Lecture 5 general characteristics of english vocabulary

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. The volume of the vocabulary.

2. Archaisms.

3. Neologisms.

4. Professional terminology.

5. Standard English. Slang.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. The volume of the vocabulary

In contrast to grammar, the vocabulary of a language is not systematic but chaotic.

Nowadays in English there are 450,000 words. Passive vocabulary is 30,000 to understand and active vocabulary is 5,000 words to speak.

The English vocabulary can be subdivided into two large stylistic layers: literary words and expressions and conversational words and expressions. Each of these large layers is, in its turn, further subdivided into lexical groups. The words in our practical vocabulary are neutral and frequent. The basic word stock includes root words, derivatives and compounds. It includes different parts of speech, native and borrowed words.

The basic word-stock is a good building material for phrases: to go mad, to go on strike, to go one’s way, to go out of fashion; to make a date, to make friends, to make a long story short, to make a scene. The words from the basic stock are usually pollysemantic.

Literary words can be divided into general literary words and special literary words.

2. Archaisms

Archaisms are words that were common but have been replaced from the language by their modern synonyms and are no longer used in neutral or colloquial speech, but they mostly belong to the poetic style, e.g. betwixt, prep. (between), damsel, n (noble girl), fluey, adj. (dusty), hark, v (listen), morn, n (morning). Archaisms remain in the language: they are used in poetry and in official documents, e.g. steed (horse), slay (kill), behold (see), perchance (perhaps), woe (sorrow). Sometimes a lexical archaism gets a new meaning, and the old meaning becomes a semantic archaism, e.g. fair in the meaning of “beautiful” is a semantic archaism, but in the meaning of “blond” it belongs to the neutral style.

3. Neologisms

A neologism (Greek neo – “new” and logos “word”) is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created – often to apply to new concepts, or to reshape older terms in newer language form. Neologisms are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena. A neologism denotes a new object or phenomenon, e.g. e-book, n – a book in an electronic format; ecotourism, n – tourism to places having unspoiled natural resources; home shopping, n – the purchase of goods from home, especially goods offered on cable television.

Neologisms come about by different means: some are imported from other languages, some phrases are translated from another language, many are made by combining familiar words or roots to make new combinations (e.g. Greek word “tele”, meaning “at a distance”, and the Latin word “visio” – “sight”, gave the word television.), some words began life as abbreviations (laser is an abbreviation of “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). New words can be added to the language due to new technologies or any idea must be expressed.

At the present moment English is developing very swiftly and there is so called “neology blowup”. Averagely 800 neologisms appear every year in Modern English. Lexical units are primarily used by university teachers, newspaper reporters, scientists, by those who are connected with mass media.

The intensive development of science, industry, terminology, means of communication leads to the invention of new words and phrases. There is the group of neologisms connected with computerization, and we can mention words used to denote:

1) different types of computers: PC, super-computer, multi-user, neurocomputer (analogue of a human brain);

2) parts of computers: hardware, software, monitor, screen, data, vaporware (experimental samples of computers for exhibition, not for production);

3) computer languages: BASIC, ALGOL, FORTRAN etc;

4) notions connected with work on computer: computerization, computerize, to troubleshoot, to blitz out (to ruin data in computer’s memory).

There are also different types of activities performed with the help of computers, many of them are formed with the help of morpheme “tele”: telework, to telecommute (to work at home having a computer which is connected with the enterprise for which one works), telebanking, telemarketing, teleshopping (when you can perform different operations with the help of your computer without leaving your home, all operations are registered by the computer at your bank). In the sphere of linguistics we have such neologisms as: machine translation, interlingual (an artificial language for machine translation into several languages) and some others.

In the sphere of medicine computers are also used and we have the following neologism: telemonitory unit (a telemonitory system for treating patience at a distance).

With the development of social activities neologisms appeared as well, e.g. youthquake (волнения среди молодёжи), pussy-footer (политик, идущий на компромиссы), Euromarket, Eurodollar, Europarliament, Europol etc.

In the modern English society there is a tendency to social stratification, and there are neologisms in this sphere as well, e.g.: belonger (представитель среднего класса, приверженец консервативных взглядов), survivers (people belonging to the lowest layer of the society), sustainers (a little bit more prosperous), emulaters (people who try to prosper in life and imitate those, they want to belong to), achievers (people who have prospered but are not belongers). All these layers of society are called VAL (Value and Lifestyle). The rich belong to jet set that is those who can afford to travel by jet planes all over the world enjoying their life. Sometimes they are called jet plane travellers.

To this group we can also refer abbreviations: yuppie (young urban professional people), PLU (during Margaret Thatcher’s rule this abbreviation appeared which means “People like us” by which snobbistic circles of society call themselves.). Nowadays PLU has been substituted by “one of us”.

There are a lot of immigrants now in the UK, in connection with which neologisms partial (имеющие право жить в стране) and non-partial (не имеющие право жить в стране) were formed.

The word-group “welfare mother” was formed to denote a non-working single mother living on benefit.

The higher society has neologism in their speech, such as: dial-a-meal, dial-a-taxi.

In the language of teenagers there are such words as: Drugs! (OK), sweat (бег на длинные дистанции), task (home composition), brunch (breakfast + lunch) поздний завтрак, etc. With the development of the professional jargons a lot of words ending in “speak” appeared in English, e.g. artspeak, sportspeak, medspeak, education-speak, video-speak, cable-speak etc.

There are different semantic groups of neologisms belonging to everyday life:

1) food e.g. starter (instead of “hors d’oevres”), microbiotic (raw vegetables, crude rice), longlife milk, clingfilm, microwave stove, consumer electronics, fridge-freezer, hamburgers (beef-, cheese-, fish-, veg-);

2) clothing e.g. catsuit (one piece clingning suit), string (miniscule bikini), hipsters (trousers or skirt with the belt on hips), completenik (a long sweater for trousers), swetnik (a long jacket), pants-skirt bloomers (lady’s sports trousers);

3) footwear e.g. winkle-pickers (shoes with long pointed toes), thongs (open sandals), backsters (beech sandals with thick soles);

4) bags e.g. bumbag (a small bag worn on waist), sling bag (a bag with a long belt), maitre (a small bag for cosmetics).

There are also such words as: dangledolly (a dolly-talisman dangling in the car before the wind screen), boot-sale (selling from the boot of the car), touch-tone (a telephone with press button).

There are also abbreviations of different types such as resto (vintage car), teen (teenager), dinky DINKS (dual income no kids yet), AIDS (Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), HIV (human immunodeficiency virus).

Strong neologisms also include phonetic borrowings, such as perestroika (Russian), solidarnost (Polish), dolce vita (Italian) etc.

Linguists distinguish three groups of neologisms: a) unstable, i.e. extremely new, being proposed, or being used only by a very small subculture; b) diffused – having reached a significant audience, but not yet having gained acceptance; c) stable – having gained recognizable and probably lasting acceptance.