The influence of American English on the development of the language



Сначала рассказать про американизмывкратце, чисто определение –см предыдущий билет

Источник –АрнольдИ.В.

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 Britishisms come to be widely used in American speech. Americanisms mentioned as specific in manuals issued a few decades ago are now used on both sides of the Atlantic or substituted by terms formerly considered as specifically British. 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 fait, 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 l’automatisation. The influence of American advertising is also a vehicle of Americanisms. This is how the British term wireless is replaced by the Americanism radio.

The personal visits of British 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 equivalents in British English: drive-in ‘a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car’ or ‘a shop where motorists buy things staying in the car’; dude ranch ‘a sham ranch used as a summer residence for holiday-makers from the cities’.

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’. In England the derived meaning is ‘the foot-way at the side of the road’. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means ‘the 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 ride on a bus. In American English combinations like a ride on the train, ride in a boat are quite usual.

5)It sometimes happens that the same word is used in American English with some difference in emotional and stylistic colouring. Nasty, for example, is a much milder expression 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 (уничижительноеслово) in the USA. Professor A.D. Schweitzer pays special attention to phenomena differing in social norms of usage. For example balance in its lexico-semantic variant ‘the remainder of anything’ is substandard(просторечноеслово) in British English and quite literary (литературный стиль) in America.

6)Last but not least, there may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. Thus, time-table which occurs in American English very rarely, yielded  ( |ˈjiːldɪd| уступать) its place to schedule.

Semantic variation. Homonyms as the limit of semantic variation.

Semantic variation(Source – определение - излекций): A number of meanings a given word is used to express are commonly discussed under the name of lexical-semantic variants (лексико-семантические варианты). Semantic variation presents a complicated case in terms of methodology in general and the identity of unit problem in particular. The majority of words in any language have more than one meaning. English, in its turn, happens to be not only a language with immense and powerful literary tradition, but it is also used internationally by an enormous number of people. Hence the polysemantic nature of its units, which is not a question of irregularity, but of working out a reliable pattern of semantic analysis.

The overall meaning of the word is approached, according to V. V. Vinogradov, in terms of nominative, nominative-derivative, colligationally and collocationally conditioned and phraseologically bound meanings (Виноградов, 1975)

We can speak here of semantic variation which is caused by the polysemy of the word. Semantic variation implies that the identity of the word remains intact as it is used in different meanings. In Do you like your tea sweet?andWhat a very sweet name — the difference between the lexical-semantic variants of the word (its direct nominative and nominative-derivative meanings) is not great enough to split it up into two different units.

Homonymy – the coincidence in the same sound form and the orthographic complex of two or more different linguistic units (определениеизметодички, навсякийслучай).

When several related meanings are associated with the same group of sounds within one part of speech, the word is calledpolysemantic, when two or more unrelated meanings are associated with the same form — the words are homonyms. (Arnold)

Источник–Антрушина:

Homonyms are words which are identical in sound and spelling, or, at least, in one of these aspects, but different in their meaning.

E. g. J bank, n. — a shore

bank, n. — an institution for receiving, lending, exchanging, and safeguarding money

ball, n. — a sphere; any spherical body ball, n. — a large dancing party

ГВИШИАНИ : At a certain point new lexical-semantic variants become mutually incompatible semantically, morphologically, in terms of collocation, style, frequency of occurrence, usage, etc. (Minajeva). New uses then turn into different words with identical expression. Variation within a word may bring to a stage when its semantic core is no longer elastic, it cannot be stretched any further, and as a result, a new word comes into being.

In the process of communication they are more of an encumbrance помеха, leading sometimes to confusion and misunderstanding. Yet it is this very characteristic which makes them one of the most important sources of popular humour.

The pun is a joke based upon the play upon words of similar form but different meaning (i. e. on homonyms) as in the following:

"A tailor guarantees to give each of his customers a perfect fit."

(The joke is based on the homonyms: I. fit, n. — perfectly fitting clothes; II. fit, n. — a nervous spasm.)

Homonyms which are the same in sound and spelling (as the ex-amples given in the beginning of this chapter) are traditionally termed homonyms proper.

The following joke is based on a pun which makes use of another type of homonyms:

"Waiter!" "Yes, sir." "What's this?" "It's bean soup, sir."

"Never mind what it has been. I want to know what it is now."

Bean, n. and been, Past Part, of to be are homophones. As the example shows they are the same in sound but different in spelling. Here are some more examples of homophones:

night, n. — knight, n.; piece, n. — peace, n.; scent, n. — cent, n. — sent, v. (Past Indef., Past Part, of to send); rite, n. — to write, v. — right, adj.; sea, n. — to see, v. — С [si:] (the name of a letter).

The third type of homonyms is calledhomographs. These are words which are the same in spelling but different in sound.

to bow [bau], v. - to incline the head or body

bow[bəʊ], n. -wood for propelling arrows

to lead [li:d],v.— to conduct on the way, go before to show the way

lead [led], n. -a heavy, rather soft metal

to tear [teə], v. - to pull apart or in pieces by force

tear [tɪə], n. - a drop of the fluid secreted by the lacrinial glands of the eye

One source of homonyms arephonetic changes which words undergo in the course of their historical development. As a result of such changes, two or more words which were formerly pronounced differently may develop identical sound forms and thus become homonyms.

Night and knight, for instance, were not homonyms in Old English as the initial k in the second word was pronounced, and not dropped as it is in its modern sound form: О.Е. kniht (cf. О.Е. niht).

In Old English the verb to write had the form writan, and the adjective right had the forms reht, riht. The noun sea descends from the Old English form , and the verb to see from О. Е. sēon. The noun work and the verb to work also had different forms in Old English: wyrkean and weork respectively.

