Main types of English dictionaries.

analogy of racism and sexism, the term speciesism has been coined to highlight and protest against an

exploitative relationship between humankind and the other living creatures of this planet.

Synonymy of suffixes: -er and –eer , e.g. writer , sonneteer (derog.).

Origin: suffixes traced to words: -dom (fr. dōm 'judgement, sentence'), -hood (fr. hād ‘state’) -ly fr. lic -

'body', 'shape'; suffixes always known as derivational morphemes: -ness, –less, -ish.

native vs borrowed suffixes. –dom, -hood, -ship vs -able, -ible, -age.

List of terms:

coalescent suffix [‚kou’lesnt] – от coalescence ‘слияние, сращение’

appurtenance [ p :tin ns] принадлежность

Assignment for the seminar:

1. State the origin and explain the meaning of the suffixes in the following words: childhood, friendship,

hardship, freedom, manhood, brotherly, boredom, rider, granny, teacher, aunty, hatred, hindrance,

drunkard.

2. Translate the following words into English: липкий, сероватый, цветистый, обощать,

мобилизовать, организовать, бесполезный, могущественный, бессильный, дружеский,

бородатый, доступный, классический, читатель, поэтический, львица, чтение, бухгалтерия.

Compare Russian and English suffixes.

3. Find words denoting males corresponding to nouns in italics.

I have to say that you have a traitress in your camp (B.Sh.). She is not only a dancer, but a very effective

actress (Theatr. World). Adieu, tigress-heart! Sheperdess without affection (Murray). Mr Dombey and gis

conductress were soon heard coming downstairs again (Dick.)

4. Pick out words with suffixes. Comment on the meaning and function of suffixes in the following text:

The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust. Roland recognized the handwriting with

a shock of excitement. Roland compared Ash’s text the translation and copied parts onto an index card.

Roland meditated on the tiresome and bewitching endlessness of the quest for knowledge. Dear madam,

Since our pleasant and unexpected conversation I have thought of little else. Iss there any way it can be

resumed, more privately and at a more leisure? He had not told her, and could not tell her, about his

secret theft. What Roland liked was his knowledge of the movements of Aj’s mind, stalked through the

twists and turns of his synraz, suddenly sharp and clear in an unexpected manner. (A.S.Byatt.

Possession).

Literature: Readings... p. 125-132. Course... Ch. 6 (§ 8-13).

Lecture 9. CONVERSION

Examples:

a) Bring me some water, please. I must water the flowers before I leave.

b) I learned to swim when I was 6. Let’s go for a swim.

Definition.Conversion may be defined as the formation of a new word through changes in its paradigm.

E.g. to drink - a drink; drinks, etc.

Conversion can be described as

a)a morphological way of word-formation.

b)a non-affixal way of forming words.

c)derivation with a zero morpheme, cf.

(1)'action - doer of the action'

to walk - a walker

to tramp - a tramp

(2)

'action - result of the action'

to agree - agreement

to find - a find.

d)a morphological-syntactic word-building means

e) a kind of functional change.

Typical semantic relations.

a. Verbs converted from nouns.

(1) a typical agent - an action characteristic of this agent e.g. ape - to ape ; doctor - to doctor ; butcher - to

butcher; a nurse - to nurse.

(2) an object - an action typically performed with it fish - to fish ; coat 'a layer of paint' - to coat 'to put a

layer of paint on smth'; skin - to skin ; dust - to dust .

(3) an instrument - an action typically performed by means of it, e.g.: screw - to screw 'to fasten with a

screw'; whip - to whip 'to beat with a whip'; a saw - to saw.

b. Nouns converted from verbs (deverbal nouns).

1) an activity - an instance of this activity: to jump - a jump; to drink - a drink.

2)a localized activity - a locality: to drive (along the road) - a drive 'a path or road along which one drives';

to walk - a walk 'a place for walking'.

3) an action - its agent, e.g. to bore - a bore; to cheat - a cheat, etc.

4) an action affecting a physical object - its result: to find - a find; to peel - a peel.

The direction of conversion. Criteria

1. The relationship between the lexical meaning of a root-morpheme and the part-of-speech meaning of

the stem: a pen - to pen; father - to father; to answer - an answer.

