Words_about_words_An_introduction_to_Eng

Multi-Word Units in English

cannot occur between the particle and the main verb): call for (John), look at (him), ask for (an invoice), believe in (justice), care for (pets), deal with

(emergencies), refer to (an event), write about (a painter), etc.

Phrasal verbs consist of a main verb and an adverb. They may be either transitive (followed by an object expressed by a noun or a pronoun) – bring up (the matter), look up (a place) - or intransitive (not accompanied by any object) – give in, sit down, shut up, blow up, catch on, stand up, play around, take off. By contrast with prepositional verbs, transitive phrasal verbs may be accompanied by mobile objects. These may occur either after the particle or between the main verb and this, without giving birth to grammatically unacceptable structures: bring up the children / bring the children up, look up the word / look the word up. However, the particle cannot precede personal pronouns: *they switched off it, *roll back this, *sew up it, etc. In the case of intransitive phrasal verbs, normally, the particle cannot be separated from the verb it accompanies – phrases such as brake again down, stand now up, give soon in, etc. are ungrammatical. Nevertheless, particles referring to directions may be modified by intensifiers which split the “verb + particle” sequence: come right back, go

straight ahead, go straight on.

Phrasal-prepositional verbs are a bridge class between the two categories just mentioned. Since they can easily be identified as a consequence of the fact that they have two particles, transitivity is not necessarily considered a distinctive feature on the basis of which these multiword verbs are recognized: check up on (a friend), get away with

(that), stand up for (one’s rights), get on with (Jane), put up with (smokers), give up on (the cinema), get down to (work), jump out at (the

reader), make up to (her), stay away from (danger), keep out of (trouble), etc.

Some prepositional, phrasal and prepositional-phrasal verbs are more idiomatic than others. In the case of multiword verbs such as ask for (“request”), refer to (“talk about”), get in (“enter”), breathe out (“exhale”), divide up (“separate into groups or parts”), lie down (“move into a horizontal position”), stay away from (“avoid”), the individual meanings of the constituents are preserved in the combination and contribute each to its sense. However, in cases such as go into (“investigate”), come by (“obtain”), give in (“surrender”), catch on (“understand”), turn up (“appear”), double up (if two people double up, they share something), pull up (about a vehicle; “slow down and stop”), put up with (“tolerate”), walk out on (“leave somebody suddenly and end the relationship with him / her”), grow away from (“develop different views and opinions”), it is difficult, if not impossible to derive the meaning of the verbal construction from that of its component elements.

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5.4. Binominals

5.4.1. Definition

Binominals are defined by Moon (1998: 152) as “dyads or conjoined pairs, unrestricted as to word class, but normally occurring in fixed order”: Adam and Eve, back and forth, bread and butter, chapter

and verse, cut and paste, demand and supply, fair and square, fish and chips, give and take, ham and eggs, husband and wife, hide and seek, love and marriage, more or less, mother and child, now and then, pen and

pencil, profit and loss, publish or perish, sir or madam, sound and fury, tip to toe, twist and shout, ups and downs, wine and dine, etc.

5.4.2. Characteristics

Many binominals are lexicalized as idiomatic units, i.e. their meaning is not compositional, but holistic, though they may also be used with their literal meaning.

In general, the order of the elements in a binominal is irreversible. In purely compositional binominals, though not theoretically irreversible, obvious tendencies for preferred ordering are displayed. According to Moon (1998: 153), “it is possible to hypothesize rules or at least crude principles from these tendencies”, many of which are, as the author points out, “language and culture-specific. The first item is typically the one considered positive or dominant, or logically prior; in some cases, it is the item considered ‘nearer to home’ or ‘nearer speaker’s viewpoint”. Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 130) characterize this as the “‘me-first’ orientation”. Examples that illustrate this point of view include: profit and loss, home

and abroad, in and out, here and there, life and death, cause and effect, men and women, women and children, etc. Other pairings show a tendency for the shorter or monosyllabic word to occur first: law and order, bed and breakfast, time and money, fruit and vegetables, etc. The norm for pairs made up of male / female counterparts is, in most cases, for the male term to precede (mother and father is probably the most frequently occurring exception to this rule): Mr and Mrs, men and women, boys and girls,

brothers and sisters, etc.

