History of Foreign Words in English

Specialization is primarily due to the fact that the receiving system has at its disposal words for the older notions, and it is only the new notion that needs a new name. Even so, the borrowing of a new word leads as a rule to semantic changes in words already existing in the language. The interaction of linguistic and extra linguistic, i.e. political, economical and cultural, factors in this process has been investigated by several authors (LP. Ivanova, N.I. Eremeyeva, A.A. Ufimtseva and others). The following example may serve to illustrate these relationships.

OE burh/burg from beorgan 'to protect' meant 'a fortress, a castle, a walled town'. In the 11th century when the Normans brought the word castel, a diminutive from Lat castra, this loan word came to denote the type of fortified mansion in which the Norman feudal aristocracy lived. So the native word burh/burg lost its first meanings keeping only the last: 'a fortified, walled town'. In the 15th century the change of the economical and political status of towns causes the word burg to lose its meaning of a fortified place. The modern word borough denotes a town with a corporation and special privileges granted by a royal charter, also a town that sends its representatives to parliament.

The conformity of the completely assimilated loan words to morphological patterns of the English paradigms may be illustrated by Scandinavian loans taking the plural ending -s: eggs, gates, laws; or Latin loan verbs with the dental suffix of the Past Indefinite and Participle II: acted, corrected, disturbed.

To illustrate the frequency of completely assimilated words it is sufficient to mention that many of them are included by E.L. Thorn-dike and I. Lorge in the list of 500 most frequent words. Some of these are: act (Lat), age (Fr), army (Fr), bill (Lat), case (Fr), cast (ON), cause (Fr), die (Scand).

II. The second group containing partially assimilatedent linguistic levels: in phonology, morphology, lexicology. We deal with lexical distinctive features and lexical oppositions.

Thus, in the opposition doubt : : doubtful the distinctive features are morphological: doubt is a root word and a noun, doubtful is a derived adjective.

The features that the two contrasted words possess in common form the basis of a lexical opposition. The basis in the opposition doubt :: doubtful is the common root -doubt-. The basis of the opposition may also form the basis of equivalence due to which these words, as it has been stated above, may be referred to the same subset. The features must be chosen so as to show whether any element we may come across belongs to the given set or not. One must be careful, nevertheless, not to make linguistic categories more rigid and absolute than they really are. There is certainly a degree of "fuzziness" about many types of linguistic sets. They must also be important, so that the presence of a distinctive feature must allow the prediction of secondary features connected with it. The feature may be constant or variable, or the basis may be formed by a combination of constant and variable features, as in the case of the following group: pool, pond, lake, sea, ocean with its variation for size. Without a basis of similarity no comparison and no opposition are possible.

When the basis is not limited to the members of one opposition but comprises other elements of the system, we call the opposition poly-dimensional. The presence of the same basis or combination of features in several words permits their grouping into a subset of the vocabulary system. We shall therefore use the term lexica.l group to denote a subset of the vocabulary, all the elements of which possess a particular feature forming the basis of the opposition. Every element of a subset of the vocabulary is also an element of the vocabulary as a whole.

It has become customary to denote oppositions by the signs: skilled

or ::, e. g. skilled -r- unskilled, unslljlled' skilled :: unskilled. The common feature of the members of this particular opposition forming its basis is the adjective stem -skilled-. The distinctive feature is the presence or absence of the prefix un-. This distinctive feature may in other cases also serve as the basis of equivalence so that all adjectives beginning with un- form a subset of English vocabulary (unable, unaccountable, unaffected, unarmed, etc.), forming a correlation:

able accountable affected armed unable unaccountable unaffected unarmed

In the opposition man :: boy the distinctive feature is the semantic component of age. In the opposition boy :: lad the distinctive feature is that of stylistic colouring of the second member.

The methods and procedures of lexical research such as contextual analysis, componential analysis, distributional analysis, etc. will be briefly outlined in other chapters of the book.

ETYMOLOGICAL DOUBLETS

The changes a loan word had had to undergo depending on the date of its penetration are the main cause for the existence of the so-called etymological doublets. Etymological doublets (or, by ellipsis, simply doublets) are two or more words of the same language which were derived by different routes from the same basic word. They differ to a certain degree in form, meaning and current usage. Two words at present slightly differentiated in meaning may have originally been dialectal variants of the same word. Thus, we find in doublets traces of Old English dialects. Examples are whole (in the old sense of 'healthy' or 'free from disease') and hale. The latter has survived in its original meaning and is preserved in the phrase hale and hearty. Both come from OE hal: the one by the normal development of OE a into 6, the other from a northern dialect in which this modification did not take place. Similarly there are the doublets raid and road, their relationship remains Hear in the term inroad which means 'a hostile incursion", 'a raid'.The verbs drag and draw both come from OE dragon.

