Lecture 1. Main types of English dictionaries.

ENCYCLOPAEDIC AND LINGUISTIC DICTIONARIES. The choice of words: thing-books vs wordbooks;

all words of the language vs words of designative character (names for substances, diseases, animals,
institutions, terms of science, biographical data). The information about a word in an entry: spelling,
pronunciation, meaning, examples of use vs extensive extralinguistic information. Cf the entries for CAT:
CAT (family Felidae), any of a group of carnivorous mammals that includes the true cats—lion, tiger,
jaguar, leopard, puma, and domestic cat—and the cheetah (see photograph). Cats typically have soft fur,
often strikingly patterned. See also domestic cat. The history of the cat family can be traced through the
fossil record to the Late Eocene Epoch (43.6 to 36.6 million… (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
cat [kæt] 1. small , domestic, fur-covered animal often kept as a pet, to catch mice, etc. (=wild cat) any
animal of the group that includes tigers, lions, panthers and leopards. bell the cat see bell (2). Let the
cat out of the bag see bag (1). Like a cat on hot bricks, very nervous or jumpy… (A.S. Hornby. Oxford
Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of current English).
Most well-known encyclopaedias: The Encyclopaedia Britannica (in 24 vos.); Encyclopaedia Britannica
Macropaedia and Micropaedia. The Encyclopaedia Americana (in 30 vols); Collier’s Encyclopaedia (in 24
vols)(for teachers and students); Chamber’s encyclopaedia (familry type reference book); Everyman’s
Encyclopaedia (for all-round use).
Specialized encyclopaedias : The Oxford Companion to English Literature, the Oxford Companion to
Theatre, Cassell’s Encyclopaedia of World Literature, etc.
Overlapping of information: the word origin in encyclopaedic dictionaries; the encyclopaedic definitions in
linguistic dictionaries; encyclopaedic parts (appendici) in linguistic dictionaries, e.g. geographical names,
names and dates of birth and life of famous people.
American dictionaries tend to be encyclopaedic; British dictionaries tend to exclude the extralinguistic
information from the entries.

• TYPES OF LINGUISTIC DICTIONARIES. Criteria for classification:

a. The nature of word lists: general (unrestricted) and restricted dictionaries.
b. The kind of information: explanatory, translation, pronouncing , etymological, ideographic
dictionaries, etc.
c. The language in which the information is given: Monolingual vs bilingual dictionaries.
c. The prospective user, e.g. advanced learners of English; children, students, etc.
Example: A.P.Cowie, R. Mackin. Oxford dictionary of Current Idiomatic English. Vol.1. Verbs
with prepositions and particles. Oxford University Press, 1975.
1. Explanatory dictionaries. Deal with the form, usage and meaning of lexical units. Synchronic
vs diachronic presentation of word meanings: from basic to derived vs from historically earlier
to those that appeared later, e.g. table ‘a piece of furniture’ / ‘a slab of stone’.
Diachronic: NED (The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles); SOD (The Shorter
Oxford Dictionary on Historical Principles)
Synchronic: COD (the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English); Webster dictionaries;
Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary (COBUILD – Collins Birmingham University
International Language Database)
2 Translation dictionaries. The New English-Russian Dictionary. (In 3 vols.) Ed. By
E.M.Mednikova & Ju.D.Apresjan. (250 000 words; V.K.Muller. English-Russian Dictionary. 53
000 words; A.M.Taube, A.V.Litvinova, A.D.Miller, R.S.Daglish. Russian-English Dictionary.
(34 000 words); English-Russian Dictionary ed. Under general direction of A.I.Smirnitsky; A
Phrase and Sentence Dictionary of Spoken Russian. Russian-English- English-Russian. N.Y.:
Dover Publications. E.g. любопытный curious. Ишь какой любопытный, всюду свой нос
сует. He’s so damned curious, he sticks his nose in everywhere. Odd. Это любопытное
совпадение. It’s an odd coincidence.
3 Specialized dictionaries.
a. Phraseological dictionaries. Dictionaries published abroad contain all sorts of
“anomalies”: idioms, colloquial word groups, proverbs. An Anglo-Russian Phraseological
Dictionary by A.V.Koonin.
b. Pharasal verbs dictionaries. Longman Dictionary of Phrasal verbs.
c. New Words dictionaries. The Barnhart Dictionary of New English (1st ed. L. 1973).
d. Slang dictionaries. Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by E.Partridge; The
Dictionary of American Slang by H.Wentworth and S.B.Flexner.
e. Usage dictionaries : give advice to native learners about what is right and what is wrong.
Dictionary of Usage and Abusage by E.Partridge: the difference between words, e.g. daily vs
diurnal; restrictions on the usage of certain words, e.g. responsible should be restricted to
human beings; the meaning of “difficult” words, e.g. vicinage ‘neighbourhood’; words easily
confused, e.g. venal and venial ; the use of certain constructions, e.g. split infinitive , etc.
 f. Frequency dictionaries: to make lists of words suitable as the basis for teaching English to
foreign learners. M. West’s General Service List.
g. Pronouncing dictionaries: record variants of contemporary pronunciation. English
Pronouncing Dictionary by Daniel Jones.
h. Etymological dictionaries: The word’s primary meaning; the immediate source of borrowing
and its origin. Etymological English Dictionary by W.W.Skeat.
i. Ideographic dictionaries. P.M. Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.
A new parameter: The form of the dictionaries: ‘hard’ dictionaries and ‘soft’ (electronic) dictionaries, e.g.
Linguo, Multitran. Electronic encyclopaedias.

List of terms:

definition – словарное толкование;

designative [‘dezigneitiv ] номинативный

entry – словарная статья;

explanatory dictionary – толковый словарь

frequency - частотность
Lecture 2. Etymological survey of English vocabulary

1. Some important landmarks of British history

a) Celtiс tribes inhabiting Britain: Britons and Gaels. Languages: Welsh, Cornish (now extinct), Irish,
Scots, Manx .
b) the Roman conquest : 55-54 B.C. - Julius Caesar’s landings and short stays; 43 A.D. - permanent
conquest of Britain under the emperor Claudius.
c) the Anglo-Saxon conquest: mid-5th century - the invasion of Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and
Jutes):
The start of the history of the English language.
d) the Scandinavian conquest (the 8th - the 11th cent): the 8th cent. - first inraids; the 9th cent. -
occupation of the territory north of the Thames; 878 - King Alfred’s peace treaty and ‘Danish law’ (the
North-east of England)
e) the Norman conquest: 1066.

2. Some basic notions

a) Native: various interpretations of the term
- words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought by Germanic tribes
- and words of unknown origin (big, path)
- and words derived on the basis of the Anglo-Saxon stock. Where does eatable belong?
- all words existing in the English word-stock of the 7th cent.
b) Borrowed.
- synchronic and diachronic point of view: wine, cheap, pound vs alibi, memorandum, stratum.
-the source of borrowing and the origin of the borrowed word: table - Fr. source, Lat. origin; school - Lat.
source, Greek origin; ink - Fr. source, origin unknown.

3. Native (Anglo-Saxon) words.

25-30% of the English vocabulary, its basic syncategorematic words and most important semantic
groups:
- most of auxiliary and modal verbs (shall, will, should, must, can, may), pronouns (I, you, he, my, your,
his), numerals, conjunctions (and, as, but, till).
- notional words: parts of body (head, hand, arm, back),kinship terms (mother, father, son, wife), natural
phenomena (snow, rain, wibd, frost), planets (sun, moon, star), animals (horse, cow, sheep, cat), basic
physical qualities (old, young, hot, heavy, light, dark, white, long), basic physical actions (do, make, go,
come, see, hear, eat).
Highly polysemantic, derivationally active, rich combinability.
Exceptions: archaic words (lore, methinks, quoth); poetic (whilom, ere, welkin); historical terms (thane,
yeoman).
Monosemantic words: ax, ash, dale. Words with limited word-building capacity: hound - to hound.

4. Borrowings.
a) from Old Norse (Scandinavian). Personal pronouns: they, their, them; political terms: law, wrong;
everyday words: husband, sister, call, take, fellow, sky. In placenames by ‘village’: Kirksby, Whitby,
Derby; spot’, ‘hill’: ness ‘cape’ : Inverness, Caithness. In proper names son: Johnson
Which word came first? OE fisc/Scand. fiskr, treo/ trē, ic /ek ‘I’, bitan / bita ‘bite’ .

c) from French.
‘Thus came England under Normandy’s power. And the Normans could not speak any language but their
own, and spoke French as they did at home, and taught thier children so. So that noblemen of this land
who came from their blood stick to the same language, which they brought from home. For unless a man
speaks French people think low of him; but low men stick still to English and to their own language. I
believe there are in all the world no other countries which do not stick to their own language, except
England alone’.(Robert Gloucester, the chronicle of the 13th century).

