AMERICAN ENGLISH - раздел Философия, Теоретические материалы По лексикологии современного Английского языка The Variety Of English Spoken In The Usa Has Received The Name Of American En...
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 normalized form called Standard American, whereas 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.
An americanism - a word (set expression) peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA. E.g. cookie 'a biscuit'; frame house 'a house consisting of a skeleton of timber, with broad or shingles laid on''; frame-up 'a staged or preconcerted law case'; guess 'think'; store 'shop'.
A general Aand comprehensive description of the American variant isgiven in Prof. A.D. Shweitzer's monograph. An important aspect of his treatment is the distinction made between americanisms belonging to the literary norm and those existing in low colloquial and slang.
The difference between the American and British literary norm is not systematic. The American variant of the English language differs from British
English in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary.
The historic causes of the deviations. American English is based on the language imported to the new continent at the time of the first settlements, that is on the English of the 17th century. The first colonies were founded in 1607, so that the first colonizers were contemporaries of Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton. Words which have died out in Britain, or changed their meaning may have survived in the USA. Thus, I guess was used by Chaucer for / think. For more than three centuries the American vocabulary developed more or less independently of the British stock and was influenced by the new surroundings. The early Americans had to coin words for the unfamiliar fauna and flora. Hence there appeared bull-frog 'a large frog', moose (the American elk), oppossum, raccoon - (an American animal related to bears), for animals; and corn, hickory, etc. for plants. The settlers also had to find names for the new conditions of economic life: back-country 'districts not yet thickly populated', back-settlement, backwoods 'the forest beyond the cleared country', backwoodsman 'a dweller in the backwoods'.
The opposition of any two lexical systems among the variants described is of great linguistic and heuristic value because it furnishes ample date for observing the influence of extra-linguistic factors upon the vocabulary. American political vocabulary shows this point very definitely: absentee voting Voting by mail', dark horse 'a candidate nominated unexpectedly and not known to his voters', to gerrymander 'to arrange and falsify the electoral process to produce a favorable result in the interests of a particular party or candidate', all-outer 'an adept of decisive measures'.
Many of the foreign elements borrowed into American English from the Indian dialects or from Spanish penetrated very soon not only into British English but also into several other languages, Russian not excluded, and so became international. 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.
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 Indian 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 Britain is caused by some specific features of pronunciation, stress or spelling
standards, such as [ae] for [a:] in ask, dance, path, etc., or [e] for [ei] in made, » day and some others.
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.
British spellingAmerican spelling
cosy cozy
offence offense
practice practise
jewellery jewelry
travelling traveling
thralldom thraldom
encase incase
In the course of time with the development of the modern means of communication the lexical differences between the two variants show a tendency to decrease. Americanisms penetrate into Standard English and briticisms come to be widely used in American speech. 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 Г automatization. The British term wireless is replaced by the americanism radio. The jargon of American film-advertising makes its way into British usage; i.e. of all time (in «the greatest film of all time»). The phrase is now firmly established as standard vocabulary and is applied to subjects other than films.
The personal visits of writers and scholars to the USA and all forms of other personal contacts bring back americanisms.
The existing cases of difference between the two variants are conveniently classified into:
1) Cases where there are no equivalent in British English - drive-in
'a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car' or 'a shop where motorist can buy things staying in the car'; dude ranch 'a sham ranch
used as a summer residence for holiday-makers from the cities'. The noun dude was originally a contemptuous nickname given by the inhabitants of the Western states to those of the Eastern states. Now there is no contempt intended in the word dude. It simply means 'a person who pays his way on a far ranch or camp”.
2) Cases where different words are used for the same denotatum, such as can, candy, mailbox, movies, suspenders, truck in the USA and tin, sweets, pillar-box (or letter-box), pictures or flicks, braces and lorry in England.
3) Cases where the semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement, for example, means in the first place 'covering of the street or the floor and the like made of asphalt, stones or some other material'. The derived meaning is in England 'the footway at the side of the road1. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means 'roadway'.
4) Cases where otherwise equivalent words are different in distribution. The verb ride in Standard English is mostly combined with such nouns as a horse, a bicycle, more seldom they say to ride on a bus. In American English combinations like a ride on the train, to ride in a boat are quite usual.
5) The same word is used in American English with some difference in emotional and stylistic colouring. Nasty, for example, is a much milder expres sion of disapproval in England than in the States, where it was even considered obscene in the 19th century. Politician in England means 'someone in polities', and is derogatory in the USA.
6) There may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. Thus, time-table which occurs in American English very rarely, yielded its place to schedule.
This question of different frequency distribution is also of paramount importance if we wish to investigate the morphological peculiarities of the American variant.