The words shirt, shriek, share, shabby come down from Old English, whereas their respective doublets skirt, screech, scar and scabby are etymological!у cognate Scandinavian borrowings. These doublets are characterized by a regular variation of sh and sc.

As an example of the same foreign word that has been borrowed twice at different times the doublets castle and chuteau may be mentioned. Both words come from the Latin castellun 'fort'. This word passed into the northern dialect of Old French as castel, which was borrowed into AAiddle English as castle. In the Parisian dialect of Old French, on the other hand, it became chastel (a Latin hard с regularly became a ch in Central Old French). In modern French chastel became chdteaux and was then separately borrowed into English meaning 'a French castle or a big country house'.

Another source of doublets may be due to the borrowing of different grammatical forms of the same word. Thus, the comparative of Latin super 'above' was superior 'higher, better', this was borrowed into English as superior 'high or higher in some quality or rank'. The superlative degree of the same Latin word was supremus 'highest'. When this was borrowed into English it gave the adjective supreme 'outstanding, prominent, highest in rank'.

Sometimes the development of doublets is due to a combination of linguistic and extra-linguistic causes. The adjective stationary for instance, means 'not moving' and stationery n -- 'writing paper, envelopes, pens, etc' The first word is a regular derivative from the noun station to which the adjective-forming suffix -ary is added. The history of the second word is more complicated. In Medieval England most booksellers were travelling salesmen. Permanent bookstores were called sta-

Hons, the salesmen of these were stationers and what they sold -- sta*^ tionery (with the noun suffix -ery as in grocery or bakery).

Not all doublets come in pairs. Examples of groups are: appreciate, appraise, apprize; astound, astonish, stun; kennel, channel, canal.

The Latin word discus is the origin of a whole group of doublets:

dais<.ME deis<OF deis<CLat discus di's/i<ME dish<.OE dj'sc<Lat discus discldisk<Xai discus discus (in sport)<Lat discus

Other doublets that for the most part justify their names by coiniiiK in pairs show in their various ways the influence of the language or dialect systems which they passed before entering the English vocabulary.

Compare words borrowed in Middle English from Parisian French: chase, chieftain, chattels, guard, gage with their doublets of Norman French origin: catch, captain, cattle, ward, wage.

INTERNATIONAL WORDS

As the process of borrowing is mostly connected with the appearance of new notions which the loan words serve to express, it is natural that the borrowing is seldom limited to one language. Words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source are called international words.

Expanding global contacts result in the considerable growth of in* ternational vocabulary. All languages depend for their changes upon the, cultural and social matrix in which they operate and various contacts between nations are part of this matrix reflected in vocabulary.

International words play an especially prominent part in various terminological systems including the vocabulary of science, industry and art. The etymological sources of this vocabulary reflect the hijjj tory of world culture. Thus, for example, the mankind's cultural debt to Italy is reflected in the great number of Italian words connected with architecture, painting and especially music that are borrowed into most European languages: allegro, andante, aria, arioso, barcarole, baritoni (and other names for voices), concert, duet, opera (and other names for pieces of music), piano and many many more.

The rate of change in technology, political, social and artistic life has been greatly accelerated in the 20th century and so has the ratr 01 growth of international wordstock. A few examples of comparatively new words due to the progress of science will suffice to illustrate the importance of international vocabulary: algorythm, antenna, antibiotldi automation, bionics, cybernetics, entropy, gene, genetic code, graph, mi croeleclronics, microminiaturization, quant, quasars, pulsars, ribosomt. etc. All these show sufficient likeness in English, French, Russian and several other languages.

The international wordstock is also growing due to the influx of ex« otic borrowed words like anaconda, bungalow, kraal, orang-outang, satu etc. These come from many different sources.

International words should not be mixed with words of the common Indo-European stock that also comprise a sort of common fund of the European languages.

This layer is of great importance for the foreign language teacher not only because many words denoting abstract notions are international but also because he must know the most efficient ways of showing the points of similarity and difference between such words as control : : контроль; general : : генерал; industry : : индустрия or magazine : : магазин, etc. usually called 'translator's false friends'.

The treatment of international words at English lessons would be one-sided if the teacher did not draw his pupils' attention to the spread of the English vocabulary into other languages.

We find numerous English words in the field of sport: football, out, match, tennis, time. A large number of English words are to be found in the vocabulary pertaining to clothes: jersey, pullover, sweater, nylon, tweed, etc. Cinema and different forms of entertainment are also a source of many international words of English origin: film, club, cocktail, jazz.

