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Composition – see word-composition.

A

Abbreviation(syn. clipping, shortening) – a shortened form of a word or phrase,e.g., prof – professor, pike - turnpike, etc.

 

Abbreviation, graphical– a sign representing a word or word-group of high frequency of occurrence, e.g., Mr – Mister, Mrs – Mistress, i.e. (Latin “id est”) – that is, cf (Latin “cofferre”) – compare.

 

Abbreviation, lexical(syn. acronym) – a word formed from the first (or first few) letters of several words which constitute a compound word or word-group, e.g., U.N.E.S.C.O. – United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, B.B.C. – the British Broadcasting Corporation, S.O.S. – Save Our Souls, B.A. –Bachelor of Arts, etc.

 

Ablaut (syn. vowel gradation or interchange) – a change from one to another vowel, characteristic of Indo-European languages, e.g., to bear – burden, to abide – abode, to bite – bit, to ride – rode, to strike –stroke, etc. Absolute (total, complete) synonyms – synonyms so identical in their meaning that one can always be substituted for by the other in any given context, e.g., fricative – spirant, almost – nearly, mirror – looking-glass, flection – inflection,noun – substantive, etc.

 

Acronym(see lexical abbreviation) – a word formed from the initial letters of a fixed phrase or title, e.g., TV – television, VIP – very important person, hi-fi – high fidelity, etc.

 

Adjectivalization – the use of nouns and participles as adjectives, e.g., a stone wall, home affairs, swimming-pool, etc.

 

Adverbialization – the use of adjectives as adverbs, e.g., he spoke loud (loudly), it tastes good, etc.

 

Affix (affixational morpheme) – a derivational morpheme which is always bound to a stem or to a combination containing a stem, e.g., unmistakable, unpardonable, irregularity. Affixes are subdivided into prefixes, suffixes and infixes according to their position (see prefix, suffix, infix), e.g., un-, dis-, re-, -ful, -less, -able, etc.

 

Affixation – is the formation of new words by adding derivative affixes to derivational bases or stems, e.g., kind + ness, grate + ful, un + happy, im + moral, etc.

 

Allomorphs – positional variants of a morpheme characterized by complementary distribution (they are used in mutually exclusive environment and stand in alternation with each other), e.g., allomorphs of the prefix in- are: il- (illegal), ir- (irregular), im- (impossible), etc.

 

Amelioration or elevation (a semantic shift of meaning) – the improvement of the connotational component of meaning, i.e. a lexeme develops a positive meaning, e.g., nice originally meant foolish, knight originally meant boy, fame originally meant report, common talk, rumour, minister originally meant servant, etc.

 

Americanism– a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA, e.g., cookie – biscuit (Br.E.), fall – autumn (Br.E.), truck – lorry (Br.E.), movies – pictures (Br.E.), sidewalk – pavement (Br.E.), etc.



 

Antonyms – words of the same parts of speech different in sound-form, opposite in their denotational meaning or meanings and interchangeable in some contexts, e.g., short – long, to begin – to end, regular – irregular, day – night, thick – thin, early – late, etc.

 

Aphaeresis, aphesis – initial clipping, i.e. the formation of a word by the omission of the initial part of the word, e.g., phone from telephone, mend from amend, story from history, etc.

 

Apocope – final clipping, i.e. the omission of the final part of the word, e.g., exam from examination, gym from gymnasium or gymnastics, lab from laboratory, ref from referee, etc.

 

Archaisms– words which have come out of active usage, and have been ousted by their synonyms. They are used as stylistic devices to express solemnity. Many lexical archaisms belong to the poetic style: woe (sorrow), betwixt (between), to chide (to scold), save (except) etc. Sometimes the root of the word remains and the affix is changed, then the old affix is considered to be a morphemic archaism, e.g. beautious (-ous was substituted by -ful); darksome (some was dropped); oft (-en was added) etc.

 

Assimilation (of a loan word) – a partial or total conformation to the phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the English language and its semantic system.

 

Asyntactical compounds – compounds whose components are placed in the order that contradicts the rules of English syntax, e.g., snow-white (N + A) (in syntax: white snow – A + N), pale-green – A + A, etc. (see syntactic compounds).

 

Β

Back-formation – derivation of a new word by subtracting a real or supposed affix from an existing word, e.g., to sculpt – sculptor, to beg – beggar, to burgle – burglar, etc.

 

Barbarisms– unassimilated borrowings or loan words, used by English people in conversation or in writing, printed in italics, or in inverted commas, e.g., such French phrases as ςξο cher – my dear, tête-a-tête – face to face, or Italian words, addio, ciao – good bye.

