Лексикология современного
английского языка
Арнольд И. В.
А 84 Лексикология современного английского языка: Учеб. для ин-тов и
фак. иностр. яз. — 3-е изд., перераб. и доп. — М.: Высш. шк., 1986. —
295 с., ил. — На англ. яз.
Учебник посвящен слову как основной единице языка, его семантической и
морфологической структуре, особенностям английского словообразования и
фразеологии. Английская лексика рассматривается как непрерывно
развивающаяся система.
В 3-м издании (2-е—1973 г.) обновлен теоретический и иллюстративный
материал, расширены главы, посвященные теории слова и семасиологии.
CONTENTS
Preface 6
Abbreviations 8
Introduction 9
Chapter 1. Fundamentals 9
§ 1.1 The Object of Lexicology 9
§ 1.2 The Theoretical and Practical Value of English Lexicology …. 12
§ 1.3 The Connection of Lexicology with Phonetics, Stylistics, Grammar
and Other Branches of Linguistics 14
§ 1.4 Types of Lexical Units 18
§ 1.5 The Notion of Lexical System 21
§ 1.6 The Theory of Oppositions 25
Part One THE ENGLISH WORD AS A STRUCTURE
Chapter 2. Characteristics of the Word as the Basic Unit of Language …
27
§ 2.1 The Definition of the Word 27
§ 2.2 Semantic Triangle 31
§ 2.3 Phonetic, Morphological and Semantic Motivation of Words …. 33
Chapter 3. Lexical Meaning and Semantic Structure of English Words …
37
§ 3.1 Definitions 37
§ 3.2 The Lexical Meaning Versus Notion 42
§ 3.3 Denotative and Connotative Meaning 47
§ 3.4 The Semantic Structure of Polysemantic Words 50
§ 3.5 Contextual Analysis 56
§ 3.6 Componential Analysis 57
Chapter 4. Semantic Change 60
§ 4.1 Types of Semantic Change 60
§ 4.2 Linguistic Causes of Semantic Change 71
§ 4.3 Extralinguistic Causes of Semantic Change 73
Chapter 5. Morphological Structure of English Words. Affixation 77
§ 5.1 Morphemes. Free and Bound Forms. Morphological Classification of
Words. Word-Families 77
§ 5.2 Aims and Principles of Morphemic and Word-Formation Analysis . .
81
§ 5.3 Analysis into Immediate Constituents 83
§ 5.4 Derivational and Functional Affixes 87
§ 5.5 The Valency of Affixes and Stems. Word-Building Patterns and Their
Meaning 90
§ 5.6 Classification of Affixes 96
§ 5.7 Allomorphs 101
§ 5.8 Boundary Cases Between Derivation, Inflection and Composition . .
102
§ 5.9 Combining Forms 104
§ 5.10 Hybrids 106
Chapter 6. Compound Words 108
§ 6.1 Definitions and Introductory Remarks 108
§ 6.2.1 The Criteria of Compounds 112
§ 6.2.2 Semi-Affixes 116
§ 6.2.3 “The Stone Wall Problem” 118
§ 6.2.4 Verbal Collocations of the Give Up Type 120
§ 6.3 Specific Features of English Compounds 121
§ 6.4.1 Classification of Compounds 122
§ 6.4.2 Compound Nouns 123
§ 6.4.3 Compound Adjectives 125
§ 6.4.4 Compound Verbs 126
§ 6.5 Derivational Compounds 127
§ 6.6 Reduplication and Miscellanea of Composition 129
§ 6.6.1 Reduplicative Compounds 129
§ 6.6.2 Ablaut Combinations 130
§ 6.6.3 Rhyme Combinations 130
§ 6.7 Pseudo Compounds 131
§ 6.8 The Historical Development of English Compounds 131
§ 6.9 New Word-Forming Patterns in Composition 133
Chapter 7. Shortened Words and Minor Types of Lexical Oppositions . . .
134
§ 7.1 Shortening of Spoken Words and Its Causes 134
§ 7.2 Blending 141
§ 7.3 Graphical Abbreviations. Acronyms 142
§ 7.4 Minor Types of Lexical Oppositions. Sound Interchange 145
§ 7.5 Distinctive Stress 147
§ 7.6 Sound Imitation 148
§ 7.7 Back-Formation 150
Chapter 8. Conversion and Similar Phenomena 153
§ 8.1 Introductory Remarks 153
§ 8.2 The Historical Development of Conversion 155
§ 8.3 Conversion in Present-Day English 156
§ 8.4 Semantic Relationships in Conversion 158
§ 8.5 Substantivation 161
§ 8.6 Conversion in Different Parts of Speech 162
§ 8.7 Conversion and Other Types of Word-Formation 163
Chapter 9. Set Expressions 165
§ 9.1 Introductory Remarks. Definitions 165
§ 9.2 Set Expressions, Semi-Fixed Combinations and Free Phrases …. 166
Changeable and Unchangeable Set Expressions 166
§ 9.3 Classification of Set Expressions 169
§ 9.4 Similarity and Difference between a Set Expression and a Word . .
174
§ 9.5 Features Enhancing Unity and Stability of Set Expressions …. 177
§ 9.6 Proverbs, Sayings, Familiar Quotations and Cliches 179
Part Two ENGLISH VOCABULARY AS A SYSTEM
Chapter 10. Homonyms. Synonyms. Antonyms 182
§ 10.1 Homonyms 182
§ 10.2 The Origin of Homonyms 188
§ 10.3 Homonymy Treated Synchronically 191
§ 10.4 Synonyms 194
§ 10.5 Interchangeability and Substitution 200
§ 10.6 Sources of Synonymy 203
§ 10.7 Euphemisms 207
I 10.8 Lexical Variants and Paronyms 207
§ 10.9 Antonyms and Conversives 209
Chapter 11. Lexical Systems 216
§ 11.1 The English Vocabulary as an Adaptive System. Neologisms . . .
216
§ 11.2 Morphological and Lexico-Grammatical Grouping 221
§ 11.3 Thematic and Ideographic Groups. The Theories of Semantic Fields.
Hyponymy 226
§ 11.4 Terminological Systems 229
§ 11.5 The Opposition of Emotionally Coloured and Emotionally Neutral
Vocabulary 233
§ 11.6 Different Types of Non-Semantic Grouping 238
Chapter 12. The Opposition of Stylistically Marked and Stylistically
Neutral
Words 240
§ 12.1 Functional Styles and Neutral Vocabulary 240
§ 12.2 Functional Styles and Registers 241
§ 12.3 Learned Words and Official Vocabulary 243
§ 12.4 Poetic Diction 244
§ 12.5 Colloquial Words and Expressions 245
§ 12.6 Slang 249
Chapter 13. Native Words Versus Loan Words 252
§ 13.1 The Origin of English Words 252
§ 13.2 Assimilation of Loan Words 255
§ 13.3 Etymological Doublets 259
§ 13.4 International Words 260
Chapter 14. Regional Varieties of the English Vocabulary 262
§ 14.1 Standard English Variants and Dialects 262
§ 14.2 American English 265
§ 14.3 Canadian, Australian and Indian Variants 270
Chapter 15. Lexicography 272
§ 15.1 Types of Dictionaries 272
§ 15.2 Some of the Main Problems of Lexicography 276
§ 15.3 Historical Development of British and American Lexicography . .
281
Conclusion 286
Recommended Reading 289
Subject Index 293
PREFACE
This book is meant as a textbook in lexicology forming part of the
curricula of the Foreign Language faculties in Teachers’ Training
Colleges and Universities. It is intended for students, teachers of
English, postgraduates and all those who are interested in the English
language and its vocabulary.
The main tool throughout the book is the principle of lexical
opposition, i.e. the application of N.S. Trubetzkoy’s theory of
oppositions to the description of lexical phenomena.
The existence of lexicology as an independent discipline forming part of
the curriculum in our Colleges and Universities implies that the
majority of Soviet linguists consider words and not morphemes to be the
fundamental units of language. Another implication is that I think it
possible to show that the vocabulary of every particular language is not
a chaos of diversified phenomena but a homogeneous whole, a system
constituted by interdependent elements related in certain specific ways.
I have attempted as far as possible to present at least some parts of
the material in terms of the theory of sets which in my opinion is a
very convenient interpretation for the theory of oppositions. This very
modest and elementary introduction of mathematical concepts seems
justified for two main reasons: first, because it permits a more general
treatment of and a more rigorous approach to mass phenomena, and it is
with large masses of data that lexicology has to cope; secondly, there
is a pressing need to bridge the gap between the method of presentation
in special linguistic magazines and what is offered the student in
lectures and textbooks. A traditionally trained linguist is sometimes
unable to understand, let alone verify, the relevance of the complicated
apparatus introduced into some modern linguistic publications.
On the other hand, it is the linguistic science developed before
structuralism and mathematical linguistics, and parallel to them, that
forms the basis of our knowledge of lexical phenomena. Much attention is
therefore given to the history of linguistic science as it deals with
vocabulary.
With the restrictions stated above, I have endeavoured to use standard
definitions and accepted terminology, though it was not always easy,
there being various different conventions adopted in the existing
literature.
The 3rd edition follows the theoretical concepts of the previous books,
the main innovation being the stress laid on the features of the
vocabulary as an adaptive system ever changing to meet the demands of
thought and communication. This adaptive system consists of fuzzy sets,
i.e. sets that do not possess sharply defined boundaries. English is
growing and changing rapidly: new words, new meanings, new types of
lexical units appear incessantly. Bookshelves are bursting with new
publications on lexical matters. The size of the manual, however, must
not change. To cope with this difficulty I have slightly changed the
bias in favour of actual description and reduced the bibliography to
naming the authors writing on this or that topic. The student has to
become more active and look up these names in catalogues and magazines.
The debt of the author of a manual to numerous works of scholarship is
heavy whether all the copious notes and references are given or not, so
I used footnotes chiefly when quotations seemed appropriate or when it
seemed specially important for a student to know about the existence of
a book. In this way more space was available for describing the ever
changing English vocabulary.
Another departure from the previous patterns lies in a certain
additional attention to how the material is perceived by the student:
the book is intended to be as clear and memorable as possible.
Lexicology is a science in the making. Its intense growth makes the task
of a textbook writer extremely difficult, as many problems are still
unsettled and a synthesis of many achievements is a thing of the future.
I shall be greatly indebted for all criticism and correction.
My warmest thanks are due to my fellow-philologists who reviewed the two
former editions for their valuable advice and suggestions and the
interest they have shown in this book, and to all those who helped me
with the MS. I would also like to thank Messieurs William Ryan and Colin
Right, who went through the MS and suggested improvements in language
and style.
I am very grateful to the Department of English Philology of Orenburg
Pedagogical Institute and their head prof. N.A. Shekhtman who reviewed
this third edition.
I. Arnold
Leningrad, 1986
ABBREVIATIONS
A words belonging in Ch. Fries’s classification to Class III, i. e.
adjectives and words that can occupy the position of adjectives
a adjective
adv adverb
AmE American English
COD The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English
Engl English
Germ German
Goth Gothic
Gr Greek
Fr French
IC’s immediate constituents
It Italian
Lat Latin
ME Middle English
ModE Modern English
N words belonging in Ch. Fries’s classification to Class I, i. e. nouns
and words that can stand in the same position
n noun
NED New English Dictionary (Oxford)
OE Old English
OED The Oxford English Dictionary
OFr Old French
ON Old North
pl plural
prp preposition
Russ Russian
Scand Scandinavian
sing singular
V words belonging in Ch. Fries’s classification to Class
II, i. e. verbs, except the auxiliaries v verb
LIST OF SYMBOLS
‘changed to’ or ‘becomes’
: : between forms denotes opposition
/ between forms denotes alternation or allophones
* indicates a reconstructed or hypothetical form
? denotes transformation
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1 FUNDAMENTALS
§1.1 THE OBJECT OF LEXICOLOGY
Lexicology (from Gr lexis ‘word’ and logos ‘learning’) is the part of
linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of the language and the
properties of words as the main units of language. The term v o c a b u
l a-r y is used to denote the system formed by the sum total of all the
words and word equivalents that the language possesses. The term word
denotes the basic unit of a given language resulting from the
association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds
capable of a particular grammatical employment. A word therefore is
simultaneously a semantic, grammatical and phonological unit.
Thus, in the word boy the group of sounds [bOI] is associated with the
meaning ‘a male child up to the age of 17 or 18’ (also with some other
meanings, but this is the most frequent) and with a definite grammatical
employment, i.e. it is a noun and thus has a plural form — boys, it is a
personal noun and has the Genitive form boy’s (e. g. the boy’s mother),
it may be used in certain syntactic functions.
The term word will be discussed at length in chapter 2.
The general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of the specific
features of any particular language, is known as general lexicology.
Linguistic phenomena and properties common to all languages are
generally referred to as language universals. Special lexicology devotes
its attention to the description of the characteristic peculiarities in
the vocabulary of a given language. This book constitutes an
introduction into the study of the present-day English word and
vocabulary. It is therefore a book on special lexicology.
It goes without saying that every special lexicology is based on the
principles of general lexicology, and the latter forms a part of general
linguistics. Much material that holds good for any language is therefore
also included, especially with reference to principles, concepts and
terms. The illustrative examples are everywhere drawn from the English
language as spoken in Great Britain.
A great deal has been written in recent years to provide a theoretical
basis on which the vocabularies of different languages can be compared
and described. This relatively new branch of study is called contrastive
lexicology. Most obviously, we shall be particularly concerned with
comparing English and Russian words.
The evolution of any vocabulary, as well as of its single elements,
9
forms the object of historical lexicology or etymology. This branch of
linguistics discusses the origin of various words, their change and
development, and investigates the linguistic and extra-linguistic forces
modifying their structure, meaning and usage. In the past historical
treatment was always combined with the comparative method. Historical
lexicology has been criticised for its atomistic approach, i.e. for
treating every word as an individual and isolated unit. This drawback
is, however, not intrinsic to the science itself. Historical study of
words is not necessarily atomistic. In the light of recent
investigations it becomes clear that there is no reason why historical
lexicology cannot survey the evolution of a vocabulary as an adaptive
system, showing its change and development in the course of time.
Descriptive lexicology deals with the vocabulary of a given language at
a given stage of its development. It studies the functions of words and
their specific structure as a characteristic inherent in the system. The
descriptive lexicology of the English language deals with the English
word in its morphological and semantical structures, investigating the
interdependence between these two aspects. These structures are
identified and distinguished by contrasting the nature and arrangement
of their elements.
It will, for instance, contrast the word boy with its derivatives:
boyhood, boyish, boyishly, etc. It will describe its semantic structure
comprising alongside with its most frequent meaning, such variants as ‘a
son of any age’, ‘a male servant’, and observe its syntactic functioning
and combining possibilities. This word, for instance, can be also used
vocatively in such combinations as old boy, my dear boy, and
attributively, meaning ‘male’, as in boy-friend.
Lexicology also studies all kinds of semantic grouping and semantic
relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, semantic fields, etc.
Meaning relations as a whole are dealt with in semantics — the study of
meaning which is relevant both for lexicology and grammar.
The distinction between the two basically different ways in which
language may be viewed, the historical or diachronic (Gr dia ‘through’
and chronos ‘time’) and the descriptive or synchronic (Gr syn
‘together’, ‘with’), is a methodological distinction, a difference of
approach, artificially separating for the purpose of study what in real
language is inseparable, because actually every linguistic structure and
system exists in a state of constant development. The distinction
between a synchronic and a diachronic approach is due to the Swiss
philologist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).1 Indebted as we are to
him for this important dichotomy, we cannot accept either his axiom that
synchronic linguistics is concerned with systems and diachronic
linguistics with single units or the rigorous separation between the
two. Subsequent investigations have shown the possibility and the
necessity of introducing the historical point of view into systematic
studies of languages.
Language is the reality of thought, and thought develops together
1 Saussure F. de. Cours de linguistique generale. Paris, 1949.
10
with the development of society, therefore language and its vocabulary
must be studied in the light of social history. Every new phenomenon in
human society and in human activity in general, which is of any
importance for communication, finds a reflection in vocabulary. A word,
through its meaning rendering some notion, is a generalised reflection
of reality; it is therefore impossible to understand its development if
one is ignorant of the changes in social, political or everyday life,
production or science, manners or culture it serves to reflect. These
extra-linguistic forces influencing the development of words are
considered in historical lexicology. The point may be illustrated by the
following example:
Post comes into English through French and Italian from Latin. Low Latin
posta — posita fern. p.p. of Latin ponere, posit, v. ‘place’. In the
beginning of the 16th century it meant ‘one of a number of men stationed
with horses along roads at intervals, their duty being to ride forward
with the King’s “packet” or other letters, from stage to stage’. This
meaning is now obsolete, because this type of communication is obsolete.
The word, however, has become international and denotes the present-day
system of carrying and delivering letters and parcels. Its synonym mail,
mostly used in America, is an ellipsis from a mail of letters, i.e. ‘a
bag of letters’. It comes from Old French male (modern malle) ‘bag’, a
word of Germanic origin. Thus, the etymological meaning of mail is ‘a
bag or a packet of letters or dispatches for conveyance by post’.
Another synonym of bag is sack which shows a different meaning
development. Sack is a large bag of coarse cloth, the verb to sack
‘dismiss from service’ comes from the expression to get the sack, which
probably rose from the habit of craftsmen of old times, who on getting a
job took their own tools to the works; when they left or were dismissed
they were given a sack to carry away the tools.
In this connection it should be emphasised that the social nature of
language and its vocabulary is not limited to the social essence of
extra-linguistic factors influencing their development from without.
Language being a means of communication the social essence is intrinsic
to the language itself. Whole groups of speakers, for example, must
coincide in a deviation, if it is to result in linguistic change.
The branch of linguistics, dealing with causal relations between the way
the language works and develops, on the one hand, and the facts of
social life, on the other, is termed sociolinguistics. Some scholars use
this term in a narrower sense, and maintain that it is the analysis of
speech behaviour in small social groups that is the focal point of
sociolinguistic analysis. A. D. Schweitzer has proved that such
microsociological approach alone cannot give a complete picture of the
sociology of language. It should be combined with the study of such
macrosociological factors as the effect of mass media, the system of
education, language planning, etc. An analysis of the social
stratification of languages takes into account the stratification of
society as a whole.
Although the important distinction between a diachronic and a
synchronic, a linguistic and an extralinguistic approach must always
11
be borne in mind, yet it is of paramount importance for the student to
take into consideration that in language reality all the aspects are
interdependent and cannot be understood one without the other. Every
linguistic investigation must strike a reasonable balance between them.
The lexicology of present-day English, therefore, although having aims
of its own, different from those of its historical counterpart, cannot
be divorced from the latter. In what follows not only the present status
of the English vocabulary is discussed: the description would have been
sadly incomplete if we did not pay attention to the historical aspect of
the problem — the ways and tendencies of vocabulary development.
Being aware of the difference between the synchronic approach involving
also social and place variations, and diachronic approach we shall not
tear them asunder, and, although concentrating mainly on the present
state of the English vocabulary, we shall also have to consider its
development. Much yet remains to be done in elucidating the complex
problems and principles of this process before we can present a complete
and accurate picture of the English vocabulary as a system, with
specific peculiarities of its own, constantly developing and conditioned
by the history of the English people and the structure of the language.
§ 1.2 THE THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL VALUE OF ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY
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. One 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 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 is widely
studied all over the world as a foreign language.
The theoretical value of lexicology becomes obvious if we realise 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 of
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
12
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 corruption.
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 serve as names for things, actions, qualities,
etc. and by their modification become better adapted to the needs of the
speakers. This proves the fallacy of one of the characteristic trends in
modern idealistic linguistics, the so-called Sapir-Whorf thesis
according to 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, standardisation
of terminology, information retrieval, literary criticism and 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 organised
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 organised in thematic groups,
word-families, synonymic 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 and
pejorative 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 ‘that
cannot be moved’, ‘clearing land from forests’ and ‘to calculate
wrongly’.
By drawing his pupils’ attention to the combining characteristics of
words the teacher will prevent many mistakes.1 It will be word-groups
falling into patterns, instead of lists of unrelated items, that will be
presented in the classroom.
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. Lexicology not only gives a systematic description of the
present make-up of the vocabulary, but also helps students to master
1 Combining characteristics or distribution — structural patterns in
which the words occur and their lexical collocations.
13
the literary standards of word usage. The correct use of words is an
important counterpart of expressive and effective speech.
An exact knowledge of the vocabulary system is also necessary in
connection with technical teaching means.
Lexicology plays a prominent part in the general linguistic training of
every philologist by summing up the knowledge acquired during all his
years at the foreign language faculty. It also imparts the necessary
skills of using different kinds of dictionaries and reference books, and
prepares for future independent work on increasing and improving one’s
vocabulary.
§ 1.3 THE CONNECTION OF LEXICOLOGY WITH PHONETICS, STYLISTICS, GRAMMAR
AND OTHER BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS
The treatment of words in lexicology cannot be divorced from the study
of all the other elements in the language system to which words belong.
It should be always borne in mind that in reality, in the actual process
of communication, all these elements are interdependent and stand in
definite relations to one another. We separate them for convenience of
study, and yet to separate them for analysis is pointless, unless we are
afterwards able to put them back together to achieve a synthesis and see
their interdependence and development in the language system as a whole.
The word, as it has already been stated, is studied in several branches
of linguistics and not in lexicology only, and the latter, in its turn,
is closely connected with general linguistics, the history of the
language, phonetics, stylistics, grammar and such new branches of our
science as sociolinguistics, paralinguistics, pragmalinguistics and some
others.1
The importance of the connection between lexicology and phonetics stands
explained if we remember that a word is an association of a given group
of sounds with a given meaning, so that top is one word, and tip is
another. Phonemes have no meaning of their own but they serve to
distinguish between meanings. Their function is building up morphemes,
and it is on the level of morphemes that the form-meaning unity is
introduced into language. We may say therefore that phonemes participate
in signification.
Word-unity is conditioned by a number of phonological features. Phonemes
follow each other in a fixed sequence so that [pit] is different from
[tip]. The importance of the phonemic make-up may be revealed by the
substitution test which isolates the central phoneme of hope by setting
it against hop, hoop, heap or hip.
An accidental or jocular transposition of the initial sounds of two or
more words, the so-called spoonerisms illustrate the same
Paralinguistics — the study of non-verbal means of communication
(gestures, facial expressions, eye-contact, etc.).
Pragmalinguistics — the branch of linguistics concerned with the
relation of speech and its users and the influence of speech upon
listeners. See: Leech G. Principles of Pragmatics. London, 1985.
14
point. Cf. our queer old dean for our dear old queen, sin twister for
twin sister, May I sew you to a sheet? for May I show you to a seat?, a
half-warmed fish for a half-formed wish, etc.1
Discrimination between the words may be based upon stress: the word
‘import is recognised as a noun and distinguished from the verb im'port
due to the position of stress. Stress also distinguishes compounds from
otherwise homonymous word-groups: ‘blackbird : : ‘black ‘bird. Each
language also possesses certain phonological features marking
word-limits.
Historical phonetics and historical phonology can be of great use in the
diachronic study of synonyms, homonyms and polysemy. When sound changes
loosen the ties between members of the same word-family, this is an
important factor in facilitating semantic changes.
The words whole, heal, hail, for instance, are etymologically related.2
The word whole originally meant ‘unharmed’, ;unwounded’. The early verb
whole meant 4to make whole’, hence ‘heal’. Its sense of ‘healthy’ led to
its use as a salutation, as in hail! Having in the course of historical
development lost their phonetic similarity, these words cannot now
exercise any restrictive influence upon one another’s semantic
development. Thus, hail occurs now in the meaning of ‘call’, even with
the purpose to stop and arrest (used by sentinels).
Meaning in its turn is indispensable to phonemic analysis because to
establish the phonemic difference between [ou] and [o] it is sufficient
to know that [houp] means something different from [hop].
All these considerations are not meant to be in any way exhaustive, they
can only give a general idea of the possible interdependence of the two
branches of linguistics.
Stylistics, although from a different angle, studies many problems
treated in lexicology. These are the problems of meaning, connotations,
synonymy, functional differentiation of vocabulary according to the
sphere of communication and some other issues. For a reader without some
awareness of the connotations and history of words, the images hidden in
their root and their stylistic properties, a substantial part of the
meaning of a literary text, whether prosaic or poetic, may be lost.
Thus, for instance, the mood of despair in O. Wilde’s poem “Taedium
Vitae” (Weariness of Life) is felt due to an accumulation of epithets
expressed by words with negative, derogatory connotations, such as:
desperate, paltry, gaudy, base, lackeyed, slanderous, lowliest, meanest.
An awareness of all the characteristic features of words is not only
rewarded because one can feel the effect of hidden connotations and
imagery, but because without it one cannot grasp the whole essence of
the message the poem has to convey.
1 Spoonerism — from the name of W.A. Spooner, warden of a college at
Oxford, who was known for such slips.
2 Etymology that branch of linguistics which deals with the origin and
history of words, tracing them to their earliest determinable base.
15
The difference and interconnection between grammar and lexicology is
one of the important controversial issues in linguistics and as it is
basic to the problems under discussion in this book, it is necessary to
dwell upon it a little more than has been done for phonetics and
stylistics.
A close connection between lexicology and grammar is conditioned by the
manifold and inseverable ties between the objects of their study. Even
isolated words as presented in a dictionary bear a definite relation to
the grammatical system of the language because they belong to some part
of speech and conform to some lexico-grammatical characteristics of the
word class to which they belong. Words seldom occur in isolation. They
are arranged in certain patterns conveying the relations between the
things for which they stand, therefore alongside with their lexical
meaning they possess some grammatical meaning. Сf. head of the committee
and to head a committee.
The two kinds of meaning are often interdependent. That is to say,
certain grammatical functions and meanings are possible only for the
words whose lexical meaning makes them fit for these functions, and, on
the other hand, some lexical meanings in some words occur only in
definite grammatical functions and forms and in definite grammatical
patterns.
For example, the functions of a link verb with a predicative expressed
by an adjective cannot be fulfilled by every intransitive verb but are
often taken up by verbs of motion: come true, fall ill, go wrong, turn
red, run dry and other similar combinations all render the meaning of
‘become sth’. The function is of long standing in English and can be
illustrated by a line from A. Pope who, protesting against blank verse,
wrote: It is not poetry, but prose run mad.1
On the other hand the grammatical form and function of the word affect
its lexical meaning. A well-known example is the same verb go when in
the continuous tenses, followed by to and an infinitive (except go and
come), it serves to express an action in the near and immediate future,
or an intention of future action: You're not going to sit there saying
nothing all the evening, both of you, are you? (Simpson)
Participle II of the same verb following the link verb be denotes
absence: The house is gone.
In subordinate clauses after as the verb go implies comparison with the
average: ... how a novel that has now had a fairly long life, as novels
go, has come to be written (Maugham). The subject of the verb go in this
construction is as a rule an inanimate noun.
The adjective hard followed by the infinitive of any verb means
‘difficult’: One of the hardest things to remember is that a man’s merit
in one sphere is no guarantee of his merit in another.
Lexical meanings in the above cases are said to be grammatically
1 A modern ‘invasion’ of grammar into lexicological ‘territory’ is a new
and promising trend referred to as semantic syntax, in which a
lexico-semantic approach is introduced into syntactic description. See,
for example, the works by T.B. Alisova, V.V. Bogdanov, V.G. Gak, I.P.
Sousov. Compare also communicative syntax as studied by L.P. Chakhoyan
and G.G. Poсheptsov.
16
conditioned, and their indicating context is called syntactic or mixed.
The point has attracted the attention of many authors.1
The number of words in each language being very great, any lexical
meaning has a much lower probability of occurrence than grammatical
meanings and therefore carries the greatest amount of information in any
discourse determining what the sentence is about.
W. Chafe, whose influence in the present-day semantic syntax is quite
considerable, points out the many constraints which limit the
co-occurrence of words. He considers the verb as of paramount importance
in sentence semantic structure, and argues that it is the verb that
dictates the presence and character of the noun as its subject or
object. Thus, the verbs frighten, amuse and awaken can have only animate
nouns as their objects.
The constraint is even narrower if we take the verbs say, talk or think
for which only animate human subjects are possible. It is obvious that
not all animate nouns are human.
This view is, however, if not mistaken, at least one-sided, because the
opposite is also true: it may happen that the same verb changes its
meaning, when used with personal (human) names and with names of
objects. Compare: The new girl gave him a strange smile (she smiled at
him) and The new teeth gave him a strange smile.
These are by no means the only relations of vocabulary and grammar. We
shall not attempt to enumerate all the possible problems. Let us turn
now to another point of interest, namely the survival of two
grammatically equivalent forms of the same word when they help to
distinguish between its lexical meanings. Some nouns, for instance, have
two separate plurals, one keeping the etymological plural form, and the
other with the usual English ending -s. For example, the form brothers
is used to express the family relationship, whereas the old form
brethren survives in ecclesiastical usage or serves to indicate the
members of some club or society; the scientific plural of index, is
usually indices, in more general senses the plural is indexes. The
plural of genius meaning a person of exceptional intellect is geniuses,
genius in the sense of evil or good spirit has the plural form genii.
It may also happen that a form that originally expressed grammatical
meaning, for example, the plural of nouns, becomes a basis for a new
grammatically conditioned lexical meaning. In this new meaning it is
isolated from the paradigm, so that a new word comes into being. Arms,
the plural of the noun arm, for instance, has come to mean ‘weapon’.
E.g. to take arms against a sea of troubles (Shakespeare). The
grammatical form is lexicalised; the new word shows itself capable of
further development, a new grammatically conditioned meaning appears,
namely, with the verb in the singular arms metonymically denotes the
military profession. The abstract noun authority becomes a collective in
the term authorities and denotes ‘a group of persons having the right to
control and govern’. Compare also colours, customs, looks, manners,
pictures, works which are the best known examples of this isolation, or,
as it
1 See the works by V.V.Vinogradov, N.N. Amosova, E. Nida and many
others.
17
is also called, lexicalisation of a grammatical form. In all these
words the suffix -s signals a new word with a new meaning.
It is also worthy of note that grammar and vocabulary make use of the
same technique, i.e. the formal distinctive features of some
derivational oppositions between different words are the same as those
of oppositions contrasting different grammatical forms (in affixation,
juxtaposition of stems and sound interchange). Compare, for example, the
oppositions occurring in the lexical system, such as work :: worker,
power :: will-power, food :: feed with grammatical oppositions: work
(Inf.) :: worked (Past Ind.), pour (Inf.) :: will pour (Put. Ind.), feed
(Inf.) :: fed (Past Ind.). Not only are the methods and patterns
similar, but the very morphemes are often homonymous. For example,
alongside the derivational suffixes -en, one of which occurs in
adjectives (wooden), and the other in verbs (strengthen), there are two
functional suffixes, one for Participle II (written), the other for the
archaic plural form (oxen).
Furthermore, one and the same word may in some of its meanings function
as a notional word, while in others it may be a form word, i.e. it may
serve to indicate the relationships and functions of other words.
Compare, for instance, the notional and the auxiliary do in the
following: What you do’s nothing to do with me, it doesn’t interest me.
Last but not least all grammatical meanings have a lexical counterpart
that expresses the same concept. The concept of futurity may be
lexically expressed in the words future, tomorrow, by and by, time to
come, hereafter or grammatically in the verbal forms shall come and will
come. Also plurality may be described by plural forms of various words:
houses, boys, books or lexically by the words: crowd, party, company,
group, set, etc.
The ties between lexicology and grammar are particularly strong in the
sphere of word-formation which before lexicology became a separate
branch of linguistics had even been considered as part of grammar. The
characteristic features of English word-building, the morphological
structure of the English word are dependent upon the peculiarity of the
English grammatical system. The analytical character of the language is
largely responsible for the wide spread of conversion1 and for the
remarkable flexibility of the vocabulary manifest in the ease with which
many nonce-words2 are formed on the spur of the moment.
This brief account of the interdependence between the two important
parts of linguistics must suffice for the present. In future we shall
have to return to the problem and treat some parts of it more
extensively.
§ 1.4 TYPES OF LEXICAL UNITS
The term unit means one of the elements into which a whole may be
divided or analysed and which possesses the basic properties of this
1 See Chapter 8.
2 A nonce-word is a word coined for one occasion, a situational
neologism: (for the) nones — by misdivision from ME (for then) ones.
18
whole. The units of a vocabulary or lexical units are two-facet
elements possessing form and meaning. The basic unit forming the bulk of
the vocabulary is the word. Other units are morphemes that is parts of
words, into which words may be analysed, and set expressions or groups
of words into which words may be combined.
Words are the central elements of language system, they face both ways:
they are the biggest units of morphology and the smallest of syntax",
and what is more, they embody the main structural properties and
functions of the language. Words can be separated in an utterance by
other such units and can be used in isolation. Unlike words, morphemes
cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units and are functioning in
speech only as constituent parts of words. Words are thought of as
representing integer concept, feeling or action or as having a single
referent. The meaning of morphemes is more abstract and more general
than that of words and at the same time they are less autonomous.
Set expressions are word groups consisting of two or more words whose
combination is integrated so that they are introduced in speech, so to
say, ready-made as units with a specialised meaning of the whole that is
not understood as a mere sum total of the meanings of the elements.
In the spelling system of the language words are the smallest units of
written discourse: they are marked off by solid spelling. The ability of
an average speaker to segment any utterance into words is sustained by
literacy. Yet it is a capacity only reinforced by education: it is well
known that every speaker of any language is always able to break any
utterance into words. The famous American linguist E. Sapir testified
that even illiterate American Indians were perfectly capable of
dictating to him — when asked to do so — texts in their own language
“word by word”. The segmentation of a word into morphemes, on the other
hand, presents sometimes difficulties even for trained linguists.
Many authors devoted a good deal of space to discussing which of the
two: the word or the morpheme is to be regarded as the basic unit. Many
American linguists (Ch. Hockett or Z. Harris, for instance) segmented an
utterance into morphemes ignoring words. Soviet lexicologists proceed
from the assumption that it is the word that is the basic unit,
especially as all branches of linguistic knowledge and all levels of
language have the word as their focal point. A convincing argumentation
and an exhaustive review of literature is offered by A. A. Ufimtseva
(1980).
If, however, we look now a little more closely into this problem, we
shall see that the boundaries separating these three sets of units are
sometimes fluid. Every living vocabulary is constantly changing adapting
itself to the functions of communication in the changing world of those
who use it. In this process the vocabulary changes not only
quantitatively by creating new words from the already available corpus
of morphemes and according to existing patterns but also qualitatively.
In these qualitative changes new morphemic material and new
word-building patterns come into being, and new names sometimes adapt
features characteristic of other sets, those of groups of words, for
instance.
19
Orthographic words are written as a sequence of letters bounded by
spaces on a page. Yet, there exist in the English vocabulary lexical
units that are not identical with orthographic words but equivalent to
them. Almost any part of speech contains units indivisible either
syntactically or in terms of meaning, or both, but graphically divided.
A good example is furnished by complex prepositions: along with, as far
as, in spite of, except for, due to, by means of, for the sake of, etc.
The same point may be illustrated by phrasal verbs, so numerous in
English: bring up ‘to educate’, call on ‘to visit’, make up ‘to apply
cosmetics’, ‘to reconcile after a disagreement’ and some other meanings,
put off “to postpone’. The semantic unity of these verbs is manifest in
the possibility to substitute them by orthographically single-word
verbs. Though formally broken up, they function like words and they are
integrated semantically so that their meaning cannot be inferred from
their constituent elements. The same is true about phrasal verbs
consisting of the verbs give, make, take and some others used with a
noun instead of its homonymous verb alone: give a smile, make a promise,
take a walk (cf. to smile, to promise, to walk).
Some further examples are furnished by compound nouns. Sometimes they
are not joined by solid spelling or hyphenation but written separately,
although in all other respects they do not differ from similar one-word
nominations. By way of example let us take some terms for military
ranks. The terms lieutenant-commander and lieutenant-colonel are
hyphenated, whereas wing commander and flight lieutenant are written
separately. Compare also such inconsistencies as all right and
altogether, never mind and nevertheless.
All these are, if not words, then at least word equivalents because they
are indivisible and fulfil the nominative, significative, communicative
and pragmatic functions just as words do.
It is worth while dwelling for a moment on formulaic sentences which
tend to be ready-made and are characterised by semantic unity and
indivisibility: All right, Allow me, Nothing doing, Never mind, How do
you do, Quite the contrary. They are learned as unanalysable wholes and
can also be regarded as word equivalents.
To sum up: the vocabulary of a language is not homogeneous. If we view
it as a kind of field, we shall see that its bulk, its central part is
formed by lexical units possessing all the distinctive features of
words, i.e. semantic, orthographic and morphological integrity as well
as the capacity of being used in speech in isolation. The marginal
elements of this field reveal only some of these features, and yet
belong to this set too. Thus, phrasal verbs, complex prepositions, some
compounds, phraseological units, formulaic expressions, etc. are divided
in spelling but are in all other respects equivalent to words.
Morphemes, on the other hand, a much smaller subset of the vocabulary,
cannot be used as separate utterances and are less autonomous in other
respects but otherwise also function as lexical items. The new term
recently introduced in mathematics to describe sets with blurred
boundaries seems expressive and worthy of
20
use in characterising a vocabulary — such sets are called fuzzy sets.1
§ 1.5 THE NOTION OF LEXICAL SYSTEM
It has been claimed by different authors that, in contrast to grammar,
the vocabulary of a language is not systematic but chaotic. In the light
of recent investigations in linguistic theory, however, we are now in a
position to bring some order into this “chaos”.
Lexicology studies the recurrent patterns of semantic relationships, and
of any formal phonological, morphological or contextual means by which
they may be rendered. It aims at systematisation.
There has been much discussion of late, both in this country and abroad,
concerning different problems of the systematic nature of the language
vocabulary. The Soviet scholars are now approaching a satisfactory
solution based on Marxist dialectics and its teaching of the general
interrelation and interdependence of phenomena in nature and society.
There are several important points to be made here.
The term system as used in present-day lexicology denotes not merely the
sum total of English words, it denotes a set of elements associated and
functioning together according to certain laws. It is a coherent
homogeneous whole, constituted by interdependent elements of the same
order related in certain specific ways. The vocabulary of a language is
moreover an adaptive system 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.
A set is described in the abstract set theory as a collection of
definite distinct objects to be conceived as a whole. A set is said to
be a collection of distinct elements, because a certain object may be
distinguished from the other elements in a set, but there is no
possibility of its repeated appearance. A set is called structured when
the number of its elements is greater than the number of rules according
to which these elements may be constructed. A set is given either by
indicating, i.e. listing, all its elements, or by stating the
characteristic property of its elements. For example the closed set of
English articles may be defined as comprising the elements: the, a/an
and zero. The set of English compounds on the other hand is an infinite
(open) set containing all the words consisting of at least two stems
which occur in the language as free forms.
In a classical set theory the elements are said to be definite because
with respect to any of them it should be definite whether it belongs to
a given set or not. The new development in the set theory, that of fuzzy
sets, has proved to be more relevant to the study of vocabulary. We have
already mentioned that the boundaries of linguistic sets are not sharply
delineated and the sets themselves overlapping.
1 Another term often used nowadays and offered by V.G. Admoni is
field-structure.
21
The lexical system of every epoch contains productive elements typical
of this particular period, others that are obsolete and dropping out of
usage, and, finally, some new phenomena, significant marks of new trends
for the epochs to come. The present status of a system is an
abstraction, a sort of scientific fiction which in some points can
facilitate linguistic study, but the actual system of the language is in
a state of constant change.
Lexicology studies this whole by determining the properties of its
elements and the different relationships of contrast and similarity
existing between them within a language, as well as the ways in which
they are influenced by extra-linguistic reality.
The extra-linguistic relationships refer to the connections of words
with the elements of objective reality they serve to denote, and their
dependence on the social, mental and cultural development of the
language community.
The theory of reflection as developed by V.I. Lenin is our
methodological basis, it teaches that objective reality is approximately
but correctly reflected in the human mind. The notions rendered in the
meanings of the words are generalised reflections of real objects and
phenomena. In this light it is easy to understand how things that are
connected in reality come to be connected in language too. As we have
seen above, the original meaning of the word post was ‘a man stationed
in a number of others along a road as a courier’, hence it came to mean
the vehicle used, the packets and letters carried, a relay of horses,
the station where horses could be obtained (shortened for post-office),
a single dispatch of letters. E. g.: It is a place with only one post a
day (Sidney Smith). It is also used as a title for newspapers. There is
a verb post ‘to put letters into a letter-box.'
The reflection of objective reality is selective. That is, human thought
and language select, reflect and nominate what is relevant to human
activity.
Even though its elements are concrete and can be observed as such, a
system is always abstract, and so is the vocabulary system or, as
Academician V.V. Vinogradov has called it, the lexico-semantic system.
The interdependence in this system results from a complex interaction of
words in their lexical meanings and the grammatical features of the
language. V.V. Vinogradov includes in this term both the sum total of
words and expressions and the derivational and functional patterns of
word forms and word-groups, semantic groupings and relationships between
words. The interaction of various levels in the language system may be
illustrated in English by the following: the widespread development of
homonymy and polysemy, the loss of motivation, the great number of
generic words and the very limited autonomy of English words as compared
with Russian words are all closely connected with the mono-morphemic
analytical character of the English language and the scarcity of
morphological means. All these in their turn result, partly at least,
from levelling and loss of endings, processes undoubtedly connected with
the reduction of vowels in unstressed syllables. In this book the
relations between these elements and the regularity of these relations
are shown
In terms of oppositions, differences, equivalencies and positional
values. Equivalence should be clearly distinguished from equality or
identity. Equivalence is the relation between two elements based on the
common feature due to which they belong to the same set.
The term sуstem as applied to vocabulary should not be understood to
mean a well-defined or rigid system. As it has been stated above it is
an adaptive system and cannot be completely and exactly characterised by
deterministic functions; that is for the present state of science it is
not possible to specify the system’s entire future by its status at some
one instant of its operation. In other words, the vocabulary is not
simply a probabilistic system but a set of interrelated adaptive
subsystems.
An approximation is always made possible by leaving some things out of
account. But we have to remember that the rules of language are mostly
analogies.
The following simple example offered by J. Lyons illustrates this point:
the regular, that is statistically predominant, pattern for adjective
stems is to form abstract nouns by means of the suffix -ness: shortness,
narrowness, shallowness. All the antonyms of the above-mentioned words,
however, follow a different pattern: they have a dental suffix: length,
width, depth. This second analogy becomes a constraint on the working of
the first. Moreover, the relationship of the adjective big with the rest
of the system is even more unpredictable, as it is mostly correlated
with the noun size. The semantic correlation then is as follows:
short = narrow = shallow = long = wide = deep = big shortness narrowness
shallowness length width depth size
At this point it will be helpful to remember that it is precisely the
most frequent words that show irregular or suppletive derivation and
inflection.
Last but not least, one final point may be made about the lexical
system, namely that its elements are characterised by their
combinatorial and contrastive properties determining their syntagmatic
and paradigmatic relationships. A word enters into syntagmatic (linear)
combinatorial relationships with other lexical units that can form its
context, serving to identify and distinguish its meaning. Lexical units
are known to be context-dependent. E. g. in the hat on her head the noun
head means ‘part of the body’, whereas in the head of the department
Head means ‘chief. A word enters into contrastive paradigmatic relations
with all other words, e. g. head, chief, director, etc. that can occur
in the same context and be contrasted to it.1 This principle of contrast
or opposition is fundamental in modern linguistics and we shall deal
with it at length in § 1.6. concerned with the theory of oppositions.
1 paradigm Paradigmatic and syntagmatic studies of meaning are functional because
the meaning of the lexical unit is studied first not through its
relation to referent but through its functions in relation to other
units.
Functional approach is contrasted to referential or onomasiological
approach, otherwise called theory of nomination, in which meaning is
studied as the interdependence between words and their referents, that
is things or concepts they name, i.e. various names given to the same
sense. The onomasiological study of lexical units became especially
prominent in the last two decades. The revival of interest in
onomasiological matters is reflected in a large volume of publications
on the subject. An outline of the main trends of current research will
be found in the monographs on the Theory of Nomination issued by the
Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences.
The study of the lexical system must also include the study of the
words’ combinatorial possibilities •— their capacity to combine with one
another in groups of certain patterns, which serve to identify meanings.
Most modern research in linguistics attaches great importance to what is
variously called valency, distributional characteristics, colligation
and collocation, combining power or otherwise. This research shows that
combinatorial possibilities of words play an important part in almost
every lexicological issue.
Syntagmatic relationships being based on the linear character of speech
are studied by means of contextual, valency, distributional,
transformational and some other types of analysis.
Paradigmatic linguistic relationships determining the vocabulary system
are based on the interdependence of words within the vocabulary
(synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, etc.).
Diachronically the interdependence of words within the lexical subsystem
may be seen by observing shifts in the meaning of existing words that
occur when a new word is introduced into their semantic sphere. This
interdependence is one of the reasons why historical linguistics can
never achieve any valuable results if it observes only the development
of isolated words. Almost any change in one word will cause changes in
one or several other words. Characteristic examples are to be found in
the influence of borrowings upon native words. The native OE haerfest
(ModE harvest || Germ Herbst) originally meant not only the gathering of
grain’ but also ‘the season for reaping’. Beginning with the end of the
14th century, that is after the Romance word autumne > autumn was
borrowed, the second meaning in the native word was lost and transferred
to the word autumn.
Сf. miss v ‘not hit’, ‘not catch’ and miss n — a title for a girl or
unmarried woman.
24
The influence of morphology is manifest, for instance, in the
development of non-affixed word-formation. Cf. harvest n and harvest v.
The above considerations are not meant to be exhaustive; they are there
to give some general idea of the relationships in question.
In this connection it is necessary to point out that various
interpretations of the same linguistic phenomena have repeatedly been
offered and have even proved valuable for their respective purposes,
just as in other sciences various interpretations may be given for the
same facts of reality in conformity with this or that practical task. To
be scientific, however, these interpretations cannot be arbitrary: they
must explain facts and permit explanation and prediction of other facts.
Therefore they must fit without bringing contradictions into the whole
system of the theory created for the subject.
§ 1.6 THE THEORY OF OPPOSITIONS
This course of English lexicology falls into two main parts: the
treatment of the English word as a structure and the treatment of
English vocabulary as a system. The aim of the present book is to show
this system of interdependent elements with specific peculiarities of
its own, different from other lexical systems; to show the morphological
and semantic patterns according to which the elements of this system are
built, to point out the distinctive features with which the main
oppositions, i.e. semantically and functionally relevant partial
differences between partially similar elements of the vocabulary, can be
systematised, and to try and explain how these vocabulary patterns are
conditioned by the structure of the language.
The theory of oppositions is the task to which we address ourselves in
this paragraph.
Lexical opposition is the basis of lexical research and description.
Lexicological theory and lexicological description cannot progress
independently. They are brought together in the same general technique
of analysis, one of the cornerstones of which is N.S. Trubetzkoy’s
theory of oppositions. First used in phonology, the theory proved
fruitful for other branches of linguistics as well.
Modern linguistics views the language system as consisting of several
subsystems all based on oppositions, differences, samenesses and
positional values.
A lexical opposition is defined as a semantically relevant relationship
of partial difference between two partially similar words.
Each of the tens of thousands of lexical units constituting the
vocabulary possesses a certain number of characteristic features
variously combined and making each separate word into a special sign
different from all other words. We use the term lexical distinctive
feature for features capable of distinguishing a word in morphological
form or meaning from an otherwise similar word or variant. Distinctive
features and oppositions take different specific manifestations on
25
different linguistic levels: in phonology, morphology, lexicology. We
deal with lexical distinctive features and lexical oppositions.
Thus, in the opposition doubt : : doubtful the distinctive features are
morphological: doubt is a root word and a noun, doubtful is a derived
adjective.
The features that the two contrasted words possess in common form the
basis of a lexical opposition. The basis in the opposition doubt ::
doubtful is the common root -doubt-. The basis of the opposition may
also form the basis of equivalence due to which these words, as it has
been stated above, may be referred to the same subset. The features must
be chosen so as to show whether any element we may come across belongs
to the given set or not.1 They must also be important, so that the
presence of a distinctive feature must allow the prediction of secondary
features connected with it. The feature may be constant or variable, or
the basis may be formed by a combination of constant and variable
features, as in the case of the following group: pool, pond, lake, sea,
ocean with its variation for size. Without a basis of similarity no
comparison and no opposition are possible.
When the basis is not limited to the members of one opposition but
comprises other elements of the system, we call the opposition
polydimensional. The presence of the same basis or combination of
features in several words permits their grouping into a subset of the
vocabulary system. We shall therefore use the term lexical group to
denote 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.
It has become customary to denote oppositions by the signs: , /
or ::, e. g.
The common feature of the members of this particular opposition forming
its basis is the adjective stem -skilled-. The distinctive feature is
the presence or absence of the prefix un-. This distinctive feature may
in other cases also serve as the basis of equivalence so that all
adjectives beginning with un- form a subset of English vocabulary
(unable, unaccountable, unaffected, unarmed, etc.), forming a
correlation:
In the opposition man :: boy the distinctive feature is the semantic
component of age. In the opposition boy :: lad the distinctive feature
is that of stylistic colouring of the second member.
The methods and procedures of lexical research such as contextual
analysis, componential analysis, distributional analysis, etc. will be
briefly outlined in other chapters of the book.
1 One must be careful, nevertheless, not to make linguistic categories
more rigid and absolute than they really are. There is certainly a
degree of “fuzziness” about many types of linguistic sets.
Part One
THE ENGLISH WORD AS A STRUCTURE
Chapter 2
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WORD AS THE BASIC UNIT OF LANGUAGE
§ 2.1 THE DEFINITION OF THE WORD
Although the borderline between various linguistic units is not always
sharp and clear, we shall try to define every new term on its first
appearance at once simply and unambiguously, if not always very
rigorously. The approximate definition of the term word has already been
given in the opening page of the book.
The important point to remember about definitions is that they should
indicate the most essential characteristic features of the notion
expressed by the term under discussion, the features by which this
notion is distinguished from other similar notions. For instance, in
defining the word one must distinguish it from other linguistic units,
such as the phoneme, the morpheme, or the word-group. In contrast with a
definition, a description aims at enumerating all the essential features
of a notion.
To make things easier we shall begin by a preliminary description,
illustrating it with some examples.
The word may be described as the basic unit of language. Uniting meaning
and form, it is composed of one or more morphemes, each consisting of
one or more spoken sounds or their written representation. Morphemes as
we have already said are also meaningful units but they cannot be used
independently, they are always parts of words whereas words can be used
as a complete utterance (e. g. Listen!). The combinations of morphemes
within words are subject to certain linking conditions. When a
derivational affix is added a new word is formed, thus, listen and
listener are different words. In fulfilling different grammatical
functions words may take functional affixes: listen and listened are
different forms of the same word. Different forms of the same word can
be also built analytically with the help of auxiliaries. E.g.: The world
should listen then as I am listening now (Shelley).
When used in sentences together with other words they are syntactically
organised. Their freedom of entering into syntactic constructions is
limited by many factors, rules and constraints (e. g.: They told me this
story but not *They spoke me this story).
The definition of every basic notion is a very hard task: the definition
of a word is one of the most difficult in linguistics because the
27
simplest word has many different aspects. It has a sound form because
it is a certain arrangement of phonemes; it has its morphological
structure, being also a certain arrangement of morphemes; when used in
actual speech, it may occur in different word forms, different syntactic
functions and signal various meanings. Being the central element of any
language system, the word is a sort of focus for the problems of
phonology, lexicology, syntax, morphology and also for some other
sciences that have to deal with language and speech, such as philosophy
and psychology, and probably quite a few other branches of knowledge.
All attempts to characterise the word are necessarily specific for each
domain of science and are therefore considered one-sided by the
representatives of all the other domains and criticised for
incompleteness. The variants of definitions were so numerous that some
authors (A. Rossetti, D.N. Shmelev) collecting them produced works of
impressive scope and bulk.
A few examples will suffice to show that any definition is conditioned
by the aims and interests of its author.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), one of the great English philosophers,
revealed a materialistic approach to the problem of nomination when he
wrote that words are not mere sounds but names of matter. Three
centuries later the great Russian physiologist I.P. Pavlov (1849-1936)
examined the word in connection with his studies of the second signal
system, and defined it as a universal signal that can substitute any
other signal from the environment in evoking a response in a human
organism. One of the latest developments of science and engineering is
machine translation. It also deals with words and requires a rigorous
definition for them. It runs as follows: a word is a sequence of
graphemes which can occur between spaces, or the representation of such
a sequence on morphemic level.
Within the scope of linguistics the word has been defined syntactically,
semantically, phonologically and by combining various approaches.
It has been syntactically defined for instance as “the minimum sentence”
by H. Sweet and much later by L. Bloomfield as “a minimum free form”.
This last definition, although structural in orientation, may be said to
be, to a certain degree, equivalent to Sweet’s, as practically it
amounts to the same thing: free forms are later defined as “forms which
occur as sentences”.
E. Sapir 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”. Sapir
also points out one more, very important characteristic of the word, its
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. The
28
situation becomes more complicated if we cannot be guided by solid
spelling.’ “The Oxford English Dictionary”, for instance, does not
include the reciprocal pronouns each other and one another under
separate headings, although they should certainly be analysed as
word-units, not as word-groups since they have become indivisible: we
now say with each other and with one another instead of the older forms
one with another or each with the other.1
Altogether is one word according to its spelling, but how is one to
treat all right, which is rather a similar combination?
When discussing the internal cohesion of the word the English linguist
John Lyons points out that it should be discussed in terms of two
criteria “positional mobility” and “uninterruptability”. To illustrate
the first he segments into morphemes the following sentence:
the – boy – s – walk – ed – slow – ly – up – the – hill
The sentence may be regarded as a sequence of ten morphemes, which occur
in a particular order relative to one another. There are several
possible changes in this order which yield an acceptable English
sentence:
slow – ly – the – boy – s – walk – ed – up – the – hill up – the – hill
– slow – ly – walk – ed – the – boy – s
Yet under all the permutations certain groups of morphemes behave as
‘blocks’ — they occur always together, and in the same order relative to
one another. There is no possibility of the sequence s – the – boy, ly –
slow, ed – walk. “One of the characteristics of the word is that it
tends to be internally stable (in terms of the order of the component
morphemes), but positionally mobile (permutable with other words in the
same sentence)”.2
A purely semantic treatment will be found in Stephen Ullmann’s
explanation: with him connected discourse, if analysed from the semantic
point of view, “will fall into a certain number of meaningful segments
which are ultimately composed of meaningful units. These meaningful
units are called words.”3
The semantic-phonological approach may be illustrated by A.H.Gardiner’s
definition: “A word is an articulate sound-symbol in its aspect of
denoting something which is spoken about.”4
The eminent French linguist A. Meillet (1866-1936) combines the
semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria and advances a formula
which underlies many subsequent definitions, both abroad and in our
country, including the one given in the beginning of this book: “A word
is defined by the association of a particular meaning with a
1 Sapir E. Language. An Introduction to the Study of Speech. London,
1921, P. 35.
2 Lyons, John. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: Univ.
Press, 1969. P. 203.
3 Ullmann St. The Principles of Semantics. Glasgow, 1957. P. 30.
4 Gardiner A.H. The Definition of the Word and the Sentence // The
British Journal of Psychology. 1922. XII. P. 355 (quoted from: Ullmann
St., Op. cit., P. 51).
29
particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical
employment.”1
This definition does not permit us to distinguish words from phrases
because not only child, but a pretty child as well are combinations of a
particular group of sounds with a particular meaning capable of a
particular grammatical employment.
We can, nevertheless, accept this formula with some modifications,
adding that a word is the smallest significant unit of a given language
capable of functioning alone and characterised by positional mobility
within a sentence, morphological uninterruptability and semantic
integrity.2 All these criteria are necessary because they permit us to
create a basis for the oppositions between the word and the phrase, the
word and the phoneme, and the word and the morpheme: their common
feature is that they are all units of the language, their difference
lies in the fact that the phoneme is not significant, and a morpheme
cannot be used as a complete utterance.
Another reason for this supplement is the widespread scepticism
concerning the subject. It has even become a debatable point whether a
word is a linguistic unit and not an arbitrary segment of speech. This
opinion is put forth by S. Potter, who writes that “unlike a phoneme or
a syllable, a word is not a linguistic unit at all.”3 He calls it a
conventional and arbitrary segment of utterance, and finally adopts the
already mentioned definition of L. Bloomfield. This position is,
however, as we have already mentioned, untenable, and in fact S. Potter
himself makes ample use of the word as a unit in his linguistic
analysis.
The weak point of all the above definitions is that they do not
establish the relationship between language and thought, which is
formulated if we treat the word as a dialectical unity of form and
content, in which the form is the spoken or written expression which
calls up a specific meaning, whereas the content is the meaning
rendering the emotion or the concept in the mind of the speaker which he
intends to convey to his listener.
Summing up our review of different definitions, we come to the
conclusion that they are bound to be strongly dependent upon the line of
approach, the aim the scholar has in view. For a comprehensive word
theory, therefore, a description seems more appropriate than a
definition.
The problem of creating a word theory based upon the materialistic
understanding of the relationship between word and thought on the one
hand, and language and society, on the other, has been one of the most
discussed for many years. The efforts of many eminent scholars such as
V.V. Vinogradov, A. I. Smirnitsky, O.S. Akhmanova, M.D. Stepanova, A.A.
Ufimtseva — to name but a few, resulted in throwing light
1 Meillet A. Linguistique historique et linguistique generate. Paris,
1926. Vol. I. P. 30.
2 It might be objected that such words as articles, conjunctions and a
few other words never occur as sentences, but they are not numerous and
could be collected into a list of exceptions.
3 See: Potter S. Modern Linguistics. London, 1957. P. 78.
30
on this problem and achieved a clear presentation of the word as a
basic unit of the language. The main points may now be summarised.
The word is the fundamental unit of language. It is a dialectical unity
of form and content. Its content or meaning is not identical to notion,
but it may reflect human notions, and in this sense may be considered as
the form of their existence. Concepts fixed in the meaning of words are
formed as generalised and approximately correct reflections of reality,
therefore in signifying them words reflect reality in their content.
The acoustic aspect of the word serves to name objects of reality, not
to reflect them. In this sense the word may be regarded as a sign. This
sign, however, is not arbitrary but motivated by the whole process of
its development. That is to say, when a word first comes into existence
it is built out of the elements already available in the language and
according to the existing patterns.
§ 2.2 SEMANTIC TRIANGLE
The question that now confronts us is this: what is the relation of
words to the world of things, events and relations outside of language
to which they refer? How is the word connected with its referent?
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. The
situation may be represented by a triangle (see Fig. 1).
Here, according to F. de Saussure, only the relationship shown by a
solid line concerns linguistics and the sign is not a unity of form and
meaning as we understand it now, but only sound form.
Originally this triangular scheme was suggested by the German
mathematician and philosopher Gottlieb Frege (1848-1925).
Well-known English scholars C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards adopted this
three-cornered pattern with considerable modifications. With them a sign
is a two-facet unit comprising form (phonetical and orthographic),
regarded as a linguistic symbol, and reference which is more
1 A concept is an idea of some object formed by mentally reflecting and
combining its essential characteristics.
31
linguistic than just a concept. This approach may be called referential
because it implies that linguistic meaning is connected with the
referent. It is graphically shown by there being only one dotted line. A
solid line between reference and referent shows that the relationship
between them is linguistically relevant, that the nature of what is
named influences the meaning. This connection should not be taken too
literally, it does not mean that the sound form has to have any
similarity with the meaning or the object itself. The connection is
conventional.
