan English and one should be ever on the lookout for this possibility in their reading. Enormous meant out of the norm, abnormal, extravagant wandering beyond (the path), extraordinary out of the regular course or order, aggravate to add weight to, weigh down. Premises were things mentioned previously, and item also was still an accountants term introducing all the sections of a bill, except the first. On penetrating into the English language some words such as climax, appendix, axis, delirium maintained their Latin form. Others lost their Latin ending, e.g. to consult (L. consultare), to permit (L. permittere), exotic (L. exoticus), to credit (L. creditum), port (L. portus), inch (L. uncia). 59

Sometimes a word was borrowed for the second time. Thus the Latin words episcopus and discus appear in Old English as biscop and disc (later dish). They were borrowed once more later to from the words episcopal and disc. There are also cases of words that had been borrowed from French and were now replaced by the corresponding Latin form: descrive (n) describe; painture picture; egal equal; verdit verdict. Sometimes nouns and adjectives that are related to one another in meaning are not of the same origin, e.g. egg oval, eye ocular, house domestic, land agrarian, mouth oral, moon lunar, nose nasal, side lateral, son filial, sun solar, etc. A large number of Latin words that had already existed in English in their NormanFrench form were reintroduced in their Latin form, but with a different meaning from that of the Norman-French words. Here are a few examples of such doublets: A certain number of Latin abbreviations are often used in English. They generally do not suggest the Latin words for which they stand, but their English equivalents: a.m. (L. ante meridian) before noon; e.g. (L. exempli gratia) for example; i.e. (L. id est) that is to say; p.m. (L. post meridian) after noon; viz. (L. videlicet) namely, to wit; etc. (L. et cetera) - and so on (this is one of the few Latin abbreviations used unchanged in English). Latin technical terms and phrases were also adopted, and some of them later passed into a wider circulation. Others have remained part of the special terminology of politics, law, trade, medicine, etc. Here are some examples: a fortiori (for a still stronger reason), ad hoc (for this special purpose only), ad libitum (at pleasure, to any extent), corpus delicti (the basic element of a crime), de facto (actually existing, especially when without lawful authority), editio princeps (first printed edition of a book), ex cathedra, honoris causa, in absentia, in memoriam, in toto (in the whole), infra dignitatem (beneath ones dignity), ipso facto (by the fact itself), non compos mentis (not master of ones mind, mad), per anum, per diem, per se (by or in itself, intrinsically), pro forma, pro tanto (so far to that extent), pro tempore (for the time).

'Pickings and stealings' from Greek Words like anonymous, polemic, tantalize, thermometer, tonic, etc. were taken straight from Greek. Most terms of Greek origin belonged to the spheres of science, mythology, and political life. They have generally acquired an international character. If we say we dont care a jot we are using as a metaphor the Greek I, iota, which is the smallest Greek letter. Asparagus is simply the Greek word for a sprout or shrub. Hypokrits meant an actor on the

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stage; and so a hypocrite is a person who pretends to have beliefs and feelings which are not his own. Agonia meant a contest, primarily in athletics. The English language has Greek words for most of the physical diseases and psychological troubles, not forgetting cremnophobia (fear of falling from cliffs), and hagiophobia (excessive dread of holy persons and things). Example 1 Greek terms can be easily identified on the basis of the suffixes contained. Here are some examples: mancy: ceromancy, catoptromancy, halomancy; -ology: paleontology, gynecology,lexicology English has taken from Greek a lot of words from mythology and has made some strange uses of them. Of all the words the Greek Gods have given, the strangest is panic. It comes from panikon deima, fear caused by Pan and an important part of the meaning is that the fear is groundless. Here are some more examples of both Latin and Greek loanwords (the latter having come in through Latin): arbitrer, allusion, apology, apparatus, appropriate, area, arena, atmosphere, autograph, acumen, auditorium, census, curriculum, circus, climax, crisis, decorum, emphasis, enthusiasm, expectation, expensive, equilibrium, formula, focus, genius, honorarium, insane, interim, junior, miser, momentum, moratorium, omen, pollen, pathetic, pendulum, propaganda, prospectus, pneumonia, premium, scheme, senior, skeleton, specimen, sanatorium (1840), species (1551), status (1693), terminus (1555), ultimatum (1731), vacuum (1550), virus .

5.5. French borrowings During the Renaissance foreign borrowings were not limited to words taken from Latin and Greek. Many French words were acquired especially after the Restoration (1660), and these are different from those adopted during the Middle English period. Most of them are restricted to particular categories of words, i.e. they reflect the preoccupations of the aristocracy and of educated people or else they are technical terms. Example 2 -aristocratic life: ball, ballet, beau, billet, doux, chagrin, intrigue, miniature, serenade, suite. -culture: belles lettres, brochure, connoiseur, critique, editor, magazine, memoir, novelist, pressuance, tableau, etc;

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-military life: brigadier, bombard, cannonade, espionage, parade; -commercial activity: capital, discount, dividend, insurance, investment, manufacture, currency; -politics: administration (management of public affairs, government), budget (annual estimate of revenue and expenditure of a state), minister (in the sense of political agent accredited by one state to another), premier (prime minister).

Other examples are: alloy, battery, bayonet, bigot, bizarre, burlesque, comrade, coquette, champagne, detail, dcor, docility, duel, entrance, grotesque, moustache (16th century), muscle, pioneer, vase, vogue, volunteer, fatigue, grimace, nave, coquette, rouge, bouquet, randezs-vous (originally a military term), ticket, volley, pansy (Fr. Pense), dandelion (Fr. Dent-de-lion), chauffeur, chic, chiffon, fondant, garage, restaurant, etc. The following quotation from J. Moore (1961:142) sums up the domains in which French words were borrowed during the Late Modern English period: During the 18th century the words connected with la guerre go like a column on the march, corps, manvre, sortie, tricolor, espionage, dept, fusillade. High society introduced salon, bureau, and etiquette. In various ways we acquired migr, rgime, canteen, coterie, and culde-sac. () During the 19th century English learned a lot of new French manners. Fashion brought over such words as crpe, beret, sude, cretonne, rosette; French chefs taught us saut, mousse, fondant, gratin; soldiers laid down barrages, issued communiqus; () society mingled only with the lite, dined in restaurants, made its daughters dbutantes and found them suitable fiancs, maintained its prestige, deplored enfants terribles and kept its amour propre.

5.6. Italian loan words Italian borrowings had been almost non-existent before the Renaissance. The Renaissance led to an ample study of Italian literature. Dante, Tasso, Ariosto and Petrarch were translated into English. A number of Italian words were adopted, mostly terms relating to literature and arts: balcony, cameo, carnival, concerto, cupola, design, fresco, grotto, gondola, inferno, lottery, motto, opera, piazza, prima donna, solo, sonata, sonnet, soprano, stanza, violin, volcano. In the 18th century Italian music was introduced in England and it brought along a number of musical terms such as: alto, allegro, adagio, andante, andante, aria, baritone, basso, cantata, concerto, contralto, crescendo, diminuendo, duet, fugue, falsetto, forte, intermezzo, libretto, madrigal, maestro, operetta, oratorio, rallentando, rondo, 62

stacatto, tempo, tenor, trio, violoncello, etc. More recent borrowings from Italian are balcony, balloon, bravo, broccoli, cameo, casino, carnival, cupola, fresco, gondola, incognito, inferno, influenza, lagoon, lasagna, lava, malaria, motto, macaroni, pergolla, piazza, portico, pasta, pizza, raviolli, regatta, scope, stanza, studio, umbrella, vendetta, and volcano. Find some other Italian loan-words by consulting an etymological dictionary. Which fields do they belong to? 5.7. Spanish and Portuguese borrowings These are due to economic and political relations with Spain and Portugal and also to Columbuss discovery of America. Here are some examples: alligator, anchovy, apricot, armada, banana, barricade, bilbo, bravado, cannibal, cargo, canoe, cocoa, condor, cockroach (which is the English adaptation of the Spanish cucccaracha), corral, embargo, guitar, hammock, hurricane, maize, marmalade, mosquito, mulatto, potato (from Haiti), port (wine), rusk, sombrero, sherry (named after Jerz in Andalusia), tank, tobacco, tomato, (from Mexican), yam. An interesting word borrowed from a dead civilization is chocolate. The Spaniards took it home from Mexico; it is really an Aztec word, chocolatl, meaning food made by mixing the seed of cacaua-atl with those of a tree called 'pochotl. The tl at the end of a word is generally a mark of its Aztec origin. Example 3 Here are some more words of Spanish & Portuguese origin: chili (red pepper), coyote from Mexican, papaw (tropical tree and its fruit), iguana (large South American tree-lizard), savannah, yucca (white-flowered American plant) guava ('tropical tree) from Cuban, alpaca, coca (a shrub from whose leaves cocaine is obtained), llama, pampas, puma, quinine from Peruvian, and jaguar, petunia, poncho, tapioca, tapir from Brazilian Portuguese.

5.8. Dutch borrowings Many Dutch words came into English by way of American English. But the English people took over a whole vocabulary directly from Dutch through their commerce with Holland and their mutual seafaring to and fro; in fact many English words connected with ships and sailors were Dutch originally: boom spar, bowline, bowsprit, commodore, cruise, hoist, deck, yacht, buoy, dock, monsoon, reef, slop (one-masted ship), to swab (to clean the deck of a vessel). 63

Other words of Dutch origin are: aloof, boor (boer) (farmer, but it also has the sense of a backwoodsman, a country lout, whereof there is the English word boorish ill-mannered) boss, spook, hop (plant), jeer, landscape, easel, frolic, furlough, kit (originally a vessel for carrying a soldiers equipment), onslaught, pickle, plumb, sketch, smuggle, tattoo drum signal, military entertainment, toy, trick, wagon, wiseacre (sententious, slow-witted person). From Holland, too, the English got their snuff (powdered tobacco taken by sniffing) and the word for it, their brandy (Dutch brandewijn) and their dope (Dutch doop). The English also accepted into their slang the Dutch word bouse, now spelt booze, gin (short for ginger borrowed by the Dutch from Old French, ultimately Latin juniperus juniper) A number of loanwords have entered through the contact of Americans with Dutch settlers, especially in the New York area. There are Dutch-American food terms like coleslaw (koolsla cabbage salad), cookie, cranberry, cruller and waffle. The diversity of other loanwords reflects the variety of cultural contacts English and Dutch speakers had in the New World: boodle, boss, bowberry, caboose, Santa Claus (Sante Klaas Saint Nicholas), sleigh, snoop, spook and stoop small porch. In the second half of the 17th century and in the 18th century the process of enriching the English vocabulary with words borrowed from different other languages went on, as shown below.

5.9. German borrowings: Certain German words were also adopted, especially in the field of mineralogy, a science which developed in Germany, e.g. bismuth, cobalt, gneiss, meerschaum, nickel (originally Kupfernickel, perhaps copper damon) quartz, zinc, etc. Some other German loan words are edelweiss, ersatz, hinterland, leitmotiv, poltergeist, rucksack, yodel, plunder, switch, iceberg, master, zigzag, Zeitgeist, Bildungsroman, waltz, etc.

Example 4 Other words taken from German include such culinary terms as braunschweiger, delicatessen, noodle, pretzel, pumpernickel, sauercraut, schnitzel, wienerwurst, and zwieback. Knackwurst, liederkranz, and sauerbraten

Many German terms entered the English vocabulary as a result of the two World Wars. Can you think of some such terms?

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5.10. Indian borrowings: British colonialism continued to expand, enlarging the sphere of activity of the English language, as well as its vocabulary. As Margaret Schlauch (quoted in Iarovici, 1973:209) says, wherever the English people had direct contact with other cultures, whether by trade, conquest, cultural interchange, or colonization, they plundered foreign vocabularies to enrich their own. This type of plundering, it may be said, had one very great advantage over the harsher forms of acquisition that often go with imperial expansion: it hurt nobody and left the givers no poorer than they were before. English colonial expansion accounts for a number of words adopted in India starting with the 18th century, e.g. bandanna (richly coloured handkerchief), bangle, bungalow, calico, cashmere, coolie, cot, curry (from Tamil), dungaree (from dungri, a coarse cloth), dinghy (small boat in Bengalese), juggernaut (comes from Jagannath, an idol of Krishna), jungle, jute, khaki (dust-coloured), loot, mongoose (from Marathi), nirvana, nabob, pariah, polo, punch (drink), pundit (Hindi learned Hindu, authority), pyjamas (from Hindi), yoga (from Hindi), shampoo (from the Hindi word champo, meaning massage), rajah, rupee, sahib, sari, sepoy (Indian soldier), topi (hat), thug (robber, strangler; it comes from the name of a fraternity of professional murderers who terrorised parts of India during the 1820s).

5.11. Borrowings from other languages MALAY words were adopted as well, e.g. amok (furious), bamboo, cockatoo, gingham, gong, mango (tree and fruit), mangrove (tree), orangutan (literally wild man of the forest), paddy (rice in the husk), rattan (kind of palm-tree), sago (sort of starch). ARABIC (Persian) words: check mate (from Al-shah mat the King is dead), caravanserai (a company of pilgrims or merchants travelling together), shawl, tulip (comes from a word meaning turban), bazaar, divan, cotton, calibre, gazelle, harem (literally forbidden), syrup, baksheesh (meant simply a present without implication of greasing the palm), jasmine (in Arabic 'yasmin' became the name of a scent, and hence presumably a name given to girls), whore (Persian houri, literally meaning a gazelle-like woman of Paradise), bint (from saida bint good-day girl (prostitute). An Arabic adjective meaning of, on, for or by a journey itself journeyed far south and wriggled its way into Swahili, whence the hunters during the 1890s picked it up as safari and gave it the meaning of an expedition after big game. TURKISH borrowings: by, caftan, agha, yoghurt, kiosk, fez, caviar, coffee (Turkish kahv, which is said to have meant some kind of wine). From HEBREW, English borrowed words such as: cherub, kosher, seraph, and schnozzle

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 CHI ESE borrowings: tea, china, kowtow (Chinese custom of kneeling with the forehead touching the ground), ketchup, typhoon, pidgin (for the quaint jargon so called; the Chinese found difficulty in pronouncing business. His shot at it was bidginess, shortened bidgin, hence Pidgin English business English and hence the English phrase Thats not my pigeon not my concern). AUSTRALIA : boomerang, kangaroo, wallaby (small kangaroo), wombat (kind of opossum), dingo, budgerigar [a kind of parrot. In England this word is often clipped to budgie). ORTH AMERICA : tomahawk, wigwam, totem, moccasin, squaw, hominy, mugwump

(from the Massachusetts mugquomp, meaning Big Chief), toboggan. JAPA ESE: kimono, jujitsu (literally pliant art), the geisha girl (originally a dancing person, though she sometimes interprets that function pretty liberally), the ceremonial form of suicide, hara-kiri (a belly-slitting, generally by its owner), rikshaw, karaoke, kimono, sake, samurai HU GARIA has enriched the English hotchpotch with the words goulash, paprika,

possibly coach (from the town of Kocs where such carriages were first made), vampire, hussar. RUSSIA : czar, troika, steppe, mammoth. More recent Russian borrowings are bolshevik, muzhik, pogrom, soviet, kolkhoz, sputnik, vodka, and samovar. ORWEGIA : ski, saga, troll, fiord. Standard English adopted a few words from various English dialects: from Irish it has taken over the blarney (flattering, cajoling talk), brogue, galore abundance, sufficiency), colleen (name for a girl), shamrock (trefoil, clover), Tory (originally an Irish robber), banshee (which comes from Gaelic bean sidhe, fairy woman). Hooligan is taken from the name of a wild Irish family that became notorious in London during the 1890s. Welsh gives us bard, coracle (a kind of boat used on the Dee), flannel. Scottish Gaelic provides the topological words loch (lake), bog (wet spongy ground), cairn (mound of stones as a monument or landmark), clan, glen (narrow valley). The word whisky is an Anglicised version of uisgebeatha, water of life: reek (smoke) shank (stalk) and stock (chap, bloke) are of Scottish origin, too. 5.12. Summary On the basis of the examples enumerated above we can say that the commonest kind of loan-words as foreign words are called when taken over unaltered- are those

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which are connected with some well-known idiosyncrasy, custom, manufacture or characteristic of the people they are borrowed from. Obviously, there is no English word for the Eskimos igloo. By accepting a foreign word into the English language we admit, as it were, the foreigners exclusive right to choose an international name for that particular thing. It is fascinating to observe what sort of things, in the case of each country, is considered to be their special perquisites. 5.13. Evaluation 1. Explain the existence in English of such sets as: rise - mount - ascend holy - sacred - consecrated fire - flame - conflagration 2. The following list contains words of Anglo-Saxon origin. Find French synonyms for them. big doom front instead smell calm dream happiness jail speech craving easy hearty leave spell clumsy faithful help life whim deed freedom holy purpose whole deep friendship hut shade work 3. Below you will find a number of English words. Give their Latin synonyms: alike empty bad rudeness alive end happy shelter big endless height stillness brotherhood fat helper stubborn dead first hence teacher daily funny young twin earthy good man wizard 4. Here are some English nouns. Find the Latin adjectives corresponding to them. heaven mother town house mind winter letter ox worm 5. In English one may come across sets of three synonyms of Anglo-Saxon, French and Latin origin. It is assumed that the Anglo-Saxon terms are popular, the French ones are literary, and the Latin learned. Try to find the French and the Latin synonyms for the following Anglo-Saxon terms: anger friendly goodness hidden huge lively sure true unclear weariness to defeat to link

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6. Below is a list of English words all of which were originally borrowed from foreign languages. Try and guess which language is the source of each word. drama, mosquito, confetti, cosmonaut, chauffeur, psychology, duvet, origami, algebra, hamburger, cobra, piano, kindergarten, mattress, siesta, mammoth, hara-kiri, marmalade, kayak, soprano, cafeteria, ballet, tulip, palaver, kangaroo, tea, tsunami, khaki, ukulele, denim, sauna ski, yacht, waltz.

5.14 HOMEWORK I. Below are the first 14 lines of the Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales. You are given both the Middle English version and the Modern English one. In about 500 words, compare the two versions pointing out the changes in vocabulary that took place from the Middle English period to Modern English. Try to find the origin of some of the words.

Prologue
Chapter 1: Lines 1-15 of 860
Middle English

Chapter 1: Lines 1-15 of 860

Modern English

Here bygynneth the Book of the tales of Caunterbury.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open eyeSo priketh hem Nature in hir coragesThanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

Here begins the Book of the Tales of Canterbury When April with his showers sweet with fruit The drought of March has pierced unto the root And bathed each vein with liquor that has power To generate therein and sire the flower; When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath, Quickened again, in every holt and heath, The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun Into the Ram one half his course has run, And many little birds make melody That sleep through all the night with open eye (So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage, And palmers to go seeking out strange strands, To distant shrines well known in sundry lands.

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Unit 6. The synchronic approach to the English vocabulary

Contents 6.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 69 6.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 69 6.3. Introduction to the unit .......................................................................................... 69 6.4. Region .................................................................................................................... 71 6.5. Education and social standing............................................................................... 73 6.6. Subject matter ........................................................................................................ 73 6.7. Medium ................................................................................................................. 74 6.8. Attitude................................................................................................................... 76 6.9. Interference ......................................................................................................... 77 6.10. Summary .............................................................................................................. 77 6.11. Evaluation ............................................................................................................. 78 6.1. Introduction Unit 6 deals with the main dimensions along which Contemporary English varies, such as region, social standing, education, and style. It also introduces some terms that are useful for the understanding of the issues under consideration, which are strongly related to social aspects. 6.2. Competences After having covered the material in this chapter, the students should be able to adapt their language to various registers, modes and styles, to identify aspects of interference in the speech of beginning learners of English, and to recognize dialectal varieties of English.

Average time for covering this unit: 2 hours

6.3. Introduction After a short survey of the history of the English language (especially of the vocabulary), we may ask ourselves whether the English language is still apt to assimilate new words or whether its evolution has come to a close. Taking into account that a language is a dynamic phenomenon no verdict would be entirely justified.

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Old English, Middle English and Modern English have merged into a new composite entity which we currently refer to as Contemporary English a generic term no longer hinting at the chronological evolution of the English language, but defining instead a sum of linguistic typologies, a variety of lexical strata. We have seen that the vocabulary of English has a temporal dimension visible in its stratification through various influences at different times. English has changed so much that it is relevant to ask whether the English language before the Norman Conquest in 1066 can be said to be the same language as Modern English. Obviously the language of Shakespeare compared to present-day English shows many more correspondences and equivalents than Old English. Nevertheless, there are very important differences that are often overlooked, due to the frequent formal similarity of words. A precise analysis in many cases shows considerable discrepancy of meaning between words used by Shakespeare and formally identical contemporary words. As part of the literary heritage, such words and their use in famous quotations simultaneously belong to Early Modern English and the contemporary language. Besides the temporal dimension, the geographic dimension of a language naturally also plays a very important role. The differences between British English and American English immediately come to mind. In many descriptions of the English language and in some school grammars we find pairs of lists such as the following:
AmE: railroad, conductor, baggage, package, gas(oline), truck, sidewalk as BrE: railway, guard, luggage, parcel, petrol, lorry, pavement.

opposed to

It is rarely mentioned that a number of British words are perfectly acceptable in many areas in America. On the other hand numerous Americanisms have become quite familiar in Britain, due to an increase in transatlantic travel and the influence of broadcast media. In many cases the original American flavour has been lost completely, especially for younger British speakers. As a rule, every single speaker has his or her very personal language. This language form of the single speaker is nowadays generally called idiolect. As opposed to this, dialect is the language form of a particular group of speakers. The term dialect is currently often used in a broad sense, i.e. both for a regional, geographical variety, as well as for a social subclass of a speech community. The neutral term variety is frequently preferred today since it lacks the negative connotations, or shades of meaning, of dialect. Sometimes a terminological distinction is made between dialect, used for the regional varieties, and social dialect, for the language of a socially determined group of speakers.

