The Functional Metaphor

The functional metaphor is perhaps the most powerful of the metaphorical constructions since the meaning of the secondary subject is transformed into action--the noun literally becomes a verb. Check out this example, still at the expense our friend John:

Man! What a guy! Old John--he sure outfoxed me!

The simplest and also the most effective poetic device is the use of comparison. It might almost be said that poetry is founded on two main means of comparing things: simile and metaphor. We heighten our ordinary speech by the continual use of such comparisons as "fresh as a daisy," "tough as leather," "comfortable as an old shoe," "it fits like the Paper on the wall," "gay as a lark," "happy as the day is long, pretty as a picture." These are all recognizable similes; they use the words "as" or "like."

43. The main problems of neology

No living vocabulary is ever stable. It is not to day what it was a century ago, still less what it will be a century hence. Its constituent elements are in a state of slow but incessant dissolution and renovation. Old words are ever becoming obsolete and dying out; new words are continually pressing in.

The XX century is reputed to be the most neogeneous one. The influx of new words has never been so rapid as in the past 25 years. It is evident by now that science transforms man's en­vironment at a pace which is not merely rapid, but swiftly acce­lerating". Throughout all the ages the elderly have lectured their juniors on the happiness of the old days and the decadence of present manners, but nowadays change is so rapid that anyone out of the first flush of youth tends to feel slightly out of date.

So the great influx of new words can be accounted for not only by intralinguistic systematic factors, but by a number of extra-linguistic stimuli of language development, such as scien­ce-technological progress, massmedia development, etc.

The English language just like other European languages is now facing 'a neological boom". This process has boosted a new branch of liguistics - neology. It's a science concerned with the investigation and description of the new vocabulary items. It is mostly preoccupied with the following problems: 1. the ways of recognition of new words and meanings;

2. accounting for, the influx of new vocabulary items;

3. patterns after which they are built;

4. lexicographical study of new words /their fixation in the dictionary, definition of their meanings, etc/;

5. the way a neologism is received by the society /the process of socialization...

The most crucial problem is that of the term itself. So far no universal definition has been proposed, though the term is clear-ly motivated: neos /new/ + logos /word/. So the simplest defini­tion is "any new word or expression". It is quite laconic, but not quite scientifically correct. We proceed from the assumption that language evolution is expressed in the change of nomina­tion, i.e. correlation between form and meaning of a vocabulary unit. A neologism then is any unit new either in form or in meaning.

44. Classification of neologisms.

Proceeding from this three main groups of neologisms may be distinguished:

1/ neologism proper /new form is combined with new meaning/:

indomethacin, pulsa r, gravisphere gravitation, interferon;

2/ transnominations - new vocabulary units, the meaning of which is already expressed by the traditional words /the farm is new, the meaning is old, though some new connotational compo­nents are added/:

head-falsie /a new ironical synonym for wig/

cinenik /a humiliating synonym for film fan/; meat-and-potatoes /basic/;

3/ semantic innovations /the form is old, the meaning is new/:

vegetable - a lifeless inert creature;

«juice - an alcoholic drink;

wart - blemish, imperfection;

саке - a sleeveless overblouse worn over a dress.

Among these three groups the neologisms proper prevail.

45.The fundamental problems of dictionary compilation.

The work at а dictionary consists of the following main stages: the collection of material, the selection of entries and their arrangement, the setting of each entry.

The most important of the former are 1) the selection of lexical units for inclusion, 2) their arrangement, 3) the setting of the entries, 4) the selection and arrangement (grouping) of word-meanings, 5) the definition of meanings, 6) illustrative material, 7) supplementary material.

No dictionary of reasonable size could possibly register all occasional applications of a lexical unit, nor is it possible to present all really occurring lexical items.

The choice of lexical units for inclusion in the prospective dictionary is one of the first problems the lexicographer faces.

