49. The “part of” relation can similarly be represented by a hierarchy of superordinate and subordinate (meronym) terms, e.G.

plant

leaf bud stem root flower shoot

stalk blade cap hair petal stamen

Reading from the bottom of the hierarchy, petal and stamen are parts (meronyms) of flower; flower, root, stem, etc. are parts (meronyms) of plant. The superordinate term is not merely a more general way of talking about its meronyms, as in the hyponymy relation, though there is a sense in which the use of a superordinate term includes reference to the meronyms. Flower refer to the entity in its totality, including its petals, stamen, stalk, and so on; but these are not more specific kinds of flower, but rather different parts of it that together make up the whole.

Such part / whole relations exist between many words in the vocabulary. Most humane artifacts are made up of parts, which we usually want to label with their own terms. A knife consists of a blade and a handle. Most obviously, the meronym relation applies to entities into their parts, e.g.

Day

Day night

Dawn morning afternoon twilight evening night

The terms day and night occur twice in this hierarchy because day refers both to the period of 24 hours and to the part ot that period which enjoys daylight; night is in contrast with this second meaning of day and also refers to the darkest part of it.

50. When you begin to apply the notions of hyponymy and meronymy to parts of the vocabulary of a language, you soon realize that, as ordinary language users, we do not neatly classify and analyse things in the systematic way that scholars and scientists attempt to do. Consider the parts of the human finger: the finger has three joints, but we have a common language term for only on of them, the knuckle. This suggests that there are “lexical gaps” for the other two potential meronyms, but we presumably so rarely need to refer to them that a periphrastic expression will usually suffocate, e.g. the middle joint or the joint nearest the nail. That was an example from meronymy.

Let’s use the hyponymy relation to illustrate the unsystematic nature of hierarchical organization in vocabulary. The superordinate term is vehicle, and so we will look at different kinds of vehicles.

Vehicle

Car / automobile van lorry / truck bus cycle train

Further hyponyms might include various kinds of carriage and cart.

But a more rational hierarchy might wish to insert an intermediate level of generality, which would distinguish engine – powered, pedal – powered, horse – drawn, hand – operated / pushed vehicles. However, these terms are not of quite the same kind as vehicle, car, van, etc.; they seem created for the purpose. Moreover, these distinctions would separate pedal cycles from motorcycles, etc. :

Cycle

pedal cycle motorcycles

bicycle tricycle moped scooter motorbike

It demonstrates that, while the hierarchical semantic relations of hyponymy and meronymy are undoubtedly important in the structuring of vocabulary, they do not operate in an altogether systematic and unambiguous way. There are many lexical gaps that are shown up when we begin to build words into hyponymy and meronymy trees, and co – hyponyms may not always be distinguished on the same basis (size, purpose, mode of power, etc.). When a new word is coined, or a new object created and named, consideration is hardly given to its place in the structure of vocabulary. A word is coined because it is needed in some mode of discourse.

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Dictionaries are recent invention. Human language has existed for at least 50 thousand years, but writing systems of any kind are rather young originating in the nearest no more than a few 1000 years ago. Obviously, writing systems have existed before there is any need for dictionaries. The earliest writing system is that of Greek, developed less than a thousand years before the birth of Christ and from it all the other are descended either in the eastern version Cyrillic or in the western Roman. But the greek did not in the dictionaries. The monks copying books by hand in the middle ages, didn’t know Latin very well. Most of the texts were written in Latin and they …in memories. They wrote translations or glosses between the lines. Other monks later made lists of the glosses and these glosses were the earliest latin-to-english dictionaries. All this took place about 700 years before publishing such lists. The 1^st such publication appeared within a lifetime Elisabeth the 1^st, who died 1603. The first moderately complete English dictionary was 150 years later the work of St. Johnson published in 1755.

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Dictionaries that gave information about equivalences between two languages are called bilingual dictionaries. Monolingual dictionaries give information about the language we already know and want to know better. Monolingual dictionaries can be of two distinct types depending on the audience they are addressed to.

-specialized dictionaries clarify the technical jargon or various professional and scholarly areas.

-generally purpose dictionaries aimed to help to understand the precise meanings, pronunciations, spellings, usages and histories of the words including some technical words.

