Productive Types of Compound Adjectives 5 страница
1 See ‘Semasiology’, § 49, p. 58.
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easily seen that words of this synonymic group differ greatly in their stylistic reference. Only the two native words small and little belong to the neutral literary layer; the rest have a specific stylistic reference: microscopic coined in recent times from Greek morphemes is used more or less as a term, diminutive is bookish, wee (which for the most part occurs in Scottish dialects) has a poetic tinge in literary English.
| § 5. Frequency and Semantic Structure |
Frequency also reflects the interdependence and comparative importance of individual meanings within the word. For example, the adjective exact has two meanings 'entirely correct, precise', eg. the exact time, smb's exact words, etc. and 'capable of being precise', e.g. exact observer, exact memory. The comparison of the frequences of these individual meanings shows that they are not of equal importance in the semantic structure of the word; it is the first meaning of this word that is much more important than the second as it accounts for 78% of total occurrences of the word, leaving only 18% to the second meaning.
The adjective blue which is a polysemantic unit of a high frequency value may serve as another example. On comparing the frequencies of individual meanings of this word we find that its neutral meaning 'the colour of the sky' accounts for 92% of the occurrences of the word, whereas the meaning 'sad' (cf. to look (to feel) blue) and the meaning 'indecent, obscene' (cf. to tell blue stories, to talk blue) are both marked by a heavy emotive charge and make only 2% and 0.5% of the occurrence of this word respectively.
Thus, as we see, the semantic frequencies of individual meanings give a better and a more objective insight into the semantic structure of words.
We may now conclude by pointing out that frequency value of the word is as a rule a most reliable and objective factor indicating the relative value of the word in the language in general and conditioning the grammatical and lexical valency of the word. The frequency value of the word alone is in many cases sufficient to judge of its structural, stylistic, semantic and etymological peculiarities, i e. if the word has a high frequency of occurrence one may suppose that it is monomorphic, simple, polysemantic and stylistically neutral. Etymologically it is likely to be native or to belong to early borrowings. The interdependence so markedly reflected by frequency can be presented graphically. Below we show the analysis of two groups of synonyms. (See the table, p. 181.)
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REPLENISHMENT OF MODERN ENGLISH VOCABULARY
| § 6. Development of Vocabulary |
As has been already mentioned, no vocabulary of any living language is ever stable but is constantly changing, growing and decaying. The changes occurring in the vocabulary are due both to linguistic and non-linguistic causes, but in most cases to the combination of both. Words may drop out altogether as a result of the disappearance of the actual objects they denote, e.g. the OE. wunden-stefna — 'a curved-stemmed ship'; зãг—
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’spear, dart’; some words were ousted1 as a result of the influence of Scandinavian and French borrowings, e.g. the Scandinavian take and die ousted the OE: niman and sweltan, the French army and place replaced the OE. h ē re and sta Þ s. Sometimes words do not actually drop out but become obsolete, sinking to the level of vocabulary units used in narrow, specialised fields of human intercourse making a group of archaisms: e g. billow — ‘wave’; welkin — ’sky’; steed — ‘horse’; slay — ‘kill’ are practically never used except in poetry; words like halberd, visor, gauntlet are used only as historical terms.
Yet the number of new words that appear in the language is so much greater than those that drop out or become obsolete, that the development of vocabularies may be described as a process of never-ending growth.2
| Groups of Synonyms | Frequency Value | Structure | The Number of Meanings | Style | Etymology | ||||||||
| Morphemic | Derivational | 1 meaning | 2 meanings | 3 and more meanings | Neutral, standard colloquial | Bookish, non-literary | Native, early borrowings | Late borrowings | |||||
| Monomorphic | Polymorphic | Simple | Derived Compound | ||||||||||
| I Fair Just Impartial Unbiased Equitable Dispassionate II Cool Composed Unruffled Imperturbable Nonchalant | 1 | + | + | + | + | + | |||||||
| 1 | + | + | + | + | + | ||||||||
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1 See ‘Etymological Survey...’, § 12, p. 172.