First of all the type of lexical units to be chosen for inclusion is to be decided upon. Then the number of items to be recorded must be determined. Then there is the basic problem of what to select and what to leave out in the dictionary.

There is nо general reply to any of these questions. The choice among the different possible answers depends upon the type to which the dictionary will belong, the aim the compilers pursue, the prospective user of the dictionary, its size, the linguistic conceptions of the dictionary-makers and some other considerations.

The order of arrangement of the entries to be included is different in different types of dictionaries and even in the word-books of the same type. In most dictionaries of various types entries are given in a single alphabetic listing. In many others the units entered are arranged in nests, based on this of that principle.In some explanatory and translation dictionaries, for example, entries are grouped in families of words of the same root.

Each of the two modes of presentation, the alphabetical and the cluster-type has its own advantages. The former provides for an easy finding of any word and establishing its meaning, frequency value, etc. The latter requires less space and presents a clearer picture of the relations of each unit under consideration with some other units in the language system, since words of the same root, the same denotational meaning or close in their frequency value are grouped together.

One of the most difficult problems nearly all lexicographes face is recording the word-meanings and arranging them in the most rational way in the order that is supposed to be of most help to those who will use the dictionary.

Students sometimes think that if the meaning is placed first in the entry, it must be the most important, the most frequent in present-day use. This is not always the case. It depends on the plan followed by the compilers.

There are at least three different ways in which the word meanings are arranged: in the sequence of their historical development (called historical order), in conformity with frequency of use that is with the most common meaning first (empirical or actual оrdеr), and in their logical connection (logical order).

Meanings of words may be defined in different ways 1) by means of definition that are characterized as encyclopaedic, 2) by means of descriptive definitions or paraphrases, 3) with the help of synonymous words and expressions, 4) by means of cross-references.

All dictionaries save those of narrowly restricted purpose provide illustrative examples. The purpose of these examples depends on the type of the dictionary and on the aim the compilers set themselves. They can illustrate the first and the last known occurrences of the entry word, the successive changes in its graphic and Phonetic forms, as well as in its meaning, the typical patterns and collocations, the difference between synonymous words, they place words in а context to clarify their meanings and usage.

The most complicated type of entry is that found in explanatory dictionaries. In explanatory dictionaries of the synchronic type the entry usually presents the following data: accepted spelling and pronunciation; grammatical characteristics including the indication of the part of speech of each entry word, the transitivity and intransitivity of verbs and irregular grammatical forms; definitions of meanings; modern currency; illustrative examples; derivatives; phraseology; etymology; sometimes also synonyms and antonyms.

А typical entrv in diachronic explanatory dictionary will have some specific features. Apart from the chronological arrangement of meanings and illustrative quotations to present the historical sense development, the etymology of the word is accorded an exhaustive treatment, besides а distinguishing feature of such reference books is the dates accompanying each word, word-meaning and quotation that indicate the time of its first registration or, if the word or one of its meanings is obsolete, the time of its last registration.

Sometimes the entries..for the same word will look quite different in dictionaries of the same type. Thus the setting of the entry varies in different books of synonyms depending upon the practical needs of the intended users. Some word-books enumerate synonyms to each meaning of the head-word to help the user recall words close in meaning that may have been forgotten. Other word-books provide discriminating synonymies, i.e. they explain the difference in semantic structure, use and style, and show how each synonym is related to, yet differs from all the others in the same group

46.Parameters of linguistic dictionary.

There are many different types of English dictionaries. First of all they may all be roughly divided into two groups— encyclopaedic and linguistic.

The two groups of reference books differ essentially in the choice of items included and in the sort of information given about them. Linguistic dic-ries are word-books, their subject matter is lexical units and their linguistic properties such as pronunciation, meaning, peculiarities of use, etc.

The encyclopaedic dic-ries the biggest of which are smtimes called simply encyclopaedias are thing - book that give information about the extra-linguistic world, they deal with concepts (objects and phenomena), their relations to other objects and phenomena, etc.

