Jelisaveta Milojevic

ESSENTIALS
OF
ENGLISH
MORPHOLOGY
EXPOSITION OF CONCEPTS AND
WORKBOOK APPLICA TION

CONTENTS

Foreword ....................................................................
i

1. Basic concepts ......................................................

1
Language and linguistics. - Language : system and
structure. - Language strata. - Language structure. Morphology. -Grammar. - Contrastiveness. - Syntagmatic
and paradigmatic analysis. - Lexical morphology. Inflectional morphology.

2. Morphological structure of English words...........

7

Word. - Lexemes, word-forms. - Morphemes, morphs,

allomorphs. - Identification and classification of
morphemes. -Affixes, prefixes, suffixes. - Derivational and
inflectional affixes. - Markedness. - Roots, stems, bases. Valency of affixes and stems. - Derivational and
inflectional paradigms. - Aims and principles of morphemic
analysis.

3. Productivity.............................................................
23
Word formation. - Transfer of meaning. - Metaphor and
metonymy. - Lexical rules. - Types of lexical rules.
-Properties of lexical rules. - Limited productivity.
-Acceptability. - Diversity. - Semantic open-endedness.
-Recursiveness. - Bidirectionality. - Lexicalization. - Types
of lexicalization. - Phonological, morphological, syntactic,
and semantic lexicalization. - Productivity as a cline. Language creativity. - Lexical innovation. - Neologisms. Nonce-formations. - Obsolete and archaic words. - Stunt
words. -Nonsense. - Phonetic motivation. - Jargonization.
- Analogy in word-formation.

7.
Morphological
processes.

127

49
4. Origin of English words
Native words. - Loan words. - Source of borrowing. - Origin of
borrowing. - Etymology. - Doublets. - Cognates. - False cognates. Assimilation of loan words. - Fully assimilated loan words. - Partially
assimilated loan words. - Not completely assimilated semantically. Not completely assimilated grammatically. - Not completely assimilated
phonetically. - Unassimilated loan words. - Folk etymology. -Anglicisms.
- Pseudoanglicisms. - International words.

5. Lexical semantics....................................................... 65
Word meaning. - Referential approach to meaning. - Types of meaning.
- Conceptual meaning. - Associative meaning. -Connotative meaning. Collocative meaning. - Reflected meaning. - Thematic meaning. Social meaning. - Affective meaning. - Functional approach to
meaning. - Distributional meaning. - Grammatical meaning. Differential meaning. -Part-of-speech meaning. - Hyperbole. - Litotes. Change of meaning. - Nature of semantic change. - Metaphor.
-Metonymy. - Other types of semantic change. - Lexical meaning
relations. - Semantic equivalence and synonymy. -Criteria of
synonymy. - Interchangeability and substitution. -Euphemisms. Dysphemisms. - Pejorative / derogatory words. - Ethnic slurs. - Political
correctness. -Polysemy and homonymy. - Classification of homonyms.
- Graphic and sound-form of homonyms. - Homophony. - Puns. - Word
play. - Bloopers. - Hyponimic (hierarchical) structures. -Taxonomy. Meronymy. - Semantic contrasts and antonymy. - Compatibility. Incompatibility.

6. Methods and procedures of morphological

analysis.......................................................................107
Immediate constituent analysis. - Distributional analysis and cooccurrence. - Transformational analysis. - Componential analysis. Contrastive analysis
Affixation. - Prefixal and suffixal derivatives. - Prefixation.
-Classification of prefixes. - Suffixation. - Classification of suffixes. Inflectional suffixes. - Grammatical categories. -Concord / government /

agreement. - Conversion. - Typical semantic relations. - Partial

conversion. - Compounding. -Structural meaning of the pattern. Meaning of compounds: motivation. - Classification. - Derivational
compounds. -Miscellanea of composition. - Neo-classical compounds.Minor morphological processes. - Shortening. - Initial, final, both-ends
clipping. - Shortening of spoken words. - Graphical abbreviations. Acronyms. -Reduplication. - Blending. -Back-formation.

8. Phraseology .............................................................. 169

Set expressions. - Cliche. - Fixed similes. - Verbal collocations. Idioms. - Proverbs, sayings, and familiar quotations.

9. Stylistic varieties of English vocabulary .................179

Registers. - Thematic groups. -Stylistically marked and stylistically
neutral words. - Functional styles. - Poetic diction. - Colloquial words
and expressions. - Slang. - Netspeak.

10. Regional varieties of English vocabulary...............189

Standard English variants and dialects. - American English. -Irish
English. - Scottish English. - Indian English. - Australian English. Canadian English.

11. Lexicography .......................................................... 205

213
225
228
229
Types of dictionaries. - Main problems in lexicography.

Selected bibliography..............
Selected dictionaries...............
Selected electronic dictionaries
Subject index ...........................

FOREWORD

Essentials of English Morphology: Exposition of Concepts and Workbook Application is meant to be complementary to my previous book:
Word and Words of English: English Morphology A - Z (Belgrade: Papirus, 2000) in the sense that it concentrates on the application side of
theoretical enunciations presented in the dictionary of English morphology terms: English Morphology A - Z. On the other hand, it as an offshoot of the previous book: it builds upon the intellectual capital and the theory presented in it, and it is equally crowded with facts, expertise,
and curiosities.
The book Essentials of English Morphology has two principal interests: firstly, to focus on a word per se, and its relation to other words in
syntagmatic context as well as in the paradigm, and secondly, to concentrate on workbook application coupled with theoretical exposition of
concepts. The book gathers around the following topics: 1. Basic concepts; 2. Morphological structure of English words; 3. Productivity; 4.
Origin of English words; 5. Lexical semantics; 6. Methods and procedures of morphological analysis; 7. Morphological processes; 8.
Phraseology; 9. Stylistic varieties of English vocabulary; 10. Regional varieties of English vocabulary. 11. Lexicography. It is based on over 130
selected references (books and articles published in: the English, Russian, French, German, and the Serbian language) presented in
Bibliography section. The examples come from different sources: from over 30 major English language dictionaries, from poetry and fiction
books in English, from British, American, Australian and Canadian newspapers, from the Inter Net, British radio and television, and, needless to
say, some of the examples I acquired

through personal communication with friends and colleagues

with whom I share fascination with words.
My task has been eased by the help of Professor Thomas F.
Magner (of the Pennsylvania State University) - a wonderful
scholar and a friend whose expertise, devotion, and patience I
have trusted for over twenty years. This time my gratitude goes
to him for his answers to my questions on: word play, puns,
gender, and language style (the title of the book in particular),
and also for some most wonderful examples with which he
generously supplied me. It would be a relief to think that half of
the joy I feel at the moment goes back to him. I also wish to
acknowledge my debt to two scholars who initiated me into the
study of words: Professor John McH. Sinclair (of the University
of Birmingham) and Professor Draginja Pervaz (of the
University of Novi Sad) - I hope this book comes up to their
expectations. I express my thanks to the reviewer, Professor
Vesna Polovina (of the University of Belgrade) and the
language-editor, Mrs. Grainne Orlic for their scrutiny of the
manuscript. My thanks also go to Professor Marica Presic (of
the University of Belgrade), a mathematician and artist, for her
stunning gift cover-design. I shall be more than happy to share
the credit for all that is good about the book Essentials of
English Morphology with all the people I have mentioned so far,
and, needless to say, to keep to myself all the responsibility for
anything that may have gone wrong.
Jelisaveta Milojevic

1. BASIC CONCEPTS

Here is a quotation from Otto Jespersen's book Essentials of

English Grammar (London, George Allen & Unwin,
reprinted 1979, p. 16) where he enunciates his idea about
what language is:
'Language is nothing but a set of human habits, the purpose of
which is to give expression to thoughts and feelings, and
especially to impart them to others. As with other habits it is not
to be expected that they should be perfectly consistent. No one
can speak exactly as everybody else or speak exactly in the
same way under all circumstances and at all moments, hence a
good deal of vacillation here and there. The divergencies would
certainly be greater if it were not for the fact that the chief
purpose of language is to make oneself understood by other
members of the same community; this presupposes and brings
about a more or less complete agreement on all essential
points.'
Comment on Jespersen's definition of language. Pay special
attention to the italicized words and phrases (they are not
italicized in the original text). How does Jespersen's idea about
what language is correlate with what you learn from the
following dictionary definitions of language:
'Language is a body of words and systems for their use
common to a people of the same community or nation [...]; it is
communication by voice, using arbitrary symbols in
conventional ways with conventional meanings; [...] any set or
system of such symbols as used in a more or less uniform
fashion by a number of people who are thus enabled to

communicate intelligibly with one another' (The Random House

Dictionary of the English Language).
'A language is a system of communication which consists of a
set of sounds and written symbols which are used by the
people of a particular country or region for talking or writing in; if
you talk about the language, you mean all the words which are
used in a particular language at a particular time; the study of
the words and grammar of a particular language' (Collins
COBUILD English Language Dictionary).
'Language is human and non-instinctive method of
communicating ideas, feelings, and desires by means of a
system of sound symbols' (OUP Dictionary of Current English)
What do these dictionary definitions have in common? Which of
the definitions is the most simplistic?

Linguistics is the science of language. In what way then

are language and linguistics related?

Language can be looked at from the structural point of view

implying the notions of system and structure. It can be seen
as a system of sub-systems operating on the inventory of
particular structural units. Name language strata. Name
structural units characteristic of each language stratum.

What is morphology? Look the term up in the dictionaries

of linguistic terms and compare these definitions to the
textbook definition given in: Word and Words of English
(Belgrade: Papirus, 2000).
What is grammar? Give different linguistic dictionary and
grammar book definitions of grammar and comment on
them.
How do you understand the definition of grammar saying
that it is the system of rules and procedures formulated as
algorithms operating on the inventory of language units?

What is the grammar of words (see: J. Milojevic: Word

and Words of English, Belgrade: Papirus, 2000)? How does
the system of rules in the domain of lexis relate to the
system of rules operating in the domain of syntax?

Morphology is traditionally divided into inflectional

morphology and word-formation. What is inflectional
morphology? What is word-formation? What principles of
language organization do you think are behind such a
division?

What are demarcation problems concerning the

distinction between inflectional morphology and wordformation? Provide examples. How about hybrid forms,
such as participles and gerunds?

Take a close look at any six grammar books that you can
find in your Departmental library and say how much space
is devoted to inflectional morphology, and how much
space is given to word-formation. Comment on this.

What is meant by language system?

Explain the concepts of system and structure referring to

language.
What is contrastiveness? Illustrate contrastiveness in
morphology.

Explain the importance of the principle of contrastiveness

in morphology and in the domain of lexis in particular.
Illustrate.

What is a minimal pair? Provide illustrations of minimal

pairs in morphology.

What is a syntagmatic chain? Provide illustrations of

syntagmatic chains in phonology, morphology, and syntax.

Having in mind the following definition of the paradigm:

paradigm is a set of language forms which are possible
alternatives at every point of a selectional axis of language
structure provide possible alternatives at every point of the
following syntagmatic strings (e.g. The book is on the table:
a book is on the table; the candle is on the table; the mouse
is on the table; the wallet is on the table; the book lies on
the table; the book is under the table; the book is on the
shelf; the book is on the desk, etc.):

What is a lexical paradigm? Give four examples of lexical

paradigms.

Give four sets of words (i.e. lexical paradigms) which

share the same root morpheme.

Give lexical paradigms which include the words which

share the following root morphemes: sleep, house, man,
tooth, make, happy.

Television encourages passive enjoyment; the tobacco industry

spends vast sums of money on advertising; when women
prove their abilities, men refuse to acknowledge them; every
day television consumes vast quantities of creative work;
camping is the ideal way of spending a holiday; ready-made
clothes are hard to obtain.

Give lexical paradigms which include the words which

share the following prefixes: pre-, re-, de-, over-, under-.,
-dis.

Give lexical paradigms which include the words which

share the following suffixes: -ery, -er, -ly, -y, -ful, -less, -able,
-like, - scape, -oholic.

Add as many examples as you can to the following lexical

paradigms.

What is the minimal number of members which constitute

a paradigm?
Give four examples of two-member paradigms (either
lexical or inflectional).
Give four examples of multimember paradigms (either
lexical or inflectional).

What is an inflectional paradigm? Give four examples of

inflectional paradigms.

Give examples of inflectional paradigms which share the

following grammatical meaning: number, person, case.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

user-friendly, media-friendly, PR-friendly ...

postman, milkman, weather man...
unhappy, unusual, unsportsmanlike...
irregular, irresponsible, irreversible...
nationalize, monopolize, humanize...
glorify, beautify, notify...

7.

8.

2. MORPHOLOGICAL
OF ENGLISH WORDS

STRUCTURE

What is a word? What would be a rule-of-thumb definition

of a word?

Give an orthographic definition of a word. Comment on

it. Provide examples to show that such a definition is
problematic (instances of compounds, of words involving
polysemy and homonymy, instances of idioms and
contracted forms). What are the implications for automatic
speech recognition and machine translation?

How many orthographic words are there in the following

examples:
9.

1. Old people are always saying that the young are not what
they were.
2. Can anything be right with the rat-race?
3. Haven't the old lost touch with all that is important in life?
4. There's no doubt that the motor-car often brings out a
man's very worst qualities. People who are normally quiet
and pleasant may become unrecognizable when they are

behind the wheel. They swear, they are ill-mannered and

aggressive, willful as two-year-olds and utterly selfish.

5.

1. Comment on the problem of 'stops' in a definition of

a word which relies on the pronunciation criterion.
What are the implications relevant for automatic
speech recognition and machine translation?
2.

3. Is a word a language universal? Are there

languages where there are no words?
4.

5. Name other principles upon which a word can be

Other language material, however, can be inserted at

word boundaries (cf. Go home and count your blessings
- Go home immediately and count your blessings - Go
straight home and count your blessings). Give more
examples to show the impossibility of insertion at
morpheme-boundaries and the possibility of insertion at
word-boundaries.
13. Having in mind all criteria upon which a word can be
defined, identify the words in the following text.
14.

defined.

15. Charlie cut the pizza into tiny squares and put each

6.

square on a toothpick. Charlie and Susanna went off to

their room. Charlie was in bed. He sat up and saw that
Raymond was watching TV and eating pizza. Susanna
looked at Charlie with an angry expression on her face.
'Go and talk to him!' she said. 'What for?' Charlie asked.
'Because he's frightened,' Susanna said. 'He's never
been away from Wallbrook before. You've upset him!'
Charlie looked away from her and bit his lip. 7 took
Raymond,' he said quietly, 'and I'm keeping him until I
get my money.' Susanna's eyes widened. 'What
money?' she asked. 'Dad left Ray some money. A lot of
money.' (Leonore Fleischer: Rain Man)

7. Words are elements which have positional

mobility,

8. i.e. they can change their position within a

syntagmatic chain (e.g. / do not know this. - This I
do not know; However, this may not be true. - This,
however, may not be true.) without producing
ungrammatical output. All words do not have an
equal mobility potential. Provide examples to
support this statement.
9.

10. The morphemes as word constituents appear in a

rigidly fixed sequential order, i.e. they cannot
change their position freely without producing
ungrammatical output (cf. dictatorship - *
shipdictator;
uneducated
*educatedun,
*ededucateun, *eduneducate). Give more examples
to prove this.
11.

12. Words are the elements of structure which resist

interruption by the insertion of other language
material (e.g. blessing cannot be interrupted by the
insertion of, say, -er, so *blessering is impossible).

16.

17.

Having in mind all criteria upon which a word can be

defined, identify the words in the following text. Say how
many words there are in every sentence. Identify the
morphemes.
18.

19. 1. She tried to keep an open mind and an open heart on

such subjects: she was open-minded and openhearted. 2. I'd rung up beforehand to book a table. 3.
The table of contents and several papers with different
12

born yesterday, dead wood, a wet blanket, scratch your

head, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on the carpet

charts and tables were scrolled and left on the table.

4. Let sleeping dogs lie and don't trouble trouble till
trouble troubles you have almost the same
meaning. 5. / loved the colour of her hair: she was
amberlievable. 6. Some people say that soaps are
written by the half-educated for the half-witted.
20.

21.

How does the definition of a word work with

reference to phrasal verbs and idioms?
22.

23. Compare the following: put up in the examples: put

up your hand and to put a person up for the night or
to put up with something; fall out in the examples:
the baby fell out of the push-chair and to fall out with
someone; stand on in: don't stand on the chair and
don't stand on ceremony.
24.

25.

Idioms, traditionally described as expressions

whose meaning cannot be inferred from the meanings
of their parts, have to fulfil two requirements: first, that
they be lexically complex, and second, that they should
be a single minimal semantic constituent. All idioms are
elementary lexical units and they exhibit internal
cohesion characteristic of single words; they also resist
interruption and the re-ordering of parts. In the example:
They are selling their films at the festival's market but
they are doing it under the table the words: they, sell,
their, film, at, the, festival, market, but, do, it are
semantically regular components; under the table,
however, is an idiom which is lexically complex but
semantically simplex (its meaning is 'secretly'). Use
the following idioms in sentences of your own. Test the
words for their regularity, position mobility. Apply a
substitution test to show that the idioms are
semantically simplex.
26.

27. blow your top, carry the torch, blow the whistle on

What is word-based morphology? Discuss.

Define word-and-paradigm approach to morphology.

What are lexical words (full words or content words)?

What are empty words (functional words or functors)?
28. Say whether the following examples represent lexical
or functional words:
29.

30. go, concentrate, drip-dry, mass-production, Ruth, glasshouse, if, and, or, beautifully, extravagantly, clergy
person, lest, pretty, the, a, there, their, he, up, down.

Lexical words are open class and grammatical words

constitute a closed class. The number of grammatical
words is finite and that of lexical words is potentially
unlimited. Comment on this.

Words can be mono-morphemic (in which case they are

referred to as simple) or polymorphemic (in which case
they are referred to as complex). Say whether the following
words can be classified as simple or complex. State the
number of morphemes of which the words consist.
31.

32. Elisabeth, tenth, wealth, inseparable, impolite, gobetween, sister-in-law, untreatable, Viking, refer,
recount, reconsider, rephrase, substitutability, troubleshooting, train-spotting, bird-watcher, blue-eyed, flatbottomed, cone-shaped, self-assertiveness, scissors,
microscopic, nanotechnology, fighter-bomber, plentiful,
beautiful, pocketful

What is a lexeme? Comment on the definition.

someone, the whys and wherefores, in the wind, not

13

What does 'arbitrary' mean in reference to a lexeme?

In what form does a lexeme appear in a dictionary?

What is a citation form?

Give citation forms of the following paradigms: live,

lives, living, lived, live and breathe, live (adj.), lives (pi.
of life), you live and learn, live and let live, live it up;
cook, cooks, cooking, cooked, cook (.), too many
cooks, too many cooks spoil the broth, cook the books;
blow, blows, blowing, blew, blown, blow (.), come to
blows, soften the blow, cushion the blow, blow off;
bottom, bottoms, at bottom, bottoms up, bet one's
bottom dollar, tame, tamer, tamest, tamed, taming,
tamely, tameness, tamer.

What is a morpheme? In what way can we say that it is a

language unit that correlates form and meaning?

Divide the words overlordship and unsportsmanlike into

morphemes.

Does a syllable have linguistic relevance?

What is the difference between a morpheme and a
syllable?

34.

What does the word transparent mean in reference

to a lexeme? Illustrate.

Consider the following examples taken from What's in a

Word. A Dictionary of Daffy Definitions by Rosalie
Moscovitch, Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1985.
Comment on the humour that you find in the explanations
(see: word play, pun).

43. p. 9 Caesar: Grab that woman!

44. p. 11 Champagne: artificial window glass (compare:

36. What does the word opaque mean in reference to a

lexeme? Illustrate.

sham pane)

37.

45. p. 12 Condescending: The prisoner is going down

38.

In the following examples say whether we are

dealing with transparent or opaque lexemes.

stairs.
46. p. 31 Maximum: a very fat mother
47. p. 37 Perverse: poetry by a very contented cat
48. p. 51 Zulu: bathroom at the London animal park

39.

40. leakage, drainage, carriage, coverage, coinage;

By which word do we refer to phonological or

orthographic shape of a language unit?

Can morphemes and syllables coincide?

42.

35.

41.

33.

pocketful, bagful, mouthful, beautiful, plentiful,

teaspoonful; ladylike, childlike, businesslike, warlike;
bakery, eatery, refinery, brewery, jewellery, trickery,
weaponry, gadgetry; sophisticated, complicated,
duplicated; bitter, bizarre, bilateral; blackberry,
strawberry, bilberry, gooseberry.

What is a word form?

What are the terms by which we refer to the realization of

a morpheme in speech or writing?

What do morphs and allomorphs have in common?

What are allomorphs or morph variants? Illustrate.

14

Give two paradigms illustrating allomorphs which are

grammatically conditioned.

Give two paradigms illustrating allomorphs which are

lexically conditioned.

Consider the following examples. Identify the

morphemes, morphs and allomorphs. Say which
allomorphs have been phonologically and which
grammatically conditioned.
49. books, members, benches, paths, bathe, bathed,
wanted, stopped, hopped, stronger, longer, longest,
poorer, poorest, love's a fan club with only two fans

50.

51. Consider the following examples. Identify the

morphemes and classify them according to their
meaning, function, and distribution (e.g. worker =
{work}, {er}; {work}: free morpheme, base; {er}: bound
morpheme, derivational suffix; tables = {table}, {s};
{table}: free morpheme, base; {s}: bound morpheme,
inflectional suffix).

How many morphs are there in the word-form /hauziz/?

What lexeme is realized in the word-form /hauziz/? Which
morphemes are realized in the word-form /hauziz/? How
many allomorphs does {house} have?
54. What are they? What kind of a morph is /hauz/? What
conditions the choice of the allomorph?

55.

56.

How many allomorphs of the morpheme {possessive}

are shown in the data? Say whether they are phonetically,
grammatically or lexically conditioned?

57. wuma^n - wum^nz; meibl - meiblz; lu:si - lu:siz;

58. filip - filips; maik - maiks; pit - pits;
59. liz - liziz; dsiis - dorisiz; bla:ntf - bla:ntfiz.

52.

53. crash-landing, semi-productive, semi-skilled, merrygo-round,

stage-manager,
oversimplified,
underestimated,
sophisticated,
three-cornered,
black-eyed,
well-meaning,
overwhelmed,
overwhelmingly, criss-cross, zig-zag, down-hiller,
go-go, lemon-squeezer, salt-shaker, mind-reading,
fighter-bomber, high-jumper, long-jumper, passer-by,
brimful, handfuls, tea-spoonful, kidney-shaped,
house-warming, trouble-shooting, blotting-paper,
half-starved, coldblooded, open-hearted, breaststroker,
good-looking,
better-looking,
wholeheartedly, lookers-on, self-assertiveness, selfopinionated, extra-mural, father-in-law, in-laws,
travel-sick, travel sickness

How many morphs are there in the word-form /pa:5z/?

What lexeme is realized in the word-form /pa:3z/? Which
morphemes are realized in the word-form /pa:Sz/? How
many allomorphs does {path} have? What are they? What
kind of a morph is /pa:5/? What conditions the choice of the
allomorph?

60.

61.

Compare the words in the following groups of examples.

Identify the morphemes. In each case say whether we are
dealing with the same or different morpheme. In which
cases are we dealing with different realizations
62. of one and the same morpheme?
63.

64. impossible - irregular - illiterate - inexpensive; deeper

-longer - cheaper - wider, stopped - hopped; unwanted
-undelivered; worker - maker - baker, worker - deeper,
cheese-slicer - egg-beater, doorstopper - day-tripper,
hairdresser - window-dressing; inseparable - impolite
-illegitimate - irrational
65.
15

70. watches, smashes, reduced, her, him, whom, woman,

66.

What is ablaut? Give four inflectional

paradigms to
67. illustrate ablaut (e.g. ring, rang, rung; seek, sought,
etc.).

What is a replacive morph? Illustrate.

Identify replacive morphs in the following examples:
foot - feet, tooth - teeth, man - men, woman - women,
breed - bred, strike - struck - stricken, shrink - shrank shrunk, sink - sank - sunk.

Give four examples to show that root morphemes do

68. not have grammatical meaning and therefore are not
grammatically marked (e.g. man in ten-man expedition
is not marked for plural number).

this, president's, presidents', will be captured, shut the

box

Derivational morphemes with the same denotative

meaning may differ in connotation only. Illustrate.

What is a discontinuous morph? Illustrate.

What is a zero morph?

What is exponence?

State whether the following is true or false: the morphs are

the exponents of the properties.

Illustrate the following: a single morphological property

realized by several morphs; a number of different
morphological properties realized in a single morph.
71. What is markedness? Explain and illustrate the
distinction that is made between marked and
unmarked.
72.

What is suppletion? What are suppletive forms?

73. What is a marker? What is an overt marker? What is

an exponent? Illustrate.

Provide the suppletive form or forms of: good, bad,

little, ox, child, louse, mouse, tooth, brother.

74.

What is a portmanteau morph? What does the word

portmanteau mean? Identify portmanteaus in the
following examples. (E.g. -s in sleeps signals three
morphemes simultaneously: {third person}, {singular
number}, {present tense}. Pay attention to the instances
of grammatical homonymy (e.g. {ed} in wanted can
mean {past tense}, {indicative}, or {past tense}
{subjunctive}, or {ed} in has wanted {aspect}, {past
participle}).

76.

69.

81. Compare these four pairs of paradigms: tiger - tigers :

75. Explain and illustrate the following: grammatical

markers, semantic markers, stylistic markers,

77. What is the meaning of {'} and {'s} in the examples:

parents', generals', women's, children's.
grammatical categories do they represent?

Which

78.

79. Are there any overt indicators of {past} in the words:

shot, put, beat, bet, burst, hit, let, reset, recast, set,
shed, shut, slit, split, thrust?
80.

swine - swine; beetle - beetles : fish - fish or fishes;

castle - castles: deer- deer; sheep - sheep : reindeer16

94. medicinal,

tribal, sensual, comical, conceptual,

residential, componential, clerical, facial, influential,
emotional, formal, sensational, clinical

reindeer. Which members of the paradigms are

marked for plural number and which are not?
82.

83. What is syncretism? Illustrate.

84.

95.

96.

A unique morph is one which only occurs in a single

combination of morphemes (e.g. cran in cranberry, bil in
bilberry; monger in fishmonger or monger in warmonger).
Add some more examples to the cranberry and fishmonger
paradigms.

85. Two members of a grammatical paradigm can be

realized by homonymous word-forms (e.g. played
as a form of a regular verb represents two different
morphological concepts: 'past simple' and 'past
participle'). Give more examples to support this.
Give some examples of irregular verbs which exhibit
no syncretism.

97.

98.

What is a base in reference to word-formation?

Illustrate. Identify bases in the following words:

86.

99.

87. Two members of a lexical paradigm can be

100.

oversimplified, underestimate, superman, extrasensory, extraordinary, externalize,

ill-equipped,
illegitimate, ill-tempered, inconsolable, joyriding,
sleeplessness, maladjustment, malnourished, opennecked,
v-necked, open-mindedness, palatable,
reinforcing, redistributed, summing-up, looker-on, topdrawer.

realized by homonymous word-forms (e.g. mop

as a noun and mop as a verb; also change as a
noun meaning
88. 'difference', and change as a noun meaning 'the money
you receive when you pay for something with more
money than it costs'). Discuss the following examples:
89.

90. Your small change makes big change. He mopped

the floor. You can find the mop in the corner.
Remote corners of the Earth. He was cornered
and could not escape. I bottled him, that's what I
did! Bottled in Scotland. Not many banks are on
the banks of the river which flows through our town.
Don't trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.
91.

92.

What is an empty morph? Among the following

examples there are those which contain surplus wordbuilding elements which do not realize any morpheme.
Identify these examples and these elements (e.g. in the
word factual is a surplus element which does not
realize any morpheme whereas in personal there is no
such element).
93.

What is root in reference to word-formation? Illustrate.

In words which are composite there can be two or more

roots. Illustrate.

Sometimes the root can be an obligatorily bound morph

(e.g. tele in telephone) or there can be two bound morphs
as roots (e.g. microscope). Provide more examples.

101.

102.

Identify roots in the following examples:

103.

104.

neo-classical, untouchables, overdo, nationalize,

unimaginable, oversimplified, biosphere, technophobe,
Egyptologist, megazoo, neuroscience, neologism,
unsupervised, unmanned, extraterrestrial, terracotta,
outmanoeuvring, outdistanced, thimbleful, typify,
17

117.

workers, dishwashers, woman's, children's,

prettier, simplest, washing, parading, untouchables,
disambiguates, disambiguated, lawn-mowers, lawnsprinklers, lookers-on, passers-by, blah-blahing.

unaccountable,
unbelieving,
unequaled,
unemotional, unearthly, unilateral, vaporizing,
verbalized, vice-chancellors, walkabouts, weariest.
105.

106.

The root has both synchronic and diachronic

relevance. Here are some examples of some common
Latin roots and the examples containing these roots:

What is a word family? Illustrate. Identify the rootmorphemes. What is a word cluster?

Give a list of words constituting word families gathered

around the following root-morphemes: bag, gun, farm, help,
kind, head, sleep, wash, house, man, love, make, body,
keep, climb, break, dance, cut, shop, drink, fight, find, hunt,
play, run, sea, sell, spy, stop, sweep, swim, walk, work,
write, house, room, stone, water, paper, day, shoe, door.

Define lexical valency (or collocability). Demonstrate how

aptly the following words are combined with other words to
give collocations (e.g. make: make money, make love,
make a telephone call, make your day, make it, make
friends, make a line, make a circle, make a group, make an
offer, make an arrangement, make rules, make laws, make
a loan, make a grant, make a donation, make a day of it,
make a night of it, make the best of something, make a
name for yourself, etc.)

107.

108.

sped, meaning: 'see, look' in: respect,

suspect, prospect, introspection, introspective,
inspect

109.

110.

press, meaning: 'press, push' in: pressure,

impress, impression, suppress, depress, express,
oppressive, oppressor

111.

112.

vert, meaning: 'turn' in: divert, introvert,

convert, revert
113.
Think of other words based on each of the
three roots listed above.
114.

115.

Work out the meaning of the following words:

support, oppose, eradicate, inspect, revert, divert,
postpone, reduce, deduce. Pair these words with the
following: uproot, look into, put off, stand by, go against,
follow from, cut down, turn aside or from, go back to.

The following words, which seem unrelated, derive from

the same Latin root and involve the idea of seizing:
prison, prize, pry, apprehend, comprehend, comprise,
enterprise, surprise. The words: quietus, quiet, acquit,
quiescent, acquiesce are all descendants of the same
common root. Find out which.
What is stem in reference to word-formation? Illustrate.
Identify stems in the following examples:

118.

119.

question, take, do, give, real, realize, kill, good,

god, going, green, dog, money, month, moon, side,
near, old, hand, on, at, by, one

120.

121.

Define grammatical valency. Demonstrate the

aptness of the following words to appear in specific
syntactic patterns (e.g. make: make a point (V + O); make
clear (V + Adj.); make you do something (V + + Inf.);
make yourself understood (V + refl. + Past Participle),
etc.)
122.

116.
18

123.
124.

uncomfortably, unnaturally, unofficially, unpleasantness,

unwillingly, unwillingness, unaltered, unbeaten, unbuilt,
undisturbed, uninviting, unloved, unrehearsed, unwritten,
untrusting, etc.):

125.

126.

take, do, have, meet, come, turn, act, kick,

catch, bring, change, laugh, put, fly, more, bad,
good.

Demonstrate the aptness of the following

affixes to appear in new words (e.g. un : unable,
unacceptable,
unalive,
unalterable,
unaware,
uncomfortable,
ungentlemanly,
unhappy,
unacceptability,
unacceptably,
uncertainly,

127.

-ability, -able, after-, -age, all-, -ary, counter-,

cross-, de-, dis-, double-, -ed, -, -er, -ery, extra-, fore-,
-ful, full, half-, -ing, -ify, -ism, -ize, -let, -less, -ly, -ness,
-scape, self-.

19

128.

129.

20

3. PRODUCTIVITY

What is word-formation?

What is meaning transfer? What is its relevance for

language productivity and word-formation?

Would you say that there is meaning transfer in the

following example: troika (from Russian) having the
meaning of (1) 'a group of three persons, nations, etc.
united in power or acting in unison', and (2) 'a Russian
vehicle drawn by three horses harnessed side-by-side'?

What is a metaphor? Illustrate.

What are petrified metaphors? Illustrate. Comment on the

examples such as: weak-kneed, hard-fisted, open-hearted,
red-handed, blackmail, gray economy, etc.

A metaphor is a powerful mechanism which triggers

neologisms. Give some examples to illustrate this (e.g.
snow- a very informal word for cocaine).

Illustrate the use of metaphor in everyday language (e.g.

Victor is a pig; she is the apple of my eye).

21

Give some examples of weather metaphors (e.g. clear the

air, feel under the weather, to save for a rainy day, etc.),
animal metaphors (e.g. pig oneself, fat cat, foxy, rat

race, etc.), colour metaphors (e.g. green fingers, red

herring, to be in the red, white lies, etc.)

1. 404 meaning 'someone or something missing'; it comes from

the Internet jargon and alludes to the error code given by the
Web server when a page you are looking for is not found;
the word could be metaphorically extended so that it can
be used in some completely unrelated contexts. Compare
the following sentences: He went to look for her in her office
but got a 404, and By the time I came back to my desk my
computer 404-ed.

Here are some metallic words used as metaphors.

