Components of intonation and the structure of English intonation group.

According to R. Kingdon the most important nuclear tones in English are: Low Fall, High Fall, Low Rise, High Rise, and Fall-Rise.

According to D. Crystal, there are nine ways of saying Yes as an answer to the question Will you marry me?

1. Low fall. The most neutral tone; a detached, unemotional statement of fact.

2. Full fall. Emotionally involved; the higher the onset of the tone, the more involved the speaker; choice of emotion (surprise, excitement, irritation) depends on the speaker's facial expression.

3. Mid fall. Routine, uncommitted comment; detached and unexcited.

4. Low rise. Facial expression important; with a 'happy' face, the tone is sympathetic and friendly; with a 'grim' face, it is guarded and ominous.

5. Full rise. Emotionally involved, often «disbelief or shock, the extent of the emotion depending on the width of the tone.

6. High rise. Mild query or puzzlement; often used in echoing what has just been said.

7. Level. Bored, sarcastic, ironic.

8. Fall-rise. A strongly emotional tone; a straight or 'negative' face conveys uncertainty, doubt, or tentativeness; a positive face conveys encouragement or urgency.

9. Rise-fall. Strong emotional involvement; depending on the face, the attitude might be delighted, challenging, or complacent.

The tempo of speech is the third component of intonation. The term tempo implies the rate of the utterance and pausation..

By 'pause' here we mean a complete stop of phonation. We may distinguish the following three kinds of pauses:

1. Short pauses which may be used to separate intonation groups within a phrase. 2. Longer pauses which normally manifest the end of the phrase.

3. Very long pauses, which are approximately twice as long as the first type, are used to separate phonetic wholes.

25.Expressive means of English syntax

The expressive means of a language are those phonetic, morphological, word building, lexical, preseological or syntactical forms which exist in language as a system for the purpose of logical and various dictionaries. Among lexical EM we must mention words with emotive meanings, interjections, polysemantic words, vulgar words, slang etc. The fact that polysemantic words retain their primary and secondary meanings is of great importance for stylistics. It is quite easy to understand the meaning of the following phrases; He grasped the main idea; a burning question; pity melted her heart. The italicized words are used in their secondary transferred dictionary meanings. But the primary and secondary meanings are realized simultaneously. The expressiveness of these words becomes obvious when compared with neutral equivalents; He understood the main idea; an important question; pity softened her heart.

It is important to know that the stylistic use of EM must not necessarily lead to the formation of an SD. For example, repetition is widely used in folk song and poetry and in oral speech to make our speech emotional and expressive, but we can’t say that in such cases we use a SD.(stylistic devices)

So EM are the facts of the language, while SDs are the property of the speech. They are the creation of individuals (writers and poets) and are based on the peculiarities of existing EM of the language. This is in short the difference between EM and SD.

Phonetic Ems

Onomatopoeia - murmur, hiss, bump, etc.

2. Alliteration - «And the s ilken, s ad, un c ertain ru s tling of each purple curtain...»

Stylistic function: authentic live communic- ation, the informality of speech acts: lemme, mighta, coupla...

3. Graphon:

a) «Yetalians», «peerading» (parading).

b) stumbling: N-n-nice weather, isn’t it?

c) lisping: You don’t mean to thay that thith ith your firth time…

Stylistic function: authentic live communication and speech characteristization

26. A Stylistic Device - is a conscious and intentional literary use of some facts of the language (including expressive means) with the purpose of further intensification of the emotional or logical emphasis contained in the corresponding expressive means.

Syntactical Stylistic Devices Based on Peculiar Syntactical Arrangement include: stylistic inversion, detached constructions, parallel constructions, chiasmus, repetition, suspense, climax, antithesis.

The usual Word-order in English is Subject — Verb (Predicate) — Object (S—P—O). Any other order will change the impact on the reader. Stylistic Inversion is an intended violation of the usual order of the members of the sentence for stylistic purpose. It aims at attaching logical stressor additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the sentence. A good student he was.

Detached constructions. Detachment is a stylistic device based on singling out a secondary member of the sentence with the help of punctuation (intonation), so that it seems formally independent of the word it refers to. Being formally independent this secondary member acquires a greater degree of significance and is given prominence by intonation. e.g. She was gone. For good. They are detached with the help of commas, dashes or even a full stop: I have to beg you for money. Daily. DC as an SD is a typification of the syntactical peculiarities of colloquial language. Function: to focus the reader’s attention.

Parallel construction is a device which may be encountered not so much in the sentence as in the macro-structures dealt with the syntactical whole and the paragraph. Parallelism is more or less complete identity of syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of sentence in close succession.

e.g. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see…

Chiasmus (Reversed Parallel Construction) from Greek [cross arrangement] – перекрестный\ реверсированный параллелизм - is based on repetition of syntactical patterns, but it has a reversed order in one of the utterances. I.e.one of the sentences is inverted as compared to that of the second sentence: SPO-OPS.

Down dropped the breeze, The sails dropped down.

Repetition is reiteration of the same word or phrase with the view of expressiveness. As an SD it fixes the reader’s attention on the key-word of the utterance. It can be of various types: at the beginning - anaphora; at the end – epiphora; the last word of one is repeated at the beginning of the next part – anadiplosis (linking/ reduplication) – Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth… (Keats); at the beginning and at the end of a sentence/paragraph – framing – кольцевой повтор, рамка. It helps to promote the text categories: prospection, retrospection, presupposition, predictability, wholeness, intensifies the utterance, produces the monotony of action, makes the rhythm.