It follows that the encyclopaedic dictionaries will never enter items like father, go, that, be, if, black, but only those of designative character such as names for substances, diseases, plants and animals, institutions, terms of science, some important events in history and geographical аnd biographical entries.

It is with linguistic dictionaries that lexicology is closely connected. And the most well-known encyclopaedias in English are The Encyclopaedia Britannica (in 24 volumes) and The Encyclopedia Americana (in 30 volumes), Collier' s Encyclopedia (in 24.vol), Chamber's Encyclopaedia (in 15 vols) and Еveryman’s Encyclopaedia (in 12 vols).

There are also numerous dictionaries presenting information about notable persons (scientists, writers, kings, presidents, etc.) often called Who's Who dictionaries.

As concept and word-meaning are closely bound up the encyclopaedic and linguistic dictionaries often overlap. Encvclopaedias sometimes indicate the origin of the word, which belongs to the domain of linguistics. And also there are elements of encyclonaedic character in many linguistic dictionaries.

A linguistic dictionary is а book alphabetically, with definitions, pronunciations, etymologies and other linguistic information or with their equivalents in another language (or other languages). Linguistic dictionaries may be divided into different categories by different criteria. According to the nature of their word-list we may speak about generаl dictionaries and restricted. The former contain lexical units in ordinary use with this or that proportion of items from various spheres of life, while the latter make their choice only from а certain part of the word-stock, the restriction being based on any principle determined by. the compiler. To restricted dictionaries belong terminological, phraseological, dialectalword-books, dictionaries of new words, of foreign words etc.

As to the information they provide all linguistic dictionaries fall into those presenting а wide range of data, especially with regard to the semantic aspect of the vocabulary items entered (they are called explanatory) and those dealing with lexical units only in relation. to some оf their characteristics, е.g. only in relation to their etymology or frequency or pronunciation. These are termed specialized dictionaries.

All types of dictionaries, save the translation ones, may be monolingual or bilingual i.e. the information about the items entered may be given in the same language or in another one.

Саrе should be taken not to mix up the terms monolingual and explanatory, on the one hand, and bi1inguа1 and trаns1аtiоn dictionaries on the other. The two pairs of terms reflect different dimensions of dictionaries. The terms monolingual and bi1inguа1 pertain to the language in which the information about the words dealt with is couched. The terms explanatory and trаns1аtiоn dictionaries characterize the kind of information itself.

Thus among dictionaries of the same type, say phraseological or terminological, we may find both monolingual and bilingual word-books. For example, Kluge's Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache is bilingual, but it is not its purpose to supply translation of the items entered.

47.The main types of dictionaries.

There are many different types of English dictionaries. First of all they may all be divided into two groups— encyclopaedic and linguistic.

The two groups of reference books differ essentially in the choice of items included and in the sort of information given about them. Linguistic dic-ries are word-books, their subject matter is lexical units and their linguistic properties such as pronunciation, meaning, peculiarities of use, etc.

The encyclopaedic dic-ries the biggest of which are smtimes called simply encyclopaedias are thing - book that give information about the extra-linguistic world, they deal with concepts (objects and phenomena), their relations to other objects and phenomena, etc. (The Encyclopaedia Britannica (in 24 volumes) and The Encyclopedia Americana (in 30 volumes)

It follows that the encyclopaedic dictionaries will never enter items like father, go, that, be, if, black, but only those of designative character such as names for substances, diseases, plants and animals, institutions, terms of science, some important events in history and geographical аnd biographical entries.

Although some of the items included in encyclopaedic and linguistic dictionaries coincide, such as the names of some diseases, the information presented in them is altogether different. The former give much more extensive information on these subjects. It is with linguistic dictionaries that lexicology is closely connected.

