BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barber, C. 2000. The English Language. A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.
Baugh, A. and T. Cable. 2002. A History of the English Language, 5th edition. London: Routledge.
Bejan, N. and Elena Asandei. 1981. Contemporary English Language: Syntax and Lexicology.
Galai: Editura Universitii din Galai.
Brook, G. L. 1981. Words in Everyday Life. London: The Macmillan Press.
Cannon, G. 1987. Historical Change and English Word-Formation: Recent Vocabulary. New York,
Oxford: Peter Lang Publishing Group.
Crystal, D. 1995. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Davies, Diane. 2005. Varieties of Modern English. An Introduction. London: Longman.
Fernando, Chitra. 1996. Idioms and Idiomaticity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hulban, H. 1975. English Lexicology. Iai: Editura Universitii Alexandru Ioan Cuza.
Jackson, H. 1988. Words and their Meaning. London: Longman.
Jackson, H. and Etienne Z Amvela. 2007. Words, Meaning and Vocabulary. An Introduction to
Modern English Lexicology, 2nd edition. London: Continuum.
Katamba, F. 2005. English Words. Structure, History, Usage, 2nd edition. London: Routledge.
Lipka, L. 2002. English Lexicology. Tbingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Loos, E., D. Day and P. Jordan (Eds.) 1999. P. Jordan (Eds.) 1999. Metonymies in English.
Moon, Rosamund. 1998. Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Pyles, T. and J. Algeo. 1982. The Origins and Development of the English Language. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Ttaru, Cristina. 2002. An Outline of English Lexicology. Word Formation. Cluj-Napoca: Limes.

COURSE OUTLINE
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Lexicology. An introduction
Word formation
Multi-word units in English
Word meaning. Sense relations between words
Sources of the English vocabulary
Lexical strata in present-day English

LEXICOLOGY.
AN INTRODUCTION

Lexicology = a branch of linguistics, the science of

words;

the part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of a

language and the properties of words as the main units of
language. (Bejan 1981)

an area of language study concerned with the nature,

meaning, history and use of words and word elements
and often also with the critical description of
lexicography (Mc Arthur 1992)

the study of lexis, understood as the stock of words in a

given language, i.e. its vocabulary or lexicon (Amvela
2007)

THE WORD

Word = a minimum free form (Bloomfield 1926), i.e. the smallest meaningful linguistic unit that can be used
independently to convey meaning

A) orthographic words = the strings of letters (and orthographic signs) occurring between two blank spaces in
written language
Not always reliable definition see clitic groups (host word + clitic): mothers, Janes, Ill, theyd, arent, etc.

B) Phonological words = words in speech

Less easy to recognize than written words
C) Words as vocabulary items
Words as lexemes = the abstract entities, with different variants, that are found in dictionaries;
Words as word-forms = the actual variants of the lexeme
eg. Ring: ring, rang, rung, rings, ringing
Good:
Child:
D) Grammatical words = lexical items with a particular meaning and certain morphological and syntactic
characteristics
The same word-form of a lexeme may be used as different grammatical words = syncretism
eg. She paid the telephone bill yesterday. / She has paid the telephone bill.
I saw a sheep and a deer. / She saw two sheep and two deer.
Grammatical words are characterized by mobility and by stability or internal cohesion
The word redifined: The term word denotes the basic unit of a given language resulting from the
association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds [and letters] capable of a
particular grammatical employment (Bejan 1981)

LEXEME VS. WORD-FORM

Waiter, do you serve shrimps?

We serve anyone, sir. We dont
mind what size you are!

WORD FORMATION.
NOTIONS

A) Morpheme = the smallest unit that has meaning and serves a grammatical function in a
language. Morphemes are the atoms with which words are built (Katamba 2005: 29)

B) Allomorphs = the variants of a morpheme that are used to form new words
- eg. im-, in-, il-, ir- are variants of the same morpheme, employed on phonetic principles, according
to the starting sound of the element to which they are added: im-possible, in-cautious, il-literate, irresponsible;
(e)s, the marker of the regular plural of nouns, is also determined by phonological factors so that it
may be realized under the form of one of the following allomorphs: /s/ in hats, /z/ in games and /iz/ in
oranges.
- The morphemes that constitute the core for the formation of new words are less sensitive to the
phonetic environment and more so to the grammatical context in which they occur: the allomorphs
drove and driven correspond, respectively, to the past simple and the past perfect of the morpheme
drive.
Free morpheme = morpheme that can appear independently in an utterance and has a meaning of
its own: drive, sing, loving, beautifully
Bound morpheme = morpheme that cannot be used independently and does not have a notional or
full meaning, but a functional or derivative one: pre-, im-, -er, -ly

C) Root = the necessary and sufficient structural constituent for a word to exist, the part common to
all the words in a word family: care in the words careful, careless, carelessness, caring
Free roots = roots equivalent to a word whose meaning they carry into all the new words they help
to form: civil in civility, region in regional or person in personify
Bound roots = roots that cannot be used independently: sanct in sanctify, tox in toxic or loc in local

D) Affix = bound morpheme that is added to the root

Prefix = affix added before the root
Suffix = affix added after the root
Infix = affix added within the root
Derivational affix = affix that helps to form new words: ful in beautiful , un- in
unimportant
Inflectional affix = affix that helps to build new grammatical forms of the same
basic word, according to the syntactic environment in which this word is used: s in
writes helps to form the present tense form of the verb to write, when it is the
predicate of a third person singular subject; -ed in loved is used for the formation of
the past and past participle of to love, while er in cleverer is added to change the
positive degree of the adjective clever into its comparative of superiority

E) Stem = the part of the word to which an affix is added in order to form a new
word: in the word carelessness, care is the root, -less and ness are affixes, and
careless is the stem.
Simple stem = a stem that coincides with the root of the new word: small in
smaller
Derived stem = a stem which contains other elements as well, affixes or other
simple stems in combination with which a compound word is formed:. im-probable in
improbability or air-condition in air-conditioning).

WORD FORMATION

The most productive means by

which new words are brought into
being in a language are:

derivation
compounding
conversion

DERIVATION
Derivation = the process of forming new words
in a language by means of adding prefixes
and/or suffixes to roots or stems.
A) Prefixation = the process by which prefixes
are added to roots in order to form new words
Prefixes have a functional meaning = they do not
change the grammatical class of the root to
which they are added, but change its
meaning.
Therefore, prefixes are classified according to the
meaning they convey, as follows:

CLASSIFICATION OF THE
ENGLISH PREFIXES
i) negative prefixes, by far the largest group of prefixes in English, express
various shades of negative meaning:

de-/dis- (not, the contrary of): depress, disapprove, dishonour;

in-/im-/ir-/il- (allomorphs of the same bound morpheme that are employed

according to the initial sound of the root or stem to which they are added
not, the contrary of): insane, impossible, irrelevant, illiterate;

non- (not): non-stop, non-resident, nonsense, nonconformist. The basic

word stock of English includes a number of quite old words built with the
prefix non-, in which the prefix is not identifiable in full: nowhere, nothing,
never, nobody, neither, nor, etc.

mis (bad(ly), wrong(ly)): mislead, mistrust, misfortune,

misunderstanding;

un- (the opposite of, not): unfair, unwise, unexpected, unbalanced;

mal- (bad(ly), wrong(ly)): malfunctioning, malformation, malpractice.

ii)) reversative and privative prefixes:

un- (to deprive of to reverse the action,

to release from): unveil, unlock, unleash;

de-/dis- (to reverse the action, to get rid

of, to deprive of): defrost, decentralize,
deforestation, disconnect, discoloured

iii) prefixes of degree and size:

arch- (supreme, chief, most important): archenemy, archbishop;

hyper- (extra): hypersensitive, hypertension, hyperinflation;

mini- (little, small): miniskirt, minicomputer, mini-vacation;

over- (too much): overreact, overdone, overdressed, overconfident;

out- (more, better, faster, longer): outnumber, outstanding, outrun, outlive;

super- (above, more than, better, bigger): supernatural, superhuman, superman,

supermarket;

sub- (less than): subhuman, substandard, subnormal;

under- (too little): underdeveloped, underestimate, undercharge;

ultra- (beyond, extremely): ultrasonic, ultraviolet, ultra-revolutionary

iv) prefixes of attitude:

co- (accompanying, with, together): cooperation, coordination, co-author, coproduce;

pro- (for, on the side of): pro-democratic, pro-European;

anti- (against): antiwar, antifreeze, anticlimax, anti-imperialist;

counter- (against, in opposition): counteract, counter-productive, counterblast

v) prefixes of time and order:

ante- (before): antenatal, anteroom, antediluvian, antepenultimate;

fore- (before): forearm, forehead, foretell, fore-mentioned;

pre- (before): prehistoric, preheat, precondition, pre-election;

ex- (former): ex-wife, ex-president, ex-friend;

post- (after): post-war, post-date, post-position;

vi) prefixes of space, direction and location (the majority of these prefixes originate
in prepositions and adverbs of place that still function as such in English):

in- (going in, being in): influx, income, intake, inmate,

out- (going out, being out): outflow, output, outdoors;

up- (in an ascending direction): uphill, uptown, upstairs;

down- (in a descending direction): downhill, downstairs, downfall;

super- (over, above): superstructure, superellevation;

sub- (under): subway, suborbital, subsoil;

inter- (between, among): international, interface, interactive;

trans- (across, into another place): transatlantic, transmigration, transcontinental.

vii) the iterative prefix re- (one more time, again): reread, rebuild, redecorate,
reconsider.

ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH

PREFIXES
English prefixes have the following main origins:
i) Germanic:

be-: besprinkle, bewilderment, become;

for-: forbid, forbear;

mis-: mislead, misinterpret, miscalculate;

out-: outlive, outgrow, outstanding;

over-: overeat, overloaded, overhear;

un-: unfriendly, uncommon, unbelievable;

up-: upright, upshot, uptake;

with-: withstand, withdraw, withhold;

ii) Latin:

bi-: bimonthly, bifocal, bidirectional;

de-: decompose, deconstruct, declutch;

dis-: disagree, disadvantage, discontinue;

em-/en-: empower, enslave;

inter-: interlocutor, intergalactic, intercontinental;

non-: non-success, non-resistant, non-payment;

pre-: prerequisite, prepaid, preadmission;

pro-: pro-ally, pro-British;

super-: superman, superfrequency, superheated;

trans-: transformer, transmutation, transpose

iii) Greek:

a-/an-: anomalous, analphabet;

anti-: antibody, antithesis, anticlerical;

hyper-: hypercritical, hypermetrical.

PRODUCTIVITY OF THE
ENGLISH PREFIXES
According to their productivity, English prefixes may be classified into:
i) productive prefixes (involved into the process of new words creation at the present stage
in the development of English):

re-: retake, rethink, rewind, review;

un-: unbelievable, unnecessary, undo;

non-: non-verbal, non-stop;

de-: deconstruct, denominalization, defrost;

dis-: disengage, dismiss, disconnect;

out-: outome, outright, outstanding;

re-: reconstruct, refine, re-establish;

mis-: misunderstanding, misfire, mislaid.

ii) semi-productive prefixes (at present, relatively inactive in the formation of new words in English):

co-: co-author, co-editor, cooperation;

counter-: counteractive, counteract, counterattack;

sub-: subway, submarine, sublet;

up-: upward, update, upload;

vice-: vice-president, vice-rector;

iii) unproductive prefixes (at present, no longer used in the process of forming new words in English,
though they might have been productive at earlier stages of the evolution of the language):

be-: beloved, becalm, besprinkle;

with-: withholder, withdraw, withstand.

Classification of English prefixes according to the phonological changes they trigger:

i) non-neutral = prefixes that cause phonological changes in the roots they are added to

ii) neutral = prefixes that do not cause phonological changes in the roots they are added to (most of the
English prefixes)

SUFFIXATION.
CLASSIFICATION OF THE
ENGLISH SUFFIXES

B) Suffixation = the process of adding suffixes to roots or stems in order to form new
words

Unlike prefixes, suffixes change the morphological class of the roots or stems to which
they are added. Therefore, their classification is not made according to semantic criteria,
but according to morphological ones, as follows:

nominal suffixes nouns may be formed from other nouns, from adjectives or verbs:
a1) suffixes denoting the doer of the action:

-er (generally, it forms names of occupations from the corresponding verbs): driver, teacher, singer,
advisor;

-ster: gangster;

-eer/-ier: profiteer, pamphleteer, gondolier;

-ist: typist, artist;

-ent/-ant: student, attendant

a2) feminine suffixes (in English gender morphological markers are quite rare; however, there are cases
when the feminine is formed from the masculine of nouns by means of suffixes):

-ette: usherette;

-ess: lioness, duchess, actress;

-ix: aviatrix;

-euse: chauffeuse.

a3) suffixes denoting nationality:

-an/-ian: Korean, Hungarian, Estonian;

- ard: Spaniard.

-ese: Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese

a4) diminutive suffixes:

-ette: kitchinette;
-let: booklet;
-y/-ie: daddy, auntie

a5) abstract noun-forming suffixes:

-ing: breaking, reading, asking;

-age: coverage, mileage, tonnage;
-ance/-ence: appearance, assistance, experience;
-ism/-icism: criticism, Catholicism, post-modernism, deconstructivism;
-hood: boyhood, neighbourhood, childhood;
-dom: freedom, martyrdom;
-ment: nourishment;
-ness/-ess: happiness, tenderness, prowess;
-ty: certainty, honesty;
-ship: kinship, friendship, leadership

adjectival suffixes adjectives may be formed

from other adjectives, from nouns or from verbs:

-ish: tallish, foolish, greenish, Turkish;

-y/ly: cloudy, silky, manly, brotherly, womanly;
-less: sugarless, harmless, flawless;
-ful: joyful, useful, delightful, eventful;
-ed: wooded, pointed, horned;
-able/-ible:
readable,
understandable,
adaptable,
accessible;
-ive: progressive, possessive, aggressive;
-some: handsome, cumbersome, tiresome;
-er, -est (for the formation of the comparative of
superiority and the superlative degrees of comparison)

verbal suffixes verbs are formed mainly from nouns and adjectives. In
modern English, the number of verb-forming suffixes is rather reduced;
however, those that are still in use today are highly productive and therefore,
extremely frequent:

-ise/-ize: utilize, fertilize, Latinize, organize;

-ify: intensify, simplify, diversify
-en: brighten, enlighten, deepen, widen.

adverbial suffixes derived adverbs are formed by adding suffixes to nouns

and adjectives mostly:

ly (added to most of the adjectives): happily, strangely, badly, beautifully;

-wise: likewise, clockwise, crabwise;
-ward/-wards: northward(s), westward(s), backward(s), foreward(s).

numeral suffixes:

-teen (it generates the cardinal numerals between 13 and 19): thirteen, fifteen,
eighteen, nineteen;
-ty (it is used to form the cardinal numeral designating multiples of 10): thirty, forty,
sixty, ninety;
-th (it is the suffix forming ordinal numbers others than one, two, three and those that
have these in their structure; it may be appended either to simple numerals, to already
derived ones or to compound ones): fourth, sixth, twentieth, fiftieth, twenty-fourth,
eighty-seventh.

ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH

SUFFIXES

English suffixes are of the following main origins:

Germanic:

-er: Londoner, worker, poker;

-art: drunkard, braggart;
-hood: boyhood, brotherhood;
-ing: learning, reading, interesting;
-man: gentleman, townsman;
-ness: hardness, cleverness;
-ship: friendship, authorship;
-ed: wooded, added;
-some: handsome, twosome;
-ward: backward, foreward;
-wise: likewise, clockwise;

Romance (Latin, French and Italian):

-ette: kitchinette, usherette, novelette;

-or: actor, inspector;
-ee: employee, payee, trainee;
-ess: lioness, actress, hostess;
-age: marriage, breakage;
-al: arrival, betrayal, dismissal;
-ance/ence: assistance, resistance, dependence;
-ery/ry: flattery, bakery, dentistry;
-ment: acknowledgement, movement, amazement;
-ant/ent: claimant, correspondent;
-fy/ify: signify;
-ize/ise: modernize, organize, moralize;
Greek:
-ist: modernist, classicist;
-ism: communism, colloquialism, organism

PRODUCTIVITY OF THE
ENGLISH SUFFIXES
Like prefixes, suffixes may be grouped, according to their ability to create new words at the present stage in the
development of English into:

productive suffixes (which are, at present, active in terms of new words formation):
-able: profitable, regrettable, understandable;
-ed: loved, grouped, played;
-ing: interesting, clearing, meaning;
-less: sugarless, harmless, speechless;
-ness: calmness, brightness, happiness;
-y: edgy, bloody, cloudy;
-ly: scarcely, evenly, likely;
-ish: selfish, childish, Turkish.
semi-productive suffixes (at present, less active in the process of word formation):
-dom: kingdom, freedom, boredom;
-ful: spoonful, mouthful, hurtful;
-hood: boyhood, childhood;
-ee: employee, trainee, payee;
-ship: kinship, relationship;
c) unproductive suffixes (at present, no longer used to form new words):
-ance: deliverance, acceptance;
-age: coinage;
-ment: movement, development;
-some: handsome, gruesome;
-th: tenth, eleventh.

COMPOUNDING

Compounding = the process of coining new words by grammatically

and semantically combining two or more roots or stems

a) Orthographic characteristic of compounds:

Compounds may be spelt:

- solid (in one word): bullfighter, theatergoer, colorblind, whetstone, etc.

- hyphenated (in words separated by a hyphen): self-determination, heartbreaking, man-made, high-born, easy-going, grass-green, etc.
- in completely separate words: tea bag, nail brush, oil well, price cut

b) Phonological characteristics of compounds:

Most compounds have one main stress and lack juncture (the break
between words): bluebell, blackbird vs. blue bell, black bird
Compounding is driven by phonological factors in the case of
reduplicatives (words created on the basis of reduplication = the
repetition of the base of a word in part or in full): pooh-pooh, goody-goody,
roly-poly, wishy-washy, flip-flop, sing-song, harum-scarum, bow-wow.

C) Morphological characteristics of compounds:

Compounds may be classified according to the morphological
class to which they belong. Basically, all morphological classes
in English have compound members:

1) compound nouns:

noun + noun: baby carriage, bachelor flat, backpack, city-dweller,

bullfrog, swordfish
verbal noun + noun: meeting place, writing desk, fishing rod
noun + verbal noun: air-conditioning, sleepwalking
adjective + noun: blackbird, highlands, bluebell, blotting paper, boarding
card, built environment, wrought iron
pronoun + noun: she-wolf, he-doctor
verb + noun: pickpocket, dare-devil
noun + verb: sunset, rainfall, body-building, bird-watching
adverb + noun: after-thought, back-talk, down-grade, yes-man, outer
space;
adverb + verb: upkeep, upstart;
verb + adverb: cut-back, turn-round;
preposition + noun: afternoon, underworld;

2) compound adjectives:

3) compound verbs:

adjective + adjective: metallic-green, bitter-sweet;

noun + adjective: duty-free, sea-sick, earth-bound, self-educated, self-sustained,
self-made, self-controlled
adjective + noun + -ed: light-hearted, hot-blooded, evil-minded;
noun + verb (participle): ocean-going, love-struck, storm-beaten;
noun + noun + -ed: lion-hearted, honey-mouthed;
adverb + verb (participle): ill-behaved, well-meant, everlasting;
adverb + adjective: evergreen;

noun + verb: hen-peck, baby-sit, house-keep;

adjective + verb: white-wash, dry-clean, sweet-talk;
verb + verb: dive-bomb, drop-kick, blast-freeze;
adverb + verb: overhear, underestimate, down-grade

4) compound adverbs:

adverb + adverb: throughout, hereabout(s);

adverb + noun: uphill, downhill, outdoor;
adverb + preposition: wherefrom, thereby, hereby

5) compound numerals:

all cardinal numerals between round figures, starting with twenty-one: thirtyfour, forty-nine, eighty-seven;
cardinal numerals from 100 upward (+ the conjunction and): one hundred
and twenty-one, nine hundred and fifty-eight, ten thousand three hundred and
forty
fractions: 2/3=two thirds, 6/8=six eights
decimal numerals: 4 2/3=four-and-two-thirds, 5 1/3=five and one third.

6) compound pronouns are built on various patterns:

possessive adjective + the noun self: myself, yourself, ourselves;

personal pronoun in the accusative + the noun self: himself, herself,

themselves;

the predeterminers some-, any-, no-, or the adjective every + the nouns body,
thing: nothing, anybody, something, everybody;

the relative-interrogative words who, what, when, which, where + the adverb
ever: whoever, whatever, whenever, etc.
7) Compound prepositions (one or several prepositions built around a noun, an
adverb, a verb, another preposition):

in the middle of, in spite of, underneath, close to, faraway from, previous to, as
concerns, due to, owing to, but for, onto, as to

8) compound conjunctions (grouped around a

noun, an adverb, an adjective, a verb, a
preposition): for the reason that, for fear that,
as well as, never again, long before, seeing
that, supposing that.