Leaden adj. 1. made of lead (literal meaning); 2. heavy; 3.
lifeless, inert, lacking energy; 4. dull, gray in colour; leaden
v. 1. to make dull or sluggish. Brassy adj. 1. made of or
resembling brass (literal meaning); 2. resembling the sound
of brass instruments; 3. brazen, bold, impudent; 4. showy,
pretentious. Find out the meaning of the following: silver
bullet, silver lining, gold brick, gold rush, golden handcuffs,
golden handshake, golden parachute, nerves of steel, iron
curtain, iron will, the Iron Chancellor (Bismarck), the Iron
Lady (Dame Margaret Thatcher). According to the examples
given what does yellow metal symbolize? The gray metal is
used as a metaphor for what?

How do you understand these three idiomatic expressions:

born with a silver spoon in your mouth; every cloud has a
silver lining; and every silver lining has a cloud.

Here is another metallic word used as metaphor. Read the

passage (The New York Times; 26 Jan 2003) and work out
the meaning of tin ear.

2. 24/7 comes from the business world and it indicates

complete availability (e.g. He needs 24/7 attention); literally
24/7 refers to the number of hours in a day and the number
of days in a week.

3. 780 degrees turn comes from geometry and when used as

metaphor it means 'complete refusal' (e.g. The government
went 180 degrees on their strategy).

Use: 404, 24/7, and 180 degrees as metaphors. Use

them in different contexts.

Having in mind the concept of semantic transfer explain

the potentially paradoxical sentence: Red Square was
white. In what way would you resolve the paradox?

24

'Ward's credibility is now under siege. Previously, he

had drawn criticism for failing to disclose that he was a
member of Augusta National Golf Club, which prohibits
women from becoming members, a policy in direct
contradiction with the Olympic movement. While
Olympic committee volunteers have shown poor
management skills, management types have had a tin
ear for effectively running a sports union.'
Here are some numeric terms used as metaphors:

What is metonymy?

Metonymy triggers the formation of many new words. Give

some examples to illustrate this.

In what way can metonyms be classified? Illustrate.

Here is a list of some metonyms. Identify the category to

which they belong (e.g. words derived from the names
22

of people, things named after their place of origin, the

names of measures, etc.):

Tesla, kelvin, oxford, champagne, decibel, joule,

newton, lawrencium, boycott, cardigan, daltonism,
macadam, mackintosh, reglan, sandwich, rugby, bikini,
astrakhan, medusa, platonic, volcano, malapropism.

What are eponyms?

Give some examples of the words derived from a person's

surname (e.g. boycott, mackintosh, sandwich, etc.)

There are a number of stereotyped and cliche phrases

containing eponyms (e.g. Achilles' heel, Adam's apple,
Oedipus complex, etc.) Give more examples.

The word tantalize, v. tr. meaning 'to torment by showing

something desirable but keeping it out of reach' derives
from Tantalus in Greek mythology. Tantalus, a king of Lydia,
was condemned to stand in Hades chin deep in water and
under fruits that receded whenever he tried to drink water or
eat the fruit. Find out where the following eponyms derive
from.

Abraham's bosom, Achilles' heel, Aladdin's cave,

America, Amazon, Bloody Mary, Christmas, Cyrillic,
Davis Cup, Quixotic.

There are a few sentences with explanations of some

eponyms. Fill in the blanks using appropriate eponyms.

24

1 A is a man who tries to seduce many women. The

name is based on the legendary fourteenth-century
Spanish aristocrat and womaniser,________.
2.________________A doubting is someone who is
sceptical,

particularly someone who refuses to believe until he has

seen proof of something. The expression alludes to one
of Jesus's apostles, ________, who refused to believe in
Christ's resurrection.
3.____________The word
derives from Eros, the
Greek god of
love.
4.
, the conventional expression said as two people
part, was originally a contraction of the phrase 'God be
with you'. The word_______was substituted for the name
God by analogy with the expressions good day and good
night.
5. The wandering people known as__were thought at
one time to have come from Egypt, and so were called
Egyptians. In time, this came to be shortened to
Gyptians, from which came the present word________.
6._ is a trademark used to describe a type of
vacuum cleaner.
7._______________The phrase__ and is used to describe
a
person who has two separate personalities, one good and
the other evil.
8.___A is an instance of the unintentional confusion of
words that produces a ridiculous effect. The word comes
from the name of the character Mrs Malaprop (the French
mal a propos).
9.
__________________________________________________

Something may be described as being___________if it

is trivial or trite. The expression derives from the name of
the simple-minded cartoon character____________created
by the American film producer Walt Disney.
10.____An
is a long quest or wandering that is full of
adventures. The word comes from the _____________, the
ancient Greek epic poem by Homer.
11._____
box is a source of great troubles; if it is
23

opened, then difficulties that were previously unknown or

under control are unleashed.

palm meaning 'a tree with long pointed leaves resembling an

outstretched hand', a rule of semantic transfer):

12. Someone who is carried away by the impracticai pursuit

of romantic ideals and who has extravagant notions of
chivalry is sometimes referred to as__________.

Toponyms are place names (e.g. Oxford, Cambridge) or

words derived from names of places (e.g. ghetto,
chartreuse, Samaritan). Ghetto, meaning 'a situation or
environment characterized by isolation, inferior status, bias,
restriction' is a typical example of meaning transfer, of how
a word may come to mean something entirely different as it
travels through time: first, it meant 'a foundry for artillery',
then it was the name of the Venetian island, then when
Jews were forced to live there it came to mean 'isolated
area, isolated people'. Chartreuse means: 1. 'light, yellowish
green', and 2. 'liqueur, usually yellow or green' named after
La Grande Chartreuse mountain where this liqueur was first
made. What is the story behind Samaritan and Good
Samaritan? What is the story behind Jericho (meaning: 'a
place out of the way; a place of concealment') often used in
the phrase go to Jericho?

In what way are the rules which account for the creative
aspect of the lexicon referred to?

What are the types of lexical rules which explain lexical

productivity?

Classify the following examples according to the type of

lexical rule (a rule of morphological derivation (involving:
addition, subtraction or composition), a rule of conversion, a
rule of semantic transfer) which explains the way in which
they have been created (e.g. divorce + > divorcee, a rule
of morphological derivation; soldier (n.) > soldier (v.), a rule
of conversion; palm meaning 'the inside of your hand' >

visionary, greenery, predetermine, drip-dry, dry-clean,

oversimplify, overgeneralize, Burmese, Nepalese,
accessible, digestible, linguistic, genetics, foolish, gobetween, consumerism, vandalism, ladylike, vice-like,
frequently, cradle-snatcher (meaning 'someone who
marries somebody much younger than himself), crane
(meaning
'machine
for
lifting'),
multi-layered,
weatherman, well-adjusted, stage-manage, massproduce,
bikini,
window-shopping,
partying,
honeymooner, mackintosh, cardigan.

Explain the properties of lexical rules, such as: limited

productivity,
diversity,
semantic
open-endedness,
recursiveness, bidirectionality, and petrification.

A process (word-forming or inflectional) is said to be

productive if it can produce new words and word-forms.
Different processes are productive to a different degree:
some are fully productive (like some inflectional
processes), some are semi-productive (like word-forming
processes), and some are no longer productive. Name
some processes which are fully productive. Give some
examples of semi-productive processes. Name some
suffixes which have stopped being productive and which
have no synchronic relevance.

There are certain restrictions on productivity (nonlinguistic and linguistic). Illustrate.

Limitations on productivity can be purely linguistic, such

as phonological or morphological. Illustrate.

Explain and illustrate actual acceptability of lexical entries.

What is potential acceptability? Illustrate.

24

24

etc.). Apply different rules to the following entries to

generate other words: man, play, drive, home, harm, pain,
white, black, keep, house, major, worm, wine, happy, make,
conserve, business.

Say whether the following examples are: actually

acceptable, potentially acceptable or unacceptable.

deepen, moisten, blacken, whiten, auburnen, beigen,

off-whiten, coalen, bronzen, ashen, earthen, golden,
leaden, oaken, silken, wooden, aluminiumen, waxen,
woollen.

The morphological component of language generates

many words some of which are actual words (which make
up the explicit lexicon) and which are part of the implicit
lexicon together with the words which have been filtered
out since they have never been used by the speech
community. Compare the following lists of words and mark
those which are potentially possible but yet non-existent in
the English language. Can you provide any explanation for
those gaps in the paradigms?

permit
permission
permissivene
ss
permissible
permissabilit
y
permissioner

permitment
permital
permitter
permittable

commit
commission
commissiven
ess
commissible
commissibilit
y
commissione
r
commitment
committal
committor
committable

transmit
transmission
transmissive
ness
transmissible
transmissibilit
y
transmission
er
transmitment
transmittal
transmitter
transmittable

24

paper man, discman, walkman, gingerbread man, toy

man, weatherman, barman, delivery man, coalman,
cameraman, camel-man, countryman, front-man, yesman, handyman

What is open-endedness? Consider the following

examples and read into them any information that you need
to understand them.

Recursiveness as a property of lexical rules refers to

the successive application of different word-generating rules
so that the output of one lexical rule can be the input to
another lexical rule (e.g. prohibit + ion > prohibition;
prohibition + ist > prohibitionist). Say which rules have been
applied successively to generate the following words.
Identify both input and output forms.

air-conditioning, air-conditioner, egg-beater, back-street

abortionist, better-looking, gold-laced, snow-covered,
kidney-shaped, hard-liner, ill-treated, immunization,
incorruptible, indefatigable, knock-kneed, memorized,
power-sharing, old-age-pensioners, one-liner, oneparent families, operational, organizational, businessoriented, penny-pinching, personalization, smoothtalking, snowcapped, soft-pedalling, soft-soaping, topranking,
unscheduled,
unrewarding,
unrivalled,
unsophisticated

A great number of different rules can be applied to the

same lexical entry to generate new words (e.g. different
rules applied to the entry sleep generate: sleepy,
sleepiness, sleepless, sleeplessness, sleeper, oversleep,

The ability of one morphological process to potentiate

another by creating a base suitable for that other process to
apply to is referred to as potentiation. Illustrate.
Recursiveness can also be observed in semantic
transfer. Consider the following example:
25

Ciceronian, adj. meaning: 1. of or relating to Cicero; 2.

in the style of Cicero, marked by ornate language,
forcefulness of expression, etc. The word is a metonym
(an eponym more precisely) derived from the name of
Cicero, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman,
orator, and writer (106-43 ). Analyze the italicized
words in the following text from the point of view of
recursiveness in semantic transfer.

What is lexicalization? Consider the following

examples. Tell the difference between possible meanings
of the words and their lexicalized meanings.

'Oxford University mooted the idea of establishing a

business school, prompting 500 black-gowned dons to
storm into the 17th century Sheldonian Theatre in
protest. Harvard's business school dates from 1908.
Cambridge succumbed in 1990. But outraged Oxonians
unleashed volleys of Ciceronian oratory, arguing that
the groves of academy should be out of bounds to
commerce.' ( Pepper, Oxford's Business Blues,
Newsweek (New York), September 2, 2002)

Words can be semantically, phonologically, morphologically,

and syntactically lexicalized. Provide examples for each
type of lexicalization.

Classify the following words according to the type of

lexicalization:

Lexical derivation is a two-directional

process: the
morphemes can be either added or subtracted. Illustrate.

strength, width, forgiveness, whiteness, foolishness, gift,

neighbourhood,
motherhood,
brotherhood,
widowerhood, mess, redskin, red herring, song,
department, basement, derailment, cutpurse, killjoy,
spoilsport.

paper
man,
top-drawer,
hit,
spring-board,
conservationist, egg-beater, killjoy, bottom-feeder,
cradle-snatcher, easy-chair, wheel-chair, push-chair,
jailbreak, heartbreak, daybreak, left-overs, turn-overs,
day-tripper, twigloo, telephone box, toy box, keepsakes,
White House, greenhouse, glasshouse

State whether the following words have been generated

by the process of addition or subtraction.

Compare the following pairs of affixes as to their degree

of productivity:

24

by-pass, passer-by, happy-go-lucky, hang-glider, hangglide,

mass-produce,
stage-manage,
stagemanagement, brain-washing, lip-read, break-neck,
tongue-twister,
mind-reading,
edit,
head-hunt,
aircondition, dryclean, hand-wash, baby-sit, housekeeper, tape-recorder, sky-dive, impossibility, bakery,
conservationist, extremism, faceless, falsified, fallingoff, fictionalized, flat-footed, go-between, spin-dry,
tumble-dry, investigatory.

-er, -ist; quasi-, de-; re-, pre-; -ment, -ery; -ion, -hood;
-ness, -ity; -y, -ful.

Compare the following pairs of word-formation

processes as to their degree of productivity:

composition in verbs and derivation in verbs;

composition in nouns and composition in adverbs;
derivation in verbs and back-formation in verbs;
shortening and blending; blending and back-formation.
26

34

What is language
creativity?

Comment on the following nonce

formations:

27

What is creativity or lexical innovation? Which forms may

this method take?

What is a neologism? Illustrate.

Here are some new words and expressions that have

come into English since 1980: taxable, junk mail,
snowboarding, monoboarding, snowsurfing, eco-friendly,
cardboard city, Leonardomania, mouse potato, karaoke,
dark-green, clergyperson, chairperson. What do they
mean?

Explain the following neologisms from the point of view of

word-formation:

abortuary; been there, done that; Blairism; Clintonite;

Clintonomics; body-piercing; bodice-ripper; breakdancing;
Britpop;
cable-ready;
cable-readyness;
canyoning; orienteering; carjacking; CD; CD-ROM;
DVD; twig loo; car bra; drop-dead; e-mail; e-mailer;
decaf; clergyperson; IFOR; Internet; mouse potato; nofly zone; no-go area; prenup; rollerblade; stage-diving;
sky-diving; techie; tree hugger; chain-smoker; chaindrinker; magicienne; KODAK; nouvelle cuisine;
perestroika; guestworker; teleprompter; chocoholic;
jokethon; fishburger; teleshopping; F-word; jet set; wait
state; disco; gyro; soap; bargain-hunter; script-write;
smaze, media-friendly, PR-friendly.

34

What are nonce words? What is the difference

between neologisms and nonce words?
blah-blahing, hah-hahed, wiskify, how-do-you-doers,
did-not-finishers, have-nots, art-for-arter, hopefuls,
hope-nots, tickler and tickle-ee.

Obsolete words are the words that have dropped out of the
language (e.g. baldric). Old words may stay in the language
but they acquire a new stylistic meaning (e.g. damsel). When
a word is no longer in general use but it is still in the language
we call it an archaism. Here are some examples of obsolete
words (the first word in the pair): yeoman - farmer or farm
tenant; cordwainer -shoemaker, ostler - a person that looks
after horses. Here are some obsolete words and their modern
counterparts juggled. Match the words in column A with those
in column B.

ADO
AFFINITY
AFORE
AFRESH
AGUE

ABASE
ABHOR
ACQUIT
ERE
DAMSEL

FUSS
TO HOLD GUILTLESS
BEFORE
ANEW
A MARRIAGE
ALLIANCE
HUMBLE
FEVER
DESPISE
BEFORE
LADY

What are stunt words?

Here are some examples of stunt words. Explanation of

their meaning is also given. Analyze the words and find out
what is 'stunt' about them.

BFE, adj. 'very far away: beyond f...ing Egypt'; acronym;

Egypt was chosen somewhat arbitrarily as a country on
the opposite side of the world. Context and source: 'My
car is parked BFE!' (Conversation)

cometised, adj. Used to describe Netscape when it

freezes or jams; based on the observation of a 'shooting
28

star' or a comet that appears on the Netscape button, in

the upper right corner of a Netscape browser. Context
and source: 'Oh geez, Netscape is cometised.' (Internet
Newsgroup).

dos and don'ts; twenty-four hopefuls taken to the

catwalk; sunsational.

disconfect, v. 'to sterilize the piece of candy you

dropped on the floor by blowing on it, somehow
assuming this will remove all the germs'. (Conversation).

disorient express, n. 'a state of confusion'. Context and

source: 'I felt like I was on the disorient Express for good
this time.' Newsweek, 11/14/96

eaters death, n. 'the acute form of eaters coma;

characterized by difficulty in standing up and walking
after an extremely large meal'; Context and source: 'I've
got eaters death and I don't think I can get up from this
chair'. (Conversation).

elecelleration, n. 'the mistaken notion that the more

you press an elevator button the faster it will arrive'.
(Conversation).

34

ringlets; anklet; wristlet; chop-o-holics; dyeing for

change; you are amberlievable; looking glam; celeb
style; are head scarves this season's must-haves; best

Having in mind the notion of nonsense, analyze the following

poems and extracts from poems {After Some Thought, A
Poem by S. Turner, taken from N. Dimitrijevic ed. Poetry with
Pleasure, Smederevska Palanka: Invest Export, 1996, p. 23;
The Dolmphious Duck by Edward Lear, taken from Lady
Strachey, ed., The Complete Nonsense Book By Edward
Lear, New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1912, p 349; There
was a Young Person of Crete by Edward Lear, op. cit, p. 109;
The Pelican Chorus and The Quangle Wangle's Hat by
Edward Lear, taken from Nonsense Songs by Edward Lear,
London and New York: Frederick Warne &Co. Ltd., s. a., no
page number; "E e, "G g, "L I from A Learical Lexicon (from
the works of Edward Lear compiled by Mura Cohn Livingston,
New York: Atheneum, 1985, no pagination, pages indicated
by letters of alphabet). We italicized the words that are
nonsensical.

Comment on Easter Eggstravaganza from the point of view

of word-formation.
Here are some examples and extracts taken from Hair
magazine (1997, 1998). Analyze the words in bold type.

What is nonsense?

AFTER SOME THOUGHT, A POEM

If I grow a
moustache for you
will you grow a
ffectionate
for me?
S. Turner

29

The Dolomphious Duck,

who caught Spotted Frogs for her dinner
with a Runcible Spoon.

E. Lear

There was a Young Person of Crete,

Whose toilette was far from complete:
She dressed in a sack spickle-speckled with
black,
That ombliferous Person of Crete.

E. Lear

PELICAN CHORUS

II

KING and Queen of the Pelicans we;

No other Birds so grand we see! None but
we have feet like fins! With lovely leathery
throats and chins! Ploffskin, Pluffskin,
Pelican jilll We think so then, and we
thought so still

E. Lear

THE QUANGLE WANGLE'S HAT

30

With ribbons and bibbons on every

side,
And bells, and buttons, and loops, and
lace, So that nobody ever could see
the vace Of the Quangle Wangle
Quee.

I
ON the top of the Crumpetty Tree
The Quangle Wangle sat,
But his face you could not see.
On account of this Beaver Hat.
For his Hat was a hundred and two feet wide,

The Quangle Wangle said

To himself on the Crumpetty Tree,
"Jam; and jelly; and bread;
Are the best of food for me!
But the longer I live on this Crumpetty
tree,
The plainer than ever it seems to me
That very few people come this way,
And that life on the whole is far from
gay!"
Said the Quangle Wangle Quee.

Ill

But there came to the Crumpetty

Tree,
Mr. and Mrs. Canary;
And they said, "Did ever you see
Any spot so charmingly airy?
May we build a nest on your lovely
Hat?
Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that!
please let us come and build a nest
Of whatever material suits you best,
Mr. Quangle Wangle Queel"

IV

31

And besides, to the Crumpetty Tree

Came the Stork, the duck, and the Owl;
The Snail and the Bumble-Bee,
The Frog and the Fimble Fowl;
(The Fimble Fowl, with a Corkscrew leg);

And all of them said, "We humbly beg,

We may build our homes on your
lovely Hat,

40

Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant

us that! Mr. Quangle Wangle
Queel"

"G
g

32

And the Golden Grouse came there,

And the Pohble who has no toes,
And the small Olympian bear,
And the Dong with a luminous nose,
And the Blue Baboon, who played the flute,
And the Orient Calf from the Land of Tute,
And the Attery Squash, and the Bisky Bat,
All came and built on the lovely Hat
Of the Quangle Wangle Quee.

VI

And the Quangle Wangle said

To himself on the Crumpetty Tree,
"When all these creatures move
What a wonderful noise there'll be!"
And at night by the light of the Mulberry moon
They danced to the Flute of the Blue Baboon,
On the broad green leaves of the Crumpetty Tree,
And all were as happy as happy could be,
With the Quangle Wangle Quee.

Answer the following questions concerning nonsensical words

in the texts quoted:

1. Are these words registered in any English dictionary?

2. On the basis of their phono-morphological shape would you
say that these words can be said to belong to the English
language?
3. Assign word-class (i.e. part-of-speech) meaning on the basis
of their distribution (i.e. their position in the syntactic string).
4. What meanings can be read into these words?
5. Analyze these words from the point of view of word formation.
6. Find the examples of ablaut.
7. Find the examples of alliteration.
8. Find the examples of rhyme words.
9. Comment on Lear's intent to mix up the tenses in the last line
of PELICAN CHORUS.
10. In what way do you see word play and nonsense related?
11. Choose one of the poems and translate it into Serbian.

"

Define analogy in reference to word-formation?

The winter seems all gone for the present - though the
Equal-noxious gales will doubtless come in
disgustable
force..."
Its Coast scenery may truly be called pomskizillious
and gromphibberous, being as no words can describe
its magnificence."

An analogical formation is a new formation clearly modelled

on one already existing lexeme. Here are

"LI
. . . a wonderfully lovely view over the river Temms &
the surroundiant landskip." some examples of
analogical formations in English. Find out the word or
expression upon which they were modelled (e.g.
tab/escape is based on landscape; Monicagate is
based on Watergate, etc.):

40

33

lakescape, seascape, roofscape, skyscape, stage

diving, orienteering, gyrocopter, oceanarium, ceilingward, chocoholic, cashaholic, chop-o-holic, rollerblades, fishburger, shrimpburger, washeteria, mouse
potato, discman.

Some forms are coined because of chance phonetic

resemblance
(e.g.
ambisextrous
is
based
on
ambidextrous). Match the following examples with the
words on which they are based:

wargasm,
catisfaction,
sunsational,
furrious,
guesstimate.

purrfect,
amberlievable,
eelionaire,
chatterday,

4. The train_slowly through the tunnel.

5. Don't hurry, don't_, breathe in slowly.
6. When someone _____, they cry in a noisy way,

breathing in short breaths.

7. She began to weep in_, choking sobs...

8. If you _ you breathe very noisily when you are
sleeping.

What does phonetic motivation refer to?

What are onomatopoeic, imitative or echoic words?

Here are some words related to the sounds made by

mouth and nose. From these words choose the correct
one to fill in the blanks.

10._________________If someone has a

, they find
it difficult to say the first
sound of a word, and so they often hesitate or repeat it
two or three times.

1.__________If someone
a cigarette or pipe, they
suck smoke into
their mouth and blow it out again.

2._____________________________She looked calm and

relaxed,___________________her cigarette.
3._________If you are you are breathing loudly and
quickly with
your mouth open because you are tired, or out of breath
after a lot of physical effort.

40

puff, pant, gasp, sob, snore, cough, splutter, stutter,

mutter, stammer, sniff, sniffle, burr, burp, hiccup

9.____________If something , it makes a series of

short spitting
sounds, usually caused by small amounts of liquid
being forced out.

11.________________She has a slight ,

notice it when she's
tired or upset.

but

you

only

12._____If you , you speak very quietly so that you

cannot
easily be heard, often because you are complaining
about something or because you are speaking to yourself.

13.___You
when your throat is irritated or
sometimes when
you are embarrassed or want to attract someone's
attention.
34

6. When you want to describe in a childish way the sound a

7. If something_______, it makes a sound like a small bell

ringing or like thin glass breaking and falling to the

14._________________________You sometimes get if you have

been eating or
drinking too quickly.

15.________If you___________________________________
a baby you pat it on the back and cause it__________________
after it has had a drink.

16.________________________If someone has a

,
they
speak English with a
regional accent in which 'r' sounds are pronounced
more noticeably than in the standard way of speaking.

small bell makes, you say it goes______.

ground.

8. There was a__of brakes.

9. A door__open nearby.
10. Bursting into__of laughter.
11. She went out__the door behind her.
12. If, when you are speaking or singing, your voice_____,

it

makes high-pitched noises which you cannot control

because you are feeling a strong emotion.

13. A bonfire__in one of the gardens.

14. If you__you make a sound like a long's'.
15. Air conditioners are costly and tend to___.
16. The continual___of machine-gun fire.
17. A__is a wooden instrument that you shake to make a
loud tattling sound, for example at a football match.
18. Rotten, uneven floorboards____.
19. A__is a dull sound, such as a heavy object makes
when it falls onto a carpet.
20.___________________When your heart
, it beats

17.__________If you
, you draw in air through your
nose hard
enough to make a sound, especially when you have a
cold or are trying not to cry.

18.__________If you , you sniff repeatedly, as you do when

you

have got a cold or when you are crying.

From the following list of words for different sorts of

sound choose the right one to complete the following
sentences and phrases:

squeak, hiss, thud, tinkle, peal, hum, rustle, roar, slam,

rattle, clatter, squeal, crack, crackle, creak, crash, tick,
rumble, ting, ting-a-ling, rat-a-tat, bang, bong, boo,
sizzle, plop, thump.

1. The_____of the masculine voices in the smoky room.

2. A menacing______of distant thunder...
3. They eyed each other, the silence broken only by the
the clock on the mantelpiece.
4. The barrel exploded with a thunderous______.
5. The bell_____once.
40

of

strongly and rather

quickly, for example because you are very frightened or

happy.

21. He__his papers.

22. The___of dishes being washed.
23. A__is a continuous series of short, loud sounds that
are made by hard things hitting each other.
24. Applause began to crash all round me.
25. The boys used to__on the doors with sticks.
26. A___is a long, deep sound such as the sound made
by a big bell.
27._____If you someone who is giving a performance or
a

___________________speech, you shout ' ' or make

other loud sounds to
35

indicate that you do not like them or their performance.

28._____________If something , it makes a hissing sound
like the
sound made by frying food.
29._A is a soft gentle sound, like the sound made by
something light dropping into water without a splash.
30._____If you someone or something, you hit them
hard,
usually with your fist.
Here are some onomatopoeic verbs which denote the
cries of several animals. Match these verbs with the
names of the animals (which are also listed), e.g. bees
hum, birds twitter, cats purr, etc.

Analyze the language of the following poem. Focus on the

word-formation processes which have been activated to
achieve this unique idiosyncratic effect of
the language used in the poem.

One summer you

aeroplaned away, too
much money away from
me, and stayed there for
quite a few missed
embraces.

Before leaving,
you smiled me that you'd
return all of a mystery
moment and would
airletter me

every few breakfasts in the

meantime.

This

you did, and I thank you most

kissingly.
I

wish however, that I could

hijackerplane to the Ignated States of
Neon where I'd crashland perfectly in
the deserted airport of your heart.

The verbs: howl, gobble, roar, cry, hiss, bleat, grunt,

coo, gibber, hum, twitter, grunt purr, crow, bow-wow,
scream, buzz, neigh, mew, quack, howl, trumpet, croak,
squeak

ONE SUMMER

The animals: apes, birds, cats, cocks, cows, dogs,

doves, ducks, eagles, elephants, flies, frogs, geese,
goats, horses, lambs, lions, mice, monkeys, pigeons,
pigs, sheep, snakes, swans, turkeys, wolves

Define and illustrate the mechanism of meaning transfer.

What is the role of meaning transfer (or semantic shift) in
word-formation?

S. Turner

40

(Dimitrijevic, N., (ed.) (1996). Poetry with Pleasure, p. 42)

36

4. ORIGIN OF ENGLISH WORDS

A native word is a word which belongs to the original

English stock as known from the earliest available
manuscripts of the Old English period. The native words are
subdivided into those of the Indo-European stock (e.g.
brother, mother, son, sun, moon, wind, water) and those of
Common Germanic origin (summer, winter, storm, rain, ice,
ground, house, room). Find the examples of native words in
the following text.

Text(1)

'Did you ever hear of such a pitiable case in all your

lives? Here was the richest breakfast that could be set
before a king, and its very richness made it good for
nothing. The poorest labourer, sitting down to his crust
of bread and cup of water, was far better off than King
Midas, whose fine food was really worth its weight in
gold. (...) How many days could he live on this rich
food? (...) But this was only a passing thought. So
pleased was Midas with the shining of the yellow metal,
that he would still have refused to give up the Golden
Touch for so small a matter as a breakfast. Just imagine
what a price for one meal! It would have been the same
as paying millions of money for some fried fish, an egg,

a potato, a hot cake, and a cup of coffee! 'It would be

quite too dear,' thought Midas. Still, so great was his
hunger, and the difficulty of his situation, that he again
cried aloud, and very sadly too. Our pretty Marygold
could bear it

no longer. She sat a moment looking at her father, and

trying, with all the might of her little wits, to find out what
was the matter with him. Then, with a sweet and
sorrowful wish to comfort him, she started from her
chair, and running to Midas, threw her arms lovingly
about his knees. He bent down and kissed her. He felt
that his little daughter's love was worth a thousand
times more than he had gained by the Golden Touch.
'My precious, precious Marygoldi' cried he. But she
made no answer.' (Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Wonder
Book, Longmans, 1967, pp. 5 0 - 5 1 )

semantic disambiguation subprocess uses semantic

dictionaries, which allow assigning features to nouns
and transformations on syntactic structures'. (Sergei
Nirenburg, ed., Machine Translation, 1987, Cambridge
University Press, p. 36)
What is the approximate proportion of native to foreign
words in text (1) and text (2)? Compare these proportions
and see if you can come up with any explanation of the
difference between them?

What are loan words?

Pinpoint the native words and the words of foreign

origin in the following text.

Text (2)

50

'The machine translation project SUSY was derived

from a Russian-German prototype system that had
been developed in the 1970's. It attempts to generalize
that system by adding multilingual capabilities (German,
Russian, French, English, and Esperanto), but the main
goal of SUSY is MT research rather than development
of an operational system. The basic MT methodology of
SUSY is transfer. The analysis stage of the system has
eight subprocesses: 1) word identification, 2)
morphological analysis, 3) homograph disambiguation,
4) clause-level parsing, 5) noun group analysis, 6) verb
group analysis, 7) combining noun and verb groups,
and 8) semantic disambiguation. The homograph
disambiguation subprocess uses a weighted heuristic to
estimate the likelihood of word class, based on the
word classes of surrounding words in the sentence. The

What do we mean by source of borrowing in comparison

to origin of borrowing (by which we mean the language to
which the word may be ultimately traced)? Here are four
dictionary entries taken from The Random House
Dictionary of the English Language. Illustrate the difference
between source of borrowing and origin of borrowing.

1. trampoline n. a sheet, usually of canvas, attached by

resilient cords or springs to a horizontal frame, used as a
springboard in tumbling (var. of trampolin < Sp < It
trampolino springboard < Gmc: see trample + ino)

2. liberty n. a freedom from despotic government or rule (ME

liberie < MF < L liberias)

3. orange n. a reddish yellow, bitter or sweet, edible citrus fruit

(ME < OF , c. Sp naranja < Ar naranj < Pers. narang < Skt
naranga)

39

4. zodiak n. an imaginary belt of heavens; divided into 12

constellations and signs of the zodiak; a diagram

representing this belt (< L zodiak(us) < Gk zoidiakos)

Key: < descended from; derived from, from; Sp Spanish; IT - Italian; Gmc - Germanic; ME - Middle
English; MF -Middle French; L - Latin; OF - Old French;
Ar - Arabic; Pers - Persian; Skt - Sanskrit; Gk - Greek
In the following text two words have been taken over
from Japanese. Which are they?

'Believe it or not, you can buy a $6000 shower curtain

for your home. But why would you? Former tycoon
Dennis Kozlowski did. He also spent $2200 on a
wastebasket, nearly $3000 on coat hangers and nearly
$6000 on sheets... The prices are not out of line, but
they're off the scale when it comes to priorities', says
Bilhuber, whose client list includes ex-AOL Time
Warner honcho Robert Pittman, Michael Douglas,
David Bowie and his model wife, Iman, and designer
Hubert Givenchy.' (Maria Puente: USA Today, Sep 27,
2002).

Take the Oxford Dictionary of New Words and search it for

more words coming from Japanese.

Taboo is a word borrowed from Tongan. As an adjective it

means 'forbidden or banned'; as a verb it means 'to avoid or
prohibit something as taboo'. Explain the use of the word
taboo in the following example.

50

'This is, after all, the age of air bags, bicycle helmets,
and drunk-driving taboos, of warning labels, coroner
inquiries and consumer product testing'. (Leonard
Stern, How Safe is Safe Enough?, The Vancouver Sun,
Oct 8, 2001)

Smorgasbord is a word taken over from Swedish

(smorgas meaning 'bread and butter' and bord meaning
'table'). This word has two meanings: 1. 'a buffet featuring
various dishes, such as hors d'oeuvres, salads, fish, etc.,
and 2. 'a medley or miscellany' (in e.g. 'annual
smorgasbord of music and cabaret'). Look this word up in
your dictionary and see what examples are provided to
illustrate its usage.

In the following text there is one word which comes

from Persian. Guess which.

A certain favoritism, even in the absence of baksheeshpocketing headwaiters, is indispensable to restaurants

that expect to maintain a steady clientele - especially in
New York, where every other big shot seems to
demand the best table and, instead of something
fabulous to eat, a custom-baked potato' (Thomas
McNamee, The Joy of Cooking, The New York Times
Book Review, Jun 23, 2002).

Many of the everyday English words such as bagel, klutz,

and kibitz are terms from Yiddish. Look these words up in
your dictionary and say what they mean.

Here are some words for clothes with Indian origin:

bandanna, cashmere, chintz, dungarees, jodhpurs, khakis,
pajamas. Fill in the blanks in the following sentences using
these words.

Give your own examples to illustrate the use of taboo in

English.

_________1.

is a square of silk material with red or

yellow
40

 spots, usually worn round the neck.

