Stylistic classification of the English lexicon.
In accordance with the division of language into literary and colloquial, we can divide the whole word stock of the English language into 3 main layers: literary, neutral and colloquial.
The literary layer consists of words that have no local or dialect character. The literary vocabulary consists of the following groups of words: 1. common literary; 2.terms and learned words; 3.poetic words; 4.archaic words; 5. barbarisms and foreign words.
The aspect of the neutral layer is its universal character. It means that it can be employed in all styles and in all spheres of human activity.
The colloquial layer of words as qualified in most English or American dictionaries is not infrequently limited to a definite language community or confined to a special locality where it circulates. The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups: 1. common colloquial words; 2. slang; 3. jargonisms; 4. professional words; 5. dialect words; 6. vulgar words.
Word structure. Morphemic analysis of English words.
Most of the English lexicon is constituted by word which have several morphemes. (75 % English words – polymorphemic). According to the number of morphemes words are classified into monomorphemic and polymorphemic.
Monomorphemic words consist of only one root-morpheme – EX. pronouns (he, this)-small, dog.
A morpheme – the smallest meaningful language unit. Morphemes may be classified:
1. from the semantic point of view morphemes fall into two classes:
· root morphemes - is the lexical nucleus of a word, it has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language. The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a set of words making up a word-cluster, for example the morpheme teach-in to teach, teacher, teaching, theor-in theory, theorist, theoretical,etc.
· non-root morphemes (or affixational) -include inflections and affixes. Roots and affixational morphemes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g., in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill,etc.: the root-morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, -fillare understood as the lexical centres of the words, as the basic constituent part of a word without which the word is inconceivable.
Affixes are classified into prefixes and suffixes: a prefix precedes the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it. Affixes besides the meaning proper to root-morphemes possess the part-of-speech meaning and a generalised lexical meaning.
|
|
|
2. Structurally morphemes fall into three types:
· Free morpheme - one that coincides with the stem or a word-form. A great many root-morphemes are free morphemes (EX. friend—friendship)
· Bound morphemes. Affixes are, naturally, bound morphemes (they always make part of a word, e.g. the suffixes -ness, -ship, -ise (-ize),etc., the prefixes un-,dis-, de-).
· Semi-bound morphemes - can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme (EX. the morpheme well– do smth well / well-known).
11. Derivational analyses.
The nature, type and arrangement of the word is known as a derivative structure. According to the derivative structure all words fall into two big classes: simple (non-derived) words and complexes (or derivatives).
The basic elementary units of the derivative structure of words are: derivational bases, derivational affixes, derivational patterns. The relations between words with a common root but of different derivative structure are known as derivative relations. The derivative structure and derivative relations make the subject of study at the derivational level of analysis. it aims at establishing correlations between different types of words, the structural and semantic patterns words are built on, the study also enables one to understand how new words appear in the language.
Derivational base:Structurally derivational bases fall into three classes:
1) bases that coincide with morphological stems of different degrees of complexity, e.g. day-dream, to day-dream, daydreamer.
2) bases that coincide with word-forms; e.g. paper-bound, unsmiling, unknown.
3) bases that coincide with word-grоups of different degrees of stability, e ,g. blue-eyed, old-fashioned..
Derivational affixes:Derivational affixes possess two basic functions: 1) stem-building , 2) word-building. In most cases derivational affixes perform both functions simultaneously.
Derivational patterns:a derivational pattern is a regular meaningful arrangement, a structure that imposes rules on the order of the derivational bases and affixes that may be brought together.
There are two types of DPs —structural that specify base classes and individual affixes, and structural-semantic that specify semantic peculiarities of bases and the individual meaning of the affix.
|
|
|
Affixation
Affixationis generally defined as the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to different types of bases. The zero degree of derivation is ascribed to simple words (EX. atom, anxious, horror). Derived words whose bases are built on simple stems + one derivational affix are described as having the first degree of derivation, (atomic, devotion),Derived words formed by two consecutive stages of adding affixes the second degree of derivation (atomical). Affixation is subdivided into suffixation and prefixation. In Modern English suffixation is mostly characteristic of noun and adjective formation, while prefixation is mostly typical of verb formation.
Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes. There are about 51 prefixes in the system of ME word-formation. The greater number of words that take prefixes are verbs – 42.4%, adjectives comprise 33,5% and nouns make up 22.4%
Two types of prefixes are to be distinguished:
1) those not correlated with any independent word (either notional or functional), e.g. un-, dis-, re-, pre-, post-, etc.;
2) those correlated with functional words (prepositions or preposition like adverbs), e.g. out-, over-, up-, under-,etc.
Suffixationis the formation of words with the help of suffixes. Suffixes usually transfer words to a different part of speech.
Noun-suffixes - -er, -dom, - ness, -tion
Adjective – -able, -less, -ful, -ic, -ous.
Verb - -en, -fy, -ise
Adverb - -ly
Compound suffixes: -ably = -able + -ly (e.g. profitably, unreasonably); -ically = -ic + -al + -ly (e.g. musically, critically); -ation= -ate+ -ion(e.g. fascination, isolation)and some others.
