Лекции по "Английскому языку"

English Vocabulary as a System

Synonymy is the coincidence in the essential meaning of words which usually preserve their differences in connotations and stylistic characteristics.

Synonyms are two or more words belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable in some contexts. These words are distinguished by different shades of meaning, connotations and stylistic features.

The synonymic dominant is the most general term potentially containing the specific features rendered by all the other members of the group. The words face, visage, countenance have a common denotational meaning "the front of the head" which makes them close synonyms. Face is the dominant, the most general word; countenance is the same part of the head with the reference to the expression it bears; visage is a formal word, chiefly literary, for face or countenance.

In the series leave, depart, quit, retire, clear out the verb leave, being general and most neutral term can stand for each of the other four terms.

One must bear in mind that the majority of frequent words are polysemantic and it is precisely the frequent words that have many synonyms. The result is that a polysemantic word may belong in its various meanings to several different synonymic groups. Kharitonchic Z. gives the example of 9 synonymic groups the word part enters as the result of a very wide polysemy:

1) piece, parcel, section, segment, fragment, etc; 2) member, organ, constituent, element, component, etc; 3) share, portion, lot; 4) concern, interest, participation; 5) allotment, lot, dividend, apportionment; 6) business, charge, duty, office, function, work; 7) side, party, interest, concern, faction; 8) character, role, cue, lines; 9) portion, passage, clause, paragraph.

The semantic structures of two polysemantic words sometimes coincide in more than one meaning, but never completely. L. Bloomfield and E. Nida suppose even that there are no actual synonyms, i.e. forms which have identical meanings.

In a great number of cases the semantic difference between two or more synonyms is supported by the difference in valency. An example of this is offered by the verbs win and gain Both may be used in combination with the noun victory: to win a victory, to gain a victory. But with the word war only win is possible: to win a war.

Criteria of synonymity is interchangeability. It should be pointed out that neither the traditional definition of synonyms nor the new version provide for any objective criterion of similarity of meaning. It is solely based on the linguistic intuition of the analyst.

Recently there has been introduced into the definition of synonymity the criterion of interchangeability in linguistic contexts that is synonyms are supposed to be words which can replace each other in a given context without the slightest alteration either in the denotational or connotational meaning.

But this is possible only in some contexts, in others their meanings may not coincide, e.g. the comparison of the sentences "the rainfall in April was abnormal" and "the rainfall in April was exceptional" may give us grounds for assuming that exceptional and abnormal are synonyms. The same adjectives in a different context are by no means synonymous, as we may see by comparing "my son is exceptional" and "my son is abnormal" (B. Quirk, the Use of English, London 1962, p. 129)

Peace and tranquillity are ordinarily listed as synonyms, but they are far from being identical in meaning. One may speak of a peace conference, but not tranquillity conference. (E.Nida, The Descriptive analysis of words).

According to whether the difference is in denotational or connotational component synonyms are classified into ideographic and stylistic. Ideographic synonyms denote different shades of meaning or different degrees of a given quality. They are nearly identical in one or more denotational meanings and interchangeable at least in some contexts, e.g. beautiful - fine - handsome -pretty Beautiful conveys, for instance, the strongest meaning; it marks the possession of that quality in its fullest extent, while the other terms denote the possession of it in part only. Fineness, handsomeness and prettiness are to beauty as parts to a whole.

In the synonymic group choose, select, opt, elect, pick the word choose has the most general meaning, the others are characterised by differences clearly statable: select implies a wide choice of possibilities (select a Christmas present for a child), opt implies an alternative (either this, or that as in Fewer students are opting for science courses nowadays); pick often implies collecting and keeping for future use (pick new words), elect implies choosing by vote (elect a president; elect smb (to be) chairman).

Stylistic synonyms differ not so much in denotational as in emotive value or stylistic sphere of application.

Pictorial language often uses poetic words, archaisms as stylistic alternatives of neutral words, e.g. maid for girl, bliss for happiness, steed for horse, quit for leave.

Calling and vocation in the synonymic group occupation, calling, vocation, business are high-flown as compared to occupation and business.

In many cases a stylistic synonym has an element of elevation in its meaning, e.g. face - visage, girl - maiden.

Along with elevation of meaning there is the reverse process of degradation: to begin - to fire away, to eat - to devour, to steal - to pinch, face - muzzle. According to the criterion of interchangeability in context synonyms are classified into total, relative and contextual.

