54. 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 colloquim 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 …

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… 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).

53. 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.

51. Dictionaries are recent inventions. Human language has existed 50 thousand years, but writing system of any kind are rather young. Originating in the near east no more than a few thousand years ago. Obviously writing system have to exist before there is any needs for dictionaries. The earliest alphabetical writing system is that of Greek developed less than a thousand years before the birth of Christ and from it all the other are dissented. Either in the eastern version cirilique all the western Roman, but the Greek didn’t invent dictionaries. The monks coping books by hand in the middle ages didn’t know the Latin very well. Most of texts were written in Latin and they joded the memories. They wrote translations on glosses between the lines. Other monks made lists of the gloses and these were the earliest letter to English dictionaries. About 700 years before publishing. The first such publication appeared in time of Elisabeth 1 and we know that died in 1603. The first English modern dictionaries was in other 100 years later the work of S. Johnson published in 1755. Modern lexicography is therefore 250 years old it took place

52. Dictionaries that give information about equivalents between two languages are called bilingual dictionaries.

Monolingual dictionaries give information about the language we already know and one to know better. They can be of two types depending on the audience to which they are addressed:

1) Specialized dictionaries aimed to clarify the technical of various professional and scholar area.

2) General purpose dictionaries aimed to help to understand the precise meanings, pronunciation, spellings, usages and histories of the words, including some of the technical words.

General purpose dictionaries are of two types: 1) unabridged dictionaries don’t contain every English word as nobody knows how many words English has. It only means that the dictionary is not the shorten version of some other version. It was compiled from scratch (to start from nothing) with all definitions and arrangements of meanings and examples determined by its own editors. The most remarkable one is the Oxford dictionary (OE dictionary). It has high degree of originality. It was the first dictionary ever to try to include every word that had appeared in English since the Norman Conquest to burring only technical terms that had not become common pillars. Of the 20916026 entries in this dictionary half or more are old words that no longer occur in modern usage. The fully up-dated second edition of 1989 is available in three forms: 20 large volumes, 2 volume compact editions, compact disc. This great dictionary is very important to all work in the history of the English language. It’s to large extent the work of a single individual Sir Janes Murray – the first official editor. He collected and organized citations from the hundreds of individual readers who were solicited from all over of English-speaking world though mainly from England and Scotland. He solted citations slips and arranged them in the historical order by senses so that one can see far every word that the date of the earliest occurrence was and that the earliest sense was and how step by step by step the meaning changed or a new meaning arose from old ones. All modern dictionaries draw much of the historical and etymological information from the Oxford Etymologies and definitions are based on citations – an index card or a computer file which lists a word and quotation containing that word if possible in a context that clearly implies a specific meaning and gives the source, author and the date of the citation. The other great modern dictionary is Webster’s 3^rd new international dictionary of the English language (published by the Meriam Webster Company in 1961). It has 450000 entries, it differs from OED in that it has excluded older obsolete words but it considerably exid the OED coverage of technical words from all the major field of knowledge.

2) Desk dictionaries are the one which we consult all the time which are shorten form of full dictionaries. (For British users - the Chambers dictionary 1998). The main conspicuous feature is that all derived forms are listed with the entry under a single head-word. It also has an appendix that least common phrases and even quotations from the classical languages and modern foreign languages and another appendix which gives the origin of many first names. For American users at least 4 possible choices:

1) American Heritage Dictionary. It was innovated in some ways. Rather than placing all the etymological information in the entry in case the word contains the root derived from proto indo-european the entry provided a reference to an appendix called indo-european roots. The one can find for every root not only the word but also dorens of the other words that were derived from the same point of origin.

2) Meriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary.

3) Randem House Webster College Dictionary.

4) Webster new Word Dictionary of The American Language.

Important difference between dictionaries: most words has different senses and meanings. Dictionaries divide up to their definitions into categories one for each desirable sense, thus the OED for a noun work divides the senses into tree main categories; Chambers has 20, Heritage 15. It is to be expected that all dictionaries will have similar if not identical category of sense. But the order is radically different, and has known to lead to serious misunderstandings of dictionary users. Historical order is logical. The OED and all the Merriam Webster’s dictionaries arrange their senses according to the date when each sense first came into English. It can be terrible misleading unless you know that the first definition is ancient history and probably only the last one applies to current usage. The idea of the logical frequency determine the order is that the meaning that are most frequent or most central come before those that are less common or more peripheral. The problem is that unlike historical ordering this order is not determinant. Most frequent in what kinds of text, in what context of use, Style, level, so this ordering really depends on the shrud guesses of the editors, and they are different.

