Productive Types of Compound Adjectives 8 страница
Another debatable point closely connected with the problem of the number of vocabulary units in English is one of the least investigated problems of lexicology — the border-line between homonymy and polysemy when approached synchronically and divergent views concerning lexico-grammatical homonymy.3 If identical sound-forms, e.g. work (n) and work (v) are considered to be different grammatical and semantic variants of the same word, they are accordingly treated as one word. This conception naturally tends to diminish the total number of
1 See Horman A. Estrin and Donald V. Mehus, The American Language in the 1970s, USA, 1974. See also C. Barnhart, op. cit.
2 See ‘Word-Groups and Phraseological Units’, § 11, p. 74.
3 See ‘Semasiology’, §§ 37-39, pp. 43 — 47.
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vocabulary units in English. In some cases of lexical homonymy the boundary line between various meanings of one polysemantic word and the meanings of two homonymous words is not sufficiently sharp and clear and allows of different approaches to the problem.1 Thus, e.g., words like fly — ‘a two-winged insect’ and fly — ‘a flap of cloth covering the buttons on a garment’ may be synchronically treated as two different words or as different meanings of the same word.2
Next comes the problem of word and word variants. If, for example, we consider the clippings doc, prof, etc. as variants of the words doctor, professor, etc., we must count prof and professor, doc and doctor as two words having each two variants. If, however, we regard them as different words having each of them its sound-form and ’semantic structure, we shall count them as four separate words.
There is one more point of interest in connection with the problem of the number of words that should be mentioned here. Paradoxical as it may seem a great number of lexical items actually used by English-speaking people cannot practically be counted. These words are usually referred to as “occasional”, “potential” or “nonce-words". The terms imply that vocabulary units of this type are created for a given occasion only and may be considered as but “potentially” existing in English vocabulary. They may be used by any member of the speech community whenever the need to express a certain concept arises. These are derived and compound words which are formed on highly productive and active word-building patterns.3 Some of these word-formation patterns and affixes are so active and productive as “to make even a representative sampling beyond our resources".4 In fact the suffix -er, e.g., may be added to almost any verbal stem to form a noun denoting the agent of the action. If we count up all the words that may be formed in this way, the number of vocabulary units will be considerably magnified.
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It is clear from the above that the divergent views concerning the nature of basic vocabulary units cannot but affect the estimate of the size of English vocabulary in terms of exact figures.
| § 13. Intrinsic Heterogeneity of Modern English |
Modern English vocabulary is not homogeneous, and contains a number of lexical units which may be considered “non-English” and “not modern". It follows that in estimating the size of vocabulary very much depends on our understanding of the terms modern and English. Let us begin with the analysis of the term English vocabulary units. If we compare words of the type Luftwaffe, regime, garage, sputnik, we shall see that the borderline between ‘non-assimilated’ borrowings which make up part of English vocabulary and foreign or alien words is not always sharp and distinct.5
1 See ‘Semasiology’, §§ 32-34, pp. 39 — 42.
2 Compare the different approaches to this word in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1957 and the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, 1956.
3 For illustrative examples see ‘Various Aspects...’, § 8, p. 184 — 187.
4 See C. Barnhart, op. cit., Explanatory Notes, p. 15.
5 See ‘Etymological Survey ...’, §§ 1, 6, 11, pp. 160, 165, 171.
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For example, it was already pointed out that the Second World War and fascist aggression gave currency to a number of new lexical items such as Luftwaffe, Blitzkrieg and others. Words of that type are distinguished from other neologisms by their peculiar graphic and sound-form. They are felt as “alien” elements in the English word-stock and are used more or less in the same way as words of a foreign language may be used by English speakers.
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This also applies to barbarisms. As a rule barbarisms, e.g. mutatis mutandis (L.), faux pas (Fr.) and others, are included even in the comparatively concise dictionaries alongside with English words l although it is rather doubtful whether they are really part of the English vocabulary.
The criterion which serves to describe lexical units as belonging to Modern English vocabulary is also rather vague. The point is that profound modifications in the vocabulary of a language are occasioned not only by the appearance and creation of new lexical items but also by the disappearance of certain lexical units.2 Some words seem gradually to lose their vitality, become obsolete and may eventually drop out of the language altogether. This was the case with the OE. niman — ‘take’; ambith — ’servant’ and a number of others. The process being slow and gradual, the border-line between “dead” and “living” words in the English word-stock is not always clearly defined. Such words, e.g., as welkin, iclept are scarcely ever used in present-day English but may be found in poetical works of outstanding English poets of the nineteenth century. Can we consider them as non-existing in the Mоdern English vocabulary? The answer to the question as to the number of lexical units in modern English word-stock will naturally vary depending on the answer given to this particular question.