Several generations of writers, following C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards,
have in their turn taken up and modified this diagram. It is known under
several names: the semantic triangle, triangle of signification, Frege
semiotic triangle, Ogden and Richards basic triangle or simply basic
triangle.
We reproduce it for the third time to illustrate how it can show the
main features of the referential approach in its present form. All the
lines are now solid, implying that it is not only the form of the
linguistic sign but also its meaning and what it refers to that are
relevant for linguistics. The scheme is given as it is applied to the
naming of cats.
The scheme is still over-simplified and several things are left out. It
is very important, for instance, to remember that the word is
represented by the left-hand side of the diagram — it is a sign
comprising the name and the meaning, and these invariably evoke one
another. So we have to assume that the word takes two apexes of the
triangle and the line connecting them. In some versions of the triangle
it is not the meaning but the concept that is placed in the apex. This
reflects the approach to the problem as formulated by medieval
grammarians; it remained traditional for many centuries.
32
We shall deal with the difference between concept and meaning in § 3.2.
In the modification of the triangle given here we have to understand
that the referent belongs to extra-linguistic reality, it is reflected
in our mind in several stages (not shown on the diagram): first it is
perceived, then many perceptions are generalised into a concept, which
in its turn is reflected in the meaning with certain linguistic
constraints conditioned by paradigmatic influence within the vocabulary.
When it is the concept that is put into the apex, then the meaning
cannot be identified with any of the three points of the triangle.1
The diagram represents the simplest possible case of reference because
the word here is supposed to have only one meaning and one form of
fixation. Simplification, is, however, inherent to all models and the
popularity of the semantic triangle proves how many authors find it
helpful in showing the essence of the referential approach.
§ 2.3 PHONETIC, MORPHOLOGICAL
AND SEMANTIC MOTIVATION OF WORDS
The term motivation is used to denote the relationship existing between
the phonemic or morphemic composition and structural pattern of the word
on the one hand, and its meaning on the other. There are three main
types of motivation: phonetical motivation, morphological motivation,
and semantic motivation.
When there is a certain similarity between the sounds that make up the
word and those referred to by the sense, the motivation is phonetical.
Examples are: bang, buzz, cuckoo, giggle, gurgle, hiss, purr, whistle,
etc. Here the sounds of a word are imitative of sounds in nature because
what is referred to is a sound or at least, produces a characteristic
sound (cuckoo). Although there exists a certain arbitrary element in the
resulting phonemic shape of the word, one can see that 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. St. Ullmann2 stresses that phonetic motivation is not a
perfect replica of any acoustic structure but only a rough
approximation. This accounts for the variability of echo-words within
one language and between different languages. Gf. cuckoo (Engl), Kuckuck
(Germ), кукушка (Russ). Within the English vocabulary there are
different words, all sound imitative, meaning ‘quick, foolish,
indistinct talk’: babble, chatter, gabble, prattle. In this last group
echoic creations combine phonological and morphological motivation
because they contain verbal suffixes -le and -er forming frequentative
verbs. We see therefore that one word may combine different types of
motivation.
1 See: Ginzburg R.S., Khidekel S.S., Knyazeva G.Y., Sankin A.A. A Course
in Modern English Lexicology. M., 1979. P. 16.
2 Ullmann St. The Principles of Semantics. P. 88.
3 И. В. Арнольд 33
Words denoting noises produced by animals are mostly sound imitative.
In English they are motivated only phonetically so that nouns and verbs
are exactly the same. In Russian the motivation combines phonetical and
morphological motivation. The Russian words блеять v and блеяние n are
equally represented in English by bleat. Сf. also: purr (of a cat), moo
(of a cow), crow (of a cock), bark (of a dog), neigh (of a horse) and
their Russian equivalents.
The morphological motivation may be quite regular. Thus, the prefix ex-
means ‘former’ when added to human nouns: ex-filmstar, ex-president,
ex-wife. Alongside with these cases there is a more general use of ex-:
in borrowed words it is unstressed and motivation is faded (expect,
export, etc.).
Сf. detainee, manoeuvrable, prefabricated, racialist, self-propelling,
vitaminise, etc. In older words, root words and morphemes motivation is
established etymologically, if at all.
From the examples given above it is clear that motivation is the way in
which a given meaning is represented in the word. It reflects the type
of nomination process chosen by the creator of the new word. Some
scholars of the past used to call the phenomenon the inner word form.
In deciding whether a word of long standing in the language is
morphologically motivated according to present-day patterns or not, one
should be very careful. Similarity in sound form does not always
correspond to similarity in morphological pattern. Agential suffix -er
is affixable to any verb, so that V+-er means ‘one who V-s’ or
‘something that V-s’: writer, receiver, bomber, rocker, knocker. Yet,
although the verb numb exists in English, number is not ‘one who numbs’
but is derived from OFr nombre borrowed into English and completely
assimilated.
The cases of regular morphological motivation outnumber irregularities,
and yet one must remember the principle of “fuzzy sets” in coming across
the word smoker with its variants: ‘one who smokes tobacco’ and ‘a
railway car in which passengers may smoke’.
Many writers nowadays instead of the term morphological motivation, or
parallel to it, introduce the term word-building meaning. In what
follows the term will be avoided because actually it is not meaning that
is dealt with in this concept, but the form of presentation.
The third type of motivation is called semantic motivation. It is based
on the co-existence of direct and figurative meanings of the same word
within the same synchronous system. Mouth continues to denote a part of
the human face, and at the same time it can
34
metaphorically apply to any opening or outlet: the mouth of a river, of
a cave, of a furnace. Jacket is a short coat and also a protective cover
for a book, a phonograph record or an electric wire. Ermine is not only
the name of a small animal, but also of its fur, and the office and rank
of an English judge because in England ermine was worn by judges in
court. In their direct meaning neither mouth nor ermine is motivated.
As to compounds, their motivation is morphological if the meaning of the
whole is based on the direct meaning of the components, and semantic if
the combination of components is used figuratively. Thus, eyewash ‘a
lotion for the eyes’ or headache ‘pain in the head’, or watchdog ‘a dog
kept for watching property’ are all morphologically motivated. If, on
the other hand, they are used metaphorically as ‘something said or done
to deceive a person so that he thinks that what he sees is good, though
in fact it is not’, ‘anything or anyone very annoying’ and ‘a watchful
human guardian’, respectively, then the motivation is semantic. Compare
also heart-breaking, time-server, lick-spittle, sky-jack v.
An interesting example of complex morpho-semantic motivation passing
through several stages in its history is the word teenager ‘a person in
his or her teens’. The motivation may be historically traced as follows:
the inflected form of the numeral ten produced the suffix -teen. The
suffix later produces a stem with a metonymical meaning (semantic
motivation), receives the plural ending -s, and then produces a new noun
teens ‘the years of a person’s life of which the numbers end in -teen,
namely from 13 to 19’. In combination with age or aged the adjectives
teen-age and teen-aged are coined, as in teen-age boy, teen-age
fashions. A morphologically motivated noun teenager is then formed with
the help of the suffix -er which is often added to compounds or noun
phrases producing personal names according to the pattern *one connected
with…’.
The pattern is frequent enough. One must keep in mind, however, that not
all words with a similar morphemic composition will have the same
derivational history and denote human beings. E. g. first-nighter and
honeymooner are personal nouns, but two-seater is ‘a car or an aeroplane
seating two persons’, back-hander is ‘a back-hand stroke in tennis’ and
three-decker ‘a sandwich made of three pieces of bread with two layers
of filling’.
When the connection between the meaning of the word and its form is
conventional that is there is no perceptible reason for the word having
this particular phonemic and morphemic composition, the word is said to
be non-motivated for the present stage of language development.
Every vocabulary is in a state of constant development. Words that seem
non-motivated at present may have lost their motivation. The verb earn
does not suggest at present any necessary connection with agriculture.
The connection of form and meaning seems purely conventional. Historical
analysis shows, however, that it is derived from OE (ze-)earnian ‘to
harvest’. In Modern English this connection no longer exists and earn is
now a non-motivated word. Complex morphological structures tend to unite
and become indivisible units, as St. Ullmann
3* 35
demonstrates tracing the history of not which is a reduced form of
nought from OE nowiht1
Chapter 3
LEXICAL MEANING AND SEMANTIC STRUCTURE
OF ENGLISH WORDS
§ 3.1 DEFINITIONS
The branch of linguistics concerned with the meaning of words and word
equivalents is called semasiology. The name comes from the Greek s?masi?
‘signification’ (from s?ma ‘sign’ s?mantikos ‘significant’ and logos
‘learning’).
In the present book we shall not deal with every kind of linguistic
meaning. Attention will be concentrated on lexical meaning and
semasiology will be treated as a branch of lexicology.
This does not mean, of course, that no attention will be paid to
grammatical meaning; on the contrary, grammatical meaning must be
considered because it bears a specific influence upon lexical meaning
(see § 1.3). In most present-day methods of lexicological analysis words
are studied by placing them, or rather considering them in larger units
of context; a word is defined by its functioning within a phrase or a
sentence. This means that the problem of autonomy of lexicology versus
syntax is now being raised and solved by special study. This functional
approach is attempted in contextual analysis, semantic syntax and some
other branches of linguistics.1
The influence of grammar on lexical meaning is manifold (see §1.3) and
will be further discussed at some length later. At this stage it will
suffice to point out that a certain basic component of the word meaning
is described when one identifies the word morphologically, i.e. states
to what grammatical word class it belongs.
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 treated in this book are as
follows: semantic development of words, its causes and classification,
relevant distinctive features and types of lexical meaning,
1 The problem is not new. M. Breal, for instance, devoted much attention
to a semasiological treatment of grammar. A German philologist H.
Hatzfeld held that semasiology should include syntax, and that many of
its chapters need historical and cultural comments.
The problem has recently acquired a certain urgency and a revival of
interest in semantic syntax is reflected in a large number of
publications by Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev scholars.
37
polysemy and semantic structure of words, semantic grouping and
connections in the vocabulary system, i.e. synonyms, antonyms,
terminological systems, etc. The present chapter does not offer to cover
all of this wide field. Attention will be centred upon semantic word
structure and semantic analysis.
An exact definition of any basic term is no easy task altogether (see §
2.1). 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.
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 (see § 2.2). 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."1 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.
In our country the definitions of meaning given by various authors,
though different in detail, agree in the basic principle: they all point
out that lexical meaning is the realisation of concept or emotion by
means of a definite language system. 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:
1 Note how this epigram makes use of the polysemy of the word meaning.
38
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 grammatical meaning 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 lexico-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
lexico-grammatical meanings are necessary.
The lexiсo-grammatical meaning is the common denominator of all the
meanings of words belonging to a lexico-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 lexico-grammatical meanings and substitute
any word of their class are called generic terms. For example the word
matter is a generic term for material nouns, the word group — for
collective nouns, the word person — for personal nouns.
Words belonging to one lexico-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”.1 The common features of semantic structure may be observed in
their dictionary definitions:
1 Quirk R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Svartvik J. A Grammar of
Contemporary English. London, 1974.
39
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
lexico-grammatical.
The conceptual content of a word is expressed in its denotative
meaning.1 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 demоfistrative, if it is
an individual object. The term referent or denotatum (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?” (Christie) 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 connotative meaning. 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.2
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'
1 There are other synonymous terms but we shall not enumerate them here
because terminological richness is more hampering than helpful.
2 See the works of E.S. Aznaurova, T.G. Vinokur, R.H. Volpert, V.I.
Maltzev, V.N. Mikhaylovskaya, I.A. Sternin, V.I. Shakhovsky and many
others.
40
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 denotational and connotative
meanings.
The third type of semantic segmentation mentioned on p. 39 was the
segmentation of the denotational meaning into semantic components. The
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. 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
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 semes 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.
Polysemy 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 classification of meanings within the semantic structure of one
polysemantic word will be discussed in § 3.4.
If the communicative value of a word contains latent possibilities
realised not in this particular variant but able to create new derived
meanings or words we call that implicational.1 The word bomb,
1 See on this point M.V. Nikitin’s works.
See also the term epidigmatic offered by D.N. Shmelev for a somewhat
similar notion of the elements of meaning that form the basis for
semantic and morphological derivation and characterise the similarities
and differences of variants within the semantic structure of one word.
41
for example, implies great power, hence the new colloquial meanings
‘great success’ and ‘great failure’, the latter being an American slang
expression.
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 semantic structure of the word so
much that every part of speech possesses semantic peculiarities of its
own.
§ 3.2 THE LEXICAL MEANING VERSUS NOTION
The term notion (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 scope and content. 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 identifying (demonstrative) and significative
functions 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 the expressive
function.
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) every word
42
evokes a general idea, a notion, without directly referring to any
particular element of reality. 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 proper names 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
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 (see § 3.3). 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
1 Ullmann St. The Principles of Semantics. P. 73. See also on the point
of proper names: Jespersen O. Philosophy of Grammar. London, 1929, p.p.
63-71; Soerensen H.S. Word-Classes in Modern English (with Special
Reference to Proper Names), with an Introductory Theory of Grammar,
Meaning and Reference. Copenhagen, 1958.
43
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.
The stylistic colouring should not be mixed with emotional tone although
here they coincide. A word may have a definite stylistic characteristic
and be completely devoid of any emotional colouring (lifer ‘a person who
has been sent to prison for life’); two words may belong to the same
style and express diametrically opposed emotions (compare, for instance,
the derogatory lousy and the laudatory smashing, both belonging to
slang).
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 valency. It has a definite
set of grammatical meanings, and a definite set of forms.
Every lexico-grammatical group of words (see p. p. 28, 39) or class is
characterised by its own lexico-grammatical meaning, forming, as it
were, the common denominator of all the meanings of the words which
belong to this group. The lexico-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 lexico-grammatical
meaning common to all the words of the class to which this word belongs
is enriched by additional features and becomes particularised.
The meaning of a specific property in such words as bright, clear, good,
quick, steady, thin is a particular realisation of the lexico-
44
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 lexico-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 lexico-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 lexico-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.
In every language the combinatorial possibility of meanings in one word
is specific. Thus, it is characteristic of English nouns to combine
individual and collective, countable and uncountable variants in one
phonetic complex. In verbs we observe different meanings based on the
transitive and intransitive lexico-semantic variants of the same verb,
as illustrated by the following examples: burn vt ‘destroy by fire’, vi
‘be in flames’; hold vt ‘contain, keep fast’, vi ‘be true’. See also
different meanings of the verbs fire, fly, run, shake, turn, walk, warm,
worry, etc.
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
45
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.
The meaning of every word forms part of the semantic system of each
particular language and thus is always determined by the peculiarities
of its vocabulary, namely the existence of synonyms, or words near in
meaning, by the typical usage, set expressions and also by the words’
grammatical characteristics depending on the grammatical system of each
language.
A good illustration is given by the verb go. Its Russian equivalent is
идти. The main meaning ‘move or pass from place to place’ is common to
both languages, as well as the meaning ‘extend’ (e. g.: This road goes
to London —Эта дорога идет в Лондон); and so is the meaning ‘work’ (Is
your watch going? — Идут ли ваши часы?). There is, however, quite a
considerable number of meanings that do not coincide. This is partly due
to the existence in the English vocabulary of the words come and walk
that point out the direction and character of the movement. Сf. Вот, он
идет! — Here he comes! On the other hand the Russian language makes a
distinction between идти and ехать. So that the English go by train, go
by bus cannot be translated as *uдmu на поезде or *идти на автобусе.
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).
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
46
functions. The development of the lexical meaning is influenced by the
whole complicated network of ties and relations between the words in a
given vocabulary and between the vocabulary and other aspects of the
language.
§ 3.3 DENOTATIVE AND CONNOTATIVE MEANING
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 the 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.
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 unilingual 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
47
constantly changing. The speakers’ ideolects vary due to different life
experience, education and other extra-linguistic 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.
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).
Evaluative connotation expresses approval of disapproval.
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
48
is not ideal. There is some difficulty for instance in separating the
binary good/bad evaluation from connotations of the so-called bias words
involving ideological 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 bias words 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 it’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
intensifying connotation (also expressive, emphatic). Thus magnificent,
gorgeous, splendid, superb are all used colloquially as terms of
exaggeration.
We often come across words that have two or three types of connotations
at once, for example the word beastly as in beastly weather or beastly
cold is emotional, colloquial, expresses censure and intensity.
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).
4 И В Арнольд 49
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.
A distinction has to be drawn between the lexical meaning of a word in
speech, we shall call it contextual 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.
As a rule the contextual meaning represents only one of the possible
variants of the word but this one variant may render a complicated
notion or emotion analyzable into several semes. In this case we deal
not with the semantic structure of the word but with the semantic
structure of one of its meanings. Polysemy does not interfere with the
communicative function of the language because the situation and context
cancel all the unwanted meanings.
Sometimes, as, for instance in puns, the ambiguity is intended, the
words are purposefully used so as to emphasise their different meanings.
Consider the replica of lady Constance, whose son, Arthur Plantagenet is
betrayed by treacherous allies:
LYMOGES (Duke of Austria): Lady Constance, peace!
CONSTANCE: War! war! no peace! peace is to me a war (Shakespeare).
In the time of Shakespeare peace as an interjection meant ‘Silence!’ But
lady Constance takes up the main meaning — the antonym of war.
Geoffrey Leech uses the term reflected meaning for what is communicated
through associations with another sense of the same word, that is all
cases when one meaning of the word forms part of the listener’s response
to another meaning. G. Leech illustrates his point by the following
example. Hearing in the Church Service the expression The Holy Ghost, he
found his reaction conditioned by the everyday unreligious and awesome
meaning ‘the shade of a dead person supposed to visit the living’. The
case where reflected meaning intrudes due to suggestivity of the
expression may be also illustrated by taboo words and euphemisms
connected with the physiology of sex.
Consider also the following joke, based on the clash of different
meanings of the word expose (‘leave unprotected’, ‘put up for show’,
‘reveal the guilt of’). E. g.: Painting is the art of protecting flat
surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
Or, a similar case: “Why did they hang this picture?” “Perhaps, they
could not find the artist.”
54
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
onomasiology. As worked out in some recent publications it received the
name of Theory of Nomination.1 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 lexico-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.
1 The problem was studied by W. Humboldt (1767-1835) who called the
feature chosen as the basis of nomination— the inner form of the word.
55
§ 3.5 CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS
The contextual method of linguistic research holds its own alongside
statistical, structural and other developments. Like structural methods
and procedures, it is based on the assumption that difference in meaning
of linguistic units is always indicated by a difference in environment.
Unlike structural distributional procedures (see §5.2, 5.3) it is not
formalised. In some respects, nevertheless, it is more rigorous than the
structural procedures, because it strictly limits its observations and
conclusions to an impressive corpus of actually recorded material. No
changes, whether controlled or not, are permitted in linguistic data
observed, no conclusions are made unless there is a sufficient number of
examples to support their validity. The size of a representative sample
is determined not so much by calculation though, but rather by custom.
Words are observed in real texts, not on the basis of dictionaries. The
importance of the approach cannot be overestimated; in fact, as E. Nida
puts it, “it is from linguistic contexts that the meanings of a high
proportion of lexical units in active or passive vocabularies are
learned."1
The notion of context has several interpretations. According to N. N.
Amosova context is a combination of an indicator or indicating minimum
and the dependant, that is the word, the meaning of which is to be
rendered in a given utterance.
The results until recently were, however more like a large collection of
neatly organised examples, supplemented with comments. A theoretical
approach to this aspect of linguistics will be found in the works by G.
V. Kolshansky.
Contextual analysis concentrated its attention on determining the
minimal stretch of speech and the conditions necessary and sufficient to
reveal in which of its individual meanings the word in question is used.
In studying this interaction of the polysemantic word with the syntactic
configuration and lexical environment contextual analysis is more
concerned with specific features of every particular language than with
language universals.
Roughly, context may be subdivided into lexical, syntactical and mixed.
Lexical context, for instance, determines the meaning of the word black
in the following examples. Black denotes colour when used with the
key-word naming some material or thing, e. g. black velvet, black
gloves. When used with key-words denoting feeling or thought, it means
‘sad’, ‘dismal’, e. g. black thoughts, black despair. With nouns
denoting time, the meaning is ‘unhappy’, ‘full of hardships’, e. g.
black days, black period.
If, on the other hand, the indicative power belongs to the syntactic
pattern and not to the words which make it up, the context is called
syntactic. E. g. make means ‘to cause’ when followed by a complex
object: I couldn’t make him understand a word I said.
1 Nida E. Componential Analysis of Meaning. The Hague-Paris, Mouton
1975. P. 195.
56
A purely syntactic context is rare. As a rule the indication comes from
syntactic, lexical and sometimes morphological factors combined. Thus,
late, when used predicatively, means ‘after the right, expected or fixed
time’, as be late for school. When used attributively with words
denoting periods of time, it means ‘towards the end of the period’, e.
g. in late summer. Used attributively with proper personal nouns and
preceded with a definite article, late means ‘recently dead’.
All lexical contexts are subdivided into lexical contexts of the first
degree and lexical contexts of the second degree. In the lexical context
of the first degree there is a direct syntactical connection between the
indicator and the dependent: He was arrested on a treason charge. In
lexical context of the second degree there is no direct syntactical
connection between a dependent and the indicator. E.g.: I move that Mr
Last addresses the meeting (Waugh). The dependent move is not directly
connected to the indicating minimum addresses the meeting.
Alongside the context N. N. Amosova distinguishes speech situation, in
which the necessary indication comes not from within the sentence but
from some part of the text outside it. Speech situation with her may be
of two types: text-situation and life-situation. In text-situation it is
a preceding description, a description that follows or some word in the
preceding text that help to understand the ambiguous word.
E. Nida gives a slightly different classification. He distinguishes
linguistic and practical context. By practical context he means the
circumstances of communication: its stimuli, participants, their
relation to one another and to circumstances and the response of the
listeners.
3.6 COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
A good deal of work being published by linguists at present and dealing
with semantics has to do with componential analysis.1 To illustrate what
is meant by this we have taken a simple example (see p. 41) used for
this purpose by many linguists. Consider the following set of words:
man, woman, boy, girl, bull, cow. We can arrange them as correlations of
binary oppositions man : : woman = boy : : girl = bull : : cow. The
meanings of words man, boy, bull on the one hand, and woman, girl and
cow, on the other, have something in common. This distinctive feature we
call a semantic component or seme. In this case the semantic distinctive
feature is that of sex — male or female. Another possible correlation is
man : : boy = woman : : girl. The distinctive feature is that of age —
adult or non-adult. If we compare this with a third correlation man : :
bull = woman : : cow, we obtain a third distinctive feature contrasting
human and animal beings. In addition to the notation given on p. 41, the
componential formula may be also shown by brackets. The meaning of man
can be described as (male (adult (human being))), woman as (female
(adult (human being))), girl as (female (non-adult (human being))), etc.
1 See the works by O.K. Seliverstova, J.N. Karaulov, E. Nida, D.
Bolinger and others.
57
Componential analysis is thus an attempt to describe the meaning of
words in terms of a universal inventory of semantic components and their
possible combinations.1
Componential approach to meaning has a long history in linguistics.2 L.
Hjelmslev’s commutation test deals with similar relationships and may be
illustrated by proportions from which the distinctive features d1, d2,
d3 are obtained by means of the following procedure:
hence
As the first relationship is that of male to female, the second, of
young to adult, and the third, human to animal, the meaning ‘boy’ may be
characterised with respect to the distinctive features d1, d2, d3 as
containing the semantic elements ‘male’, ‘young’, and ‘human’. The
existence of correlated oppositions proves that these elements are
recognised by the vocabulary.
In criticising this approach, the English linguist Prof. W. Haas3 argues
that the commutation test looks very plausible if one has carefully
selected examples from words entering into clear-cut semantic groups,
such as terms of kinship or words denoting colours. It is less
satisfactory in other cases, as there is no linguistic framework by
which the semantic contrasts can be limited. The commutation test,
however, borrows its restrictions from philosophy.
A form of componential analysis describing semantic components in terms
of categories represented as a hierarchic structure so that each
subsequent category is a sub-category of the previous one is described
by R. S. Ginzburg. She follows the theory of the American linguists J.
Katz and J. Fodor involving the analysis of dictionary meanings into
semantic markers and distinguishers but redefines it in a clear-cut way.
The markers refer to features which the word has in common with other
lexical items, whereas a distinguishes as the term implies,
differentiates it from all other words.
We borrow from R. S. Ginzburg her analysis of the word spinster. It runs
as follows: spinster — noun, count noun, human, adult, female, who has
never married. Parts of speech are the most inclusive categories
pointing to major classes. So we shall call this component class seme (a
term used by French semasiologists). As the grammatical function is
predominant when we classify a word as a count noun it seems more
logical to take this feature as a subdivision of a class seme.
1 Note the possibility of different graphical representation.
2 Componential analysis proper originates with the work of F.G.
Lounsbury and W.H. Goodenough on kinship terms.
3 Prof. W. Haas (of Manchester University) delivered a series of
lectures on the theory of meaning at the Pedagogical Institutes of
Moscow and Leningrad in 1965.
58
It may, on the other hand, be taken as a marker because it represents a
sub-class within nouns, marks all nouns that can be counted, and
differentiates them from all uncountable nouns. Human is the next marker
which refers the word spinster to a sub-category of nouns denoting human
beings (man, woman, etc. vs table, flower, etc.). Adult is another
marker pointing at a specific subdivision of living beings into adult
and not grown-up (man, woman vs boy, girl). Female is also a marker
(woman, widow vs man, widower), it represents a whole class of adult
human females. ‘Who has never married’ — is not a marker but a
distinguisher, it differentiates the word spinster from other words
which have other features in common (spinster vs widow, bride, etc.).
The analysis shows that the dimensions of meaning may be regarded as
semantic oppositions because the word’s meaning is reduced to its
contrastive elements. The segmentation is continued as far as we can
have markers needed for a group of words, and stops when a unique
feature is reached.
A very close resemblance to componential analysis is the method of
logical definition by dividing a genus into species and species into
subspecies indispensable to dictionary definitions. It is therefore but
natural that lexicographic definitions lend themselves as suitable
material for the analysis of lexical groups in terms of a finite set of
semantic components. Consider the following definitions given in
Hornby’s dictionary:
cow — a full grown female of any animal of the ox family calf — the
young of the cow
The first definition contains all the elements we have previously
obtained from proportional oppositions. The second is incomplete but we
can substitute the missing elements from the previous definition. We
can, consequently, agree with J. N. Karaulov and regard as semantic
components (or semes) the notional words of the right hand side of a
dictionary entry.
It is possible to describe parts of the vocabulary by formalising these
definitions and reducing them to some standard form according to a set
of rules. The explanatory transformations thus obtained constitute an
intersection of transformational and componential analysis. The result
of this procedure applied to collective personal nouns may be
illustrated by the following.
e. g. team ? a group of people acting together in a game, piece of work,
etc.
Procedures briefly outlined above proved to be very efficient for
certain problems and find an ever-widening application, providing us
with a deeper insight into some aspects of language.1
1 For further detail see: Арнольд И.В. Семантическая структура слова в
современном английском языке и методика ее исследования. Л., 1966.
59Chapter 4 SEMANTIC CHANGE
§ 4.1 TYPES OF SEMANTIC CHANGE
In what follows we shall deal in detail with various types of semantic
change. This is necessary not only because of the interest the various
cases present in themselves but also because a thorough knowledge of
these possibilities helps one to understand the semantic structure of
English words at the present stage of their development. The development
and change of the semantic structure of a word is always a source of
qualitative and quantitative development of the vocabulary.
All the types discussed depend upon some comparison of the earlier
(whether extinct or still in use) and the new meaning of the given word.
This comparison may be based on the difference between the concepts
expressed or referents in the real world that are pointed out, on the
type of psychological association at work, on evaluation of the latter
by the speaker, on lexico-grammatical categories or, possibly, on some
other feature.
The order in which various types are described will follow more or less
closely the diachronic classification of M. Breal and H. Paul. No
attempt at a new classification is considered necessary. There seems to
be no point in augmenting the number of unsatisfactory schemes already
offered in literature. The treatment is therefore traditional.
M. Breal was probably the first to emphasise the fact that in passing
from general usage into some special sphere of communication a word as a
rule undergoes some sort of specialisation of its meaning. The word
case, for instance, alongside its general meaning of ‘circumstances in
which a person or a thing is’ possesses special meanings: in law fa law
suit’), in grammar (e. g. the Possessive case), in medicine (‘a
patient’, ‘an illness’). Compare the following: One of Charles’s cases
had been a child ill with a form of diphtheria (Snow). (case = ‘a
patient’) The Solicitor whom I met at the Rolfords’ sent me a case which
any young man at my stage would have thought himself lucky to get
(Idem), (case = ‘a question decided in a court of law, a law suit’)
The general, not specialised meaning is also very frequent in
present-day English. E. g.: At last we tiptoed up the broad slippery
staircase, and went to our rooms. But in my case not to sleep,
immediately at least... (Idem). (case = ‘circumstances in which one is’)
This difference is revealed in the difference of contexts in which these
words occur, in their different valency. Words connected with illnesses
and medicine in the first example, and words connected with
60
law and court procedures in the second determine the semantic structure
or paradigm of the word case.
The word play suggests different notions to a child, a playwright, a
footballer, a musician or a chess-player and has in their speech
different semantic paradigms. The same applies to the noun cell as used
by a biologist, an electrician, a nun or a representative of the law; or
the word gas as understood by a chemist, a soldier, a housewife, a
motorist or a miner.
In all the examples considered above a word which formerly represented a
notion of a broader scope has come to render a notion of a narrower
scope. When the meaning is specialised, the word can name fewer objects,
i.e. have fewer referents. At the same time the content of the notion is
being enriched, as it includes a greater number of relevant features by
which the notion is characterised. Or, in other words, the word is now
applicable to fewer things but tells us more about them. The reduction
of scope accounts for the term “narrowing of the meaning” which is even
more often used than the term “specialisation”. We shall avoid the term
“narrowing", since it is somewhat misleading. Actually it is neither the
meaning nor the notion, but the scope of the notion that is narrowed.
There is also a third and more exact term for the same phenomenon,
namely “differentiation", but it is not so widely used as the first two
terms.
H. Paul, as well as many other authors, emphasises the fact that this
type of semantic change is particularly frequent in vocabulary of
professional and trade groups.
H. Paul’s examples are from the German language but it is very easy to
find parallel cases in English. This type of change is fairly universal
and fails to disclose any specifically English properties.
The best known examples of specialisation in the general language are as
follows: OE deor ‘wild beast'>ModE deer ‘wild ruminant of a particular
species’ (the original meaning was still alive in Shakespeare’s time as
is proved by the following quotation: Rats and mice and such small
deer); OE mete ‘food’>ModE meat ‘edible flesh’, i. e. only a particular
species of food (the earlier meaning is still noticeable in the compound
sweetmeat). This last example deserves special attention because the
tendency of fixed context to preserve the original meaning is very
marked as is constantly proved by various examples. Other well-worn
cases are: OE fuzol ‘bird’ (||Germ Vogel) >ModE fowl ‘domestic birds’.
The old meaning is still preserved in poetic diction and in set
expressions like fowls of the air. Among its derivatives, fowler means
‘a person who shoots or traps wild birds for sport or food’; the
shooting or trapping itself is called fowling; a fowling piece is a gun.
OE hand ‘dog’ (||Germ Hund) > ModE hound ‘a species of hunting dog’.
Many words connected with literacy also show similar changes: thus,
teach In the above examples the new meaning superseded the earlier one. Both
meanings can also coexist in the structure of a polysemantic word or be
differentiated locally. The word token deliberation on some judicial or business affair’, hence — ‘a matter
brought before this assembly’ and ‘what was said or decided upon’, then
‘cause’, ‘object’, ‘decision’. Now it has become one of the most general
words of the language, it can substitute almost any noun, especially
non-personal noun and has received a pronominal force. Cf. something,
nothing, anything, as in Nothing has happened yet.
Not every generic word comes into being solely by generalisation, other
processes of semantic development may also be involved in words borrowed
from one language into another. The word person, for instance, is now a
generic term for a human being:
editor — a person who prepares written material for publication;
pedestrian — a person who goes on foot;
refugee — a person who has been driven from his home country by war.
The word was borrowed into Middle English from Old French, where it was
persone and came from Latin persona ‘the mask used by an actor’, ‘one
who plays a part’, ‘a character in a play’. The motivation of the word
is of interest. The great theatre spaces in ancient Rome made it
impossible for the spectators to see the actor’s face and facial
changes. It was also difficult to hear his voice distinctly. That is why
masks with a megaphonic effect were used. The mask was called persona
from Lat per ‘through’ and sonare ‘to sound’. After the term had been
transferred (metonymically) to the character represented, the
generalisation to any human being came quite naturally. The process of
generalisation and abstraction is continuing so that in the 70s person
becomes a combining form substituting the semi-affix -man (chairperson,
policeperson, salesperson, workperson). The reason for this is a
tendency to abolish sex discrimination in job titles. The plural of
compounds ending in -person may be -persons or -people: businesspeople
or businesspersons.
In fact all the words belonging to the group of generic terms fall into
this category of generalisation. By generic terms we mean non-specific
terms applicable to a great number of individual members of a big class
of words (see p. 39). The grammatical categoric meaning of this class of
words becomes predominant in their semantic components.
It is sometimes difficult to differentiate the instances of
generalisation proper from generalisation combined with a fading of
lexical meaning ousted by the grammatical or emotional meaning that take
its place. These phenomena are closely connected with the peculiar
characteristics of grammatical structure typical of each individual
language. One observes them, for instance, studying the semantic history
of the English auxiliary and semi-auxiliary verbs, especially have, do,
shall, will, turn, go, and that of some English prepositions and adverbs
which in the course of time have come to express grammatical relations.
The weakening of lexical meaning due to the influence of emotional force
is revealed in such words as awfully, terribly, terrific, smashing.
“Specialisation” and “generalisation” are thus identified on the
evidence of comparing logical notions expressed by the meaning of words.
If, on the other hand, the linguist is guided by psychological
considerations and has to
63
go by the type of association at work in the transfer of the name of
one object to another and different one, he will observe that the most
frequent transfers are based on associations of similarity, or of
contiguity. As these types of transfer are well known in rhetoric as
figures of speech called metaphor (Gr metaphora is they represent the image that carries a description and serves to
represent the tenor. The third element Z is called the ground of the
metaphor. In the second example the ground is ‘good’ (used ironically)
and ‘bad’. The ground, that is the similarity between the tenor and
vehicle, in a metaphor is implied, not expressed.
The ground of the metaphors in the examples that follow is the
insincerity of the smiles that Gr. Greene mocks at: he excavated his
smile; the woman hooked on another smile as you hook on a wreath; she
whipped up a smile from a large and varied stock (Greene). (Examples are
borrowed from V. K. Tarasova’s work.)
In a linguistic metaphor, especially when it is dead as a result of long
usage, the comparison is completely forgotten and the thing named often
has no other name: foot (of a mountain), leg (of a table), eye (of a
needle), nose (of an aeroplane), back (of a book).
Transfer of names resulting from tropes (figurative use of words) has
been classified in many various ways. Out of the vast collection of
terms and classifications we mention only the traditional group of
rhetorical categories: metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, litotes,
euphemism, because it is time-honoured and every philologist must be
acquainted with it, even if he does not accept it as the best possible
grouping.
The meaning of such expressions as a sun beam or a beam of light are not
explained by allusions to a tree, although the word is actually derived
from OE beam ‘tree’ || Germ Baum, whence the meaning beam ‘a long piece
of squared timber supported at both ends’ has also developed. The
metaphor is dead. There are no associations with hens in the verb brood
‘to meditate’ (often sullenly), though the direct meaning is ‘to sit on
eggs’.
There may be transitory stages: a bottleneck ‘any thing obstructing an
even flow of work’, for instance, is not a neck and does not belong to a
bottle. The transfer is possible due to the fact that there are some
common features in the narrow top part of the bottle, a narrow outlet
for road traffic, and obstacles interfering with the smooth working of
administrative machinery. The drawing of sharp demarcation lines between
a dead metaphor and one that is alive in the speaker’s mind is here
impossible.
Metaphors, H. Paul points out, may be based upon very different types of
similarity, for instance, the similarity of shape: head of a cabbage,
the teeth of a saw. This similarity of shape may be supported by a
similarity of function. The transferred meaning is easily recognised
from the context: The Head of the school, the key to a mystery. The
similarity may be supported also by position: foot of a page/of a
mountain, or behaviour and function: bookworm, wirepuller. The word whip
‘a lash used to urge horses on’ is metaphorically transferred to an
official in the British Parliament appointed by a political party to see
that members are present at debates, especially when a vote is taken, to
check the voting and also to advise the members on the policy of the
respective party.
In the leg of the table the metaphor is motivated by the similarity of
the lower part of the table and the human limb in position and partly
5 И. В. Арнольд 65
in shape and function. Anthropomorphic1 metaphors are among the most
frequent. The way in which the words denoting parts of the body are made
to express a variety of meanings may be illustrated by the following:
head of an army/of a procession/of a household; arms and mouth of a
river, eye of a needle, foot of a hill, tongue of a bell and so on and
so forth. The transferred meaning is easily recognised from the context:
...her feet were in low-heeled brown brogues with fringed tongues
(Plomber).
Numerous cases of metaphoric transfer are based upon the analogy between
duration of time and space, e. g. long distance : : long speech; a short
path : : a short time.
The transfer of space relations upon psychological and mental notions
may be exemplified by words and expressions concerned with
understanding: to catch (to grasp) an idea; to take a hint; to get the
hang of; to throw light upon.
This metaphoric change from the concrete to the abstract is also
represented in such simple words as score, span, thrill. Score comes
from OE scoru ‘twenty’ Thus, the word book is derived from the name of a tree on which
inscriptions were scratched. ModE win
in macadam — a type of pavement named after its inventor John McAdam
(1756-1836) and diesel or diesel engine — a type of compression ignition
engine invented by a German mechanical engineer Rudolf Diesel
(1858-1913). The process of nomination includes ellipsis (Diesel engine
— diesel).
Many international physical and technical units are named after great
scientists, as for instance ampere — the unit of electrical current
after Andre Marie Ampere (1775-1836), a great French mathematician and
physicist. Compare also: ohm, volt, watt, etc.
Transfers by contiguity often involve place names. There are many
instances in political vocabulary when the place of some establishment
is used not only for the establishment itself or its staff but also for
its policy. The White House is the executive mansion of the president of
the USA in Washington, the name is also used for his administration and
politics. Similarly The Pentagon, so named, because it is a five-sided
building, denotes the US military command and its political activities,
because it contains the USA Defence Department and the offices of
various branches of the US armed forces. Wall Street is the name of the
main street in the financial district of New York and hence it also
denotes the controlling financial interests of American capitalism.
The same type is observed when we turn to Great Britain. Here the
British Government of the day is referred to as Downing Street because
the Prime Minister’s residence is at No 10 Downing Street. The street
itself is named after a 17th century British diplomat.
An interesting case is Fleet Street — a thoroughfare in central London
along which many British newspaper offices are located, hence Fleet
Street means British journalism. The name of the street is also
metonymical but the process here is reversed — a proper toponymical noun
is formed from a common noun: fleet is an obsolete term for ‘a creek or
an inlet in the shore’. Originally the street extended along a creek.
Examples of geographical names, turning into common nouns to name the
goods exported or originating there, are exceedingly numerous. Such
transfer by contiguity is combined with ellipsis in the nomination of
various stuffs and materials: astrakhan (fur), china (ware), damask
(steel), holland (linen), morocco (leather).
The similarly formed names for wines or kinds of cheese are
international as, for instance: champagne, burgundy, madeira; brie
cheese, cheddar, roquefort, etc.
Sometimes the semantic connection with place names is concealed by
phonetic changes and is revealed by etymological study. The word jeans
can be traced to the name of the Italian town Genoa, where the fabric of
which they are made was first manufactured. Jeans is a case of metonymy,
in which the name of the material jean is used to denote an object made
of it. This type of multiple transfer of names is quite common (cf.
china, iron, etc.). The cotton fabric of which jeans are made was
formerly used for manufacturing uniforms and work clothes and was known
for several centuries as jean (from Med Lat Genes, Genoa).
The process can consist of several stages, as in the word cardigan — a
knitted jacket opening down the front. Garments are often known
68
by the names of those who brought them into fashion. This particular
jacket is named after the seventh earl of Cardigan whose name is from
Cardigan or Cardiganshire, a county in Wales.
Other examples of denominations after famous persons are raglan and
Wellingtons. Raglan — a loose coat with sleeves extending in one piece
to the neckline — is named after field-marshal lord Raglan; Wellingtons
or Wellington boots — boots extending to the top of the knee in front
but cut low in back — were popularised by the first Duke of Wellington.
Following the lead of literary criticism linguists have often adopted
terms of rhetoric for other types of semantic change, besides metaphor
and metonymy. These are: hyperbole, litotes, irony, euphemism. In all
these cases the same warning that was given in connection with metaphors
and metonymy must be kept in mind: namely, there is a difference between
these terms as understood in literary criticism and in lexicology.
Hyperbole (from Gr hyperbol? ‘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.
A very good example is chosen by I. R. Galperin from Byron, and one
cannot help borrowing it:
When people say “I’ve told you fifty times,”
They mean to scold and very often do.
The reader will note that Byron’s intonation is distinctly colloquial,
the poet is giving us his observations concerning colloquial
expressions. So the hyperbole here, though used in verse, is not poetic
but linguistic.
The same may be said about expressions like: It’s absolutely maddening,
You’ll be the death of me, I hate troubling you, It’s monstrous, It’s a
nightmare, A thousand pardons, A thousand thanks, Haven’t seen you for
ages, I'd give the world to, I shall be eternally grateful, I'd love to
do it, etc.
The most important difference between a poetic hyperbole and a
linguistic one lies in the fact that the former creates an image,
whereas in the latter the denotative meaning quickly fades out and the
corresponding exaggerating words serve only as general signs of emotion
without specifying the emotion itself. Some of the most frequent
emphatic words are: absolutely! lovely! magnificent! splendid!
marvellous! wonderful! amazing! incredible! and so on.1
The reverse figure is called litotes (from Gr litos ‘plain’, ‘meagre’)
or understatement. It might be defined as expressing the affirmative by
the negative of its contrary, e. g. not bad or not half bad for ‘good’,
not small for ‘great’, no coward for ‘brave’. Some
1 See awfully and terribly on p. 63.
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understatements do not contain negations, e. g. rather decent; I could
do with a cup of tea. It is, however, doubtful whether litotes should be
considered under the heading of semantic change at all, because as a
rule it creates no permanent change in the sense of the word used and
concerns mostly usage and contextual meaning of words. Understatement
expresses a desire to conceal or suppress one’s feelings, according to
the code of reserve, and to seem indifferent and calm. E. g.:
“But this is frightful, Jeeves!”
“Certainly somewhat disturbing, sir.” (Wodehouse)
“Long time since we met.”
“It is a bit, isn’t it?” (Wodehouse)
The indifference may be superficial and suggest that the speaker’s
emotions are too strong to be explicitly stated.
Understatement is considered to be a typically British way of putting
things and is more characteristic of male colloquial speech: so when a
woman calls a concert absolutely fabulous using a hyperbole a man would
say it was not too bad or that it was some concert.
Understatement is rich in connotations: it may convey irony,
disparagement and add expressiveness. E. g. rather unwise (about
somebody very silly) or rather pushing (about somebody quite
unscrupulous).
The term irony is also 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!
As to the euphemisms, that is referring to something unpleasant by using
milder words and phrases so that a formerly unoffensive word receives a
disagreeable meaning (e. g. pass away ‘die’), they will be discussed
later in connection with extralinguistic causes of semantic change and
later still as the origin of synonyms.
Changes depending on the social attitude to the object named, connected
with social evaluation and emotional tone, are called amelioration and
pejoration of meaning, and we shall also return to them when speaking
about semantic shifts undergone by words, because their referents come
up or down the social scale. Examples of amelioration are OE cwen ‘a
woman’ >ModE queen, OE cniht ‘a young servant’ > ModE knight. The
meaning of some adjectives has been elevated through associations with
aristocratic life or town life. This is true about such words as civil,
chivalrous, urbane. The word gentle had already acquired an evaluation
of approval by the time it was borrowed into English from French in the
meaning ‘well-born’. Later its meaning included those characteristics
that the high-born considered appropriate to their social status: good
breeding, gracious behaviour, affability. Hence the noun gentleman, a
kind of key-word in the history of English, that originally meant ‘a man
of gentle (high) birth’ came to mean ‘an honourable and well-bred
person’.
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The meaning of the adjective gentle which at first included only social
values now belongs to the ethical domain and denotes ‘kind’, ‘not
rough’, ‘polite’. A similar process of amelioration in the direction of
high moral qualities is observed in the adjective noble — originally
‘belonging to the nobility’.
The reverse process is called pejoration or degradation; it involves a
lowering in social scale connected with the appearance of a derogatory
and scornful emotive tone reflecting the disdain of the upper classes
towards the lower ones. E. g.: ModE knave
the whys and wherefores become known. This is of primary importance as
it may lead eventually to a clearer interpretation of language
development. The vocabulary is the most flexible part of the language
and it is precisely its semantic aspect that responds most readily to
every change in the human activity in whatever sphere it may happen to
take place.
The causes of semantic changes may be grouped under two main headings,
linguistic and extralinguistic ones, of these the first group has
suffered much greater neglect in the past and it is not surprising
therefore that far less is known of it than of the second. Linguistic
causes influencing the process of vocabulary adaptation may be of
paradigmatic and syntagmatic character; in dealing with them we have to
do with the constant interaction and interdependence of vocabulary units
in language and speech, such as differentiation between synonyms,
changes taking place in connection with ellipsis and with fixed
contexts, changes resulting from ambiguity in certain contexts, and some
other causes.
Differentiation of synonyms is a gradual change observed in the course
of language history, sometimes, but not necessarily, involving the
semantic assimilation of loan words. Consider, for example, the words
time and tide. They used to be synonyms. Then tide took on its more
limited application to the shifting waters, and time alone is used in
the general sense.
The word beast was borrowed from French into Middle English. Before it
appeared the general word for animal was deer which after the word beast
was introduced became narrowed to its present meaning ‘a hoofed animal
of which the males have antlers’. Somewhat later the Latin word animal
was also borrowed, then the word beast was restricted, and its meaning
served to separate the four-footed kind from all the other members of
the animal kingdom. Thus, beast displaced deer and was in its turn
itself displaced by the generic animal. Another example of semantic
change involving synonymic differentiation is the word twist. In OE it
was a noun, meaning ‘a rope’, whereas the verb thrawan (now throw) meant
both ‘hurl’ and ‘twist’ Since the appearance in the Middle English of
the verb twisten (‘twist’) the first verb lost this meaning. But throw
in its turn influenced the development of casten (cast), a Scandinavian
borrowing. Its primary meaning ‘hurl’, ‘throw’ is now present only in
some set expressions. Cast keeps its old meaning in such phrases as cast
a glance, cast lots, cast smth in one’s teeth. Fixed context, then, may
be regarded as another linguistic factor in semantic change. Both
factors are at work in the case of token. The noun token originally had
the broad meaning of ‘sign’. When brought into competition with the loan
word sign, it became restricted in use to a number of set expressions
such as love token, token of respect and so became specialised in
meaning. Fixed context has this influence not only in phrases but in
compound words as well.
No systematic treatment has so far been offered for the syntagmatic
semantic changes depending on the context. But such cases do exist
showing that investigation of the problem is important.
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One of these is ellipsis. The qualifying words of a frequent phrase may
be omitted: sale comes to be used for cut-price sale, propose for
propose marriage, be expecting for be expecting a baby, media for mass
media. Or vice versa the kernel word of the phrase may seem redundant:
minerals for mineral waters, summit for summit meeting.1 Due to ellipsis
starve which originally meant ‘to die’ (|| Germ sterben) came to
substitute the whole phrase die of hunger, and also began to mean ‘to
suffer from lack of food’ and even in colloquial use ‘to feel hungry’.
Moreover as there are many words with transitive and intransitive
variants naming cause and result, starve came to mean ‘to cause to
perish with hunger’. English has a great variety of these regular
coincidences of different aspects, alongside with cause and result, we
could consider the coincidence of subjective and objective, active and
passive aspects especially frequent in adjectives. E.g. hateful means
‘exciting hatred’ and ‘full of hatred’; curious —’strange’ and
‘inquisitive’; pitiful — ‘exciting compassion’ and ‘compassionate’. One
can be doubtful about a doubtful question, in a healthy climate children
are healthy. To refer to these cases linguists employ the term
conversives.
§ 4.3 EXTRALINGUISTIC CAUSES OF SEMANTIC CHANGE
The extralinguistic causes are determined by the social nature of the
language: they are observed in changes of meaning resulting from the
development of the notion expressed and the thing named and by the
appearance of new notions and things. In other words, extralinguistic
causes of semantic change are connected with the development of the
human mind as it moulds reality to conform with its needs.
Languages are powerfully affected by social, political, economic,
cultural and technical change. The influence of those factors upon
linguistic phenomena is studied by sociolinguistics. It shows that
social factors can influence even structural features of linguistic
units: terms of science, for instance, have a number of specific
features as compared to words used in other spheres of human activity.
The word being a linguistic realisation of notion, it changes with the
progress of human consciousness. This process is reflected in the
development of lexical meaning. As the human mind achieves an ever more
exact understanding of the world of reality and the objective
relationships that characterise it, the notions become more and more
exact reflections of real things. The history of the social, economic
and political life of the people, the progress of culture and science
bring about changes in notions and things influencing the semantic
aspect of language. For instance, OE eorde meant ‘the ground under
people’s feet’, ‘the soil’ and ‘the world of man’ as opposed to heaven
that was supposed to be inhabited first by Gods and later on, with the
spread of Christianity, by God, his angels, saints and the souls of the
dead. With the progress of science earth came to mean the third planet
from the sun and the knowledge is constantly enriched. With the
development of electrical engineering earth n means ‘a connection of a
wire
1 For ellipsis combined with metonymy see p. 68.
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conductor with the earth’, either accidental (with the result of
leakage of current) or intentional (as for the purpose of providing a
return path). There is also a correspond ing verb earth. E. g.: With
earthed appliances the continuity of the earth wire ought to be checked.
The word space meant ‘extent of time or distance’ or ‘intervening
distance’. Alongside this meaning a new meaning developed ‘the limitless
and indefinitely great expanse in which all material objects are
located’. The phrase outer space was quickly ellipted into space. Cf.
spacecraft, space-suit, space travel, etc.
It is interesting to note that the English word cosmos was not exactly a
synonym of outer space but meant ‘the universe as an ordered system’,
being an antonym to chaos. The modern usage is changing under the
influence of the Russian language as a result of Soviet achievements in
outer space. The OED Supplement points out that the adjective cosmic (in
addition to the former meanings ‘universal’, ‘immense’) in modern usage
under the influence of Russian космический means ‘pertaining to space
travel’, e. g. cosmic rocket ‘space rocket’.
The extra-linguistic motivation is sometimes obvious, but some cases are
not as straightforward as they may look. The word bikini may be taken as
an example. Bikini, a very scanty two-piece bathing suit worn by women,
is named after Bikini atoll in the Western Pacific but not because it
was first introduced on some fashionable beach there. Bikini appeared at
the time when the atomic bomb tests by the US in the Bikini atoll were
fresh in everybody’s memory. The associative field is emotional
referring to the “atomic” shock the first bikinis produced.
The tendency to use technical imagery is increasing in every language,
thus the expression to spark off in chain reaction is almost
international. Live wire ‘one carrying electric current’ used
figuratively about a person of intense energy seems purely English,
though.
Other international expressions are black box and feed-back. Black box
formerly a term of aviation and electrical engineering is now used
figuratively to denote any mechanism performing intricate functions or
any unit of which we know the effect but not the components or
principles of action.
Feed-back a cybernetic term meaning ‘the return of a sample of the
output of a system or process to the input, especially with the purpose
of automatic adjustment and control’ is now widely used figuratively
meaning ‘response’.
Some technical expressions that were used in the first half of the 19th
century tend to become obsolete: the English used to talk of people
being galvanised into activity, or going full steam ahead but the
phrases sound dated now.
The changes of notions and things named go hand in hand. They are
conditioned by changes in the economic, social, political and cultural
history of the people, so that the extralinguistic causes of semantic
change might be conveniently subdivided in accordance with these. Social
relationships are at work in the cases of elevation and pejoration of
meaning discussed in the previous section where the attitude of the
upper classes to their social inferiors determined the strengthening of
emotional tone among the semantic components of the word.
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Sociolinguistics also teaches that power relationships are reflected in
vocabulary changes. In all the cases of pejoration that were mentioned
above, such as boor, churl, villain, etc., it was the ruling class that
imposed evaluation. The opposite is rarely the case. One example
deserves attention though: sir + -ly used to mean ‘masterful1 and now
surly means ‘rude in a bad-tempered way’.
D. Leith devotes a special paragraph in his “Social History of English”
to the semantic disparagement of women. He thinks that power
relationships in English are not confined to class stratification, that
male domination is reflected in the history of English vocabulary, in
the ways in which women are talked about. There is a rich vocabulary of
affective words denigrating women, who do not conform to the male ideal.
A few examples may be mentioned. Hussy is a reduction of ME huswif
(housewife), it means now ‘a woman of low morals’ or ‘a bold saucy
girl’; doll is not only a toy but is also used about a kept mistress or
about a pretty and silly woman; wench formerly referred to a female
child, later a girl of the rustic or working class and then acquired
derogatory connotations.
Within the diachronic approach the phenomenon of euphemism (Gr
euphemismos It is decidedly less emotional to call countries with a low standard of
living underdeveloped, but it seemed more tactful to call them
developing. The latest terms (in the 70s) are L.D.C. — less developed
countries and M.D.C. — more developed countries, or Third World
countries or emerging countries if they are newly independent.
Other euphemisms are dictated by a wish to give more dignity to a
profession. Some barbers called themselves hair stylists and even
hairologists, airline stewards and stewardesses become flight
attendants, maids become house workers, foremen become supervisors, etc.
Euphemisms may be dictated by publicity needs, hence ready-tailored and
ready-to-wear clothes instead of ready-made. The influence of
mass-advertising on language is growing, it is felt in every level of
the language.
Innovations possible in advertising are of many different types as G.N.
Leech has shown, from whose book on advertising English the following
example is taken. A kind of orange juice, for instance, is called Tango.
The justification of the name is given in the advertising text as
follows: “Get this different tasting Sparkling Tango. Tell you why: made
from whole oranges. Taste those oranges. Taste the tang in Tango.
Tingling tang, bubbles — sparks. You drink it straight. Goes down great.
Taste the tang in Tango. New Sparkling Tango”. The reader will see for
himself how many expressive connotations and rhythmic associations are
introduced by the salesman in this commercial name in an effort to
attract the buyer’s attention. If we now turn to the history of the
language, we see economic causes are obviously at work in the semantic
development of the word wealth. It first meant ‘well-being’, ‘happiness’
from weal from OE wela whence well. This original meaning is preserved
in the compounds commonwealth and commonweal. The present meaning became
possible due to the role played by money both in feudal and bourgeois
society. The chief wealth of the early inhabitants of Europe being the
cattle, OE feoh means both ‘cattle’ and ‘money’, likewise Goth faihu;
Lat pecus meant ‘cattle’ and pecunia meant ‘money’. ME fee-house is both
a cattle-shed and a treasury. The present-day English fee most
frequently means the price paid for services to a lawyer or a physician.
It appears to develop jointly from the above mentioned OE feoh and the
Anglo-French fee, fie, probably of the same origin, meaning ‘a
recompense’ and ‘a feudal tenure’. This modern meaning is obvious in the
following example: Physicians of the utmost fame were called at once,
but when they came they answered as they took their fees, “There is no
cure for this disease.” (Belloc)
The constant development of industry, agriculture, trade and transport
bring into being new objects and new notions. Words to name them are
either borrowed or created from material already existing in the
language and it often happens that new meanings are thus acquired by old
words.
Chapter 5
MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WORDS. AFFIXATION
§ 5.1 MORPHEMES. FREE AND BOUND FORMS. MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF
WORDS. WORD-FAMILIES
If we describe a wоrd as an autonomous unit of language in which a
particular meaning is associated with a particular sound complex and
which is capable of a particular grammatical employment and able to form
a sentence by itself (see p. 9), we have the possibility to distinguish
it from the other fundamental language unit, namely, the morpheme.
A morpheme is also 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 morpheme is derived from Gr morphe ‘form’ + -eme. The Greek
suffix -erne has been adopted by linguists to denote the smallest
significant or distinctive unit. (Cf. phoneme, sememe.) The morpheme is
the smallest meaningful unit of form. A form in these cases is a
recurring discrete unit of speech.
A form is said to be free if it may stand alone without changing its
meaning; if not, it is a bound form, so called because it is always
bound to something else. For example, if we compare the words sportive
and elegant and their parts, we see that sport, sportive, elegant may
occur alone as utterances, whereas eleg-, -ive, -ant are bound forms
because they never occur alone. A word is, by L. Bloomfield’s
definition, a minimum free form. A morpheme is said to be either bound
or free. This statement should bе taken with caution. It means that some
morphemes are capable of forming words without adding other morphemes:
that is, they are homonymous to free forms.
According to the role they play in constructing words, morphemes are
subdivided into roots and affixes. The latter are further subdivided,
according to their position, into prefixes, suffixes and infixes, and
according to their function and meaning, into derivational and
functional .affixes, the latter also called endings or outer formatives.
When a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word, what
remains is a stem (or astern base). The stem
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expresses the lexical and the part of speech meaning. For the word
hearty and for the paradigm heart (sing.) —hearts (pi.)1 the stem may be
represented as heart-. This stem is a single morpheme, it contains
nothing but the root, so it is a simple stem. It is also a free stem
because it is homonymous to the word heart.
A stem may also be defined as the part of the word that remains
unchanged throughout its paradigm. The stem of the paradigm hearty —
heartier — (the) heartiest is hearty-. It is a free stem, but as it
consists of a root morpheme and an affix, it is not simple but derived.
Thus, a stem containing one or more affixes is a derived stem. If after
deducing the affix the remaining stem is not homonymous to a separate
word of the same root, we call it abound stem. Thus, in the word cordial
‘proceeding as if from the heart’, the adjective-forming suffix can be
separated on the analogy with such words as bronchial, radial, social.
The remaining stem, however, cannot form a separate word by itself, it
is bound. In cordially and cordiality, on the other hand, the derived
stems are free.
Bound stems are especially characteristic of loan words. The point may
be illustrated by the following French borrowings: arrogance, charity,
courage, coward, distort, involve, notion, legible and tolerable, to
give but a few.2 After the affixes of these words are taken away the
remaining elements are: arrog-, char-, cour-, cow-, -tort, -volve, not-,
leg-, toler-, which do not coincide with any semantically related
independent words.
Roots are main morphemic vehicles of a given idea in a given language at
a given stage of its development. A root may be also regarded as the
ultimate constituent element which remains after the removal of all
functional and derivational affixes and does not admit any further
analysis. It is the common element of words within a word-family. Thus,
-heart- is the common root of the following series of words: heart,
hearten, dishearten, heartily, heartless, hearty, heartiness,
sweetheart, heart-broken, kind-hearted, whole-heartedly, etc. In some of
these, as, for example, in hearten, there is only one root; in others
the root -heart is combined with some other root, thus forming a
compound like sweetheart.
