BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Barber, C. 2000. The English Language. A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 Baugh, A. and T. Cable. 2002. A History of the English Language, 5th edition. London: Routledge.
 Bejan, N. and Elena Asandei. 1981. Contemporary English Language: Syntax and Lexicology. Galaţi:
Editura Universităţii din Galaţi.
 Brook, G. L. 1981. Words in Everyday Life. London: The Macmillan Press.
 Cannon, G. 1987. Historical Change and English Word-Formation: Recent Vocabulary. New York, Oxford:
Peter Lang Publishing Group.
 Crystal, D. 1995. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
 Davies, Diane. 2005. Varieties of Modern English. An Introduction. London: Longman.
 Fernando, Chitra. 1996. Idioms and Idiomaticity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Hulban, H. 1975. English Lexicology. Iaşi: Editura Universităţii „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”.
 Jackson, H. 1988. Words and their Meaning. London: Longman.
 Jackson, H. and Etienne Zé Amvela. 2007. Words, Meaning and Vocabulary. An Introduction to Modern
English Lexicology, 2nd edition. London: Continuum.
 Katamba, F. 2005. English Words. Structure, History, Usage, 2nd edition. London: Routledge.
 Lipka, L. 2002. English Lexicology. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
 Loos, E., D. Day and P. Jordan (Eds.) 1999. P. Jordan (Eds.) 1999. Metonymies in English.
 Moon, Rosamund. 1998. Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
 Pyles, T. and J. Algeo. 1982. The Origins and Development of the English Language. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich.
 Tătaru, Cristina. 2002. An Outline of English Lexicology. Word Formation. Cluj-Napoca: Limes.
COURSE OUTLINE

1. Lexicology. An introduction
2. Word formation
3. Multi-word units in English
4. Word meaning. Sense relations between words
5. Sources of the English vocabulary
6. Lexical strata in present-day English
 LEXICOLOGY.
AN INTRODUCTION
 Lexicology = a branch of linguistics, the science of words;

 “the part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of a language

and the properties of words as the main units of language.”
(Bejan 1981)

 “an area of language study concerned with the nature,

meaning, history and use of words and word elements and
often also with the critical description of lexicography” (Mc
Arthur 1992)

 “the study of lexis, understood as the stock of words in a given

language, i.e. its vocabulary or lexicon” (Amvela 2007)
 THE WORD
 Word = “a minimum free form” (Bloomfield 1926), i.e. the smallest meaningful linguistic unit that can be used independently to
convey meaning

 A) orthographic words = the strings of letters (and orthographic signs) occurring between two blank spaces in written
language
- Not always reliable definition – see clitic groups (host word + clitic): mother’s, Jane’s, I’ll, they’d, aren’t, etc.

 B) Phonological words = words in speech

- Less easy to recognize than written words

 C) Words as vocabulary items

- Words as lexemes = the abstract entities, with different variants, that are found in dictionaries;
- Words as word-forms = the actual variants of the lexeme
eg. Ring: ring, rang, rung, rings, ringing
Good:
Child:

 D) Grammatical words = lexical items with a particular meaning and certain morphological and syntactic characteristics
- The same word-form of a lexeme may be used as different grammatical words = syncretism
eg. She paid the telephone bill yesterday. / She has paid the telephone bill.
I saw a sheep and a deer. / She saw two sheep and two deer.
- Grammatical words are characterized by mobility and by stability or internal cohesion

The word redifined: “The term word denotes the basic unit of a given language resulting from the association of a
particular meaning with a particular group of sounds [and letters] capable of a particular grammatical
employment” (Bejan 1981)
 LEXEME VS. WORD-FORM

 ‘Waiter, do you serve shrimps?’

 ‘We serve anyone, sir. We don’t mind
what size you are!’
 WORD FORMATION.
NOTIONS
 A) Morpheme = “the smallest unit that has meaning and serves a grammatical function in a language.
Morphemes are the atoms with which words are built” (Katamba 2005: 29)

 B) Allomorphs = the variants of a morpheme that are used to form new words
- eg. im-, in-, il-, ir- are variants of the same morpheme, employed on phonetic principles, according to the
starting sound of the element to which they are added: im-possible, in-cautious, il-literate, ir-responsible;
–(e)s, the marker of the regular plural of nouns, is also determined by phonological factors so that it may
be realized under the form of one of the following allomorphs: /s/ in hats, /z/ in games and /iz/ in
oranges.
- The morphemes that constitute the core for the formation of new words are less sensitive to the phonetic
environment and more so to the grammatical context in which they occur: the allomorphs drove and
driven correspond, respectively, to the past simple and the past perfect of the morpheme drive.

Free morpheme = morpheme that can appear independently in an utterance and has a meaning of its
own: drive, sing, loving, beautifully
Bound morpheme = morpheme that cannot be used independently and does not have a notional or full
meaning, but a functional or derivative one: pre-, im-, -er, -ly

 C) Root = the necessary and sufficient structural constituent for a word to exist, the part common to all
the words in a word family: care in the words careful, careless, carelessness, caring

Free roots = roots equivalent to a word whose meaning they carry into all the new words they help to
form: civil in civility, region in regional or person in personify
Bound roots = roots that cannot be used independently: sanct in sanctify, tox in toxic or loc in local
 D) Affix = bound morpheme that is added to the root
Prefix = affix added before the root
Suffix = affix added after the root
Infix = affix added within the root

Derivational affix = affix that helps to form new words: –ful in beautiful , un- in
unimportant
Inflectional affix = affix that helps to build new grammatical forms of the same basic
word, according to the syntactic environment in which this word is used: –s in writes helps
to form the present tense form of the verb “to write”, when it is the predicate of a third
person singular subject; -ed in loved is used for the formation of the past and past
participle of “to love”, while –er in cleverer is added to change the positive degree of the
adjective “clever” into its comparative of superiority

 E) Stem = the part of the word to which an affix is added in order to form a new word: in
the word carelessness, care is the root, -less and –ness are affixes, and careless is the
stem.
Simple stem = a stem that coincides with the root of the new word: small in smaller
Derived stem = a stem which contains other elements as well, affixes or other simple
stems in combination with which a compound word is formed:. im-probable in improbability
or air-condition in air-conditioning).
 WORD FORMATION
 The most productive means by which
new words are brought into being in a
language are:
 derivation
 compounding
 conversion
 DERIVATION
Derivation = the process of forming new words in a
language by means of adding prefixes and/or
suffixes to roots or stems.
A) Prefixation = the process by which prefixes are
added to roots in order to form new words
Prefixes have a functional meaning = they do not
change the grammatical class of the root to which
they are added, but change its meaning.
Therefore, prefixes are classified according to the
meaning they convey, as follows:
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE
ENGLISH PREFIXES
i) negative prefixes, by far the largest group of prefixes in English, express various
shades of negative meaning:

 de-/dis- (“not”, “the contrary of”): depress, disapprove, dishonour;

 in-/im-/ir-/il- (allomorphs of the same bound morpheme that are employed according to
the initial sound of the root or stem to which they are added – “not”, “the contrary of”):
insane, impossible, irrelevant, illiterate;

 non- (“not”): non-stop, non-resident, nonsense, nonconformist. The basic word stock of
English includes a number of quite old words built with the prefix non-, in which the
prefix is not identifiable in full: nowhere, nothing, never, nobody, neither, nor, etc.

 mis – (“bad(ly)”, “wrong(ly)”): mislead, mistrust, misfortune, misunderstanding;

 un- (“the opposite of”, “not”): unfair, unwise, unexpected, unbalanced;

 mal- (“bad(ly)”, “wrong(ly)”): malfunctioning, malformation, malpractice.

 ii)) reversative and privative prefixes:

 un- (“to deprive of” “to reverse the action”,

“to release from”): unveil, unlock, unleash;

 de-/dis- (“to reverse the action”, “to get rid

of”, “to deprive of”): defrost, decentralize,
deforestation, disconnect, discoloured
iii) prefixes of degree and size:

 arch- (“supreme”, ‘chief”, “most important”): archenemy, archbishop;

 hyper- (“extra”): hypersensitive, hypertension, hyperinflation;

 mini- (“little”, “small”): miniskirt, minicomputer, mini-vacation;

 over- (“too much”): overreact, overdone, overdressed, overconfident;

 out- (“more”, “better”, “faster”, “longer”): outnumber, outstanding, outrun, outlive;

 super- (“above”, “more than”, “better”, “bigger”): supernatural, superhuman, superman, supermarket;

 sub- (“less than”): subhuman, substandard, subnormal;

 under- (“too little”): underdeveloped, underestimate, undercharge;

 ultra- (“beyond”, “extremely”): ultrasonic, ultraviolet, ultra-revolutionary

 iv) prefixes of attitude:

 co- (“accompanying”, “with”, “together”): cooperation, coordination, co-author, co-produce;

 pro- (“for”, “on the side of”): pro-democratic, pro-European;

 anti- (“against”): antiwar, antifreeze, anticlimax, anti-imperialist;

 counter- (“against”, “in opposition”): counteract, counter-productive, counterblast

v) prefixes of time and order:

 ante- (“before”): antenatal, anteroom, antediluvian, antepenultimate;

 fore- (“before”): forearm, forehead, foretell, fore-mentioned;

 pre- (“before”): prehistoric, preheat, precondition, pre-election;

 ex- (“former”): ex-wife, ex-president, ex-friend;

 post- (“after”): post-war, post-date, post-position;

 vi) prefixes of space, direction and location (the majority of these prefixes originate in
prepositions and adverbs of place that still function as such in English):

 in- (“going in”, “being in”): influx, income, intake, inmate,

 out- (“going out”, “being out”): outflow, output, outdoors;

 up- (“in an ascending direction”): uphill, uptown, upstairs;

 down- (“in a descending direction”): downhill, downstairs, downfall;

 super- (“over”, “above”): superstructure, superellevation;

 sub- (“under”): subway, suborbital, subsoil;

 inter- (“between”, “among”): international, interface, interactive;

 trans- (“across”, “into another place”): transatlantic, transmigration, transcontinental.

vii) the iterative prefix re- (“one more time”, “again”): reread, rebuild, redecorate, reconsider.
 ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH
PREFIXES
English prefixes have the following main origins:

i) Germanic:

 be-: besprinkle, bewilderment, become;

 for-: forbid, forbear;

 mis-: mislead, misinterpret, miscalculate;

 out-: outlive, outgrow, outstanding;

 over-: overeat, overloaded, overhear;

 un-: unfriendly, uncommon, unbelievable;

 up-: upright, upshot, uptake;

 with-: withstand, withdraw, withhold;

 ii) Latin:

 bi-: bimonthly, bifocal, bidirectional;

 de-: decompose, deconstruct, declutch;

 dis-: disagree, disadvantage, discontinue;

 em-/en-: empower, enslave;

 inter-: interlocutor, intergalactic, intercontinental;

 non-: non-success, non-resistant, non-payment;

 pre-: prerequisite, prepaid, preadmission;

 pro-: pro-ally, pro-British;

 super-: superman, superfrequency, superheated;

 trans-: transformer, transmutation, transpose

iii) Greek:

 a-/an-: anomalous, analphabet;

 anti-: antibody, antithesis, anticlerical;

 hyper-: hypercritical, hypermetrical.