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We shall now look at the explicit classification of varieties of English as given by Quirk/Greenbaum (1973) (quoted in Lipka, 1990:17) in A University Grammar of English. The varieties co-existing within the linguistic aggregate of Contemporary English are the following: 1. Region (geographical variation) 2. Education and social standing 3. Subject matter 4. Medium 5. Attitude 6. Interference register/field mode style AmE lit, sl law, med lit, poet fml, humour Fr, Ger

Before considering the relevance of this schema for the structure of the lexicon in greater detail, we have to mention the fact that grammar points out that there are numerous varieties of the English language and that what is normally meant by English is the common core realised in the different spoken or written forms of the language. There is, thus, a set of grammatical patterns and other characteristics common to all 'variety classes'. Within each class, further subdivision is possible and so there are varieties within varieties. Naturally, these are closely interrelated. Also, each of the six kinds of variety is related to the other variety classes. Here is a closer look at the distinction of the six classes.

Lets remember The vocabulary employed by one person can reveal a number of things about him/her: his origin (American, British, Australian, etc), the social stratum he belongs to (educated vs. non-educated), his profession (mechanic, linguist, or physician), as well as his attitude towards his interlocutor or the message transmitted. Idiolect= the language form employed by a single person; Dialect =the language form of a particular group of speakers; Sociolect = the language of a socially determined group of speakers.

6.4. Region For geographical or regional variation the term dialect is traditionally used. As we have seen, this is a notational term that is not at all unambiguous. It is often used for socially determined variants of the language. Sometimes there is a close interdependence between the two variety classes 1 and 2. Thus, Cockney is really the dialect of a particular social class 71

living in a particular part of London. Regional variation in language seems to be predominantly realized on the phonological level. This is often referred to as accent, although the term may also refer to variety class 6 'Interference'. We may speak of a Welsh or Scottish accent, but also of a noticeable French or Russian accent. A dialect, or rather a regional variety, may also be distinguished by different lexical or grammatical features. In brief, the most obvious difference between the terms accent and dialect is that the former is restricted to varieties of pronunciation, whereas the latter covers differences in grammar and vocabulary. In everyday usage, they are often confused. It has been noted that there is regionally different familiarity with specific variants of English. Thus, an Englishman will hear an American Southerner first as an American and may perhaps then classify him as a Southerner in addition. On the other hand, he may be able to distinguish within Great Britain between Irish, Scots, Northern, Welsh, South-western, and may perhaps recognize several London varieties. In North America, however, many people are able to distinguish between Canadian, New England, Midland and Southern. With regard to lexical variants, we have already seen a number of examples of differences between British and American English. Another regional variety, namely Scottish English, is perhaps less well known, although words such as loch, kirk, bonnie, lassie, wee are certainly not only familiar to British speakers. It may be difficult to decide whether these are purely dialectal variants, or whether they have a more specific descriptive meaning than their corresponding stylistically neutral equivalents (lake, church, etc.) Besides British and American English, the UGE distinguishes several other national standards of English. Scottish English, Irish English, and Canadian English are comparable to these two overwhelmingly predominant standards. South African English, New Zealand English and Australian English are in a different position in several respects. Although they are similar in orthography and grammar to British English, there are considerable differences in the lexicon and the phonology. Example 1 Here are some examples of British words and their American equivalents. British American coffins chips trousers bill biscuits angry caskets French fries pants cheque crackers mad

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Find the British equivalents of the following American linguistics items: gas/gasoline sidewalk baby carriage sneakers druggist checkers 6.5. Education and social standing Within geographically different forms of English there is considerable variation depending on education and social standing. This is sometimes referred to as sociolect or social dialect. A speaker may show more similarity in his language to people from the same social group in a different area than to people from a different social group in the same area. Indeed, one of the characteristics of the hierarchical social structure of a country like Britain is that social class takes precedence over geography as a determinant of speech, so that there is far more geographical variation among people in the lower social classes than there is amongst those at the top of the social heap. This has, in fact, gone so far that people who have passed through the public school system (or would like to sound as though they had) typically have no regional traits at all in their language. The relation between language-variation and its social dimension is such that broad generalizations in terms of variables like sex, age, social class soon give way, in particular instances, to more detailed and more interesting statements which make reference to the structure of different societies and to the attitudes (i.e. to the culture) of their members.

6.6. Subject matter Varieties according to subject matter are often referred to as registers. Within both languages and dialects, registers occur as speech adaptations that depend upon the social and communicative demands of the situation (Andersen, 1978, quoted in Berko Gleason, 1989:330). Registers refer to differences observable within speakers, across situations. While most of speakers will spend their lives speaking a single language and often a single dialect, they must master several registers in order to be socially acceptable. The term register is widely used in sociolinguistics to refer to 'varieties according to use', in contrast with dialects, defined as 'varieties according to user' (Halliday, McIntosh & Stevens, 1964 quoted in Hudson, R.A. 1991:48). The distinction is needed because the same person may use different linguistic items to express more or less the same meaning on different occasions, and the concept of dialect cannot reasonably be extended to include such variation.

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Example 2 The most elegant syntactic structures would not serve their purpose if used in a socially inappropriate fashion, such as the following question addressed to a 4year-old: 'Would you, perchance, favour some bovine lactation in a glass container delivered by your immediate biological female progenitor?'(Do you want your mom to give you a glass of milk?). Or, in writing one letter a person might start: 'I am writing to inform you that.', but in another he might write: I just wanted to let you know that.

Such examples suggest that the amount of variation due to register differences may be quite comparable to that due to differences in dialect. Each time a person speaks or writes he not only locates himself with reference to the rest of society, but also relates his act of communication to a complex classificatory scheme of communicative behaviour. This scheme takes the form of a multi-dimensional matrix. At the risk of slight oversimplification, we may say that ones dialect shows who (or what) you are, whilst ones register shows what you are doing.

6.7. Medium This term is usually employed to distinguish the spoken from the written variety. The contrast goes deeper than the superficial difference between the use of sounds and the use of graphic symbols. Grammar and vocabulary differ, too, sometimes in quite radical ways. The contrast is most noticeable when a formal written style is compared to everyday conversation. Conversational language is often inexplicit, because the participants are face-to-face, and can rely on the situation to clear up any problems of meaning. Phrases such as that one over there are regularly found in speech, but would be out of place in writing. Writers are not usually present when their output is read, so they must aim to make their language sufficiently clear and precise that it can be interpreted on its own. Conversation is usually spontaneous: speakers have to think standing up. They therefore do not have the time to plan out what they want to say, and their grammar is inevitably loosely constructed, often containing rephrasing and repetition. Sentences lack the intricate structure found in writing. Phrases such as you know, I mean, you see (called fillers) are common in speech, but not in writing. Lengthy sentences can be heard, linked only by and. The vocabulary of everyday speech tends to be informal, domestic, and more limited than in writing. There is much greater likelihood of slang and taboo words being used, as well as 74

empty nonsense words, which would never be found in writing. Conversely, writing tends to make greater use of vocabulary whose meaning is precise. Writers can ponder a while, and look a word up before they write it. This option isnt usually available to speakers. The interactive nature of conversation requires a great deal of maneuvering which would not usually be found in writing (unless an author was trying to portray speech). There are special ways of opening a conversation (Excuse me..., Guess what...., I say...), of checking that the listener is following (Are you with me? Let me put it another way...), of changing the topic (That reminds me...., By the way..., Where was I?), and ending ( ice talking to you; Gosh, is that the time?). Such strategies are unnecessary in writing, which has its own ways of organizing the exposition of a text (e.g. preface, summaries, indexes, and sub-headings). Conversation can use a wide range of tones of voice, which are difficult to convey in writing (apart from through the use of a few typographical effects and punctuation marks). On the other hand, writing has a wide range of graphic features that do not exist in speech (such as colour, layout, and capitalization). There are many vocal sound effects which cannot be satisfactorily written down, though novelists try. Equally, there are many written effects which cannot easily be spoken (such as train timetables, graphs, and formulae). Written language is usually much more permanent and formal than speech. Because of its permanence, it also has a special status, being used where it is necessary to make something legally binding (as in contracts) or to provide a means of identity or authority (as in the sacred literature of a religious tradition). Because of its formality, it is more likely to be used to provide the STANDARD which society values. Our speech is frequently judged by the standards of written language and found wanting. Lets remember Speech: - Inexplicit - spontaneous: speakers have to think standing up; use of fillers - vocabulary of everyday speech tends to be informal, domestic, and limited; - interactive nature of conversation requires a great deal of maneuvering which would not usually be found in writing; - conversation can use a wide range of tones of voice. Writing: - language sufficiently clear and precise that it can be interpreted on its own; - sentences properly constructed, they may have an intricate structure; - writing tends to make greater use of vocabulary whose meaning is precise. -writing has its own ways of organizing the exposition of a text (e.g. preface, summaries, indexes, sub-headings). -there are many written effects which cannot easily be spoken (such as train timetables, graphs, and formulae); -written language is usually much

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more permanent and formal than speech.

6.8. Attitude In this variety class, linguistic form may be determined by the speakers attitude to the hearer or reader (the addressee), to the subject matter, or to the purpose of the message. This variety is often marked by the ambiguous label style. We must add that Hallidays tenor is a more precise equivalent, although it does not include attitude to the subject matter. The University Grammar of English (UGE) distinguishes five variants of attitude along the following scale: rigid / FORMAL / neutral / I FORMAL / familiar (of which only the two in capitals are explicitly marked). With regard to the lexicon, finer distinctions are usually drawn in many dictionaries. There are different kinds and different degrees of formality and informality. From the point of view of etymology it is noteworthy that formal words are normally of classical or Romance origin, while informal words usually derive from Anglo-Saxon. There is a problem here sometimes, namely whether we have to do with two formally distinct variants of the same word, or with two denotationally different stylistic overtones. Example 3 Leech (1981:14) mentions the following lexical items as synonyms with ... stylistic overtones: steed (poetic), horse (general), nag (slang). According to this, horse would be stylistically neutral or unmarked, while both steed and nag are stylistic variants of horse. However, nag is defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD) as small riding-horse or pony: (colloq.) horse. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD) compresses this twofold definition of nag into (colloq.) (usu. old) horse. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDCE) (1978) gives two distinct definitions: 1. not fml a horse that is old or is in bad condition; 2. infml, esp. derog a horse, esp. one which races If we take the second definition in the LDCE and COD, and the one in the OALD without the qualification usu old, then nag is simply a stylistically marked variant of horse. If, on the other hand, we consider a nag to be a horse that is either small, old, in bad condition, or one which races, then nag has a meaning or denotation different from horse. A label as derog clearly refers to attitude towards the thing talked about (here: dislike), while humour denotes attitude more towards the addressee than towards subject matter. Find terms of addressing people and identify the attitude the speaker expresses towards his/her interlocutor by employing them. Example: if you address a woman with the term bitch you show your disgust, hatred, disapproval of her habits, etc. 76

6.9. Interference' This class (set off from the others by a broken line in the diagram) is in fact rather different. It refers to the contact with a foreign language and includes varieties caused by the traces left by a speakers native language when speaking English. Thus, speakers of English as a foreign language make unaware attempts to force English into the grammatical patterns of their mother tongue. This tendency is the source of further varieties of English, such as the English spoken by French, vs. that spoken by a Russian/German/Romanian. Interference manifests itself: -on the phonological level: - Romanians sometimes replace the English sounds // and // by sounds having anterior points of articulation, such as /t/ and /d/, /s/ and /z/ (alveolars), /f/ and /v/ (labio-dentals); -on the grammatical level: Romanian speakers of English, especially when they are at the beginning of the process of learning the language, form the English interrogative and negative sentences according to the Romanian pattern: You go to school today? o, I not go to school today. -on the lexical level, interference is probably more important than on the phonological and grammatical levels. In this respect loan words and loan translations must be mentioned as the result of interference. The so-called false-friends also belong here. Example 4 - the German words sensibel sensitive, brav good are identified with the English sensible reasonable and brave courageous. - the English library (R. bibliotec) is identified with the Romanian librrie, magazine (R. revist) with magazin, and compass (R. busol) with compas. 6.10 Summary Summary The variety of the English language encompasses all social situations. As soon as people come into regular contact with each other, the language that they use is likely to develop features that reflect bonds that exist between them. There exists a great deal of overlap and interrelation between the variety classes. Certain subjects can hardly be handled in writing (liturgy), while others (e.g. legal statutes) must be handled in this medium. It is further observed that for certain topics (e.g. funerals) informal language would be inappropriate and distasteful. Nevertheless, attitudinal varieties possess a great deal of independence, compared to other varieties. The parameters used for defining the six variety classes are not absolute either. They are graded and variable, and there are varieties within each variety.

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6.11 Evaluation 1. Can you give the British 'translation' of the following Australian expressions? Australian British Wanna cuppa? Go and tart yourself up! How ya goin' luv? Don't get your knickers in a knot! What's the latest goss? The old man's shot through. Could I bot a fag? Grouse lippy! 2. Read the following fragment from Hard Times, by Charles Dickens. Write out a transcription of the dialect speech in Standard English.
Stephen Blackpool 'Now, what do you complain of?' asked Mr. Bounderby. "I ha' not coom here, Sir,' Stephen reminded him, 'to complain. I coom for that I were sent for.' 'What,' repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding his arms, 'do you people, in general way, complain of?' Stephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a moment, and then seemed to make up his mind. 'Sir, I were never good at showin' o 't, though I ha' had'n my share in feeling o 't. 'Deed we are in a muddle, Sir. Look round town - so rich as 'tis - and see the numbers o' people as has been broughten into bein heer, fur to weave, an' to card, an' to piece out a livin', aw the same one way, somehows, 'twixt their cradles and their graves. Look how we live, an' wheer we live, an' in what numbers, an' by what chances, and wi' what sameness; and look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never works us no nigher to onny dis' ant object -ceptin awlus, Death. Look how you considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi' yor deputations to Secretaries o' State 'bout us, and how you are awlus right, and how we are awlus wrong, and never had'n no reason in us sin ever we were born. Look how this ha' growen an' growen, Sir, bigger an' bigger, broader an' broader, harder an' harder, fro year to year, fro generation unto generation. Who can look on 't, Sir, and fairly tell a man 'tis not a muddle?

3. Using the functional differentiation made in the chapter above determine the features of the following texts, on the basis of the given model. MODEL: text register level medium a. scientific neutral written
a) Florida. This finger pointing downward towards the Caribbean is held by some to be a colony of Cuba, by others, a paradise of senior citizens' colonies ('eventide homes'), and people who believe in 'life, liberty and happiness of pursuit'. It is said that it was a Florida hospital patient who, when approached by a young intern wielding a hypodermic needle and explaining' 'Just a little prick with a needle', said, 'I know you are, but what are you going to do with the needle?' (From David Frost & Michael Shea: The MidAtlantic Companion, p. 22) b) Let us cool the liquid still further and watch it solidify, still at the same magnification as before. As be abstract more heat the molecules, moving ever more slowly, are pulled closer together, and the liquid contracts. At length the molecules are so close that they can no longer pass between one another. The intermolecular force pulls them together so that they form a regular pattern. Something similar can be seen if some marbles in the corner of a box are gently shaken. In this way the irregular arrangement of molecules in

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gas or liquid is replaced by regular arrangement in a crystal. Such a regular arrangement is known as a space lattice, i.e. a lattice in three dimensions, as contrasted with the flat lattice or trellis common in gardens. (From A Structural Introduction to Chemistry, E.T. Harris quoted in Moody, H.L.B: Varieties of English, p.151) c) Despite the recent and expensive failure of his latest West End play, Jeffrey Archer is not noticeably down and a considerable distance from out. With Kane and Able having sold over three million copies in England and the paperback ot a Penny More, ot a Penny Less continuing to nip smartly out of the bookshops at the rate of a thousand copies a day, fifteen years after its first publication, he has little real reason to be permanently dispirited. It's common knowledge that literature is not his first love. He only started writing in his mid-thirties, when a promising political career collapsed and he resigned a safe seat in Parliament amid business and financial difficulties which would have crushed most men for good. The legend that he wrote his first novel with the cold-blooded intention of making a fortune, is, however, only a legend. (From Susan Morris and Alan Stanton: Practice Tests for CAE, p.75.) d) The "Clutch". This is invariably installed between the engine and gearbox and is almost always mounted directly on the output end of the engine, though occasionally both it and the gearbox are incorporated in the final drive unit. The clutch is always foot operated, the pedal being linked either by a direct mechanical linkage or, very often nowadays, by a hydraulic system, similar to that of hydraulic brakes. The latter method facilitates the accommodation of the considerably transverse movement of rubber mounted engines. (From The Penguin Car Handbook by Robert Ireson, quoted in Moody, H.L.B: Varieties of English, p 153)

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Unit 7. Word-formation rules

Contents 7.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 80 7.2. Competences .......................................................................................................... 80 7.3. Affixation ............................................................................................................... 81 7.3.1. Prefixes ............................................................................................................... 81 7.3.1. 1. Class-changing prefixes.................................................................................. 82 7.3.1.2. Class-preserving prefixes................................................................................. 82 7.3.2. Suffixes ................................................................................................................ 88 7.3.2.1. oun-forming suffixes...................................................................................... 88 7.3.2.2. Verb-forming suffixes....................................................................................... 89 7.3.2.3. Adjective-forming suffixes................................................................................ 90 7.3.2.4. Adverb-forming suffixes .................................................................................. 92 7.4. Composition ........................................................................................................... 93 7.5. Conversion (zero-derivation)................................................................................. 96 7.6. Clipping.................................................................................................................. 98 7.7. Blending ............................................................................................................... 100 7.8. Abbreviation......................................................................................................... 102 7.9. Reduplication ....................................................................................................... 104 7.10. Eponymous words .............................................................................................. 105 7.11. Deliberate coinages ........................................................................................... 106 7.12. Summary ............................................................................................................ 107 7.13. Evaluation .......................................................................................................... 107 7.14. Homework II ..................................................................................................... 110 7.1. Introduction Unit 7 aims at presenting the basic processes by means of which the vocabulary of English can be enriched and at showing the possible problems posed by the word-formation rules with respect to spelling, pronunciation and meaning inference. 7.2. Competences After having read the theoretical information presented in the chapter, the students should be able to identify the rules according to which certain words have been formed, to analyze the extent to which the same word-formation rules operate both in English and Romanian and to create themselves words whenever they are

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short of an appropriate word.

Average time for covering this unit: 4 hours

The LEXICON (in a narrow sense) is a list of the words of a language. But apart from this list of words, which could also be labelled lexical core, the lexicon contains a set of rules which specify how to form one class of words out of another. These rules are called WORD FORMATIO RULES (WFRs). The lexicon contains actual words. By applying WFRs to the actual words we obtain potential words. Potential words are accepted only after they have gained institutional currency in the language. They have no frequency of use, and speakers should recognize them as words that are actually used. The word formation rules are: affixation, composition, conversion (zero-derivation), clipping (contraction), blending, abbreviation, reduplication, conscious (deliberate) coinages, and eponymous words.

7.3. Affixation

Affixation represents the use of prefixes and suffixes with the roots/stems of various
words to form new words. Prefixes precede the root/stem, they change its meaning and sometimes its morphological status as well (e.g. glaze - to englaze). Suffixes are placed after the root/stem, and they modify the class of the word (e.g. happy happiness). While the prefixes in English are of Latin or Greek origin, and are much used in forming scientific words, the suffixes are more often of native origin, or have come into the language via French. They have been in the language longer, and are more frequently employed with the general vocabulary. A possibly general difference between prefixes and suffixes is that the former are characteristically less integrated with the stems to which they are attached than the latter.

7.3.1. Prefixes The number of items to be dealt with as prefixes is considerably reduced. The vast majority of prefixes in English are class-maintaining. But there are also class-changing

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prefixes. We shall deal first with the latter. Most of the prefixes can be added to bases of more than one form class. 7.3.1.1. Class changing prefixes a- pronounced //. This prefix forms adjectives, mainly but not exclusively from forms which are ambiguous between nouns and verbs. The adjectives formed by this process are restricted to predicative position: the house is ablaze vs. *the ablaze house. Other examples are asleep, astir, awash. This prefix is still productive, recent examples being aglaze, asquish, and aswivel. be- .This prefix forms transitive verbs from adjectives, verbs or, most frequently, nouns. Examples are becalm, bespatter, bemoan, befriend, bewitch, bejewel, belittle. en-. This prefix occurs with verbs that describe the process of moving into or being placed into a different state or condition, or being placed in a different position. For example, if something 'enables you to do something, it gives you an opportunity so that you become able to do it; if you enrich something, you improve its quality or value by adding something else to it. Here are some more examples: endanger, encircle, enfeeble, enlarge, enshrine, enslave, entangle, entrap. Other prefixes in this class are: de- to remove the thing denoted by the noun (debark, de-ice, debug, defrost), dis- (disbar), un- (unhorse).

7.3.1.2. Class maintaining prefixes Prefixes can be considered in terms of the form class of the base to which they are added. But they might be also classified on semantic principles. We will adopt the latter classification.

a) egative prefixes (the opposite of) un- a prefix of Germanic origin; it can be attached to adjectives, '-ed' and '-ing' participles. e.g. unfair, unexpected, unforgettable, unwitting non- is a prefix of Latin origin; it can be attached to adjectives and nouns. Words formed in this way are usually written with a hyphen, but some of the more common words are written as one word. e.g. nonadjustable, nonbusiness, nonfluency, non-smoker, non-profit, non-resident. in- (with the allomorphic variants il-, ir-, im-) is a prefix of Latin origin that can be attached to nouns and adjectives, and occasionally to verbs.

