LECTURE 2

Etymological Characteristics of Modern English Vocabulary

Questions for discussion

1. Native vocabulary items.

2. Causes and ways of borrowing.
3. Assimilation of loanwords.
4. Classification of borrowings according to the degree of assimilation.
5. Translation and semantic loans.
6. Etymological doublets.

Literature: Arnold pp. 252 – 262.

Antrushina pp. 34 –59.
Rayevska 214 – 242.

It is common knowledge that the English vocabulary, which is one of

the most extensive among the world’s languages, contains a great number
of words of foreign origin. Explanations for this should be sought in the
history of the language which is closely connected with the history of the
nation speaking the language.
English has borrowed so extensively from other languages so that the
English lexicon is like a large mosaic consisting of the vocabulary of many
old languages such as Latin, Greek, German, French, and Scandinavian. A
branch of linguistics that studies the origin and history of words is called
etymology (etymon “original form” and logos “study of”). Thus, to give
an etymological survey of the vocabulary of a given language means to
characterize it from the view point of the origin and development of its
different layers, the historical causes of their appearance and the
comparative value of native and borrowed elements in the language.
In spite of the very large number of foreign words, much has remained
of the original language. Borrowings have enriched the English lexicon but
at the core English remains a Germanic language.
In the linguistic literature, the term “native” is used to denote words,
which belong to the original English word stock as known from the earliest
available manuscripts. Native words are subdivided into those of the
Common Indo-European origin & those of the Common Germanic origin.
Words of Indo-European origin are very ancient. They appeared many
thousand years ago and belong to various important semantic spheres
 – Names of celestial bodies: the sun, the moon
– Kinship terms or names of family relations: father, mother, sister,
brother
– Numerals: one, two, hundred
– Names of trees: birch, poplar, tree
– Names of animals and birds: wolf, cat, goose
– Words denoting various qualities and properties: old, young, cold,
hot, dark
– Words denoting common actions: go, see, hear, do, sit, stand, eat,
drink
– Parts of the human body: foot, nose, lip, heart

As English belongs to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European

family borrowings do not alter the genetic inheritance of it and have not
destroyed the Germanic and Old English inheritance.
A large part of core vocabulary is composed of words of the common
Germanic origin, which have equivalents in German, Icelandic,
Norwegian, Swedish and other languages but which are not to be found
in Romance and Slavonic languages. Some of the main groups of
Germanic words are the same as in the I.E. group:
– Names of colours: green, white
– Names of seasons: winter, summer
“Spring” is a new word, O.E. word for it was “lent”. “Autumn” came
from French.
– Names of plants, trees and fruit: oak, fir, ash, berry, grass
– Names of domestic animals: hen, cow, goat
– Names of meals: bread, egg, meal
– Parts of the human body: arm, hand, finger, toe, head
Here also belong most pronouns, auxiliary and modal verbs,
prepositions and conjunctions.
Words of the common Germanic origin can be recognized by the
following morphological features:

1. One syllable or two syllable roots

2. Words beginning with the letters w (wave), wh (wheat), wr (write), tw
(twelve), dw (dwarf), sw (sweet), y (young, yard)
3. Words with such combinations as sh- (fish), th (that), tch (watch), ng
(song), dg (bridge)
4. Letter combinations: ew (new), aw (saw), ee (see), oo (foot)
 Many native words have undergone transformations in the course of
time, they acquired new meanings and became polysemous ones.
Finger – a part of a hand; part of a machine; an index; a unit of
measurement; a hand of a clock.
Highly polysemantic words are such native words as be, hand, bag, go,
have, get etc. Many native elements are used as the basis for creating new
phraseological combinations.
heel – to take to heels
to show a clean pair of heels
the heel of Achilles
the iron heel
heels over head
to set one’s heel upon sb
Native words have a great word-building power and possess large
groups (clusters) of derived and compound words.
E.g. wood: woody, woodland, woodcraft, wood-pecker, wood cutter,
woodwork, etc.

Up to 70% of the vocabulary of the English language consists of loan

words. This is due to the fact that in its 15 century long history recorded in
written available manuscripts English came into contact with many
tongues. Foreign words generally come into language through the
following ways:
1. As a result of language cross.
2. As a result of political, cultural and economic relations between nations.

