МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РЕСПУБЛИКИ КАЗАХСТАН
ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ имени ШАКАРИМА г.СЕМЕЙ
Документ СМК 3 уровня
Учебно-методические
материалы дисциплины
«Теоретические основы
иностранного языка»
УМКД
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УЧЕБНО-МЕТОДИЧЕСКИЙ КОМПЛЕКС
ДИСЦИПЛИНЫ
«Теоретические основы иностранного языка»
для специальности 5В011900 - «Иностранный язык: два иностранных языка»
УЧЕБНО-МЕТОДИЧЕСКИЕ МАТЕРИАЛЫ
Семей 2013
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Содержание
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Глоссарий
Практические занятия
Тестовые задания для самоконтроля
Экзаменационные вопросы
Самостоятельная работа студентов
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1 ГЛОССАРИЙ
В данном УММ использованы следующие термины с соответствующими определениями:
В данных УММ использованы следующие термины с соответствующими определениями:
Abbreviation may be also used for a shortened form of a written word or phrase used in a text in
place of the whole for economy of space and effort. Abbreviation is achieved by omission of letters from
one or more parts of the whole, as for instance abbr for abbreviation, bldg for building, govt for
government, wd for word, doz or dz for dozen, ltd for limited, B.A. for Bachelor of Arts, N.Y. for New York
State. Sometimes the part or parts retained show some alteration, thus, oz denotes ounce and Xmas
denotes Christmas. Doubling of initial letters shows plural forms as for instance pplp.p. for pages, ll for
lines or cc for chapters. These are in fact not separate words but only graphic signs or symbols
representing them.
Abstracted form is the use of a part of the word in what seems to be the meaning it contributes.
Acronyms (from Gr acros- ‘end'+onym ‘name’) are abbreviations whose abbreviated written
form lends itself to be read as though it were an ordinary English word and sounds like an English
word, it will be read like one. This way of forming new words is becoming more and more popular in
almost all fields of human activity, and especially in political and technical vocabulary: U.N.O., also
UNO ['ju:nou] — United Nations Organisation, NATO — the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation,
SALT—Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.
Adaptive system is the system of the vocabulary of a language is moreover an a d a p t i v e
s y s t e m constantly adjusting itself to the changing requirements and conditions of human
communications and cultural surroundings. It is continually developing by overcoming contradictions
between its state and the new tasks and demands it has to meet.
Affix is a derivational morpheme forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a
different word class. Affixes are classified into p r e f i x e s and s u f f i x e s : a prefix precedes
the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it. Affixes besides the meaning proper to root-morphemes
possess the part-of-speech meaning and a generalised lexical meaning.
Affixation (prefixation and suffixation) is the formation of words by adding derivational affixes
(prefixes and suffixes) to bases.
Allomorph is defined as a positional variant of one and the same morpheme occurring in a
specific environment and so characterised by complementary distribution.
Allonym is a term offered by N.A. Shetchman denoting contextual pairs semantically
coordinated like slow and careful, quick and impatient.
American English is the variety of English spoken in the USA.
Americanism may be defined as a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as
spoken in the USA. E. g. cookie ‘a biscuit’; frame-up ‘a staged or preconcerted law case’; guess ‘think’;
mail ‘post’; store ‘shop’.
Antonyms may be defined as two or more words of the same language belonging to the same
part of speech and to the same semantic field, identical in style and nearly identical in distribution,
associated and often used together so that their denotative meanings render contradictory or contrary
notions.
antonyms, absolute are root words (right : : wrong).
antonyms derivational are created with the presence of negative affixes (happy : : unhappy).
Aphaeresis, aphesis is a word that has been shortened at the beginning, e.g. car (from motorcar), phone (from telephone), copter (from helicopter), etc.
Apocope is a word that has been shortened at the end, e.g. ad (from advertisement), lab (from
laboratory), mike (from microphone), etc.
Archaic words are words that were once common but are now replaced by synonyms. When
these new synonymous words, whether borrowed or coined within the English language, introduce
nothing conceptually new, the stylistic value of older words tends to be changed; on becoming rare
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they acquire a lofty poetic tinge due to their ancient flavour, and then they are associated with poetic
diction.
Some examples will illustrate this statement: aught n ‘anything whatever’, betwixt prp ‘between’,
billow n ‘wave’, chide v ‘scold’, damsel n ‘a noble girl’, ere prp ‘before’, even n ‘evening’, forbears n
‘ancestors’, hapless a ‘unlucky’, hark v ‘listen’, lone a ‘lonely’, morn n ‘morning’, perchance adv
‘perhaps’, save prp, cj ‘except’, woe n ‘sorrow’, etc.
Assimilation of synonyms consists in parallel development. This law was discovered and
described by G. Stern. H.A. Trebe and G.H. Vallins give as examples the pejorative meanings acquired
by the nouns wench, knave and churl which originally meant ‘girl’, ‘boy’ and ‘labourer’ respectively,
and point out that this loss of old dignity became linguistically possible, because there were so many
synonymous terms at hand.
Australian variant is the variety of English spoken in Australia.
Back-formation (also called reversion) is a term borrowed from diachronic linguistics. It denotes
the derivation of new words by subtracting a real or supposed affix from existing words through
misinterpretation of their structure.
Barbarisms are foreign words of phrases, sometimes perverted, e.g. chic, bonmot, en passant,
delicatessen, matador, reprimand, helicopter, hippopotamus, marauder, Midi, guerre des baguettes,
boulangers, croissants
Bias words are especially characteristic of the newspaper vocabulary reflecting different
ideologies and political trends in describing political life. Some authors think these connotations
should be taken separately. The term b i a s w o r d s is based on the meaning of the noun bias ‘an
inclination for or against someone or something, a prejudice’, e. g. a newspaper with a strong
conservative bias.
Blends, blendings are the result of conscious creation of words by merging irregular fragments
of several words which are aptly called “splinters.” Splinters assume different shapes — they may be
severed from the source word at a morpheme boundary as in transceiver (=transmitter and receiver),
transistor (= transfer and resistor) or at a syllable boundary like cute (from execute) in electrocute,
medicare (from medical care), polutician (from pollute and politician) or boundaries of both kinds
may be disregarded as in brunch (from breakfast and lunch), smog (from smoke and fog), ballute (from
baloon and parachute), etc. Many blends show some degree of overlapping of vowels, consonants and
syllables or echo the word or word fragment it replaces. This device is often used to attain punning
effect, as in foolosopher echoing philosopher; icecapade (= spectacular shows on ice) echoing
escapade; baloonatic (= baloon and lunatic).
Borrowed affixes, the term is not very exact as affixes are never borrowed as such, but only as
parts of l o a n w o r d s . To enter the morphological system of the English language a borrowed
affix has to satisfy certain conditions. The borrowing of the affixes is possible only if the number of
words containing this affix is considerable, if its meaning and function are definite and clear enough,
and also if its structural pattern corresponds to the structural patterns already existing in the language.
Canadianisms are specifically Canadian words. They are not very frequent outside Canada,
except shack ‘a hut’ and fathom out ‘to explain’
Classification is orderly arrangement of the data obtained through observation.
Cliché the term comes from the printing trade. The cliché (the word is French) is a metal block
used for printing pictures and turning them out in great numbers. The term is used to denote such
phrases as have become hackneyed and stale. Being constantly and mechanically repeated they have
lost their original expressiveness and so are better avoided. H.W. Fowler in a burst of eloquence in
denouncing them even exclaims: “How many a time has Galileo longed to recant his recantation, as e
pur si muove was once more applied or misapplied!"
Clipping refers to the creation of new words by shortening a word of two or more syllables
(usually nouns and adjectives) without changing its class membership. Clipped words, though they
often exist together with the longer original source word function as independent lexical units with a
certain phonetic shape and lexical meaning of their own. The lexical meanings of the clipped word and
its source do not as a rule coincide, for instance, doc refers only to ‘one who practices medicine’,
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whereas doctor denotes also ‘the higher degree given by a university and a person who has received it’,
e.g. Doctor of Law, Doctor of Philosophy.
Cognate words are words descended from a common ancestor. The cognates of heart are the
Latin cor, whence cordial ‘hearty’, ‘sincere’, and so cordially and cordiality, also the Greek kardia,
whence English cardiac condition. The cognates outside the English vocabulary are the Russian cepдце,
the German Herz, the Spanish corazon and other words.
Colloquial
words
are
words
used
in
illiterate
popular
speech.
Combining form is a bound form but it can be distinguished from an affix historically by the fact that
it is always borrowed from another language, namely, from Latin or Greek, in which it existed as a free
form, i.e. a separate word, or also as a combining form. They differ from all other borrowings in that
they occur in compounds and derivatives that did not exist in their original language but were formed
only in modern times in English, Russian, French, etc., сf. polyclinic, polymer; stereophonic,
stereoscopic, telemechanics, television. Combining forms are mostly international. Descriptively a
combining form differs from an affix, because it can occur as one constituent of a form whose only
other constituent is an affix, as in graphic, cyclic.
Componential analysis is a very important method of linguistic investigation and has attracted a
great deal of attention. It is usually illustrated by some simple example such as the words man, woman,
boy, girl, all belonging to the semantic field “the human race” and differing in the characteristics of
age and sex.
Compounds are words consisting of at least two stems which occur in the language as free
forms. In a compound word the immediate constituents obtain integrity and structural cohesion that
make them function in a sentence as a separate lexical unit. E. g.: I'd rather read a time-table than
nothing at all.
Compound adjectives regularly correspond to free phrases. Thus, for example, the type
threadbare consists of a noun stem and an adjective stem. The relation underlying this combination
corresponds to the phrase ‘bare to the thread’. Examples are: airtight, bloodthirsty, carefree, heartfree,
media-shy, noteworthy, pennywise, poundfoolish, seasick, etc.
Compound derivatives: see Derivational compounds
Compound nouns are endocentric and ex ocent ri c com pounds. In e ndocen t ri c nouns
t he referent is nam ed by one of the el em ent s and given a fur ther characteristic by the
other. In exocentric nouns only the combination of both elements names the referent. A further
subdivision takes into account the character of stems.
Compound verbs are such verbs as outgrow, overflow, stand up, black-list, stage-manage and
whitewash.
Compounds, asyntactic are compounds that fail to conform to grammatical patterns current in
present-day, e. g. baby-sitting.
Compounds, endocentric. In these compounds the two constituent elements are clearly the
determinant and the determinatum, e.g. sun-beam, blackboard, slow-coach, wall-flower.
Compounds, exocentric these are words which have a zero determinatum stem, e. g. cut-throat,
dare-devil, scarecrow because their determinatum lies outside
Compounds, syntactic are compounds that conform to grammatical patterns current in presentday English, e.g. seashore.
Connotation and connotative meaning The information communicated by virtue of what the
word refers to is often subject to complex associations originating in habitual contexts, verbal or
situational, of which the speaker and the listener are aware.
Contrastive analysis is applied to reveal the features of sameness and difference in the lexical
meaning and the semantic structure of correlated words in different languages.
Contrastive and contrary notions are mutually opposed and denying one another, e. g. alive
means ‘not dead’ and impatient means ‘not patient’. C o n t r a r y notions are also mutually opposed
but they are gradable, e. g. old and young are the most distant elements of a series like: old : : middleaged : : young, while hot and cold form a series with the intermediate cool and warm, which, as F.R.
Palmer points out, form a pair of antonyms themselves. The distinction between the two types is not
absolute, as one can say that one is more dead than alive, and thus make these adjectives gradable.
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Contrastive distribution, i.e. if they occur in the same environment they signal different
meanings. The suffixes -able and -ed, for instance, are different morphemes, not allomorphs, because
adjectives in -able mean ‘capable of being’: measurable ‘capable of being measured’, whereas -ed as a
suffix of adjectives has a resultant force: measured ‘marked by due proportion’, as the measured
beauty of classical Greek art; hence also ‘rhythmical’ and ‘regular in movement’, as in the measured
form of verse, the measured tread.
Conversion, one of the principal ways of forming words in Modern English is highly productive
in replenishing the English word-stock with new words. The term c o n v e r s i o n , which some
linguists find inadequate, refers to the numerous cases of phonetic identity of word-forms, primarily
the so-called initial forms, of two words belonging to different parts of speech. This may be illustrated
by the following cases: work — to work; love — to love; paper — to paper; brief — to brief, etc. As a rule we
deal w i t h simple words, although there are a few exceptions, e.g. wireless — to wireless.
Conversives (or relational opposites) as F.R. Palmer calls them denote one and the same referent
or situation as viewed from different points of view, with a reversal of the order of participants and
their roles. The interchangeability and contextual behaviour are specific. The relation is closely
connected with grammar, namely with grammatical contrast of active and passive. The substitution of
a conversive does not change the meaning of a sentence if it is combined with appropriate regular
morphological and syntactical changes and selection of appropriate prepositions: He gave her flowers.
She received flowers from him. = She was given flowers by him.
Correlation of oppositions is a set of binary oppositions. It is composed of two subsets formed
by the first and the second elements of each couple, i.e. opposition. Each element of the first set is
coupled with exactly one element of the second set and vice versa. Each second element may be
derived from the corresponding first element by a general rule valid for all members of the relation.
Degradation of meaning: see Pejoration
Deletion — a procedure which shows whether one of the words is semantically subordinated to
the other or others, i.e. whether the semantic relations between words are identical. For example, the
word- group red flowers may be deleted and transformed into flowers without making the sentence
nonsensical. Cf.: I love red flowers, I love flowers, whereas I hate red tape cannot be transformed into
I hate tape or I hate red.
Denotative meaning is essentially cognitive: it conceptualises and classifies our experience and
names for the listener some objects spoken about. Fulfilling the significative and the communicative
functions of the word it is present in every word and may be regarded as the central factor in the
functioning of language.
Derivational affixes serve to supply the stem with components of lexical and lexicogrammatical meaning, and thus form4different words.
Derivational compounds are words in which the structural integrity of the two free stems is
ensured by a suffix referring to the combination as a whole, not to one of its elements: kind-hearted,
old-timer, schoolboyishness, teenager. In the coining of the derivational compounds two types of wordformation are at work. The essence of the derivational compounds will be clear if we compare them
with derivatives and compounds proper that possess a similar structure.
Descriptive lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its
development. It studies the functions of words and their specific structure as a characteristic inherent in
the system. The descriptive lexicology of the English language deals with the English word in its
morphological and semantical structures, investigating the interdependence between these two aspects.
These structures are identified and distinguished by contrasting the nature and arrangement of their
elements.
Diachronic (Gr. dia — ‘through’) approach deals with the changes and the development of
vocabulary in the course of time. It is special Historical Lexicology that deals with the evolution of the
vocabulary units of a language as time goes by. An English Historical Lexicology would be concerned,
therefore, with the origin of English vocabulary units, their change and development, the linguistic and
extralinguistic factors modifying their structure, meaning and usage within the history of the English
language.
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Dialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no
normalised literary form.
Dictionaries, bilingual or t r a n s l a t i o n are those that explain words by giving their
equivalents in another language.
Dictionaries, explanatory are dictionaries in which the words and their definitions belong to the
same language.
Dictionaries of slang contain elements from areas of substandard speech such as vulgarisms,
jargonisms, taboo words, curse-words, colloquialisms, etc.
Dictionaries of word-frequency inform the user as to the frequency of occurrence of lexical
units in speech, to be more exact in the “corpus of the reading matter or in the stretch of oral speech on
which the word-counts are based.
Dictionary is the term used to denote a book listing words of a language with their meanings and
often with data regarding pronunciation, usage and/or origin. There are also dictionaries that
concentrate their attention upon only one of these aspects: pronouncing (phonetical) dictionaries (by
Daniel Jones) and etymological dictionaries (by Walter Skeat, by Erik Partridge, “The Oxford English
Dictionary").
Echoism, echo words: see Sound imitation
Elevation: see Amelioration
Ellipsis is a deliberate omission of at least one member of the sentence, e.g. What! all my pretty
chickens and their dam at one fell swoop? (W.Shakespeare) or omission of certain members of the
sentence: it is typical phenomenon in conversation, always imitates the common features of colloquial
language, e.g. So Justice Oberwaltzer – solemnly and didactically from his high seat to the jury.
(Dreiser)
Emotional tone (colouring, connotation, component, force): see Connotations
Emotive charge is one of the objective semantic features proper to words as linguistic units and
forms part of the connotational component of meaning.
Emotive speech is any speech or utterance conveying or expressing emotion. This emotive
quality of discourse is due to syntactical, intonational and lexical peculiarities. By lexical peculiarities
we mean the presence of emotionally coloured words. The emotional colouring of the word may be
permanent or occasional.
Equivalence is the relation between two elements based on the common feature due to which
they belong to the same set.
Etymology or h i s t o r i c a l l e x i c o l o g y . This branch of linguistics discusses the
origin of various words, their change and development, and investigates the linguistic and extralinguistic forces modifying their structure, meaning and usage.
Euphemism (Gr euphemismos < eu ‘good’ and pheme ‘voice’) has been repeatedly classed by
many linguists as t a b о о , i.e. a prohibition meant as a safeguard against supernatural forces. From
the semasiological point of view euphemism is important, because meanings with unpleasant
connotations appear in words formerly neutral as a result of their repeated use instead of words that are
for some reason unmentionable, c f . deceased ‘dead’, deranged ‘mad’.
Form words, also called functional words, empty words or auxiliaries (the latter term is coined
by H. Sweet), are lexical units which are called words, although they do not conform to the definition
of the word, because they are used only in combination with notional words or in reference to them.
This group comprises auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions and relative adverbs. Primarily they
express grammatical relationships between words. This does not, however, imply that they have no
lexical meaning of their own.
Free forms are the forms which may stand alone without changing their meaning.
Functional affixes serve to convey grammatical meaning. They build different forms of one and
the same word.
Functional change: see Conversion
Functional styles - a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim of
communication. Includes: official style, scientific style, publicist style, newspaper style, belles-lettres
style, the co-ordination of the language means and stylistic devices which shapes the distinctive
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features of each style, and not the language means or stylistic devices themselves, a patterned variety
of literary text characterized by the greater or lesser typification of its constituents, supra-phrasal units,
in which the choice and arrangement of interdependent and interwoven language media are calculated
to secure the purport of the communication
Fusions or portmanteau words: see Blends
General slang includes words that are not specific for any social or professional group.
Generalisation is the process reverse to specialisation. g e n e r a l i s a t i o n , i.e. the
collection of data and their orderly arrangement must eventually lead to the formulation of< a
generalisation or hypothesis, rule, or law.
Generic terms are words in which abstraction and generalisation are so great that they can be
lexical representatives of lexico-grammatical meanings and substitute any word of their class. For
example the word matter is a generic term for material nouns, the word group — for collective nouns,
the word person — for personal nouns.
Glossaries are highly specialised dictionaries of limited scope which may appeal to a particular
kind of reader. They register and explain technical terms for various branches of knowledge, art and
trade: linguistic, medical, technical, economical terms, etc. Unilingual books of this type giving
definitions of terms.
Historism it is the name of the thing which is no longer used . Historisms are very
numerous as names for social relations, institutions and objects of material culture of the past. The
names of ancient transport means, such as types of boats or types of carriages, ancient clothes,
weapons, musical instruments, etc. can offer many examples.
Holophrasis is a type of a phrase whose elements are united by their attributive function and
become further united phonemically by stress and graphically by a hyphen, or even solid spelling. Cf.
common sense and common-sense advice; old age and old-age pensioner; the records are out of date
and out-of-date records; the let-sleeping-dogs-lie approach (Priestley). C f . : Let sleeping dogs lie (a
proverb). The speaker (or writer, as the case may be) creates those combinations freely as the need for
them arises: they are originally nonce-compounds. In the course of time they may become firmly
established in the language: the ban-the-bomb voice, round-the-clock duty.
Homographs аrе words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling:
bow [bou] : : bow [bau]; lead [li:d] : : lead [led]; row [rou] : : row [rau]; sewer [’souэ] : : sewer [sjuэ];
tear [tiэ] : : tear [tea]; wind [wind] : : wind [waind] and many more.
Homonyms and homonymy two or more words identical in sound and spelling but different in
meaning, distribution and (in many cases) origin are called h o m o nyms. The term is derived from
Greek homonymous (homos ‘the same' ‘name’) and thus expresses very well the sameness of name
combined with the difference in meaning.
Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning: air : : heir;
arms : : alms; buy : : by; him : : hymn; knight : : night; not: : knot; or: : oar; piece : : peace; rain: :
reign; scent: : cent; steel : : steal; storey : : story; write : : right and many others.
Hybrids are words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different languages.
English contains thousands of hybrid words, the vast majority of which show various combinations of
morphemes coming from Latin, French and Greek and those of native origin. Thus, readable has an
English root and a suffix that is derived from the Latin -abilis and borrowed through French.
Hyperbole (from Gr hyperbolē ‘exceed’) is an exaggerated statement not meant to be
understood literally but expressing an intensely emotional attitude of the speaker to what he is
speaking about. E. g.: A fresh egg has a world of power (Bellow). The emotional tone is due to the
illogical character in which the direct denotative and the contextual emotional meanings are combined.
Ideographic dictionaries designed for English-speaking writers, orators or translators seeking to
express their ideas adequately contain words grouped by the concepts expressed.
Ideographic groups are independent of classification into parts of speech. Words and
expressions are here classed not according to their lexico-grammatical meaning but strictly according
to their signification, i.e. to the system of logical notions. These subgroups may comprise nouns, verbs,
adjectives and adverbs together, provided they refer to the same notion. Thus, V.I. Agamdzhanova
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unites into one group such words as light n, bright a, shine v and other words connected with the
notion of light as something permitting living beings to see the surrounding objects.
Idioms, the term generally implies that the essential feature of the linguistic units under
consideration is idiomaticity or lack cf. motivation. This term habitually used by English and
American linguists is very often treated as synonymous with the term phraseological u n i t
universally accepted in our country.
Implicational is the communicative value of a word contains latent possibilities realised not in
this particular variant but able to create new derived meanings or words.
Indivisibility: “It cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning, one or two other or both
of the several parts remaining as a helpless waif on our hands”. The essence of indivisibility will be
clear from a comparison of the article a and the prefix a- in a lion and alive. A lion is a word-group
because we can separate its elements and insert other words between them: a living lion, a dead lion.
Alive is a word: it is indivisible, i.e. structurally impermeable: nothing can be inserted between its
elements. The morpheme a- is not free, is not a word.
International words are words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result of
simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source. International words play an
especially prominent part in various terminological systems including the vocabulary of science,
industry and art. The etymological sources of this vocabulary reflect the history of world culture. A
few examples of comparatively new words due to the progress of science will suffice to illustrate the
importance of international vocabulary: algorithm, antenna, antibiotic, automation, bionics, cybernetics,
entropy, gene, genetic code, graph, microelectronics, microminiaturisation, quant, quasars, pulsars,
ribosome, etc. All these show sufficient likeness in English, French, Russian and several other
languages.
Irony, the term is taken from rhetoric, it is the expression of one’s meaning by words of opposite
sense, especially a simulated adoption of the opposite point of view for the purpose of ridicule or
disparagement. One of the meanings of the adjective nice is ‘bad’, ‘unsatisfactory’; it is marked off as
ironical and illustrated by the example: You’ve got us into a nice mess! The same may be said about
the adjective pretty: A pretty mess you’ve made of it!
Jargonisms, i.e. words marked by their use within a particular social group and bearing a secret
and cryptic character, e.g. a sucker — ‘a person who is easily deceived’, a squiffer — ‘a concertina’.
Learned words or literary words serve to satisfy communicative demands of official, scientific,
high poetry and poetic messages, authorial speech of creative prose; mainly observed in the written
form; contribute to the message the tone of solemnity, sophistication, seriousness, gravity, learnedness,
e.g. I must decline to pursue this painful discussion, It is not pleasant to my feelings; it is repugnant to
my feelings. (Dickens)
Lexical group is a subset of the vocabulary, all the elements of which possess a particular
feature forming the basis of the opposition. Every element of a subset of the vocabulary is also an
element of the vocabulary as a whole.
Lexical variants are examples of free variation in language, in so far as they are not conditioned
by contextual environment but are optional with the individual speaker. E. g. northward / norward;
whoever / whosoever. The variation can concern morphological or phonological features or it may be
limited to spelling. Compare weazen/weazened ‘shrivelled and dried in appearance’, an adjective used
about a person’s face and looks; directly which may be pronounced [di'rektli] or [dai'rektli] and whisky
with its spelling variant whiskey. Lexical variants are different from synonyms, because they are
characterised by similarity in phonetical or spelling form and identity of both meaning and distribution.
Lexico-grammatical meaning: see Meaning, lexico-grammatical
Lexico-grammatical group, a class of words which have a common lexico-grammatical
meaning, a common paradigm, the same substituting elements and possibly a characteristic set of
suffixes rendering the lexico-grammatical meaning. These groups are subsets of the parts of speech,
several lexico-grammatical groups constitute one part of speech. Thus, English nouns are subdivided
approximately into the following lexico-grammatical groups: personal names, animal names, collective
names (for people), collective names (for animals), abstract nouns, material nouns, object nouns,
proper names for people, toponymic proper nouns.
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Lexicography, that is the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries, is an important branch of
applied linguistics. The fundamental paper in lexicographic theory was written by L.V. Shcherba as far
back as 1940. A complete bibliography of the subject may be found in L.P. Stupin’s works.
Lexicography has a common object of study with lexicology, both describe the vocabulary of a
language. The essential difference between the two lies in the degree of systematisation and completeness
each of them is able to achieve. Lexicology aims at systematisation revealing characteristic features of
words.
Lexicology is a branch of linguistics, the science of language. The term Lexicology is composed
of two Greek morphemes: lexis meaning ‘word, phrase’ (hence lexicos ‘having to do with words’) and
logos which denotes ‘learning, a department of knowledge’. Thus, the literal meaning of the term
L e x i c o l o g y is ‘the science of the word’.
Meaning, lexical may be described as the component of meaning proper to the word as a
linguistic unit, i.e. recurrent in all the forms of this word.
Meaning, lexico-grammatical, a common paradigm, the same substituting elements and
possibly a characteristic set of suffixes rendering the lexico-grammatical meaning.
Metaphor (Gr metaphora < meta change’ and pherein ‘bear’). A metaphor is a transfer of name
based on the association of similarity and thus is actually a hidden comparison. It presents a method of
description which likens one thing to another by referring to it as if it were some other one. A cunning
person for instance is referred to as a fox. A woman may be called a peach, a lemon, a cat, a goose, a
bitch, a lioness, etc.
Metonymy (Gr metonymia < meta ‘change’ and onoma/onytna ‘name’). In a metonymy, this
referring to one thing as if it were some other one is based on association of contiguity (a woman —a
skirt). Sean O'Casey in his one-act play “The Hall of Healing” metonymically names his personages
according to the things they are wearing: Red Muffler, Grey Shawl, etc. Metaphor and metonymy
differ from the two first types of semantic change, i.e. generalisation and specialisation, inasmuch as
they do not result in hyponymy and do not originate as a result of gradual almost imperceptible change
in many contexts, but come of a purposeful momentary transfer of a name from one object to another
belonging to a different sphere of reality.
Morpheme i s an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. But unlike a word
it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not
independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Nor are they divisible into smaller
meaningful units. That is why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language
unit.The term m o r p h e m e is derived from Gr morphe ‘form’ + -eme. The Greek suffix -erne has
been adopted by linguists to denote the smallest significant or d i s t i n c t i v e u n i t . (Cf.
phoneme, sememe.) The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. A form in these cases is a
recurring discrete unit of speech.
Native affixes are those that existed in English in the Old English period or were formed from
Old English words.
Native words are words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles from the continent in
the 5th century by the Germanic tribes — the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. Words of native origin
consist for the most part of very ancient elements—Indo-European, Germanic and West Germanic
cognates. The bulk of the Old English word-stock has been preserved, although some words have
passed out of existence. When speaking about the role of the native element in the English language
linguists usually confine themselves to the small Anglo-Saxon stock of words, which is estimated to
make 25—30% of the English vocabulary.
