- •1. Notion of sign system. Types of signs. Language as a sign system. Levels and units of language.
- •2. Notion of structural linguistics. Language and speech. Synchronic and diachronic approaches. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. Principles of opposition in linguistics.
- •3. Classification of sounds of speech.
- •5. Phonetic change and sound laws.
- •6. Semantic triangle. Denotation and connotation.
- •7. Lexical meaning, its structure, ways of its description, types of semantic change.
- •8. Word in the lexical system – polysemy and homonymy. Sources of homonyms.
- •9. Synonyms, antonyms, taboos, euphemisms.
- •10. Tropes. Metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche.
- •11. Set expressions and their types.
- •12. Etymology. Ways of word building.
- •13. Development of vocabulary. Development of semantic structure of words. Neologisms. Interaction of languages: borrowing and loans.
- •14. Grammatical meaning and grammatical categories.
- •15. Morpheme. Morphological structure of the word. Ways of expressing grammatical meaning.
- •16. Parts of speech and criteria of their division.
- •17. Disputable questions of grammar. Gender and case, moods and tenses in English.
- •20. Structural types of sentences. Types of simple sentences.
- •21. Compound sentence. Predicative construction.
- •24. Language and culture. Realia. Cultural stereotypes.
- •25. The forms of existence of language. Language dialect and variant.
- •26. American English. Phonetics, lexicon, grammar, spelling.
- •27. Style in language. Norm of language.
- •28. Main typological differences of Russian and English.
- •29. Genetic and typological classification of languages.
- •30. Common features of Indo-European languages. Common features of Germanic languages.
12. Etymology. Ways of word building.
By etymology of words their origin is understood. English vocabulary which is one of the most extensive in the world contains a lot of words of foreign origin. In the first century B.C. the Romans brought the names of milk products and planes. For example, cherry, pear, plum, beet, pepper, cup, kitchen. The fifth century A.D. the Angles and Saxons assimilated such Celtic words as down, druid, bard, cradle, London. The seventh century A.D. brought such Latin borrowings as priest, bishop, monk, nun, candle and educational terms (school, magister). Then the 8th-11th century are characterized by Scandinavian borrowings such as take, call, cast, die, husband. It is easy to recognize Scandinavian borrowings by the initial sk: sky, skill, skin, ski, skirt. In 1066 England was defeated by William the Conqueror and the English language borrowed administrative words (state, government, parliament, council), legal terms (court, judge, justice, crime), military terms (army, war, soldier, officer, battle), educational terms (pupil, lesson, library, science), everyday life words (table, plate, dinner, supper). The Renaissance Period was marked by Greek and Latin borrowings. They were abstract words (major, minor, intelligent), then scientific and artistic words (datum, status, phenomena, philosophy). Some borrowings came from so-called Parisian dialect (regime, routine, police, machine, ballet). Reasons for borrowings are contact, wars, invasions, conquest, trade, cultural relations. Sometimes it is done to fill the gap in the vocabulary. It may be a word that expresses more peculiar concept. This type of borrowings enlarges the group of synonyms. For example, Latin “cordial” – Native “friendly”; Latin “admire” – French “adore”.
Word-building. Derived words (affixes= prefixes+suffixes); Root words; Conversed words; Compound words; Neutral (shopwindow). 1) Affixless stems (blackbird); 2) Derived (absent-mindedness); 3) Contracted (TV-set); 4) Morphological (Anglo-Saxon); 5) Syntactic (lily-of-the-valley); 6) Shortening or contraction.
So word-building is understood as processes of producing new words from the resources of this particular language. Together with borrowing word-building provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language. Words are divisible into smaller units – morphemes. They do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of words. Yet they possess meaning of their own (reddish, overwrite). All morphemes are subdivided into roots and affixes. Affixes fall into prefixes (unwell) and suffixes. Words which consist of a root and an affix or several affixes are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of affixation. Root words have only a root morpheme in their structure (room, street). Conversion is a type of modern English word-building when a word from one part of speech is transformed into another part of speech (to hand – a hand). Compound words consisting of 2 or more stems (mother-in-law). Shortenings or contraction are words produced by shortening (laboratory – lab). 4 types of words (root words, derived words, compound words and shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words. Conversion, derivation and composition are the most productive ways of word-building. Composition is one the most productive types of word-building in Modern English. Traditionally 3 types of compounds are distinguished: neutral, morphological and syntactic. In neutral compounds the process of compounds is realized without any linking elements (blackbird, shopwindow). Morphological are few and number. This type is non-productive, when 2 stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant. Syntactic compounds represent specifically English word structure. They are formed from segments of speech describing typical relations (lily-of-the-valley). Less productive ways of word-building: shortening=contraction: phone = telephone; vac = vacation; hols = holidays; ads = advertisements; BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation. Minor types of modern word-building: sound imitation (dogs: bark, howl; cock: cock-a-doodle-doo; duck: quacks) and reduplication (bye-bye).