Total synonyms are those members of a synonymic group which can re-place each other in any given context, without the slightest alteration in denotative meaning or emotional meaning and connotations. They are very rare. Examples can be found mostly in special literature among technical terms and others, e.g. fatherland - motherland, suslik - gopher, noun - substantive, functional affix -flection, inflection, scarlet fever - scarlatina Relative Synonyms

Some authors class groups like ask - beg - implore, or like - love - adore, gift -talent - genius, famous - celebrated- eminent as relative synonyms, as they denote different degree of the same notion or different shades of meanings and can be substituted only in some contexts.

Contextual or context - dependent synonyms are similar in meaning only under some specific distributional conditions. It may happen that the difference between the meanings of two words is contextually neutralised, e.g. buy and get would not generally be taken as synonymous, but they are synonyms in the following examples: I'll go to the shop and buy some bread.

I'll go to the shop and get some bread.

The verbs bear, suffer, stand are semantically different and not inter-changeable except when used in the negative form: I can't stand it, I can't bear it.

One of the sources of synonymy is borrowing. Synonymy has its character-istic patterns in each language. Its peculiar feature in English is the contrast between simple native words stylistically neutral, literary words borrowed from French and learned words of Greco-Latin origin.

Native English

to ask to end to rise teaching belly

French Borrowings

to question to finish to mount guidance stomach

Latin borrowings

to interrogate to complete to ascend instruction abdomen

There are also words that came from dialects, in the last hundred years, from American English, in particular, e.g. long distance call AE - trunk call BE, radio AE - wireless BE.

Synonyms are also created by means of all word - forming processes pro-ductive In the language.

It must be noted that synonyms may influence each other semantically in two diametrically opposite ways: one of them is dissimilation or differen-tiation, the other - the reverse process , i.e. assimilation.

Many words now marked in the dictionaries as "archaic" or "obsolete" have dropped out of the language in the competition of synonyms, others survived with a meaning more or less different from the original one. This process is called synonymic differentiation and is so current that is re-garded as an inherent law of language development.

The development of the synonymic group land has been studied by A.A. Ufimtseva. When in the 13 century soil was borrowed from French into English its meaning was "a strip of land".

OE synonyms eorpe, land, folde ment "the upper layer of earth in which plants grow".

Now, if two words coincide in meaning and use, the tendency is for one of them to drop out of the language.

Folde became identical to eorpe and in the fight for survival the letter won. The polysemantic word land underwent an intense semantic development in a different direction and so dropped out of this synonymic series.

It was natural for soil to fill this lexical gap and become the main name for the notion "the mould in which plants grow". The noun earth retained this meaning throughout its history whereas the word ground, in which this meaning was formerly absent, developed it. As a result this synonymic group comprises at present soil, earth, ground.

The assimilation of synonyms consists in parallel development. This law was discovered and described by G. Stern,, H.A. Treble and G.H. Vallins in their book "An ABC of English Usage", Oxford, 1957, p. 173 give as ex-amples the pejorative meanings acquired by the nouns wench, knave and churl which originally ment "girl", "boy", and "labourer" respectively, and point out that this loss of old dignity became linguistically possible because there were so many synonymous words of similar meaning. As the result all the three words underwent degradation in their meanings:

wench - indecent girl knave - rascal churl - country man. Homonymy

The problem of polysemy is closely connected with the problem of ho-monymy. Homonyms are words which have the same form but are differ-ent in meaning. "The same form" implies identity in sound form or spelling, i.e. all the three aspects are taken into account: sound-form, graphic form and meaning.

Both meanings of the form "liver'' are, for instance, intentionally present in the following play upon words; "Is life worth living ? - It depends upon the liver",

The most widely accepted classification of homonyms is that recognising homonyms proper, homophones and homographs.

Homonyms proper (or perfect, absolute) are words identical in pronunciation аnd spelling but different in meaning, like back n. "part of the body" - back adv. "away from the front" - back v. "go back"; bear n. "animal" - bear v, "carry, tolerate".

Homophones are words of the same sound but of different spelling and meaning: air - heir, buy - by, him - hymn, steel - steal, storey - story.

Homographs are words different in sound and in meaning but accidentally identical in spelling: bow [bou] - bow [bau], lead [li:d] - lead [led].

Homoforms - words identical in some of their grammatical forms. To bound (jump, spring) - bound (past participle of the verb bind); found ( establish) -found (past participle of the verb find).

Paronyms are words that are alike in form, but different in meaning and usage. They are liable to be mixed and sometimes mistakenly interchanged.

