§ 2. Grammatical Valency

Words are used also in grammatical contexts.¹ The minimal grammatical context in which words are used when brought together to form word-groups is usually described as the pattern of the word-group. For instance, the adjective heavy discussed above can be followed by a noun (e.g. heavy storm or by the infinitive of a verb (e.g. heavy to lift), etc. The aptness of a word to appear in specific grammatical (or rather syntactic) structures is termed grammatical valency.

The grammatical valency of words may be different. To begin with, the range of grammatical valency is delimited by the part of speech the word belongs to. It follows that the grammatical valency of each individual word is dependent on the grammatical structure of the language.

This is not to imply that grammatical valency of words belonging to the same part of speech is necessarily identical. This can be best illustrated by comparing the grammatical valency of any two words belonging to the same part of speech, e.g. of the two synonymous verbs suggest and propose. Both verbs can be followed by a noun (to propose or suggest a plan, a resolution). It is only propose, however, that can be followed by the infinitive of a verb (to propose to do smth.); The adjectives clever and intelligent are seen to possess different grammatical valency as clever can be used in word-groups having the pattern: Adjective-Preposition at+Noun (clever at mathematics), whereas intelligent can never be found in exactly the same word-group pattern.

Specific linguistic restrictions in the range of grammatical valency of individual words imposed on the lexical units by the inner structure of the language are also observed by comparing the grammatical valency of correlated words in different languages. The English verb influence, for example, can be followed only by a noun (to influence a person, a decision, choice, etc.). The grammatical valency of its Russian counterpart влиять is different. The Russian verb can be combined only with a prepositional group (cf. влиять на человека, на выбор, . . ., etc.).

No departure from the norm of grammatical valency is possible as this can make the word-group unintelligible to English speakers. Thus e.g. the word-group mathematics at clever is likely to be felt as a meaningless string of words because the grammatical valency of English nouns does not allow of the structure Noun+at+Adjective.

It should also be pointed out that the individual meanings of a polysemantic word may be described through its grammatical valency. Thus, different meanings of the adjective keen may be described in a general way through different structures of the word-groups keen+N, — keen sight (hearing, etc.), keen + on + N — keen on sports (on tennis, etc.), keen+V(inf.) — keen to know (to find out, etc.).

From this point of view word-groups may be regarded as minimal syntactic (or syntagmatic) structures that operate as distinguishing clues for different meanings of a polysemantic word.

49. Phraseology as a constituent part of lexicology.

Phraseology is a branch of lexicology studying phraseological units (set expressions, praseologisms, or idioms (in foreign linguistics). Phraseological units differ from free word-groups semantically and structurally: 1) they convey a single concept and their meaning is idiomatic, i.e. it is not a mere total of the meanings of their components 2) they are characterized by structural invariability (no word can be substituted for any component of a phraseological unit without destroying its sense (to have a bee in one’s bonnet (not cap or hat). 3) they are not created in speech but used as ready-made units. Unlike a word, a phraseological unit can be divided into separately structured elements and transformed syntactically (On the instant he was thinking how natural and unaffected her manner was now that the ice between them had been broken. (Th. Dreiser, ‘An American Tragedy’). I... found this man in a kind of seizure, and went for help. This broke the ice between us, and we grew quite chatty, without either of us knowing the other's name. (H. Pollitt, ‘Serving My Time’).  Phraseological units are classified in accordance with several criteria.  In the classification proposed by acad. Vinogradov phraseological units are classified according to the semantic principle, and namely to the degree of motivation of meaning, i.e. the relationship between the meaning of the whole unit and the meaning of its components. Three groups are distinguished: phraseological fusions (сращения), phraseological unities (единства), phraseological combinations (сочетания).  1. Phraseological fusions are non-motivated. The meaning of the whole is not deduced from the meanings of the components: to kiss the hare’s foot (опаздывать), to kick the bucket (сыграть в ящик), the king’s picture (фальшивая монета) 2. Phraseological unities are motivated through the image expressed in the whole construction, the metaphores on which they are based are transparent: to turn over a new leaf, to dance on a tight rope. 3. Phraseological combinations are motivated; one of their components is used in its direct meaning while the other can be used figuratively: bosom friend, to get in touch with. ^ Prof. Smirnitsky classifies phraseological units according to the functional principle. Two groups are distinguished: phraseological units and idioms.  Phraseological units are neutral, non-metaphorical when compared to idioms: get up, fall asleep, to take to drinking. Idioms are metaphoric, stylistically coloured: to take the bull by the horns, to beat about the bush, to bark up the wrong tree. Structurally prof. Smirnitsky distinguishes one-summit (one-member) and many-summit (two-member, three-member, etc.) phraseological units, depending on the number of notional words: against the grain (не по душе), to carry the day (выйти победителем), to have all one’s eggs in one basket. Prof. Amosova classifies phraseological units according to the type of context. Phraseological units are marked by fixed (permanent) context, which can’t be changed: French leave (but not Spanish or Russian). Two groups are singled out: phrasemes and idioms. 1. Prasemes consist of two components one of which is praseologically bound, the second serves as the determining context: green eye (ревнивый взгляд), green hand (неопытный работник), green years (юные годы), green wound (незажившая рана), etc.  2. Idioms are characterized by idiomaticity: their meaning is created by the whole group and is not a mere combination of the meanings of its components: red tape (бюрократическая волокита), mare’s nest (нонсенс), to pin one’s heart on one’s sleeve (не скрывать своих чувств). ^ Prof. Koonin’s classification is based on the function of the phraseological unit in communication. Phraseological units are classified into: nominative, nominative-communicative, interjectional, communicative. 1. Nominative phraseological units are units denoting objects, phe