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e.g. inactivate, insane, inattention, illogical, improper, irrational, irrecoverable. dis- is a prefix of Latin origin; it can be attached to nouns, verbs and adjectives. e.g. disobey, disloyal, dislike a-, pronounced /ei/ or /Q/ is a prefix of Latin/Greek origin. This prefix is added exclusively to adjectival bases, as in amoral, apolitical, atypical, aphasic, asocial.

b) Reversative prefixes (to reverse the action) de- can be attached to verbs and abstract nouns. Verbs formed in this way describe an action which has the opposite effect of, or reverses, the process described by the original verb. e.g. deescalate. dis- is attached to verbs, participles and nouns. e.g. disconnect, discoloured, disorder, disinherit, disobey, dissatisfy. un- is attached to verbs and nouns. e.g. undo, unwrap, unhorse decode, deactivate deforestation, deboost, deaestheticize, decapacitate,

c) Pejorative prefixes mis (meaning bad, improper, wrongly) is a prefix of Germanic origin, attached to verbs, abstract nouns, participles. e.g. misdemeanor, misconduct, misbegotten, misdirect, misprint, misquote, mistreat. mal- (meaning badly, inadequate) is a prefix of Latin origin. It can be attached to verbs, abstract nouns, participles and adjectives. e.g. malformed, malodorous, maladjustment, maltreat, maladjusted, maldistribution. pseudo- (meaning false) can be attached to nouns and adjectives. Words formed in this way refer to or describe something which is not really what it seems or claims to be. e.g. pseudonym, pseudoscience, pseudo-creativity, pseudomycelial.

d) Prefixes of degree /size arch-. This prefix of Greek origin, meaning chief, principal, extreme, is added particularly to human nouns to denote a person who has reached the highest position possible. e.g. archbishop, archdeacon, archduchess. hyper-. A prefix of Greek origin, meaning beyond, above, excessively, hyper combines mainly with adjectives to form new adjectives, and occasionally it can be attached to nouns.

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e.g. hyperventilate, hyperactive, hypermarket, hyperglycaemia. hypo. This prefix means beneath, below and it occurs in medical words. It combines with adjectives and nouns. e.g. hypotension, hypochondria, hypodermic, hypothalamus, hypothermia. macro-. This prefix is also of Greek origin and occurs in words that refer to or describe things which are large in size or scope. Words formed in this way are usually technical or scientific. e.g. macrobiotic, macrocosm, macrobiotic, macromolecular, macro-scale, macrostructure. micro-. This is the opposite of the previous prefix, and its meaning is that of small. e.g. microcosm, microbe, microscopic, micro-economics, microsurgery. out-. A prefix of Germanic origin, out can be attached to intransitive verbs turning them into transitive ones. Verbs formed in this way describe someone or something as doing a particular action much better or to a greater extent than another person or thing. For example, if you outrun someone, you succeed in running somewhere faster than they do. e.g. outgrow, outrun, outlive, outwit, outswim, outsmart. over-. This prefix combines with nouns, verbs, and adjectives to form new nouns, verbs and adjectives. Words formed in this way indicate that a quality exists or an action is done to too great an extent. For instance, if you overload something, you put too large a load on it. e.g. overdo, overeat, overact, overbid, overambitious, overdraft, overenthusiasm super-. This prefix can be attached to adjectives to form new adjectives. Adjectives formed in this way express the idea that the quality described is present in an unusually large degree. e.g. supernatural, superabundant, super-active, super-quick. The prefix can also be attached to nouns to form new nouns that refer to a bigger, more powerful, or more important version of a particular thing. e.g. supermarket, supertanker, superstate, super-computers, super-genius, super-hero, superman, superstar. sur-. It occurs in words that have over, above or excess as part of their meaning. e.g. surcharge, surtax, surreal, surplus, surmount. sub- meaning inferior to, next lower than is a prefix of Latin origin. It is usually attached to adjectives and nouns. e.g. subadult, subagency, subalternate, subculture, sub-plot, subtype. under-. This prefix can be attached to verbs, past participles and nouns. Words formed in this way express the idea that there is not enough of something or that something has not been done as much or as well as is needed. 84

e.g. undercooked, underestimate, underprice, underexpose, underling. ultra-. This prefix is of Latin origin and it means beyond, excessive. It can be attached to nouns and adjectives. e.g. ultramodern, ultrahigh, ultramarine, ultrasonic, ultrasound, ultra-intelligent, ultra-sharp.

e) Prefixes of attitude anti-. A prefix of Latin origin, anti- combines with nouns and adjectives to form words which describe someone or something that is opposed to the thing referred to or described by the original noun or adjective. e.g. anti-abortion, anti-Catholic, anti-colonial, antipathy, antiseptic, antithetical, antiwar, anti-missile, antisocial co-. A prefix of Latin origin, co- can be attached to nouns, verbs and adjectives, its meaning being with, together. The prefix has a number of variants: com-, con-, col-, cor- . e.g. co-author, communicate, conference, coeditor, co-edit, co-operate, co-education, collateral, corroborate. contra-( contro-). This is a prefix of Latin origin, its Germanic counterpart being counter-. It means against and can appear in front of a verb or an abstract noun. e.g. contravene, controversy, counteract, counter-espionage, counterweight. pro-. A prefix of Latin origin, pro- combines with nouns and adjectives which refer to or describe a person, system, philosophy, or policy in order to form words which describe someone or something that strongly supports/is in favour of the person or the thing mentioned. e.g. pro-allies, pro-democracy, pro-feminist, pro-union, pro-liberal, pro-Western, progovernment, proponent, pro-American.

f) Locative prefixes cata-. Greek prefix, meaning down. e.g. catastrophe, cataract, catapult. circum-. This is a prefix of Latin origin, its meaning being round, around. It is attached to adjectives, nouns and verbs. e.g. circumnavigate, circumcise, circumscribe, circumspect, circumlocution. dia- is of Greek origin. Its meaning is across, through. e.g. diagonal, diameter, dialogue, diaphragm. 85

inter-. This is a prefix of Latin origin whose meaning is between, among. It combines with nouns and adjectives that refer to a person, place, or thing in order to form new adjectives. Adjectives formed in this way describe something existing or happening between two or more people or things. As far as the spelling is concerned, words formed in combination with this prefix are usually written with a hyphen, but some of the more common ones are written as one word. e.g. intervene, international, inter-city, inter-departmental, inter-disciplinary, international, inter-racial, interterritorial. super- is of Latin origin, its meaning being over, above e.g. superstructure, superscript sub- is a prefix of Latin origin, meaning under e.g. subway, subcontract. trans-. A prefix of Latin origin, trans- combines with nouns and adjectives that refer to or describe a place in order to form words which describe something that goes across the place mentioned. For example, the trans-Siberian railway is a railway that crosses Siberia. e.g. transatlantic, transcontinental, transoceanic, transmit.

g) Prefixes of time and order ante-. This is a prefix of Latin origin, the meaning of which is before. e.g. antecedent, antediluvian, ante-nuptial, ante-natal ex-. A prefix of Latin origin, meaning former, ex- combines with nouns to refer to people in order to form new nouns. Nouns formed in this way refer to someone who used to be the thing referred to by the original noun. e.g. ex-accountant, ex-boxer, ex-communist, ex-lover, ex-president, ex-husband. fore- is of Germanic origin, its meaning before. Attached to verbs, nouns and adjectives. Words formed in this way describe or refer to one thing that comes before and is relevant to another. For example, if you forewarn someone about something, you tell them in advance that you think something unpleasant or dangerous is going to happen. e.g. forearm, forebear, forecast, forefathers, foresight, forewarn, foreword, forename, foresee. pre-. The origin of this prefix is Latin, and its meaning is before. It can be attached to nouns, verbs and adjectives. Words formed in this way refer to an action which has already been done.

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e.g. preamplifier, pre-arrange, preconception, pre-cooked, pre-Christian, precast, precaution. post- is of Latin origin. Its meaning is after. Words formed by means of this prefix indicate that one thing takes place after another. e.g. postpone, post-budget, post-impressionism, post-medieval, posterity, postscriptum. prim- is of Latin origin. It means first. e.g. primordial, primogeniture, primrose, primeval. proto- has a Greek origin. Its meaning is first. It can be attached to nouns. Nouns formed in this way refer to something which comes from the early stages in the development of a particular thing. For instance, a prototype is the first model that is made of something, usually the basis for later improved models. e.g. prototype, proto-fish, proto-horse, protohuman, protozoan. re- . It is of Latin origin and its meaning is again. It is attached to verbs and their related nouns to describe or refer to the fact that an action or process is done or happens a second time, sometimes in a different way. For example, if you rewrite something, you make changes to something you have already written in order to improve it. Words formed in this way are usually written as one word, but some of the less common one can be written with a hyphen, especially when re- combines with a word beginning with a vowel. e.g. rebuild, reiterate, resettlement, rename, reopen, reopening, redefine, redefinition.

h) umber prefixes ambi- is a prefix of Latin origin, meaning; both. e.g. ambidextrous, ambiguous, ambivalent. bi-/ di- means two. e.g. bifocal, bicameral, biennial, bicycle, dichotomy, dilemma. mono-, uni- . Its meaning is one, and it occurs in words which have one or single as part of their meaning. e.g. monarchy, monotheism, monogamy, monologue, monorail, unilateral, unison, unicycle, unisex, unity. multy-, poly- means many. Adjectives formed with this prefix express the idea that there is a large number of a particular thing, or a large amount of a particular quality. e.g. multifarious, multitudinous, multi-coloured, multi-faith, multi-legged, multinational, polygamist, polyglot, polygon, polymath, polyphonic, polytechnic 87

semi- is of Latin origin, its meaning being half. It combines with adjectives and nouns. Words formed in this way express the idea that something is equal to one half of something else. e.g. semi-annual, semicircle, semi-detached, semi-tone. Semi- and half- are not always interchangeable. In order to be understood we must say halftime in the semi-final (in a football match) and not semi-time in the half-final. Besides semi- and half- we have hemi- from Greek and demi- from French, the latter going back to the Latin dimidium divided into two equal parts from the middle. e.g. demi-monde, demijohn, demigod, hemisphere. This list of prefixes is not exhaustive, our aim being mainly to present the most frequently encountered ones. It is in order now to pass to the second class of affixes, namely to suffixes. Reinforcement Prefixes in English are classified into two main groups, depending on whether they change the lexical class of the root they attach to or not. Thus, we have class-preserving prefixes and class-changing prefixes. The former are further classified into a number of groups on their meanings (locative, number, of time and order, attitudinal, etc).

7.3.2. SUFFIXES Suffixes may be grouped according to several criteria. One of them is the class of the word they form. Thus we have noun-forming suffixes, verb-forming suffixes, and so on. Another criterion is the class of the base the suffixes are typically added to (de-nominal, i.e. words obtained by adding suffixes to nouns, de-adjectival, de-verbal, etc). In this section we shall use the former classification. Again, no attempt at exhaustiveness will be made in the list of illustrations provided in each sub-section.

7.3.2.1. oun-forming suffixes Nouns from nouns a) Occupational -eer: pamphleteer, engineer, pioneer. -er: maker of; glover, potter b) Diminutive and female -ette: small; kitchenette, cigarette, feminine: usherette, majorette, -ess: waitress, actress. let: small, unimportant 88

booklet, starlet, piglet, -y (ie): daddy, auntie, Johnny. c) Status, domain -cracy: system of government democracy, plutocracy; -dom: kingdom, stardom -ery: e.g. slavery, machinery; -hood: boyhood, brotherhood, -ship: friendship, membership, Nouns (adjectives) from nouns -ese: nationality Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese. -(i)an: belonging to, nationality; Indonesian, republican; -ism: doctrine Calvinism, Buddhism, idealism; -ist: member of, occupation Buddhist, stylist, manicurist -ite: member of Labourite, Wagnerite. Nouns from verbs This is the most common type of derivation, but the nouns formed are of different kinds. -ation: lexicalization, computerization, flirtation, formation, containerization, Finlandization, fracturation. -al: denotes action (derived from dynamic verbs): arrival, refusal, denial; -ant: inhabitant, lubricant, contestant, -ee: addressee, assignee, deportee, cohabitee, divorcee; -er: actor, lecturer, player, producer, -ing: driving, painting, earnings. -ment: arrangement, commitment, entertainment, improvement, retirement. -ure: closure, failure, departure, Nouns from adjectives -cy: accuracy, efficiency, excellency, illiteracy, intimacy; -ity; complexity, formality, -ness: awkwardness, boldness, effectiveness; -th : warmth, length, youth, width. absurdity, brutality,

7.3.2.2. Verb-forming suffixes There are two main suffixes deriving verbs from nouns and from adjectives. These are: -ize: This is a suffix of Greek origin, and it is very productive. It combines with nouns to form verbs. Verbs formed in this way refer to actions that involve or are related to the original noun. e.g. apologize, characterize, epitomize, symbolize, publicize, modernize, popularize, instantize, marginalize, containerize, pedestrianize, structurize, Vietnamize. -ify: This is a suffix of Romance origin; it is less productive than -ize.

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e.g. amplify, beautify, clarify, dignify, falsify, metrify, fishify (=to supply with fish), testify, specify. -en: This is only a marginally productive suffix. It combines with nouns and adjectives that refer to a quality or state in order to form verbs. Verbs formed in this way describe the process of causing something to have a particular quality or to be in a particular state. e.g. blacken, brighten, dampen, deepen, flatten, harden, loosen, quicken, sharpen, shorten, quicken, ripen, widen.

7.3.2.3. Adjective-forming suffixes Adjectives from nouns -al. Adjectives formed in this way describe something that is connected with the thing referred to by the original noun. For example, environmental problems are related to the environment. e.g. accidental, additional, conventional, educational, historical, musical, regional. Sometimes al combines with adjectives ending in -ic to form new adjectives with the same meaning. For example, comical means the same as comic. -ed. The adjectives formed by means of this suffix describe someone or something as having a particular feature. e.g. bearded, patterned, pointed, shoed, wooded. -esque. This suffix combines with names of famous people in order to form adjectives. Adjectives formed in this way describe someone or something that is similar in style to something made or done by the person mentioned. Thus, if a piece of music is Beethovenesque, it is similar in style to the music composed by Beethoven. e.g. Dantesque, Haydnesque, Chaplinesque, Rembrandtesque. The suffix can also be added to common nouns to form adjectives: e.g. picturesque, grotesque, statuesque. -less. This suffix is added very productively to common nouns to form adjectives. Adjectives formed in this way describe people or things that do not have or do whatever is referred to. For example, if something is harmless, it cannot harm you. e.g. airless, brainless, endless, flawless, hopeless, meaningless, restless, useless. Some recent coinages are fieldless, flueless, flyless, furnitureless. -ish. This suffix occurs in words which refer to or describe the people, language or characteristics of a particular country or region.

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e.g. British, English, Jewish, Scottish, Turkish. The same suffix can also combine with common nouns to form adjectives that describe a person or thing as being like another. e.g. boyish, childish, devilish, foolish, girlish, hellish, impish, sluttish. -like. Adjectives formed with the help of this suffix describe things that are similar to whatever the nouns refer to. e.g. animal-like, childlike, daisy-like, dreamlike, flower-like, ladylike. These two suffixes ish and like have the same meaning. But in pairs such as monkish/monklike or childish/childlike, the suffixes are seen to be subtly different: the words with ish have a depreciative shade of meaning which is absent from the like words. Such shades of meaning occur quite often with suffixes, which tend to be influenced by their stems in ways in which prefixes are not. 'ish 'may have acquired this faint nuance, which is not perceptible at all in many ish words, through the influence of stems like churl, fool, fiend, to which it was early attached. -ly. Adjectives formed by means of this suffix describe things or people that have the characteristics which are typical of the original nouns. e.g. beastly, earthly, fatherly, heavenly, manly, motherly, saintly. -ous: e.g. ambitious, courteous, virtuous, venomous. -y: e.g. meaty, catty, creamy, silky. Example Other suffixes which form adjectives from nouns are: -ate: e.g. passionate, affectionate, compassionate -en: e.g. woolen, golden -ese: e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese. -ful: e.g. useful, delightful, successful. -ic: e.g. algebraic, atomic, heroic, specific.

Adjectives from verbs -able: This is probably the most productive suffix in this group, forming adjectives from transitive verbs. Adjectives formed in this way describe someone or something that is affected by the action or process described by the verb. For example, if someone has admirable qualities, they have qualities that other people admire. e.g. acceptable, adorable, comparable, manageable, preferable, recognizable.

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-less: This suffix is no longer productive when added to verbs, but a few established examples are current. e.g. countless, tireless. -ive: This suffix occurs in a large number of adjectives, some of which contain stems that are not current English words. For instance, if someone is creative, they have the ability to create and develop new ideas. e.g. active, attractive, competitive, comprehensive, destructive, effective, imaginative, protective. Example Other suffixes, which form adjectives from verbs, are: -ant/-ent: e.g. absorbent, brilliant, constant, elegant, important, ignorant, determinant. -atory: e.g. affirmatory, derogatory, compulsory

Adjectives from adjectives -ish: This is the most productive suffix of this kind. Adjectives formed in this way describe something as having a small amount of the characteristic or quality described by the original adjective. For example, if something is longish, it is fairly long. e.g. biggish, blackish, dampish, darkish, fattish, greenish, oldish, plumpish, thinnish, whitish. Other suffixes in this category are: -ly: e.g. lowly, sickly. -some: e.g. queersome, wearisome

7.3.2.4. Adverb-forming suffixes The main suffixes forming adverbs are: -ly. This suffix is mainly added to adjectives. e.g. happily, oddly. -wards, previously added to particles (as in afterwards, inwards,), is now added mainly to nouns: e.g. earthwards, homewards. -wise: This suffix is productively attached to nouns.

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e.g. cornerwise, clockwise, education-wise, hammer-wise, lengthwise, ostrich-wise Reinforcement Suffixes, just like prefixes, are classified into a number of groups, the principle we have adopted here being the class of the word they form. Thus we have noun-forming, verb-forming, adjective-forming and adverb-forming suffixes. Within each of these 4 major classes, further distinctions can be made on the basis of semantic criteria.

7.4. COMPOSITIO (COMPOU DI G) A prototypical compound is a morphologically complex word containing at least two elements which can otherwise occur as free forms, i.e. as independent words, e.g. steamboat, delivery van, snow-white. Thus, compounding essentially represents a grammatical device by which complex words can be formed from smaller elements which, under normal circumstances, have word status. Compounding differs from affixation in that the latter involves morphemes which cannot have word status. Depending on the syntactic category of lexical morphemes involved, a variety of combinations, and hence a variety of compounds can be obtained.

7.4.1. COMPOU D OU S b) Subject verb compounds. In these compounds a nominal element is interpreted as the agent of the action denoted by the other, verbal element. In most examples, therefore, the nominal element is animate, but in a few, like hovercraft, pop-gun, revolving door, though the noun is not animate, it still seems most naturally analysed as the subject of the verb. Example - be sting (cf: the bee stings), snburn, snake-bite, bus stop, daybreak, rainfall, plain crash, sunshine, toothache - cleaning lady, dancing girl, falling star, laughing stock

b) Verb object compounds Example - chewing-gum (cf: Mary chews the gum), drinking-water, rocking-horse, steering wheel. Most of these examples contain a purpose relation: gum for

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chewing, wheel for steering. - brick-layer, cheese-cutter.

Consider the following sets of compound nouns. How could you classify them on the basis of the relationship that holds between the two constituents? a) bell jar, box kite, hairpin bend, kidney bowl, piggy bank, umbrella tree. b) dancing floor, ironing board, landing strip, swimming pool, bake-house, call-box, checkpoint, show-room, watch-tower. c) blotting paper, carving knife, darning needle, magnifying glass, guide book. d) Angora rabbit, Prussian blue, Persian rug.

7.4.2. COMPOU D ADJECTIVES Compound adjectives are basically classified on the basis of the second elements. Thus, we have: a) Compound adjectives containing an ing participle Example - all-embracing, breath-taking, hair-raising, time-consuming.

b) Compound adjectives containing an ed participle Example hard-bitten, well-read, well-behaved, clean shaven, widespread, air-conditioned, heart-broken, tongue-tied. c) Compund adjectives having an adjective as the second constituent: Example - fortunate-unhappy, foolish-witty, devilish-holy. - night-blind, world-famous

Consider the following compound adjectives: daisy-fresh, dirty-cheap, feather-light, fire-hot, ice-cold, pitch dark, razor sharp, sky high, snow-white, brand new, dead slow, dog-tired. What can you with respect to the relationship holding between their constituents?

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7.4.3. COMPOU D VERBS Verb compounds may arise in 3 different ways: -by back-formation from noun or adjective compounds; -by zero derivation from compound nouns; -by linking two words together. a) Compound verbs obtained by back-formation Compound verbs may have a nominal or adjectival compounds as their sources, e.g. to globe-trot comes from the compound noun globe-trotter. The best way of explaining how the compound verb comes about is to say that a change in the constituent structure of the compound noun takes place, so that the -er is seen as belonging not to the simple root trot-, but to the compound root globe-trot-:

globe trotter globe trotter This ending may now be subtracted, leaving the compound verb to globe-trot. Similar examples are: to brainwash, to sleep-walk. It often cannot be stated with certainty which nominal (or adjectival) form has provided the starting-point for a back-formed verb compound. Brainwashing seems to be the source of to brainwash, sleep-walker/walking could both be the source of to sleep-walk. Example Further examples of compound verbs formed by 'subtraction' of a nominal or adjectival ending are to air-condition, to book-keep, to gift-wrap, to house-keep, to proof-read, to stage-manage, to window-shop.

b) Compound verbs formed by zero-derivation (conversion from a compound noun) Since this word formation rule will be described a little later, we shall only give some examples: to blue-pencil, to court-martial, to hand-cuff, to machine-gun, to short-circuit, to honeymoon, to shipwreck.

c) Compound verbs obtained by linking two words together These verbs are also called 'pseudo-compound verbs' because of their derivational nature. Here are some examples: to half-turn, to half-close, to half-rise, to backdte, to backfre, to overchrge, to overd, to updte, to upgrde, to cunterbalance, to cuntersign.