Semantic groups:
-government, the court and the law: prince, baron, noble, govern, government, court, justice, judge.
-army and military life: war, army, battle, regiment, mail, castle, banner, harness, siege.
-religion and church: religion, saint, sermon, conscience, chapel, cloister.
-town professions: butcher, painter, tailor (vs OE words denoting country professions: miller, shoemaker,
shepherd, smith).
-art: art, colour, figure, image, column, ornament
-amusements: pleasure, leisure, ease.
-meals: dinner, supper, roast.
Non-specific: air, place, cover, river, large, change.
Latinized words: debt<Fr. dette (fr. Lat. debitum), perfect <Fr. parfait (fr. Lat. perfectum).
Derivatrional affixes:
Suffixes: -ance, -ence, -ment (ignorance, dependence, government); -ess (princess), -et (cabinet), -age
(courage, marriage), -ard (coward), -able (admirable).
Prefixes: dis- (disappoint, disagree); en- (encage, encompass).
Hybrids: bewilderment, goddess, shepherdess.

с)from Latin: the Renaissance (the 16th cent.). Abstract words having to do with science. Verbs in -ate:
aggravate, alleviate, abbreviate, exaggerate; verbs in -ute: constitute, attribute, contribute, pollute; adj. in
-ant: arrogant, reluctant, evident.

Etymological doublets:
-English-Scandinavian (skirt/shirt; scatter/shatter; road/ raid)
-English-French (frere>friar /brother fr. Lat. frater)
paternel>paternal/fatherly fr. Lat. paternus

Literature:

Смирницкий А.И. История английского языка. М., 1965. Гл. I (ч.1,2).

Lecture 3. Ways of replenishment Modern English vocabulary. A. Assimilation of Borrowings.

1. Changes in the vocabulary

a) disappearance: OE wunden-stefna 'a curved-stemmed ship'
b) ousting by borrowed words:Scand.take and die vs
OE niman and sweltan; Fr. army and place vs OE hēre and staθs.
c) words become obsolete, go to the periphery and are used in poetry only:
steed 'horse', slay 'to kill'.
d) new words appear constantly.OE vocabulary:30-40 thousand words; ModE vocabulary - 400-500
thousand words.
2. Ways of enriching the ModE vocabulary:
a) vocabulary extension
b) semantic extension

A.Vocabulary extension: New vocabulary units may be a result of

a) productive (patterned) ways of word-formation
b) non-patterned ways of word-creation
c)borrowing from other languages

Borrowing is less productive both than in OE and ME and than other means of enriching the vocabulary. It
is active in terminology.
Non-true borrowings: words made up of morphemes of Greek and Latin origin, e.g. cyclotron,
telecommunication, telelecture, protein, penicillin, metalanguage, mataculture, paralinguistic,
parapsychology, videotaperecorder, videocassette.
True borrowing: Russ. dacha, bolshevik, pogrom, step', babushka. Germ.(of the WWII period): Blitzkrieg,
Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe .
Loan-translations: self-criticism (fr. Russian).
Assimilation of borrowed words

1. Types of changes
a) changes peculiar of borrowed words alone:
Greek pn, pt, ps > n, t, s, e.g. pneumatics, psychology, ptomain [‘toumein] vs Engl. condemn, stops, slept.
b) changes typical both of borrowed and native words, e.g. simplification of the inflectional system of OE
to three forms in ME - common case & possessive case sing. & plur.

2. Types of assimilation
a) phonetic assimilation
-change in sound-form:
Fr. long e>ei, e.g. communique, cafe
Germ. spits [ špits]>[spits]
- stress change: Fr. honn’eur – Engl. ’honor, rais’on>’reason, chauff’er – ‘chaffeur, cf. father, mother, etc.
b) grammatical assimilation:
Greek phenomenon – phenomena, parenthesis - parentheses.; Lat. addendum - addenda;
Two forms: Lat. vacuum - vacua, vacuums; It. virtuoso - virtuosi, virtuosos.
c) changes in morphological structure:
-divisible>indivisible: saunter (saunters, sauntered, sauntering)<Fr. s’aunter; It. -etto, -otta, -ello (ballot,
stiletto, umbrella)
.-suffix substitution: Lat. -us>-ous / -al., e.g. multifarious fr. Lat. maltifarius; historical, medical.
d) lexical assimilation:
- reduction of semantic structure: Fr.timber; Sp. cargo; cask .
- specialization of meaning, e.g. Fr. hangar ‘shed’ > Engl. ‘a shed for aeroplanes’
- generalization of meaning, e.g. It. umbrella ‘sunshade’ > Engl. ‘any protection’
- change of the order of meanings, e.g. fellow ‘comrade, companion’ -’man, boy’
- reinterpreting (folk etymology), e.g. surounder ‘overflow’> surround ‘to encircle’; Ofr estandard ‘banner’ >
Engl. standard ‘stable, oficially accepted’

3. Degree of assimilation
- easily recognizable words façade, Zeitgeist, ballet
- thoroughly assimilated pupil, master, etc.
- partially assimilated: phenomenon - pl. phenomena; graffito - graffiti; communi’que - communiques.
Factors of assimilation:
- period of borrowing, early vs late, e.g. chair< OFr cathedra; window < Scand. vindauga;
- frequency of use: turbine, clinic, exploitation, diplomat vs nobless, annui [a:n’wi] ‘apathy’, coup [ku:],
coup d’etat
-oral use vs written.
Manifestation of the degree of assimilation: the ability of the word to take part in the word-derivation.
Lecture 4. Ways of replenishment Modern English vocabulary. B. Semantic extension.

In the course of the historical development of language the word meaning is liable to change, e.g.
fond ‘foolish’, ‘foolishly credulous’ – ‘feeling strong affection to smth’; glad ‘bright, shining’ – ‘happy and
pleased about smth’.

Causes of semantic change:

a. extra-linguistic: car ‘a four-wheeled van’ (from Lat. carrus), now ‘a motor car’, ‘a railway carriage’
b. linguistic:
• ellipsis (the omission of one of the two words habitually used togetheraccompanied by the
transfer of its meaning to a remaining partner, e.g. to starve (OE steorfan)‘to die’ > ME sterven of
hunger 'to die of hunger'.
• discrimination of synonyms, e.g. OE steorfan and dēgan (fr. Sc. to die; to starve ‘to die of
hunger’, to die ‘to stop to live’ land in OE ‘a solid part of the earth’s surface’ ; the territory of a
nation’; ME country (fr. French countree) land ‘a solid part of the earth’s surface, country
‘the territory of a nation’.
• Analogy: synonymous words acquire the like meanings, e.g. verbs of getting hold with a hand
(catch, grasp, get) develop the meaning ‘to understand’

Nature of semantic change:

• Metaphor (similarity of meaning): associating two concepts, e.g. hand ‘a human organ’; ‘a pointer
on a clock’; cold ‘having low temperature’: cold hand; ‘unemotional’ : a cold glance; cool ‘having
temperature lower than the norm’; ‘unemotional’; term of positive evaluation.
• Metonymy (contiguity of meaning): tongue ‘an organ’, e.g. The doctor asked him to show his
tongue; ‘the language one speaks from birth’ , e.g. His mother tongue was French;

Results of semantic change:

• Changes in the denotational component of meaning
• Specialization (restriction) of meaning, e.g. hound ‘the dog of any breed’ > ‘the dog able to
chase’; Foul ‘any bird’> domestic bird.
• Generalization of meaning: camp ‘the place where troops are lodged in tents; > any
temporary quarters.’
• Changes in the connotational component (accompanying the changes in denotation):
• Pejorative development: boor ‘a villager’ > ‘a clumsy or ill-bred fellow’
• Ameliorative development: minister a servant > acivil servant of higher rank.

Semantic extension and numerical growth of the vocabulary.

Semantic extension and homonymy,cf.:

Shave 1. to cut hair from one’s face, very close to the skin, using a razor or shaver. When he had
shaved, he dressed and went down to the kitchen. …n.to reduce smth by a small amount. We could
shave prices a bit.
…(slang) to defeat, esp. by a small margin; to take advantage of.

Horse 1. An animal …N. (slang) heroine.

Words historically related can be apprehended as homonyms, e.g.:

• Flower 1. The part of the plant which is often brightly colored, grows on a stem…
Flour 1. A white or brown powder that is made by grinding wheat… used for making bread.
Etymologically they go back to OF flur, flour > ME flour ‘flower, the best part of anything.
Words unrelated can be apprehended as meanings of the same word:
• Ear 1.‘the ears of a person or an animal are two matching parts of their body, one on each side of
their head…’ (OE ēare,Lat auris) 4. The ears of a cereal plant such as wheat or barley are the
parts at the top of the stem, which contain the seeds or grains….’ (OE ēar, cf Lat acus, aceris).
weed ‘wild useless plant (OE wēod)
weeds ‘mourning garments worn by a widow’ (OE woed ‘garment’)
Polysemy, frequency and word structure, e.g. Heart (6), hearty (3), heartily (2), heartless, heartiness,
heartsick.