The root word heart is unsegmentable, it is non-motivated
morphologically. The morphemic structure of all the other words in this
word-family is obvious — they are segmentable as consisting of at least
two distinct morphemes. They may be further subdivided into: 1) those
formed by affixation or affixational derivatives consisting of a root
morpheme and one or more affixes: hearten, dishearten, heartily,
heartless, hearty, heartiness; 2) compounds, in which two, or very
rarely more, stems simple or derived are combined into a lexical unit:
sweetheart, heart-shaped, heart-broken or3) derivational compounds where
words of a phrase are joined together by composition and affixation:
kind-hearted. This last process is also called phrasal derivation ((kind
heart) + -ed)).
1 A paradigm is defined here as the system of grammatical forms
characteristic of a word. See also p. 23.
2 Historical lexicology shows how sometimes the stem becomes bound due
to the internal changes in the stem that accompany the addition of
affixes; сf. broad : : breadth, clean : : cleanly ['klenli], dear : :
dearth [dэ:?], grief : : grievous.
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There exist word-families with several tmsegmentable members, the
derived elements being formed by conversion or clipping. The word-family
with the noun father as its centre contains alongside affixational
derivatives fatherhood, fatherless, fatherly a verb father ‘to adopt’ or
‘to originate’ formed by conversion.
We shall now present the different types of morphemes starting with the
root.
It will at once be noticed that the root in English is very often
homonymous with the word. This fact is of fundamental importance as it
is one of the most specific features of the English language arising
from its general grammatical system on the one hand, and from its
phonemic system on the other. The influence of the analytical structure
of the language is obvious. The second point, however, calls for some
explanation. Actually the usual phonemic shape most favoured in English
is one single stressed syllable: bear, find, jump, land, man, sing, etc.
This does not give much space for a second morpheme to add classifying
lexico-grammatical meaning to the lexical meaning already present in the
root-stem, so the lexico-grammatical meaning must be signalled by
distribution.
In the phrases a morning’s drive, a morning’s ride, a morning’s walk the
words drive, ride and walk receive the lexico-grammatical meaning of a
noun not due to the structure of their stems, but because they are
preceded by a genitive.
An English word does not necessarily contain formatives indicating to
what part of speech it belongs. This holds true even with respect to
inflectable parts of speech, i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives. Not all
roots are free forms, but productive roots, i.e. roots capable of
producing new words, usually are. The semantic realisation of an English
word is therefore very specific. Its dependence on context is further
enhanced by the widespread occurrence of homonymy both among root
morphemes and affixes. Note how many words in the following statement
might be ambiguous if taken in isolation: A change of work is as good as
a rest.
The above treatment of the root is purely synchronic, as we have taken
into consideration only the facts of present-day English. But the same
problem of the morpheme serving as the main signal of a given lexical
meaning is studied in etymology. Thus, when approached historically or
diachronically the word heart will be classified as Common Germanic. One
will look for cognates, i.e. 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.
To emphasise the difference between the synchronic and the diachronic
treatment, we shall call the common element of cognate words in
different languages not their root but their radical element.
сf. heart, hearty, etc. The second grouping results in families of
historically cognate words, сf. heart, cor (Lat), Herz (Germ), etc.
Unlike roots, affixes are always bound forms. The difference between
suffixes and prefixes, it will be remembered, is not confined to their
respective position, suffixes being “fixed after” and prefixes “fixed
before” the stem. It also concerns their function and meaning.
сf. -en, -y, -less in hearten, hearty, heartless. When both the
underlying and the resultant forms belong to the same part of speech,
the suffix serves to differentiate between lexico-grammatical classes by
rendering some very general lexico-grammatical meaning. For instance,
both -ify and -er are verb suffixes, but the first characterises
causative verbs, such as horrify, purify, rarefy, simplify, whereas the
second is mostly typical of frequentative verbs: flicker, shimmer,
twitter and the like.
If we realise that suffixes render the most general semantic component
of the word’s lexical meaning by marking the general class of phenomena
to which the referent of the word belongs, the reason why suffixes are
as a rule semantically fused with the stem stands explained.
сf. enable, encamp, endanger, endear, enslave and fasten, darken,
deepen, lengthen, strengthen.
Preceding a verb stem, some prefixes express the difference between a
transitive and an intransitive verb: stay v and outstay (sb) vt. With a
few exceptions prefixes modify the stem for time (pre-, post-), place
(in-, ad-) or negation (un-, dis-) and remain semantically rather
independent of the stem.
An infix is an affix placed within the word, like -n- in stand. The type
is not productive.
An affix should not be confused with a combining form. A combining form
is also 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.
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Also affixes are characterised either by preposition with respect to
the root (prefixes) or by postposition (suffixes), whereas the same
combining form may occur in both positions. Cf. phonograph, phonology
and telephone, microphone, etc.
§ 5.2 AIMS AND PRINCIPLES OF MORPHEMIC AND WORD-FORMATION ANALYSIS
A synchronic description of the English vocabulary deals with its
present-day system and its patterns of word-formation by comparing words
simultaneously existing in it.1
If the analysis is limited to stating the number and type of morphemes
that make up the word, it is referred to as morphemic. For instance, the
word girlishness may be analysed into three morphemes: the root -girl-
and two suffixes -ish and -ness. The morphemic classification of words
is as follows: one root morpheme — a root word (girl), one root morpheme
plus one or more affixes — a derived word (girlish, girlishness), two or
more stems — a compound word (girl-friend), two or more stems and a
common affix — a compound derivative (old-maidish). The morphemic
analysis establishes only the ultimate constituents that make up the
word (see p. 85).
A structural word-formation analysis proceeds further: it studies the
structural correlation with other words, the structural patterns or
rules on which words are built.
This is done with the help of the principle of oppositions (see p. 25),
i.e. by studying the partly similar elements, the difference between
which is functionally relevant; in our case this difference is
sufficient to create a new word. Girl and girlish are members of a
morphemic opposition. They are similar as the root morpheme -girl- is
the same. Their distinctive feature is the suffix -ish. Due to this
suffix the second member of the opposition is a different word belonging
to a different part of speech. This binary opposition comprises two
elements.
А соrrelatiоn 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 (see p. 26). Observing the proportional
opposition:
girl child woman monkey spinster book
girlish childish womanish monkeyish spinsterish bookish
1 The contribution of Soviet scholars to this problem is seen in the
works by M.D. Stepanova, S.S. Khidekel, E.S. Koubryakova, T.M. Belyaeva,
O.D. Meshkov, P.A. Soboleva and many other authors.
6 И. В. Арнольд 81
it is possible to conclude that there is in English a type of derived
adjectives consisting of a noun stem and the suffix -ish. Observation
also shows that the stems are mostly those of animate nouns, and permits
us to define the relationship between the structural pattern of the word
and its meaning. Any one word built according to this pattern contains a
semantic component common to the whole group, namely: ‘typical of, or
having the bad qualities of. There are also some other uses of the
adjective forming ‘ish, but they do not concern us here.
In the above example the results of morphemic analysis and the
structural word-formation analysis practically coincide. There are other
cases, however, where they are of necessity separated. The morphemic
analysis is, for instance, insufficient in showing the difference
between the structure of inconvenience v and impatience n; it classifies
both as derivatives. From the point of view of word-formation pattern,
however, they are fundamentally different. It is only the second that is
formed by derivation. Compare:
impatience n = patience n = corpulence n impatient a patient a
corpulent a
The correlation that can be established for the verb inconvenience is
different, namely:
inconvenience v = pain v = disgust v = anger v = daydream v
inconvenience n pain n disgust n anger n daydream n
Here nouns denoting some feeling or state are correlated with verbs
causing this feeling or state, there being no difference in stems
between the members of each separate opposition. Whether different pairs
in the correlation are structured similarly or differently is
irrelevant. Some of them are simple root words, others are derivatives
or compounds. In terms of word-formation we state that the verb
inconvenience when compared with the noun inconvenience shows
relationships characteristic of the process of conversion. Cf. to
position where the suffix -tion does not classify this word as an
abstract noun but shows it is derived from one.
This approach also affords a possibility to distinguish between compound
words formed by composition and those formed by other processes. The
words honeymoon n and honeymoon v are both compounds, containing two
free stems, yet the first is formed by composition: honey n + moon n >
honeymoon n, and the second by conversion: honeymoon n> honeymoon v (see
Ch. 8). The treatment remains synchronic because it is not the origin of
the word that is established but its present correlations in the
vocabulary and the patterns productive in present-day English, although
sometimes it is difficult to say which is the derived form.
The analysis into immediate constituents described below permits us to
obtain the morphemic structure and provides the basis for further
word-formation analysis.
82
§ 5.3 ANALYSIS INTO IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENTS
A synctironic morphological analysis is most effectively accomplished by
the procedure known as the analysis into immediate constituents (IC’s).
Immediate constituents are any of the two meaningful parts forming a
larger linguistic unity. First suggested by L. Bloomfield1 it was later
developed by many linguists.2 The main opposition dealt with is the
opposition of stem and affix. It is a kind of segmentation revealing not
the history of the word but its motivation, i.e. the data the listener
has to go by in understanding it. It goes without saying that
unmotivated words and words with faded motivation have to be remembered
and understood as separate signs, not as combinations of other signs.
The method is based on the fact that a word characterised by
morphological divisibility (analysable into morphemes) is involved in
certain structural correlations. This means that, as Z. Harris puts it,
“the morpheme boundaries in an utterance are determined not on the basis
of considerations interior to the utterance but on the basis of
comparison with other utterances. The comparisons are controlled, i.e.
we do not merely scan various random utterances but seek utterances
which differ from our original one only in stated portions. The final
test is in utterances which are only minimally different from ours.”3
A sample analysis which has become almost classical, being repeated many
times by many authors, is L. Bloomfield’s analysis of the word
ungentlemanly. As the word is convenient we take the same example.
Comparing this word with other utterances the listener recognises the
morpheme -un- as a negative prefix because he has often come across
words built on the pattern un- + adjective stem: uncertain, unconscious,
uneasy, unfortunate, unmistakable, unnatural. Some of the cases
resembled the word even more closely; these were: unearthly, unsightly,
untimely, unwomanly and the like. One can also come across the adjective
gentlemanly. Thus, at the first cut we obtain the following immediate
constituents: un- + gentlemanly. If we continue our analysis, we see
that although gent occurs as a free form in low colloquial usage, no
such word as lemanly may be found either as a free or as a bound
constituent, so this time we have to separate the final morpheme. We are
justified in so doing as there are many adjectives following the pattern
noun stem + -ly, such as womanly, masterly, scholarly, soldierly with
the same semantic relationship of ‘having the quality of the person
denoted by the stem’; we also have come across the noun gentleman in
other utterances. The two first stages of analysis resulted in
separating a free and a bound form: 1) un~ + gentlemanly, 2) gentleman +
-ly. The third cut has its peculiarities. The division into gent-+-lemon
is obviously impossible as no such patterns exist in English, so the cut
is gentle- + -man. A similar pattern is observed in nobleman, and so we
state adjective stem
1 Bloomfield L. Language. London, 1935. P. 210.
2 See: Nida E. Morphology. The Descriptive Analysis of Words. Ann Arbor,
1946. P. 81.
3 Harris Z.S. Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago, 1952. P. 163.
6* 83
+ man. Now, the element man may be differently classified as a
semi-affix (see § 6.2.2) or as a variant of the free form man. The word
gentle is open to discussion. It is obviously divisible from the
etymological viewpoint: gentle We can repeat the analysis on the word-formation level showing not only
the morphemic constituents of the word but also the structural pattern
on which it is built, this may be carried out in terms of proportional
oppositions. The main requirements are essentially the same: the
analysis must reveal patterns observed in other words of the same
language, the stems obtained after the affix is taken away should
correspond to a separate word, the segregation of the derivational affix
is based on proportional oppositions of words having the same affix with
the same lexical and lexico-grammatical meaning. Ungentlemanly, then, is
opposed not to ungentleman (such a word does not exist), but to
gentlemanly. Other pairs similarly connected are correlated with this
opposition. Examples are:
ungentlemanly ___ unfair __ unkind __ unselfish gentlemanly fair kind
selfish
This correlation reveals the pattern un- + adjective stem.
The word-formation type is defined as affixational derivation. The sense
of un- as used in this pattern is either simply ‘not’, or more commonly
‘the reverse of, with the implication of blame or praise, in the case of
ungentlemanly it is blame.
The next step is similar, only this time it is the suffix that is taken
away:
gentlemanly __ womanly _ scholarly gentleman woman scholar
The series shows that these adjectives are derived according to the
pattern noun stem + -ly. The common meaning of the numerator term is
‘characteristic of (a gentleman, a woman, a scholar).
The analysis into immediate constituents as suggested in American
linguistics has been further developed in the above treatment by
combining a purely formal procedure with semantic analysis of the
pattern. A semantic check means, for instance, that we can distinguish
the type gentlemanly from the type monthly, although both follow the
same structural pattern noun stem + -ly. The semantic relationship is
different, as -ly is qualitative in the first case and frequentative in
the second, i.e. monthly means ‘occurring every month’.
This point is confirmed by the following correlations: any adjective
built on the pattern personal noun stem+-/# is equivalent to
‘characteristic of or ‘having the quality of the person denoted by the
stem’.
gentlemanly -*having the qualities of a gentleman
masterly - shaving the qualities of a master
soldierly - shaving the qualities of a soldier
womanly - shaving the qualities of a woman
Monthly does not fit into this series, so we write: monthly ±5 having
the qualities of a month
85
On the other hand, adjectives of this group, i.e. words built on the
pattern stem of a noun denoting a period of time + -ly are all
equivalent to the formula ‘occurring every period of time denoted by the
stem’:
monthly ? occurring every month hourly ? occurring every hour
yearly ? occurring every year
Gentlemanly does not show this sort of equivalence, the transform is
obviously impossible, so we write:
gentlemanly ? occurring every gentleman
The above procedure is an elementary case of the transformational
analysis, in which the semantic similarity or difference of words is
revealed by the possibility or impossibility of transforming them
according to a prescribed model and following certain rules into a
different form, called their transform. The conditions of equivalence
between the original form and the transform are formulated in advance.
In our case the conditions to be fulfilled are the sameness of meaning
and of the kernel morpheme.
E.Nida discusses another complicated case: untruly adj might, it seems,
be divided both ways, the IC’s being either un-+truly or un-true+-ly.
Yet observing other utterances we notice that the prefix un- is but
rarely combined with adverb stems and very freely with adjective stems;
examples have already been given above. So we are justified in thinking
that the IC’s are untrue+-ly. Other examples of the same pattern are:
uncommonly, unlikely.1
There are, of course, cases, especially among borrowed words, that defy
analysis altogether; such are, for instance, calendar, nasturtium or
chrysanthemum.
The analysis of other words may remain open or unresolved. Some
linguists, for example, hold the view that words like pocket cannot be
subjected to morphological analysis. Their argument is that though we
are justified in singling out the element -et, because the correlation
may be considered regular (hog : : hogget, lock : : locket), the meaning
of the suffix being in both cases distinctly diminutive, the remaining
part pock- cannot be regarded as a stem as it does not occur anywhere
else. Others, like Prof. A.I. Smirnitsky, think that the stem is
morphologically divisible if at least one of its elements can be shown
to belong to a regular correlation. Controversial issues of this nature
do not invalidate the principles of analysis into immediate
constituents. The second point of view seems more convincing. To
illustrate it, let us take the word hamlet ‘a small village’. No words
with this stem occur in present-day English, but it is clearly divisible
diachronically, as it is derived from OFr hamelet of Germanic origin, a
diminutive of hamel, and a cognate of the English noun home. We must not
forget that hundreds of English place names end in -ham, like Shoreham,
Wyndham, etc. Nevertheless, making a mixture of historical and
structural approach
1 Nida E. Morphology, p.p. 81-82. 86
86will never do. If we keep to the second, and look for recurring
identities according to structural procedures, we shall find the words
booklet, cloudlet, flatlet, leaflet, ringlet, town let, etc. In all
these -let is a clearly diminutive suffix which does not contradict the
meaning of hamlet. A.I. Smirnitsky’s approach is, therefore, supported
by the evidence afforded by the language material, and also permits us
to keep within strictly synchronic limits.
Now we can make one more conclusion, namely, that in lexicological
analysis words may be grouped not only according to their root morphemes
but according to affixes as well.
The whole procedure of the analysis into immediate constituents is
reduced to the recognition and classification of same and different
morphemes and same and different word patterns. This is precisely why it
permits the tracing and understanding of the vocabulary system.
§ 5.4 DERIVATIONAL AND FUNCTIONAL AFFIXES
Lexicology is primarily concerned with derivational affixes, the other
group being the domain of grammarians. The derivational affixes in fact,
as well as the whole problem of word-formation, form a boundary area
between lexicology and grammar and are therefore studied in both.
Language being a system in which the elements of vocabulary and grammar
are closely interrelated, our study of affixes cannot be complete
without some discussion of the similarity and difference between
derivational and functional morphemes.
The similarity is obvious as they are so often homonymous (for the most
important cases of homonymy between derivational and functional affixes
see p. 18). Otherwise the two groups are essentially different because
they render different types of meaning.
Functional affixes serve to convey grammatical meaning. They build
different forms of one and the same word. A 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. A 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’ (see1 p. 23).
Derivational affixes serve to supply the stem with components of lexical
and lexico-grammatical meaning, and thus form4different words. One and
the same lexico-grammatical meaning of the affix is sometimes
accompanied by different combinations of various lexical meanings. Thus,
the lexico-grammatical meaning supplied by the suffix -y consists in the
ability to express the qualitative idea peculiar to adjectives and
creates adjectives from noun stems. The lexical meanings of the same
suffix are somewhat variegated: ‘full of, as in bushy or cloudy,
‘composed of, as in stony, ‘having the quality of, as in slangy,
‘resembling’, as in baggy, ‘covered with’, as in hairy and some more.
This suffix sometimes conveys emotional components of meaning. E.g.:
87
My school reports used to say: “Not amenable to discipline; too fond of
organising,” which was only a kind way of saying: “Bossy.” (M. Dickens)
Bossy not only means ‘having the quality of a boss’ or ‘behaving like a
boss’; it is also a derogatory word.
This fundamental difference in meaning and function of the two groups of
affixes results in an interesting relationship: the presence of a
derivational affix does not prevent a word from being equivalent to
another word, in which this suffix is absent, so that they can be
substituted for one another in context. The presence of a functional
affix changes the distributional properties of a word so much that it
can never be substituted for a simple word without violating grammatical
standard. To see this point consider the following familiar quotation
from Shakespeare:
Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of
death but once.
Here no one-morpheme word can be substituted for the words cowards,
times or deaths because the absence of a plural mark will make the
sentence ungrammatical. The words containing derivational affixes can be
substituted by morphologically different words, so that the derivative
valiant can be substituted by a root word like brave. In a statement
like I wash my hands of the whole affair (Du Maurier) the word affair
may be replaced by the derivative business or by the simple word thing
because their distributional properties are the same. It is, however,
impossible to replace it by a word containing a functional affix
(affairs or things), as this would require a change in the rest of the
sentence.
The American structuralists B. Bloch and G. Trager formulate this point
as follows: “A suffixal derivative is a two-morpheme word which is
grammatically equivalent to (can be substituted for) any simple word in
all the constructions where it occurs."1
This rule is not to be taken as an absolutely rigid one because the word
building potential and productivity of stems depend on several factors.
Thus, no further addition of suffixes is possible after -ness, -ity,
-dom, -ship and -hood.
A derivative is mostly capable of further derivation and is therefore
homonymous to a stem. Foolish, for instance, is derived from the stem
fool- and is homonymous to the stem foolish- occurring in the words
foolishness and foolishly. Inflected words cease to be homonymous to
stems. No further derivation is possible from the word form fools, where
the stem fool- is followed by the functional affix -s. Inflected words
are neither structurally nor functionally equivalent to the
morphologically simple words belonging to the same part of speech.
Things is different from business functionally, because these two words
cannot occur in identical contexts, and structurally, because of the
different character of their immediate constituents and different
word-forming possibilities.
1 See: Bloch B. and Trager G. Outline of Linguistic Analysis. Baltimore,
1942 P. 84.
88
After having devoted special attention to the difference in semantic
characteristics of various kinds of morphemes we notice that they are
different positionally. A functional affix marks the word boundary, it
can only follow the affix of derivation and come last, so that no
further derivation is possible for a stem to which a functional affix is
added. That is why functional affixes are called by E. Nida the outer
formatives as contrasted to the inner formatives which is equivalent to
our term derivational affixes.
It might be argued that the outer position of functional affixes is
disproved by such examples as the disableds, the unwanteds. It must be
noted, however, that in these words -ed is not a functional affix, it
receives derivational force so that the disableds is not a form of the
verb to disable, but a new word — a collective noun.
A word containing no outer formatives is, so to say, open, because it is
homonymous to a stem and further derivational affixes may be added to
it. Once we add an outer formative, no further derivation is possible.
The form may be regarded as closed.
The semantic, functional and positional difference that has already been
stated is supported by statistical properties and difference in valency
(combining possibilities). Of the three main types of morphemes, namely
roots, derivational affixes and functional affixes (formatives), the
roots are by far the most numerous. There are many thousand roots in the
English language; the derivational affixes, when listed, do not go
beyond a few scores. The list given in “Chambers’s Twentieth Century
Dictionary” takes up five pages and a half, comprising all the detailed
explanations of their origin and meaning, and even then the actual
living suffixes are much fewer. As to the functional affixes there are
hardly more than ten of them. Regular English verbs, for instance, have
only four forms: play, plays, played, playing, as compared to the German
verbs which have as many as sixteen.
The valency of these three groups of morphemes is naturally in inverse
proportion to their number. Functional affixes can be appended, with a
few exceptions, to any element belonging to the part of speech they
serve. The regular correlation of singular and plural forms of nouns can
serve to illustrate this point. Thus, heart : : hearts; boy : : boys,
etc. The relics of archaic forms, such as child : : children, or foreign
plurals like criterion : : criteria are very few in comparison with
these.
Derivational affixes do not combine so freely and regularly. The suffix
-en occurring in golden and leaden cannot be added to the root steel-.
Nevertheless, as they serve to mark certain groups of words, their
correlations are never isolated and always contain more than two
oppositions, e. g. boy : : boyish, child : : childish, book : : bookish,
gold : : golden, lead : : leaden, wood : : wooden. The valency of roots
is of a very different order and the oppositions may be sometimes
isolated. It is for instance difficult to find another pair with the
root heart and the same relationship as in heart : : sweetheart.
Knowing the plural functional suffix -s we know how the countable nouns
are inflected. The probability of a mistake is not great.
89
With derivational affixes the situation is much more intricate.
Knowing, for instance, the complete list of affixes of feminisation,
i.e. formation of feminine nouns from the stems of masculine ones by
adding a characteristic suffix, we shall be able to recognise a new word
if we know the root. This knowledge, however, will not enable us to
construct words acceptable for English vocabulary, because derivational
affixes are attached to their particular stems in a haphazard and
unpredictable manner. Why, for instance, is it impossible to call a
lady-guest — a guestess on the pattern of host : : hostess? Note also:
lion : : lioness, tiger : : tigress, but bear : : she-bear, elephant : :
she-elephant, wolf : : she-wolf; very often the correlation is assured
by suppletion, therefore we have boar : : sow, buck : : doe, bull : :
cow, cock : : hen, ram : : ewe.
Similarly in toponymy: the inhabitant of London is called a Londoner,
the inhabitant of Moscow is a Muscovite, of Vienna — a Viennese, of
Athens — an Athenian.
On the whole this state of things is more or less common to many
languages; but English has stricter constraints in this respect than,
for example, Russian; indeed the range of possibilities in English is
very narrow. Russian not only possesses a greater number of diminutive
affixes but can add many of them to the same stem: мальчик, мальчишка,
мальчишечка, мальчонка, мальчуган, мальчугашка. Nothing of the kind is
possible for the English noun stem boy. With the noun stem girl the
diminutive -ie can be added but not -ette, -let, -kin / -kins. The same
holds true even if the corresponding noun stems have much in common: a
short lecture is a lecturette but a small picture is never called a
picturette. The probability that a given stem will combine with a given
affix is thus not easily established.
To sum up: derivational and functional morphemes may happen to be
identical in sound form, but they are substantially different in
meaning, function, valency, statistical characteristics and structural
properties.
§ 5.5 THE VALENCY OF AFFIXES AND STEMS. WORD-BUILDING PATTERNS AND THEIR
MEANING
Another essential feature of affixes that should not be overlooked is
their combining power or valenсу and the derivational patterns in which
they regularly occur.
We have already seen that not all combinations of existing morphemes are
actually used. Thus, unhappy, untrue and unattractive are quite regular
combinations, while seemingly analogous *unsad, *UN-FALSE, *unpretty do
not exist. The possibility of a particular stem taking a particular
affix depends on phono-morphological, morphological and semantic
factors. The suffix -ance/-ence,1 for instance, occurs only after b, t,
d, dz, v, l, r, m, n: disturbance, insistence, independence, but not
after s or z: condensation, organisation.
1 These are allomorphs. See § 5.7.
90
It is of course impossible to describe the whole system. To make our
point clear we shall take adjective-forming suffixes as an example. They
are mostly attached to noun stems. They are: ~ed (barbed), -en (golden),
-ful (careful), -less (careless), -ly (soldierly), -like (childlike), -y
(hearty) and some others. The highly productive suffix -able can be
combined with noun stems and verbal stems alike (clubbable, bearable).
It is especially frequent in the pattern un- + verbal stem + -able
(unbearable). Sometimes it is even attached to phrases in which
composition and affixation are simultaneous producing
compound-derivatives (unbrushoffable, ungetatable). These
characteristics are of great importance both structurally and
semantically.
Their structural significance is clear if we realise that to describe
the system of a given vocabulary one must know the typical patterns on
which its words are coined. To achieve this it is necessary not only to
know the morphemes of which they consist but also to reveal their
recurrent regular combinations and the relationship existing between
them. This approach ensures a rigorously linguistic basis for the
identification of lexico-grammatical classes within each part of speech.
In the English language these classes are little studied so far,
although an inquiry into this problem seems very promising.1
It is also worthy of note that from the information theory viewpoint the
fact that not every affix is capable of combining with any given stem
makes the code more reliable, protects it from noise,2 mistakes, and
misunderstanding.
The valency of stems is not therefore unlimited. Noun stems can be
followed by the noun-forming suffixes: -age (bondage), -dom (serfdom),
-eer/-ier (profiteer, collier), -ess (waitress), -ful (spoonful), -hood
(childhood), -ian (physician), -ics (linguistics), -iel-y (daddy), -ing
(flooring), -ism (heroism), -ist (violinist), -let (cloudlet), -ship
(friendship)-, by the adjective-forming suffixes: -al/-ial (doctoral),
-an (African), -ary (revolutionary), -ed (wooded), -ful (hopeful),
-ic/-ical (historic, historical), -ish (childish), -like (businesslike),
-ly (friendly), -ous/-ious/-eous (spacious), -some (handsome), -y
(cloudy)’, verb-forming suffixes: -ate (aerate), -en (hearten), -fy/-ify
(speechify), -ise (sympathise).
Verbal stems are almost equal to noun stems in valency. They combine
with the following noun-forming suffixes: -age (breakage), -al
(betrayal), -ance/-ence (guidance, reference), -ant/-ent (assistant,
student), -ee (employee), -er/-or (painter, editor), -ing (uprising),
-ion/-tion/-ation (action, information), -ment (government). The
adjective-forming suffixes used with verbal stems are: -able/-ible
(agreeable, comprehensible), -ive/-sive/-tive (talkative), -some
(meddlesome).
Adjective stems furnish a shorter list: -dom (freedom), -ism (realism),
-ity/-ty (reality, cruelty), -ness (brightness), -ish (reddish), -ly
(firmly), •ate (differentiate), -en (sharpen), -fy/-ify (solidify).
1 See the works by I.V. Arnold, T.M. Belyaeva, S.S. Khidekel, E.S.
Koobryakova, O.D. Meshkov, I.K. Arhipov and others.
2 Noise as a term of the theory of information is used to denote any
kind of interference with the process of communication.
91
The combining possibilities (or valency) are very important
semantically because the meaning of the derivative depends not only on
the morphemes of which it is composed but also on combinations of stems
and affixes that can be contrasted with it. Contrast is to be looked for
in the use of the same morpheme in different environment and also in the
use of different morphemes in environments otherwise the same.
The difference between the suffixes -ity and -ism, for instance, will
become clear if we compare them as combined with identical stems in the
following oppositions: formality : : formalism : : humanity : :
humanism; reality : : realism. Roughly, the words in -ity mean the
quality of being what the corresponding adjective describes, or an
instance of this quality. The resulting nouns are countable. The suffix
-ism forms nouns naming a disposition to what the adjective describes,
or a corresponding type of ideology. Being uncountable they belong to a
different lexico-grammatical class.
The similarity on which an opposition is based may consist, for the
material under consideration in the present paragraph, in the sameness
of suffix. A description of suffixes according to the stem with which
they are combined and the lexico-grammatical classes they serve to
differentiate may be helpful in the analysis of the meanings they are
used to render.
A good example is furnished by the suffix -ish, as a suffix of
adjectives. The combining possibilities of the suffix -ish are vast but
not unlimited. Boyish and waspish are used, whereas *enemish and *aspish
are not. The constraints here are of semantic nature. It is regularly
present in the names of nationalities, as for example: British, Irish,
Spanish.1 When added to noun stems, it forms adjectives of the type
‘having the nature of with a moderately derogatory colouring: bookish,
churlish, monkeyish, sheepish, swinish. Childish has a derogatory twist
of meaning, the adjective with a good sense is childlike. A man may be
said to behave with a childish petulance, but with a childlike
simplicity. Compare also womanly ‘having the qualities befitting a
woman’, as in womanly compassion, womanly grace, womanly tact, with the
derogatory womanish ‘effeminate’, as in: womanish fears, traitors to
love and duty (Coleridge).
With adjective stems the meaning is not derogatory, the adjective
renders a moderate degree of the quality named: greenish ‘somewhat
green’, stiffish ‘somewhat stiff, thinnish ‘somewhat thin’. The model is
especially frequent with colours: blackish, brownish, reddish. A similar
but stylistically peculiar meaning is observed in combinations with
numeral stems: eightyish, fortyish and the like are equivalent to ‘round
about eighty’, ‘round about forty’. E. g.: “What’s she like, Min?”
“Sixtyish. Stout. Grey hair. Tweeds. Red face.” (McCrone)
In colloquial speech the suffix -ish is added to words denoting the time
of the day: four-o'clockish or more often fourish means ‘round about
four o'clock’. E. g.: Robert and I went to a cocktail party at
Annette’s. (It was called “drinks at six thirty'ish” — the word
“cocktail” was going out.) (W. Cooper).
1 But not all nationalities. E. g. Russian, Italian, Chinese, Japanese.
92
The study of correlations of derivatives and stems is also helpful in
bringing into relief the meaning of the affix. The lexico-grammatical
meaning of the suffix -ness that forms nouns of quality from adjective
stems becomes clear from the study of correlations of the derivative and
the underlying stem. A few examples picked up at random will be
sufficient proof: good : : goodness; kind : : kindness; lonely : :
loneliness; ready : : readiness; righteous : : righteousness; slow : :
slowness.
The suffixes -ion (and its allomorphs -sion and -tion) and -or are
noun-forming suffixes combined with verbal stems. The opposition between
them serves to distinguish between two subclasses of nouns: abstract
nouns and agent nouns, e. g. accumulation : : accumulator; action : :
actor; election : : elector; liberation : : liberator; oppression : :
oppressor; vibration : : vibrator, etc. The abstract noun in this case
may mean action, state or result of action remaining within the same
subclass. Thus, cultivation denotes the process of cultivating (most
often of cultivating the soil) and the state of being cultivated. Things
may be somewhat different with the suffix -or, because a cultivator is
‘a person who cultivates1 and ‘a machine for breaking up ground,
loosening the earth round growing plants and destroying weeds’. Thus two
different subclasses are involved: one of animate beings, the other of
inanimate things. They differ not only semantically but grammatically
too; there exists a regular opposition between animate and inanimate
nouns in English: the first group is substituted by he or she, and the
second by the pronoun it. In derivation this opposition of animate
personal nouns to all other nouns is in some cases sustained by such
suffixes as -ard/-art (braggart), -ist (novelist) and a few others, but
most often neutralised. The term neutralisation may be defined as a
temporary suspension of an otherwise functioning opposition.
Neutralisation, as in the word cultivator, is also observed with such
suffixes as -ant, -er that also occur in agent nouns, both animate and
inanimate. Cf. accountant ‘a person who keeps accounts’ and coolant ‘a
cooling substance’; fitter ‘mechanic who fits up all kinds of metalwork’
and shutter (in photography) ‘a device regulating the exposure to light
of a plate of film’; runner ‘a messenger’ and ‘a blade of a skate’.
Structural observations such as these show that an analysis of suffixes
in the light of their valency and the lexico-grammatical subclasses that
they serve to differentiate may be useful in the analysis of their
semantic properties. The notions of opposition, correlation and
neutralisation introduced into linguistics by N. Trubetzkoy prove
relevant and helpful in morphological analysis as well.
The term word-building or derivational pattern is used to denote a
meaningful combination of stems and affixes that occur regularly enough
to indicate the part of speech, the lexico-semantic 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
1 See also: Ginzburg R.S. et al. A Course in Modern English Lexicology.
P. 103.
93
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.1
The grouping of patterns, their description and study may be based on
the same principle of explanatory transformations that we have used for
componential analysis in Chapter 3 (see §3.6).
Let us turn again to affixation and see how the dictionary defines words
with the prefix un-:
unaccented a —without an accent or stress
unbolt v — to remove the bolt of, to unlock
unconcern n — lack of concern
undo v — to reverse the effect of doing
unfailing a — not failing, constant
These few examples show that the negative prefix un- may be used in the
following patterns:
I. un- + an adjective stem un- + Part. I stem un- + Part. II stem } with
the meaning ‘not’, ‘without’, ‘the opposite of'
II. un- + a verbal stem — with the meaning of ‘to reverse the action as
the effect of...'
III. un- + a verbal stem which is derived from a noun stem — with the
reversative meaning ‘to release from'
IV. un- + a noun stem shows the lack of the quality denoted
The examples for pattern I are: uncertain, unfair, unbelievable,
unconscious, unbalanced, unknown, unborn, unbecoming’, for pattern II:
unbend, unbind, unpack, unwrap; for pattern III: unhook, unpack, unlock,
unearth.
With noun stems (pattern IV) un- is used very rarely. E. g. unpeople
‘people lacking the semblance of humanity’, unperson ‘a public figure
who has lost his influence’.
These cases of semantic overlapping show that the meaning or rather the
variety of meanings of each derivational affix can be established only
when we collect many cases of its use and then observe its functioning
within the structure of the word-building patterns deduced from the
examples collected. It would be also wrong to say that there exists a
definite meaning associated with this or that pattern, as they are often
polysemantic, and the affixes homonymous. This may be also seen from the
following examples. A very productive pattern is out-+ V = Vt. The
meaning is ‘to do something faster, better, longer than somebody or
something’. E. g. outdo, out-grow, out-live, outnumber,
1 As for instance, a numeral stem + -ish with ages has the meaning
‘approximately so many years old’: fiftyish, sixtyish, seventyish, and
has a colloquial connotation.
94
outplay. The number of possible combinations is practically unlimited.
The spelling, whether hyphenated, solid or separate is in many cases
optional. When formed not on verbs but on names of persons it means ‘to
surpass this person in something that is known as his special property’.
The classical example is “to out-Herod Herod” (Shakespeare) ‘to outdo sb
in cruelty’.1
On the other hand, the same formal pattern out-+V may occur with the
locative out- and produce nouns, such as outbreak or outburst. The
second element here is actually a deverbal noun of action.
The above examples do not exhaust the possibilities of patterns with
out- as their first element. Out- may be used with verbal stems and
their derivatives (outstanding), with substantives (outfield), with
adjectives (outbound) and adverbs (outright).
The more productive an affix is the more probable the existence
alongside the usual pattern of some semantic variation. Thus, -ee is
freely added to verbal stems to form nouns meaning ‘One who is V-ed’, as
addressee, divorcee, employee, evacuee, examinee, often paralleling
agent nouns in -er, as employer, examiner. Sometimes, however, it is
added to intransitive verbs; in these cases the pattern V+-ee means ‘One
who V-s’ or ‘One who has V-ed’, as in escapee, retiree. In the case of
bargee ‘a man in charge of a barge’ the stem is a noun.
It may also happen that due to the homonymy of affixes words that look
like antonyms are in fact synonyms. A good example is analysed by V.K.
Tarasova. The adjectives inflammable and flammable are not antonyms as
might be supposed from their morphological appearance (cf. informal : :
formal, inhospitable : : hospitable) but synonyms, because inflammable
is ‘easily set on fire’. They are also interchangeable in non-technical
texts. Inflammable may be used figuratively as ‘easily excited’.
Flammable is preferred in technical writing.
The fact is that there are two prefixes in-. One is a negative prefix
and the other may indicate an inward motion, an intensive action or as
in the case of inflame, inflammable and inflammation have a causative
function.2
It is impossible to draw a sharp line between the elements of form
expressing only lexical and those expressing only grammatical meaning
and the difficulty is not solved by introducing alongside the term
motivation the term word-formation meaning.
To sum up: the word-building pattern is a structural and semantic
formula more or less regularly reproduced, it reveals the morphological
motivation of the word, the grammatical part-of-speech meaning and in
most cases helps to refer the word to some lexico-grammatical class, the
components of the lexical meaning are mostly supplied by the stem.
1 Herod — the ruler of Judea, at the time of Christ’s birth was noted
for his despotic nature and cruelty.
2 V.K. Tarasova studies the possibilities of this homonymy of the word
inflammable when she comments on the poem by Ogden Nash entitled
“Philology, Etymology, You Owe Me an Apology”.
95
§ 5.6 CLASSIFICATION OF AFFIXES
Depending on the purpose of research, various classifications of
suffixes have been used and suggested. Suffixes have been classified
according to their origin, parts of speech they served to form, their
frequency, productivity and other characteristics.
Within the parts of speech suffixes have been classified semantically
according to lexico-grammatical groups and semantic fields, and last but
not least, according to the types of stems they are added to.
In conformity with our primarily synchronic approach it seems convenient
to begin with the classification according to the part of speech in
which the most frequent suffixes of present-day English occur. They will
be listed together with words illustrating their possible semantic
force.1
Noun-forming suffixes:
ее (employee); -eer (profiteer); -er (writer, type-writer); -ess
(actress, lioness); -hood (manhood); -ing (building, meaning, washing);
-ion/-sion/-tion/-ation (rebellion, tension, creation, explanation);
-ism/-icism (heroism, criticism); -ist (novelist, communist); -ment
(government, nourishment); -ness (tenderness); -ship (friendship);
-(i)ty (sonority).
Adjective-forming suffixes:
-able/-ible/-uble (unbearable, audible, soluble); -al (formal); -ic
(poetic); -ical (ethical); -ant/-ent (repentant, dependent); -ary
(revolutionary); -ate/-ete (accurate, complete); -ed/-d (wooded); -ful
(delightful); -an/-ian (African, Australian); -ish (Irish, reddish,
childish); -ive (active); -less (useless); -like (lifelike); -ly
(manly); -ous/-ious (tremendous, curious); -some (tiresome); -y (cloudy,
dressy).
Numeral-forming suffixes: -fold (twofold); -teen (fourteen); -th
(seventh); -ty (sixty).
Verb-forming suffixes:
-ate (facilitate); -er (glimmer); -en (shorten); -fy/-ify (terrify,
speechify, solidify); -ise/-ize (equalise); -ish (establish).
Adverb-forming suffixes: -ly (coldly); -ward/-wards (upward,
northwards); -wise (likewise).
If we change our approach and become interested in the
lexico-grammatical meaning the suffixes serve to signalise, we obtain
within each part of speech more detailed lexico-grammatical classes or
subclasses.
1 It should be noted that diachronic approach would view the problem of
morphological analysis differently, for example, in the word complete
they would look for the traces of the Latin complet-us.
2 Between forms the sign / denotes allomorphs. See § 5.7.
96
Taking up nouns we can subdivide them into proper and common nouns.
Among common nouns we shall distinguish personal names, names of other
animate beings, collective nouns, falling into several minor groups,
material nouns, abstract nouns and names of things.
Abstract nouns are signalled by the following suffixes: -age, -ance/
-ence, -ancy/-ency, -dom, -hood, -ing, -ion/-tion/-ation, -ism, -ment,
-ness, -ship, -th, -ty.1
ее (examinee), -er (porter), -ician (musician), -ist (linguist), -ite
(sybarite), -or (inspector), and a few others.
Feminine suffixes may be classed as a subgroup of personal noun
suffixes. These are few and not frequent: -ess (actress), -ine
(heroine), -rix (testatrix), -ette (cosmonette).
The above classification should be accepted with caution. It is true
that in a polysemantic word at least one of the variants will show the
class meaning signalled by the affix. There may be other variants,
however, whose different meaning will be signalled by a difference in
distribution, and these will belong to some other lexico-grammatical
class. Cf. settlement, translation denoting a process and its result, or
beauty which, when denoting qualities that give pleasure to the eye or
to the mind, is an abstract noun, but occurs also as a personal noun
denoting a beautiful woman. The word witness is more often used in its
several personal meanings than (in accordance with its suffix) as an
abstract noun meaning ‘evidence’ or ‘testimony’. The coincidence of two
classes in the semantic structure of some words may be almost regular.
Collectivity, for instance, may be signalled by such suffixes as -dom,
-ery-, -hood, -ship. It must be borne in mind, however, that words with
these suffixes are polysemantic and show a regular correlation of the
abstract noun denoting state and a collective noun denoting a group of
persons of whom this state is characteristic, сf. knighthood.
Alongside with adding some lexico-grammatical meaning to the stem,
certain suffixes charge it with emotional force. They may be derogatory:
-ard (drunkard), -ling (underling); -ster (gangster), -ton (simpleton),
These seem to be more numerous in English than the suffixes of
endearment.
Emotionally coloured diminutive suffixes rendering also endearment
differ from the derogatory suffixes in that they are used to name not
only persons but things as well. This point may be illustrated by the
suffix -y/-ie/-ey (auntie, cabbie (cabman), daddy), but also: hanky
(handkerchief), nightie (night-gown). Other suffixes that express
smallness are -kin/-kins (mannikin); -let (booklet); -ock (hillock);
-ette (kitchenette).
The connotation (see p. 47ff) of some diminutive suffixes is not one of
endearment but of some outlandish elegance and novelty, particularly in
the case of the borrowed suffix -ette (kitchenette, launderette,
lecturette, maisonette, etc.).
1 See examples on p. 96. 7
97
Derivational morphemes affixed before the stem are called prefixes.
Prefixes modify the lexical meaning of the stem, but in so doing they
seldom affect its basic lexico-grammatical component. Therefore both the
simple word and its prefixed derivative mostly belong to the same part
of speech. The prefix mis-, for instance, when added to verbs, conveys
the meaning ‘wrongly’, ‘badly’, ‘unfavourably’; it does not suggest any
other part of speech but the verb. Compare the following oppositions:
behave : : misbehave, calculate : : miscalculate, inform : : misinform,
lead : : mislead, pronounce : : mispronounce. The above oppositions are
strictly proportional semantically, i.e. the same relationship between
elements holds throughout the series. There may be other cases where the
semantic relationship is slightly different but the general
lexico-grammatical meaning remains, cf. giving : : misgiving
‘foreboding’ or ‘suspicion’; take : : mistake and trust : : mistrust.
The semantic effect of a prefix may be termed adverbial because it
modifies the idea suggested by the stem for manner, time, place, degree
and so on. A few examples will prove the point. It has been already
shown that the prefix mis- is equivalent to the adverbs wrongly and
badly, therefore by expressing evaluation it modifies the corresponding
verbs for manner.1 The prefixes pre- and post- refer to time and order,
e. g. historic :: pre-historic, pay :: prepay, view :: preview. The last
word means ‘to view a film or a play before it is submitted to the
general public’. Compare also: graduate :: postgraduate (about the
course of study carried on after graduation), Impressionism ::
Post-impressionism. The latter is so called because it came after
Impressionism as a reaction against it. The prefixes in-, a-, ab-,
super-, sub-, trans- modify the stem for place, e. g. income, abduct ‘to
carry away’, subway, transatlantic. Several prefixes serve to modify the
meaning of the stem for degree and size. The examples are out-, over-
and under-. The prefix out- has already been described (see p. 95).
Compare also the modification for degree in such verbs as overfeed and
undernourish, subordinate.
The group of negative prefixes is so numerous that some scholars even
find it convenient to classify prefixes into negative and non-negative
ones. The negative ones are: de-, dis-, in-/im-/il-/ir-, поп-, ип-. Part
of this group has been also more accurately classified as prefixes
giving negative, reverse or opposite meaning.2
The prefix de- occurs in many neologisms, such as decentralise,
decontaminate ‘remove contamination from the area or the clothes’,
denazify, etc.
The general idea of negation is expressed by dis-; it may mean ‘not’,
and be simply negative or ‘the reverse of, ‘asunder’, ‘away’, ‘apart’
and then it is called reversative. Cf. agree : : disagree ‘not to agree’
appear : : disappear (disappear is the reverse of appear), appoint : :
dis-. appoint ‘to undo the appointment and thus frustrate the
expectation’, disgorge ‘eject as from the throat’, dishouse ‘throw out,
evict’. /n-/
1 R. Quirk rails it a pejorative prefix. (See: Quirk R. et al. A Grammar
of Contemporary English. P. 384.)
2 See: Vesnik D. and Khidekel S. Exercises in Modern English
Word-building. M., 1964.
98
im-/ir-/il have already been discussed, so there is no necessity to
dwell upon them. Non- is often used in abstract verbal nouns such as
noninterference, nonsense or non-resistance, and participles or former
participles like non-commissioned (about an officer in the army below
the rank of a commissioned officer), non-combatant (about any one who is
connected with the army but is there for some purpose other than
fighting, as, for instance, an army surgeon.)
Non- used to be restricted to simple unemphatic negation. Beginning with
the sixties non- indicates not so much the opposite of something but
rather that something is not real or worthy of the name. E. g. non-book
— is a book published to be purchased rather than to be read, non-thing
— something insignificant and meaningless.
The most frequent by far is the prefix un-; it should be noted that it
may convey two different meanings, namely:
Simple negation, when attached to adjective stems or to participles:
happy : : unhappy, kind : : unkind, even : : uneven. It is immaterial
whether the stem is native or borrowed, as the suffix un- readily
combines with both groups. For instance, uncommon, unimportant, etc. are
hybrids.
The meaning is reversative when un- is used with verbal stems. In that
case it shows action contrary to that of the simple word: bind : :
unbind, do : : undo, mask : : unmask, pack : : unpack.
A very frequent prefix with a great combining power is re- denoting
repetition of the action expressed by the stem. It may be prefixed to
almost any verb or verbal noun: rearrange v, recast v ‘put into new
shape’, reinstate v ‘to place again in a former position’, refitment n
‘repairs and renewal’, remarriage n, etc. There are, it must be
remembered, some constraints. Thus, while reassembled or revisited are
usual, rereceived or reseen do not occur at all.
The meaning of a prefix is not so completely fused with the meaning of
the primary stem as is the case with suffixes, but retains a certain
degree of semantic independence.
It will be noted that among the above examples verbs predominate. This
is accounted for by the fact that prefixation in English is chiefly
characteristic of verbs and words with deverbal stems.
The majority of prefixes affect only the lexical meaning of words but
there are three important cases where prefixes serve to form words
belonging to different parts of speech as compared with the original
word.
These are in the first place the verb-forming prefixes be- and en-,
which combine functional meaning with a certain variety of lexical
meanings.1 Be- forms transitive verbs with adjective, verb and noun
stems and changes intransitive verbs into transitive ones. Examples are:
belittle v ‘to make little’, benumb v ‘to make numb’, befriend v ‘to
treat
1 Historically be- is a weakened form of the preposition and adverb by,
the original meaning was ‘about’. The prefix en-/em-, originally Latin,
is the doublet of the prefix in-/im-; it penetrated into English through
French. Many English words in which this prefix is quite readily
distinguished were formed not on English soil but borrowed as
derivatives, as was the case with the verb enlarge
like a friend’, becloud v (bedew v, befoam v) ‘to cover with clouds
(with dew or with foam)’, bemadam v ‘to call madam’, besiege v ‘to lay
siege on’. Sometimes the lexical meanings are very different; compare,
for instance, bejewel v ‘to deck with jewels’ and behead v which has the
meaning of ‘to cut the head from’. There are on the whole about six
semantic verb-forming varieties and one that makes adjectives from noun
stems following the pattern be- + noun stem + -ed, as in benighted,
bespectacled, etc. The pattern is often connected with a contemptuous
emotional colouring.
The prefix en-/em- is now used to form verbs from noun stems with the
meaning ‘put (the object) into, or on, something’, as in embed, engulf,
encamp, and also to form verbs with adjective and noun stems with the
meaning ‘to bring into such condition or state’, as in enable v, enslave
v, encash v. Sometimes the prefix en-/em- has an intensifying function,
cf. enclasp.
The prefix a- is the characteristic feature of the words belonging to
statives: aboard, afraid, asleep, awake, etc.
1 As a prefix forming the words of the category of state a- represents:
(1) OE preposition on, as abed, aboard, afoot; (2) OE preposition of,
from, as in anew, (3) OE prefixes ge- and y- as in aware.
This prefix has several homonymous morphemes which modify only the
lexical meaning of the stem, cf. arise v, amoral a.
The prefixes pre-, post-, non-, anti-, and some other Romanic and Greek
prefixes very productive in present-day English serve to form adjectives
retaining at the same time a very clear-cut lexical meaning, e. g.
anti-war, pre-war, post-war, non-party, etc.
From the point of view of etymology affixes are subdivided into two main
classes: the native affixes and the borrowed affixes. By native affixes
we shall mean those that existed in English in the Old English period or
were formed from Old English words. The latter category needs some
explanation. The changes a morpheme undergoes in the course of language
history may be of very different kinds. A bound form, for instance, may
be developed from a free one. This is precisely the case with such
English suffixes as -dom, -hood, -lock, -ful, -less, -like, -ship, e. g.
ModE -dom The term borrowed affixes is not very exact as affixes are never
borrowed as such, but only as parts of loan words. 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.
If these conditions are fulfilled, the foreign affix may even become
productive and combine with native stems or borrowed stems within the
system of English vocabulary like -able In some cases the difference is not very clear-cut: -ic and -ical, for
example, are two different affixes, the first a simple one, the second a
group affix; they are said to be characterised by contrastive
distribution. But many adjectives have both the -ic and -ical form,
often without a distinction in meaning. COD points out that the suffix
-ical shows a vaguer connection with what is indicated by the stem: a
comic paper but a comical story. However, the distinction between them
is not very sharp.
Allomorphs will also occur among prefixes. Their form then depends on
the initials of the stem with which they will assimilate. A prefix such
as im- occurs before bilabials (impossible), its allomorph ir- before r
(irregular), il- before l (illegal). It is in- before all other
consonants and vowels (indirect, inability).
Two or more sound forms of a stem existing under conditions of
complementary distribution may also be regarded as allomorphs, as, for
instance, in long a : : length n, excite v : : excitation n.
In American descriptive linguistics allomorphs are treated on a purely
semantic basis, so that not only [?z] in dishes, [z] in dreams and [s]
in books, which are allomorphs in the sense given above, but also
formally unrelated [n] in oxen, the vowel modification in tooth : :
teeth and zero suffix in many sheep, are considered to be allomorphs of
the same morpheme on the strength of the sameness of their grammatical
meaning. This surely needs some serious re-thinking, as within that kind
of approach morphemes cease to be linguistic units combining the two
fundamental aspects of form and meaning and become pure abstractions.
The very term morpheme (from the Greek morph? ‘form’) turns into a
misnomer, because all connection with form is lost.
Allomorphs therefore are as we have shown, phonetically conditioned
positional variants of the same derivational or functional morpheme
(suffix, root or prefix) identical in meaning and function and differing
in sound only insomuch, as their complementary distribution produces
various phonetic assimilation effects.
§ 5.8 BOUNDARY CASES BETWEEN DERIVATION, INFLECTION AND COMPOSITION
It will be helpful now to remember what has been said in the first
chapter about the vocabulary being a constantly changing adaptive
system, the subsets of which have blurred boundaries.
There are cases, indeed, where it is very difficult to draw a hard and
fast line between roots and affixes on the one hand, and derivational
affixes and inflectional formatives on the other. The distinction
between these has caused much discussion and is no easy matter
altogether.
There are a few roots in English which have developed great combining
ability in the position of the second element of a word and a very
general meaning similar to that of an affix. These are semi-affixes
treated at length in Chapter 6.1 They receive this name because
semantically, functionally, structurally and statistically they behave
more like affixes than like roots. Their meaning is as general. They
determine the lexico-grammatical class the word belongs to. Cf. sailor :
: seaman, where -or is a suffix, and functionally similar, -man is a
semi-affix.
1 On the subject of semi-affixes see p.p. 116-118. 102
Another specific group is formed by the adverb-forming suffix -ly,
following adjective stems, and the noun-forming suffixes -ing, -ness,
-er, and by -ed added to a combination of two stems: faint-hearted,
long-legged. By their almost unlimited combining possibilities (high
valency) and the almost complete fusion of lexical and
lexico-grammatical meaning they resemble inflectional formatives. The
derivation with these suffixes is so regular and the meaning and
function of the derivatives so obvious that such derivatives are very
often considered not worth an entry in the dictionary and therefore
omitted as self-evident. Almost every adjective stem can produce an
adverb with the help of -ly, and an abstract noun by taking up the
suffix -ness. Every verbal stem can produce the name of the doer by
adding -er, and the name of the process or its result by adding -ing. A
suffix approaching those in productivity is -ish denoting a moderate
degree of the quality named in the stem. Therefore these words are
explained in dictionaries by referring the reader to the underlying
stem. For example, in “The Concise Oxford Dictionary” we read:
“womanliness — the quality of being womanly; womanised a or past
participle in senses of the verb; womanishly — in a womanish manner;
womanishness — the quality or state of being womanish”.
These affixes are remarkable for their high valency also in the
formation of compound derivatives corresponding to free phrases.
Examples are: every day : : everydayness.
Other borderline cases also present considerable difficulties for
classification. It is indeed not easy to draw the line between
derivatives and compound words or between derivatives and root words.
Such morphemes expressing relationships in space and time as after-,
in-,1 off-, on-, out-, over-, under-, with- and the like which may occur
as free forms have a combining power at least equal and sometimes even
superior to that of the affixes. Their function and meaning as well as
their position are exactly similar to those characteristic of prefixes.
They modify the respective stems for time, place or manner exactly as
prefixes do. They also are similar to prefixes in their statistical
properties of frequency. And yet prefixes are bound forms by definition,
whereas these forms are free. This accounts for the different treatment
they receive in different dictionaries. Thus, Chambers’s Dictionary
considers aftergrowth a derivation with the prefix after-, while similar
formations like afternoon, afterglow or afterthought are classified as
compound nouns. Webster’s Dictionary does not consider after- as a
prefix at all. COD alongside with the preposition and the adverb on
gives a prefix on- with the examples: oncoming, onflow, onlooker,
whereas in Chambers’s Dictionary oncome is treated as a compound.
The other difficulty concerns borrowed morphemes that were never active
as prefixes in English but are recognised as such on the analogy with
other words also borrowed from the same source. A strong protest against
this interpretation was expressed by N.N.Amosova. In her
1 Not to be mixed with the bound form in-/im-/il-/ir- expressing
negation.
103
opinion there is a very considerable confusion in English linguistic
literature concerning the problem of the part played by foreign affixes
in English word-building. This author lays particular stress on the
distinction between morphemes that can be separated from the rest of the
stem and those that cannot. Among the latter she mentions the following
prefixes listed by H. Sweet: amphi-, ana-, apo-, cata-, exo-, en-,
hypo-, meta-, sina- (Greek) and ab-, ad-, amb- (Latin). The list is
rather a mixed one. Thus, amphi- is even productive in terminology and
is with good reason considered by dictionaries a combining form. Ana- in
such words as anachronism, anagram, anaphora is easily distinguished,
because the words readily lend themselves for analysis into immediate
constituents. The prefix ad- derived from Latin differs very much from
these two, being in fact quite a cluster of allomorphs assimilated with
the first sound of the stem: ad-/ac-/af-/ag-/al-/ap-/as-/at-/. E. g.
adapt, accumulation, affirm, aggravation, etc.
On the synchronic level this differentiation suggested by N.N. Amosova
is irrelevant and the principle of analysis into immediate constituents
depends only on the existence of other similar cases as it was shown in
§ 5.3 for the suffixes.
§ 5.9 COMBINING FORMS
It has already been mentioned in the beginning of this chapter that
there exist linguistic forms which in modern languages are used as bound
forms although in Greek and Latin from which they are borrowed they
functioned as independent words.
The question at once arises whether being bound forms, they should be
treated like affixes and be referred to the set of derivatives, or
whether they are nearer to the elements of compounds, because in
languages from which they come they had the status of words. In fact we
have a fuzzy set whose elements overlap with the set of affixes on the
one hand and with that of words on the other. Different lexicographers
have treated them differently but now it is almost universally
recognised that they constitute a specific type of linguistic units.
Combining forms are particularly frequent in the specialised
vocabularies of arts and sciences. They have long become familiar in the
international scientific terminology. Many of them attain widespread
currency in everyday language.
To illustrate the basic meaning and productivity of these forms we give
below a short list of Greek words most frequently used in producing
combining forms together with words containing them.
Astron ‘star’ — astronomy, autos ‘self’ — automatic; bios ‘life’ —
biology, electron ‘amber’ — electronics;1 ge ‘earth’ — geology,
graph-ein ‘to write’ — typography, hydor ‘water’ —hydroelectric; logos
‘speech’ — physiology, oikos ‘house’, ‘habitat’ — 1) economics, 2)
ecological system’, philein ‘love’ —philology, phone ‘sound’, ‘voice’ —
telephone;
1 Electricity was first observed in amber. 104
photos ‘light’ — photograph; skopein ‘to view’ — microscope; t?le ‘far’
— telescope.
It is obvious from the above list that combining forms mostly occur
together with other combining forms and not with native roots.
Lexicological analysis meets with difficulties here if we try to
separate diachronic and synchronic approach and distinguish between the
words that came into English as borrowings and those coined on this
model on the English soil. From the synchronic point of view, which
coincides with that of an educated English speaking person, it is
immaterial whether the morphological motivation one recognises in the
word аиtopilot originated in modern times or is due to its remote
ancestry in Latin and Greek. One possible criterion is that the word in
question could not have existed in Greek or Latin for the simple reason
that the thing it names was invented, discovered or developed only much
later.
Almost all of the above examples are international words, each entering
a considerable word-family. A few of these word-families we shall now
describe though briefly, in order to give an idea of the rich
possibilities this source of word-building provides.
Auto- comes from the Greek word autos ‘self’ and like bio-, eco-, hydro-
and many others is mostly used initially. One of the first English words
containing this element was automaton borrowed from late Latin in the
16th century. OED dates the corresponding adjective automatic as
appearing in 1586.