At least some of the Russian words borrowed into English and many other languages and thus international should also be mentioned: balalaika, bolslievik, cosmonaut, czar, intelligentsia, Kremlin, mammoth, rouble, sambo, soviet, sputnik, steppe, vodka.

To sum up this brief treatment of loan words it is necessary to stress that in studying loan words a linguist cannot be content with establishing the source, the date of penetration, the semantic sphere to which the word belonged and the circumstances of the process of borrowing.

All these are very important, but one should also be concerned with the changes the new language system into which the loan word penetrates causes in the word itself, and, on the other hand, look for the changes occasioned by the newcomer in the English vocabulary, when in finding its way into the new language it pushed some of its lexical neighbours aside. In the discussion above we have tried to show the importance of the problem of conformity with the patterns typical of the receiving language and its semantic needs.

2.3 STANDARD ENGLISH VARIANTS AND DIALECTS

Standard Engl ish -- the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and thd television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and re* cognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialectisms. Local d i M I ec t s are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts j and having no normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In Great Britain there are twB variants, Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects.

One of the best known Southern dialects is С о с к n е у, the region* al dialect of London. According to E. Partridge and H.C. Wylde, this dialect exists on two levels. As spoken by the educated lower middle classes it is a regional dialect marked by some deviations in pronunclM tion but few in vocabulary and syntax. As spoken by the uneducated, Cockney differs from Standard English not only in pronunciation but also in vocabulary, morphology and syntax. G.B. Shaw's play "Pygmalion" clearly renders this level of Cockney as spoken at the time when the play was written and reveals the handicap Cockney obviously pre** ¦ ents in competition with speakers of standard Engl Mi. Professor Нем ry Higgins, the main character of the play, speaking about Eliza Doolil* tie, the flower girl, says: You see this creature with her kerbstone English! tlie English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass this girl off as a ducliess ... even get ЛЩ a place as lady's maid or shop assistant which requires better English.

"The Encyclopaedia Britannica" treats Cockney as an accent, not acknowledging it the status of dialect.

Cockney has attracted much literary attention, and so we can judge of its past and present on the evidence of literature. As recorded by Ch. Duk ens over a century ago, Cockney was phonetically characterized by the interchange of the labial and labio-dental consonants [w] and Ivl: wtfm for very and veil for well. This trait was lost by the end of the 19th celt*] tury. The voiceless and voiced dental spirants 10] and [6] are still N placed -- though not very consistently -- by If] and [v] respectively! jing for thing and farver for father (inserting the letter r indicates vowfj length). This variation is not exclusively characteristic of Cockney and may be found in several dialects. Another trait not limited to Cockney is the interchange of the aspirated and non-aspirated initial vowels: hart for art and 'eart for heart. The most marked feature in vowel sounds is the substitution of the diphthong [ai ] for standard [ei ] in such words as day, face, rain, way pronounced: Idail, Ifais], [rain], [wail.

There are some specifically Cockney words and set expressions such as up the pole 'drunk', you' 11 get yourself disliked (a remonstrance to a person behaving very badly).

Cockney is lively and witty and its vocabulary imaginative and colourful. Its specific feature not occurring anywhere else is the so-called rhyming slang, in which some words are substituted by other words rhyming with them. Boots, for instance, are called daisy roots, hat is tit for tat, head is sarcastically called loaf of bread, and wife -- trouble and strife. It has set expressions of its own. Here is an example of a rather crude euphemistic phrase for being dead: "She may have pulled me through me operation," said Mrs Fisher, "but 'streuth I'm not sure I wouldn't be better off pushing up tlie daisies, after all." (M. Dickens)

The study of dialects has been made on the basis of information obtained with the help of special techniques: interviews, questionnaires, recording by phonograph and tape-recorder, etc. Data collected in this way show the territorial distribution of certain key words and pronunciations which vary from region to region.

Dialects are now chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. Their boundaries have become less stable than they used to be; the distinctive features are tending to disappear with the shifting of population due to the migration of working-class families in search of employment and the growing influence of urban life over the countryside. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of Standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television and cinema.

For the most part dialect in literature has been limited to speech characterization of personages in books otherwise composed in Standard English. There are Yorkshire passages in "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte, and Lancashire passages in "Mary Barton" by E. Gas-kell. A Southern dialect (that of Dorset) is sometimes introduced by Th. Hardy, A. Tennyson used Lancashire dialect in two of his poems reproducing peasant speech ("Northern Farmer: Old Style" and "Northern Farmer: New Style").