Suspense затягивание, задержка главной мысли - is a compositional device that consists in arranging the utterance in such a way, that the less important, descriptive parts are placed at the beginning, while the main idea is presented in the end of the utterance. The sentences of this type are called periodic

Climax (gradation) кульминация – is an arrangement of sentences or phrases which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance. It’s ascending series of words or utterances in which intensity or significance increases step by step. Little by little, bit by bit, and day by day, and year by year the baron got the worst of some disputed question

Antithesis (stylistic opposition) антитеза is a SD based on the author's desire to stress certain qualities of the thing by appointing it to another thing possessing antagonistic features. e. g. They speak like saints and act like devils. The aim is to make ‘contrast.

27/ Stylistic semasilogy

Semasiology is a branch of linguistics, which studies the mean­ing of the language units.

Stylistic semasiology deals with those semantic changes and relations, which create an additional / connotative meaning, the so-called figures of speech. Both Screbnev and Morokhovsky classify figures of substitution/ replacement into two groups:

1. figures of quantity

2. figures of quality

Figures of quantity demonstrate the most primitive type of renaming. Their basis is inexactitude of measurement, disproportion of the object and its verbal evaluation.

Hyperbole is created in case one common quantitative feature characterises an object in a greater degree. It is a deliberate overstatement, exaggeration that is used to intensify one of the features of the object. It is an expression of emotional evaluation of reality by a speaker who is either unrestrained by ethical conventions or knows that exaggeration would be welcome.

Quite naturally, the main sphere of use of hyperbole is colloquial speech, in which the form is hardly ever controlled and the emotion expressed directly, without any particular reserve.

He was scared to death

I’ve told you fifty times

I beg a thousand pardons

Functions and stylistic effects

- to express the intensity of strong feelings

- to show an overflow of emotions

- to intensify one of the features of an object

- to suggest the presence of the opposite quality

- to create a humorous effect

Meiosis is a figure logically and psychologically opposite of hyperbole. It is a deliberate understatement, the underestimating/diminishing of the features of the object in order to emphasise its insignificance. It is lessening, weakening, reducing the real characteristics of the object of speech.

Meiosis has no definite formal expression; various linguistic means serve to express it:

I was half-afraid you had forgotten me.

I kind of liked it.

I am not quite too late.

A humorous effect is observed when meiotic devices (words and phrases called “downtoners” – maybe, please, would you mind, etc.) co-occur with rough, offensive words in the same utterance:

It isn’t any of your business maybe.

It is widely known that understatement / meiosis is typical of the British manner of speech, in opposition to American English in which hyperbole seems to prevail.

A type of understatement, a specific form of meiosis is litotes. It presents an affirmative statement in the form of negation.

It is realised with the help of the negative particle not before a word with the negative meaning.

E.g: Love overcomes no small things.

Thus two negatives make a positive meaning. E.g. He is not uncultured (J. Aldridge)

The result is double negation, and from mathematics we know that two minuses make a plus. The result is indeed affirmative, but the meaning obtained is weakened. That is why litotes produces a meiotic effect.

Litotes may be regarded as a transposition of the syntactical construction like the rhetorical questions. The stylistic effect is based on the interplay of negative and affirmative meanings.

Functions and stylistic effects

- to weaken positive characteristics of an object

- to express doubt/uncertainty as to the value or significance of the object described

- to create an ironic attitude to the phenomenon described

28. Figures of Quality

Metonymy. This is applying the name of an object to another object that is in some way connected with the first. The kettle is boiling or The gallery applauded, Metonymy is widely used as an expressive device visualizing the ideas discussed.

Synecdoche. The term denotes the simplest kind of metonymy: using the name of a part to denote the whole or vice versa. A typical example of traditional (stereotyped) synecdoche is the word hands used instead of the word worker(s) (Hands wanted) or sailors (All hands on deck!). See also expressions like a hundred head of cattle.

Periphrasis. This does not belong with the tropes, for it is not a transfer (renaming), yet this way of identifying the object of speech is related to metonymy. Periphrasis is a description of what could be named directly; it is naming the characteristic features of the object instead of naming the object itself. What helps to differentiate periphrasis from metonymy is that the former cannot be expressed by one linguistic unit (one word): This device always demonstrates redundancy of lingual elements. Its stylistic effect varies from elevation to humour.

Metaphor. This term (originally applied indiscriminately to any kind of transfer) denotes expressive renaming on the basis of similarity of two objects: the real object of speech and the one whose name is actually used.But there is only affinity, no real connection between the two. As they are disconnected, to find features in common, the speaker must search for associations in his own mind, that is not as is the case with metonymy, where both objects lie before our eyes. Head of Government (metaphor), film-star.

Allusion. The term allusion denotes a special variety of metaphor. As the very meaning of the word shows, allusion is a brief reference to some literary or historical event commonly known. Personification is another variety of metaphor. Personification is attributing human properties to lifeless objects — mostly to abstract notions, such as thoughts, actions, intentions, emotions, seasons of the year, etc.

Antonomasia. Metaphorical antonomasia is, in a way, a variety of allusion. It is the use of the name of a historical, literary, mythological, or biblical personage applied to a person whose characteristic features resemble those of the well-known original.

Thus, a traitor may be referred to as Brutus, a ladies' man deserves the name of Don Juan.

Irony. There are at least two kinds of irony. The first represents utterances the ironical sense of which is evident to any native speaker — utterances that can have only an ironical message; A few examples: That's a pretty kettle of fishl (cf.: Хорошенькое дель-це Веселенькая история]). A fine friend you arel (cf.: Хорош друг, нечего сказать!; Ничего себе, удружил!).