__________2.
is kind of cotton cloth with printed

show incomplete
simultaneously:

designs
used for curtains, covers, furniture.
3.___________A
shawl is the one made of the fine soft
wool
of Cashmere goats.
____________4. are overalls of coarse cotton material.
5. The name for loose-fitting jacket and trousers for sleeping is
__________________.
6. The name for riding breeches is__________.
7. Pants made of khaki are called

The word erg (n.) meaning 'the unit of work or energy

in the centimeter-gram-second system' comes from
Greek
ergon ('work') and it derives from the Indo-European
root werg-. Would you say that the following words share
the same root: ergonomic, work, energy, metallurgy,
surgery, wright, orgy?

50

While many borrowed words which linguists call loan

words become naturalized (i.e. partly or completely
assimilated; e.g. cheese, street, wall, wine, husband, and
fellow have become fully assimilated) others retain their
foreign character in spelling, pronunciation, meaning, their
morphological make-up and grammar (e.g. puree, purdah,
cloche, pince-nez, kitsch, kamikaze, kebab, cadenza,
kibbutz). Here is a list of words which have come into
English from other languages. Say whether they have been
fully assimilated (in the sense that they are
indistinguishable from native words) or only partly
assimilated: not assimilated semantically, not assimilated
grammatically, not completely assimilated phonetically, not
assimilated graphically; there are examples of words which

in

several

respects

sport, start, boss, face, figure, finish, matter, sari,

sombrero, caftan, sheik, shah, bacilli, crises,
phenomena, espionage, melange, cloche, atelier,
neglige, macaroni, mezzo soprano, ballet, buffet,
expose, preecis, creche, nota bene, kibbutz, karate,
karma, chevapcici, nyet, troika, toque, trampoline.

assimilation

Here are three more words from the major source

languages of English.

1. betise (from French betise 'stupidity, nonsense', ultimately

from Latin bestia 'beast') in English has two meanings: 1.
'stupidity', and 2. 'foolish remark or action';

2. agita (Americanism, from Italian agitare ('to agitate')

means: 1. 'heartburn', and 2. 'anxiety'.

3. katzenjammer (from German Katzen (plural of Katze,
'cat') + Jammer (distress) has the following meanings: 1.
'hangover', 2. 'distress', and 3. 'confussion'.

Here are these three words in their respective contexts:

1. 'Public accountability of ministers and senior civil servants

has, to put it mildly, been relaxed. If something goes badly
wrong, the minister in whose orbit the betise has occurred
rarely makes a public apology, let alone resigns' (Europe:
What's Wrong With Nepotism, Anyway? The Economist
(London, Mar 20, 1999);

2. 'Ms. Falco and Mr. Tucci bring a more earthy, New York
agita to the roles. After growing up in the New York suburbs
- she on Long Island, he in Westchester County - the two
have made careers playing incomplete, angular characters'
41

(John Leland, Layers Of Clothing Fall Away. The New York

Times, Aug 4, 2002);

grammatically, not completely assimilated phonetically, not

assimilated graphically; there are examples of words which
show incomplete assimilation in several respects
simultaneously:

3. 'Peebles compared the intense activity in cosmology over

the last few years to 'a really good party'. But he also listed
open questions that, he said, left him with an 'uneasy
feeling' - a kind of cosmic katzenjammer -about whether the
concordance will survive new and more precise tests'
(James Glanz, Cosmology: Does Science Know the Vital
Statistics of the Cosmos? Science (Washington, DC), Nov
13, 1998.

50

Here are three more words from the major source

languages of English.

1. betise (from French betise 'stupidity, nonsense', ultimately

Here are two words in English which come from German.
Discuss these two words in terms of assimilation (kind of
assimilation and degree of assimilation).
ergon ('work') and it derives from the Indo-European
root werg-. Would you say that the following words share
the same root: ergonomic, work, energy, metallurgy,
surgery, wright, orgy?

sport, start, boss, face, figure, finish, matter, sari,

sombrero, caftan, sheik, shah, bacilli, crises,
phenomena, espionage, melange, cloche, atelier,
neglige, macaroni, mezzo soprano, ballet, buffet,
expose, preecis, creche, nota bene, kibbutz, karate,
karma, chevapcici, nyet, troika, toque, trampoline.

Discuss these three words in terms of the degree of

assimilation. Find out in what respects they have or
have not been assimilated.

While many borrowed words which linguists call loan

words become naturalized (i.e. partly or completely
assimilated; e.g. cheese, street, wall, wine, husband, and
fellow have become fully assimilated) others retain their
foreign character in spelling, pronunciation, meaning, their
morphological make-up and grammar (e.g. puree, purdah,
cloche, pince-nez, kitsch, kamikaze, kebab, cadenza,
kibbutz). Here is a list of words which have come into
English from other languages. Say whether they have been
fully assimilated (in the sense that they are
indistinguishable from native words) or only partly
assimilated: not assimilated semantically, not assimilated

from Latin bestia 'beast') in English has two meanings: 1.

'stupidity', and 2. 'foolish remark or action';

2. agita (Americanism, from Italian agitare ('to agitate')

means: 1. 'heartburn', and 2. 'anxiety'.

3. katzenjammer (from German Katzen (plural of Katze,
'cat') + Jammer (distress) has the following meanings: 1.
'hangover', 2. 'distress', and 3. 'confussion'.

Here are these three words in their respective contexts:

1. 'Public accountability of ministers and senior civil servants

has, to put it mildly, been relaxed. If something goes badly
wrong, the minister in whose orbit the betise has occurred
rarely makes a public apology, let alone resigns' (Europe:
What's Wrong With Nepotism, Anyway? The Economist
(London, Mar 20, 1999);

2. 'Ms. Falco and Mr. Tucci bring a more earthy, New York
agita to the roles. After growing up in the New York suburbs
42

plurals. How about other examples of the words with double

plurals (e.g. acquarium, n. sg. -acquaria, n. pi.; acquariums,
n. pi.)?

- she on Long Island, he in Westchester County - the two

have made careers playing incomplete, angular characters'
(John Leland, Layers Of Clothing Fall Away. The New York
Times, Aug 4, 2002);

3. 'Peebles compared the intense activity in cosmology over

the last few years to 'a really good party'. But he also listed
open questions that, he said, left him with an 'uneasy
feeling' - a kind of cosmic katzenjammer -about whether the
concordance will survive new and more precise tests'
(James Glanz, Cosmology: Does Science Know the Vital
Statistics of the Cosmos? Science (Washington, DC), Nov
13, 1998.

Here are two words in English which come from German.

Discuss these two words in terms of assimilation (kind of
assimilation and degree of assimilation).

(1) kumel n. is 1. a colourless liqueur flavored with cumin,

caraway seeds, etc. and 2. Caraway seed;

(2) krieg spiel (from German Khegsspiel, lit.: war's game) n. is

1. a game using small figures and counters that represent
troops, ships, etc. played on a map or miniature battlefield,
developed for teaching military tactics to officers

50

ergo, ad libitum, autochthon, au jus, au contraire, au

courant, faux pas, culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima
culpa

Discuss these three words in terms of the degree of

assimilation. Find out in what respects they have or
have not been assimilated.

Loan words not assimilated in any respect and which exist

alongside their English counterparts are called barbarisms,
e.g. addio (Italian) - good-bye (English); pot-au-feu (French)
- clear soup (English). Here are some examples of
barbarisms. Find their English counterparts.

The word trousseau n. sg. (trousseaux, n. pi. or trousseaus,

n. pi.) came into English from French. The meaning of the
word is: 'the clothes, linen, and other possessions that a
bride collects for her marriage'. This word is considered to
be rather old-fashioned. Comment on the degree of
grammatical assimilation of the word having in mind its two

International words are words of identical origin that

occur in several languages as a result of simultaneous or
successive borrowings from one source, e.g. super,
interview, weekend, cocktail, paradox). Find more examples
of internationalisms.
In English there are borrowings from many
languages, e.g. from Japanese: tycoon, karate, judo,
harakiri, bonsai, karaoke, kimono, origami; from Arabic:
sultan, harem, cipher, algebra, mufti, coffee; from
Turkish: yoghurt, kiosk, caftan, fez; from Eskimo: kayak,
igloo, anorak; from Russian: bistro, sputnik, cosmonaut,
perestroika, tundra, tsar, kulak, nyet, balalaika,
mammoth, kasha, kvass; from Italian: ghetto, soprano,
tenor, confetti, ballerina, fiasco, spaghetti, lasagna,
bandit, casino; from German: kitsch, hamburger,
frankfurter, delicatessen, blitz, waltz, poodle; from
French: automobile, chauffeur, boutique, elite, avant
garde, etui, etude, vis a vis; from Spanish: embargo,
siesta, guerilla, macho, mosquito, bonanza, lasso; from
Portuguese: marmalade, cobra; from Norwegian: fiord,
ski, slalom; from Dutch: yacht, cruise; from Finnish:
sauna, from Greek: drama, prologue, theatre, theory,
43

pseudonym; from Persian: caravan, sherbet, bazaar.

Are any of the words that are listed used in your own
language? Would you say that the words listed have
become international words?

paper or cloth'; the 'long strip' meaning survives in the

construction industry where a screed is a long piece of
wood used for smoothing plaster. The word screed entered
standard English as a variant of the Old English word
screade which was pronounced much like the modern
English word shred and it had exactly that meaning, 'a
piece cut or torn off, especially in a narrow strip'. Find out
the story behind the following doublet: drag and draw.

What is etymology?

Name two etymological dictionaries of the English

language.

50

Etymology is an account of the history of a word. Here

is an interesting etymology of the word glamour
according to Professor Thomas Magner (personal
communication). The English word glamour derives
from the Scottish version of grammar. As grammar was
associated with learned people the ordinary folk
regarded it with awe. The Scottish version that was then
accepted in the standard language in its meaning of
'attractive', 'exotic'. The standard language also
maintained the original grammar. Look up the word
broker in an etymological dictionary (The American
Heritage Dictionary for example) and find out about its
original usage and the history of its change in usage.
How about crocodile tears? What is the history of
crocodile tears? What is the history of the words:
marshal, steward, and miser?

Words which have developed different meanings despite

deriving from the same word are known to etymologists as
doublets. Thus, screed is a doublet of shred. Here is the
story. Despite its etymology, the word screed in its modern
usage seems to be leaning toward a meaning of 'a tonguelashing'; this current usage strays far from the word's
original meaning defined in modern dictionaries as 'a long
piece of writing'; its earlier meaning, 'a long list', dates from
the 18th century; its even earlier meaning was 'a long strip of

Cognates are words which are 'related by birth' or 'of the

same parentage', e.g. English cold is a cognate of German
kalt; one more example: a man raising capital and the one
raising cattle are not doing something very different,
etymologically speaking: the words capital and cattle are
cognates, derived from Latin caput. Look up the word
chattel in an etymological dictionary and say if it is related
to the word cattle. Would you say that cattle and chattel are
cognates?
False cognates, also known as false friends, are words
that appear to be related but are not, they have completely
different origins. Take the following example: the word
impregnable, meaning 'strong enough to resist or withstand
attack' as in an impregnable fortress comes from Middle
English, from Middle French imprenable and it looks to be a
cousin of impregnable (semantically related to impregnate);
however, this latter impregnable is an adjective which
means 'susceptible of impregnation, as an egg' and is
related to Late Latin impraegnatus 'made pregnant'. The
words impregnable 1 and impregnable 2 have separate
ancestries, they are etymologically different, they are false
cognates or false friends. Look up the following words in an
etymological dictionary and say if they are related: scission
and scissors.

False cognates or false friends work across languages

as well: the English words eventually and actual are not in
44

any way related to the Serbian words eventualno and

aktuelan; they are in no way related to aktuell or eventuelt
in Norwegian either. The following words: embarazada,
tasten, and stanza come from: Spanish, German, and
Italian respectively. With which English words do you think
they can be associated? Try to figure out their meaning.
Look the words up in their respective dictionaries.

Here are three pairs of words: 1. insensitive - unfeeling; 2.

incurable - unbeatable; 3. eradicate - uproot. Find out if the
words that make a pair mean the same.

Humble pie meaning 'humiliation in the form of apology' as

often used in the phrase to eat humble pie derives from the
phrase an umble pie changed by folk etymology by
resemblance to the word humble. The phrase an umble pie
itself was made by false splitting from a numble pie
(numbles are edible animal entrails). English words apron
and orange were also made by false splitting. Find out in
what way.

Words or meanings are changed to match an incorrect

origin for different reasons. The name for Welsh rabbit,
meaning 'a dish consisting of melted cheese, usually mixed
with ale or beer, milk, and spices, served over toast' is also
Welsh rarebit derived by folk etymology. Which reasons
do you think are behind this change (e.g. jocular reasons or
perhaps the attempt to make the name of the dish less
insulting to the Welsh)?
Here are some Sebian words and expressions derived
through folk etymology: kompaktibilan, ekspres kafa,
ekspreso, femirati se, sentimentacija, kvarijes, poluklinika,
svirena, buldozder. Find the words and phrases they are
related to. In case of kinezi-terapija (wrongly interpreted as:
'therapy practiced by the Chinese') and moralno (wrongly
interpreted as: 'something that must be done, associated
with morati) we are dealing with the type of folk etymology
derivation which is different from the one illustrated by the
examples such as: svirena and kvarijes. Can you see which
criteria for the division we have in mind? Give your own
examples if possible.

Here are some examples of false friends working across

different languages - English and Serbian in particular.
Think of your own examples.

sensible (English) - senzibilan (Serbian) eventually

(English) - eventualno (Serbian)
emission (English) - emisija (e.g. in televizijska emisiija)
(Serbian)

diet (English) - dijeta

(Serbian) public (English) - publika
(Serbian)

50

Folk etymology is change in the form of a word or phrase

based on a mistaken assumption about its composition or
meaning, as in shamefaced for shamfast ('bound by
shame'), cutlet from French cotelette (double diminutive for
'rib', so 'little rib'), woodchuck (' a marmot') for the American
Indian word wuchak (the name for a marmot found in
America). The most amusing are mishearings such as the
one which made cockroach of Spanish cucaracha and Bob
Ruly (the name of the town in Lousiana, U. S. A.) of French
bois brule. Find out the story behind the word cellar in salt
cellar.

Anglicism is a word, idiom, or characteristic feature of the

English language occurring in or borrowed by another
language, e.g. weekend or star in French, vikend or klub in
Serbian. Give some more examples of anglicisms across
the languages that are familiar to you.
45

compare: tandem in English and Serbian and bar in

English and Serbian). Analyze the following words from
the point of view of semantic adaptation: ploter,
frontmen, stilista, lider, dijeta.

Here are some examples of anglicisms in the Serbian

language. Add your own examples to the list.

Disketa, kaseta, sajt, haker, atacment, vokmen,

diskmen, brifing, lizing, marketing, menadzment, diler,
establisment, monitor, printer, skrinsejver, laser, stajling,
stilista, foto-sesn, dajdzest, plejbek, rimejk, remiks,
kambek, frontmen, fri lens, bestseler, bajpas,
pejsmejker, hamburger, dzingl, desk, spot, rok, pop,
erkondisn, marker...

Anglicisms can be analysed on three levels:

phonological, morphological and semantic. Analyze the
following anglicisms in the Serbian language: lizing,
marketing, supermarket, diet set, intervju, vestern, triler,
klub, bar.
Three degrees of morphological adaptation can be
distinguished in Serbian: zero degree of adaptation (e.g.
dolar); second degree adaptation involves phonological
adaptation of the affix (e.g. lider); third degree
adaptation means full integration into the morphological
system of the Serbian language (e.g. komercijalna
banka). Analyze the following words in terms of degrees
of morphological adaptation: foto-sesn, bilbord,
konvertibilan, menadzer, testirati, nokautirati, minic,
rasista, barmen, sejker, surfovanje Internetom.

Compare revolving credit in business English and its

equivalents in the Serbian language: (1) revolving
akreditiv, and (2) revolvirajuci akreditiv. Comment on the
degree of morphological adaptation.

50

There are three levels of semantic adaptation: zero

level of adaptation means that the imported word keeps
its original meaning (e.g. triler); the meaning of the
English word can be narrowed or widened (e.g.

Here are the meanings of the word sponsor (n.)

according to the Collins COBUILD English Language
Dictionary: 1. a person or organization that pays some
or all of the expenses connected with something such
as an event, a theatrical production, or an athletics
meeting; 2. a person who agrees to give a certain sum
of money to someone who does something special for
charity; 3. an important person or organization that
supports the actions and beliefs of another person or
organization in order to make them more popular, more
powerful, or better known. What are the meanings of
the word sponzor (n.) in Serbian? Note the following
meaning in the Serbian word: 'a man who patronizes a
young woman in return for sexual favours' (the word for
such a young woman is sponzorusa). Analyze the word
sponzor in terms of semantic adaptation. Has the
meaning of the English word been widened?
Some English words have been taken over but they
have been assigned meanings which they do not have
in English (e.g. cips and insert in Serbian). Can you
think of some more examples of English words which
have a different meaning in Serbian due to wrong
interpretation? Analyze the word dragstor in Serbian.

What are pseudoangliscisms? Provide illustrations.

Caique is a name for a translation loan. It is a result of

literal translation from another language (e.g. the word
gospel comes from an Old English compound, roughly:
good + spell, which is a direct translation of the
46

elements of the Latin ev-angel: 'good message'). The

English expression: marriage of convenience is a literal
translation from French: mariage de convenance. Here
are two German caiques: Fernsprecher for English
telephone and Fernsehen for television. Find more
examples of English caiques of foreign words and
expressions. Find some examples of Serbian words and
expressions which are literal translations of an English
word or phrase (e.g. panel diskusija in Serbian is an

50

example of caique i.e. translation loan; compare: panel

discussion in English).

The English concrete poetry is a literal translation

from either the Portuguese poesia concreta or the
German konkrete Dichtung. It means: 'poetry that uses
the physical arrangement of words or letters on a page
for visual effect to add to the meaning of the poem'.
Here is an example of concrete poetry for your
enjoyment.

47

What is the name for the branch of morphology that

studies meaning?

Which elements of structure is lexical semantics

concerned with? Do smaller elements of structure such
as prefixes and suffixes lend themselves to the study of
meaning?

The relationship between one word and another belonging

to a different part of speech and produced from the first by
some process of derivation is called paronymy (e.g. the
relationship between: white and whiten, write and writer).
The derivationally primitive word is the base and the
derived form the paronym. It is assumed that the derived
form is semantically more complex. What are the paronyms
which correspond to the following words: do, make, entail,
conclude, organize, simple, complex, mature, woman, train.

Paronymous relations apply also to zero-derived

paronyms, i.e. those with a zero affix (e.g. mop n. -mop v.;
honeymoon n. - honeymoon v.). Provide your own
examples of zero-derived paronyms.

R. McGough, Poetry with Pleasure (N. Dimitrijevic, ed., p. 27)

48

5. LEXICAL SEMANTICS

49

What are the key-points of the referential theory of

meaning? What is the referential approach to meaning?
What does referential meaning refer to?

Would you say that denotative, cognitive or conceptual

meaning can be alternatively used for referential
meaning?

There is the difference between meaning and concept and

meaning and the thing denoted. Find examples to support
this statement.

Denotation tends to be described as the definitional, literal,

obvious or commonsense meaning of a sign. The term
connotation is used to refer to the socio-cultural and
personal associations of the sign. These associations:
cultural, ideological, emotional, etc. are typically related to
the speaker's social position, age, sex, and so on. In the
case of words the denotative meaning is what dictionaries
aim to provide. Here are two words and their definitions
taken from two different dictionaries. Analyze these
definitions in terms of denotative and connotative meaning.
Compare the definitions on these grounds.

3. nebulous, adj. 1. hazy, vague, indistinct, or confused. 2.

cloudy or cloudlike. 3. of or resembling a nebula or nebulae;
nebular. {Random House Dictionary of the English
Language, Random House, New York)

1. handsome, adj. 1. having an attractive, well-proportioned,

and imposing appearance suggestive of health and
strength; good-looking: a handsome man; a handsome
woman. 2. having pleasing proportions, relationships, or
arrangements, as of shapes, forms, colors, etc. attractive: a
handsome house. 3. considerable, ample, or liberal in
amount: a handsome fortune. 4. gracious; generous: a
handsome compliment. 5. dexterous; graceful: a handsome
speech. {The Random House Dictionary of the English
Language, Random House, New York)

2. handsome 1. A man who is handsome has an

attractive face with regular features, He was a tall, dark,
and undeniably handsome man...........a tall driver with a
66

handsome face. 2. A woman who is handsome has an

attractive, smart appearance, especially with features that
are large and regular rather than small and delicate and that
are considered to show strength of character, e.g. ...a
strikingly handsome woman. 3. A building, garden, etc. that
is handsome is large and well made with an attractive
appearance, e.g. ...handsome big
apartment buildings.........a rather handsome rug... It is a
handsome place with green lawns and tall trees. 4. A
handsome sum of money is a large or generous amount
that is often more than you expected, e.g. The rate of return
on these farmers' outlay was a handsome 57 per cent. 5. A
handsome situation, event, action, etc. is pleasing to you
because of particular good qualities that it has, e.g. He had
a handsome dinner given in his honour. {Collins COBUILD
English Language Dictionary, Collins, London and
Glasgow).

4. nebulous An idea that is nebulous is vague and difficult to

talk about, either because you do not have enough

information about it or because it is not properly organized,
e.g. / still had a nebulous notion of an
afterlife......... a nebulous concept. {Collins COBUILD
English Language Dictionary, Collins, London and Glasgow)

While theorists find it useful to distinguish connotation from

denotation, in practice this distinction cannot be made in an
easy, neat, and unquestionable way. Most semanticists
argue that no sign is purely denotative so that no strict
50

division between denotation and connotation can be

made (See 2, definition 2 in the previous exercise).
Connotations can develop into new denotations. See 3,
definition 1. How does it compare to definitions 3.2 and
3.3?

Collocative meaning is what is communicated through

association with words which tend to co-occur with another
word in a syntagmatic chain. Connotation is not only a
paradigmatic
'associative'
dimension
-syntagmatic
associations are also a key factor in generating
connotations. Compare definitions 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, and
2.5 in the previous exercise and analyze them in terms of
their collocative meaning.

66

Words are more 'polysemic', and more semantically

open in their connotations than in their denotations.
They are also said to be more stable in their denotative
meaning and more variable in what they connote.
Having this in mind interpret the following statement:
denotation can be regarded as a digital code and
connotation as an analogue code.

Some linguists provide examples to prove that

semantics is conceptual and not perceptual (cf.
evening star- morning star). Comment on this.

Both connotations and denotations are socially and

culturally variable and they change over time. Generally
speaking, woman, for example, had more negative
denotations and more negative connotations in the past
than it does now. But note the use of woman in the
following situation: There's a woman at the door! It has a
negative connotation and, instead, the proper way of saying
this would be: There's a lady at the door!. On the other
hand, however, it is normal to say: There's a man at the
door! and not There's a gentleman at the door!. However,
feminists would feel very much against the use of lady in
this situation by ordinary, non-PC English speakers - can
you tell why? Find some other examples which show that
connotations are socially variable.

Tropes such as metaphor generate connotations.

Illustrate.

Changing the form of the signifier and keeping its

denotation intact can generate different connotations.
Changes of style or intonation may suggest different
connotations, such as when using different typefaces for
exactly the same text, or pronouncing the same word using
different intonation patterns. Say hello in three different
ways using three different intonation patterns and state
which connotations are implied in each case.

Members of a category must contain all the properties

defining the category. What about penguins and
ostriches? They do not fly so are they still birds? What
about a sparrow that has lost both wings? Is it still a
bird?

The concepts can be said to be clear but the borders

demarcating these concepts are not crisp-clear but
fuzzy. Where is the line separating a bird and a nonbird? Is turkey a bird? Is bat a bird? What is an animal?
Are fish animals? Peaches are said to belong to the
category of fruit but plant biologists say they are roses.
Who is right? What is the difference between nouns and
verbs? What about hybrids like gerunds and participles?

Categorial properties are not simply present or absent.

Instead, it would be more appropriate to say that a
member of a category may have varying degrees of a
given property (e.g. a sparrow is a prototypical bird;
what is a goose?; what is a penguin?; what is a bat?;
what is a platypus?). Provide more examples to
illustrate this graded membership situation.
51

Social meaning has to do with social circumstances

communicated by means of a word or some other piece of
language. The following dimensions of socio-stylistic
variation can be recognized: variation according to dialect
(geographical or social), variation according to time (the
language of the 16th century, contemporary English),
variation according to province (legal English, business
English, Net Speak), variation according to status (formal
English, educated, colloquial, slang), variation according to
modality (classroom English, the language of cartoons, the
language of jokes), variation according to singularity (the
style of Shakespeare, of T. S. Eliot).

1. Say whether the following idioms belong to British English

or American English: small beer, have another bite at the
cherry, off the boil, slip through the net, ring someone's bell,
blow smoke in someone's face.

2. Word

geography is concerned with the regional

distribution of words for various notions (e.g. cow-house
and cow-shed are widespread mostly in the Midlands and
south while various local expressions also occur, e.g. cowstable in north-east Nottinghamshire and east Lincolnshire,
beast-house in Monmouthshire, south Herefordshire. Here
are some words for 'donkey': cuddy, fussock, pronkus,
dicky, nirrup, moke, neddy, ass. What is their local regional
distribution?

language, very formal, formal, literary, slang, colloquial,

vulgar, offensive. Set (1) steed, horse, nag, gee-gee; set (2)
domicile, residence, abode, home; set (3) cast, throw,
chuck; set (4) diminutive, tiny, wee; set (5) blow smoke up
someone's ass, insincere; set (6) Negro, nigger, (7)
bracelets, handcuffs.

5. Consider the following sets of words from the point of view

of their social meaning and classify them according to the
criterion of province: (1) linguistics, LAD (Language
Acquisition Device), morpheme, phoneme, allophone, lexis,
locution, pragmatics; (2) securities, invoice, quota,
shareholder, payee, debit; (3) webzine, mailbombing,
hypertext, 4 U, FAQ (frequently asked question).

6. Here are some law words: en banc, voir dire, distrain,

minor, innuendo, injunction. State their meanings in general
everyday English (e.g. parol - 'spoken statement'; depone 'to declare under oath').

3. The word appreciate can be pronounced a'priijieit and

a'priisieit. What does the pronunciation s'priisieit tell you
about the status of the speaker?

4. Here are seven sets of words identical in their conceptual

meaning and different in their social meaning. Classify the
words according to the criterion of status. Take each and
every word and say if it is: poetic, general, slang, baby66

Language reflects the personal feelings of the speaker, his

attitude to the listener, or his attitude to what he is talking
about (e.g. a speaker can be: polite, ironic, sarcastic, rude,
offensive, etc.). This kind of meaning is called affective
meaning. It largely relies upon other types of meaning:
denotative, connotative, or stylistic. There are, however,
elements of language, chiefly interjections, like Hurrah, Aha,
Gee, Yippee, whose main function is to express emotion.
The attitude can be expressed overtly by the choice of
words (e.g. You idiotl), or in less direct ways, e.g. by scaling
our remarks according to politeness (e.g. Sit down!, Sit
down, please!, Will you be so kind as to sit downl). Give
some examples to illustrate affective meaning.
Reflected meaning refers to the situation when one sense
of a word is part of the speaker's response to another
sense. This happens in cases of multiple conceptual
meaning of words. Some people's reaction to a compound
52

when used by a linguist may be conditioned by the

everyday meanings of compound, e.g. compound in the
sense: (1) an area of land surrounded by walls or fences as
in military compound; (2) compound interest meaning
interest that is calculated not only on the original amount of
money that has been invested but also on the interest that
is earned, or (3) two chemical elements forming a
compound. Dear can mean: (1) 'expensive', but also (2)
'beloved' so that one can use the meaning of 'expensive'
and allude to the meaning of 'beloved'. The meaning that is
more frequent or more familiar has dominant suggestive
power. How about words such as: cock, erect, and
intercourse? Having in mind what you know about reflected
meaning explain why it is that the farmyard sense of the
word cock has been replaced by rooster, and why it is
difficult to use erect and intercourse in their usual innocent
senses?

Functional approach to meaning maintains that the

meaning of a linguistic unit should be studied only through
its relation (syntagmatic and paradigmatic) to other linguistic
units and not through its relation to either concept or
referent. Compare the meanings of sugar in: to sugar your
drink, to sugar the pill, sugar beet, sugar cane, sugarcoated, sugar daddy; also the meaning of red in: red hair,
red wine, red meat, red carpet, Red Cross, as red as a
beetroot, to be in the red, red-handed, red herring. Compare
the meanings of extra- in: extra-large, extra-long,
extrasensory, extraterrestrial, extramarital, extracurricular,
and the meanings o f - e r i n : doer, worker, maker, windowwasher, sandwich-maker, egg-beater, cheese-slicer. State
different meanings of the words and morphemes in their
respective contexts.

Two key concepts of the functional approach to meaning

are context and distribution. Context is the minimal stretch
of speech determining each individual meaning of the word.
Use the following words in different contexts and show how
their meaning changes depending on the surrounding
words: put, take, kiss, mad. Distribution refers to the
position of a word in relation to another word; it also refers
to the order and arrangement of the morphemes in a word.
Find pairs of words, such as: ring finger - finger ring; fruit
market -market fruit; blue sky - sky blue; child problem problem child, family problem - problem family, garden rock
-rock garden, etc. to show that the order and arrangement
of words or morphemes in a sequence is significant in the
sense that it brings out the difference in meaning (referred
to as distributional meaning).
Violation of distribution rules of the morphemes within a
word can produce ungrammatical forms, e.g. dislocate
-*locatedis; hopeful - *fulhope. Give more examples of the
unacceptable words due to the violation of order rules.

Messages can be organized so that they differ in terms of

ordering, focus and emphasis. The meaning associated
with this kind of situation is referred to as thematic
meaning. Thematic meaning is a matter of choice between
alternative grammatical constructions, words, stress, and
intonation. The following sentences can be said to have the
same cognitive meaning -however, their thematic meaning
is different:

1. I do not know this. - This I do not know.

2. John has a kite-shop. - The kite-shop belongs to John.
3. What I hate most is insincerity. - Insincerity is what I hate

most.
4. They made him learn the commandments by heart. - He
was made to learn the commandments by heart.

66

Provide your own examples to illustrate thematic

meaning.

The semantic component that serves to distinguish one

word from all others containing identical morphemes is
53

referred to as differential meaning. To see this kind of

meaning find six examples of minimal pairs and state the
distinguishing meaning component in question.

Grammatical meaning is the component of meaning

recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different
words, e.g. the case meaning in nouns (child's, woman's;
parents', soldiers'). Give a set of word forms with the
grammatical meaning of tense. Give two paradigms
illustrating the grammatical meaning of number.

(Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking-Glass, 1871)

Identify metaphor in the following sentences:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

I'm all tied up.

I was climbing the wall when the idea suddenly hit me.
Her husband is his right hand.
The left hand does not know what the right one is doing.
He is an absolute pig (snake, rat, fox).

Lexical meaning is the component of meaning proper to

the word as a linguistic unit, e.g. the word forms: elephant,
elephant's, elephants, elephants' have one and the same
core meaning component denoting: 'a giant, four-legged
animal with a trunk'. State the lexical meaning recurrent in
each of the following sets: go, goes, going, went, gone;
sneeze, sneezes, sneezing, sneezed; man, man's, men,
men's; child, child's, children, children's.

Hyperbole is a figure of speech which is an

exaggeration. It is often confused with a simile or a
metaphor. The difference is that a hyperbole is an
exaggeration. E.g. his feet were as big as a barge looks like
a simile but it is actually an exaggeration - barges can be
700 feet long. People use expressions such as: / nearly
died laughing, I almost jumped out of my skin, that made
my toes curl, a tempest in a teapot, a storm in a teacup, like
a ton of bricks, split one's sides with laughter, I was hopping
mad, I tried a thousand times. These statements are not
literally true, but people make them to sound impressive or
to emphasize something. Re-word the phrases in the
examples given using ordinary words and not hyperbole,
e.g. like a ton of bricks - something happening very
suddenly as in: he fell for her like a ton of bricks.

Find examples of hyperbole in everyday language.

Find examples of hyperbole in poetry.

Litotes is a deliberate understatement which is generated

by denying the opposite or contrary of the word which
otherwise would be used (e.g. not many meaning a few, not
a bad singer meaning a good singer, not unhappy meaning
happy). Here are some more examples:

What is part-of-speech meaning?

Having in mind the definition of part-of-speech

meaning (i.e. the meaning a word has by virtue of its form
class), comment on the following:
'God, to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or
improper'. (R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer,
and architect, 1895-1983).

Assign word-class
meaning to the
words in the following poem.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did

gyre and gimble in the wabe; All
mimsy were the borogoves, And the
mome raths outgrabe'.
66

(i.e.

part-of-speech)

54

1. Although a mish-mash the dish was not at all disagreeable

to the palate.

2. After he has learnt the truth he will not long remain ignorant
of his feelings toward her.
3. Hitting that pole obviously did not do your head any good.

1. Running a marathon in under two hours is no small

accomplishment.

2. She has a doctorate and three children, which is no small

achievement.

Find the examples of litotes in the following text:

A figure lean or corpulent, tall or short, though deviating

from beauty, may still have a certain union of the
various parts, which may contribute to make them on
the whole not unpleasing.

Depending on the context and intonation litotes can

either have the effect of understatement, or it can become
an intensifying expression. Having this in mind explain the
difference between these statements:

1. Avalanches are common in the Swiss Alps in winter.

2. Avalanches are not rare in the Swiss Alps in winter.
Litotes can be used to make a modest assertion, e.g. using

not improperly rather than correctly or best in the following

example: This genre can be termed not improperly the
melodrama of romance. Find an example of your own.

