Credit test question

Развернутые ответы (монолог):

1. Why can’t we say that English has the biggest vocabulary?

The comparison simply can't be made in any agreed apples-to-apples way.

• inflexion (словоизменение).

Do we count "run", "runs" and "ran" as separate?

• multiple meanings.

"Run" the verb and "run" the noun: one or two?

"run" as in the long run of a play on Broadway.

“run” a jog around the park

“run” in cricket

• compounds.

Is "home run" and “homerun" (as it's often written) one word or two?

names of new chemical compounds

What if we just asked, "Which language has the biggest dictionary?"

It's dependent on

best-developed dictionary

are we count obsolete, dialectal, scientific words?

German

They don't put some of words in the dictionary bc meaning of it can easily pieced together from its part (Stromtarifrechner).

Spanish

They count "estoy, estás, está" as a one word (inflect).

China

Their basic unit is the single one-syllable character, even though these are quite often combined into words.

2. Why can’t we count words in the language?

Spanish

They count "estoy, estás, está" as a one word (inflect).

China

Their basic unit is the single one-syllable character, even though these are quite often combined into words.

German

They don't put some of the words in the dictionary bc meaning of it can easily be pieced together from its part (Stromtarifrechner).

Languages with a flexible word coinage.

Also Germans count their compounds as a one word (Unabhängigkeitserklärung, "declaration of Independence”, Abschiedsvorstellung, "leave-taking performance", Weltmarktführer, "world market leader", Stromtarifrechner, electricity bill calculator").

Turkey

They have one word that can be translated as a sentence ("Were you one of those people whom we could not make into a Czechoslovak?" translates as one word in Turkish).

English

Compounds like "shoelace", "windowsill", "phrasebook", "boatswain".

And foreign-derived compounds like "television" and "geography".

Problem with morphemes

Morpheme is a usable root or piece of words.

Do we need to include “un-" as a morpheme, and "methyl-" and others.

Arabic and Hebrew (semitic languages)

They use a small number of three-letter roots to coin huge numbers of words.

Ktb has the basic "to write", but it generates at least 30 words.

So counting only "roots" or "basic words"?

• special words (professionals)

3. Scandinavian and French borrowings

Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language (the source language).

Borrowing is a process of adopting words. Loanword is a result of borrowing.

"Loan" and "borrowing" are of course metaphors, because there is no literal lending process. There is no transfer from one language to another and no "returning" words to the source language. They simply come to be used by a speech community that speaks a different language from the one they originated in.

The Scandinavian influence on Britain can be thought of in terms of three episodes.

1. 750–1016 when the Vikings (Scandinavians) began attacking the northern and eastern shores of Britain and settling in those parts of Britain.

There was a state of enmity between the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, so unsurprisingly, not many Scandinavian borrowings took place; these include husbonda (husband) and lagu (law).

2. 1016–1050, where the conditions were more or less similar to the earlier period, only that King Alfred the Great had succeeded in uniting the Anglo-Saxons and was actively promoting the English language.

There were more borrowings, including cnif (knife) and diegan (die).

3. 1050–1480. The French-speaking Normans took over Britain in 1066, and both the English and Scandinavians were given the same fate and were subdued by the Normans.

Naturally, the English and the Scandinavians come together and interact with each other more closely. Therefore, a massive influence of the Scandinavian languages on English, in both grammar and vocabulary.

It's very difficult to pick out Scandinavian loan-words in English, bc they seem to have the same quality and texture as Anglo-Saxon words.

It's everyday words, monosyllabic and include grammatical words:

• are (to be)

• pronounsce: their, them and they

• common words as bag, dirt, fog, knife, flat, low, odd, ugly, want, trust, get, give, take, raise, smile and though.

• sc- or sk- words (scathe, scorch, score, scowl, scrape, scrub, skill, skin, skirt, sky).

Scandinavian loan-words are therefore more usefully considered as core items.

Why is this so?

• The English and Scandinavian belong to the same Germanic racial, cultural and linguistic stock originally. But changes had occurred in the languages during the couple of centuries of separation of the two sets of people.

• The Scandinavians came to settle, rather than conquer or pillage. They lived alongside the Anglo-Saxons on more or less equal terms.

• Under the Norman French, particularly, the two different groups fashioned a common life together as subjects.

Under these conditions,

(a) the English word sometimes displaced the cognate Scandinavian word: fish instead of fisk; goat instead of gayte;

(b) the Scandinavian word sometimes displaces the cognate English word: egg instead of ey, sister instead of sweoster;

(c) both might remain, but with somewhat different meanings: dike-ditch, hale-whole, sick-ill, skill-craft, skirt-shirt;

(d) the English word might remain, but takes on the Scandinavian meaning dream (originally ‘joy’, ‘mirth’, ‘music’, ‘revelry’); and

(e) the English words that were becoming obsolete might be given a new lease of life, eg dale and barn.