The term paronym comes from the Greek para "beside" and onoma "name". Examples are: precede - proceed, preposition - proposition, popular - populous.

Homonyms in English are very numerous. Oxford English Dictionary registers 2540 homonyms, of which 89% are monosyllabic words and 9,1% are two-syllable words.

So, most homonyms are monosyllabic words. The trend towards monosyl-labism, greatly increased by the loss of inflections and shortening, must have contributed much toward increasing the number of homonyms in English .

Among the other ways of creating homonyms the following processes must be mentioned:

conversion which serves the creating of grammatical homonyms, e.g. iron -to iron, work - to work, etc.;

polysemy - as soon as a derived meaning is no longer felt to be connected with the primary meaning at all (as in bar - балка; bar - бар; bar - адвокатура) polysemy breaks up and separate words come into existence, quite different in meaning from the basic word but identical in spelling.

From the viewpoint of their origin homonyms are sometimes divided into historical and etymological.

Historical homonyms are those which result from the breaking up of polysemy; then one polysemantic word will split up into two or more separate words, e.g. to bear /терпіти/ - to bear /народити/ pupil /учень/ - pupil /зіниця/ plant / рослина/ - plant /завод/

Etymo1ogiсal homonyms are words of different origin which come to be alike in sound or in spelling (and may be both written and pronounced alike).

Borrowed and native words can coincide in form, thus producing homonyms (as in the above given examples).

In other cases homonyms are a result of borrowing when several different words become identical in sound or spelling. E.g. the Latin vitim - "wrong", "an immoral habit" has given the English vice - вада "evil conduct"; the Latin vitis -"spiral" has given the English ''vice" - тиски "apparatus with strong jaws in which things can be hold tightly"; the Latin vice - "instead of", "in place of" will be found in vice - president.

It should be noted that the most debatable problem in homonymy is the demarcation line between homonymy and polysemy, i.e. between different meanings of one word and the meanings of two or more homonymous words.

 

Exercise 1.

Read the following two passages and discuss the difference between the two points of view on synonymy.

In any language instances may occur where two words are synonyms i.e. semantically coinciding with each other while differing in their phonemic constitution (though cases of total semantic coincidence and unrestricted permutability within the same code are most uncommon, and often close semantic approximation is mistaken by students for a complete identity), It is obvious that as a rule a distinctive feature in any language serves to differentiate words (or their grammatical constituents) which are semantically distinct, and, above all. language has no other way to convey a semantic difference than through the distinctive features. (Mednikova E.M. Seminars in English Lexicology. - M., 1978. - p. 649).

It is a widely-held view that there are few, if any, "real" synonyms in natu-ral languages. To quote Ullmann, it is almost a truism that total synonymy is an extremely rare occurrence, a luxury that language can ill afford. As argued by Ullmann this view rests upon two quite distinct criteria: only those words can be described as synonymous which can replace each other in any given context without the slightest change either in cognitive or emotive import. The two conditions for total synonymy are therefore: (1) interchangeability in all contexts and (II) identity in both cognitive and emotive import. We will discuss the validity of the distinction between "cognitive" and "emotive" sense presently. For the moment we take it for granted.

The condition of interchangeability in all contexts reflects the common assumption that words are never synonymous in any context unless they can occur (and have the same sense) in all contexts. We have already re-ferred to and rejected this assumption. Like all sense-relation synonymy is context dependent: we will return to this point The main objection to the definition of synonymy proposed by Ullmann (and others) is that it com-bines two radically different criteria and prejudges the question of their interdependence. It will be helpful to introduce a terminological distinction at this point. Granted the validity of the distinction between "cognitive" and "'emotive" sense, we may use the term complete synonymy for equivalence of both cognitive and emotive sense; and we may restrict the term total synonymy to those synonyms (whether complete or not) which are interchangeable in all contexts. This scheme of classification allows for four possible kinds of synonyms (assuming that only two values are attributed to each of the variables):

(1) complete and total synonymy: (2) complete, but not total; (3) incomplete, but total; (4) incomplete, and not total.

It is complete and total synonymy that most semanticists have in mind when they talk of "real'' (or "absolute") synonymy. It is undoubtedly true that there are very few such synonyms in language. And little purpose is served by defining a notion of 'absolute1 synonymy which is based on the assumption that complete equivalence and total interchangeability are necessarily connected. Once we accept that they are not, and at the same time abandon the traditional view that synonymy is a matter of the identity of two independently determined 'senses', the whole question becomes much more straightforward.

 

Exercise 2.

