36 Phrasal verbs and a stone wall problem.

A phrasal verb is a verb combined with a preposition. The preposition can add extra meaning to the verb or give it more emphasis.

Could you switch off the light, please?

I had an ice-cream to cool down.

Some, prepositions change the meaning of different verbs in a similar way. The preposition away, for example, can mean away from here, or it can mean intensively. This means that it can be combined with any verb of activity.

I didn't hear the telephone because I was working away.

I've been typing away all morning.

“Stone wall” problem

The problem is: “Is the “stone wall” a compound or a word combination. The answer depends on how we treat the first component. If we understand it as a noun stem then it is a compound. If the first component is an adjective it’s a word combination. The generally accept point of view is that “stone wall” is a specific type of compound, so called unstable compound. \

There are several criteria which help us distinguish between a compound and a word combination:

1.) Semantic criterion. A compound denotes one notion a word combination, denotes two or several or more notions. EG speech sound – it’s a sound of phoneme (1 notion), a difficult sound (2 notion)

2.) Phonetic criterion – in a compound there is one stress, in a word combination there are two stresses. EG: ,black’board, ‘blackboard.

3.) Morphological criterion – a compound has single grammatical framig a word combination doesn’t have such a quality. EG: a spring day-spring days.

4.) Syntactical criterion. We can always enlarge a word combination by inserting a word. EG: a tall boy- a tall handsome boy, stone and concrete wall.

37 Variants and dialects of the English language.

For historical and economic reasons the English language has spread over vast territories. It is the national language of the UK, the USA, Australia, New Zeland and some provinces of Canada. Besides, it used to be a state language in the former colonies of the British Empire: in Asia, Africa, or in countries which fell under US domination in Central and South America. The key terms in studying the territorial varieties of the English language are: Standard English, variants, dialects. Standard English is the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people. Local dialects are varieties of the English Language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In GB there are two variants: Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Nothern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects. Features of traditional dialects

Any dialect will yield numerous examples. These are a few:

GrammarUse of noun plurals formed with -n: shoon "shoes", een "eyes", kine "cows"

Use of a T/V pronoun system: thee, thou/tha and thy, as well as you, your andyours.

Use of object pronoun form her in subject case contexts.

Use of reflexive me for “myself”: I washed me; I laid me down.

Use of redundant auxiliary do: she do go there every day.

Variant forms of the verb to be: I is (Northwest), I are (Midlands and East Yorkshire), I be (Southwest), I am (North and East)

LexisScotland: luin "boy", quine "girl", greet "cry", gang "go"Yorkshire: beck "stream", bairn "child" (These are Paul Kerswill's examples; Barrie Rhodes notes that they are not specific to Yorkshire, but common in the north generally. Bairn is widespread in Scots, while the modern.

PhonologyScotland: nicht "night", dochter "daughter", hame "home"

North: spian "spoon", bian "bone", reet "right"

North-east: fower "four", sivven "seven"

South-east Midlands: fut "foot", umman "woman"

Among the regional varieties beyond the borders of GB American English is the most important, as it has its own literary standards, i.e. its own generally accepted norms of speaking and writing. American English can not be called a dialect since it has a literary normalized form called Standard American, while a dialect has no literary form. Canadian, Australian and Indian English can also be considered regional varieties of English with their own peculiarities.

38 Characteristics of American EnglishAll speakers of English share a common linguistic system and a basic set of words. But American English differs from British English, Australian English, and other national varieties in many of its pronunciations, words, spellings, and grammatical constructions. Words or phrases of American origin, and those used in America but not so much elsewhere, are called Americanisms.

A. PronunciationIn broad terms, Canadian and American speakers tend to sound like one another. They also tend to sound different from a large group of English speakers who sound more British, such as those in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. For example, most Canadians and Americans pronounce an r sound after the vowel in words like barn, car, and farther,while speakers from the British English group do not. Also, some British English speakers drop h sounds at the beginning of words, so that he and his are pronounced as if they were spelled ee and is. The English spoken in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa sounds more like British English than American English does because these varieties have had less time to diverge from British English. The process of separate development began later in these countries than in North America.

Although Canadians and Americans share many speech habits, Canadian speakers of English sometimes tend more toward British English because of the closer historical association of Britain with Canada. One prominent difference between American English and Canadian English is the vowel sound in words like out and house. Americans often say that the Canadian pronunciation sounds as if the words were spelled oot and hoose.

In some cases there are differences between American English and British English in the rhythm of words. British speakers seem to leave out a syllable in words like secretary, as if it were spelled secretry, while Americans keep all the syllables. The opposite is true of other words, such as specialty, which Americans pronounce with three syllables (spe-cial-ty) while British speakers pronounce it with five syllables (spe-ci-al-i-ty). Vowels and consonants may also have different pronunciations. British speakers pronounce zebra to rhyme withDebra, while American speakers make zebra rhyme with Libra. Canadian and British speakers pronounce the word schedule as if it began with an sh sound, while Americans pronounce it as if it began with an sk sound.