Generally purpose dictionaries can be of two types – unabridged dictionaries and desk dictionaries which are shortened form of full dict. Desk dictionaries we consult all the time. The term unabridged means that the dictionary is not a shortened version of some other dictionary. It was compiled from scratch with all definitions and arrangements of meanings and examples determined by its own editors. The oxford English dictionary has the extremely high degree of originality. It was the 1^st dictionary ever to try to include every word that had appeared in English since the Norman conquest borrowing only technical tems that hadn’t become common parpas.. of the 291, 627 entries in OED half or more a… that no longer occur in modern usage. The fully updated second edition of 1999 is available in the free…

1 twenty large heavy-printed volumes

2 a two volume compact version which is to be read with magnifying glass

3 compact-disc

This great dictionary is very important to all work of the history of English language. It is to large extent the work of a single individual sir James A.H. Murray, its 1^st official editor. He collected and organized citations from the hundreds of individual readers who were solicited of all the English-speaking world mainly from England and Scotland. He sought a citation clips and arranged them in historical order by senses so that one can see for every word what the date of the earliest sense was and how step by step the meaning changed or the new meaning arose from the old one. All modern that dictionaries draw much of historical and the etymological information from OED.

Webster’s third new international dictionary of the English language has 450 000 entries. It differs from the oxford English dictionary and that he has excluded all the absolute words but it considerably exceeds OED’s coverage of technical words from all the major field of knowledge. The OED and Webster dictionaries arranged their senses according to the date when each sense first came into English. It can be terribly misleading unless you know that the 1^st definitions are ancient history and probably only the last one applies a current usage. This order called historical order. The idea of logical or frequency determined order is that the meanings which are most frequent or most central come before those that are less common or more peripheral.

Desktop dictionaries.

For British users

The chambers dictionary (1998)

The most conspicuous feature that all derived forms are listed within the entry single under head word. Thus, if you want to find the term descriptor, you have to look under describe. The dictionary also has an appendix that lists common phrases and ever quotations from the classical languages and modern foreign languages. And another appendix which gives the origins of many … names.

For American users.

The American heritage dictionary;

Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary;

Random house Webster’s college dictionary;

Webster’s new world dictionary of the American language

The American heritage dictionary was innovative in some ways. Rather than placing all the etymological information in the entry in case the word contained a root derived from proto-Indi-European the entry provided the reference appendix in the European roots where one can find for every root which is related by means of being derived from the same point of origin.

the number of specialized dictionaries is lost. Dictionaries of all old English, of middle English, pronunciation dictionaries, frequency dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries, dictionaries of proverbs, of loan words, bibliographical dictionaries, legal terms, medical terms, computer and so on. There are dictionaries of synonyms in which the head word is more or less arbitrarily chosen and alphabetically listed. The editist’s choice of head words is not a part of a universal classificatory system and in the entry all the semantically similar words are listed with explanations of the distinctions among them. Such dictionaries are basically tools for writers to help them avoid repeating the same words in similar contexts.

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The correlation of speech situation and linguistic means used by speakers is studied in linguastylistics. Style means the collecting characteristic of writing diction and the way of presenting things depending on the general outlook proper to person, school, period or genre. In English as a highly developed language system the same idea can be expressed by different means. The language possesses the great variety of words that equally fit to be used in a lecture, poem or talking to a child. Such words are called stylistically neutral. They are characterized by high frequency and… The rest can consist of stylistically colowords. The word choice depends on the speaker and time experience, their knowledge of audience and the relationships in which they stay to the audience. The letter is treated as pragmatic aspect of communication.

Ex.: “horse”, “stead”, “gee-gee” have the same denotation meaning. They all refer to the same animal, but the stylistic colour is different in each case. “Horse” is stylistically neutral and may be used in any situation. “Steed” is dignified and loafly and belongs to poetic diction. “Gee-gee” is a nursery word.

So, stylistically coloured words are the words suitable only in specific spheres and suggested us specific conditions of communication.

Functional style is a system of expressive means peculiar to specific spheres of communication. Other terms used for systematic vocabulary variations according to social context, subject matter and professional activity rejects and name. These include the language of science and law, advertising, newspaper according or casual conversation, etc.

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The adjective colloquial does not necessarily means slang or vulgar. Although slang and vulgar made part of colloquial vocabulary. The term literally colloquial is used to denote the vocabulary used by educated people in the course of ordinary conversation or in correspondence. Familiar colloquial is more emotional and much more free and careless than literal colloquial. It is also characterized by great number of jocular or ironic expressions. How colloquial is a term used for illiterate popular speech. It is very difficult to find hard and passed rules that help to establish the boundary between low colloquial and dialect. Because they are two used together. The basis distinction between how colloquium and two other types of colloquial is purely social. The chief peculiarity of low colloquial concern grammar and pronunciation as to the vocabulary it’s different from familiar colloquial. It contains more vulgar words and elements of dialect. Slang and argot are also the vocabulary that belong to the level of speech. They have only lexical peculiarities but argot should be distinguished from slang. Argot serves to denote special vocabulary and idiom used by a particular gender or age group especially by criminal circus. Its main point is to be unintelligible outsiders. The essential difference between slang and argot results from the fact that the first has an expressive function whereas the second is primarily concerned with the secrecy. Slang words are clearly motivated.

