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Howden, two English towns in Yorkshire some forty miles apart). Another
consideration is that
AE
has its own literary norm
and AuE is
developing
one. Thus we must speak of three variants of the English national lan-
guage having different accepted literary standards, one spoken in the Brit-
ish Isles, another spoken in the USA, the third in Australia. As to
CnE,
its
peculiarities began to attract linguistic attention only some 20 years ago.
The fragmentary nature of the observation available makes it impossible
to
determine
its
status.
Speaking about the lexical distinctions be-
tween the territorial variants of the English
language it is necessary to point out that from
the point of view of their modern currency in different parts of the Eng-
lish-speaking world all lexical units may be divided into g e n e r a l
E n g l i s h , those common to all the variants and locally-marked, those
specific to present-day usage in one of the variants and not found in the
others (i.e. Briticisms, Americanisms, Australianisms, Canadianisms,
1
etc.).
When speaking about the territorial differences of the English lan-
guage philologists and lexicographers usually
note the fact that
different
variants of English use different words for the same objects. Thus in de-
scribing the lexical differences between the British and American variants
they provide long lists of word pairs like
BE
AE
flat
-
apartment
underground
subway
lorry
truck
pavement
sidewalk
post
tin-opener
can-opener
government
administration
leader
editorial
teaching staff
faculty
From such lists one may infer that the words in the left column are the
equivalents of those given in the right column and used on the other side
of the Atlantic. But the matter is not as simple
as that.
These pairs present quite different cases.
It is only in some rare cases like
tin-opener — can-opener
or
fish-
monger — fish-dealer
that the members of such pairs are semantically
equivalent.
In pairs like
government — administration
,
leader — editorial
only
one lexical
semantic
variant of one of the members is locally-marked.
Thus
1
The terms A m e r i c a n i s m s , A u s t r a l i a n i s m s , and the like met with in
literature and dictionaries are also often used to denote lexical units that o r i g i n a t e d in the
USA, Australia, etc. These are homonymous terms, therefore in dealing with linguistic literature the
reader must be constantly alert to keep them separate. As synchronically the origin of the lexical units
is irrelevant to the understanding of the relations between different varieties of the present-day Eng-
lish, we shall adhere to the use of the terms as stated above.
202
§ 2. Lexical Differences
of Territorial Variants
in the first pair the lexical semantic variant of
administration
— ‘the ex-
ecutive officials of a government’ is an Americanism,
in
the second pair
the word
leader
in the meaning of ‘leading article in a newspaper’ is a
Briticism.
In some cases a notion may have two synonymous designations used
on both sides of the Atlantic ocean, but one of them is more frequent in
Britain, the other — in the USA. Thus in the pairs
post — mail, timetable
— shedule, notice — bulletin
the first word is more frequent in Britain,
the second — in America. So the difference “here lies only in word-
frequency.
Most locally-marked lexical units belong to partial Briticisms, Ameri-
canisms, etc., that is they are typical of this or that variant only in one or
some of their meanings. Within the semantic structure of such words one
may often find meanings belonging to general English, Americanisms and
Briticisms, e.g., in the word
pavement,
the meaning ’street or road cov-
ered with stone, asphalt, concrete, etc’ is an Americanism, the meaning
‘paved path for pedestrians at the side of the road’ is a Briticism (the cor-
responding American expression is
sidewalk),
the other two meanings
‘the covering of the floor made of flat blocks of wood, stone, etc’ and
’soil’
(geol.)
are general English. Very often the meanings that belong to
general English are common and neutral, central, direct, while the Ameri-
canisms are colloquial, marginal and figurative, e.g.
shoulder
— general
English — ‘the joint connecting the arm or forelimb with the body’,
Americanism — ‘either edge of a road or highway’.
There are also some full Briticisms, Americanisms, etc., i.e. lexical
units specific to the British, American, etc. variant in all their meanings.
For example, the words
fortnight, pillar-box
are full Briticisms,
campus,
mailboy
are full Americanisms,
outback, backblocks
are full Australian-
isms.
These may be subdivided into lexical units denoting some realia that
have no counterparts elsewhere (such as the Americanism
junior high
school)
and those denoting phenomena observable in other English-
speaking countries but expressed there in a different way (e.g.
campus
is
defined in British dictionaries as ‘grounds of a school or college’).
The number of lexical units denoting some “realia having no counter-
parts in the other English-speaking countries is considerable in each vari-
ant. To these we may refer, for example, lexical units pertaining to such
spheres of life as flora and fauna (e.g.
