15. Abbreviation.

Shortening is a comparatively new way of word-building, which has achieved a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English.

Shortenings are produced in two different ways:

1. To make a new word from a syllable of the original word. The word may lose its beginning (phone – from telephone), it’s ending (hols – for holidays, ad – from advertisement) or both the beginning and the ending (fridge – from refrigerator).

2. To make a new word from the initial letters of a word group:

a) Acronyms (if the abbreviated written form tends to be read as an ordinary English word) - NATO — the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

b) Initial shortenings - abbreviation with the alphabetical reading retained. - B.B.C. (the British Broadcasting Corporation).

Another types:

1. Sound Imitation (onomatopoeia - [onemaete'pie]).

Such words are made by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, insects, human beings and inanimate objects. EX. The English cock cries cock-a-doodle-doo (Russian - ку-ка-ре-ку).

2. Reduplication. In reduplication new words are made by doubling a stem (bye-bye, ping-pong)

16. Phraseological units

Phraseological unit (set expression, idiom) – several words that tend to be used together, and we can’t guess the meaning of the whole phrase from the meanings of it’s parts.

Typology of ph.units (according to the degree of motivation):

- phraseological unities

- phraseological combinations

- phraseological fusions

Classification of idioms according to their structure: 1. Fixed idioms: a) fixed regular idioms (It’s a 60-thousand dollar question = difficult question), b) fixed irregular (can be varied on the grammatical level) – (to have a bee in one’s bonnet (She has.., I have...). 2. Variable (varied on the lexical level) – (Ex.: to add fuel to the fire/flame)

Semantic classification:

2 Criteria:

• The degree of semantic isolation

• The degree of disinformation

1. Nominative - A hard nut to crack, 2. Nominative –communicative (The ice is broken), 3. Interjectional & modal (Emotions, feelings) - Oh, my eye! (= Oh, my God!), 4. Communicative (proverbs, sayings) - There is no smoke without fire.

Sources of idioms:

1. from our everyday life - Ex.: to sail under false colour (прятать истинное лицо),

2. from the Bible - Ex.: black sheep, lost sheep (заблудшая овца)

3. World literature - Ex.: an ugly duckling (Danish) – гадкий утенок

4. different languages - Ex.: to lose face (Chinese)

5. from history - Ex.: to cross the Rubicon

17. Regional varieties of the English language. AmE vs BrE: Lexical / phraseological differences.

The Eng. language. exists in the form of its varieties. It is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and some part of Canada.

Standard English - the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the mass media and spoken by educated people. Modern linguistics distinguishes territorial variants of a national language and local dialects. Dialects are varieties of a language with some distinctive features of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, used in one area. EX. Cockney (the East End of London), Scouse (Liverpool).

Although BrE, AmE and AusE have practically the same grammar system, phonetic system and vocabulary, they cannot be regarded as different languages. Thus we must speak of three variants of the English national language having different accepted literary standards, one spoken in the British Isles, another spoken in the USA, the third in Australia. 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. So there are Australian English, Canadian English, Indian English, and each of these has developed a literature of its own, and is characterised by peculiarities in phonetics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.