"The Northern Farmer: Old Style" is the monologue of a dying old man. He knows that his death is near and is resigned to it: "// / must die I must die." He wants his nurse to bring him ale, although doctor has forbidden it. The last stanza runs as follows: "What alta stannin' theer for, an' doesn bring ma the yaale? Doctor's a 'toltler, lass, an a's hallus t" the owd taale; I weant break rules for Doctor, a knows now moor nora floy; Git ma my yaale I tell tha, an gin I тип doy I тип day." (Tennyson)

The dialect vocabulary is remarkable for its conservatism: many words that have become obsolete in standard English are still kept in dialects, e.g. to and 'envy'<OE andian; barge 'pig'<OE berg; byscn 'blind'<:OE bisene and others.

According to O. Jespersen, however, dialect study suffered from too much attention being concentrated on the "archaic" traits. "Every survival of an old form, every trace of old sounds that have been dropped in standard speech, was greeted with enthusiasm, and the significance of these old characteristics greatly exaggerated, the general impression being that popular dialects were always much more conservative than the speech of educated people. It was reserved for a much later time to prove that this view is completely erroneous, and that popular dialects in spite of many archaic details are on the whole further developed than the various standard languages with their stronger tradition and literary reminiscences."1

The standard work of reference in dialect study is Joseph Wright's "English Dialect Dictionary".

After this brief review of dialects we shall now proceed to the discussion of variants.

The Scottish Tongue and the Irish English have a special linguistic status as compared with dialects because of the literature composed in them. The name of Robert Burns, the great national poet of Scotland, is known all over the world. There is a whole group of modern poets including Hugh MacDiarmid writing in this variant of the English language.

A few lines from R. Burns's poem dedicated to his friend James, Smith will illustrate the general character of Scottish:

To James Smith

1

Dear Smith, the slee'st, pawkie thief That e'er attempted stealth or riefl Ye surely hae some warlock-brief

Owre human hearts; For ne'er a bosom yet was prief

Against your arts.

2

For me, I swear by sun and moon, And every star that blinks aboon, Ye've cost me twenty pair o'shoon

Just gaun to see you; And ev'ry ither pair that's done

Mair taen I'm wi' you...

Here slee'st meant 'slyest', pawkie 'cunning', 'sly', rief 'robbery', warlock-brief 'wizard's contract' (with the devil), prief 'proof, aboon

1 Jespersen 0. Language, Its Nature, Development and Origin. London, 1949ii P. 68.

'above', shoon 'shoes'. The other dialect words differing only in pronunciation from their English counterparts (owre : : over; mair : : more) are readily understood.

The poetic features of Anglo-Irish may be seen in the plays by J.M. Synge and Sean О'Casey. The latter's name is worth an explanation in this connection. 0' is Gaelic and means 'of the clan of. С f. Mac -- the Gaelic for 'son' found in both Scottish and Irish names.1 Sean, also spelled Shawn and pronounced [fo:nl, is the Irish for John.

Some traits of Anglo-Irish may be observed in the following lines from "The Playboy of the Western World" by J.M. Synge: I've told my story no place till this night, Pegeen Mike, and it's foolish I was here, maybe, to be talking free; but you're decent people, I'm thinking, and yourself a kindly woman, the way I was not fearing you at all.

Pegeen exemplifies the diminutive suffix found in Standard English only in loan-words. The emphatic personal pronoun yourself appears in a non-appositional construction. С f. also It was yourself started it (O'Casey). The main peculiarities concern syntax, and they are reflected in some form words. The concrete connective word the way substitutes the abstract conjunction so that. С f. also the time that, the while for when, and all times for always. E. g.: I'd hear himself snoring out - a loud, lonesome snore he'd be making all times, the while he was sleeping; and he a man'd be raging all times the while he was waking (Synge). The Anglo-Irish of J.M. Synge, however, should not be taken as a faithful reproduction of real speech, as it is imbued with many-romantic poetic archaisms.

Words from dialects and variants may penetrate into Standard English. The Irish English gave, for instance, blarney n 'flattery', bog n 'a spongy, usually peaty ground of marsh'. This word in its turn gave rise to many derivatives and compounds, among them bog-trotter, the ironical nickname for Irishman. Shamrock (a trifoliate plant, the national emblem of Ireland) is a word used quite often, and so is the noun whiskey.

The contribution of the Scottish dialect is very considerable. Some of the most frequently used Scotticisms are: bairn 'child', billy 'chum', bonny 'handsome', brogue 'a stout shoe', glamour 'charm*, laddie, lassie, kilt, raid, slogan, tartan, wee, etc.

A great deal in this process is due to Robert Burns who wrote his poems in Scottish English, and to Walter Scott who introduced many Scottish words into his novels.