French borrowings

The Norman Conquest of 1066 left England as a trilingual country, although most people would only speak one or two of the dominant languages:

• Latin for record keeping, learning and the church

• French — language of the Norman aristocracy (language of prestige, government and polite social intercourse).

• English — language of the common folk and menials.

When the Normans took over England, they changed the language of government and the court almost overnight and disregarded existing institutions. Instead, they took on almost wholesale institutions derived from France, including the feudal system which guaranteed strong control by the king.

There were three periods of French borrowings.

1. 1066 to 1250 represents the height of Norman power.

The language spoken by the Normans, known as Norman French (different from Central or Parisian French) was the language of the King’s court, the nobles’ castles and the courts of law. Norman-French was therefore the language of honour, chivalry and justice.

There were not many French borrowings, since English continued to be used, largely in its own, low-level arenas and French and English speakers were kept separate.

2. 1250 to 1400 represents the period of English-French bilingualism in individuals. The number of French loanwords ballooned in this period.

Very briefly, this is what happened. In 1204, Normandy (in northern France, where the Normans came from) was acquired by the French king.

Norman aristocracy in England couldn’t travel back and forth between their lands in England and France anymore. They had to choose whether they wanted to remain in England or in France. Those who remained in England began to see England as their home. This led to the reassertion of English as the language of the realm. Other reasons for the reassertion of English are:

• the Normans in England belonged to the Capetian dynasty spoke Norman French; this became non-prestigious in France as the variety spoken by the Angevian dynasty in France, Parisian French, became the prestige variety; because Norman French was seen as socially inferior, it was less difficult to abandon it in favour of English;

• subsequently, England became at war with France in the Hundred Years War (1337–1453).

Even as English was on its way in, the gaps in English vocabulary had to be filled by loanwords from French. These include items pertaining to new experiences and ways of doing things introduced by the Normans. So whilst the English already had kings, queens and earls, terms taken from French include count, countess, sire, madam, duke, marquis, dauphin, viscount, baron, chevalier, servant and master.

Other domains that became enriched with French loanwords include:

• Government: parliament, chancellor, government, country, crown

• Finance: treasure, wage, poverty

• Law: attorney, plaintiff, larceny, fraud, jury, verdict

• War: battle, army, castle, tower, siege, banner

• Religion: miracle, charity, saint, pardon

• Morality: virtue, vice, gentle, patience, courage, mercy, courtesy, pity

• Recreation: falcon, covert, scent, chase, quarry

• Art, fashion, etc.: apparel, costume, gown, art, beauty, colour, image, design, cushion, tapestry

• Cuisine: stew, grill, roast, bacon, mutton, pork, veal, venison (compare these with AS-based terms like boar, calf, cow, deer, ox, sheep, swine)

• Household Relationships: uncle, aunt, nephew, cousin (form from OE: father, mother, brother and from Scandinavian sister)

3. 1400 elegant and sophisticated several became quite nativised (dance, April, native, fine, line, punish, finish).

These later borrowings were more, distant from the core, with attention being explicitly called to their sophisticated even arty ‘French’ texture: ballet, tableau, statuesque, cliché, motif, format, trousseau, lingerie, soufflé, hors d’oeuvre, rouge, etiquette (pronunciation).

4. Principles of grouping words

We can grouping words: 1. Alphabetical listing

Items in dictionaries and encyclopaedias are listed under headwords, with an entry or a mini article following each.

Items are alphabetised or placed in alphabetical order. This is useful because it is largely unambiguous and readers can find items fairly easily.

2. Parts of speech

Classified according to the word class – nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. – and most dictionaries give word class labels to lexical items as a matter of course.

We need info about use, spelling, to distinguish between nouns (e.g. licence, practice) and verbs (e.g. license, practise).

3. Frequency of use

We also regularly make distinctions between common words and obscure words.

Frequency bands:

Collins Cobuild Dictionary groups items into five frequency bands. Items in the five bands make up 95% of all spoken and written English.

• BAND 1. Common grammar words such as the, and, of and to. Frequency vocabulary items, such as like, go, paper, return and so on. There are approximately 700 words in this band.

• BAND 2. This band includes words such as argue, bridge, danger, female, obvious and sea. There are approximately 1,200 words in this band.

Bands 1 and 2 together account for about 75% of all English usage.