9) compound interjections:

- reduplicatives: blah-blah, pooh-pooh, puff-puff,

hush-hush;
- ablaut combinations: ticktack;
- onomatopoeia: cook-a-doodle-doo, gobbledygook

d) Syntactic characteristics of compounds:

word order in compounds is sometimes ungrammatical: noun +

adjective (home-sick, sea-sick, weather-sensitive), object + verb
(knee-jerk);

compounds are non-interruptible, i.e. one cannot add extra words in

between the elements of the compound without affecting its structure;

the elements of a compound cannot be modified independently *hot

air-sick and *air very-sick are ungrammatical; it is the compound as a
whole that is modified by other words: seriously air-sick; adverbs
cannot modify compound nouns - *extremely gentleman and *the very
White House are ungrammatical;

the constituents of a compound cannot be inflected each in its turn:

ashes-trays, textsbooks are ungrammatical; the whole compound is
inflected according to the morphological class to which it belongs: ashtrays, textbooks.

e)
semantic
compounds

characteristics

of

compounds with an idiomatic meaning:

turnkey, turncoat = exocentric compounds
compounds with a compositional meaning:
armchair = endocentric compounds
compounds
in
between
these two
categories: bulldog, dustbin, blackboard

CONVERSION

Conversion = the process of forming new words by means of

transferring them from one morphological class to another,
without any changes, either in their form or in their
pronunciation.

1) nouns obtained by conversion:

nouns converted from adjectives: the good, the bad, the young, the
beautiful, the ugly, the English, the Romanian, an alarmist, an
anarchist, an acid, an adhesive, etc.

nouns converted from verbs: an abstract, a drive, an ache, an alert,

an advocate, an ally, a hunt, a jump, falling, driving, swimming, a
castaway, a catch, a cover, a lift, wish, doubt, envy, turn, rise, etc.

nouns converted from adverbs, prepositions and interjections: front,

back, behind, ups and downs, ins and outs, altogether (to be in the
altogether), pros and cons, a bang, a screech, the Hm HM, etc.

2) Adjectives obtained by conversion

- anything that fulfils an attributive and/or a
predicative function is an adjective in English:

nouns: girl friend, technology boom, family duties,

song bird;
pronouns: she-wolf, he-doctor, this cat, those boys,
which car, whatever answer, she herself;
numerals: three books, the second answer, nine point
seven percent;
adverbs: the front door, the room upstairs, the furniture
outdoors, yearly event, monthly seminar, daily routine;
phrases and idiomatic expressions: a do-it-yourself
manual, a cut-and-dried speech, a butter-wouldntmelt-in-his-mouth attitude.

3) Verbs obtained by conversion

verbs obtained from nouns: to rain, to snow,

to point, to spot, to drop, to corner, to
bottle, to catalogue, to mail, to ship, to coat,
to wrap;
verbs obtained from adjectives: to calm, to
dirty, to dry, to wet, to clean;
verbs obtained from adverbs, conjunctions
and interjections: to forward, to chirp, to
meow.

MINOR MEANS OF WORD

FORMATION

Clipping
Clipping compounds, blends or portmanteau
words are lexical items that have come into
being by combining two other words of which at
least one is fragmentary: Eurasian, paratroops,
telescreen, motel, brunch, Bollywood.

Contraction
When words are shortened to just a part of
them, they are said to be contracted: bus, plane,
phone, maam, oer, exam, fab, gas.

Back-formation (regressive or back derivation) = a process

based on the analogy between words that contain affixes and
words that have component parts homonymous to affixes.
These parts are removed in order to restore (or back-form)
what is believed to have been the original: baby-sit, peddle,
edit, pup, force-land, sleepwalk, housekeep, etc.

Deflection = the process resulting in the formation of new

words by means of changing a sound in the root of certain
words: drink drank drunk, bit bite, ride rode, fall fell,
bleed blood, sing song, believe, belief, etc.

Change of accent = the mechanism by which, in a pair of a

noun and its homograph verb, the two elements come to differ
from one another by distinctive accent: ttribute attribute,
torment torment, mport import, permit permit, etc.

Abbreviation = the reduction of a word to several letters or the

reduction of a group of words designating a notion to the initials of
these words: brolly (umbrella), hanky (handkerchief), nighty
(nightgown), p.js (pyjamas), NATO, UNESCO, HTML, MP, Mt., St.,
etc.

Alphanumerics = combinations of letters and numbers: CUL8R,

2DAY, 4U, W8, G2G, GR8, etc.

Eponyms = common words formed from proper names: hermetic

(Hermes), erotic (Eros), begonia (Michel Begon), dhalia (Anders
Dahl), chesterfield (Earl of Chesterfield), volt (Al. Volta), watt (J.
Watt), raglan (Baron Raglan), gorgonzola, camembert, cheddar,
chablis, burgundy, alsacian, dalmatian, etc.

Coinage = the process of inventing entirely new words: nylon,

Llnoleum, nutella, etc.

Fill in the blanks with the right word,

starting from the word given in
bold/capital letters:

1. You need to take three of these red pills. .

day
2. He is being very . about his whereabouts last night.
mystery
3. It is his .. which I find so unbelievable. He is normally such a truthful
boy!
honest
4. If you look on the other side of the cup, you will find a small ..with the
name of the original manufacturer.
engrave
5. Reports on the invasion are still very unclear, as are the . of what this
will prompt the government to do.
imply
6. This new law will not only effect cinemas in the United States but could
have dramatic and significant. effects on the film industry .
world
7. As he was walking home late last night, Mr. Jones saw a strange. shape
in the sky and rang the police immediately.
sphere
8. His behaviour in his father's presence caused his .
inherit

9. You can't help but disbelieve the government when different ministers are
giving out . statements about policy.
contradict
10. Harry should have checked the of the swimming pool before allowing
his children in. There could have been an accident.
deep
11. The rocks appear to be stationary but in the high winds that whip across
this desert landscape, they are in reality . moving .
perceive
12. Due to inflation, house prices in this area have become totally. . We
may to look somewhere cheaper.
afford
13. Are you sure the . is working properly on this truck? We must have done
more than twenty thousand.
mile
14. Far from being a drunkard, my father is actually a perfect example of .
sober
15. Given the small .. of fire in this part of the building, one fire extinguisher
should suffice.
likely

Europes debt to Rome

It is often said that Roman law has been of . MEASURE importance in the
development of European civilization. The Romans knew that only just laws could
. SURE sound government, commercial confidence and an orderly society. The
idea of the law as being something which binds still . LIE all legal contracts
drawn up by lawyers today. Once agreed by two parties, the contract cannot be
broken.
The legal traditions of Rome, however, were not bequeathed to modern Europe by
any direct line of .. INHERIT. Most of the Roman Empires law codes fell into
. USE with the disintegration of the Empire, and had to be rediscovered in the
Middle Ages. Their SURVIVE was longest in Byzantium, but they did not
strongly influence modern law-making by that route.
The revival of Roman traditions had to compete with other non-Roman, and often .
CONTRADICT, legal practices. Even so, the Roman CONCEIVE of codified
principles suited the purposes of Europes growing states better, and civil law in
most countries . INCREASE came to be based on the Roman model. In this
regard, the most INFLUENCE institution was the French Code, written in 1804.
Nowadays, whatever their connection, all educated European lawyers readily
KNOW their debt to Rome.

Explain
the
word
formation
processes in the following items:
SCUBA
EDIT OBJECTION
CAMCORDER
BURGER
DEPRESS
TO GREEN CAPS HIPPO
FIREMAN TO GOOGLE
NOTEBOOK
REAL ESTATE
ATM JACK-IN-THE-BOX
LAUGH
SITCOM
ASAP
KODAK
BBC SWINDLE
IMPOSSIBILITY
KLEENEX GERRYMANDER
TELEVISE UNBELIEVABLE
guillotine

MULTI-WORD UNITS IN
ENGLISH

Collocations = combinations of two (or more) lexemes

that sound natural to a native speaker: blond hair, green
grass, to set a record, to exaggerate greatly, etc.
If we take into consideration the grammatical class of
the words that make up the collocation, the following
patterns are possible:

Adjective + noun: eternal glory, inflated ambition

Verb + noun: to cover a distance, to strike gold, to set a
record
Noun + verb: an engine functions/runs/works, an eagle
screams
Verb + adverb: to fight bravely/heroically, to gain
easily/rapidly
Noun + (preposition) + noun: railway accident, a row of
desks, a spark of hope, a ray of sun

The two elements of a collocation are:

The node = the lexeme under discussion

The collocate(s) = the lexeme(s) that occur together with the node

Collocations may be classified according to the range of the

node as follows:
Fixed/unique/frozen collocations = a node has only one collocate:
auburn hair
Restricted collocations = a node has a limited number of
collocates: to need desperately/sorely/badly
Unrestricted/multiple collocations = a node has an unlimited
number of collocates: an
anxious/close/curios/grim/disapproving/meaningful look

Collocations have an additive meaning, while idiomatic

expressions have a holistic meaning

Phrasal verbs (a verb, usually of Germanic origin + a preposition or an

adverb): to take in, to take up, to give up, to set up, to get up, to get in, to get
along, to come to, to come out, to come up, etc.

Clichs = routine linguistic forms ranging from a combination of two words to a

whole sentence: the apple of discord, fantastic bargain, real progress, to drown
ones sorrow in drink, the light at the end of the tunnel

Binominals and trinominals = combinations of two and three words

belonging to the same grammatical class, linked by a form word, which always
occur in the same set order: husband and wife, bed and breakfast, ham and
eggs, fish and chips, here and there, head over heels, now or never, hide and
seek, bell, book and candle, ready, willing and able, lock, stock and barrel, etc.

Pragmatic idioms = set expressions used in particular social settings: Happy

birthday, Nice to meet you, Can I help you? Black or white? Single or return?,
Dear Sir, Yours truly, etc.

Proverbs

IDIOMS

Idioms = groups of words expressing a sense unit: to

show the white feather, to see how the wind blows, to
turn over a new leaf, to smell a rat

Characteristics of idioms
A) semantic characteristics

Idioms are characterized by idiomaticity, i.e. their meaning

is not the sum of the meanings of their component
elements: red tape vs. red ribbon; to cut a poor figure vs.
to cut bread

B) functional characteristics
Idioms are characterized by semantic and grammatical
inseparability: the old man kicked the bucket (died) vs. the
cow kicked the bucket (touched the bucket with its leg)

C) contextual characteristics

Idioms are usually non-variable, i.e. their structure cannot

be changed without affecting their meaning: tighten ones
belt/*girdle, see red/*orange
In some idioms, lexical substitution is possible but it is very
limited: to have the true/right ring, burn ones bridges/boats
Some verb idioms allow for variation in tense, while some
noun idioms allow for variation in number: kicked the
bucket, smelled a rat, red herrings
Some idioms may tolerate additions that normally reinforce
their meaning and do not simply elaborate on the
expression: Kipling took the art world bull by the horns, He
suggested, with his tongue only partly in his cheek that
In some idioms, permutations are possible the most
frequent of these is change of word order by passivization:
hundreds of crocodile tears were shed (to shed tears)

D) stylistic characteristics
Numerous idioms are based on figures of speech:
a)
Metaphorical idioms: a wolf in a sheeps clothing, a white
elephant, a cold fish, to have a heavy heart
b)
Idioms based on simile: to fit like a glove, to drink like a fish,
as fresh as a daisy, as old as the hills, as poor as a church
mouse
c)
Idioms based on metonymy and synecdoche: to go under
the knife, to have an itchy palm, to have one foot in the
grave
d)
Idioms based on euphemisms: to be knocked up, six feet
under, in ones birthday suit
e)
Idioms based on hyperbole: dressed to kill, on cloud number
nine, to pay an arm and a leg, to make a mountain out of a
molehill
f)
Idioms based on alliteration: to buy a pig in a poke, to leave
in the lurch

CLASSIFICATION OF
IDIOMS

A) according to the type of elements they contain:

B) according to their meaning:

variable
non-variable idioms

idioms with a direct meaning (to make money, to throw money away)
idioms with a figurative meaning (to break the silence, to put a spoke
in somebodys wheel, not to know chalk from cheese)

C) according to their grammatical function:

nominal (the apple of ones eye, a bed of thorns, a lions share, the
man in the street, a snake in the grass, a swan song, the gift of gab)
adjectival (high and mighty, as cold as ice, cut and dried, null and
void),
verbal (to lose heart, to turn ones coat, to play the second fiddle, to
make a clean breast of something, to stack the deck/cards)
adverbial (in the long run, off and on, at length).