AMERICAN ENGLISH

The variety of English spoken in the USA has received the name of American English. The term variant or variety appears most appropriate for several reasons. American English cannot be called a dialect although it is a regional variety, because it has a literary

xCf. filz (ultimately from Latin filius), which is used in the same way in the Anglo-Norman names: Fitzgerald 'son of Gerald'.

normalized form called Standard American (or American National Standard), whereas by definition given above a dialect has no literary form. Neither is it a separate language, as some American authors, like H.L. Mencken, claimed, because it has neither grammar nor vocabulary of its own. From the lexical point of view we shall have to deal only with a heterogeneous set of Americanisms.

An Americanism may be defined as a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA. E. g. cookie 'a biscuit'; frame-up 'a staged or preconcerted law case'; guess 'think'; mail 'post'; store 'shop'.

A general and comprehensive description of the American variant is given in Professor A.D. Schweitzer's monograph. An important aspect of his treatment is the distinction made between Americanisms belonging to the literary norm and those existing in low colloquial and slang. The difference between the American and British literary norm is not systematic.

The American variant of the English language differs from British English1 in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary, and this paragraph will deal with the latter. Our treatment will be mainly diachronic.

Speaking about the historic causes of these deviations it is necessary to mention that American English is based on the language imported to the new continent at the time of the first settlements, that is on the English of the 17th century. The first colonies were founded in 1607, so that the first colonizers were contemporaries of W. Shakespeare, E. Spenser and J. Milton. Words which have died out in Britain, or changed their meaning may survive in the USA. Thus, / guess, was used, by G. Chaucer for / think. For more than three centuries the Amen-can vocabulary developed more or less independently of the British stock and was influenced by the new surroundings. The early Americans had to coin words for the unfamiliar fauna and flora. Hence bull-frog 'a large frog', moose (the American elk), opossum, raccoon (an American animal related to the bears) for animals; and corn, hickory, etc, for plants.

The opposition of any two lexical systems among the variants described is of great linguistic and heuristic8 value, because it furnishalj ample data for observing the influence of extra-linguistic factors upon vocabulary. American political vocabulary shows this point very definite ly: absentee voting 'voting by mail', dark horse 'a candidate nominated unexpectedly and not known to his voters', gerrymander 'to arranM and falsify the electoral process to produce a favourable result in I In-interests of a particular party or candidate', all-outer 'an adept ol decisive measures'.

Both in the USA and Great Britain the meaning of leftist is 'an adherent of the left wing of a party'. In the USA it also means a left-handed person and lefty in the USA is only 'a left-handed person' while l|

It must be noted that an Englishman does not accept the term "British EnglUh . Heuristic means 'serving to discover'.

Great Britain it is a colloquial variant of leftist and has a specific sense of a communist or socialist.

Many of the foreign elements borrowed into American English from the Indian languages or from Spanish penetrated very soon not only into British English but also into several other languages, Russian not excluded, and so became international due to the popularity of J.F. Cooper and H. Longfellow. They are: canoe, moccasin, squaw, tomahawk, wigwam, etc. and translation loans: pipe of peace, pale-face and the like, taken from Indian languages. The Spanish borrowings like cafeteria, mustang, ranch, sombrero, etc. are very familiar to the speakers of many European languages. It is only by force of habit that linguists still include these words among the specific features of American English.

As to the toponyms, for instance Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Utah (all names of Indian tribes), or other names of towns, rivers and states named by Indian words, it must be borne in mind that in all countries of the world towns, rivers and the like show in their names traces of the earlier inhabitants of the land in question.

Another big group of peculiarities as compared with the English of Great Britain is caused by some specific features of pronunciation, stress or spelling standards, such as [ae] for [a:] in ask, dance, path, etc., or [el for [eil in made, day and some other.

American spelling

cozy

offense

practise

jewelry

traveling

thralldom

incase

The American spelling is in some respects simpler than its British counterpart, in other respects just different. The suffix -our is spelled -or, so that armor and humor are the American variants of armour and humour. Attho stands for although and thru for through. The table below illustrates some of the other differences but it is by no means exhaustive. For a more complete treatment the reader is referred to the monograph by A.D. Schweitzer.

British spelling

cosy offence practice jewellery travelling thraldom encase

In the course of time with the development of the modern means of communication the lexical differences between the two variants show a tendency to decrease. Americanisms penetrate into Standard English and Britishisms come to be widely used in American speech. Americanisms mentioned as specific in manuals issued a few decades ago are now used on both sides of the Atlantic or substituted by terms formerly considered as specifically British. It was, for instance, customary to contrast the English word autumn with the American fall. In reality both words are used in both countries, only autumn is somewhat more elevated, while in England the word fall is now rare in literary use, though found in some dialects and surviving in set expressions: spring and fall, the fall of the year are still in fairly common

use.

