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, ir-responsible; (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, co-produce;

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; -en: darken, deepen, whiten; -ish: selfish, reddish, boyish; -y: dirty, silky, hairy; -ly: manly, slowly, hardly; -th: tenth, growth.

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. -dom: kingdom, freedom, boredom; -ful: spoonful, mouthful, hurtful; -hood: boyhood, childhood; -ee: employee, trainee, payee; -ship: kinship, relationship;

semi-productive suffixes (at present, less active in the process of word formation):

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, heart-breaking, 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:

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;

3) compound verbs:

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: thirty-four,

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:

hush;

- reduplicatives: blah-blah, pooh-pooh, puff-puff, 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 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: ash-trays, 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-wouldnt-melt-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.

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

B) functional characteristics

vs. red ribbon; to cut a poor figure vs. to cut bread

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 rat, red herrings

Some verb idioms allow for variation in tense, while some noun idioms allow for variation in number: kicked the bucket, smelled a 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)

Numerous idioms are based on figures of speech: a) Metaphorical idioms: a wolf in a sheeps clothing, a white
b)

D) stylistic characteristics

c)

d)

e)

f)

elephant, a cold fish, to have a heavy heart 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 Idioms based on metonymy and synecdoche: to go under the knife, to have an itchy palm, to have one foot in the grave Idioms based on euphemisms: to be knocked up, six feet under, in ones birthday suit 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 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:

variable non-variable idioms

B) according to their meaning:

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

SENSE RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDS SYNONYMY

Simple words may establish correlative synonymic relationships with

to leave to depart to clear out to retire

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):
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 sixpack, 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 low-rider 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 player wire bodily heartly brotherly learned happy hard Native strength time forerunner bond outstanding end ask French power age herald bail glorious finish question

Latin/Greek actor telegram corporeal cordial fraternal erudite fortunate solid Latin energy epoch precursor security 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. kingstool 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.

Meronymy = a relationship of inclusion of the part of type:

The more general term = the superordinate; The subordinate terms = the hyponyms.

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 onetime 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, hack-and-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 wellestablished 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 upper-class 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).

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

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.

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 nonstandard 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 non-standard 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

itsitsnnot that I want to be critical but

(often

combined

with

hesitation),

such

as

rehearsed speech is, in some ways, prepared before it is uttered for an audience:

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.

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.

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: