Лексикология английского языка. Practice Makes Perfect. Учебное пособие

3.Read the following newspaper headlines. Why are they funny? Use a dictionary when in doubt

A.Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers

B.Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted

C.Iraqi Head Seeks Arms

D.Prostitutes Appeal to Pope

E.Teacher Strikes Idle Kids

F.Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant

G.Red Tape Holds up New Bridge

H.Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

I.Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

J.Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half

K.Chef Throws His Heart into Helping Feed Needy

L.Air Head Fired

M.Steals Clock, Faces Time

N.Bank Drive-in Window Blocked by Board

O.Sex Education Delayed; Teachers Request Training

P.Include your Children when Baking Cookies

4.Try your hand at being a lexicographer. Write simple definitions to illustrate as many meanings as possible for the following words. After you have done it, check your results using a dictionary

Character, channel, expression, hot, house, queen, stone.

5.Contextual analysis is one of the main methods of studying the semantic structure of a word. Analyze lexical and grammatical collocations of words

A.Hot counties, hot ticket, hot situation, a hot topic, a hot temper.

B.The house of Mr. Smith, the House of Lords, the House of Windsor, the house of God.

C.The queen of England, the queen of fashion, the queen of diamonds.

D.The Prime minister will fly to Paris for a two-day visit. A wasp flew in through the open window. In the park people were flying their kites. Flags were flying cheerfully in the breeze.

E.Smell these flowers. Aren’t they sweet? The coffee smells good.

F.He feels much better today. The material feels like silk. I don’t feel like going to the office today. Feel the clothes, they are wet.

G.I can’t remember the French word for “knee”. Did you remember to post my letters?

6.Make six collocations from the given words. Write a sentence of your own using each collocation. What type of collocations are these?

7.Compare Russian and English phrases. Show the difference in collocations

8.You can expand your collocation vocabulary by training yourself to notice different collocations in texts. Go to www. economist.com/index.html and select an article that interests you. Make a list of useful collocations relating to the topic of the economy.

9.Look up the following legal words in the British National Corpus: www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk : witness, verdict, sentence, jury, guilty.

Note down any interesting collocations that you find.

10.Horoscopes are a good source of vocabulary on relationship. Read some horoscopes on-line www.horoscopes.co.uk. Make a list of any useful collocations that you find.

11.Read an article from a current issue of a celebrity magazine: www.hellomagazine.com. Highlight any interesting collocations that you find in it. For ex.: a lavish lifestyle, a fairytale wedding, to sell the story to the highest bidder, etc.

The Development

and Change of Meaning

1.Read the following extracts and explain the semantic process by which the italicized words acquired their meanings

A. “Cereal” comes from Ceres, a Roman goddess of corn and flower and “panic” comes from Pan, a Greek Nature-God. But here the resemblance ends, for not only is one Latin and the other Greek, but one is the name of an object which we can touch and see, while the other relates to that inner world of human consciousness which cannot be grasped with hand.

(Owen Barfield. “History in English Words”)

B.Most people know that America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, but few know why Vespucci made two trips to the New World as a ship navigator. In his letter sent home he put forward the idea that what Columbus had discovered was not in fact a new route to Asia, but rather a new continent. In 1507 the cartographer Martin Waldseemueller published a map that designated the New World as America and thus the name was coined. Why Waldseemueller chose to use Vespucci’s first name instead of his last name is unknown, but it was because Amerigo was easily Latinized and the term America shared the same first and last letters as Asia and Africa. So America is named after the man who first recognized that it was a new continent.

C.“Spring” first appeared in English around 816 with the sense of “rising up” and was originally applied to geological “springs” where water issued from the ground. By the 13th century “spring”

was being used figuratively to mean the source or the beginning of just about anything. In the 14th century, we began to use “spring “ to mean “ the time of rising or the beginning of existence of something”, in which sense dawn was known, for example, as “day spring”. By the 16th century we were referring to the first of the four seasons as “the spring of the year”. Soon afterwards we shortened it to “Spring”.

D.A “couch” was originally a bed or other furniture designed for sleeping, not just sitting, and it takes its name from the French “coucher” meaning “to lay in place”. “Couch” in its modern sense appeared around 1430. “Sofa” which appeared in English around 1625, comes directly from the Arabic “soffah”, meaning a portion of the floor covered for with cushions and carpets for sitting. By about 1717 “sofa” was being used as separate piece of furniture designed for sitting. Another word from the Middle East is “divan”, which originally meant “council of rulers” but later in English came to mean the padded platform where the rulers sat, and eventually was used as a synonym for “couch’.

E.“Hamburgers” are so called because they are thought to have been invented in Hamburg, Germany, although chopping up some lean beef and frying it doesn’t seem like a terribly challenging concept. The original recipe for “hamburger steak”, by the way, sounds more like meatloaf than hamburgers, involving beaten eggs, spices and onions. “Hamburgers” made their first appearance in English at the beginning of the 19th century.

F.“Chatter” first appeared in English around 1225. The word is onomatopoetic in origin, meaning that it arouse as an attempt to imitate the sound of the birds twittering. By 1250 the word was used to describe people who just couldn’t shut up. Secondary meanings include any sort of rapidly repeated motion or sound, from the chatter of your teeth on a cold morning to the chatter of an old car’s engine.

G.The word “blockbuster” appeared during World War II, meaning a large aerial bomb. The second meaning is anything, especially a movie, play or book, that is large, important or popular. Iron-

ically, the term “bomb” in show business or publishing means a complete failure, while “blockbuster” is a huge success.