Polysemy and stylistic reference, e.g. break (35), demolish (2); face (10), countenance (1).
Polysemy, frequency and etymology.
Late borrowings (regime, bourgeoisie, genre) vs early borrowings. The difference between words in
synonymic groups: small, little, diminutive, petite, wee, tiny, minute, miniature, microscopic.

Polysemy of affixes: non- a)'negative' non-human; non-existence. b)'pretended','pseudo',e.g. non-book;

non-event.

Monosemantic words are usually terms, e.g.: hydrogen, molecule.

A polysemous word can have from five to one hundred meanings. Highly polysemous words: go (40
meanings), get, put, take – 30 meanings.

Polysemy from a diachronic point of view (Which meaning came first?)

table 1. A flat slab of stone or wood. (OE tabule)
Polysemy from a synchronic point of view (which meaning is the basic one?)
Hornby: table 1. a piece of furniture; 2. people seated at a table: a ~ of card-players; 3. food provided at a
~ : He keeps a good ~; 4. Plateau, level land; 5. List, orderly arrangement of facts: ~ of contents; 6. (in the
Bible) Flat slab of stone
Collins Cobuild: table 1. A piece of furniture; 2. A chart of facts and figures which are shown in rows 3. A
list of multiplication of numbers between one and and twelve: She knows her tables already.

Criteria of the comparative value of individual meanings.

a) frequency of their occurrence in speech: table 1 - 55% .
b) stylistic neutrality
hand 1. The part of the body which is at the end of your arm… -72%
7. Someone, usu. A man who does hard physical work: farm hands …- 2,8%
c) ability to explain other meanings
c)psychological salience
Order 1. n. Arrangement in sequence - 77%; 2. v. to request smth to be made for payment - 76%.
Cf Cobuild 1. In order to; 2.3 Smth that you are told to do; 3.1 arrangement in sequence

Systematic relationships between semantics and syntax (Works of Beth Levin, Sue Atkins, Malka
Rappaport):
bake
1. Every morning they baked their own baguettes and croissants; as we baked we talked a great deal
(The indefinite object alternation; cf other creation verbs: Mrs Babcock is embroidering a sampler).
2. Jennifer has baked a special cake for Alexander (the benefactive alternation; cf She boiled some tea
for me)
3. They baked unleavened bread from dough (The material/product alternation)
4. Bake it whole in the oven (the instrumental subject alternation)
5. Bake the pastry for ten minutes (the instructional imperative) alternation)
6.

Vocabulary:
alternation – зд. диатеза, трансформация
contiguity [,konti’gjuiti] смежность
diathesis [dai’æΘisis] диатеза
ellipsis [ i’lipsis] эллипсис, опущение ( какой-л. части текста или грамматической конструкции )
salience – значимость, букв. выпуклость
Lecture 5. Homonymy.
• The definition: Words identical in sound-form but different in meaning are called homonyms, e.g.
can ‘to be able’, ‘a tin container’ . In contrast to polysemy, homonymy is irregular and non-
predictable.
• Languages where short words abound have more homonyms than those where long words are
prevalent. The abundance of homonyms in Modern English can be accounted for by the
abundance of monosyllabic words in it.

Causes of homonymy:
a) divergence of word meanings
e.g.: Lat.flos, florem, OFr.flour, flor > ME flour 1.'flower' 2. 'the finest part of wheat'. In ModE flower and
flour are synchronycally unrelated.
staff 1. A strong stick or pole (жезл); staff 2. People who work somewhere (. Historically these meanings
were related through the custom to give staffs to military officers as a sign of their high rank. Officers
worked in staffs ‘headquarters’.
Toast 1. a slice of bread made brown and crisp by cooking in high temperature; toast 2. a wish
pronounced while drinking alcohol . Historically related through the custom to put a piece of toasted bread
into a glass of wine.
b) convergent sound development, e.g. of native words: OE ic and eaze > ModE I and eye [ai];
The disappearance of the sound k before n, .g. knight –night, knot –not; the convergence of the ME ā, ai,
ei: fair – fare, pale – pail, wait – weight.
of borrowed words: Old Norse rās 'running' and OFr race 'ethnic group' - MOdE race 1 and race 2; Fr.
mèche ‘wick’ (фитиль), OE meche ‘partner’ > match 1‘спичка’, match 2 ‘a relationship, a partnership’ , as
in matchmaker.

c) the loss of inflections: OE lufu (n) and lufian (v)- ModE love; OE sunne and sunu – ModE sun
and son.

Types of Homonyms:
Full vs partial homonymy; Lexical vs lexical-grammatical vs grammatical homonymy; perfect homonyms
vs homographs and homophones.
1) Full vs partial homonymy. Do all forms of the words different in meaning coincide or not?
a) Full homonymy – the homonymy of words in all their forms (the homonymy of paradigms). Examples:
seal 1 'a sea animal' and seal 2 'a design printed on paper by means of a stamp'; mole 1 'an animal' and
mole 2 'an excrescence on the skin'.
b) Partial homonymy – the homonymy of SOME word forms, whereas the paradigms are not identical E.
g.: seal 1 and (to) seal 3 'to close tightly'.
Homoforms: know,no; knows,nose; knew, new; read,reed; read [red],red,etc.
Full homonymy is found within one part of speech, whereas partial homonymy is found within
different parts of speech. Exceptions: to lie (lay, lain)'to be in a horizontal or resting position' and to lie
(lied, lied)'to make an untrue statement'; words whose paradigm is constituted by just one form: four (a
numeral) - for (a preposition) - for 'because'.
2) Which parts of the words are different in meaning and identical in form? Lexical - lexico-
grammatical – grammatical homonymy:
a) Lexical homonymy: the lexical meanings of two words identical in form, i.e. the lexical meanings of the
roots, are different, e.g. mole 1 and mole 2.
b) Lexical-grammatical homonymy: both the meaning of the root morphemes and the meanings of
grammatical morphemes identical in form are different, e.g.race 1 (n) and race 3 (v); seam (n) and seem
(v) .
Lexical homonymy is found within one part of speech, whereas lexical-grammatical homonymy is
found between different parts of speech. Exceptions: found (Past of to find) and found (Present of 'to
begin the construction of smth’). abo
3)Grammatical homonymy, i.e. the homonymy of grammatical morphemes, in which English
abounds, e.g. the homonymy of the plural, Possessive Case sing. and plural: bears - bear's - bears'.
Homomorphemes: -ed (Past Simple and Past Participle), e.g. asked.

The two lines of classification (full-partial / lexical- lexical –grammatical- grammatical) are not mutually
exclusive, e.g. lie 1 – lie 2.
Peculiarities of lexical-grammatical homonymy:
a) no semantic relationship: seal 1 'a sea animal'- to seal 3 'to close tightly'
b) a close semantic relationship, in instances of conversion, e.g. seal 2 'a piece of wax or lead' –
to seal ; work - to work; father - to father, etc. However, the whole of the semantic structure of such words
is not alike., e.g. paper 1 ’substance manufactured from wood fibre’ – to paper ‘to paste on walls’, ‘to
cover with paper’. paper 2 ‘newspaper’ – v?; paper 3 ‘money’ – v???, etc.
Two groups of lexical-grammatical homonyms:
a) words identical in sound form but different in their lexical and grammatical meanings.
b) words identical in their sound form, different in their grammatical meaning and only partly different in
their lexical meaning.

Homographs: bow [bou] 'a piece of wood curved by a string and used for shooting arrows' - bow [bau] 'a
bend of the head or body'; tear [tia]'a drop of water coming from an eye' - tear [tea] 'to pull apart by force'.
Homophones: read [red] - red; sun - son; see - sea. In Engl. in contrast to Russ., two words ending one
in voiced, another in a voiceless consonant, are not homophones. Cf dock – dog and дог – док in Russ.
Perfect homonyms: case 1 'something that happened' - case 2 'a box, a container'.

Homonymy and polysemy: the demarcation line.