Cinema and TV are probably the most important channels for the passage of Americanisms into the language of Britain and other languages as well: the Germans adopted the word teenager and the French speak of Vaulomatisation. The influence of American advertising is also a vehicle of Americanisms. This is how the British term wireless is replaced by the Americanism radio.

The personal visits of British writers and scholars to the USA and all forms of other personal contacts bring back Americanisms.

The existing cases of difference between the two variants are veniently classified into:

Cases where there are no equivalents in British English: drive-in 'a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car' or 'a shop where motorists buy things staying in the car'; dude ran' 'a sham ranch used as a summer residence for holiday-makers from the cities'.

Cases where different words are used for the same denotatum, such as can, candy, mailbox, movies, suspenders, truck in the USA and tin, sweets, pillar-box (or letter-box), pictures or flicks, braces and lorry in England.

Cases where the semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement, for example, means in the first place 'covering of the street or the floor and the like made of asphalt, stones or some other material'. In England the derived meaning is 'the footway at the side of the road'. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means 'the roadway'.

Cases where otherwise equivalent words are different in distribution. The verb ride in Standard English is mostly combined with such nouns as a horse, a bicycle, more seldom they say ride on a bus. In American English combinations like a ride on the train, ride in a boa are quite usual.

It sometimes happens that the same word is used in American English with some difference in emotional and stylistic colouring. Nasty, for example, is a much milder expression of disapproval in England than in the States, where it was even considered obscene in t 19th century. Politician in England means 'someone in polities', an is derogatory in the USA. Professor A.D. Schweitzer pays special attention to phenomena differing in social norms of usage. For example balance in its lexico-semantic variant 'the remainder of anything' is sub* standard in British English and quite literary in America.

Last but not least, there may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. Thus, time-table which occurs in American English very rarely, yielded its place to schedule.

This question of different frequency distribution is also of paramount importance if we wish to investigate the morphological peculiarities of the American variant.

Practically speaking the same patterns and means of word-formation are used in coining neologisms in both variants. Only the frequency observed in both cases may be different. Some of the suffixes more frequently used in American English are: -ее (draftee n 'a young man about to be enlisted'), -etle (tambour-majorette "one of the girl drummers in front of a procession'), -dorn and -ster, as in roadster 'motorcar for long journeys by road' or gangsterdom.

American slang uses alongside the traditional ones also a few specific models, such as verb stem+-cr+adverb stem-H-cr, e. g. opener-upper 'the first item on the programme' and winder-upper 'the last item'. It also possesses some specific affixes and semi-affixes not used in literary colloquial: -o, -eroo, -aroo, -sie, -sy, as in coppo 'policeman', fatso 'a fat man', bossaroo 'boss', chapsie 'fellow'.

The trend to shorten words and to use initial abbreviations in American English is even more pronounced than in the British variant. New coinages are incessantly introduced in advertisements, in the press, in everyday conversation; soon they fade out and are replaced by the newest creations. Ring Lardner, very popular in the 30s, makes one of his characters, a hospital nurse, repeatedly use two enigmatic abbreviations: G.F. and B.F.; at last the patient asks her to clear the mystery.

"What about Roy Stewart?" asked the man in bed. "Oh, he's the fella I was telling you about," said Miss Lyons. "He's my G.F.'s B.F."

"Maybe I'm a D.F. not to know, but would you tell me what a B.F. and G.F. are?"

"Well, you are dumb, aren't you\" said Miss Lyons. "A G.F. tliat's a girl friend, and a B.F. is a boy friend. I thought everybody knew that."

The phrases boy friend and girl friend, now widely used everywhere, originated in the USA. So it is an Americanism in the wider meaning of the term, i.e. an Americanism "by right of birth", whereas in the above definition we have defined Americanisms synchronically as lexical units peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA.

Particularly common in American English are verbs with the hanging postpositive. They say that in Hollywood you never meet a man: you meet up with him, you do not study a subject but study up on it. In British English similar constructions serve to add a new meaning.

With words possessing several structural variants it may happen that some are more frequent in one country and the others in another. Thus, amid and toward, for example, are more often used in the United States and amidst and towards in Great Britain.

The lexical peculiarities of American English are an easy target for ironical outbursts on the part of some writers. John Updike is mildly humorous. His short poem "Philological" runs as follows:

The British puss demurely mews; His transatlantic kin meow, The kine in Minnesota moo; Not so the gentle Devon cows: They low,

As every schoolchild ought to know.