 

Blending or telescoping – formation of a word by merging parts of words (not morphemes) into one new word; the result is a blend, fusion, e.g., smog (smoke + fog), transceiver (transmitter + receiver), motel (motor + hotel),brunch (breakfast + lunch), etc.

 

Borrowings (also loan words) – words taken over from another language and (partially or totally) modified in phonetic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language, e.g., rickshaw (Chinese), sherbet (Arabian), ballet, café, machine, cartoon, police (French), etc.

 

Bound form (stem or morpheme) – a form (morpheme) which must always be combined with another morpheme (i.e. always bound to some other morpheme) and cannot stand in isolation, e.g., nat- in native, nature, nation; all affixes are bound forms.

 

Briticism– a lexical unit peculiar to the British variant of the English language, e.g., petrol is a Briticism for gasoline; opposite Americanism.

 

C

Cliché – a term or phrase which has become hackneyed and stale, e.g., to usher in a new age (era), astronomical figures, the arms of Morpheus, swan song, the irony of fate, etc.

 

Clipping – formation of a word by cutting off one or several syllables of a word, e.g., doc (from doctor), phone (from telephone), etc. (see abbreviation, apocope, aphaeresis, syncope).

 

Cockney– the regional dialect of London marked by some deviations in pronunciation and few in vocabulary and syntax, e.g., fing stands for thing, farver for farther, garn for go on, toff for a person of the upper class.

 

Coding (in lexicology) – replacing words or morphemes by conventional wordclass symbols, e.g., to see him go (V + N/pron + V), blue-eyed ((A + N)+ -ed), etc.

 

Cognates (cognate words) words descended from a common ancestor, e.g., brother (English), απΰς (Ukrainian), frater (Latin), Bruder (German).

 

Collocability – see lexical valency.

 

Collocation – habitual lexico-phraseological association of a word in a language with other particular words in a sentence, e.g., to pay attention to, to meet the demands, cold war, etc.

 

Colloquial (of words, phrases, style) – belonging to, suitable for, or related to ordinary; not formal or literary conversation, e.g., there you are, you see, here’s to us, to have a drink, etc.

 

Combinability (occurrence-range, collocability, valency) – the ability of linguistic elements to combine in speech.

 

Complementary distribution – is said to take place when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment (i.e. they appear in mutually exclusive environment and stand in alternation with each other, e.g., variants of the prefix in- (im-, il-, ir-) are characterized by complementary distribution as in imperfect,

illegal, irregular.

 

Composition – see word-composition.

 

Compounding– see word-composition.

 

Compound-derivative or derivational compound – a word formed simultaneously by composition and derivation, e.g., blue-eyed, old-timer, teenager, kind-hearted, etc.

 

Compound words or compounds – words consisting of at least two stems or root morphemes which occur in the language as free forms, e.g., tradesman, Anglo-Saxon, sister-in-law, honeymoon, passer-by, etc.

 

Concept (syn. notion) – an idea or thought, especially a generalized idea of a class of objects, the reflection in the mind of real objects and phenomena in their essential features and relations.

 

Connotation – complementary meaning or complementary semantic and (or) stylistic shade which is added to the word‟s main meaning and which serves to express all sorts of emotional, expressive, evaluative overtones.

 

Connotational (meaning) – the emotive charge and the stylistic value of the word.

 

Content– the main substance or meaning, e.g., the content of a poem is distinguished from its form.

 

Context– the minimum stretch of discourse necessary and sufficient to determine which of the possible meanings of a polysemantic word is used.

 

Contrastive distribution – characterizes different morphemes, i.e. if they occur in the same environment they signal different meanings (see complementary distribution), e.g., the suffixes -able and -ed are different morphemes, because adjectives in -able mean capable of being, e.g., measurable, whereas -ed has a resultant force, e.g. measured.

 

Conversion (root formation, functional change, zero-derivation) – the formation of a new word solely by changing its paradigm or the method of forming a new word by changing an existing one into another part of speech without any derivational affixes (or other external changes), so that the resulting word is homonymous with the original one, e.g. water (n) – to water (v); dry (adj) – to dry (v); must (v) – a must (n), go (v) a go (n).

 

Convertive prefix – a prefix which transfers words to a different part of speech, e.g. pre + war (n) = prewar (adj); de + plane = deplane (v); de + part (n) = depart (v).

 

Contextual synonyms – words (synonyms) similar in meaning only under some specific distributional conditions (in some contexts), e.g. bear, suffer and stand when used in the negative construction can't bear, can’t suffer, can’t stand become synonyms.