66

Illustrate further this use of litotes.

Litotes can be a means of expressing modesty

(downplaying one's accomplishments) in order to gain the
audience's favour as in the examples:

New words are formed, old ones wither, and existing

words change. A few hundred years ago a gale was a
gentle breeze, and nice was not a compliment, it meant
foolish or stupid. The word decimate, from Latin decimatus
(past participle) and decimus (meaning 'tenth') used to
mean 'to kill one out of every ten soldiers' and decimation
was a method of punishing mutinous legions in the ancient
Roman army. Today the word decimate has evolved to
mean 'large-scale damage, or to destroy a large number of
a group', and some dictionaries (like Collins COBUILD
English Language Dictionary) quote just this latter meaning.
Here are two more words that have changed their
meaning in time. The word officious (from Latin officiosus
'dutiful') used to mean 'ready to serve, obliging'; today the
word officious means 'excessive eagerness in offering
unwanted or unneeded help or advice'. The word feisty
(from ME and OE fisting 'breaking wind') used to mean
'spirited, full of courage, or energy'; today it means 'irritable,
or ill-tempered'. Comment on the meaning of the words:

55

78

56

decimate, officious, and feisty as they are used in the

following sentences. How would you qualify the type of
change that has occurred?

Historically, words can change their meaning through

litotes as in astound, and also through hyperbole as in kill.
They can change their meaning through elevation as in
marshal or degeneration as in knave. Word meanings
change through metaphor or metonymy (as in crane and
scepter respectively). Look up these words in an
etymological dictionary and see for yourself how the
meaning has changed through time.

Here is an example of a word that has changed its

meaning through metonymy: Pharaoh (from Middle
English Pharao, from Old English Pharaon, from Latin, from
Greek, from Hebrew par'oh, from Egyptian pr-'o 'great
house'. First the designation was for the 'palace' but later
the word was used to refer to the 'king' (in the same way
the White house and a US President can have the same
referential meaning in modern English but mind the fact that
in this case the change of meaning through metonymic
transfer has synchronic relevance). The word Pharaoh (n.)
has the following meaning in Modern English: 'a title of an
ancient Egyptian king'. It can also mean: 'a tyrant', but that
meaning has been created through metaphoric extension.
Find out what is the story behind the word mandarin in
English.

1. 'Workers are collecting the few scraps of uniforms - in one

case, a nearly complete military hat - to be analyzed for
parasites. DNA analysis may help resolve whether a strain
of typhus borne by lice helped decimate the troops.' Michael
Wines, Baltic Soil Yields Evidence of a Bitter End to
Napoleon's Army, The New York Times, Sep 14, 2002

2. 'Winter grain crops across the state have been decimated

by the conditions, with little relief expected and hopes now
pinned on summer crops.' Mark Scala, Never Rains But it
Sprinkles, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia), Sep 7,
2002

3. 'The disputed territory - remote but fertile and said to

contain gold - is not the real issue. More important is the
fact that Ethiopia, big, ancient and proud, has its main
access to the outside world controlled by small, new, feisty
Eritrea.' Africa: The New Princes Fall Out, The Economist
(London), May 23, 1998

4 'Roxeline, it turns out, was a feisty character in a comic

play that Haydn wrote some music for.' Greg Sandow, HI,
I'm Wolfgang and I'll be your composer, The Wall Street
Journal (New York), Aug 27, 2002

There are different lexical sense relations, e.g.

synonymy, hyponymy, compatibility, incompatibility, etc.
Synonymy means sameness of meaning. A synonym is a
word or expression which means the same as another word
or expression, e.g. violin - fiddle, royal -regal. A more
technical definition of synonyms is that synonyms are
words different in their pronunciation, similar in their
denotative meaning and interchangeable at least in some
contexts. Provide examples of cognitive synonyms (which
are incapable of yielding sentences with different truth
conditions), for instance: He plays the fiddle entails He
plays the violin.

5. 'If (the petition) demands that the traffic officials of

Grahamstown return to being polite public servants,
working for the good and safety of the community, rather
than the rude and officious revenue officers they have
become...' Cecile Greyling, Teacher Launches Petition
Against Traffic Department Repression, East Cape News
(Grahamstown, South Africa), June 13 2002

6. 'The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule.'
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess, 1842

78

There are no real synonyms and there is always some

difference of meaning between the words and expressions
which are said to be synonymous. The use of a member of
a synonymous pair can be contextually restricted so that it
is context-dependent, e.g. His Royal Highness but not
57

*His Kingly Highness or *His Regal Highness. Use the

following pairs of hypothetical synonyms in different
contexts and see if they are interchangeable or not:
capacity - ability; lively - bright-eyed and bushy-tailed;
recreation - leisure; reconsider -review; recreate - restore;
leave of absence - time off; dense - thick; dense - stupid;
cheap - inexpensive;

Some words and expressions are used in different styles

and registers; they are denotationally similar but they are
favoured by a particular language variant to suit best the
relations
among
speakers,
subject
matter
and
expressiveness. E.g. leave of absence and time off differ
stylistically - one is formal the other is not; also: blow smoke
up someone's ass is a very informal, even offensive
expression for the neutral hypocritical or insincere. Fill in the
gaps in the table below with the words which belong to a
particular language style. Leave some cells empty if
necessary.

Formal

fatality

iniquito
us
posteri
or

veterin
ary surgeon

piles

pee

omnisci
ent

stupid
knowall

Inform
al

comfy
dense

Offen
sive

Nigger

politic
o

Words which have stylistically negative connotation

are substituted by their circumlocutionary synonyms
which
are also called euphemisms. A euphemism is a way of
referring to something unpleasant so as to make it appear
less unpleasant (e.g. relieve oneself instead of urinate or to
put to sleep instead of kill). It is a figure of speech in which
an unpleasant or coarse phrase is replaced by a softer or
less offensive expression. A euphemism can have a
metaphorical sense as in the substitution of the phrase
push up the daisies for die (cf. mirisati travu sa donje strane
in the Serbian language). Give some more examples of
euphemisms in the English language.

Some words and expressions are used in different

registers (language variants that are subject-dependant).
Here are some words and expressions that come from legal
English: de novo, de jure, defame, impeachment,
henceforth, disclame, equivocal, aggravate, defraud. Find
their equivalents in colloquial English.
Here are some words which are used in business English:
pass the entries, parent company, surety contract, to
sustain injury / loss / damage, outstanding capital
expenditures. Find out what these words and phrases
mean. Re-phrase them using neutral, common-core English
words.

mercy
killing

Some sets of synonyms belong to different dialects, e.g. to

British English, American English, etc. Here are some
examples of dialectal synonyms: sweet shop Br. E.
-candy store Am. E.; autumn Br. E. - fall Am. E.; slip
through the net Br. E. - slip through the cracks or fall
through the cracks Am. E.; cradle-snatching Br. E. -robbing
the cradle Am. E.; like a kid in a sweet shop Br. E.; like a
kid in a candy store Am. E. Find more examples of dialectal
synonyms.

Colloq
uial
death

Give six examples of euphemisms in the Serbian language

(e.g. skratiti za glavu, otici istinu, zaobici istinu,
etc.)

78

58

Take any text (chosen at random) from a British newspaper

and search it for euphemisms.

Here are some English expressions about death: pass

away; go the way of all flesh; to breathe one's last; to be
gathered to one's fathers; to join the great majority; to come
to an untimely end. Give some examples of death
euphemisms in the Serbian language.

Consider the following sentences. What do the following

euphemisms refer to? Rephrase the sentences.

The rebel fighters were neutralized. The Prime Minister

was economical with the truth. With all due respect, I
think your figures are misleading. Could you please
regularize your bank account? We had a frank, open
exchange of views. This is not a non-risk policy. The
company is in a non-profit situation. Already half the
economy is linked to underperforming, loss-making
state companies. In the Yugoslav federation "tiny
Montenegro figures as a statistical afterthought with a
share of no more than 2 to 6 per cent in anything". Both
banks are for sale to strategic investors. The problem is
that most enterprises are over-manned and undercapitalised after a lost decade of war and sanctions.
When the mob laid hands on the fugitive they did not
stand on ceremony; they hanged him from the nearest
lamp-post. Instead of pushing up daisies, he is still
among the living, grey whiskers and all.

Give two examples of euphemisms in English belonging to

political jargon.

4. negative gain in test scores

5. synthetic glass
6. normal gratitude
7. vegetarian leather
8. thermal therapy kit
9. substantive negative outcome
10. reutilization marketing yard

78

A. stolen goods; B. junkyard; C. plastic; D. bag of ice

cubes; E. bribe; F. death, G. liar, H. vinyl; I. failed; J. lower
test scores

Answers: 1. G; 2. I; 3. A; 4. J; 5. C; 6. E; 7. H; 8. D; 9. F; 10. B.

Dysphemism (the opposite of a euphemism) is the

substitution of a harsher, depricating, offensive, ugly or
otherwise unpleasant locution for one relatively neutral or
more attractive in sound or meaning (e.g. fisheye soup for
tapioca pudding, brat for child, bitch for woman, loony bin
for mental hospital). Dysphemism is an antonym of
euphemism. Find more examples of dysphemisms in
English.

A Dysphemism is a statement which is intended to sound

much worse than reality. Political campaigns make great

Euphemisms, withdrawing our services, taking

industrial action, pass away, low IQ, Ministry of
Defence, companion animal, disadvantaged senior
citizen, disabled, manly man, under the weather, lower
income brackets, have a dialogue, retirement pension,
so-and-so, pushing up the daisies, love child

American English is awash in euphemisms and

doublespeak. See if you can do the following quiz. Match
the euphemisms from 1 to 10 with the plain English
versions from A to J (taken from: "It is Fundamentally True
That the Terms Below Are in English", The New York
Times, 26 May 1996).

1. sufferer from fictitious disorder syndrome

2. sub-optimal
3. temporarily displaced inventory

Match the following euphemisms with the words and

phrases they refer to.

Words and phrases they refer to. to go on strike,

stupid, die, Ministry of War, an old cripple, pet, old-age
pension, sex maniac, depressed, poor, objectionable
person, talk, dead, someone whose parents have never
been married to each other

59

to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to

yours'; Roman holiday ('an entertainment event where
pleasure is derived from watching gore and barbarism');
Chinese wall ('a strong barrier; a rule prohibiting
exchange of confidential information between different
departments of an organization, typically a financial
one, to prevent its use in illegal gain'); Dutch courage
('that obtained by drinking spirits')

use of dysphemisms. Find some examples of dysphemisms

belonging to political jargon.

A Dysphemism and a euphemism are often two sides of

the same coin (e.g. a guerrilla in neutral language can be
called freedom fighter by some and a terrorist by others).
Find parallel examples in the Serbian language.

A pejorative word or expression is one which is

derogatory and shows disapproval (e.g. junk food, kinglet,
mannish). Find neutral words or expressions for the
following dysphemisms: ruthlessly exploited;
language police; grammar Nazis; evil empire; pencil
pusher; cradle-snatcher; grind your teeth; every Tom, Dick
and Harry; raise hell; hell-raiser; kick ass; blow smoke up
someone's ass; the villain of the place

What is a pejorative word or expression?

What does derogatory mean?

Name two suffixes which often have derogatory force. Give

some examples.

Consider the following sentences and portions of text.

Identify words and expressions which are derogatory, and
even offensive.

'If you go to pro-Yugoslav rallies they're all toothless

illiterates. Go to pro-independence rallies and you find
young people with children on their shoulders'.

Here are some cliche phrases employing various

nationalities. They reflect a certain malice and they
denigrate some nations due to traditional hostilities between
the English and the French or e.g. the Dutch or the Irish.
One should bear in mind, however, that ethnic slurs occur
in every language and in English they are used in speech
rather than in writing.

78

French leave ('to leave without permission'); Irish bull ('a

ludicrously incongruous statement', like, e.g. 'Always go

Fill in the gaps by using a noun, verb or an adjective

related to a nation:

1. Sale at which the price of something is set far beyond its

real value and then reduced by the auctioneer until a
buyer is found is_______auction.
2._
_treat is a meal, entertainment, etc. at which each
person pays for himself.
3. Go_____with somebody means to share expenses.
4. To talk to somebody like a_______uncle means to lecture
him severely.
5.___________Take a
leave is to do something or to go
away
without giving a notice.
6. 'If I could drop dead right now I would be the happiest man
alive!' is an example of an___________bull.
7. To_______means to 'divide (a country, territory, etc.) into
________________small,
quarrelsome,
ineffectual
states'.
The
noun
related
to this verb is________.
8.
Anything very complicated or perplexing is called_________
puzzle.
9.____________________Anything unintelligible, as a speech,
handwriting,
etc.
is
referred to as_______, e.g. It's all______to me.
10. The name of a dish consisting of melted cheese,
usually
mixed with ale or beer, milk, and spices, served over
toast is_______rabbit.

60

Goth, n. means 'a rude or uncivilized person' (from Goth,

one of a Germanic tribe who invaded the Roman empire
during the third, fourth and the fifth centuries). The word is
an eponym and its meaning is derogatory. Use this word in
a sentence.
Here are two more ethnic slurs:

Here are some examples of phraseology to avoid, and

alternative suggestions:

Persons with a disability or individuals with disabilities

instead of disabled person; persons who are deaf or
young people with hearing impairments instead of deaf
people; people who are blind or persons with a visual
impairment instead of blind people; a student with
dyslexia instead of a dyslexic student.

Comment on the PC phrases from a linguistic point of

view, e.g. why is the adjective - noun combination like
dyslexic student considered to be undesirable and more
offensive than the phrase: a student with dyslexia?

1. The Germans never make a small mistake.

2. The Scots pray on their knees on Sunday but on their
neighbours the rest of the week.

Work out the meaning of the slurs. What is implied by

the first example? Note the pun: pray - prey in the
second example.

Political correctness with reference to language means

rejection of discriminatory language and use of words and
phrases which are considered socially appropriate, e.g. the
use of physically challenged for handicapped. Find more
examples of politically correct words and phrases in
English.

As civilizations decline, they become increasingly

concerned with form over substance, particularly with
respect to language. At the time of the First World War they
called it shell shock: the term was simple, clear and
descriptive. A generation later, it was called combat fatigue.
Today the two words have doubled in size, and there is
even an acronym PTSD : post traumatic stress disorder, the
term being more in tune with current effete sensibilities.
Euphemisms and politically correct language can be
pretentious, ridiculous, and at their worst they can damage
the causes they claim to benefit (cf. neutralize for kill). What
is your personal response to politically correct language?

What are politically correct terms and circumlocutions for

the following: short, tall, stupid.

Find the words to which the following PC words correspond:

black, African-American, Hispanic, Latino, ghetto, inner city.

78

There is a variety of euphemisms in referring to blindness

or blind persons, e.g. euphemisms such as hard of seeing,
visually challenged, sightless, visually impaired, people
with blindness, people who are blind. Some people feel that
politically correct euphemisms are unacceptable, even
offensive, and deserving ridicule and that the words to be
avoided
are,
on
the
contrary,
straightforward,
unobjectionable, harmless and respectable. How do you
feel about these euphemisms?

Find the examples of PC words and expressions in the

Serbian language (e.g. osobe sa invaliditetom)

What is homonymy?

What would be a rule of thumb definition of the difference

between homonymy and polysemy?

Look up the word pupil meaning 'a young person who

studies in a school' and the word pupil meaning 'the black
part in your eye' in four dictionaries and see if they are
treated as homonymous or polysemous; see whether they
are treated within one and the same headword or not.

Say whether in the following examples we are dealing

with polysemy or homonymy:
61

1. deal meaning 'to treat, to handle' and deal meaning 'to take

action';
2. deal meaning 'to distribute cards' and deal meaning 'to
treat, to handle';
3. deal meaning 'to trade or do business' and deal meaning 'to
behave in a specified manner';
4. deal meaning 'a business transaction' and deal meaning 'a
board or plank'.

State the difference

homonymy.

Compare the following paradigms and say whether we are

dealing with total or partial homonymy.

between

total

and

partial

4. 'I won't tell a soul that you have a hole in the sole of your
5.
6.
7.
8.

1. place, v.: place, places, placing, placed - place, .: place,

places;
2. back, .: back, backs - back, v.: back, backs, backing,
backed - back, adv.;
3. table, n. (as in kitchen table): table, tables - table, n. (as in
tables and graphs): table, tables;
4. pupil, n. (as in a pupil of a painter): pupil, pupils - pupil, n.
(as in the pupil in your eye): pupil, pupils.
Homonyms can be subdivided into homographs and
homophones. Homographs are the words which have the
same spelling yet they have different meanings (e.g. desert,
n. meaning 'barren land' and desert, v. meaning 'to
abandon'). Homophones are the words pronounced in the
same way but with different meanings (e.g. flu and flew, its
and it's). Find more examples of homographs and
homophones in English.

Consider the following examples and comment on the

italicized words in terms of homography and homophony.

1. 'According to the fairytale the gentleman in the te//coat and

the bow tie took the bow.'
2. 'When he entered the living room he could see live coals
and pieces of wood were still gently burning.'
3. 'The young man who lives next door and I shall go to a pub
with live music'
78

What follows is a list of homophones in phonetic

transcription. Each sound-form represents at least two
words different in spelling and meaning. Identify the words
which correspond to the pronunciation forms given, e.g.
:/ - key ('a piece of metal which you place in a lock and
turn in order to open it'); quay ('a long platform beside the
sea or a river where boats can be tied up and loaded or
unloaded').
/aed/, /eid/, /basnd/, /?:/,/7,/:9/, (, //,
/bai/, /ka:st/, /brauz/, /tju:z/, /si:lirj/, /??:??1/,
/kxs/, /??:?1/, /??:?????7, /dig*/, /dju:/, /?:?/,
/mainaV, /flu:/, /, //, /sait/, /?????/, /wit//,
/????/,/sti:l/, /??:/,/rig/, /medl/, /rein/.
English spelling is not phonetic, so words can rhyme
when their spelling is very different. Take the words given
and think of other words that rhyme with them (e.g. weight eight, late, hate, date; site - sight, height, might, light, right,
write, etc.):

shoe.'
'It was painM to her to learn that her son deliberately broke
a pane of glass in the neighbour's window.'
That son of his enjoys lying in the sun:
'You should wind the rope around the tree to secure it
against the wind:
'You are not allowed to say that aloud:

me, dew, come, tell, field, pat, pet, time, break, bread,
floor, win, pause, praise, sea, tide.

Having in mind what you know about homophony

explain the following puns:

A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

What do you ask twin witches? Which witch is which?

Marriage is the mourning after the knot before.

62

Reading whilst sunbathing makes you well-red.

When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.

What is pun? Illustrate.

Comment on the following definition of the pun (quotation

from Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the
English Language, Editor in Chief: Philip Babcock Gove,
Merriam-Webster Inc., Springfield, Maine, 1993):

'Pun - the humorous use of a word in such a way as to

suggest different meanings or applications or of words
having the same or nearly the same sound but different
meanings; a play on words.'

78

According to this definition is there a crisp-clear

distinction between pun and word play. Give an
example of a pun or word play Involving sound
similarity (e.g. 'purrfect' pets for 'cats'), and an example
of a pun or word play involving meaning similarity
(e.g. tender for 'effeminate').

Discuss the examples of word play in the following

poems (the examples are italicized).

If I grow
a moustache for
you

will you
grow a
ffectionate
for me?

S. Turner

MURDER

They
called him

a
murderer but I
thought he was
simply breath
taking.

S. Turner

Give some examples of homophoneous words used for the

sake of word play.

Consider the following pair of examples: postman - post

woman. Why is it that there is no pair mailman - mail
woman?

Analyze the following examples of word play:

Civilization - that's when two monkeys beat up another
monkey because he has been monkeying around; posterior
for posterity; cats are purrfect pets; the dog was furrious;
my dog is a champion boxer; tender meaning 'effeminate';
justice meaning a 'whore'; drum meaning 'buttocks'. Say
which examples illustrate puns or word play involving sound
similarity and which of them illustrate puns or word play
involving meaning similarity.

AFTER SOME THOUGHT, A POEM

(Poems taken from: Naum Dimitrijevic, ed. Poetry With

Pleasure, 1996, p. 23).

Breath taking' is a form of word play but more

particularly a pun. Does this example of pun involve
sound similarity or meaning similarity? What can you
say about a ffectionate as a form of word play?

The following example illustrates play on words.

Explain.

'You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never

know how soon it will be too late' (Ralph Waldo
Emerson, writer and philosopher, 1803 - 1882).

Analyze the following text (Marie Claire, May 1997, p.

64) from the point of view of word play.
63

sorry, gentlemen, only one carrion allowed per

passenger!'

STAYING FAITHFULL

Marianne Faithful! met Mick Jagger at 17 and survived

their love affair. Thirty years later, is Marianne still mad
about Mick? 7 was the love of his life and he of mine'.
'Now I have men in my life who really love me'.
Find the examples of word play in the following text
(Marie Claire, May 1997, p. 16):

STOP TEARING YOUR HEART OUT

Nothing is more damaging to your hair than yanking a

comb through wet tangles. So we created Aussie slip
detangler to rinse them away without added weight. So
put an end to fraying and flyaways. Slip detangler
clears the tangles out of your morning.

Here is some more word play from Keep 'Em

Laughing. Jokes to Amuse and Annoy your Friends, by
Louis Phillips, Viking: New York, 1996, p. 24. Base your
comments on what you know about ambiguity,
homonymy, and homophony.

Poet: / put my whole mind into that

poem. Editor: Blank verse, I suppose.

Passenger: Driver, will this bus take me to Broadway:

Bus Driver: Upper or lower? Passenger: All of me, I
hope.

Maryhelen: After Minnie Mouse fell into the river, how

did Mickey Mouse revive her? Caroline: How?
Maryhelen: He used mouse-to-mouse resuscitation.

Explain humour that you find in the following jokes.

Base your explanation on what you know about puns and
word play.

78

Two vultures board an airplane, each carrying two dead

raccoons. The stewardess looks at them and says: 'I'm

(carrion - dead animals; carry-on - piece of luggage)

There was a man who sent ten puns to friends, with the
hope that at least one of the puns would make them
laugh. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

(compare: no pun in ten did and no pun intended)

Here are some more examples of word play. (The

examples are taken from the text entitled: Thought
provoking ideas. "Some Old Some New, All Borrowed To
Make You Blue" which appeared on the Inter Net. All the
examples have been approved of by native speakers.)
Clever-read the examples carefully, and provide linguistic
explanation based on what you know about homonymy,
homography, homophony, ambiguity, and word-formation
processes. Bear in mind that some examples of pun cross
word boundaries.

1. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.

2. A backward poet writes inverse.
3. In democracy, it's your vote that counts. In feudalism, it's
your count that votes.

4. With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

5. Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft, and I'll show you
A flat minor.

6. When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

7. He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
8. A lot of money is tainted. It taint yours and it taint mine.
9. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
10. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
11. A plateau is a high form of flattery.
12. The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a

small medium at large.

13. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

14. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
15. Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of
defeat.
16. The poor guy fell into a glass-grinding machine and made a
spectacle of himself.
64

tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple

while standing on his son's head.

Find some examples of word play which appear in

commercials and advertisements on TV and in
magazines (British and American).

Find some examples of word play in cartoons (British and

American).

The fragments of texts listed below contain some examples

of bloopers. Identify them and having in mind what you
know about: homonyms, homophones, homographs, word
play, and pun analyze these bloopers providing some
linguistic explanation. (A blooper is a slang word for a
blunder, a gross, stupid or careless mistake, especially one
made in public; the bloopers quoted come from a collection
of bloopers compiled by teachers throughout the United
States and communicated to me by Thomas F. Magner in
the text entitled: The World According to Student
Bloopers).

4. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William

Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is
famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with
his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In
one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his
situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another,
Lady Macbeth tries to convince Mac-beth to kill the King by
attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example
of a heroic couplet.

5. Then the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and
nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with
bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He
wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine
was a baroness, she couldn't bear him any children.

1. Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks

invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric and
Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One
myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the
River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in
"The llliad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity" in
which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured
on this journey. Actually Homer was not written by Homer
but by another man of that name.

6. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British

2. Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the

Dames. King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery. King Harold
mustarded his troops before the Battle of
Hastings. Joan of Arc was cannonized by George
Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew
boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta provided
that no free man should be hanged twice for the same
offense.

3. In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The

greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many
poems and verse and also wrote liter-ature. Another tale
78

Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen
Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63
years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life
were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the
final event which ended her reign.
Here are some more bloopers picked up from some
signs in Africa (the source is Inter Net). Provide linguistic
explanation (on the basis of what you know about
ambiguity, semantic clash, analogy, etc.) of the humour in
the examples given.

1. On one of the buildings of a Sierra Leone Hospital: 'Mental

2.
3.
4.
5.

Health Prevention Centre'

In a Namibian nightclub: 'Ladies are not allowed to have
children in the bar'
In a Zimbabwean restaurant: 'Customers who find our
waitresses rude ought to see the manager.'
On a window of a Nigerian shop: 'Why go elsewhere to be
cheated when you can come here!'
On the grounds of a private school in South Africa: 'No
trespassing without permission'

65

An acrostic is a series of written lines or verses in

which the first, last or other particular letters form a word,
phrase, the alphabet, etc. These letters spell out a hidden
word or message. Acrostics can be said to be the most
complete type of deletion since it is only a single letter per
line that remains. Acrostics also have to do with word play.
In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream the
following passage, spoken by Titania, spells out her own
name:

Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no,

I am a spirit of no common rate,
The summer till doth tend upon my state;
ANd I do love thee. Therefore go with me.
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee;
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep...

Children yet, the tale to

hear, Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly still nestle near.

It's a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the

stream -Lingering in the golden
gleam -Life, what is it but a
dream?

Here is the acrostic poem that concludes Through the

Looking Glass written by Lewis Carroll. Find out for
whom specifically the author wrote Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland.

An anagram is the rearrangement of letters in a word,

phrase, or name to form another word, phrase, or name
(e.g. when you rearrange the letters in new door you get
one word). Explain the following example of word play
based on rearrangement of letters.

A: When is enough not

enough? B: One hug.

A boat, beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily, In an
evening of July-

The words: aboard, abode, and note, anagram into:

abroad, adobe, and tone. Find the words and phrases into
which the following words and phrases anagram: dormitory,
Statue of Liberty, television set.

Children three that nestle

near, Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear

Long has paled that

sunny sky: Echoes fade and
memories die: Autumn frosts
have slain July.

Still she haunts me,

phantomwise, Alice moving under
skies, Never seen by waking eyes.

Dirty room; Built to stay free; See? It's violent!

Kangaroo words are marsupial words that carry

smaller versions of themselves within their spellings (e.g.
respite has rest, splotch has spot). How about: instructor,
curtail, feasted, rapscallion?

Tutor, cut, fed, ate, rascal

Frangible is a three-generation kangaroo word: in its

pouch it has one word with the same meaning and that
other word has yet another one in its pouch with a similar
meaning. Identify the pouch words.

78

Fragile, frail
66

Palindrome is a word that communicates the same

message when the letters of which it is composed are read
in reverse order (e.g. level - level, race car - race car).
Palindromes make you say: Ah, ha!, Oh, ho!, Tut-tut! Try to
give some examples of your own!
While a palindromic word (such as: civic, or madam) has
the same meaning left to right and right to left, other words
change their meaning and become new words when
spelled in reverse (e.g. doc - cod, or decaf -faced). Explain
the following examples of word play:
War is raw; When you are stressed you may reach for
desserts.

6. written reminder + move upward = learn by heart

Hyponymy or inclusion refers to class membership, e.g.

violet, rose, pansy, daisy, daffodil, tulip are included in
flower. The words which are part of a given taxonomy are
related to each other through the relationship of generic
hyponymy, e.g. a lexeme flower is representative of a
number of more specific words: violet, rose, pansy, daisy,
daffodil, etc. When talking about inclusion the upper term is
the superordinate or hypernym and the lower term the
subordinate or hyponym. Give more examples of sets of
words to illustrate hyponymy.

What are co-hyponyms? Illustrate.

Here are some words which designate containers joined

with some other members of the same word family. All sets
are open so that you can add some of your own examples.
State meaning relations holding between the members of
the word family.

Pangram is a sentence that makes use of all the letters

of the alphabet (e.g. The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy
dog is a sentence that employs every letter in the alphabet
at least once). Here are some more examples:

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.

Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz. How
quickly daft jumping zebras vex.

Can you come up with your own pangram examples?

Solve the left side of the equation to create two fourletter words. Join them together to get the eight-letter word
clued on the right side of the equal sign, e.g. boyfriend +
neckware = seductive looking woman -BEAU + TIES =
BEAUTIES).

cap

3. support + the stuff of skeletons = fortitude

78

bag - handbag, shoulder bag, paper bag, carrier bag

2. soothing substance + spoken examination = Scottish

5. thing you think + enumerate = dreamer

box - matchbox, candy box, seed box, toolbox, musical

box

1. declare as true + matured = calculated central tendency

4. buckle +narrow road = Spitfire or Hurricane

Key: 1. AVER + AGED = AVERAGED; 2. BALM + ORAL = BALMORAL; 3.

BACK + BONE = BACKBONE; 4. WARP + LANE = WARPLANE; 5. IDEA +
LIST = IDEALIST; 6. MEMO + RISE = MEMORISE

basket - bread basket, laundry basket, wastepaper

basket, shopping basket, picnic basket

case - suitcase, pencil case, bookcase, pillow case

pot - flowerpot, teapot, coffee pot

bin - dustbin, rubbish bin, litter bin, pedal bin

Find the lexemes (hypernyms, superordinates) which

are representative of the words in the following four sets: 1.
garlic, marjoram, mint, basil, parsley, rosemary, sage,
67

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

thyme, bay leaf, oregano, coriander, 2. black pepper, white

pepper, Jamaica pepper, vanilla, ginger, nutmeg,
cinnamon, pimento, chilli, curry-powder, 3. wheat, maize,
rye, barley, oats, rice; 4. box, bag, bowl, pan, basket, case,
can, tank, pot, bin, jug.

What follows is a set of words representing flowers. Some

of the words listed are included in garden flowers, others in
wild flowers. Identify the words which are hyponyms
(subordinates) of garden flowers and those which are
hyponyms (subordinates) of wild flowers: iris, carnation,
hyacinth, bluebell, daisy, marigold, orchid, lily, dandelion,
pansy, rose, narcissus, crocus, snowdrop, violet, daffodil,
primrose, poppy, cacti, ivy, water lily, lily of the valley,
Madonna lily, corn-flower, thistle, clover, sunflower.
Hyponymy is the type of lexical relation which corresponds
to the inclusion of one class in another, e.g. dog, goat,
cow, sheep, horse are included in animals; cabbage,
lettuce, spring onion, spinach are included in vegetables.
When talking about inclusion the upper term is the
superordinate or hypernym and the lower term the
subordinate or hyponym, e.g. monkey is hypernym of
chimpanzee and chimpanzee is hyponym of monkey.

I like BURGUNDY colour.

This car is SKY-BLUE.
The president was ASSASINATED yesterday.
This is an ELEPHANT.
Elizabeth has a pair of SCARLET shoes.
Do we have to live in this MAUSOLEUM?
These two languages are RELATED.
She SNUBBED me.
10. She put her TEDDY beside her.

Taxonomy may be regarded as a sub-type of hyponymy

so that the taxonyms of a lexical item are a sub-set of its
hyponyms. A useful test for taxonomy is: An X is a kind /
type of Y (e.g. a daffodil is a type of flower, passion fruit is
a kind of fruit). Apply the test proposed and provide your
own examples to illustrate taxonomy.

A major type of branching lexical hierarchy is the partwhole type (e.g. arm, leg, and head are parts of the body
and: palm and finger are parts of the hand). The semantic
relation between a lexical item denoting a part and that
denoting the corresponding whole is termed meronymy.
Take the words: car, ship, school and house and pair them
with the words which indicate their parts.

Antonymy means oppositeness of meaning. Words that

are opposite are antonyms, e.g. handsome - ugly, clean dirty. Antonymy is usually used as a cover term for:
complementarity, converseness, and incompatibility,
but in the more restrictive sense of gradable opposites. It
can be exemplified by such pairs as: easy - difficult, hot cold. Add your own examples to the list of antonyms.

Antonymy is the only meaning relation which can be

signalled by a special morpheme (cf. lucky - unlucky;
harmful - harmless). Turn the following words into their
opposites by means of an affix: happy, interesting, useful,
accurate, possible, probable, use, agree, organize, behave,
polite, discrimination, pro-war, attack, informed, successful,
compose, satisfy, proper, lawful, legal, legitimate,
reversible, regular, hypertension, espionage, employer.

1. Find hypernyms of the following words: camel, sparrow,

doll, boy, slipper, egg-beater, cake, rosemary, mustard,
mobile phone, mansion, swiveling chair, coffee table,
queen, kitty, knife, spoon, fork, plate, cup.

2. Find hyponyms of the following words: limb, plant, animal,

herb, bird, chair, table, tense, cover, building, insect, flower,
tea, vehicle, monarch, cutlery, crockery.

Hyponymy involves entailment ('follows from' relation),

e.g. there are three chimpanzees entails there are three
monkeys. A sentence containing a hyponym entails a
parallel sentence identical to it except that it contains a
hypernym in place of the hyponym (e.g. Peter kicked Paul :
Peter hit Paul). Say what is entailed by the following:

1. He PUNCHED me.
78

68

Compatibility is the lexical relation which corresponds to

overlap between classes. Lexical items related by
compatibility are compatibles. A pair of compatibles must
have a common hypernym (e.g. cat and pet fall under the
superordinate animal; husband and milkman belong to the
category of human males). The sense relation between
classes with no members in common is incompatibility
(e.g. leaf and key are incompatibles, also: flower and sky).
Consider the following pairs of words and say if they are
compatibles or incompatibles:

Complementaries are a basic type of lexical

opposite.
A pair of complementaries divide some conceptual
domain into two mutually exclusive parts (e.g. true -false;
pass - fail). Consider the following pairs of words. Which of
them are not complementaries?