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7.5. CO VERSIO (zero derivation) When a word which has hitherto functioned as a member of one class undergoes a shift which enables it to function as a member of another, we have it traditionally called conversion. The question that arises here is whether the result of such a shift is two words, one derived from the other, or one word with extended functions. Conversion is an extremely productive way of producing new words in English. All form classes seem to be able to undergo conversion, and the process seems to be able to produce words of almost any form class. Although conversion does not make use of suffixes to indicate the lexical category (this is why the process is also called zero-derivation), it may involve: a) final voicing: /s/ close (adj.) use (noun) > /z/ /T bath (noun) mouth > > > / D/ to bathe to mouth

> to close > to use

house (noun) >to house

b) change of stress pattern: scort (n) bject (n) vs. vs. es`cort ob`ject

Below we shall take a closer look at the types of zero-derivation

a) Verbal zero-derivation Derived from SIMPLE OU S -cover with...N: asphalt = to asphalt, butter = to butter, paper = to paper; -surround with ...N: fence = to fence, hedge = to hedge, rail = to rail, wall = to wall; -prepare with ...N: cream = to cream, curry = to curry, salt = to salt, sugar = to sugar; -use N (on): comb = to comb, hammer = to hammer, bottle = to bottle, mop = to mop; -action typically performed with N: elbow = to elbow, finger = to finger, head = to head, shoulder = to shoulder Derived from COMPOU D OU S: - + : sandpaper = to sandpaper, handcuff = to handcuff; -Adj + : wet-nurse = to wet-nurse (to act as a wet-nurse, i.e. as a woman employed

to suckle anothers child), blue pencil = to blue pencil (to mark obliterate with a blue pencil), 96

 Derived from ADJECTIVES: dirty = to dirty, calm = to calm, narrow = to narrow, :absent

= to ab:sent, :

b) ominal zero-derivation Derived fromVERBS: to call = a call, to command = a command, to guess= a guess, to spy= a spy, to smell = a smell, to fall = a fall, to swim = a swim, to answer = an answer, to commute = a commute, to goggle = a goggle, to interrupt = an interrupt Derived from ADJECTIVES (relatively rare and frequently restricted in their syntactic occurrence): comic = a comic, bitter = bitter, final = the finals, regular = regulars, , natural = a natural, daily = a daily, creative = a creative, crazy = a crazy, double = a double, dyslexic = a dyslexic, gay = a gay, given = a given, nasty = a nasty.

c) Adjectival zero-derivation Derived from OU S: this represents a less clear case of zero-derivation since it is not completely clear whether or not conversion is involved. For some scholars it appears to be the case that the use of an element in attributive position is sufficient for that element to be classified as an adjective. By this criterion brick garage and Liverpool accent contain adjectives formed by conversion. However, it is argued that such collocations could be treated as compounds, which makes it unnecessary to view such elements as instances of conversion. Quirk (1972) (quoted in Bauer (1991: 228) suggests that when such elements can occur not only in attributive position but also in predicative position, it is possible to speak of conversion to an adjective. On the basis of: This garage is brick * This accent is Liverpool he would conclude that, in the examples above brick but not Liverpool has become an adjective by conversion. Derived from ADVERBS: adverbs may appear as attributive modifiers: down = a down line, off = an off day. The possibilities of converting words in English are numerous, but this phenomenon occurs only occasionally. Prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, interjections and even affixes can all act as bases for conversion, as is shown by the following examples: the dos and donts, the ifs and buts, the ins and outs, to up (prices), but me no buts, the hereafter, the pros and

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cons. Moreover, most of these form classes can undergo conversion into more than one form class, so that the adverb/preposition down can become a verb (to down tools, he downed his beer), a noun (he has a down on me), and an adjective (the down train). Example One final problem needs to be solved with respect to conversion, namely how do we know, for instance, whether a certain word class represents the basis of conversion or the derived word class, or to be more specific, whether bottle is derived from to bottle, or whether to bottle is derived from bottle. Admittedly, it is sometimes difficult to determine the direction of the derivation. Marchand (1964) (quoted in Lipka, 1990:85) has proposed a set of criteria for doing this. Generally, we can assume that the lexeme in whose paraphrase the other lexeme is used is the derived one. This means, for example that the verb to nail to fasten with a nail is derived from the noun nail, since in the paraphrase of the verb we use the noun. Reinforcement Conversion represents the derivational process whereby an item is converted to a new word class without any concomitant change of form. However, there are instances where changes of this type occur so regularly and with such ease that many scholars prefer to treat them as cases of syntactic usage rather than as word-formation.

7.6. CLIPPI G/CO TRACTIO Clipping is the process by which a word of two or more syllables (usually a noun) is shortened without a change in its function and meaning taking place (e.g. advertisement > advert, ad, examination > exam). The unpredictability concerns the way in which the base lexeme is shortened. The main pattern is for the beginning of the base lexeme to be retained as in bi < bisexual, mike< microphone). One cannot predict how many syllables will be retained in the clipped form (advert, ad). Clipped words are generally used in less formal situations than their full-length equivalents: they indicate an attitude of familiarity on the part of the user, either towards the object denoted, or towards the audience. According to the part of the word that is omitted, clipping can be of mainly 3 types:

a) Aphaeresis (fore-clipping) represents the reduction of the fore part of a word. This can be seen in such examples as (tele) phone, (air) plane, (omni) bus, (violon) cello, (heli) copter;

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b) Syncope (mid-clipping) consists in the reduction of the middle part of a word: e.g. fancy< fan(ta)sy, celebs < celeb(ritie)s c) Apocope (back-clipping) is the most productive of the three types and consists in the omission of the last part of a word. Here are some examples: memo(randum), cable(gram) cab(riolet) chap(man), spec(tacle)s, miss(tress), fax (from facsimile) A much rarer type is where both ends are clipped, the middle of the word being retained as in (in)flu(enza), (re)fridge(rator), (pre)script(ion), (py)jam(a)s, (head)shrink(er). The categories that frequently undergo contraction are simple words and adjectivenoun phrases. Here are some examples Example - perm < permanent wave; pub < public house; pop < popular music, vet < veterinary surgeon, pram < perambulator, bike< bicycle. - a few clipped forms that end in ie/-y: Aussie < Australian, commie < communist, hanky < handkerchief, movie < moving picture, telly < television.

Clippings show various degrees of semantic dissociation from their full forms. Words like mob from mobile, shortened from the Latin mobile vulgus, pants from pantaloons and brandy from brandywine, are no longer felt to be clippings, since their longer forms are not used. Curio (i.e. an object valued as a curiosity) and fan from fanatic (admirer, enthusiast) have acquired meanings rather different from their full forms and are not felt to be shortenings. The same holds true for van < caravan and miss < mistress. It seems likely that such examples as movie, lunch, pram are on the way to independence, since moving picture, luncheon, perambulator are not much used. Instead the clipped forms have acquired a formal, even slightly pedantic flavour. Bauer (1991:233) points out that clipping, particularly in scientific terminology, is often much more complex than in the examples that have been discussed so far. Consider, for example, the recent formations parylene < paraxylene, phorate < phosphorodithioate, prepreg < preimpregnated. In cases like these there seem to be no limitations on the clipping except that the clipped form should be a possible word, and such forms are as much instances of word manufacture as of clipping.

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7.7. BLE DI G Blends are also called telescoped words, disguised compounds or portmanteau words. They may be defined as new lexemes formed from parts of two (or possibly more) other words in such a way that a transparent analysis into morphs is not possible. As a rule, blends take the first part of one word and the last part of another, rather than mixing phonemes at random, or inserting part of one word into the middle of another. In blending, the coiner is apparently free to take as much or as little from either base as is felt to be necessary. One restriction: the splitting up of consonant clusters from either of the original words is not allowed. Blends seem to appear very frequently in: a) jocular language. Lewis Carroll was the one to coin a number of such blends as chortle from chuckle and snort, mimsy from miserable and flimsy; b) scientific language: bit from binary and digit, transistor from transfer and resistor, radiotrician from radio and electrician; c) commercial language: travelogue from travel and catalogue, motel from motorist and hotel, Eurovision from European and television. Example Here are some more examples of blends: blotch = blot + botch, blurt = blare + spurt, chump = chunk + lump, flaunt = flout + vaunt, flurry + fly + hurry, grumble = growl + rumble, splutter = splash + sputter, twirl = twist + whirl, flubber = flying + rubber, cablegram = cable + telegram, sportcast = sport + broadcast, to snoopervise = snoop + supervise, Amerind = American + Indian, Velcro (fastener consisting of two strips of fabric which cling when pressed together) = velours croch (in French). When a constituent echoes in some way the word or word-fragment it replaces, a punning effect is the result: foolosopher echoes philosopher, fakesimile echoes facsimile, and icecapade (a spectacular show on ice) echoes escapade. The effect of word-play may be achieved when syllables simply overlap: shamateur = sham + amateur (in sport, a player who is classed as an amateur, while often making money out of his play like a professional), sexcapade = sex + escapade. Most of the blended words will not be found in dictionaries and are not in common use. Many appear in quotations between inverted commas. One reason for the lack of popularity of blends may be the problems of comprehension which they present. Many blends are puzzling until one has met them in context, or learned where their constituents come from. 100

Two other difficulties that arise with blends refer to the ways they are spelled and pronounced. a) Variations in spelling arise in cases where there is an overlapping of syllables which happen to be spelled differently in the two source words: -wavering between single and double consonant: guestimate/guesstimate = guess + estimate (an estimate based on conjecture), swelegant/swellegant = swell + elegant; - other differences in the spelling of a shared syllable are seen in botel/boatel = boat + hotel (hotel for boat-travellers), slantindicular/slantendicular = slanting + perpendicular; - silent letter occurring in a source word may be felt as inappropriate in a blend, as in bomphlet = bomb + pamphlet, solemncholy = solemn = melancholy. b) The pronunciation of blends presents greater problems. Apart from difficulties arising when a splinter accidentally resembles a quite unconnected morpheme, as in squireshop /:skwaiSp/ = squire + bishop (a bishop who is also a squire), whose second element is likely to be associated with shop, the greatest difficulty in pronouncing blends is in deciding which syllable should take the primary accent, e.g.hurricoon = :hurricane + ba:lloon (a balloon sent into a hurricane to record information about it); tangemon (= tangerine + lemon) can have the following pronunciations and stress patterns: /:tQNmon/, /:tQndZmn/, /tQn:dZi:mn/. A more complex example is given by skinoe = ski + canoe (miniature canoes which fit the feet). This blend seems to pose an insoluble accentuation problem, since, if the resemblance to canoe is to be preserved, the first syllable must be unaccented /ski:nu: /, and this obscures the fact that the first element is ski /ski:/. Most of the blends are nominal, adjectival or verbal.

a) ominal blends Blends can be classified on the basis of the relationships between their elements in the same way as ordinary compounds, although uncertainties and ambiguities may be greater because of the missing elements. - appositional blends: ballute = balloon + parachute, smog = smoke + fog, compander = compressor + expander, cattalo = cattle + buffalo, liger = lion + tiger, celtuce = celery + lettuce. Appositional blends which are not coordinative, i.e. in which the first element specifies or qualifies the second, are: refujews = refugee Jews, slanguage = slang language, squarson = squire parson (a land-owning parson).

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-instrumental blends: automania = automobile mania, beermare = beer + nightmare (nightmare caused by beer). -blends containing a locative element: chunnel = channel + tunnel, daymare = day + nightmare (distress while awake, like the one caused by nightmare), seavacuation = sea + evacuation (evacuation by sea).

b) Adjectival blends These are of appositional coordinative type: clantastical = clandestine + fantastical, alphameric = alphabetic + numeric (consisting of both letters and numbers), hydramatic = hydraulic + pneumatic, attractivating = attractive + captivating, fantabulous = fantastic = fabulous.

c) Verbal blends They are rather rare: baffound = baffle = confound, galvanneal = galvanize + anneal, meld = melt + weld. Be on the watch-out for such word-forms when you read articles on the internet or when you watch movies. Keep a record of such blended terms and try to find an explanation for why people make recourse to such a word-formation rule. 7.8. ABBREVIATIO S/ACRO YMS Among the more questionable methods of word-formation at the present time is that which gives us acronyms, i.e. words formed from the initial letters of usually separate words. However, not every abbreviation counts as an acronym: to be an acronym the new word must not be pronounced as a series of letters, but as a word. Thus if Value Added Tax is pronounced as /vi ei ti/, that is an abbreviation (alphabetism), but if we pronounce it as /vQt/, it has become an acronym. A recent dictionary of abbreviated words lists over 400,000 entries. It includes such familiar forms as hi-fi, FBI, UFO, ATO and BA. There are large numbers of new technical terms such as VHS (the video home system), AIDS (Anti-Immunitary Deficient System), LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) and all the terms for computerspeak: PC (personal computer), RAM (Random Access Memory), ROM (Read Only Memory), BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). And there are thousands of coinages which have restricted regional currency, such as RAC (Royal

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Automobilistic Club), AAA (Automobile Association of America), or which reflect local organizations and attitudes with varying levels of seriousness such as MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and DAMM (Drinkers Against Mad Mothers). Because of the fact that acronyms depend on the bigger words for their existence, some people might not include them in their word count. On the other hand, one might argue that they are often more important than the original words, and that the original words may not even be remembered or known. This is the case of such examples as laser (Lightwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), ASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), radar (RAdio Detecting And Ranging), ladar (laser detection and ranging), sonar (sound navigator and ranging). The lack of predictability in acronyms is given mainly by two reasons. Firstly, the phrase from which the acronym is formed is treated with a certain amount of freedom to permit the acronym to come into being. For example, in BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) only the first part of a compound adjective provides a letter for the acronym, whereas in WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) both initial letters of the compound adjective (which is underlined) will be part of the acronym. Secondly, not every abbreviation that could be an acronym is treated as one, and there seems to be no particular reason why some abbreviations should be ignored. Due to the constraints on the phonological structure of English words, BBC cannot be pronounced as a word, whereas other combinations of initial letters could be pronounced as a word, but are not. An example in this respect would be JAL (Japanese Airlines) which is pronounced as /dZei ei el/, and not as /dZeil/. Occasionally, unusual acronyms are found where the letters are not strictly speaking initial letters in the words in a phrase. One example of this kind is KREEP, which refers to a type of moonrock, where the K is the chemical symbol for potassium, and the acronym stands for potassium, rare earth elements, phosphate. Far more common is the case where more than one letter is taken from the beginning of one or more of the words in the phrase which is the base of the acronym. Recent examples of this are GHOST (Global HOrizontal Sounding Technique), rejasing (REusing Junk As SomethING else), tacsatcom (TACtical SATellite COMmunications). This is the reason why in some cases it may no longer be clear whether the new word is an acronym or a blend. Usually blends are formed from the beginning of one word and the end part of a second word, but blends which make use of the beginnings of the two words, though unusual, should not be

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ruled out as impossible. And while it is normal for acronyms to use the beginnings of words, the clearest cases use only the initial letters. Finally, it must be stressed that acronyming is very much orthographically based. Consider, for example, PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique). If the phonetic value of each initial letter were taken as the starting point of the acronym, we would expect it to be pronounced as /pirt/, or /pit/ in those dialects of English that do not have post-vocalic /r/. But /pt/ shows the expected pronunciation of the orthographic sequence 'er'. As far as abbreviations are concerned, there is an interesting process taking place in contemporary colloquial English. Abbreviations (acronyms) like DJ /di dZei/ (Disk Jockey) are given pronunciation spellings, i.e. deejay, emcee (MC master of ceremonies), okay (OK), veep (VP vice-president). Reinforcement Abbreviations are classified into two basic groups depending on whether they can be read as words or not. Thus, we have letter words/alphabetisms which are abbreviations that breach the phonological rules in English and that are pronounced letter by letter, and acronyms, i.e. abbreviations that can be pronounced as words.

7.9. REDUPLICATIO Reduplication is the word-formation rule which brings together two or more elements which are identical or only slightly different. Mumbo-jumbo is one of a large number of foolish and fascinating words, such as hocus-pocus and higgledy-piggledy, which give pleasure to the child in us. Etymologists call them reduplicated words.

From a phonetic point of view, such words can be divided into: a) reduplicated words based on internal vowel alternations: chit-chat, drip-drop, knick-knack, tip-top, zig-zag. b) reduplicated words based on rhyme: boogie-woogie, willy-nilly, hocus-pocus, hanky-panky, namby-pamby. Now and then, this special kind of word-formation seems to bear an implication of contempt: gewgaw (a gaudy but worthless thing), tittle-tattle, chitter-chatter, and nambypamby. In other cases reduplicated word suggest alternating movement: flip-flop, ping-pong, ding-dong, or instability, nonsense, vacillation: hocus-pocus, wishy-washy, dilly-dally. 104

Some other time they are used as intensifiers of meaning: tip-top, teeny-weeny, miminypiminy. Shakespeare seems to have enjoyed these oddities among words. We find hurly-burly in Macbeth, hugger-mugger (meaning disorder, confusion) in Hamlet, tiddle-taddle, pibble-pabble in Henry V. Reduplicated words also appear in poetry, as the following anonymous limerick shows: There was a young curate of Salisbury Whose manners were halisbury-scalisbury. He went about Hampshire Without any pampshire Till his Vicar compelled him to walisbury.

7.10. EPO YMOUS WORDS These are common words derived from proper names, i.e. from names of people and from names of places.

a) Words from people. -macadam, after John McAdam, a Scottish engineer who was the first to pave streets with small blocks of stone; -mackintosh, after Charles Mackintosh who owned a factory producing raincoats; - guy, after Guy Fawks (1570 1606) who led the conspiracy known as the Gun Powder Plot, meant to kill the king; -bobby (a policemen in England), after Sir Robert Peel, who reorganized the police; -boycott, after Captain Charles S. Boycott, agent in 1880 for the estates of Lord Erne in County Mayo. Millions of people use his name in connection with a campaign to bring pressure upon a Government whose policies they deplore. What Boycott did was to carry out his masters orders and refuse to reduce the rents. As a result, the Irish simply withdrew themselves from him their labour, their company. Captain Boycott imported labourers to gather in his harvest; he had soldiers with guns standing sentinels over the stooks. In the end, instead of collecting the rents, he fled the country. -guillotine, after Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin, a humanitarian fellow, who thought it more kindly than hanging to decapitate wrong-doers by means of that typically French concept, a machine, called after him guillotin. 105

-quisling, one who betrays his own country by collaborating with the occupying power, after the Norwegian Vidkum Quisling; -lynch, after Captain William Lynch of Virginia, in the 18th century; -plimsolls, after Samuel Plimsoll, MP; -wellingtons, gumboots named after Duke Wellington;

b) Words from places -champagne, an effervescent wine, takes its name from a famous region in France where this drink is produced; -holland, linen or cotton cloth, first made in Holland; -damask, cloth produced in Damascus; Consult an etymological dictionary on the internet and find the origins of the following words: - raglan, mesmerism, zeppelin, shrapnel, sandwich (common nouns derived from names of people) - calico, muslin, duffel, bikini (common nouns derived from names of places) 7.11. DELIBERATE (CO SCIOUS) COI AGES These represent deliberate creations or words by writers and scientists. In the Early Modern English period, Shakespeare was one of the most successful creators of words. Thus, the following line from 'Macbeth' tells us very little: Aroint thee, witch! the rump-fed ronyon cries. Aroint apparently means Begone!. This can be deduced from the context. Since the phrase Aroint thee, witch! occurs also in King Lear, in a crazy song which Edgar sings, it may possibly be a quotation from some old play or ballad that has since been lost. Since Shakespeare used the term twice, and since no other writer has used it at all, we may assume that he may have made it up. Of course there are many puzzling and extraordinary words in his plays, such as bubukles (in Henry V) which apparently means a kind of excrescence, some horrible hybrid between a bubo and a carbuncle: Bardolphs face was all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o fire. In Twelfth ight, Sir Toby says: Hes a coward and a coystril that will

not drink to my niece till his brains turn o the toe like a parish top. Coystril merely means a knave.

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The most amazing of all rare words in Shakespeare is orgulous. He only used it once, in 'Troilus and Cressida': Example From isles of Greece The princes orgulous, their high blood chafd, Have to the port of Athens sent their ships. It has nothing to do with orgy, but comes from French orgueil, meaning haughty, hence 'proud, swelling, magnificent'. It went out of currency for more than two centuries, and was rediscovered by Southey and Scott. Nineteenth-century journalists seized upon it, and spoiled it by over use. Other strange words used only once by Shakespeare (and never by anybody else) include riggish, ribaudred and wappened. The scholars cant tell us anything about them save that they are all pretty rude. In modern times, science and technology have added many new words to English, showing the truth of the old proverb Necessity is the mother of invention. Kodak, nylon, Orlon, and Dacron were names made up for certain consumer items. Specific brand names such as Xerox, Kleenex, Jell-o, Frigidaire, Brillo, and Vaseline are now often used as the general name for many brands of the actual product. Notice that some of these words were created from existing words: Kleenex from the word clean, Jell-o from gel, frigidaire from frigid and air. 7.12. Summary In this unit we have shown that the lexicon of the English language can be enriched by internal means, i.e. by using word-formation rules. As opposed to the two basic ways of forming new words in the Old English Period (derivation and composition), Modern English has expanded the range of such means, which nowadays amount to 9 (derivation or affixation, composition, conversion (zero-derivation), clipping (contraction), blending, abbreviation, reduplication, conscious (deliberate) coinages, and eponymous words). But the form of words is only one aspect. Their meaning should also be considered. In the following chapter we shall investigate this particular aspect of words. 7.13. Evaluation 1. Use one of the following prefixes: dis-, il-, im-, in-, ir-, un- with each of the following words: a) attentive f) honest k) natural 107

b) aware c) cautious d) discreet e) fortunate

g) literate h) logical i) loyal j) modest

l) practicable m) relevant n) resolute o) respectful

2. Here are some of the most productive class-changing prefixes: a-, be-, en-. Form new words by adding these prefixes to the following words. Give the translation of the resulting words or use them in sentences or your own. blaze, calm, glaze, slave, sleep, spatter, moan, tomb, jewel, wash, friend, witch, snare. 3. Choose from among the negative prefixes un-, in-, dis-, de-, non-, according to the example: EXAMPLE: welcome - unwelcome; alcoholize - dealcoholize a) competence; b) active; c) grade; d) qualified; e) usual; f) proportion; g) abridged; h) likely; i) passionate; j) distinct; k) block; l) verbal; m) experience; n) kind; o) dramatic; p) regard; q) academic; r) place; s) dependence; t) consistent; u) figurative; v) eruptive. 4. The suffixes -er, -or, -ant, -ist form nouns that name people or things that do something, e.g. a pianist is someone who plays the piano. Now state what each of the following does: driver, economist, reflector, tourist, speaker, applicant, inhabitant, grinder, narrator, occupant, cyclist, investigator, dramatist, navigator, radiator, tenant, excavator, specialist, fighter, attendant. 5. Form adjectives from the following nouns: poison, grace, defense, humour, power, life, monster, envy, glory, aim, desire, fury, fun, name, taste, bore. 6. By adding -ous, -ent, -ant, -ed, derive adjectives from the bracketed nouns: a) She waited without complaining; she was very (patience). b) That visit wasn't (pleasure). c) Mary is always (confidence) that she is right. d) His behaviour was always (courtesy). e) Tommy was particularly (mischief). f) I like the privacy of a (fence) garden. g) It was a (moment) occasion. 7. Find in column B the right definition of the compound adjectives in column A: A B a. long-headed 1. generous with money b. soft-hearted 2. clever, shrewd and far-sighted c. down-hearted 3. of strict and rigid principles d. tongue-tied 4. tender by nature e. cool-headed 5. callous and unfeeling f. double-minded 6. discouraged and depressed g. hard-boiled 7. of a mind wavering between two or more courses of action h. long-winded 8. of calm judgement i. open-handed 9. tedious or lengthy in speech or argument

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j) straight-laced

10. unable to speak.

