Sources and reasons of appearing contrastive methods.

1) In fact contrastive analysis grew as the result of the practical demands of language teaching methodology where it was empirically shown that the errors which are made recurrently by foreign language students can be often traced back to the differences in structure between the target language and the language of the learner;

2) the level of language learning is increasing and it needs to have investigations of two languages. This naturally implies the necessity of a detailed comparison of the structure of a native and a target language which has been named contrastive analysis.

24. Pick out the metaphors from the following word-combinations and prove that they belong to this group:

Green bush, green man - ^, green apple, green with envy -^, the root of a word-^, a fading flower, blooming health-^

25. Explain the etymology of the following words and give characteristic features of etymology of English words:

Sputnik - russian, kindergarten -german, opera- Italian, piano- Italian, potato -italian, tomato-italian, czar-russian, violin -italian, coffee, cocoa, alarm, cargo, steppe-russian, komsomol-russian, banana, balalaika- russian

It is true that English vocabulary, which is one of the most extensive amongst the world’s languages contains an immense number of words of foreign origin. Explanations for this should be sought in the history of the language which is closely connected with the history of the nation speaking the language. An important distinctive feature that Lexicology deals with is etymology. Etymology is the origin of the words. According to origin the word stock may be subdivided into two main sets. The elements of one are native, the elements of the other are borrowed.

A native word is a word which belongs to the original English stock, as known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. A loan word, borrowed word or borrowings is a word taken over another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language.

The native words are further subdivided by diachronic linguistics into the Indo-European stock and Common Germanic origin. The words having cognates in the vocabularies of different Indo-European languages form the oldest layer. Words belonging to the subsets of the native word-stock are for the most part characterized by a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency, high frequency value and a developed polysemy, they are often monosyllabic, show great word-building power and enter a number of set expressions.

The part played by borrowings in the vocabulary of a language depends upon the history of each given language, being conditioned by direct linguistic contacts and political, economic and cultural relationships between nations. It is the vocabulary system of each language that is particularly responsive to every change in the life of the speaking community. The source, the scope and the semantic sphere of the loan words are all dependent upon historical factors. The very fact that up to 70% of the English vocabulary consist of loan words, and only 30% of the words are native is due not to an inherent tolerance of foreign elements but to specific conditions of the English language development.

26. Identify the neutral compounds in the word combinations given below and write them out in three columns: A) Simple neutral compounds: a heavy topcoat, a car’s windshield , to howl long and wolf-like ;B) Neutral derived compounds: An air-conditioned hall, a glass-walled room, a loud revolver-shot, a high-pitched voice, a snow-white handkerchief, a radio-equipped car, thousands of gold-seekers, a big hunting-knife, a lightish-coloured man; C) Neutral contracted compounds: to fight against H-bomb, big A.A. guns, to go into frantic U-turns, to fix M-Day.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1202