I've been telephoning Major Knighton all day to try and get hold of you, but he couldn't say for sure when you were expected back (Christie) - я цшсшький день дзвоню майору Найтону...

SHORTENING. LEXICAL ABBREVIATIONS. ACRONYMS. CLIPPING

The shortening of words involves the shortening of both words and word-groups. Distinction should he made between shortening of a word in written speech (graphical abbreviation) and in the sphere of oral intercourse (lexical abbreviation). Lexical abbreviations may be used both in written and in oral speech. Lexical abbreviation is the process of forming a word out of the initial elements (letters, morphemes) of a word combination by simultaneous operation of shortening and compounding. This comparatively new way of word-building has achieved a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English. Shortenings (or contracted/curtailed words/clipping) are produced in two different ways. The first is to make a new word from a syllable (rarer, two) of the original word. The latter may lose its beginning (as in phone made from telephone, fence from defence),its ending (as in hols from holidays, vac from vacation, props from properties, ad from advertisement) or both the beginning and ending (as in flu from influenza, fridge from refrigerator): It was remarkable that the prisoners were so brain-dulled by their conditions that the onset of flu symptoms caused no special reaction at first. (Clancy). The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group (UNO [*ju:neu] from the United Nations Organisation). This type is called initial shortenings. They are found not only among formal words, but also among colloquialisms and slang. So, g.f is a shortened word made from the compound girl-friend.

Here are some more examples of informal shortenings:

moving-picture —* movie

gentleman —*gent

spectacles —* specs

circumstances —*• circs

If the abbreviated written form lends itself to be read as though it were an ordinary

English word and sounds like an English word, it will be read like one. The words thus

formed are called acronyms (from Gr across - "end'+onym "name"). Ibis way of forming

new words is becoming more and more popular in almost all fields of human activity,

and especially in political and technical vocabulary:

English

UN — United Nations;

USA - United States of America;

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization;

UNICEF - United Nations International

Children's Emergency Fund;

UNESCO - United Nations Educational,

NON-PRODUCTIVE MEANS

OF WORD FORMATION

BLENDING

Blendings (blends, fusions or portmanteau words) may be defined as formation that

combine two words and include the letters or sounds they have in common as a connecting

element:

bio (logical) + (electro)nic —» bionic

wash + (caf)eteria —> washeteria

sk(ateboard) + (s)urfing —» skurflng

slim+gymnastics —> slimnastics;

miserable+flimsy —> mimsy;

gallop+triumph —> galumph;

new+utopia —• neutopia

UA. бантвський + автомат —* банкомат

ONOMATOPOEIA

Onomatopoeia (sound-imitation, echoism) is the naming of an action or thing by a

more or less exact reproduction of a natural sound associated with it (babble, crow, twitter).

Words coined by this interesting type of word-building are made by imitating different

kmds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, insects, human beings and

inanimate objects.

Non –productive blending, back-formation, onomatopoeia, sound and stress interchange

Specifically English Types of Word-Formation

Among the productive word-forming types completely foreign to Ukrainian is to be pointed out first of all conversion. The latter is performed according to some models of "converting" nouns into verbs or verbs into nouns, adjectives into nouns or nouns into adjectives, which can be seen from the examples below:

1. N>V

a chairman > to chairman

a butcher > to

butcher a boss > to boss

an X-ray > to X-ray

2. V>N

to catch > the catch to look > a

look to ride > a ride to know

how > (the) know-how

Verbs in English can often be formed as a result of converting other parts of speech as well. Cf. down (adv.) > to down (a plane),- verb

164

encore (interj.) to encore - verb, pooh-pooh (interj.) > to pooh-pooh,

- verb, etc.

Note. Ukrainian verbs can also be often formed from other parts of speech - interjections, pronouns, and particles by adding the suffixes - ка-ти. Cf. бах (intey.) - бахкати (verb), гей - гейкати, не - чекати, но - нокати, ти/ви - тикати (не тикайте на мене)/викати, цить - цитькати, ух - ухкати, штокати (contemptuously), etc.