The word autograph belonging to this word-family is a good example of
how combining forms originate. It was borrowed from French in the 17th
century. Its etymology is: Fr autograph
The Greek word bios ‘life’, long known to us in the internationalism
biography, helps to name many branches of learning dealing with living
organisms: bio-astronautics, biochemistry, bio-ecology, biology,
bionics, biophysics. Of these bio-astronautics, bio-ecology and bionics
are the newest, and therefore need explanation. Bio-astronautics (note
also the combining forms astro- and -naut-) is the study of man’s
physical capabilities and needs, and the means of meeting those in outer
space. Bio-ecology is also an interesting example because the third
combining form is so often used in naming branches of study. Cf.
geology, lexicology, philology, phonology. The form eco- is also very
interesting. This is again a case of doublets. One of these is found in
economics, economist, economise, etc. The other, connoting environment,
receives now the meaning of ‘dealing with ecology’. The general concern
over the growing pollution of the environment gave rise to many new
words with this element: eco-climate, eco-activist, eco-type,
eco-catastrophe, eco-development ‘development which balances economic
and ecological factors’. Bionics is a new science, its name is formed by
bio-+-onics. Now -onics is not a combining form properly speaking but
what the Barnhart Dictionary of New English calls abstracted form which
is defined as the use of a part of the word in what seems to be the
meaning it contributes. The term here is well motivated, because bionics
is the study of how man and other living beings perform certain tasks
and solve certain problems, and the application of the findings to the
design of computers and other electronic equipment.
The combining form geo- not only produced many scientific terms in the
19th century but had been productive much earlier: geodesy and geography
come down from the 16th century, geometry was known in the 14th century
and geology in the 18th.
In describing words containing the forms auto-, bio-, and geo- we have
already come across the form graph meaning ‘something written’. One can
also quote some other familiar examples: hydrography, phonograph,
photograph, telegraph.
Words beginning with hydro- are also quite familiar to everybody:
hydrodynamic, hydroelectric, hydromechanic, hydroponic,
hydrotherapeutic.
§ 5.10 HYBRIDS
Words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different
languages are called hybrids. 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. Moreover, it is not an
isolated case, but rather an established pattern that could be
represented as English stem+-able. Cf. answerable, eatable, likable,
usable. Its variant with the native negative prefix un- is also worthy
of note: un-+English stem+-able. The examples for this are:
unanswerable, unbearable, unforeseeable, unsayable, unbelievable. An
even more
106
frequent pattern is un-+Romanic stem + -able, which is also a hybrid:
unallowable, uncontrollable, unmoveable, unquestionable, unreasonable
and many others. A curious example is the word unmistakable, the
ultimate constituents of which are: un-(Engl)+mis-(Engl)+-tak-(Scand)
+-able (Fr). The very high valency of the suffix -able [эbl] seems to be
accounted for by the presence of the homographic adjective able [eibl ]
with the same meaning.
The suffix of personal nouns -ist derived from the Greek agent suffix
-istes forms part of many hybrids. Sometimes (like in artist, dentist)
it was borrowed as a hybrid already (Fr dentiste
Chapter 6 COMPOUND WORDS
§ 6.1 DEFINITIONS AND INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Compound words 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.
The structural cohesion of a compound may depend upon unity of stress,
solid or hyphenated spelling, semantic unity, unity of morphological and
syntactic functioning, or, more often, upon the combined effect of
several of these or similar phonetic, graphic, semantic, morphological
or syntactic factors.
The integrity of a compound is manifest in its indivisibility, i.e. the
impossibility of inserting another word or word-group between its
elements. If, for example, speaking about a sunbeam, we can insert some
other word between the article and the noun, e. g. a bright sunbeam, a
bright and unexpected sunbeam, because the article a is a separate word,
no such insertion is possible between the stems sun and beam, for they
are not words but morphemes here. (See p. 28.)
In describing the structure of a compound one should examine three types
of relations, namely the relations of the members to each other, the
relation of the whole to its members, and correlation with equivalent
free phrases.
Some compounds are made up of a determining and a determined part, which
may be called the determinant and the determinatum.1 The second stem, in
our case beam, is the basic part, the determinatum. The determinant sun
serves to differentiate it from other beams. The determinatum is the
grammatically most important part which undergoes inflection, cf.
sunbeams, brothers-in-law, passers-by.
There are non-idiomatic compounds with a perfectly clear motivation.
Here the meanings of the constituents add up in creating the meaning of
the whole and name the referent either directly or figuratively.
1 For a more complete treatment see: Marchand H. The Categories and
Types of Present-day English Word-formation. Wiesbaden, 1960. P. 11.
Useful ‘material on English compounds and their correlation with free
phrases will be found in: Vesnik D. and Khidekel S. Exercises in Modern
English Word-building, p.p. 95-100, 119, 120. Exhaustive tables are
presented in: Quirk R. et al. A Grammar of Contemporary English, p.p.
1021-1030.
108
Thus, when the combination seaman was first used it was not difficult
to understand that it meant ‘a man professionally connected with the
sea’. The word differentiated in this way a sailor from the rest of
mankind. When aviation came into being the same formula with the same
kind of motivation was used to coin the compound airman, and also
aircraft and airship to name the machines designed for air-travel,
differentiating them from sea-going craft. Spaceman, spacecraft and
spaceship, built on the model of airman, aircraft and airship, are
readily understood even when heard for the first time. The semantic
unity of the compounds seaman, airman, spaceman, aircraft, spacecraft,
airship and spaceship is based on the fact that as the conquest of the
sea, air and outer space advanced, new notions were created, notions
possessing enough relevant distinctive features to ensure their separate
existence. The logical integrity of the new combinations is supported by
solid spelling and by the unity of stress. When the meaning is not only
related to the meaning of the parts but can be inferred from it, the
compound is said to be transparent or non-idiomatic. The non-idiomatic
compounds can be easily transformed into free phrases: air mail ? ‘mail
conveyed by air’, night flight > ‘flying at night’. Such compounds are
like regularly derived words in that their meaning is readily
understood, and so they need not be listed in dictionaries.
On the other hand, a compound may be very different in meaning from the
corresponding free phrase. These compounds are called idiomatic. Thus, a
blackboard is very different from a black board. Its essential feature
is being a teaching aid: not every board of a black colour is a
blackboard. A blackboard may be not a board at all but a piece of
linoleum or some other suitable material. Its colour is not necessarily
black: it may be brown or something else. Thus, blackboard ? ‘a board
which is black’.
G. Leech calls this not idiomatic but petrified meaning; the expression
in his opinion is suggestive of solidifying and shrinking of the
denotation, i.e. of the word becoming more restricted in sense. His
examples are: a trouser-suit which is not just a ‘suit with trousers’
but ‘suit with trousers for women’. He also compared wheel-chair and
push-chair, i.e. ‘chair which has wheels’ and ‘chair which one pushes’.
They look interchangeable since all push-chairs have wheels and almost
all wheelchairs are pushed, and yet wheel chairs are for invalids and
push-chairs — for infants.1
A compound may lose its motivation and become idiomatic because one of
its elements is at present not used in the language in the same meaning.
The word blackmail has nothing to do with mail ‘post’. Its second
element, now obsolete except in Scottish, was used in the 16th century
meaning ‘payment’ or ‘tax’. Blackmail was the payment exacted by
freebooting chiefs in return for immunity from plunder. This motivation
is now forgotten and the compound is idiomatic. We shall call idiomatic
such compounds the meaning of which is not a simple sum of the meanings
of the determinant and determinatum.
See: Leech, Geoffrey. Semantics. Penguin books, 1974, p.p. 226-228.
109
The analysis of semantic relationships existing between the
constituents of a compound present many difficulties. Some authors have
attempted a purely logical interpretation. They distinguish copulative,
existential, spatial and some other types of connection. Others, like H.
Marchand,1 think that the most important factor is that the under lying
concept may be grammatical. He illustrates the verb/object relation by
such compounds as skyscraper or housekeeping and subject/verb relation
in rattlesnake and crybaby. The first element in well-being or
shortcoming is equivalent to the predicate complement.
N.G. Guterman pointed out that syntactic ties are ties between words,
whereas in dealing with a compound one studies relations within a word,
the relations between its constituents, the morphemes. In the compound
spacecraft space is not attribute, it is the determinant restricting the
meaning of the determinatum by expressing the purpose for which craft is
designed or the medium in which it will travel.
Phrases correlated with compounds by means of transformational analysis
may show objective, subject/predicative, attributive and adverbial
relations. E. g. house-keeping : : to keep house, well-being : : to be
well. In the majority of cases compounds manifest some restrictive
relationship between the constituents; the types of restrictions show
great variety.
Some examples of determinative compound nouns with restrictive
qualitative relations are given below. The list is not meant to be
exhaustive and serves only to illustrate the manifold possibilities.
Purpose or functional relations underlie such compounds as bathrobe,
raincoat, classroom, notice-board, suitcase, identity-card, textbook.
Different place or local relations are expressed in dockland,
garden-party, sea-front. Comparison is the basis of blockhead,
butter-fingers, floodlight, goldfish. The material or elements the thing
is made of is pointed out in silverware, tin-hat, waxwork, clay-pipe,
gold-foil. Temporal relations underlie such compounds as night-club,
night-duty, summer-house, day-train, season-ticket. Sex-denoting
compounds are rather numerous: she-dog, he-goat, jack-ass, Jenny-ass,
tom-cat, pea-hen. When characterising some process, the first element
will point out the agent (cock-crowing), the instrument (pin-prick),
etc.
Many compounds defy this kind of analysis or may be explained in
different ways: thus spacecraft may be analysed as ‘a craft travelling
in space’ (local) or ‘a craft designed for travelling in space’
(purpose). There are also some tautological compounds such as pathway,
roadway and the French translation loan courtyard. They are especially
numerous in uneducated speech which is generally given to producing
redundant forms: tumbler-glass, trout-fish, engineerman.
Often different relations are expressed by the same determinant:
ear-ache (local) ‘an ache in the ear’, earmark (comparison) ‘a mark like
an ear’, ear-lobe (part) ‘a lobe of the ear’, eardrop (purpose) ‘a drop
for the ear’, ear-ring (local or purpose). Compare also: lip-reading
(instrumental
1 Marchand H. The Categories and Types …. P. 30. See also: Potter S.
Modern Linguistics. P. 91.
110
relations) ‘interpretation of the motion of the lips’; lip-service
(comparison) ‘superficial service from the lips only’; lipstick
(purpose) ‘a stick of cosmetics for rouging lips’.
In the beginning of the present chapter it has been mentioned that in
describing the structure of a compound one has to examine three types of
relations. We have discussed the relations of the elements to each
other, and the relations of the whole compound to its members. The third
approach is comparing compounds with phrases containing the same
morphemes, e.g. an ashtray ? ‘a tray for ashes’.
The corresponding structural correlations take the following form:
ashtray __ hairbrush __ paperknife a tray for ashes a brush for hair a
knife for paper
Such correlations are very helpful in showing similarity and difference
of meaning in morphologically similar pairs. Consider, for example, the
following:
bookselling _ bookbinding bookmaking sell books bind books make books
A bookmaker is not one who makes books but a person who makes a living
by taking bets on horse-races. The method may be used to distinguish
unmotivated compounds.
Compounds that conform to grammatical patterns current in present-day
English are termed syntactic compounds, e. g. seashore. If they fail to
do so, they may be called asyntactic, e. g. baby-sitting.
In the first type the functional meaning and distribution coincide with
those of the elements of a free phrase, no matter how different their
lexical meaning may be. This may be shown by substituting a
corresponding compound for a free phrase.
Compare: A slow coach moves slowly. A slow-coach moves slowly.
Though different in meaning, both sentences are grammatically correct.
In these compounds the two constituent elements are clearly the
determinant and the determinatum. Such compounds receive the name of
endocentric compounds.
There are, however, other compounds where the determinatum is not
expressed but implied. A killjoy ‘a person who throws gloom over social
enjoyment’ is neither ‘joy’ nor ‘kill’ and the case is different from
the slow-coach above, as in the corresponding free phrase ‘kill’ is a
verb in the Imperative Mood and ‘joy’ is a noun on which the action of
this verb is directed. A phrase of this type cannot be used
predicatively, whereas the predicative function is typical of the
compound killjoy. The essential part of the determinatum is obviously
missing, it is implied and understood but not formally expressed. H.
Marchand considers these words as having a zero determinatum stem and
calls such compounds exocentric, e. g. cut-throat, dare-devil, scarecrow
because their determinatum lies outside as opposed to the endocentric:
sun-beam, blackboard, slow-coach, wall-flower.
111
The absence of formal determinatum results in the tendency to append
the inflectional ending to the element that happens to be final. Thus,
brothers-in-law, but in-laws. E. g.: Laws banning unofficial strikes,
go-slows and slow-downs (“Morning Star”).
§ 6.2.1 THE CRITERIA OF COMPOUNDS
As English compounds consist of free forms, it is difficult to
distinguish them from phrases. The combination top dog ‘a person
occupying foremost place’, for instance, though formally broken up, is
neither more nor less analysable semantically than the combination
underdog ‘a person who has the worst of an encounter’, and yet we count
the first (top dog) as a phrase and the second (underdog) as a word. How
far is this justified? In reality the problem is even more complex than
this isolated example suggests. Separating compounds from phrases and
also from derivatives is no easy task, and scholars are not agreed upon
the question of relevant criteria. The following is a brief review of
various solutions and various combinations of criteria that have been
offered.
The problem is naturally reducible to the problem of defining word
boundaries in the language. It seems appropriate to quote E. Nida who
writes that “the criteria for determining the word-units in a language
are of three types: (1) phonological, (2) morphological, (3) syntactic.
No one type of criteria is normally sufficient for establishing the
word-unit. Rather the combination of two or three types is essential.”1
E. Nida does not mention the graphic criterion of solid or hyphenated
spelling. This underestimation of written language seems to be a
mistake. For the present-day literary language, the written form is as
important as the oral. If we accept the definition of a written word as
the part of the text from blank to blank, we shall have to accept the
graphic criterion as a logical consequence. It may be argued, however,
that there is no consistency in English spelling in this respect. With
different dictionaries and different authors and sometimes even with the
same author the spelling varies, so that the same unit may exist in a
solid spelling: headmaster, loudspeaker, with a hyphen: head-master,
loud-speaker and with a break between the components: head master, loud
speaker. Compare also: airline, air-line, air line’, matchbox, matchbox,
match box’, break-up, breakup. Moreover, compounds that appear to be
constructed on the same pattern and have similar semantic relations
between the constituents may be spelt differently: textbook, phrase-book
and reference book. Yet if we take into consideration the comparative
frequency of solid or hyphenated spelling of the combinations in
question, the criterion is fairly reliable. These three types of
spelling need not indicate different degrees of semantic fusion.
Sometimes hyphenation may serve aesthetic purposes, helping to avoid
words that will look too long, or purposes of convenience, making
syntactic components clearer to the eye: peace-loving nations,
old-fashioned ideas.
1 Nida E. Morphology. P. 147; Quirk R. et al. A Grammar of Contemporary
English. P. 1019.
112
This lack of uniformity in spelling is the chief reason why many
authors consider this criterion insufficient. Some combine it with the
phonic criterion of stress. There is a marked tendency in English to
give compounds a heavy stress on the first element. Many scholars
consider this unity of stress to be of primary importance. Thus L.
Bloomfield writes: “Wherever we hear lesser or least stress upon a word
which would always show a high stress in a phrase, we describe it as a
compound member: ice-cream [‘ajs-krijm] is a compound but ice cream
[‘ajs’krijm] is a phrase, although there is no denotative difference in
meaning.”1
It is true that all compound nouns, with very few exceptions, are
stressed on this pattern. Cf. ‘blackboard : : ‘blackboard’, ‘blackbird :
: ‘black’bird; ‘bluebottle : : ‘blue’bottle. In all these cases the
determinant has a heavy stress, the determinatum has the middle stress.
The only exception as far as compound nouns are concerned is found in
nouns whose first elements are all- and self-, e. g. ‘All-‘Fools-Day,
‘self-con’trol. These show double even stress.
The rule does not hold with adjectives. Compound adjectives are double
stressed like ‘gray-‘green, ‘easy-‘going, ‘new-‘born. Only compound
adjectives expressing emphatic comparison are heavily stressed on the
first element: ‘snow-white, ‘dog-cheap.
Moreover, stress can be of no help in solving this problem because
word-stress may depend upon phrasal stress or upon the syntactic
function of the compound. Thus, light-headed and similar adjectives have
a single stress when used attributively, in other cases the stress is
even. Very often the stress is structurally determined by opposition to
other combinations with an identical second element, e. g. ‘dining table
: : ‘writing table. The forestress here is due to an implicit contrast
that aims at distinguishing the given combination from all the other
similar cases in the same series, as in ‘passenger train, ‘ freight
train, ex’press train. Notwithstanding the unity stress, these are not
words but phrases.
Besides, the stress may be phonological and help to differentiate the
meaning of compounds:
‘overwork ‘extra work’
‘over’work ‘hard work injuring one’s health’
‘bookcase ‘a piece of furniture with shelves for books’
‘book’case ‘a paper cover for books’
‘man’kind ‘the human race’
‘mankind ‘men’ (contrasted with women)
‘toy,factory ‘factory that produces toys’
‘toy’factory ‘factory that is a toy’.
It thus follows that phonological criterion holds for certain types of
words only.2
1 Bloomfield L. Language. P. 228. Transcription is given] as L.
Bloomfield has it.
2 For details see: Quirk R. et al. A Grammar of Contemporary English.
Appendix 2, p.p. 1039-1042.
8 И. B. Apнольд 113
H. Paul, O. Jespersen, E. Kruisinga1 and many others, each in his own
way, advocate the semantic criterion, and define a compound as a
combination forming a unit expressing a single idea which is not
identical in meaning to the sum of the meanings of its components in a
free phrase. From this point of view dirty work with the figurative
meaning ‘dishonorable proceedings’ is a compound, while clean work or
dry work are phrases. Сf. fusspot, slow-coach. The insufficiency of this
criterion will be readily understood if one realises how difficult it is
to decide whether the combination in question expresses a single
integrated idea. Besides, between a clearly motivated compound and an
idiomatic one there are a great number of intermediate cases. Finally,
what is, perhaps, more important than all the rest, as the semantic
features and properties of set expressions are similar to those of
idiomatic compounds, we shall be forced to include all idiomatic phrases
into the class of compounds. Idiomatic phrases are also susceptible to
what H. Paul calls isolation, since the meaning of an idiomatic phrase
cannot be inferred from the meaning of components. For instance, one
must be specially explained the meaning of the expressions (to rain)
cats and dogs, to pay through the nose, etc. It cannot be inferred from
the meaning of the elements.
As to morphological criteria of compounds, they are manifold. Prof. A.
I. Smirnitsky introduced the criterion of formal integrity.2 He compares
the compound shipwreck and the phrase (the) wreck of (a) ship comprising
the same morphemes, and points out that although they do not differ
either in meaning or reference, they stand in very different relation to
the grammatical system of the language. It follows from his example that
a word is characterised by structural integrity non-existent in a
phrase. Unfortunately, however, in the English language the number of
cases when this criterion is relevant is limited due to the scarcity of
morphological means.
“A Grammar of Contemporary English” lists a considerable number of
patterns in which plural number present in the correlated phrase is
neutralised in a compound. Taxpayer is one who pays taxes, cigar smoker
is one who smokes cigars, window-cleaner is one who cleans windows,
lip-read is to read the lips. The plural of still-life (a term of
painting) is still-lifes and not still lives. But such examples are few.
It cannot be overemphasised that giving a mere description of some
lexicological phenomenon is not enough; one must state the position of
the linguistic form discussed in the system of the language, i.e. the
relative importance of the type. Therefore the criterion of structural
integrity is also insufficient.
The same is true as regards connective elements which ensure the
integrity. The presence of such an element leaves no doubt that the
combination
1 Paul H. Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. 3 Aufl., Halle, 1898. S. 302;
Kruisinga E. A Handbook of Present-Day English. Groeningen, 1932. Pt.
II. P. 72; Jespersen O. A Modern English Grammar on Historical
Principles. London, 1946. Pt. VI. P. 137.
2 See: Cмирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка. M., 1956. С. 33.
114
is a compound but the number of compounds containing connective
elements is relatively insignificant. These elements are few even in
languages morphologically richer than English. In our case they are -s-
(craftsman), -o- (Anglo-Saxon), -i- (handiwork.)
Diachronically speaking, the type craftsman is due either to the old
Genitive (guardsman, kinsman, kinswoman, sportsman, statesman,
tradesman, tradeswoman, tradesfolk, tradespeople) or to the plural form.
The Genitive group is kept intact in the name of the butterfly death’s
head and also in some metaphorical plant names: lion’s snout, bear’s
ear, heart’s ease, etc.
The plural form as the origin of the connective -s- is rarer: beeswax,
woodsman, salesman, saleswoman. This type should be distinguished from
clothes-basket, goods-train or savings-bank, where the singular form of
the word does not occur in the same meaning.
It has already been pointed out that the additive (copulative) compounds
of the type Anglo-Saxon are rare, except in special political or
technical literature.
Sometimes it is the structural formula of the combination that shows it
to be a word and not a phrase. E. g. starlit cannot be a phrase because
its second element is the stem of a participle and a participle cannot
be syntactically modified by a noun. Besides the meaning of the first
element implies plurality which should have been expressed in a phrase.
Thus, the word starlit is equivalent to the phrase lit by stars.
It should be noted that lit sounds somewhat, if a very little, obsolete:
the form lighted is more frequent in present-day English. This survival
of obsolete forms in fixed contexts or under conditions of fixed
distribution occurs both in phraseology and composition.
To some authors the syntactical criterion based on comparing the
compound and the phrase comprising the same morphemes seems to ,be the
most promising. L. Bloomfield points out that “the word black in the
phrase black birds can be modified by very (very black birds) but not so
the compound-member black in blackbirds.”1 This argument, however, does
not permit the distinguishing of compounds from set expressions any more
than in the case of the semantic criterion: the first element of black
market or black list (of persons under suspicion) cannot be modified by
very either.2
This objection holds true for the argument of indivisibility advanced by
B. Bloch and G. Trager who point out that we cannot insert any word
between the elements of the compound blackbird.3 The same example black
market serves H. Marchand to prove the insufficiency of this criterion.4
Black market is indivisible and yet the stress pattern shows it is a
phrase.
1 Bloomfield L. Language. P. 232.
2 Prof. R. Lord in his letter to the author expressed the opinion that
black market and black list could be modified by very in order to
produce an ironically humorous effect, although admittedly this kind of
thing would not occur in normal speech. The effect of the deviation
therefore proves the existence of the norm.
3 Bloch B. and Trager G. Outline of Linguistic Analysis. P. 66.
4 Marchand H. The Categories and Types …. P. 14.
115
Some transformational procedures that have been offered may also prove
helpful. The gist of these is as follows. A phrase like a stone wall can
be transformed into the phrase a wall of stone, whereas a toothpick
cannot be replaced by a pick for teeth. It is true that this
impossibility of transformation proves the structural integrity of the
word as compared with the phrase, yet the procedure works only for
idiomatic compounds, whereas those that are distinctly motivated permit
the transformation readily enough:
a toothpick ? a pick for teeth tooth-powder ? powder for teeth a
tooth-brush ? a brush for teeth
In most cases, especially if the transformation is done within the frame
of context, this test holds good and the transformation, even if it is
permissible, brings about a change of meaning. For instance, …the
wall-papers and the upholstery recalled … the refinements of another
epoch (Huxley) cannot be transformed without ambiguity into the papers
on the wall and the upholstery recalled the refinements of another
epoch.
That is why we shall repeat with E. Nida that no one type of criteria is
normally sufficient for establishing whether the unit is a compound or a
phrase, and for ensuring isolation of word from phrase. In the majority
of cases we have to depend on the combination of two or more types of
criteria (phonological, morphological, syntactic or graphical). But even
then the ground is not very safe and the path of investigation
inevitably leads us to the intricate labyrinth of “the stone wall
problem” that has received so much attention in linguistic literature.
(See p. 118.)
§ 6.2.2 SEMI-AFFIXES
Having discussed the difficulties of distinguishing compounds from
phrases, we turn to the problem of telling compounds from derivatives.
The problem of distinguishing a compound from a derivative is actually
equivalent to distinguishing a stem from an affix. In most cases the
task is simple enough: the immediate constituents of a compound are free
forms, likely to occur in the same phonic character as independent
words, whereas a combination containing bound forms as its immediate
constituents, is a derivative.
There are, however, some borderline cases that do not fit in, and so
present difficulties. Some elements of the English vocabulary occurring
as independent nouns, such as man, berry, land, have been very frequent
as second elements of words for a long time. They seem to have acquired
valency similar to that of affixes. They are unstressed, and the vowel
sound has been reduced to [mэn], although the reduction is not quite
regular: for instance, when the concept “man” is clearly present in the
word, there is no reduction. As to land, the pronunciation [laend]
occurs only in ethnic names Scotland, Finland and the like, but not in
homeland or fatherland. As these elements seem to come somewhere in
between the stems and affixes, the term semi-affix has been offered to
designate them. Though not universally accepted, it can be kept for
convenience’s sake.
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As man is by far the most frequent of semi-affixes it seems worth while
to dwell upon it at some length. Its combining activity is very great.
In addition to seaman, airman and spaceman one might compile a very long
list: chairman, clergyman, countryman, fireman, fisherman, gentleman,
horseman, policeman, postman, workman, yes-man (one that agrees with
everything that is said to him) and many others. It is interesting to
note that seaman and workman go back to the Old English period, but the
model is still as productive as ever, which is testified by the
neologism spaceman.
The second element, -man is considerably generalised semantically and
approaches in meaning a mere suffix of the doer like -er. The fading of
the lexical meaning is especially evident when the words containing this
element are used about women, as in the following: The chairman, Miss
Ellen McGullough, a member of the TUC, said … (“Daily Worker”).
In cases when a woman chairs a sitting, the official form of addressing
her is madam Chairman. Chairwoman is also sometimes found unofficially
and also chairperson.
The evolution of the element -man in the 70s provides an interesting
example of the extra-linguistic factors influencing the development of
the language. Concern with eliminating discriminatory attitudes towards
women in various professions led to many attempts to degender, i.e. to
remove reference to gender in the names of professions. Thus, cameraman
is substituted by camera operator, fireman by firefighter, policeman by
police officer or police person. Person is increasingly used in
replacing the semi-affix -man to avoid reference to gender: houseperson,
businessperson. The fact that the generic sense of ‘human being’ is
present only in the word man ‘adult male’ but not in the word woman
which is only ‘adult female’, is felt as a symptom of implicitly
favouring the male sex.1
A great combining capacity characterises the elements -like, -proof and
-worthy, so that they may be also referred to semi-affixes, i.e.
elements that stand midway between roots and affixes: godlike,
gentlemanlike, ladylike, unladylike, manlike, childlike, unbusinesslike,
suchlike. H. Marchand2 points out that -like as a semi-affix is isolated
from the word like because we can form compounds of the type unmanlike
which would be impossible for a free form entering into combination with
another free form. The same argument holds good for the semi-affix
-worthy and the word worthy. Cf. worthy of note and noteworthy,
praiseworthy, seaworthy, trustworthy, and unseaworthy, untrustworthy,
unpraiseworthy.
H. Marchand chooses to include among the semi-affixes also the element
-wise traditionally referred to adverb-forming suffixes: otherwise,
likewise, clockwise, crosswise, etc.
1 See: The Second Barnhart Dictionary of New English. N.Y., 1980.
2 Marchand H. The Categories and Types …. P. 290.
117
Alongside with these, he analyses combinations with -way and -way(s)
representing the Genitive: anyway(s), otherways, always, likeways,
side-way(s), crossways, etc. The analysis given by H. Marchand is very
convincing. “Way and wise are full words, so it might be objected that
combinations with them are compounds. But the combinations are never
substantival compounds as their substantival basis would require.
Moreover, wise is being used less and less as an independent word and
may one day come to reach the state of French -meat (and its equivalents
in other Romance languages), which went a somewhat similar way, being
developed from the Latin mente, Ablative of mens (‘spirit’, ‘character’,
later ‘manner’).”
Two elements, very productive in combinations, are completely dead as
independent words. These are -monger and -wright.1 The existing
combinations with the element -monger have a strongly disparaging
character, e . g . : If any passages of the present tale should startle
the reader’s faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a
fictionmonger (Waugh). Cf. fashionmonger, newsmonger, scandalmonger,
warmonger. Only the words that existed in the language from before 1500
are emotionally neutral: fishmonger, ironmonger, -wright occurs in
playwright, shipwright, wheelwright.
As -proof is also very uncommon in independent use except in the
expression proof against, and extremely productive in combinations, it
seems right to include it among the semi-affixes: damp-proof,
fire-proof, bomb-proof, waterproof, shockproof, kissproof (said about a
lipstick), foolproof (said about rules, mechanisms, etc., so simple as
to be safe even when applied by fools).
Semi-affixes may be also used in preposition like prefixes. Thus,
anything that is smaller or shorter than others of its kind may be
preceded by mini-: mini-budget, mini-bus, mini-car, mini-crisis,
mini-planet, mini-skirt, etc.
Other productive semi-affixes used in pre-position are midi-, maxi-,
self- and others: midi-coat, maxi-coat, self-starter, self-help.
The factors conducing to transition of free forms into semi-affixes are
high semantic productivity, adaptability, combinatorial capacity (high
valency), and brevity.
§ 6.2.3 “THE STONE WALL PROBLEM”
The so-called stone wall problem concerns the status of the complexes
like stone wall, cannon ball or rose garden. Noun premodifiers of other
nouns often become so closely fused together with what they modify that
it is difficult to say whether the result is a compound or a syntactical
free phrase. Even if this difficulty is solved and we agree that these
are phrases and not words, the status of the first element remains to be
determined. Is it a noun used as an attribute or is it to be treated as
an adjective?
1 -monger The first point to be noted is that lexicographers differ in their
treatment. Thus, “The Heritage Dictionary of the English Language”
combines in one entry the noun stone and the adjective stone pertaining
to or made of stone’ and gives as an example this very combination stone
wall. In his dictionary A.S. Hornby, on the other hand, when beginning
the entry — stone as an uncountable noun, adds that it is often used
attributively and illustrates this statement with the same example —
stone wall.
R. Quirk and his colleagues in their fundamental work on the grammar of
contemporary English when describing premodification of nouns by nouns
emphasise the fact that they become so closely associated as to be
regarded as compounds. The meaning of noun premodification may
correspond to an of-phrase as in the following the story of his life —
his life story, or correlate with some other prepositional phrase as in
a war story — a story about war, an arm chair — a chair with arms, a
dish cloth — a cloth for dishes.
There is no consistency in spelling, so that in the A.S. Hornby’s
Dictionary both arm-chair and dish-cloth are hyphenated.
R. Quirk finds orthographic criteria unreliable, as there are no hard
and fast rules according to which one may choose solid, hyphenated or
open spelling. Some examples of complexes with open spelling that he
treats as compound words are: book review, crime report, office
management, steel production, language teacher. They are placed in
different structural groups according to the grammatical process they
reflect. Thus, book review, crime report and haircut are all compound
count nouns formed on the model object+deverbal noun: X reviews books ?
the reviewing of books ? book review. We could reasonably take all the
above examples as free syntactic phrases, because the substitution of
some equonym for the first element would leave the meaning of the second
intact. We could speak about nickel production or a geography teacher.
The first elements may be modified by an adjective — an English language
teacher especially because the meaning of the whole can be inferred from
the meaning of the parts.
H. Marchand also mentions the fact that 'stone 'wall is a two-stressed
combination, and the two-stressed pattern never shows the intimate
permanent semantic relationship between the two components that is
characteristic of compound words. This stress pattern stands explained
if we interpret the premodifying element as an adjective or at least
emphasise its attributive function. The same explanation may be used to
account for the singularisation that takes place, i.e. the compound is
an arm-chair not *an arms-chair. Singularisation is observed even with
otherwise invariable plural forms. Thus, the game is called billiards
but a table for it is a billiard table and it stands in a billiard-room.
A similar example is a scissor sharpener that is a sharpener for
scissors. One further theoretical point may be emphasised, this is the
necessity of taking into account the context in which these complexes
are used. If the complex is used attributively before a third noun, this
attributive function joins them more intimately. For example: I
telephoned: no air-hostess trainees had been kept late (J. Fowles).
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It is especially important in case a compound of this type is an
author’s neologism. E. g. : The train was full of soldiers. I once again
felt the great current of war, the European death-wish (J. Fowles).
It should, perhaps, be added that an increasing number of linguists are
now agreed — and the evidence at present available seems to suggest they
are right — that the majority of English nouns are regularly used to
form nominal phrases that are semantically derivable from their
components but in most cases develop some unity of referential meaning.
This set of nominal phrases exists alongside the set of nominal
compounds. The boundaries between the two sets are by no means rigid,
they are correlated and many compounds originated as free phrases.
§ 6.2.4 VERBAL COLLOCATIONS OF THE ‘GIVE UP’ TYPE
The lexicological aspects of the stone wall problem have been mentioned
in connection with compound words. Phrasal verbs of the give up type
deserve a more detailed study from the phraseological viewpoint.
An almost unlimited number of such units may be formed by the use of the
simpler, generally monosyllabic verbs combined with elements that have
been variously treated as “adverbs", “preposition-like adverbs",
“postpositions of adverbial origin", “postpositives” or even
“postpositive prefixes”.1
The verbs most frequent in these units are: bear, blow, break, bring,
call, carry, cast, catch, come, cut, do, draw, drive, eat, fall, fly,
get, give, go, hurry, hold, keep, lay, let, look, make, move, play,
pull, put, ride, run, sell, set, shake, show, shut, sit, speak, stand,
strike, take, throw, turn, walk, etc. To these the adverbs: about,
across, along, around, away, back, by, down, forth, in, off, on, out,
over, past, round, through, to, under, and the particularly frequent up
are added.
The pattern is especially common with the verbs denoting motion. Some of
the examples possible with the verb go are: go ahead ‘to proceed without
hesitation’; go away ‘to leave’; go back ‘to return’; go by ‘to pass’;
go down (a) ‘to sink’ (for a ship); (b) ‘to set’ (of the sun, moon,
etc.); (c) ‘to be remembered’ (of people or events); (d) ‘to become
quiet’ (of the sea, wind, etc.) and many other combinations. The list of
meanings for go down could be increased. Units of this type are
remarkable for their multiple meaning. Cf. bring up which may mean not
only ‘to rear from childhood, educate’ but also ‘to cause to stop’, ‘to
introduce to notice’, ‘to make prominent’, etc.
Only combinations forming integral wholes, the meaning of which is not
readily derived from the meaning of the components, so that the lexical
meaning of one of the components is strongly influenced by the presence
of the other, are referred to set expressions or compounds. E. g. come
off ‘to take place’, fall out ‘to quarrel’, give in ‘to surrender’,
leave off ‘to cease’. Alongside with these combinations showing
idiomatic
1 The problem on the whole is a very complex one and has attracted the
attention of many scholars. See, for example: Berlizon S. English Verbal
Collocations. M.; L., 1964, where a complete bibliography may be found.
See also: Ilyish B. The Structure of Modern English. M.; L., 1965, p.p.
153-154.
120
character there are free combinations built on the same pattern and of
the same elements. In these the second element may: (1) retain its
adverbial properties of showing direction (come : : come back, go : : go
in, turn : : turn away); (2) change the aspect of the verb (eat : : eat
up, speak : : speak out, stand : : stand up; the second element then may
mark the completeness or the beginning of the action); (3) intensify the
meaning of the action (end : : end up, talk : : talk away).
The second elements with the exception of about and around may be
modified by right, which acts as an intensifier suggesting the idea of
extremity: He pushed it right down. Sometimes the second element serves
to create an evaluative shade, so that a verb of motion + about means
‘move here and there’ with an implication of light-mindedness and waste
of time: climb, drive, float, run, walk, etc. about.
There are also cases where the criteria of motivation serving to
differentiate between compounds, free phrases and set expressions do not
appear to yield definite results, because motivation is partially
retained, as for instance in drop in, put on or shut up, so that the
existence of boundary cases must of necessity be admitted.
The borderline between free phrases and set expressions is not always
sharp and distinct. This is very natural, as set expressions originate
as imaginative free phrases and only gradually become stereotyped. So
this is one more instance where understanding of synchronic facts is
incomplete without diachronistic additions.
§ 6.3 SPECIFIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH COMPOUNDS
There are two important peculiarities distinguishing compounding in
English from compounding in other languages. Firstly, both immediate
constituents of an English compound are free forms, i.e. they can be
used as independent words with a distinct meaning of their own. The
conditions of distribution will be different but the sound pattern the
same, except for the stress. The point may be illustrated by a brief
list of the most frequently used compounds studied in every elementary
course of English: afternoon, anyway, anybody, anything, birthday,
day-off, downstairs, everybody, fountain-pen, grown-up, ice-cream,
large-scale, looking-glass, mankind, mother-in-law, motherland,
nevertheless, notebook, nowhere, post-card, railway, schoolboy,
skating-rink, somebody, staircase, Sunday.
It is common knowledge that the combining elements in Russian are as a
rule bound forms (руководство), but in English combinations like
Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Soviet, Indo-European or politico-economical, where
the first elements are bound forms, occur very rarely and seem to be
avoided. They are coined on the neo-Latin pattern.
The second feature that should attract attention is that the regular
pattern for the English language is a two-stem compound, as is clearly
testified by all the preceding examples. An exception to this rule is
observed when the combining element is represented by a form-word stem,
as in mother-in-law, bread-and-butter, whisky-and-soda, deaf-and-dumb,
good-for-nothing, man-of-war, mother-of-pearl, stick-in-the-mud.
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If, however, the number of stems is more than two, so that one of the
immediate constituents is itself a compound, it will be more often the
determinant than the determinatum. Thus aircraft-carrier,
waste-paper-basket are words, but baby outfit, village schoolmaster,
night watchman and similar combinations are syntactic groups with two
stresses, or even phrases with the conjunction and: book-keeper and
typist.
The predominance of two-stem structures in English compounding
distinguishes it from the German language which can coin monstrosities
like the anecdotal Vierwaldstatterseeschraubendampfschiffgesellschaft or
Feuer- and Unfallversicherungsgesellschaft.
One more specific feature of English compounding is the important role
the attributive syntactic function can play in providing a phrase with
structural cohesion and turning it into a compound. Compare: ... we’ve
done last-minute changes before ...( Priestley) and the same combination
as a free phrase in the function of an adverbial: we changed it at the
last minute more than once. Cf. four-year course, pass-fail basis (a
student passes or fails but is not graded).
It often happens that elements of a phrase united by their attributive
function 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).
Cf.: Let sleeping dogs lie (a proverb). This last type is also called
quotation compound or holophrasis. 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.
Other syntactical functions unusual for the combination can also provide
structural cohesion. E. g. working class is a noun phrase, but when used
predicatively it is turned into a compound word. E. g.: He wasn’t
working-class enough. The process may be, and often is, combined with
conversion and will be discussed elsewhere (see p. 163).
The function of hyphenated spelling in these cases is not quite clear.
It may be argued that it serves to indicate syntactical relationships
and not structural cohesion, e. g. keep-your-distance chilliness. It is
then not a word-formative but a phrase-formative device. This last term
was suggested by L. Bloomfield, who wrote: “A phrase may contain a bound
form which is not part of a word. For example, the possessive [z] in the
man I saw yesterday’s daughter. Such a bound form is a phrase
formative."1 Cf. ... for the I-don’t-know-how-manyth time (Cooper).
§ 6.4.1 CLASSIFICATION OF COMPOUNDS
The great variety of compound types brings about a great variety of
classifications. Compound words may be classified according to the type
of composition and the linking element; according to the part of
1 Bloomfield L. A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language. //
Psycho-linguistics. A Book of Reading/Ed. by Sol Saporta. N.Y., 1961.
Pt. IV. P. 28.
122
speech to which the compound belongs; and within each part of speech
according to the structural pattern (see the next paragraph). It is also
possible to subdivide compounds according to other characteristics, i.e.
semantically, into motivated and idiomatic compounds (in the motivated
ones the meaning of the constituents can be either direct or
figurative). Structurally, compounds are distinguished as endocentric
and exocentric, with the subgroup of bahuvrihi (see p. 125ff) and
syntactic and asyntactic combinations. A classification according to the
type of the syntactic phrase with which the compound is correlated has
also been suggested. Even so there remain some miscellaneous types that
defy classification, such as phrase compounds, reduplicative compounds,
pseudo-compounds and quotation compounds.
The classification according to the type of composition permits us to
establish the following groups:
The predominant type is a mere juxtaposition without connecting
elements: heartache n, heart-beat n, heart-break n, heart-breaking a,
heart-broken a, heart-felt a.
Composition with a vowel or a consonant as a linking element. The
examples are very few: electromotive a, speedometer n, Afro-Asian a,
handicraft n, statesman n.
Compounds with linking elements represented by preposition or
conjunction stems: down-and-out n, matter-of-fact a, son-in-law n,
pepper-and-salt a, wall-to-wall a, up-to-date a, on the up-and-up adv
(continually improving), up-and-coming, as in the following example: No
doubt he’d had the pick of some up-and-coming jazzmen in Paris (Wain).
There are also a few other lexicalised phrases like devil-may-care a,
forget-me-not n, pick-me-up n, stick-in-the-mud n, what’s-her name n.
The classification of compounds according to the structure of immediate
constituents distinguishes:
1) compounds consisting of simple stems: film-star;
compounds where at least one of the constituents is a derived stem:
chain-smoker;
compounds where at least one of the constituents is a clipped stem:
maths-mistress (in British English) and math-mistress (in American
English). The subgroup will contain abbreviations like H-bag (handbag)
or Xmas (Christmas), whodunit n (for mystery novels) considered
substandard;
compounds where at least one of the constituents is a compound stem:
wastepaper-basket.
In what follows the main structural types of English compounds are
described in greater detail. The list is by no means exhaustive but it
may serve as a general guide.
§ 6.4.2 COMPOUND NOUNS
Within the class of compound nouns we distinguish endосentriс and
exocentric compounds. In endocentric nouns the referent is named by one
of the elements and given a
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further 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.
The sunbeam type. A noun stem is determined by another noun stem. This
is a most productive type, the number of examples being practically
unlimited.
The maidservant type also consists of noun stems but the relationship
between the elements is different. Maidservant is an appositional
compound. The second element is notionally dominant.
The looking-glass type shows a combination of a derived verbal stem with
a noun stem.
The searchlight type consisting of a verbal stem and a noun stem is of a
comparatively recent origin.
The blackboard type has already been discussed. The first stem here very
often is not an adjective but a Participle II: cutwork. Sometimes the
semantic relationship of the first element to the second is different.
For instance, a green-grocer is not a grocer who happens to be green but
one who sells vegetables.
There are several groups with a noun stem for the first element and
various deverbal noun stems for the second: housekeeping, sunrise,
time-server.
In exocentric compounds the referent is not named. The type scarecrow
denotes the agent (a person or a thing) who or which performs the action
named by the combination of the stems. In the case of scarecrow, it is a
person or a thing employed in scaring birds. The type consists of a
verbal stem followed by a noun stem. The personal nouns of this type are
as a rule imaginative and often contemptuous: cut-throat, daredevil ‘a
reckless person’, ‘a murderer’, lickspittle ‘a toady’, ‘a flatterer’,
pickpocket ‘a thief, turncoat ‘a renegade’.
A very productive and numerous group are nouns derived from verbs with
postpositives, or more rarely with adverbs. This type consists chiefly
of impersonal deverbal nouns denoting some action or specific instance.
Examples: blackout ‘a period of complete darkness’ (for example, when
all the electric lights go out on the stage of the theatre, or when all
lights in a city are covered as a precaution against air raids); also ‘a
temporary loss of consciousness’; breakdown ‘a stoppage through
accident’, ‘a nervous collapse’; hangover ‘an unpleasant after-effect’
(especially after drink); make-up, a polysemantic compound which may
mean, for example, ‘the way anything is arranged’, ‘one’s mental
qualities’, ‘cosmetics’; take-off, also polysemantic: ‘caricature’, ‘the
beginning of a flight’, etc. Compare also: I could just imagine the
brush-off he’d had (Wain). Some more examples: comedown, drawback,
drop-out, feedback, frame-up, knockout, set-back, shake-up, splash-down,
take-in, teach-in, etc.
A special subgroup is formed by personal nouns with a somewhat
derogatory connotation, as in go-between ‘an intermediary’, start-back
‘a deserter’. Sometimes these compounds are keenly ironical: die-hard
‘an irreconcilable conservative’, pin-up (such a girl as might have her
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photograph pinned up on the wall for admiration, also the photograph
itself), pick-up ‘a chance acquaintance’, ‘a prostitute’. More seldom
the pattern is used for names of objects, mostly disparaging. For
instance: “Are these your books?” “Yes”. They were a very odd collection
of throw-outs from my flat (Cooper).
The group of bahuvrihi compound nouns is not very numerous. The term
bahuvrihi is borrowed from the grammarians of ancient India. Its literal
meaning is ‘much-riced’. It is used to designate possessive exocentric
formations in which a person, animal or thing are metonymically named
after some striking feature they possess, chiefly a striking feature in
their appearance. This feature is in its turn expressed by the sum of
the meanings of the compound’s immediate constituents. The formula of
the bahuvrihi compound nouns is adjective stem +noun stem. The following
extract will illustrate the way bahuvrihi compounds may be coined: I got
discouraged with sitting all day in the
backroom of a police station with six assorted women and a man with
a wooden leg. At the end of a week, we all knew each other’s life
histories, including that of the woodenleg’s uncle, who lived at Selsey
and had to be careful of his diet (M. Dickens).
Semantically the bahuvrihi are almost invariably characterised by a
deprecative ironical emotional tone. Cf. bigwig ‘a person of
importance’, black-shirt ‘an Italian fascist’ (also, by analogy, any
fascist), fathead ‘a dull, stupid person’, greenhorn ‘an ignoramus’,
highbrow ‘a person who claims to be superior in intellect and culture’,
lazy-bones ‘a lazy person’.
§ 6.4.3 COMPOUND ADJECTIVES
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.
The type has a variant with a different semantic formula: snow-white
means ‘as white as snow’, so the underlying sense relation in that case
is emphatic comparison, e. g. dog-tired, dirt-cheap, stone-deaf.
Examples are mostly connected with colours: blood-red, sky-blue,
pitch-black; with dimensions and scale: knee-deep, breast-high,
nationwide, life-long, world-wide.
The red-hot type consists of two adjective stems, the first expressing
the degree or the nuance of the second: white-hot, light-blue,
reddish-brown.
The same formula occurs in additive compounds of the bitter-sweet type
correlated with free phrases of the type adjective1 and adjective2
{bitter and sweet) that are rather numerous in technical and scholarly
vocabulary: social-economic, etc. The subgroup of Anglo-Saxon has been
already discussed.
The peace-loving type consisting of a noun stem and a participle stem,
is very productive at present. Examples are: breath-taking,
125
freedom-loving, soul-stirring. Temporal and local relations underlie
such cases as sea-going, picture-going, summer-flowering.
The type is now literary and sometimes lofty, whereas in the 20s it was
very common in upper-class slang, e. g. sick-making ‘sickening’.
A similar type with the pronoun stem self- as the first component
(self-adjusting, self-propelling) is used in cultivated and technical
speech only.
The hard-working type structurally consists of an adjective stem and a
participle stem. Other examples of the same type are: good-looking,
sweet-smelling, far-reaching. It is not difficult to notice, however,
that looking, smelling, reaching do not exist as separate adjectives.
Neither is it quite clear whether the first element corresponds to an
adjective or an adverb. They receive some definite character only in
compounds.
There is a considerable group of compounds characterised by the type
word man-made, i.e. consisting of Participle II with a noun stem for a
determinant.
The semantic relations underlying this type are remarkable for their
great variety: man-made ‘made by man’ (the relationship expressed is
that of the agent and the action); home-made ‘made at home’ (the notion
of place); safety-tested ‘tested for safety’ (purpose); moss-grown
‘covered with moss’ (instrumental notion); compare also the figurative
compound heart-broken ‘having a broken heart’. Most of the compounds
containing a Participle II stem for their second element have a passive
meaning. The few exceptions are: well-read, well-spoken, well-behaved
and the like.
§ 6.4.4 COMPOUND VERBS
Scholars are not agreed on the question of compound verbs. This problem
indeed can be argued in several different ways. It is not even clear
whether verbal compositions exist in present-day English, though such
verbs as outgrow, overflow, stand up, black-list, stage-manage and
whitewash are often called compound verbs. There are even more
complications to the problem than meet the eye.
H. Marchand, whose work has been quoted so extensively in the present
chapter, treats outgrow and overflow as unquestionable compounds,
although he admits that the type is not productive and that locative
particles are near to prefixes. “The Concise Oxford Dictionary", on the
other hand, defines out- and over- as prefixes used both for verbs and
nouns; this approach classes outgrow and overflow as derivatives, which
seems convincing.
The stand-up type was in turns regarded as a phrase, a compound and a
derivative; its nature has been the subject of much discussion (see §
6.2.4).
The verbs blackmail and stage-manage belong to two different groups
because they show different correlations with the rest of the
vocabulary.
blackmail v = honeymoon v = nickname v
blackmail n honeymoon n nickname n
126
The verbs blackmail, honeymoon and nickname are, therefore, cases of
conversion from endocentric nominal compounds. The type stage-manage may
be referred to back-formation. The correlation is as follows:
stage-manage v = proof-read v = housekeep v
stage-manager n proof-reader n housekeeper n
The second element in the first group is a noun stem; in the second
group it is always verbal.
Some examples of the first group are the verbs safeguard, nickname,
shipwreck, whitewash, tiptoe, outline, honeymoon, blackmail,
hero-worship. All these exist in English for a long time. The 20th
century created week-end, double-cross ‘betray’, stream-line, softpedal,
spotlight.
The type is especially productive in colloquial speech and slang,
particularly in American English.
The second group is less numerous than the first but highly productive
in the 20th century. Among the earliest coinages are backbite (1300) and
browbeat (1603), then later ill-treat, house-keep. The 20th century has
coined hitch-hike (cf. hitch-hiker) ‘to travel from place to place by
asking motorists for free rides’; proof-read (cf. proof-reader) ‘to read
and correct printer’s proofs’; compare also mass-produce, taperecord and
vacuum-clean. The most recent is hijack ‘make pilots change the course
of aeroplanes by using violence’ which comes from the slang word
hijacker explained in the Chambers’s Dictionary as ‘a highwayman or a
robber and blackmailer of bootleggers’ (smugglers of liquor).
The structural integrity of these combinations is supported by the order
of constituents which is a contrast to the usual syntactic pattern where
the verb stem would come first. Cf. to read proofs and to proofread.
H. Marchand calls them pseudo-compounds, because they are created as
verbs not by the process of composition but by conversion and
back-formation. His classification may seem convincing, if the
vocabulary is treated diachronically from the viewpoint of those
processes that are at the back of its formation. It is quite true that
the verb vacuum-clean was not coined by compounding and so is not a
compound genetically (on the word-formation level). But if we are
concerned with the present-day structure and follow consistently the
definition of a compound given in the opening lines of this chapter, we
see that it is a word containing two free stems. It functions in the
sentence as a separate lexical unit. It seems logical to consider such
words as compounds by right of their structural pattern.
§ 6.5 DERIVATIONAL COMPOUNDS
Derivational compounds or compound-derivatives like long-legged do not
fit the definition of compounds as words consisting of more than one
free stem, because their second element (-legged) is not a free stem.
Derivational compounds are included in this
127
chapter for two reasons: because the number of root morphemes is more
than one, and because they are nearest to compounds in patterns.
Derivational compounds or compound-derivatives 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 word-formation 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.
Take, for example, brainstraster, honeymooner and mill-owner. The
ultimate constituents of all three are: noun stem + noun stem+-er.
Analysing into immediate constituents, we see that the immediate
constituents (IC’s) of the compound mill-owner are two noun stems, the
first simple, the second derived: mill+owner, of which the last, the
determinatum, as well as the whole compound, names a person. For the
word honeymooner no such division is possible, since *mooner does not
exist as a free stem. The IC’s are honeymoon+-er, and the suffix -er
signals that the whole denotes a person: the structure is
(honey+moon)+-er.
еr1.
The suffix -er is one of the productive suffixes in forming derivational
compounds. Other examples of the same pattern are: backbencher ‘an M.P.
occupying the back bench’, do-gooder (ironically used in AmE),
eye-opener ‘enlightening circumstance’, first-nighter ‘habitual
frequenter of the first performance of plays’, go-getter (colloq.) ‘a
pushing person’, late-comer, left-hander ‘left-handed person or blow’.
Nonce-words show some variations on this type. The process of their
formation is clearly seen in the following examples: “Have you ever
thought of bringing them together?” “Oh, God forbid. As you may have
noticed, I'm not much of a bringer-together at the best of times.”
(Plomer) “The shops are very modern here,” he went on, speaking with all
the rather touchy insistence on up-to-dateness which characterises the
inhabitants of an under-bathroomed and over-monumented country (Huxley).
Another frequent type of derivational compounds are the possessive
compounds of the type kind-hearted: adjective stem+noun stem+ -ed. Its
IC’s are a noun phrase kind heart and the suffix -ed that unites the
elements of the phrase and turns them into the elements of a compound
adjective. Similar examples are extremely numerous. Compounds of this
type can be coined very freely to meet the requirements of different
situations.
1 See on this point the article on compounds in “The Second Barnhart
Dictionary of New English” (p. 115).
128
Very few go back to Old English, such as one-eyed and three-headed,
most of the cases are coined in Modern English. Examples are practically
unlimited, especially in words describing personal appearance or
character: absent-minded, bare-legged, black-haired, blue-eyed,
cruel-hearted, light-minded, ill-mannered, many-sided, narrow-minded,
shortsighted, etc.
The first element may also be a noun stem: bow-legged, heart-shaped and
very often a numeral: three-coloured.
The derivational compounds often become the basis of further derivation.
Cf. war-minded : : war-mindedness; whole-hearted : : whole-heartedness :
: whole-heartedly, schoolboyish : : schoolboyishness; do-it-yourselfer :
: do-it-yourselfism.
The process is also called phrasal derivation: mini-skirt>mini-skirted,
nothing but>nothingbutism, dress up>dressuppable,
Romeo-and-Julietishness, or quotation derivation as when an
unwillingness to do anything is characterised as let-George-do-it-ity.
All these are nonce-words, with some ironic or jocular connotation.
§ 6.6 REDUPLICATION AND MISCELLANEA OF COMPOSITION
§ 6.6.1 REDUPLICATIVE COMPOUNDS
In what follows we shall describe some combinations that may be called
compounds by right of pattern, as they very markedly consist of two
parts, but otherwise in most cases fail to satisfy our definition of a
compound word. Some of them contain only one free form, the other
constituents being a variation of this, while there are also cases where
both constituents are jocular pseudo-morphemes, meaningless and fanciful
sound clusters which never occur elsewhere. Their motivation is mostly
based upon sound-symbolism and it is their phonetic make-up that plays
the most important role in their functioning They are all stylistically
coloured (either colloquial, slang or nursery words) and markedly
expressive and emotional: the emotion is not expressed in the
constituents but suggested by the whole pattern (reduplication rhyme).
The group consists of reduplicative compounds that fall into three main
subgroups: reduplicative compounds proper, ablaut combinations and rhyme
combinations.
Reduplicative compounds proper are not restricted to the repetition of
onomatopoeic stems with intensifying effect, as it is sometimes
suggested. Actually it is a very mixed group containing usual free
forms, onomatopoeic stems and pseudo-morphemes. Onomatopoeic repetition
exists but it is not very extensive: hush-hush ‘secret’, murmur (a
borrowing from French) pooh-pooh (to express contempt). In blah-blah
‘nonsense’, ‘idle talk’ the constituents are pseudo-morphemes which do
not occur elsewhere. The usage may be illustrated by the following
example: Should he give them half a minute of blah-blah or tell them
what had been passing through his mind? (Priestley) Nursery words such
as quack-quack ‘duck’, Pops-Pops ‘father’ and many other words belong to
the same type.
129
Non-imitative words may be also used in reduplication and possess then
an ironical ring: pretty-pretty ‘affectedly pretty’, goody-goody
‘sentimentally and affectedly good’. The instances are not numerous and
occur only in colloquial speech. An interesting example is the
expressive and ironical never-never, an ellipsis of the phrase
never-never system ‘a hire-purchase system in which the consumer may
never be able to become the owner of the thing purchased’. The situation
may be clear from the following: “They’ve got a smashing telly, a fridge
and another set of bedroom furniture in silver-grey.” “All on the
never-never, what’ll happen if he loses his job?” (Lindsay)
§ 6.6.2 ABLAUT COMBINATIONS
The reduplicative compounds resemble in sound form the rhyme
combinations like razzle-dazzle and ablaut combinations like sing-song.
These two types, therefore, are treated by many1 as repetition with
change of initial consonant or with vowel interchange. H. Marchand
treats these as pseudo-compounds, which occur as twin forms with phonic
variation and as twin forms with a rhyme for characteristic feature.
?]— [ae]: chit-chat ‘gossip’ (from chat ‘easy familiar talk’),
dilly-dally ‘loiter’, knick-knack ‘small articles of ornament’,
riff-raff ‘the mob’, shilly-shally ‘hesitate’, zigzag (borrowed from
French), and [?] — [o]: ding-dong (said of the sound of a bell),
ping-pong ‘table-tennis’, singsong ‘monotonous voice’, tiptop
‘first-rate’. The free forms corresponding to the basic morphemes are as
a rule expressive words denoting sound or movement.
Both groups are based on sound symbolism expressing polarity. With words
denoting movement these words symbolise to and fro rhythm: criss-cross;
the to and fro movement also suggests hesitation: shilly-shally
(probably based on the question “Shall I?”); alternating noises:
pitter-patter. The semantically predominant group are the words meaning
idle talk: bibble-babble, chit-chat, clitter-clatter, etc.
§ 6.6.3 RHYME COMBINATIONS
Rhyme combinations are twin forms consisting of two elements (most often
two pseudo-morphemes) which are joined to rhyme: boogie-woogie,
flibberty-gibberty ‘frivolous’, harum-scarum ‘disorganised’,
helter-skelter ‘in disordered haste’, hoity-toity ‘snobbish’, humdrum
‘bore’, hurry-scurry ‘great hurry’, hurdy-gurdy ‘a small organ’,
lovey-dovey ‘darling’, mumbo-jumbo ‘deliberate mystification, fetish’,
1 O. Jespersen, H. Koziol and the author of this book in a previous
work.
130
namby-pamby ‘weakly sentimental’, titbit ‘a choice morsel’, willy-nilly
‘compulsorily’ (cf. Lat volens-nolens).
The choice of the basic sound cluster in some way or other is often not
arbitrary but motivated, for instance, lovey-dovey is motivated in both
parts, as well as willy-nilly. Hurry-scurry and a few other combinations
are motivated in the first part, while the second is probably a blend if
we take into consideration that in helter-skelter the second element is
from obsolete skelt ‘hasten’.
About 40% of these rhyme combinations (a much higher percentage than
with the ablaut combinations) are not motivated: namby-pamby,
razzle-dazzle. A few are borrowed: pow-wow ‘a noisy assembly’ (an
Algonquin1 word), mumbo-jumbo (from West African), but the type is
purely English, and mostly modern.
The pattern is emotionally charged and chiefly colloquial, jocular,
often sentimental in a babyish sort of way. The expressive character is
mainly due to the effect of rhythm, rhyme and sound suggestiveness. It
is intensified by endearing suffixes -y, -sie and the jocular -ty, -dy.
Semantically predominant in this group are words denoting disorder,
trickery, teasing names for persons, and lastly some playful nursery
words. Baby-talk words are highly connotative because of their
background.
§ 6.7 PSEUDO-COMPOUNDS
The words like gillyflower or sparrow-grass are not actually compounds
at all, they are cases of false-etymology, an attempt to find motivation
for a borrowed word: gillyflower from OFr girofle, crayfish (small
lobster-like fresh-water crustacean, a spiny lobster) from OFr crevice,
and sparrow-grass from Latin asparagus.