AuE
kangaroo, kaola, dingo
,
gum-
tree),
names of schools of learning (e.g.
junior high school
and
senior
high school
in
AE or
composite high school
in CnE),
names of things of
everyday life, often connected with peculiar national conditions, traditions
and customs (e.g.
AuE
boomerang,
AE
drug-store,
CnE
float-house
).
But it is not the lexical units of this kind that can be considered distin-
guishing features of this or that variant. As the lexical units are the only
means of expressing the notions in question in the English language some
of them have become common property of the entire English-speaking
community (as, e.g.,
drug-store, lightning rod, super-market, baby-
sitter
that extended from
AE,
or the hockey terms that originated
203
in Canada
(body-check, red-line, puck-carrier,
etc.); others have even
become international (as the former Americanisms
motel, lynch, aboli-
tionist, radio, cybernetics, telephone, anesthesia,
or the former Austra-
lianisms
dingo, kangaroo
and
cockatoo).
The numerous locally-marked slangisms, professionalisms and dialec-
tisms cannot be considered distinguishing features either, since they do
not belong to the literary language.
Less obvious, yet not less important, are the regional differences of an-
other kind, the so-called derivational variants of words, having the same
root and identical in lexical meaning though differing in derivational af-
fixes (e.g.
BE
acclimate —
AE
acclimatize,
BE
aluminium
—
AE
alumi-
num).
Sometimes the derivational variation embraces several words of the
same word-cluster. Compare, for example, the derivatives of race (divi-
sion of mankind) in British and American English:
BE
racial/racialist
a
,
racialist
n
,
racialism
n
AE
racist
a,
racist
n,
racialism/racism
n
When speaking about the territorial lexical divergences it is not suffi-
cient to bring into comparison separate words, it is necessary to compare
lexico-semantic groups of words or synonymic sets, to study the relations
within these groups and sets, because on the one hand a different number
of members in a lexico-semantic group is connected with a different se-
mantic structure of its members, on the other hand even insignificant
modifications in the semantic structure of a word bring about tangible re-
shuffle in the structure of the lexico-semantic group to which the word be-
longs.
For example, the British and Australian variants have different sets of
words denoting inland areas: only
inland
is common to both, besides
BE
has
interior, remote,
etc.,
AuE
has
bush, outback, backblocks, back of
beyond, back of Bourke
and many others.
Accordingly, the semantic structure of the word
bush
and its position
in the two variants are altogether different: in
BE
it has one central mean-
ing (’shrub’) and several derived ones, some of which are now obsolete, in
AuE
it has two semantic centres (‘wood’ and ‘inland areas’) that embrace
five main and four derived meanings.
Lexical peculiarities in different parts of the English-speaking world
are not only those in vocabulary, to be disposed of in an alphabetical list,
they also concern the very fashion of using words. For instance, the
grammatical valency of the verb
to push
is much narrower in
AuE,
than in
BE
and
AE
(e.g. in this variant it is not used in the patterns
VV
en
, NV
en
,
NV
ing
, NprpV
ing
.
Some patterns of the verb are typical only of one variant
(e.g.
NV
en
and
NprpV
inf
— of
BE, NV
and
NV
ing
— of
AE).
There are also
some features of dissimilarity in the word’s lexical valency, e.g. a specifi-
cally British peculiarity observed in newspaper style is the ability of the
verb to be used in combination with nouns denoting price or quality
(to
push up prices, rents,
etc.).
As to word-formation in different variants, the word-building means
employed are the same and most of them are equally productive. The dif-
ference lies only in the varying degree of productivity of some of them
204
in this or that variant. As compared with the British variant, for example,
in the American variant the affixes
-ette, -ее, super-,
as in
kitchenette,
draftee, super-market,
are used more extensively; the same is true of
conversion and blending (as in
walk-out
— ‘workers’ strike’ from
(to)
walk out; (to) major
— ’specialise in a subject or field of study’ from the
adjective
major; motel
from
motor + hotel,
etc.).
In
the Australian vari-
ant the suffixes
-ie/-y
and
-ее
, as well as abbreviations are more produc-
tive than in
BE.
Thus, the lexical distinctions between different variants of English are
intricate and varied, but they do not make a system. For the most part they
are partial divergences in the semantic structure and usage of some words.
The lexical divergences between different
variants of English have been brought about
by several historical processes.
As is well known the English language
was brought to the American continent at the beginning of the 17th cen-
tury and to Australia at the end of the 18th century as a result of the ex-
pansion of British colonialism. It is inevitable that on each territory in the
new conditions the subsequent development of the language should di-
verge somewhat from that of British English.