2.a comparison of a conversion pair with an analogous word-pairs of the same synonymic set, e.g.: a chat

- to chat & converse - conversation; to show - a show & exhibit - exhibition.

3. The derivational criterion hand n - hand v - handful - handy - (left-)handed; float n - float v - floatable -

floater - floatation- floating

4. The criterion of semantic derivation (typical semantic relations within conversion pairs) a crowd - to

crowd; a pen - to pen.

5. The frequency criterion.

6.

The transformational criterion (the transformation of nominalisation): The committee elected John

- John's election by the committee; Robert loves painting - Robert's love of painting;

John visited his friend - John's visit of his friend.

She promised help - her promise of help.

I skinned the rabbit - *My skin of the rabbit;

She bossed the family - *Her boss of the family, etc.

Diachronic approach to conversion. Results of the disappearance of inflections: love n (OE lufu) - love

v (OE luvian); work (OE weork) - work v (OE wyrcan); answer (OE andswaru) - answer (OE andswarian).

mould n - mould v mouldable, moulding.

Productivity. To girl the boat; when his guest had been washed, brandied, etc.

Dubious cases. Present - to present (a change in stress position). Cf sing - song; a house - to house.

LECTURE 10. WORD COMPOSITION (Handout)

General definition. Compounds are made up of two immediate constituents b o th o f w h i c h a r e

d e r i v a t i o n a l b a s e s : week-end, office-management, postage-stamp, aircraft-carrier.The bases can be

of different degrees of complexity, cf : week+end, office + (manage+ment) vs polymorphic words of

secondary derivation: school-mastership = [school-master]+ship=([n+n]+ suff); ex-housewife =

(suf+[n+n]); to weekend = ([n+n]) + conversion).

Types. Compounds with a linking vowel: speedometer, Afro-Asian, tragicomic , cf Russ. пулемет,

пароход; with a linking consonant: sportsman, saleswoman. The additive type: rain-driven, house-dog,

(cf. dog-house), pot-pie (cf. pie-pot).

Criteria distinguishing compounds from word combinations (word groups):

a) Structure. A rigidly fixed order of the bases with the second base as the head: key-hole, borderline,

age-long, oil-rich.

b) A new stress pattern:a) 'keyhole, 'hothouse, 'honeymoon, 'doorway; b) 'blood-,vessel, 'washing-

ma,chine. Cf: a 'green-house vs a 'green 'house; a 'dancing-girl vs a 'dancing 'girl; a 'mad-doctor vs

a 'mad 'doctor. But:'arm-'chair, 'icy-'cold, 'grass-'green, etc. c) Spelling: solid or with a hyphen.But

man-of-war, daughter-in-law; I-know-what-you-are-going-to-say expression.

Meaning. Compound words are semantically motivated units, e.g. chess-board, key-board, schoolboard;

the meaning of bases is variable, cf.:foot-print, foot-pump, foothold, foot-bath, foot-wear; footnote, foot-

lights, foot-stone; foot-high, foot-wide. The lexical meanings of bases are fused together and form a new

semantic unit,e.g. a hand-bag 'a woman's bag'; a trouser-suit 'a woman's suit'; wheel-chair 'a chair for

invalids'; a push-chair 'a chair for babies', etc.

The meaning of the pattern. Cf. life-boat and boat-life a fruit-market and market-fruit. The derivational

pattern in the compounds may be monosemantic and polysemantic. Cf. n+n=N bookshelf , needle-fish;

steamboat, windmill, sunrise, dogbite, toy-man

The degree of motivation varies. Completely-motivated compounds sky-blue, foot-pump, tea-taster.

Partially motivated: hand-bag, a flower-bed, handcuffs, a castle-builder. Completely unmotivated

compounds: eye-wash, fiddlesticks, an eye-servant, a night-cap. a slow -coach 'a person who acts

slowly'; a sweet-tooth.

Polysemy: nightcap 1. 'a cap worn in bed at night'; 2. 'a drink...'; eye-wash 1. a liquid for washing the

eyes; 2. something said or done to deceive somebody; eye-opener 1. enlightening or surprising

circumstance; 2. (US) a drink or liquor taken early in the day.

Classification.

A. according to the semantic relationship between components: coordinative and subordinative:

fighter-bomber, Anglo-American; stone-deaf (adj.), age-long (adj.).