2 It is of interest to note that the number of vocabulary units in Old English did not exceed 30 — 40 thousand words, the vocabulary of Modern English is at least ten times larger and contains about 400 — 500 thousand words.
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The appearance of a great number of new words and the development of new meanings in the words already available in the language may be largely accounted for by the rapid flow of events, the progress of science and technology and emergence of new concepts in different fields of human activity. The influx of new words has never been more rapid than in the last few decades of this century. Estimates suggest that during the past twenty-five years advances in technology and communications media have produced a greater change in our language than in any similar period in history. The specialised vocabularies of aviation, radio, television, medical and atomic research, new vocabulary items created by recent development in social history — all are part of this unusual influx. Thus war has brought into English such vocabulary items as blackout, fifth-columnist, paratroops, A-bomb, V-Day, etc.; the development of science gave such words as hydroponics, psycholinguistics, polystyrene, radar, cyclotron, meson, positron; antibiotic, etc.;1 the conquest and research of cosmic space by the Soviet people gave birth to sputnik, lunnik, babymoon, space-rocket, space-ship, space-suit, moonship, moon crawler, Lunokhod, etc.
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The growth of the vocabulary reflects not only the general progress made by mankind but also the peculiarities of the way of life of the speech community in which the new words appear, the way its science and culture tend to develop. The peculiar developments of the American way of life for example find expression in the vocabulary items like taxi-dancer — , ‘a girl employed by a dance hall, cafe, cabaret to dance with patrons who pay for each dance’; to job-hunt — ‘to search assiduously for a job’; the political life of America of to-day gave items like witchhunt — ‘the screening and subsequent persecution of political opponents’; ghostwriter — ‘a person engaged to write the speeches or articles of an eminent personality’; brinkmanship — ‘a political course of keeping the world on the brink of war’; sitdowner — ‘a participant of a sit-down strike’; to sit in — ‘to remain sitting in available places in a cafe, unserved in protest of Jim Crow Law’; a sitter-in; a lie-in or a lie-down — ‘a lying
1 The results of the analysis of the New Word Section of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary covering a period of 14 years (from 1927 to 1941) and A Dictionary of New English by С. Barnhart covering a period of 10 years (from 1963 to 1972) confirm the statement; out of the 498 vocabulary items 100 (about 1/5 of the total number) are the result of technological development, about 80 items owe their appearance to the development of science, among which 60 are new terms in the field of physics, chemistry, nuclear physics and biochemistry. 42 words are connected with the sphere of social relations and only 28 with art, literature, music, etc. See P. С. Гинзбург. О пополнении словарного состава. «Иностранные языки в школе», 1954, № 1 ; Р. С. Гинзбург, Н. Г. Позднякова. Словарь новых слов Барнхарта и некоторые наблюдения над пополнением словарного состава современного английского языка. «Иностранные языки в школе», 1975, № 3.
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A similar result is obtained by a count conducted for seven letters of the Addenda to The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English by A. S. Hornby, E. V. Gatenby, H. Wakefield, 1956. According to these counts out of 122 new units 65 are due to the development of science and technology, 21 to the development of social relations and only 31 to the general, non-specialised vocabulary. See Э. М. Медникова, Т. Ю. Каравкина. Социолингвистический аспект продуктивного словообразования. «Вестник Московского университета», 1964, № 5.
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down of a group of people in a public place to disrupt traffic as a form of protest or demonstration’; to nuclearise — ‘to equip conventional armies with nuclear weapons’; nuclearisation; nuclearism — ‘emphasis on nuclear weapons as a deterrent to war or as a means of attaining political and social goals’.
| § 7. Structural and Semantic Peculiarities of New Vocabulary Units |
It must be mentioned as a noteworthy peculiarity that new vocabulary items in Modern English belong only to the notional parts of speech, to be more exact, only to nouns, verbs and adjectives; of these nouns are most numerous.1
New vocabulary units are as a rule monosemantic and most of them are marked by peculiar stylistic value — they primarily belong to the specialised vocabulary. Neutral words and phrases are comparatively few. Terms used in various fields of science and technique make the greater part of new words.
