Термины

Упражнение 54.

Переведите нижеприводимые отрывки и выпишите термины.

В. a) When we classify vowels according to the part of the tongue raised, we distinguish three classes. The vowels which have their tongue-positions on or near the line i–a are called front vowels; in other words front vowels are those in the formation of which the 'front' of the tongue is raised in the direction of the hard palate. Vowels which have their tongue-positions on or near the line a-u are called back vowels; in other words back vowels are those in the formation of which the 'back' of the tongue is raised in the direction of the soft palate.

б) As English words have hardly any inflections, and as the inflected forms that are available are

not always restricted to definite functions, the order of words is a very important means of showing their relation in a sentence. In discussing the order of words it is advisable to treat first of simple sentences and head clauses of compound sentences, before we take the subordinate clause. The most important question as to word-order is the relative position of the subject and the verbal part of the predicate (including the copulas). The position of the rest of the sentence often depends upon this.

c) The commonest way of making new words is by what is called derivation. We are all familiar with this method by which a prefix or suffix is added to an already existing word, as 'coolness' is formed by adding the suffix -ness to 'cool,' or in 'distrust' dis- is prefixed to 'trust.' Many of these affixes we know to have been originally separate words.

d) Some words undergo a change of meaning. Through some kind of association or resemblance a word is applied to an object or an idea other than that for which it originally stood but it does not, as a result, lose its earlier, basic meaning. Our mind differentiates between the original meaning and the newly acquired one, so that although it is still only one word it has two or possibly more specialized meanings. If a friend tells us he will send us a wire, we know that wire in this case means a telegram; but we also know that in another context it would mean the metallic filament. That way is the original sense of it; the other is merely a transferred meaning, originating in the fact that telegrams are sent by means of wires.

Основной словарный фонд современного английского языка

Упражнение 55.

Выделите слова основного словарного фонда и объясните, почему в этом отрывке употреблено такое небольшое количество слов основного словарного фонда.

B. Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight - an upper-middle class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favored persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family - no branch of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy - evidence of that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature. He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life, of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of nations. He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its planting – a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and persistent - one day will see it flourishing with bland full foliage in an almost repugnant prosperity at the summit of its efflorescence.