Practically speaking the same patterns and means of word-formation are used in coining neologisms in both variants. Only the frequency observed in both cases may be different. Some of the suffixes more frequently used in American English are: -ее (draftee 'a young man about to be enlisted),- ettte (tambourmajorette 'one of the girl drummers in front of a procession1), -dom and -ster, as in roadster 'motor-car for long journeys by road' or gangster dom.
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 item1, respectively. It also possesses some specific affixes and semi-affixes not used in literary col-
loquial: -о, -eroot ~aroo, -sie/sy, as in coppo 'policeman', fatso ла fat man', bossaroo 'boss', chapsie 'fellow'.
The trend to shorten words and to use initial abbreviations is even more pronounced than in the British variant. New coinages are introduced: in advertisements, in the press, in everyday conversatiori; soon they fade out and are replaced by the newest creations. Ring Lardner, very popular in the 30's, makes one of his characters, a hospital nurse, repeatedly use two enigmatic abbreviations: G.F. and B. F.; at last the patient asks her to clear the mystery,
«What about Roy Stewart?» asked the man in bed.
«Oh, he's the fella I was telling you about» said Miss Lyons, «He's my G. F.’ s B.F.»
«Мay be Гт a D.F. not to know, but would you tell me what a B.F. and G.F. are?»
«Well, you are dumb, aren't you?» said Miss Lyons, «A G.F, that's a girl friend, and a B.F. is a boyfriend. I thought everybody knew that.»
Particularly common in American English; are verbs with the hanging postpositive. They say that in Hollywood you never meet a man:, you meet up with him, you do not study a subject but study up on it. In British English similar constructions serve to add a new meaning.
The lexical peculiarities of American English are an easy target for ironical outbursts on the part of some writers, John Updike is mildly humorous. His short poem «Philological» runs as follows:
The British puss demurely mews;
His transatlantic kin meow,
The kine in Minnesota moo;
Not so the gentle Devon cows:
They low,
As every schoolchild ought to know.
Although not sufficiently great to warrant American English the status of an independent language, it is considerable enough to make a mixture of variants sound unnatural, so that students of English should be warned against this danger.
The American English, apart from British English, is not the only existing variant. There are several other variants -where difference from the British standard is normalized. They are Australian English, Canadian English, New Zealand English. Each of them
has developed a literature of its own, and is characterized by peculiarities in phonetics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.
The vocabulary of all the variants is characterized by a high percentage of borrowings from the language of the people who inhabited the land before the English colonizers 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. The term international words is used to denote words borrowed from one language into several others simultaneously or at short intervals one after another.
V M Shirokikh L P Koudrevatykh... THE STUDY OF MODERN ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY Theoretical materials for seminars...
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Lexicology as a Science
The term consists of Greek morphemes:
lexis logos
(word, phrase) (learning).
Lexicology studies words and phrases, i.e. vocabulary of a language.
Vocabulary
Two Approaches to Language Study
Synchronic (syn = together, chronos = time).
The synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language at a given period of time.
Diachronic (dia = thro
The Real Difficulty Is in the Vocabulary
The fact that the languages commonly learnt by Europeans belong mostly to the same Aryan stock, and have besides a large vocabulary in common of borrowed Latin, French, and greek words, is apt to b
Some Basic Assumptions
The most characteristic feature of English is its mixed character. While it is wrong to speak of the mixed character of the language as a whole, the com-posite nature of the English vocabulary cann
Words of Native Origin
Words of native origin consist for the most part of very ancient elements - Indo-European, Germanic and West Germanic cognates. The bulk of the Old English word-stock has been preserved, although s
Borrowings in the English Language
In its 15 century long history the English language has come in long and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse (or Scandinavian). The great influx of borrow
Degree of Assimilation
Completely assimilated words do not differ from the native ones in pronunciation, spelling, frequency, semantic structure and sphere of application. It is difficult to distinguish them from
Morphemes. Their Structural and Semantic Classifications
A great many words have a composite nature and are made up of smaller units each having sound form and meaning. These are called morphemes, e.g. teach-er, help-less-ness, sports-man.
Like
Historic Changeability of Word-Structure
Language is never stable: it undergoes changes on all its levels: phonetic, morphological, lexical, phraseological, etc.
As for some morphemes, in the course of time they may become fused
Prefixation
Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes. There are about 51 prefixes in the system of Modern English word-formation.
Prefixes may be classified into several groups
Suffixation
Suffixation is the formation of words with the help of suffixes.
Diachronic Approach
Native suffixes:-ness, -ish, -dom, -hood, -ing, etc.
Foreign suffixes: -ation,
Structure of Compound Words: Their Inseparability
Compounds are structurally and phonetically inseparable. Structurally compounds are characterized by the specific order and arrangement of stems. The order in which the two stems are
Meaning of Compound Words. Motivation in Compounds
Semantically the majority of compounds are motivated units: their meaning is derived from the combined lexical meanings of their components. The semantic centre of the compound is the lexic
Classification of Compounds
According to the degree of semantic independence of stems; according to the part of speech; according to the means of connection of stems; according to the types of stems.