The analysis of the development of the vocabulary of Modern English shows that there are two aspects of the growth of the language — the appearance of new lexical items which increase the vocabulary numerically and the appearance of new meanings of old words.
New vocabulary units are mostly the result of the new combinations of old elements. Entirely new lexical items make an insignificant section of vocabulary.
Structurally new vocabulary items represent two types of lexical units: words, e.g. blackout, microfilm-reader, unfreeze, and word-groups, mostly phraseological units, e.g. blood bank — ‘a place where blood plasma are stored’; atomic pile — ‘reactor’, etc.
Words in their turn comprise various structural types: 2
a) simple words, e.g. jeep — ‘a small, light motor vehicle esp. for military use’; zebra — ’street crossing-place, marked by black and white stripes’;
b) derived words, such as collaborationist — ‘one who in occupied territory works* helpfully with the enemy’; centrism — ‘a middle-of-the road or a moderate position in polities’, a preppie — ‘a student or graduate of a preparatory school (sl.)’;
c) compounds, e.g. corpsman (mil.) — ‘a member of a hospital squad trained to administer first aid to wounded servicemen’, script-show — ‘a serial program on radio and television’; house-husband — U.S. ‘a married man who manages a household’, etc. The analysis of new words for their derivational structure shows a marked predominance of derived and compound words and a rather small number of simple words.
Word-groups comprise a considerable part of vocabulary extension. Structurally, the bulk of the word-groups belongs to the
1 The analysis mentioned above shows that out of the 498 new units under consideration 373 (i.e. about 75%) are nouns and nominal word-groups, 61 (or about 12%) are adjectives and only 1 (or 0,25%) adverbs. The counts conducted in recent years give an approximately the same ratio — out of 122 new units 82 (i. e. 67%) are nouns, 22 (or 18%) are verbs, 18 (i. e. about 14%) are adjectives and only one (0,8%) adverb.
2 See ‘Word-Structure’, § 12, p. 104.
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attributive-nominal type built on the A + N and N + N formulas, e.g. frequency modulation, jet engine, total war, Common Marketeer, machine time, etc.
Word-groups and different types of words are unequally distributed among various lexical stylistic groups of the vocabulary, with a predominance of one or another type in every group. For example, new words in the field of science are mostly of derived and compound structure but the technical section of the vocabulary extension is characterised by simple words. The greater part of word-groups is found among scientific and technical terms; the political layer of vocabulary is rather poor in word-groups. Besides this peculiar distribution of different types of words, every type acquires its own specific peculiarity in different lexical stylistic groups of the vocabulary, for example, although derived words are typical both of scientific and technical terms, words formed by conversion are found mostly among technical terms.
WAYS AND MEANS OF ENRICHING THE VOCABULARY
There are two ways of enriching the vocabulary as has been mentioned above: A. vocabulary extension — the appearance of new lexical items. New vocabulary units appear mainly as a result of: 1. productive or patterned ways of word-formation; 2. non-patterned ways of word-creation; 3. borrowing from other languages. B. semantic extension — the appearance of new meanings of existing words which may result in homonyms.
| § 8. Productive Word-Formation |
Productive1 word-formation is the most effective means of enriching the vocabulary. The most widely used means are affixation (prefixation mainly for verbs and adjectives, suffixation for nouns and adjectives), conversion (giving the greatest number of new words in verbs and nouns) and composition (most productive in nouns and adjectives).
'New’ words that appear as a result of productive word-formation are not entirely new as they are all made up of elements already available in the language. The newness of these words resides in the particular combination of the items previously familiar to the language speaker. As has already been mentioned productivity of derivative devices that give rise to novel vocabulary units is fundamentally relative and it follows that there are no patterns which can be called ‘fully’ productive.
Productive patterns in each part of speech, with a set of individual structural and semantic constraints, serve as a formal expression of the regular semantic relationship between different classes or semantic groupings of words. Thus the types of new words that may appear in this or that lexical-grammatical class of words can be predicted with a high degree of probability. The regularity of expression of the underlying semantic relations, firmly rooted in the minds of the speakers, make
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