May-day (sometimes capitalised May Day) is an international radio signal
used as a call for help from a ship or plane, and it has nothing to do
with the name of the month, but is a distortion of the French m’aidez
‘help me’ and so is not a compound at all.
§ 6.8 THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH COMPOUNDS
Compounding, one of the oldest methods of word-formation occurring in
all Indo-European languages, is especially developed in Germanic
languages. English has made use of compounding in all periods of its
existence. Headache, heartache, rainbow, raindrop and many other
compounds of the type noun stem+noun stem and its variant, such as
manslaughter
The phenomenon was investigated by Russian and Soviet philologists V.A.
Bogoroditsky, L.A. Bulakhovsky and N.N. Amosova, who used the Russian
term опрощение основы which may be translated into English as
“simplification of stem” (but this translation can be only tentative).
Simplification is defined as “a morphological process by which a word of
a complex morphological structure loses the meaning of its separate
morphological parts and becomes a mere symbol of the notion given."1
The English grammarians, such as J.C. Nesfield, for instance, used the
term disguised compounds, which is inconvenient because it is
misleading. In English, when a morpheme becomes the constituent of a
compound, this does not affect its sound pattern. Exceptions to this
rule signify therefore that the formation cannot be regarded as a
compound at the present stage of the language development, although it
might have been the result of compounding at some earlier stage.
The degree of change can be very different. Sometimes the compound is
altered out of all recognition. Thus, in the name of the flower daisy,
or in the word woman composition as the basis of the word’s origin can
be discovered by etymological analysis only: daisy
There are cases where one of the processes, namely demotivation, is
complete, while simplification is still under way. We are inclined to
rate such words as boatswain, breakfast, cupboard as compounds, because
they look like compounds thanks to their conservative spelling that
shows their origin, whereas in meaning and pronunciation they have
changed completely and turned into simple signs for new notions. For
example, breakfast originates from the verb break ‘interrupt’ and the
noun fast ‘going without food’. Phonetically, had it been a compound, it
should sound ['breikfa:st ], whereas in reality it is ['brekfastl. The
compound is disguised as the vowels have changed; this change
corresponds to a change in meaning (the present meaning is ‘the first
meal of the day’).
To take another example, the word boatswain ['bousn] ‘ship’s officer in
charge of sails, rigging, etc. and summoning men to duty with whistle’
originates from Late OE batsweзen. The first element is of course the
modern boat, whereas the second swain is archaic: its original meaning
was ‘lad’. This meaning is lost. The noun swain came to mean ‘a young
rustic’, ‘a bucolic lover’.
All these examples might be regarded as borderline cases, as
simplification is not yet completed graphically.
§ 6.9 NEW WORD-FORMING PATTERNS IN COMPOSITION
An interesting pattern revealing the influence of
extra-linguisticfactors on word-formation and vocabulary development are
such compounds as camp-in, ride-in, teach-in, work-in and the like. “The
Barn-hart Dictionary of New English” treats the second element as a
combining form of the adverb in and connects the original appearance of
this morpho-semantic pattern with the civil-rights movement of the 60s.
It was used to nominate such public demonstrations of protest as riding
in segregated buses (ride-in), praying in segregated churches
(kneel-in), bathing in segregated swimming pools (swim-in).
The pattern is structurally similar to an older type of compounds, such
as breakdown, feedback or lockout but differs from them semantically
including as its semantic invariant the meaning of public protest.
Somewhat later the word teach-in appeared. The name was used for long
meetings, seminars or sessions held at universities for the purpose of
expressing criticism on important political issues and discussing them.
Then any form of seminar patterned on the university teach-ins was also
called by this term. And similar terms were coined for other cases of
staging public protest. E. g. lie-in and die-in when blocking traffic.
The third stage in the development of this pattern proved to be an
extension to any kind of gathering of hippies, flower children and other
groups of young people: laugh-ins, love-ins, sing-ins. A still further
generalisation of meaning may be observed in the compound call-in and
its American version phone-in ‘period of time on radio or television
programme during which questions, statements, etc. from the public are
broadcast’, big sitdown planned for September 17 ("Daily Worker"), where
sitdown stands for sitdown demonstration.
133St. Ullmann follows M. Breal in emphasising the social causes for
these. Professional and other communities with a specialised ‘sphere of
common interests are the ideal setting for ellipsis. Open on for open
fire on, and put to sea for put ship to sea are of wartime and navy
origin, and bill for bill of exchange comes from business circles; in a
newspaper office daily paper and weekly paper were quite naturally
shortened to daily and weekly.1 It is clear from the above examples that
unlike other types of shortening, ellipsis always results in a change of
lexico-grammatical meaning, and therefore the new word belongs to a
different part of speech. Various other processes are often interwoven
with ellipsis. For instance: finals for final examinations is a case of
ellipsis combined with substantivation of the first element, whereas
prelims for preliminary examinations results from ellipsis,
substantivation and clipping. Other examples of the same complex type
are perm : : permanent wave; pop : : popular music;2 prom : : promenade
concert, i.e. ‘a concert at which at least part of the audience is not
seated and can walk about’; pub : : public house ‘an inn or tavern’;
taxi : : taxicab, itself formed from taximeter-cab. Inside this group a
subgroup with prefixed derivatives as first elements of prototype
phrases can be distinguished, e. g. coed ‘a girl student at a
coeducational institution’, prefab ‘a prefabricated house or structure’
(to prefabricate means ‘to manufacture component parts of buildings
prior to their assembly on a site’).
Curtailed words arise in various types of colloquial speech and have for
the most part a pronounced stylistic colouring as long as their
connection with the prototype is alive, so that they remain synonyms. E.
g.: They present the tops in pops. When the connection with the
prototype is lost, the curtailed word may become stylistically neutral,
e. g. brig, cab, cello, pram. Stylistically coloured shortened words may
belong to any variety of colloquial style. They are especially numerous
in various branches of slang: school slang, service slang, sport slang,
newspaper slang, etc. Familiar colloquial style gives such examples as
bobby, cabbie, mac, maxi, mini, movies. Nursery words are often clipped:
gran, granny; hanky from handkerchief; ma from mama; nightie from
nightdress; pinnie from pinafore. Stylistic peculiarity often goes hand
in hand with emotional colouring as is revealed in the above
diminutives. School and college slang, on the other hand, reveal some
sort of reckless if not ironical attitude to the things named: caf from
cafeteria ‘self-service restaurant’, digs from diggings ‘lodgings’, ec,
eco from economics, home ecs, lab, maths, prelims, prep, prof, trig,
undergrad, vac, varsity. Service slang is very rich in clipped words,
some of them penetrate the familiar colloquial style. A few examples
are: demob v from demobilise; civvy n from civilian, op n from operator;
non-com n from non-combatant; corp n from corporal; sarge n from
sergeant.
1 See: Ullmann St. The Principles of Semantics, p.p. 116, 239.
2 Often used in such combinations as pop art, pop singer, pop song.
140The only type of clippings that belong to bookish style are the
poetical contractions such as e'en, e'er, ne'er, o'er.
7.2 BLENDING
It has already been mentioned that curtailed words from compounds are
few; cases of curtailment combined with composition set off against
phrasal prototypes are slightly more numerous, e. g. ad-lib v ‘to speak
without notes or preparation’ from the Latin phrase ad libitum meaning
‘at pleasure’; subchaser n from submarine chaser. A curious derivational
compound with a clipping for one of its stems is the word teen-ager (see
p. 35). The jocular and ironical name Lib-Labs (Liberal Labour MP’s,
i.e. a particular group) illustrates clipping, composition and ellipsis
and imitation of reduplication all in one word.
Among these formations there is a specific group that has attracted
special attention of several authors and was even given several
different names: blends, blendings, fusions or portmanteau words. The
last term is due to Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice in Wonderland”
and “Through the Looking Glass”. One of the most linguistically
conscious writers, he made a special technique of using blends coined by
himself, such as chortle v
correlated two types of blends can be distinguished. One may be termed
additive, the second restrictive. Both involve the sliding together not
only of sound but of meaning as well. Yet the semantic relations which
are at work are different. The first, i.e. additive type, is
transformable into a phrase consisting of the respective complete stems
combined by the conjunction and, e. g. smog
smaze
(from Gr acros- ‘end'+onym ‘name’). 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. The last
example shows that acronyms are often homonymous to ordinary words;
sometimes intentionally chosen so as to create certain associations.
Thus, for example, the National Organisation for Women is called NOW.
Typical of acronymic coinages in technical terminology are JATO, laser,
maser and radar. JATO or jato means jet-assisted take-off; laser stands
for light amplification by stimulated emission radiation; maser — for
micro-wave amplification and stimulated emission radiation; radar — for
radio detection and ranging, it denotes a system for ascertaining
direction and ranging of aircraft, ships, coasts and other objects by
means of electro-magnetic waves which they reflect. Acronyms became so
popular that their number justified the publication of special
dictionaries, such as D.D. Spencer’s “Computer Acronym Handbook” (1974).
We shall mention only one example from computer terminology — the rather
ironic GIGO for garbage in, garbage out in reference to unreliable data
fed into the computer that produces worthless output.
Acronyms present a special interest because they exemplify the working
of the lexical adaptive system. In meeting the needs of communication
and fulfilling the laws of information theory requiring a maximum signal
in the minimum time the lexical system undergoes modification in its
basic structure: namely it forms new elements not by combining existing
morphemes and proceeding from sound forms to their graphic
representation but the other way round — coining new words from the
initial letters of phrasal terms originating in texts.
2. The other subgroup consists of initial abbreviation with the
alphabetical reading retained, i.e. pronounced as a series of letters.
They also retain correlation with prototypes. The examples are
well-known: B.B.C. ['bi:'bi:’si:] — the British Broadcasting
Corporation; G.I. ['dзi: ‘ai] — for Government Issue, a widely spread
metonymical name for American soldiers on the items of whose uniforms
these letters are stamped. The last abbreviation was originally an
Americanism but has been firmly established in British English as well.
M.P. ['em'pi:] is mostly used as an initial abbreviation for Member of
Parliament, also military police, whereas P.M. stands for Prime
Minister.
Abbreviations are freely used in colloquial speech as seen from the
following extract, in which СР. Snow describes the House of Commons
gossip: They were swapping promises to speak for one another: one was
bragging how two senior Ministers were “in the bag” to speak for him.
Roger was safe, someone said, he'd give a hand. “What has the P.M. got
in mind for Roger when we come back?” The familiar colloquial quality of
the context is very definitely marked by the set expressions: in the
bag, give a hand, get in mind, etc.
Other examples of initial abbreviations with the alphabetical reading
retained are: S.O.S. ['es'ou'es]—Save Our Souls, a wireless code-signal
of extreme distress, also figuratively, any despairing cry for help;
T.V. or TV I'tir'vi:] — television; Y.C.L. ['wai’sir'el] — the Young
Communist League.
143
3. The term 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. Consequently no
orthoepic correlation exists in such cases and the unabbreviated word is
pronounced: ll [lainz], pp ['peI8Iz].
A specific type of abbreviations having no parallel in Russian is
represented by Latin abbreviations which sometimes are not read as Latin
words but substituted by their English equivalents. A few of the most
important cases are listed below: ad lib (Lat ad libitum) — at
pleasure’, a.m. (Lat ante meridiem) — in the morning’, cf. (Lat
conferre)
compare; cp. (Lat comparare) — compare’, e.g. (Lat exempli gratia)
for example; ib(id) (Lat ibidem) — in the same place; i.e. (Lat id est)
that is; loc.cit. (Lat locus citato) — in the passage cited; ob. (Lat
obiit) —he (she) died; q.v. (Lat quod vide) — which see; p.m. (Lat post
meridiem) — in the afternoon; viz (Lat videlicet) — namely, sometimes
read viz. Actual letters are also read in the following cases: a.m.
['ei'em], e.g., i.e., q.v., p.m.
An interesting feature of present-day English is the use of initial
abbreviations for famous persons’ names and surnames. Thus, George
Bernard Shaw is often alluded to as G.B.S. ['dзi:'bi:'es], Herbert
George Wells as H.G. The usage is clear from the following example: “Oh,
yes ... where was I?” “With H.G.’s Martians,” I told him (Wyndham).
Journalistic abbreviations are often occasioned by a desire to economise
head-line space, as seen from the following example “CND Calls Lobby to
Stop MLF” ("Daily Worker"). This means that a mass lobby of Parliament
against the NATO multilateral nuclear force (MLF) is being called by the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
These regular developments are in some cases combined with occasional
jocular or accidental distortions. The National Economic Development
Council is facetiously termed Neddy. Elementary education is
colloquially referred to as the three R’s — reading, (w)riting and
‘rithmetic. Some kind of witty folk etymology is at play when the
abbreviation C.B. for construction battalions in the navy is respelt
into sea bees. The two well-known Americanisms jeep and okay may be
mentioned in this connection. Jeep meaning ‘a small military motor
vehicle’ comes from g.p. ['dзi:'pi:] (the initials of general purpose).
Okay, OK may be an illiterate misinterpretation of the initials in all
correct. Various other historic anecdotes have been also offered by way
of explanation of the latter.
144
It must be emphasised that initial abbreviation, no less than other
types of shortening, retains the valency, i.e. the combining
possibilities of the prototypes. The difference in distribution is
conditioned only by a change of meaning (lexical or more rarely
lexico-grammatical). Abbreviations receive the plural and Possessive
case inflections: G.I.’s, M.P.’s, P.O.W.’s (from prisoner of war), also
the verb paradigm: okays, okayed, okaying. E. g. A hotel’s no life for
you... Why don’t you come and P.G. with me? (A. Wilson) Here P.G. is an
abbreviation for paying guest. Like all nouns they can be used
attributively: BBC television, TV program, UN vote.
A specifically English word pattern almost absent in the Russian
language must be described in connection with initial abbreviations in
which the first element is a letter and the second a complete word. The
examples are: A-bomb for atomic bomb, V-sign — a sign made by holding
the hand up with the first two fingers spread with the palm facing
forward in the shape of a V used for expressing victory or the hope for
it. A like sign made with the back of the hand facing forward expressed
dislike and is considered very rude. The example is interesting, because
it shows the connection between the lexical system and paralinguistic
means of communication, that is gestures, mimics and prosodic means
(from para ‘beyond’).
There is no uniformity in semantic relationships between the elements:
Z-bar is a metallic bar with a cross section shaped like the letter Z,
while Z-hour is an abbreviation of zero-hour meaning ‘the time set for
the beginning of the attack’, U is standing for upper classes in such
combinations as U-pronunciation, U-language. Cf.: U-boat ‘a submarine’.
Non-U is its opposite. So Non-U speakers are those whose speech habits
show that they do not belong to the upper classes.
It will have been noted that all kinds of shortening are very productive
in present-day English. They are especially numerous in colloquial
speech, both familiar colloquial and professional slang. They display
great combining activity and form bases for further word-formation and
inflection.
§ 7.4 MINOR TYPES OF LEXICAL OPPOSITIONS. SOUND INTERCHANGE
Sound interchange may be defined as an opposition in which words or word
forms are differentiated due to an alternation in the phonemic
composition of the root. The change may affect the root vowel, as in
food n : : feed v; or root consonant as in speak v : : speech n; or
both, as for instance in life n : : live v. It may also be combined with
affixation: strong a : : strength n; or with affixation and shift of
stress as in 'democrat : : de'mocracy.
The process is not active in the language at present, and oppositions
like those listed above survive in the vocabulary only as remnants of
previous stages. Synchronically sound
interch?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
??????????????????????????????????????????
10 И. В. Арнольд 145
The causes of sound interchange are twofold and one should learn to
differentiate them from the historical point of view. Some of them are
due to ablaut or vowel gradation characteristic of Indo-European
languages and consisting in a change from one to another vowel
accompanying a change of stress. The phenomenon is best known as a
series of relations between vowels by which the stems of strong verbs
are differentiated in grammar (drink — drank — drunk and the like).
However, it is also of great importance in lexicology, because ablaut
furnishes distinctive features for differentiating words. The examples
are: abide v : : abode n; bear v : : burden n; bite v : : bit n; ride v
: : road n; strike v : : stroke n.
The other group of cases is due to an assimilation process conditioned
by the phonemic environment. One of these is vowel mutation, otherwise
called umlaut, a feature characteristic of Germanic languages, and
consisting in a partial assimilation to a succeeding sound, as for
example the fronting or raising of a back vowel or a low vowel caused by
an [i] or [j] originally standing in the following syllable but now
either altered or lost. This accounts for such oppositions as full a : :
fill v; whole a : : heal v; knot n : : knit v; tale n : : tell v. The
process will be clear if we follow the development of the second element
in each pair. ModE fill
It will be recalled in this connection that the systematic character of
the language may manifest itself in the analogy between word-building
processes and word inflection. It is worthy of note that not only are
these processes similar, but they also develop simultaneously. Thus, if
some method is no longer productive in expressing grammatical
categories, we shall also observe a parallel loss of productivity in
expressing lexical meaning. This is precisely the case with root
inflection. Instances of root inflection in the formation of the plural
of nouns (goose — geese, foot — feet, tooth—teeth) or the Past
Indefinite and Participle II of verbs (sing — sang — sung, drive — drove
— driven, tear — tore — torn) exist in the language as the relics of
past stages; and although in the case of verbs the number of ablaut
forms is still very great, no new verbs are inflected on this pattern.
The same may be said about word-building by sound interchange. The type
is not productive. No new words are formed in this way, yet sound
interchange still stays in the language serving to distinguish one
long-established word from another.
Synchronically, it differentiated parts of speech, i.e. it may signal
the non-identity of words belonging to different parts of speech: full a
: : fill v; food n : : feed v; or to different lexico-grammatical sets
within the same part of speech: fall intransitive v : : fell causative
v; compare also lie : : lay, sit : : set, rise : : raise.
Derivation often involves phonological changes of vowel or consonant:
strong sl : : strength n; heal v : : health n; steal v : : stealth n;
long a : : length n; deep a : : depth n.
Major derivative alternations involving changes of vowel and /or
consonant and sometimes stress shift in borrowed words are as follows:
delicacy n : : delicate a; piracy n : : pirate n; democracy n : :
democrat n; decency n : : decent a; vacancy n : : vacant a; creation n :
: create v; edify v : : edification n; organise v : : organisation n;
agnostic a : : agnosticism n.
Some long vowels are retained in quality and quantity; others are
shortened, and there seems to be no fixed rule, e.g. [a:] tends to be
retained: artist n : : artistic а; [э:] is regularly shortened: ‘permit
n : : per'mit v.
§ 7.5 DISTINCTIVE STRESS
Some otherwise homographic, mostly disyllabic nouns and verbs of Romanic
origin have a distinctive stress pattern. Thus, 'conduct n ‘behaviour’
is forestressed, whereas con'duct v ‘to lead or guide (in a formal way)’
has a stress on the second syllable. Other examples are: accent, affix,
asphalt, compact (impact),1 compound, compress (impress), conflict,
contest, contract (extract), contrast, convict, digest, essay, export
(import, transport), increase, insult, object (subject, project),
perfume, permit, present, produce, progress, protest, rebel, record,
survey, torment, transfer.2 Examples of words of more than two syllables
are very few:
1 Words of the same root are given in brackets.
2 There are some meanings in which the verb is also forestressed.
10* 147
'attribute n : : a'ttribute v. Historically this is probably explained
by the fact that these words were borrowed from French where the
original stress was on the last syllable. Thus, ac'cent comes through
French from Latin ac'centus. Verbs retained this stress all the more
easily as many native disyllabic verbs were also stressed in this way:
be come, be'lieve, for'bid, for'get, for'give. The native nouns,
however, were forestressed, and in the process of assimilation many loan
nouns came to be stressed on the first syllable.
э'ri?-mэtik] n : : arithmetical) [эп?'metik(эl)] a. The fact that in the
verb the second syllable is stressed involves a phonemic change of the
vowels as well: [э/ае] and [э/i].
This stress distinction is, however, neither productive nor regular.
There are many denominal verbs that are forestressed and thus homonymous
with the corresponding nouns. For example, both the noun and the verb
comment are forestressed, and so are the following words: exile, figure,
preface, quarrel, focus, process, program, triumph, rivet and others.
There is a large group of disyllabic loan words that retain the stress
on the second syllable both in verbs and nouns: accord, account,
advance, amount, approach, attack, attempt, concern, defeat, distress,
escape, exclaim, research, etc.
A separate group is formed by compounds where the corresponding
combination of words has double stress and the compound noun is
forestressed so that the stress acquires a word-building force: ‘black
‘board : : ‘blackboard and ‘draw'back : : ‘drawback.
It is worth noting that stress alone, unaccompanied by any other
differentiating factor, does not seem to provide a very effective means
of distinguishing words. And this is, probably, the reason why
oppositions of this kind are neither regular nor productive.
§ 7.6 SOUND IMITATION
The great majority of motivated words in present-day language are
motivated by reference to other words in the language, to the morphemes
that go to compose them and to their arrangement. Therefore, even if one
hears the noun wage-earner for the first time, one understands it,
knowing the meaning of the words wage and earn and the structural
pattern noun stem + verbal stem+ -er as in bread-winner, skyscraper,
strike-breaker. Sound imitating or onomatopoeic words are on the
contrary motivated with reference to extra-linguistic reality, they are
echoes of natural sounds (e. g. lullaby, twang, whiz.) Sound imitation
(onomatopoeia or echoism) is consequently the naming of an action or
thing by a more or less exact reproduction of a sound
148
associated with it. For instance words naming sounds and movement of
water: babble, blob, bubble, flush, gurgle, gush, splash, etc.
The term onomatopoeia is from Greek onoma ‘name, word’ and poiein ‘to
make1 ? ‘the making of words (in imitation of sounds)’.
It would, however, be wrong to think that onomatopoeic words reflect the
real sounds directly, irrespective of the laws of the language, because
the same sounds are represented differently in different languages.
Onomatopoeic words adopt the phonetic features of English and fall into
the combinations peculiar to it. This becomes obvious when one compares
onomatopoeic words crow and twitter and the words flow and glitter with
which they are rhymed in the following poem:
The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing.
The small birds twitter,
The lake does glitter,
The green fields sleep in the sun (Wordsworth).
The majority of onomatopoeic words serve to name sounds or movements.
Most of them are verbs easily turned into nouns: bang, boom, bump, hum,
rustle, smack, thud, etc.
Сf . bang! hush! pooh!
Semantically, according to the source of sound, onomatopoeic words fall
into a few very definite groups. Many verbs denote sounds produced by
human beings in the process of communication or in expressing their
feelings: babble, chatter, giggle, grunt, grumble, murmur, mutter,
titter, whine, whisper and many more. Then there are sounds produced by
animals, birds and insects, e.g. buzz, cackle, croak, crow, hiss, honk,
howl, moo, mew, neigh, purr, roar and others. Some birds are named after
the sound they make, these are the crow, the cuckoo, the whippoor-will
and a few others. Besides the verbs imitating the sound of water such as
bubble or splash, there are others imitating the noise of metallic
things: clink, tinkle, or forceful motion: clash, crash, whack, whip,
whisk, etc.
The combining possibilities of onomatopoeic words are limited by usage.
Thus, a contented cat purrs, while a similarly sounding verb whirr is
used about wings. A gun bangs and a bow twangs.
R. Southey’s poem “How Does the Water Come Down at Lodore” is a
classical example of the stylistic possibilities offered by
onomatopoeia: the words in it sound an echo of what the poet sees and
describes.
Here it comes sparkling, And there it flies darkling ... Eddying and
whisking,
149
Spouting and frisking, ...
And whizzing and hissing, ...
And rattling and battling, ...
And guggling and struggling, ...
And bubbling and troubling and doubling,
And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,
And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping ...
And thumping and pumping and bumping and jumping,
And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing ...
And at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar,
And this way the water comes down at Lodore.
Once being coined, onomatopoeic words lend themselves easily to further
word-building and to semantic development. They readily develop
figurative meanings. Croak, for instance, means ‘to make a deep harsh
sound’. In its direct meaning the verb is used about frogs or ravens.
Metaphorically it may be used about a hoarse human voice. A further
transfer makes the verb synonymous to such expressions as ‘to protest
dismally’, ‘to grumble dourly’, ‘to predict evil’.
§ 7.7 BACK-FORMATION
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. The phenomenon was already
introduced in § 6.4.3 when discussing compound verbs.
The process is based on analogy. The words beggar, butler, cobbler, or
typewriter look very much like agent nouns with the suffix -er/-or, such
as actor or painter. Their last syllable is therefore taken for a suffix
and subtracted from the word leaving what is understood as a verbal
stem. In this way the verb butle ‘to act or serve as a butler’ is
derived by subtraction of -er from a supposedly verbal stem in the noun
butler. Butler (ME buteler, boteler from OFr bouteillier ‘bottle
bearer’) has widened its meaning. Originally it meant ‘the man-servant
having charge of the wine’. It means at present ‘the chief servant of a
rich household who is in charge of other servants, receives guests and
directs the serving of meals’.
These examples are sufficient to show how structural changes taking
place in back-formation became possible because of semantic changes that
preceded them. In the above cases these changes were favoured by
contextual environment. The change of meaning resulted in demotivation,
and this paved the way for phonic changes, i.e. assimilation, loss of
sound and the like, which in their turn led to morphemic alternations
that became meaningful. Semantic changes often influence the
morphological structure by
150
modifying the relations between stems and derivational affixes.
Structural changes, in their turn, depend on the combined effect of
demotivation and analogy conditioned by a higher frequency of occurrence
of the pattern that serves as model. Provided all other conditions are
equal, words following less frequent structural patterns are readily
subjected to changes on the analogy of more frequent patterns.
The very high frequency of the pattern verb stem+-er (or its
equivalents) is a matter of common knowledge. Nothing more natural
therefore than the prominent part this pattern plays in back-formation.
Alongside the examples already cited above are burgle v
The degree of substantivation may be different. Alongside with complete
substantivation of the type already mentioned (the private, the
private’s, the privates), there exists partial substantivation. In this
last case a substantivised adjective or participle denotes a group or a
class of people: the blind, the dead, the English, the poor, the rich,
the accused, the condemned, the living, the unemployed, the wounded, the
lower-paid.
We call these words partially substantivised, because they undergo no
morphological changes, i.e. do not acquire a new paradigm and are only
used with the definite article and a collective meaning. Besides they
keep some properties of adjectives. They can, for instance, be modified
by adverbs. E.g.: Success is the necessary misfortune of human life, but
it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early (Trollope). It
was the suspicious and realistic, I thought, who were most easy to
reassure. It was the same in love: the extravagantly jealous sometimes
needed only a single word to be transported into absolute trust (Snow).
Besides the substantivised adjectives denoting human beings there is a
considerable group of abstract nouns, as is well illustrated by such
grammatical terms as: the Singular, the Plural, the Present, the Past,
the Future, and also: the evil, the good, the impossible. For instance:
“One should never struggle against the inevitable,” he said (Christie)/
It is thus evident that substantivation has been the object of much
controversy. Some of those, who do not accept substantivation of
adjectives as a variant of conversion, consider conversion as a process
limited to the formation of verbs from nouns and nouns from verbs. But
this point of view is far from being universally accepted.
§ 8.6 CONVERSION IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF SPEECH
In this paragraph we present the types of conversion according to parts
of speech and secondary word classes involved. By secondary word classes
we mean lexico-grammatical classes, that is subsets within parts of
speech that differ in meaning and functions, as, for instance,
transitive and intransitive verbs, countable and uncountable nouns,
gradable and non-gradable adjectives, and so on.
We know already that the most frequent types of conversion are those
from noun to verb, from verb to noun and from adjective to noun and to
verb. The first type seems especially important, conversion being the
main process of verb-formation at present.
Less frequent but also quite possible is conversion from form words to
nouns. E. g. He liked to know the ins and outs. I shan’t go into the
whys and wherefores. He was familiar with ups and downs of life. Use is
even made of affixes. Thus, ism is a separate word nowadays meaning ‘a
set of ideas or principles’, e. g. Freudism, existentialism and all the
other isms.
In all the above examples the change of paradigm is present and helpful
for classifying the newly coined words as cases of conversion. But it is
not absolutely necessary, because conversion is not limited to such
parts of speech which possess a paradigm. That, for example, may be
converted into an adverb in informal speech: I was that hungry I could
have eaten a horse.
162
R. Quirk and his colleagues extend the notion of conversion to
re-classification of secondary word classes within one part of speech, a
phenomenon also called transposition. Thus, mass nouns and abstract
nouns are converted into countable nouns with the meanings ‘a unit of
N’, ‘a kind of N’, ‘an instance of N’. E. g. two coffees, different oils
(esp. in technical literature), peaceful initiatives.
The next commonest change is changing of intransitive verbs into
transitive: to run a horse in a race, to march the prisoners, to dive a
plane. Other secondary verb-classes can be changed likewise.
Non-gradable adjectives become gradable with a certain change of
meaning: He is more English than the English.
We share a more traditional approach and treat transposition within one
part of speech as resulting in lexico-semantic variation of one and the
same word, not as coining a new one (see § 3.4).
§ 8.7 CONVERSION AND OTHER TYPES OF WORD-FORMATION
The flexibility of the English vocabulary system makes a word formed by
conversion capable of further derivation, so that it enters into
combinations not only with functional but also with derivational affixes
characteristic of a verbal stem, and becomes distributionally equivalent
to it. For example, view ‘to watch television’ gives viewable, viewer,
viewing.
Conversion may be combined with other word-building processes, such as
composition. Attributive phrases like black ball, black list, pin point,
stone wall form the basis of such firmly established verbs as blackball,
blacklist, pinpoint, stonewall. The same pattern is much used in
nonce-words such as to my-dear, to my-love, to blue-pencil.
This type should be distinguished from cases when composition and
conversion are not simultaneous, that is when, for instance, a compound
noun gives rise to a verb: corkscrew n : : corkscrew v; streamline n : :
streamline v.
A special pattern deserving attention because of its ever increasing
productivity results as a combined effect of composition and conversion
forming nouns out of verb-adverb combinations. This type is different
from conversion proper as the basic forms are not homonymous due to the
difference in the stress pattern, although they consist of identical
morphemes. Thanks to solid or hyphenated spelling and single stress the
noun stem obtains phonetical and graphical integrity and indivisibility
absent in the verb-group, сf. to ‘draw ‘back : : a ‘drawback. Further
examples are: blackout n : : black out v; breakdown n : : break down v;
come-back, drawback, fall-out, hand-out, hangover, knockout, link-up,
lookout, lockout, makeup, pull-over, runaway, run-off, set-back,
take-off, takeover, teach-in.
The type is specifically English, its intense and growing development is
due to the profusion of verbal collocations (see p. 120 ff) and con- or
unchangeable, whether the meaning of the one element remains free, and,
11* 163
more generally, on the interdependence between the meaning of the
elements and the meaning of the set expression. Much attention is
devoted to different types of variation: synonymic, pronominal, etc.
After this brief review of possible semantic classifications, we pass on
to a formal and functional classification based on the fact that a set
expression functioning in speech is in distribution similar to definite
classes of words, whereas structurally it can be identified with various
types of syntagmas or with complete sentences.
We shall distinguish set expressions that are nominal phrases: the wot
of the trouble’, verbal phrases: put one’s best foot forward; adjectival
phrases: as good as gold; red as a cherry; adverbial phrases: from head
to foot; prepositional phrases: in the course of; conjunctional phrases:
as long as, on the other hand; interjectional phrases: Well, I never! A
stereotyped sentence also introduced into speech as a ready-made formula
may be illustrated by Never say die! ‘never give up hope’, take your
time ‘do not hurry’.
The above classification takes into consideration not only the type of
component parts but also the functioning of the whole, thus, tooth and
nail is not a nominal but an adverbial unit, because it serves to modify
a verb (e. g. fight tooth and nail); the identically structured lord and
master is a nominal phrase. Moreover, not every nominal phrase is used
in all syntactic functions possible for nouns. Thus, a bed of roses or a
bed of nails and forlorn hope are used only predicatively.
Within each of these classes a further subdivision is necessary. The
following list is not meant to be exhaustive, but to give only the
principal features of the types.
I. Set expressions functioning like nouns:
N+N: maiden name ‘the surname of a woman before she was married’; brains
trust ‘a committee of experts’ or ‘a number of reputedly well informed
persons chosen to answer questions of general interest without
preparation’, family jewels ‘shameful secrets of the CIA’ (Am. slang).
N’s+N: cat’s paw ‘one who is used for the convenience of a cleverer and
stronger person’ (the expression comes from a fable in which a monkey
wanting to eat some chestnuts that were on a hot stove, but not wishing
to burn himself while getting them, seised a cat and holding its paw in
his own used it to knock the chestnuts to the ground); Hob-son’s choice,
a set expression used when there is no choice at all, when a person has
to take what is offered or nothing (Thomas Hobson, a 17th century London
stableman, made every person hiring horses take the next in order).
Ns'+N: ladies’ man ‘one who makes special effort to charm or please
women’.
N+prp+N: the arm of the law; skeleton in the cupboard.
N+A: knight errant (the phrase is today applied to any chivalrous man
ready to help and protect oppressed and helpless people).
N+and+N: lord and master ‘husband’; all the world and his
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wife (a more complicated form); rank and file ‘the ordinary working
members of an organisation’ (the origin of this expression is military
life, it denotes common soldiers); ways and means ‘methods of overcoming
difficulties’.
A+N: green room ‘the general reception room of a theatre’ (it is said
that formerly such rooms had their walls coloured green to relieve the
strain on the actors’ eyes after the stage lights); high tea ‘an evening
meal which combines meat or some similar extra dish with the usual tea’;
forty winks ‘a short nap’.
N+subordinate clause: ships that pass in the night ‘chance
acquaintances’.
II. Set expressions functioning like verbs: V+N: take advantage
V+and+V: pick and choose V+(one’s)+N+(prp): snap ones fingers at
V+one+N: give one the bird ‘to fire sb’
V+subordinate clause: see how the land lies ‘to discover the state of
affairs’.
III. Set expressions functioning like adjectives: A+and+A: high and
mighty
(as)+A+as+N: as old as the hills, as mad as a hatter Set expressions are
often used as predicatives but not attributively. In the latter function
they are replaced by compounds.
IV. Set expressions functioning like adverbs:
A big group containing many different types of units, some of them with
a high frequency index, neutral in style and devoid of expressiveness,
others expressive.
N+N: tooth and nail
prp+N: by heart, of course, against the grain
adv+prp+N: once in a blue moon
Сf: by reason of : : on the ground of.
VI. Set expressions functioning like interjections:
These are often structured as imperative sentences: Bless (one’s) soul!
God bless me! Hang it (all)!
This review can only be brief and very general but it will not be
difficult for the reader to supply the missing links.
The list of types gives a clear notion of the contradictory nature of
set expressions: structured like phrases they function like words.
There is one more type of combinations, also rigid and introduced into
discourse ready-made but differing from all the types given above in so
far as it is impossible to find its equivalent among the parts of
speech. These are formulas used as complete utterances and syntactically
shaped like sentences, such as the well-known American maxim Keep
smiling! or the British Keep Britain tidy. Take it easy.
173
A.I. Smirnitsky was the first among Soviet scholars who paid attention
to sentences that can be treated as complete formulas, such as How do
you do? or I beg your pardon, It takes all kinds to make the world, Can
the leopard change his spots? They differ from all the combinations so
far discussed, because they are not equivalent to words in distribution
and are semantically analysable. The formulas discussed by N.N. Amosova
are on the contrary semantically specific, e. g. save your breath ‘shut
up’ or tell it to the marines. As it often happens with set expressions,
there are different explanations for their origin. (One of the suggested
origins is tell that to the horse marines; such a corps being
nonexistent, as marines are a sea-going force, the last expression means
‘tell it to someone who does not exist, because real people will not
believe it’). Very often such formulas, formally identical to sentences
are in reality used only as insertions into other sentences: the cap
fits ‘the statement is true’ (e. g.: “He called me a liar.” “Well, you
should know if the cap fits. ) Compare also: Butter would not melt in
his mouth; His bark is worse than his bite.
§ 9.4 SIMILARITY AND DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SET EXPRESSION AND A WORD
There is a pressing need for criteria distinguishing set expressions not
only from free phrases but from compound words as well. One of these
criteria is the formal integrity of words which had been repeatedly
mentioned and may be best illustrated by an example with the word
breakfast borrowed from W.L. Graff. His approach combines contextual
analysis and diachronic observations. He is interested in gradation from
free construction through the formula to compound and then simple word.
In showing the borderline between a word and a formular expression, W.L.
Graff speaks about the word breakfast derived from the set expression to
break fast, where break was a verb with a specific meaning inherent to
it only in combination with fast which means ‘keeping from food’. Hence
it was possible to say: And knight and squire had broke their fast
(W.Scott). The fact that it was a phrase and not a word is clearly
indicated by the conjugation treatment of the verb and syntactical
treatment of the noun. With an analytical language like English this
conjugation test is, unfortunately, not always applicable.
It would also be misleading to be guided in distinguishing between set
expressions and compound words by semantic considerations, there being
no rigorous criteria for differentiating between one complex notion and
a combination of two or more notions. The references of component words
are lost within the whole of a set expression, no less than within a
compound word. What is, for instance, the difference in this respect
between the set expression point of view and the compound viewpoint? And
if there is any, what are the formal criteria which can help to estimate
it?
174
Alongside with semantic unity many authors mention the unity of
syntactic function. This unity of syntactic function is obvious in the
predicate of the main clause in the following quotation from J. Wain,
which is a simple predicate, though rendered by a set expression: ...the
government we had in those days, when we (Great Britain) were the
world’s richest country, didn’t give a damn whether the kids grew up
with rickets or not ...
This syntactic unity, however, is not specific for all set expressions.
Two types of substitution tests can be useful in showing us the points
of similarity and difference between the words and set expressions. In
the first procedure a whole set expression is replaced within context by
a synonymous word in such a way that the meaning of the utterance
remains unchanged, e. g. he was in a brown study ? he mas gloomy. In the
second type of substitution test only an element of the set expression
is replaced, e. g. (as) white as chalk ? (as) white as milk ? (as) white
as snow; or it gives me the blues ? it gives him the blues ? it gives
one the blues. In this second type it is the set expression that is
retained, although its composition or referential meaning may change.
When applying the first type of procedure one obtains a criterion for
the degree of equivalence between a set expression and a word. One more
example will help to make the point clear. The set expression dead beat
can be substituted by a single word exhausted. E. g.: Dispatches, sir.
Delivered by a corporal of the 33rd. Dead beat with hard riding, sir
(Shaw). The last sentence may be changed into Exhausted with hard
riding, sir. The lines will keep their meaning and remain grammatically
correct. The possibility of this substitution permits us to regard this
set expression as a word equivalent.
On the other hand, there are cases when substitution is not possible.
The set expression red tape has a one word equivalent in Russian
бюрократизм, but in English it can be substituted only by a free phrase.
Thus, in the enumeration of political evils in the example below red
tape, although syntactically equivalent to derivative nouns used as
homogeneous members, can be substituted only by some free phrase, such
as rigid formality of official routine. Cf. the following example:
BURGOYNE: And will you wipe out our enemies in London, too? SWINDON: In
London! What enemies?
BURGOYNE (forcible): Jobbery and snobbery, incompetence and Red Tape ...
(Shaw).
The unity of syntactic function is present in this case also, but the
criterion of equivalence to a single word cannot be applied, because
substitution by a single word is impossible. Such equivalence is
therefore only relative, it is not universally applicable and cannot be
accepted as a general criterion for defining these units. The
equivalence of words and set expressions should not be taken too
literally but treated as a useful abstraction, only in the sense we have
stated.
The main point of difference between a word and a set expression is the
divisibility of the latter into separately structured elements which is
contrasted to the structural integrity of words. Although equivalent to
words in being introduced into speech ready-made, a set expression is
different from them, because it can be resolved into words, whereas
words are resolved
175
into morphemes. In compound words the process of integration is more
advanced. The methods and criteria serving to identify compounds and
distinguish them from phrases or groups of words, no matter how often
used together, have been pointed out in the chapter on compounds.
Morphological divisibility is evident when one of the elements (but not
the last one as in a compound word) is subjected to morphological
change. This problem has been investigated by N.N. Amosova, A.V. Koonin
and others.] N.N. Amosova gives the following examples:
He played second fiddle to her in his father’s heart (Galsworthy). ...
She disliked playing second fiddle (Christie). To play second fiddle ‘to
occupy a secondary, subordinate position’.
It must be rather fun having a skeleton in the cupboard (Milne). I hate
skeletons in the cupboard (Ibid.) A skeleton in the cupboard ‘a family
secret’.
A.V. Koonin shows the possibility of morphological changes in adjectives
forming part of phraseological units: He’s deader than a doornail; It
made the night blacker than pitch; The Cantervilles have blue blood, for
instance, the bluest in England.
It goes without saying that the possibility of a morphological change
cannot regularly serve as a distinctive feature, because it may take
place only in a limited number of set expressions (verbal or nominal).
The question of syntactic ties within a set expression is even more
controversial. All the authors agree that set expressions (for the most
part) represent one member of the sentence, but opinions differ as to
whether this means that there are no syntactical ties within set
expressions themselves. Actually the number of words in a sentence is
not necessarily equal to the number of its members.
The existence of syntactical relations within a set expression can be
proved by the possibility of syntactical transformations (however
limited) or inversion of elements and the substitution of the variable
member, all this without destroying the set expression as such. By a
variable element we mean the element of the set expression which is
structurally necessary but free to vary lexically. It is usually
indicated in dictionaries by indefinite pronouns, often inserted in
round brackets: make (somebody’s) hair stand on end ‘to give the
greatest astonishment or fright to another person’; sow (one’s) wild
oats ‘to indulge in dissipation while young’. The word in brackets can
be freely substituted: make (my, your, her, the reader’s) hair stand on
end.
? Ice was broken by the chairman; Has burnt his boats and ... ? Having
burnt his boats he ... Pronominal substitution is illustrated by the
following example: “Hold your tongue, Lady L.” “Hold yours, my good
fool.” (N. Marsh, quoted by N.N. Amosova)
All these facts are convincing manifestations of syntactical ties within
176
the units in question. Containing the same elements these units can
change their morphological form and syntactical structure, they may be
called changeable set expressions, as contrasted to stereotyped or
unchangeable set expressions, admitting no change either morphological
or syntactical. The examples discussed in the previous paragraph mostly
belong to this second type, indivisible and unchangeable; they are
nearer to a word than their more flexible counterparts. This opposition
is definitely correlated with structural properties.
All these examples proving the divisibility and variability of set
expressions throw light on the difference between them and words.
§ 9.5 FEATURES ENHANCING UNITY AND STABILITY OF SET EXPRESSIONS
Set expressions have their own specific features, which enhance their
stability and cohesion. These are their euphonic, imaginative and
connotative qualities. It has been often pointed out that many set
expressions are distinctly rhythmical, contain alliteration, rhyme,
imagery, contrast, are based on puns, etc. These features have always
been treated from the point of view of style and expressiveness. Their
cementing function is perhaps no less important. All these qualities
ensure the strongest possible contact between the elements, give them
their peculiar muscular feel, so that in pronouncing something like
stuff and nonsense the speaker can enjoy some release of pent-up nervous
tension. Consider the following sentence: Tommy would come back to her
safe and sound (O'Flaherty). Safe and sound is somehow more reassuring
than the synonymous word uninjured, which could have been used.
These euphonic and connotative qualities also prevent substitution for
another purely linguistic, though not semantic, reason — any
substitution would destroy the euphonic effect. Consider, for instance,
the result of synonymic substitution in the above alliterative pair safe
and sound. Secure and uninjured has the same denotational meaning but
sounds so dull and trivial that the phrase may be considered destroyed
and one is justified in saying that safe and sound admits no
substitution.
Rhythmic qualities are characteristic of almost all set expressions.
They are especially marked in such pairs as far and wide, far and near
‘many places both near and distant’; by fits and starts ‘irregularly’;
heart and soul ‘with complete devotion to a cause’. Rhythm is combined
with reiteration in the following well-known phrases: more and more, on
and on, one by one, through and through. Alliteration occurs in many
cases: part and parcel ‘an essential and necessary part’; with might and
main ‘with all one’s powers’; rack and ruin ‘a state of neglect and
collapse’; then and there ‘at once and on the spot’; from pillar to
post’, in for a penny, in for a pound’, head over heels; without rhyme
or reason’, pick of the pops’, a bee in one’s bonnet’, the why and
wherefore. It is interesting to note that alliterative phrases often
contain obsolete elements, not used elsewhere. In the above expressions
these are main, an obsolete synonym to might, and rack, probably a
variant of wreck.
12 И. B. Apнольд 177
As one of the elements becomes obsolete and falls out of the language,
demotivation may set in, and this, paradoxical though it may seem, also
tends to increase the stability and constancy of a set expression. The
process is complicated, because the preservation of obsolete elements in
set expressions is in its turn assisted by all the features mentioned
above. Some more examples of set expressions containing obsolete
elements are: hue and cry ‘a loud clamour about something’ (a synonymic
pair with the obsolete word hue); leave in the lurch ‘to leave in a
helpless position’ (with the obsolete noun lurch meaning ‘ambush’); not
a whit ‘not at all’ (with the obsolete word whit — a variant of wight
‘creature’, ‘thing’ —not used outside this expression and meaning ‘the
smallest thing imaginable’).
Rhyme is also characteristic of set expressions: fair and square
‘honest’; by hook or by crook ‘by any method, right or wrong’ (its
elements are not only rhymed but synonymous). Out and about ‘able to go
out’ is used about a convalescent person. High and dry was originally
used about ships, meaning ‘out of the water’, ‘aground’; at present it
is mostly used figuratively in several metaphorical meanings:
‘isolated’, ‘left without help’, ‘out of date’. This capacity of
developing an integer (undivided) transferred meaning is one more
feature that makes set expressions similar to words.
Semantic stylistic features contracting set expressions into units of
fixed context are simile, contrast, metaphor and synonymy. For example:
as like as two peas, as old as the hills and older than the hills
(simile); from beginning to end, for love or money, more or less, sooner
or later (contrast); a lame duck, a pack of lies, arms race, to swallow
the pill, in a nutshell (metaphor); by leaps and bounds, proud and
haughty (synonymy). A few more combinations of different features in the
same phrase are: as good as gold, as pleased as Punch, as fit as a
fiddle (alliteration, simile); now or never, to kill or cure
(alliteration and contrast). More rarely there is an intentional pun: as
cross as two sticks means ‘very angry’. This play upon words makes the
phrase jocular. The comic effect is created by the absurdity of the
combination making use of two different meanings of the word cross a and
n.
To a linguistically conscious mind most set expressions tend to keep
their history. It remains in them as an intricate force, and the
awareness of their history can yield rewarding pleasure in using or
hearing them. Very many examples of metaphors connected with the sea can
be quoted: be on the rocks, rest on the oars, sail close to the wind,
smooth sailing, weather the storm. Those connected with agriculture are
no less expressive and therefore easily remembered: plough the sand,
plough a lonely furrow, reap a rich harvest, thrash (a subject) out.
For all practical purposes the boundary between set expressions and free
phrases is vague. The point that is to be kept in mind is that there are
also some structural features of a set expression correlated with its
invariability.
There are, of course, other cases when set expressions lose their
metaphorical picturesqueness, having preserved some fossilised words and
178
phrases, the meaning of which is no longer correctly understood. For
instance, the expression buy a pig in a poke may be still used, although
poke ‘bag’ (cf . pouch, pocket) does not occur in other contexts.
Expressions taken from obsolete sports and occupations may survive in
their new figurative meaning. In these cases the euphonic qualities of
the expression are even more important. A muscular and irreducible
phrase is also memorable. The muscular feeling is of special importance
in slogans and battle cries. Saint George and the Dragon for Merrie
England, the medieval battle cry, was a rhythmic unit to which a man on
a horse could swing his sword. The modern Scholarships not battleships]
can be conveniently scanned by a marching crowd.
To sum up, the memorableness of a set expression, as well as its unity,
is assisted by various factors within the expression such as rhythm,
rhyme, alliteration, imagery and even the muscular feeling one gets>
when pronouncing them.
§ 9.6 PROVERBS, SAYINGS, FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS AND CLICHES
The place of proverbs, sayings and familiar quotations with respect to
set expressions is a controversial issue. A proverb is a short familiar
epigrammatic saying expressing popular wisdom, a truth or a moral lesson
in a concise and imaginative way. Proverbs have much in common with set
expressions, because their lexical components are also constant, their
meaning is traditional and mostly figurative, and they are introduced
into speech ready-made. That is why some scholars following V.V.
Vinogradov think proverbs must be studied together with phraseological
units. Others like J. Casares and N.N. Amosova think that unless they
regularly form parts of other sentences it is erroneous to include them
into the system of language, because they are independent units of
communication. N.N. Amosova even thinks that there is no more reason to
consider them as part of phraseology than, for instance, riddles and
children’s counts. This standpoint is hardly acceptable especially if we
do not agree with the narrow limits of phraseology offered by this
author. Riddles and counts are not as a rule included into utterances in
the process of communication, whereas proverbs are. Whether they are
included into an utterance as independent sentences or as part of
sentences is immaterial. If we follow that line of reasoning, we shall
have to exclude all interjections such as Hang it (all)! because they
are also syntactically independent. As to the argument that in many
proverbs the meaning of component parts does not show any specific
changes when compared to the meaning of the same words in free
combinations, it must be pointed out that in this respect they do not
differ from very many set expressions, especially those which are
emotionally neutral.
Another reason why proverbs must be taken into consideration together
with set expressions is that they often form the basis of set
expressions. E. g. the last straw breaks the camel’s back : : the last
straw; a drowning man will clutch at a straw : : clutch at a straw; it
is useless to lock the stable door when the steed is stolen : : lock the
stable door ‘to take precautions when the accident they are meant to
prevent has already happened’.
12* 179
Both set expressions and proverbs are sometimes split and changed for
humorous purposes, as in the following quotation where the proverb All
is not gold that glitters combines with an allusion to the set
expression golden age, e . g . It will be an age not perhaps of gold,
but at least of glitter. Compare also the following, somewhat daring
compliment meant to shock the sense of bourgeois propriety: But I
laughed and said, “Don’t you worry, Professor, I’m not pulling her
ladyship’s leg. I wouldn’t do such a thing. I have too much respect for
that charming limb.” (Cary) Sometimes the speaker notices the lack of
logic in a set expression and checks himself, as in the following: Holy
terror, she is — least not so holy, I suppose, but a terror all right
(Rattigan).
Taking a familiar group of words: A living dog is better than a dead
lion (from the Bible) and turning it around, a fellow critic once said
that Hazlitt was unable to appreciate a writer till he was dead — that
Hazlitt thought a dead ass better than a living lion. A. Huxley is very
fond of stylistic, mostly grotesque, effects achieved in this way. So,
for example, paraphrasing the set expression marry into money he says
about one of his characters, who prided herself on her conversation,
that she had married into conversation.
Lexicology does not deal more fully with the peculiarities of proverbs:
created in folklore, they are studied by folklorists, but in treating
units introduced into the act of communication ready-made we cannot
avoid touching upon them too.
As to familiar quotations, 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.
The Shakespearian quotations have become and remain extremely numerous —
they have contributed enormously to the store of the language. Some of
the most often used are: I know a trick worth two of that; A man more
sinned against than sinning (“King Lear”); Uneasy lies the head that
wears a crown (“Henry IV”). Very many come from “Hamlet”, for example:
Frailty, thy name is woman’, Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice’,
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark; Brevity is the soul of wit;
The rest is silence; Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; There
are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, I Than are dreamt of in
your philosophy; It out-herods Herod; For to the noble mind / Rich gifts
wax poor when givers prove unkind.
Excepting only W. Shakespeare, no poet has given more of his lines than
A. Pope to the common vocabulary of the English-speaking world. The
following are only a few of the best known quotations: A little learning
is a dangerous thing; To err is human; To forgive, divine; For fools
rush in where angels fear to tread; At every word a reputation dies; Who
shall decide when doctors disagree?
Quotations from classical sources were once a recognised feature of
180
public speech: de te fabula narratur (Horace) ‘the story is about you’;
ternpora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis ‘times change, and we change
with them’; timeo Danaoset dona ferentes (Virgil) ‘I fear the Greeks,
even when bringing gifts’. Now they are even regarded as bad form,
because they are unintelligible to those without a classical education.
So, when a speaker ventures a quotation of that kind he hastens to
translate it. A number of classical tags nevertheless survive in
educated speech in many countries, in Russian no less than in English.
There are the well-known phrases, such as ad hoc ‘for this special
reason’; bona fide ‘in good faith’; cum grano salts ‘with a grain of
salt’; mutatis mutandis ‘with necessary changes’; tabula rasa ‘a blank
tablet’ and others of the same kind. As long as they keep their Latin
form they do not belong to English vocabulary. Many of them, however,
show various degrees of assimilation, e.g. viva voce [‘vaiva ‘vousi]
‘oral examination’, which may be used as an adjective, an adverb and a
verb. Viva voce examination is colloquially shortened into viva (noun
and verb).
Some quotations are so often used that they come to be considered
cliches. The term comes from the printing trade. The cliche (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!”1 Opinions may vary on what
is tolerable and what sounds an offence to most of the listeners or
readers, as everyone may have his own likes and dislikes. The following
are perhaps the most generally recognised: the acid test, ample
opportunities, astronomical figures, the arms of Morpheus, to break the
ice, consigned to oblivion, the irony of fate, to sleep the sleep of the
just, stand shoulder to shoulder, swan song, toe the line, tender
mercies, etc. Empty and worn-out but pompous phrases often become mere
verbiage used as a poor compensation for a lack of thought or precision.
Here are some phrases occurring in passages of literary criticism and
justly branded as cliches: to blaze a trail, consummate art, consummate
skill, heights of tragedy, lofty flight of imagination. The so-called
journalese has its own set of overworked phrases: to usher in a new age,
to prove a boon to mankind, to pave the way to a bright new world, to
spell the doom of civilisation, etc.
In giving this review of English set expressions we have paid special
attention to the fact that the subject is a highly complex one and that
it has been treated by different scholars in very different ways. Each
approach and each classification have their advantages and their
drawbacks. The choice one makes depends on the particular problem one
has in view, and even so there remains much to be studied in the future.
1 E pur si muove (It) ‘yet it does move’ — the words attributed to
Galileo Galilei. He is believed to have said them after being forced to
recant his doctrine that the Earth moves round the Sun.
181
Part Two
ENGLISH VOCABULARY AS A SYSTEM
Chapter 10
HOMONYMS. SYNONYMS. ANTONYMS
§ 10.1 HOMONYMS
In a simple code each sign has only one meaning, and each meaning is
associated with only one sign. This one-to-one relationship is not
realised in natural languages. When several related meanings are
associated with the same group of sounds within one part of speech, the
word is called polysemantic, when two or more unrelated meanings are
associated with the same form — the words are homonyms, when two or more
different forms are associated with the same or nearly the same
denotative meanings — the words are synonyms.
Actually, if we describe the lexical system according to three
distinctive features, each of which may be present or absent, we obtain
23 = 8 possible combinations. To represent these the usual tables with
only horizontal and vertical subdivisions are inadequate, so we make use
of a mapping technique developed for simplifying logical truth functions
by E.W. Veitch that proved very helpful in our semantic studies.
In the table below a small section of the lexico-semantic system of the
language connected with the noun sound (as in sound of laughter) is
represented as a set of oppositions involving phonetical form, similar
lexical meaning and grammatical part-of-speech meaning. Every pair of
words is contrasted according to sameness or difference in three
distinctive features at once.
A maximum similarity is represented by square 1 containing the
lexico-semantic variants of the same word. All the adjoining squares
differ in one feature only. Thus squares 1 and 2 differ in part of
speech meaning only. Some dictionaries as, for instance “Thorndike
Century Junior Dictionary” even place sound1 and sounds3 in one entry.
On the other hand, we see that squares 2, 3 and 4 represent what we
shall call different types of homonymy. Square 7 presents words
completely dissimilar according to the distinctive features chosen.
Square 5 is a combination of features characteristic not only of
synonyms but of other types of semantic similarity that will be
discussed later on. But first we shall concentrate on homonyms, i.e.
words characterised by phonetic coincidence and semantic
differentiation.
Two or more words identical in sound and spelling but different in
meaning, distribution and (in many cases) origin are called homonyms.
The term is derived from Greek homonymous (homos ‘the same’
182
Table 1
SIMILAR LEXICAL MEANING DIFFERENT LEXICAL MEANING
SIMILAR SOUND FORM 1. Polysemy 2. Patterned Homonymy 3. Partial Homonymy
.4. Full Homonymy
sound2 n : : sound2 n sound2 as in : a vowel sound sound1 n : : sounds3
sounds as in: to sound a trumpet sound1 n : : sound4 a sound4 as in:
sound argument sound1 n: : sound5 n sound5 as in: Long Island Sound
DIFFERENT SOUND FORM 5. Synonymy and Hyponymy 6. Word-Family 7. Any
English Words 8. Words of the Same Part of Speech
sound1: : noise sound1:: whistle sound1 n soundless a soundproof a
sound3 v sound n simple a sound n simplicity n
and onoma ‘name’) and thus expresses very well the sameness of name
combined with the difference in meaning.
There is an obvious difference between the meanings of the symbol fast
in such combinations as run fast ‘quickly’ and stand fast ‘firmly’. The
difference is even more pronounced if we observe cases where fast is a
noun or a verb as in the following proverbs: A clean fast is better than
a dirty breakfast; Who feasts till he is sick, must fast till he is
well. Fast as an isolated word, therefore, may be regarded as a variable
that can assume several different values depending on the conditions of
usage, or, in other words, distribution. All the possible values of each
linguistic sign are listed in dictionaries. It is the duty of
lexicographers to define the boundaries of each word, i.e. to
differentiate homonyms and to unite variants deciding in each case
whether the different meanings belong to the same polysemantic word or
whether there are grounds to treat them as two or more separate words
identical in form. In speech, however, as a rule only one of all the
possible values is determined by the context, so that no ambiguity may
normally arise. There is no danger, for instance, that the listener
would wish to substitute the meaning
183
’quick’ into the sentence: It is absurd to have hard and fast rules
about anything (Wilde), or think that fast rules here are ‘rules of
diet’. Combinations when two or more meanings are possible are either
deliberate puns, or result from carelessness. Both meanings of liver,
i.e. ‘a living person’ and ‘the organ that secretes bile’ are, for
instance, intentionally present in the following play upon words: “Is
life worth living?” “It depends upon the liver.” Сf.: “What do you do
with the fruit?” “We eat what we can, and what we can’t eat we can.”
Very seldom can ambiguity of this kind interfere with understanding. The
following example is unambiguous, although the words back and part have
several homonyms, and maid and heart are polysemantic:
Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart (Byron).
Homonymy exists in many languages, but in English it is particularly
frequent, especially among monosyllabic words. In the list of 2540
homonyms given in the “Oxford English Dictionary” 89% are monosyllabic
words and only 9.1 % are words of two syllables. From the viewpoint of
their morphological structure, they are mostly one-morpheme words.
Classification of Homonyms. The most widely accepted classification is
that recognising homonyms proper, homophones and homographs. Homonyms
proper are words identical in pronunciation and spelling, like fast and
liver above. Other examples are: back n ‘part of the body’ : : back adv
‘away from the front’ : : back v ‘go back’; ball n ‘a round object used
in games’ : : ball n ‘a gathering of people for dancing’; bark n ‘the
noise made by a dog’ : : bark v ‘to utter sharp explosive cries’ : :
bark n ‘the skin of a tree’ : : bark n ‘a sailing ship’; base n ‘bottom’
: : base v ‘build or place upon’ : : base a ‘mean’; bay n ‘part of the
sea or lake filling wide-mouth opening of land’ : : bay n ‘recess in a
house or a room’ : : bay v ‘bark’ : : bay n ‘the European laurel’. The
important point is that homonyms are distinct words: not different
meanings within one word.