Study the list of the synonyms given below and classify them into the fol-lowing groups:

a) synonyms which display an obvious difference in denotational compo-nent of meaning (ideographical);

b) synonyms which differ in connotational component of meaning (stylis-tic).

Lazy, Idle, Indolent:

The words mean "not active", "not in use or operation", "doing nothing".

Lazy - can be used without implying reproach or condemnation, e.g. lazy afternoon, the boy is too lazy to learn, I'm looking for a helper who is not incurably lazy.

Idle - suggests temporary inactivity or doing nothing through necessity, and hence carries no implication of faultfinding; e.g. The machines are idle dur-ing the noon hour Because supplies did not arrive that day, the work crew was idle for seven hours.

Indolent - is applied to someone who not only avoids effort but likes to indulge in relaxation. E.g. John was a contented, indolent fisherman. Selling from door to door is no occupation for an indolent person.

Home. House

These words identify any kind of shelter that serves as the residence of a person, family or household. House lacks the associated meanings attrib-uted to home, a term that suggests comfort, peace, love and family ties. It may be said that what a builder erects is a house which, when lived in, be-comes a home. Such a statement may be considered sentimental, echoing the lines of Edgar A. Guest ("It takes a heap v'livin' in a house t' make it home).

Sentiment or not, one usually speaks of "buying home" and "selling a house". But firemen put out a fire in a house, not a home, and reference is always made to a house and let; not a home and let. Conversely, one usu-ally refers to a home for the aged, not a house for the aged. Since home and house are so subtly different in use, why not sometimes resort to Residence and Dwelling and save confusion? 

 

Exercise 3.

Define the stylistic colouring of the underlined words, substitute them with a neutral synonym from the list given below.

1. Their discourse was interrupted. 2. He was dressed like a toff. 3. She passed away. 4. The old man kicked the bucket. 5. Where is Daddy ? 6. Come on, let's put on steam. 7. Meet my better half. 8. He must have gone off his rodder. 9. Come down to brass tacks. 10. Jack took his departure. 11. Well, let's drift. 12. Somebody has nailed my bag. 13. This is a case for a vet 14. He is a joiner.

A doctor, to steal, to go, to leave, to go on, please, to put out, come to the point, to go out of one's mind, a wife, a father, to die, to talk, a gentleman, good company.

 

Exercise 4.

Using a dictionary state the main semantic differences between the members of the following synonymic groups. Say, whether these differences lie within the denotational or connotational components of meaning. Gather, collect, assemble, congregate; discuss, argue, debate, dispute; help, aid, assist; employ, hire; mend, repair, patch, rebuild; occupation, calling, vocation, business; position, place, situation, post.

 

Exercise 5.

In the following word combinations substitute the italicised word with a synonym. 1. Brisk pace, celebrated painter, changeable weather, improper story, inconstant lover, juicy fruit, succinct answer. 2. Convene the dele-gates, decide the question, describe the beauty of the scene, mislead the teacher, muster all the men, hasten them along. 3. Too delicate for the job; lively for his years.

 

Exercise 6.

Fill in the blanks with a suitable paronym. Campaign, company. 1. The election, ... in England lasts about a month. 2. It was Napoleon's last.... 3. When ... stays too long, treat them like members of the family and they'll soon leave. 4. Misery loves... . 5. Come along for... . 6. Two are..., three are none. 7. The film ... merged. 8. Don't talk about your diseases in ....

 

Exercise 7.

Translate the following sentences. Find homonyms and define their types.

1. Excuse my going first, I'll lead the way. 2. Lead is heavier than iron. 3. He tears up all letters. 4. Her eyes filled with tears. 5. In England the heir to the throne is referred to as the Prince of Wales. 6. Let's go out and have some fresh air. 7. It is not customary to shake hands in England. If the hostess or the host offers a hand, take it; a bow is sufficient for the rest. 8. The girl had a bow of red ribbon in her hair. 9. Mr. Newlywed: Did you see the button on my coat, darling ? Mrs. Newlywed: No, love. I couldn't find the button, so I just sewed up the button hole. 10. Do not sow panic. 11. He took a suite at the hotel. 12. No sweet without sweat. 13. What will you have for dessert? 14. The sailors did not desert the ship. 15. He is a soldier to the core. 16. The enemy corps was routed. 17. The word 'quay' is a synonym for Embankment'. 18. The guests are sup-posed to leave the key with the receptionist. 19. When England goes metric, flour will be sold by the kilogram. 20. The rose is the national flower of England. 21. In England monarchs reign but do not rule. 22. The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.