D) according to the semantic relationship

existing between them:

synonymic idioms (babes and sucklings - a

green/fresh/raw hand spring chicken; to sleep like a
log to sleep the sleep of the just; to kick the bucket
to buy a pine condo to pop up daffodils to go
the way of all flesh to pay ones debt to nature)
antonymic idioms (as sober as a judge as drunk
as a lord; a heart of gold a heart of stone),
polysemantic idioms (to go west = 1. to die, 2. to
be ruined, 3. to go to a new place to start a better
life)

E) according to the domain of human activity to which

they belong or to what they are connected to:

sea life (to fish in troubled waters, to drink like a fish, to
be in the same boat with somebody)
trades (to have too many irons in the fire, to be between
hammer and anvil, to bring grist to the mill, in full blast)
sports (to hit below the belt, to keep the ball rolling)
medicine (to swallow the pill, to take the temperature of,
what the doctor ordered, a fly in the ointment, a bitter pill
to swallow)
parts of the body (to cry ones eyes out, in the twinkling
of an eye, to feed ones face, to have egg on ones face,
to keep ones nose to the grindstone, to put someones
nose out of joint, to get/have the upper hand)

F) idioms may also be classified into groups

denoting the same concept:

the idea of uncertainty: a leap in the dark, a needle

in a haystack, to buy a pig in a poke
the idea of economy: to cut ones coat according to
ones cloth, to make both ends meet, to save for a
rainy day
anger: to feel ones blood boiling, to burn with
anger/rage, to feel as one would burst, to fly off the
handle, to lose ones cool, to tear strips off
somebody, to fight tooth and nail, to go for
somebody hammer and tongs, to bite somebodys
head off, to chew somebody up, to see red

Place the following idioms in the right

according
to what
they refer
to:an
to column,
pass with flying
colours, go-getter,
bookworm,
to spend

arm and a leg, to foot the bill, to goof off, to play hooky, a
wet blanket, to draw a blank, to freeload, to cut corners, pink
slip, to go Dutch, clockwatcher, fly-by-night, cow college, a
live wire, to burn a whole in ones pocket, to learn the ropes,
a sweatshop, a high-brow, school of hard knocks, to get down
to brass tacks, to pound the pavement, the Ivy League

spending
money

personalit
y

work

School/
education

Rewrite the parts of text in italics, using

the appropriate idiom from the list below:
ones cup of tea (neg.), to have sticky fingers, skeleton in ones closet, wet
behind the eras, to take with a grain of salt, off the record, stuffed shirt, to
bend over backward, odds and ends, (to live) hand to mouth
1.
2.

3.

4.
5.
6.

7.

8.
9.

10.

He is a very rigid person, so I am always afraid of not saying the wrong thing.
My neighbours are very strange. I would die to find out at least one of their
family secrets.
My parents would try very hard to get the money to send me to school
abroad.
Science fiction books dont interest me. I love romance.
She doesnt have enough experience to be the project manager.
He often steals small things from the local shop but he has not been caught
yet.
You shouldnt believe everything he says when he boast about his love
affairs.
We need all sorts of small things for tonights party.
They have no money saved so they can hardly buy what they need every
day.
10.What I am going to tell you know is private.

Insert the right verbs from the list below (change

the form of the verb where necessary) into the
gaps:
blurt, bottle, choke, fend, keep, shoot, sweep, tease, tone, whip
1. For people to understand the results of this research, well need to ______ down its written
register.
2. Before Jason broke up with Helen, she had spent some time ______ out the reason of his decision.
3. Jacob had given a beautiful speech which _____ up Mary about the marriage before he popped
the question.
4. Marys harrowing experience with Brian will be impossible to be _____ aside easily.
5. Somehow, Dianna was able to _____ off criticism after she had cheated on her boyfriend.
6. Although Idaly tried to argue, she got ______ down in flames for her lies.
7. When Connor came across his ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend, he had to ______ back his
jealousy.
8. Nobody believed Andrea was really suffering from her break up. She ______ up appearances
very well.
9. Marks secret love for Laura had been ______ out by his best friend. He couldnt keep the secret.
10. After years of having _____ up his sentiments for Tanja, Jrg finally managed to speak of his
feelings.

Use the right particle(s) after the verb to

get to fill in the blanks in the following
examples:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Get. You are hurting my back!

It is sometimes difficult for her to get the meaning . in English.
If you want to be employed here, she is the person you need to
get.
If you dont take these medicines, it might take you weeks to
get. this illness.
Now that their houses have been destroyed by the earthquake,
the villagers need help to get this cold winter.
You have to get work if you want to pass this exam.
I want a bag big enough to get my laptop..
There are ways of getting taxes, but you should pay them in
due time.
She was trying to get him for having humiliated her in front of
all her colleagues.
Getting . in business takes both skill and money.

SENSE RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDS

SYNONYMY
Synonyms are words belonging to the same morphological class which
have the same core meaning, though they may differ in shades of
meaning, connotation, distribution, collocation and idiomatic use.

Synonyms may be arranged in synonymic series containing two or more

elements. In such series, one of the terms acquires a dominant position,
being the most general among the others and the most frequently used
in the language = synonymic dominant (the head in dictionaries):
to leave to depart to clear out to retire
Simple words may establish correlative synonymic relationships with
collocations, phrases or idioms as in the pairs to win to gain the upper
hand, to decide to make up ones mind, to hesitate to be in two
minds, to swing the lead to exaggerate, neck and crop entirely, to
laugh to give a laugh, to prefer to show preference, to go after to
follow, to go on to continue, to give in to surrender

correlative synonymic relations are also met in the case of some special
stylistic synonyms, in which the name of a writer, inventor, etc. is
replaced by a descriptive phrase, as in Chaucer the father of English
literature or Shakespeare the sweet swan of Avon

Correlative synonymic relations may also be recognized in

certain phrases that are made up of two synonyms linked
by the copulative conjunction and: with might and main,
lord and master, stress and strain, each and every, liberty
and freedom, really and truly, last will and testament,
exiled and banished.
A synonym is employed as an explanation or clarification
of the meaning of another word. The relationship between
the two words is frequently signaled by something like that
is to say, or a particular variety of or : He was cashiered,
that is to say, dismissed.; This is an ounce, or snow
leopard.
Polysemantic words have different synonymic series for
each of their senses. For example, ill in the sense of not in
full physical or mental health is synonymous with ailing,
indisposed, sick, unwell. If it means bad, possible
synonyms for it are evil, wicked, wrong.

TYPES OF SYNONYMS

a) strict/perfect/absolute synonyms. Two lexical units would be

perfect synonyms (i.e. would have identical meanings) if and only if all
their contextual relations were identical

Absolute synonymy is practically impossible, since no two words are

perfectly interchangeable in all their contexts of use. In the same context,
one word sounds more normalthan its presupposed perfect synonym:
Tell Mummy when Playschool begins and shell watch it with you. (+)
Tell Mummy when Playschool commences and shell watch it with you. (-)
Arthur is always chewing gum. (+)
Arthur is always munching gum. (-)
I dont just hate him, I loathe him. (+)
I dont just loathe him, I hate him. (-)
That is a scandalous waste of money. (+)
That is an outrageous waste of money. (-)

the economy of language would not tolerate (except,

perhaps, for a very limited period of time) the
existence of two lexical items with exactly the same
meaning.
historical argument against perfect synonymy - if
absolute synonyms do occur at a certain moment in
the development of a language, usually, one of the
items falls into obsolescence and is, ultimately, no
longer used, it remains to be used in particular dialects
or stylistic varieties only or it begins to be employed in
contexts from which the other is excluded.
Conclusion: When we speak of synonymy, we mean
varying degrees of loose synonymy, where we
identify not only a significant overlap in meaning
between two words, but also some contexts at least
where they cannot substitute for each other.

Loose synonymy is illustrated by at least two types of synonyms, ideographic and

stylistic.
b) ideographic synonyms. This class comprises synonyms which share the core
meaning but differ in shades of meaning in that certain notes characteristic of the
notion, phenomenon, object denoted by these words are accented. They may also
differ in connotation, collocation patterns and idiomatic use. In the pair of
synonyms to love to adore, to love is rather neutral, while to adore bears
connotations of worship or passion. Crowd refers to a disorganized group of
people, while its synonym, mob refers to the same group, but connotes the idea
of riotous intentions as well.
c) stylistic synonyms. The category of stylistic synonyms includes words having
the same notional components of meaning, but differing in their stylistic reference
or degree of formality.

Formal vs. informal: archer toxophilite, argument disputation, beauty

pulchritude, cross traverse, die decease, give up renounce, letter
missive, praise eulogy, warning caveat, western occidental.

Standard vs. slang: astonished gobsmacked, crash prang, destroy zap,

drunk, sloshed, face phizog, heart ticker, insane, barmy, money rhino,
spondulix, prison clink, steal nick.