78

animal : lizard; lizard : frog; yesterday : today;

husband : wife; milk: book; novel - book; cycle - lie;
wheel: blanket.

tiger - tigress; man - woman; give - take; dead - alive;

open - closed; open - shut; awake - asleep; night - day;
husband - wife; boy - man; home - house; black - white;
obey _ disobey; command - obey; stranger - local

6. METHODS AND PROCEDURES OF

MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

69

Converseness refers to contrastive lexical relations

involving logical reciprocity, e.g. purchase - sell, give -take.
Here are some more words which are reciprocal
correlates: husband - wife, buy - sell, left - right, up -down.
Add your own examples to the list.

Minor types of antonyms are the antipodals and reversives.

In a pair of antipodals one member of the pair is an
extreme in one direction and the other represents the other
extreme, e.g. east - west, top -bottom. In the case of
reversives one member of the pair represents movement in
one direction and the other movement in the opposite
direction, e.g. assent -descent, push - pull. Say whether the
following pairs of words are antipodals or reversives: north south, head-foot, in - out, enter - exit, yes - no, hopeful hopeless, overdone - underdone, rise - fall, ascend descend, advance - retreat, enter - leave, heat - cool,
improve -deteriorate, mount - dismount, fill - empty.

The relationship of reverse antonyms holds between

prefixal derivatives and the bases they are derived from,
e.g. lace - unlace, associate - disassociate. Add your own
examples to the list.

70

Immediate constituent analysis has to do with the

defining of the relevant relationships which hold between
morphologically relevant structural units. Combinations of
the units are usually binary and the aim of the immediate
constituent analysis is to segment structurally complex
lexical units into two independent sequences called
immediate constituents. Successive segmentation results
in ultimate constituents which cannot be further analyzed.
The word lawlessness, for example, is a binary construction
which can be divided into: lawless + ness; however, lawless
itself is a morphologically complex binary unit which can be
split into: law + less. Lawless, ness, law and less are said to
be immediate constituents and: law, less, ness are said to
be ultimate constituents. The hierarchical structure of the
word can be represented linearly by means of cuts (e.g. in
lawlessness there are two cuts marked with a vertical slash:
the first cut is between lawless and ness and the second
between law and less). The hierarchical structure of a
complex word or word-form can also be graphically
represented by a tree-diagram where branches indicate
binary division of the complex structure and leaves show
morphemic structure of the morphologically complex unit. A
tree-diagram of the word lawlessness would look like this:

708

LAWLES
SNESS

COFFEEGRINDER

709

LAWLESS

708

LAW
-LESS

N
ES
S

Immediate Constituents: cofTee, grinder,

grind, -er Ultimate Constituents: coffee,
grind, -er

First cut between coffee and

grinder Second cut between grind and -er

709

Apply immediate constituent analysis to the following

words (identify immediate and ultimate constituents; say
how many cuts there are; indicate the position of cuts;
use tree-diagrams to represent the hierarchical structure
of words): overwhelmingly, re-creation, recreation,
overgeneralization,
dissatisfied,
unilaterally,
unambiguously, misrepresentation, unobjectionable,
sleeplessness, sleepiness, uneducated, disapproval,
maladjusted, hypersensitive, dislocated, unequaled,
unidentifiable,
unimaginable,
theoretically,
underprivileged, undernourished, undernourishment,
undoubtedly, unhygienic, irreconcilable, irregularity,
irreproachable,
environmentalist,
conservationist,
enslavement,
enthronement,
inaccurately,
mismanagement, outrider, outermost, oversimplifying,
deactivate, decomposition, devaluation, developmental,
differentiation, encapsulate, teaspoonful, dishwasherproof.

COFFEE-GRINDER

COFFEE

GRIND

In the case of grammatically marked words it

is the
inflectional suffix that is cut off first (e.g. in handcuffs or
teaspoonfuls the first cut is between handcuff and -s and
between teaspoonful and -s respectively). Can you say
why?

708

Here are some more words for you to analyze by means

of immediate constituent analysis. Identify the
constituents: immediate and ultimate. Say where the cuts

-ER

are. Represent the hierarchical structure of the words using

tree-diagrams. Here is an example:
The words to be analyzed: egg-beater, dishwasher,
salad-spinner, window-shopping, window-dressing,
shoulder-bag, wax-painting, water-skiing, swimmingpool, lead-poisoning, belly-landing, mind-reading, foxhunting, daydreaming, air-conditioning, humming-bird,
sitting-room, blotting-paper, walking-stick, skippingrope,
tongue-twister, weekender, honeymooner,
midfielder, long-jumper, triple-jumper, heartbreaking,
self-regulating, self-centered, shop-soiled, outgoing,
incoming, well-meaning, passer-by, killer-whale.

GRINDER

There is one particularly frequent pattern present in

compound adjectives: the one which consists of adjective,
noun or numeral plus noun plus the -ed suffix, e.g. oldfashioned, pig-headed, four-cornered. There is another type
of combination similar to this: an adverb plus derivative in
-ed, e.g. well-mannered, well-behaved or yet another
combination of two elements the second of which is a
participle, e.g. heart-shaped, half-starved. The immediate
constituent analysis of such words of the

709

patterns mentioned above proceeds along different

lines. Compare the following examples:

pre-delivery, pre-examination, pre-retirement, poststructuralism, resource-poor, dishwasher-proof, pronationalist,

double-breasted,
double-glazed,
sportsmanship, polish ing-paste, weighing-machine,
belly-landing, ski-jumping, dress-maker, tongue-twister,
producer-director, typewriter, high-jumper, ice-dance,
onlooker, midfielder.

TWO
TWO-SIDED
STARVE -ED

HALF-

A word has a different lexical meaning depending

on its distributional pattern (cf. bird-cage and
cage-bird). Consider the following pairs of words.
See how the change of the pattern changes the
meaning of a word. Finger-ring - ring-finger, feedingbottle - bottle-feeding; water-tap - tap-water, bottlegreen - green bottle; fruit-market - market-fruit;
brand-new - new brand; house-pet - pet-house;
hunting-man - man-hunting; cutting diamond diamond-cutting;
riding-horse
horse-riding;
takeover- overtake; boat life - lifeboat.

Here are some more words for you to analyze: darkhaired, green-eyed, dog-eared, low-spirited, fainthearted, open-hearted, open-minded, good-natured,
hard-fisted, coldblooded, blue-blooded, one-sided, welladjusted, kidney-shaped, silver-plated, half-cooked,
double-glazed, full-blooded, full-throated, full-flavoured.

110

Morphological analysis can take the form of distributional

analysis. Distribution refers to the position of a lexical unit
relative to other lexical units of the same level (e.g. dis- in
disbelief takes the position of a prefix which means that it
precedes the base; -let in piglet follows the base; pushchair is a compound noun of the type verb plus noun, and
wheelchair is a compound noun of the type noun plus
noun). Consider the following words and state their
distributional patterns: unrealistic, undoubtedly, unwillingly,

The identity of distributional pattern, however,

does not necessarily mean that the words have the
same meaning (cf. take in: take a book, take a look,
take a chance, take a call). State the meaning of the
word turn in the following constructions (of the type:
turn plus direct object): turn gas, turn a knob, turn
your attention, turn a page, turn your ankle, turn a
cartwheel, turn a somersault.

Knowledge of the distributional patterns can be

used productively, i.e. to form new words, e.g. -like
combines with nouns to form adjectives which
describe things that are similar to whatever the
nouns refer to: childlike, prison-like, bird-like, clawlike. Form adjectives with this meaning using the
following nouns: animal, baby, lady, cat, clock,
74

clown, cow, dagger, daisy, desert, dog, doll, dream,

flower, honey, hook, kidney, moon.
Form nouns of the type egg-beater (the pattern being:
noun in objective case plus the verb plus the -erwith the
instrumental meaning) using the following elements:
cheese, cut; egg, slice; car, make; lemon, squeeze; coffee,
grind; pepper, grind; sandwich, make; salad, spin.

Distributional patterns are part of language competence

which enables decoding (i.e. understanding of the word on
the basis of the familiarity of the constituent elements and
distributional pattern). Interpret the meaning of the following
sets of words: reallocate, reappear, rebuild, reconsider, reeducate, reconstruct, redefine, rediscover, re-examine, re
freeze, remarry, rename, reopen, reprint, re-read, reunite,
rewrite; citywide, continent-wide, EEC-wide, nationwide,
planet-wide, state-wide, worldwide.

If fibre-rich means 'having a high amount of fibre' and if

energy-rich means 'containing a large amount of energy'
what do the following words mean: carbon-rich, cash-rich,
fat-rich, information-rich, sugar-rich, vitamin-rich?

Violation of the rules of a distributional pattern can result in

an ungrammatical word, e.g. embody - *bodyem; midfielder
- *ermidfield, *fieldermid, *miderfield. Provide your own
examples to illustrate this.

Co-occurrence means aptness of a word to co-occur (i.e.

to collocate) with other words with which it shares the
same semantic component. A collocate of a particular word
is another word which often occurs with that word, e.g. a
collocate of do can be: something, census, (your) teeth,
(your) hair, (the) room, a lot, much, a little, (the) cooking,
(the) talking, (a) service, well, badly, etc. Co-occurrence
and distribution can be seen as synonymous. What can be
a collocate of: put, keep, front, at, by? What is the collocate

110

of what in What is this all about? What is the collocate of

who in Who did he do it for? What is the collocate of
raining in: Is it raining hard? Cats and dogs.

Transformational analysis is a kind of morphological

analysis which has to do with the repatterning of wordstructure so as to bring out the difference in meaning of
the words which are structurally the same. Words:
bottle-washer and bottle-washer are the same from the
point of view of their structure and distributional pattern;
however, they differ in meaning and this can be easily
shown by resorting to transformational analysis: bottlewasher- 'person who does the washing of bottles' and
bottle-washer - 'the machine used for bottle washing'.
The following words are structurally the same. Apply
transformational analysis to disambiguate them.
Reveal the difference of the logical structure and
meaning.

1. wine-taster- wine cooler

2. walking part-walking-shoe
3. mercy-killing - time-killing
4. sword-dance - ice-dance
5. doorstopper- door-keeper
6. grinding-wheel - driving-wheel
7. ice fall- windfall
8. reading-book - reading-lamp
9. prison-breaker - housebreaker
10. playground - playtime
11. writing-paper- blotting-paper
12. wash-day - wash-house
13. play-time - kill-time
14. dancing-shoe - dancing-girl
15. prize-fight - sea-fight
16. sucking-bottle - sucking-pig

17. sea-fight - bullfight

75

18. heart-ache - heart-break

19. feeding-time - feeding-bottle
20. daydream - daybreak

1. fabled, famous, legendary

2. fictitious, invented, non-existent
3. gather, congregate, assemble
4. keep, share
5. keep, maintain
6. justify, explain, demonstrate
7. republic, state
8. stingy, mean, generous
9. unprofitable, useless
10. easy, tranquil, quiet, difficult
11. economy, extravagance
12. effective, operative, powerful, competent, energetic

Apply transformational analysis to the following sets of

words and see if they embody the same logical pattern.

1. chair maker, coffee maker, holiday maker, match-maker,

sandwich maker
2. carpet cleaner, house-cleaner, street-cleaner, vacuumcleaner, window-cleaner, wool-cleaner
3. carpet-sweeper, chimney-sweeper, street-sweeper
4. lawn-edger, lawn-mower, lawn-sprinkler, lemon-squeezer
5. air-condensing, air-cooling, space-heating, water-cooling
6. air-flow, cloudburst, dew fall, earthquake, sea-quake, snow
slide, snow slip, snow-drift, snow-fall
7. apple-grower,
bar-keeper,
bookbinder,
bookseller,
breadwinner, bullfighter, bus-driver, innkeeper, greenkeeper, gold-finder
8. sword play, sword-dance, lead-poisoning
9. blazing-star, stinkweed, glow-worm
10. egg-slicer, egg-beater, game-keeper, chimney-sweeper,
fortune-teller
11. bakery, brewery, cannery, gunnery, winery
12. bakery, brewery, artillery, greenery, machinery
13. over-anxious, over-cautious, over-confident, overdue
14. overeat, overestimate, overpower, overrule
15. armful, bagful, bottleful, roomful, teaspoonful
16. jugful, boastful, graceful, shameful, hopeful

110

Transformational analysis is instrumental in discovering

meaning relations (synonymy, oppositeness, hyponymy,
superordination) between the words. Apply transformational
analysis to the following sets of words and say which
meaning relations hold among them.

Morphological analysis can take the shape of

componential analysis which has to do with semantic
decomposition of word-meaning which can be broken
into two kinds of semantic components: semantic
markers (semantic features shared with other words,
e.g. 'profession' marker in: postman, milkman, barman,
clergyman, weather man) and semantic distinguishers
(semantic features which are distinctive, which
individualize the word, e.g. ex-president has all the
characteristics of a president except that it has the
characteristic 'used to be the thing referred to by the
noun').

1. Identify the semantic marker (i.e. the common

semantic denominator) shared by the following words:

(a) daily, hourly, monthly, weekly, quarterly, yearly

(b) animal-like, bird-like, childlike, doll-like, hook-like
(c) airless, brainless, characterless, flawless,
meaningless

(d) inter-city, intercontinental, interplanetary, interterritorial

(e) ill-adapted, ill-chosen,

ill-designed, ill-educated,
informed, ill-suited, ill-timed

ill76

(f) addressee, appointee, deportee, detainee, employee,

examinee, interviewee, trainee

(g) belly-down, face-down, head-down, nose-down, top-down
(h) coverage, drainage, leakage, linkage, marriage,
spillage
(i) comfortable, fashionable, honourable, knowledgeable,
pleasurable, valuable
(j) class-bound, culture-bound, home-bound, snowbound,
wheelchair-bound

2. Identify the semantic distinguisher (word-specific

distinctive feature) upon which the following minimal pairs
are established:

(a) frog - froglet; isle - islet; owl - owlet; pig - piglet; star-starlet
(b) economics - macroeconomics; objectives - macroobjectives; structure - macro-structure
(c) automatic - semiautomatic; conscious - semiconscious;
dark - semi-dark, divine - semi-divine; official - semiofficial;
skilled - semi-skilled
(d) confidence - self-confidence; assurance - self-assurance;
satisfaction - self-satisfaction
(e) carbon - carbon-rich; energy - energy-rich; mineral
-mineral-rich; sugar- sugar-rich; protein - protein-rich
(f) activate - deactivate; centralize - decentralize; colonize decolonize; materialize - dematerialize
(g) ceremony - post-ceremony; examination - postexamination; Freudian - post-Freudian; impressionism
-post-impressionism; medieval - post-medieval
(h) agent - sub-agent; branch - sub-branch; class - subclass; culture - subculture; editor - sub-editor; species sub-species; type - subtype
(i) cab - mini-cab; camera - mini-camera; city - mini-city;
expedition - mini-expedition; dress - mini-dress
G) judgement - misjudgement; calculation - miscalculation;
representation
misrepresentation;
management
-mismanagement
110

Consider the following sets of words. Each set consists

of the words identical in morphological shape but
different in meaning. The sets fall into two sub-sets
according to the difference in meaning of their members.
Identify
semantic
markers
and
semantic
distinguishers. Separate 'sheep from goats' (e.g. the
set: foolery, knavery, snobbery, brewery, fishery, piggery
can be divided into two sub-sets: foolery, knavery,
snobbery and brewery, fishery, piggery on the basis of
the fact that they have different common semantic
denominators: 'behaviour' and 'places' being their
respective semantic markers).

1. bribery, butchery, bravery, buffoonery, roguery, delivery,

flattery, trickery

2. bakery, cannery, fishery, nunnery, crockery, greenery,

3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

jewellery, machinery
extra-bright, extra-fine, extra-hard, extra-hot, extraEuropean, extra-marital, extra-small, extra-terrestrial
ever-available, ever-changing, ever-decreasing, everbriefer, ever-closer, ever-greater, ever-shorter
addressee, internee, absentee, cohabitee, devotee,
payee, retiree, returnee, trustee
acceptable, admirable, comfortable, pleasurable,
identifiable, profitable, enjoyable, valuable
ambassadorship,
authorship,
membership,
comradeship,
friendship,
kinship,
partnership,
relationship
under-capacity,
undergrowth,
undersea,
underproduction, underarm, underclothes, underground,
undersurface, understatement

Words refer to things and concepts which belong to

semantic categories (sometimes to more than one
category). Categories, on their part, can be seen as a
conglomerate of components. The meaning of a word
77

can be seen as the sum of the semantic features it has and

which are included in its semantic description, i.e. its
definition. Category features assign the word to a
semantic category, e.g. a fly belongs to the category
[INSECT]. Function features assign a usual state or
activity to the word, e.g. a fly flies [FLY]. Property features
list the properties distinguishing the reference of the word,
e.g. an insect which is black and has two wings [BLACK],
[WINGS]. The semantic entry for the word for fly may be
expressed as:

5. shorthand is a way of writing which uses signs instead of

letters or words and so makes it easier to write down
what someone is saying at the same speed as they are
talking

6. utensil is a tool or object that you use in order to help you

to cook or to do other tasks in your home.

7. keg is a small barrel used for storing something such as

beer or other alcoholic drinks.

Fly: [INSECT], [FLY], [BLACK], [WINGS]

8. kettle is a covered round container with a handle on the

top and a spout on the side, that is used for boiling water.

Consider the following dictionary definitions of words

as they are presented in the Collins COBUILD English
Language Dictionary. Express the semantic entry for
each word giving the sum of: category features, function
features and property features.

1. lighthouse is a tower containing a powerful flashing lamp that

is built on the coast or on a small island or rock in the sea;
lighthouses are used to guide ships or to warn them of
danger.

9. notation is a set of written symbols that are used to

represent a system of thought such as music, logic, or
mathematics.

The term componential analysis is a method of

analysis which has to do with reducing the meaning of
the word to its ultimate contrastive elements. The sense
is broken down into its minimal components. One way to
represent the senses is to write formulae in which the
dimensions of meaning are expressed by feature
symbols (e.g. woman: +human +adult -male; boy:
+human -adult +male). These formulae are called
componential
definitions.
Give
componential
definitions of the meaning of the following words: man,
girl, people, goose, gander, dog, puppy, cow, bachelor,
spinster, child, adult.

It can be said that two meanings or two componential

formulae are incompatible if one has at least one
feature contrasting with a feature in the other (e.g. the

2. muse is an imaginary force which helps a person to do

something, especially to paint or to write poetry or music, by
giving them ideas and inspiration; a muse is often imagined
to be a woman.

3. mussel is a shellfish that lives inside a dark-coloured shell

which has two sides that fit tightly together; mussels are
often gathered for food.
4. scrapbook is a book with blank pages into which you stick
pictures, newspaper articles, etc. in order to make a
collection.

110

10. nose is the part of your face which sticks out above
your mouth; it is used for smelling and breathing.

78

language units are identifiable in terms of contrasts

i.e. the conceptual meanings are organized largely in
terms of contrastive features. The notion of
paradigm builds upon this assumption (cf. different
notions of chair, deck chair, swivel chair, armchair,
electric chair, folding chair). Why is it that the words:
deck chair and steamer chair do not make a minimal
pair? Why is it that the words: magnolia and tulip
tree do not constitute a minimal pair? Why is it that
the words: ice-breaker and ice-skater make a
minimal pair (identify the main contrastive feature
upon which the distinction is made)?

meaning of man is incompatible with that of boy because of

the clash between +adult and -adult). Provide componential
formulae of the following words; compare them; isolate the
contrasting features and demonstrate incompatibility:
woman, man, plant, hammer.

110

Meaning inclusion or hyponymy is the relationship which

exists between two meanings if one componential formula
has all the features present in the other formula (e.g. boy is
hyponymous to youngster because the features making up
the definition youngster +human and +young are both
present in the definition boy). Check if the meaning relation
of hyponymy holds between the members of the following
pairs of words: woman -grown-up; woman - human being;
woman - female; magpie - collector; mainland - land; clatter
- noise; basket - container; ape - primate; gateau - cake.
Using componential formulae we can show the
synonymy of two words by assigning them both the same
componential definition (e.g. both adult and grown-up
have the same definition: +human +adult and therefore we
say that they are synonymous; the difference in style (adult
is formal and grown-up colloquial) has not been taken into
account). Check if the members of the following pairs of
words are synonymous: kidnap - abduction; haemorrhoid pile; kill - murder, nullify - invalidate; petty - trivial; perspire
-sweat; informal - casual; magnolia - tulip tree; provide
-supply; deck chair- steamer chair.
Two principles are at the basis of all language
organization: the principle of constituent structure
and the principle of contrastiveness. The first
principle is the one by which larger linguistic units can
be broken into smaller units (e.g. words into
morphemes); the second principle maintains that the

Morphological analysis can take the shape of

contrastive analysis. At the level of lexis
contrastive analysis aims at discovering the features
of sameness and difference in the meaning structure
of correlated words in a pair of languages which are
contrasted or in a pair of language variants within
one and the same language. Languages differ as to
the way in which they classify reality by means of
words, e.g. the Serbian word krevet is bed in English
but the English word bed is: krevet in Serbian, but
also: nocenje (as in: bed & breakfast), spavanje (as:
in bed time), leja (as in flower bed), korito (as in:
riverbed), podloga (as in: gravel bed), etc. On the
other hand there are words with zero
correspondents in another language (e.g. the
Serbian word cevapcici has no correspondent in
English and the English word efficient has zero
correspondent in Serbian). Consider the following
words in English: keep, beginning, beat, beam,
base, balance, baby, teacher, professor. Find their
Serbian equivalents. Demonstrate

79

the fact that polysemic words of different languages are

not co-extensive (meaning that there is no one-to-one
correspondence between the words constituting the pair)
and the fact that there is the difference in contextual
scope).

Serbian otkriti can be: invent, discover, reveal in English but

the English words cannot be used indiscriminately (e.g. Who
invented the telephone?, Who ^discovered the telephone?,
Who "'revealed the telephone?). Find appropriate contexts
into which the words: invent, discover, and reveal will fit.

Consider the following meanings of the word arm in English:

1. The upper limb of the human body; 2. The forelimb of any
vertebrate; 3. Any armlike part or attachment as in: the arm
of a record player, 4. A covering for the arm, esp. a sleeve
of a garment: the arm of a coat; 5. An administrative branch
of an organization as in: a special arm of the government; 6.
An inlet or cove: an arm of the sea; 7. Power, might: the
long arm of the law. Also consider the following phrases
with the word arm: arm in arm, at arm's length, in the arms
of Morpheus, with open arms. What are the corresponding
Serbian words and phrases?

Here are two pairs of English words: fortune - happiness

and leather - skin translated into Serbian as sreca and kola
respectively. Find appropriate contexts into which the words
constituting the pairs will fit. Make comments based on what
you know about contrastive analysis.

Find English words which have zero correspondent in

Serbian (e.g. birdwatcher).

English: with open arms and cordially correspond to the

Serbian word srdacno. Find some other examples of
English and Serbian words to show many-to-one
correspondence between the members of the pair.

Serbian: neizmenljiv is: unalterable and unchangeable in

English. Find some more examples of Serbian and English
words to show one-to-many correspondence between the
members of the pair.

722

English: director corresponds to the Serbian words: direktor,

rukovodilac, reditelj. Find some other examples of English
and Serbian words to show one-to-many correspondence
between the members of the pair.

Find Serbian words which have zero correspondent in

English (e.g. opanak).

Apply contrastive analysis to the following pairs of

words to show the difference in stylistic meaning:
sweat - perspire; you and me - you and I; father -daddy;
saliva - spit; sagacious - wise; pong - stink; array - clothes;
anon - presently; snow - cocaine.

Here are some English complex words and their Serbian

translation equivalents. The words are presented in pairs.
Compare the words constituting a pair from the point of view
of their motivation. Say in which cases we are dealing with
the same word-formation patterns and in which not.

vacuum cleaner - usisivac; ice-breaker - ledolomac;

stretcher - nosila; ring-finger - prstenjak; wedding ring
-burma; dancing teacher - ucitelj plesa; postman postar, pismonosa; playground - igraliste; beautician 123

kozmeticar; dressmaker - krojac, krojacica; lawn-mower

- kosilica; housekeeper - kucepazitelj, pazikuca;
doormat - otirac; glass house - staklena basta,
staklenik; green house -staklena basta, staklenik;
carrier-pigeon - golub pismonosa;
cleaning lady - spremacica; teacher - ucitelj, uciteljica,
nastavnik, nastavnica; blacksmith - kovac; waterproof
-vodootporan; daydream - sanjariti; daybreak - zora;
politician - politicar; spring board - odskocna daska;
gymnast - gimnasticar; judoist, judo player - dzudista;
producer- producent

stated in the Article 92 of the Company Law will be

penalized (money penalty for the breach of law by a
business company).

Contrastive analysis is important in translation.

Compare the following pieces of text and assess them
from the point of view of translation equivalence:

Clanom 92 Zakona preduzecima utvrdena je zabrana

da clanovi Upravnog odbora dva preduzeca
konkurentskoj delatnosti budu ista Ilea. Ova zabrana
utvrdena je kao imperativna, a ne kao ugovorna (u
Ugovoru osnivanju, Statutu Hi slicnom aktu), kao sto
je vecini drugih evropskih zemalja. Clanom 439
predvideno je novcano kaznjavanje za privredni prestup
zbog krsenja klauzule konkurencije iz clana 92 Zakona
preduzecima.

722

Article 92 of the Company Law prohibits the possibility

that the members of the Managing board in two
companies in rival position are the same people. This
prohibition is imperative i.e. obligatory and it is not
contractual (as a part of the Foundation Contract, the
Statute or a similar act), and such is the case in the
most part of other European countries. According to
Article 439 the breach of the clause concerning rivalry

We must begin again, modestly, patiently. From our

historians we must expect a more exact analysis of the
social conditions which have produced art in the past.
From our psychologists we must expect a more exact
analysis of the creative process in man, not merely in
the individual artist, but as a process occurring between
man and man, for art is not only creation, but also
communication. And from our educationists we must
expect a remodelling of the educational system which
will preserve and refine man's innate sensibility, to the
end that the practical activities of life are no longer
clumsy and inept, abortive or destructive; but by
securing a perfect equilibrium of the sensuous and
intellectual faculties, ensure the first requisite of a
creative age.

Moramo poceti ispocetka, skromno, strpljivo. Od nasih

istoricara
moramo
ocekivati
precizniju analizu
drustvenih uslova koji su dali umetnost proslosti. Od
nasih psihologa moramo ocekivati precizniju analizu
stvaralackog procesa ljudi uopste a ne samo pojedinog
umetnika, kao procesa koji se odigrava izmedu coveka i
coveka jer umetnost nije samo stvaranje vec i opstenje.
Od nasih pedagoga moramo ocekivati da obrazovnom
sistemu daju takav oblik koji ce sacuvati i profiniti
covekovu urodenu osecajnost sa ciljem da prakticno
delovanje zivotu ne bude vise nespretno i
neadekvatno, da se napusta Hi da bude destruktivno,
vec da obezbedi savrsenu ravnotezu culnih i
intelektualnih sposobnosti, da osigura prvi uslov
stvaralackog doba.

123

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Here is a passage from Herbert Read's The Philosophy of

Modern Art (London, Faber & Faber, p. 69) and its Serbian
translation. Apply contrastive analysis to assess the
appropriateness of the translation.
Here are some Serbian sentences translated into English.
Apply contrastive analysis to explain the mistakes in the
English translation due to wrong interpretation and false
pairing. The words to be compared are italicized.
Palo je vece i senke su postale duze. - Evening fell and the
shades grew longer.
Ova informacija potice iz pouzdanog izvora. - This
information comes from a reliable well.
Hamlet pocinje da govori svoj cuveni monolog kad je sam
na sceni. - Hamlet starts reciting his famous monologue
when he is alone on the scene.
Nije primljen na fakultet. - He was not accepted to college.
Dela govore snaznije od reci. - Actions say louder than
words.
Pas je izgubio gazdu. - The dog lost its host.
Sedeo je u hladu. - He was sitting in the shadow.
Evo jednog inserta iz filma. - Here is an insert from the film.

124

Contrastive analysis is important in methodology

(language teaching, textbook-writing, testing). Take the
following English words: eventually, actual, sensible,
drugstore, public, sympathy, decorate. If you were an
English teacher and if your students were Serbian what
would be your typical-error prediction on the basis of the
contrastive analysis?
Why is it that the words: bring and fetch; wait for, hope,
expect, look forward to; avoid and prevent; rob and steal;
rather, fairly, and quite; under, underneath, below, beneath;
between and among; are referred to as confusable
words?

Take the following English words: bar, calculator, and

tandem. Compare them to the Serbian words (anglicisms;
bar, kalkulator, tandem). Apply contrastive analysis to
spot the difference in meaning.

7. MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES

Give a definition of affixation.

What are derivational affixes? Name some.

What are grammatical (i.e. inflectional) affixes? Can a

prefix have grammatical meaning? Give a list of
grammatical (inflectional) suffixes in English. Illustrate.

Provide examples of derivatives representing what is

called a first degree derivation (e.g. readiness -derived
from ready by adding just one affix), and second degree
derivation (e.g. unbelievable - derived from believe by
means of two affixes).

The ability of one morphological process to potentiate

another by creating a base suitable for that other
_______________________________________proce
ss to apply to is referred to as____________________. One
morphological process potentiates another one in the
way that its output provides the input to another. Illustrate.

What are prefixal derivatives? Illustrate. What are

suffixal derivatives? Illustrate.

82

State the criterion upon which the distinction between

prefixal and suffixal derivatives is made.
Here are some examples of prefixal and suffixal
derivatives. Say to which class every single example
belongs.

recognizable, irreconcilable, irrelevant, invigorate,

insensibility, humorous, humidify, humidity, unadvised,
unadvisedly,
unblushing,
uncompromising,
unprecedented,
unpredictability,
co-authorship,
organization,
oriental,
frivolous,
misbehave,
misinterpretation, hurtful, tea-spoonful, table-spoonful,
hypocritical, decentralize, show-offish, decomposition,
democratize, headmastership, librarianship, ultrasophisticated, ultra-powerful, bejewelled

Diachronically, the distinction is made between prefixes

of native and foreign origin (e.g. un- is native and super- is
foreign). Here are three prefixes meaning 'half: semi-, half-,
and demi-. Which are foreign and which are native? Are
they interchangeable, i.e. can you say: halfwitted, semiwitted, demi-witted or semi-circle, half-circle, demi-circle?
Give your own examples.

Make the following words negative by adding un-, in-,

im-, ir-, il- or dis-:

Prefixes which shift a word to another category are

called class-changing prefixes, e.g. de- in de-ice {ice is a
noun and de-ice is a verb); en- in enlarge {large is an
adjective and enlarge is a verb). Prefixes which do not
change the word-class of a word are called classmaintaining prefixes, e.g. ex- in ex-husband (both the
base husband and the derivative ex-husband belong to the
same word-class - they are nouns); also extra- in extramarital is class-maintaining in that it does not change the
word-class of the derivative (both the base and the
derivative are adjectives). Here are some prefixes for you to
classify as class-changing or class-maintaining. Provide
your own examples to demonstrate the difference.

124

Semantically prefixes can be mono- and

polysemous.
Explain and illustrate.

The prefix mis- generally means that something has

been incorrectly performed. The prefix dis-, however,
means the exact opposite to what is stated in the base.
Compare: misbelief ('believing, but something wrong');
disbelief ('not believing'). Add mis- or dis- to the following
words:

mis-, dis-, anti-, ante-, ultra-, be-, en-, ex-, extra-, un-,
ill-, bi-

different, bearable, usable, reasonable, thinkable,

probable, regular, literate, legible, desirable, readable,
beatable, desirable, definable, accessible, comfortable,
believe, appear, convenient, armament, agree, appoint,
satisfied, able, believable, biased, certain, faithful,
employed, emotional, gentlemanly, official, willing,
usual, tidy, lucky, musical, civilized, prepared, written,
uttered, penetrable, polite, possible, legal, lawful,
replaceable, repressible, removable, responsible,
limitable, limited, legitimate, logical, proof, place,
possess, proportion, quiet, satisfy, assemble, credible,
efficient, order, appropriate, applicable.

behave, behaviour, agree, agreement, approve,

calculate, direct, conduct, calculation, management,
place, connect, embark, incline, infect, locate, print,
quote, understand, understanding, use, organize,
please, unite, prove, integrate

83

The prefix de- combines with verbs to make new verbs

to mean 'the opposite effect of, or reverses, whatever is
specified in the base' (e.g. decompose - 'separate into its
parts; opposite to compose). This prefix can also mean 'the
removal of something' (e.g. de-ice - 'to remove ice from').
Add de- to the following words and say to which class they
belong according to the meaning of the prefix.

debug, de-bone, de-feather, deactivate, decolonize,

decouple, defrost, dehouse, descale, demistify,
depoliticize

The prefix re- is extremely productive in forming verbs

and their related nouns. It means a repeated performance
(e.g. rewrite - 'write again', rephrase -'phrase again'). There
are, however, words which begin with the re sequence
which cannot be treated as a prefix (e.g. reduce, release,
reactor, research). Here are some words starting with re.
Split them into two sets: (1) where re- is a prefix suggesting
'repetition', and (2) where re has changed or lost its original
meaning.
re-allocate,
reapear,
rebuild,
recollection,
recommendation, reproduction, reservation, reconsider,
reconstruct, redistribution, renaming, reopen, return,
review, restore, regenerate, remarriage, remarry,
repossess, reprint, reunite, restrain, retirement

124

Adverb particles can be used as prefixes. Prefixes

which are correlated with functional words, i.e. prepositions
and preposition-like adverbs are sometimes termed
semibound prefixes. Make verbs, nouns or adjectives by
adding the particles: up, down, out, in, over, under, off or
on as prefixes (e.g. estimate -underestimate; do - overdo;
done - overdone, underdone; let out - outlet; fall - downfall;
bring up -upbringing; put in - input; shoot off - offshoot; look
on -onlooker).

over- can mean (1) excess (e.g. over-anxious,

overcook), and (2) power (e.g. overrule, overturn). Would
you say that the following words belong to either class?

overall, overcoat, overseas,

overtake, overtime, overhear

oversee,

overlook,

Here are some words with off-. Say in which cases this
off- means (1) position (e.g. off-stage, offshore), and in
which cases it means (2) that something is not the case
(e.g. off-balance, off-guard).