50.Free word combinations vs. phraseological word combinations

Free word combinations vs. phraseological word combinations. Phraseological units occupy an intermediate position between free word combinations and compound words. On the one hand, they are combinations of words and lack external inseparability. On the other hand, they are semantically integral and function as words. A free word combination does not exist in language as a ready-made unit: it is created in the process of speech, a big house (adj. + noun), to read books (verb + noun), on the table (prep. + noun), etc. Its meaning is derived from the meanings of words that make it up. In speech language-units are combined according to the structural patterns of the English language. The freedom we speak of is the freedom or choice of the lexical units to fit into a given structural pattern. We can say big house or small house or big man or big bag etc. The freedom here is relative depending upon logical factors (to read apples is illogical, a laughing triangle does not make sense logically, etc.) and linguistic factors (traditionally we say to do one's job and not to make one's job; grammatically adverbs do not combine with nouns or numerals with prepositions; stylistscally some words are incompatible). A compound word is grammatically and semantically inseparable and exists in the language as a ready-made unit reproducible in speech (unless it is a «potential» word). A phraseological unit is also reproduced in speech as a ready-made unit. There is no freedom in the choice of the component lexical units. Its meaning may be described as idiomatic because the meaning of the whole is not equal to the sum of the meanings of words which compose it. A phraseological unit functions as a single syntactic unit irrespective of the number of words of which it consists (e.g. to take in, to make up, to go to bed, are verb-equivalents and have the syntactical functions of verbs; best man, first night, red tape, black ball are noun-equivalents and have the syntactical functions of nouns).Set expressions have sometimes been called «word equivalents», and it has been postulated by A.I. Smirnitsky that the vocabulary of a language consists of words and word equivalents (word-groups), similar to words in so far as they are not created in speech but introduced into the act of communication ready-made. Thus, phraseological units are word-equivalents and as such are part of the vocabulary of the English language. The boundaries between free combinations of words and phraseological units are not always clearly marked. Phaseological units are primarily characterized by the contradiction which exists between the semantic integrity of the whole and the formal independence of its parts. But this independence is formal because, owing to the loss of its semantic independence, an element of a phraseological unit cannot be regarded as a word of full value, of full standard nature. The phraseological unit is a word-equivalent, its components may be regarded as morpheme equivalents. To sum up, there are free combinations of words, compound words and word-equivalents (phraseological units) which occupy an intermediate position. Word-equivalents are distinguished from free combinations of words by their semantic isolation. It follows, from this semantic isolation that the meaning of the whole dominates over and suppresses the meanings of the components of this word equivalent. Thus we may say that although a word-equivalent retains formal identity with the syntactic pattern of a free combination of words it is semantically isolated and idiomatic. Word-equivalents are distinguished from compound words by their formal structure which does not differ from free combinations and by their idiomatic character. The majority of compound words are not idiomatic. Their main characteristic feature lies in their inseparability or structural cohesion, idiomatic character being a complementary feature. In contrast to compound nouns the idiomatic character of phraseological units is their chief distinguishing feature.

51.Problem of definition of phraseological units. Specialists in phraseology deal with a number of problems. Such specialists determine the extent to which phraseological units may be reduced to systems, and to this end they study the markers of phraseological units. They describe the synonymity, antonymity, polysemy, homonymy, and variants of phraseological units, and they determine the specific features of words and word meanings in phraseological units. Specialists in phraseology also define the correlation of phraseological units with parts of speech, determine the syntactic role of phraseological units, and study the formation of new word meanings in relation to phraseological context. Some linguists affirm the existence of a distinctive phraseological level in language and concern themselves solely with analyzing systemic interrelationships among phraseological units. Other linguists examine phraseological units in their relationship with the entire lexical and semantic system of a language, with syntax, and with word formation. Specialists in phraseology also study the stylistic differences among phraseological units.Various methods have been developed for the study of phraseological units. The synchronic classification method predominates in structural and semantic description. When emphasis is placed on the individual word components of phraseological units, research into the capacity of word components to form phrases predominates, as does a dynamic approach to the description of the structure of phraseological units. Other methods of classifying phraseological units correlate the structural elements of such units with free word groups. The techniques of distributional analysis are used to describe the interrelationships among the structural elements of phraseological units as well as the features of the units’ external environment. The study of phraseology became a separate discipline in Soviet linguistics in the 1940’s and 1950’s owing to the work of V. V. Vinogradov and his school. Earlier studies in phraseology had been made by A. A. Potebnia, I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, A. A. Shakhmatov, K. Brugmann, H. Paul, and O. Jesperson. These linguists had isolated closely related word groups in speech that were syntactically indivisible and that could not be semantically systematized. The theoretical foundations for the functional and semantic analysis of phraseological units within the framework of lexicology were laid by C. Bally. The development of phraseology as a separate discipline was stimulated by Soviet research on lexical and semantic variation and its phraseological manifestations, as well as by an interpretation of the word group as a syntactic category equivalent in terms of nominative function to the word. This interpretation led to the study of fixed word groups as the structural foundations of the sentence. Soviet linguists analyze the phraseological composition of languages with different structures, and primarily the national languages of the USSR. They use methods developed by different trends and schools in their study of phraseology. A center of phraseological studies founded at the University of Samarkand coordinates Soviet research on phraseology and publishes collections of studies on phraseology.

52.Phraseological units. Characteristic features 1. The common features of the phraseological units The phraseological unit, according to the modern definition is – stable traditionally repeating word combination.According to the modern lexicology phraseological units are subdivided into three groups: Any language has a definite number of the «unfree word combinations» which are equal neither to a word nor to a free word combination. The difference between the phraseological unit and the free word combination is in the following: the meaning of the free word combination can be discovered from the meaning of each separate component. But the meaning of the phraseological unit cannot be discovered from the meaning of its components mostly, because the phraseological unit had come through the “semantical simplicity” process. During the historical process the words meaning limiting of the phraseological unit components had place. Very often the meaning of the phraseological unit was forcibly changed totally. So the difference between the phraseological unit and the single word is that the word often consists of the only one element, and the phraseological unit has at last two elements mainly. Each word has its direct lexical meaning and the phraseological unit often has absolutely different meaning from those of its components. 2. Specifications of the phraseological unit The considerable part the phraseological units is based on the stylistic devices as follow: and consider to be stylistically marked expression: Specific features of the phraseological units The semantical feature of the phraseological unit which is concluded in impossibility to discover the meaning of a phraseological unit from its components meanings: The phraseological units and the free word combinations meaning cannot often be defined without the context.