 PRODUCTIVITY OF THE
ENGLISH PREFIXES
According to their productivity, English prefixes may be classified into:

i) productive prefixes (involved into the process of new words creation at the present stage in the
development of English):

 re-: retake, rethink, rewind, review;

 un-: unbelievable, unnecessary, undo;

 non-: non-verbal, non-stop;

 de-: deconstruct, denominalization, defrost;

 dis-: disengage, dismiss, disconnect;

 out-: outome, outright, outstanding;

 re-: reconstruct, refine, re-establish;

 mis-: misunderstanding, misfire, mislaid.

 ii) semi-productive prefixes (at present, relatively inactive in the formation of new words in English):

 co-: co-author, co-editor, cooperation;

 counter-: counteractive, counteract, counterattack;

 sub-: subway, submarine, sublet;

 up-: upward, update, upload;

 vice-: vice-president, vice-rector;

iii) unproductive prefixes (at present, no longer used in the process of forming new words in English, though they might
have been productive at earlier stages of the evolution of the language):

 be-: beloved, becalm, besprinkle;

 with-: withholder, withdraw, withstand.

Classification of English prefixes according to the phonological changes they trigger:

 i) non-neutral = prefixes that cause phonological changes in the roots they are added to

 ii) neutral = prefixes that do not cause phonological changes in the roots they are added to (most of the English prefixes)
 SUFFIXATION. CLASSIFICATION
OF THE ENGLISH SUFFIXES
 B) Suffixation = the process of adding suffixes to roots or stems in order to form new words

 Unlike prefixes, suffixes change the morphological class of the roots or stems to which they are added.
Therefore, their classification is not made according to semantic criteria, but according to
morphological ones, as follows:

 nominal suffixes – nouns may be formed from other nouns, from adjectives or verbs:

a1) suffixes denoting the doer of the action:

 -er (generally, it forms names of occupations from the corresponding verbs): driver, teacher, singer, advisor;
 -ster: gangster;
 -eer/-ier: profiteer, pamphleteer, gondolier;
 -ist: typist, artist;
 -ent/-ant: student, attendant

a2) feminine suffixes (in English gender morphological markers are quite rare; however, there are cases when the feminine
is formed from the masculine of nouns by means of suffixes):
 -ette: usherette;
 -ess: lioness, duchess, actress;
 -ix: aviatrix;
 -euse: chauffeuse.
 a3) suffixes denoting nationality:
 -an/-ian: Korean, Hungarian, Estonian;
 - ard: Spaniard.
 -ese: Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese

a4) diminutive suffixes:

 -ette: kitchinette;
 -let: booklet;
 -y/-ie: daddy, auntie

a5) abstract noun-forming suffixes:

 -ing: breaking, reading, asking;
 -age: coverage, mileage, tonnage;
 -ance/-ence: appearance, assistance, experience;
 -ism/-icism: criticism, Catholicism, post-modernism, deconstructivism;
 -hood: boyhood, neighbourhood, childhood;
 -dom: freedom, martyrdom;
 -ment: nourishment;
 -ness/-ess: happiness, tenderness, prowess;
 -ty: certainty, honesty;
 -ship: kinship, friendship, leadership
adjectival suffixes – adjectives may be formed from
other adjectives, from nouns or from verbs:
 -ish: tallish, foolish, greenish, Turkish;
 -y/ly: cloudy, silky, manly, brotherly, womanly;
 -less: sugarless, harmless, flawless;
 -ful: joyful, useful, delightful, eventful;
 -ed: wooded, pointed, horned;
 -able/-ible: readable, understandable, adaptable,
accessible;
 -ive: progressive, possessive, aggressive;
 -some: handsome, cumbersome, tiresome;
 -er, -est (for the formation of the comparative of
superiority and the superlative degrees of comparison)
 verbal suffixes – verbs are formed mainly from nouns and adjectives. In modern
English, the number of verb-forming suffixes is rather reduced; however, those that are
still in use today are highly productive and therefore, extremely frequent:
 -ise/-ize: utilize, fertilize, Latinize, organize;
 -ify: intensify, simplify, diversify
 -en: brighten, enlighten, deepen, widen.

adverbial suffixes – derived adverbs are formed by adding suffixes to nouns and
adjectives mostly:
 ly (added to most of the adjectives): happily, strangely, badly, beautifully;
 -wise: likewise, clockwise, crabwise;
 -ward/-wards: northward(s), westward(s), backward(s), foreward(s).

numeral suffixes:
 -teen (it generates the cardinal numerals between 13 and 19): thirteen, fifteen, eighteen,
nineteen;
 -ty (it is used to form the cardinal numeral designating multiples of 10): thirty, forty, sixty,
ninety;
 -th (it is the suffix forming ordinal numbers others than one, two, three and those that have
these in their structure; it may be appended either to simple numerals, to already derived ones
or to compound ones): fourth, sixth, twentieth, fiftieth, twenty-fourth, eighty-seventh.
 ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH
SUFFIXES
 English suffixes are of the following main origins:

Germanic:

 -er: Londoner, worker, poker;

 -art: drunkard, braggart;
 -hood: boyhood, brotherhood;
 -ing: learning, reading, interesting;
 -man: gentleman, townsman;
 -ness: hardness, cleverness;
 -ship: friendship, authorship;
 -ed: wooded, added;
 -some: handsome, twosome;
 -ward: backward, foreward;
 -wise: likewise, clockwise;
 Romance (Latin, French and Italian):

 -ette: kitchinette, usherette, novelette;

 -or: actor, inspector;
 -ee: employee, payee, trainee;
 -ess: lioness, actress, hostess;
 -age: marriage, breakage;
 -al: arrival, betrayal, dismissal;
 -ance/ence: assistance, resistance, dependence;
 -ery/ry: flattery, bakery, dentistry;
 -ment: acknowledgement, movement, amazement;
 -ant/ent: claimant, correspondent;
 -fy/ify: signify;
 -ize/ise: modernize, organize, moralize;

Greek:
 -ist: modernist, classicist;
 -ism: communism, colloquialism, organism
 PRODUCTIVITY OF THE
ENGLISH SUFFIXES
Like prefixes, suffixes may be grouped, according to their ability to create new words at the present stage in the development of
English into:

 productive suffixes (which are, at present, active in terms of new words formation):
 -able: profitable, regrettable, understandable;
 -ed: loved, grouped, played;
 -ing: interesting, clearing, meaning;
 -less: sugarless, harmless, speechless;
 -ness: calmness, brightness, happiness;
 -y: edgy, bloody, cloudy;
 -ly: scarcely, evenly, likely;
 -ish: selfish, childish, Turkish.

 semi-productive suffixes (at present, less active in the process of word formation):
 -dom: kingdom, freedom, boredom;
 -ful: spoonful, mouthful, hurtful;
 -hood: boyhood, childhood;
 -ee: employee, trainee, payee;
 -ship: kinship, relationship;

 c) unproductive suffixes (at present, no longer used to form new words):

 -ance: deliverance, acceptance;
 -age: coinage;
 -ment: movement, development;
 -some: handsome, gruesome;
 -th: tenth, eleventh.
 COMPOUNDING
 Compounding = the process of coining new words by grammatically
and semantically combining two or more roots or stems

a) Orthographic characteristic of compounds:

Compounds may be spelt:
 - solid (in one word): bullfighter, theatergoer, colorblind, whetstone, etc.
 - hyphenated (in words separated by a hyphen): self-determination,
heart-breaking, man-made, high-born, easy-going, grass-green, etc.
 - in completely separate words: tea bag, nail brush, oil well, price cut

b) Phonological characteristics of compounds:

 Most compounds have one main stress and lack juncture (the break
between words): bluebell, blackbird vs. blue bell, black bird
 Compounding is driven by phonological factors in the case of
reduplicatives (words created on the basis of reduplication = the
repetition of the base of a word in part or in full): pooh-pooh, goody-goody,
roly-poly, wishy-washy, flip-flop, sing-song, harum-scarum, bow-wow.
 C) Morphological characteristics of compounds:
Compounds may be classified according to the morphological class to
which they belong. Basically, all morphological classes in English have
compound members:
 1) compound nouns:
 noun + noun: baby carriage, bachelor flat, backpack, city-dweller, bullfrog,
swordfish
 verbal noun + noun: meeting place, writing desk, fishing rod
 noun + verbal noun: air-conditioning, sleepwalking
 adjective + noun: blackbird, highlands, bluebell, blotting paper, boarding card,
built environment, wrought iron
 pronoun + noun: she-wolf, he-doctor
 verb + noun: pickpocket, dare-devil
 noun + verb: sunset, rainfall, body-building, bird-watching
 adverb + noun: after-thought, back-talk, down-grade, yes-man, outer space;
 adverb + verb: upkeep, upstart;
 verb + adverb: cut-back, turn-round;
 preposition + noun: afternoon, underworld;
 2) compound adjectives:
 adjective + adjective: metallic-green, bitter-sweet;
 noun + adjective: duty-free, sea-sick, earth-bound, self-educated, self-sustained, self-made,
self-controlled
 adjective + noun + -ed: light-hearted, hot-blooded, evil-minded;
 noun + verb (participle): ocean-going, love-struck, storm-beaten;
 noun + noun + -ed: lion-hearted, honey-mouthed;
 adverb + verb (participle): ill-behaved, well-meant, everlasting;
 adverb + adjective: evergreen;

 3) compound verbs:
 noun + verb: hen-peck, baby-sit, house-keep;
 adjective + verb: white-wash, dry-clean, sweet-talk;
 verb + verb: dive-bomb, drop-kick, blast-freeze;
 adverb + verb: overhear, underestimate, down-grade

 4) compound adverbs:
 adverb + adverb: throughout, hereabout(s);
 adverb + noun: uphill, downhill, outdoor;
 adverb + preposition: wherefrom, thereby, hereby
 5) compound numerals:
 all cardinal numerals between round figures, starting with twenty-one: thirty-four,
forty-nine, eighty-seven;
 cardinal numerals from 100 upward (+ the conjunction “and”): one hundred and
twenty-one, nine hundred and fifty-eight, ten thousand three hundred and forty
 fractions: 2/3=two thirds, 6/8=six eights
 decimal numerals: 4 2/3=four-and-two-thirds, 5 1/3=five and one third.

 6) compound pronouns are built on various patterns:

 possessive adjective + the noun self: myself, yourself, ourselves;
 personal pronoun in the accusative + the noun self: himself, herself, themselves;
 the predeterminers some-, any-, no-, or the adjective every + the nouns body,
thing: nothing, anybody, something, everybody;
 the relative-interrogative words who, what, when, which, where + the adverb
ever: whoever, whatever, whenever, etc.

7) Compound prepositions (one or several prepositions built around a noun, an

adverb, a verb, another preposition):
 in the middle of, in spite of, underneath, close to, faraway from, previous to, as
concerns, due to, owing to, but for, onto, as to
 8) compound conjunctions (grouped around a
noun, an adverb, an adjective, a verb, a preposition):
for the reason that, for fear that, as well as, never
again, long before, seeing that, supposing that.