Likewise English adjectives can easily be converted into nouns, and vice versa, according to the following patterns:

3.A>N 4. N>A

Intellectual (a) > an intellectual (n) maiden (n) > maiden (a)

progressive (a) > a progressive (n) sidelong (n) >sidelong (a)

Ukrainian (a) > a Ukrainian (n) sluggard (n) > sluggard

(a)

young (a) > a/the young (n) Zionist (n) > Zionist (a)

Among other specifically English types of word-formation the following

should be first of all pointed out:

a) The sound interchange (i.e. short vs. long): bit - beat, cot -

court, kin - keen, live - life, prove - proof, rid - read, sit - seat, etc.

b) Lexicalisation of some plural forms of nouns like colour — co

lours (military banner), glass — glasses (eye-glasses, opera-glasses),

line - lines (poetic works), etc.

c) The phonomorphological word-formation which is closely con

nected with the abbreviation proper. Cf. Mr. for mister, Mrs. (mistress),

govt. (government), Sgt. (sergeant), memo (memorandum),

demo (dem onstration), D (Lady D) princess Diana, and many others.

SEMASIOLOGY AS THE BRANCH OF LINGUISTICS. REFERENTIAL AND FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES TO MEANING Semasiology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the meaning of words

POLYSEMY. THE SEMANTIC

STRUCTURE OF A POLYSEMANTIC WORD

Most words convey several concepts and thus possess the corresponding number of

meanings. A word having several meanings is called polysemantic, and the ability of words to have more than one meaning is described by the term polysemy.

Most English words are polysemantic. It should be noted that the wealth of expressive resources of a language largely depends on the degree to which polysemy has developed in the language. The number of sound combinations that human speech organs can produce is limited. Therefore at a certain stage of language development the production of new words by morphological means becomes limited, and polysemy becomes increasingly important in providing the means for enriching the vocabulary. The process of enriching the vocabulary does not consist merely in adding new words to it, but, also, in the constant development of polysemy.

Semantic GROUPS OF WORDS

Synonyms are two or more words belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable in some contexts. These words are distinguished by different shades of meaning, connotations and stylistic features.

The synonymic dominant is the most general term potentially containing the specific features rendered by all the other members of the group.

All (or, at least, most) synonymic groups have a "central" word of this kind whose

meaning is equal to the denotation common to all the synonymic group, cf.:

To surprise - to astonish - to amaze - to astound.

To shout - to yell - to bellow - to roar.

To shine - to flash - to blaze - to gleam - to glisten - to sparkle - to glitter - to shimmer - to glimmer.

To tremble - to shiver — to shudder - to shake.

To make - to produce - to create - to fabricate – to manufacture.

The only existing classification system for synonyms was established by Academician V. V. Vinogradov, the famous Russian scholar. In his classification system there are three types of synonyms: ideographic (which he defined as words conveying the same concept but differing in shades of meaning), stylistic (differing in stylistic characteristics) and absolute (coinciding in all their shades of meaning and in all their stylistic characteristics).

HOMONYMS

Homonyms are words which are identical in sound and spelling, or, at least, in

one of these aspects, but different in their meaning.

E. g. bank, n. - a shore **• bank, n. - an institution for receiving, lending, exchanging,

and safeguarding money

ball, n. - a sphere; any spherical body ** ball, n. - a large dancing party

Both meanings of the form "liver" are, for instance, intentionally present in the following

play upon words: Is life worth living ? - It depends upon the liver.

English vocabulary is rich in such pairs and even groups of words. Their identical

forms are mostly accidental: the majority of homonyms coincided due to phonetic changes

which they suffered during their development.

CLASSIFICATION OF HOMONYMS

The most widely accepted classification of homonyms is that recognizing homonyms

proper, homophones and homographs.

Homonyms proper (or perfect, absolute) are words identical in pronunciation and

spelling but different in meaning, cf.

back n. "part of the body" - back adv. "away from the front"- back v. "go back";

bear n. "animal" - bear v. "carry, tolerate".

Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning:

air n. - heir п.;

buy v. - by prep.;

him pr. - hymn п.;

Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical