12) The Germanic element in the English vocabulary

The English vocabulary comprises a great number of borrowings, only 25-30 per cent of all English words are native. But the native element comprises a large number of high-frequency words like the articles, preposition, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries and words, denoting every day objects and ideas (house, water, child, to go, to come, etc.). By the native element we mean the words which were not borrowed from other languages, but represent the original stock of this particular language. The native element includes: the indo-European and Germanic elements.

The Germanic element represents words of roots common to most Germanic languages. The Germanic element includes: Parts of the human body (head, hand, arm, finger, bone), Animals (bear, fox, calf), Plants (oak, fir, grass), Natural phenomena (rain, frost), Seasons of the year (winter, spring, summer, but autumn is a French borrowing), Landscape features (sea, land), Human dwellings and furniture (house, room, bench), Sea-going vessels (boat, ship), Adjectives (green, blue, grey, white, small, thick, high, old, good), Verbs (to see, to hear, to speak, to tell, to say, to answer, to make, to give, to drink).

13) Shortenings, reduplication and back formation.

Shortenings is a comparatively new way of word-building, but very productive in American English. Shortenings (or contracted words) are reduced in 2 different ways: 1) The first is to make a new word from a syllable or 2 of the original word. The latter way lose its beginning (for example – phone – telephone, fence - defense), its ending (doc – doctor, disco – discotheque, auto – automobile), or both ending and beginning (flu – influenza, fridge - refrigerator). 2) To make a new word from the initial letters of a word group, for example – CD (compact disk), DJ (disk jockey), PR (public relations). Both types of shortenings are characteristic of informal speech. Informal speech abounds in words of this type – lab (laboratory), exam (examination), gent (gentleman), movie (movie theatre).

Reduplication is a way of word-building, when words are made by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic changes (bye-bye) or with a change of the root vowel or consonant (ping-pong). This second type is called gradational reduplication. Such words belong mostly to colloquialisms and slang – for example – walkie-talkie (рация), dilly-dallying (бездельничать). Back formation (or reversion) is a type of word-building when a verb is produced from a noun by subtraction. English-speaking people believed that noun denoting profession or occupation should have a corresponding verb of the same root and new verbs were made from nouns by subtracting the suffix ‘er’ – for example – to beg (from a beggar), to baby-sit (from baby-sitter), to burgle (from a burglar).

14) Types of semantic components.

The leading semantic component is called denotative component (or referential component). This component expresses the conceptual content of a word. Let’s consider some examples. The denotative component of the word lonely is alone, without company. The connotative component is melancholy, sad. It’s an emotive connotation. The denotation of the word notorious is widely known, the connotations is widely known for criminal acts or bad trades of character. It’s a negative evaluative connotation.. The denotation of the word celebrated is widely known. The connotation is widely known for special achievements in science, arts etc. It’s a positive evaluative connotation. The denotation of the word ‘to glare’ is to look, the connotation is to look steadily, lastingly in anger or rage. It’ s an emotive connotation plus connotation of duration. The denotation of the word ‘to glance’ is to look, the connotation is to look briefly, passingly. It’s a connotation of duration. The denotation of the word to shiver is to tremble, the connotation is to tremble lastingly with cold. It’s a connotation of duration plus connotation of cause. The denotation of the word to shudder is to tremble, the connotation is to tremble briefly with horror or disgust. It’s a connotation of cause, plus connotation of duration and emotive connotation. It’s quite obvious that the denotative component describes the meaning of the corresponding words incompletely.

In order to give a more or less full picture of the meaning of a word it’s necessary to include in the scheme the analysis of additional semantic components which are called connotative components. The above examples show that only through both denotative and connotative components we can understand what the word really means