 9) compound interjections:
 - reduplicatives: blah-blah, pooh-pooh, puff-puff, hush-
hush;
 - ablaut combinations: ticktack;
 - onomatopoeia: cook-a-doodle-doo, gobbledygook
 d) Syntactic characteristics of compounds:
 word order in compounds is sometimes ungrammatical: noun + adjective
(home-sick, sea-sick, weather-sensitive), object + verb (knee-jerk);

 compounds are non-interruptible, i.e. one cannot add extra words in

between the elements of the compound without affecting its structure;

 the elements of a compound cannot be modified independently – *hot

air-sick and *air very-sick are ungrammatical; it is the compound as a
whole that is modified by other words: seriously air-sick; adverbs cannot
modify compound nouns - *extremely gentleman and *the very White
House are ungrammatical;

 the constituents of a compound cannot be inflected each in its turn:

ashes-trays, textsbooks are ungrammatical; the whole compound is
inflected according to the morphological class to which it belongs: ash-
trays, textbooks.
 e) semantic characteristics of
compounds
 compounds with an idiomatic meaning:
turnkey, turncoat = exocentric compounds
 compounds with a compositional meaning:
armchair = endocentric compounds
 compounds in between these two
categories: bulldog, dustbin, blackboard
 CONVERSION
 Conversion = the process of forming new words by means of
transferring them from one morphological class to another, without any
changes, either in their form or in their pronunciation.

 1) nouns obtained by conversion:

 nouns converted from adjectives: the good, the bad, the young, the
beautiful, the ugly, the English, the Romanian, an alarmist, an anarchist, an
acid, an adhesive, etc.

 nouns converted from verbs: an abstract, a drive, an ache, an alert, an

advocate, an ally, a hunt, a jump, falling, driving, swimming, a castaway, a
catch, a cover, a lift, wish, doubt, envy, turn, rise, etc.

 nouns converted from adverbs, prepositions and interjections: front, back,

behind, ups and downs, ins and outs, altogether (to be in the altogether),
pros and cons, a bang, a screech, the Hm HM, etc.
 2) Adjectives obtained by conversion
 - anything that fulfils an attributive and/or a
predicative function is an adjective in English:
 nouns: girl friend, technology boom, family duties, song
bird;
 pronouns: she-wolf, he-doctor, this cat, those boys, which
car, whatever answer, she herself;
 numerals: three books, the second answer, nine point seven
percent;
 adverbs: the front door, the room upstairs, the furniture
outdoors, yearly event, monthly seminar, daily routine;
 phrases and idiomatic expressions: a do-it-yourself manual,
a cut-and-dried speech, a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth
attitude.
 3) Verbs obtained by conversion
 verbs obtained from nouns: to rain, to snow, to
point, to spot, to drop, to corner, to bottle, to
catalogue, to mail, to ship, to coat, to wrap;
 verbs obtained from adjectives: to calm, to dirty,
to dry, to wet, to clean;
 verbs obtained from adverbs, conjunctions and
interjections: to forward, to chirp, to meow.
 MINOR MEANS OF WORD
FORMATION
 Clipping
Clipping compounds, blends or portmanteau words
are lexical items that have come into being by
combining two other words of which at least one is
fragmentary: Eurasian, paratroops, telescreen, motel,
brunch, Bollywood.

 Contraction
When words are shortened to just a part of them,
they are said to be contracted: bus, plane, phone,
ma’am, o´er, exam, fab, gas.
 Back-formation (regressive or back derivation) = a process based on
the analogy between words that contain affixes and words that have
component parts homonymous to affixes. These parts are removed in
order to restore (or back-form) what is believed to have been the
“original”: baby-sit, peddle, edit, pup, force-land, sleepwalk,
housekeep, etc.

 Deflection = the process resulting in the formation of new words by

means of changing a sound in the root of certain words: drink – drank
–drunk, bit – bite, ride – rode, fall – fell, bleed – blood, sing – song,
believe, belief, etc.

 Change of accent = the mechanism by which, in a pair of a noun and

its homograph verb, the two elements come to differ from one another
by distinctive accent: áttribute – a’ttribute, ‘torment – tor’ment, ímport
– im’port, ‘permit – per’mit, etc.
 Abbreviation = the reduction of a word to several letters or the reduction
of a group of words designating a notion to the initials of these words: brolly
(umbrella), hanky (handkerchief), nighty (nightgown), p.j’s (pyjamas),
NATO, UNESCO, HTML, MP, Mt., St., etc.

 Alphanumerics = combinations of letters and numbers: CUL8R, 2DAY, 4U,

W8, G2G, GR8, etc.

 Eponyms = common words formed from proper names: hermetic (Hermes),

erotic (Eros), begonia (Michel Begon), dhalia (Anders Dahl), chesterfield
(Earl of Chesterfield), volt (Al. Volta), watt (J. Watt), raglan (Baron Raglan),
gorgonzola, camembert, cheddar, chablis, burgundy, alsacian, dalmatian,
etc.

 Coinage = the process of inventing entirely new words: nylon, Llnoleum,

nutella, etc.
 Fill in the blanks with the right word,
starting from the word given in
bold/capital letters:
 1. You need to take three of these red pills…. .
day
 2. He is being very …. about his whereabouts last night.
mystery
 3. It is his ….. which I find so unbelievable. He is normally such a truthful boy!
honest
 4. If you look on the other side of the cup, you will find a small …..with the name of
the original manufacturer.
engrave
 5. Reports on the invasion are still very unclear, as are the …. of what this will prompt
the government to do.
imply
 6. This new law will not only effect cinemas in the United States but could have
dramatic and significant…. effects on the film industry .
world
 7. As he was walking home late last night, Mr. Jones saw a strange…. shape in the sky
and rang the police immediately.
sphere
 8. His behaviour in his father's presence caused his ….
inherit
 9. You can't help but disbelieve the government when different ministers are giving out
…. statements about policy.
contradict
 10. Harry should have checked the … of the swimming pool before allowing his children
in. There could have been an accident.
deep
 11. The rocks appear to be stationary but in the high winds that whip across this desert
landscape, they are in reality …. moving .
perceive
 12. Due to inflation, house prices in this area have become totally…. . We may have to
look somewhere cheaper.
afford
 13. Are you sure the …. is working properly on this truck? We must have done more
than twenty thousand.
mile
 14. Far from being a drunkard, my father is actually a perfect example of … .
sober
 15. Given the small ….. of fire in this part of the building, one fire extinguisher should
suffice.
likely
 Europe’s debt to Rome
It is often said that Roman law has been of ……. MEASURE importance in the
development of European civilization. The Romans knew that only just laws could ….
SURE sound government, commercial confidence and an orderly society. The idea of
the law as being something “which binds” still ……. LIE all legal contracts drawn up by
lawyers today. Once agreed by two parties, the contract cannot be broken.

The legal traditions of Rome, however, were not bequeathed to modern Europe by any
direct line of ….. INHERIT. Most of the Roman Empire’s law codes fell into …. USE
with the disintegration of the Empire, and had to be rediscovered in the Middle Ages.
Their … SURVIVE was longest in Byzantium, but they did not strongly influence
modern law-making by that route.

The revival of Roman traditions had to compete with other non-Roman, and often ….
CONTRADICT, legal practices. Even so, the Roman… CONCEIVE of codified
principles suited the purposes of Europe’s growing states better, and civil law in most
countries …. INCREASE came to be based on the Roman model. In this regard, the
most… INFLUENCE institution was the French Code, written in 1804.

Nowadays, whatever their connection, all educated European lawyers readily … KNOW
their debt to Rome.
 Explain the word formation processes in
the following items:

SCUBA EDIT OBJECTION

CAMCORDER BURGER DEPRESS
TO GREEN CAPS HIPPO
FIREMAN TO GOOGLE NOTEBOOK
REAL ESTATE ATM JACK-IN-THE-BOX
LAUGH SITCOM ASAP
KODAK BBC SWINDLE
IMPOSSIBILITY KLEENEX GERRYMANDER
TELEVISE UNBELIEVABLE GUILLOTINE
 MULTI-WORD UNITS IN
ENGLISH
 Collocations = combinations of two (or more) lexemes that
sound natural to a native speaker: blond hair, green grass, to
set a record, to exaggerate greatly, etc.
 If we take into consideration the grammatical class of the words
that make up the collocation, the following patterns are
possible:
 Adjective + noun: eternal glory, inflated ambition
 Verb + noun: to cover a distance, to strike gold, to set a record
 Noun + verb: an engine functions/runs/works, an eagle screams
 Verb + adverb: to fight bravely/heroically, to gain easily/rapidly
 Noun + (preposition) + noun: railway accident, a row of desks, a
spark of hope, a ray of sun
 The two elements of a collocation are:
 The node = the lexeme under discussion
 The collocate(s) = the lexeme(s) that occur together with the node

 Collocations may be classified according to the range of the node as

follows:
 Fixed/unique/frozen collocations = a node has only one collocate: auburn
hair
 Restricted collocations = a node has a limited number of collocates: to need
desperately/sorely/badly
 Unrestricted/multiple collocations = a node has an unlimited number of
collocates: an anxious/close/curios/grim/disapproving/meaningful look

 Collocations have an additive meaning, while idiomatic expressions

have a holistic meaning
 Phrasal verbs (a verb, usually of Germanic origin + a preposition or an adverb): to take
in, to take up, to give up, to set up, to get up, to get in, to get along, to come to, to come
out, to come up, etc.

 Clichés = routine linguistic forms ranging from a combination of two words to a whole
sentence: the apple of discord, fantastic bargain, real progress, to drown one’s sorrow in
drink, the light at the end of the tunnel

 Binominals and trinominals = combinations of two and three words belonging to the
same grammatical class, linked by a form word, which always occur in the same set order:
husband and wife, bed and breakfast, ham and eggs, fish and chips, here and there, head
over heels, now or never, hide and seek, bell, book and candle, ready, willing and able,
lock, stock and barrel, etc.

 Pragmatic idioms = set expressions used in particular social settings: Happy birthday,
Nice to meet you, Can I help you? Black or white? Single or return?, Dear Sir, Yours truly,
etc.

 Proverbs
 IDIOMS
 Idioms = groups of words expressing a sense unit: to show the
white feather, to see how the wind blows, to turn over a new
leaf, to smell a rat

 Characteristics of idioms
 A) semantic characteristics
 Idioms are characterized by idiomaticity, i.e. their meaning is not
the sum of the meanings of their component elements: red tape
vs. red ribbon; to cut a poor figure vs. to cut bread
 B) functional characteristics
 Idioms are characterized by semantic and grammatical
inseparability: the old man kicked the bucket (died) vs. the cow
kicked the bucket (touched the bucket with its leg)
 C) contextual characteristics
 Idioms are usually non-variable, i.e. their structure cannot be
changed without affecting their meaning: tighten one’s belt/*girdle,
see red/*orange
 In some idioms, lexical substitution is possible but it is very limited:
to have the true/right ring, burn one’s bridges/boats
 Some verb idioms allow for variation in tense, while some noun
idioms allow for variation in number: kicked the bucket, smelled a
rat, red herrings
 Some idioms may tolerate additions that normally reinforce their
meaning and do not simply elaborate on the expression: Kipling
took the art world bull by the horns, He suggested, with his
tongue only partly in his cheek that…
 In some idioms, permutations are possible – the most frequent of
these is change of word order by passivization: hundreds of
crocodile tears were shed (to shed tears)
 D) stylistic characteristics
Numerous idioms are based on figures of speech:
a) Metaphorical idioms: a wolf in a sheep’s clothing, a white
elephant, a cold fish, to have a heavy heart
b) Idioms based on simile: to fit like a glove, to drink like a fish, as
fresh as a daisy, as old as the hills, as poor as a church mouse
c) Idioms based on metonymy and synecdoche: to go under the
knife, to have an itchy palm, to have one foot in the grave
d) Idioms based on euphemisms: to be knocked up, six feet under,
in one’s birthday suit
e) Idioms based on hyperbole: dressed to kill, on cloud number
nine, to pay an arm and a leg, to make a mountain out of a
molehill
f) Idioms based on alliteration: to buy a pig in a poke, to leave in
the lurch
 CLASSIFICATION OF IDIOMS
 A) according to the type of elements they contain:
 variable
 non-variable idioms