53.Different approaches to the classification of phraseological units: semantic, functional, and contextual.

There are many terms for phraseological units, but the best one is “set expressions”, for it accentuates the specific qualities of phraseological units: stability, idiomaticity, integrity, syntactic indivisibility. The central problem is the criteria of distinguishing them from free word groups. Shakhmatov and Fortunatov singled out the following criteria: stability, idiomaticity, function and context. Criterion of stability means that the components of phraseological units follow each other in the definite constant order, there can be no substitution for them. This view point has been criticized, since many phraseological units lack absolute stability and admit variations. Criterion of idiomaticity is based on the lack of motivation. Vinogradov singled out the degrees of idiomaticity: a phraseological unit is based on a phraseological fusion, which is non-motivated at all, i.g. to kick the bucket. Free word groups can be perceived through the metaphorical or metonymical meaning, i.g. to wash one’s dirty linen in public. Phraseological collocations are stable set word groups which still have a clear motivation but strictly limited vocabulary, i.g. to shrug one’s shoulder. This view point has been criticized, for there is no distinct boarder line between phraseological units and word groups on one hand and word groups and phraseological collocations – on the other. Criterion of function presupposes that phraseological units are grammatically and stylistically inseparable, in a sentence they behave like a single syntactic form, i.g. He wrote it in a long run. This view point has been criticized, as the same phraseological units may be inseparable in 1 type of syntactic context, but quite separable in another, i.g. take care - care was taken. According to the criterion of context phraseological units have a fixed meaning (unlike free word groups). Амосова subdivided them into phraseological units and phraseological idioms. Phraseological units are 2 member groups in which 1 of the members has a specific meaning dependent on the 2nd member (small hours = early). Idioms are characterized by idiomaticity of the whole group (red tape). Amosova’s view point has been criticized, for non-variability of context doesn’t necessarily imply a specific meaning of the component. Some word groups aren’t stable, although they have various degree of idiomaticity. Then, there were we many classifications before Kunin’s. Smith and Ball based their classification on rhyme, alliteration and contrast. Fortunatov and Shakhmatov paid much attention to the syntactic analysis of phraseological units. Their classification is known as structural. There has existed a diachronic classification by Larin, which reflects 3 stages a unit passes on the way of becoming a phraseological one: 1) a free word - group, 2) metaphraseologicalorical unit, 3) an idiom. Some phraseological units had been built spontaneously (they have never been free word groups). Vinogradov’s classification is synchronic. It is based on the motivation of the unit, i.e. the relationship between the meaning of the whole and the meaning of its component parts. The degree of motivation is correlated with the rigidity, indivisibility and semantic unity of the expressions. It suggests 3 types of phraseological units: phraseological fusions, phraseological units, phraseological combinations. Smirnitskii constructed a classification which is reversed in comparison with Vinagradov’s one: 1) traditional phraseological units, 2 phraseological combination with the faded phraseological units (i.g. to fall in love). 3 idioms which have no motivation (i.g. as dead as a doornail). Kunin has many classifications, the main is based upon the combination of functional, semantic features: 1) nominative phraseological units, 2) communicative phraseological units (proverbs and sayings), 3) phraseological units with combined function (interjectional phraseological units, modal phraseological units

54.V.V. Vinogradov’s classification of phraseological units

There are three classification principles of phraseological units. The most popular is the synchronic (semantic) classification of phraseological units by V.V. Vinogradov. He developed some points first advanced by the Swiss linguist Charles Bally and gave a strong impetus to a purely lexicological treatment of the material. It means that phraseological units were defined as lexical complexes with specific semantic features and classified accordingly. His classification is based upon the motivation of the unit that is the relationship between the meaning of the whole and the meanings of its component parts. The degree of motivation is correlated with the rigidity, indivisibility and semantic unity of the expression that is with the possibility of changing the form or the order of components and of substituting the whole by a single word though not in all the cases. According to Vinogradov’s classification all phraseological units are divided into phraseological fusions, phraseological unities and phraseological combinations. Phraseological fusion is a semantically indivisible phraseological unit which meaning is never influenced by the meanings of its components [2; 244]. It means that phraseological fusions represent the highest stage of blending together. The meaning of components is completely absorbed by the meaning of the whole, by its expressiveness and emotional properties. Once in a blue moon – very seldom; To cry for the moon – to demand unreal; Under the rose – quietly. Sometimes phraseological fusions are called idioms under which linguists understand a complete loss of the inner form. To explain the meaning of idioms is a complicated etymological problem (tit to tat means “to revenge”, but no one can explain the meaning of the words tit and tat).

55.N.N. Amosova’s classification of phraseological units.

Prof. Amosova classifies phraseological units according to the type of context. Phraseological units are marked by fixed (permanent) context, which can’t be changed: French leave (but not Spanish or Russian). Two groups are singled out: phrasemes and idioms. 1. Prasemes consist of two components one of which is praseologically bound, the second serves as the determining context: green eye (ревнивый взгляд), green hand (неопытный работник), green years (юные годы), green wound (незажившая рана), etc.  2. Idioms are characterized by idiomaticity: their meaning is created by the whole group and is not a mere combination of the meanings of its components: red tape (бюрократическая волокита), mare’s nest (нонсенс), to pin one’s heart on one’s sleeve (не скрывать своих чувств).

56. .V. Coonin’s classification of phraseological units.

A.V. Koonin's classification is based on the functions the units fulfil in speech. They may be nominating (a bull in a china shop), interjectinal (a pretty kettle of fish), communicative (familiarity breeds contempt), or nominating-communicative (pull somebody's leg). Further classification into subclasses depends on whether the units are changeable or unchangeable, whether the meaning of the one element remains free, and, more generally, on the interdependence between the meaning of the elements and the meaning of the set expression.

Formal classification distinguishes set expressions that are nominal phrases: the root of the trouble; verbal phrases: put one's best foot forward; adjectival phrases: as good as gold; red as a cherry; adverbial phrases. from head to foot; prepositional phrases: in the course of; conjunctional phrases: as long as, on the other hand, interjectional phrases: Well, I never!