Neologism is a newly coined word or phrase or a new meaning for an existing word, or a word
borrowed from another language. The intense development of science and industry has called forth the
invention and introduction of an immense number of new words and changed the meanings of old ones,
e. g. aerobic, black hole, computer, isotope, feedback, penicillin, pulsar, quasar, tape-recorder,
supermarket and so on.
Notion (concept) is the term introduced into linguistics from logic and psychology. It denotes the
reflection in the mind of real objects and phenomena in their essential features and relations.
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Observation is an early and basic, phase of all modern scientific investigation, including
linguistic, and is the centre of what is called the inductive method of inquiry.
Obsolete words are words which are no longer used.
Official vocabulary the language of business documents, the language of legal documents, the
language of diplomacy, the language of military documents.
Onomasiology, the study of means and ways of naming the elements of reality.
Onomatopoeic words: see Sound imitation
Onomatopoeic stems are repeated parts of a compound.
Oppositions are semantically and functionally relevant partial differences between partially
similar elements of the vocabulary.
Opposition, theory of studying of this system of interdependent elements with specific
peculiarities of its own, different from other lexical systems; showing the morphological and semantic
patterns according to which the elements of this system are built, pointing out the d i s t i n c t i v e
f e a t u r e s with which the main o p p o s i t i o n s can be systematised, and trying and explaining
how these vocabulary patterns are conditioned by the structure of the language.
Orthographic words are written as a sequence of letters bounded by spaces on a page.
Paradigm has been defined in grammar as the system of grammatical forms characteristic of a
word, e. g. near, nearer, nearest; son, son’s, sons, sons’ .
Pattern implies that we are speaking of the structure of the word-group in which a given word is
used as its head.
Pejoration are changes depending on the social attitude to the object named, connected with
social evaluation and emotional tone.
Phrasal verbs: see Verbal collocations Phraseology: see Set expressions
Phraseological collocations are motivated but they are made up of words possessing specific
lexical valency which accounts for a certain degree of stability in such word-groups. In phraseological
collocations variability of member-words is strictly limited. For instance, bear a grudge may be
changed into bear malice, but not into bear a fancy or liking. We can say take a liking (fancy) but not
take hatred (disgust). These habitual collocations tend to become kind of clichés where the meaning of
member-words is to some extent dominated by the meaning of the whole group. Due to this
phraseological collocations are felt as possessing a certain degree of semantic inseparability.
Prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying meaning, c f . hearten
— dishearten. It is only with verbs and statives that a prefix may serve to distinguish one part of
speech from another, like in earth n — unearth v, sleep n — asleep (stative).
Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes.
Proper nouns or p r o p e r n a m e s . It has been often taken for granted that they do not
convey any generalised notion at all, that they only name human beings, countries, cities, animals,
rivers, stars, etc. And yet, names like Moscow, the Thames, Italy, Byron evoke notions. Moreover, the
notions called forth are particularly rich. The clue, as St. Ullmann convincingly argues, lies in the
specific function of proper names which is identification, and not signifying.
Professionalisms, i.e. words used in narrow groups bound by the same occupation, such as, e.g.,
lab for ‘laboratory’, hypo for ‘hypodermic syringe’, a buster for ‘a bomb’, etc.
Proverb is a short familiar epigrammatic saying expressing popular wisdom, a truth or a moral
lesson in a concise and imaginative way.
Quotations, familiar, they are different from proverbs in their origin. They come from literature
but by and by they become part and parcel of the language, so that many people using them do not
even know that they are quoting, and very few could acccurately name the play or passage on
which they are drawing even when they are aware of using a quotation from W. Shakespeare.
Semantic component: see Seme
Semantic triangle is the scheme. The account of meaning given by Ferdinand de Saussure
implies the definition of a word as a linguistic sign. He calls it ‘signifiant’ (signifier) and what it refers
to — ‘signifie’ (that which is signified). By the latter term he understands not the phenomena of the
real world but the ‘concept’ in the speaker’s and listener’s mind.
Semantics is the study of meaning which is relevant both for lexicology and grammar.
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Semasiology The branch of linguistics concerned with the meaning of words and word
equivalents. The name comes from the Greek sēmasiā ‘signification’ (from sēma ‘sign’ sēmantikos
‘significant’ and logos ‘learning’).
Semi-affixes, elements that stand midway between roots and affixes: godlike, gentlemanlike,
ladylike, unladylike, manlike, childlike, unbusinesslike, suchlike.
Set expression or set- p h r a s e implies that the basic criterion of differentiation is stability of
the lexical components and grammatical structure of word-groups.
Shortened words and shortening 134-145
Slang are words which are often regarded as a violation of the norms of Standard English, e.g.
governor for ‘father’, missus for ‘wife’, a gag for ‘a joke’, dotty for ‘insane’.
Sociolinguistics is the branch of linguistics, dealing with causal relations between the way the
language works and develops, on the one hand, and the facts of social life, on the other.
Sound imitation: see onomatopoeia
Stem is what remains when a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word. The
stem expresses the lexical and the part of speech meaning. A stem may also be defined as the part of
the word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm.
Suffix is a derivational morpheme standing after the root and modifying meaning, e.g. childish,
quickly, worker.
Suffixation is the formation of words with the help of suffixes. Suffixes usually modify the
lexical meaning of the base and transfer words to a, different part of speech. There are suffixes
however, which do not shift words from one part of speech into another; a suffix of this kind usually
transfers a word into a different semantic group, e.g. a concrete noun becomes an abstract one, as is the
case with child — childhood, friend — friendship, etc.
Synchronic (Gr. syn — ‘together, with’ and chronos — ‘time’) approach is concerned with the
vocabulary of a language as it exists at a given time, for instance, at the present time.
Synonyms are words different in sound-form but similar in their denotational meaning (or
meanings) and interchangeable at least in some contexts.
Technical terms and terminology is the greatest part of every language vocabulary. It is also its
Word building or d e r i v a t i o n a l p a t t e r n is used to denote a meaningful
combination of stems and affixes that occur regularly enough to indicate the part of speech, the lexicosemantic category and semantic peculiarities common to most words with this particular arrangement
of morphemes.1 Every type of word-building (affixation, composition, conversion, compositional
derivation, shortening, etc.) as well as every part of speech have a characteristic set of patterns. Some
of these, especially those with the derivational suffix -ish, have already been described within this
paragraph. It is also clear from the previous description that the grouping of patterns is possible
according to the type of stem, according to the affix or starting with some semantic grouping.
Word, definition of The term word denotes the basic unit of a given language resulting from the
association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular
grammatical employment. A word therefore is simultaneously a semantic, grammatical and
phonological unit.
Word-family is a type of traditional lexicological grouping. For example: dog, doggish, doglike,
doggy/doggie, to dog, dogged, doggedly, doggedness, dog-wolf, dog-days, dog-biscuit, dog-cart, etc.; hand,
handy, handicraft, handbag, handball, handful, handmade, handsome, etc.
Word form, or the form of a word, is defined as one of the different aspects a word
may take as a result of inflection. Complete sets of all the various forms of a word when
considered as inflectional patterns, such as declensions or conjugations, are termed paradigms.
Word-formation is the system of derivative types of words and the process of creating new
words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic formulas and
patterns.
Word-formation, types of there are such types as affixation, conversion and word-composition.
Zero derivation: see Conversion
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Лекции по лексикологии
2.1 The subject matter of lexicology
1. The lexicology
2. The theoretical and practical value of English lexicology
3. The connection of English lexicology with other linguistic sciences, such as phonetics,
grammar, stylistics, the history of language
Aims:
teaching – To give the idea of subject matter of lexicology;
developing – To deepen the idea of the theoretical and practical value of English lexicology;
educational (pedagogic) – To increase the connection of English lexicology with other
linguistic sciences, such as phonetics, grammar, stylistics, the history of language
.1. The lexicology is a part of linguistic dealing with the vocabulary of the language and the
property of the words and word combinations. The term “lexicology” is composed of two great
morphemes: “lexis” – which means “phrase” and “logos” – which denotes learning or department
knowledge. The literal meaning of the lexicology is the science of the word. The term “vocabulary”
denotes the system formed by a sound total of all the words and word equivalents that the language
possesses. The term “word” denotes the basic unit of a particular meaning, of a particular group of
sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment. A word is a semantic grammatical and
phonological group of sounds. For example: in the word “girl” the group of sounds [g, i, r, l] is
associated with the meaning “a female child up to the age 16-17”, also with other meanings and
definite grammatical employment, that is “girl” is a personal noun, it has a genitive case and it has
plural form. It also may be used in some syntactical functions, as subject, predicative and object. The
general study of words and vocabulary is known as general lexicology. Special lexicology devotes its
attention to description to all the characteristics peculiarities in the vocabulary of the given language or
concrete language. It goes without saying that every special lexicology is based on the principals of
general lexicology. A great deal has been written to provide a theoretical bases, on which the
vocabularies of different languages can be compared and described. This relatively new branch is
called contractive or comparative lexicology. The evolution of any vocabulary as well as single
element forms the object of the historical lexicology of different words, their change, development,
investigates the linguistic and extra linguistic forces modifying their development and structure,
meaning and usage. Descriptive lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a given language at a given
stage of its development. It studies the function of words and their specific structures. For example: it
may contrast the word “child” with its derivatives “childhood”, “childish”. Descriptive lexicology also
studies the English words and their morphological and semantic structures, determines their
colorations between two these aspects.
The lexicology also studies all kinds of semantic grouping or semantic relations, such as
synonymy, antonym, homonymy. There are two principal approaches in linguistics to the study of
linguistic material, namely: synchronic (from Greek “syn” – “together”, “with” and “chronos” –
“time”), diachronic (“dia” – “through”, “chronos” – “time”). The distinction between synchronic and
diachronic was proposed by Swiss philologist Ferdinand de Saucier (1857 – 1913).
Language is a reality of thought and thought develops with development of society, so
language and vocabulary must being studied in the light of social history. A word through its meaning
rendering some notion is generalized reflection of reality. With extra linguistic forces influencing the
development of words are considered in historical lexicology, etymology.
2. The importance of English lexicology is based not on the size of its vocabulary, however big
it is, but on the fact that at present it is the world’s most widely used language. On of the most
fundamental works on the English language of the present – “a grammar of contemporary English” by
R.Quirk, S. Greenbaum, G/ Leech and J. Svartvik (1978) –gives the following data: it is spoken as a
native language by nearly three hundred million people in Britain, the United States, Ireland, Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and some other countries. The knowledge of English is widely
spread geographically – it is in fact used in all continents. It is also spoken in many countries as a
second language and used in official and business activities there. This is the case in India, Pakistan
and many other former British colonies. English is also one of the working languages of the United
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Nations and the Universal language of International Aviation. More than a half world’s scientific
literature is published in English and 60% of the world’s radio broadcasts are in English. For all these
reasons it widely studied all over the world as a foreign language.
The theoretical value of lexicology becomes obvious if we realize that it forms the study of one
of the three main aspects of language, i.e. its vocabulary, the other two being its grammar and sound
system. The theory of meaning was originally developed within the limits philosophical science. The
relationship between the name and the thing named has in the course of history constituted one of the
key questions in Gnostic theories and therefore in the struggle of materialistic and idealistic trends.
The idealistic point of view assumes that the earlier forms of words disclose their real correct meaning,
and that originally language was created by some superior reason so that later changes of any kind are
looked upon as distortions and corruptions.
The materialistic approach considers the origin, development and current use of words as
depending upon the needs of social communication. The dialectics of its growth is determined by its
interaction with the development of human practice and mind. In the light of V.I. Lenin’s theory of
reflection we know that the meanings of words reflect objective reality. Words theory as names for
thighs, actions, qualities, etc. and by their modification become better adapted to the needs of the
speakers. This proves the fallacy of one of the characteristics trends in modern idealistic linguistics, the
so-called Sappier- Whorf thesis according t which the linguistic system of one’s native language not
only expresses one’s thoughts but also determines them. This view is incorrect, because our mind
reflects the surrounding world not only through language but also directly.
Lexicology came into being to meet the demands of many different branches of applied
linguistics, namely of lexicography, standardization of terminology, information retrieval, literary
criticisms especially of foreign language teaching.
Its importance in training a would – be teacher of languages is of a quite special character and
cannot be overestimated as it helps to stimulate a systematic approach to the facts of vocabulary and an
organized comparison of the foreign and native language. It is particularly useful in building up the
learner’s vocabulary by an effective selection, grouping and analysis of new words. New words are
better remembered if they are given not at random but organized in thematic groups, words families,
synonymy series, etc.
A good knowledge of the system of word – formation furnishes a tool helping the student to
guess and retain in his memory the meaning of new words on the basis of their motivation and by
comparing and contrasting them with the previously learned elements and patterns.
The knowledge, for instance, of the meaning of negative, reversative prefixes and patterns of
derivation may be helpful in understanding new words. For example such words as immovable a,
deforestation n and miscalculate v will be readily understood as ‘hat cannot be moved’, ‘clearing land
from forests’ and ‘to calculate wrongly’.
A working knowledge and understanding of functional styles and stylistic synonyms is
indispensable when literary texts are used as a basis for acquiring oral skills, for analytical reading,
discussing fiction and translation.
3. The treatment of words in lexicology cannot be separated from the study of all languages. The
word is studied in several branches in linguistics, not only in lexicology. It is closely connected with
general linguistics, grammar, the history of the language, phonetics, social linguistics, paralinguistic,
pragmalinguistics. The importance of connection between lexicology and phonetics is explained if we
remember that a word is an association of a given group of sounds with a given meaning, so that “tip”
is one word, “top” another. Phonemes have no meaning of their own but they serve to distinguish
between meanings. The differentiations between words may be based upon stress “import” – noun,
“import” – verb.
Stylistics from different angle studies many problems of lexicology. These are problems of
meaning, synonymy, connotation – the problem of semantic change of words.
A close connection between lexicology and grammar is conditioned by the inseparable ties
between the objects of their investigation. the ties between lexicology and grammar are particularly
strong in the sphere of word – building as lexicology before has been considered as a part of grammar,
later it had become as separate pattern of linguistics.
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2.2 Word as a basic unit of the language
1. Types of lexicological units.
2. The definition of the word.
3. Phonetic, morphemic, semantic motivation of words.
Aims:
teaching – To give the idea of a word as a basic unit of the language;
developing – To deepen the idea of the definition of the word;
educational (pedagogic) – To increase the willing to study a word.
1. The term “unit” means one of the elements into which a whole may be divided or analyzed.
The units of vocabulary or lexicological units are two faced-elements possessing form and meaning.
The basic unit forming the
of vocabulary is the word. Other units are morphemes that are parts of
words into which they may be divided and the set expression – groups of words, into which words may
be combined.
Morpheme – word – set expression.
Words are the central elements of the language system. They are the biggest of morphology and
smallest of syntax. They embody the main structural properties and the functions of the language.
Words can be separated in an utterance by other units and can be used in isolation. Unlike words,
morphemes cannot be divided into smaller meaningful feeling or action. The meaning of morphemes is
more abstract, more general than that of words.
Set expressions are word groups consisting of two or more words, whose combinations is
integrated, so that they are introduced as readymade units with the specialized meaning of the whole.
2. The most important point to remember about definition is that, it should indicate the most
essential characteristic features of the notion, the features of the notion, the features by which this
notion is distinguished from other similar notion. The defining the word we must distinguish it from
other linguistic units, such as morphemes, phonemes and word groups. To make things easier we’ll
begin from preliminary description. Uniting meaning and form the word is composed of two or more
morphemes, each consisting of one or more speech sounds. Morphemes are also meaningful units, but
they cannot be used independently, they are always parts of words. Definition of every notion is a very
hard task and the definition of a word is one of the most difficult in linguistics, because the simplest
word has many different aspects, because any word has its own sound form, it has its morphological
structure, being a certain arrangement of morphemes. When we used a certain actual speech it may
occur in different meanings, because any words has polysemantic nature, it may be used in different
forms and syntactical functions. Being the central element of any language system the word is the
focus for the problems for phonology, lexicology, syntax, morphology. The authors, who investigated
the word, gave the different variants of the definitions of the word.
Th. Hobbs (1588-1671) one of the great philosophies reviewed materialistic approach to a
formal problem of nomination when that “Words are not mere sounds, but names of matter”. Three
centuries later the great Russian physiologist Pavlov I. V. examined the word in the connection with
the studies of the second signal system. One of the latest developments of the science and engineering
is machine. It also deals with words and requires the definition to them within the scope the linguistics.
The word has been defined syntactically, semantically, phonologically and by combining different
approaches. The word has been defined syntactically as “the minimum sentence” by Sweet and later by
L. Bloomfield as “ a minimum free form”. L. Sappier takes into consideration the syntactic and
semantic aspects when he calls the word “one of the smallest completely satisfying bits of isolated
meaning into which the sentence resolves itself”. He also points out one more important characteristics
of a word – its indivisibility. The essence of indivisibility will be clear in forming comparison of an
article “a”, “or” and prefix “a”. In the words “a lion – alive”: “a lion” – is a word group, because it can
be divided into elements and we can insert some elements between them. Ex: “a beautiful lion”.
“alive” is a word, because it is indivisible, because nothing can be inserted, because the morpheme “a”
is not free, it is not a word.
J. Lyos points out that the word should be discussed in terms of two criteria: positional
movelety and uninterruptibility.
Ex: The – boy – s – walk – ed – slow – ly – up – the – hill.
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Slow – ly – the – boy – s – walk – ed – up – the – hill.
We can change word order, but we can’t “s – boy, ed – walk”.
The efforts of many eminent scholars Vinogradov, Smirnitsky, Ahmanove resulted in throwing
light on the problem of the word as a basic unit of the language and they achieved definite results. The
eminent French linguist A. Mallet combines the semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria and
gives the following definition: “The word is defined by the association of the particular meaning with
the particular group of sounds of a particular grammatical employment”. This definition doesn’t permit
us to distinguish words from phonemes, because not only “a child”, but also “a pretty child” are
combination of sound with particular meaning. But we can except this definition with some
modification adding that the word is the smallest significant unit of a given language capable
functioning a known and characterized by the positional movelity within a sentence.
3. The term “motivation” is used to denote the relationship existing between the phonemic and
morphemic composition and structural pattern on the word on the one hand and its meaning on the
other. There are three types of motivation in English: phonemic, morphemic, semantic.
When there is a certain similarity between the sounds that make up a word and those refer to by
the sense, the motivation is phonemic. Ex: “bang, buzz, cuckoo, giggle, hiss, purr”, here the sounds of
words are imitative of sounds in nature. Although they exist a certain arbitrary element on the resulting
phonemes, one can see this type of motivation is determined by the phonological system of each
language as shown by the difference of echo words for the same concept in different languages.
Ex: cuckoo – in English, kuckuck – in German, кукушка – in Russian, кокек – in Kazah. Words
denoting noises produced by animals are most play sound imitative. In English they only phonetically,
though nouns and verbs are exactly the same. In Russian motivation combines phonetic and
morphemic motivation.
Ex: bark, moo, purr.
The morphological motivation may be quite regular. Thus the prefix –ex means “former”.
When added to human nouns ‘expresident”, there is a general use of prefix –“ex” is unstressed and
motivation is fated. Ex: “expect”, “export”.
3 Semantic structure of the English word
1. The definition of lexical meaning of a word.
2. The lexical meaning of words.
3. Types of grammatical meanings of words:
a. denotative meaning (direct)
b. connotative meaning (figurative)
Aims:
teaching – To give the idea of the semantic structure of the English word;
developing – To deepen the idea of the semantic structure of the English word;
educational (pedagogic) – To increase the willing to study the semantic structure of the English
word.
1. The branch of linguistics concerned with the meaning of words and word equivalents is called
s e m a s i o l o g y . The name comes from the Greek sēmasiā ‘signification’ (from sēma ‘sign’
sēmantikos ‘significant’ and logos ‘learning’).
If treated diachronically, semasiology studies the change in meaning which words undergo.
Descriptive synchronic approach demands a study not of individual words but of semantic structures
typical of the language studied, and of its general semantic system.
The main objects of semasiological study are follows: semantic development of words, its
causes and classification, relevant distinctive features and types of lexical meaning,
Polysemy and semantic structure of words, semantic grouping and connections in the
vocabulary system, i.e. synonyms, antonyms, terminological systems, etc.
An exact definition of any basic term is no easy task altogether. In the case of lexical meaning
it becomes especially difficult due to the complexity of the process by which language and human
mind serve to reflect outward reality and to adapt it to human needs.
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The definition of lexical meaning has been attempted more than once in accordance with the
main principles of different linguistic schools. The disciples of F. de Saussure consider meaning to be
the relation between the object or notion named, and the name itself. Descriptive linguistics of the
Bloomfieldian trend defines the meaning as the situation in which the word is uttered. Both ways of
approach afford no possibility of a further investigation of semantic problems in strictly linguistic
terms, and therefore, if taken as a basis for general linguistic theory, give no insight into the
mechanism of meaning. Some of L. Bloomfield’s successors went so far as to exclude semasiology
from linguistics on the ground that meaning could not be studied “objectively", and was not part of
language but “an aspect of the use to which language is put”. This point of view was never generally
accepted. The more general opinion is well revealed in R. Jakobson’s pun. He said: “Linguistics
without meaning is meaningless". This crisis of semasiology has been over for some twenty years now,
and the problem of meaning has provided material for a great number of books, articles and
dissertations.
The definitions of meaning given by various authors, though different in detail, agree in the
basic principle: they all point out that l e x i c a l m e a n i n g is t h e r e a l i s a t i o n of
c o n c e p t or e m o t i o n by m e a n s of a d e f i n i t e l a n g u a g e s y s t e m . The
definition stresses that semantics studies only such meanings that can be expressed, that is concepts
bound by signs.
It has also been repeatedly stated that the plane of content in speech reflects the whole of human
consciousness, which comprises not only mental activity but emotions, volition, etc. as well. The
mentalistic approach to meaning treating it only as a concept expressed by a word oversimplifies the
problem because it takes into consideration only the referential function of words. Actually, however,
all the pragmatic functions of language — communicative, emotive, evaluative, phatic, esthetic, etc.,
are also relevant and have to be accounted for in semasiology, because they show the attitude of the
speaker to the thing spoken of, to his interlocutor and to the situation in which the act of
communication takes place.
The complexity of the word meaning is manifold. The four most important types of semantic
complexity may be roughly described as follows:
Firstly, every word combines lexical and grammatical meanings. E.g.: Father is a
personal noun.
Secondly, many words not only refer to some object but have an aura of associations expressing
the attitude of the speaker. They have not only denotative but connotative meaning as well.
E. g.: Daddy is a colloquial term of endearment.
Thirdly, the denotational meaning is segmented into semantic components or semes.
E.g.: Father is a male parent.
Fourthly, a word may be polysemantic, that is it may have several meanings, all interconnected
and forming its semantic structure.
E. g.: Father may mean: ‘male parent’, ‘an ancestor’, ‘a founder or leader’, ‘a priest’.
It will be useful to remind the reader that the g r a m m a t i c a l m e a n i n g is defined as
an expression in speech of relationships between words based on contrastive features of arrangements
in which they occur. The grammatical meaning is more abstract and more generalised than the lexical
meaning, it unites words into big groups such as parts of speech or lexica-grammatical classes. It is
recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words. E. g. parents, books, intentions,
whose common element is the grammatical meaning of plurality. The interrelation of lexics and
grammar has already been touched upon in § 1.3. This being a book on lexicology and not on
grammar, it is permissible not to go into more details though some words on lexica-grammatical
meanings are necessary.
T h e l e x i c a - g r a m m a t i c a l m e a n i n g is the common denominator of all the meanings
of words belonging to a lexica - grammatical class of words, it is the feature according to which they
are grouped together. Words in which abstraction and generalisation are so great that they can be
lexical representatives of lexica-grammatical meanings and substitute any word of their class are called
g e n e r i c t e r m s . For example the word matter is a generic term for material nouns, the word
group — for collective nouns, the word person — for personal nouns.
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Words belonging to one lexica - grammatical class are characterised by a common system of
forms in which the grammatical categories inherent in them are expressed. They are also substituted by
the same prop-words and possess some characteristic formulas of semantic and morphological
structure and a characteristic set of derivational affixes. See tables on word-formation in: R. Quirk et
al., “A Grammar of Contemporary English”. The common features of semantic structure may be
observed in their dictionary definitions:
management — a group of persons in charge of some enterprise,
chorus — a group of singers,
team — a group of persons acting together in work or in a game.
The degree and character of abstraction and generalisation in lexico-grammatical meanings and
the generic terms that represent them are intermediate between those characteristic of grammatical
categories and those observed on the lexical level — hence the term l e x i c a - g r a m m a t i c a l .
The conceptual content of a word is expressed in its d e n o t a t i v e m e a n i n g . To denote
is to serve as a linguistic expression for a concept or as a name for an individual object. The denotative
meaning may be signifiсative, if the referent is a concept, or d e m о f i s t r a t i v e , if it is an
individual object. The term r e f e r e n t or den o t a t u m (pl. denotata) is used in both cases. Any
text will furnish examples of both types of denotative meaning. The demonstrative meaning is
especially characteristic of colloquial speech where words so often serve to identify particular elements
of reality. E. g.: “Do you remember what the young lady did with the telegram?”. Here the connection
with reality is direct.
Especially interesting examples of significative meaning may be found in aphorisms, proverbs
and other sayings rendering general ideas. E. g.: A good laugh is sunshine in the house (Thackeray) or
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work (Frost) contain
words in their significative meanings.
The information communicated by virtue of what the word refers to is often subject to complex
associations originating in habitual contexts, verbal or situational, of which the speaker and the listener
are aware, they give the word its c o n n o t a t i v e m e a n i n g . The interaction of denotative
meaning and its pragmatic counterpart — connotation — is no less complicated than in the case of
lexical and grammatical meaning. The connotative component is optional, and even when it is present
its proportion with respect to the logical counterpart may vary within wide limits.
We shall call connotation what the word conveys about the speaker’s attitude to the social
circumstances and the appropriate functional style (slay vs kill), about his approval or disapproval of
the object spoken of (clique vs group), about the speaker’s emotions (mummy vs mother), or the degree
of intensity (adore vs love).
The emotional overtone as part of the word’s communicative value deserves special attention.
Different approaches have been developing in contemporary linguistics.
The emotional and evaluative meaning of the word may be part of the denotational meaning.
For example hireling ‘a person who offers his services for payment and does not care about the type of
work.
Has a strong derogatory and even scornful connotation, especially when the name is applied to
hired soldiers. There is a considerable degree of fuzziness about the boundaries between the denotative
and connotative meanings.
The third type of semantic segmentation was the segmentation of the denotative meaning into
s e m a n t i c c o m p o n e n t s . The c o m p o n e n t i a l a n a l y s i s is a very important method
of linguistic investigation and has attracted a great deal of attention. It is usually illustrated by some
simple example such as the words man, woman, boy, girl, all belonging to the semantic field “the
human race” and differing in the characteristics of age and sex. Using the symbols HUMAN, ADULT,
MALE and marking them positively and negatively so that -ADULT means ‘young’ and -MALE
means ‘female’, we may write the following componential definitions:
man:
+ HUMAN
+ ADULT
+ MALE
woman:
+ HUMAN
+ ADULT
— MALE
boy:
+ HUMAN
— ADULT
+ MALE
girl:
+ HUMAN
— ADULT
— MALE
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One further point should be made: HUMAN, ADULT, MALE in this analysis are not words of
English or any other language: they are elements of meaning, or s e m e s which can be combined in
various ways with other similar elements in the meaning of different words. Nevertheless a linguist, as
it has already been mentioned, cannot study any meaning devoid of form, therefore these semes are
mostly determined with the help of dictionary definitions.
To conclude this rough model of semantic complexities we come to the fourth point, that of
polysemy.
P o l y s e m y is inherent in the very nature of words and concepts as every object and every
notion has many features and a concept reflected in a word always contains a generalisation of several
traits of the object. Some of these traits or components of meaning are common with other objects.
Hence the possibility of using the same name in secondary nomination for objects possessing common
features which are sometimes only implied in the original meaning. A word when acquiring new
meaning or meanings may also retain, and most often retains the previous meaning.