 B) according to their meaning:

 idioms with a direct meaning (to make money, to throw money away)
 idioms with a figurative meaning (to break the silence, to put a spoke in
somebody’s wheel, not to know chalk from cheese)

 C) according to their grammatical function:

 nominal (the apple of one’s eye, a bed of thorns, a lion’s share, the man
in the street, a snake in the grass, a swan song, the gift of gab)
 adjectival (high and mighty, as cold as ice, cut and dried, null and void),
 verbal (to lose heart, to turn one’s coat, to play the second fiddle, to make
a clean breast of something, to stack the deck/cards)
 adverbial (in the long run, off and on, at length).
 D) according to the semantic relationship existing
between them:
 synonymic idioms (babes and sucklings - a green/fresh/raw
hand – spring chicken; to sleep like a log – to sleep the
sleep of the just; to kick the bucket – to buy a pine condo –
to pop up daffodils – to go the way of all flesh – to pay one’s
debt to nature)
 antonymic idioms (as sober as a judge – as drunk as a
lord; a heart of gold – a heart of stone),
 polysemantic idioms (to go west = 1. to die, 2. to be
ruined, 3. to go to a new place to start a better life)
 E) according to the domain of human activity to which they
belong or to what they are connected to:
 sea life (to fish in troubled waters, to drink like a fish, to be in
the same boat with somebody)
 trades (to have too many irons in the fire, to be between
hammer and anvil, to bring grist to the mill, in full blast)
 sports (to hit below the belt, to keep the ball rolling)
 medicine (to swallow the pill, to take the temperature of, what
the doctor ordered, a fly in the ointment, a bitter pill to
swallow)
 parts of the body (to cry one’s eyes out, in the twinkling of an
eye, to feed one’s face, to have egg on one’s face, to keep one’s
nose to the grindstone, to put someone’s nose out of joint, to
get/have the upper hand)
 F) idioms may also be classified into groups denoting
the same concept:
 the idea of uncertainty: a leap in the dark, a needle in a
haystack, to buy a pig in a poke
 the idea of economy: to cut one’s coat according to one’s
cloth, to make both ends meet, to save for a rainy day
 anger: to feel one’s blood boiling, to burn with anger/rage,
to feel as one would burst, to fly off the handle, to lose
one’s cool, to tear strips off somebody, to fight tooth and
nail, to go for somebody hammer and tongs, to bite
somebody’s head off, to chew somebody up, to see red
 Place the following idioms in the right column,
according to what they refer to:
to pass with flying colours, go-getter, bookworm, to spend an arm
and a leg, to foot the bill, to goof off, to play hooky, a wet blanket,
to draw a blank, to freeload, to cut corners, pink slip, to go Dutch,
clockwatcher, fly-by-night, cow college, a live wire, to burn a whole
in one’s pocket, to learn the ropes, a sweatshop, a high-brow,
school of hard knocks, to get down to brass tacks, to pound the
pavement, the Ivy League

spending personality work School/

money education
 Rewrite the parts of text in italics, using the
appropriate idiom from the list below:
one’s cup of tea (neg.), to have sticky fingers, skeleton in one’s closet, wet behind the
eras, to take with a grain of salt, off the record, stuffed shirt, to bend over backward,
odds and ends, (to live) hand to mouth

1. He is a very rigid person, so I am always afraid of not saying the wrong thing.
2. My neighbours are very strange. I would die to find out at least one of their family
secrets.
3. My parents would try very hard to get the money to send me to school abroad.
4. Science fiction books don’t interest me. I love romance.
5. She doesn’t have enough experience to be the project manager.
6. He often steals small things from the local shop but he has not been caught yet.
7. You shouldn’t believe everything he says when he boasts about his love affairs.
8. We need all sorts of small things for tonight’s party.
9. They have no money saved so they can hardly buy what they need every day.
10. 10.What I am going to tell you know is private.
 Insert the right verbs from the list below (change the
form of the verb where necessary) into the gaps:

blurt, bottle, choke, fend, keep, shoot, sweep, tease, tone, whip
1. For people to understand the results of this research, we´ll need to ______ down its
written register.
2. Before Jason broke up with Helen, she had spent some time ______ out the reason of his
decision.
3. Jacob had given a beautiful speech which _____ up Mary about the marriage before he
popped the question.
4. Mary´s harrowing experience with Brian will be impossible to be _____ aside easily.
5. Somehow, Dianna was able to _____ off criticism after she had cheated on her
boyfriend.
6. Although Idaly tried to argue, she got ______ down in flames for her lies.
7. When Connor came across his ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend, he had to
______ back his jealousy.
8. Nobody believed Andrea was really suffering from her break up. She ______ up
appearances very well.
9. Mark´s secret love for Laura had been ______ out by his best friend. He couldn´t keep
the secret.
10. After years of having _____ up his sentiments for Tanja, Jörg finally managed to speak
of his feelings.
 Use the right particle(s) after the verb “to get”
to fill in the blanks in the following examples:
1. Get…. You are hurting my back!
2. It is sometimes difficult for her to get the meaning …. in English.
3. If you want to be employed here, she is the person you need to
get….
4. If you don’t take these medicines, it might take you weeks to get….
this illness.
5. Now that their houses have been destroyed by the earthquake, the
villagers need help to get… this cold winter.
6. You have to get… work if you want to pass this exam.
7. I want a bag big enough to get my laptop…..
8. There are ways of getting … taxes, but you should pay them in due
time.
9. She was trying to get… him for having humiliated her in front of all
her colleagues.
10. Getting …. in business takes both skill and money.
SENSE RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDS
SYNONYMY

 Synonyms are words belonging to the same morphological class which have
the same core meaning, though they may differ in shades of meaning,
connotation, distribution, collocation and idiomatic use.
 Synonyms may be arranged in synonymic series containing two or more
elements. In such series, one of the terms acquires a dominant position,
being the most general among the others and the most frequently used in
the language = synonymic dominant (the head in dictionaries):
to leave – to depart – to clear out – to retire
 Simple words may establish correlative synonymic relationships with
collocations, phrases or idioms as in the pairs to win – to gain the upper
hand, to decide – to make up one’s mind, to hesitate – to be in two minds,
to swing the lead – to exaggerate, neck and crop – entirely, to laugh – to
give a laugh, to prefer – to show preference, to go after – to follow, to go
on – to continue, to give in – to surrender
 correlative synonymic relations are also met in the case of some special
stylistic synonyms, in which the name of a writer, inventor, etc. is replaced
by a descriptive phrase, as in Chaucer – the father of English literature or
Shakespeare – the sweet swan of Avon
 Correlative synonymic relations may also be recognized in certain
phrases that are made up of two synonyms linked by the
copulative conjunction “and”: with might and main, lord and
master, stress and strain, each and every, liberty and freedom,
really and truly, last will and testament, exiled and banished.
 A synonym is employed as an explanation or clarification of the
meaning of another word. The relationship between the two words
is frequently signaled by something like that is to say, or a
particular variety of or : He was cashiered, that is to say,
dismissed.; This is an ounce, or snow leopard.
 Polysemantic words have different synonymic series for each of
their senses. For example, ill in the sense of “not in full physical or
mental health” is synonymous with ailing, indisposed, sick, unwell.
If it means “bad”, possible synonyms for it are evil, wicked, wrong.
 TYPES OF SYNONYMS
 a) strict/perfect/absolute synonyms. Two lexical units would be perfect
synonyms (i.e. would have identical meanings) if and only if all their contextual
relations were identical
 Absolute synonymy is practically impossible, since no two words are perfectly
interchangeable in all their contexts of use. In the same context, one word sounds
“more normal”than its presupposed perfect synonym:

Tell Mummy when Playschool begins and she’ll watch it with you. (+)
Tell Mummy when Playschool commences and she’ll watch it with you. (-)

Arthur is always chewing gum. (+)

Arthur is always munching gum. (-)

I don’t just hate him, I loathe him. (+)

I don’t just loathe him, I hate him. (-)

That is a scandalous waste of money. (+)

That is an outrageous waste of money. (-)
 the economy of language would not tolerate (except,
perhaps, for a very limited period of time) the existence of
two lexical items with exactly the same meaning.
 historical argument against perfect synonymy - if absolute
synonyms do occur at a certain moment in the development
of a language, usually, one of the items falls into
obsolescence and is, ultimately, no longer used, it remains
to be used in particular dialects or stylistic varieties only or
it begins to be employed in contexts from which the other is
excluded.
 Conclusion: When we speak of synonymy, we mean
varying degrees of ‘loose’ synonymy, where we identify not
only a significant overlap in meaning between two words,
but also some contexts at least where they cannot substitute
for each other.
 Loose synonymy is illustrated by at least two types of synonyms, ideographic and stylistic.
 b) ideographic synonyms. This class comprises synonyms which share the core meaning
but differ in shades of meaning in that certain notes characteristic of the notion,
phenomenon, object denoted by these words are accented. They may also differ in
connotation, collocation patterns and idiomatic use. In the pair of synonyms to love – to
adore, “to love” is rather neutral, while “to adore” bears connotations of worship or passion.
“Crowd” refers to a disorganized group of people, while its synonym, “mob” refers to the
same group, but connotes the idea of riotous intentions as well.
 c) stylistic synonyms. The category of stylistic synonyms includes words having the same
notional components of meaning, but differing in their stylistic reference or degree of
formality.
 Formal vs. informal: archer – toxophilite, argument – disputation, beauty –
pulchritude, cross – traverse, die – decease, give up – renounce, letter – missive,
praise – eulogy, warning – caveat, western – occidental.
 Standard vs. slang: astonished – gobsmacked, crash – prang, destroy – zap, drunk,
sloshed, face – phizog, heart – ticker, insane, barmy, money – rhino, spondulix, prison
– clink, steal – nick.
 Technical vs. non-technical: incision – cut, lesion – wound
 Neutral vs. poetic: happiness – bliss, merry – jocund,
 Speech vs. writing: you’re – you are
 A particular stylistic synonymic relationship is established between a taboo word
and its corresponding euphemistic words or expressions. A euphemism is a mild,
indirect or less offensive word or expression substituted when the
speaker/writer fears that more direct wording might be harsh, unpleasantly
direct or offensive (when resorted to by officials such as members of the
Parliament, officers, lawyers, etc., the use of euphemisms is known as
“doublespeak”):
 to die - to breathe one’s last (breath, gasp), to depart this life, to pay one’s debt to
nature, to go to one’s last home, to go the way of all flesh, to kick the bucket, to hop
the twig, to join the majority, to be no more, to buy a pine condo, to cross the river to
reach the eternal reward, to go to the other side
 a stupid person - has a couple of eggs shy of a dozen, a few beers short of a six-
pack, a few clowns short of a circus, a few bricks short of a wall, a kangaroo loose in
the paddock, s/he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, not the brightest light in the
harbour/on the Christmas tree, not tied too tight to the pier, knitting with only one
needle, not firing on all cylinders, s/he is as useful as a wooden frying pan, as a screen
door on a submarine or as tits on a bull, s/he is a person whose elevator stuck
between floors, who got into the gene pool when the lifeguard wasn’t watching, who
fell out of the family tree or who goes fishing in Nebraska
 Dysphemisms = coarser and more direct words
and phrases that are used to replace both more
refined and quite common lexical items, for
humorous or deliberately offensive purposes. The
relationship between the euphemism and the
common word designating its referent may be
considered stylistic synonymy as well.
 bean counter = accountant, grease monkey = mechanic,
sawbones = surgeon, quack = doctor, brain bucket =
motorcycle helmet, Jesus juice = wine, muffin top = flesh
that “erupts” over the sides of low-rider tight jeans, dead
tree edition = the paper edition of an online magazine
 SOURCES OF SYNONYMY
 The rich synonymy in English is due to the fact that it has borrowed an
impressive number of words from other languages.
 Double and triple scales of synonymy