Technical vs. non-technical: incision cut, lesion wound

Neutral vs. poetic: happiness bliss, merry jocund,

Speech vs. writing: youre you are

A particular stylistic synonymic relationship is established between a

taboo word and its corresponding euphemistic words or expressions. A
euphemism is a mild, indirect or less offensive word or expression
substituted when the speaker/writer fears that more direct wording
might be harsh, unpleasantly direct or offensive (when resorted to by
officials such as members of the Parliament, officers, lawyers, etc., the
use of euphemisms is known as doublespeak):

to die - to breathe ones last (breath, gasp), to depart this life, to pay ones
debt to nature, to go to ones last home, to go the way of all flesh, to kick
the bucket, to hop the twig, to join the majority, to be no more, to buy a
pine condo, to cross the river to reach the eternal reward, to go to the other
side
a stupid person - has a couple of eggs shy of a dozen, a few beers short of
a six-pack, a few clowns short of a circus, a few bricks short of a wall, a
kangaroo loose in the paddock, s/he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer,
not the brightest light in the harbour/on the Christmas tree, not tied too
tight to the pier, knitting with only one needle, not firing on all cylinders,
s/he is as useful as a wooden frying pan, as a screen door on a submarine
or as tits on a bull, s/he is a person whose elevator stuck between floors,
who got into the gene pool when the lifeguard wasnt watching, who fell out
of the family tree or who goes fishing in Nebraska

Dysphemisms = coarser and more direct

words and phrases that are used to replace both
more refined and quite common lexical items,
for humorous or deliberately offensive purposes.
The relationship between the euphemism and
the common word designating its referent may
be considered stylistic synonymy as well.

bean counter = accountant, grease monkey =

mechanic, sawbones = surgeon, quack = doctor, brain
bucket = motorcycle helmet, Jesus juice = wine,
muffin top = flesh that erupts over the sides of lowrider tight jeans, dead tree edition = the paper edition
of an online magazine

SOURCES OF SYNONYMY

The rich synonymy in English is due to the fact that it has borrowed an
impressive number of words from other languages.

Double and triple scales of synonymy

Native

swine

ox

calf

body

ghost

friendship

help

ship

world

room

end

ask

answer

buy

French
pork
beef
veal
corpse
spirit
amity
aid
vessel
universe
chamber
finish
request
reply
purchase

Native
playeractor
wire telegram
bodily corporeal
heartly
brotherly
learned
happyfortunate
hard solid

Latin/Greek

Native

French

Latin

strength
time age
forerunner
bond bail
outstanding
end finish
ask question

power

energy

cordial
fraternal
erudite

epoch
herald
precursor
security
glorious splendid
conclude
interrogate

Besides borrowings, another source of synonymy in English, seen from a diachronic

perspective, is represented by archaisms. Many of these are at present used only in
dialectal speech, having been replaced in the common language by various
synonyms. king-stool has been substituted for throne, book-hoard for library,
leechcraft and leechdom for medicine, seamer for tailor, to betake for to deliver for to
occupy.
Geographical and stylistic varieties of English are a rich source of synonymy. Thus,
charm, chest and church in standard British English may be paired with
glamour, kist and kirk in Scottish English, to add to the examples of ideographic
synonyms already given. The British words autumn, tin, lorry, insect, sweet
and maize as synonyms of the American words fall, can, truck, bug,
candy and corn respectively may enlarge the same category as may Cockney
words and phrases such as trap, chap or ill speed together with their standard
English synonyms sailor, friend and bad luck.
Euphemisms are another important source of synonymy as in the pairs of words:
illiterate uneducated, chaotic unformed, sterile unfruitful, short
vertically challenged, etc.
The belonging of words to various styles in the language may lead to synonymy as
well. For instance, lazy is the standard neutral word for which the colloquial
lazybones may be substituted, trousers is neutral, while its synonym pants is
colloquial, evening, morning, valley and sorrowful are neutral, while their
synonyms eve, morn, vale and doleful are poetic, heart attack and
headache belong to the everyday language, while their synonyms myocardial
infarct and cephalalgia are medical technical terms.

ANTONYMY

Antonymy is the sense relation holding between words belonging to the same
morphological class and having opposite meanings.

Characteristics of antonyms

Antonymy is possible only if the words entering this semantic relationship

share a common component of their senses. Thus, old and young share the
component age, long and short share the component length, while
deep and shallow both refer to depth.

Antonyms are found in certain typical configurations in English:

A and B: Young and old were present at the meeting, a matter of life and death, the
long and the short of it;
A or B: wanted dead or alive, Well see if she was right or wrong, Good or bad, Ill take
it;
neither A nor B: neither friend nor foe,
A not B: He was alive, not dead as they thought,
X is A and Y is B: Youth is wild and age is tame (Shakespeare)

Another context in which antonyms are typically employed is when reference is

made to a change of state as in The exhibition opens at nine and closes at noon
or The poet was born in 1924 and died in 1991.

Polysemantic words have different antonyms, for each of their senses.

Thus, if even refers to numbers and means devisible by two, its
antonym is odd; if it refers to character or mood and means calm, its
antonym is agitated; for its meaning dull, it enters an antonymic
relationship with interesting, while sharp may be considered its
antonym when it means unable to cut. On the other hand,
ploysemantic words may have a number of antonyms for some of their
meanings and none for others. Thus, criticism in the meaning of
blame has the antonyms praise, approval, while in the meaning of
writing critical essays it has no opposite meaning correspondent.

Antonyms appear in a great number of idioms (to make neither head

nor tail of something, to see something in black and white) and
proverbs (What soberness conceals, drunkness reveals, What is done
cannot be undone, A small leak will sink a great ship, You cant teach
an old dog new tricks, One mans loss is another mans gain), as well
as in several figures of speech extensively used in literature (oxymoron,
irony, antithesis, etc.): Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself
nothing; age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

TYPES OF ANTONYMS

If we refer to the type of oppositeness of meaning, we may speak about

three major classes of antonyms: gradable antonyms, ungradable or
contradictory antonyms and converses.

A) gradable antonyms: beautiful ugly, small big, rich poor,

wide narrow, fast slow, increase decrease. As their name suggests,
the semantic relationship between gradable antonyms is not of the either
or type, but rather of the more less type. They represent the end-points
of a continuum or a scale. The more less relationship is made obvious by
a number of characteristic features of gradable antonyms. They allow
comparison: My dress is longer than yours, The tree is less tall than the
building. Gradable antonymic adjectives may be modified by intensifying
adverbs: very good, extremely bad, extraordinarily beautiful.

In a pair of gradable antonyms, one of the terms is unmarked, while the other
one is marked. The unmarked member is the one that is normally expected
as in How old are you? or How long is the way to the museum?. When
this is used, the speaker/writer does not prejudge anything whereas, when
the marked member is used, certain presuppositions hold. If the two previous
questions had been How young are you? and How short is the way to the
museum?, the implications had been that the person asked about his/her
age was young and the way to the museum was short.

B) ungradable or contradictory antonyms: asleep awake, dead

alive, on off, permit forbid, remember forget, win lose, shut
open, true false. Unlike in the case of gradable antonyms, the
semantic relationship between the two members of an ungradable
antonymic pair is of the either or type, i.e. the assertion of one member
always implies the negation of the other, with no options in between (in the
case of adjectives, this is proven by the fact that they do not allow degrees
of comparison). Thus, an animate being may be described as either dead
or alive, but not as some degree of these or as being more one than the
other. If certain behaviour is permitted, then it is not forbidden; if one
lost a contest, then one has not won it; if a switch is off, then it is not
on.

C) converse antonyms: above below, before after, behind in

front of, buy sell, give receive, husband wife, parent child,
speak listen. The meanings of the two antonyms are like the two sides of
the same coin, one member of the pair expresses the converse meaning of
the other. Buy and sell describe the same transaction, the difference
lying in the vantage point from which it is viewed. If the transaction is seen
from the point of view of the person who gives up the goods in exchange for
money, we speak about selling, if it is seen from the point of view of the
person who receives the goods upon paying a sum of money for them, we
speak about buying.

If we take into consideration the form of the

antonyms, we may speak about root and affixal
antonyms.

A) root or radical antonyms are different lexical

units with opposite meanings: warm cold, kind
cruel, open shut.
B) affixal antonyms are words having the same root,
the relation of oppositeness of meaning between them
being established by means of negative (and positive)
affixes which are added to the common root: careful
careless, important unimportant, to believe to
disbelieve, to entangle to disentangle.

HYPONYMY AND
MERONYMY

Hyponymy and meronymy are based on hierarchical

relationships (they are the consequence of the fact that
some words have a more general meaning than others).

Hyponymy = a relationship of inclusion of the kind of

type: dog spaniel, cocker, German shepard, puddel,
etc; vehicle car, truck, lorry, bus, bike, motorbike, etc.

The more general term = the superordinate;

The subordinate terms = the hyponyms.

Meronymy = a relationship of inclusion of the part of

type: plant leaf, bud, petal, stem, root; day dawn,
morning, noon, afternoon, evening, etc.

The more general term = the superordinate;

The subordinate terms = the meronyms.

HOMONYMY

Homonymy = a relation of lexical ambiguity between words

having different meanings; it is a situation where one
orthographic or spoken form represents more than one
vocabulary item.

Types of homonyms
If their pronunciation and spelling are taken into consideration,
homonyms may be one of the following:

a) perfect homonyms or homonyms proper. These are words

identical in both spelling and pronunciation: light (adjective) light
(noun).
b) homophones. These are words that have the same
pronunciation, but differ in spelling: air heir, I eye, buy bye
- by
c) homographs. These are words that have the same spelling, but
differ in pronunciation: wound [wu:nd] wound [waund], bow
[bu] bow [bau], lead [led] lead [li:d].

Homonyms are a rich source of humour. They are as well a

source of confusion for users of English who do not master
the language and, sometimes, even for proficient speakers
of it:

Why did the teacher wear sunglasses? Her students were too
bright.

Waiter, will the pancakes be long? No, sir, round.

A family of three tomatoes was walking downtown one day

when the little baby tomato started lagging behind. The big
father tomato walks back to the baby tomato, stomps on her,
squashing her into a red paste, and says Ketchup!

Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case

According to the type of meaning that helps to differentiate

words that have the same sound and/or form, homonyms may
be grouped in three categories:

a) lexical homonyms are homonyms which belong to the same

grammatical class and have different lexical meanings: the noun
seal meaning a kind of sea animal and the noun seal meaning
the special mark put on documents to prove that they are
authentic.
b) lexical-grammatical homonyms are homonyms which belong
to different grammatical classes and have different lexical
meanings: the noun bear referring to a particular kind of large
wild animal with thick fur and the verb bear meaning inability to
accept or to do something.
c) grammatical homonyms are homonyms which differ in
grammatical meaning only: that as a demonstrative noun and
that as a demonstrative adjective, played as the past tense of
the verb to play and played as the past participle of the same
verb.

SEMANTIC CHANGE

Causes of semantic change

A) Extra-linguistic causes of semantic change are determined by the close connection between
language and the evolution of human society. Being the most dynamic and flexible part of a
language, vocabulary reacts to almost every change in the outer reality it helps to picture. Thus,
torch was used in Middle English (ME) to designate a piece of cloth damped in oil, lit and held in
hand in order to make light. With the advance of technology, the word has come to also refer to
the small electric lamp that runs on batteries and serves the same purpose in modern times. The
noun mill was initially used for a building with machinery for grinding corn. Industrial
developments influenced its meaning and extended the reference of the word to factory - any kind
of building with equipment for manufacturing processes (we now have saw / cotton / silk / paper
mills).
The evolution of culture and society - when academy was borrowed in the 15th century, it was used
as the name of a garden near Athens, where Plato used to teach. Two centuries later, it referred to
the school system of Plato, while, beginning with the end of the 17th century, it has been used to
designate an institution for the promotion of art or science.
Social causes such as the need for specialized terms in each branch of science that deals with
specific phenomena and concepts. The word cell, whose general meaning is compartment, has
come to mean the space between the ribs of a vaulted roof in architecture, the space between
the nerves of the wings of insects in entomology and a vessel containing one pair of plates
immersed in fluid to form a battery in electricity.
The need of expressiveness, taboo and euphemisms in language - one way of achieving expressive
effects in everyday language is through the use of slang words. In slang, everyday words and
phrases acquire new meanings. Thus, baby is used for girl or sweetheart, the bread basket is
the stomach, to lamp means to hit, a bag is an ugly woman or an objectionable unpleasant
person, to rabbit is used for to talk unceasingly, gear refers to illicit drugs and choice is used
as an adjective meaning best, excellent.

B) Linguistic causes of semantic change

Ellipsis consists of the omission of one part of a phrase. Quite frequently, the
remaining part takes on the meaning of the whole: sale, obtained by ellipsis from
cut-price sale, has come to be used with the meaning of the initial phrase an
event or period of time during which a shop reduces the prices of some of its goods.
Analogy occurs when one member of a synonymic series acquires a new meaning
and this new meaning is extended to the other elements in the series as well. In the
synonymic series to catch to grasp to get, the first verb acquired the meaning to
understand, which was later transferred to the verbs to grasp and to get.
The discrimination of synonyms is the result of the evolution of the meanings of
certain synonyms. In OE, land meant both solid part of the earths surface and
territory of a nation. Later on, in ME, the word country was borrowed from French
and it became a synonym of land. In short time, however, country restricted its
meaning to territory of a nation, while land remained to be used in everyday
language for solid part of the earths surface (when land is used to refer to an area
with recognized political borders, it bears connotations of mystery, emotion or
obsolescence).
Borrowings from other languages may also lead to semantic changes. Deer used to
mean animal up to ME, when, under the pressure of the borrowed words beast,
creature, animal, it restricted its meaning to a large brown wild animal with long
thin legs.

RESULTS OF SEMANTIC
CHANGE

A) Extension or widening of meaning is the process by

which the sense(s) of a word is / are enlarged or enriched.
The word journal originally meant, a daily record of transactions
or events. Through extension of meaning, at present, it means
both a daily newspaper and any periodical publication
containing news in any particular sphere. The early meaning of
butler, a male servant in charge of the wine cellar was later
extended to a male servant in charge of the household.
Extension of meaning may sometimes involve the evolution of a
word from concrete to abstract. Branch, for example, was used
with the meaning a portion or limb of a tree or other plant.
From this initial meaning, several abstract meanings have
evolved and are recognized today: one of the portions into
which a family or race is divided, a component portion of an
organization or system, a part of a particular area of study or
knowledge.

B) Narrowing or restriction of meaning is the process

opposite to extension. By it, a word with a wider meaning
acquires a narrower meaning that comes to be applied to
some of its previous referents only. Very frequently, narrowing
goes hand in hand with specialization of meaning.
Mare, for example, meant horse up the moment in the
evolution of English when its meaning was restricted to the
female horse only. Likewise, any kind of dog was considered a
hound. Nowadays, hound is used as such only poetically or
archaically, its specialized meaning in the common language
being dog used by hunters for chasing the game. Fowl is
another example of narrowing of meaning. It was used to refer
to any kind of bird, while now, it is only the domestic birds that
are called fowls.
Specialization of meaning, accompanying narrowing, is very
clear in the case of trade names that originated in common
nouns: Sunbeam, Thunderbird, Caterpillar.

C) Degradation of meaning or pejorative development is the process by

which a neutral word either loses its original meaning completely and acquires a
new, derogatory one, or it preserves it and develops a new pejorative meaning
in addition.
The former case may be illustrated by means of the word quarrel, which meant
complaint. By a first semantic change, as Hulban (1975: 120) indicates, it
came to mean a ground or occasion of complaint against a person, leading to
hostile feelings. The meaning of the word degraded even further from this and
reached the point of a violent contention or altercation between persons, a
rapture of friendly relations. Knave underwent the same process. It initially
meant boy and later lost this meaning in favour of dishonest man.
The word suburban is illustrative of the latter case. From the initial meaning, of
or belonging to the suburbs of the town, a new derogatory one evolved, the
former still being preserved. Today, suburban is used not only for what is not in
the city, but also for typical of the attitudes and way of life of people who live
in the suburbs, which some people consider rather boring, conservative,
involving inferior manners and narrower views.
Analogy plays an important role in the process of degradation of meaning. This
is very obvious in the following examples of zoosemy, metaphors that implicitly
compare humans with animals. Thus, besides the animal itself, a sheep is a
poor-spirited, stupid or timid person. A fox is a cunning person, a monkey or an
ape is one that plays the ape, an imitator, a mimic.

D) Elevation of meaning is the reverse of

degradation, implying the process by which a newly
evolved meaning of a word acquires a higher
status as compared to the initial one. Fame, for
example, originally meant rumour, but later on, it
became celebrity, good reputation. Bard was
initially a term of contempt, designating a
ministrel-poet. Later, when ministrels started to be
idealized, the word referring to them suffered an
elevation of meaning, quite obvious in Shakespeare
himself having been called The Bard.

TRANSFER OF MEANING

Many of the cases of extension and narrowing of

meaning mentioned in the previous sections are based
on transfer of meaning. There are two main types of
such transfer, according to the kind of association that
they presuppose. Associations based on similarity lead
to metaphor, while those based on contiguity, i.e., on
the condition of being in contact, in proximity, in a
broad sense, lead to metonymy. Unlike extension,
narrowing, elevation and degradation, transfer of
meaning is not a gradual process, but rather the result
of a sudden change from one field to another, on a
particular occasion of use (both metaphors and
metonymies may be one-time only creations in
language).

METAPHOR

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of things in terms of another (Lakoff,
Johnson 1980: 5). In other words, metaphor involves an implicit comparison of two entities, based on an alleged
resemblance between them. This implicit comparison is contained in the meaning of a word or phrase that has come
to be different from its original meaning.

Types of metaphor:
A) live metaphors - conscious creations used by writers as stylistic devices
B) linguistic metaphors

standardized lexical metaphors in whose case the idea of similarity is lost. They are usually considered dead
metaphors and include examples such as daisy, whose origin is the OE daeges aege (the days eye) and
wind, coming from the OE windes aege (the winds eye).

degrading or fading metaphors in whose case the idea of similarity is still evident. Such metaphors
may rely on:

similarity of shape: the head of the pin, the mouth of the river, the foot of the hill, ball-point-pen;
similarity of position: head-word, headstone;
similarity of colour: red-admiral, blue-bell, blue-wing;
similarity of destination or purpose: blood bank, data bank;
space and duration in time: long run, long-lived, shortcircuit, shortcoming, short-dated;
physical sensations: cold war, warm congratulations, sweet dreams, bitter remark;
Ulmann (1970) offers another classification of degrading linguistic metaphors. According to him, they may be
grouped into:
anthropomorphic metaphors, involving the transfer of meaning from the human body and its parts to inanimate
objects: the mouth of the river, the lungs of the town, the heart of the matter;
animal metaphors: dogs tail (a plant), cat-o-the-nine-tails. People can also be called foxes, lions, doves, donkeys,
etc;
metaphors that translate abstract experiences into concrete terms: to throw light on, to enlighten, brilliant idea;
synaesthetic metaphors, involving the transposition from one sense to another: cold voice, loud colours, piercing
sounds.

METONYMY

Metonymy consists of the use of the name of one thing for that of something else, with which it
is usually associated. This association is not a mental process that links two independent entities,
like in the case of metaphor, but one that brings together entities which are in a certain proximity
or contact.
According to the type of relationship established between the two elements in a metonymy, the
following types of associations are possible:

the use of the symbol for the thing symbolized: From the cradle to the grave, one has always something new
to learn, The Crown visited the soldiers on the battle field;
the use of the material an object is made of for the object itself: iron, glass;
the use of the holder for the thing held: The gallery applauded, He is fond of the bottle, You should save your
pocket if you want to buy a new computer;
the use of the makers name for the object made: I like the Rembrand on that wall, Put that Dickens away and
listen to me, I hate reading Heidegger, He bought a Ford;
the use of the place name where the object is or was originally made for the object itself: At dinner, they
served the soup in their best china;
the use of the instrument for the agent: They answered the door / phone, The sax has the flu today, The gun
he hired wanted 50 grants;
the use of the concrete for the abstract and of the abstract for the concrete: They dedicated their pens to a
just cause, He is of noble blood; The leadership took action against thefts;
the use of the name of an organization or an institution for the people who make a decision or work there:
Exxon has raised its prices again, The Senate thinks abortion is immoral;
the use of the place name where an event was recorded for the event itself: Do you remember the Alamo?,
Pearl Harbour still has an effect on Americas foreign policy;
the use of a place name where an institution is located for the institution itself: The White House voted
against entering war, Wall Street has been in panic these days;
the reference to the behaviour of a person experiencing a particular emotion for the emotion itself: She gave
him a tongue-lashing, I really chewed him out good;
the use of the part for the whole (also called synecdoche) and of the whole for the part: They hired ten new
hands, We dont accept longhairs here, She is wearing a fine fox.

LEXICAL STRATA

Lexical strata may be approached from two perspectives:

Diachronic
Synchronic

Diachronic lexical strata

Archaisms = words and phrases, their senses or grammatical forms that were current at one time, but that
have passed out of use completely or are very rarely employed at present.
Archaisms are of two kinds:

Absolute archaisms = words that have disappeared completely from the language. Eg: alegar ale or beer
which has passed through the acetous fermentation and was used as a cheap substitute for vinegar, ballop the
old name for the flap in the forepart of the breeches which is buttoned up, buzznack an old organ, out of order
and playing badly, upknocking the employment of the knocker-up who went house to house in the early morning
hours to awaken his working-class clients, dawkin a fool, a sinpleton, gubbertushed having projected teeth,
kidcote common jail, rax stretch oneself after sleep;
Relative archaisms = words that are still used, but quite infrequently. They occur in a variety of contexts, for a
multitude of purposes and reasons. Thus, film makers and writers of historical novels use them to render the past
times they focus on as accurately as possible: druid, tournament, archer, thane (knight), gleeman (wondering
minstrel), witan (kings council), oracle, etc. A similar desire to evoke a former age justifies the use of relative
archaisms in circumstances where doing so has political or emotional connotations, or when the official new name
of a country, city or province is not generally accepted (such as Persia instead of Iran, Bombay rather than Mumbai,
and Madras as the older variant of Chennai). So, a restaurant seeking to conjure up historic associations might
prefer to call itself Old Bombay or refer to Persian cuisine, avoiding the employment of the newer place names. A
notable contemporary example is the name of the airline Cathay Pacific, which uses the archaic Cathay for China.
In science and technology, fields of continuous and dynamic development, some specialized words or meanings
may follow the trend and fall into disuse quite quickly. However, the emotional associations that some of these
presuppose have kept them in use, even if within very narrow limits this is, according to the explanations in
Wikipedia, the case of the meaning radio that the generation of Brits that lived through the Second World War still
associate with the word wireless. Phrases associated with religion, rituals and traditions, though not considered
common if they occur in general speech or writing, continue to be used in the circumstances in which they
appeared long in the past. For example, thou shalt and thou shalt not are considered archaic in general use, but
being part of the common English translation of the Ten Commandments, they continue to be repeated and used in
that context without calling attention to themselves (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-archaisms.htm). Similarly,
the archaic I thee wed is perfectly consonant with a present day wedding ceremony.