• BAND 3. This band includes words such as aggressive, medicine and tactic. There are approximately 1,500 words in this band.

• BAND 4. This band includes words such as accuracy, duration, miserable, puzzle and rope. There are approximately 3,200 words in this band.

• BAND 5. This band includes words such as abundant, crossroads, fearless and missionary. There are approximately 8,100 words in this band.

• UNBANDED. The rest of the items (about 5% of English lexical items) are unbanded; examples include buccaneer, conflagration, epilogue, joust and progeny.

4. Grouping by ‘acquisition level’ for graded reading

‘Controlled vocabulary’ also known as the ‘vocabulary control movement’, and very well known listing is Michael West’s A General Service List, published in 1953.

West himself taught English in India and his list grew organically from studies done in the 1930s on vocabulary selection for teaching purposes. The Longman Structural Readers.

A mix of criteria have been used for categorising vocabulary, including frequency, prominence, universality (words useful in all countries), utility (enabling discussion on as wide a subject range as possible), their usefulness in terms of definition value.

Useful for teachers, students, anyone who wants to use dictionary in learning purposes.

West’s list is aimed at second- or foreign-language learners of English.

Classification of the Oxford Other approaches may include classification on the levels of formality (very formal, formal, neutral, informal, very colloquial)

the level of specialisation or technicality, etc.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) provides the following diagram to characterise English vocabulary as seen by the compiling of the dictionary:

2 урок диаграма

5. Relationships within the language

Lexicology deals not only with words but also with relations between words.

The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure made a distinction between associative relations and syntagmatic relations. Linguists tend to use the term paradigmatic relations instead of associative relations today.

The paradigmatic relation is to do with choice. When you form a sentence, you need to (consciously or unconsciously) make a lexical selection at different points in the sentence.

Paradigma — of related word forms that are derived from the same root or stem, and that share a similar grammatical function.

Syntagma — the combination of words according to the rules of syntax for that language.

Paradigmatic relation describes a substitution relationship between words with the same word class.

Syntagmatic relation is about the relationship/position between words in a sentence.

1. Hierarchical Relations

Taxonomies

The taxonomy relation is a relation which associates an entity (hyponym) of a certain type to another entity (hyperonym) of a more general type.

Taxonomy introduces a type/subtype relation:

Plant — flower, tree, bush, grass

Taxonomies usually have up to 7 levels that correspond to different levels of genericity. However, taxonomies of technical terms may be much deeper. It is also important to note that in some cases, certain nodes do not have any corresponding word in a given language; whereas they have one in another language. A taxonomy may thus have holes.

Meronymies

Meronymies describe the part-whole relation. It is a fairly complex relation which attempts to take into account the degree of differentiation of the parts with respect to the whole and also the role that these parts play with respect to their whole (целое и часть)

Meronymies can be characterized perhaps in a slightly too restrictive way:

Car — back door, seat, engine, wheel

Similarly to taxonomies, the meronymy relation cannot really be conceived between two elements, but should be conceived with respect to the set of all the parts forming the whole.

2. Non-Hierarchical relations

Among non-hierarchical relations we mainly distinguish synonyms and the different forms of opposition (antonyms).

Synonyms

Two words are synonyms if they have a significant similar semantic content.

Synonyms have a significant semantic overlap, but the degree of synonymy is not necessarily related to that overlap. Synonyms often do not depend on the degree of precision of the semantic descriptions, but their degree of synonymy may however change at different levels of granularity.

Absolute synonyms

if it exists at all, it is quite rare. Absolute synonyms would be able to be substituted one for the other in any context in which their common sense is denoted with no change to truth value, communicative effect, or 'meaning’

Contextual synonyms

W1 and W2 are synonyms in the context C.

Antonyms and Opposites

A basic definition could be that W1 and W2 are antonyms or opposites if they have most semantic characteristics in common but if they also differ in a significant way on at least one essential semantic dimension.

As with synonyms, antonyms and opposites represent highly contextualized relations. There are also various degrees of opposition: some pairs of word-senses are more prototypically opposites than others.

Antonyms refer to gradable properties and opposites to non-gradable ones.

Antonyms

(good and bad)

Antonyms do not necessarily partition the conceptual space into two mutually exclusive compartments which cover the whole conceptual domain. Some overlap or space in between is possible, as in good and bad, since it is indeed possible to say that something is neither good nor bad, or, possibly, to say that something is both good and bad.

Opposites

(father and mother)

An interesting class among opposites are directional opposites. They represent either basic, topological, or conceptual (metaphorical) directional oppositions. In this class, which is conceptually relatively simple, fall examples such as: start – finish, top – bottom, descend – ascend.