29. Figures of Contrast

They are formed by intentional combination, often by direct juxtaposition of ideas, mutually excluding, and incompatible with one another, or at least assumed to be. They are differentiated by the type of actualization of contrast, as well as by the character of their connection with the referent.

Oxymoron. Oxymoron discribes some feature to an object incompatible with that feature. It is a logical collision of notional words taken for granted as natural, in spite of the incongruity of their meanings. Ex: His honour rooted in dishonour stood

Evidently an attributive or an adverbial combination forming oxy moron is not devoid of sober sense despite its outward illogicality: it probably would be but for the fact that one of its two components is used figuratively.

This figure of speech is not too often met with; the more expressive is

its stylistic effect. It is not absurd for absurdity's sake, but discloses the essence of the object full of seeming or genuine discrepancies.

" I liked him better than I would have liked his father... We were fellow strangers."

Antithesis is a device bordering on stylistics and logic. It’s essential to distinguish between antithesis and contrast. Contrast is a literary (not a linguistic) device based on the logical opposition between the phenomena set one against anotherIt must be admitted that classification of antitheses is on the whole risky due to the very general character of the notion of antithesis. The borderlines of the phenomenon are vague by their nature. Perhaps the surest way is to assume that antithesis is any identification of contrast meant to be perceived by the recipient. The most natural, or regular expression of contrast is the use of antonyms. We have already seen it: best — worst, wisdom —foolishness, light — darkness, everything — nothing.

Antithesis is not only an expressive device used in every type of emotional speech (poetry, imaginative prose, oratory, colloquial speech), but also, like any other stylistic means, the basis of set phrases, some of which are not necessarily emphatic unless pronounced with special force: now or never, dead or alive, yes or no, black and white

Functions and stylistic effects

- to stress the contrast

- rhythmically organise the utterance

- to emphasise the heterogeneous nature of the objects described

30. Figures of Inequality

Their semantic function is highlighting differences. Specifying, or clarifying synonyms.

Synonym used for clarification mostly follow one another (in opposition to replacers), although not necessarily immediately. Clarifiers may either arise in the speaker's mind or they occupy the same syntactical positions in two or more parallel sentences.

" Joe was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish dear fellow." (Dickens) Climax (or: Gradation). ideas in which what precedes is less than what follows. Thus the second element surpasses the first and is, in its turn, surpassed by the third, and so on. To put it otherwise, the first element is the weakest (though not necessarily weak the last being the strongest.

" I am sorry, I am so very sorry, I am so extremely sorry."

Anti-climax (or: Bathos). 'back gradation'. it is the opposite to climax, but this assumption is not quite correct. It would serve no purpose whatever making the second element weaker than the first, the third still weaker, and so on. " Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."

Zeugma. As with the pun, this device consists in combining unequal, semantically heterogeneous, or even incompatible, words or phrases. Zeugma is a kind of economy of syntactical units: one unit (word, phrase) makes a combination with two or several others without being repeated itself: She was married to Mr. Johnson, her twin sister, to Mr.Ward; their half-sister, to Mr. Trench"

Tautology pretended and tautology disguised. repetition of the same word or word combination: the theme and the rheme are lexically identical. 6 For East is East, and West is West...'

31. Dialect - is a variety of language, which prevails in a districts with local peculiarities of voc., pronunciation, phrase There are 5 dialects: Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group has 4 or 5dialects. Cockney - Southern dialect (London). It exists in 2 levels: as spoken by educated and uneducated people. Features of Cockney dialect

- Interchange between [W] and [V]: [vel] - [wel] - well

- The voiceless and voiced dental spirants: [O] - [f] fing - thing; [ ] - [v] faver - father.

- Interchange of the aspirated and non-aspirated initial sounds: heart - `eart.

- Substitution of diphthongs: day- [dai], way - [wai].

Features: 1. Dialect peculiarities especially those of voc are constantly being incorporated into coll. speech. From these levels they can come into common stock. E.g.: car, tram, trolley - used to be dialect words. Using dialect words is the bright, expressive means.

33. Morphological structure of the english word

If we describe a w o r d as an autonomous unit of language in which a particular meaning is associated with a particular sound complex and which is capable of a particular grammatical employment and able to form a sentence by itself, we have the possibility to distinguish it from the other fundamental language unit, namely, the morpheme.

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. That is why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language unit.

According to the role they play in constructing words, 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 formative s.

When a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word, what remains is a stem (or astern base). 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.

A stem may also be defined as the part of the word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. The stem of the paradigm hearty – heartier – (the) heartiest is hearty-. It is a free stem, but as it consists of a root morpheme and an affix, it is not simple but derived. 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. Thus, in the word cordial ‘proceeding as if from the heart’, the adjective-forming suffix can be separated on the analogy with such words as bronchial, radial, social. The remaining stem, however, cannot form a separate word by itself, it is bound. In cordially and cordiality, on the other hand, the derived stems are free.

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-, com-, cow-, -tort, -volve, not-, leg-, toler-, which do not coincide with any semantically related independent

words.

Roots are main morphemic vehicles of a given idea in a given language at a given stage of its development. A root may be also regarded as the ultimate constituent element which remains after the removal of all functional and derivational affixes and does not admit any further analysis. It is the common element of words within a w o r d-f a m i 1 y. Thus, -heart- is the common root of the following series of words: heart, hearten, dishearten, heartily, heartless, hearty, heartiness, sweetheart, heart-broken, kind-hearted, whole-heartedly, etc. In some of these, as, for example, in hearten, there is only one root; in others the root -heart is combined with some other root, thus forming a compound like sweetheart.

We shall now present the different types of morphemes starting with the root. It will at once be noticed that the root in English is very often homonymous with the word.