According to
Definition. Treatment of Conversion
Conversion (to convert - превращать) - is highly productive in replenishing the English word-stock with new words. The term «conversion» refers to numerous cases of phonetic identity of two words
Semantic Relations between Conversion Pairs
As one of the two words within a conversion pair is semantically derived from the other, it is of great theoretical and practical importance to determine the semantic relations between the words re
Traditional and Occasional Conversion
Modern English vocabulary is exceedingly rich in conversion pairs. Conversion in Modern English is extremely productive: new conversion pairs appear in fiction, newspaper articles and in oral com
Graphical Shortening
These are signs representing words and wordgroups of high frequency of occurrence in written speech: scientific books, articles, advertisements, letters, etc.
Letters:
St - Stree
Lexical Shortening
Lexical Abbreviation
It is natural that in the course of time and language development some graphical abbreviations should penetrate into the sphere of oral speech and turn into lexical ab
Historical Approaches to the Study of Word Meaning
Ancient Greece – Nature vs. Convention
In ancient Greece and Rome the study of language was a part of philosophy. The ancient Greeks first tackled the study of lan
Referential Theory of Meaning
The major thesis of this theory was that the word meaning is the actual referent. The meaning of a tree is the actual referent that occurs or the object in the world. This approach encounter
Conceptual Theory of Meaning - De Saussure
Concepts are not individual occurrences but a whole set of occurrences. The concept is in our mind and it is not an image. First we conceptualise. Then we need to lexicalise the concept, the
Grammatical Meaning
The branch of lexicology that is devoted to the study of meaning is known as semasiology.
Meaning is one of the most difficult problems in the theory of language and it has been the topic
Lexical Meaning
Besides grammatical meaning words have lexical meaning. The words go, goes, went, going, gone, having different grammatical meanings, have one and the same semantic component denoting the pr
Denotational and Connotational Meaning
The lexical meaning is not homogeneous either, it consists of:
- denotational meaning (semes) - component of the lexical meaning that makes communication possible; the basis of
Division of Vocabulary into Different Layers
Stylistically words can be subdivided into formal, neutral and informal layers. The formal and informal layers contain a number of subgroups. The main aspect of the formal layer is its booki
Formal Vocabulary
Literary words are chiefly used in writing and in polished speech:
1. common literary words (learned words) - mostly polysemantic, used in books of elevated style and in books o
Informal Vocabulary
The informal part is traditionally subdivided into literary colloquial (cultivated speech), familiar colloquial, low colloquial (illiterate speech). Literary colloquial is used by educated
Change of Meaning as a Linguistic Phenomenon
In the course of the historical development of a language, the meaning of words change, e.g.: glad had the meaning of bright in OE; husband had the meaning of master of the house-hold
Causes of Semantic Change
There are two groups of causes of semantic change: extralinguistic (historical) and linguistic factors.
Extralinguistic causes
In nation's social life,
Nature of Semantic Change: Metaphor and Metonymy
To answer the question «how new meanings develop» we must investigate the inner mechanism of this process. A necessary condition of any semantic change, no matter what the cause, is some connecti
Results of Change of Meaning
Results of semantic change can be generally seen in the changes of the denotational meaning of the word - restriction and extention of meaning, or in the change of its connotational component - ame
Grammatical and Lexical Ambiguity
Ambiguity
A word is ambiguous if it has more than one sense or more than two synonyms that are not synonyms to each other. A sentence is ambiguous if it has two or more parap
Monosemantic and Polysemantic Words
In the course of historic development of the English language words have undergone many changes. When we analyse the semantic structure of the words we notice that they are not units of a single me
Primary and Secondary Meanings
By diachronic approach we distinguish the primary meaning: table - a flat slab of stone and wood (плита), and secondary meanings (all the other meanings): стол, пища, таблица
Basic and Minor Meanings
Synchronically we understand polysemy as the coexistence of different meanings of the same word at a certain historical period of the development of the English language. Here the problems a
Classification of Synonyms
Acad. V.V. Vinogradov established the following classification of synonyms: ideographic, stylistic, ideographic-stylistic, contextual, absolute (total).
Ideographic synonyms a
Types of Connotations
A more modern and effective approach to the classification of synonyms may be based on the definition describing synonyms as words differing in connotations:
- connotation of degree or
Superstitious Taboos
A special source of synonymy is the so-called euphemism (eu - well, phemi -1 speak).