B. VocabularyThe most frequently used words are shared by speakers of different varieties of English. These words include the most common nouns, the most common verbs, and most function words (such as pronouns, articles, and prepositions). The different varieties of English do, however, use different words for many words that are slightly less common–for example, British crisps for American potato chips, Australian billabong for American pond, and Canadian chesterfield for American sofa. It is even more common for the same word to exist with different meanings in different varieties of English. Corn is a general term in Britain, for which Americans use grain, while corn in American English is a specific kind of grain. The word pond in British English usually refers to an artificial body of water, whereas ponds also occur naturally in North America. British English chemist is the same as American Englishdrugstore, and in Canada people go to the druggist. Many of the words most easily recognized as American in origin are associated with aspects of American popular culture, such asgangster or cowboy.

C. SpellingAmerican English spelling differs from British English spelling largely because of one man, American lexicographer Noah Webster. In addition to his well-known An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), Webster published The American Spelling Book (1783, with many subsequent editions), which became one of the most widely used schoolbooks in American history. Webster's books sought to standardize spelling in the United States by promoting the use of an American language that intentionally differed from British English. The development of a specifically American variety of English mirrored the new country's separate political development. Webster's most successful changes were spellings with or instead of our (honor, labor for the British honour, labour); with er instead of re (center, theater for the British centre, theatre); with an s instead of a c (defense, license for the British defence, licence); with a final ck instead of que (check, mask for the British cheque, masque); and without a final k (traffic, public, now also used in British English, for the older traffick, publick). Later spelling reform created a few other differences, such as program for British programme. Canadian spelling varies between the British and American forms, more British in eastern Canada and more American in western Canada.

D. GrammarThe grammar of educated speakers of English differs little among national varieties. In the speech of people with less access to education, grammatical variations in regional and social varieties of American English are very common as normal, systematic occurrences (not as errors). One major difference between British and American English is that the two attach different verb forms to nouns that are grammatically singular but plural in sense. In American English, the team is..., or the government is... (because they are viewed as single entities), but in British English, the team are..., or the government are... (because teams and government are understood to consist of more than one person). Sometimes function words are used differently: The British stay in hospital but Americans stay in the hospital.

39 The most important problems of lexicography are connected with: 1) the selection of lexical units for inclusion; 2) the arrangement of the selected lexical units; 3) the setting of the entry; 4) the selection and arrangement of word-meanings; 5) the definition of meanings; 6)the illustrative material. The selection of lexical units for inclusion. It is necessary to decide: a) what types of lexical units will be chosen for the inclusion; b) the number of these items; c) what to select and what to leave out in the dictionary; d) which form of the language,spoken or \ written or both, the dictionary is to reflect; e) whether the dictionary ' should contain obsolete units, technical terms, dialectisms, colloquial- j isms, and some others. The choice among different possible answers depends upon the type to which the dictionary will belong, the aim the compilers pursue, the prospective user of the dictionary, the size of the dictionary, thelinguistic concepts of the dictionary-makers and some other considerations. The London Dictionary of Contemporary English (1992),for example, aims to provide advanced students and teachers of Englishwith appropriate information on the core vocabulary of contemporaryinternational English. Therefore this dictionary contains around56,000 words and phrases, including scientific and technical language, business and computer terms, literary words, and informal andidiomatic usage. It covers both the major varieties, American and British English, in particular. The units for inclusion may be drawn either from other dictionaries or/and from some reading matter or/and from the spoken discourse. For example, in the New Oxford Dictionary of English the extensive use has been made of the British National Corpus. The arrangement of the selected lexical units. There are two modes of presentation of entries, the alphabetical order and the cluster type,i. e. when the units entered are arranged in nests, based on this or that principle. For example, in synonym-books words are arranged in synonymic sets and its dominant member serves as the head-word of theentry. Entries may be grouped in families of words of the same root as incase of, for example, some general explanatory and translationdictionaries. The basic units are given as main entries that appear inalphabetical order while the derivatives and the phrases which the word enters are given either as subentries or in the same entry as run-ons that are also alphabetized. The difference between subentries andrun-ons is that the former do include definitions and usage labels, whereas run-on words are not defined as their meanings are clear from the main entry. The setting of the entry. The most complicated type of entry is thatfound in general explanatory dictionaries of the synchronic type. Insuch dictionaries the entry usually presents the following data:accepted spelling and pronunciation; grammatical characteristics including the indication of the part of speech of each entry word, whether nouns are countable or uncountable, the transitivity/intransitivity of verbs and irregular grammatical forms; definitions of meaning; modern currency; illustrative examples; derivatives; phraseology; etymology; sometimes synonyms and antonyms.