Ex.: Cradle snatcher – and old man who married younger woman.

Argot words on the contrary don’t show their motivation. Rap – kill, shin – knife, book – a life sentence.

In all the groups of colloquial especially in familiar colloquial words easily acquire a new meaning and new valiancy. Colloquialisms are a persistent feature of conversation of 90 % of the population. Slang words are identified and distinguished by contrasting them. They are expressive, often ironical and soft to create fresh names for something. For the most part they sound vulgar, hush aiming to throw the object of speech in a ridiculer slight.

Slang for money: beans, beass (лить), dibs (фишки, бабки), dough (тесто), chink (звон монет), cof (богатство), wads.

Head: hat peg, attie, brain-pan, nut, upper stray.

and it show the object of speech in the ridiculous life. The lexical meaning of slang words contains not only the denotational component but also an emotive component and all the other possible types of connotation it is expressive evaluation and stylistically coloured. After a slang word has been used in speech people get a custom to.. slang words are then expected into literary vocabulary (bit, bore, chip, fun). Most prominent place occupied by words that have no synonyms and serve as expressive ways for specific notion. (teenager, blurb). The bulk of slang is ed by short lift words according to the sphere of usage there is special, general slang. General slang includes words that are not specific for any social group. Special slang is peculiar to some group (sport slang, sea slang).

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Suffixes usually modify the lexical meaning of the base and transfer words to different part of speech (unlike prefixes, which don’t usually alter the part of speech category). There are suffixes that transfer words into different semantic group, for example friend – friendship, when a concrete noun becomes an abstract one. On the whole there are five criteria to classify afiixes. Thus, affixes can be classified:

1. according to the lexico-grammatical character of the base they are added to:

a) deverbal (those added to the verbal base): -er (reader), -ing (talking), -ment (agreement), -able (suitable); re- (rewrite), over- (overdo), out- (outstay);

b) denominal (those added to the nominal base): -less (endless), -ful (armful), -ist (novelist), -some (troublesome); un- (unbutton), de- (detrain);

c) deadjectival (those added to the adjectival base): -en (widen) , -ly (rapidly), -ness (brightness); un- (uneasy), bi.

2. according to the part of speech formed:

a) noun-forming: -age (bondage), - ance/-ence (assistance/reference), -dom (kingdom), -er (speaker), -ess (actress), -ing (constructing), -hood (childhood), -ness (tenderness), -ship (partnership); non- (non-smoker), sun- (sub-committee), ex- (ex-husband);

b) adjective-forming: -able/-ible/-uble (unbearable/ audible/soluble), -al (official), -ic (poetic), -ant/-ent (repentant/dependent), -ed (shaped), -ful (doubtful). –ish (bookish), -ive (active), -ous (curious); un- (unfair), il- (illiterate), ir-

c) numeral-forming suffixes: -fold (twofold), teen (fourteen), -th (seventh), -ty (sixty)

d) verb-forming: -ate (facilitate), -er (glimmer), fy/-ify (terrify), -ize (equalize), ish (establish); en-/em- (enclose), be-, de-(dethrone)

e) adverb-forming: -ly (coldly), -ward/-wards(upward/northwards), -wise (likewise); un- (unfortunately), up (uphill)

3. Semantically affixes fall into:

a) monosemantic with one meaning only: -ess has one meaning:”female’ – tailoress; ex- (ex-wife).

b) polysemantic –with more that one meaning: -hood has two meanings – 1) condition of quality (womanhood), 2) collection or group (brotherhood); dis- has 4 meanings: 1) not, 2) reversal or absence of an action or state, diseconomy 3) removal of (disbranch) 4) completeness or intensification of an unpleasant acton (disgruntled)

4. according to their generalizing denotational meaning affixes fall into several groups (смотри самую первую классификацию)

5. according to their stylistic reference:

a) those characterized by neutral stylictic reference: -able (agreeable), -er (writer); over- (oversee), under- (underestimate), un- (unknown).

b) those having a certain stylistic value: -oid (asteroid), -tron (cyclotron); pseudo- (pseudo-classical), super- superstructure), ultra- (ultraviolet).

These affixes are of a literary bookish character and often occur in turns.

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1. The word is the fundamental unit of the language. It has form and content. Linguists define “word” as the smallest free form found in language. Words have an internal structure consisting of small units organized in a particular way. The most important of the word structure is the morpheme (from Greek “morphe” - “form”, -“ema”- “the smallest distinctive unit. M is the smallest unit of language that carries information of meaning and function.