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.
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.
It has been often argued that homographs constitute a phenomenon that
should be kept apart from homonymy as the object of linguistics is sound
language. This viewpoint can hardly be accepted. Because of the effects
of education and culture written English is a generalised national form
of expression. An average speaker does not separate the written and oral
form. On the contrary he is more likely to analyse the words in terms of
letters than in terms of phonemes with which he is less familiar. That
is why a linguist must take into consideration both the spelling and the
pronunciation of words when analysing cases of identity of form and
diversity of content.
Various types of classification for homonyms proper have been suggested.
A comprehensive system may be worked out if we are guided by the theory
of oppositions and in classifying the homonyms take into consideration
the difference or sameness in their lexical and grammatical meaning,
paradigm and basic form. For the sake of completeness we shall consider
this problem in terms of the same mapping technique used for the
elements of vocabulary system connected with the word sound.
As both form and meaning can be further subdivided, the combination of
distinctive features by which two words are compared becomes more
complicated — there are four features: the form may be phonetical and
graphical, the meaning — lexical and grammatical, a word may also have a
paradigm of grammatical forms different from the basic form.
The distinctive features shown in the table on p. 186 are lexical
meaning (different denoted by A, or nearly the same denoted by A),
grammatical meaning (different denoted by B, or same by B), paradigm
(different denoted by C, or same denoted by C), and basic form
(different D and same D).
The term “nearly same lexical meaning” must not be taken too literally.
It means only that the corresponding members of the opposition have some
important invariant semantic components in common. “Same grammatical
meaning” implies that both members belong to the same part of speech.
Same paradigm comprises also cases when there is only one word form,
i.e. when the words are unchangeable. Inconsistent combinations of
features are crossed out in the table. It is, for instance, impossible
for two words to be identical in all word forms and different in basic
forms, or for two homonyms to show no difference either in lexical or
grammatical meaning, because in this case they are not homonyms. That
leaves twelve possible classes.
185
Homonyms
Table II
Difference and Identity in Words
A Different lexical meaning A Nearly same lexical meaning
В Different grammatical meaning Partial Homonymy Patterned Homonymy D
Same basic form
light, -s n light, -er, -est a flat, -s n flat, -er, -est a for prp for
cj before prp before adv before cj eye, -s n eye, -s, -ed, -ing v
might n may—might v
thought n thought v (Past Indefinite Tense of think) D Different basic
form
В Same grammatical meaning axis, axes n axe — axes n bat—butted v
butt—butted v
Synonyms
lie—lay—lain
V
lie — lied — lied v Full Homonymy
spring, -s n spring, -s n spring, -s n Polysemy
Variants of the same polysemantic word D Same basic form
С
Different paradigm С
Same paradigm or no changes С
The 12 classes are:
ABCD. Members of the opposition light n ‘the contrary of darkness’ : :
light a ‘not heavy’ are different in lexical and grammatical meaning,
have different paradigms but the same basic form. The class of partial
homonymy is very numerous. A further subdivision might take into
consideration the parts of speech to which the members belong, namely
the oppositions of noun : : verb, adjective : : verb, n : : adjective,
etc.
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ABCD. Same as above, only not both members are in their basic form. The
noun (here might ‘power’) is in its basic form, the singular, but the
verb may will coincide with it only in the Past Tense. This lack of
coincidence between basic forms is not frequent, so only few examples
are possible. Compare also bit n ‘a small piece’ and bit (the Past
Indefinite Tense and Participle II of bite).
ABCD. Contains pairs of words belonging to the same part of speech,
different in their basic form but coinciding in some oblique form, e. g.
in the plural, or in the case of verbs, in the Past Tense. Axe — axes,
axis — axes. The type is rare.
ABCD. Different lexical meaning, same basic form, same grammatical
meaning and different paradigm: lie — lay — lain and lie — lied — lied.
Not many cases belong to this group.
ABCD. Represents pairs different in lexical and grammatical meaning but
not in paradigm, as these are not changeable form words. Examples: for
prp contrasted to for cj.
ABCD. The most typical case of full homonymy accepted by everybody and
exemplified in every textbook. Different lexical meanings, but the
homonyms belong to the same part of speech: spring1 n ‘a leap’ ::
spring2 ‘a source’ :: spring3 n ‘the season in which vegetation begins’.
ABCD. Patterned homonymy. Differs from the previous (i.e. ABCD) in the
presence of some common component in the lexical meaning of the members,
some lexical invariant: before prp, before adv, before cj, all express
some priority in succession. This type of opposition is regular among
form words. .
ABCD. Pairs showing maximum identity. But as their lexical meaning is
only approximately the same, they may be identified as variants of one
polysemantic word.
ABCD. Contains all the cases due to conversion: eye n : : eye v. The
members differ in grammatical meaning and paradigm. This group is
typical of patterned homonymy. Examples of such noun-to-verb or
verb-to-noun homonymy can be augmented almost indefinitely. The mean-ing
of the second element can always be guessed if the first is known.
ABCD. Pairs belonging to different parts of speech and coinciding in
some of the forms. Their similarity is due to a common root, as in
thought n : thought v (the Past Indefinite Tense of think).
ABCD. Similarity in both lexical and grammatical meaning combined with
difference in form is characteristic of synonyms and hyponyms.
ABCD. The group is not numerous and comprises chiefly cases of double
plural with a slight change in meaning such as brother — brothers : :
brother — brethren.
It goes without saying that this is a model that gives a general scheme.
Actually a group of homonyms may contain members belonging to different
groups in this classification. Take, for example, fell1 n ‘animal’s hide
or skin with the hair’; fell2 n ‘hill’ and also ‘a stretch of
North-English moorland’; fell3 a ‘fierce’ (poet.); fell4 v ‘to cut down
187
trees’ and as a noun ‘amount of timber cut’; fell5 (the Past Indefinite
Tense of the verb fall). This group may be broken into pairs, each of
which will fit into one of the above described divisions. Thus, fell1 :
: fell2 may be characterised as ABCD, fell1 : : fell4 as ABCD and fell4
: : fell5 as ABCD.
§ 10.2 THE ORIGIN OF HOMONYMS
The intense development of homonymy in the English language is obviously
due not to one single factor but to several interrelated causes, such as
the monosyllabic character of English and its analytic structure.
The abundance of homonyms is also closely connected with such a
characteristic feature of the English language as the phonetic identity
of word and stem or, in other words, the predominance of free forms
among the most frequent roots. It is quite obvious that if the frequency
of words stands in some inverse relationship to their length, the
monosyllabic words will be the most frequent. Moreover, as the most
frequent words are also highly polysemantic, it is only natural that
they develop meanings which in the course of time may deviate very far
from the central one. When the intermediate links fall out, some of
these new meanings lose all connections with the rest of the structure
and start a separate existence. The phenomenon is known as
disintegration or split of polysemy.
Different causes by which homonymy may be brought about are subdivided
into two main groups:
homonymy through convergent sound development, when two or three words
of different origin accidentally coincide in sound; and
homonymy developed from polysemy through divergent sense development.
Both may be combined with loss of endings and other morphological
processes.
In Old English the words zesund ‘healthy’ and sund ‘swimming’ were
separate words both in form and in meaning. In the course of time they
have changed their meaning and phonetic form, and the latter
accidentally coincided: OE sund>ModE sound ‘strait’; OE зesund>ModE
sound ‘healthy’. The group was joined also accidentally by the noun
sound ‘what is or may be heard’ with the corresponding verb that
developed from French and ultimately from the Latin word sonus, and the
verb sound ‘to measure the depth’ of dubious etymology. The coincidence
is purely accidental.
Two different Latin verbs: cadere ‘to fall’ and capere ‘to hold’ are the
respective sources of the homonyms case1 ‘instance of thing’s occurring’
and case2 ‘a box’. Indeed, case1
Unlike the homonyms case and sound all the homonyms of the box group
due to disintegration or split of polysemy are etymologically connected.
The sameness of form is not accidental but based on genetic
relationship. They are all derived from one another and are all
ultimately traced to the Latin buxus. “The Concise Oxford Dictionary”
has five entries for box: box1 n ‘a kind of small evergreen shrub’; box2
n ‘receptacle made of wood, cardboard, metal, etc. and usually provided
with a lid’; box3 v ‘to put into a box’; box4 n ‘slap with the hand on
the ear’; box5 v — a sport term meaning ‘to fight with fists in padded
gloves’.
Such homonyms may be partly derived from one another but their common
point of origin lies beyond the limits of the English language. In these
words with the appearance of a new meaning, very different from the
previous one, the semantic structure of the parent word splits. The new
meaning receives a separate existence and starts a new semantic
structure of its own. Hence the term disintegration or split of
polysemy.
It must be noted, however, that though the number of examples in which a
process of this sort could be observed is considerable, it is difficult
to establish exact criteria by which disintegration of polysemy could be
detected. The whole concept is based on stating whether there is any
connection between the meanings or not.1 Whereas in the examples dealing
with phonetic convergence, i.e. when we said that case1 and case2 are
different words because they differ in origin, we had definite
linguistic criteria to go by; in the case of disintegration of polysemy
there are none to guide us, we can only rely on intuition and individual
linguistic experience. For a trained linguist the number of unrelated
homonyms will be much smaller than for an uneducated person. The
knowledge of etymology and cognate languages will always help to supply
the missing links. It is easier, for instance, to see the connection
between beam ‘a ray of light’ and beam ‘the metallic structural part of
a building’ if one knows the original meaning of the word, i.e. ‘tree’
(OE beam||Germ Baum), and is used to observe similar metaphoric
transfers in other words. The connection is also more obvious if one is
able to notice the same element in such compound names of trees as
hornbeam, whitebeam, etc.
The conclusion, therefore, is that in diachronic treatment the only
rigorous criterion is that of etymology observed in explanatory
dictionaries of the English language where words are separated according
to their origin, as in match1 ‘a piece of inflammable material you
strike fire with’ (from OFr mesche, Fr meche) and match2 (from OE
gemaecca ‘fellow’).
It is interesting to note that out of 2540 homonyms listed in “The
Oxford English Dictionary” only 7% are due to disintegration of
polysemy, all the others are etymologically different. One must,
however, keep in mind that patterned homonymy is here practically
disregarded.
This underestimation of regular patterned homonymy tends to produce a
false impression. Actually the homonymy of nouns and verbs due to the
processes of loss of endings on the one hand and conversion
1 See p. 192 where a formal procedure is suggested.
189
on the other is one of the most prominent features of present-day
English. The process has been analysed in detail in the chapter on
conversion. It may be combined with semantic changes as in the pair long
a : : long v. The explanation is that when it seems long before
something comes to you, you long for it (long a
The process can sometimes be more complicated. Thus, according to COD,
the verb stick developed as a mixture of ME stiken
The etymological criterion may lead to distortion of the present-day
situation. The English vocabulary of today is not a replica of the Old
English vocabulary with some additions from borrowing. It is in many
respects a different system, and this system will not be revealed if the
lexicographer is guided by etymological criteria only.
A more or less simple, if not very rigorous, procedure based on purely
synchronic data may be prompted by analysis of dictionary definitions.
It may be called explanatory transformation. It is based on the
assumption that if different senses rendered by the same phonetic
complex can be defined with the help of an identical kernel word-group,
they may be considered sufficiently near to be regarded as variants of
the same word; if not, they are homonyms.
Consider the following set of examples:
A child’s voice is heard (Wesker).
His voice ... was ... annoyingly well-bred (Cronin).
The voice-voicelessness distinction ... sets up some English consonants
in opposed pairs ...
In the voice contrast of active and passive ... the active is the
unmarked form.
The first variant (voice1) may be defined as ‘sounds uttered in speaking
or singing as characteristic of a particular person’, voice2 as ‘mode of
uttering sounds in speaking or singing’, voice3 as ‘the vibration of the
vocal chords in sounds uttered’. So far all the definitions contain one
and the same kernel element rendering the invariant common basis of
their meaning. It is, however, impossible to use the same kernel element
for the meaning present in the fourth example. The corresponding
definition is: “Voice — that form of the verb that expresses the
relation of the subject to the action”. This failure to satisfy the same
explanation formula sets the fourth meaning apart. It may then be
considered a homonym to the polysemantic word embracing the first three
variants. The procedure described may remain helpful when the items
considered belong to different parts of speech; the verb voice may mean,
for example, ‘to utter a sound by the aid of the vocal chords’:
This brings us to the problem of patterned homonymy, i.e. of the
invariant lexical meaning present in homonyms that have developed from
one common source and belong to various parts of speech.
Is a lexicographer justified in placing the verb voice with the above
meaning into the same entry with the first three variants of the noun?
The same question arises with respect to after or before — preposition,
conjunction and adverb.
English lexicographers think it quite possible for one and the same word
to function as different parts of speech. Such pairs as act n — act v,
back n — back v, drive n — drive v, the above mentioned after and before
and the like, are all treated as one word functioning as different parts
of speech. This point of view was severely criticised. It was argued
that one and the same word could not belong to different parts of speech
simultaneously, because this would contradict the definition of the word
as a system of forms.
192
This viewpoint is not faultless either; if one follows it consistently,
one should regard as separate words all cases when words are countable
nouns in one meaning and uncountable in another, when verbs can be used
transitively and intransitively, etc. In this case hair1 ‘all the hair
that grows on a person’s head’ will be one word, an uncountable noun;
whereas ‘a single thread of hair’ will be denoted by another word
(hair2) which, being countable, and thus different in paradigm, cannot
be considered the same word. It would be tedious to enumerate all the
absurdities that will result from choosing this path. A dictionary
arranged on these lines would require very much space in printing and
could occasion much wasted time in use. The conclusion therefore is that
efficiency in lexicographic work is secured by a rigorous application of
etymological criteria combined with formalised procedures of
establishing a lexical invariant suggested by synchronic linguistic
methods.
As to those concerned with teaching of English as a foreign language,
they are also keenly interested in patterned homonymy. The most
frequently used words constitute the greatest amount of difficulty, as
may be summed up by the following jocular example: I think that this
“that” is a conjunction but that that “that” that that man used was a
pronoun.
A correct understanding of this peculiarity of contemporary English
should be instilled in the pupils from the very beginning, and they
should be taught to find their way in sentences where several words have
their homonyms in other parts of speech, as in Jespersen’s example: Will
change of air cure love? To show the scope of the problem for the
elementary stage a list of homonyms that should be classified as
patterned is given below:
Above, prp, adv, a; act n, v; after prp, adv, cj; age n, v; back n, adv,
v; ball n, v; bank n, v; before prp, adv, cj; besides prp, adv; bill n,
v; bloom n, v; box n, v. The other examples are: by, can, case, close,
country, course, cross, direct, draw, drive, even, faint, flat, fly,
for, game, general, hard, hide, hold, home, just, kind, last, leave,
left, lie, light, like, little, lot, major, march, may, mean, might,
mind, miss, part, plain, plane, plate, right, round, sharp, sound,
spare, spell, spring, square, stage, stamp, try, type, volume, watch,
well, will.
For the most part all these words are cases of patterned
lexico-grammatical homonymy taken from the minimum vocabulary of the
elementary stage: the above homonyms mostly differ within each group
grammatically but possess some lexical invariant. That is to say, act v
follows the standard four-part system of forms with a base form act, an
s-form (act-s), a Past Indefinite Tense form (acted) and an ing-form
(acting) and takes up all syntactic functions of verbs, whereas act n
can have two forms, act (sing.) and acts (pl.). Semantically both
contain the most generalised component rendering the notion of doing
something.
Recent investigations have shown that it is quite possible to establish
and to formalise the differences in environment, either syntactical or
lexical, serving to signal which of the several inherent values is to be
ascribed to the variable in a given context. An example of
distributional analysis will help to make this point clear.
13 И. В. Арнольд 193
The distribution of a lexico-semantic variant of a word may be
represented as a list of structural patterns in which it occurs and the
data on its combining power. Some of the most typical structural
patterns for a verb are: N+V+N, N+V+prp+N, N+V+A, N+V+adv, N+ V+to+V and
some others. Patterns for nouns are far less studied, but for the
present case one very typical example will suffice. This is the
structure: article+A+N.
In the following extract from “A Taste of Honey” by Shelagh Delaney the
morpheme laugh occurs three times: I can’t stand people who faugh at
other people. They'd get a bigger laugh, if they laughed at themselves.
We recognise laugh used first and last here as a verb, because the
formula is N+laugh+prp+N and so the pattern is in both cases N+ V+prp+N.
In the beginning of the second sentence laugh is a noun and the pattern
is article+A+N.
This elementary example can give a very general idea of the procedure
which can be used for solving more complicated problems.
We may sum up our discussion by pointing out that whereas distinction
between polysemy and homonymy is relevant and important for lexicography
it is not relevant for the practice of either human or machine
translation. The reason for this is that different variants of a
polysemantic word are not less conditioned by context than lexical
homonyms. In both cases the identification of the necessary meaning is
based on the corresponding distribution that can signal it and must be
present in the memory either of the pupil or the machine. The
distinction between patterned and non-patterned homonymy, greatly
underrated until now, is of far greater importance. In non-patterned
homonymy every unit is to be learned separately both from the lexical
and grammatical points of view. In patterned homonymy when one knows the
lexical meaning of a given word in one part of speech, one can
accurately predict the meaning when the same sound complex occurs in
some other part of speech, provided, of course, that there is sufficient
context to guide one.
| 10.4 SYNONYMS
Taking up similarity of meaning and contrasts of phonetic shape, we
observe that every language has in its vocabulary a variety of words,
kindred in meaning but distinct in morphemic composition, phonemic shape
and usage, ensuring the expression of most delicate shades of thought,
feeling and imagination. The more developed the language, the richer the
diversity and therefore the greater the possibilities of lexical choice
enhancing the effectiveness and precision of speech.
Thus, slay is the synonym of kill but it is elevated and more expressive
involving cruelty and violence. The way synonyms function may be seen
from the following example: Already in this half-hour of bombardment
hundreds upon hundreds of men would have been violently slain, smashed,
torn, gouged, crushed, mutilated (Aldington).
The synonymous words smash and crush are semantically very close, they
combine to give a forceful representation of the atrocities of war. Even
this preliminary example makes it obvious that the still very common
194
definitions of synonyms as words of the same language having the same
meaning or as different words that stand for the same notion are by no
means accurate and even in a way misleading. By the very nature of
language every word has its own history, its own peculiar motivation,
its own typical contexts. And besides there is always some hidden
possibility of different connotation and feeling in each of them.
Moreover, words of the same meaning would be useless for communication:
they would encumber the language, not enrich it. If two words exactly
coincide in meaning and use, the natural tendency is for one of them to
change its meaning or drop out of the language.
Thus, synonyms are words only similar but not identical in meaning. This
definition is correct but vague. E. g. horse and animal are also
semantically similar but not synonymous. A more precise linguistic
definition should be based on a workable notion of the semantic
structure of the word and of the complex nature of every separate
meaning in a polysemantic word. Each separate lexical meaning of a word
has been described in Chapter 3 as consisting of a denotational
component identifying the notion or the object and reflecting the
essential features of the notion named, shades of meaning reflecting its
secondary features, additional connotations resulting from typical
contexts in which the word is used, its emotional component and
stylistic colouring. Connotations are not necessarily present in every
word. The basis of a synonymic opposition is formed by the first of the
above named components, i.e. the denotational component. It will be
remembered that the term opposition means the relationship of partial
difference between two partially similar elements of a language. A
common denotational component forms the basis of the opposition in
synonymic group. All the other components can vary and thus form the
distinctive features of the synonymic oppositions.
Synonyms can therefore be defined in terms of linguistics as two or more
words of the same language, belonging to the same part of speech and
possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational
meanings, interchangeable, at least in some contexts without any
considerable alteration in denotational meaning, but differing in
morphemic composition, phonemic shape, shades of meaning, connotations,
style, valency and idiomatic use. Additional characteristics of style,
emotional colouring and valency peculiar to one of the elements in a
synonymic group may be absent in one or all of the others.
The definition is of necessity very bulky and needs some commenting
upon.
To have something tangible to work upon it is convenient to compare some
synonyms within their group, so as to make obvious the reasons for the
definition. The verbs experience, undergo, sustain and suffer, for
example, come together, because all four render the notion of
experiencing something. The verb and the noun experience indicate actual
living through something and coming to know it first-hand rather than
from hearsay. Undergo applies chiefly to what someone or something bears
or is subjected to, as in to undergo an operation, to undergo changes.
Compare also the following example from L.P. Smith: The French language
has undergone
13* 195
considerable and more recent changes since the date when the Normans
brought it into England. In the above example the verb undergo can be
replaced by its synonyms suffer or experience without any change of the
sentence meaning. The difference is neutralised.
Synonyms, then, are interchangeable under certain conditions specific to
each group. This seems to call forth an analogy with phonological
neutralisation. Now, it will be remembered that neutralisation is the
absence in some contexts of a phonetic contrast found elsewhere or
formerly in the language. It appears we are justified in calling
semantic neutralisation the suspension of an otherwise functioning
semantic opposition that occurs in some lexical contexts.
And yet suffer in this meaning (‘to undergo’), but not in the example
above, is characterised by connotations implying wrong or injury. No
semantic neutralisation occurs in phrases like suffer atrocities, suffer
heavy losses. The implication is of course caused by the existence of
the main intransitive meaning of the same word, not synonymous with the
group, i.e. ‘to feel pain’. Sustain as an element of this group differs
from both in shade of meaning and style. It is an official word and it
suggests undergoing affliction without giving way.
A further illustration will be supplied by a group of synonymous nouns:
hope, expectation, anticipation. They are considered to be synonymous,
because they all three mean ‘having something in mind which is likely to
happen’. They are, however, much less interchangeable than the previous
group because of more strongly pronounced difference in shades of
meaning. Expectation may be either of good or of evil. Anticipation, as
a rule, is a pleasurable expectation of something good. Hope is not only
a belief but a desire that some event would happen. The stylistic
difference is also quite marked. The Romance words anticipation and
expectation are formal literary words used only by educated speakers,
whereas the native monosyllabic hope is stylistically neutral. Moreover,
they differ in idiomatic usage. Only hope is possible in such set
expressions as: hope against hope, lose hope, pin one’s hopes on sth.
Neither expectation nor anticipation could be substituted into the
following quotation from T.S. Eliot: You do not khow what hope is until
you have lost it.
Taking into consideration the corresponding series of synonymous verbs
and verbal set expressions: hope, anticipate, expect, look forward to,
we shall see that separate words may be compared to whole set
expressions. Look forward to is also worthy of note, because it forms a
definitely colloquial counterpart to the rest. It can easily be shown,
on the evidence of examples, that each synonymic group comprises a
dominant element. This synonymic dominant is the most general term of
its kind potentially containing the specific features rendered by all
the other members of the group, as, for instance, undergo and hope in
the above.
The synonymic dominant should not be confused with a generic term or a
hyperonym. A generic term is relative. It serves as the name for the
notion of the genus as distinguished from the names of the species —
hyponyms. For instance, animal is a
196
generic term as compared to the specific names wolf, dog or mouse
(which are called equonyms). Dog, in its turn, may serve as a generic
term for different breeds such as bull-dog, collie, poodle, etc.
The recently introduced term for this type of paradigmatic relation is
hyponymy or inclusion, for example the meaning of pup is said to be
included in the meaning of dog, i.e. a more specific term is included in
a more generic one. The class of animals referred to by the word dog is
wider and includes the class referred to by the word pup. The term
inсlusiоn is somewhat ambiguous, as one might also say that pup includes
the meaning ‘dog'+the meaning ‘small’, therefore the term hyponym is
preferable. We can say that pup is the hyponym of dog, and dog is the
hyponym of animal, dog, cat, horse, cow, etc. are equonyms and are
co-hyponyms of animal. Synonymy differs from hyponymy in being a
symmetrical relation, i.e. if a is a synonym of b, b is the synonym of
a. Hyponymy is asymmetrical, i.e. if a is a hyponym of b, b is the
hyperonym of a. The combining forms hypo- and hyper-come from the Greek
words hypo- ‘under’ and hyper- ‘over’ (cf. hypotonic ‘having less than
normal blood pressure’ and hypertonic ‘having extreme arterial
tension’).
The definition on p. 195 states that synonyms possess one or more
identical or nearly identical meanings. To realise the significance of
this, one must bear in mind that the majority of frequent words are
polysemantic, and that it is precisely the frequent words that have many
synonyms. The result is that one and the same word may belong in its
various meanings to several different synonymic groups. The verb appear
in ... an old brown cat without a tail appeared from nowhere (Mansfield)
is synonymous with come into sight, emerge. On the other hand, when Gr.
Greene depicts the far-off figures of the parachutists who ...appeared
stationary, appeared is synonymous with look or seem, their common
component being ‘give impression of’. Appear, then, often applies to
erroneous impressions.
Compare the following groups synonymous to five different meanings of
the adjective fresh, as revealed by characteristic contexts:
A fresh metaphor — fresh : : original : : novel : : striking.
To begin a fresh paragraph — fresh : : another : : different : : new.
Fresh air — fresh : : pure : : invigorating.
A freshman — fresh : : inexperienced : : green : : raw.
To be fresh with sb — fresh : : impertinent : : rude.
The semantic structures of two polysemantic words sometimes coincide in
more than one meaning, but never completely.
Synonyms may also differ in emotional colouring which may be present in
one element of the group and absent in all or some of the others. Lonely
as compared with alone is emotional as is easily seen from the following
examples: ... a very lonely boy lost between them and aware at ten that
his mother had no interest in him, and that his father was a stranger.
(Aldridge). I shall be alone as my secretary doesn’t come to-day
(M.Dickens). Both words denote being apart from others, but lonely
besides the general meaning implies longing for company, feeling sad
because of the lack of sympathy and companionship. Alone does not
necessarily suggest any sadness at being by oneself.
197
If the difference in the meaning of synonyms concerns the notion or the
emotion expressed, as was the case in the groups discussed above, the
synonyms are classed as ideоgraphiс synonyms,1 and the opposition
created in contrasting them may be called an ideographic opposition. The
opposition is formulated with the help of a clear definitive statement
of the semantic component present in all the members of the group. The
analysis proceeds as a definition by comparison with the standard that
is thus settled. The establishment of differential features proves very
helpful, whereas sliding from one synonym to another with no definite
points of departure created a haphazard approach with no chance of
tracing the system.
“The Anglo-Russian Dictionary of Synonyms” edited by J.D. Apresyan
analyses semantic, stylistic, grammatical and distributional
characteristics of the most important synonymic groups with great skill
and thoroughness and furnishes an impressive array of well-chosen
examples. The distinctive features evolved in describing the points of
similarity and difference within groups deserves special attention. In
analysing the group consisting of the nouns look, glance, glimpse, peep,
sight and view the authors suggest the following distinctive features:
1) quickness of the action, 2) its character, 3) the role of the doer of
the action, 4) the properties and role of the object. The words look,
glance, glimpse and peep denote a conscious and direct endeavour to see,
the word glance being the most general. The difference is based on time
and quickness of the action. A glance is ‘a look which is quick and
sudden’. A glimpse is quicker still, implying only momentary sight. A
peep is ‘a brief furtive glimpse at something that is hidden’. The words
sight and view, unlike the other members of the group, can describe not
only the situation from the point of one who sees something, but also
situations in which it is the object — that what is seen, that is most
important, e. g. a fine view over the lake. It is also mentioned that
sight and view may be used only in singular. What is also important
about synonyms is that they differ in their use of prepositions and in
other combining possibilities. One can, for instance, use at before
glance and glimpse (at a glance, at a glimpse) but not before look.
In a stylistic opposition of synonyms the basis of comparison is again
the denotational meaning, and the distinctive feature is the presence or
absence of a stylistic colouring which may also be accompanied by a
difference in emotional colouring.
It has become quite a tradition with linguists when discussing synonyms
to quote a passage from “As You Like It” (Act V, Scene I) to illustrate
the social differentiation of vocabulary and the stylistic relationship
existing in the English language between simple, mostly native, words
and their dignified and elaborate synonyms borrowed from the French. We
shall keep to this time-honoured convention. Speaking to a country
fellow William, the jester Touchstone says: Therefore, you
1 The term has been introduced by V.V. Vinogradov.
198
clown, abandon, — which is in the vulgar leave, — the society, — which
in the boorish is company, — of this female, — which in the common is
woman; which together is abandon the society of this female, or, clown,
thou perishest; or to thy better understanding diest; or, to wit, I kill
thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death.
The general effect of poetic or learned synonyms when used in prose or
in everyday speech is that of creating an elevated tone. The point may
be proved by the very first example in this paragraph (see p. 194) where
the poetic and archaic verb slay is substituted for the neutral kill. We
must be on our guard too against the idea that the stylistic effect may
exist without influencing the meaning; in fact it never does. The verb
slay not only lends to the whole poetical and solemn ring, it also shows
the writer’s and his hero’s attitude to the fact, their horror and
repugnance of war and their feeling for the victims.
The study of synonyms is a borderline province between semantics and
stylistics on the one hand and semantics and phraseology on the other
because of the synonymic collocations serving as a means of emphasis.
Synonymic pairs like wear and tear, pick and choose are very numerous in
modern English phraseology and often used both in everyday speech and in
literature. They show all the typical features of idiomatic phrases that
ensure their memorableness such as rhythm, alliteration, rhyme and the
use of archaic words seldom occurring elsewhere.
The examples are numerous: hale and hearty, with might and main,
nevertheless and notwithstanding, stress and strain, rack and ruin,
really and truly, hue and cry, wane and pale, act and deed. There are
many others which show neither rhyme nor alliteration, and consist of
two words equally modern. They are pleonastic, i.e. they emphasise the
idea by just stating it twice, and possess a certain rhythmical quality
which probably enhances their unity and makes them easily remembered.
These are: by leaps and bounds, pure and simple, stuff and nonsense,
bright and shining, far and away, proud and haughty and many more.
In a great number of cases the semantic difference between two or more
synonyms is supported by the difference in valency. The difference in
distribution may be syntactical, morphological, lexical, and surely
deserves more attention than has been so far given to it. It is, for
instance, known that bare in reference to persons is used only
predicatively, while naked occurs both predicatively and attributively.
The same is true about alone, which, irrespectively of referent, is used
only predicatively, whereas its synonyms solitary and lonely occur in
both functions. The function is predicative in the following sentence:
If you are idle, be not solitary, if you are solitary, be not idle (S.
Johnson). It has been repeatedly mentioned that begin and commence
differ stylistically. It must be noted, however, that their
distributional difference is not less important. Begin is generalised in
its lexical meaning and becomes a semi-auxiliary when used with an
infinitive. E. g.: It has begun to be done — it has been begun. If
follows naturally that begin and not commence is the right word before
an infinitive even in formal style. Seem and appear may be followed by
an infinitive or
199
a that-clause, a hill of a hundred metres is not high. The same
relativity is characteristic of its antonym low. As to the word tall, it
is used about objects whose height is greatly in excess of their breadth
or diameter and whose actual height is great for an object of its kind:
a tall man, a tall tree. The antonym is short.
The area where substitution is possible is very limited and outside it
all replacement makes the utterance vague, ungrammatical and even
unintelligible. This makes the knowledge of where each synonym differs
from another of paramount importance for correctness of speech.
The distinction between words similar in meaning are often very fine and
elusive, so that some special instruction on the use of synonyms is
necessary even for native speakers. This accounts for the great number
of books of synonyms that serve as guides for those who aim at good
style and precision and wish to choose the most appropriate terms from
the varied stock of the English vocabulary. The practical utility of
such reference works as “Roget’s International Thesaurus” depends upon a
prior knowledge of the language on the part of the person using them.
N.A. Shechtman has discussed this problem on several occasions. (See
Recommended Reading.)
The study of synonyms is especially indispensable for those who learn
English as a foreign language because what is the right word in one
situation will be wrong in many other, apparently similar, contexts.
It is often convenient to explain the meaning of a new word with the
help of its previously learned synonyms. This forms additional
associations in the student’s mind, and the new word is better
remembered. Moreover, it eliminates the necessity of bringing in a
native word. And yet the discrimination of synonyms and words which may
be confused is more important. The teacher must show that synonyms are
not identical in meaning or use and explain the difference between them
by comparing and contrasting them, as well as by showing in what
contexts one or the other may be most fitly used.
Translation cannot serve as a criterion of synonymy: there are cases
when several English words of different distribution and valency are
translated into Russian by one and the same word. Such words as also,
too and as well, all translated by the Russian word тоже, are never
interchangeable. A teacher of English should always stress the necessity
of being on one’s guard against mistakes of this kind.
Contextual or context-dependent synonyms are similar in meaning only
under some specific distributional conditions. It may happen that the
difference between the meanings of two words is contextually
neutralised. E. g. buy and get would not generally be taken as
synonymous, but they are synonyms in the following examples offered by
J. Lyons: I’ll go to the shop and buy some bread : : I’ll go to the shop
and get some bread. The verbs bear, suffer and stand are semantically
different and not interchangeable except when used in the negative form;
can’t stand is equal to can’t bear in the following words of an officer:
Gas. I’ve swallowed too much of the beastly stuff. I can’t stand it any
longer. I'm going to the dressing-station (Aldington).
202
There are some other distinctions to be made with respect to different
kinds of semantic similarity. Some authors, for instance, class groups
like ask : : beg : : implore; like : : love : : adore or gift : : talent
: : genius as synonymous, calling them relative synonyms. This attitude
is open to discussion. In fact the difference in denotative meaning is
unmistakable: the words name different notions, not various degrees of
the same notion, and cannot substitute one another. An entirely
different type of opposition is involved. Formerly we had oppositions
based on the relationships between the members of the opposition, here
we deal with proportional oppositions characterised by their
relationship with the whole vocabulary system and based on a different
degree of intensity of the relevant distinctive features. We shall not
call such words synonymous, as they do not fit the definition of
synonyms given in the beginning of the chapter.
Total synonymy, i.e. synonymy where the members of a synonymic group can
replace each other in any given context, without the slightest
alteration in denotative or emotional meaning and connotations, is a
rare occurrence. Examples of this type can be found in special
literature among technical terms peculiar to this or that branch of
knowledge. Thus, in linguistics the terms noun and substantive;
functional affix, flection and inflection are identical in meaning. What
is not generally realised, however, is that terms are a peculiar type of
words totally devoid of connotations or emotional colouring, and that
their stylistic characterisation does not vary. That is why this is a
very special kind of synonymy: neither ideographic nor stylistic
oppositions are possible here. As to the distributional opposition, it
is less marked, because the great majority of terms are nouns. Their
interchangeability is also in a way deceptive. Every writer has to make
up his mind right from the start as to which of the possible synonyms he
prefers, and stick to it throughout his text to avoid ambiguity. Thus,
the interchangeability is, as it were, theoretical and cannot be
materialised in an actual text.
The same misunderstood conception of interchangeability lies at the
bottom of considering different dialect names for the same plant, animal
or agricultural implement and the like as total (absolute) synonyms.
Thus, a perennial plant with long clusters of dotted whitish or purple
tubular flowers that the botanists refer to as genus Digitalis has
several dialectal names such as foxglove, fairybell, fingerflower,
finger-root, dead men’s bells, ladies’ fingers. But the names are not
interchangeable in any particular speaker’s ideolect.1 The same is true
about the cornflower (Centaurea cyanus), so called because it grows in
cornfields; some people call it bluebottle according to the shape and
colour of its petals. Compare also gorse, furze and whim, different
names used in different places for the same prickly yellow-flowered
shrub.
§ 10.6 SOURCES OF SYNONYMY
The distinction between synchronic and diachronic treatment is so
fundamental that it cannot be overemphasised, but the two aspects
1 Ideolect — language as spoken by one individual.
203
are interdependent. It is therefore essential after the descriptive
analysis of synonymy in present-day English to take up the historical
line of approach and discuss the origin of synonyms and the causes of
their abundance in English.
The majority of those who studied synonymy in the past have been
cultivating both lines of approach without keeping them scrupulously
apart, and focused their attention on the prominent part of foreign loan
words in English synonymy, e. g. freedom : : liberty or heaven : : sky,
where the first elements are native and the second, French and
Scandinavian respectively. O. Jespersen and many others used to stress
that the English language is peculiarly rich in synonyms, because
Britons, Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans fighting and settling upon
the soil of the British Isles could not but influence each other’s
speech. British scholars studied Greek and Latin and for centuries used
Latin as a medium for communication on scholarly topics.
Synonymy has its characteristic patterns in each language. Its peculiar
feature in English is the contrast between simple native words
stylistically neutral, literary words borrowed from French and learned
words of Greco-Latin origin. This results in a sort of stylistically
conditioned triple “keyboard” that can be illustrated by the following:
Native English
words Words borrowed
from French Words borrowed
from Latin
to ask to question to interrogate
belly stomach abdomen
to gather to assemble to collect
empty devoid vacuous
to end to finish to complete
to rise to mount to ascend
teaching guidance instruction
English also uses many pairs of synonymous derivatives, the one Hellenic
and the other Romance, e. g. periphery : : circumference; hypothesis : :
supposition; sympathy : : compassion; synthesis : : composition.
The pattern of stylistic relationship represented in the above table,
although typical, is by no means universal. For example, the native
words dale, deed, fair are the poetic equivalents of their much more
frequent borrowed synonyms valley, act or the hybrid beautiful.
This subject of stylistic differentiation has been one of much
controversy in recent years. It is universally accepted, however, that
semantic and stylistic properties may change and synonyms which at one
time formed a stylistic opposition only may in the course of time become
ideographically cognitively contrasted as well, and vice versa.
It would be linguistically naive to maintain that borrowing results only
in quantitative changes or that qualitative changes are purely
stylistical. The introduction of a borrowed word almost invariably
starts some alteration both in the newcomer and in the semantic
structure of existing words that are close to it in meaning. When in the
13th century the word soil (OFr soil,
204
soyil) was borrowed into English its meaning was ‘a strip of land’. The
upper layer of earth in which plants grow had been denoted since Old
English by one of the synonyms: eorthe, land, folde. The development of
the group has been studied by A.A. Ufimtseva. All these words had other
central meanings so that the meaning in question was with them
secondary. Now, if two words coincide in meaning and use, the tendency
is for one of them to drop out of the language. Folde had the same
function and meaning as eorthe and in the fight for survival the latter
won. The polysemantic word land underwent an intense semantic
development in a different direction but dropped out of this synonymic
series. In this way it became quite natural for soil to fill the obvious
lexical gap, receive its present meaning and become the main name for
the corresponding notion, i.e. ‘the mould in which plants grow’. The
noun earth retained this meaning throughout its history, whereas the
word ground in which this meaning was formerly absent developed it. As a
result this synonymic group comprises at present soil, earth and ground.
The fate of the word folde is not at all infrequent. Many other words
now marked in the dictionaries as “archaic” or “obsolete” have dropped
out in the same competition of synonyms; others survived with a meaning
more or less removed from the original one. The process is called
synonymic differentiation and is so current that M. Breal regarded it as
an inherent law of language development. It must be noted that synonyms
may influence each other semantically in two diametrically opposite
ways: one of them is dissimilation, the other the reverse process, i.e.
assimi1atiоn. The 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.
The important thing to remember is that it is not only borrowings from
foreign languages but other sources as well that have made increasing
contributions to the stock of English synonyms. There are, for instance,
words that come from dialects, and, in the last hundred years, from
American English in particular. As a result speakers of British English
may make use of both elements of the following pairs, the first element
in each pair coming from the USA: gimmick : : trick; dues : :
subscription; long distance (telephone) call : : trunk call; radio : :
wireless. There are also synonyms that originate in numerous dialects
as, for instance, clover : : shamrock; liquor : : whiskey (from Irish);
girl : : lass, lassie or charm : : glamour (from Scottish).
The role of borrowings should not be overestimated. Synonyms are also
created by means of all word-forming processes productive in the
language at a given time of its history. The words already existing in
the language develop new meanings. New words may be formed by affixation
or loss of affixes, by conversion, compounding, shortening and so on,
and being coined, form synonyms to those already in use.
205
Of special importance for those who are interested in the present-day
trends and characteristic peculiarities of the English vocabulary are
the synonymic oppositions due to shift of meaning, new combinations of
verbs with postpositives and compound nouns formed from them,
shortenings, set expressions and conversion.
Phrasal verbs consisting of a verb with a postpositive are widely used
in present-day English and may be called one of its characteristic
features. (See p. 120 ff.) Many verbal synonymic groups contain such
combinations as one of their elements. A few examples will illustrate
this statement: choose : : pick out; abandon : : give up; continue : :
go on; enter : : come in; lift : : pick up; postpone : : put off;
quarrel : : fall out; return : : bring back. E.g.: By the way, Toby has
quite given up the idea of doing those animal cartoons (Plomer).
The vitality of these expressions is proved by the fact that they really
supply material for further word-formation. Very many compound nouns
denoting abstract notions, persons and events are correlated with them,
also giving ways of expressing notions hitherto named by somewhat
lengthy borrowed terms. There are, for instance, such synonymic pairs as
arrangement : : layout; conscription : : call-up; precipitation : :
fall-out; regeneration : : feedback; reproduction : : playback;
resistance : : fight-back; treachery : : sell-out.
An even more frequent type of new formations is that in which a noun
with a verbal stem is combined with a verb of generic meaning (have,
give, take, get, make) into a set expression which differs from the
simple verb in aspect or emphasis: laugh : : give a laugh; sigh : : give
a sigh; walk : : take a walk; smoke : : have a smoke; love : : fall in
love (see p. 164). E. g.: Now we can all have a good read with our
coffee (Simpson).
N.N. Amosova stresses the patterned character of the phrases in
question, the regularity of connection between the structure of the
phrase and the resulting semantic effect. She also points out that there
may be cases when phrases of this pattern have undergone a shift of
meaning and turned into phraseological units quite different in meaning
from and not synonymical with the verbs of the same root. This is the
case with give a lift, give somebody quite a turn, etc.
Quite frequently synonyms, mostly stylistic, but sometimes ideographic
as well, are due to shortening, e. g. memorandum : : memo; vegetables :
: vegs; margarine : : marge; microphone : : mike; popular (song) : : pop
(song).
One should not overlook the fact that conversion may also be a source of
synonymy; it accounts for such pairs as commandment : : command]
laughter : : laugh. The problem in this connection is whether such cases
should be regarded as synonyms or as lexical variants of one and the
same word. It seems more logical to consider them as lexical variants.
Compare also cases of different affixation: anxiety : : anxious- ness;
effectivity : : effectiveness, and loss of affixes: amongst : : among or
await : : wait.
206
§ 10.7 EUPHEMISMS
A source of synonymy also well worthy of note is the so-called euphemism
in which by a shift of meaning a word of more or less ‘pleasant or at
least inoffensive connotation becomes synonymous to one that is harsh,
obscene, indelicate or otherwise unpleasant.1 The euphemistic expression
merry fully coincides in denotation with the word drunk it substitutes,
but the connotations of the latter fade out and so the utterance on the
whole is milder, less offensive. The effect is achieved, because the
periphrastic expression is not so harsh, sometimes jocular and usually
motivated according to some secondary feature of the notion: naked : :
in one’s birthday suit] pregnant : : in the family way. Very often a
learned word which sounds less familiar is therefore less offensive, as
in drunkenness : : intoxication; sweat : : perspiration.
Euphemisms can also be treated within the synchronic approach, because
both expressions, the euphemistic and the direct one, co-exist in the
language and form a synonymic opposition. Not only English but other
modern languages as well have a definite set of notions attracting
euphemistic circumlocutions. These are notions of death, madness,
stupidity, drunkenness, certain physiological processes, crimes and so
on. For example: die : : be no more : : be gone : : lose one’s life : :
breathe one’s last : : join the silent majority : : go the way of alt
flesh : : pass away : : be gathered to one’s fathers.
A prominent source of synonymic attraction is still furnished by
interjections and swearing addressed to God. To make use of God’s name
is considered sinful by the Church and yet the word, being expressive,
formed the basis of many interjections. Later the word God was
substituted by the phonetically similar word goodness: For goodness
sake\ Goodness gracious] Goodness knows! Cf. By Jovel Good Lord! By Gum!
As in:
His father made a fearful row.
He said: “By Gum, you’ve done it now.” (Belloc)
A certain similarity can be observed in
t???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
О thou! Whatever title suit thee,
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie ...
Euphemisms always tend to be a source of new synonymic formations,
because after a short period of use the new term becomes so closely
connected with the notion that it turns into a word as obnoxious as the
earlier synonym.
§ 10.8 LEXICAL VARIANTS AND PARONYMS
There are many cases of similarity between words easily confused with
synonymy but in fact essentially different from it.
1 For a diachronic analysis of this phenomenon see p.p. 73 ff.
207
Lexical variants, for instance, 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.
The cases of identity of stems, a similarity of form, and meaning
combined with a difference in distribution should be classed as synonyms
and not as lexical variants. They are discussed in many books dedicated
to correct English usage. These are words belonging to the same part of
speech, containing identical stems and synonymical affixes, and yet not
permitting free variation, not optional. They seem to provoke mistakes
even with native speakers. A few examples will suffice to illustrate the
point. The adjectives luxurious and luxuriant are synonymous when
meaning ‘characterised by luxury’. Otherwise, luxuriant is restricted to
the expression of abundance (used about hair, leaves, flowers).
Luxurious is the adjective expressing human luxury and indulgence (used
about tastes, habits, food, mansions). Economic and economical are
interchangeable under certain conditions, more often, however, economic
is a technical term associated with economics (an economic agreement).
The second word, i.e. economical, is an everyday word associated with
economy; e. g. economical stove, economical method, be economical of
one’s money.
Synonyms of this type should not be confused with paronyms, i.e. words
that are kindred in origin, sound form and meaning and therefore liable
to be mixed but in fact different in meaning and usage and therefore
only mistakenly interchanged.
The term paronym comes from the Greek para ‘beside’ and onoma ‘name’, it
enters the lexicological terminology very conveniently alongside such
terms as synonyms, antonyms, homonyms and allonyms.1
Different authors suggest various definitions. Some define paronyms as
words of the same root, others as words having the same sound form, thus
equalising them with word-families or homonyms. Any definition, however,
is valuable only insofar as it serves to reflect the particular
conception or theory of the subject one studies and proves useful for
the practical aims of its study. As the present book is intended for the
future teachers of English, it is vital to pay attention to grouping of
words according to the difficulties they might present to the student.
That is why we take the definition given above stressing not only the
phonetic and semantic similarity but also the possible mistakes in the
use
1 Allоnуm is a term offered by N.A. Shechtman denoting contextual pairs
semantically coordinated like slow and careful, quick and impatient.
208
of these “hard words”. This is the case with the adjectives ingenious
and ingenuous. The first of these means ‘clever’ and may be used both of
man and of his inventions and doings, e. g. an ingenious craftsman, an
ingenious device. Ingenuous means ‘frank’, ‘artless’, as an ingenuous
smile.
The likeness may be accidental as in the verbs affect and effect. The
first means ‘influence’, the second — ‘to produce’. These come from
different Latin verbs. The similarity may be also due to a common
source. It is etymologically justified in alternate ‘succeeding each
other’ and alternative ‘providing a choice’, or consequent ‘resulting’
and consequential ‘important’, or continuance ‘an uninterrupted
succession’ and continuation which has two distinct meanings ‘beginning
again’ and ‘sequel’ as the continuation of a novel.
§ 10.9 ANTONYMS AND CONVERSIVES
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.
Contradictory notions are mutually opposed and denying one another, e.
g. alive means ‘not dead’ and impatient means ‘not patient’. Contrary
notions are also mutually opposed but they are gradable, e. g. old and
young are the most distant elements of a series like: old : :
middle-aged : : 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.
Another classification of antonyms is based on a morphological approach:
root words form absolute antonyms (right : : wrong), the presence of
negative affixes creates derivational antonyms (happy : : unhappy).
The juxtaposition of antonyms in a literary text emphasises some
contrast and creates emotional tension as in the following lines from
“Romeo and Juliet” (Act I, Scene V):
My only love sprang from my only hate\ Too early seen unknown, and known
too late!
One of the features enhancing the pathetic expressiveness of these lines
is contrast based on such pairs as love : : hate; early : : late;
unknown : : known. The opposition is obvious: each component of these
pairs means the opposite of the other. The pairs may be termed antonymic
pairs.
Antonyms have traditionally been defined as words of opposite meaning.
This definition, however, is not sufficiently accurate, as it only
shifts the problem to the question of what words may be regarded as
words of opposite ??????????????????????????????????????????????
14 И. В. Арнольд 209
The important question of criteria received a new and rigorously
linguistic treatment in V.N. Komissarov’s work. Keeping to the
time-honoured classification of antonyms into absolute or root antonyms
(love : : hate) and derivational antonyms, V.N. Komissarov breaks new
ground by his contextual treatment of the problem. Two words, according
to him, shall be considered antonymous if they are regularly contrasted
in actual speech, that is if the contrast in their meanings is proved by
definite types of contextual co-occurrence.
Absolute antonyms, then, are words regularly contrasted as homogenous
sentence members connected by copulative, disjunctive or adversative
conjunctions, or identically used in parallel constructions, in certain
typical contexts.
In the examples given below we shall denote the first of the antonyms —
A, the second — B, and the words they serve to qualify — X and Y,
respectively.
1. If you’ve obeyed all the rules good and bad, and you still come out
at the dirty end ... then I say the rules are no good (M. Wilson).
The formula is:
A and (or) В = all
not A but (on the contrary) В
2. He was alive, not dead (Shaw). The formula is:
3. You will see if you were right or wrong (Cronin).
The formula is:
A or В
4. The whole was big, oneself was little (Galsworthy). The formula is: X
is A, and Y, on the contrary, В
A regular and frequent co-occurrence in such contexts is the most
important characteristic feature of antonyms. Another important
criterion suggested by V.N. Komissarov is the possibility of
substitution and identical lexical valency. This possibility of
identical contexts is very clearly seen in the following lines:
There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of
us, That it hardly becomes any of us To talk about the rest of us
(Hock).
Members of the same antonymic pair reveal nearly identical spheres of
collocation. For example the adjective hot in its figurative meaning of
‘angry’ and ‘excited’ is chiefly combined with names of
210
unpleasant emotions: anger, resentment, scorn, etc. Its antonym cold
occurs with the same words.
The diagnostic force of valency is weaker than that of regular
cooccurrence.
Unlike synonyms, antonyms do not differ either in style, emotional
colouring or distribution. They are interchangeable at least in some
contexts. The result of this interchange may be of different kind
depending on the conditions of context. There will be, for instance, no
change of meaning if ill and well change places within the sentence in
the following: But whether he treated it ill or well, it loved nothing
so much as to be near him (Wells). Or a whole sentence receives an
opposite meaning when a word is replaced by its antonym, although it
differs from its prototype in this one word only: You may feel he is
clever : : You may feel he is foolish.
As antonyms do not differ stylistically, an antonymic substitution never
results in a change of stylistic colouring.
The possibility of substitution and identical valency show that semantic
polarity is a very special kind of difference implying a great deal of
sameness.
In dealing with antonymic oppositions it may be helpful to treat
antonyms in terms of “marked” and “unmarked” members. The unmarked
member can be more widely used and very often can include the referents
of the marked member but not vice versa. This proves that their meanings
have some components in common. In the antonymic pair old : : young the
unmarked member is old. It is possible to ask: How old is the girl?
without implying that she is no longer young. W.C. Chafe says that we
normally talk about a continuum of wideness as width and not about a
continuum of narrowness. Thus, the usual question is: How wide is if?
and not How narrow is it? which proves the unmarked vs marked character
of wide vs narrow. In the antonymic opposition love : : hate, there is
no unmarked element.
Some authors, J.Lyons among them, suggest a different terminology. They
distinguish antonyms proper and complementary antonyms. The chief
characteristic feature of antonyms proper is that they are regularly
gradable. Antonyms proper, therefore, represent contrary notions.
Grading is based on the operation of comparison. One can compare the
intensity of feeling as in love — attachment — liking — indifference —
antipathy — hate. Whenever a sentence contains an antonym or an
antonymic pair, it implicitly or explicitly contains comparison.
The important point to notice is this — the denial of the one member of
antonymic opposition does not always imply the assertion of the other —
take, for instance W.H. Auden’s line: All human hearts have ugly little
treasures. If we say that our hearts’ treasures are neither ugly nor
little, it does not imply that they are beautiful or great.
It is interesting to note that such words as young : : old; big : :
small; good : : bad do not refer to independent absolute qualities but
to some-implicit norm, they are relative. Consider the following
portrait of an elephant:
14* 211
The Elephant
When people call this beast to mind, They marvel more and more
At such a little tail behind
So large a trunk before.
The tail of an elephant is little only in comparison with his trunk and
the rest of his body. For a mouse it would have been quite big. J. Lyons
discusses an interesting example of antonyms also dealing with
elephants: A small elephant is a large animal. The implicit size-norm
for elephants is not the same as that for all animals in general: the
elephant which is small in comparison with other elephants may be big in
comparison with animals as a class.
This example may also serve to show the difference and parallelism
between antonymy proper and complementarity (expressing contradictory
notions).
The semantic polarity in antonymy proper is relative, the opposition is
gradual, it may embrace several elements characterised by different
degrees of the same property. The comparison they imply is clear from
the context. Large and little denote polar degrees of the same notion.
The same referent which may be small as an elephant is a comparatively
big animal, but it cannot be male as an elephant and female as an
animal: a male elephant is a male animal.
Having noted the difference between complementary antonyms and antonyms
proper, we must also take into consideration that they have much in
common so that in a wider sense both groups are taken as antonyms.
Complementaries like other antonyms are regularly contrasted in speech
(male and female), and the elements of a complementary pair have similar
distribution. The assertion of a sentence containing an antonymous or
complementary term implies the denial of a corresponding sentence
containing the other antonym or complementary:
The poem is good ? The poem is not bad (good : : bad — antonyms proper)
This is prose ? This is not poetry (prose : : poetry — complementaries)
As to the difference in negation it is optional with antonyms proper: by
saying that the poem is not good the speaker does not always mean that
it is positively bad. Though more often we are inclined to take into
consideration only the opposite ends of the scale and by saying that
something is not bad we even, using a litotes, say it is good.
So complementaries are a subset of antonyms taken in a wider sense.
If the root of the word involved in contrast is not semantically
relative, its antonym is derived by negation. Absolute or root antonyms
(see p. 209) are on this morphological basis, contrasted to those
containing some negative affix.
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Thus, the second group of antonyms is known as derivational antonyms.
The affixes in them serve to deny the quality stated in the stem. The
opposition known : : unknown in the opening example from Shakespeare
(see p. 209) is by no means isolated: far from it. It is not difficult
to find other examples where contrast is implied in the morphological
structure of the word itself. E. g. appear : : disappear; happiness : :
unhappiness; logical : : illogical; pleasant : : unpleasant; prewar : :
postwar; useful : : useless, etc. There are typical affixes and typical
patterns that go into play in forming these derivational antonyms. It is
significant that in the examples given above prefixes prevail. The
regular type of derivational antonyms contains negative prefixes: dis-,
il-/im-/in-/ir-, поп- and un-. Other negative prefixes occur in this
function only occasionally.
As to the suffixes, it should be noted that modern English gives no
examples of words forming their antonyms by adding a negative suffix,
such as, for instance, -less. The opposition hopeless : : hopeful or
useless : : useful is more complicated, as the suffix -less is not
merely added to the contrasting stem, but substituted for the suffix
-ful. The group is not numerous. In most cases, even when the language
possesses words with the suffix -less, the antonymic pairs found in
actual speech are formed with the prefix un-. Thus, the antonymic
opposition is not selfish : : self/ess but selfish : : unselfish. Cf.
selfishness : : unselfishness; selfishly : : unselfishly. E.g.: I had
many reasons, both selfish and unselfish, for not giving the unnecessary
openings (Snow).
Several features distinguish the two groups of antonyms. In words
containing one of the above negative prefixes the contrast is expressed
morphologically as the prefixed variant is in opposition to the
unprefixed one. Therefore if the morphological motivation is clear,
there is no necessity in contexts containing both members to prove the
existence of derivational antonyms. The word unsuccessful, for instance,
presupposes the existence of the word successful, so that the following
quotation is sufficient for establishing the contrast: Essex was always
in a state of temper after one of these unsuccessful interviews
(Aldridge).
The patterns, however, although typical, are not universal, so that
morphologically similar formations may show different semantic
relationships. Disappoint, for example, is not the antonym of appoint,
neither is unman ‘to deprive of human qualities’ the antonym of man ‘to
furnish with personnel’.
The difference between absolute and derivational antonyms is not only
morphological but semantic as well. To reveal its essence it is
necessary to turn to logic. A pair of derivational antonyms form a
privative binary opposition, whereas absolute antonyms, as we have
already seen, are polar members of a gradual opposition which may have
intermediary elements, the actual number of which may vary from zero to
several units, e. g. beautiful : : pretty : : good-looking : : plain : :
ugly.
Many antonyms are explained by means of the negative particle: clean —
not dirty, shallow — not deep. It is interesting to note that whereas in
Russian the negative particle and the negative prefix are homonymous, in
the English language the negative particle not is morphologically
unrelated to the prefixes dis-, il-/im-/in-/ir- and un-. Syntactic
negation by means of
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this particle is weaker than the lexical antonymy. Compare: not happy :
: unhappy; not polite : : impolite; not regular : : irregular; not to
believe : : to disbelieve. To prove this difference in intensity V.N.
Komissarov gives examples where a word with a negative prefix is added
to compensate for the insufficiency of a syntactic negation, even
intensified by at all: I am sorry to inform you that we are not at all
satisfied with your sister. We are very much dissatisfied with her (Ch.
Dickens).
Almost every word can have one or more synonyms. Comparatively few have
antonyms. This type of opposition is especially characteristic of
qualitative adjectives. Cf. in W.Shakespeare’s “Sonnet LXXVI":
For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is
told.
It is also manifest in words derived from qualitative adjectives, e. g.
gladly : : sadly; gladness : : sadness. Irrespective of the part of
speech, they are mostly words connected with feelings or state: triumph
: : disaster; hope : : despair. Antonymic pairs, also irrespective of
part of speech, concern direction (hither and thither) (L.A. Novikov
calls these “vectorial antonyms"), and position in space and time (far
and near).
Nothing so difficult as a beginning,
In poetry, unless perhaps the end (Byron).
Compare also day : : night; late : : early; over : : under.
The number of examples could be augmented, but those already quoted will
suffice to illustrate both the linguistic essence of antonyms and the
very prominent part they play among the expressive means a language can
possess. Like synonyms they occupy an important place in the
phraseological fund of the language: backwards and forwards, far and
near, from first to last, in black and white, play fast and loose, etc.
Not only words, but set expressions as well, can be grouped into
antonymic pairs. The phrase by accident can be contrasted to the phrase
on purpose. Cf. up to par and below par. Par represents the full nominal
value of a company’s shares, hence up to par metaphorically means ‘up to
the level of one’s normal health’ and below par ‘unwell’.
Antonyms form mostly pairs, not groups like synonyms: above : : below;
absent : : present; absence : : presence; alike : : different; asleep :
: awake; back : : forth; bad : : good; big : : little, etc. Cases when
there are three or more words are reducible to a binary opposition, so
that hot is contrasted to cold and warm to cool.
Polysemantic words may have antonyms in some of their meanings and none
in the others. When criticism means ‘blame’ or ‘censure’ its antonym is
praise, when it means ‘writing critical essays dealing with the works of
some author’, it can have no antonym. The fact lies at the basis of W.S.
Maugham’s pun: People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
Also in different meanings a word may have different aa-tonyms. Compare
for example: a short story : : a long story but a short man : : a tall
man; be short with somebody : : be civil with somebody.
