2. Neutral, common literary and common colloquial vocabulary

Neutral words, which form the bulk of the English vocab­ulary, are used in both literary and colloquial language. Neutral words are the main source of synonymy and polysemy. It is the neutral stock of words that is so prolific in the production of new meanings.

Common literary words are chiefly used in writing and in polished speech. One can always tell a literary word from a colloquial word. The reason for this lies in certain objective features of the literary layer of words. What these objective features are, is difficult to say be­cause as yet no objective criteria have been worked out. But one of them undoubtedly is that literary units stand in opposition to colloquial units. This is especially apparent when pairs of synonyms, literary and colloquial, can be formed which stand in contrasting relation.

Both literary and colloquial words have their upper and lower ranges. The lower range of literary words approaches the neutral layer and has a markedly obvious tendency to pass into that layer. The same may be said of the upper range of the colloquial layer: it can very easily pass into the neutral layer. The lines of demarcation between common colloquial and neutral, on the one hand, and common literary and neutral, on the other, are blurred. It is here that the process of inter-penetration of the stylistic strata becomes most apparent.

3. Special literary vocabulary

a) Terms

One of the most characte­ristic features of a term is its direct relevance to the system or set of terms used in a particular science, discipline or art, i.e. to its nomenclature.

When a term is used our mind immediately associates it with a cer­tain nomenclature. A term is directly connected with the concept it de­notes. A term, unlike other words, directs the mind to the essential quality of the thing, phenomenon or action as seen by the scientist in the light of his own conceptualization.

Terms are mostly and predominantly used in special works dealing with the notions of some branch of science. Therefore it may be said that they belong to the style of language of science. But their use is not con­fined to this style. They may as well appear in other styles—in newspa­per style, in publicistic and practically in all other existing styles of language. But their function in this case changes. They do not always fulfil their basic function, that of bearing exact reference to a given con­cept. When used in the belles-lettres style, for instance, a term may acquire a stylistic function and consequently become a (sporadical) SD. This happens when a term is used in such a way that two meanings are materialized simultaneously.

The function of terms, if encountered in other styles, is either to indi­cate the technical peculiarities of the subject dealt with, or to make some reference to the occupation of a character whose language would naturally contain special words and expressions.

There is an interesting process going on in the development of any language. With the increase of general education and the expansion of technique to satisfy the ever-growing needs and desires of mankind, many words that were once terms have gradually lost their quality as terms and have passed into the common literary or even neutral vocabulary. This process may be called "de-terminization". Such words as 'radio', 'television' and the like have long been in-common use and their termi­nological character is no longer evident.

b) Poetic and Highly Literary Words

Poetic words form a rather insignificant layer of the special literary vocabulary. They are mostly archaic or very rarely used highly literary words which aim at producing an elevated effect. They have a marked tendency to detach themselves from the common literary word-stock and gradually assume the quality of terms denoting certain definite notions and calling forth poetic diction.

Poetic words and expressions are called upon to sustain the special elevated atmosphere of poetry. This may be said to be the main function of poetic words.

Poetical tradition has kept alive such archaic words and forms as yclept (p. p. of the old verb clipian—to call, name); quoth (p. t. of owed-an — to speak); eftsoons (eftsona,— again, soon after), which are used even by modern ballad-mongers.

Poetical words and word-combinations can be likened to terms in that they do not easily yield to polysemy. They are said to evoke emotive meanings

c) Archaic, Obsolescent and Obsolete Words

The word-stock of a language is in an increasing state of change. Words change their meaning and sometimes drop out of the language altogether. New words spring up and replace the old ones. Some words stay in the language a very long time and do not lose their faculty of gaining new meanings and becoming richer and richer polysemantically. Other words live but a short time and are like bubbles on the surface of water — they disappear leaving no trace of their existence.

In registering these processes the role of dictionaries can hardly be over-estimated. Dictionaries serve to retain this or that word in a lan­guage either as a relic of ancient times, where it lived and circulated, or as a still living unit of the system, though it may have lost some of its meanings. They may also preserve certain nonce-creations which were never intended for general use.We shall distinguish three stages in the aging process of words:

The beginning of the aging process when the word becomes rarely used. Such words are called obsolescent, i.e. they are in the stage of gradually passing out of general use. To this category first of all belong morphological forms .belonging to the earlier stages in the development of the language. In the English language these are the pronouns thou and its forms thee, thy and thine; the corresponding verbal ending -est and the verb-forms art, wilt (thou makest, thou wilt); the ending -(e)th instead of -(e)s (he maketh) and the pronoun ye.

To the category of obsolescent words belong many French borrow­ings which have been kept in the literary language as a means of pre­serving the spirit of earlier periods, e. g. a pallet (=a straw mattress); a palfrey (=a small horse); garniture (^furniture); to emplume (^to adorn with feathers or plumes). - „

The second group of archaic words are those that have already gone completely out of use but are still recognized by the English-speaking community: e. g. methinks (=it seems to me); nay (=no). These words are called obsolete.