A well-known humourist G. Mikes goes as far as to say: "It was de* cided almost two hundred years ago that English should be the language spoken in the United States. It is not known, however, why this deci* sion has not been carried out." In his book "How to Scrape Skies" he gives numerous examples to illustrate this proposition: "You must be extremely careful concerning the names of certain articles. If you ask for suspenders in a man's shop,-you receive a pair of braces, if you ask for a pair of pants, you receive a pair of trousers, and should you ask for a pair of braces, you receive a queer look.

I should like to mention that although a lift is called an elevator in the United States, when hitch-hiking, you do not ask for an elevator, you ask for a lift.

There is some confusion about the word flat.

A flat in America is called an apartment; what they call a flat is a puncture in vourtyre (or as they spell it, tire). Consequently the notice: FLATS FIXED does not indicate an estate agent where they are going to fix you up with a flat, but a garage where they are equipped to mend a puncture."

Disputing the common statement that there is no such thing as the American nation, he says: "They do indeed exist.

They have produced the American constitution, the American way of life, the comic strips in their newspapers: they have their national game, baseball -- which is cricket played with a strong American accent -- and they have a national language, entirely their own, unlike any other language."

This is of course an exaggeration, but a very significant one. It confirms the fact that there is a difference between the two variants to be reckoned with. Although not sufficiently great to warrant American English the status of an independent language, it is considerable enough to make a mixture of variants sound unnatural and be called Mid-Atlantic. Students of English should be warned against this danger.

2.4 CANADIAN, AUSTRALIAN AND INDIAN VARIANTS

It should of course be noted that American English is not the only existing variant. There are several other variants where difference from the British standard is normalized. Besides the Irish and Scottish variants that have been mentioned in the preceding paragraph, there are Australian English, Canadian English, Indian English. Each of these has developed a literature of its own, and is characterized by pecul iarities in phonetics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.

Canadian English is influenced both by British and American Eng* lish but it also has some specific features of its own. Specifically Canadian words are called Canadianisms. They are not very Ire quent outside Canada, except shack 'a hut' and fathom out 'to explain'

The vocabulary of all the variants is characterized by a high pel centage of borrowings from the language of the people who inhabited the land before the English colonisers came. Many of them denote som| specific realia of the new country: local animals, plants or weathel conditions, new social relations, new trades and conditions of labmn The local words for new notions penetrate into the English language and later on may become international, if they are of sufficient interest and importance for people speaking other languages.

International words coming through the English of India are for instance: bungalow n, jute n, khaki a, mango n, nabob n, pyjamas, sahib, sari.

Similar examples, though perhaps fewer in number, such as boomerang, dingo, kangaroo, are all adopted into the English language through its Australian variant and became international. They denote the new phenomena found by English immigrants on the new continent. A high percentage of words borrowed from the native inhabitants of Australia will be noticed in the sonorous Australian place names.1

It has been noticed by a number of linguists that the British attitude to this phenomenon is somewhat peculiar. When anyone other than an Englishman uses English, the natives of Great Britain, often half-consciously, perhaps, feel that they have a special right to criticize his usage because it is "their" language. It is, however, unreasonable with respect to people in the United States, Canada, Australia and some other areas for whom English is their mother tongue. At present there is no single "correct" English and the American, Canadian and Australian English have developed standards of their own. It would therefore have been impossible to attempt a lexicological description of all the variants simultaneously: the aim of this book was to describe mainly the vocabulary of British English, as it is the British variant that is received and studied in Soviet schools.

CONCLUSION

The present book has treated the specific features of the English word as a structure, both on the morphemic and semantic levels, and dealt with the English vocabulary as an adaptive system of contrasting and interrelated elements. The presentation of these is conceived on the basis of the theory of oppositions as initiated by N.S. Trubetz-koy and is described, partly at least, in set-theoretical terms.

The classical book on the theory of oppositions is the posthumous treatise by N.S. Trubetzkoy "Grundzugc der Phonologie". The full significance and value of this work are now being realized and appreciated both in Soviet linguistics and abroad. Nevertheless, application of the theory of oppositions to linguistic analysis on levels other than that of phonology is far from being complete. One need hardly say that the present volume does not attempt to be definitive in its treatment of oppositions for lexicological description: quite considerable amount of research has already been done in some directions and very little in many others. Many points remain to be elucidated by future patient study and by collecting reliable factual evidence on which more general conclusions may then be built.

The special interest of contemporary science in methods of linguistic research extends over a period of about thirty years. The present status of principles and techniques in lexicology, although still far from satisfactory, shows considerable progress and an intense development.