According to the recent estimates the OED contained 414,825 lexical units out of which 52,464 are obsolete words, 9,733 alien words, 67,105 obsolete and variant forms of main words.3
| § 14. Number of Vocabulary Items in Actual Use and Number of Vocabulary Units in Modern English |
Taking into account the growth of the vocabulary in the last forty years an estimate of 30,000 words in the actual working vocabulary of educated persons today may be considered reasonable though it comprises a number of non-assimilated, archaic and occasional words. It should be pointed out, however, that a considerable number of words are scarcely ever used and the meaning of quite a number of them is unknown to an average educated English layman, e.g. abalone, abattoir, abele and the like.4 It follows that there is a considerable difference between the number of lexical items in Modern English vocabulary and the number of lexical items in actual use. Bу the phrase “in actual use” we do not imply words and phrases used by any single individual but
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1 See, e. g., The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1957.
2 See ‘Various Aspects ...’, § 6, p. 180.
3 Clarence L. Barnhart. Methods and Standards for Collecting Citations for English Descriptive Dictionaries, 1975.
4 See The Shorter Oxford Dictionary, 1957,
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the vocabulary actually used and understood by the bulk of English-speaking people as a whole at a given historical period. It also follows that not all vocabulary items are of equal practical importance. In this connection it should be recalled that there is a considerable difference between the vocabulary units a person uses and those he understands. According to the data available, the “passive” vocabulary of a “normally educated person” comprises about 30,000 words. At best about 20,000 are actually used in speech. Of these not all the words are equally important.
The relative “value” of lexical items is dependent on how frequently this or that particular unit occurs in speech and on the range of application of these units. 4,000 — 5,000 of most frequently occurring words are presumed to be amply sufficient for the daily needs of an average member of the given speech community. It is obvious that these 4,000 — 5,000 comprise ordinary words which are as a rule polysemantic and characterised by neutral stylistic reference.1 Specialised vocabulary units (special words and terminology) are naturally excluded.
It should not be inferred from the above that frequency alone is an adequate criterion to establish the most useful list of words. There are, especially in science, words that appear very rarely even in a large corpus, but are central to the “concepts of a whole science.
As is well known terminology in various fields of scientific inquiry comprises many peculiar vocabulary units the bulk of which is made up of Latin or Greek morphemes. Terms possess a number of common features in all European languages. Terms are as a rule used by comparatively small groups of professionals and certainly not by the language community as a whole. Most of them are to a certain extent “international”, i.e. understandable to specialists irrespective of their nationality. Compare for example Russ. зуб — зубы, English tooth — teeth and the corresponding phonetic terms Russ. дентальный, Eng. dental. Compare also Eng. radio — Russ. радио, Eng. electronics — Russ. электроника, etc. Special words and terms make up the bulk of neologisms and the question naturally arises whether terms belong to common English vocabulary items. Nevertheless they are of great importance for those who are working in this or that branch of science or technology.
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| § 15. Summary and Conclusions |
1. The comparative value and place of the word in the vocabulary system is conditioned by the interdependence of the structural, semantic, stylistic and etymological aspects of the words which is brought out most vividly in the frequency value attached to each word.
2. On the basis of the interrelation of lexical and grammatical types of meaning words fall into two classes: notional words and form words — a numerically small class of words with the highest frequency value.
1 Some figures found in Pierre Guiraud’s book Les caractères statistiques du vocabulaire (Presses Universitaires de France, 1954) may be of interest to language learners. The counts conducted by the author show that out of 20,000 words the first 100 most frequently occurring words make up 60% of any text; 1,000 — 85%; 4,000 — 97,5%, all the rest (about 15,000) - 2,5%.
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3. Words of high frequency value are mostly characterised by polysemy, structural simplicity, neutral stylistic reference and emotive charge. They generally belong either to the native words or to the early borrowings which are already fully or almost fully assimilated.
4. Frequency also reflects the interdependence and comparative importance of individual meanings within the word. The basic meaning of the word is at the same time the meaning with the highest frequency value.
5. The development of vocabulary is largely due to the rapid flow of events, the progress of science and technology and emergence of new concepts in different fields of human activity.
6. Distinction should be made between the qualitative growth of the vocabulary as a result of semantic extension of the already available words and the numerical replenishing of vocabulary as a result of appearance of new vocabulary units.
7. There are three principal ways of the numerical growth of vocabulary: a) productive word-formation, b) various non-patterned ways of word creation, c) borrowings.
8. Productive word-formation is the most powerful source of the numerical growth of present-day English vocabulary.
There are various ways of non-patterned word creation. The two main types are lexicalisation and shortening.