The number of Specialized dictionaries is vast. Dictionaries of Old English, of Middle English, pronouncing dictionaries, chronological dictionaries, frequency dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries, dictionaries of proverbs, loan words, bibliographical dictionaries, legal terms, medical terms, music, astronomy, geography, computer terms. Dictionary of synonyms in which the head word is more or less abertreally chosen and alphabetically listed. The editors’ choice of headwords is not part of illeberate universal classificated system and in the entry all the semantically similar words are listed with explanations of the distinctions among them. One of the most famous one Webster New Dictionary of synonyms. Dictionary of synonyms are basically tools for writers to help them avoiding repeating the same word in different context.

48. The relation of hyponymy serves to structure large parts of vocabulary. It is perhaps an all – pervasive structuring relation. It is almost evident in the taxonomies of natural phenomena.

Plant

Fungus lichen shrub creeper tree

Mushroom toads ivy bindweed conifer deciduous

Pine spruce oak ash

The term at the top of the hierarchy (plant) has the most general meaning, and it can be used to refer to all the objects denoted by tern below it. It is a ‘superordinate’ term. Those immediately below it, the directly “subordinate” terms (fungus, lichen, shrub, etc.), are its “hyponyms”. So, tree is a hyponym of plant, but is in turn a superordinate to its hyponyms conifer, deciduous; conifer is in turn a superordinate to its hyponyms pine, spruce, etc. Reading up from the bottom of the hierarchy, pine is a “kind of” conifer, which is a kind of tree, which is a kind of plant.

Hyponymy relations are not restricted to the classification system of natural phenomena. They are found also, for example, in taxonomies of natural human artifacts, e.g.

Container

Pot barrel box tin bag

Cask keg case crate sack pouch purse

Suitcase briefcase

The hierarchy is neither complete nor entirely accurate. For one thing, the term barrel probably needs to occur as a hyponym of itself; in other words, barrel denotes a class of objects that includes casks, kegs and barrels. Barrel has both a more general and a more specific meaning. What this begins to illustrate is that hyponymy hierarchies are not necessarily either complete or neatly arranged. After all, our vocabulary presumably contains the words that we, as members of a particular culture or speech community, need in order to communicate with each other about environment and our experience. In many instances, we do not need words of varying degrees of generality, so that we can refer tyo classes and subclasses of entities; but that does not mean that they will always form a neat system of terms.

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.

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.

50. In semantic (or lexical) field analysis, words are grouped together into “fields” on the basis of an element of shared meaning. Such a field may comprise words referring to drinking vessels, or verbs of communication (speak, order, want, promise, etc.) There is no set of agreed criteria for establishing semantic fields, though a “common component” of meaning might be one.

An early example of a semantic field arrangement of English vocabulary is Roget’s Thesaurus. It has a hierarchical organization and entries are arranged in two columns on the page, using the relation of antonymy, the relation of (loose) synonymy. Roget divides the vocabulary initially into six broad “classes”: abstract relations, space, matter, intellect, volition, affections. Each of these classes then subdivided into ‘sections”; e.g. affections has the sections: generally, personal, sympathetic, moral, religious. A further two subdivisions take place to reach the articles (or semantic fields); moral affections, for example, are subdivided into: obligations, sentiments, conditions, practice, institutions. An article contains lists of words, organized by word class, that would fall under the heading of the article.

43. Polysemy refers to the situation when a word has two ore more different meanings (see question 3 lecture 3). In most cases only one of the meanings of a polysemantic words will fit into a given context, but occasionally ambiguity may also arise. For instance, consider the words “bat”, “bank”. Look at the bat under the tree. Susan may go to the bank today. Ambiguity may arise (result) from the fact that “bat” may mean “either flying mammal or implement used to hit the ball in cricket”, while “bank” may mean either river bank or the place we are deal with money.

44. Despite it’s a pair simplicity the concept of polysemy is complex and involved a certain number of problems. Today we’ll consider:

1) the number of meanings;

2) differences in recognizing polysemy.