Native French
 swine pork
 ox beef
 calf veal
 body corpse
 ghost spirit
 friendship amity
 help aid
 ship vessel
 world universe
 room chamber
 end finish
 ask request
 answer reply
 buy purchase
 Native Latin/Greek
 player actor
 wire telegram
 bodily corporeal
 heartly cordial
 brotherly fraternal
 learned erudite
 happy fortunate
 hard solid

 Native French Latin



 strength power energy

 time age epoch
 forerunner herald precursor
 bond bail security
 outstanding glorious splendid
 end finish conclude
 ask question interrogate
 Besides borrowings, another source of synonymy in English, seen from a diachronic
perspective, is represented by archaisms. Many of these are at present used only in
dialectal speech, having been replaced in the common language by various synonyms. king-
stool has been substituted for throne, book-hoard for library, leechcraft and leechdom for
medicine, seamer for tailor, to betake for to deliver for to occupy.
 Geographical and stylistic varieties of English are a rich source of synonymy. Thus, “charm”,
“chest” and “church” in standard British English may be paired with “glamour”, “kist” and
“kirk” in Scottish English, to add to the examples of ideographic synonyms already given.
The British words “autumn”, “tin”, “lorry”, “insect”, “sweet” and “maize” as synonyms of the
American words “fall”, “can”, “truck”, “bug”, “candy” and “corn” respectively may enlarge
the same category as may Cockney words and phrases such as “trap”, “chap” or “ill speed”
together with their standard English synonyms “sailor”, “friend” and “bad luck”.
 Euphemisms are another important source of synonymy as in the pairs of words: “illiterate
– uneducated”, “chaotic – unformed”, “sterile – unfruitful”, “short – vertically challenged”,
etc.
 The belonging of words to various styles in the language may lead to synonymy as well. For
instance, “lazy” is the standard neutral word for which the colloquial “lazybones” may be
substituted, “trousers” is neutral, while its synonym “pants” is colloquial, “evening”,
“morning”, “valley” and “sorrowful” are neutral, while their synonyms “eve”, “morn”, “vale”
and “doleful” are poetic, “heart attack” and “headache” belong to the everyday language,
while their synonyms “myocardial infarct” and “cephalalgia” are medical technical terms.
 ANTONYMY
 Antonymy is the sense relation holding between words belonging to the same
morphological class and having opposite meanings.

 Characteristics of antonyms
 Antonymy is possible only if the words entering this semantic relationship share a
common component of their senses. Thus, “old” and “young” share the component
“age”, “long” and “short” share the component “length”, while “deep” and “shallow”
both refer to depth.

 Antonyms are found in certain typical configurations in English:

 A and B: “Young and old were present at the meeting”, “a matter of life and death”, “the long and
the short of it”;
 A or B: “wanted dead or alive”, “We’ll see if she was right or wrong”, “Good or bad, I’ll take it”;
 neither A nor B: “neither friend nor foe”,
 A not B: “He was alive, not dead as they thought”,
 X is A and Y is B: “Youth is wild and age is tame” (Shakespeare)

 Another context in which antonyms are typically employed is when reference is made to a
change of state as in “The exhibition opens at nine and closes at noon” or “The poet was
born in 1924 and died in 1991”.
 Polysemantic words have different antonyms, for each of their senses. Thus, if
“even” refers to numbers and means “devisible by two”, its antonym is “odd”; if
it refers to character or mood and means “calm”, its antonym is “agitated”; for
its meaning “dull”, it enters an antonymic relationship with “interesting”, while
“sharp” may be considered its antonym when it means “unable to cut”. On the
other hand, ploysemantic words may have a number of antonyms for some of
their meanings and none for others. Thus, “criticism” in the meaning of “blame”
has the antonyms “praise”, “approval”, while in the meaning of “writing critical
essays” it has no opposite meaning correspondent.

 Antonyms appear in a great number of idioms (“to make neither head nor tail of
something”, “to see something in black and white”) and proverbs (“What
soberness conceals, drunkness reveals”, “What is done cannot be undone”, “A
small leak will sink a great ship”, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, “One
man’s loss is another man’s gain”), as well as in several figures of speech
extensively used in literature (oxymoron, irony, antithesis, etc.): Youth, which is
forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing; age, which forgives itself everything,
is forgiven nothing.
 TYPES OF ANTONYMS
 If we refer to the type of oppositeness of meaning, we may speak about three
major classes of antonyms: gradable antonyms, ungradable or contradictory
antonyms and converses.
 A) gradable antonyms: “beautiful – ugly”, “small – big”, “rich – poor”, “wide –
narrow”, “fast – slow”, “increase – decrease”. As their name suggests, the semantic
relationship between gradable antonyms is not of the “either – or” type, but rather of
the “more – less” type. They represent the end-points of a continuum or a scale. The
“more – less” relationship is made obvious by a number of characteristic features of
gradable antonyms. They allow comparison: “My dress is longer than yours”, “The tree
is less tall than the building”. Gradable antonymic adjectives may be modified by
intensifying adverbs: “very good”, “extremely bad”, “extraordinarily beautiful”.

 In a pair of gradable antonyms, one of the terms is unmarked, while the other one is
marked. The unmarked member is the one that is normally expected as in “How old
are you?” or “How long is the way to the museum?”. When this is used, the
speaker/writer does not prejudge anything whereas, when the marked member is
used, certain presuppositions hold. If the two previous questions had been “How
young are you?” and “How short is the way to the museum?”, the implications had
been that the person asked about his/her age was young and the way to the museum
was short.
 B) ungradable or contradictory antonyms: “asleep – awake”, “dead – alive”, “on
– off”, “permit – forbid”, “remember – forget”, “win – lose”, “shut – open”, “true –
false”. Unlike in the case of gradable antonyms, the semantic relationship between the
two members of an ungradable antonymic pair is of the “either – or” type, i.e. the
assertion of one member always implies the negation of the other, with no options in
between (in the case of adjectives, this is proven by the fact that they do not allow
degrees of comparison). Thus, an animate being may be described as either “dead” or
“alive”, but not as some degree of these or as being more one than the other. If
certain behaviour is “permitted”, then it is not “forbidden”; if one “lost” a contest, then
one has not “won” it; if a switch is “off”, then it is not “on”.

 C) converse antonyms: “above – below”, “before – after”, “behind – in front of”,

“buy – sell”, “give – receive”, “husband – wife”, “parent – child”, “speak – listen”. The
meanings of the two antonyms are like the two sides of the same coin, one member of
the pair expresses the converse meaning of the other. “Buy” and “sell” describe the
same transaction, the difference lying in the vantage point from which it is viewed. If
the transaction is seen from the point of view of the person who gives up the goods in
exchange for money, we speak about “selling”, if it is seen from the point of view of
the person who receives the goods upon paying a sum of money for them, we speak
about “buying”.
 If we take into consideration the form of the
antonyms, we may speak about root and affixal
antonyms.

 A) root or radical antonyms are different lexical units

with opposite meanings: “warm – cold”, “kind – cruel”,
“open – shut”.
 B) affixal antonyms are words having the same root, the
relation of oppositeness of meaning between them being
established by means of negative (and positive) affixes
which are added to the common root: “careful – careless”,
“important – unimportant”, “to believe – to disbelieve”, “to
entangle – to disentangle”.
 HYPONYMY AND MERONYMY
 Hyponymy and meronymy are based on hierarchical
relationships (they are the consequence of the fact that some
words have a more general meaning than others).

 Hyponymy = a relationship of inclusion of the “kind of” type:

dog – spaniel, cocker, German shepard, puddel, etc; vehicle –
car, truck, lorry, bus, bike, motorbike, etc.
 The more general term = the superordinate;
 The subordinate terms = the hyponyms.
 Meronymy = a relationship of inclusion of the “part of” type:
plant – leaf, bud, petal, stem, root; day – dawn, morning, noon,
afternoon, evening, etc.
 The more general term = the superordinate;
 The subordinate terms = the meronyms.
 HOMONYMY
 Homonymy = a relation of lexical ambiguity between words having
different meanings; it is “a situation where one orthographic or spoken
form represents more than one vocabulary item”.

 Types of homonyms
 If their pronunciation and spelling are taken into consideration,
homonyms may be one of the following:

 a) perfect homonyms or homonyms proper. These are words identical

in both spelling and pronunciation: “light (adjective) – light (noun)”.
 b) homophones. These are words that have the same pronunciation, but
differ in spelling: “air – heir”, “I – eye”, “buy – bye - by”
 c) homographs. These are words that have the same spelling, but differ
in pronunciation: “wound [wu:nd] – wound [waund]”, “bow [bu] – bow
[bau]”, “lead [led] – lead [li:d]”.
 Homonyms are a rich source of humour. They are as well a
source of confusion for users of English who do not master the
language and, sometimes, even for proficient speakers of it:

 Why did the teacher wear sunglasses? Her students were too
bright.

 Waiter, will the pancakes be long? No, sir, round.

 A family of three tomatoes was walking downtown one day when

the little baby tomato started lagging behind. The big father
tomato walks back to the baby tomato, stomps on her, squashing
her into a red paste, and says ‘Ketchup!’

 Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case

 According to the type of meaning that helps to differentiate words that
have the same sound and/or form, homonyms may be grouped in
three categories:

 a) lexical homonyms are homonyms which belong to the same

grammatical class and have different lexical meanings: the noun “seal”
meaning a kind of sea animal and the noun “seal” meaning the special mark
put on documents to prove that they are authentic.
 b) lexical-grammatical homonyms are homonyms which belong to
different grammatical classes and have different lexical meanings: the noun
“bear” referring to a particular kind of large wild animal with thick fur and
the verb “bear” meaning inability to accept or to do something.
 c) grammatical homonyms are homonyms which differ in grammatical
meaning only: “that” as a demonstrative noun and “that” as a
demonstrative adjective, “played” as the past tense of the verb “to play”
and “played” as the past participle of the same verb.
 SEMANTIC CHANGE
 Causes of semantic change

 A) Extra-linguistic causes of semantic change are determined by the close connection between
language and the evolution of human society. Being the most dynamic and flexible part of a language,
vocabulary reacts to almost every change in the outer reality it helps to picture. Thus, torch was used in
Middle English (ME) to designate “a piece of cloth damped in oil, lit and held in hand in order to make
light”. With the advance of technology, the word has come to also refer to “the small electric lamp that
runs on batteries” and serves the same purpose in modern times. The noun mill was initially used for “a
building with machinery for grinding corn”. Industrial developments influenced its meaning and extended
the reference of the word to “factory - any kind of building with equipment for manufacturing processes”
(we now have saw / cotton / silk / paper mills).
 The evolution of culture and society - when academy was borrowed in the 15th century, it was used as the
name of a garden near Athens, where Plato used to teach. Two centuries later, it referred to the school
system of Plato, while, beginning with the end of the 17th century, it has been used to designate an
institution for the promotion of art or science.
 Social causes – such as the need for specialized terms in each branch of science that deals with specific
phenomena and concepts. The word cell, whose general meaning is “compartment”, has come to mean
“the space between the ribs of a vaulted roof” in architecture, “the space between the nerves of the wings
of insects” in entomology and “a vessel containing one pair of plates immersed in fluid to form a battery”
in electricity.
 The need of expressiveness, taboo and euphemisms in language - one way of achieving expressive effects
in everyday language is through the use of slang words. In slang, everyday words and phrases acquire
new meanings. Thus, baby is used for “girl” or “sweetheart”, the bread basket is the “stomach”, to lamp
means “to hit”, a bag is “an ugly woman” or “an objectionable unpleasant person”, to rabbit is used for “to
talk unceasingly”, gear refers to “illicit drugs” and choice is used as an adjective meaning “best, excellent”.
  B) Linguistic causes of semantic change

 Ellipsis consists of the omission of one part of a phrase. Quite frequently, the remaining
part takes on the meaning of the whole: sale, obtained by ellipsis from cut-price sale, has
come to be used with the meaning of the initial phrase – “an event or period of time during
which a shop reduces the prices of some of its goods”.
 Analogy occurs when one member of a synonymic series acquires a new meaning and this
new meaning is extended to the other elements in the series as well. In the synonymic
series to catch – to grasp – to get, the first verb acquired the meaning “to understand”,
which was later transferred to the verbs to grasp and to get.
 The discrimination of synonyms is the result of the evolution of the meanings of certain
synonyms. In OE, land meant both “solid part of the earth’s surface” and “territory of a
nation”. Later on, in ME, the word country was borrowed from French and it became a
synonym of land. In short time, however, country restricted its meaning to “territory of a
nation”, while land remained to be used in everyday language for “solid part of the earth’s
surface” (when land is used to refer to an area with recognized political borders, it bears
connotations of mystery, emotion or obsolescence).
 Borrowings from other languages may also lead to semantic changes. Deer used to mean
“animal” up to ME, when, under the pressure of the borrowed words beast, creature,
animal, it restricted its meaning to “a large brown wild animal with long thin legs”.
 RESULTS OF SEMANTIC
CHANGE
 A) Extension or widening of meaning is the process by which the
sense(s) of a word is / are enlarged or enriched.

The word journal originally meant, “a daily record of transactions or

events”. Through extension of meaning, at present, it means both “a
daily newspaper” and “any periodical publication containing news in
any particular sphere”. The early meaning of butler, “a male servant in
charge of the wine cellar” was later extended to “a male servant in
charge of the household”.
Extension of meaning may sometimes involve the evolution of a word
from concrete to abstract. Branch, for example, was used with the
meaning “a portion or limb of a tree or other plant”. From this initial
meaning, several abstract meanings have evolved and are recognized
today: “one of the portions into which a family or race is divided”, “a
component portion of an organization or system”, “a part of a
particular area of study or knowledge”.
 B) Narrowing or restriction of meaning is the process opposite to
extension. By it, a word with a wider meaning acquires a narrower
meaning that comes to be applied to some of its previous referents
only. Very frequently, narrowing goes hand in hand with specialization
of meaning.
Mare, for example, meant “horse” up the moment in the evolution of
English when its meaning was restricted to the female horse only.
Likewise, any kind of dog was considered a hound. Nowadays, hound
is used as such only poetically or archaically, its specialized meaning in
the common language being “dog used by hunters for chasing the
game”. Fowl is another example of narrowing of meaning. It was used
to refer to any kind of bird, while now, it is only the domestic birds that
are called fowls.
Specialization of meaning, accompanying narrowing, is very clear in the
case of trade names that originated in common nouns: Sunbeam,
Thunderbird, Caterpillar.
 C) Degradation of meaning or pejorative development is the process by which a
neutral word either loses its original meaning completely and acquires a new, derogatory
one, or it preserves it and develops a new pejorative meaning in addition.
The former case may be illustrated by means of the word quarrel, which meant “complaint”.
By a first semantic change, as Hulban (1975: 120) indicates, it came to mean “a ground or
occasion of complaint against a person, leading to hostile feelings”. The meaning of the
word degraded even further from this and reached the point of “a violent contention or
altercation between persons, a rapture of friendly relations”. Knave underwent the same
process. It initially meant “boy” and later lost this meaning in favour of “dishonest man”.
The word suburban is illustrative of the latter case. From the initial meaning, “of or
belonging to the suburbs of the town”, a new derogatory one evolved, the former still being
preserved. Today, suburban is used not only for what is not “in the city”, but also for
“typical of the attitudes and way of life of people who live in the suburbs, which some
people consider rather boring, conservative, involving inferior manners and narrower
views”.
Analogy plays an important role in the process of degradation of meaning. This is very
obvious in the following examples of zoosemy, metaphors that implicitly compare humans
with animals. Thus, besides the animal itself, a sheep is “a poor-spirited, stupid or timid
person”. A fox is a cunning person, a monkey or an ape is one that “plays the ape, an
imitator, a mimic”.
 D) Elevation of meaning is the reverse of
degradation, implying the process by which a newly
evolved meaning of a word acquires a “higher” status
as compared to the initial one. Fame, for example,
originally meant “rumour”, but later on, it became
“celebrity, good reputation”. Bard was initially a term
of contempt, designating a ministrel-poet. Later,
when ministrels started to be idealized, the word
referring to them suffered an elevation of meaning,
quite obvious in Shakespeare himself having been
called “The Bard”.
 TRANSFER OF MEANING
 Many of the cases of extension and narrowing of meaning
mentioned in the previous sections are based on transfer of
meaning. There are two main types of such transfer, according
to the kind of association that they presuppose. Associations
based on similarity lead to metaphor, while those based on
contiguity, i.e., on the condition of being in contact, in
proximity, in a broad sense, lead to metonymy. Unlike
extension, narrowing, elevation and degradation, transfer of
meaning is not a gradual process, but rather the result of a
sudden change from one field to another, on a particular
occasion of use (both metaphors and metonymies may be one-
time only creations in language).
 METAPHOR
 The essence of metaphor is “understanding and experiencing one kind of things in terms of another” (Lakoff,
Johnson 1980: 5). In other words, metaphor involves an implicit comparison of two entities, based on an alleged
resemblance between them. This implicit comparison is contained in the meaning of a word or phrase that has come
to be different from its original meaning.

 Types of metaphor:
 A) live metaphors - conscious creations used by writers as stylistic devices
 B) linguistic metaphors
 standardized lexical metaphors in whose case the idea of similarity is lost. They are usually considered “dead”
metaphors and include examples such as daisy, whose origin is the OE daeges aege (“the day’s eye”) and
wind, coming from the OE windes aege (“the wind’s eye”).
 “degrading” or “fading” metaphors in whose case the idea of similarity is still evident. Such metaphors
may rely on:

 similarity of shape: the head of the pin, the mouth of the river, the foot of the hill, ball-point-pen;
 similarity of position: head-word, headstone;
 similarity of colour: red-admiral, blue-bell, blue-wing;
 similarity of destination or purpose: blood bank, data bank;
 space and duration in time: long run, long-lived, shortcircuit, shortcoming, short-dated;
 physical sensations: cold war, warm congratulations, sweet dreams, bitter remark;
 Ulmann (1970) offers another classification of degrading linguistic metaphors. According to him, they may be
grouped into:
 anthropomorphic metaphors, involving the transfer of meaning from the human body and its parts to inanimate
objects: the mouth of the river, the lungs of the town, the heart of the matter;
 animal metaphors: dog’s tail (a plant), cat-o’-the-nine-tails. People can also be called foxes, lions, doves, donkeys,
etc;
 metaphors that translate abstract experiences into concrete terms: to throw light on, to enlighten, brilliant idea;
 synaesthetic metaphors, involving the transposition from one sense to another: cold voice, loud colours, piercing
sounds.
 METONYMY
 Metonymy consists of the use of the name of one thing for that of something else, with which it is usually
associated. This association is not a mental process that links two independent entities, like in the case of
metaphor, but one that brings together entities which are in a certain proximity or contact.
 According to the type of relationship established between the two elements in a metonymy, the following
types of associations are possible:
 the use of the symbol for the thing symbolized: From the cradle to the grave, one has always something new to learn,
The Crown visited the soldiers on the battle field;
 the use of the material an object is made of for the object itself: iron, glass;
 the use of the holder for the thing held: The gallery applauded, He is fond of the bottle, You should save your pocket if
you want to buy a new computer;
 the use of the maker’s name for the object made: I like the Rembrand on that wall, Put that Dickens away and listen to
me, I hate reading Heidegger, He bought a Ford;
 the use of the place name where the object is or was originally made for the object itself: At dinner, they served the soup
in their best china;
 the use of the instrument for the agent: They answered the door / phone, The sax has the flu today, The gun he hired
wanted 50 grants;
 the use of the concrete for the abstract and of the abstract for the concrete: They dedicated their pens to a just cause,
He is of noble blood; The leadership took action against thefts;
 the use of the name of an organization or an institution for the people who make a decision or work there: Exxon has
raised its prices again, The Senate thinks abortion is immoral;
 the use of the place name where an event was recorded for the event itself: Do you remember the Alamo?, Pearl
Harbour still has an effect on America’s foreign policy;
 the use of a place name where an institution is located for the institution itself: The White House voted against entering
war, Wall Street has been in panic these days;
 the reference to the behaviour of a person experiencing a particular emotion for the emotion itself: She gave him a
tongue-lashing, I really chewed him out good;
 the use of the part for the whole (also called synecdoche) and of the whole for the part: They hired ten new hands, We
don’t accept longhairs here, She is wearing a fine fox.
 LEXICAL STRATA
 Lexical strata may be approached from two perspectives:
 Diachronic
 Synchronic

 Diachronic lexical strata

 Archaisms = words and phrases, their senses or grammatical forms that were current at one time, but that have
passed out of use completely or are very rarely employed at present.
 Archaisms are of two kinds:
 Absolute archaisms = words that have disappeared completely from the language. Eg: alegar – “ale or beer which has
passed through the acetous fermentation and was used as a cheap substitute for vinegar”, ballop – “the old name for the flap
in the forepart of the breeches which is buttoned up”, buzznack – “an old organ, out of order and playing badly”, upknocking –
“the employment of the knocker-up who went house to house in the early morning hours to awaken his working-class clients”,
dawkin – “a fool, a sinpleton”, gubbertushed – “having projected teeth”, kidcote – “common jail”, rax – “stretch oneself after
sleep”;
 Relative archaisms = words that are still used, but quite infrequently. They occur in a variety of contexts, for a multitude of
purposes and reasons. Thus, film makers and writers of historical novels use them to render the past times they focus on as
accurately as possible: druid, tournament, archer, thane (“knight”), gleeman (“wondering minstrel”), witan (“king’s council”),
oracle, etc. “A similar desire to evoke a former age justifies the use of relative archaisms in circumstances where doing so has
political or emotional connotations, or when the official new name of a country, city or province is not generally accepted (such
as Persia instead of Iran, Bombay rather than Mumbai, and Madras as the older variant of Chennai). So, a restaurant seeking
to conjure up historic associations might prefer to call itself Old Bombay or refer to Persian cuisine, avoiding the employment of
the newer place names. A notable contemporary example is the name of the airline Cathay Pacific, which uses the archaic
Cathay for China”. In science and technology, fields of continuous and dynamic development, some specialized words or
meanings may follow the trend and fall into disuse quite quickly. However, the emotional associations that some of these
presuppose have kept them in use, even if within very narrow limits – this is, according to the explanations in Wikipedia, the
case of the meaning “radio” that the generation of Brits that lived through the Second World War still associate with the word
wireless. Phrases associated with religion, rituals and traditions, though not considered common if they occur in general speech
or writing, continue to be used in the circumstances in which they appeared long in the past. “For example, thou shalt and
thou shalt not are considered archaic in general use, but being part of the common English translation of the Ten
Commandments, they continue to be repeated and used in that context without calling attention to themselves”
(http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-archaisms.htm). Similarly, the archaic I thee wed is perfectly consonant with a present
day wedding ceremony.
 Neologisms = generally accepted definition - new words or
expressions, or existing words used with new meanings; a different
point of view - not necessarily brand new lexical items or
meanings, but rather words, phrases and senses that, at the
moment when they occurred in a language, had a considerable
impact on its users. British dictionaries of neologisms contain items
such as acid rain, dating since 1850, greenhouse effect, born in
1920, misfortuned, first documented in 1881 and the three
century-old condom. Such words and phrases are living their
“second youth” now, at times when environmental protection and
health care are issues on everybody’s lips. Similarly, the Romanian
senat, camere parlamentare, interpelare, jandermerie, used initially
during the two World Wars, have been brought back into usage
recently and may, therefore, be considered neologisms.