Moon (1998: 154-155) points out (quoting a personal communication with John Sinclair) that many antonymic binominals or conjoined antonyms “have a meaning along the lines of ‘everything’ or ‘no matter what’”. This can be seen in pairs, not always linked with “and”, with conjoined temporals: from cradle to grave, beginning to end, day and night / night and day; spatials and directionals: head to foot, left and right,

search high and low, top to toe, top to bottom, up hill and down dale; and

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other contrastives: by fair means or foul, come rain or shine, flotsam and jetsam, etc.

Some conjoined antonyms, with a dynamic meaning, imply repetition: back and forth, come and go, in and out, on and off, push and pull, stop and start, etc, while others, which can be considered fixed expressions based on antonymic relationships, imply the idea of strong contrast: apples and oranges, chalk and cheese, oil and water. Pairs whose elements are linked with or provide even more obvious contrasted alternatives: feast or famine, black or white, sink or swim, trick or treat,

publish or perish, all or nothing, sooner or later, etc.

Linked synonyms or cases when the same word is repeated inevitably have an emphatic function or emphasis as part of their meaning:

alive and kicking / well, bits and pieces, done and dusted, dead and gone,

fair and impartial, far and away, by leaps and bounds, last will and testament, nooks and crannies, out and out, etc.

Though less numerous than binominals, trinominals, strings of three elements belonging to the same morphological class, linked by a grammatical element and occurring in a fixed order, are also to be mentioned as illustrative as a type of multi word lexical units in English: cool, calm and collected (“not angry or emotional”), lock, stock and barrel

(“everything”), coffee, tea or milk (“a choice of beverage”), here, there and everywhere / hither, thither and yon (“everywhere”), every Tom, Dick and Harry (“anybody”), hook, line and sinker (“without reservation, completely”), a hop, skip and jump (“a short distance”), tall, dark and handsome (about men; “very attractive”), etc.

5.5. Proverbs

5.5.1. Definition

Proverbs – “short, generally known sentences of the folk which contain wisdom, truth, morals and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed and memorizable form and which are handed down from generation to generation” (Mieder 1994: 24) – allow very little variation (if any) and are therefore perceived as ready made units of a language. English is pretty rich in sayings: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, A Jack of all

trades is master of none, Birds of a feather flock together, Don’t judge a book by its cover, Failure is the stepping stone for success, It’s the early

bird that gets the worm, Long absent, soon forgotten, More haste, less speed, etc.

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5.5.2. Characteristics

Beside brevity, proverbs exhibit typical stylistic features such as (some, according to Arora (1984)): metaphor – Life is just a bowl of

cherries, Failure is the stepping stone for success, Laughter is the shortest distance between two people; alliteration – Forgive and forget, Better safe than sorry, In for a penny, in for a pound; parallelism – Nothing ventured,

nothing gained, Easy come, easy go, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; rhyme – When the cat is away, the mice will play, Little strokes fell great oaks, A stitch in time saves nine; ellipsis - Once bitten, twice shy, All hat and no cattle; hyperbole – All is fair in love and war, Give him an inch and he’ll take a yard, A person is king in his home; personification – Hunger is the best cook, Actions speak louder than words; comparison –

Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you’re gonna get, A

woman is like a cup of tea, you’ll never know how strong she is until she boils, etc.