Neologisms = generally accepted definition - new words or

expressions, or existing words used with new meanings; a
different point of view - not necessarily brand new lexical items
or meanings, but rather words, phrases and senses that, at the
moment when they occurred in a language, had a considerable
impact on its users. British dictionaries of neologisms contain
items such as acid rain, dating since 1850, greenhouse effect,
born in 1920, misfortuned, first documented in 1881 and the
three century-old condom. Such words and phrases are living
their second youth now, at times when environmental
protection and health care are issues on everybodys lips.
Similarly, the Romanian senat, camere parlamentare, interpelare,
jandermerie, used initially during the two World Wars, have been
brought back into usage recently and may, therefore, be
considered neologisms.

Neologisms appear in a language as the result of the evolution of

the historical, political, social and cultural context.

The linguistic phenomena mainly associated with the creation of neologisms are borrowing
and word formation by various techniques.

Borrowing: from French: aestheticienne beautician, aromatherapy - a type of health treatment in

which nicely smelling oils are rubbed into somebodys skin to make the person feel relexaed, ballotin
small pacakage, bustier a piece of clothing for women that does fits close to the body and does not
cover the shoulders and the arms, diamantaire diamond seller); from Spanish (aficionado
supporter, huaquero robber of ancient thombs in Chile, Peru and Bolivia, morcilla a special type of
sausages that contain pig blood, mucho much); from Russian (Afghantsi former Soviet soldier in
Afghanistan, khozraschrot economic liability, demokratizatsiya process of democratization of
society and its institutions, perestroika ample process of social, political and economic reform initiated
in 1987 by M. Gorbaciov in the USSR); from German (bedienung mention on a bill that the final
amount indicated contains the waiters tip, kletten prinzip means of supervising hooligans in a crowd
so as to prevent their riotous intentions); from Japanese (basho traditional Japanese fight
championship, karaoke the singing by amateurs of the lyrics of songs against recorded tunes,
mawashi the competition attire of sumo fighters, Nikkei index of the relative prices of stocks at the
Tokyo Stock Exchange); from Czech (eyelyser optical apparatus for measuring the level of alcohol in
ones blood, colourization process of colouring a film initially made in black and white); from Italian
(libero the last player at the back of the football field, mascarpone Italian cottage cheese), etc.
Word formation: Affixation: biodegradable which decomposes naturally, without harming the
environment, biofuel fuel obtained from organic matters, depowerment the loss by the masses of
their capacity to decide upon their own fate, derecognize to retrieve the official recognition of an
organization, institution, etc, deselect to reject, to eliminate, to exclude, ecopolicy the strategy of
an environmental movement, ecorefugee person who has left an area in which pollution made living
almost impossible, proactive s/he who takes the initiative the first, pro-choice in favour of a
womans right to opt for abortion, supercollider big and powerful particle accelerator, supersite
double-sized advertising hoard, unplugged (about musical instruments) acoustic, without electronic
components, unscoopy without sensational news, boring, unwaged - unemployed, etc.
Compounding: airhead beautiful, but stupid woman, alcohol-abuse excessive consumption of
alcoholic drinks, fuzzword word with an ambiguous sense, used to impress the interlocutor, hackand-slash about games, which promotes violence, lockdown period of time when the inmates in a
jail are isolated, middlemarket of average quality, meant for middle class consumers, shoutline
text printed in italics at the beginning of an advertisement, etc.

Synchronic lexical strata

Geographical varieties
The spread of English as a global
language may be described in terms of
the well-established three concentric
circles model suggested by Kachru
(1989): the inner circle, the outer
circle and the expanding circle.

The inner circle includes the territories where

English is the first, official language, even if
other languages are also spoken here the British
Isles, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The best represented inner circle variety is American

English, with a main distinction between Northern and
Southern dialects in terms of pronunciation, grammar
and vocabulary.
During the depression, said the cowboy to me, I used
to hop freights at least once a month. In those days,
youd see hundreds of men riding a flatcar or in a boxer,
and they werent just bums, they were all kinds of men
out of work and going from one place to another and
some of them just wandering. It was like that all over the
West. Brakemen never bothered you in those days

The outer circle groups together territories in Asia and Africa to

which English was first transported in colonial contexts and where it
has since existed alongside very different local languages. Many
people use English as a second language within these multilingual
contexts and the language also has an institutional and administrative
importance (Davies 2005: 47).
The best represented outer circle variety of English, according to the
number of speakers that use it, is Indian English, characterized by a
number of peculiar phonetic, grammatical and lexical features. Words
and phrases that are said to be peculiar of Indian English include: shift
(move from one apartment to another), weatish complexion (light,
creamy brown complexion), expire (to die, especially in reference to
ones family member), acting pricey (playing hard to get), dearness
allowance (payment given to employees to compensate for the
effects of inflation), chargesheet (to file charges against someone in
court), on the anvil (used frequently in the Indian press to mean
about to happen, to take place), out of station (out of town), etc.
Local words and expressions often intersperse with English ones.
Dhobi-wallah (laundryman), bandh (local strike), lakh (one
hundred thousand), crore (ten million), bheris (fish farms), etc.

The expanding circle includes territories in which English

has become or is becoming the most important foreign
language (Davies 2005: 46).
English-origin borrowings in Romanian

Reasons for extensive borrowing:

the temptation of the youngsters to sprinkle their vocabulary with words

belonging to the British-American super-civilization to which their
parents had been denied access. By doing this, they feel closer to the
Western man (usually American), perceived as a competent,
enterprising, prosperous and reliable person (Prlog 2004: 94);
Romanians nowadays are more frequently exposed to the English
language - they can read a large number of newspapers, magazines and
books in English; throughout the country, they can watch TV channels
that broadcast in this language; and they have numerous occasions of
hearing and using English during their travels abroad or as the language
of communication in business settings;
Journalists and public people also contribute to English having a high
status in Romania, by using Anglicisms quite often, both in their spoken
and in their written materials.
English is the most widely taught foreign language in Romanian schools.

Words of English origin that have been borrowed into

English are:

non-assimilated
nouns
without
inflections,
determiners or modifiers or used as parts of verb
collocations (software pentru gestionarea muzicii
software for managing music; te duci cu gndul la
shopping you think of shopping; s-a dat click de
peste nou milioane de ori they gave a click over nine
million times), adjectives used as attributes or as
predicatives, in the postive degree (tot felul de pedepse
funny all sorts of funny punishments; am rmas
addicted I remained addicted; trebuie s rmi fair
you have to remain fair) and adverbs used as
attributes or as adverbials (caracteristici de navigare
outdoor characteristics of outdoor navigation;
comunitate online online community; backstage se
afl cel mai mare fan his greatest fan is backstage),
etc.

Assimilated directly or indirectly:

nouns that have been assigned Romanian gender by various means, such as the
presence of a Romanian indefinite or definite article or Romanian inflections for
number, case, gender (masculine: am fost nsoii de un bodyguard we were
accompanied by a bodyguard; designerii ne surpind constant designers
constantly surprise us; feminine: sunt o fan Liza Minelli I am a Lisa Minelli
fan; fanele mai pot spera the fans can still hope; neuter: completeaz cu un
blush roz add a pink blush; target-ul l reprezint copiii the target is
represented by children);
nouns whose gender is assigned by the presence of a pronominal adjective or
modifier marked for gender (neuter: cum poi pstra acest look how you can
preserve this look; masculine: este noul superstar al rockului he is the new
superstar of rock);
nouns obtained by derivation with Romanian suffixes, from English roots (diploma
de cea mai bine mbrcat coolgirli diploma for the best-dressed coolgirli;
o fashionist precum actria K.B. a fashionist like the actress K.B.; Eti cea
mai dulce maroonic You are the sweetest maroonic);
adjectives used in the Romanian comparative and superlative degrees (cea mai
cool pereche de balerini the coolest pair of shoes; foarte simplu i foarte cool
very simple and very cool);
verbs conjugated according to the Romanian pattern (poi uploada fotografii you
can upload photographs; nu tiu s managerieze problemele sufleteti they
cannot manage soul problems; pe unde am mixat, lumea s-a distrat people had
fun wherever I mixed music).

phrases that adopt both the meaning and the structure

of corresponding English phrases have occurred in
Romanian: cod de bare (bar code), a avea fluturai n
stomac (to have butterflies in ones stomach), a ine
prima pagin (to keep the front page);
The meaning of some Romanian words have enlarged
under the influence of English words they share at least
one sense with: chimie - the scientific study of
substances and of the way they react with other
substances, got the extra meaning affective
relationship between people, under the influence of the
English chemistry; scndur flat piece of wood, has
come to also mean board with four wheels that one
stands on and rides, influenced by its English partial
synonym skateboard.

Ethnic varieties of English

Ethnicity, understood as the common ancestry,
race and distinctive culture of a group of people
(whose representatives live in smaller or larger
communities in a certain country), is reflected in
the language these people use. In the case of
English, at least two ethnic varieties are very
well-established:

the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) spoken by about 90 percent of the black population of
African origin in the United States, the majority of which
comes from inner-city and working class backgrounds

It displays a number of phonological, grammatical (both

morphological and syntactic), lexical and discursive
peculiarities

Chicano/Mexican-American English spoekn by people of

Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and other Spanish-speaking
backgrounds in the US. According to Baugh and Cable (2002), in
the 1990 US census, 60 percent of the Hispanics reported their
national origin to be Mexican and it has been estimated that
Mexican-American English, or Chicano English is now spoken
by around 30 million people in the US.

Just like AAVE, Chicano English has a number of characteristic features

in terms of its phonetics, grammar and vocabulary.

Ethnic varieties of English (and of any other language, for that

matter) play an important role in preserving the shared identity of
a particular minority group within a majority mass. It is because of
this that members of an ethnic minority will not give up using its
characteristic vernacular (although, on occasions, the standard
language is used, especially by the upper educated classes) and
will fight, by cultural and political means, to ensure its survival.