• Diachronically, cases of sound convergence are treated as homonymy, because homonymous forms
can be traced to etymologically different words, cf race 1 and race 2. Cases of semantic divergence
are difficult to interpret, as it is not clear when all semantic ties between all meanings are broken.
Speakers may comprehend historically related meanings as unrelated, cf.: table 'a piece of furniture'
'a chart of facts and figures that are shown in rows across the page'; 'food'. They are related through
the meaning ‘board’: This idea is supported by the polysemy of the word board:
table ' board 'food'

'a piece of furniture' 'a piece of furniture'

'a board' ? ?
'food’ ’a chart’

Sometimes speakers comprehend historically unrelated meanings as related, cf.: ear 'an organ of
hearing' <from Lat. auris, OE eare> and ear 'a part of a plant' (ear of corn) <from Lat. acus,aceris, OE
ear>.

weeds 'wild useless plants' < OE weod

weeds 'widow's garments' < OE woed

• Synchronically, the criterion for distinguishing between homonymy and polysemy is a semantic
relationship. If speakers comprehend various meanings as related, they are considered to be different
meanings of one and the same word.
Between different meanings of a polysemous word there often exists a stable relationship that can’t
be found between meanings of homonymous words.
Two meanings can be proved to be related if the relation is systematic, or regular, cf the relationship
board- food, board - chart. Other examples. a) 'part-whole':apricot 1 a tree; 2 a fruit of that tree); b) ‘an
animal - a person behaving like this animal’: pig 1. 2. a dirty, greedy or ill-mannered person; c) ‘an organ
of the human body – part of a certain thing’: foot (of a human being) – foot (of the hill); eye (of a living
creature) – eye (of a needle); horn (of a cow) – horn (a musical instrument), etc.
Criteria for distinguishing homonymous words: spelling, e.g. pair – pear; context, e.g. Boxing Day
(26th of December) – a boxing match, a boxing champion.

• The use of homonyms in fiction. Overlapping of homonyms in one context (their coexistence ) is
the basis for word play, in particular the puns.
Oscar Wilde.'The Importance of Being Earnest'
The advertisement in the metro: Mind the GAP! (gap ‘some space between the train and the
platform); Gap – a big department store in London.
Vocabulary
Divergence – дивергенция, расхождение
convergent – конвергенция, сближение
conversion - конверсия
Lecture 6. THE STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH WORD AND THE ENGLISH WORD-FORMATION.

General notions
a. The relationship between the word structure and word derivation: the segmentation of existing words
vs the formation of new words

I. The morphological structure of English words

a. Divisibility: segmentable vs non-segmentable words.
(1) agree-ment, fear-less, quick-ly, door-handle
(2) house, girl, woman, husband
The smallest indivisible two-facet language units into which the word can be segmented are called
morphemes. Two-facet means possessing both sound-form and meaning. In the word morphemes can
be represented by different sound–shapes, e.g. please , pleasing , pleasure, pleasant. Different
representations of a given morpheme are called allomorphs.
b. Principles of segmentation and the notion of proportion:

Each element into which the word is segmented should combine with at least two different elements
retaining its meaning
reader ac | reading ad
writer bc | writing bd

Compare:
hamlet ‘a village’, ‘a small village’ | ham ‘salted and smoked smoked meat’
ringlet ‘a small ring’ | ring finger ‘the finger on which the ring is worn’
streamlet ‘a small stream’ | streamline ‘the line of liquid flow ‘

b. Transparency of a morphemic structure:

(1) Words with a trasparent morphemic structure because each of their component morphemes can be
encountered within other words, e.g. : agreement - agree-able, predic-a-ment, This type of
segmentability is called complete
(2) Words, the structure of which is not transparent.
a.-for semantic reasons
retain:
retain ac | receive ad
contain bc | conceive bd

The proportion (the basis for segmentability is observed), but what is the meaning of the components?
Is re- the same as in reread? What is -tain and -ceive?
Bloomfield called this type of morphemic segmentability conditional, because the segments do not rise
to the status of morphs for purely semantic reasons. The segments are called pseudo- or quasi- morphs.
Other linguists consider these words non-segmentable.

b. words the component morphemes of which seldom or never occur in other words. -streamlet, ringlet,
leaflet, hamlet. Let- is a diminutive suffix. The denotational meaning of stream-, ring- leaf- is clear. What is
the denotational meaning of ham- if hamlet is a ‘small village’? Ham ‘smoked meat’ is a homonym of
ham- in hamlet. Ham- is a unique morpheme.
-locket, pocket, lionet, cellaret, hogget. –et is a diminutive suffix. Lion-, cellar, lock and hog occur in other
words, e.g. lioness, callarage, lock, hog, hogish. And pock-? Such morphemes as pock- and ham- are
called unique. These words are nonsegmentable or have defective segmentability.

To which type do gooseberry, cranberry, strawberry belong?

c. Classification of morphemes
a) from the semantic point of view: root-morphemes and non-root morphemes.
Root-morphemes are the lexical centers of the word. Each root-morpheme possesses an individual
lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language. Root-morphemes are isolated as
common parts of the words constituting a word cluster, e.g. play, player, playing, playful. Root
morphemes do not possess the part-of-speech meaning.
Non-root morphemes: inflectional and affixational. Inflectional morphemes carry only grammatical
meaning and are relevant for the formation of word-forms. Affixational morphemes are relevant for
building various parts of stems and carry the most general lexical meaning + the part-of-speech meaning,
e.g. reader: -er ‘the action doer’ , ‘noun’.
b) Morphemic status of segments: free, bound and semi-bound (or semi-free) morphemes.
Free morphemes are those that coincide with the word stem or a word-form, e.g. friend- in friendship.
Usu. free morphemes are root-morphemes.
Bound morphemes occur only as a constituent part of a word, i.e. various affixes, e.g. -y: friendly, -ness:
whiteness, pre- : preview, un- , dis-, etc. A root-morpheme Barbar is a bound morpheme because it it is
found within adjectives (barbarian, barbarous only).
Semi-bound morphemes occur both as affixes and as stems, e.g. well- : sleep well vs well-known; half
past six - half-eaten.
A problem: What is the status of morphemes of Greek and Latin origin that combine in words telephone,
telegraph,telescope, microscope, etc.? They have a definite lexical meaning: tele ‘far’, graph ‘to write’,
scope ‘seeing’. Tele- may be a prefix, whereas -graph may be a root morpheme. Phonograph,
seismograph, autograph… is –graph a suffix? They never occur independently, so they are bound root-
morphemes.

What is the status of -man in postman, fisherman, gentleman vs man-made, man-servant? How id it
related to the noun man?
The difference in pronunciation: [‘fiſ m n] (the reduced vowel corresponds to a reduced semantic value);
The difference in meaning: in chairman -man is a human agent of any sex, synonymous to –er., cf
Madam Chairman, but man [m n]in cabman, postman still is semantically related to man [mæn] in man-
servant and to athe semantic opposition between man and woman.
But *She is a gentleman. –man can be classified as a semi-bound (or semi-free) morpheme.

Procedure of morphemic analysis. In the analysis into Immediate constituents at each stage the word
is segmented into two components it immediately breaks into until one comes to the two constituents
unable of further divisibility. Examples: readable, readability, friendliness, friendly-looking.

Morphemic types of words:

Monomorphic (root-words): dog, small, pen.
Polymorphic: monoradical (one-root) words: having one root- and one or more affixal morphemes: radical
prefixal: out-do, reenter
pleasurable, possibility, sufferer, etc.; polyradical (having more than one root): bookstand, safety-pin.

II. Derivational word structure.

The morphological analysis does not reveal how the words are constructed. . The process of deriving a
word on the basis of another word is called word formation.The basic word and derived word are related,
and all together they constitute a word-formation cluster.

E.g. the morphological and the derivational structure of unmanly, discouragement.

The nature, type and arrangement of the immediate constituents of a word (Ics) are its derivational
structure.
Basic units of the derivational structure: derivational affixes, derivational bases, derivational patterns.
Derivational word classes: Simple (non-derived words, simplexes) vs derivatives (complexes) (82%);
Classes of derivatives: derived words vs compounds (15%).

a. Historical changeability of word-structure

The process of simplification: husband - OE hus-bond-a.

Change of the type of a morpheme, e.g. a root-morpheme>an affixational morpheme, e.g. friendship: OE
freondscipe, a compound; Other former root-morphemes:
-hood, -dom, -like.

b. Word-formation. Derivation vs word-composition (compounding). Affixation and conversion. Productive

vs non-productive ways of word-forming. Productive means and ways easily derive new words. Non-
productiove do not derive new words/
(12) house - to house [hauz], full - to fill, to lie - to lay
(13) collarless appearance, a lungful of smoke
Productive and active ways of word-forming
(14) -ful (beautiful, hopeful, useful) vs -er (interrupter, breakfaster)
Synchronic and diachronic approach to word-formation
(15) beggar - to beg, editor - to edit.