-hearted, -bringing, -pay, -paid, -ripe, -dressed, -fall,

-keep, -right, -line, -roar, -root, -pour, -fed, -anxious,
-confident, -cast, -duty, -set, -break, -cry, -burst, -come,
-fit, -fond,
-populated, -flow, -eager, -exposure, -wear, -line, -write,
-spring, -print, -charge, -developed, -manned,
-indulgence

off-campus, off-line, off-peak, off-season, off-screen,

off-field, off-track, off-key

self- is very productive in forming nouns from nouns or

adjectives from present and past participles (e.g. selfservice, self-regulating, self-employed). It has two basic
meanings: (1) something done to or by yourself (e.g. selfanalysis), and (2) attitudes (e.g. self-important). Here are
some words which belong to class (1) and you are asked to
add your own examples: self-approval, self-awareness,
self-restraint, self-inflicted, self-discipline... Here are some
self- words meaning 'attitude' (class 2). Continue the
paradigm: self-confident, self-assured, self-confidence,
self-respect, self-satisfied...

84

fore-, pre-, post-, ante-, ex- are prefixes of time and

order. Give your own examples to show this meaning of
the prefixes quoted.

sub-, inter-, intra-, trans- all belong to the category of

locative prefixes. Illustrate.
Give a definition of a suffix.

Suffixes can have lexical or grammatical meaning in which

case they are called inflectional. Name inflectional
suffixes in English.

Suffixes which shift a word to another category are called

class-changing suffixes (e.g. -ize in nationalize shifts an
adjective to the verb category; -fy in beautify shifts a noun
to the verb class). Suffixes which do not change the wordclass of a word are called class-maintaining suffixes (e.g.
-ish in yellowish does not change the word-class of the
initial adjective and the derivative is also an adjective; also
-let in froglet where both the base and the derivative belong
to the same word-class - they are nouns). Give examples of
your own to show the difference between those two classes
of suffixes.

As to their origin suffixes can be native (e.g. -ish, -dom) or

foreign (e.g. -ation, -able). Give some more examples of
native and foreign suffixes.

Suffixes can be mono- and polysemous, Illustrate.

Classify suffixes according to their

meaning. Provide some examples.

124

-hood refer to states, conditions, or the periods of time in

which something is experienced; words ending in -er / -or
usually have -ship; words ending in -man also have -ship;
the suffix -dom in nouns has two meanings: a state or
condition, and a realm or territory.
Make new nouns from the words listed bellow using
these suffixes.

The suffix -ness is highly productive in making new

abstract words from adjectives. These newly formed
nouns refer to the state or quality described by the
adjective. Note that a final is replaced by T before adding
-ness. Make abstract nouns from the adjectives listed
bellow using -ness.

aggressive, attractive, aware, bitter, bold, careless,

drunken, empty, foolish, happy, ill, lonely, lovely, open,
sad, sick, ugly, weak, white, black

part-of-speech

Here are three noun suffixes: -hood, -ship and -dom.

These three suffixes are used to make abstract nouns
from the names that refer to people; the names for
members of a family have the suffix -hood; nouns ending in

lord, lady, duke, bore, child, girl, mother, father, king,

free, gangster, star, champion, relation, parent, unlikely,
apprentice, professor, knight, woman, man, martyr,
leader, hard, chairman, editor, member, trainee,
ambassador, fellow, craftsman, comrade, partner, lively,
scholar

There are some examples of nouns ending in -ness.

Four of the examples, however, have a different meaning
from the one specified in the previous exercise ('state or
quality described by the adjective'). Which are these
words?

happiness, idleness, gentleness, weakness, business,

youthfulness,
forgiveness,
blindness,
likeness,
kindness, consciousness, madness, witness

85

Suffixation in -ness is so productive that many abstract

words are formed in this way despite the fact that there are
already existing words with the same meaning but different
morphological shape (compare: humble -humbleness;
humble - humility). Formations in -ness are sometimes not
necessary at all. Give the correct abstract nouns which
correspond to the adjectives listed bellow. Say in which
cases -ness formations are also possible.

baker,
cooker,
diner,
Londoner,
West-Ender,
commander, counter, computer, high-jumper, triplejumper, potter, backhander, two-seater, all-rounder,
hard-liner, skateboarder, wind-surfer, wood-pecker,
highlander, islander,
New Yorker, go-getter, bottom-feeder, salad-spinner,
backbencher, right-winger

beautiful, courageous, generous, certain, brave, high,

new, difficult, dangerous, intelligent, proud

Add the correct suffix (-er, -or, -ar) to the following words:
sail, bake, make, liberate, sing, murder, govern, donate, lie,
law, orate, narrate.

Suffixes -ist and -an, -ian are also used to form nouns
associated with people (e.g. abortionist, European,
Algerian). Add the correct suffix to the following words
(make appropriate adjustments).

Noun-forming suffixes -th and -t are no longer

productive. Give the nouns which correspond to these
words:

high, wide, strong, long, dead, wide, give, dry, deep,

weigh, true, see, grow, warm, hot

124

-er suffix can be tacked on to almost any base: simple

or composite, substantive or verbal, to a numeral, and all
kinds of phrases on the general meaning basis: 'he who or
that which is connected with or characterized by his or its
appurtenance to'. Most often the -er has agentive or
instrumental meaning (e.g. baker, cheese-cutter); it can
have a 'species' marker (e.g. wood-pecker). This suffix can
also be added to a noun in which case it has several
meanings (compare: commissioner - Londoner - snowboarder). It can be added to a numeral (e.g. fiver). Nouns
can be derived from a phrasal verb by means of the suffix
-er (e.g. pass by - passer-by; wait on -waiter). The suffix -er
can be added to compounds and syntactic phrases (e.g.
four-wheeler, teen-ager, weekender, long-jumper, downhiller). In its agentive meaning the suffix -er can take the
form of -or, -ar (e.g. worker, liberator, beggar). Here are
some words ending in -er. Analyze their structural pattern.
Classify them according to their general meaning.

judo, motor, botany, zoology, piano, violin, science,

neurology, psychiatry, politics, economics, physics,
cartoon, terror, Christ, art, Paris, Italy, Hungary,
theology, history, diet, beauty, extreme, ideal, elite,
race, novel, type, Africa, Syria, Austria, Australia

Here are two more suffixes used for people: -eer (e.g.
mountaineer), and - (e.g. divorcee). Add the ending -eer
or - to these words:

address, appoint, engine, deport, detain, employ,

examine, interview, trust, train, refer, refuge, profit,
auction, absent

-ess combines with nouns that refer to a woman or a

female animal. When it is not possible to add this suffix to a
noun, femininity is indicated by woman or lady put before
the noun (e.g. baroness but woman-writer) or after the
noun (e.g. policewoman, cleaning lady). French -ienne and
86

-e are also possible indicators of femininity (e.g.

comedienne, fiancee). Make the feminine form of these
words:

author, count, god, heir, host, lion, manager, panther,

priest, prince, steward, tiger, cook, teacher, singer,
dentist, duke, speaker, mayor, actor, conductor,
governor,
waiter, murderer, violinist, chairman,
postman, policeman, mailman, fiance, magician, Negro

The noun suffix -ful can be added freely to many

words to indicate the quantity held by what is expressed by
the noun (e.g. handful - 'the quantity held by the hand'). Add
-ful to the words listed bellow. Give your own examples of
the words in -ful indicating 'the amount contained'.

pocket, mouth, spoon, teaspoon, tablespoon, house,

dish, basket, saucer, cup, bucket, box, room, arm, bag,
bottle, glass, pan, plate, sack

-ful also combines with nouns in order to form

adjectives which, in this case, describe someone or
something as having the characteristic or quality mentioned
to a very high degree (e.g. if something is powerful it is very
strong, very effective or done with great force). Here is a list
of words with this meaning. Add some examples of your
own.

beautiful, boastful, cheerful, deceitful, delightful,

forceful, graceful, harmful, joyful, merciful, painful,
shameful

Say whether -ful in the following words can be

interpreted to mean (1) amounts and measurement or (2)
characteristics and qualities.

124

awful, brimful, fateful, fruitful, grateful, lawful, wrongful

Can the following words be said to belong to the -ion

group described in the preceding exercise?

affection, attention, disposition, mission

-ism can be found in nouns referring to beliefs, or to

behaviour related to such beliefs. Add your own examples
to the following list.

action, division, contemplation, investigation, addition,

simulation, prevention, explanation, codification,
presentation, formation, contribution, creation, decision,
completion, imagination, information, consumption,
complication, realization, liberation, reduction, definition

-ion combines with verbs to form nouns which in this

case refer to the state or process described by the verb
(e.g. combination refers to the process of combining and
exploitation is the process of exploiting). The most common
variations of the spelling of -ion are: -ation,
-ition, -sion, and -tion. Add your own examples to the
following list:

Thatcherism,
Marxism,
feminism,
alcoholism,
Catholicism, consumerism, extremism, heroism,
hooliganism,
patriotism,
nationalism,
realism,
symbolism, terrorism, vandalism

The following are verb-forming suffixes: -en, -fy (-ify),

-ate, and -ize. Make verbs from these words by adding
appropriate endings. Make any changes in spelling if they
are necessary.

87

strength, length, deep, sharp, thick, horror, just, clear,

simple, hard, false, intense, stupid, regular, hospital,
immune, sympathy, equal, active, familiar, commercial,
plastic, solid, tranquil
Adjective suffixes - and -ly have the general
meaning of 'having the quality of or appearance of what is
specified in the base. Form adjectives from the following
words:

blood, bulk, bush, taste, love, heaven, kind, leisure,

man, woman, saint, world, dirt, dust, fat, flower, grease,
hair, itch, stone, sex, smoke, sun, worth, thirst, pink,
yellow, green, brother, friend

The adjective suffix -ish has different meanings.

When it is added to the names of persons it means 'having
the bad qualities of. In this case we say that it is
derogatory. Compare the members of the following pairs of
words and state the difference in meaning.

manly - mannish; womanly - womanish; childlike childish; old maid - old-maidish

124

Adjective suffixes -ful and -less can be said to have

opposite meaning (e.g. meaningful - meaningless); -full
makes adjectives with the meaning of 'having', and -less
makes adjectives with opposite meaning of 'lacking
something'. Here are some words for you to classify as to
whether they can or cannot form the -ful : -less pair (e.g.
faithful: faithless, but frightful: *frightless, *lifeful: lifeless).

seaman, awe, life, respect, fear, dog, cat, war,

business, lone, burden, noise, child, lady, trouble,
blame, adventure, flavour, loath, venture, bother,
mouse, trust

acceptable, admirable, dependable, comfortable,

honourable, knowledgeable, valuable, imaginable,
profitable, preferable, machine-washable, tolerable,
agreeable, amiable, considerable, miserable, sociable,
capable

There are some less common adjective suffixes:

-like, -some, and -worthy, -like has the meaning of
'resembling or in the manner of (e.g. Godlike); -some is
added to verbs and nouns to mean 'attributes and
characteristics' (e.g. quarrelsome) or 'causing someone to
feel a particular emotion' (e.g. fearsome); -worthy has the
meaning of 'worthy of (e.g. praiseworthy). Make adjectives
from these words using the appropriate suffix:

The suffix -able (-ible) is extremely productive in

modern English and it can be added to a very large number
of nouns and almost any transitive verb to mean 'able to be'
(e.g. washable - 'that can be washed'). The form -ible is
found in French and Latin borrowings (e.g.
possible, digestible), -able can also mean 'qualities'
(e.g. something that is fashionable is in fashion). The
following words fall into three classes according to the
meaning of the suffix: (1) those with the meaning of
'possibility; (2) those with the meaning of 'having certain
qualities', and (3) those where neither is the case. Classify
the following words according to the meaning of the suffix.
Note that there is no equal number of words in all three
sets.

pain, air, breath, life, character, child, harm, colour,

purpose, need, play, sleep, heart, help, hope, name,
power, speech, taste, rest, sense, beauty, thought,
penny, time, fruit, care

-ly suffix can form adverbs (e.g. badly, equally,

quickly, naturally), but it can also form adjectives (e.g.
lively, brotherly, lonely, costly). Here are some words
88

ending in -ly for you to divide into two groups according to

their part-of-speech meaning: cheaply, clearly, easily,
deadly, fatherly, exactly, normally, properly, perfectly, rigidly,
slowly, rapidly, heavenly, leisurely, northerly, finally,
frequently, earthly, kindly

seedling, duckling, nestling, suckling, baby, dolly,

Tommy, Lizzie, hillock, bullock, kitchenette, maisonette

Smallness can be expressed by the use of suffixes but it

can also be implied, e.g. kid, cottage, hamlet, pocket,
globule, molecule, particle, chicken, maiden, kitten, freckle.
Give some more examples of words implying smallness.

The following words indicate small quantities. Match the

quantity to the substance (e.g. a crumb of bread, a drop of
rain, etc.):

Here are some recently coined English neologisms:

consumeritis, telegenic, discothequenik, pamphleteer,
Zippergate, fishburger, jokethon. Analyze their derivational
pattern. Comment on the suffixes used. Give more
examples to demonstrate the productive force of the
suffixes used.

Say which English suffixes can be said to have derogatory

force. Illustrate.

Compare the following pairs of words. State the difference

between the members of each pair from the point of view of
their stylistic reference.

From the point of view of stylistic reference suffixes can

be: stylistically neutral (e.g. -er in worker) and
stylistically marked (e.g. -ish in childish). Give some more
examples of stylistically neutral and stylistically marked
suffixes.

What does diminutive mean? Name some suffixes that are

used to form diminutives in English. Provide examples.
The following words all have diminutive endings.
Explain their meaning:

124

booklet, bracelet, eaglet, froglet, starlet, droplet, cutlet,

piggy, piggie, sweetie, deary, hanky, lambkin, catkin,

What is a declension and what is a conjugation?

What are grammatical words? These words are also

known as functional words, functors or empty words.

The substance: of salt, of bread, of rain, of meat, of air,

of paper, of hair, of grass, of wind, of pottery, of dirt, of
wood, of snow, of blood, of information, of cloth, of a
cigarette, of fossilized bone

Suffixes in English can have lexical or grammatical

meaning. Give a list of inflectional suffixes in English.
How many inflectional suffixes are there in English?

childlike - childish; womanlike - womanish; boastful show-offish

The quantity: a grain, a speck, a drop, a chip, a scrap,

a lock, a crumb, a morsel, a blade, a breath, a puff, a
fragment, a pinch

What is grammaticalization?

What is markedness? What are markers? Explain the

dichotomy: marked - unmarked within a lexical and an
inflectional paradigm.
Inflectional suffixes, functional words and word order are
markers of grammatical relations. Illustrate.
89

In English grammatical categories are the following:

person, number, degree, case, gender, definiteness, tense,
modality, aspect and voice. Different grammatical
categories operate within different word-classes. Say with
which parts of speech these grammatical categories are
associated.

What are the exponents of plural number in nouns: in

writing and in pronunciation?

State the rules governing the use of -s and -es in

writing the grammatical morpheme meaning 'number'.
Provide illustrations.

Name grammatical categories which are marked by

inflectional suffixes. Name those which are marked by
functional words. Which grammatical categories are marked
by inflectional suffixes together with functional words?
A single morph which simultaneously represents a bundle
of several different grammatical elements is referred to as a
____________________morph. Illustrate.
Define the grammatical category of person. Say when
the category of person is inherent and when it is overtly
marked. Illustrate.
Are there personal inflections in Modern English?

What are the rules that govern phonetic realization of

the grammatical morpheme meaning 'number'?
Illustrate?

Some plurals have meanings which are not found in

singulars. Give some examples.

Give some examples of plural and sungular

invariables (pluralia tantum and singularia tantum).

What does generic number mean? Illustrate.

Give the rules regulating the writing and pronunciation

of the 'number' suffix in verbs. Illustrate.

What are the exponents of the grammatical morpheme

meaning 'third person' in writing? Give the rules.
How many allomorphs does the grammatical morpheme
meaning 'third person' have? Name the allomorphs and
state the rules. Illustrate.

Define the grammatical category of number.

Grammatical expressions of number can be found in
most nouns, in some pronouns and in some verbs. Can
they be found in adjectives or participles?

Do the modals encode the category of number?

In the preterit there is just one example which encodes

'number'. Which one is that?

What is the term generic person used for? Illustrate.

124

The category of degree is represented by unmarked

forms, comparatives and superlatives. What are the
exponents of comparative degree? What are the
exponents of superlative degree?

Say something about comparison by inflection.

in what way are the inflectional degree

suffixes
realized in writing? State the rules. Illustrate.
90

determiners for third person singular show feminine

-masculine - neuter gender oppositions. Find examples
to support this statement.

In what way are the inflectional degree

suffixes
realized in speech? Are there any allomorphs?
Illustrate.

Case relations can be shown by case endings. Illustrate.

From the point of view of morphological marking, English

nouns have a two-case system. Give a few paradigms to
support this statement.

Gender in nouns is represented either by lexical

oppositions of formally unrelated words (e.g. lord -lady) or
by lexical oppositions of formally related words with overt
morphological gender markers (e.g. poet -poetess). Give
more examples.

124

There are nouns with dual gender, e.g. artist, cook, writer.
Give some more examples.
Gender distinctions in English are also expressed by
pronouns and determiners. Personal, possessive,
reflexive and emphatic pronouns and possessive

Define the grammatical category of definiteness. What

does it denote?

What are the exponents of definiteness?

What are the allomorphs which realize the definite and

the indefinite article. Give the rules. Illustrate.

Some words in English are inherently marked for

definiteness, e.g. him is definite, oneself is indefinite,
her is definite, whoever is indefinite. Give some more
examples.

As for pronouns in English they have either two or three

cases. Give some examples.
Give the definition of the grammatical category of gender.

There are three allomorphs of the genitive morpheme

in English. Which are they? State the rules. Illustrate.

What kind of gender is called referring gender?

Illustrate.

In what way is the genitive inflection written in English?

State the rules. Illustrate.

Define the grammatical category of case. To which word

classes does the category of case relate?

What is tense as a grammatical category?

State the rules which regulate the realization of the -sending in the third person singular indicative of the
present simple tense. State both writing and
pronunciation rules. Illustrate.

State both writing and pronunciation rules which

regulate the realization of the past tense marker in
regular verbs. Illustrate.
Here are some verb forms with the past tense marker.
Divide them into three groups corresponding to three
allomorphs which realize the past tense marker.

divided, snubbed, hopped, brimmed, concluded,

manipulated, overpowered, reduplicated, glided,
compensated, predominated, surfaced, seemed, lulled,
91

canned, coached, bridged, laughed, occurred, mailed,

served, wiped, air-conditioned, smoothed, played,
regarded, sabotaged, managed, banged, bequeathed,
guided

Define the grammatical category of modality.

Two types of modality can be distinguished: epistemic

and deontic. Explain and illustrate.

Which modality features are traditionally referred to by the

term mood?

The English verb has three moods. Which are they?

Define the grammatical category of aspect.

Major distinction within the category of aspect is made

between perfective and imperfective aspect. Give a few
pairs of examples to illustrate this distinction.

In English the progressive aspect is marked with the

auxiliary verb be plus the main verb with the -ing inflection.
By what term is the inflected form traditionally referred to?

In what way is the {ing} realized in speech and writing?

What are the changes that occur in writing when the stem
and the inflectional suffix -ing are joined? Provide
illustrations.
Some verbs in English do not allow the use of the
progressive. Pinpoint such verbs in the following group of
examples. To what class of verbs do they belong?

124

hop, estimate, delete, pat, renovate, do, move, desire,

hate, dislike, detest, like, horrify, terrify, prefer, know,
understand, feel, reduce, hurt

The rules governing the realizations of the {ed}

inflection as part of the verb form called past participle are
identical to those governing the realizations of the
inflectional suffix {ed} with the grammatical meaning of the
'past tense'. Formulate these rules and provide
illustrations.

What is voice as a grammatical category? What are the

exponents of passive voice? Which class of verbs is
associated with the use of passive voice? Provide
examples to illustrate the opposition active - passive.

What do we mean by agreement in grammar? What other

two terms are related to it as its subordinates?

What does government mean in reference to English

grammar? Provide illustrations.

Find the examples illustrating government in the

following sentences.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

I talked to him.
I had a message from her.
He is a dear friend of mine.
It was a serious blunder of yours.
It was very considerate of you.
From whom did you get it?
Concord refers to the situation when two or more
lexemes are obligatorily marked for the same
morphological categories (e.g. compare: a boy has and the
boys have - the words in the first phrase are marked for
singular number whereas the words in the latter phrase are
marked for plural number). Of two forms showing concord
the use of one necessitates the use of the other. Having in
mind the definition of concord, analyze the following text
from the point of view of concord, identifying the
92

prema drugom. Mali dug pravi duznika, a veliki dug

pravi neprijatelja, a svaki dug pravi nezadovoljnika.
(Jovan Ducic: Blago cara Radovana, Prozaik, 1996, p.
197)

morphological categories for which the words which make

the text are marked.

The demand for computer systems that can translate

texts among various languages, or at least help human
translators, is high and growing in our informationsaturated world. Research and development activities
directed at building such systems can be united under
the headings 'machine translation' and 'machine-aided
translation.' The state of the machine translation art in
the mid-1980s is encouraging but not yet satisfactory.
Speaking plainly, we don't have systems that can
adequately translate texts devoted to a reasonably
broad domain of discourse, even between two specific
languages. At the same time, technological and
especially conceptual advances are evident in this
renascent field of study. (Sergei Nirenburg, ed. Machine
Translation, CUP, 1987, p. xiii)

In the text above find the examples of unilateral

concord (when the relation of two elements is unilateral in
the sense that one element can be combined with several
other elements, e.g. can combines with: /, you, he, she,
etc.); find the examples of bilateral concord (if one word
necessitates the use of the other, e.g. / can be combined
only with am and vice versa).
The following text is in the Serbian language. Analyze it
from the point of view of agreement.

124

Ima ljudi koji nisu imali nista drugo nego ugledne

prijatelje, kojima je to za zivot bilo dovoljno. Veliki uslov
prijateljstva, to je ne traziti blagodarnost za ucinjene
usluge. Stoga su anticki pisci i istakli red: sve je
zajednicko medu prijateljima. Jer blagodarnost bi bila
smetnja zajednickoj sudbini medu prijateljima; prirodi
covekovoj lezi da blagodarnost ne odvodi ljubav nego
potajnu mrznju. Blagodarnost je osecanje inferiornosti

Le Frangais typique que Ton caricature si souvent

coiffe d'un beret; un journal a la main et une baguette
sous le bras, n'existe pas. En France, on achete moins
d'un milion de berets par an et la consommation de
pain n'est plus que de 120 grammes par jour. Ajoutons
que le nombre de lecteurs de la presse quotidienne a
baisse d'un quart entre 1980 et 1990. Pour illustrer la
diversite de Tesprit frangais, je citerai le general de
Gaulle qui disait de ces concitoyens: Comment
voulez-vous gouverner un pays Ton produit plus de
400 sortes de fromages ? (Transcriptions, Mame
Imprimeurs, 1998, p. 270)

The following text is in the French language. Analyze it

from the point of view of agreement.

On the basis of the texts you have just analyzed (and

which have been chosen at random for the sake of
illustration) answer the following question: what is your
general impression on the versatility of the agreement
rules in English, Serbian and French?
Conversion in morphology is the process which produces
lexemes which change their word-class without the addition
of an affix. Conversion is sometimes referred to as zero
derivation (derivation by zero affix). Comment on this.

What are other terms which refer to the process of

conversion?

What is a technical term for a word which is the output of

the process of conversion?
93

Conversion is a deliberate shift into another word-class

(e.g. soldier n. > soldiery, in he soldiered his way through
the crowd). On the other hand there are words in English
which have the same shape and which belong to more than
one part of speech (e.g. there is love which is a noun and
love which is a verb). Provide more examples to show the
difference.

Compounds, derivatives, back-derived words, blends,

acronyms, clipped forms, simple and complex words can be
input material to the process of conversion. Provide
illustrations.

All part-of-speech classes can be input material to the

process of conversion. Provide illustrations.

Even affixes can be used as bases for conversion.

Illustrate.

Conversion (or shifting) has to do with the shift of

grammar (i.e. functional shift) and shift of meaning
(specialization of meaning, generalization of meaning,
metaphor, metonymy). Identify the type of shift in the
following examples: mop n. > mop v.; skin n. > skin v.; veto
n. > veto v.; honeymoon n. > honeymoon v.; frog n.
> frog n. (meaning 'a French person'); kiwi n. > kiwi n.
(meaning 'a New Zealander'), walk v. intransitive > walk
v. transitive; tea n. uncountable > tea n. countable (as in
the teas of China).

Name major kinds of conversion. Provide illustrations.

124

Minor kinds of conversion are, for example: conversion

from affixes to nouns, from verbs to adjectives, from
phrases to adjectives, etc. Provide illustrations.

Here are some examples of verb to noun conversion

for you to classify according to the following semantic
and logic criteria: deverbal nouns meaning the
instance of the action; converted nouns from stative
verbs; deverbal nouns indicating the agent of the
action; nouns denoting place of the action; nouns
denoting object or result of the action; deverbal
substantives indicating an instrument of the action:
move, get-away, help, rebel, turn, catch, break-down,
fall-out, cover, cure, permit, dump.

Directionality of conversion has to do with assigning

priority to one word-class as the starting point in the
process of conversion. The decision is based upon
semantic
criteria
which
are
given
priority.
Transformational analysis can be used to decide on
directionality of conversion (e.g. to honeymoon means
'spending your honeymoon somewhere', so the
meaning of the noun honeymoon is incorporated into
the meaning of the the verb to honeymoon and it is for
that reason that the noun is considered to be more
basic and therefore we are dealing with noun-to-verb
conversion). Consider the following examples and
apply transformational analysis to decide on the
directionality of conversion: the whites, the deaf, a
daily, doubt ., cheat ., drive ., limp ., fall-out .,
French ., ups and downs, nobody ., go-between .,
panic v., ship v., box v., cradle v., floor v., handcuff v.,
busy v., empty v., encore v.

Adjectives denoting a quality common to a group of

people may denote such people as a group, e.g. the
deaf, the hopefuls. Provide more examples.

Superlatives can be used as nouns. Illustrate.

94

Uncountable nouns can become countable nouns (e.g.

tea : teas (meaning 'different kinds of tea'). Provide
more examples.

When verbs are converted into nouns, the stress usually

shifts from the second to the first syllable (e.g. con'duct v. 'conduct .; dfgest v. - 'digest .). Provide more illustrations.

Verbs converted from nouns may denote: action

(e.g. to fish, to butcher), instrument (e.g. to whip, to
fork), place (e.g. to can, to box), time (e.g. to vocation,
to honeymoon), deprivation of the object (e.g. to bone,
to dust). Classify the following converted verbs
according to the semantic and logic criteria: ape, dog,
crusade, parade, lust, nurse, tower, screw, telescope,
nail, hammer, x-ray, cradle, land, belly-land, to yacht,
weekend, winter, holiday, peel, scalp, side-step,
referee, bomb, bicycle, motor, balloon, ski, stage,
cradle, field, milk.

Here are some examples of disyllabic noun-verb

A number of compound verbs are formed by

conversion, e.g. to spotlight, to stagemanage. Provide
more examples.

pairs. Say if they differ in stress. Balance - balance,

censor -censor, dispute - dispute, release - release, support
-support.

Read the following nouns: abstract, conflict, export,

extract, import, insult, refund, refill, remake, suspect,
transport, break-down, press-up.

Use the following verbs in context (e.g. cushion - He

tried to cushion the fall). Autograph, panic, photograph,
host, film, elbow, soldier, gray, chance.

>

Verbs can change their subsidiary class due to

conversion (e.g. walk v. intransitive can shift to the
transitive class as in: He offered to walk me home). Here
are two more examples for you to comment on.

Consider the following examples and identify the type

of conversion involved: to bald, to dim, to idle, to
better, to busy, to dirty, to empty, to still.

Explain the difference between complete and partial

conversion. Provide examples.
Consider the following examples and say if they represent
the instances of complete or partial conversion: floor v.,
land v., box v., honeymoon v., ugly ., rich ., Belgrade adj.
(as in Belgrade fair), off adj. (as in an off chance), then adj.
(as in the then Miss of the World).

124

kinds

of

alteration

1. He was hissed off the stage..

2. If you snow someone you talk in a flattering and
insincere way in order to deceive them.

Identify the type of conversion in the following

examples:

1. He will repair it, the how you leave to him.

2. It is the why of the crime that interests the police.

Illustrate the principle

approximate conversion.

What do we mean by approximate conversion?

in

Consider the following examples and identify the type of

conversion: summit ., convertible ., commercial .,
regular ., supersonic ., newly marrieds n.
e

95

Having in mind what you know about conversion

compare the following Serbian graffiti with its English
translation equivalent focusing on the words in bold type:

Civilizacija - to je kad dva majmuna izlemaju treceg

zato sto se majmunise.

Find another expression for the following so that you

use a compound adjective (e.g. a book where the corners
of the leaves have been turned down to mark particular
pages : a dog-eared book):

Civilization - that's when two monkeys beat up another

monkey because he has been monkeying around.

financed by the state, covered with earth, plated with

silver, laced with gold, surrounded by the police, made
by man, born in New York, controlled by the state,
driven by the wind, stained with blood, soiled while in
shop, written by hand, swept by the wind, made by a
tailor, covered with snow, trained in college, lit by the
candles, lined with trees, knitted by hand, drawn by a
horse, covered with leather.
Rephrase the following so that you use a compound
adjective (e.g. a girl with blue eyes : a blue-eyed girl):

124

Rephrase the following so that you use a compound

adjective (e.g. lit by the moon : moon-lit):

a girl with green eyes, a girl with gray eyes, a girl with
dark eyes, a gentleman with gray hair, a lady with
auburn hair, a lady with the blue blood, a commoner
with the red blood, shoes with high heels, shoes with
low heels, shoes with rubber soles, a girl with a round
face, a boy with an oval face, a man with an open heart
and open mind, a hat with a narrow brim, a man with
big shoulders, a fellow with the heart of a chicken,
murder committed in cold blood, a man with a quick wit,
a fellow with bad manners, a jacket with a colour of
coffee, a lady who is well dressed, a sofa which is
covered with leather.

a man whose mind wavers between two or more

courses of action, a stingy man, a generous man, a
timid fellow, jealousy, having no enthusiasm for the
business in hand, a compliment of doubtful sincerity, a
person clever in small thefts.

Key: a double-minded man, a close-fisted man, an open handed

man, a chicken-hearted fellow, the green-eyed monster, halfhearted, a left-handed compliment, a light-fingered person

Rephrase the following so that you use a compound

adjective (e.g. as clear as crystal: crystal-clear):

as black as coal, as bright as silver, as cold as stone,

as cold as marble, as firm as a rock, as sharp as a
razor, as white as snow, as smooth as glass, as green
as moss, as blue as the sky, having the eyes like
Argus, having eyes as keen as the lynx, famous all
over the world.
Rephrase the following so that you use a compound
adjective (e.g. a report having two pages : a two-page
report). Mind that the measuring word is always singular
because it is the unit of measurement (e.g. an interval
which lasts fifteen minutes: a fifteen-minute interval):

a hat having three corners, a walk of three miles, a job

to be completed in a year, a performance lasting two
hours, a delay of a quarter of an hour, a leave lasting
three days, a banknote worth 100 dollars, a walk which
takes half an hour, a journey of two thousand miles, a
river which is six hundred miles long, piano music
played by four hands, a building with a hundred
storeys, a man who weighs twenty stones, a monastery
96

healthy and energetic (a jocular comment on a person's

general condition and spirits) : bright-... and ...-tailed;
the case so strong that it cannot be challenged is
referred to as a ...-iron case; a final desperate struggle
is referred to as a ...-ditch effort; a situation with two
options, both equally dangerous is referred to as a
edged sword.

built in the thirteenth century, a railway carriage of the

first class, a pass which expires at the end of two
weeks, a car with a rating of 20 horse-power.