Borrowing is another source of homonyms. A borrowed word may, in the final stage of its phonetic adaptation, duplicate in form either a native word or another borrowing. So, in the group of homonyms riteобряд, n. — to write, v. — right, adj. the second and third words are of native origin whereas rite is a Latin borrowing (< Lat. ritus). Bank, n. ("shore") is a native word, and bank, n. ("a financial institution") is an Italian borrowing. Fair, adj. (as in a fair deal, it's not fair) is native, and fair, n. ("a gathering of buyers and sellers") is a French borrowing. Match, n. ("a game; a contest of skill, strength") is native, and match, n. ("a slender short piece of wood used for producing fire") is a French borrowing.

Word-building also contributes significantly to the growth of homonymy, and the most important type in this respect is undoubtedly conversion. Such pairs of words as comb расческа, n. — to comb, v., pale, adj. — to pale, v., to make, v. — makeпроизводство, n. are numerous in the vocabulary. Homonyms of this type, which are the same in sound and spelling but refer to different categories of parts of speech, are calledlexico-grammatical homonyms.

Shortening is a further type of word-building which increases the number of homonyms. E.g. fan, n. in the sense of "an enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer, etc." is a shortening produced from fanatic. Its homonym is a Latin borrowing fan, n. which denotes an implement for waving lightly to produce a cool current of air.

Words made by sound-imitation can also form pairs of homonyms with other words: e. g. bang, n. ("a loud, sudden, explosive noise") — bangчёлка, n. ("a fringe of hair combed over the forehead").

The above-described sources of homonyms have one important feature in common. In all the mentioned cases the homonyms developed from two or more different words, and their similarity is purely accidental. (In this respect, conversion certainly presents an exception for in pairs of homonyms formed by conversion one word of the pair is produced from the other: a find < to find.)

Now we come to a further source of homonyms which differs essentially from all the above cases. Two or more homonyms can originate from different meanings of the same word when, for some rea-son, the semantic structure of the word breaks into several parts. This type of formation of homonyms is calledsplit polysemy.

From what has been said in the previous chapters about polysemantic words, it should have become clear that the semantic structure of a polysemantic word presents a system within which all its constituent meanings are held together by logical associations. In most cases, the function of the arrangement and the unity is deter-mined by one of the meanings (e. g. the meaning "flame" in the noun fire — see Ch. 7, p. 133). If this meaning happens to disappear from the word's semantic structure, associations between the rest of the meanings may be severed, the semantic structure loses its unity and falls into two or more parts which then become accepted as independent lexical units.

Let us consider the history of three homonyms:

board, n. — a long and thin piece of timber

board, n. — daily meals, esp. as provided for pay,e. g. room and board

board, n. — an official group of persons who direct or supervise some activity, e. g. a board of directors

It is clear that the meanings of these three words are in no way associated with one another. Yet, most larger dictionaries still enter a meaning of board that once held together all these other meanings "table". It developed from the meaning "a piece of timber" by transference based on contiguity (association of an object and the material from which it is made). The meanings "meals" and "an official group of persons" developed from the meaning "table", also by transference based on contiguity: meals are easily associated with a table on which they are served; an official group of people in authority are also likely to discuss their business round a table.

Nowadays, however, the item of furniture, on which meals are served and round which boards of directors meet, is no longer denoted by the word board but by the French Norman borrowing table, and board in this meaning, though still registered by some dictionaries, can very well be marked as archaic as it is no longer used in common speech. That is why, with the intrusion of the borrowed table, the word board actually lost its corresponding meaning. But it was just that meaning which served as a link to hold together the rest of the constituent parts of the word's semantic structure. With its diminished role as an element of communication, its role in the semantic structure was also weakened. The speakers almost forgot that board had ever been associated with any item of furniture, nor could they associate the concepts of meals or of a responsible committee with a long thin piece of timber (which is the oldest meaning of board). Consequently, the semantic structure of board was split into three units.

The subdivision of homonyms into homonyms proper, homophones and homographs is certainly not precise enough and does not reflect certain important features of these words, and, most important of all, their status as parts of speech. The examples given in the beginning of this chapter show that homonyms may belong both to the same and to different categories of parts of speech. Obviously, a classification of homonyms should reflect this distinctive feature. Also, the paradigm of each word should be considered, because it has been observed that the paradigms of some homonyms coincide completely, and of others only partially.

Accordingly, Professor A. I. Smirnitsky classified homonyms into two large classes:I. full homonyms, II. partial homonyms

Full lexical homonyms are words which represent the same cate-gory of parts of speech and have the same paradigm.

match, n. — a game, a contest

match, n. — a short piece of wood used for producing fire

Partial homonymsare subdivided into three subgroups:

A. Simple lexico-grammatical partial homonyms are words which belong to the same category of parts of speech. Their paradigms have one identical form, but it is never the same form, as will be seen from the examples.

to lay, v.класть

lay, v. (Past Indef. of to lieлгать)

to bound, v.(прыгать, скакать to run with long steps, especially in an enthusiastic way)

bound, v. (Past Indef., Past Part, of to bindсвязывать)

B. Complex lexico-grammatical partial homonymsare words of different categories of parts of speech which have one identical form in their paradigms.

rose, n.

rose, v. (Past Indef. of to rise)

maid, n.

made, v. (Past Indef., Past Part, of to make)

left, adj.

left, v. (Past Indef., Past Part, of to leave)

bean, n.

been, v. (Past Part, of to be)

one, num.

won, v. (Past Indef., Past Part, of to win)

C. Partial lexical homonyms are words of the samecategory of parts of speech which are identical only intheir corresponding forms.

to lie (lay, lain), v. to lie (lied, lied), v.

to can (canned, canned) консервировать

(I) can (could)


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