Assignments for the seminar:

1. Explain the difference between productive and active affixes.

2. What is the morphological and the derivational structure of the words: refreshment, disillusionment,
overlooker, overproduction.
3. Pick out the words with the prefix pre-: prepay, prepare, prefer, prepossess, prevail, preside, president,
prevail, pretend, preview, previous.
4. Which morphemes are called bound?
5. What is the difference in meaning between the words perspiration and sweat? Inquisitive and nosy?
Beverage and drink? How to account for it?
Lecture 7. WORD FORMATION: AFFIXATION. PREFIXATION.
Types of word formation: word derivation and word composition.
Affixation.
Derived words:
- words of zero degree of derivation, e.g. yellow, dress, haste,devote, atom etc.;
-words of one degree of derivation, e.g.: yellowish, undress, hasty, devote, atomic, etc.
-words, of the second degree of derivation, e.g. atomical, hastily, devotion, etc.
Suffixal derivatives and prefixal derivatives, e.g. unjust (un+just) justify (just+ify); non-smoker,
prearrangement.
Morphemic vs derivational analysis: reappearance, unreasonable -prefixal-suffixal derivatives or prefixal
derivatives (un+reasonable; re+appearance). Cf. discouragement (discourage+ment).
Functions with respect to part of speech derivation: noun- and adjective-forming / verb-forming.

PREFIXATION vs word-composition and compounding.

The status of over- and under- in overdo, overturn, underestimate, underate etc. Cf. income, onlooker,
outcome, etc.;
afternoon, afterglow, afterthought, aftergrowthin Chamber’s dictionary..
Classification: bound (dis-, re-, anti-); semibound, e.g. out-, under-, over-, self- , etc (cf. out of the house,
under the bridge, over the bridge, self-esteem, , self-support, etc.).
verbs - 42,5% of prefixal derivatives; adjectives -33,5%.
Verbs: to engulf, to understand, recreate.
Adjectives: oversensitive, predetermined, bilingual.
Nouns: Ex-president, antifascist, disbelief.
Convertive prefixes: in be-, en- (and its variant em-) de-, etc.: begulf, embronze, encage, debase, etc..
Prefixes of native origin:be-, mis-, un-, under- , over-; of foreign origin: dis- , en- (em-), inter-, re-, non-,
ex-, anti-, extra-, ultra-
According to the type of the base they are added to:
a) deverbal: rewrite, overturn, return, etc.
b)denominal: ex-president, antifascist, disbelief.
c)deadjectival: antistatic, improbable, underestimated.

Mono- and polysemantic prefixes, e.g. out- 'to do better than somebody': to outdo, outclass, outfox,
outgrow, outlive, outnumber somebody; ‘to surpass the person in a certain well-known quality’ to out-
Herod Herod (Shakespeare) ‘to be more cruel than the ruler of Judea Herod"; ‘to stop to exist by breaking
physical borders’: to outbreak, to outburst, etc.; ‘to show the shape of smth’: to outline.

in-: negative: hospitable - inhospitable; causative: to flame - to inflame.

The generic denotational meaning:
negative prefixes: un-, non-,in-, dis-, a- , e.g. ungrateful, unemployment, non-politician, non-scientific,
disloyal, asymmetry. It illegal, irrational, improbable.
reversative, or privative: un-, de-, dis: untie, decentralize, disambiguate, etc.
pejorative: as mis-, mal-, pseudo-, e.g. miscalculate, maltreat, pseudoart.
of time and order: fore-, pre-, post-,ex-: foretell, preposition, pre-war, postposition, postclassical, ex-
champion.
prefixes of repetition: re-, e.g. reiterative, recreate;
locative prefixes: super-, sub-, inter-, trans-, e.g.: superstructure, submarine, interlinguistics,
transnational, transatlantic.
Stylistic reference: neutral (un- , re-, over-, under); literary-bookish (pseudo-, uni- super-, ultra-).
Productivity: highly productive (re-), productive de- (to undo what has been done, reverse an action or a
process: decentralize, desegregate)

Questions to the seminar

1. What is the origin of English prefixes?

2. What is the relationship between prefixes and root morphemes?
3. Which prefixes are productive and which are non-productive ?
4. Synonymy of prefixes.
5. In a book on Russian word-formation it is said that the function of prefixes is to give a new
shade of meaning to words without changing their part-of-speech characteristics, e.g. ехать - приехать
- подъехать, etc. Does the same hold for English?
 6. Why do some linguists include prefixation into such means of word-formation as
compounding?
7. Do prefixes in the following words have the same meaning or different?
a)unwilling, untie, unbearable, unbind, unbend.
b)displease, disclose, disobey, disaffectation.
c) belittle, befriend, behead.
8. Pick out words with the prefix pre-: prepay, prepare, prefer, prepossess, prevail, preside,
president, prevail, pretend, preview, previous.
9. Pick out the prefixed words; state the meaning of a prefix:
Undoubtedly one of Mr. Parker Pyne’s assets was his sympathetic manner. It was Mr. Pyne’s task to
pave the way for the necessary disclosures. Mr. Wade, he deduced at once, was the inarticulate type.
Suppose your wife discovers that you are looking forward to regaining your freedom as much as she is?
The grounds of Lorrimer Court were lovely in the afternoon sunshine. Her figure was ungainly, and the
heavy fur coat she wore did not disguise the fact. Mrs Gardner re-entered the room with a bowl soup on a
tray. Mrs. Abner Rymer, widow of Abner Rymer, the “button shank” king was removed yesterday to a
private home for mental cases. “No,” said Mr. Parker Pyne,
“there you misjudge me”. A grand figure of a peasant woman, outlined against the setting sun.
(A.Christie)
10. What is the morphological and the derivational structure of the following words:
predeterminably; inaccessibilitty, refreshment, regretful, disillusionment, overlooker, overproduction.
Lecture 8. SUFFIXATION.
Functions: a) to transfer a word into a different part of speech, e.g. to read – readable, bright – brightness,
visual – visualize;
b) to transfer a word into a different semantic group e.g : brother - brotherhood, fellow - fellowship, etc.
Compound suffixes – chains of suffixes occurring in derived words: -ably = -able+-ly (profitably,
unreasonably); -ically= -ic+-al+-ly (musically); -ation=-ate+-ion (liberation, emigration).
Compound suffixes acquiring a new quality are coalescent suffixes or a group suffix.
Cf translation (translate + -ion), fascination (fascinate + - ion), adaptation (adapt + -ation [ei n] ). –ation is
a composite suffix (-ate + -ion) functioning as a single unit, so adaptation is a first-degree derivative.
Other examples: damnation (from damn), condemnation (from condemn), formation (from form).
Morphological changes due to combining the derivational morpheme with the base:
a) sound change: actor - actress, tiger - tigress ; liable - liability, possible - possibility.
b) Stress change:courage - courageous, investigate - investigation; employ - employee, government –
governmental, picture – picturesque.
Classification:
• with respect to the part of speech suffixes form:
a)noun-forming suffixes -er, -dom, -ness, -ation: writer, wisdom, cleanness, pagination.
b)adjective suffixes, -able, -less, -ful, -ic, -ous: likable, hopeless, fruitful, geographic, mountainous.
c) verb-suffixes, e.g. -en, -fy, -ize: to darken , exemplify, advertize.
d) adverb-suffixes, e.g. -ly, -ward: easily, westward
• according to the base suffixes are added to: deverbal: -er, -ment, -able; denominal:-less, -ish, -ful;
deadjectival: -en, -ish, -ness.
• according to the generic denotational sense:
a) the agent of an action: -er, -ant: speaker, participant.
b) appurtenance: -an, -ian, -ese,: Arabian, Elizabethan, Russian, Japanese.
c) collectivity: -dom, ery: freedom, peasantry.
d) diminutiveness: -ie, -let, -ling,: birdie, ringlet, wolfling.
• according to their stylistic reference: neutral (-er, -able); non-neutral (-oid , e.g. romboid ), -aceous ,
e.g. flirtatious.
• according to their meaning structure: mono- and polysemantic suffixes.
Polysemy of suffixes: –er and –y.
Cf a) a professional: a hunter, a baker b) a performer of an action at a given moment: a packer, chooser,
giver c) a device, a means: blotter , stain-remover, eraser .
Cf a) a bony fish, a stony ground; b)a rainy day , a cloudy sky; c) bushy beard, inky darkness.
Homonymy of suffixes: -ly: a lovely day; isn't it lovely; a friendly smile; his words sounded friendly. –en:
strengthen; golden, wooden. –ish: bluish, yellowish; girlish behaviour,a boyish voice .
Productivity. Dead vs living suffixes. -d (dead, seed); -lock (wedlock), -t (height, flight). Dead suffixes
are no longer felt as component parts of the words.
Living suffixes are easily singled out: -ate -dom, -en, -er, -ful, -ify, -ish,-ism, -less -ship, e.g.

Living suffixes : productive vs non-productive. -er, -ish, -less vs -dom, -ship, -ful, -en, -ify, -ate. On the
analogy of racism and sexism, the term speciesism has been coined to highlight and protest against an
exploitative relationship between humankind and the other living creatures of this planet.

Synonymy of suffixes: -er and –eer , e.g. writer , sonneteer (derog.).

Origin: suffixes traced to words: -dom (fr. dōm 'judgement, sentence'), -hood (fr. hād ‘state’) -ly fr. lic -
'body', 'shape'; suffixes always known as derivational morphemes: -ness, –less, -ish.
native vs borrowed suffixes. –dom, -hood, -ship vs -able, -ible, -age.

List of terms:
coalescent suffix [‚kou’lesnt] – от coalescence ‘слияние, сращение’
appurtenance [ p :tin ns] принадлежность

Assignment for the seminar:

1. State the origin and explain the meaning of the suffixes in the following words: childhood, friendship,
hardship, freedom, manhood, brotherly, boredom, rider, granny, teacher, aunty, hatred, hindrance,
drunkard.
2. Translate the following words into English: липкий, сероватый, цветистый, обощать,
мобилизовать, организовать, бесполезный, могущественный, бессильный, дружеский,
бородатый, доступный, классический, читатель, поэтический, львица, чтение, бухгалтерия.
Compare Russian and English suffixes.
3. Find words denoting males corresponding to nouns in italics.
I have to say that you have a traitress in your camp (B.Sh.). She is not only a dancer, but a very effective
actress (Theatr. World). Adieu, tigress-heart! Sheperdess without affection (Murray). Mr Dombey and gis
conductress were soon heard coming downstairs again (Dick.)
4. Pick out words with suffixes. Comment on the meaning and function of suffixes in the following text:
The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust. Roland recognized the handwriting with
a shock of excitement. Roland compared Ash’s text the translation and copied parts onto an index card.
Roland meditated on the tiresome and bewitching endlessness of the quest for knowledge. Dear madam,
Since our pleasant and unexpected conversation I have thought of little else. Iss there any way it can be
resumed, more privately and at a more leisure? He had not told her, and could not tell her, about his
secret theft. What Roland liked was his knowledge of the movements of Aj’s mind, stalked through the
twists and turns of his synraz, suddenly sharp and clear in an unexpected manner. (A.S.Byatt.
Possession).
Literature: Readings... p. 125-132. Course... Ch. 6 (§ 8-13).

Lecture 9. CONVERSION
Examples:
a) Bring me some water, please. I must water the flowers before I leave.
b) I learned to swim when I was 6. Let’s go for a swim.
Definition.Conversion may be defined as the formation of a new word through changes in its paradigm.
E.g. to drink - a drink; drinks, etc.

Conversion can be described as

a)a morphological way of word-formation.
b)a non-affixal way of forming words.
c)derivation with a zero morpheme, cf.
(1)'action - doer of the action'
to walk - a walker
to tramp - a tramp
(2) 'action - result of the action'
to agree - agreement
to find - a find.
d)a morphological-syntactic word-building means
e) a kind of functional change.
Typical semantic relations.
a. Verbs converted from nouns.
(1) a typical agent - an action characteristic of this agent e.g. ape - to ape ; doctor - to doctor ; butcher - to
butcher; a nurse - to nurse.
(2) an object - an action typically performed with it fish - to fish ; coat 'a layer of paint' - to coat 'to put a
layer of paint on smth'; skin - to skin ; dust - to dust .
(3) an instrument - an action typically performed by means of it, e.g.: screw - to screw 'to fasten with a
screw'; whip - to whip 'to beat with a whip'; a saw - to saw.
b. Nouns converted from verbs (deverbal nouns).
1) an activity - an instance of this activity: to jump - a jump; to drink - a drink.
2)a localized activity - a locality: to drive (along the road) - a drive 'a path or road along which one drives';
to walk - a walk 'a place for walking'.
3) an action - its agent, e.g. to bore - a bore; to cheat - a cheat, etc.
4) an action affecting a physical object - its result: to find - a find; to peel - a peel.
The direction of conversion. Criteria
1. The relationship between the lexical meaning of a root-morpheme and the part-of-speech meaning of
the stem: a pen - to pen; father - to father; to answer - an answer.
2.a comparison of a conversion pair with an analogous word-pairs of the same synonymic set, e.g.: a chat
- to chat & converse - conversation; to show - a show & exhibit - exhibition.
3. The derivational criterion hand n - hand v - handful - handy - (left-)handed; float n - float v - floatable -
floater - floatation- floating
4. The criterion of semantic derivation (typical semantic relations within conversion pairs) a crowd - to
crowd; a pen - to pen.
5. The frequency criterion.
6. The transformational criterion (the transformation of nominalisation): The committee elected John
- John's election by the committee; Robert loves painting - Robert's love of painting;
John visited his friend - John's visit of his friend.
She promised help - her promise of help.
I skinned the rabbit - *My skin of the rabbit;
She bossed the family - *Her boss of the family, etc.
Diachronic approach to conversion. Results of the disappearance of inflections: love n (OE lufu) - love
v (OE luvian); work (OE weork) - work v (OE wyrcan); answer (OE andswaru) - answer (OE andswarian).
mould n - mould v mouldable, moulding.
Productivity. To girl the boat; when his guest had been washed, brandied, etc.
Dubious cases. Present - to present (a change in stress position). Cf sing - song; a house - to house.

LECTURE 10. WORD COMPOSITION (Handout)

General definition. Compounds are made up of two immediate constituents b o th o f w h i c h a r e

d e r i v a t i o n a l b a s e s : week-end, office-management, postage-stamp, aircraft-carrier.The bases can be
of different degrees of complexity, cf : week+end, office + (manage+ment) vs polymorphic words of
secondary derivation: school-mastership = [school-master]+ship=([n+n]+ suff); ex-housewife =
(suf+[n+n]); to weekend = ([n+n]) + conversion).
Types. Compounds with a linking vowel: speedometer, Afro-Asian, tragicomic , cf Russ. пулемет,
пароход; with a linking consonant: sportsman, saleswoman. The additive type: rain-driven, house-dog,
(cf. dog-house), pot-pie (cf. pie-pot).
Criteria distinguishing compounds from word combinations (word groups):
a) Structure. A rigidly fixed order of the bases with the second base as the head: key-hole, borderline,
age-long, oil-rich.
b) A new stress pattern:a) 'keyhole, 'hothouse, 'honeymoon, 'doorway; b) 'blood-,vessel, 'washing-
ma,chine. Cf: a 'green-house vs a 'green 'house; a 'dancing-girl vs a 'dancing 'girl; a 'mad-doctor vs
a 'mad 'doctor. But:'arm-'chair, 'icy-'cold, 'grass-'green, etc. c) Spelling: solid or with a hyphen.But
man-of-war, daughter-in-law; I-know-what-you-are-going-to-say expression.
Meaning. Compound words are semantically motivated units, e.g. chess-board, key-board, schoolboard;
the meaning of bases is variable, cf.:foot-print, foot-pump, foothold, foot-bath, foot-wear; footnote, foot-
lights, foot-stone; foot-high, foot-wide. The lexical meanings of bases are fused together and form a new
semantic unit,e.g. a hand-bag 'a woman's bag'; a trouser-suit 'a woman's suit'; wheel-chair 'a chair for
invalids'; a push-chair 'a chair for babies', etc.
The meaning of the pattern. Cf. life-boat and boat-life a fruit-market and market-fruit. The derivational
pattern in the compounds may be monosemantic and polysemantic. Cf. n+n=N bookshelf , needle-fish;
steamboat, windmill, sunrise, dogbite, toy-man
The degree of motivation varies. Completely-motivated compounds sky-blue, foot-pump, tea-taster.
Partially motivated: hand-bag, a flower-bed, handcuffs, a castle-builder. Completely unmotivated
compounds: eye-wash, fiddlesticks, an eye-servant, a night-cap. a slow -coach 'a person who acts
slowly'; a sweet-tooth.
Polysemy: nightcap 1. 'a cap worn in bed at night'; 2. 'a drink...'; eye-wash 1. a liquid for washing the
eyes; 2. something said or done to deceive somebody; eye-opener 1. enlightening or surprising
circumstance; 2. (US) a drink or liquor taken early in the day.

Classification.
A. according to the semantic relationship between components: coordinative and subordinative:
fighter-bomber, Anglo-American; stone-deaf (adj.), age-long (adj.).
Coordinative compounds may be:
a) reduplicative: goody-goody, fifty-fifty, hush-hush;
chit-chat, zig-zag, sing-song, clap-trap, walkie-talkie, helter-skelter.
b) additive: a queen-bee, a secretary-stenographer, a bed-sitting room. Clock-tower or girl-friend -
additive or subordinative?
B. according to the order of their components: syntactic and asyntactic. Asyntactic: red-hot, bluish-
black, pale-blue, rain-driven, oil-rich. Syntactic: blue-bell, mad-doctor, blacklist.
C. According to the nature of bases: compounds proper and derivational (pseudocompounds)
compounds : door-step, age-long, baby-sitter, looking glass, street-lighting, handiwork, sportsman vs
long-legged; a breakdown, a kill joy
.