Coordinative compounds may be:

a) reduplicative: goody-goody, fifty-fifty, hush-hush;

chit-chat, zig-zag, sing-song, clap-trap, walkie-talkie, helter-skelter.

b) additive: a queen-bee, a secretary-stenographer, a bed-sitting room. Clock-tower or girl-friend -

additive or subordinative?

B. according to the order of their components: syntactic and asyntactic. Asyntactic: red-hot, bluish-

black, pale-blue, rain-driven, oil-rich.

Syntactic: blue-bell, mad-doctor, blacklist.

C. According to the nature of bases: compounds proper and derivational (pseudocompounds)

compounds : door-step, age-long, baby-sitter, looking glass, street-lighting, handiwork, sportsman vs

long-legged; a breakdown, a kill joy

.

Lecture 11. Paradigmatic Relations between Words in English: Synonymy

Synonymy is a relation of semantic equivalence.

Words are synonymous not as such, but in some of their meanings, e.g. disappear, vanish, fade.

Disappear: get out of sight. Fade: 1. lose colour, freshness or vigour. Flowers soon fade when cut . 2. to

disappear out of sight or memory. As evening came the coastline faded in the darkness. 3. to decrease

in strength. The conversation faded. Vanish: suddenly disappear, go out of sight. The thief disappeared in

the crowd.

The wealth of synonyms in English is partly accounted for by extensive borrowing. A synonymic *

E.g.‘see’: see, behold, descry, espy, view, survey, observe, notice, remark, note, discern, perceive;

contemplate. Native: see, behold; Latin: contemplate. The rest are loanwords from French.

Main patterns of synonymic sets in English:

a)a double-scale pattern:

- native & Latin words, e.g. bodily – corporeal [ko:’poriel]; brotherly - fraternal.

- native & French, e.g. answer - reply.

b)a triple-scale pattern : native, French & Latin/Greek:

begin/start – commence - initiate

to ask - to question - to interrogate

to end - to finish - to complete

to rise - to mound - to ascend

belly - stomach - abdomen

teaching - guidance – instruction

A triple-scale pattern is a sum of two double-scale patterns.

The difference between synonyms of different origin may be both stylistic and semantic, cf.

smell, stink, stench, bouquet [bu:’kei], fragrance, aroma, redolence[’redoulence] strong

(sometimes specific) fragrance;

trip, journey, tour.

The difference between synonyms has a social significance, cf.: Therefore, you, clown, abandon,

which is in the vulgar leave, - the society - which in the boorish is company - of this female - which in the

common is woman; which together is abandon the society of this female, or clown, thou perishest; or to

thy better understanding diest; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death

(W.Shakespeare 'As you like it', Act 5, Scene 1, the jester Touchstone to a country fellow William).

Exceptions (native words are poetic, borrowed are neutral): dale - valley, deed - act, fair -

beautiful.

Coexistence of synonyms: tube – underground – metro.

Other sources of synonyms:

a)borrowings from dialects: clover - (Ir.)shamrock, liquor - (Ir.) whiskey; girl - (Scot.) lass, lassie;

charm - (Scot.)glamour.

(Glamour [glamour ]– alteration of old English grammar, fr. the popular association of erudition with

occult practices]).

1. a magic spell.

1. a romantic , exciting and often illusory attraction; esp. alluring or fascinating personal attraction

b)borrowings from American English: trick - gimmick; dues - subscription; trunk call - long

distance call; wireless - radio.

c) word-forming processes

- a simple verb - versus a phrasal verb, e.g. choose - pick out; abandon - give up; continue - go

on; lift - pick up; postpone - put off, etc.

- a borrowed noun - a noun derived from a phrasal verb: arrangement - layout; resistance - fight-

back; conscription - call-up, etc.

- a simple verb - a combination of a noun stem with a verb of generic meaning,e g.: to laugh - to

give a laugh; to walk - to take a walk. Not to confuse with: to give a lift; to give smb. quite a turn, etc.!

- a long word vs its shortened variant, e.g.: memorandum - memo, microphone - mike, etc.

- direct nominations vs euphemisms, e.g.: drunk - merry; drunkenness - intoxication; sweat -

perspiration; naked - in one's birthday suit; pregnant - in a family way. Euphemisms help new synonyms

appear.