9. The two main types of shortening are: a) transformations of word- groups into words which involve substantivisation, acronyms and blend- ings and b) clippings which consist in a change of the word-structure.
10. Borrowing as a source of vocabulary extension takes the shape of borrowing of morphemes, borrowing of actual words and loan-translations. Especially active nowadays is the formation of new words out of borrowed morphemes.
11. The exact number of vocabulary units in Modern English cannot be stated with any degree of certainty for a number of reasons:
a) Constant growth of Modern English word-stock.
b) Intrinsic heterogeneity of Modern English vocabulary.
c) Divergent views concerning the nature of basic vocabulary units connected with some crucial debatable problems of lexicology: homonymy, polysemy, phraseology, nonce-words.
d) The absence of a sharp and distinct border-line between English and foreign words and between modern and outdated English vocabulary units.
12. There is a considerable difference between the number of vocabulary units in Modern English word-stock and the number of vocabulary items in actual use.
The selection and number of vocabulary items for teaching purposes depends on the aims set before language learners.
VIII. Variants and Dialects of the English Language
To this point we have been dealing with the vocabulary of the English language as if there were only one variety of this language. We shall now turn to the details in which the language of some English speakers differs from that of others, we shall see what varieties of the language in question there are and how they are interconnected.
Every language allows different kinds of variations: geographical or territorial, perhaps the most obvious, stylistic, the difference between the written and the spoken form of the standard national language and others. We shall be concerned here with the territorial variations, the others being the domain of stylistics.
For historical and economic reasons the English language has spread over vast territories. It is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and some provinces of Canada. It is the official language in Wales, Scotland, in Gibraltar and on the island of Malta. The English language was also at different times enforced as an official language on the peoples who fell under British rule or US domination in Asia, Africa and Central and South America. The population of these countries still spoke their mother tongue or had command of both languages. After World War II as a result of the national liberation movement throughout Asia and Africa many former colonies have gained independence and in some of them English as the state language has been or is being replaced by the national language of the people inhabiting these countries (by Hindi in India, Urdu in Pakistan, Burmanese in Burma, etc.). though by tradition it retains there the position of an important means of communication.
The role of the English language in these countries is often overrated, apart from other reasons, through not differentiating between the function of the language as a mother tongue and its function as a means of communication between the colonisers and the native population.
THE MAIN VARIANTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
| § 1. General Characteristics of the English Language in Different Parts of the English-Speaking World |
It is natural that the English language is not used with uniformity in the British Isles and in Australia, in the USA and in New Zealand, in Canada and in India, etc. The English language also has some peculiarities in Wales, Scotland, in other parts of the British Isles and America. Is the nature of these varieties the same?
Modern linguistics distinguishes territorial variants of a national language and local dialects. Variants of a language are regional varieties of a standard literary language characterised by some minor peculiarities in the sound system, vocabulary and grammar and by
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their own literary norms. Dialects are varieties of a language used as a means of oral communication in small localities, they are set off (more or less sharply) from other varieties by some distinctive features of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.
Close inspection of the varieties mentioned above reveals that they are essentially different in character. It is not difficult to establish that the varieties spoken in small areas are local dialects. The status of the other varieties is more difficult to establish.
It is over half a century already that the nature of the two main variants of the English language, British and American (Br and AE) has been discussed. Some American linguists, H. L. Mencken for one, speak of two separate languages with a steady flood of linguistic influence first (up to about 1914) from Britain to America, and since then from America to the British Isles. They even proclaim that the American influence on British English is so powerful that there will come a time when the American standard will be established in Britain.1 Other linguists regard the language of the USA as a dialect of English.
Still more questionable is the position of Australian English (AuE) and Canadian English (CnE).
The differences between the English language as spoken in Britain, the USA, Australia and Canada are immediately noticeable in the field of phonetics. However these distinctions are confined to the articulatory-acoustic characteristics of some phonemes, to some differences in the use of others and to the differences in the rhythm and intonation of speech. The few phonemes characteristic of American pronunciation and alien to British literary norms can as a rule be observed in British dialects.
The variations in vocabulary, to be considered below, are not very numerous. Most of them are divergences in the semantic structure of words and in their usage.
The dissimilarities in grammar like AE gotten, proven for BE got, proved are scarce. For the most part these dissimilarities consist in the preference of this or that grammatical category or form to some others. For example, the preference of Past Indefinite to Present Prefect, the formation of the Future Tense with will as the only auxiliary verb for all persons, and some others. Recent investigations have also shown that the Present Continuous form in the meaning of Future is used twice as frequently in BE as in the American, Canadian and Australian variants; infinitive constructions are used more rarely in AE than in BE and AuE and passive constructions are, on the contrary, more frequent in America than in Britain and in Australia.
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