Catachresis is a gradual planting of one sense for another for a large or short period of time

Ex.: - sermon (early) – any conversation
(now) – religious conversation

One of the chief consequences of semantic change is the change in the area meaning.
Each word has an area of meaning, it has certain limits.

As a result of semantic change this area of meaning can be restricted (ограниченный, узкий) or expended (тратить, расходовать (на что-л. - for, on, in)).

Ex.:

1. Restriction of meaning:
- names for classes of animals
“deer” – earlier included all wild animals
now only deer
“fowl” – earlier - birds in general
now – poultry & wild fowl (дичь)
- a number of Anglo-Saxon words shrunk under the influence of Norman words
“pond” – from Latin “pontus” (sea or large stretch of water).
Due to its confrontation with word “lake” “pond” changed its meaning to “пруд”.

2. Expansion of meaning.
It happens as a result of chance situations.
The word “вокзал’ came to Russian from English word “Vauxhall” as the general name of all main railway stations. Now – автовокзал, ж/д вокзал, м/р вокзал.
The same thing happens very often with loan words (заимствованное слово).

15.Lingustic causes of semantic change. And yet a thorough understanding of the phenomena involved in semantic change is impossible unless the whys and wherefores become known. This is of primary importance as it may lead eventually to a clearer interpretation of language development. The vocabulary is the most flexible part of the language and it is precisely its semantic aspect that responds most readily to every change in the human activity in whatever sphere. The causes of semantic changes may be grouped under two main headings, linguistic and extralinguistic ones. Linguistic causes influencing the process of vocabulary adaptation may be of paradigmatic and syntagmatic character; in dealing with them we have to do with the constant interaction and interdependence of vocabulary units in language and speech, such as differentiation between synonyms, changes taking place in connection with ellipsis and with fixed contexts, changes resulting from ambiguity in certain contexts, and some other causes. Differentiation of synonyms is a gradual change observed in the course of language history, sometimes, but not necessarily, involving the semantic assimilation of loan words. Consider, for example, the words time and tide. They used to be synonyms. Then tide took on its more limited application to the shifting waters, and time alone is used in the general sense.

16. EXTRALINGUISTIC CAUSES OF SEMANTIC CHANGE Semantic change – changes of both synchronic and diachronic nature, which concerns the semantic content of the word. New meanings would appear by means of semantic shift (q.v.) and semantic transference (q.v.), which lead to the growth of polysemy. Causes for s.ch. can be both extralinguistic and linguistic. Semantic change. There are many causes of semantic change: 1) Historical causes. According to historical principle, everything develops changes, social institutions change in the course of time, the words also change.Ex.: “car” which goes back to Latin “carfus” which meant a four wheeled (vehicle) wagon, despite of the lack of resemblance. 2) Psychological causes. Taboos of various kinds.Words are replaced by other words, sometimes people do not realize that they use euphemisms. Ex.: “lady’s room” instead of the “lavatory” 3) Linguistic causes Tendency of a language to borrow a particular metaphorical development of a word from another language.The nature of semantic change.Metaphor accounts for a very considerable proportions of semantic changes.Language is full of so-called fossilized (trite-банальный, избитый, неоригинальный) metaphors, which no longer call up the image of an object from which they were borrowed.Ex.: the leaf of a book; hands of a clock; a clock face; hands of a cabbage.Metonymy is the tendency of certain words to occur in near proximity & mutually influence one another.Ex.:He drinks 2 cups (tea, coffee) every morning. He has eaten 2 plates (porridge) today.“Bureau” (French origin)When it appeared in the language, meant “thick green cloth” usually tables were covered with it, it became associated with a writing table. (BrE)AmE: 2 further stages- an office furnished with writing tables- an office1) The substitution of cause, form effect- sleeping sickness is diseases which causes sleep & vice versa.2) Catachresis is a gradual planting of one sense for another for a large or short period of time.Ex.: - sermon (early) – any conversation, (now) – religious conversationOne of the chief consequences of semantic change is the change in the area meaning.Each word has an area of meaning, it has certain limits.As a result of semantic change this area of meaning can be restricted (ограниченный, узкий) or expended (тратить, расходовать (на что-л. - for, on, in)). Ex.: 1. Restriction of meaning:- names for classes of animals“deer” – earlier included all wild animals now only deer“fowl” – earlier - birds in generalnow – poultry & wild fowl (дичь)- a number of Anglo-Saxon words shrunk under the influence of Norman words “pond” – from Latin “pontus” (sea or large stretch of water).Due to its confrontation with word “lake” “pond” changed its meaning to “пруд”.2. Expansion of meaning. It happens as a result of chance situations. The word “вокзал’ came to Russian from English word “Vauxhall” as the general name of all main railway stations. Now – автовокзал, ж/д вокзал, м/р вокзал. The same thing happens very often with loan words (заимствованное слово).

17. MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WORDS. MORPHEMES. FREE AND BOUND FORMS A morpheme is also an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. But unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Nor are they divisible into smaller meaningful units. A form is said to be free if it may stand alone without changing its meaning; if not, it is a bound form, so called because it is always bound to something else. For example, if we compare the words sportive and elegant and their parts, we see that sport, sportive, elegant may occur alone as utterances, whereas eleg-, -ive, -ant are bound forms because they never occur alone. A word is, by L. Bloomfield’s definition, a minimum free form. A morpheme is said to be either bound or free. It means that some morphemes are capable of forming words without adding other morphemes: that is, they are homonymous to free forms. morphemes are subdivided into roots and affixes. The latter are further subdivided, according to their position, into prefixes, suffixes and infixes, and according to their function and meaning, into derivational and functional.affixes, the latter also called endings or outer formatives. When a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word, what remains is a stem. The stem expresses the lexical and the part of speech meaning. For the word hearty and for the paradigm heart (sing.) -hearts (pi.)1 the stem may be represented as heart-. This stem is a single morpheme, it contains nothing but the root, so it is a simple stem. It is also a free stem because it is homonymous to the word heart.Thus, a stem containing one or more affixes is a derived stem. If after deducing the affix the remaining stem is not homonymous to a separate word of the same root, we call it abound stem. Bound stems are especially characteristic of loan words. The point may be illustrated by the following French borrowings: arrogance, charity, courage, coward, distort, involve, notion, legible and tolerable, to give but a few.2 After the affixes of these words are taken away the remaining elements are: arrog-, char-, cour-, cow-, -tort, -volve, not-, leg-, toler-, which do not coincide with any semantically related independent words.

18. Various Types and Ways of Forming Words. Productivity of Word-Formation Means A distinction is made between two large classes of word-building means:

To Class I belong the means of building words having one motivating base. To give an English example, the noun catcher is composed of the base catch- and the suffix -er, through the combination of which it is morphologically and semantically motivated.Class II includes the means of building words containing more than “ one motivating base. Apart from these a number of minor ways of forming words such as back-formation, sound interchange, distinctive stress, sound imitation, blending, clipping and acronymy are traditionally referred to Word-Formation.

Another classification of the types of word-formation worked out by H. Marchand. Proceeding from the distinction between full linguistic signs and pseudo signs ² he considers two major groups: 1) words formed as grammatical syntagmas, i.e. combinations of full linguistic signs which are characterised by morphological motivation such as do-er, un-do, rain-bow; and 2) words which are not grammatical syntagmas, i.e. which are not made up of full linguistic signs. To the ‘ first group belong Compounding, Suffixation, Prefixation, Derivation by a Zero Morpheme³ and Back-Derivation, to the second — Expressive Symbolism, Blending, Clipping, Rime and Ablaut Gemination,* Word-Manufacturing.⁵ It is characteristic of both groups that a new coining is based on a synchronic relationship between morphemes.Word-Formation is the system of derivative types of words and the process of creating new words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic formulas and patterns. For instance, the noun driver is formed after the pattern v+-er, i.e. a verbal stem +-the noun-forming suffix -er. The meaning of the derived noun driver is related to the meaning of the stem drive- ‘ to direct the course of a vehicle’ and the suffix -er meaning ‘an active agent’: a driver is ‘one who drives’ (a carriage, motorcar, railway engine, etc.). Likewise compounds resulting from two or more stems joined together to form a new word are also built on quite definite structural and semantic patterns and formulas, for instance adjectives of the snow-white type are built according to the formula п+а, etc. It can easily be observed that the meaning of the whole compound is also related to the meanings of the component parts.

Within the types, further distinction may be made between the ways of forming words. The basic ways of forming words in word-derivatiоn, for instance, are affixation and conversion. It should be noted that the understanding of word-formation as expounded here excludes semantic word-building as well as shortening, sound- and stress-interchange which traditionally are referred, to minor ways of word-formation. the shortening of words should not be regarded as a way of word-formation on a par with derivation and compounding. Productivity of Word-Formation Means Some of the ways of forming words in present-day English can be resorted to for the creation of new words whenever the occasion demands — these are calledprоduсtiveways of formingwords, other ways of forming words cannot now produce new words, and these are commonly termed non-productive or unproductive. For instance, affixation has been a productive way of forming words ever since the Old English period; on the other hand, sound-interchange must have been at one time a word-building means but in Modern English, as has been mentioned above, its function is actually only to distinguish between different classes and forms of words.

It follows that productivity of word-building ways, individual derivational patterns and derivational affixes is understood as their ability of making new words which all who speak English find no difficulty in understanding, in particular their ability to create what are called ос-casionalwords or nonce-wоrds.² Nonce-words are built from familiar language material after familiar patterns. The following words may serve as illustration: (his) collarless (appearance), a lungful (of smoke), a Dickensish (office), to unlearn (the rules), etc.The delimitation between productive and non-productive ways and means of word-formation as stated above is not, however, accepted by all linguists without reserve. Some linguists consider it necessary to define the term productivity of a word-building means more accurately. They hold the view that productive ways and means of word-formation are only those that can be used for the formation of an unlimited number of new words in the modern language, i.e. such means that “know no bounds"and easily form occasional words. This divergence of opinion is responsible for the difference in the lists of derivational affixes considered productive in various books on English Lexicology.Three degrees of productivity are distinguished for derivational patterns and individual derivational affixes: l) highly-productive,2) productive or semi-productive and 3) non-productive.The agent suffix -er is to be qualified both as a productive and as an active suffix: on the one hand, the English word-stock possesses hundreds of nouns containing this suffix (e.g. driver, reaper, teacher, speaker, etc.), on the other hand, the suffix -er in the pattern v+-er-> N is freely used to coin an unlimited number of nonce-words denoting active agents (e.g., interrupter, respecter, laugher, breakfaster, etc.).The adjective suffix -ful is described as a productive but not as an active one, for there are hundreds of adjectives with this suffix (e.g. beautiful, hopeful, useful, etc.), but no new words seem to be built with its help.For obvious reasons, the noun-suffix -th in terms of this approach is to be regarded both as a non-productive and a non-active one.

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