Since one meaning cannot always be delimited and distinguished from another, it’s not easy to say without hesitation whether two meanings are the same or different. Consequently we cannot determine exactly how many meanings a polysemanmtic word has. Consider the verb “eat”. Most dictionaries distinguish the literal sense of “taking in through the mouth and swallowing”, and the derived meaning of “use up, damage or destroy smth, especially by samycollection”, which tends to suggest that the verb may have at least two different meanings. However, in the literal sense we can also distinguish between “eating nuts” and “eating soup”. The former with fingers, and the letter with a spoon, moreover we can also talk about drinking soup, as eating it. It may therefore be said that in this sense at least “eat” corresponds to drink since the letter involves swallowing the liquids. We can push the analysis even further by asking where eating an orange which involves sucking is the same thing as eating an apple which involves even chewing. It goes without saying that if we push this analysis too far, we may make up deciding that the verb “eat” has different meanings for different food that we eat. This discussion shows that there is no clear criterion for either difference or sameness of meaning and it would seem futile to attempt an expositive count of the number of possible meanings which a given verb may have. The meaning of this word is bound to very according to the specific context in a wide semantic field part of which overlaps with that of over words. Ex.: the semantic field of “eat” overlaps with drink that referring to the but there is no overlapping when dealing with nuts since they cannot be drunk. A word may have both a literal meaning and one or more transferred meaning. Although we cannot determine with precision how many different meanings this word may have altogether.

The second problem stated when we refer to the difficulty in recognizing polysemy: we are dealing with the relationship between polysemy and homonymy. The problem is to decide when we have polysemy and where we have homonymy. Another word we have a written form with two meanings, should we consider that one word with different meaning (polysemy) or as two different words with the same shape (homonymy). Dictionaries have to decide where the particular item is to be handled in terms of polysemy or homonymy, because a polysemantic word will be treated as a single entry. While a homonymous one will have a separate entry for each of the homonyms. It must be said that far from being a defect of language polysemy is an essential condition for its efficency. If it were not possible to attach several senses for the same word this would mean a crashen burden or our memory. We would have to possess separate terms for every conceivable object we might wish to talk about, and be absolutely precise in our choice of word. Consequently polysemy must be considered an invaluable factor of economy and flexibility in language.

45-46. Homonymy refers to the situation where we have two or more words with the same shape. Although they have the same shape homonyms are considered distinct lexemes, maybe because they have unrelated meanings and different etymologies. There is however some difficulty in the establishment of sameness of shape, owing to the fact that we do not make the distinction in both speech and writing.

Ex.: Lead (metal) lead (dog’s lead); right, rite, write.

Thus “Lead” (metal) and “lead” (dog’s lead) are spelt the same but pronounced differently. And “right”, “rite”, “write” spelt differently but pronounced the same. For the first case “lead – lead” the term homograph should be used (same spelling). For the second – homophone is the appropriate term. In addition to the difference in meaning homonyms may also be kept apart by syntactic differences.

Tender (adj., n, v), bear (n, v), hail (n. v) hoarse (adj.)horse (n.)

When homonyms belong to different word classes as in the case of “tender”, which has different lexemes as adj., n., v. Each homonym has got only a distinct meaning but also a different grammatical function. The same observation apply to pairs of words such as bear (n, v), hail (n. v), hoarse (adj.), horse (n.), brave (n., adj.)

The rout was very long. The root was very long.

Helen didn’t see the bat. (лет. Мышь) Helen didn’t see the bat. (бита)

Knows (v.) nose, right, writes.

Because of sameness of shape there is a danger of homonymy conflict in the sense that two homonyms with totally different meanings may both make sense in the same utterance.

However, there are at least two different meanings any possibility of confusion. The difference in the word-class and the difference in spelling. Besides the difference in the overall context. Many homonyms exist only in theory since in practice there is no risk of any confusion, because they belong to different word classes. Consider the pairs of homonyms “knows” as n. and “knows” as a v. Apart from difference in meaning it’s difficult to imagine a context in which both memories of a given pair might occur interchangeability. They are uncomplimentary distribution in the sense that the one occurs the other, cannot occur however it might me specified that sinse the member of each pair differ in word class, the choice of one homonym instead of the other is determined mainly by the rule of syntax, not those of the lexicology. Similar types of restriction also applies to pairs of homonyms which are identically in spelling and pronunciation. Ex.: grave (adj, n.) stick (n., v.)

The analysis shows that difference in grammatical class contributes to a sustention reduction in the number of effective homonyms in English. However the difference in class alone does not automatically rule out all possibilities of confusion. English is non-formatic writing system, because there is not absolute one to one correspondence between the letters of writing and the sounds of pronunciation of words. As a result spelling will often help to differentiate between words that are identical in sound. This aspect also reduces the number of homonyms. On the printed \ written page. It may also be useful in spoken language, because it provides a quick and easy way of remaining confusion. So, it may be simple to spell the word out then to define their meaning. The discussion of the illumination of homonyms confusion shows in this respect English writing is more intelligible than speech and that homonym in the language as a whole spoken as well as written is reduced by writing, contentious. It also shows that even if we focus them grammatical \ graphological consideration play an important role in the distinction between homonyms but extremely important to note that there is no clear-cut dividing line between polysemy and homonymy. The major difficulty is that it isn’t at all clear how far meanings need to diverge before we treat words representing them as separate. The results of experiment suggest that native speakers are generally in agreement over the fair range of examples of homonymy and polysemy although there is still a considerable reduce of bodyline cases.

39. Oppositeness is perhaps not such a pervasive meaning relation in the vocabulary of English as synonymy, but it has an important role in structuring the vocabulary of English. This is especially so in the adjective word class, where a good many words occur in antonymous pairs, e.g. long – short, wide – narrow, new – old, rough – smooth, light – dark, straight – crooked, deep – shallow, fast – slow. While antonymy is typically found among adjectives it is not restricted to this word class: bring – take (verbs), death – life (nouns), noisily – quietly (adverbs), above – below (prepositions), after – before (conjunctions or prepositions).

Besides having morphologically unrelated antonyms, as in the examples above, English can also derive antonyms by meansof prefixes and suffixes. Negative prefixes such as dis-, un-, or in- may derive an antonym from the positive root, e.g. dishonest, unsympathetic, infertile. Compare also: encourage – discourage but entangle – disentangle, increase – dicrease, include – exclude. Similarly, the suffixes –ful, -less may derive pairs of antonyms, e.g. useful – useless, thoughtful – thoughtless; but this is by no means always the case, e.g. hopeful and hopeless are not antonyms, grateful has no counterpart grateless, selfless has no counterpart selfful.

40. It is often the case that antonyms occur together, either within the same sentence. One reason is that certain expressions are srtuctured in this way, e.g. “a matter of life and death”, “from start to finish”, “the long and the short of it”, “neither friend nor foe”, “wanted dead or alive”. A second reason is that antonyms may be used redundantly to emphasize a point, e.g. “It was a remark made in private, not in public”, or to make a rhetorical flourish, e.g. “Is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?” Another context in which antonyms are typically employed is where reference is to change of state, e.g. “The museum opens at nine and closes at four”.

We generally think of antonymy as a relation holding between words belonging to the same word class, but since antonymy is a semantic relation, it may hold between words that belong to different word classes. For example, in “Lighten our darkness, we pray”, a verb and a noun form an antonym pair. In “She remembered to shut the door but left the window open”, a verb and an adjective are in a relation of antonymy. Clearly, oppositeness influences our thinking and communicating to a significant extent,as the widespread use of antonymy demonstrates.

41. Unlike synonymy, antonymy covers a number of different types of oppositeness of meaning. Three types are commonly identified: gradable antonyms, contradictory or complementary antonyms, and converses. Antonym pairs of these types express oppositeness in rather different ways, though it is not clear that we as speakers are necessarily aware of these differences or that they play a part in how we store antonyms in our mental lexicon.

Gradable antonyms include pairs like the following: beautiful – ugly, expensive – cheap, fast – slow, hot – cold, increase – decrease, long – short, love – hate, rich – poor, sweet – sour, wide – narrow.

