lavrova_n_a_a_coursebook_on_english_lexicology_angliiskaya_l

9.Mobile phones gradually took …from pagers.

10.The meeting will last for about 15 more minutes, but I can’t chair it any longer, because I’m urgently needed in the office, so will you take…as my deputy?

VIII

Find cases of metaphor in the passages below. Say what the metaphor draws on. If the metaphor is cognitive, specify its type.

1.I went to see the village again, about a year afterwards. There was nothing there. Mounds of red mud, where the huts had been, had long swathes of rotting thatch over them, veined with the red galleries of the white ants. The pumpkin vines rioted everywhere…: it was a festival of pumpkins. The bushes were crowding up, the

new grass sprang vivid green (D. Lessing, “The Old Chief Mshlanga”, 1956, P. 14).

2.The warmth of that fire spread through Gwen, enveloping her in a sweet golden aura that seemed in her mind to outshine the pale, cold light of the moon. Laying her head down on her arms, she began to cry again, but these tears sprang from a different well,

one deeper and purer than she had ever imagined existed. They were tears of joy, for she knew that she had loved Joram unselfishly (M. Weis, T. Hickman, “The Dark Sword Trilogy”, Vol. II, P. 228).

3.As chief librarian in charge of records for over thirty years, he considered the entire history of British international affairs his private domain. He made a speciality of ferreting out policy blunders and scandalous intrigues…that had been swept under the carpet of secrecy (C. Cussler, “Night Probe”, 2003, P. 59).

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4.The third day broke, bleak and windy. At sunrise the Ents’ voices rose to a great clamour and then died down again. As the morning wore on, the wind fell and the air grew heavy with expectancy… The afternoon came, and then, going west towards the mountains, sent out long yellow beams between the cracks and fissures of the clouds. Suddenly they were aware that everything was quiet; the whole forest stood in listening silence (J. R.R. Tolkien, “The Lord of the Rings”, Part two, “The Two Towers”, 1994, P. 99).

5.The Butters were a family of large, inbred, indeterminately numerous individuals who lived seasonally in a collection of shanty homes in an area of perpetual wooded gloom known as the Bottoms along the swampy margins of the Raccoon River (B. Bryson, “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”, 2007, P. 73).

6.Some people argue that because God is a caring deity ill health and suffering must also have an origin in divine care. From this proceeds the widespread understanding that disease and physical suffering are the means by which God purifies the soul (I. Mortimer, “The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England”, 2007, P. 190).

7.The glass of the kitchen window-panes rattled in their frames and then the rumble of the guns rolled down from the north. Once again the German guns were hunting along the ridges, clamouring and barking like wild dogs (Wilbur Smith “The Burning Shore”, 1997, P. 48)

8.Centaine shivered. Death – that word again. Death was all around them. On the ridges over there where for the moment the sound of the guns was just a low rumble, death in the sky above them (Wilbur Smith “The Burning Shore”, 1997, P. 68)

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9.Everything I’ve written so far about Los Angeles is true, as far as I know. But everything I’ve written so far is also profoundly inaccurate. If you think of LA as a room, it would be fair to say that I’ve been deliberately neglecting an elephant sitting by itself in the corner. Lots of Angelenos choose to do the same – they behave as if the elephant weren’t there, or they pretend it’s no bigger than a mouse. But soon I think they won’t have a choice.

The elephant is not aggressive. It just keeps on growing” [Mark Abley, The Prodigal Tongue, 2009:129].

10.He leaned back. Somewhere in the house there was the sound of rushing water. The radiator rattled and the rain knocked with soft fingers at the window [Remarque, 1971:69].

11.A huge old chestnut tree stretched its naked arms upward toward the wet sky [Remarque, 1971:85].

12.I am sitting here with a woman between pale chrysanthemums and a bottle of calvados, and the shadow of love rises, trembling, lonesome, strange and sad, it too an exile from the safe gardens of the past, shy and wild and quick as if it had no right – [Remarque, 1971:146].

13.She calls that joy! To be driven by multiple dark propellers, in a gust of breathless desire for repossession – joy? Outside there is a moment of joy, the dew at the window, the ten minutes of silence before the day stretches out its claws [Remarque, 1971:248].

IX

Specify the functions performed by the following cases of metonymy:

1. He looked across the room toward Albert. The feathered hat was just explaining to him very audibly why he was such a swine, at the same

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time rhythmically rapping on the table with her umbrella [Remarque, 1971:64].

2.She did not put it on. She simply hung it around her shoulders. It was an inexpensive mink, possible an imitation – but it did not look cheap on her.

3.In Vienna – five years, it was not yet expensive, I could live cheaply; but it cost me two Renoirs and a Degas pastel. In Prague I lived on and ate up a Sisley and five drawings [Remarque, 1971:347].

4.Number twelve is dead, Veber. Now you call the police [Remarque, 1971:438].

Euphemisms are indirect words and word combinations that are used instead of a harsher word or expression to gloss over or conceal the notion that the latter word or expression conveys. Euphemisms can be classified according to various criteria: according

to their origin and current sphere of application (politics, medicine), according to their stylistic characteristics and word-building peculiarities (idioms, slang words, blends, shortenings, terms).

XI

Match the left-hand euphemisms with their right-hand meaning and specify the linguistic strategy that underlies each euphemism.

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As technology develops, some words may acquire a narrower or reduced meaning, the process and its result known as “specialization”. Thus, the advent of the computer and its evolution introduced into the language a number of specialized meanings for older words, traditionally used in a more general sense.