A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class, c f. -en, -y, -less in hearten, hearty, heartless. When both the underlying and the resultant forms belong to the same part of speech, the suffix serves to differentiate between lexico-grammatical classes by rendering some very general lexico-grammatical meaning. For instance, both -ify and -er are verb suffixes, but the first characterizes causative verbs, such as horrify, purify, rarefy, simplify, whereas the second is mostly typical of frequentative verbs: flicker, shimmer,.twitter and the like.

A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying meaning, c f. hearten – dishearten. It is only with verbs and statives that a prefix may serve to distinguish one part of speech from another, like in earth n -unearth v, sleep n – asleep (stative). It is interesting that as a prefix en- may carry the same meaning of being or bringing into a certain state as the suffix -en, c f. enable, encamp, endanger, endear, enslave and fasten, darken, deepen, lengthen, strengthen.

34. he linguistic science at present is not able to put forward a definition of meaning which is conclusive. However, there are certain facts of which we can be reasonably sure, and one of them is that the very function of the word as a unit of communication is made possible by its possessing a meaning. Therefore, among the word’s various characteristics, meaning is certainly the most important.

Generally speaking, meaning can be more or less described as a component of the word through which a concept (mental phenomena) is communicated.

Meaning endows the word with the ability of denoting real objects, qualities, actions and abstract notions. The relationships between

“referent” (object, etc. denoted by the word), “concept” and “word” are traditionally represented by the following triangle:

Thought or Reference

(Concept = mental phenomena)

Symbol Referent

(word) (object denoted by the word)

By the «symbol» here is meant the word; “thought” or “reference” is concept. The dotted line suggests that there is no immediate relation between “word” and “referent”: it is established only through the concept.

On the other hand, there is a hypothesis that concepts can only find their realization through words. It seems that thought is dormant till the word wakens it up. It is only when we hear a spoken word or read a printed word that the corresponding concept springs into mind. The mechanism by which concepts (i. e. mental phenomena) are converted into words (i. e. linguistic phenomena) and the reverse process by which a heard or a printed word is converted into a kind of mental picture are not yet understood or described.

The branch of linguistics which specialises in the study of meaning is called semantics. As with many terms, the term «semantics» is ambiguous for it can stand, as well, for the expressive aspect of language in general and for the meaning of one particular word in all its varied aspects and nuances (i. e. the semantics of a word = the meaning(s) of a word).

Polysemy.

Semantic Structure of the Word

It is generally known that most words convey several concepts and thus possess the corresponding number of meanings. A word having several meanings is called polysemantic, and the ability of words to have more than one meaning is described by the term polysemy.

Polysemy is certainly not an anomaly. Most English words are polysemantic.

It should be noted that the wealth of expressive resources of a language largely depends on the degree to which polysemy has developed in the language. Sometimes people who are not very well informed in linguistic matters claim that a language is lacking in words if the need arises for the same word to be applied to several different phenomena. In actual fact, it is exactly the opposite: if each word is found to be capable of conveying at least two concepts instead of one, the expressive potential of the whole vocabulary increases twofold. Hence, a well-developed polysemy is a great advantage in a language.

On the other hand, it should be pointed out that the number of sound combinations that human speech organs can produce is limited. Therefore at a certain stage of language development the production of new words by morphological means is limited as well, and polysemy becomes increasingly important for enriching the vocabulary. From this, it should be clear that the process of enriching the vocabulary does not consist merely in adding new words to it, but, also, in the constant development of polysemy.

The system of meanings of any polysemantic word develops gradually, mostly over the centuries, as more and more new meanings are added to old ones, or oust some of them. So the complicated processes of polysemy development involve both the appearance of new meanings and the loss of old ones. Yet, the general tendency with English vocabulary at the modern stage of its history is to increase the total number of its meanings and in this way to provide for a quantitative and qualitative growth of the language’s expressive resources.

When analysing the semantic structure of a polysemantic word, it is necessary to distinguish between two levels of analysis.

On the first level, the semantic structure of a word is treated as a system of meanings. For example, the semantic structure of the noun “fire” could be roughly presented by this scheme (only the most frequent meanings are given):

I

The above scheme suggests that meaning (I) holds a kind of dominance over the other meanings conveying the concept in the most general way whereas meanings (II)—(V) are associated with special circumstances, aspects and instances of the same phenomenon.

Meaning (I) (generally referred to as the main meaning) presents the centre of the semantic structure of the word holding it together. It is mainly through meaning (I) that meanings (II)—(V) (they are called secondary meanings) can be associated with one another, some of them exclusively through meaning (I) — the main meaning, as, for instance, meanings (IV) and

(V).

It would hardly be possible to establish any logical associations between some of the meanings of the noun “bar” except through the main meaning[1]:

Bar, n

Meaning’s (II) and (III) have no logical links with one another whereas each separately is easily associated with meaning (I): meaning (II) through the traditional barrier dividing a court-room into two parts; meaning (III) through the counter serving as a kind of barrier between the customers of a pub and the barman.

Yet, it is not in every polysemantic word that such a centre can be found.

Some semantic structures are arranged on a different principle. In the following list of meanings of the adjective “dull” one can hardly hope to find a generalized meaning covering and holding together the rest of the semantic structure.

Dull, adj.

1. A dull book, a dull film — uninteresting, monotonous, boring.

2. A dull student — slow in understanding, stupid.

3. Dull weather, a dull day, a dull colour — not clear or bright.

4. A dull sound — not loud or distinct.

5. A dull knife — not sharp.

6. Trade is dull — not active.

7. Dull eyes (arch.) — seeing badly.

8. Dull ears (arch.) — hearing badly.

There is something that all these seemingly miscellaneous meanings have in common, and that is the implication of deficiency, be it of colour (m.

III), wits (m. II), interest (m. I), sharpness (m. V), etc. The implication of insufficient quality, of something lacking, can be clearly distinguished in each separate meaning.

Dull, adj.

1. Uninteresting — deficient in interest or excitement.

2. … Stupid — deficient in intellect.

3. Not bright- deficient in light or colour.

4. Not loud — deficient in sound.

5. Not sharp — deficient in sharpness.

6. Not active — deficient in activity.

7. Seeing badly — deficient in eyesight.

8. Hearing badly — deficient in hearing.

The transformed scheme of the semantic structure of “dull” clearly shows that the centre holding together the complex semantic structure of this word is not one of the meanings but a certain component that can be easily singled out within each separate meaning.

On the second level of analysis of the semantic structure of a word: each separate meaning is a subject to structural analysis in which it may be represented as sets of semantic components.

The scheme of the semantic structure of “dull” shows that the semantic structure of a word is not a mere system of meanings, for each separate meaning is subject to further subdivision and possesses an inner structure of its own.

Therefore, the semantic structure of a word should be investigated at both these levels: 1) of different meanings, 2) of semantic components within each separate meaning. For a monosemantic word (i. e. a word with one meaning) the first level is naturally excluded.

Types of Semantic Components

The leading semantic component in the semantic structure of a word is usually termed denotative component (also, the term referential component may be used). The denotative component expresses the conceptual content of a word.

The following list presents denotative components of some English adjectives and verbs:

Denotative components

lonely, adj. — alone, without company … notorious, adj. — widely known celebrated, adj. — widely known to glare, v. — to look to glance, v. — to look to shiver, v. — to tremble to shudder, v. — to tremble

It is quite obvious that the definitions given in the right column only partially and incompletely describe the meanings of their corresponding words. They do not give a more or less full picture of the meaning of a word. To do it, it is necessary to include in the scheme of analysis additional semantic components which are termed connotations or connotative components.

Denotative Connotative components components

The above examples show how by singling out denotative and connotative components one can get a sufficiently clear picture of what the word really means. The schemes presenting the semantic structures of “glare”, “shiver”,

“shudder” also show that a meaning can have two or more connotative components.

The given examples do not exhaust all the types of connotations but present only a few: emotive, evaluative connotations, and also connotations of duration and of cause.

Meaning and Context

It’s important that there is sometimes a chance of misunderstanding when a polysemantic word is used in a certain meaning but accepted by a listener or reader in another.

It is common knowledge that context prevents from any misunderstanding of meanings. For instance, the adjective “dull”, if used out of context, would mean different things to different people or nothing at all. It is only in combination with other words that it reveals its actual meaning: “a dull pupil”, “a dull play”, “dull weather”, etc. Sometimes, however, such a minimum context fails to reveal the meaning of the word, and it may be correctly interpreted only through a second-degree context as in the following example: “The man was large, but his wife was even fatter”. The word “fatter” here serves as a kind of indicator pointing that “large” describes a stout man and not a big one.

Current research in semantics is largely based on the assumption that one of the more promising methods of investigating the semantic structure of a word is by studying the word’s linear relationships with other words in typical contexts, i. e. its combinability or collocability.

Scholars have established that the semantics of words which regularly appear in common contexts are correlated and, therefore, one of the words within such a pair can be studied through the other.

They are so intimately correlated that each of them casts, as it were, a kind of permanent reflection on the meaning of its neighbour. If the verb

“to compose” is frequently used with the object “music”, so it is natural to expect that certain musical associations linger in the meaning of the verb “to composed”.

Note, also, how closely the negative evaluative connotation of the adjective “notorious” is linked with the negative connotation of the nouns with which it is regularly associated: “a notorious criminal”, “thief”,

“gangster», “gambler”, “gossip”, “liar”, “miser”, etc.

All this leads us to the conclusion that context is a good and reliable key to the meaning of the word.

It’s a common error to see a different meaning in every new set of combinations. For instance: “an angry man”, “an angry letter”. Is the adjective “angry” used in the same meaning in both these contexts or in two different meanings? Some people will say «two» and argue that, on the one hand, the combinability is different (“man” —name of person; “letter” — name of object) and, on the other hand, a letter cannot experience anger.

True, it cannot; but it can very well convey the anger of the person who wrote it. As to the combinability, the main point is that a word can realize the same meaning in different sets of combinability. For instance, in the pairs “merry children”, “merry laughter”, “merry faces”, “merry songs” the adjective “merry” conveys the same concept of high spirits.

The task of distinguishing between the different meanings of a word and the different variations of combinability is actually a question of singling out the different denotations within the semantic structure of the word.

1) a sad woman,

2) a sad voice,

3) a sad story,

4) a sad scoundrel (= an incorrigible scoundrel)

5) a sad night (= a dark, black night, arch. poet.)

Obviously the first three contexts have the common denotation of sorrow whereas in the fourth and fifth contexts the denotations are different. So, in these five coniexts we can identify three meanings of “sad”.

35.