Rephrase the following so that you use compound

adjectives with present participle (e.g. a car which is
moving fast: a fast-moving car). Note that there are also
some institutionalized compounds expressing the same
idea (e.g. a gadget for slicing eggs : an egg-slicing gadget:
egg-slicer).

a job which consumes a lot of time, a bird which flies

high, a machine for cutting grass, a machine for
mowing grass, a gadget for cutting cheese, a gadget for
slicing cheese, a machine for purifying water, a gadget
for slicing eggs, a man who suffers a long time, a river
which flows slowly

Fill the blank spaces with some common compound

adjectives (e.g. he spoke in a matter-of ... voice - he spoke
in a matter-of-fact voice):

State the importance of word order in

composition.
What is differential meaning? Explain the difference in
structure and meaning between the following pairs of
constructions:

124

the duchess was devastated by the divorce : the

divorce devastated duchess; the air-company charted
the flight: the air-company charted flight; they knitted
the pullover by hand: a hand knitted pullover, they
washed the silk dress by hand: a hand washed silk
dress

Explain the difference in structure, meaning, and

focus between the following pairs of constructions:

the room is ...-proof; the watch is ...-proof; I shall

always remember this never-to-be-... moment; he kept
us all bored by his ...-drawn-out argument; I prefer
made-to-...clothes to
...-to-wear suits; she was praised for her ...-thought-out
argument; she came in wearing a ...-fitting dress; a man
with a ...-beaten face; an up-to-... version of a computer
program; a drip-... dress; life in the country is simple
and very down-to-...; he stole it: he was caught red-...;
he graduated from a university: he is ...-educated man;
he carried out an extensive research: he is ...-informed;
some people speak in a round-... way but his speech
was very .. .-the-point; he is an out-and-.. .Her, this
problem should be solved on a day-to-... basis; the
...-school tie is the mark of a high social class; lively,

boat life : life boat; boat deck : deck boat; deck lounge :
lounge deck; fruit market : market fruit; flower garden :
garden flower, child problem : problem child; cage bird :
bird cage; horse race : race horse; horse show: show
horse; pet shop : shop pet; finger ring : ring finger,
laboratory research: research laboratory.

Find the examples of compound words in the following

text. State their word-formation pattern and their part-ofspeech meaning. Note the difference between nonce
formations and institutionalized compounds.

97

124

1. The two schedules dovetailed together without

friction. 2. We sell a lot of down-market books. 3. The
soil from the river banks is washed downstream. 4. He
had much more down-to-earth reasons. 5. There will be
a similar downturn in manufacturing and industry. 6.
This country has the most poverty-stricken and
downtrodden population in the world. 7. His research
took him among the down-and-outs in the city of
Liverpool. 8. He stood still with his eyes downcast. 9.
Don't be too downhearted. 10. A draining-board is the
place on a sink unit where things such as cups, plates,
cutlery, etc. are put to drain after the washing up. 11. A
dragonfly is a brightly-coloured insect with a long thin
body and two pairs of wings, which is often found near
slow-moving or still water. 12. She had a drawstring bag
and the trousers with a drawstring waist. 13. Already the
landscape has a depopulated and dreamlike air. 14.
This was a soul-destroying job. 15. Some of the food is
very good, some of it's so-so, and some of it's plain
ordinary. 16. She became quite sought-after as an afterdinner speaker. 17. After much soul-searching the union
called off the strike. 18. Mrs. Pringle came to give me a
hand with the spring-cleaning. 19. She couldn't get to
the meeting so she sent me as her stand-in. 20. I'm
trying to arrange a stand-in lecturer. 21. He was quite a
show-offish and stand-offish person. 22. A starfish is a
flat, star-shaped creature with five arms that lives in the
sea. 23. You must toilet-train the child. 24. A tom-tom is
a long narrow African or Asian drum that you play with
your hands. 25. He offered some tongue-in-cheek
advice about keeping out of the rain. 26. He became
completely tongue-tied. 27. 'She sells seashells on the
seashore' is an English tongue-twister. 28. A pick-me-up
is a drink that you have in order to make you feel
healthier and more energetic. 29. Eight police outriders
escorted the minister's car. 30. The article then listed a
series of nudge-nudge, wink-wink rumours that have
appeared in broadsheet and tabloid newspapers over

the last two years, insinuating the Prime Minister was

having an affair. 31. While-U-wait service. 32. A fifteen
day bus tour of Scotland with a plan-as-you-go itinerary.
33. The dialect of the area has a sing-song intonation.
34. Tom was ashamed seeing his grease-stained
hands. 35. When somebody touch-types, they type
without looking at the keys on the typewriter. 36.
Inflation could be down to 8 per cent or thereabouts. 37.
She wanted to be more than a hanger-on, a camp
follower. 38. The bride wore a full-length ivory wedding
gown with three-quarter length sleeves and a 20-foot
train. 39. Tracy wears a silk sweetheart two-layered
corset in pastel check and Catherine a wedding dress
in lavender silk taffeta with a strapless boned bodice.
40. Daisy wears a backless cowl neck top with crystals.
41. Catherine and Molly model bridesmaid dresses Catherine wears a powder-pink raw silk flower fairy
dress with pale-pink tulle and an apple blossom
headdress; and Molly wears a pale coffee raw silk
dress with lace overlay. 42. / knew she would never get
too big headed because she is so well grounded. 43.
My uncle is quick witted like my grandfather. 44.
Victoria wore an unusual one-sleeved dress in a black
and white animal-style print. 45. Hollywood star
pictured with on-screen wife

Penelope Cruz. 46. To be high-minded is to be

of noble mind. 47. High-principled and high-toned have
this meaning of high-minded; and high-spirited is
similar, with the added idea of courage. 48. This
artistically detailed tile topped jewelry box contains
three multiple sized ring holders; beautifully crafted to
hold all of your keepsakes. 49. Another great bag by
what's-their-name!

Illustrate the process of recursiveness in word

formation in the following examples. To show the difference
98

safety centres, world hunger relief scheme, systemic

connective tissue lung disease

in meaning of the different types of examples resort to

transformational analysis.

shock absorber, speed indicator, lie detector, video

cassette recorder, tape recorder, hard-liner, hard-hitter,
brain-twister, fire-eater, card player, lawn mower, trouble
maker, housebreaker, all-rounder, hundred-percenter,
down-hiller, snake-charmer, window-shopping, windowdressing, window-cleaning, spring cleaning, dressmaking,
housetraining,
house-warming,
housebreaking,
housekeeping, mercy-killing, time-killing, bullfighting,
wrong-doing, blood poisoning, food poisoning; readingroom, skipping-rope, starting-point, washing-powder,
wishing-well, frying pan, weeping-willow, writing-paper,
blotting-paper, dancing bear, dancing-shoe, rocking chair,
swivelling chair, humpbacked, sharp-eyed, dogeared,
kidney-shaped, three-cornered, gold-plated, high-heeled,
single-handed, light-hearted, cold-blooded, best-dressed,
in-line skates, roller skates, roller blades

climbing plant, climbing-boot, walking shoes, walking

stick, folding machine, folding door, dancing girl,
dancing partner, sleeping bag, sleeping partner,
sleeping pill, sleeping-car, drinking-man, drinking water,
drinking chocolate, drinking straw, gambling-man,
gambling house, hunting-spider, hunting ground,
hunting-party, hunting-dog, hunting-field, shooting star,
shooting jacket, standing-bed, standing-ground,
sucking-pig,
sucking-bottle,
washing-machine,
washing-powder, washing-day, washing-house.

Disambiguate the following. Juxtapose different

interpretations to show the difference between them (e.g.
primitive art exhibition : 1. primitive art / exhibition; 2.
primitive / art exhibition): dirty work overalls, modern art
exhibition, Saturday shopping guide, liberal party members,
special delivery service, special night show, road safety
centres, electrical garbage disposal equipment.

Translate into your mother tongue the following.

Highlight the difficulties that may arise when doing the
translation.

124

Disambiguate the following examples of the V-ing +

noun combinations resorting to transformational
analysis (e.g. dancing bear: a bear who dances;
dancing shoes : shoes for dancing). The examples
listed fall into two distinctive groups, which groups:

walking leather shoes, saddle leather riding boots, wind

speed and direction, computer processing speed, a
kitchen fitted with a stainless steel sink, he stood the
red wine bottle on the bench beside him, crease
resistant machine washable drip-dry fabrics, road

Divide the following examples into four sets according

to the semantic markers: 'purpose', 'habitual', 'habitual
and profession', and 'species', e.g. kill-time has a
'purpose' marker, bird-watcher has a 'habitual' marker,
bird-trainer has a 'habitual and profession' marker, and
rove-beetle has a 'species' marker. Note that there are
homonymous words like, e.g. dish-washer (having a
'purpose' marker) and dish-washer (having a 'habitual
and profession' marker).

bottle-washer, bottle-washer, kill-time, kill-joy, windowwasher, grave-digger, grave-digger, fly-catcher, flycatcher, bookbinder, cutpurse, mouthwash, air
freshener, feeding-bottle, bake-house, ironing-board,
drawbridge, answerphone, blotting-paper, catch-fly,
mocking-bird, weeping-elm, dancing-girl, freedomlover, sneeze-weed, stink-bird, grasshopper, humming99

bird, pearl-diver, ski-runner, sandwich maker, cavedweller, climbing-boot, night-worker, seed-feeder, treecreeper, water-breather, prize-fighter, sleeping-suit,
sleeping bag, wishing-well, honey-guide, living room,
suck-egg, woodpecker, boxing-glove, carrycot, knittingneedle, tracing paper, tuning-fork, wrapping-paper,
walking-shoe,
hair-splitter,
lady-killer,
leg-puller,
pleasure-seeker, turncoat, coal-digger, cotton-picker,
green-keeper, glass-blower, bartender, innkeeper

writing, news, knife, money, bag) MAN (ginger bread, post,

work, weather, power, mail, garbage, slaughter, spokes,
police, milk, hang) BOOK (binder, bindery, collecting,
keeper, seller, guide, reading, coffee table, case, account,
stall, shop, store)

Combine the words in capital letters with each word from

the list in brackets, putting it either before or after to make
an attested compound word, Example:
DOOR (keeper, swing)
keeper - door-keeper swing swing-door

DOOR (scraper, stop, folding, revolving, mat)

DAY (break, dream, dreamer, peep, work, worker,
pay, washing)
GLASS (blower, cutter, painter, painting, work, looking,
magnifying, reading, spy)
SHIP (battle, flag, merchant, sailing, builder)
SHOE (dancing, jogging, running, polish, black,
maker, making, shine, slip, walking)
HORSE (tamer, taming, keeper, keeping, riding,
rocking, work, man, shoe, race, show)
HOUSE (bake, eating, gambling, builder, building,
cleaner, cleaning, owner, owning, warming, breaker,
breaking, holder, keeper, work, printing)
WATER (drinking, breather, carrier, cooler, cooling,
drinker, finder, flow, skiing, softener, fall, rat, sea,
wheel)
BED (standing, warmer, room, sitter, hospital, clothes,
hotel)
PAPER (blotting, drawing, cutter, fastener, feeder,
folder, maker, clip, washing, printing, tracing, wrapping,
124

Here are some neo-classical compounds (formed

from elements of the classical languages): Scientology,
radioluminescence, radiometeorgraph, radioscopy,
biophysics, serigraphy, nanotechnology, technophobe,
technophile,
neurolinguistics,
otorhinolaryngology,
hydropathy, diplopia. Add to the list some of your own
examples.
Shortening means the reduction of a word where one
part of the original word is subtracted. There seem to
be no phonological or spelling reasons on the basis of
which the subtracted part can be predicted. Shortening
(or sometimes referred to as clipping) can take the
shape of final clipping (where the end of the original
word is clipped), initial clipping (where the beginning
part is subtracted), syncope (where the middle part of
the word is left out), both-ends clipping (where final
and initial clipping are combined). Here are some
clipped forms in English. Say to which category of
shortening (i.e. clipping) they belong. Cinema, lab, pub,
ad, coke, mike, vet, phone, bus, plane, ma'am, flu,
fridge, fridge-freezer, specs, mailomat, cablegram, Pat,
Nick, Ben, Liz, Aussie, , co-op, mac, ref, gym.

The usage of the word obtained by clipping and of the

original word is different: clipped words are generally
considered to be less formal, and sometimes informal.
Consider the following examples of clipped forms and
assign a language style marker to them (e.g. doc,
informal): sis, prof, ref, prom, perm, Liz, fab, comfy,
gents.
100

Dx 'diagnosis', and Hx 'history'. What are the codes for

'treatment' and 'symptoms'?

What are acronyms? Provide some examples.

Here are some clipped forms. Match them with their

corresponding undipped forms (e.g. M. A. - Master of
Arts). UNESCO, NATO, OPEC, PTO, RSVP, UN, M. P.,
PIN, . ., p. ., ext., laser, radar, . I. A., U. S. A., GB,
CD, DVD, SARS, AIDS, Ltd., . ., ., H. R. H., etc.,
i.e., cf.

Here are some abbreviations with 'ordinary'

pronunciation (e.g. laser /leizaV) and some initial
abbreviations with the alphabetical reading retained
(e.g. . . C. /bi:bi:si:/). Read the following: D. J., V. J.,
VCR, V. I. P., M. A., S. O. S., F. . I., UNESCO, UN,
NB, RSVP, PTO, OPEC, NATO, AIDS, SARS.

There are some abbreviations which appear in writing

but which are pronounced as the full word (e.g. Mr.
/mistaV). Provide more illustrations.

Here are some abbreviations that you can see on an

envelope, in a letter or a fax: c/o, enc, PS. Say what
these abbreviations mean.

124

Rx is a noun meaning: 1. a prescription, and 2. a

solution to a problem. It is an abbreviation of Latin
recipe meaning 'take'. Rx also has a few cousins, e.g.

Young people in the States do not seem to be

interested in reading books nowadays. How do you
understand the following comment that appeared in an
American newspaper: 'Can we ABC while we MTV?'

Netspeak abounds in acronyms and clippings (e.g.

www, CD). Find some more examples.
Initials and clipped elements can be combined with fullword elements (e.g. A-bomb, PR officer). Provide more
examples to illustrate this way of word forming.

Ellipsis is defined as the omission of a word or words

considered essential for grammatical completeness.
Ellipsis in morphology is the omission of a part of a
word or parts of words or phrases. Ellipsis may result in
a change of lexical and grammatical meaning and the
new word belongs to a different part of speech, e.g.
daily paper > daily (compare: daljinski upravljac >
daljinski, and mobilni telefon > mobilni in the Serbian
language). Various other processes are often
interwoven with ellipsis. Consider the following pairs of
examples and say which other process are combined
with ellipsis: final exams > finals; preliminary
examinations > prelims; permanent wave > perm;
popular music > pop;

101

promenade concert > prom; taximeter-cab > taxi-cab >

taxi; cooperative store > co-op.

Abbreviations receive the plural and possessive case

inflections (e.g. M. P.-s, M. P.'s). Give the verb paradigm of
O.K.

Acronyms can be used atributively (e.g. TV program, UN

vote). Provide more illustrations.

Two types of blends can be distinguished: additive (e.g.

guesstimate - guess and estimate) and restrictive
(transformable as a head word and a modifier, e.g. spam spiced ham). Consider the following examples and say to
which type of blends they belong: actorexia, televangelist,
cinerama, positron, mimsy, Benelux, Euroasia.

Instead of ballute (balloon + parachute) combinations such

as: paraloon or balachute are equally possible. However, it
is only ballute that is attested. Can you say why?

There are blends created of phonaesthemes, i.e.

elements based on the principle of expressive symbolism
(e.g. flimmer < flicker + shimmer). Provide your own
illustrations.

Here are two examples of compound blends.

screenager < screen + teenager, celtuce < celery +
lettuce. Provide examples of nominal compound
blends, adjectival compound blends, and verbal
compound blends.

Blending is compounding by means of clipped forms. The

result of blending is a blend or portmanteau word.
There are two meanings packed up in a single word.
Can you work out the meaning of the initial undipped forms
entering the process of blending in the following examples:
smog, brunch, sexpert, amberlievable, motel, foolosopher.

There are blends created as suffixed words (e.g.

washeteria, fishburger). Give more examples which
belong to the 'teria' and 'burger* paradigm.

Here is a word that appeared in an advertisment in

Hair magazine: ansafaxacopyphone. What do you
think it means? Think about the processes of
shortening and blending.

Cockney rhyming slang belongs to the general

category of blending. Provide illustrations.
Blends seem to be on the rise in terminology and
trade advertisments. Take some British and
American magazines and search them for blends.

Back-formation is the word-forming process which

involves deletion of actual or supposed affixes (e.g.
stage-manager > stage-manage). It is also called
reverse derivation or retrograde derivation.
Analyze the following examples of back-formed
words: blockbust, baby-sit, dry-clean, mass-produce,
lip-read, stage-dive, burgle, sculpt, edit, typewrite,
vacuum-clean.

Metanalysis means re-interpretation of a particular

structure counter etymology. In what way are backformation and metanalysis related?
102

Phraseology is the study of word-groups the members

of which are functionally and semantically inseparable.
What is the term by which we refer to such wordgroups?

What is the difference between phraseological units and

variable word-groups? Provide illustrations.

Say if the italicized phrases are free and variable or

fixed and invariable:

The most productive type of back-formation is

derivation of verbs, and composite verbs in particular,
from compounds that end in either -er or -ing (e.g.
thought-reading > thought-read; housekeeper >
housekeep). Provide more examples of this type of backformation (e.g. house-warm, vacuum-clean, etc).

Here are two pieces of text from the magazine Hair

(Feb. - March 1998). Analyze the italicized words from the
point of view of word-formation processes. When thinking
about back-formation bear in mind that the process is
heavily based on analogy.

Style: After applying strong-hold mousse, hair was

diffuser-dried, then blow-dried smooth. To style, hair
was gathered up, pleated, twisted and pinned into place.
The ends were backcombed and spritzed with
hairspray.

Style: After blow-drying the fringe smooth, rough-dry the

remainder of the hair and work wax throughout, pushcombing to create a sexy tousled effect.

1. When you lose your purse or lose the game do not lose
2.
3.
4.
5.

Phraseology is interested in cliche, idioms, proverbs,

and familiar quotations. Provide illustrations.

What is a cliche? Illustrate.

How does a cliche compare to some other types of

stereotypical formations? To what language style do
cliche words and phrases belong?

Reduplication is the word-forming process which

produces reduplicative compounds that fall into three main
groups: reduplicative compounds proper (e.g. blah-blah),
ablaut
combinations
(e.g.
chit-chat),
rhyme
combinations (e.g. boogie-woogie). Here are some
examples of reduplicative compounds for you to classify:
mumbo-jumbo, pow-wow, helter-skelter, hurdy-gurdy, hurlyburly, hocus-pocus, tiptop, mish-mash, lovey-dovey, pingpong, sing-song, flip-flop, zigzag, hah-hah, murmur, teenyweeny.

766

your temper]
Have a look at the reverse side of the tailcoat.
The reverse side of the medal is that they will leave us in
the cold.
We left the beaten track in order to see some more
exciting sites.
The scientist left the beaten track and came up with a
new theory.

8. PHRASEOLOGY
767

Cliche formations fall into different categories. State which

they are and provide examples (e.g. bottom feeder individual word; creme de la creme - phrase; pie in the skyrhyme based on assonance, etc.)

5. ...the Rubicon
6. Judas' ...
Here are some commonplace comparisons. Insert the
word which is missing (e.g. as hungry as a ... - as hungry as
a hunter)

Here are some examples of cliche. Divide the examples

into five sets: individual words, phrases, proverbs and
sayings, rhymes based on assonance, rhymes based on
alliteration:

accidents will happen; add fuel to the flames; all things

considered; it's all Greek to me; ants in your pants; the
back of beyond; to beat about the bush; big-wig; I was
not born yesterday; buzz word; not to be fit to hold a
candle to someone; cliff-hanger; loose canon; every
cloud has a silver lining; two's company- three's a
crowd; off the cuff; don't let the grass grow under your
feet; don't look a gift horse in the mouth; ugly duckling;
fat cat; keep your fingers crossed; to make someone's
hair stand on end; to make a mountain out of a molehill;
name-dropping; namby-pamby; neither fish, flesh nor
fowl; pie in the sky; when in Rome do as the Romans
do.

In English there are a number of stereotyped and

cliche phrases containing eponyms (e.g. Achilles' heel,

Adam's apple). Finish the following cliche phrases by
inserting the appropriate word:

1.
2.
3.
4.
170

cut the Gordian ...

as ... as Methuselah
Hercules' ...
The ... of Damocles

As ... as coal, as ... as ink, as ... as a day, as busy as a

as changeable as a as ... as a frog, as cold as as cool
as a as ... as a fox, as ... as a door nail, as deaf as a as
deep as a as ... as a bone, as ... as dust, as drunk as a
as easy as as fat as a as ... as a pancake, as ... as a
daisy, as ... as a king, as ... as a dove, as ... as a
feather, as like as two as mute as a as ... as the hills,
as ... as a ghost, as ... as church mouse, as ... as a
peacock, as ... as lightning, as ... as a Jew, as ... as a
razor, as ... as the grave, as ... as glass, as ... as honey,
as ... as a wafer, as thin as a as ... as a toad, as ugly as
a as ... as a drowned rat, to follow like a ...

According to the language style fixed similes are not

neutral and they should be used with care. Would you
say that they are informal and humorous?

Here are some fixed similes with like: drink like a fish,
sleep like a log, etc. Rephrase the following sentences
which have the like construction so that you explain what
they mean.

1. He never misses a thing: he has eyes like a hawk.

2. The manager was like a bear today.
3. I won't take her with me to a party again! Last time she was
like a bull in a china shop.
4. Your criticism was like a red rag to a bull.
104

Here are some two-word fixed expressions (the words

are usually connected by and or or): here and there; now
and then; hit and miss; give and take; odds and ends; part
and parcel; rack and ruin; rough and ready; wine and dine;
pick and choose; first and foremost; on and on;
on and off; back and forth; up and down; through and
through; in and out; over and over; sooner or later; all or
nothing; sink or swim. Use these phrases in context.

Everyday language is full of fixed expressions. Their

meaning can be transparent, e.g. this is it; that's that. Which
other expressions with this and that do you know?

Here are some fixed expressions used as sentence

modifiers: if the worst comes to the worst; if all else fails; as
luck would have it; in other words; at any rate; at all events;
in all likelihood; in all probability; in any case; on the other
hand; on second thoughts; on the contrary; on the whole.
Use these expressions in context.

There are certain adjectives that often go in pairs.

Their order within the pair is fixed and the phrases
should be memorized as such. Learn these adjective
-adjective combinations by heart: for better for worse; cut
and dried; dead and gone; drunk or sober; fair and square;
free and easy; good or bad; great and small; high and dry;
the long and short; more or less; past and present; rich and
poor, rough and ready; short and sweet; slow and steady;
slow but sure; through thick and thin.

170

Sometimes two nouns go together making a fixed

idiomatic collocation. Learn these idiomatic pairs by
heart: Alpha and Omega; bag and baggage; through fire
and water; flesh and blood; over head and ears; heart and
soul; part and parcel; sheep and goats; skin and bone;

sword and shield; tooth and nail. Use these phrases in

context.

Some common verbs combine with prepositions or

particles to form verbs (often referred to as phrasal verbs)
with new and often unpredictable meanings (e.g.
put + off > put off meaning to cancel). Here are some
phrasal verbs formed from: do, make, be, put, take, brake,
come, turn, and bring. Add the correct particle in the
following sentences:

1. Make ... your mind. You can't sit on the fence forever.
2. She was heavily made ...
3. He did ... with all his bad habits.
4. He broke ... the house and made ... with the safe.
5. He is capable of anything. I wonder what he is ... to now.
6. His car broke ... unexpectedly.
7. Please, do not smoke during take...
8. He was taken ... by her story.
9. I took ... him the moment I saw him.
10. We applied for the scholarship but they turned us ...
11. Put... the stove before leaving the kitchen.
12. He was beautifully brought and so were all his brothers and

sisters.

13. New regulations came ... two weeks ago.

14. Keep ... the grass!

Adverb particles can be found in imperatives and

exclamations. Here are some cliche examples: Get out!,
Look out!, Hands off!, Be off! Provide more illustrations.

By idiom we understand peculiar uses of particular words

and phrases which have become stereotyped. The order of
the elements within the idiom is fixed and the meaning of it
is not equal to the sum of the meanings of the parts.
Consider the following examples that are ambiguous in the
sense that two interpretations can be assigned to them: the
105

literal and the idiomatic one. State these two different

meanings in each case. Say in which context literal meaning
would be appropriate. Say in which context only idiomatic
meaning would be appropriate.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Here are some idiomatic adjective and noun

phrases
and their meaning: animal spirits 'natural cheerfulness',
arch look 'a sly, significant look', bad blood 'vicious temper',
blind alley 'a lane closed at one end'. Find out the meaning
of the following idioms: black sheep, blue stocking, chickenhearted man, cold feet (in to have cold feet), cold shoulder
(in to give one the cold shoulder), cold war, crocodile tears,
diamond wedding, double-minded man, French leave,
Dutch courage, free lance, high flier, hush money, leap
year, queer fish, quixotic project, red-letter day, small talk,
sleeping partner, wet blanket, white lie, swan song.

She has a tongue.

He has the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
All went down the drain.
Keep your chin up!
What have you got up your sleeve?
She was skating on thin ice.
They were left out in the cold.
When one person sneezes, another catches cold.

There are instances where literal meaning does not make

sense (e.g. to have green fingers, storm in a tea cup). Give
more examples to show inappropriateness of the literal
interpretation of the idiom.

Idioms are typically metaphorical: they are metaphors

that have become petrified or fossilized (e.g. black
sheep, slow coach). Provide more examples.

4.
5.
6.

Find out what the italicized idioms mean:

think, 'What happens when you take your face off, when
they see you in the morning?'
Each design is very different in style. Some are subtle,
some gloriously OTT.
Before I got involved in this I used to think that
mountaineers were a little bit round the bend.
These are, for the most part, ordinary middle-of-the-road
people who want the usual things out of life.
His political ideas are very much middle-of-the-road.

170

Match the following fish idioms with their meaning:

1. She hardly socializes at all: she's a bit of an odd-ball.

2. When I look at models with all that over-the-top makeup, I
3.

Identify the structural pattern of the following idiomatic

phrases: an apple of discord, a bed of roses, a bed of
thorns, birds of a feather, a fish out of water, a house of
mourning, a Jack of all trades, the ins and outs of a thing,
the ups and downs of life, the man in the street. What do
these idiomatic phrases mean? Use these phrases in
context.

1. A big fish 2. A big fish in a small pond 3. A small fish

in a big pond 4. A cold fish 5. Drink like a fish 6. A fish
out of water 7. Have other fish to fry 8. Have bigger fish
to fry 9. Like shooting fish in a barrel 10. Neither fish nor
fowl 11. There are plenty more fish in the sea.

1. Difficult to identify, classify, or understand 2.There are still

many other people you can be happy with 3. The weaker
side has no chance at all of winning 4. Feel awkward or ill at
ease because you are in an unfamiliar situation 5. Not
interested because you have more important, interesting, or
profitable things to do 6. Not interested because you have
something else to do 7. Drink a lot of alcohol 8.
Unemotional, unfriendly and unsympathetic 9. Somebody
106

 beat your chest; drop a brick; have a finger in every pie;

not very important because they are part of a much larger

organization 10. Somebody who is one of the most
important and influential people in a small organization or
social group 11. Somebody very important and powerful.

Say what these sentences mean:

1. Kate thinks she is the bee's knees.

2. When they showed her in everybody was in a state of shock:
she was dressed up like a dog's dinner.

3. I hate to say it, but this paper of yours is a dog's breakfast.

4. I was not impressed at all although it was meant to be a dog

7.
8.
9.

Translate these Serbian idioms into English: drveni

advokat; sitni sati; radio Mileva; trla baba Ian da joj prode
dan; bije baksuz; hoce biti, nece biti; svako zlo ima svoje
dobro; dva losa ubise Milosa; bacati biser pred svinje; dusa
od coveka; koliko ti dusa hoce; ne lipsi magarce do zelene
trave; biti nekoga pojam; podviti rep; igrati na jednu
kartu; ne mrdnuti ni prstom; ni riba ni devojka; siroke ruke;
deveta rupa na svirali; okrenuti curak naopako; obojci,
opanci.

Here are some English words and phrases whose meaning

you can't work out on the basis of your knowledge of the
meaning of their constituent parts and of your knowledge of
the pattern used in the formation of a particular word or
phrase. We say that such words and phrases are idiomatic.

Here are some eye idioms for you to say what they mean
and to use them in context: before your eyes; can't take
your eyes off someone; feast your eyes on something; have
eyes in the back of your head; keep your eyes peeled; only
have eyes for someone (for something); open someone's
eyes; eye-opener; keep your eyes open; up to your eyes;
with your eyes closed; with your eyes glued to something.

6.

laugh your head off; wet your whistle; a wolf in sheep's

clothing; the bush telegraph.

and pony show.

5. His career was ruined and everything went to the dogs.
In all honesty he will trick you, cheat you, use you, drop you,
throw you to the dogs.
I think he has no feet on the ground and this idea of his is
only a pie in the sky.
It was a horrific accident and they survived by the skin of
their teeth.
I think you should challenge his opinion and not dance to his
tune just because he is your superior.
10. The show was excellent: the music was great and the
costumes were out of this world.

170

Translate these English idioms into Serbian: by the skin

of your teeth; jump out of your skin; out of a clear blue sky;
there's no smoke without fire; cover your tracks; get out of
bed on the wrong side; have a bee in your bonnet;

salad days, trim your sails, the salt of the earth, red
herring, acid test, a fishing expedition, shoot yourself in
the foot, play gooseberry, grapevine, lose your marbles,
if you pay peanuts you get monkeys, learn the ropes,
lovebirds, bullish, pig-headed, sheepish, clockwork,
overcook, hothouse, glass-house, greenhouse, to have
green fingers, tempestuous, a smart cookie, Dutch
courage, French leave, push up the daisies

You can play the following game. Players write down the
meaning of a word or phrase. You earn your bonus by
the correct answer, by choosing the correct answer and
by creating the believable fake answer! The game may
include some other ways for players to have fun. A
player may be allowed a minute to describe a phrase to
another player without using any of the words in the
107

group, e.g. hard disk, software, hardware, input, output,

mouse, log in, log out, save, format, tools, reset,
multitasking, chip, bit, byte are all joined by the subjectmatter of computing. Give more examples to illustrate the
following thematic groups: musical apparatus, camping,
gardening, house work, capital punishment, banking,
medicines.

phrase. Players may also use their acting or drawing

skills.

Here are some English proverbial sayings. Express

their meaning in a non-idiomatic way. Find their equivalent
sayings in the Serbian language.

1. What can't be cured must be endured.

2. Prevention is better than cure.
3. A rolling stone gathers no moss.
4. Rome was not built in a day.
5. Better late than never.
6. Easy come, easy go.
7. As you make your bed. So you must lie.
8. Too many cooks spoil the broth.
9. A stitch in time saves nine.
10. All his geese are swans.
11. Birds of a feather flock together.
12. You shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket.

170

To which thematic group do these words

From the point of view of the subject matter, language

breaks into a variety of registers, and as for the social
circumstances of speech process it breaks into a variety of
functional styles. Words that fit equally well any register
and any style are called stylistically neutral (or
unmarked). Words that fit only certain social occasions are
considered to be marked and they are labeled: formal,
colloquial, informal, very informal, familiar, offensive,
slang, non-standard, old-fashioned, poetical, etc. Take
two English language dictionaries published by different
publishers (e.g. Oxford University Press, Collins, or
Longman, etc) and search them for the words which belong
to the styles mentioned above.

Vulgate (n.) (from Late Latin vulgata editio (popular edition),

past participle of vulgare (to make public or common), from
vulgus (the public)) means everyday, informal or
substandard speech of a people. Provide examples.

9. STYLISTIC VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

VOCABULARY

Register refers to the domain of communication (its subject

matter) as reflected in language, especially in its vocabulary.
A group of words joined together by the common subjectmatter they are related to is referred to as a thematic

oniomania, duopoly, monopoly, oligopoly, monopsony,

duopsony, oligopsony, nummary, emptor, pre-empt,
premium, prompt, redeem

belong? purse, wallet, safe, piggybank, bank

Take a dictionary of quotations and find six examples of

familiar quotations (e.g. to be or not to be; to err is
human, to forgive divine).

Look up the following words in a dictionary and say by which

thematic group they are joined.

108

Taboo words are those which are proscribed by society as

improper and unacceptable. Provide examples.

What are euphemisms in comparison to taboo words?

Comment on political correctness in relation to taboo

words.

Dim, long-expectant eyes, Fingers

denied the plucking, Patient till
paradise.

Compare these two pairs of examples:

them dwells my Beloved, Where is the

place for anything else?

3. My nosegays are for captives;

1. There is a man at the door. : There is a *woman at the

door.
2. There is a man at the door.: There is a lady at the door.

There is a kind of taboo on using the word woman {lady

is more appropriate). Find more examples in which the
word woman is inappropriate.

Feminists do not like the use of the word Miss,

preferring Ms. But when we are trying to get the attention of
a waitress we say: Oh, Missl (and not: Oh, Msl). Comment
on this having in mind what you know about language
usage, artificiality of language norm.

Some words can be said to belong to poetic diction

(e.g. ere, eve, damsel). Consider the words: tarry, collyrium,
and nosegay as they are used in the following examples
taken from the poetry of: Kahlil Gibran, V. K. Sethi, and
Emily Dickinson respectively.

Find non-poetic English equivalents for: tarry, collyrium,

and nosegay.

Read the following poem by Rabindranath Tagore

{Gitananjali, 1912). There are two words which can be
marked 'poetic'. Which are they? What are their non-poetic
equivalents?

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards
perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country
awake.

1. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You
are the bows from which your children, as living arrows, are
sent forth.

2. Kabir, in my eyes reddened by love

How can collyrium be applied? Within
170

Take a close look at the following definitions of

slang
taken from The Oxford English Dictionary, Collins
COBUILD English Language Dictionary, The Random
House Dictionary of the English Language, CasselPs
Dictionary of Slang. Compare the definitions and comment
on them from the point of view of language norm and
109

language purism. Say which definitions are overtly

proscriptive and which are proscriptive by implication?