A stereotyped sentence also introduced into speech as a ready-made formula may be illustrated by Never say die! 'never give up hope', take your time 'do not hurry'.This classification takes into consideration not only the type of component parts but also the functioning of the whole, thus, tooth and nail is not a nominal but an adverbial unit, because it serves to modify a verb (e. g. fight tooth and nail)

Within each of these classes a further subdivision is as follows:

a) Set expressions functioning like nouns:

N+N: maiden name 'the surname of a woman before she was married'; brains trust 'a committee of experts'

N's+N: cat's paw 'one who is used for the convenience of a cleverer and stronger person' (the expression comes from a fable in which a monkey wanting to eat some chestnuts that were on a hot stove, but not wishing to burn himself while getting them, seised a cat and holding its paw in his own used it to knock the chestnuts to the ground)

Ns'+N: ladies' man 'one who makes special effort to charm or please women'.

N+prp+N: the arm of the law, skeleton in the cupboard. N+A: blight errant (the phrase is today applied to any chivalrous man ready to help and protect oppressed and helpless people). N+and+N: lord and master 'husband'; all the world and his wife. A+N: high tea 'an evening meal which combines meat or some similar extra dish with the usual tea'. N+ subordinate clause: ships that pass in the night 'chance acquaintances'.

b) Set expressions functioning like verbs: V+N: take advantage

V+and+V: pick and choose

V+(one's)+N+(prp): snap one's fingers at

V+one+N: give one the bird 'to fire sb'

V+subordinate clause: see how the land lies 'to discover the state of affairs'.

c) Set expressions functioning like adjectives: A+and+A: high and mighty

(as)+A+as+N: as old as the hills, as mad as a hatter

d) Set expressions functioning like adverbs: N+N: tooth and nail

prp+N: by heart, of course adv+prp+N: once in a blue moon prp+N+or+N: by hook or by crook cj+clause: before one can say Jack Robinson

5. Set expressions functioning like prepositions: prp+N+prp: in consequence of

5. Set expressions functioning like interjections:

These are often structured as imperative sentences: Bless (one's) soul! God bless me! Hang it (all)!

4. Phraseological stability is based upon:

1. the stability of use;

2. the stability of meaning;

3. lexical stability;

4. syntactic stability;

5. rhythmic characteristics, rhyme and imagery.

57. Synonyms and antonyms in phraseology

Synonyms are words different in their sound-form but similar in their denotational meaning or meanings and interchangeable at least in some contexts.

Synonyms usually belong to the same part of speech.

According to semantic correlation (semantic identity) synonyms are classified into absolute and ideographic.

Absolute synomyms are rare. Their meaning is so fully identical that one can always be substituted for the other.

Fatherland — motherland — mother country

лінгвістика — мовознавство

Ideographic synonyms denote different shades of meaning or different degress of a given quality. They are neutral.

Beautiful — fine — handsome — pretty

border (any limit) — frontier (a state border)

to want — to desire

великий — величезний — гігантський — велетенський

хата — дім — будинок

Stylistic synonims — those which are used in different stylistic contexts. They differ not so much in meaning as in the emotional saturation and stylistic reference.

Father — parent — dad — daddy

побачення — кавалєрка

Mixed types of synonyms — they display differences in their denotational meaning denoting different shades of meaning and have different stylistic reference. They are ideographic-stylistic synonyms.

Woe -sorrow-grief

говорити — ректи — балакати — базікати

Phraseological synonyms differ in their lexical or syntactic combinability.

They can replace each other in some combinations but they are not interchangeable in others.

The word has two senses = the word has two meanings

but we cant say: he is a man of meaning.

Only: he is a man of sense.

When we deal with phraseological synonyms it is the «linguistic context» that predetermines the choice of a synonym.

ill — sick

ill — mean, foul.

Новий — сучасний

новий — незнайомий (інший, свіжий)

Pleonasm is characteristic for Ukrainian synonyms (the use of more words than necessary to express the given idea — багатослівність): шлях-дороженька, гуляти-бенкетувати.

Synonymic condensation is characteristic for English synonyms. (the use of words bearing on the same idea for the sake of empasis) : sick and tired, really and truly, well and good.

Antonyms are defined as words opposite in meaning. Linguistic context determines the selection of an antonym.

Тихий голос — гучний голос

тихий хід — швидкий хід

Semantic antonyms — words comprising different root-morphemes.

Derivational antonyms — words of the same root-morphemes,

The polarity of meanings in the sematics antonyms is expressed semantically. It is imlicit.

Even — odd, low — high, правда — берхня

In derivational antonyms the polarity of meanings is explicit. It is expressed by means of affixes having negative or opposite meaning.

In English: un (unpleasant), in (independent), ir (irregular), mis (misunderstand),

dis (dishonest), im (impossible), il (illegal), extra (extraordinary), less (useless)

In Ukrainian: не — без + the stem of the word

гарний — негарний

прибутковий — безприбутковий

а, анти

асиметрія, антивірус.

Polysemantic words may not only enter different antonymic pairs but also in some contexts may function both as synonyms and as antonyms.

Stand — lie, стояти — лежати (antonyms)

The village stand at the river Thames.

The village lies to the south of the river. (synonyms)

Antonyms proper (language antonyms) — they display opposite meanings even if taken in isolation.

Contextual antonyms (speech) antonyms — lose the polarity of meanings if they are taken outside a certain context.

Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care.

Не бійтесь заглядати у словник, це пишний яр, а не сумне провалля

58.Proverbs and sayings.

The place of proverbs, sayings and familiar quotations with respect to set expressions is a controversial issue. A proverb is a short familiar epigrammatic saying expressing popular wisdom, a truth or a moral lesson in a concise and imaginative way. Proverbs have much in common with set expressions, because their lexical components are also constant, their meaning is traditional and mostly figurative, and they are introduced into speech ready-made. Another reason why proverbs must be taken into consideration together with set expressions is that they often form the basis of set expressions. E. g. the last straw breaks the camel's back: :the last . straw; a drowning man will clutch at a straw::clutch at a straw; it is useless, to lock the stable door when the steed is stolen: :lock the stable door.