Social varieties of English

Standard English - the variety of English

considered the norm in an English-speaking country,
usually associated with users belonging to the upper
well-educated social classes on the one hand, and to
the media and the official social, scientific, political,
cultural, etc. settings, on the other. SE is also the
variety taught to learners of English as a foreign
language. However, it should not be understood that
it is spoken by members of the upper social classes
and in the previously mentioned contexts only it is
spread, admittedly, in a non-uniform way, across the
whole social spectrum and it is encountered in less
formal environments as well.

What SE is not:

an accent - SE can be identified mainly by its vocabulary, grammar

and orthography, but not by its pronunciation. In Britain, there is a
high status and widely described accent known as Received
Pronunciation (RP), also known as Kings English, Queens English
and BBC English also, which is sociolinguistically unusual when seen
from a global perspective in that it is not associated with any
geographical area, being instead a purely social accent associated with
speakers in all parts of the country, or at least in England, from upperclass and upper-middle-class backgrounds (Trudgill 1999: 118). While
users of RP also speak SE, not all speakers of SE speak it with an RP about 10% of the population in Britain speak SE with some form of
regional accent, even if this is not very distant from RP. Therefore, it is
justified to say that while RP is, in a sense, standardized, it is a
standardized accent of English and not Standard English itself. This
point becomes even clearer from an international perspective.
Standard English speakers can be found in all English-speaking
countries, and it goes without saying that they speak this variety with
different non-RP accents, depending on whether they came from
Scotland or the USA or New Zealand or wherever (Trudgill 1999: 118).

a style (a language variety that can be placed on a continuum,

ranging from very formal to very informal).

Standard non-standard is not the same as formal - informal.

Eg. The old man was bloody knackered after his long trip - SE, though
couched in a very informal style (Trudgill 1999: 120)
Father were
very tired after his lengthy journey - non-standard English (due to the
grammatically incorrect agreement between the subject and the verb),
couched in a rather formal style (Trudgill 1999: 120).

even if SE tends to be used formally (a fact imposed by the contexts in

which it occurs), it is not impossible for it to be employed in an informal
way, too. Stylistic switching occurs within the variety in question and
not between it and another one.

a register (a variety of language connected to a particular topic,

subject matter or activity, such as mathematics, medicine,
physics, law, etc.), although it is most usual in English-speaking
societies to employ SE when one is using scientific registers

There was two eskers what we saw in them U-shaped valleys is a

nonstandard English sentence, couched in the technical register of
physical geography (Trudgill 1999: 121)
An informal discussion between scientists in their field of expertise
might be SE, even if not too many specialised terminology is used

What SE is:

a language variety, a social dialect which displays characteristics

that individualize it as pretty unusual among the other dialects of
English.
SE is the dialect spoken as their native variety by about 12 to 15%
of Britains population, this segment being concentrated at the top
of the social scale. The further down this scale one gets, the more
numerous non-standard forms of language one comes across.
From a historical point of view, SE was selected (though not
through a conscious process of decision making by regulatory
bodies such as academies, for instance) as the variety to become
the standard one precisely because it was the variety associated
with the social group with the highest degree of power, wealth and
prestige. Subsequent developments have reinforced its social
character: the fact that it has been employed as the dialect of an
education to which pupils, especially in earlier centuries, have had
differential access depending on their social class background
(Trudgill 1999: 124).

the most obvious features that make SE differ from other non-standard
English dialects lie at the level of grammar. Some of these features
are:

Standard English fails to distinguish between the forms of the auxiliary

forms of the verb do and its main verb forms. This is true both of present
tense forms, where many other dialects distinguish between auxiliary I do,
he do and main verb I do, he does, and the past tense, where most other
dialects distinguish between auxiliary did and main verb done, as in You
done it, did you?;
Standard English has an unusual and irregular present tense verb
morphology in that only the third-person singular receives morphological
marking: he goes versus I go. Many other dialects use either zero for all
persons or -s for all persons;
Standard English lacks multiple negation, so that no choice is available
between I dont want none, which is not possible, and I dont want any.
Most nonstandard dialects of English around the world permit multiple
negation;
Standard English has an irregular formation of reflexive pronouns with some
forms based on the possessive pronouns e.g. myself, and others on the
objective pronouns e.g. himself. Most nonstandard dialects have a regular
system employing possessive forms throughout i.e. hisself, theirselves;

Standard English fails to distinguish between second person singular and second person
plural pronouns, having you in both cases. Many nonstandard dialects maintain the older
English distinction between thou and you, or have developed newer distinctions such as
you versus youse;
Standard English has irregular forms of the verb to be both in the present tense (am, is,
are) and in the past (was, were). Many nonstandard dialects have the same form for all
persons, such as I be, you be, he be, we be, they be, and I were, you were, he were, we
were, they were;
In the case of many irregular verbs, Standard English redundantly distinguishes between
preterite and perfect verb forms both by the use of the auxiliary have and by the use of
distinct preterite and past participle forms: I have seen versus I saw. Many other dialects
have I have seen versus I seen;
Standard English has only a two-way contrast in its demonstrative system, with this
(near to the speaker) opposed to that (away from the speaker). Many other dialects have
a three-way system involving a further distinction between, for example, that (near to
the listener) and yon (away from both speaker and listener)

What is considered SE from a grammatical point of view should be regarded

without losing sight of the fact that language is continuously changing and that
it might very well happen that what is labeled non-standard at a certain moment
should become the norm. The reverse phenomenon is also possible what is
today considered standard language might enter the category of non-standard
forms in the future.

Slang - the attribute of lower social classes chiefly. It may be contrasted

with jargon (technical language of occupational or other groups) and with
argot or cant (secret vocabulary of underworld groups), but the borderlines
separating these categories from slang are greatly blurred, and some
writers use the terms cant, argot, and jargon in a general way, to include all
the foregoing meanings (Varanakov online: 4). However, just like in the
case of SE, this does not mean that slang is never used by speakers not
belonging to the upper classes of a society.

It is characterized by the use of very informal and generally short-lived nonstandard words, phrases and meanings
It originates in various subcultures or occupational groups in a society (police,
medical professionals, computer specialists, sports groups, religious denominations,
drug addicts, criminals, etc.). Within these, slang words and phrases are initially
suggested by an individual, usually, as a way of expressing hostility, ridicule or
contempt (Varanakov online: 5) either towards the members, values, attitudes or
behaviour of her / his own group or of a different group. However, only after these
lexical elements are widely adopted by the group or subculture within which they
were created do they have chances of becoming real slang (a one time usage does
not guarantee their survival as part of the language variety under discussion).
Following this stage, if the group or subculture has an extensive enough contact
with the mainstream culture, these words and phrases may spread and become
known to a greater number of language users.

Other reasons for the birth of slang:

the exercising of ingenuity, wit and humour

the desire to be different, novel or picturesque (either
positively or as in thewish to avoid insipidity negatively)
to escape from clichs
to lend an air of solidity, concreteness, to the abstract, of
earthiness to the idealistic
to reduce, perhaps also to disperse the solemnity, the
pomposity, the excessive seriousness of a conversation (or of a
piece of writing)
to soften the tragedy, to lighten or to prettify the inevitability
of death or madness, or to mask the ugliness or the pity of
profound turpitude (e.g. treachery, ingratitude)
to show that one belongs to a certain school, trade, or
profession, artistic or intellectual set, or social class, in brief, to
be in the swim or to establish contact and, hence, to show or
prove that someone is not in the swim
to be secret - not understood by those around one, etc.

Slang is not restricted either temporally or

geographically. All historical periods and all
geographical areas have had their own slang.
Professional in various fields have their own
slang
Slang is frequently based on figures of
speech,
mostly
on
metaphors
and
comparison; rhyming slang is a category that
has pretty numerous representatives in
English

Written and oral varieties of English

the previously well drawn separation line between the two has become quite blurred
recently, under the influence of the development and more and more extensive use of
communication channels such as the email, mobile phones and online chat rooms. Thus,
new varieties of English, specific to electronic communication, have evolved.
Spontaneous speech, one form of oral communication, occurs when people talk
naturally and informally, without having planned in advance what they are going to say.
This is not to mean that spontaneous talk is just small talk for the sake of talking, that
the interlocutors have no conscious aim in their talk whatsoever, but rather that
linguistically, they have not already worked out what form of the language they are going
to use to express what they want to say. In their heads, they may well have quite clear
intentions, but they will actually express these intentions spontaneously, if and when they
get the chance to in the course of the conversation.
Although informal conversation does not seem to be closely controlled, a set of rules is
still applied by the speakers, even if unconsciously most of the times: the use of formulas
to open or close a dialogue, of greetings or pragmatic idioms (adjacency pairs of the kind
Im George. / Nice to meet you; Im sorry! / No problem.; Have some more cake! / No,
thank you, Ive had enough, etc.), to giving feedback (by using, for example, discourse
markers such as yes, I know, exactly, sure, etc.), asking and answering questions, making
and responding to suggestions, signaling the intention to keep or to yield the floor (in the
former case, by, for instance, pausing at a moment when the sentence is still incomplete
and when, therefore, the interlocutor feels discouraged to take over; in the latter, by
pausing when an idea has been completely expressed, directly asking for the
interlocutors opinion or displaying suggestive body language looking more steadily to
the person to whom the speaker is willing to give the floor, nodding, etc).

Non-fluency features of spontaneous talk:

abandoned / incomplete words such as thi-this and abandoned

and / or reformulated sentence structure, such as I could
always get the tickets from theres a new box office down
you know, when you go through that new shopping
archade
syntactic blends, where the structure of the sentence changes
in mid-stream, e.g. About two hundred years ago we had
ninety-five percent of people in this country were employed in
farming.
mispronunciations and slips of the tongue, e.g. par cark for car
park (syllable-onset consonants swopped); win a pin for with a
pin (where an anticipated consonant is articulated early).
fillers like er, erm.
repetition (often combined with hesitation), such as itsits
nnot that I want to be critical but

rehearsed speech is, in some ways, prepared before it

is uttered for an audience:

speeches thought over and maybe even drafted before

they are delivered to the listeners
drama, in whose case lines are learned by heart by the
actors and then reproduced before the spectators.

Therefore, though the aim of the speaker in these cases

is to sound as spontaneous as possible, what s/he says
does not come out in the same way as it does in the
case of fully unprepared speech. Some non-fluency
characteristics are preserved (syntactic blends, fillers,
hesitation markers, etc.) though - intentionally in the
case of theatre, possibly uncontrolled in the case of
public speakers.

Traditional written texts are characterized by

features that are the consequence of their
being produced in a more controlled manner
than oral discourse. The final version of a
written text, one that might have been arrived
at after several revisions, is a string of
coherent sentences that reflect a logical
sequencing of ideas. These sentences tend to
be much longer and more elaborated than
those in spoken discourse, with no (intentional)
grammatical mistakes and with a higher level
of vocabulary.

Electronic written texts (emails,

text messages) mixture of oral
and written features in various
degrees, depending on the level of
formality of the text
Characteristics of emails: