25. Neutral words and stylistically marked words: Informal vocabulary.

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Informal vocabulary is used when speaking with friends, relatives, acquaintance.

There are several sub-groups in this group:

1) Colloquial words. They in their turn are divided into literary-colloquial, familiar-colloquial, and low-colloquial.

Literary-colloquial words do not break the norms of the language. We use these words in our everyday speech. EG: He has caught a cold.

Many of the clichés belong to this group: EG: Благодарю Вас! Thank you! Thanks.

These word are also use in fiction. They are used in the speech of the characters and in modern books, literature, in the author’s narration.

familiar-colloquial words sound rude. They are colorful and expressive. They’re used by the young people, who want to be grown up and want to be independent and by those people whose cultural and educational background is poor.

EG: I’m fed up with it – я сыт по горло.

low-colloquial words are met in the speech of the illiterate people

EG: by the characters of “Pygmalion”

It should be noted that there is no strict boarder line between literary and familiar col., and fam. and low colloquial.

EG: familiar combinations: “awfully nice”, “not so bed”

Slang

Slangizms are a very interesting groups of words. One of the characteristics of slangizm is that they are not included into Standard English

EG: mug = face; trap = mouth

Such words are based on metaphor, they make speech unexpected, vivid and sometimes difficult to understand.

Slang appears as a language of a subgroup in a language community. We can speak of black-americans’ slang, teenagers’ slang, navy and army slang.

26. Terminology. Problems associated with the concept of the "term".

A term is a word or a word combination used in a particular branch of science, technology, trade of the arts to convey a notion peculiar to this or that activity.

The system of terms is used in some branch of human activity is called terminology.

There are several problems connected with terminology.

1) Is there a difference between a term and a word of the general language?

EG: the word “frame” may be a term (PC) and the same time a word of general language.

There is a criterion which helps to distinguished between a term and a word the general language. It is definability.

That means that a term has a clear explanation.

There is another problem: must a word be polisementic or monosemantic?

It must be monosemantic , but in fact it is polisemantic. EG: the word “semantic” first meaning: all the meanings of the word; second: a branch of lexicology.

Finally: must a term have synonyms? It should not. But in fact, in real life, it does have synonyms.

EG: a phraseological unit, an idiom, a set-phrase…

Among these synonyms there is a dominant term, which is called “descriptor”

It has the following characteristics:

1. It’s the easiest to define

2. descriptor has a clear semantic structure. It’s not based on metaphor or metonomy. The nomination is direct.

EG: a fricative sound (нет переносного значения)

3. A descriptor has derivatives

4. a descriptor is the most frequent word.