Formal style or formal vocabulary is used to cover varieties of English vocabulary that occur in books and magazines, that we hear from a lecture, a public speaker, a radio announcer or possibly in official talk. These types of communication are characterised as monologues addressed by one person to many, and often prepared in advance. Words are used with precision, the vocabulary is elaborate.

Informal style or informal vocabulary is used in personal two-way everyday communication. It is in the form of dialogue where the speaker has the qualities of voice, gesture, the speaker has an opportunity to know whether he is understood, the listener can always interrupt him and demand additional information. The vocabulary may be determined socially or regionally(dialect). Informal vocabulary is used in one’s immediate circle: family, relatives or friends. Informal style is relaxed, free and easy, familiar and unpretentious. The choice of words is determined in each particular case not only by an informal (or formal) situation, but also by the speaker’s educational and cultural background, age group and his occupational and regional characteristics.

50. Analyze the types of slang and compare with jargons.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines slang as “language of a highly colloquial style, considered as below the level of standard educated speech and consisting either new words or of current words employed in some special sense”. Slang, informal, non-standard words and phrases, generally shorter lived than the expressions of ordinary colloquial speech, and typically formed by creative, often witty juxtapositions of words or images. Slang can be contrasted with jargon (technical language of occupational or other groups) and with argot or cant (secret vocabulary of underworld groups), but borderlines separating these categories from slang are greatly blurred, and some writers use the terms cant, argot and jargon in a general way to include all the foregoing meanings. Slang tends to originate in subcultures within a society. Occupational groups (F: loggers, police, medical professionals and computer specialists) are prominent originators of both jargon and slang; other groups creating slang include the armed forces, teenagers, racial minorities, ghetto residents, labor unions, citizens-band radiobroadcasters, sports groups, drug addicts, criminals and even religious denominations. In addition to occupational and professional groups, there are many other types of subcultures that supply slang. These include sexual deviants, narcotic addicts, ghetto groups, institutional populations, agricultural subsocieties, political organizations, the armed forces, Gypsies, and sports groups of many varieties. Some of the most fruitful sources of slang are the subcultures of professional criminals who have migrated to the New World since the 16^th century. In some cases slang may provide a needed name for an object or actionor it may offer an emotional outlet or a satirical or patronizing reference. It may provide euphemisms and it may allow its user to create a shock effect by using a pungent slang expression in an unexpected context. Slang has provided myriad synonyms for parts of the body, for food, for drunkenness. Slang words are expressive, mostly ironical words serving to create fresh names for some things that are frequent topics of discourse. They sound somewhat vulgar, cynical and harsh. This is not surprising, for slang words and idioms are short-lived and very soon either disappear or lose their peculiar colouring and become either colloquial or stylistically neutral lexical units. Most slang words are metaphors. The circle of users of slang is more narrow than that of colloquialisms. It is mainly used by the young and uneducated. Slang’s colourful and humorous quality makes it catching, so a considerable part of slang may become accepted by nearly all the groups of speakers. Slang words are clearly motivated. The lexical meaning of a slang word contains not only the denotational component but also an emotive component (most often it expresses irony) and all the other possible types of connotation – it is expressive, evaluatory and stylistically coloured and is the marked member of a stylistic opposition. Some of these are the employment of metaphor, simile, folk etymology, distortion of sounds in words, generalization, specialization, clipping, the use of acronyms, elevation and degeneration, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, borrowings from foreign languages, and the play of euphemism against taboo.

According to sphere of usage slangs are subdivided into general and special slang.

General slang includes words that are not specific for any social or professional group. Special slang is peculiar for some such group: teenager slang, university slang, football slang.