8. Translate the following into English using compound nouns: a) cutremur de pmnt; b) main de splat; c) tunsoare; d) ap potabil; e) revrsat de zori; f) strngere de mna; g) pta de snge; h) camuflaj; i) centur de siguran; j) cocoat; k) pieton. 9. Complete the following sentences using a verb (in an appropriate tense) which denotes a part of the body: a) You have no money. ............ the facts. You can't go on spending as though you were a millionaire. b) Could you ........... me that book on the table next to you? c) In the final minutes of the football match, Robson ......... the ball into the back of the net. d) After his father's death, Tom had to shoulder the responsibility for his family's debts. e) She ................ the material gently. It felt as smooth as silk. f) The bank robber was ................ with a knife and a gun. 10. Identify the words which were clipped in order to form the contracted forms and identify the type of clipping, distinguishing among aphaeresis (foreclipping) (FC), syncope (medial clipping) (MC) and apocope (back-clipping) (BC), according to the model: MODEL: specs spectacles a) story h) fan b) cinema i) copter c) dorm j) hanky d) max k) cello e) memo l) telly f) perm m) pants g) vamp n) wig BC

11. Choose the pairs of words forming blends, according to the model. MODEL: sneet = snow + sleet The choice is made from: breakfast, guest, transfer, Oxford, screen, buffalo, pneumatic, cable, electronics, motor, inflation, Europe, television, beef, American, cattle, resistor, hotel, dictate, electricity, confound, parachute, star, Baker Street, automat, swell, execute, Indian, phone, cast, fog, mail, stagnation, aviation, sport, telegram, motorist, dome, dump, troop, cavalcade, African, smoke, Cambridge, lunch, Waterloo Underground, fish, elegant. a) Amerind b) dumbfound c) catalo d) dictaphone e) electrocute f) paratroops g) guestar i) Oxbridge j) avionics k) smog l) telescreen m) stagflation n) mailomat o) cablegram q) motel r) Eurafrican s) brunch t) Bakerloo u) beefish v) swellegant w) pneudome

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h) sportcast

p) transistor

x) motorcade.

7.14. HOMEWORK II Analyse the word-formation rules encountered in the following excerpt. Notice which of the studied processes are employed more frequently and try to explain why. Lindsay Lohan confirmed on her Twitter page last week that she failed a court-ordered drug and alcohol screening. Lohan spent two weeks in jail this year after violating probation stemming from convictions involving her 2007 arrests for drug use and driving under the influence. She spent another 23 days undergoing rehabilitation at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Fox had threatened her with 30 days in jail for each probation violation. Fox must now decide whether to send her back to jail or back into treatment. Lohan posted a series of Twitter messages last Friday acknowledging her drug problem. Regrettably, I did in fact fail my most recent drug test, she tweeted. She also said, substance abuse is a disease, which unfortunately doesnt go away over night. I am working hard to overcome it. Lohan often posts updates with the account thats verified by Twitter as belonging to the actress. Meanwhile, Lohan settled a lawsuit with E*Trade over a Super Bowl commercial that may have insinuated that she's a "Milkaholic." Lohan settled her $100 million lawsuit against E*Trade, although the terms of the settlement are confidential. Source: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/lindsay_lohan_drug_woes_worsen_cash_V7X0JrWg jWfkDQSZiQMfFO?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=#ixzz10AtU0qyc (accessed 2010-09-21)

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Unit 8. Meaning
Contents 8.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 111 8.2. Competences ........................................................................................................ 111 8.3. The linguistic sign ............................................................................................... 112 8.3.1. Models of the linguistic sign ............................................................................. 112 8.4. The meaning of linguistic signs............................................................................ 114 8.5. Causes of changes of meaning ............................................................................. 114 8.6. Directions in which changes of meaning occur .................................................. 118 8.6.1. Extension of meaning........................................................................................ 118 8.6.2. arrowing of meaning ...................................................................................... 119 8.6.3. Degradation of meaning ................................................................................... 120 8.6.6. Elevation of meaning ........................................................................................ 122 8.7. Summary .............................................................................................................. 123 8.8. Evaluation ........................................................................................................... 123

8.1. Introduction This unit will introduce the students to some models of the linguistic sign, providing thus a basis for a beter understanding of the term meaning. It will show the factors that can bring about changes in the meaning of a word and, at the same time will offer a view of the directions in which the meaning of words can change.

8.2. Competences After having covered the material presented in unit 8, the students should be able to identify types of meaning, to figure out how meanings have changed in time, and to employ the words of the English language properly with their presentday meanings.

Time envisaged for covering Unit 8: 2 hours.

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8.3. THE LI GUISTIC SIG : WHAT'S IN A WORD? In this chapter we will deal with various aspects of the linguistic sign (i.e. the word), focussing on meaning. But first and foremost we have to look at some models of linguistic sign which derive from Saussures ideas about it. Closely connected is the further question about the definition of the meaning of the linguistic sign. In this context we may distinguish purely language-immanent approaches from those that take into account the extra-linguistic reality. If, following Saussure, we separate the language system (LANGUE) from its realization and application (PAROLE), we then must distinguish between denotation and reference.

8.3.1. Models of the sign In modern linguistics F. Saussure was the first scholar to consider language as a structured system of signs. We will consider more closely his binary model. A second important model is Ogden and Richards semiotic triangle. It is crucial to realize that both models Saussures and Ogden/Richards abstract from certain facts that have been rediscovered in linguistics during the last fifty years. These are the users of the linguistic signs, the context of use, and the functions of the linguistic sign.

a) Saussures approach In Saussures view of language as a system of signs, sign and system are mutually conditioning, since a sign only derives its value from within the system on the basis of its relation to other signs. For him the linguistic sign itself has two sides: a given notion (concept) that is associated in the brain with a certain phonic image (acoustic image). Both are mutually conditioning and evoke each other mutually. This is symbolized by the arrows in the following diagram:

concept sign -----------acoustic image

flower ----------FLOWER -------------FLOWER

Figure 1. Saussures model

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The notions of concept and acoustic image are later replaced by him by the terms signifi (signifier) and signifiant (signified). According to Saussure there is no necessary connection between the signifier and the signified. For him the relation between the two sides of the linguistic sign is fundamentally arbitrary, non-motivated, or conventional. In brief, for Saussure the linguistic sign is binary, since it consists of two parts. Its meaning, its content is defined as a concept and therefore as a mental entity. His model of the sign abstracts from the users and the functions of the sign. In this binary model, the extralinguistic object denoted by the linguistic sign is not included. This, however, plays a role in the triadic model developed by Ogden and Richards, to which we will now turn.

b) Ogden and Richards Semiotic Triangle The model of the linguistic sign developed by Ogden and Richards is represented in figure 2, in modified form:

THOUGHT (reference)

SYMBOL (word)

(thing) REFERENT

Figure 2. Ogden and Richards triangle of signification Besides the term semiotic triangle, the labels triangle of signification, and referential triangle are also used in the literature. The last term is justified by the fact that the model includes the referent (object, thing, person in the world). The triangle has to be interpreted in the following way. There is no direct relationship between the word symbol and the extralinguistic thing or referent denoted by it. This is symbolized by the broken line connecting the two, which Ogden and Richards characterize as an imputed relation, saying that the symbol stands for the referent. The relation between the two is indirect and mediated by a concept or thought, which Ogden and Richards also label reference. The term reference, identified with thought, is used in a different way by Ogden and Richards than in many recent linguistic theories. In the latter, reference is usually understood as a relational concept. The term is either used for the relation between the full linguistic sign and an extralinguistic referent, or the action of a speaker referring to an extralinguistic object

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by means of a linguistic sign. According to Ogden and Richards semiotic triangle, there is then, for example, no direct relation between the signifiant (or symbol) dog and a certain class of living beings, or a specific element of this class. They stress the point that the meaning of a linguistic symbol (as a concept or thought) has to be clearly distinguished from the extralinguistic object (or referent) denoted by it. Words, as linguistic signs, are therefore indirectly related to extralinguistic referents. Reinforcement The two basic types of the linguistic sign are Saussures and Ogden and Richards. While in Saussures model the linguistic sign has two facets (the signifier and the signified), Ogden and Richards model has an additional element, namely the referent (i.e. the object in the world the word refers to). 8.4. THE MEA I G OF SIG S That meaning is a notational term becomes particularly apparent if we look at Ogden and Richards' book entitled The Meaning of Meaning (published in 1949) where a list of 22 definitions of meaning is given. There is certainly no single, correct explanation of meaning. John Lyons (1977, quoted in Lipka, 1990:46) distinguishes three kinds of meaning, namely descriptive meaning, social meaning and expressive meaning. For him, these are correlated with the descriptive, social and expressive functions of language. Geoffrey Leech (1981) (quoted in Lipka, 1990:46) identifies meaning in the widest sense with communicative value. This comprehensive notion can be split up into three groups: 1. sense 2. associative meaning and 3. thematic meaning. The second category may itself be further divided into a number of subgroups, as shown in the following diagram: 1. conceptual meaning (sense) a. connotative m. 2. associative meaning b. stylistic m. c. affective m. d. reflected m. e. collocative m. 3. thematic meaning 8.5. CAUSES OF CHA GI G OF MEA I G Every word has at least a specific meaning (and by meaning we mean the semantic load carried by any linguistic form), and at the same time this meaning is unstable, changing all the time. Meaning, as well as any other features of language, is subject to constant change. There are a number of factors that determine the change of meaning of lexical items. 114

MEANING = communicative value

a) The influence of context: irrespective of its length, a new combination of words would exercise and spread an influence over the neighbouring words. Words are not isolated in human speech; they are connected and interconnected within the framework of sentences, i.e. organised lexical phonetical grammatical structures expressing our thoughts and feelings. Context can be interpreted: - either in a general sense, implying extralinguistic factors such as gestures, concrete situations, the social background of the speaker, etc.; - or in a strict linguistic sense, in the sense of a determiner, phrase, sentence, passage or paragraph, which is so closely connected to a word as to affect its meaning.

Consider the way in which the context influences the meaning of the word work: WORK = munc, efort fizic a. He gets good money for his work. b. His work is strenuous. (munc) c. A womans work is never done. (trebluial) d. What sort of work do you do? e. He went out to look for work. (lucru) f. Is he at home or at work? (serviciu) g. Get down to work! (treab, lucru) h. Shakespeares work is known all over the world. (oper)

b) Stress In general, in English we have to stress the important words (i.e. the so-called content words): nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. By placing stress on different syllables of identical strings of sounds we can get different meanings of words belonging to different word classes. Thus, stress will differentiate -verbs from nouns, as in: im`port (vb) vs. `import (n)

re`bel vs. `rebel miscon`duct vs. mis`conduct

pro`ject vs. `project -nouns from adjectives, as in: `August (n) `minute 115 vs. au`gust (adj) vs. mi`nute.

c) The process of passing from concrete to abstract

CONCRETE

TO GO: to proceed, to pass along, to move, to leave, to depart a. We go home. b. The car goes fast. c. Money goes fast.

TO GO: to fail, to collapse, to give way His hearing has gone.

TO GO: to harmonize
ABSTRACT

Black and white go together very well.

d) The process of passing from particular to general FAMILY: - parents and children -a group of persons connected by blood or marriage -a group of persons forming a household -any class or group of similar or related things GENERAL PARTICULAR

e) Analogy (association) Analogy is a mental process involving shift of meaning. Thus the basic (conceptual) meaning of the word bag is a sack or pouch, usually of paper, cloth or leather. By analogy, it can also be interpreted as a womans purse, and by analogy with this second meaning it can be understood as any suitcase. Analogy can be considered literally and figuratively. According to John Moor (1961:235), language (...) is ever-changing: no more settled than the sea or the sky. The only words of fixed form and meaning are the dead ones, marked in the dictionaries as "Arch." (archaic) and "Obs." (obsolete). The others, which continue to reflect our living thoughts, are subject to the inexorable laws of life, which forbid immutability. Eduard Sapir (1921) stated that nothing is perfectly static, but undergoing a slow change. The most dynamic part of language is the vocabulary (especially in meaning). Stephen Ullmann (1962) is the initiator of a mentalistic approach to meaning. In his model, meaning is a reversible and reciprocal relation between NAME (n) and SENSE (S). Meaning changes all the time. There are several stages implied in the change of meaning: 116

stage I: originally, a word has a certain form (n) and a certain meaning (S): S (sense/meaning)

n (name) stage II: in the course of time, the linguistic item acquires a second meaning: S + S1 (polysemous word)

The original meaning a) is either retained (S=S1), and then we have a case of polysemy, b) or dies out (is gradually lost) and its place is taken by the new meaning, which is different from S S S1

(change of meaning)

The two processes through which new meanings are derived from the basic linguistic form are radiation and concatenation. RADIATIO is the semantic process by which the new meanings derive directly from the centre of the basic form and are therefore mutually independent.

top part of everything (literally & metaphorically)

head of the nail/screw/pin/cabbage/flower (resembling the head in shape)

HEAD (part of human body)

head of the bed/list/table/stairs (resembling the head in position)

head of the family/school/house (metaphorically, it can stand for the leader)

CO CATE ATIO is the semantic process by which new meanings are added to the basic meaning in succession, and one after the other.

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e.g. BUG 1. insect with piercing sucking mouth; 2. (loosely) any insect; 3. (informal) a micro-organism; 4. (slang) enthusiast; 5. (slang) small electronic microphone to trace telephone conversations.

Example The two processes mentioned above can also be interrelated, as shown below: 1. board (plank) 2. extended surface of wood 3. table 4. food served at table 5. meals provided for pay 8. the side of a ship 6. council table 7. council

We need at least 3 meanings of a word to say if we have a case of radiation or of concatenation.

8.6. DIRECTIO S I WHICH CHA GES OF MEA I G OCCUR The analysis of the change of meaning can be made in point of range and of evaluation. With respect to range, we shall talk about extension (generalization, widening) of meaning and about narrowing (specialization). From the point of view of evaluation, we have elevation (amelioration) and degradation (pejoration) of meaning.

8.6.1. Extension of meaning is the process by which the sense or senses of a word are enlarged or enriched, i.e. the sense may expand to include more referents than it formerly had. Below are some exsmples of words whose meanings underwent extension. Contemporary is a word which in a dozen years or so has acquired a new meaning. Seeing this word so often used as a synonym for modern, people are beginning to forget that it really means 'belonging to the same time or period. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the process will continue and gain momentum, so that the older meaning of the word will become obsolete and the dictionary will have to make room for a new definition, something like this:
Contemporary, adj. modern, fashionable, up-to-date.

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Person (from Latin persona) originally meant face-mask worn by actors; later, it meant the characters in a play; later on it meant a man, anybody. Nowadays, it means a person, male or female. Place (Latin platea), originally meant broad street a part of space any locality. Season (Latin satio-nis) seed-time, sowing 3-month period of the year. Alibi originally meant elsewhere, in a different place; later, it referred to the situation when one was in a different place from where a crime has been committed. Nowadays it means to have a reasonable excuse for doing/not doing something. Painful once meant taking pains. Nowadays it means feeling or giving pain. Holy-days originally meant days set aside for religious observance. Holy-day became holiday, and took on its secular meaning, a very long time ago; a modern Bank Holiday implies exactly the opposite of a holy-day. Earn has originated from some agricultural expression. It comes from an old Teutonic word for harvest, while it is a cognate with the present Dutch erne and the German Ernte (meaning a harvest). The Bavarian arnen signifies both to reap and to earn wages. Fee derives its significance from the pastoral and agricultural pursuits with which all commerce was bound up in old days. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon feoh meaning cattle, which was formerly one of the main means of making payments fees such as those to physicians, lawyers, etc. Mill originally meant a place for making things by the process of grinding, i.e. for preparing the meal. Now it is simply a place for making varied kinds of things, so that we can speak of wollen mills, steel mills, gin mills, and so on. Butcher originally referred to a person who killed goats. Later on the term was used in connection with any slayer of animals who provided food for human use. Today, the word means either a killer of animals for meat or an inhuman slayer of people. The verb to escape meant to get out of ones clothing, to lose ones cape while fleeing. But nowadays people use it with a different meaning, namely to get oneself free from confinement or control.

8.6.2.

arrowing of meaning is the process by which a word of extensive usage is restricted

to a special object (it becomes 'specialized').The referential scope of the word is reduced. A word like river refers to a large amount of water that flows towards the sea. But if we use the same word with the definite article (i.e. The River ), to a Londoner it means The Thames, to a Parisian it is the Seine, whereas to an Egyptian it stands for the Nile. The same 119

holds true for city, meaning a large important town, which changes its meaning into the business centre of London if used with the definite article by a Londoner. The Channel stands for the English Channel if used by English people. After having meant shining, bright, the adjective glad acquired the sense of cheerful or joyous and later its meaning was narrowed: unlike cheerful, joyful, happy, glad denotes the state of feeling pleasure for a certain specific cause. The word girl was initially employed to refer to a young person of either sex. Now it is used only to refer to a young female. Garage meant in the beginning any safe place, whereas nowadays it is restricted to the place where cars are kept. Narrowing of meaning also occurred to native words when replaced by borrowings. Thus, the Old English word deer, which meant animal, narrowed its meaning to a specific species of animals, namely a hoofed mamal, the males of which have solid horns or antlers after the French beast and the Latin animal came into use in the English language. Another example is the Germanic word stool (meaning chair), whose meaning narrowed down to a single seat without arms or a back, after the French chair was borrowed.

8.6.3. Degradation of meaning could be defined as the process according to which neutral words acquire deprecatory meaning. First, a word degenerates in meaning and a bit later its degeneration gets worse until at last this may become extreme and finally the word is used with a shade of contempt. A good example is the word villain. Villain goes back to the French term 'villein' which originally signified a peasant and which, in its turn, came from the Latin villa, meaning farm-house. It came into the language as villanus, a slave attached to ones toiling place. In English it was at first a kind of a descriptive term for a particular social class. In the beginning it replaced the native word churl (from the Anglo-Saxon ceorl) which had the same meaning. Very soon the term villain became a term of contempt and was used in connection with a person who did not belong to the gentry. Gradually a set of ideas were associated with villain: all the features which were opposed to courtesy. In this way villain was applied to a low fellow, in general, and villany was used in connection with low conduct and thoughts. A nice example is found in the historical phenomenon of pejoration in words referring to women, where respectable words acquire negative connotations over the centuries. A hussy was once a perfectly respectable housewife, and wench just meant 'young woman', but both

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terms now connote a woman of loose morals. And lady once used just for a woman of noble birth is now the standard term for any woman.

Example Some more examples are presented below: - Boor originally meant a ploughman; later (in the 15th century) it meant peasant; in the 16th century it meant a rustic without refinement. Nowadays its meaning is that of an ill-bred fellow. -Knave (German Knabe) originally meant boy, then servant, and this came from the habit of calling the servants boy. Thus it came to be used as a general term for a person of an inferior status in life. Finally, it developed the sense of scoundrel. -Nowadays, fellow can be either contemptuous or can be simply used for man, in general. Once it had the meaning of 'partner'. -Fanatic (from Latin fanaticus) originally meant inspired by a deity. Then it acquired the meaning of enthusiastic. The Romans applied it frequently to the priests, and nowadays the word has changed its meaning into marked by an excessive enthusiasm and intense uncritical devotion. -Silly (derived from the German selig or the Anglo-Saxon soelig) meant happy, poor, innocent during the Old English period. The Celts believed that after death their great heroes went to The Silly Isles, the happy islands. Later, it meant simple. In the ballad Robin Hood Rescuing the Widows Three we encounter the phrase silly woman meaning simple woman. In Shakespeares time the word meant helpless, innocent as in silly habit (Cymbeline) and silly beggars (Richard II). At present, the meaning of the word degraded to foolish, stupid - aughty used to mean poor (literally possessing naught). Nowadays it means 'disobedient, badly-behaved'. -To admire is literally to wonder at; shade by shade during many centuries it has acquired its present meaning of to gaze on with pleasure. -Gestation meant carrying or being carried long before it came to signify the process of carrying young. Doctors used to prescribe gestation (i.e. riding on horseback or in a carriage) plus pure air and seabathing during convalescence -Charity was equated with love before it fell into disrepute during the last century and got itself an almost contemptuous significance.

Sometimes over the shops of British old-fashined butchers and country tradesmen one can see the word purveyor, which used to be a rather proud description of himself by one who purveyed his goods, taking them in the smart float behind the well-groomed pony to the 121

owners of big houses round about. Such purveying has become a casualty of a changing society, and the word is going out of use save in one respect: it survives in common speech as a purveyor of gossip. The original meaning of heresy (from Greek hairesis, a taking-for-oneself, a choosing, hence a sect or school of thought) was simply a private opinion. The Church altered all that, laying down that it was sinful to hold private opinions about theological matters. This term could include almost anything, for theology concerned itself not only with God but with the nature of the universe, the whole field of natural science, and the whole gamut of personal morality. Private opinion went up in flames, between 1231 and the end of the 16th century over the whole civilized Europe; and the word heresy still carries an echo of the screams of the racked and a stench of burnt flesh about with it. In general we nowadays use it for any opinion which we do not happen to hold ourselves. Tart was a term of endearment: the girl was sweet like a jam-tart. Among the Cockneys in the 1860s it was a term of approval applied to a woman. Little ones were called tartlets. In Australia it meant a sweetheart, and among some classes it is still applied to any girl. Tart got its bad meaning in England about 1900; but it has never had the force and damaging quality of whore, which as an epithet or accusation is generally a deliberate insult. Gay originally means cheerful, lively. But in the 1950s this word began to be used as a synonym for homosexual, and that is now its most usual sense. Sinister is a term borrowed from Latin, where it meant on the left, a simple fact that is neither positive nor negative in and of itself. But Roman soothsayers considered the left side to be unlucky, and over the time the word came to mean evil or ominous. Smug meant trim or neat or pretty. Its present suggestion of objectionable selfsatisfaction seems to have grown during the 19th century. Vulgar comes from the Latin vulgus meaning common people. Nowadays, the word means lacking in refinement or good taste/coarse. Hussy originally meant a house wife. Its meaning has degraded to the present impudent or promiscuous girl.