The third group, which may be called archaic proper, are words which are no longer recognizable in modern English, words that were in use in Old English and which have either dropped out of the language entirely or have changed in their appearance so much that they have become unrecognizable, e. g. troth (^faith); a losel (=a worthless, lazy fellow).

The border lines between the groups are not distinct. In fact they interpenetrate. It is specially difficult to distinguish between obsolete and obsolescent words. But the difference is important when we come to deal with the stylistic aspect of an utterance in which the given word serves a certain stylistic purpose. Obsolete and obsolescent words have separate functions, as we shall point out later.

There is still another class of words which is erroneously classed as archaic, viz. historical words. By-gone periods in the life of any society are marked by historical events, and by institutions, customs, mater­ial objects, etc. which are no longer in use, for example: Thane, yeoman, goblet, baldric, mace. Words of this type never disappear from the lan­guage. They are historical terms and remain as terms referring to definite stages in the development of society and cannot therefore be dispensed with, though the things and phenomena to which they refer have long -passed into oblivion. Historical words have no synonyms, whereas archaic words have been replaced by modern synonyms.

Archaic words are primarily and predominantly used in the creation of a realistic background to historical novels.

d) Barbarisms and Foreignisms

In the vocabulary of the English language there is a considerable layer of words called barbarisms. These are words of foreign origin which have not entirely been assimilated into the English lan­guage. They bear the appearance of a’ borrowing and are felt as some­thing alien to the native tongue. The role foreign borrowings played in the development of the English literary language is well known, and the great majority of these borrowed words now form part of the rank and file of the English vocabulary. It is the science of linguistics, in particular its branch etymology, that reveals the foreign nature of this or that word. But most of what were formerly foreign borrowings are now, from a purely stylistic position, not regarded as foreign.

But still there are some words which retain their foreign appearance to a greater or lesser degree. These words, which are called barbarisms, are, like archaisms*, also considered to be on the outskirts of the lit­erary language. *

Most of them have corresponding English synonyms; e. g. chic (=stylish); bon mot (=a clever witty saying); en passant (— in passing); infinitum (= to infinity) and many other words and phrases.

It is very important for purely stylistic purposes to distinguish between barbarisms and foreign words proper. Barbarisms are words which have already become facts of the English language. They are, as it were, part and parcel of the English word-stock, though they remain on the outskirts of the literary vocabulary. Foreign words, though used for certain stylistic purposes, do not belong to the English vocabulary. They are not registered by English dictionaries, except in a kind of ad­denda which gives the meanings of the foreign words most frequently used in literary English. Barbarisms are generally given in the body of the dictionary.

There are foreign words in the English vocabulary which fulfil a terminological function. Therefore, though they still retain their foreign appearance, they should not be regarded as barbarisms. Such words as ukase, udarnik, soviet, kolkhoz and the like denote certain concepts which reflect an objective reality not familiar to English-speaking communities. There are no names for them in English and so they have to be explained. New concepts of this type are generally given the names they have in the language of the people whose reality they reflect.

Further, such words as solo, tenor, concerto, blitzkrieg (the blitz), luftwaffe and the like should also be distinguished from barbarisms. They are different not only in their functions but in their nature as well; They are terms. Terminological borrowings have no synonyms; barbarisms, on the contrary, may have almost exact synonyms.

e) Literary Coinages (Including Nonce-Words)

There is a term in linguistics which by its very nature is ambiguous and that is the term neologism. In dictionaries it is generally defined as * a new word or a new meaning for an established word.! Every­thing in this definition is vague. How long should words or their mean­ings be regarded as new? Which words of those that appear as new in the language, say during the life-time of one generation, can be regarded as established? It is suggestive that the latest editions of certain diction­aries avoid the use of the stylistic notation "neologism" apparently because of its ambiguous character. If a word is fixed in a dictionary and provided that the dictionary is reliable, it ceases to be a neologism. If a new meaning is recognized as an element in the semantic structure of a lexical unit, it ceases to be new. However, if we wish to-divide the word-stock of a language into chronological periods, we can convention­ally mark off a period which might be called new.

The first type of newly coined words, i. e. those which designate new­born concepts, may be named terminological coinages. The second type, I. e. words coined because their creators seek expressive utte­rance may be named stylistic coinages.

New words are mainly coined according to the productive models for word-building in the given language. But the new words of the literary-bookish type we are dealing with in this chapter may sometimes be built with the help of affixes and by other means which have gone out of use or which are in the process of dying out. In this case the stylistic effect produced by the means of word-building chosen becomes more apparent, and the stylistic function of the device can be felt more acutely.