These pairs are called gradable antonyms because they do not represent an either/ or relation but rather a more/less relation. The words can be viewed as terms at the end-poins of a continuum or gradient. The more/less relation is evident in a number of ways: the terms allow comparison, e.g. “My arm is longer/shorter than yours”, “I love a good book more than a good meal”; the adjectives can be modified by “intensifying” adverbs, e.g. very long, extremely hot, extraordinary beautiful. The terms do not represent absolute values; for the adjectives the value depends on the noun being described; the length of arms is on a different scale from the length of, say, roads. In such pairs of adjectives, one is usually a marked term, the other unmarked. This manifests itself, for example, in questions such as “How long is the street?” To ask “How short is the street?” already assumes that the street has been identified as short. The use of long does not make an assumption either way. Also, in giving dimensions, you would use the “larger” term, e.g. “The street is 400 metres long” (not short).

The following are examples of contradictory or complementary antonyms: asleep – awake, dead – alive, on – off, permit – forbid, remember – forget, shut – open, true – false, win – lose.

These pairs of antonyms are in an either/or relation of oppositeness. An animate being can be described as either dead or alive, but not as some grade of these or as being more one than the other. The assertion of one implies the denial of the other member of the pair: if you permit some behavior, then it is not forbidden; if you lose a contest, then you have not won it; if a switch is on, then it is not off.

The following are examples of converse antonyms: above – below, before – after, behind – in front of, buy – sell, give – receive, husband – wife, parent – child, speak – listen.

For each pair of antonyms, one expresses the converse meaning of the other. In the case of sentences with buy and sell, for example, the same transaction is expressed from different (converse) perspectives: Lydia bought the car from Kristen Kristen sold the car to Lydia. Similarly with nouns such as husband and wife, a sentence may express the relationship in one of two, converse, ways: Margaret is Malcolm’s wife. Malcom is Margaret’s husband. And the same is also true for prepositions like above and below: The spaghetti is on the shelf above the rice. The rice is on the shelf below spaghetti.

42. If you look at any dictionary of synonyms and antonyms, you will find that far more synonyms are given than antonyms. Sameness of meaning seems to be a more pervasive semantic relation than oppositeness of meaning. Why should this be so?

One reason must be the extraordinary synonym richness of English arising from the blending of words from different language sources in its vocabulary. A converse reason is that the number of words and their related concepts that allow an opposite is limited, whereas there is no such theoretical limitation on the relation of synonymy.

As we noted ealier, the largest group of antonyms are to be found in the adjective word class, among the “gradable” adjectives (deep-shallow, near-far, clean-dirty). Some adjective antonym pairs belong to the complementary type (dead-alive, open-shut, singular-plural). Many adjectives, however, are not gradable, e.g. those referring to the material (wooden, plastic, velvet), provenance (African, Europian, Cameroonian), shape (round, square, oval).

Other word classes contain antonym pairs, but to a lesser extent, and only of the complementary and converse types. Gradable antonyms are found only in the adjective class, or among adverbs derived from adjectives(slowly-quickly, frequently-rarely, closely-distantly). The noun class contains some complementary antonym pairs (sloth-diligence, joy-sadness, sleep-insomnis) and some converse antonym pairs (parent-child, teacher-student, employer-emploee). Similarly, the verb class contains some complementary antonyms (go-stay, float-sink, gather-scatter), as well as some converse antonyms (send-receive, buy-sell, own-belong to). We have also noted some antonym pairs among prepositions/adverb particles (on-off – complementary, above-below – converse). But in all word classes other than adjectives, the incidence of antonym pairs is restricted.

36. Many linguists take this position and make a distinction between “strict” or “absolute” synonymy and “loose” synonymy. In the strict sense, two words that are synonyms would have to be interchangeable in all their possible contexts of use: a free choice would exist for a speaker or writer of either one or the other word in any given context. The choice would have no effect on the meaning, style or connotation of what was being said or written. Linguists argue that such strict synonymy does not exist, or that, if it does, it exists only as semantic change is taking place. Strict synonymy is uneconomical; it creates unnecessary redundancy in a language. To have a completely free choice between two words for a particular context is a luxury that we can well do without. Indeed, it would appear that where, historically, two words have been in danger of becoming strict synonyms, one of them has either changed its meaning in some way or fallen out of use. For example, when the word sky was borrowed from Old Norse into English it came into competition with the native English word heaven: both words denoted both the physical firmament and the spiritual realm of God and the angels. In due course, sky came to denote just the physical, and heaven just the spiritual; though each is still sometimes used in the context where the other word would normally be expected. Similarly, when spirit was borrowed from French (ultimately from Latin), it was in competition with the native English ghost: spirit has taken over as the term with the more general meaning, and ghost is more or less restricted to “disembodied spirit” meanings. Consider also the following archaic or obsolete words, which have fallen out of use and been replaced by the items in brackets: culver (pigeon), divers (various), dorp (village), erst (formerly), fain (willing), levin (lightning), trig (neat), warrener (gamekeeper), wight (human being), yare (readily).