1. Slang is the special vocabulary used by any set of persons

of low or disreputable character; language of a low or vulgar
type...language of a highly colloquial type, considered as
bellow the level of standard educated speech... (OED)
2. Slang n. words, phrases, meanings of words, etc.,
commonly used in talk but not suitable for good writing or
formal occasions... (The Advanced Learner's Dictionary of
Current English, OUP)
3. Slang consists of words, expressions and meanings that are
informal and are used by people who know each other very
well or who have the same job or the same interests. Slang
is not considered suitable for formal social situations or
serious writing (Collins COBUILD).
4. Slang n. 1. very informal usage in vocabulary and idiom that
is characteristically more metaphorical, playful, elliptical,
vivid, and ephemeral than ordinary language 2. Speech and
writing characterized by the use of vulgar and socially taboo
vocabulary (The Random House Dictionary).
5. Slang is the counter-language. The language of the rebel,
the outlaw, the despised, the marginal, the young. Above all
it is the language of the city - the urgent, pointed, witty,
cruel, capable of both including and excluding, of mocking
and confirming (Cassel's Dictionary of Slang).

What is another term (borrowed from French) which seems

to be synonymous with slang?

What is the difference between slang and argot

according to The Collins COBUILD English Language
Dictionary?

What is the difference between colloquial speech and

slang according to The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang?

170

How do you see the concepts of idiom and slang

related?

Irony, humour and metaphor are characteristics of

slang (consider the examples like: pre-stiff meaning
'someone close to death' or a prune meaning a 'dehydrated
patient'). Look some slang dictionary up for some more
examples which illustrate this point.

Slang does not spare anyone, it is most often cruel due

to its pejorative attitude. Consider the following slang
words for gifted pupils: brainiacs and cram artists. Can you
think of some other examples?

All of the productive morphological processes that are in

use in the English language are present in its slang as well
(e.g. shortening or abbreviation as in fan(atic), derivation
as in posey (an adjective from pose meaning 'pretentious'),
blending grualt < grunge + alternative music. Explain the
following slang words from the point of view of wordformation: talent meaning 'sexually attractive girl'; baa-lamb
meaning 'tram'; jaw-breakers 'cheap, hard or sticky sweets';
cracksman 'housebreaker'.

There are some examples of slang and informal

English. Match the examples with neutral equivalents.

Examples of slang and informal language: keep one's lip

buttoned, mates, quid, money for old rope, blew the
money, terrific, hit the jackpot, slashed, lifer, a grand,
grassed on me, the coppers, the bottle, bent, stacks of
dough, broke, Kiwi, old woman, so-and-so, lid, spit &
polish, Tommy Tucker, turn one's toes up, wet behind
the ears

Neutral equivalents: the police, lots of money, to tell

nothing, hidden, wife, to die, have great success, spent
110

the money recklessly, supper, money easily obtained,

inexperienced, furbishing, a thousand pounds, pound,
with no money, objectionable person, the courage,
friends, a New Zealander, a hat, dishonest, informed the
police, one sentenced for life, 'great'

What do the following examples of slang or informal

English mean?

What a rip-off!, Who's pinched my book?, What a drag?,

He's got a lot of hang-ups., the loo, in-laws, jaw-breaker,
jerk, make it, swelling, cool, mess about, much of a
muchness, to monkey around, more-ish, pin-up girl, to
pig oneself.

It is noon already and Peter is still in bed. He's___idle.

Careful with the milk! It's_
_hot.
I can't eat the ice-cream, it's frozen___.
If you want to feel_awake, take a cold shower!
You have lovely shoes. Are they__new?
I have been worried__about you!
The performance was a total disaster. I was bored_____
from beginning to end.
8.______________This soup is cold! You should complain
to the
waiter!
9.______________I'm scared
at the sight of him. This
is
subconscious, he just frightens me.
10. I didn't hear the bell. I must have been_asleep.

170

The following words can be used in informal English to

intensify the meaning of the adjective: fast, wide, solid,
bone, stiff, boiling, brand, sick, stone (e.g. dead serious,
brand new) Put one of these words into each gap to
intensify the meaning of the adjective.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Bronx cheer n. is a toponym (after Bronx, NY) meaning 'a

rude sound indicating disapproval made by sticking tongue
partly out between the lips and blowing air out' has the
synonym raspberry. How come? Raspberry tart was a code
for fart and then the rhyming part was dropped. Other
examples of rhyming slang are butchers for look (cf.
butcher's hook); apples for stairs (cf. apples and pairs);
china for mate (cf. china plate); Adam and Eve rhymes with
believe, April fools rhymes with stools, bull and cow rhymes
with cow, trouble and strife with wife, holy friar with liar, etc.
Best-known rhyming slang was used by London Cockneys.
Take a look at the following piece of text and consider it from
the point of view of language style. Comment on the
stylistic value of the italicized words.

Travis also notes in the Post that, contrary to UK reports,

Tom Cruise will go to next week's Academy Awards with
Penelope Cruz. 'I think it's very gutsy of him because the
Oscars will be crawling with Aussies and they might give
Tom the Oz equivalent of a Bronx cheer because he's a
bit unpopular with them for dumping Australia's sainted
Nicole,' the Kiwi-born columnist waxes. Sainted?' (Peter
Holder, et al. Sydney confidential; The Daily Telegraph
(Sydney, Australia); 18 March 2002)

Read the following two pieces of text taken from two

American papers (The Los Angeles Times 19 Jun 1997 and
The Seattle Times 13 October 2000). There is one slang
word in each text for you to pinpoint. If a verb this word
means: 1. To throw out; 2. To refuse to serve a customer. If
an adjective it means 'sold-out'. If a noun it means 'an
undesirable customer, one who is denied service'. To help
you: it rhymes with nix.

'He says the show will go on next month, though

scheduling conflicts may move it to another hotel and
the band may be eighty-sixed.'
111

mechanism which triggers neologisms (e.g. mailbomb

(v.) and mailbombing - 'the act of sending massive
amounts of e-mail to a single address in order to disrupt
the system of the recipient'). Creativeness is also shown
by special symbols (called emoticons) to express
emotions, such as happiness or sarcasm (e.g. : ) or )
or by all-caps to indicate shouting. It is interesting that
Netspeak inspires grammatical and vocabulary
changes in the process of assimilation (e.g. Serbian:
surfovanje, rather than native: krstariti Internetom for
surf the Internet and skrolovanje for scroll for which
there is no translation equivalent in Serbian). Some
Netspeak words have become international words
(e.g. Internet and cybercafe) and there is an ever
growing number of Netspeak words which have spilt
over into our off-line lives. Here are some examples of
Netspeak words which you are asked to analyze from
the point of view of
word formation, identify word formation processes and
comment on the grammatical aspects of the words given.
Clues are given when necessary.

'David enlists the help of his friend Richard Lewis to buy

a bracelet for his wife from a jewelry store that 86ed
him.'

All bloody interpolations are considered to belong to slang,

e.g. abso-bloody-lutely; also every bloody as in e.g. Hello,
everybloody! (bloody used as part of wordplay in Benny Hill
Show). Think of some other interpolations that mark the
words as informal and slang. Provide examples.

A difference can be made between general slang and

special slang (used only by some specific social or
professional group). Search a slang dictionary for some
examples of military slang.

Back slang is created when a word is spelled

backwards (e.g. top o' reeb > pot of beer, say > yes).
Here are two more back-slang words: tekram, emag.
What are their 'normal' language counterparts?

170

Netspeak is usually classified as a dynamic jargon in

and of itself, rather than slang. It is heavily based upon
technological vocabulary used by computer
programmers and actually all users of computer
networks. It is the speech of people on the Internet and
it is spreading rapidly into advertising and business.
Linguistically, the most interesting feature of Netspeak is
its morphology. It abounds in acronyms and
abbreviations (e.g. FAQ - 'frequently asked question',
TIA - 'thanks in advance'), derivatives (e.g. Internet,
hypertext), eponyms (e.g. Gabriel, Veronica - 'different
protocols for searching the Internet'), functional shifts
(e.g. flame (n.) - 'an angry answer'; flame (v.) - 'to
respond angrily'). There are quite a few analogical
formations in Netspeak (e.g. compare: e-mail - snail
mail). Building words by metaphorical extension is ever
so present in Netspeak and metaphor is a powerful

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

netiquette
yahooligans
webpaedia
hactivist (hacker + activist)
BTW (by the way)
cyber, cyberish, cyberpunk, cyberspace, cybernaut,
cyberart, cyberartist, cyberculture, cybercafe, Cyberians,
cybercrime, cyberlawyer, cyberlaw, cyberphobia
7. e-cash, e-commerce, e-mail
8. emoticon
9. smiley
10. FWIW (for what it's worth)
11. FYI (for your information)
12. LOL (laughing out loud)
13. modem mantra

112

14. sysop (system + operator)

15. telnet
16. SoHo (small office, home office)
17. MorF (mail or female)
18. README file
19. ROTFL (rolling on the floor laughing)
20. Trojan horse (an illegal computer program presented as
useful and funny but meant to be destructive when
downloaded)
21. www
22. webliography
23. bug

Say if the following words belong to American or British

English on the basis of their spelling: nationalize, flavor,
labour, whiskey, whisky, worshipping, worshiping, worshiper,
worshipper, programme, program.

Here are some common American words and their British

counterparts: railroad, fall, can, candy, suspenders AmE railway, autumn, tin, sweets, braces BrE. Match the words in
A. (American English) with the ones in B. (British English):

Provide your own examples of Netspeak words you have

encountered while using the Internet. Analyze these
examples.

170

10.
REGIONAL
ENGLISH
VOCABULARY

VARIETIES

OF

The two broadest national standards are British and

American English. The two languages differ (sometimes
considerably) in: spelling, pronunciation, grammar, and
vocabulary. Do the following exercises:
American spelling is usually simpler. Provide American
versions of the following British-English words: colour,
vigour, centre, plough, catalogue, prologue.

A. American English: gasoline, baggage, blow-out, truck,

mailbox, movies, sidewalk, line, vacation, trunk (of car),
hood (of car), cab, round trip, railway car, engineer (on
train), baby carriage, antenna, elevator, eraser, apartment,
closet, drapes, Scotch tape, yard, cookie, garbage, garbage
man
. British English: dustman, rubbish, petrol, lorry, luggage,
holiday, puncture, pavement, queue, boot, bonnet, taxi,
return, pram, engine driver, railway carriage, lift, aerial,
rubber, flat, wardrobe, taxi, lorry, letter-box, engine driver,
curtains, Sellotape

What is the spelling of the 'plural' morpheme in fiasco in

American and British English?

There is some tendency in American English to use the past

informally in place of the perfective. Use the past in place of
the perfective in the following examples: 1. I've already had
too many 2. He's never seen the sea.

Here are some words which belong to both American and

British English. However, they mean different things for
American and British speakers (e.g. when an American says
purse he means what an Englishman calls a handbag but if
an Englishman says purse he means what an American
calls a wallet). Resolve the confusion which might arise
between American and British English speakers when they
113

use words such as: bill, the first floor, pants, subway, wash
up.

Moonshine is 1. Foolish thoughts, ideas, or talk that are not

based on reality, and 2. Whisky that is made illegally. Look
the word up in a dictionary and find out whether it is used
mainly in American or British English.
Say if the following idioms are used in British or American
English. There is one idiom which is used mainly in
Australian English: which one is that?

1. If someone is on the fiddle, they are getting money

dishonestly. The expression is used in_________English.

2. 'Fall on your feet' is used only in_________English.

3. If you get your feet wet you experience something for

the
___________________________________________ f
irst time. The expression is used mainly in ______________
English.

4. The expression 'an Englishman's home is his castle' is used

in____________English.

5. If you say that someone takes the high road, you mean that
they follow the course of action that is the most

7. If you say that someone has roos in their top paddock, you
mean that they have peculiar ideas or are crazy. (Roos is
short for kangaroos) This is an informal expression which is
used mainly in_________________________English.

8. If you say that someone picks up their marbles and goes

home, you mean that they leave a situation in which they are
involved because they are dissatisfied with the way
___________________________________________ t
hings are going. This expression is used in ______________
English.

Here is a joke for you. An Englishman asked an American:

'What do you do with all this fish?' The American replied:
'We eat what we can and what we can't we can.' When the
Englishman came back to England he told his English friend
the joke and phrased it like this: 'We eat what we can and
what we can't we put into tins.' Why didn't his friend find the
joke funny? (Note the homophony of: can and can't in
American English and homonymy of can 'be able to' and
can 'tin').

sick adj. 'excellent, great, cool', e.g. He was showing

some sick snowboarding moves.

down adv. 'willing', e.g. / am down to drive to San

Francisco tonight.

ride n. 'car, motorcycle', e.g. My ride is parked in the

garage.

___________________________________________ m
oral or most correct. This expression is used in___________
English.

6. If you say that one thing or person knocks spots off another,
you mean that the first one is much better than the second.
This expression is used in___________________English.

170

Here are some of the Top 20 2003 College Slang

Terms in American English:

114

bounce v. 'to leave', e.g. Let's bounce. This party is

boring.

TIGHT adj. 'great, good, cool, likeable, attractive' (a

generic positive), e.g. That concert was hella tight.

A common way of forming slang words is by shortening or

by using loosely pronounced forms of ordinary words. Hella
is one of the examples. What are the other examples from
the list of the American college slang words?

What is the meaning of awful and terrific in British English

slang? Compare the meaning of these two words to the
meaning of tight, sick and dope in American college slang.
How do these words compare to strasno and uzasno in the
Serbian language, as in: strasno lepo, uzasno dobro? Note
that the Serbian words are not restricted to college slang.

dog (dogg / dawg) n. 'a friend or buddy', e.g. Hey dawg,

let's go shopping tomorrow!

chill / chill o u t v. 'to relax, rest, to hang out', e.g.

Dude, chill out! You won't get in that much trouble.

Comment on the word bling-bling from the point of view of

word-formation.

Comment on the word ghetto from the point of view of wordformation and meaning transfer in particular. Find out other
non-slang meanings of the word ghetto.

What is the meaning of: kul adj., kulirati v., trip ., and
tripovati v. in the Serbian language (these are slang words
used by the young). Are these anglicisms in any way
related to the English slang words cool and trip?

bling-bling n. & adj. 'jewelry, money, expensive items',

e.g. Bill is showing off his bling-bling all over campus.

sweet adj. 'wonderful, great', e.g. No class! Sweet!

hot adj. 'good-looking, fashionable', e.g. Ann was

looking so hot at the party last night!

ghetto adj. 'dirty, cheap, bad, low class, trashy', e.g.

That girl in the skimpy dress looks so ghetto.

What up / what's up / wassup / wazzup 'a greeting,

hello', e.g. Wassup, Mike!

trip v. 'to become upset, angry, to go crazy', e.g. 'Ever

since I got my "F", I've been trlppin'.

170

And the most popular:

115

Here is some Irish slang:

116

gur

header

holliers

holy show

horse's hoof

hacks

kibosh

letting on

mot

scarlet

scratcher

slagging

sleeveen

stocious

staying away

He's been on
gur since Saturday from home, usually a
child

mentally

Keep away
unstable person
from the header

holidays,

Two weeks
vacation time
holliers for me

You made a
spectacle
holy show of
yourself

That's a bit
exaggerated
of a horse's hoofl
story
think

I'm just off to

toilet,
the jacks
restroom
added the
He put the
last straw;
kibosh on it
break
1 was just
pretending
letting on

Have you got

girlfriend
a mot?
I'm scarlet
blushing
for you

He's always
bed
in the scratcher

I'm only

making fun of
slagging you
someone, generally
good-naturedly

She's a bit of
sly
a sleeveen
person,
calculating

He was
drunk
stocious this
195

evening

117

A common way of making slang words is by using short

forms or loosely pronounced forms of words. Take a look at
the words listed above and pinpoint those formed in this way.

195

Compare the Irish eat the head off with the British English
bite someone's head off and snap someone's head off and
find out if they mean the same.

Full shilling is an instance of metaphor in word-formation.

How about holy show?

In British English kibosh, in to put the kibosh on something,

is an informal expression which means 'to completely ruin
an event, a situation or someone's plans'. Is the meaning
the same in Irish slang?
Let on is an informal expression in British English which
means 'to tell something that was meant to be a secret',
e.g. Don't let on we went to that dance! Can this meaning
be compared to the meaning of let on in Irish slang? Do
you think that confusion may arise between British and Irish
speakers?

Some words have a slang meaning which is different from

their everyday meaning. Look up the verb give out in an
English-English dictionary and see which meanings are
given. Is there the meaning 'to scold' to be found?

Jacks is an Irish slang word for 'toilet'. What are BritishEnglish slang words and expressions for 'lavatory'? How
about British John and Irish jacks?

Stocious is legless in Irish slang. Find out British-English

slang words and expressions for 'drunk'.

No language or dialect evolves in isolation; rather, a

language or a dialect is a combination of the languages and
dialects in contact. Scots is no exception. We present a

118

choice of dialect words typical of Scottish English; examples

of common English words which are, in fact, Scots, follow;
then comes the list of some words and phrases that Scots
speakers in Ireland use.

1. Here are some dialect words that are used in Scottish

English: aye 'eye', ben 'mountain', brae 'river bank', drum
'whiskey', glen 'valley', kirk 'church', loch 'lake', bonny
'beautiful', janitor 'caretaker', lassie 'girl', wee 'small'. Add
other words to the list.

2. The English language has borrowed many Scots words

over the years. Here are some common English words
which are Scots:

English word
blackmail
skullduggery
heckle
slogan
flit
weird
golf
flat
gift of the gab
hunker down

Original Scots
black maill
sculduddery
hekill
slogorne
flit
weird
gowf
flat
gift of the gob
hunker doon

Here are the stories behind the words: blackmail, slogan,

and flat:

a) maill is Scots for rent. 'Black mailf was rent money taken from
a landowner as protection against possible damage to the
landowner's property;
197

b) slogan comes from the Scots word slogorne which meant 'a

battle-cry used by a clan to identify and locate other clan

members'; it eventually came to mean any catchword or
catchphrase;
) flat was originally another term for 'landing'; by
metonymic transfer it came to refer to the apartments
whose doors opened out onto the 'flats'.

Find out the etymology of the other English words that

are listed above.

3. There are a lot of words and phrases used in Northern

Ireland which can be found in the Scots dictionary.

Some words and phrases used in Ireland by Ulster

Scots:
Scots word
wean
greet
glar
quare
bachle
keech

Meaning
child
to cry, to weep
mud
large, big
a clumsy person
you don't want to know

We are sure that you know the meaning of bonny and

lass. What do these two words mean?

119

While bureaucrats still use archaic British phrases, most

of the younger educated people are familiar and comfortable
with the American usage (they get familiar with American
English via MTV and CNN that have large viewership in India,
and also the Internet). However, many Indians would prefer
the more formal British tone and tenor. Here is an extract from
an interview with an Indian, Ramananda Sengupta,
international editor for Outlook Magazine; the interview
appeared on the Internet. The passage is about the difference
between American and British Net English. Comment on the
author's views.

liquor from bootleg to Scotch whisky). Indian English is

considered to be more formal than British English and it has
preserved some language characteristics which would be
appropriately qualified as belonging to poetic diction (cf. chest
Br. E. - bosom
Indian E.; bandit Br. E. - miscreant Indian E.) Here are some
words which are more common in Indian English than British
English. Find British English words which match the following
Indian words: nab, Eve-teaser, the common man, fleetfoots,
undertrials, wearunders.

'British English by contrast is very correct but distant in

the sense that there is no effort to befriend the net user.
American English has a back-slapping, devil-may-care
quality while British has a distinct may-l-please,
apologetic tone to it.'

In India, English continues to be the official working

language. There are 15 national languages recognized by
the Indian constitution and these are spoken in over 1600
dialects. Indian English has improvised and innovated so
much so that it is referred to as Hinglish, a kind of pidgin
English that draws from Hindi and other local languages
(e.g. the phrase "Fooding and lodging" a common sign in
front of a 'hotel'; or rum - a generic term for any kind of

There are two views on Australian English: the first, that

Australian English is an endangered species, and the second,
that Australian English is a kind of substandard species and
deserves extinction. The truth is that Australian English is
interesting for its rich store of idiosyncratic words and
expressions and for its unique ways of word-building (e.g.
smoke > *smok; *smok + > smoko meaning 'coffee break' or
milk + > milko 'a person who delivers milk' or beaut <
197

beautiful 'great' or a blend ecorat < economic rationalism;

optic (as in 'optic nerve') is rhyming slang for perv so that to
have an optic is to ogle). Here are some core Australian
words: bludger, brass, razoo, dobber, woop woop, wowser,
yakka, and idioms and phrases: happy as a bastard on
Fathers' Day, off like a bride's nightie, she'll be apples, he
looks like a stunned mullet, miserable as a bandicoot, as
useful as a sore arse to a boundary rider, down the gurgler.
Find out what these words and idioms mean.

2. He is interested in farming bizzo.

3. How about a party when the oldies have gone for the
weekend?
4. Where did they take you when you were in Oz?

Shark biscuits is an Australian neologism for 'novice

surfer'. Comment on the word from the point of view of
word-formation (meaning transfer, in particular). How about
this example: little boys is the name for 'cocktail frankfurters
for children'.

Here are some Australian and New Zealand idioms

and their meaning:

Here are some more Australian words taken from the

Internet The Lonely Planet Australian Phrase Book:

1. Australian words for food: counter tea, chico roll, minimum

chips, silverbeet, chocolate crackles, fairy bread, lollies

2. Australian drinking terms: the middy, pot, schooner, dead

marine, tinnie, the leg opener

3. Australian terms for coffee: flat white, short black, long

black, macchiato

Comment on the morphological make-up of the words

listed. Find the examples which illustrate the use of
metaphor in word creation.

What do you think the italicized words mean in

Australian English:

acting now will save

a stitch in time saves
time in the long run
nine
above board
open to inspection
to do something with the
accidentally on purpose
purpose hidden
afters
pudding or dessert

a failure or someone
also ran
who achieves nothing
argy-bargy
to argue words
as sure as eggs
definitely
at the end of the day
in the end
Aussie
Australian
offsider
assistant
off your face
exceedingly intoxicated

a male who
Ocker
is very Australian
oldies
parents
Find out if some of the words or phrases listed above do
appear in British English with the same meaning (e.g.
argy-bargy).

1. We got bitten by mozzies at yesterday's barbie.

120

197

Ocker gives two derivatives: ockerism and ockerdom. See

the meaning of ocker in the table above and state the
meaning of the derived words.
English is different all over the world. Here are some
characteristics of Canadian English:

First, some questions and answers concerning general

rules for Canadian spelling:

1. Centre or center? The -re is preferred.

2. Cigarette or cigaref? The long forms are preferred:
catalogue, cigarette, moustache, cauldron, omelette.

3. Defence or defense? The -ce is preferred over -se as in

words such as: defence, practice, pretence but -se is used
when these words are used as verbs.
Aesthetic or esthetic? The diphthong is preferred (but mind:
medieval or mediaeval is undecided).
Organize or organise? Canadian editors reject the British
-ise preferring -ize ending.
Enroll or enrol? The double / is preferred so: enroll, fulfill,
install, marvelled, marvellous, signalled, skillful, woollen.
-our is given precedence so: colour, glamour, favour,
honour.

4.
5.
6.
7.

Find out which spelling is right in Canadian English:

adviser or advisor, compleat or complete; co-ordinate or
coordinate; gray or grey; sceptical or skeptical?

Here is some Canadian vocabulary. The ways that

Canadian English differs from American or British English
are pointed out.

1. Bill vs. check: Canadians ask for the bill.

2. Boot vs. trunk: trunk is used by the Canadians.
3. Can vs. tin: Younger Canadians tend to eat out of cans,
while older Canadians eat out of tins.
121

4. Canadian bacon: This is what Americans call back bacon. The

long strips that you eat for breakfast are called side bacon in
both countries.
5. Attorney vs. barrister vs. lawyer vs. solicitor. In Canada the
distinction does not mean much: use lawyer to be on the safe
side.
6. Chemist vs. drugstore vs. pharmacy: Canadians don't go to
chemists when they need an aspirin.
7. Chips vs. fries: Canadians use chips in spoken language but
chips can also refer to what the British call crisps.
8. Click is a Canadian slang for kilometre.
9. College in Canada is halfway between school and university
and most colleges grant only diplomas.
10. Dick when used by the Canadians means 'absolutely
nothing', e.g. Last week I did dick all.
11. Eh? A famous Canadian way of ending sentences; it usually
means 'don't you think'.
12. Elevator vs. lift: Canadians take elevators.
13. Faucet vs. tap: Canadians turn on the tap.
14. Railroads vs. railways: Canadians prefer railways.

Answer the following questions:

1. Do Canadians fill the tanks of their cars with gas or petrol?

2. Do Canadians go on holiday or on vacations?
3. What do you think homo milk means? To help you, this is
called whole milk in the States.
4. What would you find beside your plate on the dinner table in
Canada: a table napkin or a serviette?
5. What do Canadians prefer: running shoes (or runners) or
sneakers?
6. How does the word college in Canadian English compare to
the word college as it is used in American English?

Humidex is a word often used by Canadian weather

announcers referring to the combined effect of heat and
197

humidity or temperature. Comment on the word-formation

pattern of the word.

122

197

Loonie or loony is a colloquialism for Canada's

dollar coin. The nickname comes from the loon on
the coin. Which word-forming process are we
dealing with in this case?

AWOL is the Canadian term for absent without

official leave. Which word-formation process
triggered this word?

11.
LEXICOGRAPH
Y

Lexicography is the writing and compiling of dictionaries.

What is lexicology? In what relation does lexicography
stand to lexicology?

Comment on the following definition of a dictionary: 'A

dictionary is a reference book of statements in words about
words. Like other reference works it has no predestined
tactical role - it is an auxiliary in the daily business of
communication. That is a crucial point" (John Sinclair, The
Dictionary of the Future, Collins English Dictionary Annual
Lecture given at the University of Strathclyde, 6 May 1987,
p. 6). Find some other textbook and dictionary definitions of
a dictionary; compare them and comment on them.

Dictionaries can be: monolingual, bilingual, and

multilingual. What is the criterion behind such a
distinction?

Dictionaries which deal with contemporary vocabulary are

called synchronic. What do we call those that deal with
words in a historical perspective?

Both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries can be

general (if they present a comprehensive list of words of a
given language) or special (if they cover only one particular
segment of vocabulary). Say if the following dictionaries are
general or special:

1. Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Idioms

2. Collins COBUILD English language dictionary
3. Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current Usage
4. Dictionary of Rhyming Slang
5. Enciklopedijski englesko-srpskohrvatski recnik
6. Fifty years Among the New Words: A Dictionary of
Neologisms

7. New New Words Dictionary

8. English Pronouncing Dictionary
9. Random House Dictionary of the English Language
10. Oxford English Dictionary

Would you say that the dictionaries of synonyms,

homophones, eponyms, proverbs, cliche, phrasal verbs are
general or special?

206

What are glossaries? If you find the following sentence in a

foreword to a book: Glossaries are provided in English,
German, and Russian, how would you understand it? How
do you understand this: Glossary of the Bible?
Here are a few lines taken from Concordance Extract from
the Main Corpus for 'mind' (J. Sinclair, ed. Looking Up. An
account of the COBUILD Project in lexical computing,
London: Collins, 1987, p. 36).

GW0034 BR BR ay inhibit the formation of an original

idea in a mind capable of original ideas. It may be
better t GW0086 BR BR the first chance!" But Mr.
Evans in his tormented mind cared nothing whether
John liked the tower or Gwoo33 BR BR er bother with
more? Why even mention love, never mind carry on
about how love itself must evolve to GW0086 BR BR e
the little urchin again." And then Tom Barter's mind
ceased suddenly to think in definite words. T GW0086
BR BR as if they were perfectly meaningless sounds,
his mind ceased to bed. He felt the pressure of her br
GW0002 BR BR JACMA, in developing their plans, had
to bear in mind certain considerations arising from the
new GW0052 BR BR ?' "suppose he left it in the safe.'
"Would you mind checking up?' "I'll ask his secretary oh, GW0081 BR BR who are impelled by their inner
needs, often mind children when the job is really
beyond their GW 071 AM BR lasses and she paid for
her own meals. She didn't mind cigarette smoke any
more. She had no lovers [...].
A series of letters and numbers preceding each
concordance line are intended to convey information
about its origin (G - general corpus; W - written; OOOn
- text reference number; BR British cultural identity; AM
-American cultural identity).

So what are concordances?

The concordances are a huge source of information about

a language. The raw text is called corpus and the linguistic
observations form a database. The database relies on the
corpus. If it is true that the whole structure of the database
125

rests upon the examples would you say that the dictionary is
ultimately little more than a commentary on the examples?

One of the features of a dictionary is its selection of

examples. Should the examples be real, drawn from the
corpus or should they be made up by the lexicographer?
There are dictionaries (e.g. Dr Johnson's Dictionary of 1755
and The Oxford English Dictionary begun by Murray in
1878, to mention the most famous ones) which use real
citations. There are other authors who think that it is a
serious mistake to make the examples less important than
the commentary either by concocting them or editing them
too heavily. Take a look at the contrast:

1. Creepy adj. as defined in The Advanced Learner's

Dictionary of Current English: 'having or causing a creeping
of the flesh', e.g. The ghost story made us all creepy.

I think is the next target for progressive lexicography.'

(John Sinclair, The Dictionary of the Future, Collins
English Dictionary Annual Lecture given at the
University of Strathclyde, 6 May 1987, p. 5)
Different dictionaries use different presentation styles.
Some are notorious for the typographical eccentricities,
numerous uses of brackets, symbols and abbreviations
together with different typeface. In comparison to the
dictionaries characterized by this kind of professional
mystique there are those whose presentation is simple and
clear. Compare the following two pairs of dictionaries and
comment on their presentation:

1. Enciklopedijski englesko-srpskohrvatski recnik (1974), S.

Ristic et al., Beograd: Prosveta
2. Hrvatskoili srpsko-engleski eciklopedijski rjecnik (1983 i
dalje), Z. Bujas, Graficki zavod Hrvatske

2. Creepy adj. as defined in The Collins COBUILD English

Language Dictionary 'something that is creepy gives you a
strange unpleasant feeling of fear', e.g. It was very creepy
in the woods; We've found a creepy caravan where a witch
lives.

The first definition is a commentary on a made-up

example and the second is based on real English. Note
the difference in meaning as specified in (1) and the one
specified in (2). According to the definition (2) it is not
the people who are creepy, but something which they
experience. Having in mind what has been stated above
comment on the following opinion:

206

7 now turn to a glimpse of the future, where the

dictionary will be a device through which the user will
observe the living language. Not the frozen fillets of the
printed citations nor the stuffed dummies of the madeup examples, but the language as it is when it is being
used. This is the language through the dictionary, which

1. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language,

College Edition, New York; Random House, 1967

2. Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary, London:

Collins, 1987

One of the main problems in lexicography is the selection

of head-words. This problem is related to the problem of
syntagmatic and paradigmatic boundaries. Having in mind
what you know about homonymy and polysemy comment
on the dictionary treatment of the following pairs of words:
bank n. 'river bank', and bank n. 'establishment for keeping
money'; dot n. 'a small round mark', and dot n. 'woman's
dowry'. Look these words up in different dictionaries (e.g.
Oxford and COBUILD) and see if the words have been
treated in the same way. Have the words been treated as
polysemous, i.e. one word with two different meanings; or
as homonymous, i.e. two words with different meanings
and having the same shape?
126

206

The problem of arrangement of lexical entries has to

do with the problem of synonymy and sequencing. In a
synchronic dictionary various senses are presented in
frequency-based order. Compare the entries for fuzz in the
Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary and in The
Random House Dictionary of the English Language and see
if they are the same from the point of view of the order of
meanings.
Users of a language have a strong sense of the 'core'
meaning of a word. However, this meaning is not
necessarily the most frequent. For example, the most
frequent meaning of the word bet v. is the one that appears
in informal expressions such as 7 bet', I'm willing to bet',
and 'my bet is', to say that what you are saying is true or will
definitely happen. Look this word up in Co///A7s COBUILD
English Language Dictionary and see which meaning of bet
is number (1).
Dictionary definitions can be linguistic or encyclopaedic.
The meaning of the word can be defined in terms of its
synonyms or by context. Words refer to things and concepts
which belong to semantic categories (sometimes to more
than one category). The meaning of a word can be seen as
the sum of the semantic features it has and which are
included in its semantic description, i.e. its definition.
Category features assign the word to a semantic category,
e.g. a ladybird belongs to the category [INSECT]. Function
features assign a usual state or activity to the word, e.g. a
ladybird flies [FLY]. Property features list the properties
distinguishing the reference of the word, e.g. 'an insect
which is small, round, has black spots and can fly' [SMALL],

[ROUND], [RED], [BLACK SPOTS], [WINGS]. The

semantic entry for the word for ladybird may be expressed
as:

Ladybird: [INSECT], [FLY], [SMALL], [ROUND], [RED],

[BLACK SPOTS], [WINGS]
Consider the following dictionary definitions of words
as they are presented in the Collins COBUILD English
Language Dictionary. Express the semantic entry for
each word giving the sum of: category features,
function features and property features.

1. referee n. 1. a referee is a person whose job is to control a

sports match or contest; 2. A referee is also a person who
gives you a reference, for example when you are applying
for a job

2. laboratory n. is a building or a room that contains special

scientific equipment; scientists use laboratories to do
experiments or to do research

3. key n. is a specially shaped piece of metal which you place

in a lock and turn, in order to open a door, a suitcase, a
cupboard, etc. or to close it so that it stays closed

4. pick-me-up n. is a drink that you have in order to make

you feel healthier and more energetic

Who are the most notable lexicographers of English?

What are the best known publishing houses that

specialize in English dictionaries?

127