E. g. birth — 1) the act or time of being born, 2) an origin or beginning, 3) descent, family.
The different variants of a polysemantic word form a semantic whole due to the proximity of
the referents they name and the notions they express. The formation of new meanings is often based on
the potential or implicational meaning. The transitive verb drive, for instance, means ‘to force to move
before one’ and hence, more generally, ‘to cause an animal, a person or a thing work or move in some
direction’, and more specifically ‘to direct a course of a vehicle or the animal which draws it, or a
railway train, etc.’, hence ‘to convey in a vehicle’ and the intransitive verb: ‘to go in a vehicle’. There
are also many other variants but we shall mention only one more, namely — the figurative — ‘to
mean’, as in: “What can he be driving at?” (Foote)
All these different meanings can be explained one with the help of one of the others.
The typical patterns according to which different meanings are united in one polysemantic
word often depend upon grammatical meanings and grammatical categories characteristic of the part of
speech to which they belong.
Depending upon the part of speech to which the word belongs all its possible meanings become
connected with a definite group of grammatical meanings, and the latter influence the s e m a n t i c
s t r u c t u r e of the word so much that every part of speech possesses semantic peculiarities of its
own.
2. The term n o t i o n (concept) is introduced into linguistics from logic and psychology. It
denotes the reflection in the mind of real objects and phenomena in their essential features and
relations. Each notion is characterised by its s c o p e and c o n t e n t . The scope of the notion is
determined by all the objects it refers to. The content of the notion is made up of all the features that
distinguish it from other notions. The distinction between the scope and the content of a notion lies at
the basis of such terms as the i d e n t i f y i n g ( d e m o n s t r a t i v e ) and s i g n i f i c a t i v e
f u n c t i o n s of the word that have been discussed above. The identifying function may be
interpreted as denoting the objects covered by the scope of the notion expressed in the word, and the
significative function is the function of expressing the content of the respective notion. The function of
rendering an emotion or an attitude is termed t h e e x p r e s s i v e f u n c t i o n .
The relationship between the linguistic lexical meaning and the logical notion deserves special
attention not only because they are apt to be confused but also because in comparing and contrasting
them it is possible to achieve a better insight into the essence of both. In what follows this opposition
will be treated in some detail.
I. The first essential point is that the relationship between notion and meaning varies. A word
may have a notion for its referent. In the example A good laugh is sunshine in the house (Thackeray).
The scope of the significative meaning and that of the notion coincide; on different levels they
cover the same area. But a word may also have, and quite often has a particular individual object for its
referent as in “Do you remember what the young lady did with the telegram?” (Christie)
The problem of p r o p e r n a m e s is particularly complicated. It has been often taken for
granted that they do not convey any generalised notion at all, that they only name human beings,
countries, cities, animals, rivers, stars, etc. And yet, names like Moscow, the Thames, Italy, Byron
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evoke notions. Moreover, the notions called forth are particularly rich. The clue, as St. Ullmann
convincingly argues, lies in the specific function of proper names which is identification, and not
signifying.1
Pronouns possess the demonstrative function almost to a complete exclusion of the significative
function, i.e. they only point out, they do not impart any information about the object pointed out
except for its relation to the speaker.
To sum up this first point: the logical notion is the referent of lexical meaning quite often but
not always, because there may be other referents such as the real objects.
II.
Secondly, notions are always emotionally neutral as they are a category of thought.
Language, however, expresses all possible aspects of human consciousness. Therefore the meaning of
many words not only conveys some reflection of objective reality but also connotations revealing the
speaker’s state of mind and his attitude to what he is speaking about. The following passage yields a
good example: “Vile bug of a coward,” said Lypiatt, “why don’t you defend yourself like a man?”
(Huxley) Due to the unpleasant connotations the name bug acquires a negative emotional tone. The
word man, on the contrary, has a positive connotation implying courage and firmness. When used in
emotionally coloured situations emphatic syntactic structures and contexts, as in our example from
Huxley, words accumulate emotional associations that finally blur their exact denotative meaning.
The content of the emotional component of meaning varies considerably. Emotionally charged
words can cover the whole scale of both positive and negative emotions: admiration, respect,
tenderness and other positive feelings, on the one hand, and scorn, irony, loathing, etc., on the other.
Two or more words having the same denotative meaning may differ in emotional tone. In such
oppositions as brat : : baby and kid : : child the denotative force of the right- and left-hand terms is the
same but the left-hand terms are emotional whereas those on the right are neutral.
III. Thirdly, the absence not only of identity, but even of regular one-to-one correspondence
between meaning and notion is clearly seen in words belonging to some specific stylistic level. This
purely linguistic factor is relevant not for the content of the message but for the personality of the
speaker, his background and his relations with his audience. The wording of the following example can
serve to illustrate the point: “Well,” said Kanga, “Fancy that! Fancy my making a mistake like that.”
(Milne) Fancy when used in exclamatory sentences not only expresses surprise but has a definite
colloquial character and shows that the speaker and those who hear him are on familiar terms.
Summing up the second and the third points, one may say that owing to its linguistic nature the
lexical meaning of many words cannot be divorced from the typical sphere where these words are used
and the typical contexts, and so bears traces of both, whereas a notion belongs to abstract logic and so
has no ties with any stylistic sphere and does not contain any emotive components.
IV. The linguistic nature of lexical meaning has very important consequences. Expressing a
notion, a word does so in a way determined by the peculiarities of the lexical and grammatical systems
of each particular language and by the various structural ties of the word in speech. Every word may be
said to have paradigmatic ties relating it to other words and forms, and giving it a differential quality.
These are its relations to other elements of the same thematic group, to synonymous and antonymous
words, phraseological restrictions on its use and the type of words which may be derived from it. On
the other hand, each word has syntagmatic ties characterising the ordered linear arrangement of speech
elements.
The lexical meaning of every word depends upon the part of speech to which the word belongs.
Every word may be used in a limited set of syntactical functions, and with a definite valence. It has a
definite set of grammatical meanings, and a definite set of forms.
Every lexica-grammatical group of words or class is characterised by its own lexicagrammatical meaning, forming, as it were, the common denominator of all the meanings of the words
which belong to this group. The lexica-grammatical meaning may be also regarded as the feature
according to which these words are grouped together. Many recent investigations are devoted to
establishing word classes on the basis of similarity of distribution.
In the lexical meaning of every separate word the lexica-grammatical meaning common to all
the words of the class to which this word belongs is enriched by additional features and becomes
particularised.
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The meaning of a specific property in such words as bright, clear, good, quick, steady, thin is a
particular realisation of the lexica-grammatical meaning of qualitative adjectives. These adjectives
always denote the properties of things capable of being compared and so have degrees of comparison.
They refer to qualities that vary along a continuous scale and are called gradable. The scope of the
notion rendered by the lexica-grammatical meaning of the class is much larger than the scope of the
notion rendered by the lexical meaning of each individual word. The reverse also holds good: the
content of the notion expressed by the lexica-grammatical meaning of the class is smaller, poorer in
features than the content of the notion expressed by the lexical meaning of a word.
In summing up this fourth point, we note that the complexity of the notion is determined by the
relationships of the extra-linguistic reality reflected in human consciousness. The structure of every
separate meaning depends on the linguistic syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships because
meaning is an inherent component of language. The complexity of each word meaning is due to the
fact that it combines lexical meaning with lexica-grammatical meaning and sometimes with emotional
colouring, stylistic peculiarities and connotations born from previous usage.
V.
The foregoing deals with separate meanings as realised in speech. If we turn to the
meaning of words as they exist in language we shall observe that frequently used words are
polysemantic.
Morphological derivation also plays a very important part in determining possible meaning
combinations. Thus, for instance, nouns derived from verbs very often name not only the action itself
but its result as well, e. g. show n ‘the act of showing’, ‘an exhibition’.
All these examples are sufficient to prove the fifth point, namely, that the grouping of meanings
is different from the grouping of notions.
VI.
Last but not least, the difference between notion and meaning is based upon the fact that
notions are mostly international, especially for nations with the same level of cultural development,
whereas meaning may be nationally determined and limited. The grouping of meanings in the semantic
structure of a word is determined by the whole system of every language, by its grammar and
vocabulary, by the peculiar history both of the language in question and the people who speak it. These
factors influence not only the mere presence and absence of this or that meaning in the semantic
system of words that may be considered equivalent in different languages, but also their respective
place and importance. Equivalent words may be defined as words of two different languages, the main
lexical variants of which express or name the same notion, emotion or object. Their respective
semantic structures (in the case of polysemantic words) show a marked parallelism, but this similarity
is not absolute. Its degree may vary.
There is quite a number of meanings that are realised only under certain specific structural
conditions, such as: go fishing (skating, boating, skiing, mountain-climbing); go running (flying,
screaming); go limp (pale, bad, blind); be going to ... that have no parallel in Russian (see p. 16).
It is common knowledge that there are many cases when one English word combines the
meanings of two or more Russian words expressing similar notions and vice versa. For example:
A.
boat — судно, шлюпка, пароход, лодка; coat — пальто, пиджак, китель; desk —
парта, письменный стол; floor — пол, этаж; gun — пушка, ружье; cry — кричать, плакать.
B.
нога — foot and leg; рука — hand and arm; часы — watch and clock; пальцы —
fingers and toes; сон — sleep and dream; высокий — high and tall. The last example is particularly
interesting because it reveals that the word high cannot cover all the cases of great vertical dimension,
i.e. the scope of the notion and that of the meaning do not coincide.
Summing up all the points of difference between the thing meant, the notion and the meaning,
we can say that the lexical meaning of the word may be defined as the realisation or naming of a
notion, emotion or object by means of a definite language system subject to the influence of grammar
and vocabulary peculiarities of that language. Words that express notions may also have some
emotional or stylistic colouring or express connotations suggestive of the contexts in which they often
appear. All the specific features that distinguish the lexical meaning from the notion are due to its
linguistic nature. Expressing the notion is one of the word’s functions but not the only one, as there are
words that do not name any notion; their meaning is constituted by other functions. The
development of the lexical meaning is influenced by the whole complicated network of ties and
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relations between the words in a given vocabulary and between the vocabulary and other aspects of the
language.
3. In the previous paragraphs we emphasised the complexity of word meaning and mentioned its
possible segmentation into denotative and connotative meaning. In this paragraph we shall analyse
these in greater detail. In most cases t h e d e n o t a t i v e m e a n i n g is essentially cognitive: it
conceptualises and classifies our experience and names for the listener some objects spoken about.
Fulfilling the significative and the communicative functions of the word it is present in every word and
may be regarded as the central factor in the functioning of language.
The expressive function of the language with its orientation towards the speaker’s feelings, and
the pragmatic function dealing with the effect of words upon listeners are rendered in connotations.
Unlike the denotative meaning, connotations are optional.
The description of the denotative meaning or meanings is the duty of lexicographers in
anilingual explanatory dictionaries. The task is a difficult one because there is no clear-cut demarcation
line between the semantic features, strictly necessary for each definition, and those that are optional. A
glance at the definitions given in several dictionaries will suffice to show how much they differ in
solving the problem. A cat, for example, is defined by Hornby as “a small fur-covered animal often
kept as a pet in the house”. Longman in his dictionary goes into greater detail: a cat is “a small animal
with soft fur and sharp teeth and claws, often kept as a pet, or in buildings to catch mice”. The
Chambers Dictionary gives a scientific definition — “a cat is a carnivore of the genus Felix, esp. the
domesticated kind”.
The examples given above bring us to one more difficult problem. Namely, whether in
analysing a meaning we should be guided by all that science knows about the referent, or whether a
linguist has to formulate the simplest possible concept as used by every speaker. If so, what are the
features necessary and sufficient to characterise the referent? The question was raised by many
prominent scientists, the great Russian philologist A. A. Potebnya among them. A. A. Potebnya
distinguished the “proximate” word meaning with the bare minimum of characteristic features as used
by every speaker in everyday life, and the “distant” word meaning corresponding to what specialists
know about the referent. The latter type we could have called ‘special’ or ‘terminological’ meaning. A.
A. Potebnya maintained that linguistics is concerned only with the first type. The problem is by no
means simple, especially for lexicographers, as is readily seen from the above lexicographic treatment
of the word cat.
The demarcation line between the two types is becoming more fluid; with the development of
culture the gap between the elementary notions of a layman and the more and more exact concepts of a
specialist narrows in some spheres and widens in others. The concepts themselves are constantly
changing. The speakers’ ideolects vary due to different life experience, education and other extralinguistic factors.
The bias of studies depends upon their ultimate goals.
If lexicology is needed as the basis for language teaching in engineering colleges, we have to
concentrate on terminological semantics, if on the other hand it is the theory necessary for teaching
English at school, the meaning with the minimum semantic components is of primary importance. So
we shall have to concentrate on this in spite of all its fuzziness.
Now, if the denotative meaning exists by virtue of what the word refers to, connotation is the
pragmatic communicative value the word receives by virtue of where, when, how, by whom, for what
purpose and in what contexts it is or may be used. Four main types of connotations are described
below. They are stylistic, emotional, evaluative and expressive or intensifying.
The orientation toward the subject-matter, characteristic, as we have seen, of the denotative
meaning, is substituted here by pragmatic orientation toward speaker and listener; it is not so much
what is spoken about as the attitude to it that matters.
When associations at work concern the situation in which the word is uttered, the social
circumstances (formal, familiar, etc.), the social relationships between the interlocutors (polite, rough),
the type and purpose of communication (learned, poetic, official, etc.), the connotation is stylistic.
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An effective method of revealing connotations is the analysis of synonymic groups, where the
identity of denotation meanings makes it possible to separate the connotational overtones. A classical
example for showing stylistic connotations is the noun horse and its synonyms. The word horse is
stylistically neutral, its synonym steed is poetic, nag is a word of slang and gee-gee is baby language.
An emotional or affective connotation is acquired by the word as a result of its frequent use in
contexts corresponding to emotional situations or because the referent conceptualised and named in the
denotative meaning is associated with emotions. For example, the verb beseech means 'to ask eagerly
and also anxiously'. E. g.: He besought a favour of the judge (Longman).
Making use of the same procedure of comparing elements of a synonymic group, one compares
the words magic, witchcraft and sorcery, all originally denoting art and power of controlling events by
occult supernatural means, we see that all three words are now used mostly figuratively, and also that
magic as compared to its synonyms will have glamorous attractive connotations, while the other two,
on the contrary, have rather sinister associations.
It is not claimed that these four types of connotations: stylistic, emotional, evaluative and
intensifying form an ideal and complete classification. Many other variants have been proposed, but
the one suggested here is convenient for practical analysis and well supported by facts. It certainly is
not ideal. There is some difficulty for instance in separating the binary good/bad evaluation from
connotations of the so-called b i a s words involving i d e o l o g i c a l viewpoints. Bias words are
especially characteristic of the newspaper vocabulary reflecting different ideologies and political
trends in describing political life. Some authors think these connotations should be taken separately.
The term b i a s w o r d s is based on the meaning of the noun bias ‘an inclination for or
against someone or something, a prejudice’, e. g. a newspaper with a strong conservative bias.
The following rather lengthy example is justified, because it gives a more or less complete
picture of the phenomenon. E. Waugh in his novel “Scoop” satirises the unfairness of the Press. A
special correspondent is sent by a London newspaper to report on a war in a fictitious African country
Ishmalia. He asks his editor for briefing:
“Can you tell me who is fighting whom in Ishmalia?”
“I think it is the Patriots and the Traitors.”
“Yes, but which is which?”
“Oh, I don’t know that. That’s Policy, you see [...] You should have asked Lord Copper.”
“I gather it’s between the Reds and the Blacks.”
“Yes, but i t ’ s not quite so easy as that. You see they are all Negroes. And the Fascists won’t be
called black because of their racial pride. So they are called White after the White Russians. And the
Bolshevists want to be called black because of their racial pride.” (Waugh)
The example shows that connotations are not stable and vary considerably according to the
ideology, culture and experience of the individual. Even apart of this satirical presentation we learn
from Barn-hart’s dictionary that the word black meaning ‘a negro’, which used to be impolite and
derogatory, is now upgraded by civil rights movement through the use of such slogans as “Black is
Beautiful” or “Black Power”.
A linguistic proof of an existing unpleasant connotation is the appearance of euphemisms. Thus
backward students are now called under-achievers. Countries with a low standard of living were first
called undeveloped, but euphemisms quickly lose their polite character and the unpleasant
connotations are revived, and then they are replaced by new euphemisms such as less developed and
then as developing countries.
A fourth type of connotation that should be mentioned is the i n t e n s i f y i n g
c o n n o t a t i o n (also expressive, emphatic). Thus magnificent, gorgeous, splendid, superb are
all used colloquially as terms of exaggeration.
Sometimes emotion or evaluation is expressed in the style of the utterance. The speaker may
adopt an impolite tone conveying displeasure (e. g. Shut up!). A casual tone may express friendliness о
r affection: Sit down, kid [...] There, there — just you sit tight (Chris tie).
Polysemy is a phenomenon of language not of speech. The sum total of many contexts in which
the word is observed to occur permits the lexicographers to record cases of identical meaning and
cases that differ in meaning. They are registered by lexicographers and found in dictionaries.
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A distinction has to be drawn between the lexical meaning of a word in speech, we shall call it
c o n t e x t u a l meaning, and the semantic structure of a word in language. Thus the semantic
structure of the verb act comprises several variants: ‘do something’, ‘behave’, ‘take a part in a play’,
‘pretend’. If one examines this word in the following aphorism: Some men have acted courage who had it
not; but no man can act wit (Halifax), one sees it in a definite context that particularises it and makes
possible only one meaning ‘pretend’. This contextual meaning has a connotation of irony. The unusual
grammatical meaning of transitivity (act is as a rule intransitive) and the lexical meaning of objects to
this verb make a slight difference in the lexical meaning.
Contextual meanings include nonce usage. Nonce words are words invented and used for a
particular occasion.
The study of means and ways of naming the elements of reality is called
o n o m a s i o l o g y . As worked out in some recent publications it received the name of Theory of
Nomination. So if semasiology studies what it is the name points out, onomasiology and the theory of
nomination have to show how the objects receive their names and what features are chosen to
represent them.
Originally the nucleus of the theory concerned names for objects, and first of all concrete
nouns. Later on a discussion began, whether actions, properties, emotions and so on should be
included as well. The question was answered affirmatively as there is no substantial difference in the
reflection in our mind of things and their properties or different events. Everything that can be named
or expressed verbally is considered in the theory of nomination. Vocabulary constitutes the central
problem but syntax, morphology and phonology also have their share. The theory of nomination takes
into account that the same referent may receive various names according to the information required at
the moment by the process of communication, e. g. Walter Scott and the author of Waverley (to use an
example known to many generations of linguists). According to the theory of nomination every name
has its primary function for which it was created (primary or direct nomination), and an indirect or
secondary function corresponding to all types of figurative, extended or special meanings (see p. 53).
The aspect of theory of nomination that has no counterpart in semasiology is the study of repeated
nomination in the same text, as, for instance, when Ophelia is called by various characters of the tragedy:
fair Ophelia, sweet maid, dear maid, nymph, kind sister, rose of May, poor Ophelia, lady, sweet lady,
pretty lady, and so on.
To sum up this discussion of the semantic structure of a word, we return to its definition as a
structured set of interrelated lexical variants with different denotational and sometimes also
connotational meanings. These variants belong to the same set because they are expressed by the same
combination of morphemes, although in different contextual conditions. The elements are interrelated due
to the existence of some common semantic component. In other words, the word’s semantic structure is
an organised whole comprised by recurrent meanings and shades of meaning that a particular sound
complex can assume in different contexts, together with emotional, stylistic and other connotations, if
any.
Every meaning is thus characterised according to the function, significative or pragmatic effect
that it has to fulfil as denotative and connotative meaning referring the word to the extra-linguistic
reality and to the speaker, and also with respect to other meanings with which it is contrasted. The
hierarchy of lexica-grammatical variants and shades of meaning within the semantic structure of a word
is studied with the help of formulas establishing semantic distance between them developed by N. A.
Shehtman and other authors.
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
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4 Types of lexical grouping of the English words
1. The English Vocabulary as an Adaptive System. Neologisms
2. Morphological and Lexico-Grammatical Grouping
3. Terminological Systems
4. Different Types of Non-Semantic Grouping
Aims:
teaching – To give the idea of lexical grouping of the English words;
developing – To deepen the idea of lexical grouping of the English words;
educational (pedagogic) – To increase meaning from a lexicological point of view.
1. To adapt means to make or undergo modifications in function and structure so as to be fit for a
new use, a new environment or a new situation.1 It has been stated in § 1.5 that being an adaptive
system the vocabulary is constantly adjusting itself to the changing requirements and conditions of
human communications and cultural and other needs. We shall now give a more detailed presentation
of the subject. This process of self-regulation of the lexical system is a result of overcoming
contradictions between the state of the system and the demands it has to meet. The speaker chooses
from the existing stock of words such words that in his opinion can adequately express his thought and
feeling. Failing to find the expression he needs, he coins a new one. It is important to stress that the
development is not confined to coining new words on the existing patterns but in adapting the very
structure of the system to its changing functions.
According to F. de Saussure synchronic linguistics deals with systems and diachronic linguistics
— with single elements, and the two methods must be kept strictly apart. A language system then
should be studied as something fixed and unchanging, whereas we observe the opposite: it is
constantly changed and readjusted as the need arises. The concept of adaptive systems overcomes this
contradiction and permits us to study language as a constantly developing but systematic whole. The
adaptive system approach gives a more adequate account of the systematic phenomena of a vocabulary
by explaining more facts about the functioning of words and providing more relevant generalisations,
because we can take into account the influence of extra-linguistic reality. The study of the vocabulary
as an adaptive system reveals the pragmatic essence of the communication process, i.e. the way
language is used to influence the addressee.
There is a considerable difference of opinion as to the type of system involved, although the
majority of linguists nowadays agree that the vocabulary should be studied as a system.2 Our present
state of knowledge is, however, insufficient to present the whole of the vocabulary as one articulated
system, so we deal with it as if it were a set of interrelated systems.
For different purposes of study different types of grouping may prove effective, there is no
optimum short cut equally suitable for all purposes. In the present chapter we shall work out a review
of most of the types of grouping so far suggested and an estimate of their possibilities. If we succeed in
establishing their interrelation, it will help us in obtaining an idea of the lexical system as a whole. We
must be on our guard, however, against taking the list of possible oppositions suggested by this chapter
for a classification.
We shall constantly slide the basis of our definitions from one level to another, whereas in an
adequate classification the definition of various classes must be based on the same kind of criteria.
That means we shall obtain data for various approaches to the system, not the system itself as yet.
The adaptive system approach to vocabulary is still in its infancy, but it is already possible to
hazard an interim estimate of its significance. Language as well as other adaptive systems, better
studied in other branches of science, is capable of obtaining information from the extra-linguistic
world and with the help of feedback makes use of it for self-optimisation. If the variation proves useful,
it remains in the vocabulary. The process may be observed by its results, that is by studying new words
or n e o l o g i s m s . New notions constantly come into being, requiring new words to name them.
Sometimes a new name is introduced for a thing or notion that continues to exist, and the older name
ceases to be used. The number of words in a language is therefore not constant, the increase, as a rule,
more than makes up for the leak-out.
New words and expressions or n e о l о g i s m s are created for new things irrespective of their
scale of importance. They may be all-important and concern some social relationships, such as a new
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form of state, e. g. People’s Republic, or something threatening the very existence of humanity, like
nuclear war. Or again the thing may be quite insignificant and short-lived, like fashions in dancing,
clothing, hairdo or footwear (e. g. roll-neck). In every case either the old words are appropriately
changed in meaning or new words are borrowed, or more often coined out of the existing language
material either according to the patterns and ways already productive in the language at a given stage
of its development or creating new ones.
Thus, a n e o l o g i s m is a newly coined word or phrase or a new meaning for an existing
word, or a word borrowed from another language.
The intense development of science and industry has called forth the invention and introduction
of an immense number of new words and changed the meanings of old ones, e. g. aerobic, black hole,
computer, isotope, feedback, penicillin, pulsar, quasar, tape-recorder, supermarket and so on.
The laws of efficient communication demand maximum signal in minimum time. To meet these
requirements the adaptive lexical system is not only adding new units but readjusts the ways and
means of word-formation and the word-building means. Thus, when radio location was invented it was
defined as radio detection and ranging which is long and so a convenient abbreviation out of the first
letter or letters of each word in this phrase was coined, hence radar. The process of nomination may
pass several stages. In other words, a new notion is named by a terminological phrase consisting of
words which in their turn are made up of morphemes. The phrase may be shortened by ellipsis or by
graphical abbreviation, and this change of form is achieved without change of meaning. Acronyms are
not composed of existing morphemes according to existing word-formation patterns, but on the
contrary revolutionise the system by forming new words and new morphemes out of letters. The whole
process of word-formation is paradoxically reversed.
The lexical system may adapt itself to new functions by combining several word-building
processes. Thus fall-out — the radioactive dust descending through the air after an atomic explosion
— is coined by composition and conversion simultaneously. Ad-lib ‘to improvise’ is the result
of borrowing (Lat. ad libitum), shortening, compounding and conversion. Compare also admass coined
by J.B. Priestley and meaning ‘mass advertising in its harmful effect on society’.
It is also interesting to mention the new meaning of word-formation patterns in composition.
Teach-in is a student conference or a series of seminars on some burning issue of the day, meaning
some demonstration of protest. This pattern is very frequent: lie-in, sleep-in, pray-in, laugh-in, love-in,
read-in, sing-in, stay-in, talk-in.
In all the above variants the semantic components ‘protest’ and ‘place’ are invariably present.
This is a subgroup of peculiarly English and steadily developing type of nouns formed by a combined
process of conversion and composition from verbs with postpositives, such as a holdup ‘armed
robbery’ from hold-up ‘rob’, come-back ‘a person who returns after a long absence’.
The intense development of shortening aimed at economy of time and effort but keeping the
sense complete is manifest not only in acronyms and abbreviations but also in blends, e . g . bionics <
bio+(electr)onics; slintnastics < slim+gymnastics and back-formation. The very means of wordformation change their status. This is for instance manifest in the set of combining forms. In the past
these were only bound forms borrowings from Latin and Greek mostly used to form technical terms.
Now some of them turn into free standing words, e. g. maxi n ‘something very large’.
Semi-affixes which used to be not numerous and might be treated as exceptions now evolve into
a separate set. An interesting case is person substituting the semi-affix -man due to an extra linguistic
cause — a tendency to degender professional names, to avoid mentioning sex discrimination
(chairperson, policeperson). A freer use of semi-affixes has been illustrated. The set of semi-affixes is
also increased due to the so-called abstracted forms, that is parts of words or phrases used in what
seems the meaning they contribute to the unit. E. g. workaholic ‘a person with a compulsive desire to
work’ was patterned on alcoholic; footballaholic and bookaholic are selfexplanatory. Compare also:
washeteria ‘a self-service laundry’.
When some word becomes a very frequent element in compounds the discrimination of
compounds and derivatives, the difference between affix and semi-affix is blurred. Here are some
neologisms meaning ‘obsessed with sth’ and containing the elements mad and happy: power-mad,
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money-mad, speed-mad, movie-mad and auto-happy, trigger-happy, footlight-happy. It is not quite clear
whether, in spite of their limitless productivity, we are still justified in considering them as compounds.
Our survey has touched only upon a representative series of problems connected with the
functioning and development of the present-day English vocabulary as an adaptive system and of the
tendency in coining new words. For a reliable mass of evidence on the new English vocabulary the
reader is referred to lexicographic sources.
New additions to the English vocabulary are collected in addenda to explanatory dictionaries and
in special dictionaries of new words. One should consult the supplementary volume of the EnglishRussian Dictionary ed. by I.R. Galperin, the three supplementary volumes of “The Oxford English
Dictionary” and the dictionaries of New English which are usually referred to as Barnhart Dictionaries,
because Clarence Barnhart, a distinguished American lexicographer, is the senior of the three editors.
The first volume covers words and word equivalents that have come into the vocabulary of the
English-speaking world during the period 1963-1972 and the second — those of the 70s.