 Neologisms appear in a language as the result of the evolution of

the historical, political, social and cultural context.
 The linguistic phenomena mainly associated with the creation of neologisms are borrowing and
word formation by various techniques.
 Borrowing: from French: aestheticienne – “beautician”, aromatherapy - “a type of health treatment in which
nicely smelling oils are rubbed into somebody’s skin to make the person feel relexaed”, ballotin – “small
pacakage”, bustier – “a piece of clothing for women that does fits close to the body and does not cover the
shoulders and the arms”, diamantaire – “diamond seller”); from Spanish (aficionado – “supporter”, huaquero –
“robber of ancient thombs in Chile, Peru and Bolivia”, morcilla – “a special type of sausages that contain pig
blood”, mucho – “much”); from Russian (Afghantsi – “former Soviet soldier in Afghanistan”, khozraschrot –
“economic liability”, demokratizatsiya – “process of democratization of society and its institutions”, perestroika –
“ample process of social, political and economic reform initiated in 1987 by M. Gorbaciov in the USSR”); from
German (bedienung – “mention on a bill that the final amount indicated contains the waiter’s tip”, kletten prinzip –
“means of supervising hooligans in a crowd so as to prevent their riotous intentions”); from Japanese (basho –
“traditional Japanese fight championship”, karaoke – “the singing by amateurs of the lyrics of songs against
recorded tunes”, mawashi – “the competition attire of sumo fighters”, Nikkei – “index of the relative prices of
stocks at the Tokyo Stock Exchange”); from Czech (eyelyser – “optical apparatus for measuring the level of
alcohol in one’s blood”, colourization – “process of colouring a film initially made in black and white”); from Italian
(libero – “the last player at the back of the football field”, mascarpone – “Italian cottage cheese”), etc.
 Word formation: Affixation: biodegradable – “which decomposes naturally, without harming the environment”,
biofuel – “fuel obtained from organic matters”, depowerment – “the loss by the masses of their capacity to decide
upon their own fate”, derecognize – “to retrieve the official recognition of an organization, institution, etc”,
deselect – “to reject, to eliminate, to exclude”, ecopolicy – “the strategy of an environmental movement”,
ecorefugee – “person who has left an area in which pollution made living almost impossible”, proactive – “s/he
who takes the initiative the first”, pro-choice – “in favour of a woman’s right to opt for abortion”, supercollider –
“big and powerful particle accelerator”, supersite – “double-sized advertising hoard”, unplugged – (about musical
instruments) “acoustic, without electronic components”, unscoopy – “without sensational news, boring”, unwaged
- “unemployed”, etc. Compounding: airhead – “beautiful, but stupid woman”, alcohol-abuse – “excessive
consumption of alcoholic drinks”, fuzzword – “word with an ambiguous sense, used to impress the interlocutor”,
hack-and-slash – “about games, which promotes violence”, lockdown – “period of time when the inmates in a jail
are isolated”, middlemarket – “of average quality, meant for middle class consumers”, shoutline – “text printed in
italics at the beginning of an advertisement”, etc.
 Synchronic lexical strata
 Geographical varieties
 The spread of English as a global language
may be described in terms of the well-
established three concentric circles model
suggested by Kachru (1989): the inner
circle, the outer circle and the
expanding circle.
 The inner circle includes the territories where
English is the first, official language, even if other
languages are also spoken here – the British Isles,
USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
 The best represented inner circle variety is American
English, with a main distinction between Northern and
Southern dialects in terms of pronunciation, grammar and
vocabulary.
 ‘During the depression’, said the cowboy to me, ‘I used to
hop freights at least once a month. In those days, you’d see
hundreds of men riding a flatcar or in a boxer, and they
weren’t just bums, they were all kinds of men out of work
and going from one place to another and some of them just
wandering. It was like that all over the West. Brakemen
never bothered you in those days…’
 The outer circle groups together “territories in Asia and Africa to which English
was first transported in colonial contexts and where it has since existed
alongside very different local languages. Many people use English as a second
language within these multilingual contexts and the language also has an
institutional and administrative importance” (Davies 2005: 47).
 The best represented outer circle variety of English, according to the number of
speakers that use it, is Indian English, characterized by a number of peculiar
phonetic, grammatical and lexical features. Words and phrases that are said to
be peculiar of Indian English include: shift (“move from one apartment to
another”), weatish complexion (“light, creamy brown complexion”), expire (“to
die”, especially in reference to one’s family member), acting pricey (“playing
‘hard to get’”), dearness allowance (“payment given to employees to
compensate for the effects of inflation”), chargesheet (“to file charges against
someone in court”), on the anvil (used frequently in the Indian press to mean
“about to happen, to take place”), out of station (“out of town”), etc. Local
words and expressions often intersperse with English ones. Dhobi-wallah
(“laundryman”), bandh (“local strike”), lakh (“one hundred thousand”), crore
(“ten million”), bheris (“fish farms”), etc.
 The expanding circle includes “territories in which English has
become or is becoming the most important foreign language”
(Davies 2005: 46).
 English-origin borrowings in Romanian
 Reasons for extensive borrowing:
 the temptation of the youngsters to sprinkle their vocabulary with words
belonging to the British-American super-civilization to which their parents had
been denied access. By doing this, “they feel closer to the Western man (usually
American), perceived as a competent, enterprising, prosperous and reliable
person” (Pârlog 2004: 94);
 Romanians nowadays are more frequently exposed to the English language - they
can read a large number of newspapers, magazines and books in English;
throughout the country, they can watch TV channels that broadcast in this
language; and they have numerous occasions of hearing and using English during
their travels abroad or as the language of communication in business settings;
 Journalists and public people also contribute to English having a high status in
Romania, by using Anglicisms quite often, both in their spoken and in their
written materials.
 English is the most widely taught foreign language in Romanian schools.
 Assimilated directly or indirectly:
 nouns that have been assigned Romanian gender by various means, such as the presence of a
Romanian indefinite or definite article or Romanian inflections for number, case, gender
(masculine: am fost însoţiţi de un bodyguard – “we were accompanied by a bodyguard”;
designerii ne surpind constant – “designers constantly surprise us”; feminine: sunt o fană
Liza Minelli – “I am a Lisa Minelli fan”; fanele mai pot spera – “the fans can still hope”; neuter:
completează cu un blush roz – “add a pink blush”; target-ul îl reprezintă copiii – “the target
is represented by children”);
 nouns whose gender is assigned by the presence of a pronominal adjective or modifier marked
for gender (neuter: cum poţi păstra acest look – “how you can preserve this look”;
masculine: este noul superstar al rockului – “he is the new superstar of rock”);
 nouns obtained by derivation with Romanian suffixes, from English roots (diploma de cea mai
bine îmbrăcată coolgirliţă – “diploma for the best-dressed ‘coolgirliţă’”; o fashionistă precum
actriţa K.B. – “a ‘fashionistă’” like the actress K.B.”; Eşti cea mai dulce maroonică – “You are
the sweetest ‘maroonică’”);
 adjectives used in the Romanian comparative and superlative degrees (cea mai cool pereche
de balerini – “the coolest pair of shoes”; foarte simplu şi foarte cool – „very simple and very
cool”);
 verbs conjugated according to the Romanian pattern (poţi uploada fotografii – „you can
upload photographs”; nu ştiu să managerieze problemele sufleteşti – “they cannot manage
soul problems”; pe unde am mixat, lumea s-a distrat – “people had fun wherever I mixed
music”).
 Words of English origin that have been borrowed into
English are:
 non-assimilated - nouns without inflections, determiners or
modifiers or used as parts of verb collocations (software
pentru gestionarea muzicii – “software for managing music”; te
duci cu gândul la shopping – “you think of shopping”; s-a dat
click de peste nouă milioane de ori – “they gave a click over
nine million times”), adjectives used as attributes or as
predicatives, in the postive degree (tot felul de pedepse funny
– “all sorts of funny punishments”; am rămas addicted – “I
remained addicted”; trebuie să rămâi fair – “you have to
remain fair”) and adverbs used as attributes or as adverbials
(caracteristici de navigare outdoor – “characteristics of
outdoor navigation”; comunitate online – “online community”;
backstage se află cel mai mare fan – “his greatest fan is
backstage”), etc.
 phrases that adopt both the meaning and the structure of
corresponding English phrases have occurred in Romanian: cod
de bare (“bar code”), a avea fluturaşi în stomac (“to have
butterflies in one’s stomach”), a ţine prima pagină (“to keep the
front page”);
 The meaning of some Romanian words have enlarged under
the influence of English words they share at least one sense
with: chimie - “the scientific study of substances and of the way
they react with other substances”, got the extra meaning
“affective relationship between people”, under the influence of
the English chemistry; scândură – “flat piece of wood”, has
come to also mean “board with four wheels that one stands on
and rides”, influenced by its English partial synonym skateboard.
 Ethnic varieties of English
 Ethnicity, understood as the common ancestry, race
and distinctive culture of a group of people (whose
representatives live in smaller or larger communities
in a certain country), is reflected in the language
these people use. In the case of English, at least two
ethnic varieties are very well-established:
 the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) -
spoken by about 90 percent of the black population of
African origin in the United States, the majority of which
comes from inner-city and working class backgrounds
 It displays a number of phonological, grammatical (both
morphological and syntactic), lexical and discursive peculiarities
 Chicano/Mexican-American English – spoekn by people of Mexican,
Puerto Rican, Cuban and other Spanish-speaking backgrounds in the US.
According to Baugh and Cable (2002), in the 1990 US census, 60 percent of
the Hispanics reported their national origin to be Mexican and it has been
estimated that Mexican-American English, or Chicano English is now
spoken by around 30 million people in the US.

 Just like AAVE, Chicano English has a number of characteristic features in terms
of its phonetics, grammar and vocabulary.