51. Classify the colloquial words according to their importance.

Colloquial words are used by everybody and their sphere of used in everyday conversational speech both by cultivated and uneducated people of all age groups. Colloquial words are subdivided into literary colloquial, familiar colloquial and low colloquial. Literary colloquial words are used not only everyday speech but also include the printed page. The borderline of literary colloquial words is not limited. As the examples of literary colloquial words may be

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a) a number of shortenings, e.g. pram, exam, fridge, flu, math, movie

b) verb with post-positional adverbs: put up, make up, make out, do away, turn up, turn in

Familiar- colloquial words. The circle of speakers using familiar colloquial is more limited: these words are used mostly by the young and the semi-educated. This vocabulary group closely verges on slang and has smth of its coarse flavour.

Low colloquial words are usually characteristic of the speech of persons who may be broadly described as uncultivated. This group is stocked with words of illiterate English which do not present much interest for our purposes.

The term colloquial is old enough. Dr.Johnson, the great English lexicographer used it. Colloquial English is very emotional. In all the groups of colloquialisms and in familiar colloquial especially, words easily acquire new meanings and new valency.

52. Show the functions of idioms and proverbs.

Phraseological units or idioms as they are called by most western scholars, represent what can probably be described as the most picturesque, colourful and expressive part of the language’s vocabulary. Phraseology is a kind of picture gallery in which are collected vivid and amusing sketches of the nation’s customs, traditions, recollections of its past history, scraps of folk songs and fairy-tales. Usually the leading component of the idiom is expressed by a verb or a noun. Together with synonymy and antonymy, phraseology represents expressive resources of vocabulary. V.H.Collins writes in his Book of English Idioms: “in standard spoken and written English today idiom is an established and essential element that used with care, ornaments and enriches the language”. Idioms are ready-made speech units, sometimes speech over-loaded with idioms loses its freshness and originality, they lose their colours and become trite clichés. On the other hand, oral or written speech lacking idioms loses much in expressiveness, colour and emotional force. In modern linguistics, there is considerable confusion about the terminology associated with these word-groups. Most Russian scholars use the term phraseological units which was first introduced by academician V.V.Vinogradov. the term “idiom” widely used by western scholars has comparatively found its way into Russian phraseology but is applied mostly to only a certain type of phraseological unit as it will be clear. There are some other terms denoting more or less the same linguistic phenomenon: set-expressions, set-phrases, fixed word-groups, collocations. The function of idioms in speech is purely nominative (they denote an object, an act, etc.), The function of proverbs in speech is communicative (they impart certain information). Professor A.V.Koonin includes proverbs in his classification and calls them communicative phraseological units.

53. Explain the basic problems of lexicography according to their importance.

SOME BASIC PROBLEMS OF LEXICOGRAPHY

To get maximum efficiency from dictionaries, to secure all the information afforded by them it is useful to have an insight into the experience of lexicographers and some of the main problems underlying their work.

The work at a dictionary consists of the following main stages: the collection of material, the selection of entries and their arrangement, the setting of each entry.

At different stages of his work the lexicographer is confronted with different problems. Some of these refer to any type of dictionary, others are specific of only some or even one type. The most important of the former are 1) the selection of lexical units for inclusion, 2) their arrangement, 3) the setting of the entries, 4) the selection and arrangement (grouping) of word-meanings, 5) the definition of meanings, 6) illustrative material, 7) supplementary material.

54. Give the aims and objectives of phraseological units.

Semantically all word-groups may be classified into motivated and non-motivated. Non-motivated word groups are usually described as phraseological units. Phraseological units or idioms as they are called by most western scholars, represent what can probably be described as the most picturesque, colourful and expressive part of the language’s vocabulary. Phraseology is a kind of picture gallery in which are collected vivid and amusing sketches of the nation’s customs, traditions, recollections of its past history, scraps of folk songs and fairy-tales. Usually the leading component of the idiom is expressed by a verb or a noun. Together with synonymy and antonymy, phraseology represents expressive resources of vocabulary. V.H.Collins writes in his Book of English Idioms: “in standard spoken and written English today idiom is an established and essential element that used with care, ornaments and enriches the language”. Idioms are ready-made speech units, sometimes speech over-loaded with idioms loses its freshness and originality, they lose their colours and become trite clichés. On the other hand, oral or written speech lacking idioms loses much in expressiveness, colour and emotional force. In modern linguistics, there is considerable confusion about the terminology associated with these word-groups. Most Russian scholars use the term phraseological units which was first introduced by academician V.V.Vinogradov. the term “idiom” widely used by western scholars has comparatively found its way into Russian phraseology but is applied mostly to only a certain type of phraseological unit as it will be clear. There are some other terms denoting more or less the same linguistic phenomenon: set-expressions, set-phrases, fixed word-groups, collocations.