Compounding by mere juxtaposition of free forms has been a frequent pattern since the Old
English period and is so now, сf. brains-trust ‘a group of experts’, brain drain ‘emigration of
scientists’, to brain-drain, brain-drainer, quiz-master ‘chairman in competitions designed to test the
knowledge of the participants’. In the neologism backroom boys ‘men engaged in secret research’ the
structural cohesion of the compound is enhanced by the attributive function. Cf. redbrick (universities),
paperback (books), ban-the-bomb (demonstration). The change of meaning, or rather the introduction of
a new, additional meaning may be illustrated by the word net-work ‘a number of broadcasting stations,
connected for a simultaneous broadcast of the same programme’. Another example is a word of
American literary slang — the square. This neologism is used as a derogatory epithet for a person who
plays safe, who sticks to his illusions, and thinks that only his own life embodies all decent moral
values.
As a general rule neologisms are at first clearly motivated. An exception is shown by those based
on borrowings or learned coinages which, though motivated at an early stage, very soon begin to
function as indivisible signs. A good example is the much used term cybernetics ‘study of systems of
control and communication in living beings and man-made devices’ coined by Norbert Wiener from
the Greek word kyberne-tes ‘steersman’+suffix -ics.
There are, however, cases when etymology of comparatively new words is obscure, as in the
noun boffin ‘a scientist engaged in research work’ or in gimmick ‘a tricky device’ — an American
slang word that is now often used in British English.
In the course of time the new word is accepted into the word-stock of the language and being
often used ceases to be considered new, or else it may not be accepted for some reason or other and
vanish from the language. The fate of neologisms is hardly predictable: some of them are short-lived,
others, on the contrary, become durable as they are liked and accepted. Once accepted, they may serve
as a basis for further word-formation: gimmick, gimmickry, gimmicky. Zip (an imitative word denoting
a certain type of fastener) is hardly felt as new, but its derivatives — the verb zip (zip from one place to
another), the corresponding personal noun zipper and the adjective zippy — appear to be neologisms.
When we consider the lexical system of a language as an adaptive system developing for many
centuries and reflecting the changing needs of the communication process, we have to contrast the
innovations with words that dropped from the language ( o b s o l e t e words) or survive only in
special contexts ( a r c h a i s m s and h i s t o r i s m s ) .
A r c h a i s m s are words that were once common but are now replaced by synonyms. When
these new synonymous words, whether borrowed or coined within the English language, introduce
nothing conceptually new, the stylistic value of older words tends to be changed; on becoming rare
they acquire a lofty poetic tinge due to their ancient flavour, and then they are associated with poetic
diction.
Some examples will illustrate this statement: aught n ‘anything whatever’, betwixt prp ‘between’,
billow n ‘wave’, chide v ‘scold’, damsel n ‘a noble girl’, ere prp ‘before’, even n ‘evening’, forbears n
‘ancestors’, hapless a ‘unlucky’, hark v ‘listen’, lone a ‘lonely’, morn n ‘morning’, perchance adv
‘perhaps’, save prp, cj ‘except’, woe n ‘sorrow’, etc.
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When the causes of the word’s disappearance are extra-linguistic, e.g. when the thing named
is no longer used, its name becomes an h i s t о r i s m . Historisms are very numerous as names
for social relations, institutions and objects of material culture of the past. The names of ancient
transport means, such as types of boats or types of carriages, ancient clothes, weapons, musical
instruments, etc. can offer many examples.
Before the appearance of motor-cars many different types of horse-drawn carriages were in use.
The names of some of them are: brougham, berlin, calash, diligence, fly, gig, hansom, landeau, phaeton,
etc. It is interesting to mention specially the romantically metaphoric prairie schooner ‘a canvascovered wagon used by pioneers crossing the North American prairies’. There are still many sailing
ships in use, and schooner in the meaning of ‘a sea-going vessel’ is not an historism, but a prairie
schooner is. Many types of sailing craft belong to the past as caravels or galleons, so their names are
historisms too.
The history of costume forms an interesting topic by itself. It is reflected in the history of
corresponding terms. The corresponding glossaries may be very long. Only very few examples can be
mentioned here. In W. Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, doublets are often mentioned. A doublet is a
close-fitting jacket with or without sleeves worn by men in the 15th-17th centuries. It is interesting to
note that descriptions of ancient garments given in dictionaries often include their social functions in
this or that period. Thus, a tabard of the 15th century was a short surcoat open at the sides and with
short sleeves, worn by a knight over his armour and emblazoned on the front, back and sides with his
armorial bearings. Not all historisms refer to such distant periods. Thus, bloomers — an outfit
designed for women in mid-nineteenth century. It consisted of Turkish-style trousers gathered at the
ankles and worn by women as “a rational dress”. It was introduced by Mrs Bloomer, editor and social
reformer, as a contribution to woman rights movement. Somewhat later bloomers were worn by girls
and women for games and cycling, but then they became shorter and reached only to the knee.
A great many historisms denoting various types of weapons occur in historical novels, e. g. a
battering ram ‘an ancient machine for breaking walls’; a blunderbuss ‘an old type of gun with a wide
muzzle’; breastplate ‘a piece of metal armour worn by knights over the chest to protect it in battle’; a
crossbow ‘a medieval weapon consisting of a bow fixed across a wooden stock’. Many words
belonging to this semantic field remain in the vocabulary in some figurative meaning, e. g. arrow,
shield, sword, vizor, etc.
2. On the morphological level words are divided into four groups according to their
morphological structure, namely the number and type of morphemes which compose them. They are:
1. Root or morpheme words. Their stem contains one free morpheme, e. g. dog, hand.
2. Derivatives contain no less than two morphemes of which at least one is bound, e . g .
dogged, doggedly, handy, handful; sometimes both are bound: terrier.
3. Compound words consist of not less than two free morphemes, the presence of bound
morphemes is possible but not necessary, e. g. dog-cheap ‘very cheap’; dog-days ‘hottest part of the
year’; handball, handbook.
4. Compound derivatives consist of not less than two free morphemes and one bound morpheme
referring to the whole combination. The pattern is (stem+stem) +suffix, e. g. dog-legged ‘crooked or
bent like a dog’s hind leg’, left-handed.
This division is the basic one for lexicology.
Another type of traditional lexicological grouping is known as w o r d - f a m i l i e s . The
number of groups is certainly much greater, being equal to the number of root morphemes if all the
words are grouped according to the root morpheme. For example: dog, doggish, doglike, doggy/doggie,
to dog, dogged, doggedly, doggedness, dog-wolf, dog-days, dog-biscuit, dog-cart, etc.; hand, handy,
handicraft, handbag, handball, handful, handmade, handsome, etc.
Similar groupings according to a common suffix or prefix are also possible, if not as often made
use of. The greater the combining power of the affix, the more numerous the group. Groups with such
suffixes as -er, -ing, -ish, -less, -ness constitute infinite (open) sets, i.e. are almost unlimited, because
new combinations are constantly created. When the suffix is no longer productive the group may have
a diminishing number of elements, as with the adjective-forming suffix -some, e. g. gladsome,
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gruesome, handsome, lithesome, lonesome, tiresome, troublesome, wearisome, wholesome, winsome,
etc.
The next step is classifying words not in isolation but taking them within actual utterances. Here
the first contrast to consider is the contrast between notional words and form or functional words.
Actually the definition of the word as a minimum free form holds good for notional words only. It is
only n o t i o n a l words that can stand alone and yet have meaning and form a complete utterance.
They can name different objects of reality, the qualities of these objects and actions or the process in
which they take part. In sentences they function syntactically as some primary or secondary members.
Even extended sentences are possible which consist of notional words only. They can also express the
attitude of the speaker towards reality.
F o r m w o r d s , also called functional words, empty words or auxiliaries (the latter term is
coined by H. Sweet), are lexical units which are called words, although they do not conform to the
definition of the word, because they are used only in combination with notional words or in reference
to them. This group comprises auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions and relative adverbs.
Primarily they express grammatical relationships between words. This does not, however, imply that
they have no lexical meaning of their own.
The borderline between notional and functional words is not always very clear and does not
correspond to that between various parts of speech. Thus, most verbs are notional words, but the
auxiliary verbs are classified as form words. It is open to discussion whether link verbs should be
treated as form words or not. The situation is very complicated if we consider pronouns. Personal,
demonstrative and interrogative pronouns, as their syntactical functions testify, are notional words;
reflexive pronouns seem to be form words building up such analytical verb forms as I warmed myself,
but this is open to discussion. As to prop-words (one, those, etc.), some authors think that they should
be considered as a separate, third group.
It is typical of the English language that the boundary between notional and functional words
sometimes lies within the semantic structure of one and the same word, so that in some contexts they
appear as notional words and in other contexts as form words. Compare the functions and meanings of
the verb have as used in the following extract from a novel by A. Huxley: Those that have not
complain about their own fate. Those that have do not, it is only those in contact with them •— and
since the havers are few these too are few — who complain of the curse of having. In my time I have
belonged to both categories. Once I had, and I can see that to my fellowmen I must then have been
intolerable ... now I have not. The curse of insolence and avarice has been removed from me.
The systematic use of form words is one of the main devices of English grammatical structure,
surpassed in importance only by fixed word order. Form words are therefore studied in grammar rather
than in lexicology which concentrates its attention upon notional words.
Those linguists who divide all the words into three classes (notional words, form words, deictic
and substitute words or prop-words) consider the latter as pointing words (this, that, they, there, then,
thus, he, here, how, who, what, where, whither, nobody, never, not). Deictic words are orientational words,
relative to the time and place of utterance. They ultimately stand for objects of reality, if only at second
hand.
Very interesting treatment of form words is given by Charles Fries. The classes suggested by Ch.
Fries are based on distribution, in other words, they are syntactic positional classes. Ch. Fries
establishes them with the view of having the minimum number of different groups needed for a
general description of utterances. His classification is based on the assumption that all the words that
could occupy the same “set of positions” in the patterns of English single free utterances without a
change of the structural meaning, must belong to the same class. Very roughly and approximately his
classification may be described as follows. The bulk of words in the utterances he investigated is
constituted by four main classes. He gives them no names except numbers. Class I: water, time,
heating, thing, green (of a particular shade), (the) sixth, summer, history, etc.; Class II: felt, arranged,
sees, forgot, guess, know, help, forward ‘to send on’; Class HI: general, eighth, good; better,
outstanding, wide, young’, Class IV: there, here, now, usually, definitely, first, twice.
Every reader is at once tempted to equate these class numbers with the usual names: “nouns",
“verbs", “adjectives” and “adverbs”. The two sets of names, however, do not strictly coincide in either
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what is included or what is excluded. Neither morphological form nor meaning are taken into
consideration. Unfortunately Ch. Fries does not give satisfactory definitions and offers only the
procedure of substitution by which words can be tested and identified in his minimum test frames:
Class I
Class II
Class III
Class IV
Frame
A
(The
concert
was
good
(always)
)
Frame
В
(The
clerk
remembered
(the) tax
(suddenly
)
)
Frame
С
(The
team
went
there
)
The functional words are subdivided into 15 groups, and as Ch. Fries could not find for them any
general identifying characteristics, they are supposed to be recognised and learned as separate words,
so that they form 15 subsets defined by listing all the elements. As an example of form words the
group of determiners may be taken. These are words which in the Ch. Fries classification system serve
to mark the so-called Class I forms. They can be substituted for the in the frame (The) concert is good.
That is to say, they are words belonging to the group of limiting noun modifiers, such as a, an, any,
each, either, every, neither, no, one, some, the, that, those, this, these, what, whatever, which, whichever,
possessive adjectives (my) and possessive case forms (Joe’s). Determiners may occur before
descriptive adjectives modifying the Class I words.
We have dwelt so extensively upon this classification, because it is very much used, with
different modifications, in modern lexicological research practice, though the figures in the
denotations of Ch. Fries were later substituted by letters. N denotes Class I words, i.e. all the nouns
and some pronouns and numerals occupying the same positions, V — Class II, namely verbs with the
exception of the auxiliaries, A — Class III, adjectives, some pronouns and numerals used attributively,
D — Class IV, adverbs and some noun phrases. In lexicology the notation is chiefly used in various
types of semasiological research with distributional and transformational analysis.
The division into such classes as p a r t s of s p e e c h observes both paradigmatic and
syntagmatic relationships of the words and also their meaning. There is no necessity to dwell here
upon the parts of speech, because they are dealt with in grammar. We shall limit our discussion to
subdivisions of parts of speech and call them lexico-grammatical groups. By a l e x i c o g r a m m a t i c a l g r o u p we understand a class of words which have a common lexicogrammatical meaning, a common paradigm, the same substituting elements and possibly a
characteristic set of suffixes rendering the lexico-grammatical meaning. These groups are subsets of
the parts of speech, several lexico-grammatical groups constitute one part of speech. Thus, English
nouns are subdivided approximately into the following lexico-grammatical groups: personal names,
animal names, collective names (for people), collective names (for animals), abstract nouns, material
nouns, object nouns, proper names for people, toponymic proper nouns.
If, for instance, we consider a group of nouns having the following characteristics: two number
forms, the singular and the plural; two case forms; animate, substituted in the singular by he or she;
common, i.e. denoting a notion and not one particular object (as proper names do); able to combine
regularly with the indefinite article, some of them characterised by such suffixes as -er/-or, -ist, -ее, eer and the semi-affix -man, we obtain the so-called personal names: agent, baker, artist, volunteer,
visitor, workman.
Observing the semantic structure of words belonging to this group we find a great deal of
semantic likeness within it, not only in the denotative meanings as such but also in the way various
meanings are combined. Personal nouns, for instance, possess a comparatively simple semantic
structure. A structure consisting of two variants predominates. In many cases the secondary, i.e.
derived meaning is due to generalisation or specialisation.1 Generalisation is present in such words as
advocate, which may mean any person who supports or defends a plan or a suggestion anywhere, not
only in court; apostle, which alongside its religious meaning may denote any leader of any reform or
doctrine. E.g.: What would Sergius, the apostle of the higher love, say if he saw me now? (Shaw)
Specialisation is observed in cases like beginner, where the derived meaning corresponds to a
notion of a narrower scope: ‘one who has not had much experience’ as compared to ‘one who begins’.
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The group is also characterised by a high percentage of emotionally coloured, chiefly derogatory
words among the metaphorical derived variants, such as baby ‘a person who behaves like a baby’ or
witch ‘an ugly and unkind woman’.
Words belonging to another lexico-grammatical group, for instance those denoting well-known
animals, very often develop metaphorical expressive names for people possessing qualities rightly or
wrongly attributed to the respective animals: ass, bitch, cow, fox, swine. E. g.: Armitage had talked, he
supposed. Damned young pup! What did he know about it! (Christie)
The subdivision of all the words belonging to some part of speech into groups of the kind
described above is also achieved on this basis of oppositions. Should we want to find the subgroups of
the English noun, we may take as distinctive features the relations of the given word to the categories
of number and case, their combining possibilities with regard to definite, indefinite and zero article,
their possible substitution by he, she, it or they, their unique or notional correlation.2
Lexico-grammatical groups should not be confused with parts of speech. A few more examples
will help to grasp the difference. Audience and honesty, for instance, belong to the same part of speech
but to different lexico-grammatical groups, because their lexico-grammatical meaning is different:
audience is a group of people, and honesty is a quality; they have different paradigms: audience has
two forms, singular and plural, honesty is used only in the singular; also honesty is hardly ever used in
the Possessive case unless personified. To show that the substituting elements are different two
examples will suffice: I am referring to what goes on inside the audience’s mind when they see the play
(Arden). Honesty isn’t everything but I believe it’s the first thing (Priestley). Being a collective noun,
the word audience is substituted by they; honesty is substituted by it.
Other words belonging to the same lexico-grammatical group as audience are people, party, jury,
but not flock or swarm, because the lexico-grammatical meaning of the last two words is different: they
are substituted by it and denote groups of living beings but not persons, unless, of course, they are used
metaphorically.
3. Sharply defined extensive semantic fields are found in terminological systems.
Terminology constitutes the greatest part of every language vocabulary. It is also its most
intensely developing part, i.e. the class giving the largest number of new formations. Terminology of a.
language consists of many systems of terms. We shall call a t e r m any word or word-group used to
name a notion characteristic of some special field of knowledge, industry or culture. The scope and
content of the notion that a ‘term serves to express are specified by d e f i n i t i o n s in literature
on the subject. The word utterance for instance, may be regarded as a linguistic term, since Z. Harris,
Ch. Fries and other representatives of descriptive linguistics attach to it the following definition: “An
utterance is any stretch of talk by one person before and after which there is a silence.”
Many of the influential works on linguistics that appeared in the last five years devote much
attention to the problems of sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics may be roughly defined as the study of
the influence produced upon language by various social factors. It is not difficult to understand that
this influence is particularly strong in lexis. Now terminology is precisely that part of lexis where this
influence is not only of paramount importance, but where it is recognised so that terminological
systems are purposefully controlled. Almost every system of special terminology is nowadays fixed
and analysed in glossaries approved by authorities, special commissions and eminent scholars.
A term is, in many respects, a very peculiar type of word. An ideal term should be monosemantic
and, when used within its own sphere, does not depend upon the micro-context, provided it is not
expressed by a figurative variant of a polysemantic word. Its meaning remains constant until some new
discovery or invention changes the referent or the notion. Polysemy, when it arises, 1 is a drawback, so
that all the speakers and writers on special subjects should be very careful to avoid it. Polysemy may
be tolerated in one form only, namely if the same term has various meanings in different fields of
science. The terms alphabet and word, for example, have in mathematics a meaning very different
from those accepted in linguistics.
Being mostly independent of the context a term can have no contextual meaning whatever. The
only meaning possible is a denotational free meaning. A term is intended to ensure a one-to-one
correspondence between morphological arrangement and content. No emotional colouring or
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evaluation are possible when the term is used within its proper sphere. As to connotation or stylistic
colouring, they are superseded in terms by the connection with the other members of some particular
terminological system and by the persistent associations with this system when the term is used out of
its usual sphere.
A term can obtain a figurative or emotionally coloured meaning only when taken out of its
sphere and used in literary or colloquial speech. But in that case it ceases to be a term and its
denotational meaning may also become very vague. It turns into an ordinary word. The adjective
atomic used to describe the atomic structure of matter was until 1945 as emotionally neutral as words
like quantum or parallelogram. But since Hiroshima and the ensuing nuclear arms race it has assumed
a new implication, so that the common phrase this atomic age, which taken literally has no meaning at
all, is now used to denote an age of great scientific progress, but also holds connotations of ruthless
menace and monstrous destruction.
Every branch and every school of science develop a special terminology adapted to their nature
and methods. Its development represents an essential part of research work and is of paramount
importance, because it can either help or hinder progress. The great physiologist I.P. Pavlov, when
studying the higher nervous activity, prohibited his colleagues and pupils to use such phrases as the
dog thinks, the dog wants, the dog remembers; he believed that these words interfered with objective
observation.
The appearance of structuralist schools of linguistics has completely changed linguistic
terminology. A short list of some frequently used terms will serve to illustrate the point: allomorph,
allophone; constituent, immediate constituent’, distribution, complementary distribution, contrastive
distribution’, morph, morphophonemics, morphotactics, etc.
Using the new terms in context one can say that “phonologists seek to establish the system
pattern or structure of archiphonemes, phonemes and phonemic variants based primarily on the
principle of twofold choice or binary opposition11. All the italicised words in the above sentence are
terms. No wonder therefore that the intense development of linguistics made it imperative to
systematise, standardise and check the definitions of linguistic terms now in current use. Such work on
terminology standardisation has been going on in almost all branches of science and engineering since
the beginning of the 20th century, and linguists have taken an active part in it, while leaving their own
terminology in a sad state of confusion. Now this work of systematisation of linguistic terms is well
under way. A considerable number of glossaries appeared in different countries. These efforts are of
paramount importance, the present state of linguistic terminology being quite inadequate creating a
good deal of ambiguity and misunderstanding.
The terminology of a branch of science is not simply a sum total of its terms but a definite
system reflecting the system of its notions. Terminological systems may be regarded as intersecting
sets, because some terms belong simultaneously to several terminological systems. There is no harm in
this if the meaning of the terms and their definitions remain constant, or if the respective branches of
knowledge do not meet; where this is not so, much ambiguity can arise. The opposite phenomenon, i.e.
the synonymy of terms, is no less dangerous for very obvious reasons. Scholars are apt to suspect that
their colleagues who use terms different from those favoured by themselves are either talking nonsense
or else are confused in their thinking. An interesting way out is offered by one of the most modern
developments in world science, by cybernetics. It offers a single vocabulary and a single set of
concepts suitable for representing the most diverse types of systems: in linguistics and biological
aspects of communication no less than in various engineering professions. This is of paramount
importance, as it has been repeatedly found in science that the discovery of analogy or relation
between two fields leads to each field helping the development of the other.
Such notions and terms as quantity of information, redundancy, enthropy, feedback and many
more are used in various disciplines. Today linguists, no less than other scholars, must know what is
going on in other fields of learning and keep abreast of general progress.
The origin of terms shows several main channels, three of which are specific for terminology.
These specific ways are:
1. Formation of terminological phrases with subsequent clipping, ellipsis, blending, abbreviation:
transistor receiver → transistor → trannie; television text → teletext; ecological architecture →
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ecotecture; extremely low frequency → ELF.
2. The use of combining forms from Latin and Greek like aerodrome, aerodynamics, cyclotron,
microfilm, telegenic, telegraph, thermonuclear, telemechanics, supersonic. The process is common to
terminology in many languages.
3. Borrowing from another terminological system within the same language whenever there is
any affinity between the respective fields. Sea terminology, for instance, lent many words to aviation
vocabulary which in its turn made the starting point for the terminology adopted in the conquest of
space. If we turn back to linguistics, we shall come across many terms borrowed from rhetoric:
metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and others.
The remaining two methods are common with other layers of the vocabulary. These are wordformation in which composition, semantic shift and derivation take the leading part, and borrowing
from other languages. The character of the terms borrowed, the objects and ideas they denote are full
of significance for the history of world culture. Since the process of borrowing is very marked in every
field, all terminology has a tendency to become international. An important peculiarity of terms as
compared to the rest of the vocabulary is that they are much more subject to purposeful control. There
are special establishments busy with improving terminology. We must also pay attention to the fact
that it is often possible to trace a term to its author. It is, for instance, known that the radio terms anode
and cathode were coined by M. Faraday, the term vitamin by Dr. Funk in 1912, the term bionics was
born at a symposium in Ohio (USA) in September of 1960. Those who coin a new term are always
careful to provide it with a definition and also to give some reasons for their choice by explaining its
motivation.
Terms are not separated from the rest of the vocabulary, and it is rather hard to say where the line
should be drawn. With the development and growth of civilisation many special notions become
known to the layman and form part and parcel of everyday speech. Are we justified to call such words
as vitamin, inoculation and sedative or tranquilliser terms? With radio and television sets in every
home many radio terms — antenna, teletype, transistor, short waves — are well known to everybody
and often used in everyday conversation. In this process, however, they may lose their specific
terminological character and become similar to all ordinary words in the intentional part of their
meaning. The constant interchange of elements goes both ways. The everyday English vocabulary,
especially the part of it characterised by a high index of frequency and polysemy, constitutes a constant
source for the creation of new terms.
Due to the expansion of popular interest in the achievements of science and technology new
terms appear more and more frequently in newspapers and popular magazines and even in fiction.
Much valuable material concerning this group of neologisms is given in two Barn-hart Dictionaries of
New English from which we borrow the explanation of two astronomical terms black hole (1968) and
white hole created on its pattern in 1971. Both terms play an important symbolic role in A.
Voznesensky’s first major prose work entitled “O”. A black hole is a hypothetic drain in space which
engulfs matter and energy, even massive stars. A white hole is a hypothetical source of matter and
energy through which what was sucked in through black holes may reappear in other universes.
Dictionaries for the most part include terminological meanings into the entry for the head-word.
The fact that one of the meanings is terminological is signalled by showing in brackets the field where
it can be used. For example, the word load as an electrical term means ‘the amount of current supplied
by a generating station at any given time’; power in mathematics is ‘the product obtained by
multiplying the number into itself, and in mechanics ‘capacity of doing work’; the optical term power
denotes ‘the magnifying capacity of a lens’.
The above survey of terms as a specific type of words was descriptive, the approach was strictly
synchronic. Investigation need not stop at the descriptive stage. On the contrary, the study of changes
occurring in a group of terms or a whole terminological subsystem, such as sea terms, building terms,
etc. during a long period of time, can give very valuable data concerning the interdependence of the
history of language and the history of society. The development of terminology is the most complete
reflection of the history of science, culture and industry.
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4.The simplest, most obvious non-semantic grouping, extensively used in all branches of applied
linguistics is the alphabetical organisation of written words, as represented in most dictionaries. It is of
great practical value as the simplest and the most universal way of facilitating the search for the
necessary word. Even in dictionaries arranged on some other principles (in “Roget’s International
Thesaurus", for example) we have an alphabetical index for the reader to refer to before searching the
various categories. The theoretical value of alphabetical grouping is almost null, because no other
property of the word can be predicted from the letter or letters the word begins with. We cannot infer
anything about the word if the only thing we know is that it begins with a p. Only in exceptional cases
some additional information can be obtained on a different, viz. the etymological, level. For instance,
words beginning with a w are mostly native, and those beginning with a ph borrowed from Greek. But
such cases are few and far between.
The rhyming, i.e. inverse, dictionary presents a similar non-semantic grouping of isolated written
words differing from the first in that the sound is also taken into consideration and in that the grouping
is done the other way round and the words are arranged according to the similarity of their ends. The
practical value of this type is much more limited. These dictionaries are intended for poets. They may
be also used, if but rarely, by teachers, when making up lists of words with similar suffixes.
A third type of non-semantic grouping of written words is based on their length, i.e. the number
of letters they contain. This type, worked out with some additional details, may prove useful for
communication engineering, for automatic reading of messages and correction of mistakes. It may
prove useful for linguistic theory as well, although chiefly in its modified form, with length measured
not in the number of letters but in the number of syllables. Important statistical correlations have been
found to exist between the number of syllables, the frequency, the number of meanings and the stylistic
characteristics a word possesses. The shorter words occur more frequently and accumulate a greater
number of meanings.
Finally, a very important type of non-semantic grouping for isolated lexical units is based on a
statistical analysis of their frequency. Frequency counts carried out for practical purposes of
lexicography, language teaching and shorthand enable the lexicographer to attach to each word a
number showing its importance and range of occurrence. Large figures are, of course, needed to bring
out any inherent regularities, and these regularities are, naturally, statistical, not rigid. But even with
these limitations the figures are fairly reliable and show important correlations between quantitative
and qualitative characteristics of lexical units, the most frequent words being polysemantic and
stylistically neutral.
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
5 Phraseological unit (set expression)
1.Phraseological unit
2.Free Word-Groups, Versus Set-Phrases. Phraseological Units, Idioms, Word-Equivalents
3.Phraseological Units and Idioms Proper
4.Phraseology as a Subsystem of Language
Aims:
teaching – To give the idea of Phraseological Units and Idioms Proper;
developing – To deepen the idea of Phraseological Units and Idioms Proper;
educational (pedagogic) – To increase the willing to study Phraseological Units and Idioms
Proper.
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1. It has been repeatedly pointed out that word-groups viewed as functionally and semantically
inseparable units are traditionally regarded as the subject matter of phraseology. It should be noted,
however, that no proper scientific investigation of English phraseology has been attempted until quite
recently. English and American linguists as a rule confine themselves to collecting various words,
word-groups and sentences presenting some interest either from the point of view of origin, style,
usage, or some other feature peculiar to them. These units are habitually described as i d i o m s but no
attempt has been made to investigate these idioms as a separate class of linguistic units or a specific
class of word-groups.
American and English dictionaries of unconventional English, slang and idioms and other
highly valuable reference-books contain a wealth of proverbs, sayings, various lexical units of all
kinds, but as a rule do not seek to lay down a reliable criterion to distinguish between variable wordgroups and phraseological units. Paradoxical as it may seem the first dictionary in which theoretical
principles for the selection of English phraseological units were elaborated was published in our
country.1
The term itself p h r a s e o l o g i c a l u n i t s to denote a specific group of phrases was
introduced by Soviet linguists and is generally accepted in our country.
