5. Stylistic synonyms.

Belong to different styles.

child	Infant	Kid
neutral	elevated	colloquial
To die To kick the bucket

Sources of Synonymy

 development of the native elements, mostly denoting different shades of common meaning,e.g. fast – speedy – swift; handsome – pretty – lovely;

 adaptation of words from dialects and varieties of English, e.g. dark – murk (Northern English); girl – lass (Scottish English); wireless – radio (American English);

 foreign borrowings, e.g. to ask (native) – to question (French) – to interrogate (Latin); to end (native) – to finish (French) – to complete (Latin);

 euphemisms, e.g. drunk – intoxicated – tired and emotional; to kill – to finish – to make away with sb – to remove;

 etymological doublets, e.g. shade – shadow; canal – channel;

 productive word-forming processes, e.g. await – wait; memorandum – memo; resistance – fight back

41.Homonymy. Classification of homonyms

Homonyms (from Gr. “homos” means “the same”, “omona” means “name”) are the words, different in meaning and either identical both in sound and spelling or identical only in spelling or sound. The most widely accepted classification of them is following:

Homonyms proper (or perfect homonyms)

Homophones

Homographs

Homonyms proper are words identical in pronunciation and spelling:

“Ball” as a round object used in game, “ball” as a gathering of people for dancing;

“Bark” v to utter sharp explosive cries; “bark” n is a noise made by dog or a sailing ship, etc.

“Bay” v is to bark; “bay” n is a part of the sea or the lake filling wide mouth opening of the land, or the European laurel⁵, or гнедая лошадь.

You should remember, that homonyms are distinct words – not different meanings within one word.

Homophones are words of the same sound, but of different meaning, for example:

“Air” – “heir”, “arms” – “alms”, “bye” – “buy” – “by”, “him” – “hymn”, “knight” – “night”, “rain” – “reign”, “not” – “knot”, “or” – “ore” – “oar”, “piece” – “peace”, “scent” – “cent”, “steal” – “steel” – “still”, “write” – “right”, “sea” – “see”, “son” – “sun”.

In the sentence: “The play-write on my right thinks it that some conventional rite⁶ should symbolize the right of every man to write as he pleases” the sound complex [rait] is noun, adjective, adverb and verb, has 4 different spellings and 6 different meanings.

The difference may be confined to the use of a capital letter as in “bill” and “Bill”: “How much is my milk bill?” – “Excuse me, madam, but my name is John”. On the other hand, whole sentences may be homophonic: “The sons raise meat” - “The sun’s rays meet”. To understand this one needs a wide context.

Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling:

Bow [bou] – лук / [bau] – поклон или нос корабля

Lead [li:d] – вести / [led] – свинец

Row [rou] – грести или ряд / [rau] – шум, скандал

Sever [sov ] – шея / [sjuv ] – сточная труба

Tear [tεe] – рвать / [ti ] – слеза

Wind [wind] – ветер / [waind] – заводить (часы)

42.Neologisms and international words. Their place in the vocabulary system of the English language.Neologisms are newly coined terms, words, or phrases, that may be commonly used in everyday life but have yet to be formally accepted as constituting mainstream language. Neologisms represent the evolving nature of the English language. Over time people create new words that express concepts or ideas that were previously expressed using other words or use words that may not have existed at all. Neologisms can be completely new words, new meanings for existing words or new semes in existing words. Here are some examples of neologisms that are finding their way into modern-day English language.

International words. There exist many words that were borrowed by several languages. Such words are mostly of Latin and Greek origin and convey notions which are significant in the field of communication in different countries. Here belong names of sciences (philosophy, physics, chemistry, linguistics), terms of art (music, theatre, drama, artist, comedy), political terms (politics, policy, progress). The English language became a source for international sports terms (football, hockey, cricket, rugby, tennis)

43. Relations of hyponymy In linguistics, a hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field^[1] is included within that of another word, its hypernym (sometimes spelled hyperonym outside of the natural language processing community^{[citation needed]}). In simpler terms, a hyponym shares a type-of relationship with its hypernym. For example, scarlet, vermilion, carmine, and crimson are all hyponyms of red (their hypernym), which is, in turn, a hyponym of colour.^[2]Computer science often terms this relationship an "is-a" relationship. For example, the phrase Red is-a colour can be used to describe the hyponymic relationship between red and colour.Hypernymy is the semantic relation in which one word is the hypernym of another. Hypernymy, the relation in which words stand when their extensions stand in the relation of class to subclass, should not be confused with holonymy, which is the relation in which words stand when the things that they denote stand in the relation of whole to part. A similar warning applies to hyponymy and meronymy.As a hypernym can be understood as a more general word than its hyponym, the relation is used in semantic compression by generalization to reduce a level of specialization.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: eorþe, 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.