Lecture 11. Paradigmatic Relations between Words in English: Synonymy

Synonymy is a relation of semantic equivalence.
Words are synonymous not as such, but in some of their meanings, e.g. disappear, vanish, fade.
Disappear: get out of sight. Fade: 1. lose colour, freshness or vigour. Flowers soon fade when cut . 2. to
disappear out of sight or memory. As evening came the coastline faded in the darkness. 3. to decrease
in strength. The conversation faded. Vanish: suddenly disappear, go out of sight. The thief disappeared in
the crowd.
The wealth of synonyms in English is partly accounted for by extensive borrowing. A synonymic *
E.g.‘see’: see, behold, descry, espy, view, survey, observe, notice, remark, note, discern, perceive;
contemplate. Native: see, behold; Latin: contemplate. The rest are loanwords from French.
Main patterns of synonymic sets in English:
a)a double-scale pattern:
- native & Latin words, e.g. bodily – corporeal [ko:’poriel]; brotherly - fraternal.
- native & French, e.g. answer - reply.
b)a triple-scale pattern : native, French & Latin/Greek:
begin/start – commence - initiate
to ask - to question - to interrogate
to end - to finish - to complete
to rise - to mound - to ascend
belly - stomach - abdomen
teaching - guidance – instruction

A triple-scale pattern is a sum of two double-scale patterns.

The difference between synonyms of different origin may be both stylistic and semantic, cf.
smell, stink, stench, bouquet [bu:’kei], fragrance, aroma, redolence[’redoulence] strong
(sometimes specific) fragrance;
trip, journey, tour.

The difference between synonyms has a social significance, cf.: Therefore, you, clown, abandon,
which is in the vulgar leave, - the society - which in the boorish is company - of this female - which in the
common is woman; which together is abandon the society of this female, or clown, thou perishest; or to
thy better understanding diest; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death
(W.Shakespeare 'As you like it', Act 5, Scene 1, the jester Touchstone to a country fellow William).
Exceptions (native words are poetic, borrowed are neutral): dale - valley, deed - act, fair -
beautiful.
Coexistence of synonyms: tube – underground – metro.

Other sources of synonyms:

a)borrowings from dialects: clover - (Ir.)shamrock, liquor - (Ir.) whiskey; girl - (Scot.) lass, lassie;
charm - (Scot.)glamour.
(Glamour [glamour ]– alteration of old English grammar, fr. the popular association of erudition with
occult practices]).
1. a magic spell.
1. a romantic , exciting and often illusory attraction; esp. alluring or fascinating personal attraction

b)borrowings from American English: trick - gimmick; dues - subscription; trunk call - long
distance call; wireless - radio.
c) word-forming processes
- a simple verb - versus a phrasal verb, e.g. choose - pick out; abandon - give up; continue - go
on; lift - pick up; postpone - put off, etc.
- a borrowed noun - a noun derived from a phrasal verb: arrangement - layout; resistance - fight-
back; conscription - call-up, etc.
- a simple verb - a combination of a noun stem with a verb of generic meaning,e g.: to laugh - to
give a laugh; to walk - to take a walk. Not to confuse with: to give a lift; to give smb. quite a turn, etc.!
 - a long word vs its shortened variant, e.g.: memorandum - memo, microphone - mike, etc.
- direct nominations vs euphemisms, e.g.: drunk - merry; drunkenness - intoxication; sweat -
perspiration; naked - in one's birthday suit; pregnant - in a family way. Euphemisms help new synonyms
appear.
Only the double-scale pattern (with its variant, a triple-scale pattern) and the pattern ‘a simple
verb – a phrasal verb’ are English-specific. The rest have parallels in Russian:
а) согласиться - выразить согласие; обрадоваться - проявить радость; предположить -
высказать предположение.
б)Телевизор - телик; видеомагнитофон - видик, видак; читальный зал - читалка;
психиатрическая больница - психушка.
в) уборная - туалет, пьяный - навеселе; беременная - в интересном положении.

Pairs of synonyms can be used for stylistic purposes, i.e. to make speech more expressive, e.g.
wear and tear; pick and choose. Some have characteristics of set expressions (idiomatic phrases or
phraseological units): Alliteratiion, rhythm and/or rhyme: hale and hearty; with might and main;
nevertheless and notwithstanding; stress and strain; rack and ruin; really and truly; hue and cry; wane
and pale; act and deed. Some are pleonastic pairs (stress the idea by repetition only), e.g.: by leaps and
bounds; pure and simple; stuff and nonsense; bright and shining; far and away; proud and haughty, etc.

A synonymic dominant is semantically the simplest member of a synonymic set, able to express
the meaning common to all members o f the set, the most neutral of them, syntagmatically the freest, e.g.
hope in the set hope, expectation, anticipation. shine in the set shine, blaze, flash, glint, glare, gleam,
beam, sparkle, twinkle, scincillate, glitter, glisten, glow, flicker, shimmer, glimmer.
Synonymic dominants are used in set expressions: hope against hope; lost hope; pin one’s hope
on smth.

LECTURE 12. PARADIGMATIC RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDS IN ENGLISH: HYPONYMY,

ANTONYMY, AND SEMANTiC FIELDS

Hyponymy: a relation of a hierarchical type (relation of inclusion), e.g.

Animal vehicle
/ | \
wolf mouse fox, etc.
train car bicycle
The opposition of a general term to individual terms / of a classifier to members of a group / of a
hyperonym to hyponyms.
Individual terms contain (entail) the meaning of the general term plus their individual meanings.
Hyponymical relations within synonymic sets, see shine.
A method to establish hyponymic relations: lexical stepwise decomposition.
A tendency of English is to use a more general verb (a hyperonym), whereas Russian tends to
use a more specific one, cf.: My house is on the bank of the river - мой дом стоит на самом берегу
реки.
Stone was on the bottom of the boat - Cтoyн сидел на дне лодки. Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a
manager clerk roused him - так он просидел полных 10 минут, пока старший клерк не разбудил его.
etc.

The difference between hyponymic sets in different languages, cf:

Engl. Russian
Meal ---0---

breakfast lunch dinner supper завтрак обед полдник ужин

Antonymy is the relationship of contrast.

absolute antonyms (formed by root-words): right - wrong, good - bad;
derivational homonyms: honest - dishonest, hopeful - hopeless.
Ways of forming derivational antonyms:
a) prefixation (a productive means. Negative prefixes: dis-, il-, im-, in-, ir-, un-, e.g.: dishonest – not
honest, unhappy - not happy, impolite, irregular, intransitive.
Syntactic negation is weaker than negation by the negative prefix and the latter is used to strengthen the
former, e.g.:‘I am sorry to inform you that we are not at all satisfied eith your sister. We are very much
dissatisfied with her’ (Ch. Dickens).
b) Suffixation as a (non-productive) means of producing antonymy. -less substitutes -ful, e.g.: hopeful -
hopeless, useful - useless.
selfish - selfless, BUT in actual speech selfish - unselfish, cf.:
I had many reasons both selfish and unselfish, for not giving the unnecessary openings (B.Shaw)

The difference between Russian and English derivational antonyms:

a) Compare the negative particle and negative prefix
Эта лужа не глубокая, а совсем мелкая.
Это неглубокая река. vs
The success of the campaign was in disuniting the ruling party.
This measure did not unite the provinces.

Semantic fields

Closely knit sectors of vocabulary characterized by a common concept constitute semantic fields.
Examples: KINSHIP (father, mother, son, to marry, to divorce, to give birth to, to be born to, etc.);
PLEASANT EMOTIONS (joy, happiness, enjoyment, gaiety, to enjoy, to be glad, to be pleased, pleasure, etc).
Members of a semantic field are not synonyms; they are different parts of speech having a common
semantic component (a common denominator). Synonyms, antonyms , hyper-hyponymic sets can be
brought together into one semantic field.

Semantic fields differ in different languages, e.g. COLOR in Russ.a and Engl. : blue vs синий and голубой;
PARTS OF BODY: Engl. hand, arm – Russ. рука; Engl. leg, foot – Russ. нога, etc.
Kinship terms: Engl. mother-in-law – Russ. свекровь, теща.
The word meaning can be determined only if the stucture of a semantic field is known.

LECTURE 12. WORD GROUPS.