 

Coordinative(or copulative) compounds – compounds whose components are structurally and semantically independent and constitute two structural and semantic centres, e.g., actor-manager, fifty-fifty, secretary-stenographer, etc.

 

D

Degradation of meaning (also pejoration or deterioration) – the appearance of a derogatory and scornful emotive charge in the meaning of the word, i.e. a lexeme develops a negative meaning, e.g. knave (OE – boy), silly (OE – happy), boor (OE – farmer).

 

Demotivation– loss of motivation, when the word loses its ties with another word or words with which it was formerly connected and associated, ceases to be understood as belonging to its original word-family, e.g. lady, breakfast,boatswain, to kidnap, etc.

 

Denominal verb – a verb formed by conversion from a noun or an adjective, e.g., stone – to stone, rat – to rat, empty – to empty, nest – to nest, corner – to corner, etc.

 

Denotation (see referent) – the direct, explicit meaning or reference of a word or term.

 

Denotational(or denotative) meaning – the component of the lexical meaning which makes communication possible, i.e. the component of meaning signifying or identifying the notion or the object and reflecting some essential features of the notion named; see referential meaning.

 

Derivation – the process of forming new words by affixes, sound and stress interchange, e.g. work – worker, kind – unkind, food – feed, blood –bleed, life – live, present – present, import – import. Some scholars include conversion into derivation, too.

 

Derivational affix - an affix which serves to form new words, e.g. -less in helpless or dis- in dislike, etc.

 

Derivational level of analysis is aimed at establishing the derivational history of the word in question, i.e. at establishing through what word-building means it is built and what is its structural or word-building pattern. The method of analysis into

immediate and ultimate constituents (IC‟s and UC‟s) is very effective on this level, e.g. threateningly (adv) falls into the following IC‟s:

1) threatening + -ly on the pattern A + -ly,

2) threaten + -ing on the pattern V +-ing,

3) threat + -en on the pattern N+ -en

Thus, the adverb threateningly is a derivative built through affixation in three steps.

 

Derivational suffix – a suffix serving to form new words, e.g. read-able, helpless, useful etc., see suffix.

 

Derivative (syn. derived word) – a word formed through derivation, e.g. manhood, rewrite, unlike, etc.

 

Derived stem – a stem (usually a polymorphemic one) built by means of derivation; a stem comprising one root-morpheme and one or more derivational affixes, e.g. courageously, singer, tigress, etc.

 

Descriptive approach – see synchronic approach.

 

Deterioration– see degradation of meaning.

 

Deverbal noun – a noun formed from a verb by conversion, e.g. to buy – a buy, must – a must, to cut – a cut, etc.

 

Diachronic or historic approach (in lexicology) – the study of the vocabulary in its historical development, see synchronic approach.

 

Dialect(local) – a variety of the English language peculiar to some district and having no normalized literary form, e.g. Cockney, Northern, Midland, Eastern dialects of England, etc., see variant.

 

Dictionary – a book of words in a language usually listed alphabetically with definitions, translations, pronunciations, etymologies and other linguistic information. Kinds of dictionaries: bilingual, encyclopaedic, etymological, explanatory, general, ideographic, linguistic, multilingual, phraseological, pronouncing, special, unilingual etc.

 

Differential meaning (of a morpheme) – the semantic component that serves to distinguish one word from the others containing identical morphemes, e.g. cranberry, blueberry, blackberry.

 

Distribution – possible variants (the total, sum) of the immediate lexical, grammatical and phonetic environment of a linguistic unit (i.e. the position of a linguistic sign in relation to other linguistic signs). For a morpheme it is the preceding and following morpheme(s), for a word it is the preceding and the following word(s), for a phoneme it is the preceding and the following

phoneme(s); see the complementary and contrastive distribution.

Distributional meaning (of a morpheme) – the meaning of the order andarrangement of morphemes making up the word, cf, ring-finger and finger ring.

 

Distributional pattern– a phrase (word) all elements of which including the headword are coded, e.g. to hear smb sing (V+ N/pron + V,), copybook (N + N), redhaired (A + N + suffix).

 

Distributional formula – a structure (phrase, word) whose components except the head one are coded, e.g. to hear somebody sing (hear + N/pron + V). In distributional formulas of words affixes are usually coded: e.g. blue-eyed ((A + N) + -ed).

 

Doublet – see etymological doublet.

 

E


Date: 2016-01-03; view: 848


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Gwiazda betlejemska | Nonce-word – a word coined and used for a single occasion, e.g. Bunburyist (O. Wilde), dimple-making (Th. Hardy), library-grinding (S. Lewis), familyphysicianery(J.K. Jerome).
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