36. There are the following groups: phonetic borrowings, translation loans, semantic borrowings, morphemic borrowings. Phonetic borrowings are most characteristic in all languages; they are called loan words proper. Words are borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and meaning. Then they undergo assimilation, each sound of the borrowing language. In some cases the spellingis changed. The structure of the word can also be changed. The position of the stress is very often influenced by the phonetic system of the borrowing language. The paradigm of the word, and sometimes the meaning of the borrowed word are also changed. Such words as: labor, travel, table, chair, people are phonetic borrowings from French; apparatchic, nomenclature, sputnik are borrowings from Russian; bank, soprano, duet are phonetic borrowings from Italian etc. [16, 114-117]

Translation loans are word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme) translations of some foreign word expressions. In such cases the notion is borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical units, `to takethe bull by the horns'(Latin), `living space'(German) etc. Some translation loans appeared in English from Latin already in the Old English period, for example Sunday (solis dies)

There are translation loans from the language of Indians, such as: 'pipe of peace', `pale-faced' from German `masterpiece', `homesickness', 'superman'.

Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we havetwo relative languages which have common words with different meanings, for example there are semantic borrowings between Scandinavian and English, such as the meaning `to live' for the word `to dwell' which in Old English had the meaning `to wander'. Or else the meaning `''' for the word' gift' which in Old English had the meaning `'

Semantic borrowing can appear when an English word borrowed into some other language, developed there a new meaning and this meaning was borrowed back into English, for example `brigade' was borrowed into Russian and formed the meaning `a working collective', `'. This meaning was borrowed back into English as a Russian borrowing. The same is true of the English word `pioneer'.

Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in the language when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from one language into another, so that the morphemic structure of borrowed words becomes familiar to the people speaking the borrowing language, for example we can find a lot of Romanic affixes in English word-building system, that is why there are a lot words- hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin, for example `goddes', `beautiful' etc.

37. Foreign language influences in English Classification of borrowings according to the degree of assimilation While many words enter English as slang, not all do. Some words are adopted from other languages; some are mixtures of existing words (portmanteau words), and some are new creations made of roots from dead languages: e.g. thanatopsis. No matter the origin, though, words rarely, if ever, are immediately accepted into the English language. Here is a list of the most common foreign language influences in English, where other languages have influenced or contributed words to English.

Celtic words are almost absent, except for dialectal words, such as the Yan Tan Tethera system of counting sheep. However, English syntax was influenced by Celtic languages, starting from the Middle English; for example, the system of continuous tenses (absent in other Germanic languages) was a cliché of similar Celtic phrasal structures.

French legal, military, and political terminology; words for the meat of an animal; noble words; words referring to food — e.g., au gratin. Nearly 30% of English words (in an 80, 000 word dictionary) may be of French origin.

Latin scientific and technical words, medical terminology, academic and legal terminology. See also: Latin influence in English.

Greek words: scientific and medical terminology (for instance -phobias and -ologies), Christian theological terminology.

Scandinavian languages such as Old Norse - words such as sky and troll or, more recently, geysir.

Norman words: castle, cauldron, kennel, catch, cater are among Norman words introduced into English. The Norman language also introduced (or reinforced) words of Norse origin such as mug

German - words relating to World War I and World War II, such as blitz, Fü hrer and Lebensraum; food terms, such as bratwurst, hamburger and frankfurter; words related to psychology and philosophy, such a gestalt, Ü bermensch and zeitgeist. From German origin are also: wanderlust, schadenfreude, kaputt, kindergarten, autobahn, rucksack. See also: List of German expressions in English.

The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a) from what group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is assimilated easier, b) in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written form, words borrowed orally assimilated quicker;, c) how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated, d) how long the word lives in the language, the longer it lives, more than assimilated it- is.

Accordingly borrowings are subdivided into: completely assimilated, partly assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms) [17, 368-372]

Completely assimilated borrowings are not as foreign words in language, the French word `sport' and the native word 'start'. Completely assimilated verbs belong to regular verbs, for example correct-corrected. Completely assimilated nouns form their plural by means of s-inflection, for example gate-gates. In completely assimilated French words the stress has been shifted from the last syllable to the last but one. Semantic assimilation of borrowed words depends on the words existing in the borrowing language, if it is polysemantic, for example the Russian borrowing `sputnik' is used in English only in one of its meaning.

Partly assimilated borrowings are subdivided into the following groups:

Borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed, for example sari, sombrero, taiga, kvass etc.

Borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, for example nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus-bacilli, phenomenon-phenomena, datum-data, genius-genii etc.

Borrowings non-assimilated phonetically. Here belong words with the initial sounds /v/ and /z/, for example voice, zero. In native words these voiced consonants are used only in the intervocalic position as allophones of sounds /f/ and /s/ (loss-lose, life-live). Some Scandinavian borrowings have consonants and combinations of consonants which were not palatalized for example /sk/ in the words: sky, skate, ski etc(in native word we have the palatalized sounds denoted by the digraph `sh', for example shirt); sounds /k/ and /g/ before front vowels are not palatalized for example girl, get, give, kid, kill, kettle. In native words we have palatalization, for example German, child. Some French borrowings retain special combinations of sounds, for example /a: 3? In the words: camouflage, bourgeois, some of them retain the combination of sounds /wa: / in the words: memoir, boulevard.Borrowings can be partly assimilated graphically, for example in Greek borrowings `y' can be spelled in the middle of the word (symbol, synonym), `ph' denotes the sound /f/ (phoneme, morpheme), `ch' denotes the sound /k/ (chemistry, chaos) nad `ps' denotes the sound /s/ (psychology) Non-assimilated borrowings (barbarisms)narenborrowings which are used by Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, for example addio (Italian), tete-a-tete(French), dolce vita(Italian)

38. One of the most obvious changes that occurred after the Norman conquest was that of the language: the Anglo-Norman.The influence of the Normans can be illustrated by looking at two words, beef and cow. Beef, commonly eaten by the aristocracy, derives from the Anglo-Norman, while the Anglo-Saxon commoners, who tended the cattle, retained the Germanic cow. Many legal terms, such as indict, jury, and verdict have Anglo-Norman roots because the Normans ran the courts. This split, where words commonly used by the aristocracy have Romantic roots and words frequently used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners have Germanic roots, can be seen in many instances.

In vocabulary, about 10000 words entered the English language at this stage, and more than a third of today’s PdE (Present-day English) words are related to those Anglo-Norman ME (Middle English) words.

English pronunciation also changed. The fricative sounds [f], [s], [Ɵ ] (as in thin), and [ʃ ] (shin), French influence helped to distinguish their voiced counterparts [v], [z], [ ] (the), and [ƺ ] (mirage), and also contributed the diphthong [oi] (boy).

Grammar was also influenced by this phenomenon especially in the word order. While Old English (and PdE in most of the occasions) had an Adj + N order, some expressions like secretary general, changed into the French word order, that is, N + Adj.

English has also added some words and idioms that are purely French, and that are used nowadays.

Since French-speaking Normans took control over the church and the court of London. A largest number of words borrowed by the government, spiritual and ecclesiastical (religious) services. As example – state, royal (roial), exile (exil), rebel, noble, peer, prince, princess, justice, army (armee), navy (navie), enemy (enemi), battle, soldier, spy (verb), combat (verb) and more. French words also borrowed in English art, culture, and fashion as music, poet (poete), prose, romance, pen, paper, grammar, noun, gender, pain, blue, diamond, dance (verb), melody, image, beauty, remedy, poison, joy, poor, nice, etc. Many of the above words are different from modern French in use or pronunciation or spelling.

Thus, the linguistic situation in Britain after the Conquest was complex. French was the native language of a minority of a few thousand speakers, but a minority with influence out of all proportion to their numbers because they controlled the political, ecclesiastical, economic, and cultural life of the nation.

39. The phonological history of English describes changing phonology of the English language over time, starting from its roots in proto-Germanic to diverse changes in different dialects of modern English. This section summarizes the changes occurring within distinct time periods, covering the last 2, 000 years or so. Within each subsection, changes are in approximate chronological order.

The time periods for some of the early stages are quite short due to the extensive population movements occurring during the Migration Period (early AD), which resulted in rapid dialect fragmentation.

Late Proto-Germanic period[edit]

See also: Proto-Germanic language § Late Proto-Germanic

This period includes changes in late Proto-Germanic, up to about the 1st century. Only a general overview of the more important changes is given here; for a full list, see the Proto-Germanic article.

Unstressed word-final /a/ and /e/ were lost. Early PG *barta > late PG *bart " you carried (sg)".

Word-final /m/ became /n/.

Word-final /n/ was then lost after unstressed syllables with nasalization of the preceding vowel. Hence PrePG *dʰ ogʰ om > early PG *dagam > late PG dagą > OE dæ ġ " day (acc. sg.)". The nasalisation was retained at least into the earliest history of Old English.

Word-final /t/ was lost after an unstressed syllable. This followed the loss of word-final /n/, because it remained before /t/: PrePG *bʰ r̥ n̥ t > early PG *burunt > late PG *burun " they carried".

/e/ was raised to /i/ in unstressed syllables.

The original vowel remained when followed by /r/, and was later lowered to /ɑ /.

Early i-mutation: /e/ was raised to /i/ when an /i/ or /j/ followed in the next syllable.

This occurred before deletion of word-final /i/; hence PIE *upé ri > early PG *uberi > late PG *ubiri > German ü ber " over". Compare PIE *upé r > early PG *uber > late PG *ubar > German ober " over".

But it occurred after the raising of unstressed /e/ to /i/: PIE *bʰ é rete > PG *berid > *birid " you carry (pl)".

This also affected the diphthong /eu/, which became /iu/.

As a consequence of this change, /ei/ > /iː /. The Elder Futhark of the Proto-Norse language still contained different symbols for the two sounds.

z-umlaut: /e/ is raised to /i/ before /z/.

Early PG *mez " me, dative" > late PG *miz > OHG mir, OS mi, ON mé r (with general lowering and lengthening of i before r).

This change was only sporadic at best because there were barely any words in which it could have occurred at all, since /e/ remained only in stressed syllables. The umlauting effect of /z/ remained, however, and in Old West Norse it was extended to other vowels as well. Hence OEN glaʀ, hrauʀ, OWN gler, hreyrr.

Pre-nasal raising: /e/ > /i/ before nasal + consonant. PrePG *bʰ endʰ onom > PG *bendaną > *bindaną > OE bindan > ModE bind (Latin of-fendō).

This was later extended in Pre-Old English times to vowels before all nasals; hence OE niman " take" but OHG neman.

Loss of /n/ before /x/, with nasalization and compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel.

The nasalization was eventually lost, but remained through the Ingvaeonic period.

Hence PrePG *tongjonom > PG *þ ankijaną > OE þ encan > ModE think, but PrePG *tonktos > PG *þ anhtaz > *þ ā ̃ htaz > OE þ ō ht > ModE thought.

This change followed the raising of /e/ before a nasal: PG *þ enhaną > *þ inhaną > *þ ī ̃ hanã > Gothic þ eihan.

Final-syllable short vowels were generally deleted in words of three syllables or more. PG *biridi > Goth baí riþ /beriθ / " (he) carries" (see above), and also PG *-maz, *-miz > *-mz (dative and instrumental plural ending of nouns, 1st person plural ending of verbs, as on the Stentoften Runestone).

Northwest Germanic period[edit]

This was the period that existed after the East Germanic languages had split off. Changes during this time were shared with the North Germanic dialects, i.e. Proto-Norse. Many of the changes that occurred were areal, and took time to propagate throughout a dialect continuum that was already diversifying. Thus, the ordering of the changes is sometimes ambiguous, and can differ between dialects.