Only the double-scale pattern (with its variant, a triple-scale pattern) and the pattern ‘a simple

verb – a phrasal verb’ are English-specific. The rest have parallels in Russian:

а) согласиться - выразить согласие; обрадоваться - проявить радость; предположить -

высказать предположение.

б)Телевизор - телик; видеомагнитофон - видик, видак; читальный зал - читалка;

психиатрическая больница - психушка.

в) уборная - туалет, пьяный - навеселе; беременная - в интересном положении.

Pairs of synonyms can be used for stylistic purposes, i.e. to make speech more expressive, e.g.

wear and tear; pick and choose. Some have characteristics of set expressions (idiomatic phrases or

phraseological units): Alliteratiion, rhythm and/or rhyme: hale and hearty; with might and main;

nevertheless and notwithstanding; stress and strain; rack and ruin; really and truly; hue and cry; wane

and pale; act and deed. Some are pleonastic pairs (stress the idea by repetition only), e.g.: by leaps and

bounds; pure and simple; stuff and nonsense; bright and shining; far and away; proud and haughty, etc.

A synonymic dominant is semantically the simplest member of a synonymic set, able to express

the meaning common to all members o f the set, the most neutral of them, syntagmatically the freest, e.g.

hope in the set hope, expectation, anticipation. shine in the set shine, blaze, flash, glint, glare, gleam,

beam, sparkle, twinkle, scincillate, glitter, glisten, glow, flicker, shimmer, glimmer.

Synonymic dominants are used in set expressions: hope against hope; lost hope; pin one’s hope

on smth.

LECTURE 12. PARADIGMATIC RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDS IN ENGLISH: HYPONYMY,

ANTONYMY, AND SEMANTiC FIELDS

Hyponymy: a relation of a hierarchical type (relation of inclusion), e.g.

Animal

vehicle

/ | \

wolf mouse fox, etc.

train car

bicycle

The opposition of a general term to individual terms / of a classifier to members of a group / of a

hyperonym to hyponyms.

Individual terms contain (entail) the meaning of the general term plus their individual meanings.

Hyponymical relations within synonymic sets, see shine.

A method to establish hyponymic relations: lexical stepwise decomposition.

A tendency of English is to use a more general verb (a hyperonym), whereas Russian tends to

use a more specific one, cf.: My house is on the bank of the river - мой дом стоит на самом берегу

реки.

Stone was on the bottom of the boat - Cтoyн сидел на дне лодки. Full ten minutes he rested thus, till a

manager clerk roused him - так он просидел полных 10 минут, пока старший клерк не разбудил его.

etc.

The difference between hyponymic sets in different languages, cf:

Engl.

Russian

Meal

---0---

breakfast lunch dinner supper

Antonymy is the relationship of contrast.

absolute antonyms (formed by root-words): right - wrong, good - bad;

derivational homonyms: honest - dishonest, hopeful - hopeless.

Ways of forming derivational antonyms:

a) prefixation (a productive means. Negative prefixes: dis-, il-, im-, in-, ir-, un-, e.g.: dishonest – not

honest, unhappy - not happy, impolite, irregular, intransitive.

Syntactic negation is weaker than negation by the negative prefix and the latter is used to strengthen the

former, e.g.:‘I am sorry to inform you that we are not at all satisfied eith your sister. We are very much

dissatisfied with her’ (Ch. Dickens).

завтрак обед

полдник

ужин

b) Suffixation as a (non-productive) means of producing antonymy. -less substitutes -ful, e.g.: hopeful -

hopeless, useful - useless.

selfish - selfless, BUT in actual speech selfish - unselfish, cf.:

I had many reasons both selfish and unselfish, for not giving the unnecessary openings (B.Shaw)

The difference between Russian and English derivational antonyms:

a) Compare the negative particle and negative prefix

Эта лужа не глубокая, а совсем мелкая.

Это неглубокая река.

vs

The success of the campaign was in disuniting the ruling party.

This measure did not unite the provinces.

Semantic fields

Closely knit sectors of vocabulary characterized by a common concept constitute semantic fields.

Examples: KINSHIP (father, mother, son, to marry, to divorce, to give birth to, to be born to, etc.);

PLEASANT EMOTIONS (joy, happiness, enjoyment, gaiety, to enjoy, to be glad, to be pleased, pleasure, etc).