2.Explain the logical associations in the following groups of meaning for the same words. Define the type of transference which has taken place

A.The face of a woman – the face of a clock, the wing of a bird – the wing of an aircraft, the neck of a child – the neck of a bottle, the leg of a person – the leg of a table, the cap of a schoolboy – the cap of a bottle, the coat of Mrs. Smith – the coat of a dog, grains of wheat – grains of sand.

B.A green leave – a green party, a cool night – a cool head, a white T-shirt – white coffee, a big house – a big decision.

C.To catch a bird – to catch a breath, to lose one’s purse – to lose one’ eyesight, to give somebody a present – to give somebody a chance, to take an apple – to take a hint, to exchange badges – to exchange glances.

D.Mentor – mentor, Lord Cardigan – cardigan, P. Magnol – magnolia, I. Newton – newton, A. Volta – volt, Solomon – Solomon Islands, Queen Victoria – Lake Victoria, G. Washington – Washington D. C., Lynch – to lynch, Jean Morean de Seychelles – Seychelles, Henry Royce and Charles Rolls – Rolls-Royce, Romulus – Rome, Sakichi Toyoda – Toyota.

3.Analyze the process of development of new meanings in the italicized words in the examples given below

1. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. 2. To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles. 3. The sooner you fall behind the more time you’ll have to catch up. 4. A clear conscience is usually a sign of a bad memory. 5. Change is inevitable except from vending machines. 6. Get a new car for your spouse – it will be a great trade. 7. If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments. 8. No

one is listening until you make a mistake. 9. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks. 10. Support bacteria – they are the only culture some people have. 11. Love may be blind but marriage is a real eye-opener.

4.During WWII lots of slang words appeared in English to describe military food. Read the examples and analyze the process of development of new meanings

Sausages – bags of mystery, coffee –battery acid, black strap – ink, milk – cow juice, tapioca – fish eyes, canned salmon – goldfish, salad – grass, pancake – gasket, hash – mystery, catsup – red paint, toast – shingles; a cook – a pan rattler, a dishwasher – a pearl diver.

5.Explain the basis for the following jokes. Trace the logical associations between the different meanings of the same word

No Other Victims

A man met his friend loitering in the street in the soldier uniform.

–Hello, Jim, he greeted him. What’s it you’re doing here?

–Nothing. Just killing the time.

–Oh, I see. There’s no war at the moment.

Language of Times

A little boy was looking through the newspaper.

“Daddy”, he asked, “do you remember you told me mushrooms were very nice things?”

“Yes, what of it?”

“Well, look at this one,” said the boy, pointing at a photo in the paper. That was a photo showing American H-bomb tests at Bikini.

6.Try your hand at doing research. Write a short essay on the development of the meanings of the two of the following

words. Try to explain each shift of meaning. Use any etymological dictionary you have

Apology, apostle, butterfly, cybernetics, curfew, fortune, peach, peacock, peanut, peasant.

7.In the examples given below identify the cases of widening and narrowing of meaning

A.An elderly lady, Mrs. Coleman, was mugged outside her house last week.

B.It was a beautiful day, the sort of day, when you feel glad to be

alive.

C.Fate struck me down the day before the First Night of my new play “The Queen and I”.

D.I left a packet of cigarettes on a shop counter and as I was leaving the shop I heard the girl on the till say: “Whose are these?”

E.I asked him what impression Lord Archer had made on him. “His wife is very nice”, said Elius diplomatically.

F.I’m not the fittest woman in the world and I arrived at the maternity hospital in an enfeeble state.

G.I keep remembering the emergency plumber’s face when he broke the news to us that the pipe which runs under the kitchen floor for some inexplicable reason seemed to have restricted flow.

H.The cat is also silly. Our house is clock-a-block with sofas and beds. There’s even a cat basket, yet the fool chooses to sleep in the center of the bottom step of the stairs.

I.A typical meal could be brown rice with green lentils or broccoli and white fish. It is also recommended you keep your diet meat and dairy-free.

J.I ran round to the front of the house to see the boys trying desperately to start their car.

K.Penguins and ostriches are flightless birds.

one topic to another, to run a tap, to run a temperature, to run before you can walk, to walk the walk, to be walking on air, to go back on one’s word / promise, it goes without saying.

11.Write 5–7 sentences with the collocations from exercise 8

12.To revise what you have learnt from the preceding chapters, say everything you can about the italicized words in one of the following aspects: etymology, style, word-building, semantics

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

A man walks into a restaurant with a full-grown ostrich behind him. As he sits down, the waitress comes over and asks for their order. The man says, “I’ll have a hamburger, fries and coke”, and turns to the ostrich. “What’s yours?” “I’ll have the same,” says the ostrich.

A short time later the waitress returns with the order. “That will be $6.40 please”. The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out exact change for payment.

The next day the man and the ostrich come again and the man says, “I’ll have a hamburger fries and a coke.” And the ostrich says, “I’ll have the same.” Once again the reaches his pocket and pays with exact change.

This becomes a routine until late one evening the two enter again. “The usual?” asks the waitress. “No, this is Friday night, so I’ll have a steak, baked potato and salad,” says the man. “Same for me,” says the ostrich.

A short time later the waitress comes with the order and says, “That will be $12.62.” Once again the man pulls the exact change out of his pocket and places it on the table.

The waitress can’t hold back her curiosity any longer. “Excuse me, sir. How do you manage to always come up with the exact change out of your pocket every time?” “Well,” says the man, “several years ago I was cleaning the attic and found an old lamp. When I rubbed it a Genie appeared and offered me two wishes. My first wish was that if