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55. Give the correct definition of context and its types.

Context is the minimal stretch of speech necessary to determine individual meanings of the word. A full understanding of the semantic structure of any lexical item can be gained only from the study of a variety of contexts in which the word is used, i.e. from the study of the intralinguistic relations of words in the flow of speech. That is why the main types of linguistic contexts which serve to determine individual meanings of words are lexical, grammatical, the extra-linguistic or context of situation, common contextual associations or thematic groups.

In lexical contexts the main importance are the groups of lexical items combined with the polysemantic word under consideration. F: the verb to take in isolation has primarily the meaning “lay hold of with the hands, grasp, seize” when combined with the lexical group of words denoting some means of transportation (e.g. to take the tram, the bus, train) it acquires the meaning synonymous with the meaning of the verb go. This can be also proved that when we want to describe the individual meaning of a polysemantic word, we find it sufficient to use this word in combination with some members of a certain lexical group. F: handsome + man, person; size, reward, sum. The meaning “good looking” and “considerable, ample” are illustrated by the contexts. The meanings determined by lexical contexts are sometimes referred to as lexically (or phraseologically) bound meanings which implies that such meanings are to be found only in certain lexical contexts.

In grammatical contexts the grammatical structure serves to determine various individual meanings of a polysemantic word. F: one of the meanings of the verb make is “to force, to induce” is found only in the grammatical context possessing the structure to make smb do smth or in other terms this word’s meaning is “to become”. “to turn out to be” is observed in the contexts of a different structure. i.e. make followed by an adjective and a noun (to make a good wife, a good teacher). A different syntactic function of the verb, e.g. that of the predicate (to make machines, tables) excludes the possibility of the meaning “to become, turn out to be”. The lexical and grammatical contexts are also called linguistic or verbal contexts.

In extra-linguistic contexts (context of situation) the meaning of the word is determined not by the linguistic factors but by the actual speech situation in which this word is used.

In common contextual associations (the thematic groups) the meaning is based on the coocurrence of words in certain repeatedly used contexts. Words in thematic groups are joined together by common contextual associations within the framework of the sentence and reflect the interlinking of things or events. Words making up a thematic group belong to different parts of speech and do not possess any common denominator of meaning. Contextual associations formed by the speaker of a language are usually conditioned by the context of situation which necessitates the use of certain words. F: journey-train-taxi-bags-ticket; shopping – it is usual to speak of the prices, of the goods we buy, sell.

Extra-linguistic and common contextual associations are also called extra-linguistic or non-verbal contexts.

56. Point out the criteria distinguishing major types of word formation.

Affixation and types of affixation.

All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots (or radicals) and affixes. The latter, in their turn, fall into prefixes which precede the root in the structure of the word and suffixes which follow the root. Words which consist of a root and an affix are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word-building known as affixation or derivation.

The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme. From the etymological point of view affixes are classified into the same two large groups as words: native and borrowed.

Affixes can also be classified into productive and non-productive types. By productive affixes we mean the ones, which take part in deriving new words in this particular period of language development. The best way to identify productive affixes is to look for them among neologisms and so-called nonce-words, i.e. words coined and used only for this particular occasion. Non-productive affixes which do not give any new coinages.