44.The theory of semantic field. Thematic groups. 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 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: eorþe, 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. 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 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. Šcur.

45.Word groups and their classification.

Word-groups:

Constructed in speech

Substitution is possible

individual meanings of the components (motivated)

each notional word functions as a separate syntactic unit

unpredictable

Phraseological units:

ready-made

as a rule, no substitution

meaning is non-motivated (idiomatic)

the whole expression functions as a single syntactic unit

predictable

A word-group is the largest two-facet lexical unit comprising more than one word but expressing one global concept.The lexical meaning of the word groups is the combined lexical meaning of the component words. The meaning of the word groups is motivated by the meanings of the component members and is supported by the structural pattern. But it’s not a mere sum total of all these meanings! Polysemantic words are used in word groups only in 1 of their meanings. These meanings of the component words in such word groups are mutually interdependent and inseparable (blind man – «a human being unable to see», blind type – «the copy isn’t readable).Word groups possess not only the lexical meaning, but also the meaning conveyed mainly by the pattern of arrangement of their constituents. The structural pattern of word groups is the carrier of a certain semantic component not necessarily dependent on the actual lexical meaning of its members (school grammar – «grammar which is taught in school», grammar school – «a type of school»). We have to distinguish between the structural meaning of a given type of word groups as such and the lexical meaning of its constituents. Word-groups may be classified according to their head-words into:nominal groups – red flower;adjective groups – kind to people;verbal groups – to speak well.The head is not necessarily the component that occurs first.Word-groups are classified according to their syntactical pattern into predicative and non-predicative groups. Such word-groups as he went, Bob walks that have a syntactic structure similar to that of a sentence are termed as predicative, all others are non-predicative ones.Non-predicative word-groups are divided into subordinative and coordinative depending on the type of syntactic relations between the components. E.g., a red flower, a man of freedom are subordinative non-predicative word-groups, red and freedom being dependent words, while day and night, do and die are coordinative non-predicative word-groups.The lexical meaning of a word-group may be defined as the combined lexical meaning of the component members. But it should be pointed out, however, that the term «combined lexical meaning» does not imply that the meaning of the word-group is always a simple additive result of all the lexical meanings of the component words. As a rule, the meanings of the component words are mutually dependent and the meaning of the word-group naturally predominates over the lexical meaning of the components. The interdependence is well seen in word-groups made up of polysemantic words. E.g., in the phrases the blind man, the blind type the word blind has different meanings – unable to see and vague.

46. Free word groups. Definition. Classification.Free word-groups are so called not because of any absolute freedom in using them but simply because they are each time built up anew in the speech process whereas idioms are used as ready-made units with fixed and constant structures. The task of distinguishing between free word-groups and phraseological units is further complicated by the existence of a great number of marginal cases, the so-called semi-fixed or semi-free word-groups, also called non-phraseological word-groups which share with phraseological units their structural stability but lack their semantic unity and figurativeness e. g. to go to school, to go by bus, to commit suicide.

A word-group is a combination of at least two meaningful words joined together according to the rules of a particular language.

According to the head-word:

Nominal, verbal, adjectival, statival, numerical, pronominal, adverbial

According to the type of connection:

Predicative

Non-predicative

-subordinate

-coordinate

According to the criterion of distribution, word-groups are classified into:

-exocentric, i.e. having the distribution different from either of its members, e.g. side by side, to grow smaller, kind to people etc.

-endocentric, i.e. having one central member functionally equivalent to the whole word-group, e.g. a red flower, bravery of all kinds etc.

Endocentric word-groups are further subdivided into:

-coordinative if they have the same distribution as two or more of its members, e.g. bread and butter; coffee, tea, and milk;

-subordinative if they have the same distribution as one of their members, e.g. fresh milk; very fresh.

This classification was elaborated by the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield in the book Language (1933).

48.Valency. Lexical valency and grammatical valencyTo get a better insight into the essentials of structure and meaning of word-groups we must begin with a brief survey of the main factors active in uniting words into word-groups. The two main linguistic factors to be considered in this connection are the lexical and the grammatical valency of words.