Allophonic i-mutation: Short back vowels were fronted when followed in the next syllable by /i/ or /j/, by i-mutation: /ɑ / > [æ ], /o/ > [ø ], /u/ > [y][citation needed]

In this initial stage, the mutated vowels were still allophonically conditioned, and were not yet distinct as phonemes. Only later, when the /i/ and /j/ were modified or lost, the new sounds were phonemicized.

i-mutation affected all the Germanic languages except for Gothic, although with a great deal of variation. It appears to have occurred earliest, and to be most pronounced, in the Schleswig-Holstein area (the home of the Anglo-Saxons), and from there to have spread north and south. However, it is possible that this change already occurred in Proto-Germanic proper, in which case the phenomenon would have remained merely allophonic for quite some time. If that is the case, that would be the stage reflected in Gothic, where there is no orthographic evidence of i-mutation at all.

Long vowels and diphthongs were affected only later, probably analogically, and not in all areas. Notably, they were not mutated in most (western) Dutch dialects, whereas short vowels were.

a-mutation: /u/ is lowered to /o/ when a non-high vowel follows in the next syllable.

This is blocked when followed by a nasal followed by a consonant, or by a cluster with /j/ in it. Hence PG *gulþ ą > OE/ModE gold, but PG guldijaną > OE gyldan > ModE gild.

This produces a new phoneme /o/, due to inconsistent application and later loss of word-final vowels.

Final-syllable long vowels were shortened.

Final /ɔ ː / becomes /o/, later raised to /u/. PG *sagō (" saw (tool)") > OE sagu, ON sǫ g.

Final /ɛ ː / becomes /e/ in ON (later raised to /i/), /ɑ / in West Germanic. PG *hailidē (" he/she/it healed") > ON heilð i, but OE hǣ lde, OHG heilta.

The final long diphthong /ɔ ː i/ loses its final element and usually develops the same as /ɔ ː / from that point on. PG *gebō i (" gift", dative singular) > NWG *gebō > ON gjǫ f, OHG gebu, OE giefe (an apparent irregular development).

" Overlong" vowels were shortened to regular long vowels.

PG /ɛ ː / (maybe already /æ ː / by late PG) becomes /ɑ ː /. This preceded final shortening in West Germanic, but postdated it in North Germanic.

Unstressed diphthongs were monophthongized. /ɑ i/ > /eː /, /ɑ u/ > /oː /. The latter merged with ō from shortened overlong ô. PG *sunauz (" son", genitive singular) > NWG *sunō z > ON sonar, OE suna, OHG suno; PG *nemai (" he/she/it take", subjunctive) > NWG *nemē > ON nemi, OE nime, OHG neme; PG *stainai (" stone", dative singular) > NWG *stainē > ON steini, OE stā ne, OHG steine.

West Germanic period[edit]

This period occurred around the 2nd to 4th centuries. It is unclear if there was ever a distinct " Proto-West Germanic", as most changes in this period were areal, and likely spread throughout a dialect continuum that was already diversifying further. Thus, this " period" may not have been a real timespan, but may simply cover certain areal changes that did not reach into North Germanic. This period ends with the further diversification of West Germanic into several groups before and during the Migration Period: Ingvaeonic, Istvaeonic (Old Frankish) and Irminonic (Upper German).

Loss of word-final /z/.

This change occurred before rhotacization, as original word-final /r/ was not lost.

But it must have occurred after the Northwest Germanic split, since word-final /z/ was not eliminated in Old Norse, instead merging with /r/.

/z/ was not lost in single-syllable words in southern and central German. Compare PG *miz > OS mi, OE me vs. OHG mir.

The OE nominative plural -as (ME -s), OS nominative plural -ō s may be from original accusative plural *-ans, due to the Ingvaeonic Nasal-Spirant law, rather than original nominative plural *-ō z, which would be expected to become *-a (OHG -a, compare ON -ar).

Rhotacization: /z/ > /r/.

This change also affected Proto-Norse, but only much later. /z/ and /r/ were still distinct in the Danish and Swedish dialect of Old Norse, as is testified by distinct runes. (/z/ is normally assumed to be a rhotic fricative in this language, but there is no actual evidence of this.)

PG *deuzą > Goth dius; OE dē or > ModE deer

West Germanic gemination: single consonants followed by /j/ except /r/ became double (geminate). This only affected consonants preceded by a short vowel, because those preceded by a long vowel or by another consonant were never followed by /j/ due to Sievers' law.

PG *bidjaną, *habjaną > OE biddan, habban > ModE bid, have

Ingvaeonic and Anglo-Frisian period[edit]

This period is estimated to have lasted only a century or so, the 4th to 5th; the time during which the Franks started to spread south into Gaul (France) and the various coastal people began colonising Britain. Changes in this period affected the Ingvaeonic languages, but not the more southernly Central and Upper German languages. The Ingvaeonic group was probably never homogeneous, but was divided further into Old Saxon and Anglo-Frisian. Old Frankish (and later Old Dutch) was not in the core group, but was affected by the spread of several areal changes from the Ingvaeonic area.

The Anglo-Frisian languages shared several unique changes that were not found in the other West Germanic languages. The migration to Britain caused a further split into early Old English and early Old Frisian.

Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law: Loss of nasals before fricatives, with compensatory lengthening. Hence PG *munþ az > ModG Mund but OE mū þ, ModE mouth.

An intermediate stage was a long nasal vowel, where nasal /ɑ ̃ ː / > /õ ː /. PrePG *donts > PG *tanþ s > OE