In the first place names for new animals, birds, fishes, plants, trees,
etc. were formed of familiar English elements according to familiar Eng-
lish patterns. Such are
mockingbird, bullfrog, catfish, peanut, sweet
potato
,
popcorn
that were coined in
AE
or
dogger
— ‘professional
hunter of dingoes’,
Bushman
— ‘Australian soldier in Boer War’ formed
in
AuE.
New words were also borrowed to express new concepts from the lan-
guages with which English came into contact on the new territories. Thus
in the American variant there appeared Indian
hickory, moose, racoon,
Spanish
canyon, mustang, ranch, sombrero,
etc.
At the same time quite a number of words lost in
BE
have survived on
the other continents and conversely, certain features of earlier
BE
that
have been retained in England were lost in the new varieties of the lan-
guage, changed their meaning or acquired a new additional one.
For example, Chaucer used
to guess
in the meaning of
to think,
so do
the present day Americans; the English however abandoned it centuries
ago and when they happen to hear it today they are conscious that it is an
Americanism. The same is true of the words
to loan
for
to lend, fall
for
autumn, homely
for
ugly, crude,
etc.
The word
barn
designated in Britain a building for storing grain (the
word was a compound in Old English consisting of
bere
— ‘barley’ and
ærn
— ‘house’); in
AE
it came also to mean a place for housing stock,
particularly cattle. Similarly,
corn
was applied in America to an alto-
gether different cereal (maize) and lost its former general meaning ‘grain’.
The word
station
acquired the meaning of ‘a sheep or cattle ranch’, the
word
bush
— the meaning of ‘wood’ and
shrub
(AuE
scrub) — ‘
any
vegetation but wood’ in
AuE.
Modern times are characterised by considerable levelling of the
205
§ 3. Some Points of History
of the Territorial Variants
and Lexical Interchange
Between Them
lexical distinctions between the variants due to the growth of cultural and
economic ties between nations and development of modern means of
communication.
For example, a large number of Americanisms have gained currency in
BE,
some becoming so thoroughly naturalised that the dictionaries in Eng-
land no longer mark them as aliens (e.g.
reliable, lengthy, talented, belit-
tle).
Others have a limited sphere of application (e.g.
fan
—
colloq. ‘
a per-
son enthusiastic about a specific sport, pastime, or performer’,
to iron out
— ’smooth out, eliminate’). The influx of American films, comics and pe-
riodicals resulted in the infiltration of American slang, e.g.
gimmick
—
‘deceptive or secret device’,
to root
— ’support or encourage a contestant
or team, as by applauding or cheering’, etc.
Certain uses of familiar words, which some 50 years ago were peculiar
to the US, are now either completely naturalised in Britain or evidently on
the way to naturalisation. Numerous examples will be found by noting the
words and meanings indicated as American in dictionaries at the beginning
of the century and in present days.
At the same time a number of Briticisms have passed into the” lan-
guage of the USA, e.g.
smog
which is a blend of
smoke
and
fog, to brief
— ‘to give instructions’. This fact the advocates of the American language
theory deliberately ignore. Sometimes the Briticisms adopted in America
compete with the corresponding American expressions, the result being the
differentiation in meaning or spheres of application, for example, unlike
the American
store,
the word
shop,
taken over from across the ocean at
the beginning of the 20th century is applied only to small specialised es-
tablishments (e.g.
gift shop, hat shop, candy shop),
or specialised de-
partments of a department store (e.g.
the misses’ shop).
British
luggage
used alongside American
baggage
in America differs from its rival in col-
locability
(luggage compartment, luggage rack,
but
baggage car, bag-
gage check, baggage room).
In the pair
autumn — fall
the difference
in
AE
is of another nature: the former is bookish, while the latter colloquial.
LOCAL VARIETIES IN THE BRITISH ISLES
AND IN THE USA
In the British Isles there exist many speech
varieties confined to particular areas. These
local dialects traceable to Old English dia-
lects may be classified into six distinct divisions: 1) Lowland (Scottish or
Scotch, North of the river Tweed),
1
2) Northern (between the rivers Tweed
and Humber), 3) Western, 4) Midland and 5) Eastern (between the river
Humber and the Thames), 6) Southern (South of the Thames). Their
sphere of application is confined to the oral speech of the rural population
in a locality and only the Scottish dialect can be said to have a literature of
its own with Robert Burns as its greatest representative.
1
The Scottish dialect of the English language is to be distinguished from the Scottish
tongue, which is a Celtic language spoken in the Highlands.
206
§ 4. Local Dialects
in the British Isles