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surprising in these contexts (since such words refer to something that has disappeared from man’s life, they are called historisms). “A similar desire to evoke a former age justifies the use of relative archaisms in circumstances where doing so has political or emotional connotations, or when the official new name of a country, city or province is not generally accepted (such as Persia instead of Iran, Bombay rather than Mumbai, and Madras as the older variant of Chennai). So, a restaurant seeking to conjure up historic associations might prefer to call itself Old Bombay or refer to Persian cuisine, avoiding the employment of the newer place names. A notable contemporary example is the name of the airline Cathay Pacific, which uses the archaic Cathay for China” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaism). In science and technology, fields of continuous and dynamic development, some specialized words or meanings may follow the trend and fall into disuse quite quickly. However, the emotional associations that some of these presuppose have kept them in use, even if within very narrow limits – this is, according to the explanations in Wikipedia, the case of the meaning “radio” that the generation of Brits that lived through the Second World War still associate with the word wireless. Phrases associated with religion, rituals and traditions, though not considered common if they occur in general speech or writing, continue to be used in the circumstances in which they appeared long in the past. “For example, thou shalt and thou shalt not are considered archaic in general use, but being part of the common English translation of the Ten Commandments, they continue to be repeated and used in that context without calling attention to themselves” (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-archaisms.htm). Similarly, the archaic I thee wed is perfectly consonant with a present day wedding ceremony.

6.1.2. Neologisms

“The English language, as the largest and most dynamic collection of words and phrases ever assembled, continues to expand, absorbing hundreds of words annually into its official and unofficial rolls” (Kacirk 2000: 7), so that the “sacrifice” of archaisms finds itself a counterpart in the addition of neologisms to the lexicon. The definition of neologisms as “new words or expressions, or existing words used with new meanings” (Macmillan English Dictionary 2002: 949) has been generally accepted so far. However, more recently, other points of view regarding how neologisms should be defined have also been expressed. One such point of view belongs to the editors of The Oxford Dictionary of New Words (1995: V), S. Tulloch, E. Knowles and J. Elliott. According to them, a neologism is “any word, phrase or meaning which has come to be widely used by the speakers of English or which was in fashion in the 80’s or 90’s”. What follows from this approach to neologisms is that they are not necessarily brand new lexical

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Lexical Strata in English

items or meanings, but rather words, phrases and senses that, at the moment when they occurred in a language (in this case, in English, but in any other language for that matter), had a considerable impact on its users. As Volceanov (1998: 7) points out, British dictionaries of neologisms contain items such as acid rain, dating since 1850, greenhouse effect, born in 1920, misfortuned, first documented in 1881 and the three century-old condom. Such words and phrases are living their “second youth” now, at times when environmental protection and health care are issues on everybody’s lips. Similarly, the Romanian senat, camere parlamentare, interpelare, jandermerie, used initially during the two World Wars, have been brought back into usage recently and may, therefore, be considered neologisms.

Neologisms appear in a language as the result of the evolution of the historical, political, social and cultural context. In the introduction to her report on the evolution of the English vocabulary at the beginning of the second millennium, Susie Dent (2007) highlights the main events and concerns that this time span covered and that played a role in the creation of new words and phrases: the dramatic wars in the Middle East (which were the source of lexical items such as degrading, deconflicting or attriting for “killing in a battle”, unlawful combatant for “prisoner of war”, extraordinary rendition or irregular rendition for “apprehension and transfer of a person from one state to another, the latter frequently a place where torture is practiced”, etc.), “the realities of global warming … and preoccupations with our carbon footprint” (Dent 2007: 3) (reflected at the level of the lexicon in the appearance of new phrases such as carbon budget

– “the sum of all exchanges, inflows and outflows, of carbon compounds by a firm or country”, carbon credit – “a certified carbon dioxide emission displacement credit, supposed to be equal to one ton of CO2 removed from the environment”, carbon offsetting – “investment in a project or activity that reduces greenhouse gas emissions or removes carbon from the atmosphere (eg. solar energy) to compensate for the emissions attributable to another process or activity (eg. an air flight)” – all defined as such in various online dictionaries), the evolution of online technology, the Internet and mobile phones especially (due to which English has enriched with neologisms such as blog – “a web page that serves as an individual’s electronic diary to which pubic access is permitted”, cyberbullying – “the use of e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, cell phones or other forms of information technology to deliberately hares, threaten or intimidate someone”, spam – explained in Wikipedia as “the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately”), the rap and hip-hop music gaining ground outside the Afro-American community (responsible for idioms such as ghostriding the wip - explained in Wikipedia as “when a person puts a vehicle’s transmission in gear, then exits the vehicle while it is still rolling to dance beside it or on the hood or roof” and catching the vapours – “being caught up in someone else’s