Conversion
Conversion is one of the principal ways of forming words in ME and it is highly productive. Conversion consists in making a new word from some existing word by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged. The new word has a meaning which differs from that of the original one though it can more or less be easily associated with it: work — to work; love — to love; paper — to paper.
|
|
|
Conversion can be described as a morphological way of forming words. The treatment of conversion as a morphological way of forming words was suggested by prof. Smirnitsky.
Cases of conversion:
1) formation of verbs from nouns and more rarely from other parts of speech, and
2) formation of nouns from verbs and rarely from other parts of speech.
Basic Criteria: the problem of the criteria of semantic derivation: which of the two words within a conversion pair is the derived member?
The 1st criterion makes use of the non-correspondence between the lexical meaning of the root-morpheme and the part-of-speech meaning of the stem in one of the two words making up a conversion pair.
The 2nd criterion involves a comparison of a conversion pair with analogous word-pairs making use of the synonymic sets, of which the words in question are members. For instance, in comparing conversion pairs like chatv— chatn;workv— workn, etc. with analogous synonymic word-pairs like converse — conversation; exhibit — exhibition; occupy — occupation; employ — employment,etc. we are led to conclude that the nouns chat, show, work,etc. are the derived members.
Compounding
Compounding: This type of word-building, in which new words are produced by combining two or more stems, is one of the three most productive types in Modern English, the other two are conversion and affixation.
Compounds, on the one hand, are generally clearly distinguished from free word-groups, on the other hand they borderline between them. So there are some criteria which are used to differentiate them: phonetic criterion, semantic and graphic.
· Phоnetiсallу compounds have a specific structure of their own. No phonemic changes of bases occur in composition but the compound word acquires a new stress pattern (‘arm-'chair, ‘grass-'green).
· Graphicallymost compounds have two types of spelling — daughter-in-law, man-of-war, brother-in-arms.
|
|
|
· Semantically compound words are generally motivated units. The meaning of the compound is first of all derivedfrom the combined lexical meanings of its components.
There are different classifications of compound words:
1) From the point of view of degree of semantic independence: coordinative compounds – the two components are semantically equally important (oak-tree, girl-friend, Anglo-American); and subordinative compounds - the components are not equally important
2) From part of speech they form: compound words are found in all parts of speech, but the majority of compounds are nouns and adjectives.
3) The description of compound words through the correlation with variable word-groups makes it possible to classify them into four major classes: adjectival-nominal (care-free), verbal-nominal (hand-shake), nominal (horse-race) and verb-adverb compounds (break-down, runaway).
Abbreviation.
Shortening is a comparatively new way of word-building, which has achieved a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English.
Shortenings are produced in two different ways:
1. To make a new word from a syllable of the original word. The word may lose its beginning (phone – from telephone), it’s ending (hols – for holidays, ad – from advertisement) or both the beginning and the ending (fridge – from refrigerator).
2. To make a new word from the initial letters of a word group:
a) Acronyms (if the abbreviated written form tends to be read as an ordinary English word) - NATO — the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
b) Initial shortenings - abbreviation with the alphabetical reading retained. - B.B.C. (the British Broadcasting Corporation).
Another types:
1. Sound Imitation (onomatopoeia - [onemaete'pie]).
Such words are made by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, insects, human beings and inanimate objects. EX.The English cock cries cock-a-doodle-doo (Russian - ку-ка-ре-ку).
2. Reduplication.In reduplication new words are made by doubling a stem (bye-bye, ping-pong)
Phraseological units
Phraseological unit (set expression, idiom) – several words that tend to be used together, and we can’t guess the meaning of the whole phrase from the meanings of it’s parts.
Typology of ph.units (according to the degree of motivation):
- phraseological unities
- phraseological combinations
- phraseological fusions
Classification of idioms according to their structure: 1. Fixed idioms: a) fixed regular idioms (It’s a 60-thousand dollar question = difficult question), b) fixed irregular (can be varied on the grammatical level) – (to have a bee in one’s bonnet (She has.., I have...).2. Variable (varied on the lexical level) – (Ex.: to add fuel to the fire/flame)
Semantic classification:
2 criteria:
· The degree of semantic isolation
· The degree of disinformation
1. Nominative - A hard nut to crack, 2. Nominative –communicative (The ice is broken), 3. Interjectional & modal (Emotions, feelings) - Oh, my eye! (= Oh, my God!), 4. Communicative (proverbs, sayings) - There is no smoke without fire.
Sources of idioms:
1. from our everyday life -Ex.: to sail under false colour (прятать истинное лицо),
2. from the Bible -Ex.: black sheep, lost sheep (заблудшая овца)
3. World literature -Ex.: an ugly duckling (Danish) – гадкий утенок
4. different languages -Ex.: to lose face (Chinese)
5. from history -Ex.: to cross the Rubicon
Дата добавления: 2018-05-09; просмотров: 1594; Мы поможем в написании вашей работы! |
Мы поможем в написании ваших работ!