Members of a semantic field are not synonyms; they are different parts of speech having a common

semantic component (a common denominator). Synonyms, antonyms , hyper-hyponymic sets can be

brought together into one semantic field.

Semantic fields differ in different languages, e.g. COLOR in Russ.a and Engl. : blue vs синий and голубой;

PARTS OF BODY: Engl. hand, arm – Russ. рука; Engl. leg, foot – Russ. нога, etc.

Kinship terms: Engl. mother-in-law – Russ. свекровь, теща.

The word meaning can be determined only if the stucture of a semantic field is known.

LECTURE 12. WORD GROUPS.

• Structural Types of Word-Groups

Words combine with other words into word-groups, e.g. a red flower, from the horse’s mouth, etc.

- Endocentric word-groups vs exocentric word-groups

Endocentric word-groups have the same distribution as one of its members (which is central), i.e. the

group can be substituted by its central member, e.g. black bird (He saw a bird / a black bird)

Exocentric word-groups have different distribution from its members, i.e. none can be regarded central.

E.g. side by side. All the group can’t be substituted by one of its members.

- Predicative word-groups, i.e. equivalent to a sentence (John is working) vs non-predicative (a hot iron).

Non-predicative: subordinative (the front door) and coordinative (day and night).

- According to their headwords: nominal (a bright smile), adjectival (easy to read), verbal (to write a novel,

to run fast). The position of the headword is not important: courage to fight – great courage .

• Meaning of Word-Groups.

- Lexical and grammatical (structural) meaning.

-- The lexical meaning of a word-group is a combined meaning of the component words, e.g. a reliable

friend: reliable ‘such that can be trusted’+ friend ‘somebody one knows well and likes, but who is not a

relative’.

The meaning of a word-group is not simply the sum total of the meanings of its components: the

meanings of words in the word-group are interdependent, and the meaning of the word-group

predominates over the meanings of its constituents. E.g. old ‘one who has lived for many years and is no

longer young’ ; boy ‘a male child’. An old boy ‘a man who used to be a pupil in a particular school or

college’ . cf He arrived on the board through the old-boy network. Man ‘a male human being’. An old man

‘one’s father’ or ‘one’s husband’, cf The first letter I got from my old man told me how proud he was of

me; her old man has run off with someone else.

Word-groups are semantically inseparable. This can be proved by their connotations or stylistic reference.

Old, boy, and man are stylistically neutral; an old boy or an old man are colloquial.

-- Grammatical (structural) meaning of a word-group is the meaning conveyed by the pattern of the

arrangement of its components. Word-groups containing identical components are different in meaning

because of the difference in their arrangement, cf light blue ‘shade of color’ – blue light ‘light that has the

color blue’.

Some linguists argue that the structural meaning is more important than the lexical meanings of the

components, because in one and the same structure different lexical units aquire identical interpretation,

cf all day long, all summer long, all sun long ‘as long as there was sun; a day ago, a year ago, a grief

ago.

• Syntactic structures (formulae) and patterns of word-groups.

- Syntactic structure, or a formula, of a word-group is the description of the arrangement of its

components as parts of speech, e.g. red flower, good friends, bright pupil - A+N; to hammer a nail, to

break a cup, to ring the bell – V+N, etc.

- A pattern of a word-group is its description with respect to the head word, e.g; to get through the door

(to get+ through+ N); to break the cup (to break + N).

In different patterns the meaning of the head-word is different, e.g. to break+N, to break into+N, to break

+ Adj (to break the cup / the window ‘to turn into pieces’; to break into the house ‘to get into by force’; to

break loose ‘to become free’).

In one the same pattern the meaning of the head word can be different, e.g. to break+N: to break the

window – to break the record ‘to set a new record’ – to break the habit ‘to stop doing smth’.

• Motivated and non-motivated word-groups.

Word–groups are lexically motivated if the meaning of the group can be deduced from the meaning of its

components, cf red rock ‘rock of red colour’ and red herring ‘smth of no importance used to take one’s

attention away from the problem’.

They are syntactically motivated if the meaning of the whole is dependent (is deducible from the order

and arrangement of the components). Red rock is motivated by the pattern ‘quality + substance’. Red