E.g. The word builder for example consists of 2 morphemes: build with the meaning of contrast and the morpheme –er which indicates that the entire word functions as a noun with a meaning “one who builds”, similarly, the word house is made up of the morphemes “house” with the meaning dwelling and –s with the meaning more than one. Some words consists of a single morpheme… that carry information about its meaning and function. Such words are said to be simple words and distinguished from complex words which contain 2 or more morphemes. E.g.

one	two	three	More than 3
and
boy	Boy-s
hunt	Hunt-er	Hunt-er-s
Act	Act-ive	Act-iv-ate	Re-act-iv-ate

It is important to keep in mind that morpheme is neither a meaning nor a stretch of sound, but a meaning and a stretch of sound joined together. Morphemes are usually arbitrary, there’s no natural connection between their sound and their meaning. Thus, morphemes are the smallest two-facet meaningful language units. They are not independent sense units, as words or sentence are. They are always used as parts of words.

2. Morphemes do not always have an invariant form, a morpheme in various texts can have different phonemic shapes. All the representatives of a given morpheme are called allomorphs of that morpheme (Greek allos “other”) the morpheme used to express indefiniteness in English, for instance has two forms r before a word that begins with a consonant and n before a word that begins with a vowel. An orange or a car. The variant forms of a morpheme are its allomorphs. Another example of allomorphic variation is the following: the final segment in “assert” is t, when this morpheme stands alone as a separate word. But the final segment is sh, when this morpheme combines with the morpheme consisting of ion in the word assertion. Similar alterations are found in words such as include – inclusive, electric – electricity, impress – impression, thus allomorph is a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environment.

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Morphemes can be classified from the semantic and structural point of view. Semantically morphemes divide into 2 types:

1) root morphemes. Root m. are the lexical nuclears of words, for example in the words remake or disorder roots are make and order are understood as a lexical center of word. The root morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words, making up a word cluster. E.g. morpheme teach in the words to teach, teacher, teaching.

2) non-root morphemes, which include inflectional morphemes (or inflections) and affixational morphemes (or affixes).

Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and thus relevant only for the formation of word forms, various affixes are relevant for building various types of stems (stamps, sterms). Affixes are divided into prefixes and suffixes. A prefix is a derivational morpheme preceding the root morpheme and modifying its meaning. Safe – unsafe. A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the root and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class: hardly – hardless.

Structurally morphemes fall into: free morphemes, which can be words by themselves. A free morpheme coincides with the stem or a word form. E.g boy is a free m. since it can be used as a word on its own, or the root morpheme friend of the noun friendship is qualified as free because it coincides with one of the forms of the word friend. Bound morphemes must be attached to another element, it occurs only as constituent part of the word. Affixes are bound morphemes for they always make part of words. –ness, -ship, -dis, -im etc.

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According to the number of morphemes words fall into monomorphic and polymorphic.

Monomorphic or root words consist of one root morpheme, e.g. fog, big, smell.

Polymorphic words according to the number of root morphemes, are classified into: monoradical and polyradical words.

Monoradical or one root m. words fall into 3 types:

1 radical-suffixal words. 1 root m., 1 or more suffixal m. acceptable, acceptability.

2 radical-prefixal words. 1 root m, a prefixal morpheme. Unbutton.

3 prefixal-radical-suffixal words: these are the words which consist of one root, prefixal and suffixal morphemes. E.g. disagreeable, misinterpretation.

Polyradical words fall into 2 types:

1 polyradical words which consist of 2 or more roots with no affixational morphemes. E.g. Lamp-shade.

2 polyradical words which contain at least two roots with affixational morphemes. E.g. Safety-pin.

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Depending on the semantic class we can differentiate several types of meaning in morphemes. Root morphemes possess lexical differential and distributional types of meaning. Affixational morphemes, lexical, part of speech, differential and distributional types of meaning. Lexical meaning of root morphemes differs of that or affixational morphemes. Root morphemes have an individual lexical meaning which is shared by no other morphemes. Lexical meaning of affixational morphemes is of a more general character. E.g. the suffix –en has the meaning “the change of a quality”. Verbs formed with the help of this suffix, convey the idea that smb or smth has more of a quality than in was before. A river deepens. Differential meaning is the semantic component that serves to distinguish one word from others, containing identical morphemes. In words containing more than one morpheme, one of the constituting morphemes always has differential meaning. In the word bookshelf “shelf” serves to distinguish this word from other words containing the morpheme book. Distributional meaning is the meaning of the order and arrangement of morphemes making up the word. E.g. singer is composed of two morphemes: sing and er, both of which possess the lexical meaning to make musical sounds and doer of action. A different arrangement of the same morphemes would make the word meaningless.

Part-of-speech meaning. In most cases affixational morpheme indicate the part of speech to which a derivational word belongs. E.g. the affixational morpheme –ment is used to form nouns, while the affixational morphemes –less forms the adjectives.

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