59.Familiar quotations.

As to familiar quotations, they are different from proverbs in their origin. They come from literature but by and by they become part of the language, so that many people using them do not even know that they are quoting, and very few could accurately name the play or passage on which they are drawing even when they are aware of using a quotation from W. Shakespeare.

The Shakespearian quotations have become and remain extremely numerous — they have contributed enormously to the store of the language. Very many come from "Hamlet", for example: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark; Brevity is the soul of wit; The rest is silence; Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio

Some quotations are so often used that they come to be considered cliches. The term is used to denote such phrases as have become hackneyed and stale. Being constantly and mechanically repeated they have lost their original expressiveness. The following are perhaps the most generally recognised: the acid test, ample opportunities, astronomical figures, the arms of Morpheus, to break the ice, the irony of fate, etc.

-taught to native speakers in school and to learners of English as a foreign language;

-a canon of literature and translations;

-prestigious within a country;

-only a minority of people within a country (e.g. radio newscasters, translators) use it. Most people speak a variety of regional English, or a mixture of standard and regional English.

60.Regional variants and dialects of Modern English.Standard English — the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognised as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialecticisms. Local dialeсts are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalised literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In Great Britain there are two variants, Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects.

One of the best known Southern dialects is Cockney, the regional dialect of London. According to E. Partridge and H.C. Wylde, this dialect exists on two levels. As spoken by the educated lower middle classes it is a regional dialect marked by some deviations in pronunciation but few in vocabulary and syntax. As spoken by the uneducated, Cockney differs from Standard English not only in pronunciation but also in vocabulary, morphology and syntax. G.B. Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” clearly renders this level of Cockney as spoken at the time when the play was written and reveals the handicap Cockney obviously presents in competition with speakers of standard English. Professor Henry Higgins, the main character of the play, speaking about Eliza Doolittie, the flower girl, says: You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass this girl off as a duchess ... even get her a place as lady’s maid or shop assistant which requires better English.

“The Encyclopaedia Britannica” treats Cockney as an accent, not acknowledging it the status of dialect.

Cockney has attracted much literary attention, and so we can judge of its past and present on the evidence of literature. As recorded by Ch. Dickens over a century ago, Cockney was phonetically characterised by the interchange of the labial and labio-dental consonants [w] and [v]: wery for very and vell for well. This trait was lost by the end of the 19th century. The voiceless and voiced dental spirants [θ] and [∂] are still replaced — though not very consistently — by [f] and [v] respectively: fing for thing and farver for father (inserting the letter r indicates vowel length). This variation is not exclusively characteristic of Cockney and may be found in several dialects. Another trait not limited to Cockney is the interchange of the aspirated and non-aspirated initial vowels: hart for art and ‘eart for heart. The most marked feature in vowel sounds is the substitution of the diphthong [ai] for standard [ei] in such words as day, face, rain, way pronounced: [dai], [fais], [rain], [wai].

There are some specifically Cockney words and set expressions such as up the pole ‘drunk’, you’ll get yourself disliked (a remonstrance to a person behaving very badly).

Cockney is lively and witty and its vocabulary imaginative and colourful. Its specific feature not occurring anywhere else is the so-called rhyming slang, in which some words are substituted by other words rhyming with them. Boots, for instance, are called daisy roots, hat is tit for tat, head is sarcastically called loaf of bread, and wife — trouble and strife. It has set expressions of its own. Here is an example of a rather crude euphemistic phrase for being dead: “She may have pulled me through me operation,” said Mrs Fisher, “but ‘streuth I’m not sure I wouldn’t be better off pushing up the daisies, after all.” (M. Dickens)

The study of dialects has been made on the basis of information obtained with the help of special techniques: interviews, questionnaires, recording by phonograph and tape-recorder, etc. Data collected in this way show the territorial distribution of certain key words and pronunciations which vary from region to region.

Dialects are now chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. Their boundaries have become less stable than they used to be; the distinctive features are tending to disappear with the shifting of population due to the migration of working-class families in search of employment and the growing influence of urban life over the countryside. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of Standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television and cinema.For the most part dialect in literature has been limited to speech characterisation of personages in books otherwise composed in Standard English. There are Yorkshire passages in “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë, and Lancashire passages in “Mary Barton” by E. Gaskell. A Southern dialect (that of Dorset) is sometimes introduced by Th. Hardy, A. Tennyson used Lancashire dialect in two of his poems reproducing peasant speech ("Northern Farmer: Old Style” and “Northern Farmer: New Style").

“The Northern Farmer: Old Style” is the monologue of a dying old man. He knows that his death is near and is resigned to it: “If I must die I must die.” He wants his nurse to bring him ale, although doctor has forbidden it. The last stanza runs as follows: “What atta stannin’ theer for, an’ doesn bring ma the yaäle? Doctor’s a ‘tattier, lass, an a’s hallus V the owd taäle; I weänt break rules for Doctor, a knows now moor nora floy, Git ma my yaäle I tell tha, an gin I тип doy I тип doy.” (Tennyson)

The dialect vocabulary is remarkable for its conservatism: many words that have become obsolete in standard English are still kept in dialects, e. g. to and ‘envy’ < OE andian; barge ‘pig’ < OE berg; bysen ‘blind’ < OE bisene and others.

According to O. Jespersen, however, dialect study suffered from too much attention being concentrated on the “archaic” traits. “Every survival of an old form, every trace of old sounds that have been dropped in standard speech, was greeted with enthusiasm, and the significance of these old characteristics greatly exaggerated, the general impression being that popular dialects were always much more conservative than the speech of educated people. It was reserved for a much later time to prove that this view is completely erroneous, and that popular dialects in spite of many archaic details are on the whole further developed than the various standard languages with their stronger tradition and literary reminiscences."¹

The standard work of reference in dialect study is Joseph Wright's “English Dialect Dictionary”.After this brief review of dialects we shall now proceed to the discussion of variants.

