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language. However, there are some absolute synonyms in the language, which have exactly the same meaning and belong to the same style: to moan, to groan; homeland, motherland. In cases of desynonymization one of the absolute synonyms can specialize in its meaning and we get semantic synonyms: city (borrowed) – town (native). The French borrowing city is specialized in its meaning.

Sometimes one of the absolute synonyms is specialized in its usage and we get stylistic synonyms: to begin (native) – to commence (borrowing). Here the French word is specialized.

Stylistic synonyms can also appear by means of abbreviation: exam (colloquial), examination (neutral).

Among stylistic synonyms we can point out euphemisms: the late (dead), to perspire (to sweat).

On the other hand, there are slang synonyms. They are expressive, mostly ironical words serving to create fresh names for some things that are frequently used.: mad – daft, potty, balmy, loony, bonkers, touched, nutty.

There are also phraseological synonyms, these words are identical in their meanings and styles but different in their combinability with other words in the sentence: to visit museums but to attend lectures; teachers question their pupils, judges interrogate witnesses.

There are also contextual synonyms which are similar in meaning only under some specific distributional conditions: buy and get are not synonyms out of context but they are synonyms in the following examples: I‘ll go to the shop and buy some bread and I‘ll go to the shop and get some bread.

In each group of synonyms there is a word with the most general meaning, which can substitute any word in the group. Such words are called synonymic dominants: piece is the synonymic dominant in the group slice, lump. morsel.

Very many compound nouns denoting abstract notions, persons and events are correlated with phrasal verbs. We have such synonymous pairs as: arrangement – layout, reproduction – playback.

Conversion can also serve to form synonyms. laughter – laugh.

There are also cases of different affixation: effectivity – effectiveness. It can be treated as a lexical variant but not a synonym. Variants can also be phonetical (vase [veiz] - [va:z]) and graphical (to-morrow - tomorrow).

The peculiar feature of English is the contrast between simple native words which are stylistically neutral, literary words borrowed from French and learned words of Greko-Latin origin, e.g.:

Paronymy is an intermediate phenomenon between homonymy (identical sound-form) and synonymy (similar meaning).

Paronyms are words which are partially similar in form but different in meaning and usage: proscribe-prescribe. The coinciding parts are not morphemes but meaningless sound-clusters. Pairs like historic-historical (words containing the same root-morpheme) are usually treated as synonyms. Yet words of both groups are easily confused in speech even by native speakers: sensiblesensitive, prudentprudish.

Improper usage of learned and sonorous language results in the so-called malapropisms. to have a supercilious (superficial) knowledge in accounts. This kind of word confusion is due to ignorance and produces a humorous effect. Malapropisms may be viewed as a kind of paronyms. The words are attracted to each other because of their partial phonetic similarity.

III.Antonyms

Antonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or contradictory notions.

V.N. Comissarov classified antonyms into two groups: absolute (root) antonyms (late - early) and derivational antonyms (to please – to displease, honest - dishonest). Absolute antonyms have different roots and derivational antonyms have the same roots but different affixes. In most cases negative prefixes form antonyms (un-, dis- non-). Sometimes they are formed by means of antonymous suffixes: -ful and –less (painful - painless).

The difference between derivational and root antonyms is also in their semantics. Derivational antonyms express contradictory notions, one of them excludes the other: active-inactive. Absolute antonyms express contrary notions. If some notions can be arranged in a group of more than two members, the most distant members of the group will be absolute antonyms: ugly, plain, good-looking, pretty, beautiful, the antonyms are ugly and beautiful.

Leonard Lipka in the book Outline of English Lexicology describes three types of oppositeness:

a)complementarity: male – female. The denial of the one implies the assertion of the other, and vice versa;

b)antonyms: good – bad. It is based on different logical relationships;

c)converseness: to buy – to sell. It is mirror-image relations or functions:

husband-wife, above-below, pupil-teacher.

L. Lipka also gives the type which he calls directional oppositions: up-down, consequence opposition: learn-know, antipodal opposition: North-South, EastWest.

L. Lipka also points out non-binary contrast or many-member lexical sets. In such sets of words we can have outer and inner pairs of antonyms: excellent, good, average, fair, poor.

Not every word in a language can have antonyms. This type of opposition can be met in qualitative adjectives and their derivatives: beautiful-ugly, to beautify-to uglify. It can be also met in words denoting feelings and states: to respect-to scorn, respectful-scornful and in words denoting direction in space and time: here-there, up-down, before-after.

If a word is polysemantic, it can have several antonyms, e.g. the word bright has the antonyms dim, dull, sad.

Lecture 11

Vocabulary Classifications

I.Morphological and Functional Grouping

By their morthemic structure words may be simple (hand, dog), derivative (handful, doggie), compound (handbook, dog-cheap), compound derivative (lefthanded, dog-legged).

Words are also classified into word-families: dog, doggish, doglike, doggy, to dog, dog-cart. the number of word-families is equal to that of root-morphemes.

Words may be grouped by their common affix: troublesome, lonesome, tiresome, handsome. Groups with productive affixes constitute open sets, since new words are constantly created.

By their function words are grouped into notional, functional and semifunctional. Notional words can be used alone. They name objects of reality, qualities, actions or processes. Functional words are used only in combination with notional words or in reference to them: auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, relative adverbs. They express relations between words. Semifunctional words point to or stand for objects of reality: here, then, this, one, he, how.

By their meaning, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships words are divided into parts of speech and lexico-grammatical groups. Among nouns we find personal names, animal names, collective, abstract, proper names. The members of each group have a common lexico-grammatical meaning and paradigm, the same substituting elements and a set of suffixes. Personal nouns denote animate objects and express notions, have two number forms and two case forms, regularly combine with the indefinite article, are substituted by he or she and may have sufftxes -er, -or, -ist, -ee, -eer, -man.

II.Thematic and Ideographic Groups. Semantic Fields.

A thematic group is a subdivision ofa lexico-grammatical group: kinship terms, names for parts of the human body, colour terms. The basis of grouping is both linguistic and extra-linguistic: the words are associated because their referents are connected. The words may be connected by the logical relationship or inclusion: sheep – ram, ewe, lamb. The generic term (hyperonym) is the superordinate of specific terms (hyponyms).

An ideographic grouping includes thematically related words of different parts of speech: light n, bright a, shine v. Grammatical meaning is disregarded. words are classed according to the systems of logical notions.

A semantic field embraces interelated words covering a certain conceptual area. The member-words are semantically interdependent. They delimit and determine each other’s meaning. The meaning of the captain is only understood if we know whether his subordinate is called lieutenant (the army), commander (the navy), mate or first officer (the merchant service).

There are two formal criteria of semantically related words: co-occurence and valency potential. The statistical approach (A. Shaikevitch) assumes that they often occur in texts together. The syntactic approach (Y. Apresyan) asserts that they occur in similar patterns.

III.Terminological Systems

Terminilogical systems are sharply defined. Terms are words or wordgroups that name notions of a special field of Knowledge, industry or culture. They have many peculiarities:

1.Terms are monosemantic words. Polysemy is only tolerated if the term has different meanings in different fields of science: The meaning of word in linguistics and mathematics.

2.A term has only a denotational free meaning and no figurative, contextual or emotional meanings. But if regularly used in colloquial speech it becomes a non-term.

3.Each term is strictly defined and has a constant meaning until a new discovery changes the referent or the notion.

4.There is one-to-one correspondence between the concept and the term naming it. Synonymous terms cause a great deal of confusion: linguistic terms – phraseological unit, idiom, set expression.

5.Terms are created by specialists and never appear as a result of

spontaneous language development.

Various disciplines make use of each other’s acievements, therefore some terms belong to several terminological systems: feedback, enthropy, redundancy. There is a constant interchange between special and general vocabulary. Many terms come to be used by laymen: vitamin, penocillin, gene, transistor, bionics. On the other hand, everyday words may develop terminological meanigs.

IV. Emotionally Coloured and Emotionally Neutral Vocabulary

Language is used not only to make statements but also to convey or express emotions. In this case lexical meaning acquires additional colouring (connotation). There exist three types of emotional words: emotional proper, intensifyiing and evaluatory.

Emotional words proper help to release emotions and tension. They include interjections (Hell! Ah!), words with diminutive and derogatory affixes (duckling, daddy), phrasal or converted personal nouns (a bore, a die-hard). Some words are emotional only in their metaphorical meaning. cow, ass, devil, angel (as applied to people).

Intensifying words are used to emphasize what is said: absolute, mere, ever, so, just. Their denotative meaning may be supressed by their emphatic function: awfully beautiful, terribly nice.

Evaluatory words express a value judgement and specify emotions as good or bad. Their denotative and evaluative meanings cxo-exist: scheme – a secret and dishonest plan.

Emotional words have some functional peculiarities.

1.They can be used in the emotional syntactic pattern a + (A) +N + of + a

+N. - a mere button of a nose.

2.They can be used without any formal or logical connection with the context: There was a rumour in the office about some diamonds. – Diamonds, my eye, they’ll never find any diamonds. Here my eye has no denotational meaning and the syntactic function.

3.They can contradict the meaning of the words they formally modify.: awfully glad, damn good.

4.They can lend emotional colouring to the whole sentence and occupy an optional position in it.

V.Stylistically Marked and Stylistically Neutral Words

The basic stylistic division of the vocabulary is stylistically neutral and stylistically marked words. The former can be used in any situation and make up the greater part of every utterance. The latter are found only in specific contexts. horse (neutral) – steed (poetic) – gee-gee (a nursery word).

Stylistically marked words are subdivided into formal and informal. Formal vocabulary includes special terms (morpheme, phoneme), learned words (initial, to exclude), official words (to dispatch, to summon) and poetic words (woe, to behold, lone). Informal vocabulary is subduvided into standard colloquial and substandard: slang, argot, dialectal, familiar and vulgar words. Colloquial vocabulary includes common polysemantic words (thing, get, really, nice), nouns converted from verbs (give a scare, make-up), verbs with postpositives (think out, come on), substantivized adjectives (woolies, daily), emotional units (a bit tired, by God, oh), modal words and expressions (definitely, in a way, rather, by no means). Slang words are fresh and shocking words for usual things: drunk – boozy, cockeeyed, soaked, tight.

VI. Non-Semantic Grouping

Words may be grouped according to their initial letters. Alphabetic organization is the simplest and most universal grouping of written words used in most dictionaries. Grouping according to the words’ final letters is used in inverse dictionaries and helps to make lists of words with similar suffixes or rhymin words.

Grouping according to the length of words (the number of letters they contain) is meant for communication engineering, automatic reading of messages and correction of mistakes. The number of syllables is important theoretocally: shorter words occur more frequently and have a greater number of meanings.

Grouping according to the words’ frequency is based on statistical counts. It is used for practical purposes in lexicography, language teaching and shorthand. It is also important theoretically – the most frequent words are polysemantic and stylistically neutral.