2. Attempts have been made to approach the problem of phraseology in different ways. Up till
now, however, there is a certain divergence of opinion as to the essential feature of phraseological
units as distinguished from other word-groups and the nature of phrases that can be properly termed
phraseological units.
The complexity of the problem may be largely accounted for by the fact that the border-line
between free or variable word-groups and phraseological units is not clearly defined. The so-called
free word-groups are only relatively free as collocability of their member-words is fundamentally
delimited by their lexical and grammatical valency which makes at least some of them very close to
set-phrases. Phraseological units are comparatively stable and semantically inseparable. Between the
extremes of complete motivation and variability of member-words on the one hand and lack of
motivation combined with complete stability of the lexical components and grammatical structure on
the other hand there are innumerable border-line cases.
However, the existing terms, e.g. set-phrases, idioms, word-equivalents, reflect to a certain
extent the main debatable issues of phraseology which centre on the divergent views concerning the
nature and essential features of phraseological units as distinguished from the so-called free wordgroups. The term s e t - p h r a s e implies that the basic criterion of differentiation is stability of the
lexical components and grammatical structure of word-groups. The term i d i o m s generally implies
that the essential feature of the linguistic units under consideration is idiomaticity or lack of
motivation. This term habitually used by English and American linguists is very often treated as
synonymous with the term p h r a s e o l o g i c a l u n i t universally accepted in our country. The
term w o r d - e q u i v a l e n t stresses not only the semantic but also the functional inseparability
of certain word-groups and their aptness to function in speech as single words.
Thus differences in terminology reflect certain differences in the main criteria used to
distinguish between free word-groups and a specific type of linguistic units generally known as
phraseology. These criteria and the ensuing classification are briefly discussed below.
3. As can be inferred from the above discussion, the functional approach does not discard
idiomaticity as the main feature distinguishing phraseological units from free word-groups, but seeks
to establish formal criteria of idiomaticity by analysing the syntactic function of phraseological units in
speech.
An attempt is also made to distinguish phraseological units as word-equivalents from i d i o m s
proper, i.e. idiomatic units such as that’s where the shoe pinches, the cat is out of the bag, what will
Mrs Grundy say?, etc. Unlike phraseological units, proverbs, sayings and quotations do not always
function as word-equivalents. They exist as ready-made expressions with a specialised meaning of
their own which cannot be inferred from the meaning of their components taken singly. Due to this the
linguists who rely mainly on the criterion of idiomaticity classify proverbs and sayings as
phraseological units.
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The proponents of the functional criterion argue that proverbs and sayings lie outside the
province of phraseology. It is pointed out, firstly, that the lack of motivation in such linguistic units is
of an essentially different nature. Idioms are mostly based on metaphors which makes the transferred
meaning of the whole expression more or less transparent. If we analyse such idioms, as, e.g., to carry
coals to Newcastle, to fall between two stools, or fine feathers make fine birds, we observe that
though their meaning cannot be inferred from the literal meaning of the member-words making up
these expressions, they are still metaphorically motivated as the literal meaning of the whole
expression readily suggests its meaning as an idiom, i.e. ‘to do something that is absurdly superfluous’,
‘fail through taking an intermediate course’ and ‘to be well dressed to give one an impressive
appearance’ respectively.1 The meaning of the phraseological units, e.g. red tape, heavy father, in the
long run, etc., cannot be deduced either from the meaning of the component words or from the
metaphorical meaning of the word-group as a whole.
Secondly, the bulk of idioms never function in speech as word-equivalents which is a proof of
their semantic and grammatical separability.
It is also suggested that idioms in general have very much in common with quotations from
literary sources, some of which also exist as idiomatic ready-made units with a specialised meaning of
their own. Such quotations which have acquired specialised meaning and idiomatic value, as, e.g., to
be or not to be (Shakespeare), to cleanse the Augean stables (mythology), a voice crying out in the
wilderness (the Bible), etc. differ little from proverbs and sayings which may also be regarded as
quotations from English folklore and are part of this particular branch of literary studies.
4. Comparing the three approaches discussed above (semantic, functional, and contextual) we
have ample ground to conclude that they have very much in common as the main criteria of
phraseological units appear to be essentially the same, i.e. stability and idiomaticity or lack of
motivation. It should be noted however that these criteria as elaborated in the three approaches are
sufficient mainly to single out extreme cases: highly idiomatic non-variable and free (or variable)
word-groups.
Thus red tape, mare’s nest, etc. according to the semantic approach belong to phraseology and
are described as fusions as they are completely non-motivated. According to the functional approach
they are also regarded as phraseological units because of their grammatical (syntactic) inseparability
and because they function in speech as word-equivalents. According to the contextual approach red
tape, mare’s nest, etc. make up a group of phraseological units referred to as idioms because of the
impossibility of any change in the ‘fixed context’ and their semantic inseparability.
The status of the bulk of word-groups however cannot be decided with certainty with the help
of these criteria because as a rule we have to deal not with c o m p l e t e idiomaticity and stability
but with a certain degree of these distinguishing features of phraseological units. No objective criteria
of the d e g r e e of idiomaticity and stability have as yet been suggested. Thus, e.g., to win a victory
according to the semantic approach is a phraseological combination because it is almost completely
motivated and allows of certain variability to win, to gain a victory. According to the functional
approach it is not a phraseological unit as the degree of semantic and grammatical inseparability is
insufficient for the word-group to function as a word-equivalent. Small hours according to the
contextual approach is a phraseme because one of the components is used in its literal meaning. If
however we classify it proceeding from the functional approach it is a phraseological unit because it is
syntactically inseparable and therefore functions as a word-equivalent. As can be seen from the above
the status of the word-groups which are partially motivated is decided differently depending on which
of the criteria of phraseological units is applied.
There is still another approach to the problem of phraseology in which an attempt is made to
overcome the shortcomings of the phraseological theories discussed above. The main features of this
new approach which is now more or less universally accepted by Soviet linguists are as follows:
Phraseology is regarded as a self-contained branch of linguistics and not as a part of lexicology.
1. Phraseology deals with a phraseological subsystem of language and not with isolated
phraseological units.
2. Phraseology is concerned with all types of set expressions.
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4. Set expressions are divided into three classes: phraseological units (e.g. red tape, mare’s nest,
etc.), phraseomatic units (e.g. win a victory, launch a campaign, etc.) and border-line cases
belonging to the mixed class. The main distinction between the first and the second classes is
semantic: phraseological units have fully or partially transferred meanings while components of
phraseomatic units are used in their literal meanings.
5. Phraseological and phraseomatic units are not regarded as word- equivalents but some of them
are treated as word correlates.
6. Phraseological and phraseomatic units are set expressions and their phraseological stability
distinguishes them from free phrases and compound words.
7. Phraseological and phraseomatic units are made up of words of different degree of wordness
depending on the type of set expressions they are used in. (Cf. e.g. small hours and red tape.) Their
structural separateness, an important factor of their stability, distinguishes them from compound words
(cf. e.g. blackbird and black market).
Other aspects of their stability are: stability of use, lexical stability and semantic stability.
8. S t a b i l i t y of use means that set expressions are reproduced ready-made and not created
in speech. They are not elements of individual style of speech but language units.
9. L e x i c a l s t a b i l i t y means that the components of set expressions are either
irreplaceable (e.g. red tape, mare’s nest) or partly replaceable within the bounds of phraseological or
phraseomatic variance: lexical (e.g. a skeleton in the cupboard — a skeleton in the closet),
grammatical (e.g. to be in deep water — to be in deep waters), positional (e.g. head over ears —
over head and ears), quantitative (e.g. to lead smb a dance — to lead smb a pretty dance), mixed
variants (e.g. raise (stir up) a hornets’ nest about one’s ears — arouse (stir up) the nest of
hornets).
10. S e m a n t i c s t a b i l i t y is based on the lexical stability of set expressions. Even when
occasional changes ‘are introduced the meaning of set expression is preserved. It may only be
specified, made more precise, weakened or strengthened. In other words in spite of all occasional
changes phraseological and phraseomatic units, as distinguished from free phrases, remain semantically invariant or are destroyed. For example, the
substitution of the verbal component in the free phrase to raise a question by the verb to settle (to
settle a question) changes the meaning of the phrase, no such change occurs in to raise (stir up) a
hornets’ nest about one’s ears.
11. An integral part of this approach is a method of phraseological identification which helps to
single out set expressions in Modern English.
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
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Лекция № 1
Тема: Phonetics and Phonology
The Outline
1.
Phonetics as a science. Its object, branches and methods of investigation.
2. Functions of speech sounds. The reason for the invention of the phoneme.
3. Phonology as a science, its object and methods of investigation.
4. Phonemes and allophones. Types of allophones.
5. The link of phonetics with other branches of linguistics: grammar, lexicology and stylistics.
The branch of linguistics which explore the inventory, structure and functions of the speech
sounds, is called phonetics.
Phonetics is an independent branch of linguistics like lexicology or grammar. These linguistic
sciences study language from three different points of view. Lexicology deals with the vocabulary of
language, with the origin and development of words, with their meaning and word building. Grammar
defines the rules governing the modification of words and the combination of words into sentences.
Phonetics studies the outer form of language; its sound matter. The phonetician investigates the
phonemes and their allophones, the syllabic structure the distribution of stress, and intonation. He is
interested in the sounds that are produced by the human speech-organs insofar as these sounds have a
role in language. Let us refer to this limited range of sounds as the phonic medium and to individual
sounds within that range as speech-sounds. We may now define phonetics as the study of the phonic
medium. Phonetics is the study of the way humans make, transmit, and receive speech sounds.
Phonetics occupies itself with the study of the ways in which the sounds are organized into a system of
units and the variation of the units in all types and styles of spoken language.
Phonetics is a basic branch of linguistics. Neither linguistic theory nor linguistic practice can do
without phonetics. No kind of linguistic study can be made without constant consideration of the
material on the expression level.
2. Aspects and units of phonetics
Human speech is the result of a highly complicated series of events. Let us consider the speech
chain, which may be diagrammed in simplified form like this:
Speaker's
Speaker's vocal
Transmission
Liste
Listener's ear
brain
tract
of sounds
ner's brain
through
air
1
2
3
4
5
linguistic
articulatory
acoustic
auditory
linguistic
The formation of the concept takes place in the brain of a speaker. This stage may be called
psychological. The message formed within the brain is transmitted along the nervous system to the
speech organs. Therefore, we may say that the human brain controls the behaviour of the articulating
organs which effects in producing a particular pattern of speech sounds. This second stage may be
called physiological. The movements of the speech apparatus disturb the air stream thus producing
sound waves. Consequently, the third stage may be called physical or acoustic. Further, any
communication requires a listener, as well as a speaker. So the last stages are the reception of the
sound waves by the listener's hearing physiological apparatus, the transmission of the spoken message
through the nervous system to the brain and the linguistic interpretation of the information conveyed. .
The sound phenomena have different aspects:
(a) the articulatory aspect;
(b) the acoustic aspect;
(c) the auditory (perceptive) aspect;
(d) the functional (linguistic) aspect.
Now it is possible to show the correlation between the stages of the speech chain and the aspects
of the sound matter.
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Articulation comprises all the movements and positions of the speech organs necessary to
pronounce a speech sound. According to their main sound-producing functions, the speech organs can
be divided into the following four groups:
(1) the power mechanism;
(2) the vibration mechanism;
(3) the resonator mechanism;
(4) the obstruction mechanism.
The functions of the power mechanism consist in the supply of the energy in the form of the air
pressure and in regulating the force of the air stream. The power mechanism includes: (1) the
diaphragm, (2) the lungs, (3) the bronchi, (4) the windpipe, or trachea. The glottis and the supra-glottal
cavities enter into the power mechanism as parts of the respiratory tract. The vibration mechanism
consists of the larynx, or voice box, containing the vocal cords. The most important function of the
vocal cords is their role in the production of voice. The pharynx, the mouth, and the nasal cavity
function as the principal resonators thus constituting the resonator mechanism. The obstruction
mechanism (the tongue, the lips, the teeth, and the palate) forms the different types of obstructions.
The acoustic aspect studies sound waves. The basic vibrations of the vocal cords over their
whole length produce the fundamental tone of voice. The simultaneous vibrations of each part of the
vocal cords produce partial tones (overtones and harmonics). The number of vibrations per second is
called frequency. Frequency of basic vibrations of the vocal cords is the fundamental frequency.
Fundamental frequency determines the pitch of the voice and forms an acoustic basis of speech melody.
Intensity of speech sounds depends on the amplitude of vibration.
The auditory (sound-perception) aspect, on the one hand, is a physiological mechanism. We can
perceive sound waves within a range of 16 Hz-20.000 Hz with a difference in 3 Hz. The human ear
transforms mechanical vibrations of the air into nervous and transmits them to brain. The listener hears
the acoustic features of the fundamental frequency, formant frequency, intensity and duration in terms
of perceptible categories of pitch, quality, loudness and length. On the other hand, it is also a
psychological mechanism. The point is that repetitions of what might be heard as the same utterance
are only coincidentally, if ever, acoustically identical. Phonetic identity is a. theoretical ideal. Phonetic
similarity, not phonetic identity, is the criterion with which we operate in the linguistic analysis.
Functional aspect. Phonemes, syllables, stress, and intonation are linguistic phenomena. They
constitute meaningful units (morphemes, words, word-forms, utterances). Sounds of speech perform
different linguistic functions.
Let's have a look at the correlation of some phonetic terms discussed above.
articulatory characteristics
acoustic
properties
auditory(perc
linguistic
eptible) qualities
phenomena
fundamental
melody
frequency
different
positions
and
formant
quality
movements of speech organs
frequency
(timbre)
the amplitude of vibrations
intensity
loudness
the quantity of time during
Duration
length
which the sound is pronounced
vibration of the vocal cords
pitch
phoneme
stress
tempo,
rhythm, pauses
The phonetic system of language is a set of phonetic units arranged in an orderly way to replace
each other in a given framework. Phonetics is divided into two major components (or systems):
segmental phonetics, which is concerned with individual sounds (i.e. "segments" of speech) and
suprasegmental phonetics dealing with the larger units of connected speech: syllables, words, phrases
and texts.
1. Segmental units are sounds of speech (vowels and consonants) which form the vocalic and
consonantal systems;
2.
Suprasegmental, or prosodic, units are syllables, accentual (rhythmic) units, intonation
groups, utterances, which form the subsystem of pitch, stress, rhythm, tempo, pauses.
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Now we may define phonetics as a branch of linguistics that studies speech sounds in the broad
sense, comprising segmental sounds, suprasegmental units and prosodic phenomena (pith, stress,
tempo, rhythm, pauses).
Let us consider the four components of the phonetic system of language.
The first and the basic component of the phonetic structure of language is the system of its
segmental phonemes existing in the material form of their allophones. The phonemic component has 3
aspects, or manifestations:
1. the system of its phonemes as discrete isolated units;
2. the distribution of the allophones of the phonemes;
3.
the methods of joining speech sounds together in words and at their junction, or the
methods of effecting VC, CV, CC, and VV transitions.
The second component is the syllabic structure of words. The syllabic structure has two aspects,
which are inseparable from each other: syllable formation and syllable division.
The third component is the accentual structure of words as items of vocabulary (i.e. as
pronounced in isolation). The accentual structure of words has three aspects: the physical (acoustic)
nature of word accent; the position of the accent in disyllabic and polysyllabic words; the degrees of
word accent.
The fourth component of the phonetic system is the intonational structure of utterances. The four
components of the phonetic system of language (phonemic, syllabic, accentual and intonational) all
constitute its pronunciation (in the broad sense of the term).
3. Branches of phonetics
We know that the phonic medium can be studied from four points of view: the articulatory, the
acoustic, the auditory, and the functional.
We may consider the branches of phonetics according to these aspects. Articulatory phonetics is
the study of the way the vocal organs are used to produce speech sounds. Acoustic phonetics is the
study of the physical properties of speech sounds. Auditory phonetics is the study of the way people
perceive speech sounds. Of these three branches of phonetics, the longest established, and until
recently the most highly developed, is articulatory phonetics. For this reason, most of terms used by
linguists to refer to speech-sounds are articulatory in origin.
Phoneticians are also interested in the way in which sound phenomena function in a particular
language. In other words, they study the abstract side of the sounds of language. The branch of
phonetics concerned with the study of the functional (linguistic) aspect of speech sounds is called
phonology. By contrast with phonetics, which studies all possible sounds that the human vocal
apparatus can make, phonology studies only those contrasts in sound which make differences of
meaning within language.
Besides the four branches of phonetics described above, there are other divisions of the science.
We may speak of general phonetics and the phonetics of a particular language (special or descriptive
phonetics). General phonetics studies all the sound-producing possibilities of the human speech
apparatus and the ways they are used for purpose of communication. The phonetics of a particular
language studies the contemporary phonetic system of the particular language, i.e. the system of its
pronunciation, and gives a description of all the phonetic units of the language. Descriptive phonetics
is based on general phonetics.
Linguists distinguish also historical phonetics whose aim is to trace and establish the successive
changes in the phonetic system of a given language (or a language family) at different stages of its
development. Historical phonetics is a part of the history of language.
Closely connected with historical phonetics is comparative phonetics whose aims are to study the
correlation between the phonetic systems of two or more languages and find out the correspondences
between the speech sounds of kindred languages.
Phonetics can also be theoretical and practical. At the faculties of Foreign Languages in this
country, two courses are introduced:
1. Practical, or normative, phonetics that studies the substance, the material form of phonetic
phenomena in relation to meaning.
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2. Theoretical phonetics, which is mainly concerned with the functioning of phonetic units in
language.
This dichotomy is that which holds between theoretical and applied linguists. Briefly, theoretical
linguistics studies language with a view to constructing theory of its structure and functions and
without regard to any practical applications that the investigation of language might have. Applied
linguistics has as its concerns the application of the concepts and findings of linguistics to a variety of
practical tasks, including language teaching.
All the branches of phonetics are closely connected not only with one another but also with other
branches of linguistics. This connection is determined by the fact that language is a system whose
components are inseparably connected with one another.
Phonetics is also connected with many other sciences. Acoustic phonetics is connected with
physics and mathematics. Articulatory phonetics is connected with physiology, anatomy, and
anthropology. Historical phonetics is connected with general history of the people whose language is
studied; it is also connected with archaeology. Phonology is connected with communication
(information) theory, mathematics, and statistics.
СРС
1. Write the plural forms of these words and transcribe them. Prove that phonetics is connected
with grammar.
Witch judge
half
loaf
wife
glass
crash
knife
self
wolf
fox
calf
leaf
actress gas
elf
life
thief
hostess
2. Write the three forms of these verbs and transcribe them. Prove that phonetics is connected
with grammar.
beg
compel
stop
work
nod
invent
live
recognize wrap
pass
permit rest
3.
Transcribe these words. Underline the interchanging vowels and consonants in the
corresponding parts of speech.
advice—to advise
use—to use
a house—to house
an excuse—to excuse
a
device—to devise
loose—to lose close—to close
4.
Read these words and word combinations. Translate them into Russian. Prove that
phonetics is connected with lexicology through accent.
'break-promise—'break 'promise
'heavy-weight — 'heavy 'weight
'red-book—'red
'book
'blue-stocking—'blue 'stocking
'blue-nose—'blue 'nose
'blue-coat — 'blue 'coat
'blue-bonnet—'blue 'bonnet
'black-hole—'black 'hole
'black mass—'black 'mass
'redbreast — 'red 'breast
'bluebell — 'blue 'bell
'bluestone— 'blue 'stone
'blue-lines — 'blue 'lines
'bluebottle—'blue 'bottle
'blackshirt — 'black 'shirt
'black-face—'black 'face
'bird's-eye—'bird's 'eye
'bread-and-butter — 'bread and 'butter
5.
Transcribe, read and translate these pairs of words. Single out the sounds that
differentiate the meaning of the words.
sell—sale
model — modal
saw—so
Polish — polish
guard—guide
worth—
worse truth — truce
still—steel pool —pull
ship—sheep sit—seat fill —feel
live—
leave
ill —eel
slip — sleep but—bath breath—breadth
6.
Read these compounds. Single out the sounds
that interchange. Translate the compounds into Russian.
ping—pong
sing—song
slip — slop
tip—top
wish—wash
wishy—washy
knick — knack
mingle — mangle
mish — mash
prittle — prattle
rickety — rackety
riff—raff
tip — top
shilly – shally
tick – tack
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zig – zag
7.
Translate these words and then transcribe them.
1.
очень; меняться, изменяться; 2. личный; персонал, личный состав; 3. костюм;
свита; 4. патруль; бензин; 5. мэр; майор; 6. бунт; разгром; маршрут, путь; 7. выносить, терпеть;
пиво; 8. год; ухо; 9. набережная; очередь; 10. влиять; эффект; 11. сквозняк; засуха; 12. волосы;
заяц; наследник; 13. наливать; бедный; лапа; 14. мужество; вагон: 15. требовать; приобретать
8.
Give the plural form of these words and then transcribe both forms.
wolf, wife, life, leaf, thief, knife, sheaf, half, self, elf, loaf, calf, echo, potato, hostess, tigress,
basis, thesis, crisis, analysis, man, foot, goose, mouse, bath, house, class, box, dish, inch, phenomenon
9.
Single out pairs of sounds the interchange of which makes the words different parts of
speech.
glaze v—glass n
loathe v—loath n
lose v—loss n
clothe v—cloth n
halve v—half n
live v—life n
prove v—proof n
serve v—serf n
10.
Accent and transcribe these words. Translate them into Russian.
insult — to insult
object—to object
outgo — to outgo
produce—to produce subject—to subject
outgrowth—to outgrow
outlay—to outlay
outthrow—to outthrow present—to present
protest—to protest
torment—to torment
Занятие № 2
Phoneme as a unit of language
Outline
1. Definition of the phoneme and its functions
2. Types of allophones and main features of the phoneme
3. Methods of the phonemic analysis
4. Main phonological schools
To know how sounds are produced is not enough to describe and classify them as language units.
When we talk about the sounds of language, the term "sound" can be interpreted in two different ways.
First, we can say that [t] and [d], for example, are two different sounds in English: e.g. ten-den, seatseed. But on the other hand, we know that [t] in let us and [t] in let them are not the same. In both
examples the sounds differ in one articulatory feature only. In the second case the difference between
the sounds has functionally no significance. It is clear that the sense of "sound" in these two cases is
different. To avoid this ambiguity, linguists use two separate terms: phoneme and allophone.
The phoneme is a minimal abstract linguistic unit realized in speech in the form of speech
sounds opposable to other phonemes of the same language to distinguish the meaning of morphemes
and words.
Let us consider the phoneme from the point of view of its aspects.
Firstly, the phoneme is a functional unit. In phonetics function is usually understood as a role of
the various units of the phonetic system in distinguishing one morpheme from another, one word from
another or one utterance from another. The opposition of phonemes in the same phonetic environment
differentiates the meaning of morphemes and words: e.g. bath-path, light-like. Sometimes the
opposition of phonemes serves to distinguish the meaning of the whole phrases: He was heard badly He was hurt badly. Thus we may say that the phoneme can fulfill the distinctive function.
Secondly, the phoneme is material, real and objective. That means it is realized in speech in the
form of speech sounds, its allophones. The phonemes constitute the material form of morphemes, so
this function may be called constitutive function.
Thirdly, the phoneme performs the recognitive function, because the use of the right allophones
and other phonetic units facilitates normal recognition. We may add that the phoneme is a material and
objective unit as well as an abstract and generalized one at the same time.
2. Types of allophones and the main features of the phoneme
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Let us consider the English phoneme [d]. It is occlusive, forelingual, apical, alveolar, lenis
consonant. This is how it sounds in isolation or in such words as door, darn, down, etc, when it retains
its typical articulatory characteristics. In this case the consonant [d] is called principal allophone. The
allophones which do not undergo any distinguishable changes in speech are called principal.
Allophones that occur under influence of the neighboring sounds in different phonetic situations
are called subsidiary, e.g.:
a. deal, did - it is slightly palatalized before front vowels
b. bad pain, bedtime - it is pronounced without any plosion
с. sudden, admit - it is pronounced with nasal plosion before [n], [m]
d. dry - it becomes post-alveolar followed by [r].
If we consider the production of the allophones of the phoneme above we will find out that they
possess three articulatory features in common - all of them are forelingual lenis stops. Consequently,
though allophones of the same phoneme possess similar articulatory features they may frequently
show considerable phonetic differences.
Native speakers do not observe the difference between the allophones of the same phoneme. At
the same time they realize that allophones of each phoneme possess a bundle of distinctive features
that makes this phoneme functionally different from all other phonemes of the language. This
functionally relevant bundle is called the invariant of the phoneme. All the allophones of the phoneme
[d] instance, are occlusive, forelingual, lenis. If occlusive articulation is changed for constrictive one [d]
will be replaced by [z]: e. g. breed - breeze, deal — zeal, the articulatory features which form the
invariant of the phoneme are called distinctive or relevant.
To extract relevant features of the phoneme we have to oppose it to some other phoneme in the
phonetic context.
If the opposed sounds differ in one articulatory feature and this difference brings about changes
in the meaning this feature is called relevant: for example, port — court, [p] and [k] are consonants,
occlusive, fortis; the only difference being that [p] is labial and [t] is lingual.
The articulatory features which do not serve to distinguish meaning are called non-distinctive,
irrelevant or redundant. For example, it is impossible to oppose an aspirated [ph] to a non-aspirated one
in the same phonetic context to distinguish meaning.
We know that anyone who studies a foreign language makes mistakes in the articulation of
sounds. L.V. Shcherba classifies the pronunciation errors as phonological and phonetic. If an
allophone is replaced by an allophone of a different phoneme the mistake is called phonological. If an
allophone of the phoneme is replaced by another allophone of the same phoneme the mistake is called
phonetic.
3. Methods of the phonemic analysis
The aim of the phonological analysis is, firstly, to determine which differences of sounds are
phonemic and which are non-phonemic and, secondly, to find the inventory of phonemes of the
language.
As it was mentioned above, phonology has its own methods of investigation. Semantic method is
applied for phonological analysis of both unknown languages and languages already described. The
method is based on a phonemic rule that phonemes can distinguish words and morphemes when
opposed to one another. It consists in systematic substitution of one sound for another in order to find
out in which cases where the phonetic context remains the same such replacing leads to a change of
meaning. This procedure is called the commutation test. It consists in finding minimal pairs of words
and their grammatical forms. For example:
pen [pen]
Ben [ben]
gain [gain]
cane [kain]
ten [ten]
den[den
Minimal pairs are useful for establishing the phonemes of the language. Thus, a phoneme can
only perform its distinctive function if it is opposed to another phoneme in the same position. Such
an opposition is called phonological. Let us consider the classification of phonological oppositions
worked out by N.S. Trubetzkoy. It is based on the number of distinctive articulatory features
underlying the opposition.
1. If the opposition is based on a single difference in the articulation of two speech sounds, it
is a single phonological opposition, e.g. [p]-[t], as in [pen]-[ten]; bilabial vs. forelingual, all the
other features are the same.
2. If the sounds in distinctive opposition have two differences in their articulation, the
opposition is double one, or a sum of two single oppositions, e.g. [p]-[d], as in [pen]-[den], 1)
bilabial vs. forelingual 2) voiceless-fortis vs. voiced-lenis
3. If there are three articulatory differences, the opposition is triple one, or a sum of three
single oppositions, e.g. [p]- [ð], as in [pei]-[ ðei]: 1) bilabial vs. forelingual, 2) occlusive vs.
constrictive, 3) voiceless-fortis vs. voiced-lenis.
American descriptivists, whose most zealous representative is, perhaps, Zellig Harris, declare
the distributional method to be the only scientific one. At the same time they declare the semantic
method unscientific because they consider recourse to meaning external to linguistics. Descriptivists
consider the phonemic analysis in terms of distribution. They consider it possible to discover the
phonemes of a language by the rigid application of a distributional method. It means to group all the
sounds pronounced by native speakers into phoneme according to the laws of phonemic and
allophonic distribution:
1. Allophones of different phonemes occur in the same phonetic context. In this case their
distribution is contrastive.
2. Allophones of the same phoneme(s) never occur in the same phonetic context. In this case
their distribution is complementary.