The Scottish Tongue and the Irish English have a special linguistic status as compared with dialects because of the literature composed in them. The name of Robert Burns, the great national poet of Scotland, is known all over the world. There is a whole group of modern poets including Hugh MacDiarmid writing in this variant of the English language

61.American English. Lexical, phonetic, grammatical, etymological and semantic particularities. Development trends The variety of English spoken in the USA has received the name of American English. The term variant or variety appears most appropriate for several reasons. American English cannot be called a dialect although it is a regional variety, because it has a literary normalised form called Standard American (or American National Standard), whereas by definition given above a dialect has no literary form. Neither is it a separate language, as some American authors, like H.L. Mencken, claimed, because it has neither grammar nor vocabulary of its own. From the lexical point of view we shall have to deal only with a heterogeneous set of Americanisms.

An Americanism may be defined as a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA. E. g. cookie ‘a biscuit’; frame-up ‘a staged or preconcerted law case’; guess ‘think’; mail ‘post’; store ‘shop’.A general and comprehensive description of the American variant is given in Professor A.D. Schweitzer’s monograph. An important aspect of his treatment is the distinction made between Americanisms belonging to the literary norm and those existing in low colloquial and slang. The difference between the American and British literary norm is not systematic.

The American variant of the English language differs from British English¹ in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary, and this paragraph will deal with the latter. Our treatment will be mainly diachronic.

Speaking about the historic causes of these deviations it is necessary to mention that American English is based on the language imported to the new continent at the time of the first settlements, that is on the English of the 17th century. The first colonies were founded in 1607, so that the first colonisers were contemporaries of W. Shakespeare, E. Spenser and J. Milton. Words which have died out in Britain, or changed their meaning may survive in the USA. Thus, I guess, was used by G. Chaucer for I think. For more than three centuries the American vocabulary developed more or less independently of the British stock and was influenced by the new surroundings. The early Americans had to coin words for the unfamiliar fauna and flora. Hence bullfrog ‘a large frog’, moose (the American elk), opossum, raccoon (an American animal related to the bears) for animals; and corn, hickory, etc. for plants.

The opposition of any two lexical systems among the variants described is of great linguistic and heuristic² value, because it furnishes ample data for observing the influence of extra-linguistic factors upon vocabulary. American political vocabulary shows this point very definitely: absentee voting ‘voting by mail’, dark horse ‘a candidate nominated unexpectedly and not known to his voters’, gerrymander ‘to arrange and falsify the electoral process to produce a favourable result in the interests of a particular party or candidate’, all-outer ‘an adept of decisive measures’.

Both in the USA and Great Britain the meaning of leftist is ‘an adherent of the left wing of a party’. In the USA it also means a left-handed person and lefty in the USA is only ‘a left-handed person’ while in Great Britain it is a colloquial variant of leftist and has a specific sense of a communist or socialist. Many of the foreign elements borrowed into American English from the Indian languages or from Spanish penetrated very soon not only into British English but also into several other languages, Russian not excluded, and so became international due to the popularity of J.F. Cooper and H. Longfellow. They are: canoe, moccasin, squaw, tomahawk, wigwam, etc. and translation loans: pipe of peace, pale-face and the like, taken from Indian languages. The Spanish borrowings like cafeteria, mustang, ranch, sombrero, etc. are very familiar to the speakers of many European languages. It is only by force of habit that linguists still include these words among the specific features of American English.

As to the toponyms, for instance Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Utah (all names of Indian tribes), or other names of towns, rivers and states named by Indian words, it must be borne in mind that in all countries of the world towns, rivers and the like show in their names traces of the earlier inhabitants of the land in question.

Another big group of peculiarities as compared with the English of Great Britain is caused by some specific features of pronunciation, stress or spelling standards, such as [æ] for [a:] in ask, dance, path, etc., or [e] for [ei] in made, day and some other.

The American spelling is in some respects simpler than its British counterpart, in other respects just different. The suffix -our is spelled -or, so that armor and humor are the American variants of armour and humour. Altho stands for although and thru for through. The table below illustrates some of the other differences but it is by no means exhaustive. For a more complete treatment the reader is referred to the monograph by A.D. Schweitzer.

British spelling American spelling

cosy cozy

offence offense

practice practise

jewellery jewelry

travelling traveling

thraldom thralldom

encase incase

In the course of time with the development of the modern means of communication the lexical differences between the two variants show a tendency to decrease. Americanisms penetrate into Standard English and Britishisms come to be widely used in American speech. Americanisms mentioned as specific in manuals issued a few decades ago are now used on both sides of the Atlantic or substituted by terms formerly considered as specifically British. It was, for instance, customary to contrast the English word autumn with the American fall. In reality both words are used in both countries, only autumn is somewhat more elevated, while in England the word fall is now rare in literary use, though found in some dialects and surviving in set expressions: spring and fait, the fall of the year are still in fairly common use.

Cinema and TV are probably the most important channels for the passage of Americanisms into the language of Britain and other languages as well: the Germans adopted the word teenager and the French speak of l’automatisation. The influence of American advertising is also a vehicle of Americanisms. This is how the British term wireless is replaced by the Americanism radio.

The personal visits of British writers and scholars to the USA and all forms of other personal contacts bring back Americanisms.

The existing cases of difference between the two variants are conveniently classified into:

1. Cases where there are no equivalents in British English: drive-in ‘a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car’ or ‘a shop where motorists buy things staying in the car’; dude ranch ‘a sham ranch used as a summer residence for holiday-makers from the cities’.

2. Cases where different words are used for the same denotatum, such as can, candy, mailbox, movies, suspenders, truck in the USA and tin, sweets, pillar-box (or letter-box), pictures or flicks, braces and lorry in England.

3. Cases where the semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement, for example, means in the first place ‘covering of the street or the floor and the like made of asphalt, stones or some other material’. In England the derived meaning is ‘the footway at the side of the road’. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means ‘the roadway’.

American slang uses alongside the traditional ones also a few specific models, such as verb stem+-er+adverb stem+-er, e. g. opener-upper ‘the first item on the programme’ and winder-upper ‘the last item’. It also possesses some specific affixes and semi-affixes not used in literary colloquial: -o, -eroo, -aroo, -sie, -sy, as in coppo ‘policeman’, fatso ‘a fat man’, bossaroo ‘boss’, chapsie ‘fellow’.

