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The intense development of shortening aimed at economy of time and effort but keeping the sense complete is manifest not only in acronyms and abbreviations but also in blends, e.g. bionics < bio+(electr)onics; slintnastics < slim+gymnastics and back-formation. The very means of word-formation change their status. This is for instance manifest in the set of combining forms. In the past these were only bound forms borrowings from Latin and Greek mostly used to form technical terms. Now some of them turn into free standing words, e.g. maxi n ‘something very large’.

Semi-affixes which used to be not numerous and might be treated as exceptions now evolve into a separate set. An interesting case is person substituting the semi-affix -man due to an extra linguistic cause — a tendency to degender professional names, to avoid mentioning sex discrimination (chairperson, policeperson). A freer use of semi-affixes has been illustrated on p. 118. The set of semi-affixes is also increased due to the so-called abstracted forms, that is parts of words or phrases used in what seems the meaning they contribute to the unit. E. g. workaholic ‘a person with a compulsive desire to work’ was patterned on alcoholic; footballaholic and bookaholic are selfex-planatory. Compare also: washeteria ‘a self-service laundry’.

When some word becomes a very frequent element in compounds the discrimination of compounds and derivatives, the difference between affix and semi-affix is blurred. Here are some neologisms meaning ‘obsessed with sth’ and containing the elements mad and happy: power-mad, money-mad, speed-mad, movie-mad and auto-happy, trigger-happy, footlight-happy. It is not quite clear whether, in spite of their limitless productivity, we are still justified in considering them as compounds.

Our survey has touched only upon a representative series of problems connected with the functioning and development of the present-day English vocabulary as an adaptive system and of the tendency in coining new words. For a reliable mass of evidence on the new English vocabulary the reader is referred to lexicographic sources. New additions to the English vocabulary are collected in addenda to explanatory dictionaries and in special dictionaries of new words. One should consult the supplementary volume of the English-Russian Dictionary ed. by I.R. Galperin, the three supplementary volumes of “The Oxford English Dictionary” and the dictionaries of New English which are usually referred to as Barnhart Dictionaries, because Clarence Barnhart, a distinguished American lexicographer, is the senior of the three editors. The first volume covers words and word equiva-lents that have come into the vocabulary of the English-speaking world during the period 1963-1972 and the second — those of the 70s.

In what follows the student will find a few examples of neologisms showing the patterns according to which they are formed. Automation ‘automatic control of production’ is irregularly formed from the stem automatic with the help of the very productive suffix -tion. The corresponding verb automate is a back-formation, i. e. ‘re-equip in the most modern and automated fashion’. Re- is one of the most productive prefixes, the others are anti-, de-, un-, the semi-affixes self-, super- and mini- and many more; e. g. anti-flash ‘serving to protect the eyes’, antimatter n, anti-novel n, anti-pollution, deglamorise ‘to make less attractive’, resit ‘to take a written examination a second time’, rehouse ‘to move a family, a community, etc. to new houses’. The prefix un- increases its combining power, enjoys a new wave of fashion and is now attached even to noun stems. A literary critic refers to the broken-down “Entertainer” (in John Osborne’s play) as a “contemporary un-hero, the desperately unfunny Archie Rice”. Unfunny here means “not amusing in spite of the desire to amuse’. All the other types of word-formation described in the previous chapters are in constant use, especially conversion (orbit the moon, service a car), composition and semantic change.

Compounding by mere juxtaposition of free forms has been a frequent pattern since the Old English period and is so now, сf. brains-trust ‘a group of experts’, brain drain ‘emigration of scientists’, to brain-drain, brain-drainer, quiz-master ‘chairman in competitions designed to test the knowledge of the participants’. In the neologism backroom boys ‘men engaged in secret research’ the structural cohesion of the compound is enhanced by the attributive function. Cf. redbrick (universities), paperback (books), ban-the-bomb (demonstration). The change of meaning, or rather the introduction of a new, additional meaning may be illustrated by the word net-work ‘a number of broadcasting stations, connected for a simultaneous broadcast of the same programme’. Another example is a word of American literary slang — the square. This neologism is used as a derogatory epithet for a person who plays safe, who sticks to his illusions, and thinks that only his own life embodies all decent moral values.

As a general rule neologisms are at first clearly motivated. An exception is shown by those based on borrowings or learned coinages which, though motivated at an early stage, very soon begin to function as indivisible signs. A good example is the much used term cybernetics ‘study of systems of control and communication in living beings and man-made devices’ coined by Norbert Wiener from the Greek word kyberne-tes ‘steersman’ + suffix -ics.

There are, however, cases when etymology of comparatively new words is obscure, as in the noun boffin ‘a scientist engaged in research work’ or in gimmick ‘a tricky device’ — an American slang word that is now often used in British English.

In the course of time the new word is accepted into the word-stock of the language and being often used ceases to be considered new, or else it may not be accepted for some reason or other and vanish from the language. The fate of neologisms is hardly predictable: some of them are short-lived, others, on the contrary, become durable as they are liked and accepted. Once accepted, they may serve as a basis for further word-formation: gimmick, gimmickry, gimmicky. Zip (an imitative word denoting a certain type of fastener) is hardly felt as new, but its derivatives — the verb zip (zip from one place to another), the corresponding personal noun zipper and the adjective zippy — appear to be neologisms.

Варианты и диалекты английского языка

English variants and dialects

Standard 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.

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.

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. “The Encyclopaedia Britannica” treats Cockney as an accent, not acknowledging it the status of dialect. 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: to push up the daisies, after all.

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. Words from dialects and variants may penetrate into Standard English. The Irish English gave, for instance, blarney n ‘flattery’, bog n ‘a spongy, usually peaty ground of marsh’. This word in its turn gave rise to many derivatives and compounds, among them bog-trotter, the ironical nickname for Irishman. Shamrock (a trifoliate plant, the national emblem of Ireland) is a word used quite often, and so is the noun whiskey. The contribution of the Scottish dialect is very considerable. Some of the most frequently used Scotticisms are: bairn ‘child’, billy ‘chum’, bonny ‘handsome’, brogue ‘a stout shoe’, glamour ‘charm’, laddie, lassie, kilt, raid, slogan, tartan, wee, etc. A great deal in this process is due to Robert Burns who wrote his poems in Scottish English, and to Walter Scott who introduced many Scottish words into his novels.

American English

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’. The American variant of the English language differs from British English1 in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary.

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 In-dian 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 Brit-ain is caused by some specific features of pronunciation, stress or spelling stan-dards, 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.

In the course of time with the development of the modern means of commu-nication 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 fall, 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.

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. E.g.: B.F. ‘boy-frieng’, G.F. ‘girl-friend’

Canadian, Australian and Indian variants

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.

Основные принципы составления  словарей. Виды словарей

Lexicography, 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.

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 (explanatory) is used, whereas bilingual (translation) dictionaries are those that explain words by giving their equivalents in another language. Multilingual or polyglot dictionaries are not numerous, they serve chiefly the purpose of comparing syno-nyms and terminology in various languages. 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. 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 dic-tionaries are at the same time historical when they represent the state of vocabulary at some past stage of its development.

Both bilingual and unilingual dictionaries can be

• general
• 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 in-stance, 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. 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. The words are chosen according to:

• the sphere of human activity in which they are used (technical dictionaries)

The first subgroup embraces highly specialised dictionaries of limited scope which may appeal to a particular kind of reader. They register and explain techni-cal 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 type of the units themselves (e. g. phraseological dictionaries)

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

• the relationships existing between them (e. g. dictionaries of synonyms).

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.