Linguistic dictionaries may be divided into different categories by different criteria. According to the nature of their word-list we may speak about generаl (contain lexical units in ordinary use with this or that proportion of items from various spheres of life) dictionaries and restricted (terminological, phraseological, dialectalword-books, dictionaries of new words, of foreign words etc).

All types of dictionaries, save the translation ones, may be monolingual or bilingual i.e. the information about t e items entered may be given in the same language or in another one.

Саге should be taken not to mix up the terms monolingual and explanatory, on the one hand, and bi1inguа1 and trаns1аtiоn dictionaries on the other. The two pairs of terms reflect different dimensions of dictionaries. The terms monolingual and bi1inguа1 pertain to the language in which the information about the words dealt with is couched. The terms explanatory and trаns1аtiоn dictionaries characterize the kind of information itself.

Explanatory dictionaries - Most of these dictionaries deal with the form, usage and meaning of lexical units in Modern Eng, regarding it as а stabilized system and taking no account of its past development. They are synchronic in their presentation of words as distinct from diachronic, those concerned with the development of words occurring within the written history of the language.

Translation dictionaries (=parallel) are word- books containing vocabulary items in one language and their equivalents in another language. (New Engl-Russian Dic-ry edited by Prof Galperin, Engl-Rus by Muller, thr Rus-Eng by Smirnitsky)

Phraseological dictionaries in England and America have accumulated vast collections of idiomatic or сcolloquial phrases, proverbs and other, usually image-bearing word-groups with profuse illustrations. (The Anglo-Rus Phras Dict by Koonin)

New words dict-ries (of neologisms) have as their aim adequate reflection of the continuous growth of the Engl Lang-ge.

Dict-ries of Slang contain elements from areas of substandard speech such as vu1garisms, jargonisms, taboo words, curse-words, colloquialisms, еtc (Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by Е. Partridge)

Usage dict-ries make it their business to pass judgement on usage problems of all kinds, on what is right or wrong. Designed for- native speakers-they supply much various information on such usage problems as, е.g., the difference in meaning between words, the proper pronunciation of words like, the plural forms of the nouns, the meaning of such foreign wordsetc. They also explain what is meant by neologisms, archaisms, colloquial and slang words and how one is to handle them, etc. (of Modern English Usage by N. W. Fowler)

Dictionaries of word-frequency inform the user as to the frequency of occurrence of lexical units in speech, to be more exact in the corpus of the reading matter or in the stretch of oral speech on which the word-counts are based, they are constructed to make up lists of the so-called basic vocabulary, for spelling reforming, for an all-round synchronic analysis of modern English, etc.

Reverse dict-ry is a list of words in which the entry words are arranged in alphabetical order starting with their final letters. The original aim of such dictionaries was to indicate words which' form rhymes. Nowadays such dic-ries are also used to 'study the frequency and productivity of certain word-forming elements and other problems of word-formation.

Pronouncing dic-ries record contemporary pronunciation. They indicate variant pronunciations (which are numerous fn some cases), as well as the pronunciation of different grammatical forms. (English Pronouncing Dictionary by Daniel Jones)

Etymological dic-ries trace present-day words to the oldest forms available, establish their primary meanings and give the parent form reconstructed by means of the comparative-historical method. In case of borrowings they point out the immediate source of borrowing, its origin, and parallel forms in cognate languages. (Etymological English Dictionary by W. W. Skeat)

Ideographic dictionaries contain words grouped by the concepts expressed (were designed for Engl-speaking writers, translators) (Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases P.M. Roget)

48.Mental vocabulary versus dictionary.