The trend to shorten words and to use initial abbreviations in American English is even more pronounced than in the British variant. New coinages are incessantly introduced in advertisements, in the press, in everyday conversation; soon they fade out and are replaced by the newest creations. Ring Lardner, very popular in the 30s, makes one of his characters, a hospital nurse, repeatedly use two enigmatic abbreviations: G.F. and B.F.; at last the patient asks her to clear the mystery.

“What about Roy Stewart?” asked the man in bed.

“Oh, he’s the fella I was telling you about,” said Miss Lyons. “He’s my G.F.’s B.F.”

“Maybe I’m a D.F. not to know, but would you tell me what a B.F. and G.F. are?”

“Well, you are dumb, aren’t you!” said Miss Lyons. “A G.F. that’s a girl friend, and a B.F. is a boy friend. I thought everybody knew that.”

62. Australian, Canadian, Indian, New Zealand variants of the English language. It should of course be noted that American English is not the only existing variant. There are several other variants where difference from the British standard is normalised. Besides the Irish and Scottish variants that have been mentioned in the preceding paragraph, there are Australian English, Canadian English, Indian English. Each of these has developed a literature of its own, and is characterised by peculiarities in phonetics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.

Canadian English is influenced both by British and American English but it also has some specific features of its own. Specifically Canadian words are called Canadianisms. They are not very frequent outside Canada, except shack ‘a hut’ and fathom out ‘to explain’.

The vocabulary of all the variants is characterised by a high percentage of borrowings from the language of the people who inhabited the land before the English colonisers came. Many of them denote some specific realia of the new country: local animals, plants or weather conditions, new social relations, new trades and conditions of labour. The local words for new notions penetrate into the English language and later on may become international, if they are of sufficient interest and importance for people speaking other languages.

International words coming through the English of India are for instance: bungalow n, jute n, khaki a, mango n, nabob n, pyjamas, sahib, sari.

Similar examples, though perhaps fewer in number, such as boomerang, dingo, kangaroo, are all adopted into the English language through its Australian variant and became international. They denote the new phenomena found by English immigrants on the new continent. A high percentage of words borrowed from the native inhabitants of Australia will be noticed in the sonorous Australian place names. ¹

It has been noticed by a number of linguists that the British attitude to this phenomenon is somewhat peculiar. When anyone other than an Englishman uses English, the natives of Great Britain, often half-consciously, perhaps, feel that they have a special right to criticise his usage because it is “their” language. It is, however, unreasonable with respect to people in the United States, Canada, Australia and some other areas for whom English is their mother tongue. At present there is no single “correct” English and the American, Canadian and Australian English have developed standards of their own. It would therefore have been impossible to attempt a lexicological description of all the variants simultaneously: the aim of this book was to describe mainly the vocabulary of British English, as it is the British variant that is received and studied in Soviet schools.

63.Pidgin and creole languagesA pidgin is a restricted language which arises for the purposes of communication between two social groups of which one is in a more dominant position than the other. The less dominant group is the one which develops the pidgin. Historically, pidgins arose in colonial situations where the representatives of the particular colonial power, officials, tradesmen, sailors, etc., came in contact with natives. The latter developed a jargon when communicating with the former. This resulted in a language on the basis of the colonial language in question and the language or languages of the natives. Such a language was restricted in its range as it served a definite purpose, namely basic communication with the colonists. In the course of several generations such a reduced form of language can become more complex, especially if it develops into the mother tongue of a group of speakers. This latter stage is that of creolisation. Creoles are much expanded versions of pidgins and have arisen in situations in which there was a break in the natural linguistic continuity of a community, for instance on slave planatations in their early years.

The interest of linguists in these languages has increased greatly in the last few decades. The main reason for this is that pidgins and creoles are young languages. In retracing their development it may be possible to see how new languages can arise. Furthermore, the large number of shared features among widely dispersed pidgins and creoles leads to the conclusion that creoles at least show characteristics which are typical of language in the most general sense, the features of older languages, such as complex morphology or intricate phonology, arising due to the action of various forces over a long period of time after the birth of these languages. In type, creoles are all analytic and generally lack complexity in their sound systems.

64. Dictionary and its main types. Glossary, concordance, thesaurus, monolingual, bilingual and polyglot dictionariesLexicography, that is the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries, is an important branch of applied linguistics. The fundamental paper in lexicographic theory was written by L.V. Shcherba as far back as 1940. A complete bibliography of the subject may be found in L.P. Stupin’s works. Lexicography has a common object of study with lexicology, both describe the vocabulary of a language. The essential difference between the two lies in the degree of systematisation and completeness each of them is able to achieve. Lexicology aims at systematisation revealing characteristic features of words. It cannot, however, claim any completeness as regards the units themselves, because the number of these units being very great, systematisation and completeness could not be achieved simultaneously. The province of lexicography, on the other hand, is the semantic, formal, and functional description of all individual words. Dictionaries aim at a more or less complete description, but in so doing cannot attain systematic treatment, so that every dictionary entry presents, as it were, an independent problem. Lexicologists sort and present their material in a sequence depending upon their views concerning the vocabulary system, whereas lexicographers have to arrange it most often according to a purely external characteristic, namely alphabetically.

It goes without saying that neither of these branches of linguistics could develop successfully without the other, their relationship being essentially that of theory and practice dealing with the same objects of reality. The term dictionary is used to denote a book listing words of a language with their meanings and often with data regarding pronunciation, usage and/or origin. There are also dictionaries that concentrate their attention upon only one of these aspects: pronouncing (phonetical) dictionaries (by Daniel Jones) and etymological dictionaries (by Walter Skeat, by Erik Partridge, “The Oxford English Dictionary").