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popularity”), and last, but not least, “the rise of a distinct ‘us and them’ mentality which led to a new register of social labels” (Dent 2007: 4) (including words such as chavs – a derogatory term used to describe white teenagers of working class background, who frequently engage in antisocial behaviour, the returning Sloanes – “rich young men and women of the upper class” and U and non-U, for “upper class” and “middle class” respectively, not long ago revived in the context of Prince William’s extensively talked about love relationship with Kate Middleton, a representative of the average social class in Britain).

The linguistic phenomena mainly associated with the creation of neologisms are borrowing and word formation by various techniques. They will be illustrated in what follows with examples selected from Volceanov’s (1998) dictionary of neologisms.

As far as English is concerned, it has recently enriched its vocabulary with loan words from French (aestheticienne – “beautician”, aromatherapy - “a type of health treatment in which nicely smelling oils are rubbed into somebody’s skin to make the person feel relexaed”, ballotin

–“small pacakage”, bustier – “a piece of clothing for women that does fits close to the body and does not cover the shoulders and the arms”, diamantaire – “diamond seller”), Spanish (aficionado – “supporter”, huaquero – “robber of ancient thombs in Chile, Peru and Bolivia”, morcilla

–“a special type of sausages that contain pig blood”, mucho – “much”), Russian (Afghantsi – “former Soviet soldier in Afghanistan”, khozraschrot

–“economic liability”, demokratizatsiya – “process of democratization of society and its institutions”, perestroika – “ample process of social, political and economic reform initiated in 1987 by M. Gorbaciov in the USSR”), German (bedienung – “mention on a bill that the final amount indicated contains the waiter’s tip”, kletten prinzip – “means of supervising hooligans in a crowd so as to prevent their riotous intentions”), Japanese (basho – “traditional Japanese fight championship”, karaoke – “the singing by amateurs of the lyrics of songs against recorded tunes”, mawashi – “the competition attire of sumo fighters”, Nikkei – “index of the relative prices of stocks at the Tokyo Stock Exchange”), Czech (eyelyser – “optical apparatus for measuring the level of alcohol in one’s blood”, colourization – “process of colouring a film initially made in black and white”), Italian (libero – “the last player at the back of the football field”, mascarpone – “Italian cottage cheese”), etc. Borrowing from foreign languages apart, transferring words and phrases from one regional dialect into another has also contributed to the enrichment of the recipient variety with neologisms. Speaking of English, it is the American dialect that has mostly acted as donor to the British one, to which it has lately transferred words and phrases such as: cliffhanger – “TV series of which each episode finishes with a scene full of suspense”, ecodoomster – “supporter of the idea that life on earth will perish as the result of environmental degradation”, Joshua – “test for

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detecting anemia”, oilflation – “inflation caused by the rise in the price of petrol”, tagging – “painting on walls with coloured spray”, etc.

Of the word formation techniques on the basis of which neologisms are created, affixation and compounding seem to be the most productive.

The former may be illustrated by examples such as: biodegradable

–“which decomposes naturally, without harming the environment”, biofuel

–“fuel obtained from organic matters”, depowerment – “the loss by the masses of their capacity to decide upon their own fate”, derecognize – “to retrieve the official recognition of an organization, institution, etc”, deselect

–“to reject, to eliminate, to exclude”, ecopolicy – “the strategy of an environmental movement”, ecorefugee – “person who has left an area in which pollution made living almost impossible”, proactive – “s/he who takes the initiative the first”, pro-choice – “in favour of a woman’s right to opt for abortion”, supercollider – “big and powerful particle accelerator”, supersite – “double-sized advertising hoard”, unplugged – (about musical instruments) “acoustic, without electronic components”, unscoopy – “without sensational news, boring”, unwaged - “unemployed”, etc.

Compounding has lately given birth to words such as: airhead – “beautiful, but stupid woman”, alcohol-abuse – “excessive consumption of alcoholic drinks”, fuzzword – “word with an ambiguous sense, used to impress the interlocutor”, hack-and-slash – “about games, which promotes violence”, lockdown – “period of time when the inmates in a jail are isolated”, middlemarket – “of average quality, meant for middle class consumers”, shoutline – “text printed in italics at the beginning of an advertisement”, etc.

Though most of the English neologisms have come into being by derivation and / or compounding, minor means of word formation have also brought their contribution to the creation of new lexical items in the language under scrutiny. Blending and abbreviation have been especially prolific in this sense. It is due to them that English has recently enriched with words and phrases such as: agitpop – (agitation + pop) “protesting pop music”, fertigation – (fertilize + irrigation) “method of fertilizing the soil by sprinkling it with water in which nutrient substances have been dissolved”, middlescence – (middle age + adolescence, used especially for women) “middle age”; AI – (abb. for “artificial intelligence”), BEM – (abb. for Bug-Eyed Monster) “a monster in science fiction writings”, HINT – (abb. for Happy Idiot News Talk) “stupid discussion between TV news readers”, MAD – (abb. for Mutual Assured Destruction) “theory according to which the launching of a nuclear attack would bring the mutual destruction of the two enemies”, etc.

The examples of neologisms provided in this section have all been quoted from either printed or online dictionaries. However, only few of the newly coined words make it to dictionaries. Many remain as short-lived as the fashion of a certain moment and do not have the chance of becoming entries in reference books. “If only the smallest percentage of new words

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make it into current dictionaries, what are the determining factors in their success?

Very roughly speaking, there are five primary contributors to the survival of a new word: usefulness, user-friendliness, exposure, the durability of the subject it describes, and its potential associations or extensions. If a new word fulfils these robust criteria, it stands a very good chance of inclusion in the modern lexicon” (Dent 2007: 8).

6.2. Synchronic lexical strata

6.2.1. Geographical varieties of English

Undoubtedly, English has exceeded the borders of countries where it is spoken as the official language or one of the official languages and has become the language used globally today, from international trade to the world of politics, from major cultural and scientific events to the worldwide media. The spread of global English may be described in terms of the wellestablished three concentric circles model suggested by Kachru (1989): the

inner circle, the outer circle and the expanding circle.

The inner circle includes the territories where English is the first, official language, even if other languages are also spoken here – the British Isles, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Since, as Crystal (1997: 53) points out, “the USA has nearly 70 per cent of all English mother tongue speakers in the world”, it is American English that will be briefly discussed in what follows (strictly speaking, American English is spoken not only in the USA, but also in Canada and certain parts of the Carribeans)2.

The most influential inner circle variety is characterized by dialects having a more uniform structure than those of British English. Their boundaries “have been significantly affected by the high degree of social and geographical mobility that has characterized American life through successive waves of settlement and immigration” (Davies 2005: 48). As Davies (2005) explains, differences between dialects are more obvious in the East, where the primary settlement took place, while dialects are more homogenous in the West, where immigrants from different areas or speech communities have come together and influenced each other. Originally, the scholars’ belief was that American English dialects may be split into two broad categories: Northern dialects and Southern dialects. The 1930s and 1940s “three-way split between Northern, Midland (subdivided into North and South Midland) and Southern dialects” (Davies 2005: 48) was preserved for about half a century, when Carver’s (1987) research dictated a

2 A look back at the lexical differences between British and American English, as the two major geographical varieties of the language in question, pointed out in chapter two, might be useful here.

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