There is, however, a third possibility, namely, that the sounds both occur in a language but the
speakers are inconsistent in the way they use them, for example, калоши-галоши, and [‘ei∫э ‘егжэ]. In such cases we must take them as free variants of a single phoneme. We could explain the
case on the basis of sociolinguistics. Thus, there are three types of distribution: contrastive,
complementary and free variation.
4.
Main phonological schools
Let us consider the phrase [на лугу кос нет] and words [вАлы ], [сАма]. Logically, there can
only be three answers to the question: which phonemes are represented by the consonant sound [c]
in [кос] and by the vowel sound [А] in [вАлы]:
M (1) If [кос] and [вАлы] are grammatical forms of the words коза and вол respectively,
then the consonant [c] represents phoneme /з/, while the vowel [А] is an allophone of the phoneme
/o/. If [кос] and [вАлы] are grammatical forms of the words коса and вал respectively, then the
consonant [c] belongs to the phoneme /с/, while the vowel [А] should be assigned to the phoneme
/а/.
СП (2) The consonant [c] in [кос] belongs to the phoneme Id no matter whether it is a form of
коза or that of коса, while the vowel [А] in [вАлы] represents the phoneme /a/ no matter whether it
is a form of вол or that of вал.
П (3) The consonant [c] represents neither phoneme /з/, nor phoneme Id, while the vowel [А]
in [вАлы] does not belong either to the phoneme /a/ or to the phoneme /о/.
Since there are three possible answers to the above questions, there are three schools of
thought on the problem of identifying phonemes.
Those linguists who give the first answer belong to the so-called morphological
(Moscow phonological) school (R.I. Avanesov, V.N. Sidorov, P.S. Kuznetsov, A.A. Reformatsky,
and N.F. Yakovlev). The exponents of this school maintain that two different phonemes in different
allomorphs of the same morpheme may be represented on the synchronic level by one and the same
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sound, which is their common variant and, consequently, one and the same sound may belong to
one phoneme in one word and to another phoneme in another word.
In order to decide to which phoneme the sounds in a phonologically weak (neutral) position
belong, it is necessary to find another allomorph of the same morpheme in which the phoneme
occurs in the strong position, i.e. one in which it retains all its distinctive features. The strong
position of a Russian consonant phoneme is that before a vowel sound of the same word, whereas
the strong position of a vowel phoneme is that under stress. The consonant [c] in кос belongs to the
phoneme Id because in the strong position in such allomorphs of the same morpheme as in коса,
косы the phoneme is definitely /с/. In коз the same sound [c] is a variant of the phoneme /з/
because in the strong position, as in коза, козы, the phoneme is definitely /з/. The vowel [А] in
валы is an allophone of the phoneme /a/ because the phoneme occurs in the strong position in вал
while the same vowel [А] in волы is a variant of the phoneme /o/ because this phoneme is found in
the strong position in вол.
According to this school of thought, the neutral vowel sound in original should be assigned to
the English phoneme /σ/ because this phoneme occurs in the strong position in such word as origin.
The second school of thought, originated by L.V. Shcherba, advocates the autonomy of the
phoneme and its independence from the morpheme. Different allomorphs of a morpheme may differ
from each other on the synchronic level not only in their allophonic, but also in their phonemic
composition. According to the Leningrad (Petersburg) phonological school (L.V. Shcherba, L.R.
Zinder, M.I. Matusevich), speech sounds in a phonologically neutral position belong to that
phoneme with whose principal variant they completely or nearly coincide. Thus, the sound [c] in
[кос] should be assigned to the phoneme /с/ because it fully coincides with the latter's principal
variant, which is free from the influence of neighboring speech sounds. The vowel [А] in [вАлы]
should be assigned to the phoneme /a/ because it nearly coincides with the latter's principal variant
[a]. The vowel [ъ] in [въдАвос] does not even resemble either [o] or [a] or [А] but it is still
assigned to the /a/ phoneme because both /o/ and /a/ are reduced to [ъ].
According to the third school of thought, there exist types of phonemes higher than the unit
phoneme. Different linguists call them differently. One of the terms for them introduced by Prague
Linguistic Circle, namely by N.S. Trubetzkoy and R. Jacobson, is archiphoneme. According to
them, the archiphoneme is a combination of distinctive features common to two phonemes. Thus
each of the speech sounds [c], [з] represents the phonemes /c/, /з/. These two phonemes differ from
each other only in matter of voice, while both of them possess the other two distinctive features: (1)
forelingual (2) fricative articulation. These two features together constitute the archiphoneme to
which both [c] and [з] belong. This archiphoneme is, therefore, neither voiceless nor voiced. It
designated by Russian capital letter C. The sound [c] in [кос] in both На лугу кос нет and На лугу
коз нет belongs to this archiphoneme and not to the phoneme /c/ or /з/.
The phoneme /а/ and /о/ belong to archiphoneme which is realized in the sound [A], as in
[вАлы] meaning both валы and волы.
Practical Task
1.
Какие аллофоны фонемы /d/ вы можете назвать? Приведите примеры.
2.
Проанализируйте аллофоны фонемы /t/ в следующих словах: town, tool, team,
that, written, bottle, stable, at the door, white coat, tram.
3.
Приведите примеры, иллюстрирующие случаи, в которых один звук является
аллофоном разных фонем.
6. На каких различиях основаны оппозиции между следующими фонемами: a) /k/ —/t/;
б) /k/ —/G/; в) /k/ — /z/? Приведите свои примеры одинарных, двойных и множественных
оппозиций.
Занятие № 3
The system of the English phonemes
Outline
1. The system of consonant phonemes. Problem of affricates
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2. The system of vowel phonemes. Problems of diphthongs and vowel length
The phonological analysis of English consonant sounds helps to distinguish 24 phonemes: [p,
b, t, d, k, g, f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ∫, ж(не нашла ничего лучше ), h, t∫, dж, m, n, ŋ, w, r, 1, j]. Principles
of classification suggested by Russian phoneticians provide the basis for establishing of the
following distinctive oppositions in the system of English consonants:
There are some problems of phonological character in the English consonantal system; it is
the problem of affricates - their phonological status and their number. The question is: what kind of
facts a phonological theory has to explain.
1) Are the English [t∫, dж] sounds monophonemic entities or biphonemic
combinations (sequences, clusters)?
2) If they are monophonemic, how many phonemes of the same kind exist in English, or, in
other words, can such clusters as [tr, dr] and [tθ, dð] be considered affricates?
To define it is not an easy matter. One thing is clear: these sounds are complexes because
articulatory we can distinguish two elements. Considering phonemic duality of affricates, it is
necessary to analyze the relation of affricates to other consonant phonemes to be able to define their
status in the system.
The problem of affricates is a point of considerable controversy among phoneticians.
According to Russian specialists in English phonetics, there are two affricates in English: [t∫, dж]. D.
Jones points out there are six of them: [t∫, dж], [ts, dz], and [tr, dr]. A.C. Gimson increases their
number adding two more affricates: [tθ, tð]. Russian phoneticians look at English affricates through
the eyes of a phoneme theory, according to which a phoneme has three aspects: articulatory,
acoustic and functional, the latter being the most significant one. As to British phoneticians, their
primary concern is the articulatory-acoustic unity of these complexes.
Before looking at these complexes from a functional point of view it is necessary to define
their articulatory indivisibility.
According to N.S. Trubetzkoy's point of view a sound complex may be considered
monophonemic if: a) its elements belong to the same syllable; b) it is produced by one articulatory
effort; c) its duration should not exceed normal duration of elements. Let us apply these criteria to
the sound complexes.
1. Syllabic indivisibility
butcher [but∫ -ə]
lightship [lait-∫ip]
mattress [mætr-is]
footrest [fut-rest]
curtsey [kз:-tsi]
out-set
[aut-set]
eighth [eitθ]
whitethorn [wait-θo:n]
In the words in the left column the sounds [t∫], [tr], [ts], [tθ] belong to one syllable and cannot
be divided into two elements by a syllable dividing line.
2. Articulatory indivisibility. Special instrumental analysis shows that all the sound
complexes are homogeneous and produced by one articulatory effort.
3. Duration. With G.P. Torsuyev we could state that length of sounds depends on the
position in the phonetic context, therefore it cannot serve a reliable basis in phonological analysis.
He writes that the length of English [t∫] in the words chair and match is different; [t∫] in match is
considerably longer than |t| in mat and may be even longer than [∫] in mash. This does not prove,
however, that [t∫] is biphonemic.
According to morphological criterion a sound complex is considered to be monophonemic if a
morpheme boundary cannot pass within it because it is generally assumed that a phoneme is
morphologically indivisible. If we consider [t∫], [dж] from this point of view we could be secure to
grant them a monophonemic status, since they are indispensable. As to [ts], [dz] and [tθ], [dð]
complexes their last elements are separate morphemes [s], [z], [θ], [ð] so these elements are easily
singled out by the native speaker in any kind of phonetic context. These complexes do not
correspond to the phonological models of the English language and cannot exist in the system of
phonemes. The case with [tr], [dr] complexes is still more difficult.
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By way of conclusion we could say that the two approaches have been adopted towards this
phenomenon are as follows: the finding that there are eight affricates in English [t∫], [dж], [tr], [dr],
[ts], [dz], [tð], [dθ] is consistent with articulatory and acoustic point of view, because in this respect
the entities are indivisible. This is the way the British phoneticians see the situation. On the other
hand, Russian phoneticians are consistent in looking at the phenomenon from the morphological
and the phonological point of view which allows them to define [t∫], [dж] as monophonemic units
and [tr], [dr], [ts], [dz], [tð], [dθ] as biphonemic complexes. However, this point of view reveals the
possibility of ignoring the articulatory and acoustic indivisibility.
2. The system of vowel phonemes. Problems of diphthongs and vowel length
The following 20 vowel phonemes are distinguished in BBC English (RP): [i:, a:, o:, u:, з:, i,
e, æ, σ, υ, л(типа крышка домика), ə; ei, ai, oi, аυ, eυ, υə, iə].
Principles of classification provide the basis for the establishment of the following distinctive
oppositions:
1. Stability of articulation
1.1. monophthongs vs. diphthongs
bit - bait, kit - kite, John - join, debt — doubt
1.2. diphthongs vs. diphthongoids
bile - bee, boat — boot, raid - rude
2. Position of the tongue
2.1. horizontal movement of the tongue
a) front vs. central
cab — curb, bed — bird
b) back vs. central
pull – pearl, cart - curl, call - curl
2.2. vertical movement of the tongue
a) close
(high)
vs.
mid-open
(mid)
bid — bird, week - work
b) open
(low)
vs.
mid-open
(mid)
lark - lurk, call — curl, bard-bird
3. Position of the lips rounded vs. unrounded don — darn, pot - part
The English diphthongs are, like the affricates, the object of a sharp phonological
controversy, whose essence is the same as in the case of affricates are the English diphthongs
biphonemic sound complexes or composite monophonemic entities?
Diphthongs are defined differently by different authors. One definition is based on the
ability of a vowel to form a syllable. Since in a diphthong only one element serves as a syllabic
nucleus, a diphthong is a single sound. Another definition of a diphthong as a single sound is based
on the instability of the second element. The 3d group of scientists defines a diphthong from the
accentual point of view: since only one element is accented and the other is unaccented, a
diphthong is a single sound.
D. Jones defines diphthongs as unisyllabic gliding sounds in the articulation of which the
organs of speech start from one position and then glide to another position.
N.S. Trubetzkoy states that a diphthong should be (a) unisyllabic, that is the parts of a
diphthong cannot belong to two syllables; (b) monophonemic with gliding articulation; (c) its
length should not exceed the length of a single phoneme.
In accordance with the principle of structural simplicity and economy American
descriptivists liquidated the diphthongs in English as unit phonemes.
The same phonological criteria may be used for justifying the monophonemic
treatment of the English diphthongs as those applicable to the English affricates. They are the
criteria of articulatory, morphophonological (and, in the case of diphthongs, also syllabic)
indivisibility, commutability and duration. Applied to the English diphthongs, all these criteria
support the view of their monophonemic status.
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Problem of length. There are long vowel phonemes in English and short. However, the length
of the vowels is not the only distinctive feature of minimal pairs like Pete -pit, beet - bit, etc. In
other words the difference between i: i. u: - υ is not only quantitative but also qualitative, which is
conditioned by different positions of the bulk of the tongue. For example, in words bead- bid not
only the length of the vowels is different but in the [i:] articulation the bulk of the tongue occupies
more front and high position then in the articulation of [i].
Qualitative difference is the main relevant feature that serves to differentiate long and short
vowel phonemes because quantitative characteristics of long vowels depend on the position they
occupy in a word:
(a) they are the longest in the terminal position: bee, bar, her;
(b) they are shorter before voiced consonants: bead, hard, cord;
(c) they are the shortest before voiceless consonants: beet, cart.
СРС Practical tasks:
1.Circle the words that begin with a bilabial consonant:
a) Mat
gnat
sat
bat
rat
pat
Circle the words that begin with a velar consonant:
b) Knot got lot cot hot pot
Circle the words that begin with a labio-dental consonant:
c) Fat
cat
that
mat chat vat
Circle the words that begin with a dental consonant:
d) Pie
guy
shy
thigh
thy
high
Circle the words that begin with a palato-alveolar consonant:
a) Sigh
shy
tie
thigh
thy lie
Circle the words that end with a nasal:
b) Rain rang dumb deaf
Circle the words that begin with a lateral:
c) Nut lull bar rob one
Circle the words in which the consonant in the middle is voiced:
d) tracking mother
robber leisure massive stomach
razor
Circle the words that begin with an alveolar consonant:
a) Zip
nip
lip
sip tip
dip
Circle the words that end with an affricate:
b) much back edge ooze
Circle the words that end with a stop:
c ) pill lip lit graph crab dog hide laugh back
Circle the words in which the consonant in the middle is voiced:
d) tracking mother
robber leisure massive stomach
razor
2. Characterize the given sounds according to the model:
Model: [ k] - back lingual, occlusive voiceless consonant
[g] – , [z] –, [v] -, [æ ] -, [ŋ] -, [b], [e ]
3. Transcribe and intone, paying attention to the position of the nucleus:
This is a good book.
That is a nice thing.
It is a short way.
It’s a deep lake.
4. Define the type of the phonetic phenomena in the next expressions:
It’ll be,
it cost,
play with toys,
Mrs. Myrtle is always flirting
Who is this,
on the radio,
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In the morning,
in the middle,
under the tree,
let it be a riddle of some kind
Занятие № 4
Topic: The Syllabic Structure of the English Language
The Outline
1.
The problem of definition of a syllable.
2.
Functional characteristics of the syllable.
3.
Classification of syllables.
4.
Some theories on syllable formation.
5.
The syllabic structure of English.
6.Особенности слогораздела и места ударения в английском языке (доклад). Плоткин
В.Я. Строй английского языка. – М., 1989, 239 с. (с. 197-199).
Speech can be broken into minimal pronounceable units into which sounds show a tendency
to cluster or group. These smallest phonetic groups arc generally given the name of syllables. Being
the smallest pronounceable units, syllables form morphemes, words and phrases. Each of these units
is characterized by a certain syllabic structure. Thus a meaningful language unit phonetically may
be considered from the point of view of syllable formation and syllable division.
The syllable is a complicated phenomenon and like a phoneme it can be studied on four levels
- articulatory, acoustic, auditory and functional. The complexity of the phenomenon gave rise to
many theories.
We could start with the so-called expiratory (chest pulse or pressure) theory by R.H. Stetson.
This theory is based on the assumption that expiration in speech is a pulsating process and each
syllable should correspond to a single expiration. So the number of syllables in an utterance is
determined by the number of expirations made in the production of the utterance. This theory was
strongly criticized by Russian and foreign linguists. G.P. Torsuyev, for example, wrote that in a
phrase a number of words and consequently a number of syllables can be pronounced with a single
expiration. This fact makes the validity of the theory doubtful.
Another theory of syllable put forward by O. Jespersen is generally called the sonority theory.
According to O. Jespersen, each sound is characterized by a certain degree of sonority which is
understood us acoustic property of a sound that determines its perceptibility. According to this
sound property a ranking of speech sounds could be established: <the least sonorous> voiceless
plosives  voiced fricatives voiced plosives  voiced fricatives  sonorants  close vowels
open vowels <the most sonorous>. In the word plant for example we may use the following
wave of sonority: [pla:nt]. According to V.A. Vasssilyev the most serious drawback of this theory is
that it fails to explain the actual mechanism of syllable formation and syllable division. Besides, the
concept of sonority is not very clearly defined.
Further experimental work aimed to description of the syllable resulted in lot of other theories.
However the question of articulatory mechanism of syllable in a still an open question in phonetics.
We might suppose that this mechanism is similar in all languages and could be regarded as phonetic
universal.
In Russian linguistics there has been adopted the theory of syllable by LV Shcherba. It is
called the theory of muscular tension. In most languages there is the syllabic phoneme in the centre
of the syllable which is usually a vowel phoneme or, in some languages, a sonorant. The phonemes
preceding or following the syllabic peak are called marginal. The tense of articulation increases
within the range of prevocalic consonants and then decreases within the range of postvocalic
consonants.
Russian linguist and psychologist N.I. Zhinkin has suggested the so-called loudness theory
which seems to combine both production and perception levels. The experiments carried out by N.I.
Zhinkin showed that the arc of loudness of perception level is formed due to variations of the
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volume pharyngeal passage which is modified by contractions of its walls. The narrowing of the
passage and the increase in muscular tension which results from it reinforce the actual loudness of a
vowel thus forming the peak of the syllabic. So the syllable is the arc оf loudness which correlates
with the arc of articulatory effort on the speed production level since variations in loudness are due
to the work of all speech mechanisms.
It is perfectly obvious that no phonetician has succeeded so far in giving an adequate
explanation of what the syllable is. The difficulties seem to arise from the various possibilities of
approach to the unit. There exist two points of view:
1. Sоme linguists consider the syllable to be a purely articulatory unit which lacks any
functional value. This point of view is defended on the ground that the boundaries of syllables do
not always coincide with those of morphemes.
2. However the majority of linguists treat the syllable as the smallest pronounceable unit
which can reveal some linguistic function.
Trying to define the syllable from articulatory point of view we may talk about universals.
When we mean the functional aspect of the syllable it should be defined with the reference to the
structure of one particular language.
The definition of the syllable from the functional point of view tends to single out the
following features of the syllable:
a) a syllable is a chain of phonemes of varying length;
b) a syllable is constructed on the basis of contrast of its constituents (which is usually of
vowel - consonant type);
c) the nucleus of a syllable is a vowel, the presence of consonants is optional; there are
no languages in which vowels are not used as syllable nuclei, however, there are languages in which
this function is performed by consonants;
d) the distribution of phonemes in the syllabic structure follows by the rules which are
specific enough for a particular language.
2. The structure and functions of syllables in English
Syllable formation in English is based on the phonological opposition vowel - consonant.
Vowels are usually syllabic while consonants are not with the exceptions of [l], [m], [n], which
become syllabic in a final position preceded by a
noise consonant: bottle [bσtl], bottom [bσtm], button [b/\tn] and [r] (in those accents which
pronounce [r]) perhaps [præps].
The structure of English syllables can be summarized as follows:
• Many syllables have one or more consonants preceding the nucleus. These
make up the syllable onset: me, so, plow.
The English language has developed the closed type of syllable as the fundamental one while
in Russian it is the open type that forms the basis of syllable formation.
The other aspect of this component is syllable division. The problem of syllable division in
case of intervocalic consonants and their clusters, like in such words as city, extra, standing and
others.
Let us consider the first word ['sit.i]. There exist two possibilities:
a) the point of syllable division is after the intervocalic consonant:
b) the point of syllable division is inside the consonant.
In both cases the first syllable remains closed because the shot vowel should remains check
The result of instrumentally analyses show, that the point of syllable division in such words is
inside the intervocalic consonant. EPD indicates the point of division after the consonant.
The second case. There are two syllables in the word extra but where should the boundary
between them fall?
1) [e - kstrə]. It is unlike that people would opt for a division between [e] and [kstrə] because
there are no syllables in English which begin with consonant sequence [kstr].
2) Similarly, a division between [ekstr] and [ə] would be unnatural.
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3) [ek - strə], [eks - trə], [ekst - rə] are possible. People usually prefer either of the first two
options here, but there no obvious way of deciding between them.
In some cases we may take into account the morphemic structure of words. For example,
standing consists of two syllables; on phonetic grounds [stæn - diŋ). on grammatical grounds [stænd
- iŋ].
Now we shall consider two functions of the syllable.
The first is constitutive function. It lies in its ability to be a part of a word itself. The syllables
form language units of greater magnitude that is words, morphemes, and utterances. It this respect
two things should be emphasized. First, the syllable is the unit within which the relations between
distinctive features of phonemes and their acoustic correlates are revealed. Second, within a syllable
(or syllables) prosodic characteristics of speech are realized, which form the stress pattern of a word
and the intonation structure of an utterance. In sum, the syllable is a specific minimal structure of
both segmental and suprasegmental features.
The other function is distinctive one. In this respect the syllable is characterized
by its ability to differentiate words and word-forms. One minimal pare has been found in English to
illustrate the word distinctive function in the syllabic: nitrate — night-rate. There analogical
distinction between word combinations can be illustrated by many more examples: an aim - a name;
an ice house - a nice house, etc. Sometimes the difference in syllable division may be the basic
ground for differentiation in such pairs as I saw her rise.- I saw her eyes; I saw the meat — I saw
them eat.
Practical tasks
1. Transcribe the words. Define how many syllables are there in the given words and define
its boundaries. Prove your decision.
catfish
melt
carpet
nature
eagle
metal
announced
mileage
funny
proper
syllable
mile
1.
Read, transcribe these words with two equal stresses and translate them:
Unaided
non-payment
misspell
Unalienable
non-resident
misuse
Unaltered
ex-minister
misrule
Unarmed
non-stop
misplace
Unaspirated
reopen
underofficer
Unclean
reorganize
underdressed
Anti-national
repack
vice-admiral
Anticyclonic
prepaid
pre-history
3 Read and transcribe these compound words denoting a single idea and translate them:
Butterfly, newcomer, butter-fingers, blacksmith, greatcoat, airplane, bluebottle, butter-boat,
butter dish, bookmark
4. Put down the stress marks in the words below:
Centralization, modification, composition, nationalization, organization, anticipation,
intersession, satisfactory, sentimentality, overbalance, justification, hospitability, distribution,
representation, unaccountable, artificial, fundamental, administration, characteristic
Занятие № 5
Topic: Word stress in English
Outline
1. Nature of word stress
2. Place of word stress in English. Degrees of stress
3. Functions and tendencies of the English stress
4. Typology of accentual structures
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На лабораторно-практических занятиях разбираются теоретические вопросы, а также
обсуждаются выводы, к которым студенты пришли в результате выполнения практического
задания.
При подготовке к лабораторно-практическому занятию рекомендуется использовать
следующий дополнительный материал.
1. Nature of word stress
The sequence of syllables in the word is not pronounced identically. The syllable or syllables
which are uttered with more prominence than the other syllables of the word are said to be stressed
or accented. Stress in the isolated word is termed word stress; stress in connected speech is termed
sentence stress.
Stress is defined differently by different authors. B.A. Bogoroditsky, for instance, defined
stress as an increase of energy, accompanied by an increase of expiratory and articulatory activity.
D. Jones defined stress as the degree of force, which is accompanied by a strong force of exhalation
and gives an impression of loudness. H. Sweet also stated that stress, is connected with the force of
breath. According to A.C. Gimson, the effect of prominence is achieved by any or all of four factors:
force, tone, length and vowel colour.
If we compare stressed and unstressed syllables in the words contract ['kσntrækt], to contract
[kən'trækt], we may note that in the stressed syllable:
(a) the force is greater, which is connected with more energetic articulation;
(b) the pitch of voice is higher, which is connected with stronger tenseness of the vocal cords
and the walls of the resonance chamber;
(c) the quantity of the vowel [æ] in [kən'trækt] is greater, the vowel becomes longer;
(d) the quality of the vowel [æ] in the stressed syllable is different from the quality of this
vowel in the unstressed position, in which it is more narrow than ['æ].
On the auditory level a stressed syllable is the part of the word which has a special
prominence. It is produced by a greater loudness and length, modifications in the pitch and quality.
The physical correlates are: intensity, duration, frequency and the formant structure. All these
features can be analyzed on the acoustic level. Word stress can be defined as the singling out of one
or more syllables in a word, which is accompanied by the change of the force of utterance, pitch of
the voice, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sound, which is usually a vowel. In
different languages one of the factors constituting word stress is usually more significant than the
others. According to the most important feature different types, of word stress are distinguished in
different languages.
1) If special prominence in a stressed syllable or syllables is achieved mainly through the
intensity of articulation, such type of stress is called dynamic, or force stress.
2) If special prominence in a stressed syllable is achieved mainly through the change of pitch,
or musical tone, such accent is called musical, or tonic. It is characteristic of the Japanese, Korean
and other oriental languages.
3) If special prominence in a stressed syllable is achieved through the changes in the quantity
of the vowels, which are longer in the stressed syllables than in the unstressed ones, such type of
stress is called quantitative.
4) Qualitative type of stress is achieved through the changes in the quality of the vowel under
stress.
English word stress is traditionally defined as dynamic, but in fact, the special prominence of
the stressed syllables is manifested in the English language not only through the increase of
intensity, but also through the changes in the vowel quantity, consonant and vowel quality and pitch
of the voice.
Russian word stress is not only dynamic but mostly quantitative and qualitative. The length of
Russian vowels always depends on the position in a word.
Now we should like to distinguish the notions of word stress and sentence stress. They are
first of all different in their sphere of application as they are applied to different language units:
word stress is naturally applied to a word, as a linguistic unit, sentence stress is applied to a phrase.
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Secondly, the distinction of the rhythmic structure of a word and a phrase is clearly observed in the
cases when the word stress in notional words is omitted in a phrase, e.g. I 'don't think he is 'right or
when the rhythmic structure of the isolated word does not coincide with that of a phrase, e.g.
'Fifteen. 'Room Fifteen. 'Fifteen 'pages.
So in a speech chain the phonetic structure of a word obtains additional characteristics
connected with rhythm, melody, and tempo. Though the sentence stress falls on the syllable marked
by the word stress it is not realized in the stressed syllable of an isolated word but in a word within
speech continuum. Since the spheres of word stress and sentence stress fall apart their functions are
actually different. Sentence stress organizes a sentence into a linguistic unit, helps to form its
rhythmic and intonation pattern, and performs its distinctive function on the level of a phrase.
Stress difficulties peculiar to the accentual structure of the English language are connected
with the vowel special and inherent prominence. In identical positions the intensity of English
vowels is different. The highest in intensity is /a:/, then go /о:, з:, i:, u:, æ, σ, e, υ, i/.
All English vowels may occur in accented syllables, the only exception is /ə/, which is never
stressed. English vowels /i, и, ə υ/ tend to occur in unstressed syllables. Syllables with the syllabic
/1, m, n/ are never stressed. Unstressed diphthongs may partially lose their glide quality. In stressed
syllables English stops have complete closure, fricatives have full friction, and features of
fortis/lenis distinction are clearly defined.
2. Place of word stress in English. Degrees of stress
Languages are also differentiated according to the place of word stress. The traditional
classification of languages concerning place of stress in a word is into those with a fixed stress and
those with a free stress. In languages with a fixed stress the occurrence of the word stress is limited
to a particular syllable in a polysyllabic word. For instance, in French the stress falls on the last
syllable of the word (if pronounced in isolation), in Finnish and Czech it is fixed on the first syllable,
in Polish on the one but last syllable. In languages with a free stress its place is not confined to a
specific position in the word. In one word it may fall on the first syllable, in another on the second
syllable, in the third word — on the last syllable, etc. The free placement of stress is exemplified in
the English and Russian languages, e.g. English: 'appetite - be'ginning - ba'lloon; Russian: озеро погода - молоко.
The word stress in English as well as in Russian is not only free but it may also be shifting,
performing the semantic function of differentiating lexical units, parts of speech, grammatical forms.
