5. Pick out the archaic words from the words given below and comment on their usage and meaning.

Do, dost, does, you, thee, ye, thou, horse, though, albeit, also, eke, spring, vernal, said, quoth, told, maiden, girl, perhaps, ere, before.

6. State the nature of terms in the following passage:

There was no stock-ticker and no telephone, and the clearing house had only recently been thought of in New York, and had not yet been introduced in Philadelphia. Instead of a clearing-house service, messengers ran daily between banks and brokerage firms, balancing accounts on pass-books, exchanging bills, and, once a week, transferring the gold coin which was the only thing that could be accepted for balances due, since there was no stable national currency.

7. State the type of sub-neutral (colloquial) words in the following examples:

1. I’ve often thought you’d made a corking good actress. (Dreiser) 2) They graduated from Ohio State together, himself with an engineering degree. (Jones) 3) “Poor son of a bitch”, he said, “I feel for him, and I’m sorry I was bastardly”. (Jones) 4) I’m here quite often – taking patients to hospitals for majors, and so on. (Lewis) 5) Can we have some money to go to the show this aft, Daddy? (Hemingway) 6) “How long did they cook you?” Dongere’s stopped short and looked at him. “How long did they cook you?” – “Since eight this morning. Over Twelve hours…” “You don’t unbutton then? After twelve hours of it?” – “Me?..They got a lot of dancing to do before they’ll get anything out of me.” (Howard) 7) Hello, kid! Gee, you look cute, all right! (Dreiser)

7. Determine the functions performed by slang words in the following examples:

1) You right, old buddy. Let’s make it. (Baldwin) 2) “Now, listen”, he said, “I ain’t the kind of joker going to give you a hard time running around after other chicks and shit like that”. (Baldwin) 3) “If you don’t mind, Belinder”, he said, “I’m going to try to nap a little. I’m absolutely bushed.” (I. Shaw) 4) She really didn’t have any idea who this nut could be, or what he was after. (Baldwin) 5) What’s Broadway today? Pimps, whores, drug-pushers, muggers. I don’t blame you for running away from it all. (I. Shaw)

Study guidelines:

Considering the etymological peculiarities of the English vocabulary students should differentiate the terms “source of borrowing” and “origin of borrowing”.

While preparing for the seminar attention should be paid to the examples which will be focused on in practical assignments. Students should find their own examples of translation loans, semantic loans and international words.

For best apprehension of the etymological peculiarities of the English vocabulary, it’s recommended to present them in a diagram in copybooks.

Studying the assimilation of borrowings students are recommended to take into consideration the fact that there are three groups of assimilated words and the term “barbarism” is an equivalent to the notion “non-assimilated words”.

While preparing to this seminar it’s important to pay attention to the close relations between lexicology and stylistics. Both of them deal with words, their meanings, but from different angles.

One of the controversies concerning the differentiation of the English vocabulary is that the division into different vocabulary layers is pretty much relative and the lines of demarcation between common colloquial and neutral and common literary and neutral layers are blurred, since words interpenetrate into each other’s stylistic strata very often. Even some linguists, who clearly see the systematic character of the language as a whole, deny the possibility of systematically classifying the vocabulary. They say that the word-stock of any language is so large and so heterogeneous that it is impossible to formalize it and therefore present it in any system.

One should not underestimate the significance of neutral words since they are the main source of synonymy and polysemy in the English language.

The profound and fundamental investigations having a specific stylistic value belong to I.R. Galperin, I.V. Arnold. While preparing to the seminar students are recommended to use textbooks by the above-mentioned authors, and the textbooks by Y.M. Skrebnev, T.A. Znamenskaya, V.I. Shakhovsky.