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Semantic polarity presupposes the presence of some common semantic
components in the denotational meaning. Thus, while ashamed means
‘feeling unhappy or troubled because one has done something wrong or
foolish’, its antonym proud also deals with feeling but the feeling of
happiness and assurance which also has its ground in moral values.
A synonymic set of words is an opposition of a different kind: its basis
is sameness or approximate sameness of denotative meaning, the
distinctive features can be stylistic, emotional, distributional or
depending on valency.
There is one further type of semantic opposition we have to consider.
The relation to which the name of conversives is usually given may be
exemplified by such pairs as buy : : sell; give : : receive; ancestor :
: descendant; parent : : child; left : : right; cause : : suffer;
saddening : : saddened.
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.
Some linguists class conversives as a subset of antonyms, others suggest
that antonyms and conversives together constitute the class of
contrastives. Although there is parallelism between the two relations,
it seems more logical to stress that they must be distinguished, even if
the difference is not always clear-cut. The same pair of words, e. g.
fathers and sons, may be functioning as antonyms or as conversives.
An important point setting them apart is that conversive relations are
possible within the semantic structure of one and the same word. M.V.
Nikitin mentions such verbs as wear, sell, tire, smell, etc. and such
adjectives as glad, sad, dubious, lucky and others.
It should be noted that sell in this case is not only the conversive of
buy, it means ‘be sold’, ‘find buyers’ (The book sells well). The same
contrast of active and passive sense is observed in adjectives: sad
‘saddening’ and ‘saddened’, dubious and doubtful mean ‘feeling doubt and
inspiring doubt’.
This peculiarity of conversives becomes prominent if we compare
equivalents in various languages. The English verb marry renders both
conversive meanings, it holds good for both participants: Mary married
Dick or Dick married Mary. In a number of languages, including Russian,
there are, as J. Lyons and some other authors have pointed out, two
verbs: one for the woman and another for the man.
The methodological significance of the antonymic, synonymic, conversive,
hyponymic and other semantic relations between lexical items becomes
clear if we remember that the place that each unit occupies in the
lexical system and its function is derived from the relations it
contracts with other units (see table on p. 183).
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Chapter 11
LEXICAL SYSTEMS
§ 11.1 THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY AS AN ADAPTIVE SYSTEM. NEOLOGISMS
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.
1 The term adaptive comes from the theory of evolution. Ch. Darvin as
far back as 1859 wrote about adaptation in the animal world by which a
species or individual improves its conditions in relation to its
environment. Note also that a relatively new science called “bionics”
studies living systems in order to make machines behaving as efficiently
as systems in nature.
2 For a detailed discussion of the statistical approach the reader
should refer to the works of A.J. Shaikevitch.
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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 neologisms. 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 neоlоgisms 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 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 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.
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
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convenient abbreviation out of the first letter or letters of each word
in this phrase was coined, hence radar. (See § 7.3.) 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 (see § 6.9). 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 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, 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 English-Russian
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.
In what follows the student will find a few examples of neologisms
showing the patterns according to which they are formed. Automation
‘automatic control of production’ is irregularly formed from the stem
automatic with the help of the very productive suffix -tion. The
corresponding verb automate is a back-formation, i. e. ‘re-equip in the
most modern and automated fashion’. Re- is one of the most productive
prefixes, the others are anti-, de-, un-, the semi-affixes self-, super-
and mini-and many more; e. g. anti-flash ‘serving to protect the eyes’,
antimatter n, anti- novel n, anti-pollution, deglamorise ‘to make less
attractive’, resit ‘to take a written examination a second time’,
rehouse ‘to move a family, a community, etc. to new houses’. The prefix
un- increases its combining power, enjoys a new wave of fashion and is
now attached even to noun stems. A literary critic refers to the
broken-down “Entertainer” (in John Osborne’s play) as a “contemporary
un-hero, the desperately unfunny Archie Rice”. Unfunny here means “not
amusing in spite of the desire to amuse’. All the other types of
word-formation described in the previous chapters are in constant use,
especially conversion (orbit the moon, service a car), composition and
semantic change.
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
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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 (obsolete words) or survive only in
special contexts (archaisms and historisms).
Archaisms 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.
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 histоrism.
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.
220
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 canvas-covered 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.
§ 11.2 MORPHOLOGICAL AND LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL GROUPING
On the morphological level words are divided into four groups according
to their morphological structure (see § 5.1), namely the number and type
of morphemes which compose them. They are:
Root or morpheme words. Their stem contains one free morpheme, e. g.
dog, hand.
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.
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.
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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
word-families. 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, 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 notional 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.
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.
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;
222
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.
B.N. Aksenenko very aptly proved the presence of a lexical meaning by
suggesting a substitution test with They went to the village as a test
frame. By substituting across, from, into, round, out of and through for
to, one readily sees the semantic difference between them.
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.
The percentage of the total vocabulary in these four classes is over
93%. The remaining 7% are constituted by 154 form words. These, though
few in number, occur very frequently.
223
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 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 parts of speech 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 lexico-grammatical group we understand 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.
224
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’.
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
1 These terms are used to denote not the process but the result of the
semantic change seen when existing lexico-semantic variants of a word
are compared.
2 Unique correlation is characteristic of proper names which have some
unique object for referent (e. g. the Thames); words whose referents are
generalised in a notion have notional correlations (e. g. river).
15 И. В. Арнольд 225
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.
§ 11.3 THEMATIC AND IDEOGRAPHIC GROUPS. THE THEORIES OF SEMANTIC FIELDS.
HYPONYMY
A further subdivision within the lexico-grammatical groups is achieved
in the well-known thematic subgroups, such as terms of kinship, names
for parts of the human body, colour terms, military terms and so on. The
basis of grouping this time is not only linguistic but also
extra-linguistic: the words are associated, because the things they name
occur together and are closely connected in reality. It has been found
that these words constitute quite definitely articulated spheres held
together by differences, oppositions and distinctive values. For an
example it is convenient to turn to the adjectives. These are known to
be subdivided into qualitative and relative lexico-grammatical groups.
Among the first, adjectives that characterise a substance for shape,
colour, physical or mental qualities, speed, size, etc. are
distinguished.
The group of colour terms has always attracted the attention of
linguists, because it permits research of lexical problems of primary
importance. The most prominent among them is the problem of the
systematic or non-systematic character of vocabulary, of the difference
in naming the same extra-linguistic referents by different languages,
and of the relationship between thought and language. There are hundreds
of articles written about colour terms.
The basic colour name system comprises four words: blue, green, yellow,
red; they cover the whole spectrum. All the other words denoting colours
bring details into this scheme and form subsystems of the first and
second order, which may be considered as synonymic series with
corresponding basic terms as their dominants. Thus, red is taken as a
dominant for the subsystem of the first degree: scarlet, orange,
crimson, rose, and the subsystem of the second degree is: vermilion,
wine red, cherry, coral, copper-red, etc. Words belonging to the basic
system differ from words belonging to subsystems not only semantically
but in some other features as well. These features are: (1) frequency of
use; (2) motivation; (3) simple or compound character; (4) stylistic
colouring; (5) combining power. The basic
226
terms, for instance, are frequent words belonging to the first thousand
of words in H.S. Eaton’s “semantic frequency list", their motivation is
lost in present-day English. They are all native words of long standing.
The motivation of colour terms in the subsystem is very clear: they are
derived from the names of fruit (orange), flowers (pink), colouring
stuffs (indigo). Basic system words and most of the first degree terms
are root words, the second degree terms are derivatives or compounds:
copper-red, jade-green, sky-coloured. Stylistically the basic terms are
definitely neutral, the second degree terms are either special or
poetic. The meaning is widest in the four basic terms, it gradually
narrows down from subsystem to subsystem.
The relationship existing between elements of various levels is
logically that of inclusion. Semanticists call it hyponymy. The term is
of comparatively recent creation. J. Lyons stresses its importance as a
constitutive principle in the organisation of the vocabulary of all
languages. For example, the meaning of scarlet is “included” in the
meaning of red. So scarlet is the hyponym of red, and its co-hyponym is
crimson, as to red — it is the superordinate of both crimson and
scarlet. Could every word have a superordinate in the vocabulary, the
hierarchical organisation of the lexical system would have been ideal.
As it is there is not always a superordinate term. There is, for
instance, no superordinate term for all colours as the term coloured
usually excludes white and black. F.R. Palmer gives several examples
from the animal world. The word sheep is the superordinate for ram, ewe
and lamb. The word dog is in a sense its own superordinate, because
there is no special word for a male dog, although there is a special
term for the female and for the little dog, i.e. bitch and pup.
Superordinates are also called hyperonyms, this latter term is even more
frequent. Some scholars treat this phenomenon as presupposition, because
if we say that some stuff is scarlet it implies that it is red. One may
also treat synonymy as a special case of hyponymy (see Ch. 10).
Thematic groups as well as ideographic groups, i.e. groups uniting words
of different parts of speech but thematically related, have been mostly
studied diachronically. Thus A.A. Ufimtseva wrote a monograph on the
historical development of the words: eorthe, land, grund;, mideanzeard,
molde, folde and hruse.
The evolution of these words from the Old-English period up to the
present is described in great detail. The set in this case is defined by
enumerating all its elements as well as by naming the notion lying at
the basis of their meaning. Many other authors have also described the
evolution of lexico-semantic groups. The possibility of transferring the
results obtained with limited subsets on the vocabulary as a whole
adaptive system remains undefined. Subsequent works by A.A. Ufimtseva
are devoted to various aspects of the problem of the lexical and
lexico-semantic system.
All the elements of lexico-semantic groups remain within limits of the
same part of speech and the same lexico-grammatical group. When;
grammatical meaning is not taken into consideration, we obtain the
so-called ideographic groups.
15* 227
The ideographic subgroups 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 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.
The approach resembles the much discussed theory of semantic fields but
is more precise than some of them, because this author gives purely
linguistic criteria according to which words belonging to the group may
be determined. The equivalence of words in this case is reflected in
their valency.
The theory of semantic fields continues to engage the attention of
linguists. A great number of articles and full-length monographs have
been written on this topic, and the discussion is far from being closed.
Jost Trier’s1 conception of linguistic fields is based on F. de
Saussure’s theory of language as a synchronous system of networks held
together by differences, oppositions and distinctive values. The
starting point of the whole field theory was J. Trier’s work on
intellectual terms in Old and Middle High German. J. Trier shows that
they form an interdependent lexical sphere where the significance of
each unit is determined by its neighbours. The semantic areas of the
units limit one another and cover up the whole sphere. This sphere he
called a linguistic, conceptual or lexical field. His definition (here
given in St. Ullmann’s translation)2 is: “Fields are linguistic
realities existing between single words and the total vocabulary; they
are parts of a whole and resemble words in that they combine into some
higher unit, and the vocabulary in that they resolve themselves into
smaller units.” Since the publication of J. Trier’s book, the field
theory has proceeded along different lines, and several definitions of
the basic notion have been put forward. A search for objective criteria
made W. Porzig, G. Ipsen and other authors narrow the conception down.
G. Ipsen studies Indo-European names of metals and notices their
connection with colour adjectives. W. Porzig pays attention to regular
contextual ties: dog — bark, blind — see, see — eye. A. Jolles takes up
correlative pairs like right — left.
The greatest merit of the field theories lies in their attempt to find
linguistic criteria disclosing the systematic character of language.
Their structuralist orientation is consistent. J. Trier’s most important
shortcoming is his idealistic methodology. He regards language as a
super-individual cultural product shaping our concepts and our whole
knowledge of the world. His ideas about the influence of language upon
thought, and the existence of an “intermediate universe” of concepts
interposed between man and the universe are wholly untenable. An
1 See: Trier, Jost. Der deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des
Verstandes. Die Geschichte eines sprachlichen Feldes. Heidelberg, 1931.
2 See: Ullmann St. The Principles of Semantics. P. 157.
228
exhaustive criticism of this theory may be found in M.D. Stepanova’s
work.
Freed from its idealistic fetters, J. Trier’s theory may, if properly
developed, have far-reaching consequences in modern semantics. At this
point mention should be made of influential and promising statistical
work by A. Shaikevitch.1 This investigation is based on the hypothesis
that semantically related words must occur near one another in the text,
and vice versa; if the words often occur in the text together, they must
be semantically related. Words (adjectives) were chosen from concordance
dictionaries for G. Chaucer, E. Spenser, W. Shakespeare and several
other English poets. The material was studied statistically, and the
results proved the hypothesis to be correct. Groups were obtained
without making use of their meaning on a strictly formal basis, and
their elements proved to be semantically related. For example: faint,
feeble, weary, sick, tedious and whole ‘healthy’ formed one group. Thin,
thick, subtle also came together. The experiment shows that a purely
formal criterion of co-occurrence can serve as a basis of semantic
equivalence.
A syntactic approach to the problem of semantic fields has been
initiated by the Moscow structuralist group. From their point of view,
the detailed syntactic properties of the word are its meaning. Y.
Apresyan proposes an analysis, the material of which includes a list of
configuration patterns (phrase types) of the language as revealed by
syntactic analysis, an indication of the frequency of each configuration
pattern and an enumeration of meanings (already known, no matter how
discovered) that occur in each pattern. Preliminary study of English
verbs as constituents of each pattern has yielded corresponding sets of
verbs with some semantic features in common. A semantic field can
therefore be described on the basis of the valency potential of its
members. Since a correlation has been found between the frequency of a
configuration pattern and the number of word meanings which may appear
in it, Y. Apresyan proposes that a hierarchy of increasingly
comprehensive word fields should be built by considering configuration
patterns of increasing frequency. Of the vast literature on semantic
fields special attention should be paid to the works by G. ?cur.2
§ 11.4 TERMINOLOGICAL SYSTEMS
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 term 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 definitions in
1 Шайкевич А.Я. Дистрибутивно-статистический анализ текстов: Автореф.
Дис. ...д-ра филол. наук. Л., 1982.
2 See, for instance: Щур Г.С. Теория поля в лингвистике. М., 1974.
229
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
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
1 There may be various reasons for it.
230
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.
231
Up till now we have been dealing with problems of linguistic
terminology. These are only a part of the whole complex of the
linguistic problems concerning terminology. It goes without saying that
there are terms for all the different specialities. Their variety is
very great, e. g. amplitude (physics), antibiotic (medicine), arabesque
(ballet), feedback (cybernetics), fission (chemistry), frame (cinema).
Many of the terms that in the first period of their existence are known
to a few specialists, later become used by wide circles of laymen. Some
of these are of comparatively recent origin. Here are a few of them,
with the year of their first appearance given in brackets: stratosphere
(1908), gene (1909), quantum (1910), vitamin (1912), isotope (1913),
behaviourism (1914), penicillin (1929), cyclotron (1932), ionosphere
(1931), radar (1942), transistor (1952), bionics (1960), white hole
(1972), beam weapon (1977).
? transistor ? trannie; television text ? teletext; ecological
architecture ? ecotecture; extremely low frequency ? ELF.
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.
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 word-formation 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
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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.
§ 115 THE OPPOSITION OF EMOTIONALLY COLOURED AND EMOTIONALLY NEUTRAL
VOCABULARY
There are people who are apt to assume that speech is a sort of device
for making statements. They forget its numerous other functions. Speech
also expresses the speaker’s attitude to what he is talking about, his
emotional reaction, his relations with his audience. He may wish to
warn, to influence people, to express his approval or disapproval or to
make some
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parts of what he says more emphatic. All these pragmatic factors
introduce into the lexical meaning of words additional overtones. These
again are apt to be confused. Using terms like “expressive", “emotive",
“affective", “evaluative", “slang", some authors are inclined to treat
them as synonyms, thinking, for instance, that an emotive word is of
necessity also a stylistically coloured word, or considering all
stylistically coloured words as emotional. We shall see that this is not
always the case.
In what follows we shall understand by emotive speech 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. We shall concentrate our attention on the first. A word
acquires its emotional colouring, otherwise called its affective
connotations, its power to evoke or directly express feelings as a
result of its history in emotional contexts reflecting emotional
situations. The character of denotata corresponding to the root of the
word may be wrought with emotion. Thus, in the emotive phrases: be
beastly mean about something, a glorious idea, a lovely drink, a rotten
business, etc., the emotional quality is based upon associations brought
about by such notions as ‘beast’, ‘glory’, ‘love’ and ‘rot’ and the
objects they stand for.
The best studied type of emotional words are interjections. They express
emotions without naming them: Ah! Alas! Bother! Boy! Fiddlesticks! Hear,
hear! Heavens! Hell! Humbug! Nonsense! Pooh! etc. Some of them are
primary interjections, others are derived from other parts of speech. On
the latter opinions differ. Some say that Cornel and Hark! are not
interjections at all, but complete sentences with their subject not
expressed. We shall not go into this controversy and keep to our main
theme.
сf. roadster ‘an open automobile’.
There is a disparaging semi-affix -monger: panicmonger, scandalmonger,
scaremonger, warmonger.
A very interesting problem, so far investigated but little, concerns the
relationship between the morphological pattern of a word and its
emotional possibilities. Thus, for example, personal nouns formed by
composition from complete sentences or phrases are derogatory:
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also-ran, never-do-well, sit-by-the-fire, stick-in-the-mud, die-hard.
This goes only for names of persons. There is nothing objectionable in a
forget-me-not. Compare also: I suppose your friends, if you have any,
don’t mean much to you unless ... they are great-something-or-other
(Fair-child).
There are several groups expressing censure by their morphological
structure. There are personal nouns formed by conversion: a bore, a
swell and by combined composition and conversion from verbs with post
positives: a come-back ‘a person reinstated in his former position’, a
stand-in ‘a substitute’, a stuck-up = an upstart ‘a person who assumes
arrogant tone’ (also one who has risen from insignificance), a washout
‘a failure’.
To express emotion the utterance must be something not quite ordinary.
Syntactically this is reflected in inversion contrasted to the usual
word order. Its counterpart in vocabulary is coinage of nonce-words.
Very often it is a kind of echo-conversion, as in the following: Lucas:
Well? Hans: Don’t well me, you feeble old ninny (Osborne).
я “You don’t bloody-hell here.”
The type is definitely on the increase in English speech of today.
Often the muscular feeling of the emotional word or phrase is more
important than its denotational meaning. Its function is to release
pent-up emotions, pent-up tension. This may explain why hell and heaven
have such rich possibilities, while paradise has practically none.
It must be noted that emotional words only indicate the presence of
emotion but very seldom are capable of specifying its exact character.
The emotionally coloured words are contrasted to the emotionally neutral
ones. The words of this latter group express notions but do not say
anything about the state of the speaker or his mood: copy, report,
impatient, reach, say, well are all emotionally neutral. The difference
between the sets is not very clear-cut, there are numerous boundary
cases. The sets may be said to intersect and contain elements that
belong to both, because many words are neutral in their direct meaning
and emotional under special conditions of context. Having been used for
some time with an occasionally emotional effect, they may acquire some
permanent features in their semantic structure that justify referring
them into the other subset.
It is also difficult to draw a line of demarcation between emotional and
emphatic or intensifying words; therefore we shall consider the latter a
specific group of the emotional words subset. Intensifiers convey
special intensity to what is said, they indicate the special importance
of the thing expressed. The simplest and most often used of these are
such words as ever, even, all, so. The first of them, due to its
incessant use, has become a kind of semi-affix, as seen from the solid
spelling of such combinations as whatever, whenever, etc. If we compare:
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Whyever didn’t you go? and Why didn’t you go? we shall see at once how
much more expressive and emphatic the first variant is. There is also a
big incessantly developing and changing group of intensifying adverbs:
awfully, capitally, dreadfully, fiercely, frightfully, marvellously,
terribly, tremendously, wonderfully and very many others. The fashion
for them changes, so that every generation has its favourite
intensifiers and feels those used by their elders trite and
inexpressive. The denotative meaning of intensifying adverbs may be
almost completely suppressed by their emphatic function, so that in
spite of the contradiction of combinations like awfully glad,
frightfully beautiful or terribly important, they are very frequent.
E.g.: How are you, Helene? You're looking frightfully well (Amis).
Very little is known so far about limitations imposed upon the combining
possibilities of intensifiers. It is, for instance, quite usual to say
stark naked or stark mad, where stark means ‘wholly’, but not *stark
deaf; we say stone deaf instead. The fact is very little studied from
the synchronic point of view. Compare also the fixed character of such
combinations as flat denial, sheer nonsense, paramount importance, dead
tired, bored stiff. All such purely linguistic constraints concerning
the valency of words are of great theoretical interest.
Sometimes it is very difficult to tell an intensifier from an
emotionally coloured word, because in many cases both functions are
fulfilled by one and the same word, as in the following example: “You
think I know damn nothing,” he said indignantly. “Actually I know damn
all (Priestley).
An intensifying function may be also given to sound-imitative
interjections, as in the following: I was an athlete, you see, one of
those strong-as-a-horse boys. And never a day’s illness — until bang,
comes a coronary, or whoosh, go the kidneys! (Huxley)
A third group which together with emotional and intensifying words could
be opposed to the neutral vocabulary may be called evaluatory words.
Words which, when used in a sentence, pass a value judgment differ from
other emotional words in that they can not only indicate the presence of
emotion but specify it.
In evaluatory words the denotative meaning is not superseded by the
evaluative component, on the contrary they co-exist and support each
other. For example: Oh, you're not a spy. Germans are spies. British are
agents (Rattigan). A few more examples will not be amiss. The verb
fabricate has not lost its original neutral meaning of ‘manufacture’,
but added to it the meaning of ‘invent falsely’. When using this word,
the speaker is not indifferent to the fact but expresses his scorn,
irony or disgust. Scheming is a derogatory word (cf. planning), it means
‘planning secretly, by intrigue or for private ends’. For example: “I
wouldn’t exaggerate that, Mildred,” said Felix. “You're such a schemer
yourself, you're a bit too ready to attribute schemes to other people”
“Well, somebody’s got to do some scheming,” said Mildred. “Or let’s call
it planning, shall we? As you won’t raise a finger to help yourself,
dear boy, I have to try to help you. And then I am accused of scheming.”
(Murdoch)
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When the emotional variant of the word or a separate emotional word is
contrasted to its neutral variant the emotional word always turns out to
be morphologically or semantically derived, not primary.
The names of animals, for instance, when used metaphorically, almost
invariably have a strong evaluative force: “Silly ass,” said Dick. “He’s
jealous because he didn’t win a prise.” (M. Dickens) Compare also colt
‘a young male horse up to an age of four or five’, which occurs in the
figurative meaning of ‘a young inexperienced person’. The same type of
relationship is seen in the figurative meaning of the word pup as a
contemptuous term for a conceited young man.
Emotional, emphatic and evaluative words should not be confused with
words possessing some definite stylistic features although in actual
discourse these properties may coincide, and we often come across words
both emotionally and stylistically coloured. Style is, however, a
different kind of opposition; it will be discussed in the next chapter.
The distinction we are dealing with in the present paragraph is helpful,
because it permits us to observe some peculiar phenomena and features of
words in emotional speech.
The emotive effect is also attained by an interaction of syntactic and
lexical means. The pattern a+(A)1+N1+of+a+N2 is often used to express
emotion and emphasis. The precise character of the emotion is revealed
by the meaning and connotations possible for N1 and N2, the denotata may
be repulsive or pleasant, or give some image. Compare, for example: a
devil of a time, a deuce of a price, a hell of a success, a peach of a
car, an absolute jewel of a report, a mere button of a nose. The word
button in the last example acquires expressiveness and becomes ironical,
being used metaphorically, although used in its direct meaning it is
emotionally neutral; it acquires its emotional colour only when
transferred to a different sphere of notions. The adjectives absolute
and mere serve as intensifiers.
Emotional words may be inserted into a syntactic chain without any
formal or logical connection with what precedes or follows but
influencing the whole and making it more forcible, as, for example, in
the following: “There was a rumour in the office,” Wilson said, “about
some diamonds.” “Diamonds my eye,” Father Rank said. “They’ll never find
any diamonds.” (Greene) It would be wrong to consider this use of my eye
a figurative meaning, its relationship with the direct denotational
meaning being different from what we observe in metaphorical or
metonymical meanings. In this and similar cases the emotional component
of meaning expressing in a very general way the speaker’s feelings and
his state of mind dominates over the denotational meaning: the latter is
suppressed and has a tendency towards fading out.
Emotional words may even contradict the meaning of the words they
formally modify, as, for example, in the following: Everything was too
bloody friendly, Damn good stuff this. The emotional words in these two
examples were considered unprintable in the 19th century and dashes were
used to indicate the corresponding omissions in oaths:
The brackets show that this position is optional.
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D--n. The word has kept its emotional colouring, but its stylistic
status has improved.
Words expressing similar emotions may belong to different styles and the
vulgar Damn\ that can be at best qualified as familiar colloquial can be
compared with the lofty and poetical Alas! Each of them in its own way
expresses vexation, so that their emotional colouring, though not
identical, is similar; stylistically they are very different. The
criteria by which words can be referred to the set in question are being
at present investigated. A difficult problem is presented by words
naming emotions: love, hate, fear, fright, rage, etc. or associated with
emotions: dead, death, dirt, mean and the like. Some authors argue that
they cannot be considered emotional, because emotion plays the part of
denotatum, of something that is named, not expressed. Subsequent authors
have shown that if the question is considered in purely linguistic terms
of word-building and contextual ties, it may be proved that some of
these words can express feeling.
Words belonging (on a synchronic level) to word-families containing
interjections can be proved to possess the following properties: they
can express emotions, they can lend emotional colouring to the whole
sentence in which they occur, they occupy an optional position. Thus,
the whole cluster of derivatives with rot are regularly emotional: rot,
rotten, to rot, rotter. Emotionality is indubitable in the following:
Oh, get out! You don’t really care, damn you! You asked her to marry you
in your rotten cold-blooded way, but I loved her (Christie).
Different positive emotions are rendered by love and its derivatives
lovely a and lovely n (the latter is a synonym for darling).
In concluding the paragraph it is necessary to stress once more that as
a rule emotional and emphatic words do not render emotions by themselves
but impart these to the whole utterance in co-ordination with syntactic
and intonation means. Only context permits one to judge whether the word
serves as a mere intensifier or expresses emotion, and if so, to
particularise the type of emotion.
§ 11.6 DIFFERENT TYPES OF NON-SEMANTIC GROUPING
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.
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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.
variants of these vocabularies have received the derogatory names of
officialese and journalese. Their chief drawback is their triteness:
both are given to cliches.
§ 12.4 POETIC DICTION
Any word or set expression which is peculiar to a certain level of style
or a certain type of environment and mood will become associated with it
and will be able to call up its atmosphere when used in some other
context. There is no such thing as one poetic style in the English
language. The language a poet uses is closely bound with his outlook and
experience, with his subject-matter and the message he wants to express.
But there remains in English vocabulary a set of words which contrast
with all other words, because, having been traditionally used only in
poetry, they have poetic connotations. Their usage was typical of poetic
conventions in the 18th century, but since the so-called Romantic Revolt
in the first quarter of the 19th century poetic diction fell into
disuse. These words are not only more lofty but also as a rule more
abstract in their denotative meaning than their neutral synonyms. To
illustrate this layer, suffice it to give some examples in oppositions
with their stylistically neutral synonyms. Nouns: array : : clothes;
billow : : wave; brine : : salt water; brow : : forehead; gore : blood;
main : : sea; steed : : horse; woe : : sorrow. Verbs: behold : : see;
deem : : think; hearken : : hear; slay : : kill; trow : : believe.
Adjectives: fair : : beautiful; hapless : : unhappy; lone : : lonely;
murky : : grim; uncouth : : strange. Adverbs: anon : : presently; nigh :
: almost; oft : : often; whilom : : formerly. Pronouns: thee : : thou;
aught : : anything; naught : : nothing. Conjunctions: albeit : :
although; ere : : before.
Sometimes it is not the word as a whole that is poetic but only one of
its variants. It may be semantic: the words fair, hall, flood and many
others have among their meanings a poetical one. It may be also a
phonetical variant: e'en : : even; morn : : morning; oft : : often.
In the 18th century the standards of poetic diction were rigorously
observed and the archaic ingredient was considered not only appropriate
but obligatory. This poetic diction specialised by generations of
English poets was not only a matter of vocabulary, but also of
phraseology, imagery, grammar and even spelling. Traces of this
conservative tendency may be observed in the 19th century poetry. They
may either heighten the emotional quality of the expression or create an
ironical colouring by juxtaposing high style and trivial matter.
In the following stanza by G.G. Byron conventional features of poetic
language can be interpreted both ways:
I’ve tried another’s fetters too
With charms perchance as fair to view And I would fain have loved as
well,
But some inconquerable spell
Forbade my bleeding breast to own
A kindred care for ought but one.
("Stanzas to a Lady on Leaving England")
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§ 12.5 COLLOQUIAL WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS
The term colloquial is old enough: Dr Johnson, the great English
lexicographer, used it. Yet with him it had a definitely derogatory
ring. S. Johnson thought colloquial words inconsistent with good usage
and, thinking it his duty to reform the English language, he advised “to
clear it from colloquial barbarisms”. By the end of the 19th century
with Neo-grammarians the description of colloquial speech came into its
own, and linguists began to study the vocabulary that people actually
use under various circumstances and not what they may be justified in
using.
As employed in our time, the adjective colloquial does not necessarily
mean ‘slangy’ or ‘vulgar’, although slang and vulgar vocabulary make
part of colloquial vocabulary, or, in set-theoretical terminology, form
subsets contained in the set we call colloquial vocabulary.
The term literary colloquial is used to denote the vocabulary used by
educated people in the course of ordinary conversation or when writing
letters to intimate friends. A good sample may be found in works by a
number of authors, such as J. Galsworthy, E.M. Forster, C.P. Snow, W.S.
Maugham, J.B.Priestley, and others. For a modern reader it represents
the speech of the elder generations. The younger generation of writers
(M. Drabble for instance) adhere to familiar colloquial. So it seems in
a way to be a differentiation of generations. Familiar colloquial is
more emotional and much more free and careless than literary colloquial.
It is also characterised by a great number of jocular or ironical
expressions and nonce-words.
Low colloquial is a term used for illiterate popular speech. It is very
difficult to find hard and fast rules that help to establish the
boundary between low colloquial and dialect, because in actual
communication the two are often used together. Moreover, we have only
the evidence of fiction to go by, and this may be not quite accurate in
speech characterisation. The basis of distinction between low colloquial
and the two other types of colloquial is purely social. Everybody
remembers G.B. Shaw’s “Pygmalion” where the problem of speech as a mark
of one’s social standing and of social inequalities is one of the
central issues. Ample material for observation of this layer of
vocabulary is provided by the novels of Alan Sillitoe, Sid Chaplin or
Stan Barstow. The chief peculiarities of low colloquial concern grammar
and pronunciation; as to the vocabulary, it is different from familiar
colloquial in that it contains more vulgar words, and sometimes also
elements of dialect.
Other vocabulary layers below the level of standard educated speech are,
besides low colloquial, the so-called slang and argot. Unlike low
colloquial, however, they have only lexical peculiarities. Argot should
be distinguished from slang: the first term serves to denote a special
vocabulary and idiom, used by a particular social or age group,
especially by the so-called underworld (the criminal circles). Its main
point is to be unintelligible to outsiders.
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The boundaries between various layers of colloquial vocabulary not
being very sharply defined, it is more convenient to characterise it on
the whole. If we realise that gesture, tone and voice and situation are
almost as important in an informal act of communication as words are, we
shall be able to understand why a careful choice of words in everyday
conversation plays a minor part as compared with public speech or
literature, and consequently the vocabulary is much less variegated. The
same pronouns, prop-words, auxiliaries, postpositives and the same most
frequent and generic terms are used again and again, each conveying a
great number of different meanings. Only a small fraction of English
vocabulary is put to use, so that some words are definitely overworked.
Words like thing, business, do, get, go, fix, nice, really, well and
other words characterised by a very high rank of frequency are used in
all types of informal intercourse conveying a great variety of
denotative and emotional meanings and fulfilling no end of different
functions. The utterances abound in imaginative phraseology, ready-made
formulas of politeness and tags, standard expressions of assent,
dissent, surprise, pleasure, gratitude, apology, etc.
The following extract from the play “An Inspector Calls” by J.B.
Priestley can give ample material for observations:
BIRLING (triumphantly): There you are! Proof positive. The whole story’s
just a lot of moonshine. Nothing but an elaborate sell. (He produces a
huge sigh of relief.) Nobody likes to be sold as
badly as that — but — for all that – – – – (He smiles at them
all.) Gerald, have a drink.
GERALD (smiling): Thanks. I think I could just do with one now.
BIRLING (going to sideboard): So could I.
Mrs BIRLING (smiling): And I must say, Gerald, you’ve argued this very
cleverly, and I’m most grateful.
GERALD (going for his drink): Well, you see, while I was out of the
house I'd time to cool off and think things out a little.
BIRLING (giving him a drink): Yes, he didn’t keep you on the run as he
did the rest of us. I’ll admit now he gave me a bit of a scare at the
time. But I'd a special reason for not wanting any public scandal just
now. (Has his drink now, and raises his glass.) Well, here’s to us. Come
on, Sheila, don’t look like that. All over now.
Among the colloquialisms occurring in this conversation one finds whole
formulas, such as there you are, you see, I’m most grateful, here’s to
us; set expressions: a lot of moonshine, keep sb on the run, for all
that, cases of semi-conversion or typical word-groups like have a drink
(and not drink)’, give a scare (and not scare)’, verbs with
postpositives: cool off, think things out, come on; particles like just
and well. Every type of colloquial style is usually rich in figures of
speech. There is no point in enumerating them all, and we shall only
note the understatement: a bit of a scare, I could just do with one.
The above list shows that certain lexical patterns are particularly
characteristic of colloquialisms. Some may be added to those already
mentioned.
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Substantivised adjectives are very frequent in colloquial speech:
constitutional ‘a walk’, daily ‘a woman who comes daily to help with
household chores’, also greens for ‘green leaf vegetables’, such as
spinach, cabbage, etc., and woollies ‘woollen clothes’.
A large number of new formations is supplied by a process combining
composition and conversion and having as prototypes verbs with
postpositives: carry-on ‘way of behaving’, let-down ‘an unexpected
disappointment’, make-up ‘cosmetics’.
One of the most modern developments frequent in colloquial style are the
compounds coined by back-formation: the type to baby-sit (from
baby-sitter) is often resorted to.
It is common knowledge that colloquial English is very emotional.1
Emotions find their lexical expression not only in emphatic adverbs and
adjectives of the awfully and divine type, or interjections including
swear words, but also in a great number of other lexical intensifiers.
In the following example the feeling named by the novelist is expressed
in direct speech by an understatement: Gazing down with an expression
that was loving, gratified and knowledgeable, she said, “Now I call that
a bit of all right.” (Snow)
In all the groups of colloquialisms, and in familiar colloquial
especially, words easily acquire new meanings and new valency. We have
already observed it in the case of the verb do in I could do with one
meaning ‘I would like to have (a drink)’ and originally used jokingly.
Make do is a colloquialism also characterised by fixed context; it means
‘to continue to use old things instead of buying new ones, to
economise’. Other peculiarities of valency of the same verb are observed
in such combinations as do a museum, or do for sb, meaning ‘to act as a
housekeeper’. Verbs with postpositives are used in preference to their
polysyllabic synonyms.
Such intensifiers as absolutely, fabulous/fab, grand, lovely, superb,
terrific and the like come readily to the speaker’s lips. Getting
hackneyed, they are apt to lose their denotational meaning and keep only
their intensifying function. The loss of denotational meaning in
intensifiers is also very obvious in various combinations with the word
dead, such as dead sure, dead easy, dead right, dead slow, dead
straight.
As these adverbs and adjectives become stale other expressive means may
be used. Here is an example of heated argument in literary colloquial
between the well-bred and educated personages of СР. Snow’s “The
Conscience of the Rich":
“If you're seriously proposing to print rumours without even a scrap of
evidence, the paper isn’t going to last very long, is it?”
“Why in God’s name not?”
“What’s going to stop a crop of libel actions'?”
“The trouble with you lawyers,” said Seymour, jauntily once more, “is
that you never know when a fact is a fact, and you never see an inch
beyond your noses. I am prepared to bet any of you, or all three, if you
like, an even hundred pounds that no one, no one brings an action
against us over this business”.
1 The subject has been dealt with in the previous chapter but a few
additional examples will not come amiss.
247
Carefully observing the means of emphasis used in the passage above,
one will notice that the words a scrap, an inch, even are used here only
as intensifiers lending emphasis to what is being said; they are
definitely colloquial. But they have these properties due to the
context, and the reader will have no difficulty in finding examples
where these words are neither emphatic nor stylistically coloured. The
conclusion is that some words acquire these characteristics only under
certain very definite conditions, and may be contrasted with words and
expressions that are always emotional and always colloquial in all their
meanings, whatever the context. On earth or in God’s name, for instance,
are colloquial and emotional only after some interrogative word: Why in
God’s name ..., Why on earth ..., Where in God’s name ..., Where on
earth ..., What in God’s name..., What on earth..., etc. A typical
context is seen in the following extract: The man must be mad,
sitting-out there on a freezing morning like this. What on earth he
thinks he is doing I can’t imagine (Shaffer). On the other hand, there
exist oaths, swear words and their euphemistic variations that function
as emotional colloquialisms independent of the context. The examples
are: by God, Goodness gracious, for Goodness sake, good Lord and many
others. They occur very often and are highly differentiated socially.
Not only is there a difference in expressions used by schoolboys and
elderly ladies, sailors and farmers but even those chosen by students of
different universities may show some local colour.
Many lexical expressions of modality may be also referred to
colloquialisms, as they do not occur anywhere except informal everyday
intercourse. Affirmative and negative answers, for instance, show a wide
range of modality shades: definitely, up to a point, in a way, exactly,
right-o, by all means, I expect so, I should think so, rather, and on
the other hand: I am afraid, not or not at all, not in the least, by no
means, etc. E. g.: Mr Salter’s side of the conversation was limited to
expressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right he said, “Definitely,
Lord Copper”; when he was wrong, “Up to a point.” (Waugh) The emotional
words already mentioned are used as strong negatives in familiar or low
colloquial: “Have you done what he told you?” “Have I hell!” The answer
means ‘Of course I have not and have no intention of doing it’. Or: “So
he died of natural causes, did he?” “Natural causes be damned.” The
implication is that there is no point in pretending the man died of
natural causes, because it is obvious that he was killed. A synonymous
expression much used at present is my foot. The second answer could be
substituted by Natural causes my foot, without any change in meaning.
Colloquialisms are a persistent feature of the conversation of at least
90% of the population. For a foreign student the first requirement is to
be able to differentiate those idioms that belong to literature, and
those that are peculiar to spoken language. It is necessary to pay
attention to comments given in good dictionaries as to whether a word is
colloquial (colloq.), slang (sl.) or vulgar (vulg.).
248
To use colloquialisms one must have an adequate fluency in English and
a sufficient familiarity with the language, otherwise one may sound
ridiculous, especially, perhaps, if one uses a mixture of British and
American colloquialisms. The author has witnessed some occasions where a
student used American slang words intermingled with idiomatic
expressions learned from Ch. Dickens, with a kind of English public
school accent; the result was that his speech sounded like nothing on
earth.
§ 12.6 SLANG
Slang words are identified and distinguished by contrasting them to
standard literary vocabulary. They are expressive, mostly ironical words
serving to create fresh names for some things that are frequent topics
of discourse. For the most part they sound somewhat vulgar, cynical and
harsh, aiming to show the object of speech in the light of an off-hand
contemptuous ridicule. Vivid examples can be furnished by various slang
words for money, such as beans, brass, dibs, dough, chink, oof, wads;
the slang synonyms for word head are attic, brain-pan, hat peg, nut,
upper storey, compare also various synonyms for the adjective drunk:
boozy, cock-eyed, high, soaked, tight and many more. Notions that for
some reason or other are apt to excite an emotional reaction attract as
a rule many synonyms: there are many slang words for food, alcohol
drinks, stealing and other violations of the law, for jail, death,
madness, drug use, etc.
Slang has often attracted the attention of lexicographers. The
best-known English slang dictionary is compiled by E. Partridge.
The subject of slang has caused much controversy for many years. Very
different opinions have been expressed concerning its nature, its
boundaries and the attitude that should be adopted towards it. The
question whether it should be considered a healthful source of
vocabulary development or a manifestation of vocabulary decay has been
often discussed.
It has been repeatedly stated by many authors that after a slang word
has been used in speech for a certain period of time, people get
accustomed to it and it ceases to produce that shocking effect for the
sake of which it has been originally coined. The most vital among slang
words are then accepted into literary vocabulary. The examples are bet,
bore, chap, donkey, fun, humbug, mob, odd, pinch, shabby, sham, snob,
trip, also some words from the American slang: graft, hitch-hiker,
sawbones, etc.
These words were originally slang words but have now become part of
literary vocabulary. The most prominent place among them is occupied by
words or expressions having no synonyms and serving as expressive names
for some specific notions. The word teenager, so very frequent now, is a
good example. Also blurb — a publisher’s eulogy of a book printed on its
jacket or in advertisements elsewhere, which is originally American
slang word.
The communicative value of these words ensures their stability. But they
are rather the exception. The bulk of slang is formed by shortlived
words. E. Partridge, one of the best known specialists in English
249
slang, gives as an example a series of vogue words designating a man of
fashion that superseded one another in English slang. They are: blood
(1550-1660), macaroni (1760), buck (1720-1840), swell (1811), dandy
(1820-1870), toff (1851)1.
It is convenient to group slang words according to their place in the
vocabulary system, and more precisely, in the semantic system of the
vocabulary. If they denote a new and necessary notion, they may prove an
enrichment of the vocabulary and be accepted into standard English. If,
on the other hand, they make just another addition to a cluster of
synonyms, and have nothing but novelty to back them, they die out very
quickly, constituting the most changeable part of the vocabulary.
Another type of classification suggests subdivision according to the
sphere of usage, into general slang and special slang. General slang
includes words that are not specific for any social or professional
group, whereas special slang is peculiar for some such group: teenager
slang, university slang, public school slang, Air Force slang, football
slang, sea slang, and so on. This second group is heterogeneous. Some
authors, A.D. Schweitzer for instance, consider argot to belong here. It
seems, however, more logical to differentiate slang and argot. The
essential difference between them results from the fact that the first
has an expressive function, whereas the second is primarily concerned
with secrecy. Slang words are clearly motivated, сf. cradle-snatcher ‘an
old man who marries or courts a much younger woman’; belly-robber ‘the
head of a military canteen’; window-shopping ‘feasting one’s eyes on the
goods displaced in the shops, without buying anything’. Argot words on
the contrary do not show their motivation, сf. rap ‘kill’, shin ‘knife’,
book ‘a life sentence’.
Regarding professional words that are used by representatives of various
trades in oral intercourse, it should be observed that when the word is
the only name for some special notion it belongs not to slang but to
terminology. If, on the other hand, it is a jocular name for something
that can be described in some other way, it is slang.
There are cases, of course, when words originating as professional slang
later on assume the dignity of special terms or pass on into general
slang. The borderlines are not always sharp and distinct.
For example, the expression be on the beam was first used by pilots
about the beam of the radio beacon indicating the proper course for the
aircraft to follow. Then figuratively be on the beam came to mean ‘to be
right’, whereas be off the beam came to mean ‘to be wrong’ or ‘to be at
a loss’.
1 To this list the 20th century words masher and teddy-boy could be
added. There seems to be no new equivalent in today’s English because
such words as mod and rocker (like beat and beatnik) or hippy and punk
imply not only, and not so much a certain way of dressing but other
tastes and mental make-up as well. Mods (admirers of modern jazz music)
and more sportive rockers were two groups of English youth inimical to
one another. The words are formed by abbreviation and ellipsis: modA great deal of slang comes from the USA: corny, cute, fuss-pot,
teenager, swell, etc. It would be, however, erroneous to suppose that
slang is always American in its origin. On the contrary, American slang
also contains elements coming from Great Britain, such as cheerio
‘goodbye’, right-o ‘yes’ > Gerry for ‘a German soldier’, and some,
though not many, others.
Slang is a difficult problem and much yet remains to be done in
elucidating it, but a more complete treatment of this layer of
vocabulary would result in an undue swelling of the chapter. Therefore
in concluding the discussion of slang we shall only emphasise that the
most important peculiarities of slang concern not form but content. The
lexical meaning of a slang word contains not only the denotational
component but also an emotive component (most often it expresses irony)
and all the other possible types of connotation — it is expressive,
evaluative and stylistically coloured and is the marked member of a
stylistic opposition. .
tions, the salesmen of these were stationers and what they sold —
stationery (with the noun suffix -ery as in grocery or bakery).
Not all doublets come in pairs. Examples of groups are: appreciate,
appraise, apprise; astound, astonish, stun; kennel, channel, canal.
The Latin word discus is the origin of a whole group of doublets:
dais
International words should not be mixed with words of the common Indo-European stock that also comprise a sort of common fund of the European languages. This layer is of great importance for the foreign language teacher not only because many words denoting abstract notions are international but also because he must know the most efficient ways of showing the points of similarity and difference between such words as control : : контроль; general : : генерал; industry : : индустрия or magazine : : магазин, etc. usually called ‘translator’s false friends’. The treatment of international words at English lessons would be one-sided if the teacher did not draw his pupils’ attention to the spread of the English vocabulary into other languages. We find numerous English words in the field of sport: football, out, match, tennis, time. A large number of English words are to be found in the vocabulary pertaining to clothes: jersey, pullover, sweater, nylon, tweed, etc. Cinema and different forms of entertainment are also a source of many international words of English origin: film, club, cocktail, jazz. At least some of the Russian words borrowed into English and many other languages and thus international should also be mentioned: balalaika, bolshevik, cosmonaut, czar, intelligentsia, Kremlin, mammoth, rouble, sambo, soviet, sputnik, steppe, vodka. To sum up this brief treatment of loan words it is necessary to stress that in studying loan words a linguist cannot be content with establishing the source, the date of penetration, the semantic sphere to which the word belonged and the circumstances of the process of borrowing. All these are very important, but one should also be concerned with the changes the new language system into which the loan word penetrates causes in the word itself, and, on the other hand, look for the changes occasioned by the newcomer in the English vocabulary, when in finding its way into the new language it pushed some of its lexical neighbours aside. In the discussion above we have tried to show the importance of the problem of conformity with the patterns typical of the receiving language and its semantic needs. Chapter 14 REGIONAL VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY § 14.1 STANDARD ENGLISH VARIANTS AND DIALECTS Standard English — the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognised as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialecticisms. Local dialeсts are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalised literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In Great Britain there are two variants, Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects. One of the best known Southern dialects is Cockney, the regional dialect of London. According to E. Partridge and H.C. Wylde, this dialect exists on two levels. As spoken by the educated lower middle classes it is a regional dialect marked by some deviations in pronunciation but few in vocabulary and syntax. As spoken by the uneducated, Cockney differs from Standard English not only in pronunciation but also in vocabulary, morphology and syntax. G.B. Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” clearly renders this level of Cockney as spoken at the time when the play was written and reveals the handicap Cockney obviously presents in competition with speakers of standard English. Professor Henry Higgins, the main character of the play, speaking about Eliza Doolittie, the flower girl, says: You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass this girl off as a duchess ... even get her a place as lady’s maid or shop assistant which requires better English. “The Encyclopaedia Britannica” treats Cockney as an accent, not acknowledging it the status of dialect. Cockney has attracted much literary attention, and so we can judge of its past and present on the evidence of literature. As recorded by Ch. Dickens over a century ago, Cockney was phonetically characterised by the interchange of the labial and labio-dental consonants [w] and [v]: wery for very and vell for well. This trait was lost by the end of the 19th century. The voiceless and voiced dental spirants [?] and [?] are still replaced — though not very consistently — by [f] and [v] respectively: fing for thing and farver for father (inserting the letter r indicates vowel 262 length). This variation is not exclusively characteristic of Cockney and may be found in several dialects. Another trait not limited to Cockney is the interchange of the aspirated and non-aspirated initial vowels: hart for art and ‘eart for heart. The most marked feature in vowel sounds is the substitution of the diphthong [ai] for standard [ei] in such words as day, face, rain, way pronounced: [dai], [fais], [rain], [wai]. There are some specifically Cockney words and set expressions such as up the pole ‘drunk’, you’ll get yourself disliked (a remonstrance to a person behaving very badly). Cockney is lively and witty and its vocabulary imaginative and colourful. Its specific feature not occurring anywhere else is the so-called rhyming slang, in which some words are substituted by other words rhyming with them. Boots, for instance, are called daisy roots, hat is tit for tat, head is sarcastically called loaf of bread, and wife — trouble and strife. It has set expressions of its own. Here is an example of a rather crude euphemistic phrase for being dead: “She may have pulled me through me operation,” said Mrs Fisher, “but ‘streuth I’m not sure I wouldn’t be better off pushing up the daisies, after all.” (M. Dickens) The study of dialects has been made on the basis of information obtained with the help of special techniques: interviews, questionnaires, recording by phonograph and tape-recorder, etc. Data collected in this way show the territorial distribution of certain key words and pronunciations which vary from region to region. Dialects are now chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. Their boundaries have become less stable than they used to be; the distinctive features are tending to disappear with the shifting of population due to the migration of working-class families in search of employment and the growing influence of urban life over the countryside. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of Standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television and cinema. For the most part dialect in literature has been limited to speech characterisation of personages in books otherwise composed in Standard English. There are Yorkshire passages in “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte, and Lancashire passages in “Mary Barton” by E. Gaskell. A Southern dialect (that of Dorset) is sometimes introduced by Th. Hardy, A. Tennyson used Lancashire dialect in two of his poems reproducing peasant speech ("Northern Farmer: Old Style” and “Northern Farmer: New Style"). “The Northern Farmer: Old Style” is the monologue of a dying old man. He knows that his death is near and is resigned to it: “If I must die I must die.” He wants his nurse to bring him ale, although doctor has forbidden it. The last stanza runs as follows: “What atta stannin’ theer for, an’ doesn bring ma the yaaele? Doctor’s a ‘tattier, lass, an a’s hallus V the owd taaele; I weaent break rules for Doctor, a knows now moor nora floy, Git ma my yaaele I tell tha, an gin I тип doy I тип doy.” (Tennyson) The dialect vocabulary is remarkable for its conservatism: many words that have become obsolete in standard English are still kept in dialects, e. g. to and ‘envy’ According to O. Jespersen, however, dialect study suffered from too much attention being concentrated on the “archaic” traits. “Every survival of an old form, every trace of old sounds that have been dropped in standard speech, was greeted with enthusiasm, and the significance of these old characteristics greatly exaggerated, the general impression being that popular dialects were always much more conservative than the speech of educated people. It was reserved for a much later time to prove that this view is completely erroneous, and that popular dialects in spite of many archaic details are on the whole further developed than the various standard languages with their stronger tradition and literary reminiscences."1 The standard work of reference in dialect study is Joseph Wright's “English Dialect Dictionary”. After this brief review of dialects we shall now proceed to the discussion of variants. The Scottish Tongue and the Irish English have a special linguistic status as compared with dialects because of the literature composed in them. The name of Robert Burns, the great national poet of Scotland, is known all over the world. There is a whole group of modern poets including Hugh MacDiarmid writing in this variant of the English language. A few lines from R. Burns’s poem dedicated to his friend James Smith will illustrate the general character of Scottish: To James Smith 1 Dear Smith, the slee’st, pawkie thief That e’er attempted stealth or rief! Ye surely hae some warlock-brief Owre human hearts; For ne'er a bosom yet was prief Against your arts. 2 For me, I swear by sun and moon, And every star that blinks aboon, Ye’ve cost me twenty pair o’shoon Just gaun to see you; And ev’ry ither pair that’s done Mair taen I’m wi’ you... Here slee’st meant 'slyest’, pawkie ‘cunning’, ‘sly’, rief ‘robbery’, warlock-brief ‘wizard’s contract’ (with the devil), prief ‘proof’, aboon 1 Jespersen O. Language, Its Nature, Development and Origin. London, 1949. P. 68. 264 ‘above’, shoon ‘shoes’. The other dialect words differing only in pronunciation from their English counterparts (owre : : over; mair : : more) are readily understood. The poetic features of Anglo-Irish may be seen in the plays by J.M. Synge and Sean О’Casey. The latter’s name is worth an explanation in this connection. O’ is Gaelic and means ‘of the clan of’. Cf. Mac — the Gaelic for ‘son’ found in both Scottish and Irish names.1 Sean, also spelled Shawn and pronounced [So:n], is the Irish for John. Some traits of Anglo-Irish may be observed in the following lines from “The Playboy of the Western World” by J.M. Synge: I’ve told my story no place till this night, Pegeen Mike, and it’s foolish I was here, maybe, to be talking free, but you’re decent people, I'm thinking, and yourself a kindly woman, the way I was not fearing you at all. Pegeen exemplifies the diminutive suffix found in Standard English only in loan-words. The emphatic personal pronoun yourself appears in a non-appositional construction. Cf. also It was yourself started it (O’Casey). The main peculiarities concern syntax, and they are reflected in some form words. The concrete connective word the way substitutes the abstract conjunction so that. Cf. also the time that, the while for when, and all times for always. E.g.: I’d hear himself snoring out — a loud, lonesome snore he’d be making all times, the while he was sleeping’, and he a man’d be raging all times the while he was waking (Synge). The Anglo-Irish of J.M. Synge, however, should not be taken as a faithful reproduction of real speech, as it is imbued with many romantic poetic archaisms. Words from dialects and variants may penetrate into Standard English. The Irish English gave, for instance, blarney n ‘flattery’, bog n ‘a spongy, usually peaty ground of marsh’. This word in its turn gave rise to many derivatives and compounds, among them bog-trotter, the ironical nickname for Irishman. Shamrock (a trifoliate plant, the national emblem of Ireland) is a word used quite often, and so is the noun whiskey. The contribution of the Scottish dialect is very considerable. Some of the most frequently used Scotticisms are: bairn ‘child’, billy ‘chum’, bonny ‘handsome’, brogue ‘a stout shoe’, glamour ‘charm’, laddie, lassie, kilt, raid, slogan, tartan, wee, etc. A great deal in this process is due to Robert Burns who wrote his poems in Scottish English, and to Walter Scott who introduced many Scottish words into his novels. § 14.2 AMERICAN ENGLISH The variety of English spoken in the USA has received the name of American English. The term variant or variety appears most appropriate for several reasons. American English cannot be called a dialect although it is a regional variety, because it has a literary 1 Cf. fitz (ultimately from Latin filius), which is used in the same way in the Anglo-Norman names: Fitzgerald ‘son of Gerald’. 265 normalised form called Standard American (or American National Standard), whereas by definition given above a dialect has no literary form. Neither is it a separate language, as some American authors, like H.L. Mencken, claimed, because it has neither grammar nor vocabulary of its own. From the lexical point of view we shall have to deal only with a heterogeneous set of Americanisms. An 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’. A general and comprehensive description of the American variant is given in Professor A.D. Schweitzer’s monograph. An important aspect of his treatment is the distinction made between Americanisms belonging to the literary norm and those existing in low colloquial and slang. The difference between the American and British literary norm is not systematic. The American variant of the English language differs from British English1 in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary, and this paragraph will deal with the latter. Our treatment will be mainly diachronic. Speaking about the historic causes of these deviations it is necessary to mention that American English is based on the language imported to the new continent at the time of the first settlements, that is on the English of the 17th century. The first colonies were founded in 1607, so that the first colonisers were contemporaries of W. Shakespeare, E. Spenser and J. Milton. Words which have died out in Britain, or changed their meaning may survive in the USA. Thus, I guess, was used by G. Chaucer for I think. For more than three centuries the American vocabulary developed more or less independently of the British stock and was influenced by the new surroundings. The early Americans had to coin words for the unfamiliar fauna and flora. Hence bullfrog ‘a large frog’, moose (the American elk), opossum, raccoon (an American animal related to the bears) for animals; and corn, hickory, etc. for plants. The opposition of any two lexical systems among the variants described is of great linguistic and heuristic2 value, because it furnishes ample data for observing the influence of extra-linguistic factors upon vocabulary. American political vocabulary shows this point very definitely: absentee voting ‘voting by mail’, dark horse ‘a candidate nominated unexpectedly and not known to his voters’, gerrymander ‘to arrange and falsify the electoral process to produce a favourable result in the interests of a particular party or candidate’, all-outer ‘an adept of decisive measures’. Both in the USA and Great Britain the meaning of leftist is ‘an adherent of the left wing of a party’. In the USA it also means a left-handed person and lefty in the USA is only ‘a left-handed person’ while in Great Britain it is a colloquial variant of leftist and has a specific sense of a communist or socialist. 1 It must be noted that an Englishman does not accept the term “British English”. 2 Heuristic means ‘serving to discover’. 266 Many of the foreign elements borrowed into American English from the Indian languages or from Spanish penetrated very soon not only into British English but also into several other languages, Russian not excluded, and so became international due to the popularity of J.F. Cooper and H. Longfellow. They are: canoe, moccasin, squaw, tomahawk, wigwam, etc. and translation loans: pipe of peace, pale-face and the like, taken from Indian languages. The Spanish borrowings like cafeteria, mustang, ranch, sombrero, etc. are very familiar to the speakers of many European languages. It is only by force of habit that linguists still include these words among the specific features of American English. As to the toponyms, for instance Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Utah (all names of Indian tribes), or other names of towns, rivers and states named by Indian words, it must be borne in mind that in all countries of the world towns, rivers and the like show in their names traces of the earlier inhabitants of the land in question. Another big group of peculiarities as compared with the English of Great Britain is caused by some specific features of pronunciation, stress or spelling standards, such as [ae] for [a:] in ask, dance, path, etc., or [e] for [ei] in made, day and some other. The American spelling is in some respects simpler than its British counterpart, in other respects just different. The suffix -our is spelled -or, so that armor and humor are the American variants of armour and humour. Altho stands for although and thru for through. The table below illustrates some of the other differences but it is by no means exhaustive. For a more complete treatment the reader is referred to the monograph by A.D. Schweitzer. British spelling American spelling cosy cozy offence offense practice practise jewellery jewelry travelling traveling thraldom thralldom encase incase In the course of time with the development of the modern means of communication the lexical differences between the two variants show a tendency to decrease. Americanisms penetrate into Standard English and Britishisms come to be widely used in American speech. Americanisms mentioned as specific in manuals issued a few decades ago are now used on both sides of the Atlantic or substituted by terms formerly considered as specifically British. It was, for instance, customary to contrast the English word autumn with the American fall. In reality both words are used in both countries, only autumn is somewhat more elevated, while in England the word fall is now rare in literary use, though found in some dialects and surviving in set 267 expressions: spring and fait, the fall of the year are still in fairly common use. Cinema and TV are probably the most important channels for the passage of Americanisms into the language of Britain and other languages as well: the Germans adopted the word teenager and the French speak of l’automatisation. The influence of American advertising is also a vehicle of Americanisms. This is how the British term wireless is replaced by the Americanism radio. The personal visits of British writers and scholars to the USA and all forms of other personal contacts bring back Americanisms. The existing cases of difference between the two variants are conveniently classified into: Cases where there are no equivalents in British English: drive-in ‘a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car’ or ‘a shop where motorists buy things staying in the car’; dude ranch ‘a sham ranch used as a summer residence for holiday-makers from the cities’. Cases where different words are used for the same denotatum, such as can, candy, mailbox, movies, suspenders, truck in the USA and tin, sweets, pillar-box (or letter-box), pictures or flicks, braces and lorry in England. Cases where the semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement, for example, means in the first place ‘covering of the street or the floor and the like made of asphalt, stones or some other material’. In England the derived meaning is ‘the footway at the side of the road’. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means ‘the roadway’. Cases where otherwise equivalent words are different in distribution. The verb ride in Standard English is mostly combined with such nouns as a horse, a bicycle, more seldom they say ride on a bus. In American English combinations like a ride on the train, ride in a boat are quite usual. It sometimes happens that the same word is used in American English with some difference in emotional and stylistic colouring. Nasty, for example, is a much milder expression of disapproval in England than in the States, where it was even considered obscene in the 19th century. Politician in England means ‘someone in polities’, and is derogatory in the USA. Professor A.D. Schweitzer pays special attention to phenomena differing in social norms of usage. For example balance in its lexico-semantic variant ‘the remainder of anything’ is substandard in British English and quite literary in America. Last but not least, there may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. Thus, time-table which occurs in American English very rarely, yielded its place to schedule. This question of different frequency distribution is also of paramount importance if we wish to investigate the morphological peculiarities of the American variant. ее (draftee n ‘a young man about to be enlisted’), -ette (tambour-majorette ‘one of the girl drummers in front of a procession’), -dom and -ster, as in roadster ‘motorcar for long journeys by road’ or gangsterdom. American slang uses alongside the traditional ones also a few specific models, such as verb stem+-er+adverb stem+-er, e. g. opener-upper ‘the first item on the programme’ and winder-upper ‘the last item’. It also possesses some specific affixes and semi-affixes not used in literary colloquial: -o, -eroo, -aroo, -sie, -sy, as in coppo ‘policeman’, fatso ‘a fat man’, bossaroo ‘boss’, chapsie ‘fellow’. The trend to shorten words and to use initial abbreviations in American English is even more pronounced than in the British variant. New coinages are incessantly introduced in advertisements, in the press, in everyday conversation; soon they fade out and are replaced by the newest creations. Ring Lardner, very popular in the 30s, makes one of his characters, a hospital nurse, repeatedly use two enigmatic abbreviations: G.F. and B.F.; at last the patient asks her to clear the mystery. “What about Roy Stewart?” asked the man in bed. “Oh, he’s the fella I was telling you about,” said Miss Lyons. “He’s my G.F.’s B.F.” “Maybe I’m a D.F. not to know, but would you tell me what a B.F. and G.F. are?” “Well, you are dumb, aren’t you!” said Miss Lyons. “A G.F. that’s a girl friend, and a B.F. is a boy friend. I thought everybody knew that.” The phrases boy friend and girl friend, now widely used everywhere, originated in the USA. So it is an Americanism in the wider meaning of the term, i.e. an Americanism “by right of birth", whereas in the above definition we have defined Americanisms synchronically as lexical units peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA. Particularly common in American English are verbs with the hanging postpositive. They say that in Hollywood you never meet a man: you meet up with him, you do not study a subject but study up on it. In British English similar constructions serve to add a new meaning. With words possessing several structural variants it may happen that some are more frequent in one country and the others in another. Thus, amid and toward, for example, are more often used in the United States and amidst and towards in Great Britain. The lexical peculiarities of American English are an easy target for ironical outbursts on the part of some writers. John Updike is mildly humorous. His short poem “Philological” runs as follows: The British puss demurely mews; His transatlantic kin meow, The kine in Minnesota moo; Not so the gentle Devon cows: They low, As every schoolchild ought to know. 269 A well-known humourist G. Mikes goes as far as to say: “It was decided almost two hundred years ago that English should be the language spoken in the United States. It is not known, however, why this decision has not been carried out.” In his book “How to Scrape Skies” he gives numerous examples to illustrate this proposition: “You must be extremely careful concerning the names of certain articles. If you ask for suspenders in a man’s shop, you receive a pair of braces, if you ask for a pair of pants, you receive a pair of trousers, and should you ask for a pair of braces, you receive a queer look. I should like to mention that although a lift is called an elevator in the United States, when hitch-hiking, you do not ask for an elevator, you ask for a lift. There is some confusion about the word flat. A flat in America is called an apartment; what they call a flat is a puncture in your tyre (or as they spell it, tire). Consequently the notice: FLATS FIXED does not indicate an estate agent where they are going to fix you up with a flat, but a garage where they are equipped to mend a puncture.” Disputing the common statement that there is no such thing as the American nation, he says: “They do indeed exist. They have produced the American constitution, the American way of life, the comic strips in their newspapers: they have their national game, baseball — which is cricket played with a strong American accent — and they have a national language, entirely their own, unlike any other language.” This is of course an exaggeration, but a very significant one. It confirms the fact that there is a difference between the two variants to be reckoned with. Although not sufficiently great to warrant American English the status of an independent language, it is considerable enough to make a mixture of variants sound unnatural and be called Mid-Atlantic. Students of English should be warned against this danger. § 14.3 CANADIAN, AUSTRALIAN AND INDIAN VARIANTS It should of course be noted that American English is not the only existing variant. There are several other variants where difference from the British standard is normalised. Besides the Irish and Scottish variants that have been mentioned in the preceding paragraph, there are Australian English, Canadian English, Indian English. Each of these has developed a literature of its own, and is characterised by peculiarities in phonetics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary. Canadian English is influenced both by British and American English but it also has some specific features of its own. Specifically Canadian words are called Canadianisms. They are not very frequent outside Canada, except shack ‘a hut’ and fathom out ‘to explain’. The vocabulary of all the variants is characterised by a high percentage of borrowings from the language of the people who inhabited the land before the English colonisers came. Many of them denote some specific realia of the new country: local animals, plants or weather conditions, new social relations, new trades and conditions of labour. The local words for new notions penetrate into the English language and later on may become international, if they are of sufficient interest and importance for people speaking other languages. 270 International words coming through the English of India are for instance: bungalow n, jute n, khaki a, mango n, nabob n, pyjamas, sahib, sari. Similar examples, though perhaps fewer in number, such as boomerang, dingo, kangaroo, are all adopted into the English language through its Australian variant and became international. They denote the new phenomena found by English immigrants on the new continent. A high percentage of words borrowed from the native inhabitants of Australia will be noticed in the sonorous Australian place names. 1 It has been noticed by a number of linguists that the British attitude to this phenomenon is somewhat peculiar. When anyone other than an Englishman uses English, the natives of Great Britain, often half-consciously, perhaps, feel that they have a special right to criticise his usage because it is “their” language. It is, however, unreasonable with respect to people in the United States, Canada, Australia and some other areas for whom English is their mother tongue. At present there is no single “correct” English and the American, Canadian and Australian English have developed standards of their own. It would therefore have been impossible to attempt a lexicological description of all the variants simultaneously: the aim of this book was to describe mainly the vocabulary of British English, as it is the British variant that is received and studied in Soviet schools. 1 S.J. Baker quotes a poem consisting of geographical names only: I like the native names as Paratta And Illawarra, and Wooloomooloo, Nandowra, Woogarora, Bulkomatta, Tenah, Toongabbie, Mittagong, Merroo... Chapter 15 LEXICOGRAPHY § 15.1 TYPES OF DICTIONARIES 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. It cannot, however, claim any completeness as regards the units themselves, because the number of these units being very great, systematisation and completeness could not be achieved simultaneously. The province of lexicography, on the other hand, is the semantic, formal, and functional description of all individual words. Dictionaries aim at a more or less complete description, but in so doing cannot attain systematic treatment, so that every dictionary entry presents, as it were, an independent problem. Lexicologists sort and present their material in a sequence depending upon their views concerning the vocabulary system, whereas lexicographers have to arrange it most often according to a purely external characteristic, namely alphabetically. It goes without saying that neither of these branches of linguistics could develop successfully without the other, their relationship being essentially that of theory and practice dealing with the same objects of reality. The term dictionary is 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"). For dictionaries in which the words and their definitions belong to the same language the term unilingual or explanatory is used, whereas bilingual or translation dictionaries are those that explain words by giving their equivalents in another language.1 Multilingual or polyglot 1 The most important unilingual dictionaries of the English language are “The Oxford English Dictionary”, A.S. Hornby’s dictionary, Webster’s, Funk and Wagnells, Random House and many more (see Recommended Reading at the end of the book). 272 dictionaries are not numerous, they serve chiefly the purpose of comparing synonyms and terminology in various languages. 1 Unilingual dictionaries are further subdivided with regard to the time. Diachronic dictionaries, of which “The Oxford English Dictionary” is the main example, reflect the development of the English vocabulary by recording the history of form and meaning for every word registered. They may be contrasted to synchronic or descriptive dictionaries of current English concerned with present-day meaning and usage of words. 2 The boundary between the two is, however, not very rigid: that is to say, few dictionaries are consistently synchronic, chiefly, perhaps, because their methodology is not developed as yet, so that in many cases the two principles are blended. 3 Some synchronic dictionaries are at the same time historical when they represent the state of vocabulary at some past stage of its development. 4 Both bilingual and unilingual dictionaries can be general and special. General dictionaries represent the vocabulary as a whole with a degree of completeness depending upon the scope and bulk of the book in question. The group includes the thirteen volumes of “The Oxford English Dictionary” alongside with any miniature pocket dictionary. Some general dictionaries may have very specific aims and still be considered general due to their coverage. They include, for instance, frequency dictionaries, i.e. lists of words, each of which is followed by a record of its frequency of occurrence in one or several sets of reading matter. 5 A rhyming dictionary is also a general dictionary, though arranged in inverse order, and so is a thesaurus in spite of its unusual arrangement. General dictionaries are contrasted to special dictionaries whose stated aim is to cover only a certain specific part of the vocabulary. Special dictionaries may be further subdivided depending on whether the words are chosen according to the sphere of human activity in which they are used (technical dictionaries), the type of the units themselves (e. g. phraseological dictionaries) or the relationships existing between them (e. g. dictionaries of synonyms). The first subgroup embraces 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 are called 1 See, for example: Buck, Carl Darling. A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages. Chicago, 1949. 2 Such as: Hornby A.S., Gatenby E.V., Wakefield H. The Advance Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford, 1948. 3 Cf.: The Concise Oxford Dictionary/Ed. by H.W. Fowler. Oxford, 1944. 4 Bosworth J. and Toller T. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford, 1882-1898; Kurath, Hans and Kuhn, Sherman M. Middle English Dictionary. Univ. of Michigan Press, 1952. 5 See, for instance: Thorndike E.L. and Lorge I. The Teacher’s Word-Book of 30,000 Words; West Michael. A General Service List of English Words. London, 1959; Eaton, Helen S. Semantic Frequency List of English, French, German and Spanish. Chicago, 1940; Kuccra, Henry] and Francis, W. Nelson. Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English. Brown Univ. Press, Providence, 1967. 18 И. B. Арнольд 273 glossaries. They are often prepared by boards or commissions specially appointed for the task of improving technical terminology and nomenclature. The second subgroup deals with specific language units, i.e. with phraseology, abbreviations, neologisms, borrowings, surnames, toponyms, proverbs and. sayings, etc. The third subgroup contains a formidable array of synonymic dictionaries that have been mentioned in the chapter on synonyms. Dictionaries recording the complete vocabulary of some author are called concordances,1 they should be distinguished from those that deal only with difficult words, i.e. glossaries. Taking up territorial considerations one comes across dialect dictionaries and dictionaries of Americanisms. The main types of dictionaries are classified in the accompanying table. Types of Dictionaries Unilingual Bilingual or multilingual General Explanatory dictionaries irrespective of their bulk English-Russian, Russian-English, etc. and multilingual dictionaries Etymological, frequency, phonetical, rhyming and thesaurus type dictionaries Concentrated on one of the distinctive features of the word Special Glossaries of scientific and other special terms; concordances1 Dictionaries of abbreviations, antonyms, borrowings, new words, proverbs, synonyms, surnames, toponyms, etc.2 Dictionaries of scientific and other special terms1 Dictionaries of abbreviations, phraseology, proverbs, synonyms, etc.2 Dictionaries of American English, dialect and slang dictionaries Dictionaries of Old English and Middle English with explanations in Modern English 1 Dictionary entries are chosen according to the sphere of communication or the corpus in which they occur. 2 Dictionary entries are selected according to the type of relationships between words. 1 For instance: Schmidt, Alex. Shakespeare Lexicon. A Complete Dictionary of All the English Words: In 2 vols. Berlin, 1923. There are concordances to the works of G. Chaucer, E. Spenser, W. Shakespeare, J. Milton, W. Wordsworth, P.B. Shelley and other writers. 274 Finally, dictionaries may be classified into linguistic and non-linguistic. The latter are dictionaries giving information on all branches of knowledge, the encyclopaedias. They deal not with words, but with facts and concepts. The best known encyclopaedias of the English-speaking world are “The Encyclopaedia Britannica”1 and “The Encyclopaedia Americana”.2 There exist also biographical dictionaries and many minor encyclopaedias. English lexicography is probably the richest in the world with respect to variety and scope of the dictionaries published. The demand for dictionaries is very great. One of the duties of school teachers of native language is to instil in their pupils the “dictionary habit”. Boys and girls are required by their teachers to obtain a dictionary and regularly consult it. There is a great variety of unilingual dictionaries for children. They help children to learn the meaning, spelling and pronunciation of words. An interesting example is the Thorndike dictionary.3 Its basic principle is that the words and meanings included should be only those which schoolchildren are likely to hear or to encounter in reading. The selection of words is therefore determined statistically by counts of the actual occurrence of words in reading matter of importance to boys and girls between 10 and 15. Definitions are also made specially to meet the needs of readers of that age, and this accounts for the ample use of illustrative sentences and pictures as well as for the encyclopaedic bias of the book. A dictionary is the most widely used reference book in English homes and business offices. Correct pronunciation and correct spelling are of great social importance, because they are necessary for efficient communication. A bilingual dictionary is useful to several kinds of people: to those who study foreign languages, to specialists reading foreign literature, to translators, to travellers, and to linguists. It may have two principal purposes: reference for translation and guidance for expression. It must provide an adequate translation in the target language of every word and expression in the source language. It is also supposed to contain all the inflectional, derivational, semantic and syntactic information that its reader might ever need, and also information on spelling and pronunciation. Data on the levels of usage are also considered necessary, including special warnings about the word being rare or poetical or slangy and unfit to be used in the presence of “one’s betters”. The number of special bilingual dictionaries for various branches of knowledge and engineering is ever increasing. A completely new type are the machine translation dictionaries which present their own specific problems, naturally differing from those presented by bilingual dictionaries for human translation. It is highly probable, however, that their 1 The Encyclopaedia Britannica: In 24 vols. 10th ed. London — Chicago — Toronto, 1961. 2 The Encyclopaedia Americana. The International Reference Work: In 30 vols. 9th ed. N.Y., 1957. 3 Thorndike E.L. The Thorndike Century Junior Dictionary. Scott Foresmann Co.. Chicago — Atlanta — Dallas — New York, 1935. 18* 275 development will eventually lead to improving dictionaries for general use. The entries of a dictionary are usually arranged in alphabetical order, except that derivatives and compounds are given under the same head-word. In the ideographic dictionaries the main body is arranged according to a logical classification of notions expressed.1 But dictionaries of this type always have an alphabetical index attached to facilitate the search for the necessary word.2 The ideographic type of dictionary is in a way the converse of the usual type: the purpose of the latter is to explain the meaning when the word is given. The Thesaurus, on the contrary, supplies the word or words by which a given idea may be expressed. Sometimes the grouping is in parallel columns with the opposite notions. The book is meant only for readers (either native or foreign) having a good knowledge of English, and enables them to pick up an adequate expression and avoid overuse of the same words. The Latin word thesaurus means ‘treasury’. P. Roget’s book gave the word a new figurative meaning, namely, ‘a store of knowledge’, and hence ‘a dictionary containing all the words of a language’. A consistent classification of notions presents almost insuperable difficulties. Only relatively few “semantic fields", such as kinship terms, colour terms, names for parts of human body and some others fit into a neat scheme. For the most part, however, there is no one-to-one correlation between notions and words, and the classification of notions, even if it were feasible, is a very poor help for classification of meanings and their systematic presentation. The system of meanings stands in a very complex relationship to the system of notions because of the polysemantic character of most words. The semantic structure of words and the semantic system of vocabulary depend on many linguistic, historical and cultural factors. § 15.2 SOME OF THE MAIN PROBLEMS OF LEXICOLOGY The most burning issues of lexicography are connected with the selection of head-words, the arrangement and contents of the vocabulary entry, the principles of sense definitions and the semantic and functional classification of words. In the first place it is the problem of how far a general descriptive dictionary, whether unilingual or bilingual, should admit the historical element. In fact, the term “current usage” is disconcertingly elastic, it may, for instance, be stretched to include all words and senses used by W. Shakespeare, as he is commonly read, or include only those of the fossilised words that are kept in some set expressions or familiar quotations, e. g. shuffled off this mortal coil ("Hamlet"), where coil means ‘turmoil’ (of life). For the purpose of a dictionary, which must not be too bulky, selection between 1 “Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases” was first published in 1852. About 90 succeeding revised editions have appeared since. 2 An American version of Thesaurus is rearranged alphabetically, with the ideographic classification shown by means of cross-references. See: The New Roget’s Thesaurus in Dictionary Form/Ed. by Norman Lewis. 1961. 276 scientific and technical terms is also a very important task. It is a debatable point whether a unilingual explanatory dictionary should strive to cover all the words of the language, including neologisms, nonce-words, slang, etc. and note with impartial accuracy all the words actually used by English people; or whether, as the great English lexicographer of the 18th century Samuel Johnson used to think, it should be preceptive, and (viewed from the other side) prohibitive. Dictionary-makers should attempt to improve and stabilise the English vocabulary according to the best classical samples and advise the readers on preferable usage. A distinctly modern criterion in selection of entries is the frequency of the words to be included. This is especially important for certain lines of practical work in preparing graded elementary textbooks. When the problem of selection is settled, there is the question as to which of the selected units have the right to a separate entry and which are to be included under one common head-word. These are, in other words, the questions of separateness and sameness of words. The first deals with syntagmatic boundaries of word-units and has to solve such questions as whether each other is a group of two separate words to be treated separately under the head-words each and other, or whether each other is a unit deserving a special entry (compare also: one another). Need such combinations as boiling point, carbon paper, department store, phone box be sub-entered under their constituents? If so, under which of them? Or, perhaps, it will be more convenient for those who use the dictionary if these were placed as separate main entries consisting of a nominal compound or a phrase. As to the sameness, this deals with paradigmatic boundaries. How many entries are justified for hound'? COD has two — one for the noun, and the other for the verb: ‘to chase (as) with hounds’; the verb and the noun are thus treated as homonyms. “Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary” combines them under one head-word, i.e. it takes them as variants of the same word (hence the term “sameness"). The problem is even more complicated with variants belonging to the same part of speech. This problem is best illustrated by the pun that has already been discussed elsewhere in this book: Mind you, I don’t mind minding the children if the children mind me (Understand, I don’t object to taking care of the children if the children obey me). Here the dictionary-maker is confronted with the problem of sameness. Should mind be considered one word with several semantic variants, and take one entry? Or is it more convenient to represent it as several words? The difference in the number of entries for an equal bulk of vocabulary may also depend on a different approach to the regularly formed derivatives, like those with -er, -ing, -ness, and -ly. These are similar to grammatical endings in their combining possibilities and semantic regularity. The derivation is so regular, and the meaning and class of these derivatives are so easily deduced that they are sometimes sidered not worth an entry. 377 That is why the definition of the scope of a dictionary is not quite as simple as it might appear at first sight. There exist almost unsurmountable difficulties to a neat statistical evaluation. Some publishers state the number of entries in a subtitle, others even claim for the total coverage with the exception of very special terms. It must be remembered, however, that without a generally accepted standard for settling the problems of sameness and separateness no meaningful evaluation of the scope of any particular dictionary is possible. Besides in the case of a living language the vocabulary is not stable, and the attitude of lexicographers to archaisms and neologisms varies. The arrangement of the vocabulary entry presents many problems, of which the most important are the differentiation and the sequence of various meanings of a polysemantic word. A historical dictionary (the Oxford Dictionary, for instance) is primarily concerned with the development of the English vocabulary. It arranges various senses chronologically, first comes the etymology, then the earliest meanings marked by the label obs. — obsolete. The etymologies are either comparative or confined to a single language. The development is documented by illustrative quotations, ranging from the oldest to recent appearances of the word in question. A descriptive dictionary dealing with current usage has to face its own specific problems. It has to apply a structural point of view and give precedence to the most important meanings. But how is the most important meaning determined upon? So far each compiler was guided by his own personal preference. An objective procedure would be to obtain data of statistical counts. But counting the frequency of different meanings of the same word is far more difficult than counting the frequency of its forms. It is therefore not by chance that up to now many counts have been undertaken only for word forms, irrespective of meaning. Also, the interdependence of meanings and their relative importance within the semantic structure of the word do not remain the same. They change almost incessantly, so that the task of establishing their relative frequency would have to be repeated very often. The constant revisions necessary would make the publication of dictionaries very expensive. It may also be argued that an arrangement of meanings according to frequency would sometimes conceal the ties and relationship between various elements of the semantic structure. Nevertheless some semantic counts have been achieved and the lexicographers profited by them. Thus, in preparing high-school English dictionaries the staff under chief editor C.L. Barnhart was aided by semantic counts which Dr E.L. Thorndike had made of current standard literature, from children’s books to “The Encyclopaedia Britannica”. The count according to C.L. Barnhart was of enormous importance in compiling their dictionaries, but the lexicographer admits that counts are only one of the criteria necessary for selecting meanings and entries, and that more dictionary evidence is needed, namely typical quotations for each meaning. Dictionary evidence normally exists in the form of quotation slips constituting raw material for word treatment and filed under their appropriate head-words. 278 In editing new dictionaries the lexicographers cannot depend only on the scholarly editions such as OED. In order to meet the demands of their readers, they have to sample the reading of the public for whom the dictionary is meant. This textual reference has to be scrupulously examined, so as to account for new words and meanings making their way into the language. Here again some quantitative criteria must be established. If a word or meaning occurs in several different sources over a wide range of magazines and books during a considerable period of time, it may be worth including even into a college dictionary. The preface to “The Concise Oxford Dictionary", for instance, states that its authors find that sense development cannot be presented in every word, because obsolete words are as a rule omitted. Only occasionally do they place at the beginning a rare but still current sense, if it can throw light on the more common senses that follow, or forms the connecting link with the etymology. The etymologies are given throughout, but otherwise the compilers do not seem to keep to any consistent principle and are guided by what they think is the order of logical connection, familiarity or importance. E.L. Thorndike formulates the following principles: “Other things being equal, literal uses come before figurative, general uses before special, common uses before rare, and easily understandable uses before difficult, and to sum up: that arrangement is best for any word which helps the learner most.” A synchronic dictionary should also show the distribution of every word. It has been traditionally done by labelling words as belonging to a certain part of speech, and by noting some special cases of grammatically or lexically bound meanings. Thus, the word spin is labelled in “The Concise Oxford Dictionary” as v.t. & i., which gives a general idea of its distribution; its various senses are shown in connection with words that may serve as subject or object, e. g.: “2. (of spider, silkworm, etc.) make (web, gossamer, cocoon, or abs.) by extrusion of fine viscous thread ... 10. spun glass (spun when heated into filaments that remain pliant when cold); spun gold, silver (gold, silver thread prepared for weaving ...).” This technique is gradually being improved upon, and compilers strive to provide more detailed information on these points. “The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary ...” by A.S. Hornby, E.V. Gatenby and H. Wakefield supplies information on the syntactical distribution of each verb. In their “Notes on Syntax” the compilers state that one who is learning English as a foreign language is apt to form sentences by analogy, which at times may lead him into error. For instance, the student must be warned against taking the use of the verb tell in the sentence Please tell me the meaning as a model for the word explain, because *Please, explain me the meaning would be ungrammatical. For this purpose they provide a table of 25 verb patterns and supply the numerical indications in each verb entry. This gives the student the necessary guidance. Indications are also supplied as to which nouns and which semantic varieties of nouns may be used in the plural. This helps the student to avoid mistakes like *interesting informations. Many dictionaries indicate the different stylistic levels to which the words belong: colloquial, technical, poetical, rhetorical, archaic, familiar, vulgar or slang, and their expressive colouring: emphatic, ironical, 279 diminutive, facetious. This is important, because a mere definition does not show these data. There is always a difference in style between the dictionary word and its definition. The word digs is a slang word but its definition ‘lodgings’ is not. Giving these data modern dictionary-makers strive to indicate the nature of the context in which the word may occur. The problem is also relevant for bilingual dictionaries and is carefully presented in the “New English-Russian Dictionary” edited by I.R. Galperin. A third group of lexicographic problems is the problem of definitions in a unilingual dictionary. The explanation of meaning may be achieved by a group of synonyms which together give a fairly general idea; but one synonym is never sufficient for the purpose, because no absolute synonyms exist. Besides, if synonyms are the only type of explanation used, the reader will be placed in a vicious circle of synonymic references, with not a single word actually explained. Definitions serve the purpose much better. These are of two main types. If they are only concerned with words as speech material, the definition is called linguistic. If they are concerned with things for which the words are names, they are termed encyclopaedic. American dictionaries are for the most part traditionally encyclopaedic, which accounts for so much attention paid to graphic illustration. They furnish their readers with far more information about facts and things than their British counterparts, which are more linguistic and more fundamentally occupied with purely lexical data (as contrasted to r e a 1 i a), with the grammatical properties of words, their components, their stylistic features, etc. Opinions differ upon the optimum proportion of linguistic and encyclopaedic material. Very interesting considerations on this subject are due to Alf Sommerfeldt. He thinks that definitions must be based on the fact that the meanings of words render complex notions which may be analysed (cf. componental analysis) into several elements rendered by other words. He emphasises, for instance, that the word pedestrian is more aptly defined as ‘a person who goes or travels on foot’ than as ‘one who goes or travels on foot’. The remark appears valuable, because a definition of this type shows the lexico-grammatical type to which the word belongs and consequently its distribution. It also helps to reveal the system of the vocabulary. Much too often, however, one sees in dictionaries no attention paid to the difference in distribution between the defined and the defining word. The meaning of the word may be also explained by examples, i.e. contextually. The term and its definition are here fused. For example, diagonal is explained by the following context where only this term can occur: A square has two diagonals, and each of them divides the square into two right-angled isosceles triangles. Very often this type can be changed into a standard form, i.e. A diagonal is one of the two lines ..., etc. One more problem is the problem of whether all entries should be defined or whether it is possible to have the so-called “run-ons” for derivative words in which the root-form is readily recognised (such as absolutely or resolutely). In fact, whereas resolutely may be conveniently given as a -ly run-on after resolute, there is a meaning problem for absolutely. One must take into consideration that in colloquial speech absolutely means ‘quite so’, ‘yes’ which cannot be deduced from the meaning of the corresponding adjective. 280 § 15.3 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN LEXICOGRAPHY Although, as we have seen from the preceding paragraph, there is as yet no coherent doctrine in English lexicography, its richness and variety are everywhere admitted and appreciated. Its history is in its way one of the most remarkable developments in linguistics, and is therefore worthy of special attention. In the following pages a short outline of its various phases is given. A need for a dictionary or glossary has been felt in the cultural growth of many civilised peoples at a fairly early period. The history of dictionary-making for the English language goes as far back as the Old English period where its first traces are found in the form of glosses of religious books with interlinear translation from Latin. Regular bilingual English-Latin dictionaries were already in existence in the 15th century. The unilingual dictionary is a comparatively recent type. The first unilingual English dictionary, explaining words by English equivalents, appeared in 1604. It was meant to explain difficult words occurring in books. Its title was “A Table Alphabeticall, containing and teaching the true writing and understanding of hard usuall English words borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine or French”. The little volume of 120 pages explaining about 3000 words was compiled by one Robert Cawdrey, a schoolmaster. Other books followed, each longer than the preceding one. The first attempt at a dictionary including all the words of the language, not only the difficult ones, was made by Nathaniel Bailey who in 1721 published the first edition of his “Universal Etymological English Dictionary”. He was the first to include pronunciation and etymology. Big explanatory dictionaries were created in France and Italy before they appeared for the English language. Learned academies on the continent had been established to preserve the purity of their respective languages. This was also the purpose of Dr Samuel Johnson’s famous Dictionary published in 1755.1 The idea of purity involved a tendency to oppose change, and S. Johnson’s Dictionary was meant to establish the English language in its classical form, to preserve it in all its glory as used by J. Dryden, A. Pope, J. Addison and their contemporaries. In conformity with the social order of his time, S. Johnson attempted to “fix” and regulate English. This was the period of much discussion about the necessity of “purifying” and “fixing” English, and S. Johnson wrote that every change was undesirable, even a change for the best. When his work was accomplished, however, he had to admit he had been wrong and confessed in his preface that “no dictionary of a living tongue can ever be perfect, since while it is hastening to publication, some 1 Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language in Which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals and Illustrated in Their General Significations by Examples from the Best Writers: In 2 vols. London, 1775. 19 И. В. Арнольд 281 words are budding and some falling away”. The most important innovation of S. Johnson’s Dictionary was the introduction of illustrations of the meanings of the words “by examples from the best writers", as had been done before him in the dictionary of the French Academy. Since then such illustrations have become a “sine qua non” in lexicography; S. Johnson, however, only mentioned the authors and never gave any specific references for his quotations. Most probably he reproduced some of his quotations from memory, not always very exactly, which would have been unthinkable in modern lexicology. The definitions he gave were often very ingenious. He was called “a skilful definer”, but sometimes he preferred to give way to sarcasm or humour and did not hesitate to be partial in his definitions. The epithet he gave to lexicographer, for instance, is famous even in our time: a lexicographer was ‘a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge ...’. The dictionary dealt with separate words only, almost no set expressions were entered. Pronunciation was not marked, because S. Johnson was keenly aware of the wide variety of the English pronunciation and thought it impossible to set up a standard there; he paid attention only to those aspects of vocabulary where he believed he could improve linguistic usage. S. Johnson’s influence was tremendous. He remained the unquestionable authority on style and diction for more than 75 years. The result was a lofty bookish style which received the name of “Johnsonian” or “Johnsonese”. As to pronunciation, attention was turned to it somewhat later. A pronouncing dictionary that must be mentioned first was published in 1780 by Thomas Sheridan, grandfather of the great dramatist. In 1791 appeared “The Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language” by John Walker, an actor. The vogue of this second dictionary was very great, and in later publications Walker’s pronunciations were inserted into S. Johnson’s text — a further step to a unilingual dictionary in its present-day form. The Golden Age of English lexicography began in the last quarter of the 19th century when the English Philological Society started work on compiling what is now known as “The Oxford English Dictionary” (OED), but was originally named “New English Dictionary on Historical Principles”. It is still occasionally referred to as NED. The purpose of this monumental work is to trace the development of English words from their form in Old English, and if they were not found in Old English, to show when they were introduced into the language, and also to show the development of each meaning and its historical relation to other meanings of the same word. For words and meanings which have become obsolete the date of the latest occurrence is given. All this is done by means of dated quotations ranging from the oldest to recent appearances of the words in question. The English of G. Chaucer, of the “Bible” and of W. Shakespeare is given as much attention as that of the most modern authors. The dictionary includes spellings, pronunciations and detailed etymologies. The completion of the work required more than 75 years. The result is a kind of encyclopaedia of language used not only for reference purposes but also as a basis for lexicological research. 282 The lexicographic concept here is very different from the prescriptive tradition of Dr S. Johnson: the lexicographer is the objective recorder of the language. The purpose of OED, as stated by its editors, has nothing to do with prescription or proscription of any kind. The conception of this new type of dictionary was born in a discussion at the English Philological Society. It was suggested by Frederick Furnivall, later its second titular editor, to Richard Trench, the author of the first book on lexicology of the English language. Richard Trench read before the society his paper “On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries", and that was how the big enterprise was started. At once the Philological Society set to work to gather the material, volunteers offered to help by collecting quotations. Dictionary-making became a sort of national enterprise. A special committee prepared a list of books to be read and assigned them to the volunteers, sending them also special standard slips for quotations. By 1881 the number of readers was 800, and they sent in many thousands of slips. The tremendous amount of work done by these volunteers testifies to the keen interest the English take in their language. The first part of the Dictionary appeared in 1884 and the last in 1928. Later it was issued in twelve volumes and in order to accommodate new words a three volume Supplement was issued in 1933. These volumes were revised in the seventies. Nearly all the material of the original Supplement was retained and a large body of the most recent accessions to the English language added. The principles, structure and scope of “The Oxford English Dictionary", its merits and demerits are discussed in the most comprehensive treaty by L.V. Malakhovsky. Its prestige is enormous. It is considered superior to corresponding major dictionaries for other languages. The Oxford University Press published different abridged versions. “The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles” formerly appeared in two volumes, now printed on thinner paper it is bound in one volume of 2,538 pages. It differs from the complete edition in that it contains a smaller number of quotations. It keeps to all the main principles of historical presentation and covers not only the current literary and colloquial English but also its previous stages. Words are defined and illustrated with key quotations. “The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English” was first published in 1911, i.e. before the work on the main version was completed. It is not a historical dictionary but one of current usage. A still shorter form is “The Pocket Oxford Dictionary”. Another big dictionary, also created by joined effort of enthusiasts, is Joseph Wright’s “English Dialect Dictionary”. Before this dictionary could be started upon, a thorough study of English dialects had to be completed. With this aim in view W.W. Skeat, famous for his “Etymological English Dictionary” founded the English Dialect Society as far back as 1873. Dialects are of great importance for the historical study of the language. In the 19th century they were very pronounced though now they are almost disappearing. The Society existed till 1896 and issued 80 publications, mostly monographs. 19* 283 Curiously enough, the first American dictionary of the English language was compiled by a man whose name was also Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson Jr., a Connecticut schoolmaster, published in 1798 a small book entitled “A School Dictionary”. This book was followed in 1800 by another dictionary by the same author, which showed already some signs of Americanisation. It included, for instance, words like tomahawk and wampum, borrowed into English from the Indian languages. It was Noah Webster, universally considered to be the father of American lexicography, who emphatically broke away from English idiom, and embodied in his book the specifically American usage of his time. His great work, “The American Dictionary of the English Language", appeared in two volumes in 1828 and later sustained numerous revised and enlarged editions. In many respects N. Webster follows the lead of Dr S. Johnson (the British lexicographer). But he has also improved and corrected many of S. Johnson’s etymologies and his definitions are often more exact. N. Webster attempted to simplify the spelling and pronunciation that were current in the USA of the period. He devoted many years to the collection of words and the preparation of more accurate definitions. N. Webster realised the importance of language for the development of a nation, and devoted his energy to giving the American English the status of an independent language, distinct from British English. At that time the idea was progressive as it helped the unification of separate states into one federation. The tendency became reactionary later on, when some modern linguists like H. Mencken shaped it into the theory of a separate American language, not only different from British English, but surpassing it in efficiency and therefore deserving to dominate and supersede all the languages of the world. Even if we keep within purely linguistic or purely lexical concepts, we shall readily see that the difference is not so great as to warrant American English the rank of a separate language, not a variant of English (see p. 265). The set of morphemes is the same. Some words have acquired a new meaning on American soil and this meaning has or has not penetrated into British English. Other words kept their earlier meanings that are obsolete and not used in Great Britain. As civilisation progressed different names were given to new inventions on either side of the Atlantic. Words were borrowed from different Indian languages and from Spanish. All these had to be recorded in a dictionary and so accounted for the existence of specific American lexicography. The world of today with its ever-growing efficiency and intensity of communication and personal contacts, with its press, radio and television creates conditions which tend to foster not an isolation of dialects and variants but, on the contrary, their mutual penetration and integration. Later on, the title “International Dictionary of the English Language” was adopted, and in the latest edition not Americanisms but words not used in America (Britishisms) are marked off. N. Webster’s dictionary enjoyed great popularity from its first editions. This popularity was due not only to the accuracy and clarity of definitions but also to the richness of additional information of encyclopaedic 284 character, which had become a tradition in American lexicography. As a dictionary N. Webster’s book aims to treat the entire vocabulary of the language providing definitions, pronunciation and etymology. As an encyclopaedia it gives explanations about things named, including scientific and technical subjects. It does so more concisely than a full-scale encyclopaedia, but it is worthy of note that the definitions are as a rule up-to-date and rigorous scientifically. Soon after N. Webster’s death two printers and booksellers of Massachusetts, George and Charles Merriam, secured the rights of his dictionary from his family and started the publication of revised single volume editions under the name “Merriam-Webster”. The staff working for the modern editions is a big institution numbering hundreds of specialists in different branches of human activity. It is important to note that the name “Webster” may be attached for publicity’s sake by anyone to any dictionary. Many publishers concerned with their profits have taken this opportunity to issue dictionaries called “Webster’s”. Some of the books so named are cheaply-made reprints of old editions, others are said to be entirely new works. The practice of advertising by coupling N. Webster’s name to a dictionary which has no connection with him, continues up to the present day. A complete revision of N. Webster’s dictionary is achieved with a certain degree of regularity. The recent “Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language” has called forth much comment, both favourable and unfavourable. It has been greatly changed as compared with the previous edition, in word selection as well as in other matters. The emphasis is on the present-day state of the language. The number of illustrative quotations is increased. To accommodate the great number of new words and meanings without increasing the bulk of the volume, the editors excluded much encyclopaedic material. The other great American dictionaries are the “Century Dictionary", first completed in 1891; “Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary", first completed in 1895; the “Random House Dictionary of the English Language", completed in 1967; “The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language", first published in 1969, and C.L. Barnhart’s et al. “The World Book Dictionary” presenting a synchronic review of the language in the 20th century. The first three continue to appear in variously named subsequent editions including abridged versions. Many small handy popular dictionaries for office, school and home use are prepared to meet the demand in reference books on spelling, pronunciation, meaning and usage. An adequate idea of the dictionaries cannot be formed from a mere description and it is no substitute for actually using them. To conclude we would like to mention that for a specialist in linguistics and a teacher of foreign languages systematic work with a good dictionary in conjunction with his reading is an absolute necessity. CONCLUSION The present book has treated the specific features of the English word as a structure, both on the morphemic and semantic levels, and dealt with the English vocabulary as an adaptive system of contrasting and interrelated elements. The presentation of these is conceived on the basis of the theory of oppositions as initiated by N.S. Trubetzkoy and is described, partly at least, in set-theoretical terms. The classical book on the theory of oppositions is the posthumous treatise by N.S. Trubetzkoy “Grundzuge der Phonologie”. The full significance and value of this work are now being realised and appreciated both in Soviet linguistics and abroad. Nevertheless, application of the theory of oppositions to linguistic analysis on levels other than that of phonology is far from being complete. One need hardly say that the present volume does not attempt to be definitive in its treatment of oppositions for lexicological description: quite considerable amount of research has already been done in some directions and very little in many others. Many points remain to be elucidated by future patient study and by collecting reliable factual evidence on which more general conclusions may then be built. The special interest of contemporary science in methods of linguistic research extends over a period of about thirty years. The present status of principles and techniques in lexicology, although still far from satisfactory, shows considerable progress and an intense development. The main procedures in use have been described in connection with the subject-matter they serve to investigate. They are the componential analysis, the contextological and valency analysis, analysis into immediate constituents, explanatory transformations based on dictionary definitions and different types of semantic oppositions helping to describe the vocabulary system. Each of these techniques viewed separately has its limitations but taken together they complete one another, so that each successive procedure may prove helpful where the previous one has failed. We have considered these devices time and again in discussing separate aspects of the vocabulary system. All these are formalised methods in the sense that they replace the original words in the linguistic material sampled for analysis by symbols that can be discussed without reference to the particular elements they stand for, and then state precise rules for the combination and transformation of formulas thus obtained. 286 It must be emphatically stressed that although the synchronic and diachronic treatments are set apart, and the focal point of interest is the present state of the English vocabulary, these two aspects are not divorced, and the constant development of the whole system is always kept in mind. It must be fully realised that the separation of the two aspects is only an abstraction necessary for heuristic purposes. Secondly, structural methods demand a rigorous separation of levels and a study of language as an autonomous system. This dogmatic thesis placed a burden upon research. In present-day Soviet linguistics the interrelation between different levels as well as between language and extralinguistic reality is taken as all-important. Finally, what is especially important, language is a social phenomenon, the language of any society is an integral part of the culture and social life of this society, words recognised within the vocabulary of the language are that part of the language on which the influence of extra-linguistic factors tells in the first place. Much of the semantic incommensurability that exists between languages can be accounted for in terms of social and cultural differences. Sociolinguistics which is now making great progress is concerned with linguistic differences and with the actual performances of individuals as members of specific speech communities. It concentrates on the correlation of linguistic features with values and attitudes in social life with the status of speakers and listeners in social network. It deals with coexistence in the same individual or the same group of speakers of several linguistic codes, resorted to according to language-use conventions of society, i.e. a more prestigious formal and conservative code is used for official purposes, the other for spontaneous informal conversation. As sociolinguistics is still in its infancy it was possible to include in the present book only a few glimpses of this new branch. Recent years in” Soviet linguistics have undoubtedly seen great progress in lexicology coming from various schools with various aims and methods. It is outside the scope of the present book to reflect them all, it is to be hoped, however, that the student will watch current literature and retrieve the necessary information on points that will interest him. The modern methods of vocabulary study have emerged from practical concerns, especially those of foreign language teaching, dictionary-making, and recently, from the needs of machine translation and information retrieval. Improvements and expansion in foreign language teaching called forth a new co-operation between didactics and linguistics. In this connection it is well to remember that many eminent linguists devoted a great deal of attention to problems of teaching languages: L.V. Shcherba, L. Bloomfield, Ch. Fries, O. Jespersen, E. Nida wrote monographs on these problems. There has been a considerable growth of activity in the field of mathematical linguistics. Much of this is connected with computer-aided linguistics. We have attempted to show the usefulness of set-theoretical concepts for the study of vocabulary. We must be on our guard, however, against the idea that an attachment of mathematical symbols and 287 operations to linguistics material will by itself make the statements about it more scientific. The introduction of mathematical apparatus into linguistics is justified only when it is based on a thorough comprehension of linguistic problems involved. Otherwise an indiscriminate introduction of mathematical procedures will be purely ornamental and may even lead to the generation of meaningless results. Even more important and promising, perhaps, is the fact that the penetration of mathematical methods, whether from the theory of sets, adaptive system theory, symbolic logic or mathematical statistics, leads to a more rigorous general approach. We are now hopeful that with the help of cautious and responsible application of some developments in system theory a genuinely scientific lexicology can come into being that will be useful in different branches of applied linguistics. A fresh departure in the study of language including its vocabulary is the communicative linguistics in which the pragmatic rather than structural approach is used. This new trend relates vocabulary characteristics not only to meanings but to uses and situations and the degree of their formality. Pragmatics concerned with the relations between signs and expressions and their users is steadily gathering momentum penetrating all branches of linguistics. At present, however, this promising trend has hardly begun to take shape. In more than ten years that have passed since the second edition of this book went to press, the problems of English lexicology have been investigated in a tremendous number of publications. Bringing the bibliography up to date keeping the same degree of comprehensiveness without a great increase in bulk proved impossible. Our debt to numerous works of scholarship had been acknowledged in copious notes and references of the previous editions. Here a basically different approach was chosen: bibliographical footnotes were drastically reduced and the selective list gathered below includes books especially recommended as further reading. An attempt is made to take account of modern lexicological theory as developed in the last decade and also to show the survival o??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????? Агамджанова В. И. Контекстуальная избыточность лексического значения слова. Рига, 1977. Азнаурова Э. С. Очерки по стилистике слова. Ташкент, 1973. Акуленко В. В. Вопросы интернационализации словарного состава языка. Харьков, 1972. Амосова Н. Н. Этимологические основы словарного состава современного английского языка. М., 1956. Амосова Н. Н. Основы английской фразеологии. Л., 1963. Амосова Н. Н. Английская контекстология. Л., 1968. (На англ. яз.). Апресян Ю. Д. Лексическая семантика. Синонимические средства языка. М. 1974. Арнольд И. В. Лексикология современного английского языка. М., 1959. Арнольд И. В. Семантическая структура слова в современном английском языке и методы ее исследования. Л., 1966. Арнольд И. В. Стилистика современного английского языка: Стилистика декодирования. 2-е изд., перераб. Л., 1981. Аспекты семантических исследований: Сборник. М., 1980. Беляева Т. М., Потапова И. А. Английский язык за пределами Англии. Л., 1971. Беляева Т. М. Словообразовательная валентность глагольных основ в английском языке. М., 1979. Бенвенист Э. Общая лингвистика/Пер. с англ. М., 1977. Блумфилд Л. Язык/Пер. с англ. М., 1968. Бондарко А. В. Грамматические категории и контекст. Л., 1971. Бондарко А. В. Грамматическое значение и смысл. Л., 1978. Борисов В. В. Аббревиация и акронимы. М., 1972. Виноградов В. В. Об основных типах фразеологических единиц в русском языке // Виноградов В. В. Лексикология и лексикография: Избранные труды. М., 1977. Виноградов В. В. Основные типы лексических значений слова // Виноградов В. В. Лексикология и лексикография: Избранные труды. М., 1977. Вольф E. М. Грамматика и семантика прилагательного. М., 1978. Вольф E. М. Функциональная семантика оценки. М., 1985. Гулыга E. В., Шендельс E. И. Грамматико-лексические поля в современном немецком языке. М., 1969. Есперсен О. Философия грамматики/Пер. с англ. М., 1958. Звегинцев В. А. Семасиология. М., 1957. Звегинцев В. А. История языкознания XIX—XX вв. в очерках и извлечениях. М., 1965. Иванова И. П., Бурлакова В. В., Почепцов Г. Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка. М., 1981. Ильиш Б. А. Строй современного английского языка. 3-е изд. Л., 1971. Караулов Ю. Н. Общая и русская идеография. М., 1976. Караулов Ю. Н. Лингвистическое конструирование и тезаурус литературного языка. М., 1981. Касарес X. Введение в современную лексикографию/Пер. с исп. М., 1958. Кацнельсон С. Д. Типология языка и речевое мышление. Л., 1972. Кащеева М. А., Потапова И. А., Тюрина Н. С. Практикум по английской лексикологии. Л., 1974. 289 Котелова Н. 3. Значение слова и его сочетаемость. Л., 1975. Кубрякова Е. С. Основы морфологического анализа. М., 1974. Кубрякова Е. С. Типы языковых значений. Семантика производного слова. М., 1981. Кузнецова А. И. Понятие семантической системы языка и методы ее исследования. М., 1963. Кунин А. В. Английская лексикология. М., 1940. (На англ. яз.). Кунин А. В. Английская фразеология. М., 1970. Кунин А. В. Фразеология современного английского языка. М., 1972. Лайонз Дж. Введение в теоретическую лингвистику/Пер. с англ. М., 1978. Лотте Д. С. Вопросы заимствования и упорядочения иноязычных терминов и терминоэлементов. М., 1982. Медникова Э. М. Значение слова и методы его описания. М., 1974. Медникова Э. М. Практикум по лексикологии английского языка. М., 1978. (На англ. яз.). Мешков О. Д. Словообразование современного английского языка. М., 1976. Никитин М. В. Лексическое значение слова. М., 1983. Новиков Л. А. Семантика русского языка. М., 1982. Пауль Г. Принципы истории языка/Пер. с нем. М., 1960. Потебня А. А. Эстетика и поэтика. М., 1977. Пражский лингвистический кружок: Сб. статей/Сост., ред. и предисл. Н. А. Кондрашова. М., 1967. Принципы и методы семантических исследований. Сборник. М., 1976. Резинкина Н. М. Развитие языка английской научной литературы. М., 1978. Рейман Е. А. Английские предлоги. Значения и функции. Л., 1982. Селиверстова О. Н. Компонентный анализ многозначных слов. М., 1975. Сепир Э. Язык/Пер. с англ. М.-Л., 1934. Смирницкий А. И. Лексикология английского языка. М., 1956. Солнцев В. М. Язык как системно-структурное образование. М., 1971. Соссюр Ф. де. Труды по языкознанию/Пер. с фр. М., 1977. Степанов Ю. С. Методы и принципы современной лингвистики. М., 1975. Степанов Ю. С. Основы общего языкознания. М., 1975. Степанов Ю. С. Имена. Предикаты. Предложения. М., 1981. Степанова М. Д. Методы синхронного анализа лексики. М., 1968. Степанова М. Д. Теория валентности и валентностный анализ. М., 1973. Стернин И. А. 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The Linguistic Science and Language Teaching. London, 1964. Halliday M. A. K. and Hasan R. Cohesion in English. London, 1976. Harris, Zellig S. Methods in Structural Linguistics. Chicago, 1952/Reprinted as “Structural Linguistics", 1961. Hockett, Charles. A Course in Modern Linguistics. N. Y., 1958. Jespersen, Otto. Growth and Structure of the English Language. Oxford, 1982. (First publ. in 1905.) Jespersen, Otto. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Copenhagen, 1942. Part VI. Koziol H. Handbuch der englischen Wortbildungslehre. Heidelberg, 1937. Koziol H. Grundziige der englischen Semantik. Vienna, 1969. Kronasser H. Handbuch der Semasiologie. Heidelberg, 1952. Leech, Geoffrey N. English in Advertising. London, 1966. Leech, Geoffrey N. Towards a Semantic Description of English. London, 1969. Leech, Geoffrey N. Meaning and the English Verb. London, 1971. Leech, Geoffrey N. Semantics. Penguin Books, 1974. Leech, Geoffrey N., Deuchar M. and Hoggnuradd R. English Grammar for Today. A New Introduction. London, 1982. Leech, Geoffrey N. Principles of Pragmatics. London, 1985. Lehnart M. Morphem, Wort und Satz im Englischen. Berlin, 1969. Lehrer A. Semantic Fields and Lexical Structure. Amsterdam — London, 1974. Leisi, Ernst. Das heutige Englisch. Wesenzuge und Probleme. Heidelberg, 1955. Leisi, Ernst. Der Wortinhalt. Seine Struktur im Deutschen und Englischen. 2 Aufl. Heidelberg, 1961. Leith, Dick. A Social History of English. London, 1983. Lyons, John. Semantics. London—Cambridge, 1979. Vols. 1 and 2. Lyons, John. Language and Linguistics: an Introduction. Cambridge, 1981. С. English Words and their Background. New York — London, 1931. Nida, Eugene. Morphology, the Descriptive Analysis of Words. Michigan, 1946. Nida, Eugene. Componential Analysis of Meaning. An Introduction to Semantic Structures. The Hague —Paris, 1975. Ogden C. K., Richards I. A. The Meaning of Meaning. N. Y., 1970. (First publ. in 1923.) Palmer H. Grammar of English Words. London, 1961. Palmer F. Semantics. A New Outline/Pref. and commentaries by M. V. Nikitin. M., 1982. Partridge, Eric. Slang To-day and Yesterday. London, 1933. Potter S. Modern Linguistics. London, 1957. 291 Quirk, Randolph. The English Language and Images of Matter. London, 1972. Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey and Svartvik, Ian. A Grammar of Contemporary English. New York—London, 1974. Schlauch, Margaret. The English Language in Modern Times. Warszawa, 1965. Schmidt W. Lexikalische und aktuelle Bedeutung. Berlin, 1963. Sergeantson M. A History of Foreign Words in English. London, 1935. Sheard, John. The Words We Use. N. Y., 1954. Soerensen H. Word-Classes in Modern English with Special Reference to Proper Names: With an Introductory Theory of Grammar, Meaning and Reference. Copenhagen, 1958. Turner J. The English Language in Australia and New Zealand. London, 1972. Ullmann St. Words and their Use. London, 1951. 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SUBJECT INDEX Abbreviation 142-145 Ablaut combinations 130 Ablaut or vowel gradation 146 Abstracted forms 106, 218, 219 Acronyms 142-145, 218 Adaptive system 10ff, 21, 143, 216ff: see System, lexical adaptive Affixes 77-107 Allomorphs 101, 102 Amelioration 70 American English 265-270 Antonyms 182, 201, 209-215 antonyms, absolute 209ff antonyms derivational 209ff Aphaeresis, aphesis 138 Apocope 138 Archaic words 205, 220 Assimilation of loan words 255-259 Assimilation of synonyms 205, 255-259 Australian variant 270, 271 Back-formation 127, 150-152 Bahuvrihi 123, 125 Barbarism 256, 258 Basic form 153, 185 Bias words 49 Blends, blending 141, 142 Borrowing, borrowed affixes and words: see Loan words Bound forms 77, 80 Boundary cases 102, 103, 121 Canadianism 270 Cliche 179-181 Clipping: see Shortening Cockney 262, 263 Cognate words 79ff Colloquial words 145, 245-249 Combinations, phraseological 170, 171 Combining forms 80, 104-106 Combining power 194; see also Valency Complementary distribution 101ff Componential analysis 41, 57-59 Compounds 78, 108-152 Compound adjectives 125, 126 Compound derivatives: see Derivational compounds Compound nouns 123-125 Compound verbs 126, 127 Compounds, asyntactic 111 Compounds, endocentric and exocentric 111, 123ff Compounds, syntactic 111 Connotation and connotative meaning 40-50, 97, 177, 230-238, 251 Contextual analysis 56, 57 Contrastive and contrary notions 209ff Conversion 18, 153-164 Conversives 73, 209-215 Correlation of oppositions 26, 81, 111 Curtailment 134 Dead suffixes 100 Degradation of meaning: see Pejoration Demotivation 132 Denotative meaning 40, 47-50 Derivational affixes 77, 87ff Derivational compounds 127 Derivatives 10, 76ff Determinant and determinatum 108ff Diachronic (approach) 10//, 155//, 216 Dialect 262 Dictionaries 272-285 Dictionary, bilingual 272ff Dictionary, explanatory 272ff Dictionary, machine-translation 275 Diminutive suffixes 97 Disintegration of polysemy: see Split of polysemy Distinctive feature 25, 26, 53, 146, 185 Distinctive stress 15, 147, 148 Distribution 13, 101 Doublets, etymological 136, 137, 259 260 Echoism, echo words: see Sound imitation Elevation: see Amelioration Ellipsis 139ff Emotional tone (colouring, connotation, component, force) 43, 44, 233ff, 437; see also Connotations Emotive speech 234 Equivalence 23 Equonym 197 Etymology 10, 15, 79 294 Euphemism 75, 207 Evaluative connotation 48 False etymology 131 Form words 18, 187, 222-223 Formatives, inner 89 Formatives, outer 77-89 Free forms 77ff, 129, 131 Functional affixes 87-90 Functional change: see Conversion Functional styles 240-250 Fusions or portmanteau words: see Blends Fusion phraseological 170 Fuzzy sets 6, 21, 26 Generic terms 39, 63, 196 Generalisation 62-63 Glossary 274 Historism 220 Holophrasis 122ff Homograph 185 Homonyms and homonymy 154ff, 182-194 Homonymy, patterned 155ff, 183ff, 191 Homophone 154, 184ff Hybrids 106, 107 Hyperbole 69 Hyperonymy 196, 197 Hyponym 196, 197, 226-229 Ideographic groups 226, 227 Ideolect 209 Idioms: see Set expressions Immediate constituents 83-87, 141 Implicational 41, 50 Indivisibility 28 Informal vocabulary 242 Information retrieval 13 Integrity 30, 114 Intensifier 235 Intensifying connotation 49 International words 260, 261 Irony 69 Learned words 243 Lexical group 26 Lexical variants 207, 208 Lexicalisation 18 Lexico-grammatical class or group 224 Lexico-grammatical meaning: see Meaning, lexico-grammatical Lexico-grammatical variant 51, 52 Lexicography 191-194, 272ff Linguostylistics 240ff Litotes 69 Loan words 100, 135, 252-259 Marked member of the opposition 242 Meaning, contextual 54 Meaning, denotative 40, 47 Meaning, figurative 52 Meaning, grammatical 39, 99 Meaning, lexical 16, 37ff, 42-47 Meaning, lexico-grammatical 16, 224 Metaphor 64ff Metonymy 64ff Morpheme 19, 77-107 Morphemic analysis 81ff Motivation 33-36, 83, 95 Native words 204ff, 252ff Neologism 134, 216-220 Neutralisation, semantic 196 Non-semantic grouping 238, 239 Nonce usage 55, 245 Nonce words 18 Notion 42-47 Obsolete words 177, 205 Official vocabulary 243 Onomasiological approach 24 Onomasiology 55 Onomatopoeia 148ff Onomatopoeic words: see Sound imitation Onomatopoeic stems 129 Oppositions 23, 25, 184ff, 195,215,225, 241 Opposition, basis of 26 Opposition, binary 215, 242 Opposition, equipollent 242 Opposition, lexical 134, 145, 241 Opposition, polydimensional 26 Opposition, privative 215 Opposition, proportional 98 Opposition, synonymic 195 Opposition, theory of 25, 26 Paradigm 156ff Paradigmatic 24, 201 Paralinguistics 14 Paronyms 207, 208 Patterned homonymy: see Homonymy, patterned Patterns, word-building 90-95, 133 Patterns, new word-forming 133 Pejoration 70 Phrasal verbs: see Verbal collocations Phraseology: see Set expressions Poetic diction 244 Polysemy and polysemantic words 41, 50-57, 182 Polysemy, disintegration of: see Split of polysemy Positional mobility 29, 30 Pragmalinguistics 14, 47ff, 240 Prefix 13ff, 213 Proper nouns 43, 62, 66-69 Proverbs 179ff Pseudo-compounds 131 295 Quotation compounds and quotation derivation 122, 123, 129 Quotations, familiar 179-181 Reduplication 129, 130 Referent 31, 32 Register 241ff Rhyme combinations 130, 131 Roots 77ff, 153ff, 188 Semantic change 60-76 Semantic change, extralinguistic causes of 73-76 Semantic change, linguistic causes of 71-73 Semantic component: see Seme Semantic field 226, 228, 229 Semantic structure of the Word 10, 42, 50-55 Semantic triangle 31-33 Semasiology 37 Seme 41-59 Semi-affixes 84, 102, 116-118 Semi-fixed combinations 166-167 Set expressions 19, 165-181 Shortened words and shortening 134-145 Simplification of stems 132 Slang 140, 249-251 Sociolinguistics 11, 230, 240 Sound imitation or onomatopoeia 129, 148ff Sound interchange 145-147 Sound symbolism 130 Specialisation 61, 62 Split of polysemy 188ff Stem 77ff, 90-95 ‘Stone-wall’ problem 118-120 Stress, distinctive 147, 148 Style, functional 240-248 Substantivation 161, 162 Suffixes 77-107, 213 Suppletion, lexical 90, 243 Synchronic (approach) 10ff, 155ff, 216 Syncope 138 Synonymic differentiation 209 Synonymic dominant 196 Synonyms 178, 182ff, 194-209 Synonymy, sources of 203-205 Syntagmatic vs paradigmatic relations 23 System, lexical or vocabulary 10ff, 38, 152, 182ff, 215 System, lexical adaptive 10ff, 21, 216 Technical terms and terminology 229-233 Telescoping and portmanteau words 141 Thematic groups 226ff Transformations, explanatory 59, 192 Transposition 153, 163 Ultimate constituents 81, 84 Umlaut 146 Understatement: see Litotes Uninterruptability 29, 30 Unities, phraseological 170ff Valency 24, 90-95, 195, 200 Variants or regional varieties 262ff Verbal collocations of the ‘give up' type 120, 121, 161, 206 Vowel gradation 146 Vowel mutation 146 Word, definition of 27-31 Word equivalents 9, 20, 167 Word-family 77ff, 222 Word-formation analysis 81ff Word-formation, types of 163 Zero derivation: see Conversion УЧЕБНОЕ ИЗДАНИЕ Ирина Владимировна Арнольд лексикология современного английского языка (на английском языке) Заведующий редакцией И. 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