Some productive affixes

Noun-forming suffixes	-er, -ing, -ness, -ism, -ist, -ance
Adjective-forming suffixes	-y, -ish, -ed, -able, -less
Adverb-forming suffixes	-ly
Verb-forming suffixes	-ize, -ise, -ate
Prefixes	un-, re-, dis-

Some non-productive affixes

Noun-forming suffixes	-th, -hood
Adjective-forming suffixes	-ly, -some, -en, -ous
Verb-forming suffix	-en

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Affix which is a type of morpheme, is generally defined as the smallest indivisible component of the word possessing a meaning of its own. Affixes have widely generalized meanings and refer the concept conveyed by the whole word to a certain category.

Affixation is divided into suffixation and prefixation. The main function of suffixes is to form one part of speech from another, the secondary function is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. There are different classifications of suffixes:

2. part-of-speech classification.

2. semantic classification.

3. lexical-grammatical character of the stem.

4. origin of suffixes.

5. productivity.

Prefixation is the formation of words by means of adding a prefix to the stem. Prefixes are more independent than suffixes. Prefixes can be classified according to the nature of words in which they are used: prefixes used in notional words and prefixes used in functional words. Prefixes used in notional words are proper prefixes which are bound morphemes, e.g. un- (unhappy). Prefixes used in functional words are semi-bound morphemes because they are met in the language as words, e.g. over- (overhead, over the table).

The main function of prefixes in English is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. Prefixes can be classified according to different principles:

1. semantic classification

a) prefixes of negative meaning, as in- , non-, un- (invaluable, nonformals, unfree)

b) prefixes denoting repetition or reversal actions, as: de-, re-, dis- (decolonize, revegetation, disconnect)

6. prefixes denoting time, space, degree relations, as: inter-, hyper-, ex-, pre-, over- (interplanetary, hypertension, ex-student, preelection, overdrugging)

2. origin of prefixes:

4. native (Germanic) as: un-, over-, under-

5. Romanic as: in-, de-, ex-, re-

6. Greek as: sym-, hyper-

Conversion is a characteristic feature of the English word-building system. It is also called affixless derivation or zero-suffixation. Conversion is treated differently by different scientists, e.g. prof. A.I.Smirnitsky treats conversion as a morphological way of forming words when one part of speech is formed from another part of speech by changing its paradigm, e.g. to form the verb “to dial” from the noun “dial” we change the paradigm of the noun (a dial, dials) for the paradigm of a regular verb (I dial, he dials, dialed).

Marchant treats conversion as a morphological-syntactical word-building because we have not only the change of the paradigm, but also the change of the syntactic function, e.g. I need some good paper for my room. I paper my room every year.

Conversion is the main way of forming verbs in Modern English. Verbs can be formed from nouns of different semantic groups and have different meanings because of that, e.g.

a) verbs have instrumental meaning if they are formed from nouns denoting parts of a human body, e.g. to eye, to finger, to shoulder. They have instrumental meaning if they are formed from nouns denoting tools, machines, instruments, weapons, e.g. to hammer, to rifle, to nail

b) verbs can denote an action characteristic of the living being denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to crowd, to wolf, to ape

c) verbs can denote acquisition, addition or deprivation if they are formed from nouns denoting an object, e.g. to fish, to dust, to peel, to paper

d) verbs can denote an action performed at the place denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to park, to garage, to bottle, to pocket, to corner

e) verbs can denote an action performed at the time denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to winter, to week-end

Nouns can also be formed by means of conversion from verbs. Converted nouns can denote:

a) instant of an action, e.g. a jump, a move

7. process or state, e.g. sleep, walk

8. agent of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a help, a scold

9. object or result of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a burn, a find, a purchase

10. place of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a drive, a stop, a walk

Compound words and their types.

Composition is the way of word-building when a word is formed by joining two or more stems to form one word. The structural unity of a compound word depends upon the unity of stress, solid or hyphenated spelling, semantic unity, unity of morphological and syntactical functioning. These are characteristic features of compound words in all languages.

