31.Types of synonyms

Types of synonyms (absolute; ideographic, stylistic). Synonymic dominant.

Absolute synonyms are very rare in the language. They are mostly different names for one and the same plant, animal, disease etc.

e.g.: luce – pike, compounding – composition, castor – beaver, алфавіт – абетка, буква – літера, процент – відсоток, площа – майдан, нагідки – календула.

Ideographic synonyms differ from each other in shades of meaning. Synonyms of this kind are very numerous in the English language. In such synonyms we can easily find the general and the particular. The general connects such synonyms into one group, makes them representatives of one concept whereas the particular allows every synonym of the group to stress a certain feature of the concept. Thus all the synonyms express the concept in all its many-sided variety and completeness.

Stylistic synonyms do not differ in shades of their common meaning. They differ in usage and style: doctor (official) – doc (familiar); to commence (official) – to begin (neutral). They also show the attitude of the speaker towards the event, object or process described: to die – to depart, to expire – to kick the bucket; говорити – балакати, базікати; ходити – шкандибати, дибати, пхатися, читальний зал – читалка, здібний – кмітливий.

synonymic dominant is the most general term of its kind potentially containing the specific features rendered by all the other members of the group

32,Taboo. Euphemisms an disphemisms

Dysphemism is the use of extreme words instead of more moderate or accurate words

Euphemism is a substitution for an expression that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the receiver, using instead an agreeable or less offensive expression, or to make it less troublesome for the speaker.

33.Semantic fields. Relations of inclusion

In studying the lexicon of English (or any language) we may group together lexemes which inter-relate, in the sense that we need them to define or describe each other. For example we can see how such lexemes as cat, feline, moggy, puss, kitten, tom, queen and miaow occupy the same semantic field. We can also see that some lexemes will occupy many fields: noise will appear in semantic fields for acoustics, pain or discomfort and electronics (noise = “interference”). Although such fields are not clear-cut and coherent, they are akin to the kind of groupings children make for themselves in learning a language. An entertaining way to see how we organize the lexicon for ourselves is to play word-association games.

Hyponymy is the semantic relationship of inclusion. The hyponymic relationship may be viewed as the hierarchical relationship between the meaning of the general and individual terms.

34.Stylistically neutral and marked words.

Speech communication employs a host of expressive means ranging from linguistic to paralinguistic and extralinguistic features. It is the natural language, however, whose systematic variation on all levels of its structure (phonology, morphology, lexicology and syntax) offers the widest possibilities of suiting its use to fit communicative functions of discourses in various contexts. Thus linguistic expressive means, which are systematically identified and cetegorized by linguistic stylistics (stylolinguistics), lie at the core of stylistic variation. However, it should be noted that as stylistically relevant are considered those linguistic variations which perform similar or alternative communicative functions and which are, in fact, competitors within a particular paradigm or category. From this perspective, there are language units which occur in all types of texts due to their neutral stylistic value (hence stylistically neutral units, e.g., notional words, -s plural marker). On the other hand, other language units bear a stylistic marker already before they are actually used, and so they tend to occur only in some types of texts (hence stylistically marked units, e.g., terms, some foreign plural nouns, vulgarisms, participial constructions; these ´bearers´ of stylistic information which may come from any linguistic plane are also called stylemes, štylémy, cf. Mistrík 1993). Further, not all levels of language system offer equal possibilities of choice: the most differentiated level is the wordstock (synonymy and polysemy), and the fewest possibilities of selection are on the phonological plane (phonemic variations). The possibilities of stylistic variations are not unlimited and some authors maintain that the importance of style is often overestimated (cf. Čermák 2001).

35.English phraseology: Semantic types. English phraseology. Characteristics of phraseological units.

1.1. Semantic unity.

1.2. Structural stability.

Phraseology and free word-combinations

There are seven types of phraseological units in I.Arnold’s structural classification:

1) nominal phrases, e.g., high life

2) verbal phrases, e.g., put one’s head in a noose

3) adverbial phrases, e.g., by hook or by crook

4) adjectival phrases, e.g., as wet as a drowned rat

5) prepositional phrases, e.g., in accordance with

6) conjunctional phrases, e.g., as long as

7) interjectional phrases, e.g., well, I never did!

The Russian scholar A.I.Molotkov classifies phraseological units of the Russian

language taking into account that the lexical meaning of a phraseological unit and its

grammatical categories form the content of a phraseological unit (in contrast to its form), with

which the lexical-grammatical characteristic of a phraseological unit is connected: nominal,

verbal, adjectival, adverbial, verbal-prepositional; interjectional phraseological units.

(Молотков 1978:46)

Each idiom is a semantic unity. The semantic unity can be reflected by the fact that the meaning of an idiom is very often not the total sum of the meanings of the constituent words. The semantic unity can also be shown in the illogical relations between the literal meanings of the constituent words and the meaning of the idiom.

Structural stability means that the structure of an idiom usually remains unchangeable. In the other words, the constituent components of an idiom can not, generally speaking, be replaced.