8.6.4. Elevation of meaning is the process by which a word acquires a higher status than it initially had, quite the reverse of degradation of meaning. Example -Knight (Old English cniht) originally meant boy; nowadays it refers to 'man awarded a non-hereditary title (Sir) by a sovereign'.

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-Minister was used initially to refer to a servant, whereas now it means an important public official. -Awfully, originally connected with terror and horror, is now just an intensifier: its awfully expensive, its awfully nice of you. - ice ise derived from the Latin nescius meaning ignorant. The Old French nice meant foolish/simple. Nowadays the word means agreeable, delightful.

The original meaning of the word guts was that of entrails. At present, the word can mean courage, this sense being preserved only in informal speech (e.g. Have you got the guts to do bungee jumping?).

We still use many words which existed already in Old English, and quite a number of them have been subjected to successive changes of meaning during the different periods of development of the English language. Can you figure out how the meaning of the following words has changed in time: sad, governor, marshal, constable, meat, jaw, fast? 8.7. Summary This unit has shown that the meaning of words is not stable, but changeable both in time, and within the same period of time, due to various factors. The changes the meaning of words may undergo are classified according to range and positive/negative evaluation. Behind almost each word there is a short history of its meaning, which is worth investigating. 8.8. Evaluation 1. Etymology is the study of the history of words. Find a good etymological disctionary and examine how the meanings of the following words have changed over time: assassin, bead, buxom, clue, cloud, heckle, hysteria, liquor, mess, parasite, saucer, treacle, weired, worm (source: Radford et al, 1999:272). 2. In some cases, the change in meaning of a word can only be understood in terms of associated cultural changes or particular historical events. Here are a few examples of such words. Consulting a good dictionary, try to explain the changes in the meaning of these words. a. The word car derives from Latin carra two-wheeled cart. 123

b. the words electron, electronics and electricity all derive from Greek elektronamber (petrified tree rasin) c. The word book is derived from the name of the beech tree. d. The word chapel is derived from Latin cappella cloak. e. The word money derives from Latin moneta one who admonishes f. the word sinister derives from Latin sinister on the left hand side g. The names of September and October, the ninth and tenth months of the year, are derived from Latin septem seven and octo eight h. The word charm derives from Latin carmen song. (Trask, L.R. 1994:44) 3. Each of the following sentences should seem normal enough. However, in each case, the modern meaning of the word in italics is quite different from its earlier meaning, and the sentence would be quite impossible if the word had retained its original meaning. Try to guess the ealier meaning of the word from the context, and check your guess in a good dictionary which provides earlier meanings. a. No animals are allowed in the cockpit. b. Miss Marples knitting wool cannot be a clue. c. The candidate turned up in a dark blue suit. d. She is small and slim, but she has a great deal of poise. e. We arrived at a dusty village in the middle of the desert. f. Wrapping her cloak tightly about her, she escaped from her escort. g. The Japanese manufacturers make heavy use of automated factories. h. The ships passengers were quarantined for two weeks. i. John is a mediocre mountain-climber, but he always makes it to the top. j. After the break-in, our vegetarian shop was a shambles. k. Shes painted a lovely blues-and yellow miniature. A dishevelled old man, bald and toothless, huddled in a doorway. (Trask, L.R. 1994:44) 4. On the left is a list of words which have undergone substantial changes of meaning during the last few centuries; on the right is a list of their former meanings in a different order. Can you match each word with its former meaning? a. sack b. prove c. skill d. disease e. frock f. wade g. thing h. silly i. reek j. impertinent k. fee l. boon m. pen n. tide o. fond 1. understand 2. monks costume 3. foolish 4. unrelated 5. feather 6. test 7. strong wine 8. time 9. discomfort 10. prayer 11. livestock 12. legal matter 13. smoke 14. go 15. helpless (Source: Trask, R.L., 1994:45) 124

Unit 9. Semantic relations

Contents 9.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 125 9.2. Competences ........................................................................................................ 125 9.3. Incompatibility .................................................................................................... 127 9.4. Antonymy.............................................................................................................. 128 9.5. Hyponymy (meaning inclusion) ........................................................................... 131 9.6. Synonymy ............................................................................................................. 132 9.7. Homonymy and Polysemy ................................................................................... 136 9.8. Summary .............................................................................................................. 138 9.9. Evaluation ............................................................................................................. 138 9.1. Introduction The present chapter aims at offering a detailed description of the semantic or sense relations established among the words of the lexicon, focussing on the paradigmatic ones. At the same time, it will also show the stylistic effect of some of these sense relations and the ways in which they can be exploited in literature.

9.2. Competences After having covered the theoretical material contained in this unit, the students should be able to identify the semantic relations, to provide synonymous, antonymous or homonymous pairs for various words, to employ the most suitable lexical item of a synonymic set in a certain context. At the same time, they are expected to enjoy jokes based on all kinds of semantic relations provided at the end of the chapter.

Time envisaged for covering Unit 9: 4 hours.

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Postulating linguistic meaning primarily as a relation brings forward the important problem of the nature of semantic relations. Ever since ancient times scholars in the field of language were aware of the diverse ties existing among the words of a given language. A systematic study of these relations was initiated by Ferdinand de Saussure (1965), who suggested the existence of a network of associative fields within the vocabulary of a language. In conformity with his general idea on the systematic nature of language, de Saussure suggested that the lexicon, too, be structured by means of a series of possible associations, which are established among the vocabulary items of a language. According to him, these associations are: -etymological (based on resemblance in both their meaning and form); -derivational (based on identity of suffixes); -formal (based on accidental sound resemblance); -semantic (based on meaning relations proper). In this chapter we shall focus on the last type, namely on semantic relations, which are of two sorts: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. The syntagmatic relations are the relations established between elements that coexist within the same linguistic chain. The linguistic items situated on the syntagmatic axis find themselves in a both...and kind of relationship. They are situated in contrast position. The syntagmatic relations are directly observable in the spoken or written chain, and are established between lexical items belonging to different word classes. Paradigmatic relations at the semantic level are established, as a rule, among members of the same class of distribution (traditionally called parts of speech). The linguistic elements on the paradigmatic axis are mutually exclusive within one and the same linguistic sequence. They find themselves in an either ... or kind of relationship. Unlike the syntagmatic relations, the paradigmatic (oppositional) ones are not directly observable within a linguistic chain. Consequently, any linguistic element situated in a certain position in a given chain can therefore be defined by means of these two parameters. The syntagmatic relations, being related to the selectional restrictions governing the production of the strings of discourse, are analysed by sentence syntax (e.g. the choice of certain adjectives by animate nouns, or the types of objects and subjects certain types of verbs may take). Therefore, we shall deal here only with the paradigmatic relations.

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Paradigmatic relations are established, as a rule, among members of the same class of distribution. They are: incompatibility, antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy, polysemy and homonymy.

9.3. I COMPATIBILITY The primary semantic relation on the paradigmatic axis is that of incompatibility, a relation which characterizes all lexical elements. The relation of incompatibility can be established on the basis of substitution of items in a given utterance. If one utterance including a given term negates another utterance in which that term has been substituted, the two substitutable terms, as well as other terms belonging to the same substitution class are said to find themselves in a relation of incompatibility. In other words, sentences with incompatible terms will thus contradict each other. Example Consider the example John owns a car/farm/house/shop, etc. The terms in the set car, house, farm, shop are said to be incompatible because the choice of one rejects the choice of another, though there is a close semantic link between them, namely all denote things that can be owned. This set could not include other concrete nouns such as sky, leaf, love, and rain. Sometimes incompatibility is a reflection of a clear definition in the world of experience. Lions and elephants are distinct species and copper and iron are different metals. But this is not wholly relevant. What is relevant is that the terms themselves are incompatible, even if there may be no clear distinction in the world. Consider, for example, the colour terms red and orange. There is no clear dividing line in the spectrum between these two classes, yet we would never agree that a particular object was red and at the same time orange. We might even describe it as red one day and orange the next day, yet we would still never admit that it was both red and orange. Red and orange are incompatible terms in the following sentences: Marys hat is orange / Marys hat is red. It becomes obvious that the relation of incompatibility is useful for establishing semantic fields. The existence of such semantic fields in any language can be used in various ways, one of them being the categorization of the vocabulary according to a number of topics, an enterprise brilliantly achieved by Rogets Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (1941). Grouping the whole vocabulary under 990 heads or topics, therefore as many semantic fields, this dictionary offers a choice of words to fit any context.

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9.4. A TO YMY The wider concept of incompatibility includes several types of meaning relations that are based on more intimate relations of oppositeness. In traditional lexicology these relations are dealt with under the general term of antonymy. Antonymy is a regular and very natural feature of language and can be defined fairly precisely as the contrasting relation between two lexemes, one of which denotes some positive property whereas the other denotes the absence of that property. Ironically, the basic characteristic of two words which are antonyms is that they share all but one semantic property (e.g. husband and wife). The property they do not share is present in one word and absent in the other. However, there are different kinds of opposites and we must clearly distinguish between them. Several different subclasses have been singled out (Lyons, 1977, ch. 9). Antonyms fall into at least three groups: gradable antonyms (pairs that describe the opposite ends of a continuous dimension), binary antonyms (pairs that exhaust all linguistic possibilities along some dimension), and converse antonyms (pairs that describe the relationship between items from opposite perspectives) (Parker and Riley, 2005:37). The three types of antonymic relations are presented in more details below.

a) Gradability The term gradability is used to designate those meaning oppositions which admit certain gradations with regard to the meaning expressed. English abounds in pairs of words such as wide narrow, old young, big small, good bad, tough tender, warm cool. These, all of them adjectives, have in common the fact that they may be seen in terms of degrees of the quality involved. Thus, a road may be wide or very wide and one road may be wider than another. We have, that is to say, a gradation of width, size, age, etc., all indicated by such adjectives as the previously mentioned ones. Not only are these adjectives gradable, but they are graded against different norms according to the items being discussed. Thus, a stripe on a dress may be wide if it is only 2 inches wide, but a road would have to be many yards wide before it could be so described. This accounts for the apparent paradoxes of a small elephant being bigger than a big mouse, for small means small as elephants go and big, big as mice go. The temperature required to describe a swimming pool as hot is not the same as the temperature required to describe a drink as hot; the temperature of a cold ice cream is not the same temperature as a cold shower. And to take another example of a graded term, an old man is much older than an old dog, 128

which in its turn is very much older than an old piece of cake. On the other hand, there is no fixed range of years for which a book may be described as old. If one is referring to a standard set by history, a book has to be approximately 100 years old to be described in terms of old, but in order to be old for a four-year old boy, it need be only a couple of weeks old. A further point we need to make is that in each pair one of the terms is generally MARKED in the sense of having a more specific meaning, whereas the other term is used to describe more generally the gradable quality. When we use the UNMARKED terms, as in How high is it?/ How wide is it? How hot is it? there is no implication that a particular thing is high/wide/hot. But when we use the MARKED terms, as in How short is the tower?/How narrow is the road?/How cold is the tea?, we imply that the tower is short, the road is narrow and the tea is cold. Notice that it is the UNMARKED member of the pair that is used to form nouns, i.e. high = height, wide= width. In English it is the larger term that appears to be unmarked, but this does not seem to be a universal feature; in the pair old young, the first member is unmarked, but the noun is derived from the marked one, i.e. youth. Since these antonyms are gradable, there are often intermediate terms. Thus we have not just hot cold, but HOT - /warm cool/ - COLD, with the intermediate pair /warm-cool/ forming a pair of antonyms themselves.

b) Complementarity Complementarity can be illustrated by pairs of words such as male - female, singlemarried, alive-dead. Strictly, these belong to the set of incompatible terms we mentioned earlier (7.2.1), but with one specific characteristic, namely that they are members of two-term sets instead of the multiple term sets that were discussed above. But they are, in some ways, similar to the gradable antonyms, in that both exhibit incompatibility. There is one striking difference between the two types of antonyms. It is characteristic of complementaries that the denial of one implies the assertion of the other and vice versa. The definition of this senserelation is therefore based on the logical implication combined with negation. If one member of a pair of complementaries is true, then the other must be false. Thus, Tom is not married implies Tom is single, and also Tom is married implies Tom is not single. There is no third possibility. With the gradable antonyms, in contrast, although there are only 2 terms, it is not the case that to say something is not wide/warm is to say that it is narrow/cold or the other way round. The possibility of being neither wide/warm nor narrow/cold is left open. 129

An interesting point, however, is that there is no absolute distinction between these two types. We can treat male/female, married/single, alive/dead as gradable antonyms on occasions. Someone can be very male or more married and certainly more dead than alive.

c) Reversibility (converseness/relational opposition) A quite different kind of antonymy is found with pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship between items. Examples are buy/sell, husband/wife, give/take, know/ignore, where the lexemes imply each other mutually. If A sells to B, B buys from A; if A is B's husband, B is A's wife. Lyons (1977) suggests the term converseness for these, whereas Palmer (1976) prefers the term relational opposition, being concerned to point out their essential relational characteristics. Example Here are some more examples of converses: to rent/to let, to own/to belong to, give/receive, fianc/fiance, parent/child, debtor/creditor, and, possibly, teacher/pupil. A number of terms referring to spatial position also belong here - above/below, in front of/behind, north of/south of, etc. In grammar, too, active and passive exhibit relational opposition, for if A hits B, B is hit by A. Converses can be completely paraphrased by each other, as seen in the example above. However, converseness has been interfered with by specific conventionalization of meaning in certain instances. Thus, my friend gave me a book cannot be adequately paraphrased by I took the book from my friend, as the latter phrase can be interpreted to mean that I took the book without his giving it to me. Reinforcement The three kinds of sense-relations between lexical items that are traditionally summed up under the term antonymy differ clearly in many ways. Complementaries (binary antonyms), gradables and converses always occur in pairs, which are treated and interpreted as two-member lexical fields It is worth pointing out that some pairs that have traditionally been treated as antonyms (e.g. liquid and solid) might be better handled as hyponyms of the same

superordinate terms (i.e. liquid, solid and gas are hyponyms of matter. Hyponymy, as a semantic relation, is dealt with in the following sub-chapter.

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9.5. HYPO YMY (meaning inclusion) Hyponymy is the linguistic equivalent of the logical concept of implication. It is a relation of asymmetrical implication of the type established between genus and species, as in flower - rose, house - chalet, vegetable - tomato. The second term in each pair is included in the first, but the reverse is not valid. A tomato is a vegetable, but not all vegetables are tomatoes. The relation of hyponymy involves a superordinate ('upper') term which covers a number of hyponyms ('lower' terms). Thus, rose, daisy, and violet are co-hyponyms of the superordinate term FLOWER. Superordinate terms, in their turn, may become hyponyms in relation to a more general term, in our case PLA T.

Example PLANT flower rose daisy pansy violet oak tree birch fir

The same term may appear in several places in the hierarchy. This is, of course, possible only if it is polysemantic; in one of its meanings it may be superordinate to itself in another meaning. Thus animal may be used (a) in contrast with vegetable to include birds, fishes, insects as well as mammals, (b) in the sense of 'mammals' to contrast with birds, fishes and insects, to include both humans and beasts, (c) in the sense of 'beast' to contrast with human. Thus it occurs three times in the hierarchical classification of nature. Relying on your knowledge of biology, try to draw a similar hierarchical diagram for the term ATURE Hyponymy involves the logical relationship of entailment (i.e. the relation of 'it follows from'). To say that one sentence entails another is to say that if the first sentence is true, the second is (on logical grounds) also true. To say This is a rose entails This is a flower. Similarly, There are two girls entails There are two children. In all such examples a sentence containing the hyponym entails a sentence containing the superordinate term. Hyponymy is one of the main paradigmatic relations, one of the constitutive principles of organization of the lexicon of all languages. Roget's Thesaurus mentioned earlier is based on hyponymy as a principle of organization.

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9.6. SY O YMY Two or more lexical items are said to be synonymous if they share the same features with a slight difference in their deepest semantic content. Synonymy was described by Lyons (1977) as a symmetrical hyponymy, therefore a relation of equivalence in logical terms. It is one semantic relation most dealt with by grammarians and semanticians. One of the most complete definitions of synonymy was given by Levitchi (1970): Synonyms are two or more lexical or grammatical units comparable through their content, but reflecting in various degrees and in various senses (semantic, grammatical, stylistic) the essential notes of the notion they denote. This definition makes it clear that synonymy exists not only at the level of lexical units, but also at that of grammatical forms (for example the means of expressing repeated actions in the past: used to and would).

a) Absolute synonyms. The definition mentioned above also refers to the delicate problem of absolute or perfect synonyms. It is often said that absolute synonyms do not exist. However, if absolute synonyms do exist, their number is very limited and restricted to monosemantic terms, such as scientific or technical terms. Examples of absolut synonyms would be the terms semi-vowels and semi-consonants or salt and sodium chloride.

b) Relative synonyms. The greatest majority of synonyms are relative. The degree of semantic similarity between words depends to a great extent on the number of semantic properties they share. Thus, sofa and couch refer to the same type of object and share most of their semantic properties. So do stool and chair. On the other hand, there are words that have many semantic features in common, but which are not synonymous or near synonymous. Thus, man and boy refer to male humans; the meaning of boy includes the additional semantic property of youth (i.e. [- ADULT]). Man = [+Animate], [+Human], [+Male], [+Adult] Boy = [+Animate], [+Human], [+Male], [-Adult] Consequently, the semantic system of English permits you to say: A sofa is a couch/A couch is a sofa, but not A man is a boy/A boy is a man, except when you wish to describe the boylike qualities of a man or the manlike qualities of a boy. Relative synonyms are a proof of the richness of a language, allowing for differentiation and specialization within the lexicon. This differentiation is not only of semantic nature but also of a sylistic one. 132

c) Stylistic synonyms. Stylistic synonyms express the same meaning but in various functional styles. In the series arrogant cocky, violinist fiddler, spectacles giglamps, dupe sucker, the first term is neutral, whereas the second is colloquial or even slangy. A classical example is the series of synonyms goodbye, adieu, bye-bye, so long in which good- bye is neutral, adieu is jocular, bye-bye is familiar and so long is colloquial. The conclusion arises that for a proper discussion of synonymy we must take into consideration the communication level used by the speaker. A variety of stylistic synonyms is representend by the so-called disguised synonyms which are generally based on figures of speech and characterize an object or a person in a certain way.

Example Shakespeare - the greatest English playright - the sweet swan of Avon Another aspect of stylistic synonymy is represented by euphemisms (Greek eu = well and phemi = I say), i.e. lexical units considered less offensive or distasteful than the units they replace. Thus, He passed away sounds milder than He died, while He has had a drink too much wouldnt be as offensive as Hes drunk. The motives for generating euphemisms are as diverse and as universal as the range of human emotions. People are subject to all varieties of fears. Afraid to flout social and moral conventions, we refer to our lovers as companions, thus disguising the unconventional or socially unacceptable nature of the relationship. Our fear of specific deseases has led people to coin a lexicon of euphemisms for insanity and retardation (e.g. innocent = mentally retarded horizontally challenged = stupid, to have kangaroos in ones top paddock = to be insane), veneral disease, or cancer. Another motive for contemporary euphemizing is our strong desire to avoid offending others. This fear of causing psychic pain, this desire to be well thought of leads us to use kind words; we prefer to discontinue rather than to fire employees. In our eagerness to avoid deflating our egos and those of others, we often create euphemisms that inflate them, for example by conferring overblown titles on people, places and jobs. The term professor has been attached to bartenders, magicians and snake-oil salesmen, as well as academics. The terms institute and college have been applied to schools for auto mechanics, television repairmen, barbers and others.

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The fields most likely to be subject to euphemizing are: parts of the body, sickness, death, crime, sex, the world of work, war. Below we shall give some examples of euphemisms from each of these fields. parts of the body (forbidden territory): to be in ones birthday suit = naked, boobs, cleavage, headlights = breasts, bum, exhaust pipe = the posterior, privates, ones thing = the genitals. sickness: acutely visually handicapped = blind, the big C = cancer, cut-and-paste job = a surgical procedure in which a patient is opened up and then, because the surgeon discovers that his or her condition is hopeless, sewn up again, without the performance of any further surgery, to send for the green van = to send for the mental-hospital ambulance, which in Britain is green; vocally challenged = mute, aurally inconvenienced = deaf. sex: action / enclosure = sexual intercourse, cash and carried = married, a French letter = condome, to play on the other side = to be gay. death: to rest in Abrahams bosom, to be at rest, to go home in a box, to cash in ones chips, to go West, to dangle in the sheriffs picture frame, to hang up ones hat = to die; the last summons, the last gateway = death. crime: bracelets = handcuffs, a booster = a shoplifter, a dip = a pickpocket, Eliza smiles = its a good time for robbery, client of the correctional system/guest = prisoner, the lightfingered gentry = thieves. the world of work: a cleansing operative = an English roadsweeper or dustman, guest workers = foreign laborers imported to get a job done at lower wages than those required to meet the minimum-wage standards in the host country, a lounge lizard = an American term for one whose major activity is frequenting discos and nightclubs, a vehicle appearance specialist = a car washer, sex care provider, sex worker = prostitute. war: bought it = died in action, a casuality = a wounded or dead person in a war, the first skirt = the commanding officer in a Womens army Corps, the Regimental restaurant = the mess hall house bathrooms: to explain the chain = to show somebody wherethe bathroom is, chic sales = outdoor toilet, the facilities, the John/Jack, the TOPOS, Waterloo= toilet. It is quite obvious that the use of one term or another in a synonymic series depends on the communication situation and the intention of the speaker. But it is also the context that very often dictates the use of a particular term in a string of synonyms. Contextual synonyms are synonyms that are conditioned by a fixed context, out of which they are no longer synonymous. 134

Example - good and kind: She is a good/kind person but Thats very kind [polite] of you vs. She is good [talented, gifted for] at languages - range and selection are synonymous in There is a wide selection/range of goods in shops at the moment, but Selections from Byrons works vs. The pitch range of the voice.

The existence of the semantic relation of synonymy provides the field for the variety of expressions in a language. From this point of view, a good command of synonymy imposes itself as an essential factor for translation, an activity which requires the finding of the appropriate equivalents. This activity implies the selection of the best solutions from a possible synonymic series, taking into account the stylistic level and the context. The translation of a literary text raises delicate problems because of the figures of speech based on synonymy. Such a figure of speech is the quantitative hendiadys, which represents the association of two or more synonyms by means of the conjunction and. Quantitative hendiadys is very frequent in English, in standardized expressions: Example each and every, far and away, dust and ashes, wear and tear, soft and tender, with might and main, sick and tired.

Find the synonymous word for the given ones so as to form quantitative hendiadys: part and , safe and , the twists and , rough and .., heart and , every now and Synonymy is also particularly useful in the field of lexicography, being the main device used by monolingual dictionaries, which most often resort to synonymy instead of explanations, e.g. binoculars = field glasses. The advantage of this method is a great economy of space and conciseness, but there is a disadvantage as well, because the explanation given is sometimes insufficient or misleading for people with lower proficiency in language. In other cases, where a lexical synonym cannot be provided, a definition of the word is given in the form of a paraphrase, e.g. parliament = supreme law-making council or assembly. Synonyms also serve as a vehicle for humour. One story concerns the educated son who returns home after four years at college. His mother asks him the meaning of the word 135

narrative. It means a tale, replies the son. She also asks him the meaning of extinguish. To put out, answers the son. That night, at the sons homecoming party, during a lull in the conversation the mother is heard asking the son to grab that pesky dog by the narrative and extinguish him. The humour in this story depends on the use of synonyms extinguish = put out, and narrative = tale, story and also on the use of homonyms, tale/tail. The context-dependency of synonyms and their stylistic differentiations point to the complexity of this linguistic field and to the difficulty the learner of English encounters in mastering the lexicon. Therefore, one of the major concerns of the student of English should be the acquisition of a good command of the synonyms of the language.

9.7. POLYSEMY A D HOMO YMY The convergence of historical and synchronic approaches to the lexicon brings us to the problem which has been a longwithstanding matter of concern for linguists: how does one draw the line between HOMONYMY (roughly, two or more words having the same pronunciation and/or spelling) and POLYSEMY (one word having two or more senses). In order to solve this problem, linguists have made use of three types of criteria: a) The criterion of etymology. Ear1 'organ of hearing' and ear2 'head of corn' are distinguished as homonyms, because they were formally distinct in Old English and thus have a different etymology. Consequently, they are treated as two separate words or lexemes in present-day English dictionaries. On the other hand, flower 'part of plant' and flour 'powder made by crushing grain' would be treated as a single polysemous word with two meanings. The reason for this is that they are etymologically identical, since both go back to the same Middle English word flour. In spite of the fact that they are spelled differently, they are pronounced alike. Other well-known pairs in the history of English are: catch - chase, mint money, inch - ounce. Since the speaker of a language does not normally possess any etymological knowledge, we may conclude that etymology cannot be a useful criterion for distinguishing between homonymy and polysemy. b) The criterion of formal identity or distinctness. There are 3 possible situations, all of them implying differences in meaning: b.1) absolute homonyms, or words pronounced and spelt alike: count: (v) a numra, (n) conte; spring: (n) izvor; (n) primvar; (v) a sri;

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b.2) homographs, or words spelt alike but pronounced differently: lead pronounced /li:d/, meaning 'a conduce', and pronounced /led/, 'plumb', minute pronounced /:minit/ is a noun meaning 'minut', whereas pronounced /mai:nju:t/, it is an adjective meaning minuscul; b.3) homophones, or words pronounced alike but spelt differently: cereal - serial /'siril/, desert (v) - dessert (n) /di'z:t/ c) Close semantic relatedness. If two or more senses are related we recognize a case of polysemy. But we may ask what 'related' means. There are two answers, one historical and one psychological, which do not necessarily coincide. Two meanings are historically related if they can be traced back to the same source, or if one meaning can be derived from the other; two meanings are psychologically related if present-day users of the language feel intuitively that they are related, and therefore tend to assume that they are different uses of the same word. Thus, mess 'dirty or untidy state of affairs' is derived historically from the now rare mess 'dish of food', while crane 'machine for lifting' is derived presumably by a visual metaphor from crane 'type of long-necked bird'. Reinforcement Homonyms are words with (almost) identical graphical or sonorous form, whose meanings are not related, and which are given separate entries in the dictionary. They are word-forms belonging to distinct lexemes. On the other hand, polysemous words are given one entry in the dictionary and their meanings are related. Polysemy seems to have a higher frequency in the language; it is an eminently economical phenomenon based on the perception of analogies and establishment of rational associations. On the other hand, homonymy is one of the sources of some stylistic devices such as puns (play upon words), and syllepsis. Polysemy and homonymy facilitate creativity in many types of discourse. The figure of speech with which they are most commonly associated, given their potential for word-play, is the pun. The pun is a humorous device consisting in the homonymic interpretation of the same word or phrase: 'We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall hang separately' (Benjamin Franklin). Puns also lie at the core of much English humour and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland highly illustrates this. Example
<<Im a poor man, your Majesty, the Hatter began in a trembling voice and I hadnt but just begun my tea not above a week or so and what with the bread-andbutter getting so thin and the twinkling of the tea -

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The twinkling of what? said the King. It began with the tea, the Hatter replied. Of course twinkling begins with a T! said the King sharply. Do you take me for a dunce?>> (Lewis Carroll, Alices Adventures in Wonderland)

Syllepsis is a figure of speech implying the simultaneous use of the same lexical unit in two different senses or functions of which one is proper and the other figurative, as in He took his hat and his leave, where the second term (in its figurative use) is omitted in 'he took his leave'. Homonymy exists in all languages, but the lexical units affected by it are different in most cases, i.e. there is no semantic correspondence between the English homonyms and their translations. That is why literary translations should resort to puns existing in the target language, which may vary from those in the source language.

9.8. Summary In this unit we have seen how words are related to one another on the basis of their meaning. In some cases a number of words share meaning, in some others they have opposite meanings, whereas the meaning of some words includes the meaning of others. Semantic relations are the basis of a number of some figures of speech, such as syllepsis or the pun. Without a sound knowledge of the semantic relation, students will not be able to enjoy the jokes based on them.

9.9. Evaluation Evaluation A TO YMY 1. What is the opposite of: dry, strong, rough, thick, hard? 2. Now give the opposite of the following: dry wine, strong cigarette, a rough sea, a thick person, a hard exercise. 3. Classify the following antonyms as gradable (G), complementary (C), or reversative (R): a. wide/narrow b. smoking/non-smoking c. near/far d. defeat/lose to e. innocent/guilty f. wife/husband g. in front of/behind 138

h. true/false i. open/closed j. teacher/student k. cheap/expensive man/woman 4. What is the opposite of the following words? Use the negative prefixes un-/ in/ im-/ dis-. If there is another word that has approximately the same meaning, write that too. WORD OPPOSITE SIMILAR MEANING e.g. safe unsafe dangerous modest happy complete expensive interesting important perfect friendly polite correct honest certain flexible SY O YMY 5. Give a synonym for each of the underlined words in the following sentences. Choose from the ones below: giddy chatty stingy intentional hopeless absurd mad pensive immature reliable disgraceful weird amiable famished conscious

a. There is only one way of describing Hitler - he was completely insane. b. A good friend is someone who is kind, considerate and totally dependable. c. Our new boss isn't too bad at all. In fact, she's quite likeable, really. d. You are aware of the fact that he's married, aren't you? e. I wish you'd grow up! You are so childish. f. I didn't mean to break it - it wasn't deliberate. g. That's the last time I go to a party with Simpson! His behaviour last night was absolutely disgusting. h. I always get very dizzy when I stand on the top of high buildings. i. What do you mean you can't afford to buy me a drink? Don't be so mean! You've got a lot more money than I have. j. I could eat a horse! I'm really hungry. k. Take those trousers off - you look ridiculous in them! l. Our new neighbours are very talkative. m. You're looking rather thoughtful this morning. n. We've lost the match! You played like a team of grannies! You were pathetic. o. Charles has some really peculiar ideas sometimes! 139

6. Fill in the blanks by choosing from the synonymic series the most adequate terms: controversy - dispute - debate a. The question under ................. raised an amendment. b. Can't you see this problem is beyond any ..............? c. This ................. cannot be continued any longer. damage - harm - injury d. The bombs caused great ................ to the airport. e. There is no ................... in taking a few pills. d. Your statement does a(n) .............. to her reputation. agreement - bargain - contract - convention - pact - treaty g. The two states have signed their first cultural ........... . h. The USA have signed several .......... for delivering food to underdeveloped countries. i. The two leaders did not reach any ............... j. Military ................ are a permanent danger to the worlds peace. come - arrive at - reach k. When does the train .......... the station? l. Years.......... and go! m. Through hard work he ........... success. hold - contain - embody - include n. The box .............. chocolates. o. The two characters ................... all virtues and vices. p. The exhibition ........ some rare manuscripts. q. The ship ............ 45,000 tons. 7. Decide which word in each of the following groups is significantly different from the others. If necessary, use your dictionary. a. to celebrate, to commiserate, to commemorate, to honour b. to soothe, to startle, to alarm, to frighten c. to inflame, to douse, to extinguish, to smother d. a symbol, a sign, a password, a logo e. a phantom, a spirit, a ghost, a premonition HOMO YMY 8. Mark the correct word: a. Boy / buoy - which floats more frequently? b. Beach / beech - which one is a tree? c. Rain / reign / rein - which of them drenches you if you have no umbrella? d. Cession / session - by which do you agree to give up lands, rights? e. Bare / bear - which one is a wild animal? f. Flea / flee - which one means a small, wingless insect that feeds on the blood of human beings and some animals? g. Key / quay - which one does a boat come alongside? h. Cereal / serial - which one might continue next week?

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i. Steal / steel - which one is used for knives, tools? j. Air / heir - which inherits and which is everywhere? k. Fair / fare - which do you pay on a bus? l. Pair / pear - which one is a sweet, juicy fruit? m. Pail/ pale - which one is a vessel for carrying liquids? n. Bail / bale - which one do you pay to be released from jail? o. Ascent / assent - which one means 'approval'? p. Berth / birth - which one is a place for sleeping on a train or ship? q. Break / brake - which one is a device which causes something else to slow down or stop whether it is a car or a desire? r. Complement/ compliment - which one is a praise? 9. Complete the following jokes. The humour depends on homophones in each one. read/red stories/storeys rains/reins bean/been bolder/boulder pane/pain bare/bear allowed/aloud week/weak a. Waiter, what do you call this? > It's ........ soup, sir. I don't care what it's ...... . What is it now? Have you ever hunted ...........? >No, I always hunt with my clothes on. Why are black clouds like somebody riding a horse? >Because they both hold the .............. A teacher saw two boys fighting in the playground. >Stop! You know the school rules - No fighting ............ But, sir, we weren't fighting ...... . We were fighting quietly. What is the effect of seven days dieting? > They make one ............... Did you hear about the novelist who lived on the ninth floor of a block of >He dropped six ................... into a wastepaper basket and lived. g. How can I get rid of my headache? >Hit your head against a window and the ........ will disappear. Fortune Teller: Would you like your palm ........., sir? >Man: No, thanks, I like the colour it is now. What did the small shy stone say? >I wish I was a little ...................

b.

c.

d.

e.

f. flats?

h.

j.

HYPO YMY 10. Which of the following statements are true?

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a) tennis is a hyponym of sport; b) cucumber and vegetable are co-hyponyms; c) plant is a superordinate of tree; d) calf is a hyponym of creature; e) orange and tomato are co-hyponyms; f) chess is a hyponym of game; g) game is a hyponym of sport; h) poker is a hyponym of sport; i) bread is a co-hyponym of milk; j) disease is a superordinate of tuberculosis; k) swing and toy are co-hyponyms. On the basis of the answers you provided, try to construct partial taxonomies1. Try to extend these taxonomies upwards and downwards and point out any difficulties or points of interest that arise.

Taxonomy is a structure in which we meet more general terms as we ascend to higher levels.

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Unit 10. Lexical strata in Contemporary English

Contents 10.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 143 10.2. Competences ...................................................................................................... 143 10.3. Diachronic lexical strata .................................................................................. 144 10.3.1. Archaisms........................................................................................................ 144 10.3.2. eologisms ..................................................................................................... 146 10.4. Synchronic lexical strata.................................................................................... 149 10.4.1. Technical words ............................................................................................. 150 10.4.2. Slang ............................................................................................................... 151 10.4.2. 1.Sociolinguistic aspects of slang ................................................................... 152 10.4.2.2. Cant.............................................................................................................. 154 10.4.2.3. Argot ............................................................................................................ 154 10.4.2.4. Jargon .......................................................................................................... 155 10.4.3. Vulgar terms.................................................................................................... 156 10.4.4. Dialecticisms................................................................................................... 156 10.5. Summary ............................................................................................................ 157 10.6. Evaluation ......................................................................................................... 157 10.7. H omework .......................................................................................................... 159 10.1 Introduction This last unit aims at presenting the various lexical strata that can be encountered in Contemporary English. It also points out the problems the words belonging to various lexical strata pose in understanding different types of texts. Furthermore, it shall help students identify which lexical stratum is appropriate to particular social and professional circumstances. 10.2. Competences Once the students have finished studying unit 10, they are expected to be able to make the distinction between literary and colloquial English, to identify whether a word is archaic or newly borrowed/created and to adapt their vocabulary to the social and professional contexts of use.

Time envisaged for covering Unit 10: 2 hours.

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The English vocabulary is built up of lexical units which are stylistically differentiated according to their history and persistence in time. By taking the stylistic differences into consideration, lexical units may be grouped into lexical (stylistic) strata. The criteria of determining lexical strata are diachrony and synchrony. Diachronic lexical strata are chronologically determined, whereas synchronic lexical strata must be considered as the totality of lexical units subordinated to the linguistic phenomena manifestly acting in a certain period.

10.3. DIACHRO IC LEXICAL STRATA 10.3.1. Archaisms As we read texts dating from earlier centuries, we may carry over into our speech or writing linguistic peculiarities from the earlier texts. We may also carry them over from texts we hear, such as in theatrical performances, literary recitals and the Church liturgy. Such carryovers are known as archaisms. Thus, swine is the archaic word for 'pig'; ass is the archaic form for donkey. Such archaic forms are chiefly used for literariness or for irony. Archaisms cover words, as well as meanings and pronunciations that have become old-fashioned or that have been completely excluded from common usage. One should distinguish between: a) grammatical archaisms: -the ending est in the second person singular of verbs in the present: thou speakest you speak; thou hast spoken you have spoken; -the use of two or even more than two negations in one and the same sentence: That cannot be so neither (Shakespeares The Two Gentlemen of Verona); Thou hast spoken no word all this while - nor understood none neither). -the use of two relative pronouns: Men shal wel knowe who that I am. (Caxton, 1485, quoted in Lightfoot, 1979:322) b) phonetic archaisms: words that have undergone changes in their spelling or/and pronunciation in the course of time: hath has, tough/thee you, thy your. c) lexical archaisms: words which have disappeared from the everyday language of the speakers, and which can be still encountered in poetry or historical works, where they create a certain atmosphere, e.g. brow forehead, morn morning According to the persistence in the language, archaisms can be classified into: a. Absolute archaisms (archeologisms/obsolete words) these are lexical, grammatical or phonetic units that have disappeared from the language altogether. The denoted objects, 144

phenomena, actions, relations, qualities have not lost their reality or use, but their denominations have been replaced by equivalents: e.g. ferne was replaced by remote, thou/thee and the adjective thy disappeared completely from the language in the 18th century, except in certain dialects and poetry. b. Relative archaisms are words, meanings or constructions that have been excluded from common usage but are still used occasionally in functional styles, dialects, etc. Relative archaisms may be classified, in their turn, into: b.1) potential archaisms, i.e. words, meanings or constructions of limited currency at present. This limitation is due to the replacement of their denominations by equivalents. Potential archaisms often occur in poetry, and they are also called poetisms. Here are some examples: brow forehead, ere before, foe enemy, morn morning The deliberate usage of archaisms is a distinctive feature of the English romantic poetry, represented by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Keats, who adorned their verses with poetisms. The following fragments are meant as illustration: Example Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, Last eve in Beautys circle proudly gay, The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife, The mourn the marshalling in arms the day Battles magnificently stern array. (Byron's Childe Harold: The Eve of Waterloo)

My soul had been a lawn besprinkled oer With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams; The morn was clouded, but no shower fell, Thoin her lids hung the sweet tears of May; The open casement pressed a new-leaved vine Let in the budding warmth and throstles lay...(John Keats: Ode on Indolence) Potential archaisms are also characteristic of fairy-tales, anecdotes and other folklore productions: Thou shalt not repent thy deed quoth the golden fish. (The Golden Fish) Specific archaisms are still in use in the official style, some examples of this kind being hereof of this, thereafter after that, whereas since, because, thereof from that cause, etc. b.2) historisms are words that once denominated objects, phenomena, actions, relations which have lost in time their reality, use or topicalization. Such words have

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nowadays only a historical documentary value, being used by writers especially in historical novels in order to create an appropriate atmosphere. Walter Scotts historical novels are good examples in point. Historisms are such examples as thegn (Anglo-Saxon nobleman), gleeman (Anglo-Saxon wandering minstrel), witan (Anglo-Saxon the kings council), tournament (in the Middle Ages, a sport consisting of an encounter between two mounted knights), etc.

10.3.2. eologisms The term was derived from the Greek neo new and logos word in order to denominate the new words of a language. There are two meanings attached to it: a broad one, designating as neologisms all new words (borrowings, newly created words, words that existed in the language but only recently received attention), and a restricted one, designating only those words which were recently borrowed. In establishing the neologic character of a word, two factors should be taken into account: time and frequency. A certain word is a neologism as long as it is felt as a novelty by the native speaker of the language and as long as it has a low frequency in everyday usage. New realities bring about new words, scientific and technical notions (also called terms) being almost daily introduced into the vocabulary, in accordance with the requirements of mans activity in various specialized domains. Here are some examples picked out from the terminology of several fields of science: galvanoplasty (metallurgy), sonogram, CAT (computer axial tomography), cosmetic bonding, (an orthodontic technique in which a plastic resin is used to alter the shape of teeth) (medicine), corticosterone, nitroglycerine, radium (chemistry), apocope (linguistics), schizophrenia, egocentric, extrovert, psychoanalysis (psychology). The World Wars represent an example of how great developments or events leave their mark upon language. We may observe some of the words that came into English between 1914 and 1918 as a direct consequence of World War I. Some of these military terms are: as air raid, antiaircraft gun, tank and blimp, dud (a shell that did not explode), slacker, trench foot, cootie, and war bride. It would seem that World War II was less productive of memorable words, as it was of memorable songs. Nevertheless it made its contribution to the language in the form of certain new words, new meanings, or an increased currency for expressions that had been used before.

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Example -air raid terms: blackout, blitz, blockbuster, dive-bombing; - other terms with military/political significance: to spearhead an attack, to mop up, and to appease New scientific discoveries and inventions, such as the automobile, computer, film and broadcasting have brought more new words into general use. Thus, we have learned new words or new meanings in carburetor, spark plug, choke, clutch, gearshift/lever, windshield/screen, power steering, convertible, turbocharger, etc. From the world of film, radio and television we have such words as screen, reel, projector, close-up, fade-out, three-D (film), aerial, lead-in, loud-speaker, stand-by, microphone (radio), cable TV, teleprompter, telethon, videotape, VCR (television). With the widespread manufacturing and marketing of personal computers during the 1980s, a much larger number of English speakers found the need of computer terms in their daily work: PC, RAM (random-access memory), ROM (read-only memory), DOS (disk operating system), byte, modem, software, hacker, download, spam, and vaccine. More recent terms would be: bogusware (a computer software intended to damage the computer it is used with), phantom bug (a bug deliberately and maliciously inserted into a computer program in order to spoil it), earcon (an audio signal produced by a computer, representing a particular activity that can be or is being carried out by the computer), or keprom (an abbreviation from key-access erasable programmable read-only memory; it is a computer chips erasable

reprogrammable memory with an electronic lock to protect programs). A couple of neological term related to the financial sector entered the British vocabulary. Here are some examples. Archer (British slang) refers to the sum of 2,000. When allegations appeared in a newspaper that he had paid a prostitute this sum, Jeffrey Archer2, then deputy and chairman of the Conservative Party had to resign his seat in the Parliament. Placido (British slang) refers to the sum of 10. The term derives from Placido Domingo, punningly based on his occupation as an operatic tenor (tenner). Seymour indicates a six-figure salary. This coinage is apparently based on the name of a creative director of the advertising agency Saatchi&Saatchi in the early 1980s. This Mr. Seymour was reputed to have been the first to step into 100,000 bracket in the advertising industry.