The Roman invasion, the adoption of Christianity, Scandinavian and

Norman conquests of the British Isles, the development of British
colonialism and trade and cultural relations served to increase immensely
the English vocabulary.
When a country is invaded the language of the conqueror and the
conquered cross and they begin to struggle for supremacy. As a result of
this struggle one language gains victory and therefore preserves its word
stock and its grammatical system. But at the same time it is enriched at the
expense of words borrowed from the language of the conquered. English
experienced language crosses twice: first with Scandinavian languages in
the 10th century, later with French in the 11-14th centuries. In both cases,
the English language was victorious though it has considerably enriched its
vocabulary with many French and Scandinavian words.
 The term “assimilation” is used to denote a partial or total conformation
to the phonetic and morphological standards of the receiving language and
its semantic system.
In the course of time borrowings underwent certain changes in the
adopting language and became assimilated. Three types of assimilation are
singled out:
1. PHONETIC ASSIMILATION comprises changes in the sound
system. Sounds alien to the norms of English are adjusted to make
them fit into phonological system of the recipient language. E.g.
long /ɛ/ in French words is replaced by the diphthong /ei/ in English
(e.g. buffet, cafe). The accent was gradually shifted in foreign words
to the first syllable so that such French words as honour, season,
reason are accented in the same way as father, mother.
2. GRAMMATICAL ASSIMILATION. Borrowings lost all their
former grammatical categories and inflexions and acquired the new
ones: писанка – pysanka, a noun, has a plural form (-s) and a poss.
case.
3. LEXICAL ASSIMILATION. Consists in changes in the semantic
structure of a loan word. Some words may acquire new meanings in
English: Ital. umbrella came into English in the meaning of
‘sunshade’, but it also came to denote ‘getting shelter from the rain’.
Sometimes a primary meaning may become a secondary one and vice
versa. Sc. fellow penetrated into English in the meaning of ‘friend,
companion’. Now its basic meaning is ‘a boy’ or ‘a man’.

Some borrowed words can be easily recognized as foreign but the others
look very much like native elements. This is because of the differences in
the degree of the assimilation. The degree of assimilation depends upon a
number of factors:
1. The time of the borrowing means that the older the borrowing the
more it follows English accentuation and pronunciation: dish,
window, chair.
2. The frequency of usage. How often the borrowing is used in the
language, and the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is
assimilated.
3. The way through which borrowings came into English: orally or
through writing. Oral loan words are more rapidly assimilated than
those which came through written speech.
 According to the degree of assimilation, all borrowings are divided into
three groups: fully or completely assimilated; partially assimilated;
unassimilated or barbarisms.
Fully assimilated borrowings do not reveal any signs of foreign
origin. They fully correspond to the norms of English spelling,
pronunciation, grammatical structure: e.g. Lat. wine, street, plum, cheese,
wall, pear
Fr. table, chair, figure, face, finish, matter
Scand. husband, fellow, wing, root, take, die

Some borrowings underwent semantic assimilation. e.g.: sport in

O.Fr. meant ‘entertainment’, ‘making merry’. In English it acquired a new
meaning ‘outdoor games or activities’. Later on it was borrowed with this
meaning by other languages and became international. So, all the words of
this group do not differ from native elements phonetically and
grammatically.

Partially assimilated loanwords are subdivided into those which are

not assimilated phonetically, grammatically, graphically or semantically.
Borrowings, which are not assimilated phonetically, are recognized
through:
- the alien sound /ʒ/ in some French borrowings (pleasure, measure,
treasure);
- some French borrowings have retained their stress on the last syllable,
e.g. police, cartoon, demand, contain.
- some French borrowings retain special combinations of sounds, e.g. the
combination of sounds /wa:/ in the words: memoir, boulevard, bourgeois.
- in some French borrowings the final consonant is not pronounced:
buffet, ballet, bomb, comb, climb, coup
Borrowings, which are not assimilated grammatically, are
represented by nouns of Latin and Greek origin, which preserved their
former plural form: datum – data, phenomenon – phenomena, crisis –
crises.
Borrowings can be partly assimilated graphically.
In Greek borrowings the letter “y” can be spelled in the middle of the
word (symbol, synonym).
The diacritic mark is sometimes preserved: cliché, café.
Some words still have peculiar letter combinations:
ph denotes the sound /f/: phoneme, morpheme
ps denotes the sound /s/: psychology
ou → /u:/: boulevard, camouflage, bourgeois
qu → /k/: question, bouquet
ch → /k/: cholera, chemistry
ch → /ʃ/: chef, machine, chic, parachute
Words, which are not assimilated semantically, denote objects and
phenomena alien to the British way of life. They denote some real
characteristics of the life of a certain nation. They are:
1. Names of clothes: sombrero (Mexican), sari (Indian), sarafan (Turkish),
bolero (Spanish).
2. Names of professions and titles: rajar (Indian), shah (Persian), tzar
(Russian).
3. Names of foreign vehicles: brychka (Polish), rickshaw (Chinese).
4. Names of food: borshch (Ukrainian), kvas (Russian), paprikash
(Hungarian), goulash (Hungarian), kebab (Persian), tikka-masala
(Hindi).
Non-assimilated words or barbarisms haven’t adopted the norms of
English and they have equivalents of Anglo-Saxon origin. E.g.: tête-à-
tête (face to face), vis-à-vis (eye to eye); adieu – good bye; affiche; ad
hoc (‘not planned in advance’); eureka; ciao, dolce vita.

Translation loans are words or word phrases, which are formed from
the material of a given language but after the foreign pattern by means of
literally, morpheme for morpheme translation:
Lat. lingua materna (mother tongue)
It. prima ballerina (first dancer)
Germ. Wunderkind (wonder child)
Germ. Meisterstück (masterpiece)
Fr. par coeur (by heart)
Fr. ça la vans sans dire (it goes without saying)
Fr. le commencement de la fin (the beginning of the end)
Sp. el momento de la verdad (the moment of truth)

Semantic loan is the development in a loan word of a new meaning

under the influence of a related word in another tongue. It can happen
when we have two relative languages which have common words with
different meanings.
e.g. the verb ‘dwell’ which in Old English had the meaning
«wander» acquired its new signification under the influence of a
Scandinavian word dvelja with the meaning «live».
The more changes, which a loan word undergoes depending on the
period of its penetration, are the main sources of existence of etymological
doublets. Etymological doublets are two or more words, which were
derived by different ways from one and the same basic original word.
They differ to a certain degree in their form, meaning and current usage.
E.g. Lat. discus was borrowed by English twice: at first it happened
in O.E. in order to form the present-day word “dish”, which is fully
assimilated. Many centuries later this word penetrated in English again.
This time to form the noun “disc”. It is not fully assimilated because the
period of phonetic changes was already over and the meaning of the word
wasn’t so vital.
Shirt (Engl.) - skirt (Scand.) came from the same root but their
phonemic shape is different and their lexical meanings are also different
but easily associated – they both denote articles of clothing. We can also
single out etymological triplets: lat. hospital – fr. hostel – fr. – hotel.
 LECTURE 3

The Structure of English Words. Word Building in English.

1. The morphological structure of a word.

2. The morphemic analysis of word structure.
1. Word building in English:
a/ productive ways of word-formation (affixation, conversion, word composition,
shortening).
b/ non-productive ways of word-formation.

Literature: Arnold pp. 77 – 165.

Ginsburg pp. 89 – 160.
Rayevskaya pp. 46 – 116.

Most words in English have a composite nature and are made up out of smaller
significant (meaningful) parts which are called morphemes.
A MORPHEME is an indivisible two-faceted language unit. Like a word, it is
an association of a definite meaning with the definite sound form but unlike a word it
is not autonomous, i.e. it can occur only as a constituent part of a word, never
separately. The morpheme may have different phonemic shapes in different contexts.
They are called ALLOMORPHS, they are positional variants of the same stem or
suffix. E.g. please, pleasure, pleasant; clear, clarity; indifferent, independent, illegal,
irregular; distribution, discussion.
Morphemes can be classified in accordance with two criteria semantically and
structurally.
Semantically they are classified into lexical and grammatical.
Lexical morphemes consist of roots and affixes. A root morpheme is the
semantic centre of the word, it is the same for all words that make up a word family.
e.g. heart, heartily, hearten, dishearten, heartless, heart-broken, sweetheart, kind-
hearted etc.
Affixes (suffixes and prefixes) are word building elements which change or
modify the meaning of the root morpheme: like – dislike, green – greenish.
Grammatical morphemes are represented by inflexions which carry only a
grammatical meaning of the word: write, is writing, was written… .
Structurally morphemes fall into free, bound and semi-bound. Free
morphemes are those which coincide with the stem or root morpheme and are
homonymous to a separate word. In other words, free morphemes are forms that
occur alone. E.g. friend, friendly, friendship; play, player, playing, playful.
Bound morphemes may be used only as constituent parts of a word and never
occur independently. All affixational morphemes are bound: -ness, -ize, re-, dis-.
Root morphemes can be both free and bound. E.g. theor- (theory, theoretical) barbar-
(barbarism, barbarian).
 Semi-bound or semi-free morphemes can occur both as free and bound. They
behave more like affixes than like roots. They lost their semantic and structural
identity with the stem.
E.g. man-made (free), chairman (semi-affix); sailor (bound) and seaman (semi-
bound); sleep well (root) and well known (semi-bound).
From the point of view of their morphological structure there exist three
structural types of words in English: simple (root-words), derived and compound.
Simple words (root-words) are those which contain only one root morpheme
(child, grow, build);
- derived words contain a root morpheme plus derivational affixes (rewrite,
considerable);
- compound words contain two or more root morphemes. They are further
subdivided into compounds proper, and derived compounds depending on whether
they have a derivational suffix or not: e.g. railway, suitcase, blackboard (proper
compounds); blue-eyed, bold-headed, cinemagoer (derived compounds).
Both simple and compound words may exist in full and abbreviated forms: doc
= doctor, hand-beg = H-beg, Christmas = X-mas.

Word-formation in English

The vocabulary of any language is constantly growing. It is achieved by the

means of the vocabulary and semantic extension. By vocabulary extension we mean
word formation and borrowings from other languages, by semantic extension we
mean the development and changes in semantic structure of a word which may result
in appearance of homonyms.
Word formation is the process of coining new words from the material
available in the given language after a certain semantic and structural pattern. There
are productive and non-productive ways of word building in English.
Productive ways are those which can be used whenever it is necessary to form a
new word. Here belong affixation, conversion, word composition and shortening.
Affixation is the formation of new words by adding affixes to some root
morpheme. It is divided into prefixation and suffixation. Both suffixes and prefixes
modify the lexical meaning of the root morpheme but there are a few points of
difference between them.
1. Prefixes precede the root and suffixes follow it. E.g.unhealthy.
2. Suffixes unlike prefixes form a word belonging to a different part of speech.
Cf. unkind & kindness (adj. & noun).
3. Suffixes and prefixes can be classified along different lines:
Suffixes – according to a part of speech (noun building: -er, -ment, -ness, -ship);
adjective building suffixes: -full, -less, -ous, -able, etc.
Prefixes are classified according to their meaning: negative (un-, dis-); repetition
of the action (re-); opposition (anti-, counter-, un-); excessiveness or insufficiency
(extra-, over-, mis-, under-). They change and concretize the meaning of a word: to
overdo – to do too much; to misdo – not to do properly.
4. Prefixes are semantically more independent than suffixes.
Cf. reread & reading
 There are cases of polysemy, synonymy and homonymy among English
prefixes and suffixes. E.g. –ER it means the doer of an action or a device or an
instrument (cutter, boiler, blotter, ruler, cooker). But it also may have collective
meaning: a reader (хрестоматія).
Synonymous affixes are represented by different suffixes denoting the doer of
an action: driver, runner; typist, journalist; engineer, profiteer; president; servant;
musician, magician, librarian, sailor, tailor.
Homonymous affixes participate in the making of words of different parts of
speech. E.g. EN ( adj. ) – wooden, woolen; ( verb ) – shorten, strengthen; ( noun ) –
oxen. FUL ( adj. ) – careful, beautiful; ( noun ) – spoonful, handful.
From the point of view of their productivity all affixes are divided into living
and dead.
Dead affixes are those which can be singled out in a word only with the help of
a special etymological analysis. They have fused with the base of the word and lost
their independence completely. E.g. -t: flight, weight; -red: hatred; -le: bundle; -lock:
wedlock.
Living affixes are divided into productive and non-productive. Productive
affixes possess the ability to form new words in the particular period of language
development: -er, -ness, un-, -ed, -ly, -ish. The term ‘non-productive’ refers to the
affixes which are unlikely to be used for the formation of new words. e.g. -ous, -th,
fore- (famous, depth, foresee).

Conversion (zero derivation) is a process of the production of new words by

which a word belonging to one word class is transferred to another word class
without any change of form, either in pronunciation or spelling. Conversion of verbs
into nouns and nouns into verbs is extremely productive in English. E.g. empty – to
empty, water – to water, air – to air.
In fact, this word-formation process occurs so regularly that many scholars
prefer to consider it as a matter of syntactic usage rather than as word-formation
(Bauer 1983).
There has been much discussion about the nature of conversion since 1891
when Henry Sweet introduced the term ‘conversion’. Some linguists apply it only to
common nouns built from the proper names: Ohm, Watt, Ampere.
There’s also a point of view on conversion as a morphological and syntactic
word building means. It implies the change of the syntactic function alongside the
change of a paradigm. E.g. she is such a dear – What a dear little child!; I need some
paper – I paper my room every year.
a The pig will jump over the stile!
b What a jump!
In What a jump! The verb is converted into a noun by ‘zero derivation’, i.e.
without using any affix. Here the position of the word is important. If we see the
subject the pig and the auxiliary verb will before the word jump, we know it must be
a verb. But when jump occurs after the indefinite article a we know it must be a noun.

There are four types of conversion:

1. Substantivation: forming nouns from different parts of speech. Eg. to say – a say;
to call – a call; to try – a try; criminal – a criminal.
2. Verbalization: better – to better; slow – to slow; a bottle – to bottle; paper – to
paper.
3. Adjectivization: standing people – standing rule.
4. Adverbalization: that film – that dull.
a She is a fast runner.
b She runs fast.
a He is a slow bowler.
b Go slow.
Conversion is especially productive in the formation of neologisms: e.g. star –
to star; screen – to screen; data-bank – to data-bank; network – to network.
Conversive relations can be observed between three, four and more words in English.
E.g. down: as a noun (e.g. we all have our ups and downs; to have a down on
someone).
as a verb – The workers downed all their mugs of ale.
as an adjective – Let’s meet at the down platform.
as a preposition – The stream ran down the slope.
as an adverb – Two trees fell down during the storm
To sum up, conversion is highly productive because of small number of affixes
and the absence of part of speech markers.

Compounding (word-composition) is the way of word-building when a word

is formed by joining two or more stems to form a new lexical item. E.g. room-mate,
moon-light, shoe-string, ashtray, strong-minded, old-fashioned, book-seller, script-
writer.
Classification of English compounds
1. According to the parts of speech compounds are subdivided into:
a) nouns, such as: baby-moon, globe-trotter, blackberry, blackberry, hothouse,
pick-pocket;
b) adjectives, such as: free-for-all, metallic-green, heart-broken, hard-working,
blue-eyed, soft-hearted, new-born;
c) verbs, such as: to sweet-talk, to honey-moon, to baby-sit;
d) adverbs, such as: indoors, outside;
e) prepositions, such as: into, within, throughout;
f) numerals, such as: fifty-five.
2. According to the type of composition compounds are divided into:
a) neutral, which are formed by juxtaposition (by joining together two stems
without any joining morpheme), e.g. ball-point, to windowshop, blue-bell, heartache,
raincoat.;
b) morphological where components are joined by a linking element: vowels
«o» or «i» or the consonant «s», e.g. craftsman, sportsman, statesman, handicraft,
sportsman, speedometer, Anglo-Saxon;
c) syntactical where the components are joined by means of functional words,
e.g. matter-of-fact, up-to-date, free-for-al, daughter-in-law, forget-me-not, devil-may-
care.
3. According to their structure compounds are subdivided into:
 a) compounds proper which consist of two stems, e.g. to job-hunt, tip-top,
doorstep, film star, sportsman, glossy red;
b) derivational compounds, where besides the stems we have affixes, e.g.
videoplayer, long-legged, blond-haired;
c) compound words consisting of three or more stems, e.g. cornflower-blue,
eggshell-thin, wastepaper-basket;
d) compound-shortened words, e.g. boatel, magalog, motocross, maths-
mistress.
4. According to the relations between the components compound words are
subdivided into:
a) endocentric compounds where one or both components is the semantic and
the structural centre (the ‘head’) of the compound. e.g. in boyfriend we have two head
roots, i.e. a boy who is a friend, and a friend who is a boy; or in armchair there is
only one head root; this is a modification structure, i.e. a chair with arms. In English
the head is normally the item on the right hand of the compound;
b) exocentric compounds where neither root is the ‘head’. e.g. pick-pocket, i.e.
one who picks pockets. Literally, a turncoat is a person who ‘turns his or her coat’.
But the word means ‘renegade’ (ренегат, перебіжчик, віровідступник).
5. According to the meaning of the whole compound we can point out
idiomatic and non-idiomatic compounds. Cf. a blackboard – a black board.
In idiomatic compounds, the semantic unity of a compound word is often very
strong. It means that the meaning of the whole is not a sum of meanings of its
components, e.g. to ghostwrite, dragon-fly, buttercup etc.
Non-idiomatic compounds are not different in their meaning from the
corresponding free phrases. Cf. a blackboard – a black board. e.g. airmail, to
bloodtransfuse, swimming pool, sunlight, apple-tree

Shortening
Shortening (clipping) is the type of word-formation device in which a new word
is formed by clipping the existing lexical items with the aim to create shorter words
convenient for the use in speech. The shortened word is always colloquial, or even
slangy.
There are four types of word shortening in English:
1. Fore-clipping (aphaeresis), where the front of the word is trimmed: telephone –
phone; airplane – plane; tobacco – baccy; parachute – chute. Many first names
were shortened in aphaeresis way: Rebecca – Becky, Elizabeth – Beth, Albert –
Bert.
2. Middle-clipping (syncope), where the middle of the word is dropped: vegetarian –
veg, madam – ma’am; fantasy – fancy; market – mart; spectacles – specs; mister –
Mr.
3. Back-clipping (apocope), where the end of the word is trimmed: doc, lab, gym,
veterinary – vet; mountain – mount; advertisement – ad; high fidelity – Hi-Fi; high
technology – Hi-Tech, wireless fidelity – Wi-Fi.
4. Mixed type (clipping both the initial and final part of the word): refrigerator –
fridge; influenza – flu; detective – tec; avanguard – van.
 The shortening of words is taken to its logical conclusion in acronyms and
abbreviations. When words are pronounced with the names of the letters of the
alphabet, they are called abbreviations. Examples of abbreviations: CD (“compact
disk), VCR (“video cassette recorder”), COD (Cash on Delivery), WTO (World
Trade Organisation), BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation).
But when words are pronounced like individual lexical items, they are
acronyms as in VIP, UNO, NATO, UNESCO, AIDS (Acquired Immunity
Deficiency Syndrome). These examples have kept capital letters, but many acronyms
simply become everyday terms such as pin (“personal identification number”), laser
(“light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”), radar (“radio detecting
and ranging”), and zip (“zone improvement plan”).
A special group is represented by graphical abbreviations which are used in
written speech mostly: PhD, BA, MA, pp. (pages), ft (feet), Aug (August), Tue
(Tuesday) etc.

Sometimes shortening influences the spelling of the word, e.g. “c” can be
substituted by “k” before “e” to preserve pronunciation and “x” in some other cases,
e.g. mike (microphone), coke (coca-cola), fax (facsimile), teck (technical college),
trank (tranquilizer), etc.
Graphical abbreviations are the result of shortening of words and word groups
only in written speech while orally the corresponding full forms are used. They are
used for the economy of space and effort in writing.
Several semantic groups of graphical abbreviations can be singled out:
a) days of week, e.g. Mon – Monday, Tue – Tuesday;
b) names of months, e.g. Apr – April, Aug – August, Sep – September;
c) names of counties in the UK, e.g. Yorks – Yorkshire; Berks – Berkshire;
d) names of states in the USA, e.g. Ala – Alabama, Alas – Alaska, Calif –
California;
e) names of address, e.g. Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr.;
f) military ranks, e.g. capt – captain, col – colonel, sgt – sergeant;
g) scientific degrees, e.g. BA, MA, DM – Doctor of Medicine;
h) units of time, length, weight, e.g. f/ft (foot/feet), sec. – second, in. – inch, mg. –
milligram.

Non-productive processes of word-building are:

1. Blending (telescoping) – the process of coining a new word by joining two

clipped stems:
e.g. smoke + fog is smog (polluted fog); binary + digit is bit; motor + hotel is motel;
positive + electron is positron; transfer + resistor is transistor; television + broadcast
is telecast, chunnel is channel + tunnel.
This word-formation method has grown in popularity in recent decades. Many
ordinary words are blends. They are hybrid words rather than simple roots. Blends
tend to be more frequent in informal style in the registers of journalism, advertising
and technical fields.
2. Change of stress – the formation of new verbs from nouns by shifting the stress:
subject – to subject; object – to object; record – to record, contract – to contract,
decrease – to decrease, protest – to protest, progress – to progress, import – to
import.

3. Back-formation – the formation of a new word (usually a verb) by removing a

real derivative or supposed suffix: housekeeper – to housekeep; babysitter – to
baby-sit; sculpture – to sculpt; enthusiasm – to enthuse; donation – to donate.

4. Reduplication – the production of new words by repeating the stems in part

(partial reduplication) or in entirety (full reduplication): ping-pong, murmur, hush-
hush, puff-puff, shilly-shally, ding-dong, tittle-tattle (idle chat, gossip), tick-tock
(the sound of a large clock ticking), roly-poly.

5. Sound interchange. It was very productive in O.E. Today there are only some
remnants of this process. It involves vowel-interchange or consonant-interchange:
advice – to advise, food – to feed, speech – speak, life – to live, close – to close.
Sound interchange helps to differentiate words of different parts of speech:
practise – practice, believe – belief, prove – proof, etc.

Sound imitation – forming new words which reproduce natural sounds. They are
emotionally coloured. There are such semantic groups as
a/ sounds of animals, birds, insects: mew, roar, hiss, buzz, twitter.
b/ words imitating the sounds of people: whisper, giggle, groan, babble.
c/ words imitating the sounds produced by water: splash, bubble.
d/ sounds made by metallic objects: clink, tinkle, clang.
e/ words imitating forceful motion: clash, crash, whip, whisk.

In spite of the fact that borrowings cover 70% of the essential vocabulary it
has never been the most important means of enriching the English vocabulary.
Word formation has always been and still is much more important and its role
shouldn’t be underestimated.
 Lecture 4

Main Problems of Semasiology

• The notion of a word.

• Approaches to the study of word meaning.
• Types of word meaning. Lexical meaning. Denotation &
connotation.
• Word meaning & polysemy. The semantic structure of polysemantic
words.

Literature: Arnold pp. 27 – 60.

Антрушина pp. 99 – 113.
Ginsburg pp. 13 –29.

It is one of the most complicated problems to give a definition of a

word because the simplest word has many aspects. Being a certain
arrangement of phonemes, it has a certain sound form. Besides every word
has a certain morphemic structure because it is an arrangement of
morphemes. When used in speech it has a certain grammatical form, which
signals various meanings. Thus, being the central element of any language
system a word is a sort of focus for the problems of phonology, lexicology,
morphology and syntax. It is also studied by other sciences that have to do
with language and speech: philosophy, psychology, sociology.
Correspondingly, there are numerous definitions of the word and this is
natural since any definition depends on the aims of the scholar and the line
of his approach.
An American linguist L. Bloomfield was the first to suggest a formal
definition of the word. He contrasted the word with other significant units:
the morpheme as the smallest meaningful unit and the syntagma (structure)
consisting of more than one word. For him, a minimal form is a morpheme
which may occur alone, that is a free morpheme. Thus, a word is a
minimal free form.
The word is described as a unit of a language alongside of other
units, morphemes, word phrases and sentences. It is a unity of form and
concept, or to be more exact of the sound form and a particular meaning
capable of a particular grammatical employment.
The main function of many languages is to carry meaning. A branch
of lexicology, which studies the problem of meaning is called
SEMASIOLOGY or LEXICAL SEMANTICS. In present-day linguistic
theory, there is no generally accepted definition of meaning. There are
different approaches to the study of word meaning. It can be studied
through:
1. establishing relations between words and the concepts they denote.
2. observation of various functional usages of a word in speech.
So linguists distinguish between two basic approaches to the problem
of meaning: REFERENTIAL & FUNCTIONAL.
REFERENTIAL approach states that meaning is connected with the
referent i.e. an object or phenomenon or relations between them in the
reality, which are referred to by a word. The meaning is therefore defined
as a certain reflection in our mind of objects or relations that exist in
reality. Referential approach distinguishes between three closely connected
components with meaning, that is
1) the sound-form of the linguistic sign,
2) the concept underlying this sound form and
3) the referent, i.e. the part or aspect of reality to which the linguistic sign
refers.
The best known referential model of meaning is called the "semantic
triangle". Originally this triangular scheme was suggested by G. Frege.
Later on, Ogden and Richards adopted this three cornered pattern with
considerable modification.

CONCEPT

SOUND FORM REFERENT

Let me explain this. For example, the sound-form of the linguistic
sign [ǽpl] is connected with our concept of ‘an apple’ which it denotes and
through it with the referent, i.e. the actual apple. Thus, the FORM is
associated with the referent through CONCEPTS in the minds of speakers
that capture the essence of things. The diagram implies that the meaning is
a correlation between the sound-form of a word, the underlying concept
and the concrete object it denotes.
The question arise: in what way does the meaning correlate with
each element of the triangle and in what relation does meaning stand to
each of them? Let’s identify the relations between the sound-form and the
meaning, the concept and the meaning, the referent and the meaning.
1. It is easily observed that the sound form of the word is not
identical with its meaning. There is no inherent connection between the
sound cluster [d/\v] and the meaning of the word dove. The connection
between them is conventional and arbitrary. On the one hand, the words
have different sound forms but express the same meaning, e.g. dove,
голуб, gołąb etc. On the other hand, the same sound form is associated
with different meanings in different languages, e.g. [buk] in Ukrainian
means a kind of a tree; in English it is a written or printed work bound into
a cover.
2. The meaning and the concept. The meaning of the word though
closely connected with the underlying concept is not identical with it.
Concept is a category of human cognition. Concept is the thought of an
object that singles out its essential features. Concepts are the result of
abstraction and generalization. Thus, they are almost the same for the
whole humanity at a given period of its historical development. The
meanings of words, however, are different in different languages.
Compare: the concept of “a building for human habituation” is expressed
by HOUSE, ДІМ; “fixed residence of family or household” – HOME,
ДОМІВКА. These examples show that the meanings of words that express
those concepts may vary in different languages.
3. The meaning and the referent are not the same things either.
Firstly, meaning is linguistic, whereas the referent is beyond the scope of
language. The same object can be denoted by more than one word of a
different meaning, e.g., the referent “CAT” can be denoted by the words
“cat”, “animal”, “Tom”, “this”, “pet”, etc. All these words have the same
referent but different meanings.
The conclusion is obvious: meaning is not to be identical with any of
the three points of the triangle, but closely connected with them.

Functional approach.
The functional approach maintains that the meaning of a linguistic
unit can be studied through its relation to other linguistic units.
This approach is often described as contextual as it is based on the
analysis of various contexts. The context determines which of the possible
meanings of a polysemantic word is used. Analyzing the function of a
word in linguistic contexts, we conclude that meanings are different (or the
same). And this fact is true of different meanings of one and the same
word. For example, we can observe the difference of the meanings of the
word take if we examine its functions in different contexts, take the tram
(the taxi, the cab, etc.) as opposed to to take to sb. or smth. (to start to like
someone or something).
We know, for instance, that the meaning of the two words move and
movement is different because they occupy different positions in relation to
other words. (To) move, e.g., can be followed by a noun (move the chair),
preceded by a pronoun (we move), etc. The position occupied by the word
movement is different: it may be followed by a preposition (movement of
smth), preceded by an adjective (slow movement), and so on. As the
distribution of the two words is different, we are entitled to the conclusion
that not only they belong to different classes of words, but also their
meanings are different, too.
The meaning in this approach is defined as the sum total of what the
word contributes to different contexts in which the word appears.
e.g. to make
1. to make chair, shelf (= to construct)
2. to make a good teacher, wife (= to become)
3. to make money, friends, enemies (= to get, to
earn)
4. to make smb. do smth. (= to force)

The two approaches do not contradict each other but complement and
both are used in linguistic research.

Types of word meaning.

Word-meaning is not homogeneous. It is made up of various
components. These components are described as types of meaning. The two
main types of meaning are the grammatical meaning and the lexical meaning.
The grammatical meaning is defined as an expression in speech of
relationship between words. GM is the component of meaning recurrent in
identical forms of different words of the same class. These forms may
express the tense meaning (asked, thought, walked); the case meaning
(girl's, boy's, night's); the meaning of plurality (boys, tables, places).
Grammatical meaning is common to all the words belonging to this part of
speech.
The lexical meaning is the meaning proper to the given linguistic
unit in all its forms and distributions. The word-forms go, goes, went,
going, gone possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person,
number, but in each form they have the same meaning 'the process of
movement'.
Lexical meaning has many facets, it means that it is not homogeneous
either. Normally, a distinction is drawn between denotational and
connotational meanings.
Denotational meaning is the lexical nucleus of the word, which is
connected with the referent (denotatum) and the notion the given word
denotes. In other words, denotation is the objective relationship between a
lexeme and the reality to which it refers. David Crystal explains the notion
of denotation in the following way:…………………
 The word-denotation is shared by all the members of the given
speech community, and it enables them to understand it either in process
of oral or written communication. E.g. cat – a small fur-covered animal
often kept as a pet in the house for catching mice.

The other part of meaning is the connotation of the word. It is what

is suggested by or associated with a particular word meaning. It expresses
a personal attitude of the speaker to the object of speech, or it may
characterize the role of the speaker in the process of communication.
Connotations are subjective, they characterize the speaker, his
attitude, they include the vibes and associations the words have, they
include additional properties of words, e.g. poetic, slang, baby language,
casual, colloquial, formal, humorous etc.
Normally, connotation comprises the emotional charge and stylistic
reference. By emotional charge we mean the attitude of the speaker to
what is being spoken about. While examining such words as love ↔
worship; father ↔ dad; dog ↔ doggy; mother ↔ mom; eat ↔ scarf; thin
↔ skinny we cannot fail to observe the difference in emotional charge of
the second word in each pair of words.
In Ukrainian connotative meanings are expressed by different
suffixes In English there are just some of them: -ie/y, -let, -ling, -ette (e.g.
birdie, sonny, piglet, darling, kitchenette).
Stylistic reference indicates the social sphere in which the discourse
takes place, e.g. to ask – to question – to interrogate (neutral style –
literary bookish – scientific); child – kid – infant.
Denotation and connotation are both important to determine word
meaning in a given context.
Consider the following:
SLIDE

Denotational meaning (a Connotational meaning

dictionary definition) (associations)
a film star a famous actor or actress celebrity, cool, very
in cinema films wealthy, good-looking,
glamorous, vain, multiply
married etc.

Polysemy is the capacity for a word to have multiple meanings.

Words having only one meaning are called monosemantic. Monosemantic
words are few in number. These are mainly scientific terms. The bulk of
English words are polysemantic.
Polysemy is used to describe cases when different meanings of the
same word are related to each other. As a rule, polysemy is a result of one
meaning being extended metaphorically over time to create new shades of
meaning (i.e. new senses). Conventionally each of these senses is
numbered and listed under the head word in a dictionary.
This can be seen in the example of coat:
coat a. ‘an outer garment with sleeves for wearing outdoors’
b. ‘an animals covering of fur’
c. ‘a covering of paint or similar material’ (coat of paint, coat of
snow)
The meanings here seem related, and they have the general sense that
means ‘a covering’.

Lexical meaning can also be classified along different lines. If the

meaning of the word is aimed straight at one object we say that it is direct
meaning. If it is aimed not at the referent but at something resembling it in
appearance or function or at something connected with the referent in the
certain way we have to do with indirect, figurative or transferred meaning.