Mental vocabulary is information about a language in people’s mind. Dictionary is a book, a list of ws(arranged normally in an alphabetical order-from A to Z)
Differences between mental vocabulary and dictionary:
1) in organization(dictionary is a list of ws;mental vocab isn’t a list,it’s like a network of meanings)
2) in content(in dic ws are fixed,some ws are not registered and not all the meanings are whritten,the cognitive knowledge(knowledge about life) is absent;mental vocab contains more information about life,besides we can guess the meaning of some ws). The memory isn’t restricted, but dictionaries are restricted.
3) In information(dictionaries are cut and dry and have not very many pronunciation patterns, but in our minds we know what’s more typical and what isn’t and we have many pronunciation patterns -> mental voc is much richer! It’s a massive structure,we can compare mental voc with libraries)

49. What are characteristics of learner's dictionary? Thesaurus.

The word thesaurus is New Latin for treasure; coined in the early 1820s. Besides its meaning as a treasury or storehouse, it more commonly means a listing of words with similar or related meanings. For example, a book of jargon for a specialized field; or more generally a list of subject headings and cross-references used in the filing and retrieval of documents. (Or indeed papers, certificates, letters, cards, records, texts, files, articles, essays and perhaps even manuscripts.)

The first example of this genre, Roget's Thesaurus, was published in 1852, having been compiled earlier, in 1805, by Peter Roget.

Although including synonyms, entries in a thesaurus should not be taken as a list of synonyms. The entries are also designed for drawing distinctions between similar words and assisting in choosing exactly the right word. Nor does a thesaurus entry define words. That work is left to the dictionary.

In Information Technology, a thesaurus represents a database or list of semantically orthogonal topical search keys. In the field of Artificial Intelligence, a thesaurus may sometimes be referred to as an ontology.

Examples

Roget's Thesaurus is the world's best-known thesaurus, created by Dr. Peter Mark Roget (1779 - 1869) in 1805 and was released to the public in 1852. The original edition had 15,000 words, and each new edition has been larger. The Karpeles Manuscript Library houses the original manuscript in its collection.

Thesaurus is composed of six primary classes. Each class is composed of multiple divisions and then sections. This may be conceptualized as a tree containing over a thousand branches for individual "meaning clusters" or semantically linked words. These words are not exactly synonyms, but can be viewed as colours or connotations of a meaning or as a spectrum of a concept. One of the most general words is chosen to typify the spectrum as its headword, which labels the whole group.

Roget's Thesaurus can be seen as a classification system, as evidenced by the outline from the 1911 US edition, now in the public domain.

50. Variants and dialects of contemporary English.

It is natural that the English language js not used with uniformity in НИ British Isles and in Australia, in the USA and in New Zealand, in Canada and in India, etc. The English language also has some peculiarities in Wales, Scotland, in other parts of the British Isles and America.

Modern linguistics distinguishes territorial variants of а national language and local dialects. Variants of а language are regional varieties of а standard literary language characterized by some minor peculiarities in the sound system, vocabulary and grammar and by their own literary norms. Dialects are varieties of а language used as а means of oral communication in small localities, they are set off (more or less sharply) from other varieties by some distinctive features of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.

The varieties spoken in small areas are local dialects. The status of the other varieties is more difficult to establish.

It is over half а century already that the nature of the two main variants of the English language, British and American (Br and AE) has been discussed.

Still more questionable is the position of Australian English (АиЕ) and Canadian English (CnE).

The differences between the English language as spoken in Britain, the USA, Australia and Canada are immediately noticeable in the field of phonetics. However these distinctions are confined to the articulatory-acoustic characteristics of some phonemes, to some differences in the use of others and to the differences in the rhythm and intonation of speech. The few phonemes characteristic of American pronunciation and alien to British literary norms can as а rule be observed in British dialects.

The variations in vocabulary are not very numerous. Most of them are divergences in the semantic structure of, words and in their usage.

The differences in grammar like АЕ gotten, proven for ВЕ got, proved are scarce. For the most part these dissimilarities consist in the preference of this or that grammatical category or form to some others. (eg the preference of Past Indefinite to Present Prefect, the formation of the Future Tense with will as the only auxiliary verb for all persons etc). Recent investigations have also shown that the Present Continuous form in the meaning of Future is used twice as frequently in ВЕ as in the American, Canadian and Australian variants; infinitive constructions are used morerarely in АЕ than in ВЕ and АиЕ and passive constructions are, on the contrary, more frequent in America. than in Britain and in Australia.