Euphemism is a way of speaking by which an unpleasant, improper _or offensive thing is designated by
Social Taboos
Euphemism is a frequent occurrence in Modem English, it is a wider phenomenon than a taboo was, and it has spread to many spheres of life. Such euphemisms can be called social taboos.
The Definition of Antonymy
Antonymy is a lexical opposition of meaning. The words are different in form and opposite in meaning. It is also a relative phenomenon (same lexical field identical in style) and it has cont
Types of Antonymy
Complementary (contradictory/binary) antonymy. Complementary antonyms come in pairs that exhaust all the possibilities within a mixed lexical filed. One denies the other and together they m
Kinds of Antonyms
Absolute/root vs. Derivational antonyms..Absolute (root) antonyms such as: hot - cold, short - long are lexically words. The derivational antonyms are
formed by addin
The Definition of Neologism
The vocabulary does not remain the same, but changes constantly. New notions come into being, requiring new words to name them. On the other hand, some notions and things become outdated and the wo
Kinds of Neologisms
The intense development of science and industry, changes in economy, social and political life introduced a great number of new words, denoting new notions in these fields. Prof. I.R.Galperin calle
Ways of Word-Forming of Neologisms
The bulk of neologisms in English are formed according to the productive models of word-building in the given period and with the help of word-stock of the language. So, the greater part of literar
Archaisms
The vocabulary of a language never remains stable. There are constant changes in the semantic structure of any language. Words appear, undergo a number of phonetic and semantic changes and finally
Some Basic Features of Word-Groups
Words put together to form lexical units make phrases or word-groups. One must recall that lexicology deals with words, word-forming morphemes and word-groups.
The degree of structural and
Structure of Word-Groups
Structurally word-groups can be considered in different ways. Word-groups may be described as for the order and arrangement of the component-members. E.g., the word-group to read a book can
Motivation in Word-Groups
Word-groups like words may be also analysed from the point of view of their motivation. Word-groups may be called as lexically motivated if the combined lexical meaning of the group is deducible
Criteria of Stability and Lack of Motivation
Phraseological units are habitually defined as non-motivated word-groups that cannot be freely made up in speech but are reproduced as ready-made units; the other essential feature of phrase
General Classification of Phraseological Units
Taking into consideration mainly the degree of idiomaticity phraseological units may be classified into three big groups. This classification was first suggested by Acad. V. V. Vinogradov. These g
Structural Classification
Phraseological units may be defined as specific word-groups functioning as word-equivalents; they are equivalent to definite classes of words. The part-of-speech meaning of phraseological units is
Genetic (Etymological) Classification
Phraseological units are created from free word-groups. But in the course of time some words - constituents of phraseological units may drop out of the language; the situation in which the phraseol
Proverbs
Besides phraseological units - word-equivalents, the language has set-phrases which are equivalents of sentences. They are proverbs, sayings, aphorisms,
e.g.:custom is the second nature -
STANDARD ENGLISH. NATIONAL VARIANTS AND LOCAL DIALECTS
Standard English is the official language of Great Britain used in its literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called national variants. Local dialects are
Canadian English
English appeared in Canada in the 17th cent. with the British colonizers, who met there not only the native people - Red Indians and Eskimos, but with the French colonizers as well, who
Australian English
The Australian Commonwealth – the British dominion – was founded in 1901; before that the states were independent colonies, ruled separately by the British Government.
In the 20th
New Zealand English
New Zealand is one of the farthest former dominions of Great Britain, and from the first days of its development is economically closely connected with Australia. Their relations found reflection i
Problems in Lexicography
1. Selection of head words - selection of the items included in the dictionary is done according to the type and size (general, pocket dictionary).
2. Arrangement of lexical entrie
H.Sweet about Dictionaries
Study of the Vocabulary
It will, perhaps, be most convenient to begin with that aspect of the dictionary which makes it the reverse of the grammar. From this p
Procedures of Linguistic Investigation
Acquaintance with the currently used procedures of linguistic investigation is of considerable importance both for language learners and for prospective teachers as it gives them the possibility
Contrastive Analysis
Contrastive linguistics attempts to find out similarities and differences in languages. Detailed comparison of the structure of a native and a target language is called contrastive analy
Statistical Analysis
Statistical analysis has considerable importance not only because of its precision but also because of its relevance to certain problems of communication engineering and information theory.
Distributional Analysis
Distributional analysis in its various forms is widely used nowadays by lexicologists. By distribution we understand the occurrence of a lexical unit relative to other lexical units of the same
CONCISE DICTIONARY OF LINGUISTIC TERMS
Краткий словарь-справочник лингвистических терминов
Аббревиатура (abbreviation)- слово, образованное из названий начальных букв или из начальных звуков слов, входящих в и
CONTENTS
Introduction: the object of lexicology..........................................
Etymological survey of the English language..............................
I. Word structure and wo
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