Гос филология / Гос филология / Лексикология / 1. modern english voc-ry

The voc-ry of the modern Eng lang-ge may be characterized as great in volume, comprehensive and heterogeneous in character, i.e. it contains a great number of words, embraces & includes words from various sources. The voc-ry of modern Eng is immense. It contains more than half a million words and set expressions. The individual voc-ry of an educated Eng speaker is about 30 thousand words. Of these not all the words are equally important. An average speaker uses about 4 or 5 thousand of most frequently occurring words. The choice of words in the individual voc-ry depends on one’s education, occupation, experience, age, situation. The exact number of voc-ry units in modern Eng can not be stated for a number of reasons. The 1^st one is the constant change, growth of the Eng voc-ry. The enormous growth in the number of words is one of the best known facts in the History of the Eng voc-ry. the old Eng period don’t exceed 30 thousand while the New Oxford Dictionary contains over 4 hundred thousand words. Lang-ge as a product of human society changes with the change of society. The voc-ry of a lang-ge never remains stable. The changes in the voc-ry are due to linguistic & extralinguistic causes. The extraling-c causes are determined by the social nature of the lang-ge. By extraling-c causes we mean historical events and changes in the life of society: social, economic, political, cultural. They are reflected in the voc-ry of the lang-ge spoken by that society. By ling-c causes we mean different relations b/w the words of the voc-ry, and so on. The main changes that take place in the voc-ry of a lang-ge under the influence of ling-c and extraling-c causes: 1.New words may be formed in the lang-ge, e.g. sexism, ageism (-ism means discrimination); 2. New words may be borrowed from other lang-ges, e.g. perestroika; 3. Some words may become obsolete and drop out of the lang-ge. They become archaic like thou (you), vernal (spring), brine (sea). Other words become historical words like cataphrat (кольчуга) cause the notions they express no longer exist in the people’s life. 4. Some words drop out of the lang-ge cause they are ousted by their synonyms, which may be borrowed from another lang-ge or created in the Eng lang-ge, e.g. the Fr borrowing “autumn” ousted the corresponding native word; 5. Some words may develop their semantic structure & become polysemantic, e.g. in the course of the historical development the word “Earth” (land) which had acquired the new m-ng “planet” due to the development of astronomy. 6. The semantic structure of other words may split & as a result more homonyms may appear in the lang-ge, e.g. as a result of split of polycemy of the word “board” the foll-ng homonym appeared – board (стол, еда/ lodgings/ group of people).