Jeffrey Archer is also a well-known British novelist. Some of his best-sellers are Kane and Abel, The Prodigal Daughter, ot a Penny More, not a Penny Less

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Neologisms are very numerous in modern languages, but their currency is low because of their strict specialization. However, there are terms, like telephone, television, satellite, echography, which enjoy wide circulation owing to the impact of science and technology of modern life. From the stylistic point of view, neologisms are usually neutral if used in scientific and technical texts; but, like any other words in the language, they may acquire stylistic value if used on purpose in other contexts. The English so-called metaphysic poets had a propensity for neologisms, and the romantic poets did not hesitate to use them beside archaisms. We reproduce below an illustrative Example Here is an illustrative quotation from John Donnes The Extasie: When love, with one another so Interinanimates two soules, The abler soule, which thence doth flow, Defects of loneliness controules, .......................................................... ....the Atomies of which we grow Are soules, whom no chance can invade. We have to mention the fact that neologisms are accepted in the standard language only if they are felt as necessary. Otherwise they rapidly fall into the category of absolute archaisms. We have such an example in the quotation above: the word interinanimates was coined by the author himself but it was never used again. Such neologisms are called nonce words (occurring, used, or made only once or for a special occasion). Many writers try to innovate in the linguistic field either by coining words, like John Donne, or by using a device called stylistic derivation which may be effected: -by means of reduction: e.g. Then whats the skeleton? (In Galsworthys The White Monkey) based on the saying to have a skeleton in the closet, meaning to have an unpleasant secret; -by paraphrase: in Hamlet we encounter the following line: With an auspicious and a dropping eye, which seems to have been inspired from the old English saying to cry with an eye and laugh with the other; -by mixed means: ...they were a very happy couple, riding side by side on their hobbies (from Marryats Midshipman Easy), inspired by the proverb Every man has his hobby-horse (meaning everybody has a favourite subject or idea). When they are obviously superfluous, nonce words resemble barbarisms. These are neologisms which have been borrowed although more adequate equivalents already existed in

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the language. Here are some examples: au pair (baby-sitter), sputnik (satellite), effluvium (odour), etc. Some people desiring to polish their language in order to show off, sometimes obtain the reverse by creating not merely barbarisms, but the so-called malapropisms (from the name of Mrs. Malaprop, a character in R.B. Sheridans play The Rivals). These are words substituted for other words (usually neologic in character), with which they sound more or less alike. Thus, Mrs. Malaprop spoke of an allegory (meaning an 'alligator') on the banks of the Nile. In Act III of the above-mentioned play she produces the following lines: Sir, you overpower me with good-breeding. (Apart). He is a very pineapple of politeness. (She imagines that exotic fruit enjoy careful breeding). Oh, it gives me the hydrostatics to such a degree. (Distress is exerted on her just like hydrostatic power). Example Here are some other examples of malapropisms: -I compute to Manchester (commute). - She went into historics (hysterics). - The doctor said I was suffering from nerves and high potential (hypotension). - He told a funny antidote (anecdote). - The doctor listened to her chest with his periscope (stethoscope).

10.4. SY CHRO IC LEXICAL STRATA The following represents a traditional synchronic survey of the structure of the English vocabulary based on a diagram given in the introduction to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED, 1973:X)
Figure 1. Synchronic survey of the structure of the English vocabulary
FOREIGN

AR

AI

H EC

AN

SL

SC
NI

IE
CA

NT
L

IF IC

written

COMMON
spoken

medium

DI

AL

EC

TA

VU A LG R

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The representation starts out from the assumption that the vocabulary of English contains a large central area, which is common to all media, styles, and social classes. This concept of common English, symbolized by COMMON, is equivalent, with respect to the lexicon, to the common core which is present in all varieties of English, in all stylistic and social strata. The 'core' contains such words as to be, come, father, chair, good, bad, green, very, and so on. They will not be given any special marking in the lexicon. From Common English upwards, we have literary forms, whereas downwards there are colloquial forms. The forms referred to as literary are mainly encountered in the written language of poetry and science, and moreover in the formal style. The colloquial speech, as the epithet implies, is that of spoken conversation, easy without being slovenly, conventional but not formal. Colloquial forms are also typical of the informal writing style (for example, they are encountered in personal letters and newspaper articles). Some clarification of the terminology seems to be in order here. Some of the terms overlap (for example scientific words and technical words), while some others are quite different since they refer to different individual elements of the language or to different combinations of such individual elements. Thus, literary and slang cover only the vocabulary, standard includes all elements (i.e. grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation), vulgar refers mainly to vocabulary and grammar. Colloquial English, cant and vulgar cannot be considered language in themselves: they are only terms referring to certain elements of the language, namely to words. We can say, for example: he speaks dialect, but we cannot say he speaks vulgar English, because there is no such language as vulgar English. In what follows, we shall present in more details the sub-types of colloquial English, namely technical, slang, vulgar and dialectal.

10.4.1. Technical words In English, the term technical does not refer strictly to the language of technique, but also encompasses specialized words (with the exception of scientific words, which belong to the literary language). This stratum contains the vocabulary belonging to the domains of reference which the specialists are concerned with. Thus, we have the specialized language of chemists (containing such items as inert gases, iodine, valence), of soldiers, of sailors (containing such items as starboard, clove-hitch, gybe), of students, of handicraft, economics and politics. Technical vocabularies are considered good, if they have the formal characteristics of nomenclature, i.e. one clearly delimited set of referents per words. As empirical objects are 150

often not as obviously delimited, as we need them for an easy nomenclature, we substitute for them the clearly delimited entities of our theories. Creating clearly delimited domains of reference isomorphic to nomenclatures is the aim of scientific theories. But, in fact, very few technical vocabularies reach this ideal. Consider the sailors technical vocabulary. It contains more than one nomenclature, for instance, a nomenclature for knots (including clove-hitch, reef knot, sheet bend), one for steering different courses (including gybe, turnabout, tack, reach, run), one for different types of wave (surf, swell). Each of these nomenclatures is open, i.e. we cannot list all the terms (and only the terms) belonging to it. The sailors terminology has more or less obvious subdivisions. For instance, gybe and turnabout form a pair of antonyms; tack, reach, run a ternary set of antonyms. But the division of the field of knots into the three sub-fields of knots, hitches and bends is controversial even among specialists. The field of wave types contains an obvious gap for waves caused by blowing wind in mid-ocean. This is filled by paraphrases such as rough sea, rough water. There is no obvious linguistic relation between the lexical field (say) of knots and of wave types, nor can we determine boundaries for what is and what is not a sailors technical vocabulary. The sailor is certainly professionally concerned with tides, but does the word tide belong to his professional vocabulary? On the one hand, these specialized phrases can be very 'distinct'; on the other hand, they can intermingle with slang. When used by young people and within a closed circle of members (students, soldiers, sportsmen), technical language can acquire a shade of cheerfulness. In such cases, the term slang will be more appropriate: thus we have Public School Slang, avy Slang, Army Slang, R.A.F. Slang, etc. This would be acceptable, but it

would not contribute to the clarification of which words should be considered technical and which slang. Leisi (1985:186) is of the opinion that it would be better to reserve the term slang for the perky and cheerful elements of the specialized language.

10.4.2. Slang One mark of informal style is the frequent occurrence of slang. But what is SLANG? In linguistics, where definitions at best are often imprecise and leaky, that of slang is especially notorious. The problem is one of complexity, such that a definition satisfying one person or authority would seem inadequate to another because the prime focus is different.

The linguist Paul Roberts (1958) has defined slang as one of those things that everybody can recognize and nobody can define. The Oxford Dictionary defines slang as 'the 151

language of a highly colloquial type, considered as below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words or of current words employed in some special sense. Greenough and Kittredge (1905) (quoted in Baugh & Cable, 1991:307) define slang as a peculiar kind of vagabond language, always hanging on the outskirts of legitimate speech, but continually straying or forcing its way into most respectable company. Yet, slang is a part of language and cannot be ignored or dismissed with a contemptuous sneer. One reason why slang cannot be ignored even by the strictest purists is that it has not infrequently furnished expressions that purists use without suspecting their origin. Even students of language are constantly surprised when they come across words that they use naturally and with entire propriety but find questioned or condemned by writers of a generation or a few generations before. The expression what on earth seems to be an idiomatic intensive and certainly would not be objected to in the speech of anyone today. But a couple of decades ago, people condemned it as slang and expressed horror at hearing it. Even the harmless word joke was once slang.

10.4.2.1. Sociolinguistic aspects of slang. Slang emerged from the special languages of subcultures, or perhaps we should call the more despised of them undercultures. The group studied longest and most persistently has been the criminal underworld itself, including the prison population, whose cant or argot still provides a respectable number of unrespectable terms. Other undercultures contributing heavily are those of hoboes, of gypsies, of soldiers and sailors, of the police, of business workers, of gamblers, of cowboys, of all sorts of students, of show-business workers, of jazz musicians, of athletes and their fans, and of immigrant or ethnic populations cutting across these other subcultures. In the 1980s, we must note that some of these traditional spawning grounds for slang have lost their productivity, and that other subcultures have emerged to replace them. For example, general adoption of terms from gypsies, cowboys has very nearly ceased, although the contributions of all these persist in the substrata of current slang. Criminals and police (cops and robbers) still make their often identical contributions. Teenagers and students can still be counted on for innovation. But several centres of gravity have shifted greatly during the past fifty years. Terms from the drug scene have multiplied astronomically. Sports also make a much larger contribution.

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Some sources of the slang are entirely new. Examples of this are the computer milieu and the hospital-medical-nursing complex. In the first case an exciting technological inundation is at the base, and in the other the reason is television. In the matter of sex, our period has witnessed a great increase in the number of terms taken over from homosexuals, especially male homosexuals. And it would be wrong to restrict the range of their contribution to sex terms alone, since the gay population merges with so many others that are educated, witty, observant and modish. Robert L. Chapman (1987) classifies slang into two groups, namely primary and secondary slang. Primary slang is the pristine speech of subculture members, so very natural to its speakers that it seems they must be mute without it. Much of the teenage talk, and the speech of urban street gangs, would be examples of primary slang. Secondary slang is chosen not so much to fix one in a group as to express ones attitude and resourcefulness by pretending to be a member of a street gang, or a criminal, or a gambler, or a drug user, and so forth and hence to express ones contempt, superiority, and cleverness by borrowing someone elses verbal dress. Secondary slang is a matter of stylistic choice rather than true identification (Chapman, 1987:xiii). Here are some examples of slang terms belonging to various spheres: drugs: yellow jacket (a capsule of narcotics), barbs (barbiturates), to get (to get relief or pleasure from a dose of narcotics), to freak out (to have intense hallucinations and other reactions from drugs), blue cheer (LSD), bogue (adj. in need of narcotics), basuco (the residue that remains after refining cocaine, used as a drug), bong (a pipe for smoking marijuana, hubba (a chip or pellet of crack); sex: to get ones rocks off (to have an orgasm), boom-boom (sexual activity), bunny fuck (very quick sexual act), chippy joint (a brothel), fairy (mail homosexual), American sock/gumboot (condome); army: bobtail (a dishonourable discharge), booby trap (WW2 a hidden explosive charge designed to set off by some ordinary act), chicken colonel (a full colonel)), eighty-four (WW II a naval prison); sports: blind-side (v) (to tackle or block from an unseen quarter), bonehead play (an error, esp. one caused by bad judgment); criminals world: bullpen (prison: a cell or secure area where prisoners are kept temporarily), fish (a new prison inmate);

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music: blow (to play a musical instrument, esp. in jazz style and not necessarily a wind instrument), eighty-eights (a piano), beach music (a style of American pop music based on black soul music and rhythm & blues, and originating on the coast of South Carolina), chicken-dancing (a type of dancing to pop music in which participants raise and lower their arms bent-elbowed, as if flapping their wings), hook (a repeated, typically catchy melodic phrase in a popular musical composition; students language: blob (a mistake), bone (a diligent student), bogue (adj.) (disgusting, unattractive), bogue (n) (a cigarette); food and drinks: belly-bomber (a small, highly spiced burger), blush wine (ros wine), fuzzy navel (a cocktail made from peach schnapps and orange juice), huffer (a long roll or section of French bread with a sandwich-style filling). miscellaneous: to drag somebody kicking and screaming in the 21st century (to force to recognize or adapt to change); ditz (stupid person), Katie bar the door! (get ready for trouble); lip fuzz (moustache), bush (a beard, whiskers), fish (in the slang of street-gangs, it means 'a member of a street gang'; in the language of homosexuals it means 'a heterosexual person', whereas in the slang of sports, it refers to 'a weak opponent'), a coconut head (derog. sl. a black person who adopts white cultural characteristics the exterior is brown, the interior is white). We may differentiate certain types of slang: cant, argot and jargon

10.4.2.2. CA T is a term that means slang used by the underworld. It was once defined as the Sicilian dialect of Italian. To two-finger (to pickpocket), snow (cocaine), and lugger (con-man from confidence man) are some cant terms. Other such terms have made their way from underground to overground, and are understood by nearly all, though most are considered slang: payolo (undercover or indirect payment for a commercial favour), C-note (a $100 bill), to hang paper (to write bum checks), sawbuck (a $10 bill).

10.4.2.3. ARGOT. Cant and argot are nearly synonyms. One speaks of thieves cant or a thieves argot. But the term argot may also be applied to the specialized terminology of a profession or trade. Linguistic argot consists of terms such as phoneme, morpheme, case, lexical item, style and so on. The existence of argots is illustrated by the story of a seaman witness being cross-examined at a trial, who was asked if he knew the plaintiff. Indicating that he didnt know what plaintiff meant brought a chide from the attorney: You mean you came into this court as a witness and dont know what plaintiff means? Later, the sailor was asked 154

where he was standing when the boat lurched. Abaft the binnacle, was the reply, and to the attorneys questioning stare he responded: You mean you came into this court and dont know where abaft the binnacle is?. The argot vocabulary is made up of common words and phrases with changed meaning (usually metaphors, e.g. shades (eye-glasses), chick (young woman), to split (to leave, to part).

10.4.2.4. JARGO , in one of its meanings, has the non-cant definition of argot. Practically, every conceivable profession, trade, and occupation has its own jargon: truck drivers, doctors, linguists, mechanics, schoolteachers, firemen, lawyers all use special terms of their trade. Here are some examples: journalese: tail-coat politics (pejoratively, with no personality), snapper (photographer taking snap-shots), hack (derived from hackney and used to designate any journalist, but felt as pejorative if used by somebody who doesnt belong to the group); medical jargon: the big C (cancer), a cut and paste job (surgical procedure in which a patient is opened up and then sewn up without performance of any other surgery), a summer squash/a vegetable (an unresponsive patient who has little or no brain function). Example David Crystal (1990:102) provided us with a long list of trucker jargon. yes children garage police station police accelerator understand? tyres stop for the lavatory driving on hard shoulder Evel Knievel motorcyclist eyeballs headlights five-finger stolen goods grandma lane slow lane highballing moving fast affirmative anklebiters barn bear den bears boot rest copy? doughnuts drain the radiator dusting jockey lettuce lollipop mobile mattress motionlotion organ grinding pitstop rubber duck slappers smokey on rubber smokeys balloon stack super cola tags wrapper driver paper money signpost car and caravan fuel making love lay-by first convoy truck wipers police on patrol breath test exhaust beer plates car

This type of slang is of low currency and has no basic word-stock or grammatical structure of its own, but only a small number of specific words and phrases. 155

Many jargon terms, nevertheless, pass into the standard language. Jargon spreads from a narrow group until it is used and understood by a large segment of population, similar to slang. Eventually it may lose its special status as either jargon or slang and gain entrance into the respectable circle of formal usage.

Reinforcement The term slang can have the following basic meanings: 1. A kind of language occurring chiefly in casual and playful speech, made up typically of short-lived coinages and figures of speech that are deliberately used in place of standard terms for added raciness, humor, irreverence, or other effect. 2. Language peculiar to a group; argot or jargon: thieves' slang 10.4.3. Vulgar terms (four letter words) are words that ought never to be used. Many people know these words (such as shit), but observe the convention to the extent that from birth to death they never say them. For many people, the effect of linguistic taboo is to give these words extra value as symbols of protest, for instance. It is particularly clear in these cases that the social value of a word is just a matter of convention, since other words with precisely the same meanings are not taboo (though they may be unrestricted for use as technical terms, like faeces, or with children, like poo-poo).

10.4.4. Dialecticisms are words and phrases of current usage only in restricted dialectal areas (but they sometimes penetrate into the common language and even into the language of poetry and proverbs. Here are a few examples: from Scottish: wee (small, tiny), bern/bairn (child), bony (beautiful); aye (yes), burn (stream), dram (drink, usually of whisky), loch (lake), pinkie (little finger), provost (mayor), to travel (to go on foot), flesher (butcher), clachlan (small village), Hogmanay (New Years Eve); from Irish: airy (light-hearted), blather (talk nonsense), bold (naughty), cog (cheat), mannerly (well-mannered), shore (drain), yoke (thingummy), banshee (ghost, female spirit warning of death in a house), beyond the bayonds (incredible), if hardy comes to hardy (if the worst comes to the worst) good scram to you (good luck to you). Some of the British English terms are employed with different meanings in Australian English. Thus, a station is a sheep farm, bush refers to the countryside, a tube is a can of beer, mob stands for a flock of sheep, and Sheila is not a proper noun but a common one, meaning woman.

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Some very picturesque expressions can be encountered in New Zealand English. Here are some of them: Example - hook your mutton = go away! - let the hare sit = take it easy - to be mad as a maggot = to be crazy - to be up the boohai = to be lost or baffled It is true that all the categories of words presented have no sharp boundaries. Thus, colloquial, slang, and vulgar cannot be precisely and unambiguously defined. In figure 1 they are close neighbours and the areas of vocabulary denoted by them merge and interpenetrate, as we have seen. The radial lines connect the peripheral and the central areas of the vocabulary. The further we get to the periphery, the more we depart from the common vocabulary of common English.

10.5. Summary In this last chapter we have tried to help students increase their mastery of English vocabulary from the technical, literary, scientific and other domains by acquiring recurrent morphemes and words incorporating them in the appropriate contexts of communication. 10.6. Evaluation 1. Find archaisms (lexical, phonetic and grammatical) in the following fragment from Shakespeare's Macbeth: Clean from my hand? o, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red. Enter Lady Macbeth. Lady. My hands are of your color, but I shame To wear a heart so white. (Knock). I hear a knocking At the south entry. Retire we to our chamber. A little water clears us with deed. How easy it is then! Your constancy Hath left you unattended. (Knock.) Hark! more knocking. Get on your nightgown, lest occasion calls us And show us to be watchers. Be not lost So poorly in our thoughts. Macbeth. To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself. Knock. Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst. 157

Exeunt. 2. Can you guess the meanings of the following neologisms? If not, look the words up in a dictionary. Note: some of the neologisms are colloquial, some others scientific. automall, joe, data capture, DDT, golden shares, the shaft, rock and roll, sandwich generation, jet set, icon, bubble, to awfulize, I'm sideways, to shoot oneself in the foot, rice burner. 3. Find examples of English 'barbarisms' in Romanian. 4. Formal vs. informal (colloquial) English. Here are two jumbled letters. One is written to a hotel, and the other to a friend. Decide which sentences go with which letter, and put them in the right order. How does formal English differ from the informal (colloquial) language? Letter to a friend Letter to a hotel a) I would like a single room with a shower. b) I'm writing to ask you a favour. c) I don't mind where you put me. I'll sleep anywhere! d) I have a further request. e) I would like to make a reservation for the nights of 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of January. f) I hope the above is convenient. g) Write soon and let me know. h) I'm coming down to London at the end of the month to go to a conference. i) Could I have a bite to eat when I arrive? j) I hope you are all well, and that you've recovered from the busy Christmas period. k) I would be extremely grateful. l) Could I possibly have a room at the back, as I find the front rooms rather noisy? m) Could you put me up for a few days? n) Just a sandwich will do. o) I look forward to your reply. p) It's the 22nd - 24th January. q) As I will be arriving quite late, could you possibly put a cold buffet in my room on the 22nd? r) I hope that's right. s) There's something else I'd like to ask you. 5. For the following examples of formal style, say how they may be expressed in a more neutral style. a. Diners are requested to refrain from smoking in this section of the restaurant. b. Please vacate this seat should an elderly or infirm person require it. c. Should the goods not meet with your entire satisfaction, please return them starting date and place of purchase, and we will gladly refund you. d. In the event of fire, proceed to the nearest exit point. 6. Match the Standard English words with their dialectal equivalents:

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Standard a. ear b. pumps c. to play d. autumn e. child f. badger g. cake h. peak i. valley 10.7. HOMEWORK III

Dialectal 1. coomb (Wlesh) 2. backend (Northern dialect) 3. bairn (Northern dialect) 4. brock (Welsh) 5. sandshoes (Scottish) 6. to lake (Lower Northern dialect) 7. tor (Welsh) 8. bannock 9. lug (Scottish)

Consider the following prison slang terms and their meanings. Account for the change in meaning of the slang terms. Does any relationship hold between the original meaning and the slang meaning of these terms?
AD SEG BEEF BULLET C/O CHRONO DORM G.P. GATED OUT INK ISSUE KITE P.C. P.O. PROGRAM PRUNO ROLLED UP SHU SHANK SLEEVED STAFF ADMINISTRATIVE SEGREGATION A CRIME 1 YEAR PERIOD OF TIME CORRECTIONAL OFFICER INSTITUTIONAL WRITE UP HOUSING UNIT GENERAL PRISON POPULATION RELEASED FROM PRISON TATTOO YOUR ORIGINAL CRIME NOTE OR LETTER PROTECTIVE CUSTODY PAROLE OFFICER HOW A PRISONER DOES HIS TIME ILLEGAL HOME MADE PRISON ALCOHOL ARRESTED SECURITY HOUSING UNIT PRISON MADE KNIFE ARMS COVERED WITH TATTOOS CUSTODY PERSONNEL

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TATS YOLKED TIER TIPPED UP TOPPED OUT YARD

TATTOOS MUSCULAR LEVELS OR STORIES IN A HOUSING UNIT GANG AFFILIATED OFF PAROLE OUTDOOR RECREATION AREA

Source: http://www.convictsandcops.com/slang.htm

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Bibliography
Adams, V. (1973). An Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation. Longman, London Baugh, A. & Cable, Th. (1993). The History of the English Language. Routledge, London Crystal, D. (1990). The English Language. Penguin Books. Harmondsworth Iarovici, E. (1973). A History of the English Language. Editura didactic i pedagogic, Bucureti Levitchi, L. (1970), Limba engleza contemporana. Lexicologie. Editura didactic i pedagogic, Bucureti Peculea, P. et al. (1992). An Elementary Course in English. "Transilvania' University Press, Brasov Lipka, L. (1990). An Outline of English Lexicology. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tbingen

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