• Structural Types of Word-Groups
Words combine with other words into word-groups, e.g. a red flower, from the horse’s mouth, etc.
- Endocentric word-groups vs exocentric word-groups
Endocentric word-groups have the same distribution as one of its members (which is central), i.e. the
group can be substituted by its central member, e.g. black bird (He saw a bird / a black bird)
Exocentric word-groups have different distribution from its members, i.e. none can be regarded central.
E.g. side by side. All the group can’t be substituted by one of its members.
- Predicative word-groups, i.e. equivalent to a sentence (John is working) vs non-predicative (a hot iron).
Non-predicative: subordinative (the front door) and coordinative (day and night).
- According to their headwords: nominal (a bright smile), adjectival (easy to read), verbal (to write a novel,
to run fast). The position of the headword is not important: courage to fight – great courage .
• Meaning of Word-Groups.
- Lexical and grammatical (structural) meaning.
-- The lexical meaning of a word-group is a combined meaning of the component words, e.g. a reliable
friend: reliable ‘such that can be trusted’+ friend ‘somebody one knows well and likes, but who is not a
relative’.
The meaning of a word-group is not simply the sum total of the meanings of its components: the
meanings of words in the word-group are interdependent, and the meaning of the word-group
predominates over the meanings of its constituents. E.g. old ‘one who has lived for many years and is no
longer young’ ; boy ‘a male child’. An old boy ‘a man who used to be a pupil in a particular school or
college’ . cf He arrived on the board through the old-boy network. Man ‘a male human being’. An old man
‘one’s father’ or ‘one’s husband’, cf The first letter I got from my old man told me how proud he was of
me; her old man has run off with someone else.
Word-groups are semantically inseparable. This can be proved by their connotations or stylistic reference.
Old, boy, and man are stylistically neutral; an old boy or an old man are colloquial.
-- Grammatical (structural) meaning of a word-group is the meaning conveyed by the pattern of the
arrangement of its components. Word-groups containing identical components are different in meaning
because of the difference in their arrangement, cf light blue ‘shade of color’ – blue light ‘light that has the
color blue’.
Some linguists argue that the structural meaning is more important than the lexical meanings of the
components, because in one and the same structure different lexical units aquire identical interpretation,
cf all day long, all summer long, all sun long ‘as long as there was sun; a day ago, a year ago, a grief
ago.
• Syntactic structures (formulae) and patterns of word-groups.
- Syntactic structure, or a formula, of a word-group is the description of the arrangement of its
components as parts of speech, e.g. red flower, good friends, bright pupil - A+N; to hammer a nail, to
break a cup, to ring the bell – V+N, etc.
- A pattern of a word-group is its description with respect to the head word, e.g; to get through the door
(to get+ through+ N); to break the cup (to break + N).
In different patterns the meaning of the head-word is different, e.g. to break+N, to break into+N, to break
+ Adj (to break the cup / the window ‘to turn into pieces’; to break into the house ‘to get into by force’; to
break loose ‘to become free’).
In one the same pattern the meaning of the head word can be different, e.g. to break+N: to break the
window – to break the record ‘to set a new record’ – to break the habit ‘to stop doing smth’.
• Motivated and non-motivated word-groups.
Word–groups are lexically motivated if the meaning of the group can be deduced from the meaning of its
components, cf red rock ‘rock of red colour’ and red herring ‘smth of no importance used to take one’s
attention away from the problem’.
They are syntactically motivated if the meaning of the whole is dependent (is deducible from the order
and arrangement of the components). Red rock is motivated by the pattern ‘quality + substance’. Red
herring is not motivated.
One and the same word-group can be polysemous , with one meaning that is motivated , and one that is
not, cf red carpet ‘carpet of red colour’; a special ‘treatment given to very important or honorable visitors’.

Non-motivated word-groups are called phraseological units.

LECTURE 9. PHRASEOLOGY
• Motivated and non-motivated word-groups
Lexically motivated word-groups: heavy weight, take lessons
Lexically non-motivated: red tape ‘beaurocracy’, , ‘serious or solemn part in a theatrical play’;
take place ‘occur’.
• Degree of motivation can vary, cf: Black dress ‘a dress of black colour’ – black market ‘a secret
market’ – black death ‘a form of plague epidemic in Europe in the 14th century’; apple sauce ‘sauce
made of apples’ & ‘nonsense’.
• Non-motivated word-groups: phraseological units (American and British linguists use the term
idioms).
The treatment of phraseological units in dictionaries: foreign dictionaries do not discriminate between
idioms, unconventional English and slang; word-groups, sayings and proverbs
• Synonymous terms: phraseological units, set-phrases, idioms, word-equivalents. Set phrases
emphasize stability; idioms – lack of motivation (idiomaticity) . the term ‘idiom’ is synonymous to
‘phraseological unit’; word-eqivalents stress the structural inseparability and the capacity of certain
word-groups to function as a single word.
• Definitions of phraseological units:
o non-motivated word-groups that cannot be freely made in speech but are ready-made. The
concept of ready made is subject to criticism: various linguistic phenomena can be
described as ready-made, ranging from words to sentences. (proverbs, sayings), set-
phrases, such as Good morning, and quotations.
o word-groups with a non-variable or stable context. Free word-groups allow the substitution of
the members, e.g. a small room, a small business , a small farmer. The meaning of on
emember is determined by the meaning of the other, cf small (small room) ‘space’; small
business, small farmer ‘capital’. Small hours ‘the early hours of morning from about 1 a.m to
4 p.m.’, small beer ‘weak ‘ – only in combintion with these nouns.
Exceptions: to wag one’s tail, to shrug one’s shoulders. The contexts are stable , yet, the word-
groups are not idiomatic.
• Classifications of phraseological units can be based either on the degree of motivation / or on the
syntactic function of units in speech.
the degree of motivation: Fusions, phraseological unities, phraseological combinations / collocations.

o Fusions: the highest degree of component blending, e.g. tit for tat ‘зуб за зуб, око за око’.
Fusions are language specific and do not lend themselves to translation
o Phraseological unities are motivated, e.g. To stick to one’s guns ‘to keep to one’s views /
opinion, etc., to refuse to change one’s views or opinions in the face of the opposition’.
 Phraseological unities allow synonymous substitution, e.g. , are transklateble; some of them
are international, cf to know the way the wind is blowing.
o Phraseological combinations (collocations): motivated, with one component in the direct
meaning and others in figurative meanings: meet the demand, meet the necessity, meet the
requirement ‘соответствовать требованию’ и т.п.
Commentary: the degree of idiomaticity is evaluated differently by different speakers. To take tea, to take
care are idiomatic for the Russian speaker; non-idiomatic for the French speaker, cf prendre du thé,
prendre soin. For the English idiomatic are such groups as red tape, or kick the bucket ‘die’.

the syntactic function: set expressions are classified into those functioning
- as nominal phrases: cat’s paw ‘somebody ewho is used for the convenience of а
cleverer and stronger person (cf Russian чужими руками жар загребать);
- as verbs: pick and choose; to give one the bird ‘to fire smb’
- as adjectives: high and mighty; as mad as a hunter
- as adverbs: by hook or by crook, before one can say Jack Robinson ‘very quickly’
- as interjections: Hang it all !
- as utterances: Take it easy! His bark is worse than its bite.

• Peculiarities of phraseological units: their stability is enhanced by euphonic qualities (rhythm, rhyme ,
reiteration, alliteration), imagery, expressive means, and the use of obsolete words.
o Euphonic qualities:
- Rhythm: far and wide / far and near ‘in a very big number of places’ or ‘over a very
large distance’ e.g. The drum was heard far and wide by fits amd starts ‘irregularly’,
heartand soul ‘with complete devotion to the case’.
- Reiteration: on and on
- Rhythm and alliteration: part and parcel ‘an essential and necessary part of smth’,
with might and main ‘with all one’s powers’ , rack and ruin ‘ a state of neglect and
collapse’. Cf the effect of the substitution: safe and sound – secure and uninjured.
- Rhyme : out and about ’able to go out’ , used about a convalescent person; high and
dry ’left without help’, orig. about a ship.
- Obsolete words: in phras. Units consisting of two words, one is an obsolete word,
synonymous to the other, e.g.: main (a syn. for might, ‘strength’); hue (a syn. for cry);
leave in the lurch (lurch ‘ambush’ засада ); not a whit ‘not at all’ (whit ‘the smallest
thing imaginable’, not used outside the phrase).
- Rhyme and synonyms: fair and square ‘honest’, by hook or by crook ‘ by any method’

o Imagery: simile, contrast, metaphor, synonymy.

- Simile: as like as two peas; as old as the hills and older than the hills;
- Contrast: by wear or tear; for love or money
- Metaphor: to swallow a pack of lies
Combinations of features: as good as gold; as please as Punch; as fit as a fiddle ; as cross as two sticks
(based on a pun)