In English word stress is used as a means of word-building; in Russian it marks both word-building
and word formation, e.g. 'contrast — con'trast; 'habit — habitual 'music — mu'sician; дома —
дома; чудная — чудная, воды — воды.
There are actually as many degrees of stress in a word as there are syllables. The opinions of
phoneticians differ as to how many degrees of stress are linguistically relevant in a word. The
British linguists usually distinguish three degrees of stress in the word. A.C. Gimson, for example,
shows the distribution of the degrees of stress in the word examination. The primary stress is the
strongest, it is marked by number 1, the secondary stress is the second strongest marked by 2. All
the other degrees are termed weak stress. Unstressed syllables are supposed to have weak stress.
The American scholars B. Bloch and G. Trager find four contrastive degrees of word stress, namely:
loud, reduced loud, medial and weak stresses. Other American linguists also distinguish four
degrees of word stress but term them: primary stress, secondary stress, tertiary stress and weak
stress. The difference between the secondary and tertiary stresses is very subtle and seems
subjective. The criteria of their difference are very vague. The second pretonic syllables of such
words as libe'ration, recog'nition are marked by secondary stress in BrE, in AmE they are said to
have tertiary stress. In AmE tertiary stress also affects the suffixes -ory, -ary, -ony of nouns and the
suffixes –ate, -ize, -y of verbs, which are considered unstressed in BrE, e.g. 'territory, 'ceremony,
'dictionary; 'demonstrate, 'organize, 'simplify.
British linguists do not always deny the existence of tertiary stress as a tendency to use a
tertiary stress on a post-tonic syllable in RP is also traced.
3. Functions and tendencies of the English stress
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Word stress in a language performs three functions.
1. Word stress constitutes a word, it organizes the syllables of a word into a language unit
having a definite accentual structure, that is a pattern of relationship among the syllables; a word
does not exist without the word stress Thus the word stress performs the constitutive function.
Sound continuum becomes a phrase when it is divided into units organized by word stress into
words.
2. Word stress enables a person to identify a succession of syllables as a definite accentual
pattern of a word. This function of word stress is known as identificatoiy(у него так в лекции) (or
recognitive). Correct accentuation helps the listener to make the process of communication easier,
whereas the distorted accentual pattern of words, misplaced word stresses prevent normal
understanding.
3. Word stress alone is capable of differentiating the meaning of words or their forms, thus
performing its distinctive function. The accentual patterns of words or the degrees of word stress
and their positions form oppositions, e.g. 'import — im'port, 'billow — below.
The accentual structure of English words is liable to instability due to the different origin of
several layers in the Modern English word-stock. In Germanic languages the word stress originally
fell on the initial syllable or the second syllable, the root syllable in the English words with prefixes.
This tendency was called recessive. Most English words of Anglo-Saxon origin as well as the
French borrowings (dated back to the 15th century) are subjected to this recessive tendency.
Unrestricted recessive tendency is observed in the native English words having no prefix, e.g.
mother, daughter, brother, swallow, ,in assimilated French borrowings, e.g. reason, colour,
restaurant. Restricted recessive tendency marks English words with prefixes, e.g. foresee, begin,
withdraw, apart. A great number of words of Anglo-Saxon origin are monosyllabic or disyllabic,
both notional words and form words. They tend to alternate in the flow of speech, e.g. 'don't be'lieve
he's 'right.
The rhythm of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables gave birth to the rhythmical
tendency in the present-day English which caused the appearance of the secondary stress in the
multisyllabic French borrowings, e.g. revolution, organi'sation, assimilation, etc. It also explains
the placement of primary stress on the third syllable from the end in three- and four-syllable words,
e.g. 'cinema, 'situate, ar'ticulate. The interrelation of both the recessive and the rhythmical
tendencies is traced in the process of accentual assimilation of the French-borrowed word personal
on the diachronic level, e.g. perso'nal — 'perso'nal — 'personal.
The appearance of the stress on the first syllable is the result of the recessive tendency and at
the same time adaptation to the rhythmical tendency. The recessive tendency being stronger, the
trisyllabic words like personal gained the only stress on the third syllable from the end, e.g. 'family,
'library, faculty, 'possible.
The accentual patterns of the words territory, dictionary, necessary in AmE with the primary
stress on the first syllable and the tertiary stress on the third are other examples illustrating the
correlation of the recessive and rhythmical tendencies. Nowadays we witness a great number of
variations in the accentual structure of English multisyllabic words as a result of the interrelation of
the tendencies. The stress on the initial syllable is caused by the diachronical recessive tendency or
the stress on the second syllable under the influence of the strong rhythmical tendency of the
present day, e.g. 'hospitable — ho'spitable, 'distribute — dis'tribute, 'aristocrat — a'ristocrat,
'laryngoscope — la'ryngoscope.
A third tendency was traced in the instability of the accentual structure of English word stress,
the retentive tendency: a derivative often retains the stress of the original or parent word, e.g.
'similar — as'simitate, recom'mend — recommen 'dation.
4. Typology of accentual structures
The numerous variations of English word stress are systematized in the typology of accentual
structure of English words worked out by G.P. Torsuyev. He classifies them according to the
number of stressed syllables, their degree or character (the main and the secondary stress). The
distribution of stressed syllables within the word accentual types forms accentual structures of
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words. Accentual types and accentual structures are closely connected with the morphological type
of words, with the number of syllables, the semantic value of the root and the prefix of the word.
The accentual types are:
1. ['___]. This accentual type marks both simple and compound words. The accentual
structures of this type may include two and more syllables, e.g. 'fafher, 'possibly, 'mother-in-law,
'gas-pipe.
2. [ '_ '_ ]. The accentual type is commonly realized in compound words, most of them are
with separable prefixes, e.g. 'radio-'active, 're'write, 'diso'bey.
3. [ '_' _ '_ ] and 4. ['_' _ '_ '_]. The accentual types are met in initial compound abbreviations
like 'U'S'A, 'U'S'S'R.
5. ['_ ,___]. The type is realized both in simple and compound words, very
common among compound words, e.g. 'hair-,dresser, 'substructure.
6. [, _'___]. The accentual type marks a great number of simple words and some compound
words as well. In simple words the stresses fall onto:
1. the prefix and the root: maga'zine;
2. the root and the suffix: ,hospi'tality;
3. the prefix and the suffix: disorganization.
The other five types are rare and found in small number of words.
The data given above suggest an idea of the great variability in the accentual structure of
English words. The most widely spread among the enumerated accentual types are supposed to be
Type 1, Type 2, Type 5 and Type 6. Each type includes varieties of definite accentual structures
with different numbers of syllables and marks thousands of words. So the four of them cover the
main bulk of most common English words and are therefore most typical for the English vocabulary.
The variability of the word accentual structure is multiplied in connected speech. The
accentual structure of words may be altered under the influence of rhythm, e.g. An 'unpolished
'stone but: The 'stone was un'polished.
The tempo of speech may influence the accentual pattern of words. With the quickening of
the speed the carefulness of articulation is diminished, the vowels are reduced or elided, the
secondary stress may be dropped, e.g. The 'whole organi'zation of the 'meeting was 'faulty.
СРС Practical tasks:
1.
Define the number of syllables in the given words:
Female, window, profile, under, over, cotton, table, husband, important, excessive, relation,
satisfactory, aristocracy, melancholy, caterpillar, consideration, circumlocution, variability,
industrialization, unintelligibility, metereorological, administrative, autobiographic, unreliability,
2.
Provide these words with necessary stress marks:
Air -raid, birdcage, coalmine, washstand, mailbag, music-dance, grandfather, handwriting,
shopkeeper, dinner-jacket, shop-window, hot-water- bottle, post-graduate, second-hand, vicechancellor
3.
Transcribe and put down the stress marks in these verbs and nouns
Absent n- absent v
Compress n – compress v
Produce n - produce v
Combine n – combine v
Concert n –concert v
Outlay n –outlay v
Infix n –infix v
Desert n –desert v
Theme 1 Grammar in the systemic conception of language
1.The definition of language. The distinction between language and speech.
2. Language as a semiotic system: its functions, elements and structure.
3.The systemic character of grammar. Morphology and syntax - the two main sections of
grammar
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Language is a multifaceted, complex phenomenon which can be studied and described from
various points of view: as a psychological or cognitive phenomenon, as a social phenomenon, from
the point of view of its historic changes, etc. But first and foremost language is treated as a semiotic
system (system of signs). A system is a structured set of elements united by a common function.
Language is a system of specific interconnected and interdependent lingual signs united by their
common function of forming, storing and exchanging ideas in the process of human intercourse.
The foundations of systemic language description were formulated at the turn of the 20th
century in the works of many linguists, among them the Russian linguists I. A. Baudoin de
Courtenay, A. A. Potebnya and others. The originator of the systemic approach in linguistics is
considered to be a Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure. He was the first to divide the
phenomenon of language in general (in French: ‘language’) into two sides: an ‘executive’ side
(‘parole’), concerned with the production, transmission, and reception of speech, and an underlying
language system (‘langue’). This is one of the basic postulates of modern systemic linguistics:
language in general comprises two aspects: the system of special lingual units, language proper,
and the use of the lingual units, speech proper. In other words, language in the narrow sense of the
term is a system of means of expression, while speech is the manifestation of the system of
language in the process of intercourse. The system of language comprises the body of lingual units
and the rules of their use, while speech includes the act of producing utterances and the result of it
(the utterances themselves, or the text).
Other terms are used in linguistics by different authors to denote the two basic aspects of
language (which, however, do not always coincide with the ‘language – speech’ dichotomy):
‘language competence’ and ‘language performance’ (N. Chomsky), ‘ linguistic schema’ –
‘linguistic usage’, ‘linguistic system’ – ‘linguistic process’ (‘text’) (L. Hjelmslev), ‘code’ –
‘message’ (R. Jacobson), etc. Still, the terms ‘language’ and ‘speech’ are the most widely used.
Ferdinand de Saussure was also among the first scholars who defined lingual units as specific
signs - bilateral (two-sided) units that have both form and meaning. Ferdinand de Saussure spoke
about an indissoluble link between a phonetic ‘signifier’ (French: ‘signifiant’), and a ‘signified’
(‘signifie’). In the system of language, a lingual sign has only a potential meaning; in speech, in the
process of communication, this potential meaning is “actualized”, connected with a particular
referent. That is why a lingual sign is graphically presented in the form of a triangle, including the
material form, the meaning and the referent. For example, the word ‘elephant’ is a sign, consisting
of a signifier, or form – the sequence of phonemes (or, in written presentation, of letters), and a
signified, or meaning – the image of the animal in our mind; the referent is the ‘real’ animal in the
outside world, which may or may not be physically present.
referent
‘elephant’
form
meaning
The units of language are of two types: segmental and supra-segmental. Segmental lingual
units consist of phonemes, which are the smallest material segments of the language; segmental
units form different strings of phonemes (morphemes, words, sentences, etc.). Supra-segmental
lingual units do not exist by themselves, their forms are realized together with the forms of
segmental units; nevertheless, they render meanings of various kinds, including grammatical
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meanings; they are: intonation contours, accents, pauses, patterns of word-order, etc. Cf., the change
of word-order and intonation pattern in the following examples: He is at home (statement). – Is he
at home? (question). Supra-segmental lingual units form the secondary line of speech,
accompanying its primary phonemic line.
Segmental lingual units form a hierarchy of levels. The term ‘hierarchy’ denotes a structure
in which the units of any higher level are formed by the units of the lower level; the units of each
level are characterized by their own specific functional features and cannot be seen as a mechanical
composition of the lower level units.
The 1st level is formed by phonemes, the smallest material lingual elements, or segments.
They have form, but they have no meaning. Phonemes differentiate the meanings of morphemes
and words. E.g.: man – men.
The 2nd level is composed of morphemes, the smallest meaningful elements built up by
phonemes. The shortest morpheme can consist of one phoneme, e.g.: step-s; -s renders the meaning
of the 3rd person singular form of the verb, or, the plural form of the noun. The meaning of the
morpheme is abstract and significative: it does not name the referent, but only signifies it.
The 3rd level consists of words, or lexemes, nominative lingual units, which express direct,
nominative meanings: they name, or nominate various referents. The words consist of morphemes,
and the shortest word can include only one morpheme, e.g.: cat. The difference is in the quality of
the meaning.
The 4th level is formed by word-combinations, or phrasemes, the combinations of two or
more notional words, which represent complex nominations of various referents (things, actions,
qualities, and even situations) in a sentence,
e.g.: a beautiful girl, their sudden departure. In a more advanced treatment, phrases along
with separate words can be seen as the constituents of sentences, notional parts of the sentence,
which make the fourth language level and can be called “denotemes”.
The 5th level is the level of sentences, or proposemes, lingual units which name certain
situations, or events, and at the same time express predication, i.e. they show the relations of the
event named to reality - whether the event is real or unreal, desirable or obligatory, stated as a fact
or asked about, affirmed or negated, etc., e.g.: Their departure was sudden (a real event, which took
place in the past, stated as a fact, etc.). Thus, the sentence is often defined as a predicative lingual
unit. The minimal sentence can consist of just one word, e.g.: Fire!
The 6th level is formed by sentences in a text or in actual speech. Textual units are
traditionally called supra-phrasal unities; we will call such supra-sentential constructions, which
are produced in speech, dictemes (from Latin ‘dicto’ ‘I speak’). Dictemes are characterized by a
number of features, the main one of which is the unity of topic. As with all lingual units, dictemes
are reducible to one unit of the lower level; e.g., the text of an advertisement slogan can consist of
just one sentence: Just do it!; or, a paragraph in a written text can be formed by a single independent
sentence, being topically significant.
Not all lingual units are meaningful and, thus, they can not be defined as signs: phonemes and
syllables (which are also distinguished as an optional lingual level by some linguists) participate in
the expression of the meaning of the units of upper levels; they are called “cortemes” (from Lat.
cortex: ‘bark, crust, shell’) as opposed to the majority of meaningful lingual units, called
“signemes”.
Crucial for the systemic description of language are the two fundamental types of relations
between lingual units: paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. The term “syntagmatic relations” is
derived from the word “syntagma”, i.e. a linear combination of units of the same level. Lingual
units form various lingual strings, sequences, or constructions; in other words, lingual units cooccur in the same actual sequences. E.g.: He started laughing. The morphemes are also connected
syntagmatically within words: start+ed = started; laugh+ing = laughing; the combinations of
words form syntagmas within phrases and sentences: He + started; started + laughing. Besides, the
sentence can be connected with other sentences by syntagmatic relations in the process of
communication, in speech, e.g.: He started laughing. Everybody thought it was rather odd. Since
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these relations can be observed in actual utterances, they are also defined by the Latin term “in
praesentia” (“in the presence”, present in the same sequence).
The other type of relations, opposed to syntagmatic, are called paradigmatic. The term is
derived from the word “paradigm” and denotes the relations between elements in paradigms in the
system of language. Ferdinand de Saussure called these relations ‘associative relations’, implying
the way different linguistic units are arranged and associated with each other in human minds.
Classical grammatical paradigms are those making up grammatical categories of words, or,
morphological categories, e.g., the category of number or case of the noun: in Russian – стол –
стола – столу – столом – на столе; in English – toy – toys; tooth – teeth; children – children’s,
etc. Paradigm, in most general terms, is a system of variants of the same unit, which is called ‘the
invariant’; paradigmatic relations are the relations between the variants of the lingual unit within a
paradigm Not only words, but all lingual units are organized in the system of language
paradigmatically according to their own categories; for example, sentences may be organized in
paradigms according to the category “the purpose of communication”, in such paradigms
declarative, interrogative and imperative sentence patterns of the same sentence invariant are
opposed, e.g.: He laughed. – Did he laugh? – Let him laugh. Since these relations can’t be
observed in actual speech they are also described as relations “in absentia” (“in the absence”).
Paradigmatic relations exist not only in grammar, but in the phonetical and lexical systems of
language as well. For example, paradigmatic relations exist between vowels and consonants, voiced
and voiceless consonants, etc.; between synonyms and antonyms, in topical groups of words, wordbuilding models, etc. But paradigmatic relations are of primary importance for grammar, as the
grammar of language is above all systemic.
As a system, language is subdivided into three basic subsystems, each of which is a system in
its own turn. They are the phonetical (phonological), lexical and grammatical systems. The
phonetical system includes the material units of which language is made up: sounds, phonemes,
different intonation models, and accent models. The phonetical system of language is studied by a
separate branch of linguistics called phonology. The lexical system includes all the nominative
(naming) means of language – words and stable word-combinations. The lexical system is studied
by lexicology. The grammatical system includes the rules and regularities of using lingual units in
the construction of utterances in the process of human communication. The grammatical system is
described by grammar as a branch of linguistics.
The study of grammar may be either practical (practical grammar), which describes grammar
as a set of rules and regulations to follow, or theoretical (theoretical grammar), aiming at the
explanation of how and why the grammatical system works.
Within the grammatical system we single out parts of speech and sentence patterns. The parts
of speech are further subdivided into nouns, verbs, adjective, adverbs, functional parts of speech;
this subdivision of grammar is known as morphology. Sentences are further subdivided into simple
and composite: composite sentences are subdivided into complex and compound, etc.; this
subdivision of grammar is known as syntax.
In the history of linguistics, there were attempts to separate grammar, as the description of
linguistic forms and structures, from semantics, the description of meanings. This is absolutely
impossible, since grammatical forms and regularities are meaningful, though, of course, the quality
of grammatical meanings is different from the quality of lexical meanings. Grammatical meanings
are connected with the most abstract and general parts of information, rendered by lingual units. For
example, the word hands, apart from its immediate lexical meaning (the referent of the word), bears
some grammatical meanings, in particular, ‘thingness’ (the categorical grammatical meaning of
nouns), ‘plurality’ (more than one objects are denoted) and others.
A lingual unit has been described above as a sign – a bilateral unit, which has its form and its
meaning. Thus, two language planes can be distinguished - the plane of content and the plane of
expression: the plane of content comprises all the meaningful, semantic elements contained in the
language, while the plane of expression comprises all the material, formal units of the language.
Each lingual unit, including grammatical units, is a unity of meaning and form, of content and the
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means of its expression. But the correspondence between the two planes is not one-to-one; the
relations between the units of content and the units of expression are more complex. In cases of
polysemy and homonymy two or more units of the plane of content correspond to one unit of the
plane of expression, for example, the lexical homonyms: seal, hand, etc. In cases of synonymy, just
the other way round, two or more units of the plane of expression correspond to one unit of the
plane of content, for example, the lexical synonyms: pretty, nice, beautiful, etc. The relations of
homonymy and synonymy can be distinguished in the grammatical system too. For example,
homonymy in grammar: the grammatical suffix -(e)s denotes the 3rd person singular of the verb, the
genitive case of the noun, or the plural of the noun, as in breaks, bird’s, birds; synonymy in
grammar: future action can be expressed with the help of the future indefinite, the present
indefinite, or the present continuous form of the verb, as in We’ll fly tomorrow; We fly tomorrow;
We are flying tomorrow.
Another major contribution to the systemic description of language by Ferdinand de Saussure
and Beaudoin de Courtenay was the doctrine that the synchronic study of a particular ‘state’ of a
language in its development should be separated from the diachronic study of the language changes
from one state to another. So, one more fundamental type of relation between language elements is
to be distinguished: synchronic relations between language elements coexisting at a certain period
of time, and diachronic relations between lingual elements of a certain type at different time
periods. Language and each of its subsystems are synchronic systems of co-existing elements; in
each system it is also possible to analyze diachronic relations between its elements. For example,
synchronic relations in New English: hard –harder–hardest; synchronic relations in Old English:
heard - Heardra - heardost; diachronic relations: hard – heard; harder – heardra; hardest –
heardost.
Theme 2 Morphemic and categorial structures of the word
1. The word and the morpheme, their correlation in the level structure of the language.
2. Lexical (derivational, word-building) and grammatical (functional, word-changing) affixes.
3. The "allo-emic" theory in morphology: morphs, allomorphs and morphemes.
4. Grammatical category as a system of expressing a generalized grammatical meaning.
5. The theory of oppositions. The types of oppositions: binary and supra-binary (ternary,
quaternary, etc.) oppositions; privative, gradual, and equipollent oppositions.
1. The morpheme is the elementary meaningful lingual unit built up from phonemes and
used to make words. It has meaning, but its meaning is abstract, significative, not concrete, or
nominative, as is that of the word. Morphemes constitute the words; they do not exist outside the
words. Studying the morpheme we actually study the word: its inner structure, its functions, and the
ways it enters speech.
Stating the differences between the word and the morpheme, we have to admit that the
correlation between the word and the morpheme is problematic. The borderlines between the
morpheme and the word are by no means rigid and there is a set of intermediary units (half-words half-morphemes), which form an area of transitions (a continuum) between the word and the
morpheme as the polar phenomena. This includes the so-called “morpheme-like” functional, or
auxiliary words, for example, auxiliary verbs and adverbs, articles, particles, prepositions and
conjunctions: they are realized as isolated, separate units (their separateness being fixed in written
practice) but perform various grammatical functions; in other words, they function like morphemes
and are dependent semantically to a greater or lesser extent. Cf..: Jack’s, a boy, have done.
In traditional grammar, the study of the morphemic structure of the word is based on two
criteria: the positional criterion - the location of the morphemes with regard to each other, and the
semantic (or functional) criterion - the contribution of the morphemes to the general meaning of
the word.
2. According to these criteria morphemes are divided into root-morphemes (roots) and
affixal morphemes (affixes). Roots express the concrete, “material” part of the meaning of the
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word and constitute its central part. Affixes express the specificational part of the meaning of the
word: they specify, or transform the meaning of the root. Affixal specification may be of two kinds:
of lexical or grammatical character. So, according to the semantic criterion affixes are further
subdivided into lexical, or word-building (derivational) affixes, which together with the root
constitute the stem of the word, and grammatical, or word-changing affixes, expressing different
morphological categories, such as number, case, tense and others. With the help of lexical affixes
new words are derived, or built; with the help of grammatical affixes the form of the word is
changed.
According to the positional criterion affixes are divided into prefixes, situated before the root
in the word, e.g.: under-estimate, and suffixes, situated after the root, e.g.: underestim-ate. Prefixes
in English are only lexical: the word underestimate is derived from the word estimate with the help
of the prefix under-. Suffixes in English may be either lexical or grammatical; e.g. in the word
underestimates -ate is a lexical suffix, because it is used to derive the verb estimate (v) from the
noun esteem (n), and –s is a grammatical suffix making the 3rd person, singular form of the verb to
underestimate. Grammatical suffixes are also called inflexions (inflections, inflectional endings).
Grammatical suffixes form word-changing, or morphological paradigms of words, which
can be observed to their full extent in inflectional languages, such as Russian, e.g.: стол – стола –
столу – столом - о столе; morphological paradigms exist, though not on the same scale, in English
too, e.g., the number paradigm of the noun: boy - boys.
Lexical affixes are primarily studied by lexicology with regard to the meaning which they
contribute to the general meaning of the whole word. In grammar word-building suffixes are
studied as the formal marks of the words belonging to different parts of speech; they form lexical
(word-building, derivational) paradigms of words united by a common root, cf.:
to decide - decision - decisive - decisively
to incise - incision - incisive - incisively
Besides prefixes and suffixes, some other positional types of affix are distinguished in
linguistics: for example, regular vowel interchange which takes place inside the root and transforms
its meaning “from within” can be treated as an infix, e.g.: a lexical infix – blood – to bleed; a
grammatical infix – tooth – teeth. Grammatical infixes are also defined as inner inflections as
opposed to grammatical suffixes which are called outer inflections.
3. When studying morphemes, we should distinguish morphemes as generalized lingual units
from their concrete manifestations, or variants in specific textual environments; variants of
morphemes are called “allo-morphs”.
The so-called allo-emic theory was developed in phonetics: in phonetics, phonemes, as the
generalized, invariant phonological units, are distinguished from their concrete realizations, the
allophones. For example, one phoneme is pronounced in a different way in different environments,
cf.: you [ju:] - you know [ju]; in Russian, vowels are also pronounced in a different way in stressed
and unstressed syllables, cf.: дом - домой. The same applies to the morpheme, which is a
generalized unit, an invariant, and may be represented by different variants, allo-morphs, in
different textual environments.
The “allo-emic theory” in the study of morphemes was also developed within the framework
of Descriptive Linguistics by means of the so-called distributional analysis: in the first stage of
distributional analysis a syntagmatic chain of lingual units is divided into meaningful segments,
morphs, e.g.: he/ start/ed/ laugh/ing/; then the recurrent segments are analyzed in various textual
environments, and the following three types of distribution are established: contrastive
distribution, non-contrastive distribution and complementary distribution. The morphs are said
to be in contrastive distribution if they express different meanings in identical environments the
compared morphs, e.g.: He started laughing – He starts laughing; such morphs constitute different
morphemes. The morphs are said to be in non-contrastive distribution if they express identical
meaning in identical environments; such morphs constitute ‘free variants’ of the same morpheme,
e.g.: learned - learnt, ate [et] – ate [eit] (in Russian: трактора – тракторы). The morphs are said to
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be in complementary distribution if they express identical meanings in different environments, e.g.:
He started laughing – He stopped laughing; such morphs constitute variants, or allo-morphs of the
same morpheme.
Besides these traditional types of morphemes, in Descriptive Linguistics distributional
morpheme types are distinguished; they immediately correlate with each other in the following
pairs. Free morphemes, which can build up words by themselves, are opposed to bound
morphemes, used only as parts of words; e.g.: in the word ‘hands’ hand- is a free morpheme and -s
is a bound morpheme. Overt and covert morphemes are opposed to each other: the latter shows the
meaningful absence of a morpheme distinguished in the opposition of grammatical forms in
paradigms; it is also known as the “zero morpheme”, e.g.: in the number paradigm of the noun,
hand – hands, the plural is built with the help of an overt morpheme, hand-s, while the singular with the help of a zero or covert morpheme, handØ.
Segmental morphemes, consisting of phonemes, are opposed to supra-segmental
morphemes, which leave the phonemic content of the word unchanged, but the meaning of the word
is specified with the help of various supra-segmental lingual units, e.g.: `convert (a noun) - con`vert
(a verb).
4. Grammatical meanings of notional words are rendered by their grammatical forms. For
example, the meaning of the plural in English is regularly rendered by the grammatical suffix –(e)s:
cats, books, clashes. Grammatical meanings of individual grammatical forms are established as
such in paradigmatic correlations: the plural correlates with the singular (cat – cats), the genitive
case of the noun correlates with the common case (cat – cat’s), the definite article determination
correlates with the indefinite article determination (a cat – the cat), etc.
The generalized meaning rendered by paradigmatically correlated grammatical forms is called
“categorial”. Category is a logical notion denoting the reflection of the most general properties of
phenomena. Categorial meanings in grammar are expressed by grammatical paradigms. For
example, within the system of the English noun the generalized, categorial meaning of “number” is
expressed grammatically through the paradigmatic correlation (or, opposition in a paradigm) of two
members, of two grammatical forms, each with its own grammatical meaning: the singular (e.g.,
cat) and the plural (cats).
Thus, the definition of grammatical category is as follows: grammatical category is a system
of expressing a generalized categorial meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of
grammatical forms. In other words, it is a unity of a generalized grammatical meaning and the
forms of its expression.
5. Paradigmatic correlations, as shown above, are exposed by “oppositions” of grammatical
forms - the members of a paradigm. Oppositions are analyzed linguistically with the help of a
special method known as “oppositional analysis”. N. S. Trubetzkoy, a member of the Prague
Linguistic Circle, developed it at the turn of the 20th century for the purposes of phonological
research; later it became widely employed in the analysis of grammatical categories. Opposition
members are characterized by two types of features: common features and differential features.
Common features serve as the basis for uniting the grammatical forms within the same paradigm; in
the example above, the two forms, cat and cats, are paradigmatically united as forms of one and the
same word, sharing the categorical grammatical meaning of number. Differential features serve to
differentiate the members of an opposition; for example, the grammatical form of the plural, cats,
has an inflection, or a grammatical suffix, which the form of the singular, cat, has not.
On the basis of various combinations of common and differential features, several types of
oppositions are distinguished. The prevalent type in English grammar is a binary privative
opposition. The term “binary” means, that the opposition consists of two members, or forms;
besides binary oppositions, there are oppositions, that may include more than two members
(‘ternary’, ‘quaternary’, etc.). The term “privative” means that the members of the opposition are
characterized by the presence/absence of a certain differential feature, which serves as the formal
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mark of one of its members; in the example above, cat – cats, the ending of the plural is its formal
mark. The member of the opposition characterized by the presence of the differential mark is called
“marked”, “strong”, or “positive” (commonly designated by the symbol +). The other member of
the opposition, characterized by the absence of the differential feature, is called “unmarked”,
“weak”, or “negative” (commonly designated by the symbol -). In the category of number the
strong, marked member is the plural form, because it possesses a special formal mark (either the
productive suffix -(e)s, or other formal means, such as -en in children, etc.), the weak, unmarked
member of the opposition is the singular form, which possesses no special mark. To stress the
negative marking of the weak member it is also defined in oppositional theory with “non-”terms:
e.g., the singular is referred to as “non-plural”.
Besides the differences in the form, there are also regular semantic differences between the
members of the privative oppositions: the meaning of the weak member is always more general and
more abstract, while the meaning of the strong member is always more particular and concrete. Due
to this difference in meaning, the weak member of the opposition is used in a wider range of
contexts than the strong member and it can even regularly substitute the strong member in certain
contexts. For example, the singular form of the noun can be used generically to denote all the
objects belonging to a certain class: The rose is my favourite flower = (All) Roses are my favourite
flowers.
Besides privative oppositions, there are gradual and equipollent oppositions, which are minor
types in morphology. Gradual oppositions are formed by a series of members which are
distinguished not by the presence or absence of a differential feature, but by the degree of it. A
gradual morphological opposition in English can be identified only in the plane of content in the
category of comparison, cf.: big – bigger - biggest. Equipollent oppositions are formed by members,
which are distinguished by a number of their own features. An equipollent morphological
opposition in English can be identified in the plane of expression in the paradigms of suppletive
forms, for example, in the correlation of the person and number forms of the verb be: am – are – is
(was – were).
Theme 3 Grammatical classes of words
1. The notion of a part of speech as a lexico-grammatical class of words.
2. Principles of grammatical classification of words. Polydifferential and monodifferential
(heterogeneous and homogeneous) classifications.
3. The syntactico-distributional classification of words
1.The traditional term “parts of speech” was developed in Ancient Greek linguistics and
reflects the fact that at that time there was no distinction between language as a system and speech,
between the word as a part of an utterance and the word as a part of lexis. The term “parts of
speech” is accepted by modern linguistics as a conventional, or “non-explanatory” term (“nameterm”) to denote the lexico-grammatical classes of words correlating with each other in the general
system of language on the basis of their grammatically relevant properties.
There are three types of grammatically relevant properties of words that differentiate classes
of words called “parts of speech”: semantic, formal and functional properties. They traditionally
make the criteria for the classification of parts of speech. The semantic criterion refers to the
generalized semantic properties common to the whole class of words, e.g.: the generalized (or,
categorial) meaning of nouns is “thingness”, of verbs process, of adjectives substantive property, of
adverbs non-substantive property. The formal criterion embraces the formal features (word-building
and word-changing) that are characteristic for a particular part of speech, e.g.: the noun is
characterized by a specific set of word-building affixes, cf.: property, bitterness, worker, etc., and is
changed according to the categories of number, case and article determination: boy-boys, boy –
boy’s, boy – the boy – a boy, etc. Combinability is also a relevant formal feature for each particular
part of speech; for example, verbs can be modified by adverbs, while nouns cannot (except in
specific contexts). The functional criterion is based on the functions that the words of a particular
class fulfill in the sentence, e.g.: the most characteristic functions of the noun are those of a subject
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and an object; the only function of the finite form of the verb is that of a predicate; the adjective
functions in most contexts as an attribute; the adverb as an adverbial modifier.
2. Classifications in general may be based either on one criterion (such classifications are
called homogeneous, or monodifferential), or on a combination of several criteria (such
classifications are called heterogeneous, or polydifferential). The traditional classification of parts
of speech is polydifferential (heterogeneous); it is based on the combination of all the three criteria
mentioned above: ‘meaning – form – function’.
Traditionally, all parts of speech are subdivided on the upper level of classification into
notional words and functional words. Notional words, which traditionally include nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and numerals, have complete nominative meanings, are in most cases
changeable and fulfill self-dependent syntactic functions in the sentence. The noun, for example, as
a part of speech, is traditionally characterized by 1) the categorial meaning of substance
(“thingness”), 2) a specific set of word-building affixes, the grammatical categories of number, case
and article determination, prepositional connections and modification by an adjective, and 3) the
substantive functions of subject, object or predicative in the sentence. Functional words, which
include conjunctions, prepositions, articles, interjections, particles, and modal words, have
incomplete nominative value, are unchangeable and fulfill mediatory, constructional syntactic
functions.
The employment of the three criteria combined, in present-day mainstream linguistics, was
developed mainly by V. V. Vinogradov, L. V. Scherba, A. I. Smirnitsky, B. A. Ilyish and others.
There are certain limitations and controversial points in the traditional classification of parts
of speech, which make some linguists doubt its scientific credibility. First of all, the three criteria
turn out to be relevant only for the subdivision of notional words. As for functional words, these
classes of words do not distinguish either common semantic, or formal, or functional properties,
they are rather characterized by the absence of all three criteria in any generalized form. Second, the
status of pronouns and the numerals, which in the traditional classification are listed as notional, is
also questionable, since they do not have any syntactic functions of their own, but rather different
groups inside these two classes resemble in their formal and functional properties different notional
parts of speech: e.g., cardinal numerals function as substantives, while ordinal numerals function as
adjectives; the same can be said about personal pronouns and possessive pronouns. Third, it is very
difficult to draw rigorous borderlines between different classes of words, because there are always
phenomena that are indistinguishable in their status. E.g., non-finite forms of verbs, such as the
infinitive, the gerund, participles I and II are actually verbal forms, but lack some of the
characteristics of the verb: they have no person or number forms, no tense or mood forms, and what
is even more important, they never perform the characteristic verbal function, that of a predicate.
There are even words that defy any classification at all; for example, many linguists doubt whether
the words of agreement and disagreement, yes and no, can occupy any position in the classification
of parts of speech.These, and a number of other problems, made linguists search for alternative
ways to classify lexical units.
The first classification of parts of speech was homogeneous: in ancient Greek grammar the
words were subdivided mainly on the basis of their formal properties into changeable and
unchangeable; nouns, adjectives and numerals were treated jointly as a big class of “names”
because they shared the same morphological forms. This classical linguistic tradition was followed
by the first English grammars: Henry Sweet divided all the words in English into “declinables” and
“indeclinables”. But the approach which worked well for the description of highly inflectional
languages turned out to be less efficient for the description of other languages.
3. The syntactic approach, which establishes the word classes in accord with their functional
characteristics, is more universal and applicable to languages of different morphological types. The
principles of a monodifferential syntactico-distributional classification of words in English were
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developed by the representatives of American Descriptive Linguistics, L. Bloomfield, Z. Harris and
Ch. Fries.
Ch. Fries selected the most widely used grammatical constructions and used them as
substitution frames: the frames were parsed into parts, or positions, each of them got a separate
number, and then Ch. Fries conducted a series of substitution tests to find out what words can be
used in each of the positions. Some of the frames were as follows: The concert was good (always).
The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly). The team went there. All the words that can be used in
place of the article made one group, the ones that could be used instead of the word “clerk”
another, etc. The results of his experiments were surprisingly similar to the traditional classification
of parts of speech: four main positions were distinguished in the sentences; the words which can be
used in these positions without affecting the meaning of the structures were united in four big
classes of words, and generally speaking coincide with the four major notional parts of speech in
the traditional classification: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Besides these “positional words”
(“form-words”), Ch. Fries distinguished 15 limited groups of words, which cannot fill in the
positions in the frames. These “function words” are practically the same as the functional words in
the traditional classification.
The syntactico-distributional classification of words distinguished on a consistently syntactic
basis testifies to the objective nature of the classification of parts of speech. More than that, in some
respects the results of this approach turn out to be even more confusing than the allegedly “nonscientific” traditional classification: for example, Group A, embracing words that can substitute for
the article “the” in the above given frames, includes words as diverse as “the, no, your, their, both,
few, much, John’s, twenty”, or one word might be found in different distributional classes. Thus, the
syntactico-distributional classification cannot replace the traditional classification of parts of
speech, but the major features of different classes of words revealed in syntactico-distributional
classification can be used as an important supplement to traditional classification.
The combination of syntactico-distributional and traditional classifications strongly suggests
the unconditional subdivision of the lexicon into two big supra-classes: notional and functional
words. The major formal grammatical feature of this subdivision is their open or closed character.
The notional parts of speech are open classes of words, with established basic semantic, formal and
functional characteristics. There are only four notional classes of words, which correlate with the
four main syntactic positions in the sentence: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They are
interconnected by the four stages of the lexical paradigmatic series of derivation, e.g.: to decide –
decision – decisive – decisively. The functional words are closed classes or words: they cannot be
further enlarged and are given by lists. The closed character of the functional words is determined
by their role in the structure of the sentence: the functional words expose various constructional
functions of syntactic units, and this makes them closer to grammatical rather than to lexical means
of the language.
As for pronouns and the numerals, according to the functional approach they form a separate
supra-class of substitutional parts of speech, since they have no function of their own in the
sentence, but substitute for notional parts of speech and perform their characteristic functions. The
difference between the four notional parts of speech and substitutional parts of speech is also
supported by the fact that the latter are closed groups of words like functional parts of speech.
The three supra-classes are further subdivided into classes (the parts of speech proper) and
sub-classes (groups inside the parts of speech). For example, nouns are divided into personal and
common, animate and inanimate, countable and uncountable, etc.; pronouns are subdivided into
personal, possessive (conjoint and absolute), objective pronouns, demonstrative, reflexive, relative,
etc.; numerals are subdivided into cardinal and ordinal, etc.
The field approach, which was outlined in the previous units, also helps clarify many
disputable points in the traditional classification of parts of speech. The borderlines between the
classes of words are not rigid; instead of borderlines there is a continuum of numerous intermediary
phenomena, combining the features of two or more major classes of words. Field theory states that
in each class of words there is a core, the bulk of its members that possess all the characteristic
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features of the class, and a periphery (marginal part), which includes the words of mixed, dubious
character, intermediary between this class and other classes. For example, the non-finite forms of
the verb (the infinitive, the gerund, participles I and II) make up the periphery of the verbal class:
they lack some of the features of a verb, but possess certain features characteristic to either nouns,
or adjectives, or adverbs. There are numerous intermediary phenomena that form a continuum
between the notional and functional supra-classes; for example, there are adverbs whose
functioning is close to that of conjunctions and prepositions, e.g.: however, nevertheless, besides,
etc. Notional words of broad meaning are similar in their functioning to the substitutive functioning
of the pronouns, e.g.: He speaks English better than I do; Have you seen my pen? I can’t find the
wretched thing. Together with the regular pronouns they form the stages of the paradigmatic series,
in which the four notional parts of speech are substitutively represented, cf.: one, it, thing, matter,
way… - do, make, act…- such, similar same… - thus, so, there…
The implementation of the field approach to the distribution of words in parts
of speech was formulated by the Russian linguists G. S. Schur and V. G.
Admoni.
4 Noun: gender
1. Noun as the central nominative lexemic unit of language. Categorial meaning of the noun.
2. Grammatically relevant subclasses of the noun.
3. The problem of gender category in English.
4. Gender oppositions and gender classes of nouns.
1. The categorial meaning of the noun is “substance” or “thingness”. Nouns directly name
various phenomena of reality and have the strongest nominative force among notional parts of
speech: practically every phenomenon can be presented by a noun as an independent referent, or,
can be substantivized. Nouns denote things and objects proper (tree), abstract notions (love),
various qualities (bitterness), and even actions (movement). All these words function in speech in
the same way as nouns denoting things proper.
The most characteristic functions of the noun in a sentence are the function of a subject and
an object, since they commonly denote persons and things as components of the situation, e.g.: The
teacher took the book. Besides, the noun can function as a predicative (part of a compound
predicate), e.g.: He is a teacher; and as an adverbial modifier, e.g.: It happened last summer. The
noun in English can also function as an attribute in the following cases: when it is used in the
genitive case (the teacher’s book), when it is used with a preposition (the book of the teacher), or in
contact groups of two nouns the first of which qualifies the second (cannon ball, space exploration,
sea breeze, the Bush administration, etc.).
2. As with any other part of speech, the noun is further subdivided into subclasses, or groups,
in accord with various particular semantico-functional and formal features of the constituent words.
The main grammatically relevant subclasses of nouns are distinguished in the following
correlations.
On the basis of “type of nomination” proper nouns are opposed to common nouns. Common
nouns present a general name of any thing belonging to a certain class of things, e.g.: river – any
river, boy – any boy, while the proper nouns have no generalized meaning; they serve as a label, a
nickname of a separate individual being or thing, e.g.: Mississippi, John, New York, etc. This
semantic subdivision of nouns is grammatically manifested through the differences in their formal
features of the category of article determination and of the category of number. The use of proper
nouns in the plural or with the articles is restricted to a limited number of contexts: normally, one
cannot use the plural form of the word New York, though it is possible to say There are two Lenas
in our group, or The Joneses are to visit us. If proper nouns are used with articles or other
determiners and/or in the plural, in most contexts it signifies their transposition from the group of
proper nouns into the group of common nouns, e.g.: You are my Romeo!; I can’t approve of young
Casanovas like you.
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On the basis of “form of existence” of the referents animate nouns are opposed to inanimate
nouns, the former denoting living beings (man, woman, dog), the latter denoting things and
phenomena (tree, table). This semantic difference is formally exposed through the category of case
forms, as animate nouns are predominantly used in the genitive case, cf.: John’s leg, but the leg of
the table. This subdivision of nouns is semantically closely connected with the following one.
On the basis of “personal quality” human animate nouns (person nouns), denoting human
beings, or persons, are opposed to non-human (animate and inanimate) nouns (non-person
nouns), denoting all the other referents. This lexico-semantic subdivision of nouns is traditionally
overlooked in practical and theoretical courses on grammar, but it is grammatically relevant because
only human nouns in English can distinguish masculine or feminine genders, e.g.: man – he, woman
– she, while the non-human nouns, both animate and inanimate, are substituted by the neuter gender
pronoun ‘it’. The exceptions take place only in cases of transposition of the noun from one group
into another, e.g., in cases of personification, e.g.: the sun - he, the moon - she, etc.
On the basis of “quantitative structure” of the referent countable (variable) nouns are
opposed to uncountable (invariable) nouns, the former denoting discrete, separate things which
can be counted and form discrete multitudes, e.g.: table – tables, the latter denoting either
substances (sugar), or multitudes as a whole (police), or abstract notions (anger), and some others
entities. This subdivision is formally manifested in the category of number.
Besides the formal features enumerated above, the semantic differences between different
groups of nouns are manifested through their selectional syntagmatic combinability; e.g., it is
possible to say The dog is sleeping, but impossible to say *The table is sleeping.
3. The category of gender in English is a highly controversial subject in grammar. The
overwhelming majority of linguists stick to the opinion that the category of gender existed only in
Old English. They claim that, since formal gender marks disappeared by the end of the Middle
English period and nouns no longer agree in gender with adjacent adjectives or verbs, there is no
grammatical category of gender in modern English. They maintain that in modern English, the
biological division of masculine and feminine genders is rendered only by lexical means: special
words and lexical affixes, e.g.: man – woman, tiger – tigress, he-goat – she-goat, male nurse, etc.
The fact is, the category of gender in English differs from the category of gender in many
other languages, for example, in Russian, in French or in German. The category of gender
linguistically may be either meaningful (or, natural), rendering the actual sex-based features of the
referents, or formal (arbitrary). In Russian and some other languages the category of gender is
meaningful only for human (person) nouns, but for the non-human (non-person) nouns it is formal;
i.e., it does not correspond with the actual biological sense, cf.: рука is feminine, палец is
masculine, тело is neuter, though all of them denote parts of the human body. In English gender is
a meaningful category for the whole class of the nouns, because it reflects the real gender attributes
(or their absence/ irrelevance) of the referent denoted. It is realized through obligatory
correspondence of every noun with the 3rd person singular pronouns - he, she, or it: man – he,
woman – she, tree, dog – it. For example: A woman was standing on the platform. She was wearing
a hat. It was decorated with ribbons and flowers… Personal pronouns are grammatical gender
classifiers in English.
4. The category of gender is formed by two oppositions organized hierarchically. The first
opposition is general and opposes human, or person nouns, distinguishing masculine and feminine
gender (man – he, woman – she) and all the other, non-human, non-person nouns, belonging to
the neuter gender (tree, dog – it). The second opposition is formed by the human nouns only: on the
lower level of the opposition the nouns of masculine gender and of feminine gender are opposed.
Gender
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+
_
Person nouns Non-person nouns (tree - it)
+
Feminine nouns (woman - she)
-
Masculine nouns (man -he)
Gender is a constant feature category: it is expressed not through variable forms of words, but
through nounal classification; each noun belongs to only one of the three genders. In addition, there
is a group of nouns in English which can denote either a female or a male in different contexts;
these nouns can be substituted by either ‘he’ or ‘she’, e.g.: president, professor, friend, etc. They
constitute a separate group of nouns – the common gender nouns. For them the category of gender
is a variable feature category.
There are no formal marks to distinguish the strong and the weak members in either of the
gender oppositions. They can be distinguished semantically: nouns of the neuter gender in the upper
level of the opposition is more abstract compared to masculine and feminine gender nouns; they are
the weak member of the opposition and are naturally used in the position of neutralization. For
example: The girl was a sweet little thing; “What is it over there: a man or just a tree?” On the
lower level of the opposition, masculine gender nouns are the weak member of the opposition and
can be used to denote all human beings irrespective of sex, e.g.: Man must change in the changing
world. When there is no contextual need to specify the sex of the referent, common gender nouns
are also neutrally substituted by the masculine pronoun, e.g.: Every student must do his best.
Besides the cases of neutralization, the most obvious examples of oppositional reduction in
the category of gender are the cases when the weak member of the opposition, nouns of neuter
gender, are used as if they denote female or male beings, when substituted by the pronouns ‘he’ or
‘she’. In most cases such use is stylistically colored and is encountered in emotionally loaded
speech. It is known as the stylistic device of personification and takes place either in some
traditionally fixed contexts, e.g.: a vessel – she; or in high-flown speech, e.g., Britain – she, the sea
– she. In fairy-tales and poetic texts weak creatures are referred to as she, and strong or evil creature
as he, e.g.: Death is the only freedom I will know. I hear His black wings beating about me! (Isles)
Theme 5 Verb: general
1. The verb as a notional word denoting process. Its formal and functional properties.
2. Grammatically relevant subclasses of the verb; notional, functional, and semi-functional
verbs.
3. Actional and statal verbs, limitive and unlimitive verbs, transitive and intransitive verbs,
supplementive and complementive verbs.
1.The verb as a notional part of speech has the categorial meaning of dynamic process, or
process developing in time, including not only actions as such (to work, to build), but also states,
forms of existence (to be, to become, to lie), various types of attitude, feelings (to love, to
appreciate), etc.
Formally, the verb is characterized by a set of specific word-building affixes, e.g.: to activate,
to widen, to classify, to synchronize, to overestimate, to reread, etc.; there are some other means of
building verbs, among them sound-replacive and stress-shifting models, e.g.: blood – to bleed,
'import – to im'port. There is a peculiar means of rendering the meaning of the process, which
occupies an intermediary position between the word and the word-combination: the so-called
“phrasal verbs”, consisting of a verb and a postpositional element. Some phrasal verbs are closer to
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the word, because their meaning cannot be deduced from the meaning of the verb or the meaning of
the postposition separately, e.g.: to give up, to give in, etc.; others are semantically closer to the
word-combination, e.g.: to stand up, to sit down, etc. A separate group of phrasal verbs is made by
combinations of broad meaning verbs to have, to give, to take and nouns, e.g.: to give a look, to
have rest, to have a bite, etc.
The verb is usually characterized as the most complex part of speech, because it has more
word-changing categories than any other notional part of speech. It is changed according to the
categories of person and number, tense, aspect, voice and mood. Besides, each verb has a specific
set of non-finite forms (the infinitive, the gerund, participles I and II), otherwise called “verbals”,
or “verbids”, opposed to the finite forms of the verb, otherwise called “finites”; their opposition is
treated as “the category of finitude”.
Such a wide range of forms is mainly due to the importance of the function that the verb
performs in the sentence: its primary function (and the only function of its finite forms) is the
function of a predicate – the central, organizing member of the sentence, expressing its crucial
predicative meanings, or the relations of the event denoted by the sentence to actual reality. The
non-finite forms of the verbs, verbids, perform functions characteristic of other notional parts of
speech – nouns, adjectives, or adverbs, but still, they can express partial predication and share a
number of other important verbal features with the finites.
2. The complexity of the verb is also manifested in the intricate system of its grammatically
relevant subclasses.
On the upper level, all the verbs according to their semantic (nominative) value fall into two
big sub-classes: the sub-class of notional verbs and the sub-class of functional and semi-functional
verbs. Notional verbs have full nominative value and are independent in the expression of the
process, e.g.: to work, to build, to lie, to love, etc.; these verbs comprise the bulk of the class and
constitute an open group of words. Functional and semi-functional (or, semi-notional) verbs make a
closed group of verbs of partial nominative value. They are dependent on other words in the
denotation of the process, but through their forms the predicative semantics of the sentence is
expressed (they function as predicators).
Functional and semi-functional verbs are further subdivided into a number of groups.
Auxiliary functional verbs are used to build the analytical grammatical forms of notional verbs,
e.g.: have done, was lost, etc. Link verbs connect the nominative part of the predicate (the
predicative) with the subject. They can be of two types: pure and specifying link verbs. Pure link
verbs perform a purely predicative-linking function in the sentence; in English there is only one
pure link verb to be; specifying link verbs specify the connections between the subject and its
property, cf.: He was pale. – He grew pale. The specification of the connections may be either
“perceptional”, e.g.: to seem, to look, to feel, etc., or “factual”, e.g.: to grow, to become, to get, etc.
The semi-functional link verbs should be distinguished from homonymous notional verbs, e.g.: to
grow can be a notional verb or a specifying link verb, cf.: The child grew quickly. – He grew pale.
Modal verbs are predicators denoting various subject attitudes to the action, for example,
obligation, ability, permission, advisability, etc.: can, must, may, etc. A group of semi-notional
verbs function as verbid introducers, i.e., they introduce non-finite forms of verbs into the structure
of the sentence: they are grammatically inseparable from the verbids and these two lexemes jointly
make the predicate of the sentence, e.g.: He happened to know all about it.
3. Notional verbs are subdivided into several groups as follows.
On the basis of subject-process relations the verbs are subdivided into actional and statal
verbs. The terms are self-explanatory: actional verbs denote the actions performed by the subject as
an active doer, e.g.: to go, to make, to build, to look, etc.; statal verbs denote various states of the
subject or present the subject as the recipient of an outward activity, e.g.: to love, to be, to worry, to
enjoy, to see, etc. Mental and sensual processes can be presented as actional or statal; they can be
denoted either by correlated pairs of different verbs, or by the same verbal lexeme, e.g.: to know
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(mental perception) – to think (mental activity), to see, to hear (physical perception as such) - to
look, to listen (physical perceptional activity); The cake tastes nice (taste denotes physical
perception, it is used as a statal verb). – I always taste food before adding salt (taste denotes
perceptional activity, it is used as an actional verb).
Another subdivision of notional verbs is based on their aspective meaning, which exposes the
inner character of the process denoted, or, its mode of realization. Thus, all the verbs into two big
groups: the so-called limitive verbs and unlimitive verbs. Limitive verbs present a process as
potentially limited, directed towards reaching a certain border point, beyond which the process
denoted by the verb is stopped or ceases to exist, e.g.: to come, to sit down, to bring, to drop, etc.
Unlimitive verbs present the process as potentially not limited by any border point, e.g.: to go, to
sit, to carry, to exist, etc. Some limitive and unlimitive verbs form semantically opposed pairs,
denoting roughly the same actual process presented as either potentially limited or unlimited, cf.: to
come – to go, to sit down – to sit, to bring – to carry; other verbs have no aspective counterparts,
e.g.: to be, to exist (unlimitive), to drop (limitive).
The next subdivision of the notional verbs is based on their combinability features, or their
valency. In traditional grammar studies, on the basis of combinability, verbs are divided into
transitive and intransitive: transitive verbs denote an action directed toward a certain object; in a
sentence they are obligatorily used with a direct object. Constructions with transitive verbs are
easily transformed from active into passive, e.g.: He wrote a letter. – The letter was written by him.
The valency of the word can be either obligatory (required), or optional (permitted). The
obligatory adjuncts (the valents required by the verb) are called “complements” and the verb itself
is called “complementive”; without a complement a syntactic construction with a complementive
verb is grammatically incomplete and semantically deficient, cf.: He is a writer. - *He is…. The
optional valents are called “supplements” and the verb is called “uncomplementive” (or,
“supplementive”).
Uncomplementive verbs are further subdivided into two groups of verbs: personal and
impersonal verbs. Personal verbs imply the subject of the action denoted (animate or inanimate,
human or non-human), e.g.: to work, to laugh, to grow, to start, etc., as in I’m working; The concert
started. Impersonal verbs usually denote natural phenomena, e.g.: to rain, to snow, to drizzle, etc.;
the number of impersonal verbs is limited; in English they are combined with a formal subject, e.g.:
It’s raining (in Russian impersonal uncomplementive verbs can be used without any subject at all,
cf.: Моросит; Смеркается).
Complementive verbs are further subdivided according to the members of the sentence which
they must be obligatorily used with. Predicative complementive verbs are link verbs obligatorily
combined in a sentence with their predicatives, e.g.: He is a writer. Adverbial complementive verbs
are verbs which are obligatorily combined with adverbial modifiers of time, or space, or manner,
e.g.: He lives in Paris; He lived in the eighteenth century; The married and lived happily ever since.
Objective complementive verbs require either one object-complement (monocomplementive verbs)
or two compliments (bicomplementive verbs). The following verbs are monocomplementive: to
have – the possession objective verb, non-passivized; to take, to grasp, to enjoy, etc. – direct
objective verbs, e.g.: Take the book; to look at, to point to, to send for, etc. – prepositional objective
verbs; in spite of their prepositional use they are easily passivized in English, e.g.: Everyone looked
at her; She was looked at.; to cost, to weigh, to fail, to become, etc. – direct objective verbs, nonpassivized; to belong to, to abound in, to merge with, etc. – prepositional objective verbs, nonpassivized.
In conclusion, it should be stressed once again that many verbs in English in different
contexts migrate easily from one group to another, and the boundaries between the subclasses are
less rigid than in Russian. For example: to work is an uncomplementive verb, but in modern
English, especially in its American variant, one can use it with a direct object too, e.g.: She worked
her team hard; She worked the phones. Such cases, as well as all other notional “sub-class
migration” cases, are treated as syntactic variants (‘uses’) of the same verbal lexemes. But lexemes
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which coincide as notional and functional or semi-functional verbs should be treated as
homonymous verbs, because different grammatical functions underlie these subdivisions.
3 САМОСТОЯТЕЛЬНАЯ РАБОТА СТУДЕНТА
3.1 Some general theoretical problems to the problem of the word
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
3.2 Characteristic of the word as basic unit of language
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
3.3 The branches of lexicology
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
3.4 Types of lexical units: a word, a morpheme and a phrase
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
3.5 Types of word meaning
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
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5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
3.6 Semasiology as a branch of lexicology
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
3.7 Word meaning in morphemes
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
3.8 The lexical meaning of a word
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
3.9 The grammatical meaning of words
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
3.10 Phraseological unit
Recommended literature:
1. Antrushina Modern English Lexicology - M.,1999
2. Arnold I.V. The English Word - M.,1986
3. Ginzburg Modern English Lexicology – M.,1979
4. Koonin A. English Lexicology - M.,1978
5. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1977
6. Харитончик З.А. Лексикология английского языка - M.,1987
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