The main procedures in use have been described in connection with the subject-matter they serve to investigate. They are the componential analysis, the contextological and valency analysis, analysis into immediate constituents, explanatory transformations based on dictionary definitions and different types of semantic oppositions helping to describe the vocabulary system.

Each of these techniques viewed separately has its limitations but taken together they complete one another, so that each successive procedure may prove helpful where the previous one has failed. We have considered these devices time and again in discussing separate aspects of the vocabulary system. All these are formalized methods in the sense that they replace the original words in the linguistic material sampled for analysis by symbols that can be discussed without reference to the particular elements they stand for, and then state precise rules for the combination and transformation of formulas thus obtained.

It must be emphatically stressed that although the synchronic and diachronic treatments are set apart, and the focal point of interest is the present state of the English vocabulary, these two aspects are not divorced, and the constant development of the whole system is always kept in mind. It must be fully realized that the separation of the two aspects is only an abstraction necessary for heuristic purposes. Secondly, structural methods demand a rigorous separation of levels and a study of language as an autonomous system. This dogmatic thesis placed a burden upon research. In present-day Soviet linguistics the interrelation between different levels as well as between language and extra-linguistic reality is taken as all-important.

Finally, what is especially important, language is a social phenomenon, the language of any society is an integral part of the culture and social life of this society, words recognized within the vocabulary of the language are that part of the language on which the influence of extra-linguistic factors tells in the first place. Much of the semantic incommensurability that exists between languages can be accounted for in terms of social and cultural differences.

Sociolinguistics which is now making great progress is concerned with linguistic differences and with the actual performances of individuals as members of specific speech communities. It concentrates on the correlation of linguistic features with values and attitudes in social life with the status of speakers and listeners in social network. It deals with coexistence in the same individual or the same group of speakers of several linguistic codes, resorted to according to language-use conventions of society, i.e. a more prestigious formal and conservative code is used for official purposes, the other for spontaneous informal conversation. As sociolinguistics is still in its infancy it was possible to include in the present book only a few glimpses of this new branch.

Recent years in Soviet linguistics have undoubtedly seen great progress in lexicology coming from various schools with various aims and methods. It is outside the scope of the present book to reflect them all, it is to be hoped, however, that the student will watch current literature and retrieve the necessary information on points that will interest him.

The modern methods of vocabulary study have emerged from practical concerns, especially those of foreign language teaching, dictionary-making, and recently, from the needs of machine translation and information retrieval. Improvements and expansion in foreign language teaching called forth a new co-operation between didactics and linguistics. In this connection it is well to remember that many eminent linguists devoted a great deal of attention to problems of teaching languages: L.V. Shcherba, L. Bloomfield, Ch. Fries, O. Jespersen, E. Nida wrote monographs on these problems.

There has been a considerable growth of activity in the field of mathematical linguistics. Much of this is connected with computer-aided linguistics. We have attempted to show the usefulness of set-theoretical concepts for the study of vocabulary. We must be on our guard, however, against the idea that an attachment of mathematical symbols and operations to linguistics material will by itself make the statements about it more scientific. The introduction of mathematical apparatus into linguistics is justified only when it is based on a thorough comprehension of linguistic problems involved. Otherwise an indiscriminate introduction of mathematical procedures will be purely ornamental and may even lead to the generation of meaningless results. liven more important and promising, perhaps, is the fact that the penetration of mathematical methods, whether from the theory of sets, adaptive system theory, symbolic logic or mathematical statistics, leads to a more rigorous general approach. We are now hopeful that with the help of cautious and responsible application of some developments in system theory a genuinely scientific lexicology can come into being that will be useful in different branches of applied linguistics.

A fresh departure in the study of language including its vocabulary is the communicative linguistics in which the pragmatic rather than structural approach is used. This new trend relates vocabulary characteristics not only to meanings but to uses and situations and the degree of their formality. Pragmatics concerned with the relations between signs and expressions and their users is steadily gathering momentum penetrating all branches of linguistics. At present, however, this promising trend has hardly begun to take shape.

In more than ten years that have passed since the second edition of this book went to press, the problems of English lexicology have been investigated in a tremendous number of publications. Bringing the bibliography up to date keeping the same degree of comprehensiveness without a great increase in bulk proved impossible. Our debt to numerous works of scholarship had been acknowledged in copious notes and references of the previous editions. Here a basically different approach was chosen: bibliographical footnotes were drastically reduced and the selective list gathered below includes books especially recommended я« further reading. An attempt is made to take account'of modern lexic logical theory as developed in the last decade and also to show the su vival of basic studies translated, updated and published many years after their first edition. (See, for instance, works by K. Baldinger, M. Breal, O. Jespersen.)

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