For dictionaries in which the words and their definitions belong to the same language the term unilingual or explanatory is used, whereas bilingual or translation dictionaries are those that explain words by giving their equivalents in another language.¹ Multilingual or polyglot dictionaries are not numerous, they serve chiefly the purpose of comparing synonyms and terminology in various languages. ¹

Unilingual dictionaries are further subdivided with regard to the time. Diachronic dictionaries, of which “The Oxford English Dictionary” is the main example, reflect the development of the English vocabulary by recording the history of form and meaning for every word registered. They may be contrasted to synchronic or descriptive dictionaries of current English concerned with present-day meaning and usage of words. ² The boundary between the two is, however, not very rigid: that is to say, few dictionaries are consistently synchronic, chiefly, perhaps, because their methodology is not developed as yet, so that in many cases the two principles are blended. ³ Some synchronic dictionaries are at the same time historical when they represent the state of vocabulary at some past stage of its development. ⁴

Both bilingual and unilingual dictionaries can be general and special. General dictionaries represent the vocabulary as a whole with a degree of completeness depending upon the scope and bulk of the book in question. The group includes the thirteen volumes of “The Oxford English Dictionary” alongside with any miniature pocket dictionary. Some general dictionaries may have very specific aims and still be considered general due to their coverage. They include, for instance, frequency dictionaries, i.e. lists of words, each of which is followed by a record of its frequency of occurrence in one or several sets of reading matter. ⁵ A rhyming dictionary is also a general dictionary, though arranged in inverse order, and so is a thesaurus in spite of its unusual arrangement. General dictionaries are contrasted to special dictionaries whose stated aim is to cover only a certain specific part of the vocabulary.

Special dictionaries may be further subdivided depending on whether the words are chosen according to the sphere of human activity in which they are used (technical dictionaries), the type of the units themselves (e. g. phraseological dictionaries) or the relationships existing between them (e. g. dictionaries of synonyms).

The first subgroup embraces highly specialised dictionaries of limited scope which may appeal to a particular kind of reader. They register and explain technical terms for various branches of knowledge, art and trade: linguistic, medical, technical, economical terms, etc. Unilingual books of this type giving definitions of terms are called glossaries. They are often prepared by boards or commissions specially appointed for the task of improving technical terminology and nomenclature.

The second subgroup deals with specific language units, i.e. with phraseology, abbreviations, neologisms, borrowings, surnames, toponyms, proverbs and. sayings, etc.

The third subgroup contains a formidable array of synonymic dictionaries that have been mentioned in the chapter on synonyms. Dictionaries recording the complete vocabulary of some author are called concordances,¹ they should be distinguished from those that deal only with difficult words, i.e. glossaries. Taking up territorial considerations one comes across dialect dictionaries and dictionaries of Americanisms. The main types of dictionaries are classified in the accompanying table.

Finally, dictionaries may be classified into linguistic and non-linguistic. The latter are dictionaries giving information on all branches of knowledge, the encyclopaedias. They deal not with words, but with facts and concepts. The best known encyclopaedias of the English-speaking world are “The Encyclopaedia Britannica”¹ and “The Encyclopaedia Americana”.² There exist also biographical dictionaries and many minor encyclopaedias.

English lexicography is probably the richest in the world with respect to variety and scope of the dictionaries published. The demand for dictionaries is very great. One of the duties of school teachers of native language is to instil in their pupils the “dictionary habit”. Boys and girls are required by their teachers to obtain a dictionary and regularly consult it. There is a great variety of unilingual dictionaries for children. They help children to learn the meaning, spelling and pronunciation of words. An interesting example is the Thorndike dictionary.³ Its basic principle is that the words and meanings included should be only those which schoolchildren are likely to hear or to encounter in reading. The selection of words is therefore determined statistically by counts of the actual occurrence of words in reading matter of importance to boys and girls between 10 and 15. Definitions are also made specially to meet the needs of readers of that age, and this accounts for the ample use of illustrative sentences and pictures as well as for the encyclopaedic bias of the book.

A dictionary is the most widely used reference book in English homes and business offices. Correct pronunciation and correct spelling are of great social importance, because they are necessary for efficient communication.

A bilingual dictionary is useful to several kinds of people: to those who study foreign languages, to specialists reading foreign literature, to translators, to travellers, and to linguists. It may have two principal purposes: reference for translation and guidance for expression. It must provide an adequate translation in the target language of every word and expression in the source language. It is also supposed to contain all the inflectional, derivational, semantic and syntactic information that its reader might ever need, and also information on spelling and pronunciation. Data on the levels of usage are also considered necessary, including special warnings about the word being rare or poetical or slangy and unfit to be used in the presence of “one’s betters”. The number of special bilingual dictionaries for various branches of knowledge and engineering is ever increasing. A completely new type are the machine translation dictionaries which present their own specific problems, naturally differing from those presented by bilingual dictionaries for human translation. It is highly probable, however, that their development will eventually lead to improving dictionaries for general use.

The entries of a dictionary are usually arranged in alphabetical order, except that derivatives and compounds are given under the same head-word. In the ideographic dictionaries the main body is arranged according to a logical classification of notions expressed.¹ But dictionaries of this type always have an alphabetical index attached to facilitate the search for the necessary word.²

The ideographic type of dictionary is in a way the converse of the usual type: the purpose of the latter is to explain the meaning when the word is given. The Thesaurus, on the contrary, supplies the word or words by which a given idea may be expressed. Sometimes the grouping is in parallel columns with the opposite notions. The book is meant only for readers (either native or foreign) having a good knowledge of English, and enables them to pick up an adequate expression and avoid overuse of the same words. The Latin word thesaurus means ‘treasury’. P. Roget’s book gave the word a new figurative meaning, namely, ‘a store of knowledge’, and hence ‘a dictionary containing all the words of a language’. A consistent classification of notions presents almost insuperable difficulties. Only relatively few “semantic fields", such as kinship terms, colour terms, names for parts of human body and some others fit into a neat scheme. For the most part, however, there is no one-to-one correlation between notions and words, and the classification of notions, even if it were feasible, is a very poor help for classification of meanings and their systematic presentation. The system of meanings stands in a very complex relationship to the system of notions because of the polysemantic character of most words. The semantic structure of words and the semantic system of vocabulary depend on many linguistic, historical and cultural factors.