2.General characteristics of the English lexicon.

Of all the Language components lexicon is the most sensitive of man’s social life, its development is influenced by different extra linguistic factors. One of the specific characteristics of the lexicon in modem English is that it is very extensive. Though it is not possible to give the exact amount of lexical units in any Language because there is not a complete unanimity what should be considered a lexical unit, and because lexicon is too complex, dynamic and flexible for any accurate calculations, dictionary makers estimate that in English there are somewhere from 450,000 to 3.O00 000 words. About a million words. The English Language vocabulary development is very dynamic. Many words become obsolete and drop out of the System. But still many more words are born. The characteristic feature of the English vocabulary is its steady replenishment. The expansion of vocabulary is especially noticeable in the sphere of terminology. New developments in science and technology brought in use such words as television, laser, vinyl, computer, software, diskette, video, modem, to log in, high-tech, on-line, and there is no limit to their potential number. Such recent prefixes like -mini maxi-, super-,micro mega hyper- are very active and highly productive in creating new words; mini-diskette, superchip, micro-surgery, or hypersonic. Minor word-formations like blendings, or portmanteau words (pompetent for 'pompous but compétent", smust (smoke and dust), sexplosion for *sex explosion', movelist for 'a writer for the movies) and analogical word-formations like beef-a-roni ;rice-a-roni, noodle-roni after the original macaroni or cheeseburger, fish burger after hamburger have become quite numerous in modem English. A Native American proverb suggests that Language changes within a mile. No wonder then that the English language, one of world languages spoken in all the continents by millions of people, exists in a great number of variants and dialects. The existing varieties of English are made first of all by lexical differences, as well as differences in phonetic and grammatical Systems Still another characteristic feature of the English lexicon is its mixed etymological character. A Germanic language, English borrowed up to 70% of its total vocabulary from more than 50 languages of the world. Though not so intensively as during and after the periods of invasion of Great Britain, foreign words still enrich the English lexicon: bébé, baguette, bouillon (FrJ, baba, babushka, borshch [RussJ, a capella, bambino [lt], charisma [Gk|, bonsai, sushi [Jap], caramba, or basque (Sp). The majority of them were remodeled and assimilated according to the specific features of the English language system; some of them arc still being assimilated. Not only words but many affixes came from Latin and Greek with the Renaissance, many of them became very productive and are often used with native roots forming such hybrids as womanize, witticism, etc. Loan words radically changed the structure of the Old English lexicon. They led to numerous etymological doublets, homonyms. Created a three-member pattern of stylistically different synonyms neutral ones beingtraced to Anglo-Saxon roots, literary words coming from French and learned words being borrowed from Latin. However. Native, predominantly monosyllabic words of Anglo-Saxon origin arc still the most frequently used. Polysemantic, communicatively important, and thus remain the core of the lexical system of modem English. Monomorphism of many words consisting of only roots {love, answer, sail, hate^ birth, death, etc.) is one of the most distinctive features of the English vocabulary that was developed in the course of its history. Most of them, both native and loans, arc also monosyllables; eye, head, nose, car, dog. Home, bed; air, cost, Jirm, pay, push, cry, move; die, egg, leg, sky, tkirt; dise, pain. These short words naming the most important concepts for human survival and further development possess a tremendous potential for derivation and they act as sources for new names derived by lexical-semantic, morphological and lexical-syntactic means. Their active use in lexical-semantic naming lead to a high degree of polysemy of English words. estimated as one of the highest in the European languages. Like in other Indo-European languages they are the bases for many morphologically derived words by means of affixation, composition, conversion, and other word building means that finally make up the majority of word-stock in English. High productivity of conversion as well as some other non-affixal ways of word-derivation such as shortening. bock-formation, transposition, and some others, make many English derived words remain monomorphic (to knife, a fan, to edit, the rich). Compounding is one of the most important types of word-format ion in English. Within the System of English compounds the predominant part is made up of composites without a linking element (snowman, oil-rich, sky*blue Some collocations of words, and even some sentences, become more fixed as a result of their frequent use in speech. They change into readily reproduced clichés and finally become lexicalized alongside with morphemes and words.. In English, as in any other language, there arc also, numerous word groups that semantically cannot be reduced to the meanings of their components and are characterized by functional integrity (to break the ice, in the long run, mare's nest, etc.). Such idiomatic word groups along with words as smaller units and proverbs, sayings or quotations as longer ready-made units, are also part and parcel of the English lexicon. lexical rules are not rigid. Rather than strict laws they are major tendencies and are limited to particular groups of lexicon. According to the stylistic classification the English lexicon can be classified into: common words, formal layer and informal layer.