XII

Study the table of computer and Internet terms below, specify the type of transference and say what specialization resulted in.

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The appearance of new words is often influenced by technological progress; when technology advances there may appear new versions of the preexisting product or thing, in this case new words are required to nominate the novelty. New words for old or outmoded objects have come to be known

as “retronyms”. Retronyms are almost always represented by an attributive word-combination, in which the first element is key to disclosing the essence of an outdated object. The classical example is the retronym “acoustic guitar”, which emerged when guitar was replaced by an electric guitar, that is, by its more advanced version. Interestingly, retronyms, despite referring to old-fashioned notions, often have positive connotations, unlike many of their more advanced counterparts (called “neonyms”).

XIII

Below are a number of neonyms. Study them closely and find out their retronym counterparts. Which of the retronyms are characterized by positive connotations?

Digital computer

Digital watch

Liquid soap

Colour television

Disposable diapers

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Cordless drill

Laptop computer

Digital camera

Ballpoint pen

Softcover book

Water polo

Machine-readable

Machine translation

Laser printer

Automatic transmission

Peroxide blonde

Artificial language (machine language)

Cable television

Electron microscope

Radio telescope

E-book

Electronic journalist

Jet plane

Push-button phone

Dried egg (artificial egg)

Water skiing

Single-parent family

Drive-in theatre

Skim milk

Different terms are used to refer to novel lexemes in a language, such as “neologisms”, “lexical innovations”, “neo-lexemes”, etc., the prevailing being the term “neologisms”. Although this term is not by all means new, there is still no unanimous opinion

among linguists and pundits as to its semantics. The noted Russian linguist N.Z. Kotelova suggests several linguistic theories that disclose its essence. Another linguist, T.V. Popova, refers to these theories as “stylistic”, “psycholinguistic”, “lexicographic”, “denotative”, “structural” and “historical”.

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Let us outline them in some detail. According to the fist theory (“stylistic”), neologisms are stylistically-marked words (that is, negatively marked along the line of neutrality), their meanings and phraseological units, whose usage and application entails a novelty effect. Psycholinguistic theory defines “neologism” as “a linguistic unit that has not been previously encountered by a native speaker in his experience” [Togoeva, 1999:88]. This theory brings to the fore the subjective individual novelty of a word. Proponents of this theory underline that most neologisms are not represented in dictionaries. According to the lexicographical theory, neologisms are words registered by neological dictionaries. The theory is open to argument, since it is hardly possible to enter all new words in a neo-dictionary, which would make it bulky and non-selective.

The denotational theory posits that neologisms are words referring to a new notion or realia. For all its convenience, the theory disregards purely linguistic reasons for the appearance of new words, among which are: the penchant for expressivity, creativity and evaluative nominations, linguistic economy and analogical extensions.

Adherents of the structural theory believe that neologisms are words that are new from the point of view of their form, structure. This theory does not count derived words built with the help of known affixes as neologisms, because such “innovations” are relatively easy to decode and interpret if one knows the meaning of the stem and the appended affix. Professor T.V. Popova considers the historical theory as the most appropriate, as it takes into account the period of time when a new word emerges, consequently, it is possible to speak of neologisms of the 18th, 19th and, indeed, any century. Within the framework of this theory, the notion of neologisms is relative, a word can be regarded as new in one or several aspects. The following criteria of a word’s novelty are taken into account:

1)Novelty for all native speakers

2)Novelty for a particular national language

3)Novelty for a particular genre of speech

4)Speech novelty or language novelty

5)Structural, semantic or stylistic novelty

A neologism, thus, can be defined as “a word, its meaning, or a phraseological unit (an idiom) that exists in a particular language or its genre and that did not exist earlier” [Popova, 2005:12].

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XIV

There are various criteria underlying the classification of neologisms, such as the year of their emergence, the word-building pattern used in their creation, the sphere of their application and usage, etc.

Below are a number of neologisms selected by the year of their appearance. Comment on their meaning and word-building pattern and speculate on their prospective longevity, going by the criteria suggested by R. Fischer (1998):

1)Frequency of usage. After a new word is introduced, it starts to be used more frequently. After some time, the frequency reaches its peak, and then either levels off or goes gradually down. This is the stage when the word has completed the process of standardization.

2)A variety of contexts in which the new word is used. If a novel word appears in different texts and in different genres, it means that standardization is in full swing. In case the application of the word is confined to a social or a geographical dialect, standardization is absent.

3)Absence or presence of graphic markers, such as capitals, bold fonts, italics, hyphen, etc. If these markers are present, standardization is either close to nil or is nascent. If the word is standardized, these markers are either absent or only one type of marker prevails.

4)The meaning of the word. If the word becomes polysemantic or develops a metaphorical meaning, it is on the way to standardization. If the word’s meaning is constantly explained and paraphrased by means of synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms and hyperonyms, its standardization is not completed, therefore it has slim chances of taking root in the language.

5)If a novel word is used as a proper name, for example as a trade mark name, it has more chances of catching on, as it facilitates the word’s recognition.

6)Word-building productivity. If a novel word becomes a derivational basis for other words, it testifies to the completion of standardization.

7)Syntactic function. Standardization entails the usage of a novel word as an attribute before a noun.

8)Topicality. The degree of standardization increases if the word is rarely used as the theme of an article.

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