 Ethnic varieties of English (and of any other language, for that matter) play
an important role in preserving the shared identity of a particular minority
group within a majority mass. It is because of this that members of an
ethnic minority will not give up using its characteristic vernacular (although,
on occasions, the standard language is used, especially by the upper
educated classes) and will fight, by cultural and political means, to ensure
its survival.
 Social varieties of English
 Standard English - the variety of English considered the
norm in an English-speaking country, usually associated with
users belonging to the upper well-educated social classes on
the one hand, and to the media and the official social,
scientific, political, cultural, etc. settings, on the other. SE is
also the variety taught to learners of English as a foreign
language. However, it should not be understood that it is
spoken by members of the upper social classes and in the
previously mentioned contexts only – it is spread,
admittedly, in a non-uniform way, across the whole social
spectrum and it is encountered in less formal environments
as well.
 What SE is not:
 an accent - SE can be identified mainly by its vocabulary, grammar and
orthography, but not by its pronunciation. In Britain, there is “a high status
and widely described accent known as ‘Received Pronunciation’ (RP)”, also
known as “King’s English”, “Queen’s English” and “BBC English” also, “which
is sociolinguistically unusual when seen from a global perspective in that it
is not associated with any geographical area, being instead a purely social
accent associated with speakers in all parts of the country, or at least in
England, from upper-class and upper-middle-class backgrounds” (Trudgill
1999: 118). While users of RP also speak SE, not all speakers of SE speak it
with an RP - about 10% of the population in Britain speak SE with some
form of regional accent, even if this is not very distant from RP. Therefore,
it is justified to say that “while RP is, in a sense, standardized, it is a
standardized accent of English and not Standard English itself. This point
becomes even clearer from an international perspective. Standard English
speakers can be found in all English-speaking countries, and it goes without
saying that they speak this variety with different non-RP accents, depending
on whether they came from Scotland or the USA or New Zealand or
wherever” (Trudgill 1999: 118).
 a style (a language variety that can be placed on a continuum, ranging from
very formal to very informal).
 Standard – non-standard is not the same as formal - informal.
 Eg. The old man was bloody knackered after his long trip - SE, though “couched in a
very informal style” (Trudgill 1999: 120) Father were very tired after his lengthy
journey - non-standard English (due to the grammatically incorrect agreement between
the subject and the verb), “couched in a rather formal style” (Trudgill 1999: 120).
 even if SE tends to be used formally (a fact imposed by the contexts in which it
occurs), it is not impossible for it to be employed in an informal way, too. Stylistic
switching occurs within the variety in question and not between it and another
one.
 a register (a variety of language connected to a particular topic, subject
matter or activity, such as mathematics, medicine, physics, law, etc.),
although it is most usual in English-speaking societies to employ SE when
one is using scientific registers
 There was two eskers what we saw in them U-shaped valleys is a nonstandard
English sentence, couched in the technical register of physical geography
(Trudgill 1999: 121)
 An informal discussion between scientists in their field of expertise might be SE,
even if not too many specialised terminology is used
 What SE is:
 a language variety, a social dialect which displays characteristics that
individualize it as pretty unusual among the other dialects of English.
 SE is the dialect spoken as their native variety by about 12 to 15% of
Britain’s population, this segment being concentrated at the top of the
social scale. The further down this scale one gets, the more numerous non-
standard forms of language one comes across. From a historical point of
view, SE was selected (though not through a conscious process of decision
making by regulatory bodies such as academies, for instance) as the variety
to become the standard one precisely because “it was the variety
associated with the social group with the highest degree of power, wealth
and prestige. Subsequent developments have reinforced its social character:
the fact that it has been employed as the dialect of an education to which
pupils, especially in earlier centuries, have had differential access depending
on their social class background” (Trudgill 1999: 124).
 the most obvious features that make SE differ from other non-standard English
dialects lie at the level of grammar. Some of these features are:
 Standard English fails to distinguish between the forms of the auxiliary forms of the
verb do and its main verb forms. This is true both of present tense forms, where many
other dialects distinguish between auxiliary I do, he do and main verb I do, he does,
and the past tense, where most other dialects distinguish between auxiliary did and
main verb done, as in You done it, did you?;
 Standard English has an unusual and irregular present tense verb morphology in that
only the third-person singular receives morphological marking: he goes versus I go.
Many other dialects use either zero for all persons or -s for all persons;
 Standard English lacks multiple negation, so that no choice is available between I don’t
want none, which is not possible, and I don’t want any. Most nonstandard dialects of
English around the world permit multiple negation;
 Standard English has an irregular formation of reflexive pronouns with some forms
based on the possessive pronouns e.g. myself, and others on the objective pronouns
e.g. himself. Most nonstandard dialects have a regular system employing possessive
forms throughout i.e. hisself, theirselves;
  Standard English fails to distinguish between second person singular and second person plural
pronouns, having you in both cases. Many nonstandard dialects maintain the older English distinction
between thou and you, or have developed newer distinctions such as you versus youse;
 Standard English has irregular forms of the verb to be both in the present tense (am, is, are) and in
the past (was, were). Many nonstandard dialects have the same form for all persons, such as I be,
you be, he be, we be, they be, and I were, you were, he were, we were, they were;
 In the case of many irregular verbs, Standard English redundantly distinguishes between preterite
and perfect verb forms both by the use of the auxiliary have and by the use of distinct preterite and
past participle forms: I have seen versus I saw. Many other dialects have I have seen versus I seen;
 Standard English has only a two-way contrast in its demonstrative system, with this (near to the
speaker) opposed to that (away from the speaker). Many other dialects have a three-way system
involving a further distinction between, for example, that (near to the listener) and yon (away from
both speaker and listener)

 What is considered SE from a grammatical point of view should be regarded without losing
sight of the fact that language is continuously changing and that it might very well happen
that what is labeled non-standard at a certain moment should become the norm. The
reverse phenomenon is also possible – what is today considered standard language might
enter the category of non-standard forms in the future.
 Slang - the attribute of lower social classes chiefly. It may be contrasted with “jargon
(technical language of occupational or other groups) and with argot or cant (secret
vocabulary of underworld groups), but the borderlines separating these categories
from slang are greatly blurred, and some writers use the terms cant, argot, and jargon
in a general way, to include all the foregoing meanings” (Varanakov online: 4).
However, just like in the case of SE, this does not mean that slang is never used by
speakers not belonging to the upper classes of a society.
 It is characterized by the use of very informal and generally short-lived non-standard words,
phrases and meanings
 It originates in various subcultures or occupational groups in a society (police, medical
professionals, computer specialists, sports groups, religious denominations, drug addicts,
criminals, etc.). Within these, slang words and phrases are initially suggested by an individual,
usually, as a way of expressing “hostility, ridicule or contempt” (Varanakov online: 5) either
towards the members, values, attitudes or behaviour of her / his own group or of a different
group. However, only after these lexical elements are widely adopted by the group or
subculture within which they were created do they have chances of becoming real slang (a one
time usage does not guarantee their survival as part of the language variety under discussion).
Following this stage, if the group or subculture has an extensive enough contact with the
mainstream culture, these words and phrases may spread and become known to a greater
number of language users.
 Other reasons for the birth of slang:
 the exercising of ingenuity, wit and humour
 the desire to be different, novel or picturesque (either positively or –
as in thewish to avoid insipidity – negatively)
 to escape from clichés
 to lend an air of solidity, concreteness, to the abstract, of earthiness to
the idealistic
 to reduce, perhaps also to disperse the solemnity, the pomposity, the
excessive seriousness of a conversation (or of a piece of writing)
 to soften the tragedy, to lighten or to ‘prettify’ the inevitability of death
or madness, or to mask the ugliness or the pity of profound turpitude
(e.g. treachery, ingratitude)
 to show that one belongs to a certain school, trade, or profession,
artistic or intellectual set, or social class, in brief, to be ‘in the swim’ or
to establish contact and, hence, to show or prove that someone is not
‘in the swim’
 to be secret - not understood by those around one, etc.
 Slang is not restricted either temporally or
geographically. All historical periods and all
geographical areas have had their own slang.
 Professional in various fields have their own slang
 Slang is frequently based on figures of speech,
mostly on metaphors and comparison; rhyming
slang is a category that has pretty numerous
representatives in English
 Written and oral varieties of English
 the previously well drawn separation line between the two has become quite blurred recently, under
the influence of the development and more and more extensive use of communication channels such
as the email, mobile phones and online chat rooms. Thus, new varieties of English, specific to
electronic communication, have evolved.
 Spontaneous speech, one form of oral communication, occurs when people talk naturally and
informally, without having planned in advance what they are going to say. This is not to mean that
spontaneous talk is just “small talk” for the sake of talking, that the interlocutors have no conscious
aim in their talk whatsoever, but rather that linguistically, they have not already worked out what
form of the language they are going to use to express what they want to say. In their heads, they
may well have quite clear intentions, but they will actually express these intentions spontaneously, if
and when they get the chance to in the course of the conversation.
 Although informal conversation does not seem to be closely controlled, a set of rules is still applied
by the speakers, even if unconsciously most of the times: the use of formulas to open or close a
dialogue, of greetings or pragmatic idioms (adjacency pairs of the kind I’m George. / Nice to meet
you; I’m sorry! / No problem.; Have some more cake! / No, thank you, I’ve had enough, etc.), to
giving feedback (by using, for example, discourse markers such as yes, I know, exactly, sure, etc.),
asking and answering questions, making and responding to suggestions, signaling the intention to
keep or to yield the floor (in the former case, by, for instance, pausing at a moment when the
sentence is still incomplete and when, therefore, the interlocutor feels discouraged to take over; in
the latter, by pausing when an idea has been completely expressed, directly asking for the
interlocutor’s opinion or displaying suggestive body language – looking more steadily to the person
to whom the speaker is willing to give the floor, nodding, etc).
 Non-fluency features of spontaneous talk:
 abandoned / incomplete words such as thi-this and abandoned
and / or reformulated sentence structure, such as I could
always get the tickets from … there’s a new box office down …
you know, when you go through that new shopping archade…
 syntactic blends, where the structure of the sentence changes
‘in mid-stream’, e.g. About two hundred years ago we had
ninety-five percent of people in this country were employed in
farming.
 mispronunciations and slips of the tongue, e.g. par cark for car
park (syllable-onset consonants swopped); win a pin for with a
pin (where an anticipated consonant is articulated early).
 fillers like er, erm.
 repetition (often combined with hesitation), such as
it’s…it’s…n…not that I want to be critical but…
 rehearsed speech is, in some ways, prepared before it is
uttered for an audience:
 speeches thought over and maybe even drafted before they are
delivered to the listeners
 drama, in whose case lines are learned by heart by the actors and
then reproduced before the spectators.
 Therefore, though the aim of the speaker in these cases is to
sound as spontaneous as possible, what s/he says does not
come out in the same way as it does in the case of fully
unprepared speech. Some non-fluency characteristics are
preserved (syntactic blends, fillers, hesitation markers, etc.)
though - intentionally in the case of theatre, possibly
uncontrolled in the case of public speakers.
 Traditional written texts are characterized by
features that are the consequence of their being
produced in a more controlled manner than oral
discourse. The final version of a written text, one that
might have been arrived at after several revisions, is
a string of coherent sentences that reflect a logical
sequencing of ideas. These sentences tend to be
much longer and more elaborated than those in
spoken discourse, with no (intentional) grammatical
mistakes and with a higher level of vocabulary.
 Electronic written texts (emails, text
messages) – mixture of oral and written
features in various degrees, depending
on the level of formality of the text
 Characteristics of emails: