NewArchive / 06 - The main sources of enriching vocabulary

6 - The main sources of enriching vocabulary.

There are two ways of enriching vocabulary:

1. Semantic extension – the appearance of new meanings of existing words (Wds) which may result in homonyms.

2. Vocabulary extension – the appearance of new lexical items (vocabulary units) → they appear mainly as a result of:

• Productive (patterned) ways of Wd-formation

• Non-patterned ways of Wd-creation

• Borrowing from other languages

Semantic extension (SE).

SE of Wds already available in the lang. is a powerful source of qualitative growth and development of the vocabulary (Voc) though it doesn’t necessarily add to its numerical growth → it’s the split of polysemy that results in appearance of new voc. units thus increasing the number of Wds.

Ways of SE:

• A great number of new meanings develop in simple Wds which belong to diff. spheres of human activity. New meanings appear mostly in everyday general Voc:

# a beehive – “a woman’s hairstyle”

a vegetable – “a lifeless, inert person”

• Wds of specialized and terminological type develop non-specialized, non-terminological meanings:

# the technical term feedback developed a non-term. meaning “a reciprocal effect of one person or thing upon another”.

Many new meanings in the sphere of Gen. Voc. are stylistically and emotively non-neutral and marked as colloq. and slang: # juice (US sl.) – “position, power, influence”.

• Scientific and technical terminological meanings appear as a result of specialization:

# to read (genetic) – “to decode”

• New terminological meanings also appear as a result of expansion of the sphere of application – when terms of one branch of science develop new meanings and pass over to other branches

# a general scientific term system in cybernetics developed the meaning “anything consisting of at least two interrelated parts”.

• New meanings also appear as a result of semantic development of affixes:

# the prefix –non developed a new meaning “pretended, pseudo” – non-book, non-policy.

Vocabulary extension.

Productive Wd-formation – one of the ways of forming Wds in present-day Eng. when new Wds are created whenever occasion demands. It’s the most effective means of enriching the Voc.

New Wds that appear as a result of Productive Wd-form. are not entirely new as they are all made up of elements already available in the Lang. → the newness of these Wds is in the particular combination of the items previously familiar to the language speaker → there are no patterns that can be called fully productive.

Productive patterns (PP) in each part of speech, with a set of individual and semantic constraints, serve as a formal expression of the regular semantic relationship between diff. classes of Wds → the existence of one class of Wds presupposes the possibility of appearance of the other which stands in regular semantic relations with it:

# stream → to stream – “to divide students into separate classes according to level of intelligence” (conversion)

The degree of productivity is connected with:

• a set of rigid structural and semantic constraints (the lexical-grammatical class, structural type of bases)

• a certain power of analogy attached to each pattern

The most widely used means are:

• affixation

- prefixation mainly for Vbs and Adjs

- suffixation for nouns and Adjs.

# prefixal negative Adjs are formed after two patterns:

(un- + part I/II →Adj ) – unguarded

(un- +adj →Adj) – uncool

• conversion – gives the greatest number of new Wds in Vbs and nouns.

# timetable → to timetable – “to set a timetable”

• composition – most productive in nouns and Adjs. One of the components of compounds often become a centre of creations by analogy:

# earthquake → birthquake ( =population explosion)

house-wife → house-husband

• back-derivation (back-formation) as a source of new Vbs. The pattern of semantic relationship of the action and its active doer, the action and the name of the process of this action are regularly represented by highly productive nominal patterns with suff’s –er and –ing - (v + -er → N, v + -ing → N):

# baby-sitter → to babysit – the noun was felt as derived and the “corresponding” Vb was formed by taking the suff. or the suffix-like sound-cluster away.

• so-called occasional or potential Wds – built on analogy with the most productive types of derived and compound Wds, easily understood and never striking one as “unusual” or “new”. It often happens that a Wd, sometimes due to social or political reasons, especially prominent and frequent → one of its components acquires an additional derivative force and becomes a centre of a series of lexical items:

# sit-in (n) → to sit-in, sit-inner, kneel-in, ride-in.

Various ways of Wd-creation

The two main types of Unpatterned Wd-creation are:

• lexicalization – various ways of transformation of a Wd-form into a Wd.

The gr. flexion in some Wd-forms (most often the plural of nouns) - # arms, customs – lost its gr. meaning

→ the plural suffix was re-interpreted

→ developed a diff. lexical meaning – “weapons” and “import duties” respectively

→ a complete break of semantic links with the semantic structure of the parent Wds

→ new Wds with a diff. set of gr. features appeared.

• shortening (Sh) consists in substituting a part for a whole.

Distinction should be made between Sh. which results in lexical items and in numerous graphical abbreviations (GA): # Mr. = Mister,

St. = street,

# shortened variants of Latin and French Wds and Wd-groups - i.e.(Lat. Id est – “that is”)

GAs are proper only to written speech (books, adds, letters, etc.) – in reading many of them are substituted by the Wds and phrases that they represent. The abbrs. of Latin and French Wds are usually read as their Eng. equivalents →GAs can’t be considered new lexical voc. units!

Sh. comprises diff. ways of Wd-creation:

1. different types of Lexical Shortening

• Substantivization - transformation of a Wd-group into a Wd.

→ the final nominal member of a frequently used attributive Wd-group drops

→ the remaining Adj takes on the meaning and all the syntactic functions of the noun

→ it develops into a new Wd changing its class membership

→ becomes homonymous to the existing Adj

# a topless: - a topless dress

- a topless dancer

- a bar (стрипбар)

Substantivization is often accompanied by productive suffixation

# one-wing plane → a one-winger

• Acronyms and letter abbreviations – lexical abbrs. of a phrase. Let’s distinguish the difference between them:

Letter abbrs. are mere replacements of longer phrases (names of political parties, famous people, etc.). They are pronounced letter by letter and possess no other linguistic forms proper to Wds.

# DOD – Department of Defense (in the USA)

Acronyms are regular voc. units spoken as Wds. They perform the syntactical functions of ordinary Wds taking on gr. inflexions: # MP – MP’s – MPess (woman-member of Parliament).

Acronyms are formed in various ways:

• from the initial letters of a phrase, which may be pronounced differently:

1. as regular Wds # NATO – [‘neitou]

2. as a succession of alphabetical readings of the constituent letters # BBC

from the initial syllables of each Wd in a phrase

# Interpol – international police

• by a combination of the abbr. of the 1^st or of the 1^st two members of a phrase with the last member undergoing no change at all # V-day – Victory Day

• Blendings are the result of conscious creation of Wds (splinters) by merging irregular fragments of several Wds. Most of them are marked as colloq.

# Medicare from Medical Care

Smog from “smoke” and “fog”

This device is often used to attain punning effect:

# foolosopher echoing “philosopher”

2. Clipping – the creation of new Wds by shortening the Wd of two or more syllables (usually nouns and Adjs) without changing its class membership. Clippings function as independent lexical units with a certain phonetic shape and lexical meaning of their own.

# phone, fridge, lab, etc.

The lexical meanings of a clipping and its source don’t coincide:

# doc refers only to “one who practices medicine”

Doctor denotes also “the higher degree given by university and one who has received it”.

Clippings always differ from non-clipped Wds in the emotive charge and stylistic reference.

Borrowing – are active mainly in the field of scientific terminology.

• Many terms are often made up of borrowed morphemes (mostly morphemes from classical Lang’s – Latin and Greek).

# paralinguistic (para- means “related to, near)

But though these Wds consist of borrowed morphemes they can’t be regarded as true borrowings cuz these Wds didn’t exist either in the Latin or in the Greek Wd-stock. All of them are actually formed according to patterns of Eng. Wd-formation.

• True borrowings from diff. Lang’s as a rule reflect the way of life, the peculiarities of development of the speech communities from which they come.

# kolkhoz

As most of these Wds remain unassimilated in present-day Eng. they are all the time felt as foreign Wds and tend to drop out of the language.

• Loan-translations also reflect the peculiarities of the way of life of the countries they come from. They easily become stable units of the voc.

# self-criticism – калька с русского :)