When we speak of synonymy, then we mean varying degrees of “loose” synonymy, where we identify not only a significant overlap in meaning between two words, but also some contexts at least where they cannot substitute for each other. Take the synonyms find and discover: they are substitutable in the context Lydia found/discover the ball behind the garden shed; but not in the context Marie Curie discovered radium in 1898 or in the context Franz found it easy to compose sonatas. As is evident in this case, synonyms may be substitutable where their meaning overlaps, but where a meaning falls outside of the shared area (discover = “be the first one to come across something”, find = “experience something in some way”) one cannot be used instead of the other. Synonyms may overlap in meaning to a greater or lesser degree, though it is not clear how this might be measured, nor whether there is a limit at which the notion of synonymy becomes meaningless.

37. The important question concerning synonyms is: can we make any generalization about the different kinds of contexts in which the meanings of synonyms may differ? The answer is that we can make some genalizations, but cannot be sure that cover all the cases.

1.Some synonym pairs differ in that they belong to different dialects of English. the dialects may be one of the national standards, e. g. British, American or Australian English; or may be a regional dialect within a country or area, e. g. Tyneside, West Midlands, South – West dialects of British English. Here are some examples of synonym pairs in British and American English: bonnet (car) – hood, caravan – trailer, drawing pin – thumbtack, farm – ranch, lawyer – attorney, lift – elevator, pavement – sidewalk, refuse/rubbish – garbage, tap – faucet, windscreen – windshield.

Now here are some synonym pairs from standard British and northern British English: anyway – anyroad, armpit – oxter, brew (tea) – mash, child – bairn, frightening – fleysome, money – brass, nothing – nowt, passageway – ginnel/snicket, sandwich – butty, splinter – skelf.

2. A second general way in which synonyms may be distinguished relates to the style or formality of the context in which a word may be used. One of a pair of synonyms may be used in a more formal context than the other; or one of the pair may belong to slang or colloquial English, while the other is in more general use. Here are some examples of synonym pairs, where one of the pair is usually used in an informal or less formal context and the other in a more formal context: archer – toxophilite, argument – disputation, beauty – pulchritude, cross – traverse, die – decease, give up – renounce, letter – missive, praise –eulogy, warning – caveat, western – occidental.

Now here are some synonym pairs from standard English and from English slang: astonished – gobsmacked, crash – prang, destroy – zap, drunk – sloshed, etc, face – phizog, heart – ticker, insane – barmy, etc, money – rhino, spondulix, etc, prison – clink, steal – nick, etc. For some ordinary language words such as drunk, insane or stupid, money, slang synonyms proliferate.

3. A third way in which synonym pair may be distinguished is where connotation differ. Two words may largely share a denotation, in referring to a particular entity, but they may have divergent associative or emotive meanings. Take the words push and shove: their denotation largely overlaps – forceful propulsion forward; but shove connotes roughness or haste, which push does not. Here are some further pairs of synonyms that differ in their connotations: ambiguous – equivocal (deliberately), famous – notorious (disreputably), hate – loathe (with repugnance or disgust), misuse – abuse (of privilege or power), new – novel (strikingly), obtain – procure (with effort), persuade – inveigle (with ingenuity or deceit), proud – haughty (with disdain), recollection – reminiscence (with pleasure), simulate – feign (with craftiness). Arguable, both members of each pair of synonyms belong to the same dialect (standard) and to the same level of formality. It is the connotation of the second member of each pair that distinguishes them.

4.There may be a collocation difference inside synonymous pairs or rows: rancid and rotten are synonyms, but the former is used only of butter or bacon; kingly, road and regal are synonymous, but mail has to be royal in the UK.

38. English is a language particularly rich in pairs of synonyms. The primary reason for this has to do with the history of the language and especially with the wholesale borrowing from other languages, especially French and Latin. We can see the consequences for the meaning relation of synonymy.