There are two characteristic features of English compounds:

1. both components in an English compound are free stems, that is they can be used as words with a distinctive meaning of their own. The sound pattern will be the same except for the stresses.

2. English compounds have a two-stem pattern, with the exception of compound words which have form-word stems in their structure, e.g. middle-of-the-road, off-the-record.c

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Compounds are not homogeneous in structure. Traditionally three types are distinguished: neutral, morphological and syntactic.

In neutral compounds the process of compounding is realized without any linking elements, by a mere juxtaposition of two stems. There are three subtypes of neutral compounds depending on the structure of the constituent stems. 1) simple neutral compounds, they consist of simple affixless stems. 2) derived or derivational neutral compounds, they have affixes in their structure. 3) contracted neutral compounds, they have a shortened stem in their structure.

Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is non-productive. It is represented by words in which two compounding stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant.

In syntactic compounds we once more find a feature of specifically English word structure. These words are formed from segments of speech, preserving in their structure numerous traces of syntagmatic relations typical of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs.

The compounds whose meaning do not correspond to the separate meanings of their constituent parts are called idiomatic compounds. F : blackboard, blackbird, lady-killer, chatterbox, in these compounds one of the components or both has changed its meaning: a blackboard is neither a board nor necessarily black, a chatterbox not a box but a person, and a lady-killer kills no one but is merely a man who fascinates women, a blackbird is some kind of bird.

Shortening (contraction)

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

Shortenings are produced in two different ways. The first is to make a new word of syllable of the original word. The latter may lose its beginning (as in phone made from telephone, fence from defence), its ending (as in hols from holidays, vac from vacation, ad from advertisement) or both the beginning and ending (as flu from influenza, fridge from refrigerator).

The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group: U.N.O., B.B.C., M.P. this type is called initial shortenings.

57. Point out the criteria distinguishing minor types of word formation.

Blending

The term blending is used to designate the method of merging parts of words into one new word; the result is a blend, also known as a portmanteau word. Blends are words formed from a word-group or two synonyms. In blends two way of word-building are combined: abbreviation and composition. To form a blend we clip the end of the first component and the beginning of the second component. As a result we have a compound-shortened word. One of the first blends in English was the word “smog” from two synonyms smoke and fog which means smoke mixed with fog. Cinemadict from cinema addict, chunnel from canal and channel, dramedy from drama and comedy, faction from fact fiction-fiction based on real facts, informecial from information commercial, medicare from medical care, slanguist from slang linguist.

Back-formation

It is the way of word-building when a word is formed by dropping the final morpheme to form a new word (reversion). Instead of a noun made from a verb by affixation, a verb was produced from a noun by substraction. It is opposite to suffixation that is why it is called back-formation. At first it appeared in the language as a result of misunderstanding the structure of a borrowed word. F: to collocate from collocation, to compute from computer, to emote from emotion, to televise from television, painter from to paint, to baby sit from baby sitter.

Back-formation is derivation of new words by substracting a real or supposed affix from existing words through misinterpretation of their structure.

Reduplication

New words are made by doubling a stem either without any phonetic changes or with a varation of the root vowel or consonant as in ping-pong, chit-chat, bye-bye, stylistically speaking most words are made by reduplication represent informal groups colloquialisms and slang.

Reduplication is the morphological process by which a morpheme is repeated, thereby creating a new word with a different word class. There are two types of reduplication: partial which reduplicates only part of the morpheme and full in which the entire morpheme is reduplicated.

Sound-interchange

They may be defined as an opposition in which words or word forms are differentiated due to an alternation in the phonemic composition of the root. It means some sounds are changed to form a new word. It is non-productive in Modern English, it was productive in old English and can be met in other Indo-European languages. In many cases we have vowel and consonant interchange. In nouns we have voiceless consonants and in verbs we have corresponding voiced consonants because in old English these consonants in nouns were at the end of the word and in verbs in the intervocal position. F: life-to live, blood-to bleed, hot-to heat, to sing-song.

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