Since ВЕ, АЕ and АиЕ have essentially the same grammar system, phonetic system and vocabulary, they cannot be regarded as different languages. Nor can they be referred to local dialects; because they serve all spheres of verbal communication in society, within their territorial area they have dialectal differences of their own; besides thev differ far less than local dialects.

Another consideration is that AE has its own literary norm and AuE is developing one. As to CnE its peculiarities began to attract linguistic attention only some 20 years ago.

Main differences bw AE and BE:

The reform in the English spelling for American English was introduced by the famous American lexicographer Noah Webster who published his first dictionary in 1806. Those of his proposals which were adopted in the English spelling are as follows:

a) the delition of the letter «u» in words ending in «our», e.g. honor, favor;

b) the delition of the second consonant in words with double consonants, e.g. traveler, wagon,

c) the replacement of «re» by «er» in words of French origin, e.g. theater, center,

d) the delition of unpronounced endings in words of Romanic origin, e.g.

catalog, program,

e) the replacement of «ce» by «se» in words of Romanic origin, e.g. defense, offense,

d) delition of unpronounced endings in native words, e.g. tho, thro.

In American English we have r-coloured fully articulated vowels, in the combinations: ar, er, ir, or, ur, our etc. In BE the sound / / corresponds to the AE /^/, e.g. «not». In BE before fricatives and combinations with fricatives «a» is pronounced as /a:/, in AE it is pronounced / / e.g. class, dance, answer, fast etc.

On the British Isles there are some local varieties of English which developed from Old English local dialects. There are six groups of them: Lowland /Scottish/, Northern, Western, Midland, Eastern, Southern. These varieties are used in oral speech by the local population. Only the Scottish dialect has its own literature /R. Berns/.

One of the best known dialects of British English is the dialect of London - Cockney. Some peculiarities of this dialect can be seen in the first act of «Pigmalion» by B. Shaw, such as: interchange of /v/ and /w/ e.g. wery vell; interchange of /f/ and /0/, /v/ and / /, e. g/ fing /thing/ and fa:ve / father/; interchange of /h/ and /-/, e.g. «’eart» for «heart» and «hart» for «art; substituting the diphthong /ai/ by /ei/ e.g. «day» is pronounced /dai/; substituting /au/ by /a:/, e.g. «house» is pronounced /ha:s/,«now«/na:/; substituting /ou/ by /o:/ e.g. «don’t» is pronounced /do:nt/ or substituting it by / / in unstressed positions, e.g. «window» is pronounced /wind /.

Another feature of Cockney is rhyming slang: «hat» is «tit for tat», «wife» is «trouble and strife», «head» is «loaf of bread» etc. There are also such words as «tanner» /sixpence/, «peckish»/hungry/.

Peter Wain in the «Education Guardian» writes about accents spoken by University teachers: «It is a variety of Southern English RP which is different from Daniel Jones’s description. The English, public school leavers speak, is called «marked RP», it has some characteristic features: the vowels are more central than in English taught abroad, e.g. «bleck het»/for «black hat»/, some diphthongs are also different, e.g. «house» is pronounced /hais/. There is less aspiration in /p/, /b/, /t/ /d/.

The American English is practically uniform all over the country, because of the constant transfer of people from one part of the country to the other. However, some peculiarities in New York dialect can be pointed out, such as: there is no distinction between / / and /a: / in words: «ask», «dance» «sand» «bad», both phonemes are possible. The combination «ir» in the words: «bird», «girl» «ear» in the word «learn» is pronoinced as /oi/ e.g. /boid/, /goil/, /loin/.In the words «duty’, «tune» /j/ is not pronounced /du:ti/, /tu:n/.

T

u

Поиск по сайту: