Words_about_words_An_introduction_to_Eng

Word Formation

cutting, beating or knocking down”), lie – lay (“to put or set down”). Verbs have also been turned into nouns by deflection: bleed – blood; break –

breach; feed – food; sing – song; speak – speech.

Ablaut combinations illustrating the voiced – voiceless consonant alternation include: advise – advice; prove – proof; devise – device;

believe – belief.

3.6.6. Change of accent

By this mechanism, in a pair made up of a noun and its homograph verb, the two elements (generally, of Romance origin) differ from one another by distinctive accent. Thus, the noun accent is stressed on the first syllable, while its corresponding verb is stressed on the second syllable. Such pairs of words are pretty numerous in English: ‘attribute – a’ttribute,

‘torment – tor’ment, ‘contract – con’tract, ‘import – im’port, ‘permit – per’mit, ‘present – pre’sent.

3.6.7. Abbreviation

At least two things may be understood by abbreviation: the reduction of a word to several letters and the reduction of a group of words designating a notion to the initials of these words.

According to Tătaru (2002), the former is due to the discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation in English, as well as “to the unusual length of some words as against the majority of the other words, especially those in the basic word stock” (Tătaru 2002: 91). It is a phenomenon that is quite frequent in English, especially in its American variety, and it tends to become very productive. Examples of words abbreviated by reduction to several letters in their structure include: brolly for umbrella, hanky for

handkerchief, nighty for nightgown or p.j’s for pyjamas.

The latter type of abbreviation is extremely productive in Modern English. Some words obtained by reduction to the initial letters of the component elements of a multi-word notion have become so common in the language that speakers do not recognize or do not know what these abbreviations stand for. Some of them are pretty transparent (UFO –

unidentified flying object, NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization), while others require a scientist’s knowledge to be traced back to what they stand for (HTML – hypertext mark-up language, http – hypertext transfer

– or transport – protocol).

There are several ways in which these abbreviations may be read:

• by pronouncing the letters connected as if they formed a word proper: AIDS – Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Nasdaq –

The National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, laser – light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific and

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Words about Words

Cultural Organisation. When abbreviations are pronounced this way, they are known as acronyms;

•by pronouncing the letters in their structure in isolation: pm –

post meridian, MP – Member of the Parliament, B&B – bed and breakfast, bpi – bits per inch;

•by reading the word of group of words that has been abbreviated:

dr, Ms. Mr., BTW (by the way), Mt. (mount), St. (saint), Rd. (road).

Abbreviations from Latin that have an international character are found in English as well, both in the everyday and in the specialized language: am – ante meridian, i.e. – id est (that is), e.g. – exempli gratia

(for example), ap. – apud (according to), sup. – supra (above), etc.

3.6.8. Alphanumerics

Alphanumerics are a special case of abbreviations – combinations of letters and numbers - which have gained in importance with the advance of the email and the SMS language, due to the fact that they meet the requirements of reduced space and expedient communication. They have penetrated the language of advertising as well, since they are striking and informal at the same time. Alphanumerics are to be read component by component, being based on homophony with other words in the language. Examples include: CUL8R (see you later), BU (be you), 4U (for you), D8 (date), CU2NITE (see you tonight). Alphanumerics combine with abbreviation to letters in words such as B2B (business-to-business), B2C

(business-to-consumer).

3.6.9. Eponyms

Eponyms are words derived from proper names. If considered from the point of view of the morphological class to which they belong, eponyms are best represented by nouns. They are the most numerous, more so than adjectives and verbs put together.

As demonstrated by Brook (1981), the sources that gave English proper names that became eponyms are extremely varied.

Many of them have passed into the language from names in the Greek and Roman mythology, some as derivatives. Antropos was, for example, one of the three Fates who had the task of cutting the thread of life to the required length. Atropine, the eponym derived from it, became a picturesque term for the poisonous substance found in the deadly nightshade. Another word derived from Greek legends is procrustean, meaning “tending to produce uniformity by violent methods”. Its origin lies in the name of a violent robber of Attica, Procrustes, who used to stretch or amputate his victims to make them fit his bed. Eros, the Greek god of love has given erotic, while hermetic is derived from Hermes, a versatile god

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Word Formation

whose responsibilities included alchemy. It is used today mainly in the phrase hermetic seal, to refer to an airtight closure that alchemists initially made use of. From Roman mythology, English has cereal, derived from Ceres, the name of the goddess of agriculture. The name of Cupid, the god of love, is clearly related to cupidity. Fortuna, the goddess of chance as a power in human affairs, gave fortune, while Gratia, one of the three goddess sisters who bestowed beauty and charm, gave grace.

Literature (both British or American and worldwide) was another rich source of eponyms. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was the origin of Man Friday, sometimes meaning “an aboriginal”, but also “a cheerful, hardworking and versatile assistant”. Brook (1981: 41) suggests that “the phrase has become so much a part of [our] language that newspapers sometimes contain advertisements from would-be employers of Girl Fridays”. Gargantuan, meaning “enormous” comes from Gargantua, Rabelais’ giant character in La Vie tres horrifique of Grand Gargantua, while quixotic is well established in English to denote people, ideas or plans that are not practical and rarely succeed, by analogy with Cervantes’ Don Quixote, a generous, but unworldly and self-deluding character, in the book by the same name.

The names of real life persons which have evolved into common nouns in English may be grouped into a few quite large categories.

Many names of flowers have been formed by derivation with the suffix –ia from the name of the botanist who discovered them or of someone the explorer wanted to honour. Examples include well-known words such as begonia after Michel Begon, an administrator in the West Indies who discovered the flower, dahlia, after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl, forsythia after the English botanist William Forsyth, lobelia after the Flemish botanist Matthias de Lobel and magnolia, named by Linnaeus in honour of Pierre Magnol, a French physician.

Products have often preserved the name of their inventors. Bakelite is a synthetic resin invented by a Flemish chemist named Leo Baekeland. The chesterfield, a sofa with padded seat, arms and back, was named after a nineteenth century Earl of Chesterfield, while the bunsen burner, a piece of equipment that produces a gas flame and is used in laboratories, received its name from Robert Wilhelm von Bunsen.

In electrical engineering, the names of various measurement units are taken from the names of the scientist who first used them. The most familiar are volt, the unit of electric force, from Count Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist, watt, the unit of power, from James Watt, a Scottish engineer, and amp, the unit of electric power, from Andre Amper, a French scientist. Others, less frequently used in everyday language, are ohm, the unit of resistance, from the German physicist Georg Simon Ohm, and coulomb, the unit of electric charge, from the French engineer Charles de Coulomb.

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The item invented may be very simple, but, if it proves useful, its name spreads quickly into the common language. Sandwich is derived from the name of the Earl of Sandwich, a keen gambler who is said to have once spent a whole day and night at the gaming-table, eating nothing else but pieces of meat placed in between two small slices of bread. Articles of dress may derive their names from those of famous people who once wore them. Thus, the raglan, a kind of overcoat without shoulder seams, was named after the commander of the British forces in the Crimean War, Baron Raglan. The Earl of Cardigan gave his name to the cardigan, a knitted woolen jacket buttoned at the front. The wellingtons, knee-high rubber waterproof boots, took their name from that of the Duke of Wellington.

Place names have been as productive as people names in contributing to the enrichment of English with eponyms. They may be recognized as the origin of the names of various wines and varieties of cheese. Examples include chablis, made near the small town of Chablis, burgundy, from the ancient province of Burgundy, champagne, originally the sparkling beverage made in the region of Champagne, now any kind of beverage made according to the initial Champagne method, gorgonzola, the cheese originally made in the town by this name in Lombardy, camembert, deriving its name from that of a village in France and cheddar, which acquired its name from that of the village where it was first made, Cheddar, in Somerset.

Finally, (though this is not a comprehensive approach, as extensive as it may be), breeds of dogs are frequently named after their real or supposed places of origin. Thus, the alsacian comes from Alsace, the dalmatian, from the Dalmatian Coast and the saint bernard from the Hospice of the Great St. Bernard, a pass in the Alps.

Words formed from proper names may behave just like the rest of the lexical items in the vocabulary of English. They may undergo shortening as in strad for Stradivarius and they may serve as the basis for derivatives, as in macadamize, from the root macadam, an eponym connected to the name of John Macadam, the inventor of the pavement with cubic stones. Eponyms may also be blended with other words, as in gerrymander, meaning “to divide a region in which people vote in a way that gives a particular political group an unfair advantage”. The word is a blend of salamander with gerry, from Elbridge Gerry, who, at a certain moment, used this device to make sure that the Republicans remained in power in Massachusetts.

Some of the types of eponyms discussed here will be mentioned in the chapter dedicated to word meaning, more exactly, to metonymy, as an instance of transfer of meaning. Justifiably, transfers such as the use of the name of the inventor for the thing invented or that of the place name for the product coming from there are considered by some linguists kinds of metonymy.

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Word Formation

3.6.10. Nonce words

There are words in English, as in any other language, that have been coined by various users (fiction writers and journalists especially) but are not yet accepted by the whole English speaking community. These are called nonce words.

Diachronically, nonce words may remain just a fashion of the moment and drop out of use or they may come to enter the accepted vocabulary and be mentioned in dictionaries. This was the case of words attributed to Shakespeare such as auspicious, to accost (somebody), to

dwindle, nayward, dauntless.

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Word Meaning

successive elements. The principle is based on the fact that the speakers of a language cannot produce a multitude of sounds at the same time.

To summarize, for Saussure, the linguistic sign is a binary mental entity, abstracted both from its users and from the extra-linguistic object denoted by it. However, if the object in reality the linguistic sign refers to plays no role in Saussure’s theory, it does in the triadic model developed by Ogden and Richards (1923).

4.2. Ogden and Richards’ “Semiotic Triangle”

The model of the linguistic sign developed by Ogden and Richards (1923) is represented below:

THOUGHT or REFERENCE

SYMBOL (“word”) stands for (“thing”) REFERENT

The “semiotic triangle”, the “triangle of signification” or the “referential triangle”, as it is called in the literature, suggests that there is no direct relationship between the word or the symbol and the extra-linguistic thing or the referent it denotes (this is indicated by the dotted line connecting them). The two are linked indirectly, by means of the abstract thought or reference in our brains (“reference” is used by Ogden and Richards in a different way than in most of the more recent linguistic theories, where it denotes either the relationship between a full linguistic sign and an extralinguistic referent, or the action of a speaker / writer referring to an extra-linguistic object by means of a linguistic sign). According to Ogden and Richards, there is then no direct relationship between the word or the symbol dog and a particular class of living beings or a specific element of this class. They stress the point that the meaning of the linguistic symbol (sign), as a concept or thought, has to be clearly distinguished from the extra-linguistic object denoted by it. Words, as linguistic signs, are therefore indirectly related to extra-linguistic referents.

Saussure’s binary model is thus expanded into the three-sided model of the semiotic triangle, which, however, still excludes the users of the linguistic sign – the speaker / writer and the hearer / reader. In 1934, Karl Buhler gave the model of the linguistic sign a pragmatic dimension and included the two in the theory.

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4.3. Bühler’s “Organon Model”

Bühler’s theory, following Plato, who sees language as a tool (“organon”) is represented in a simplified form in the diagram below (cf Lipka 2002: 58):

Fig. 1. Bühler’s “Organon Model”

The picture above has to be understood in the following way. The sign in the center links a sender (normally, the speaker) with an addressee (normally, the hearer) and the represented objects and relations. The connecting lines between the sign and the three elements just mentioned symbolize the three most important functions of the complex linguistic sign, i.e. of the language: expression (also called “the emotive function”), representation (also called “the referential function”) and appeal (also called “the conative / vocative function”). The linguistic sign, as an instrument, is an expression of the sender (speaker or writer) who uses it to appeal to the addressee (hearer or reader). At the same time, it serves for the representation of objects, states of affairs and relations, i.e. for the representation of extra-linguistic referents.

As an expression of the speaker or writer, in other words, being dependent on the sender, the linguistic sign is, according to Buhler (1934), a “symptom”. Because of its correlation with an extra-linguistic referent, it is also a “symbol”. Seen from the point of view of its relation to an addressee, whose behaviour it is meant to direct and control, the sign is, finally, “a signal”. These three approaches to the linguistic sign may be

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Word Meaning

correlated with the language functions suggested by Buhler in the following way:

4.4. Word meaning

The discussion of the three successive models above hinted at aspects connected to word meaning. Word meaning is a pretty controversial issue in linguistics, which has been dedicated thousands of pages to and has been approached from hundreds of angles. It is beyond the scope of this book to attempt at summarizing the available theories of meaning. However, instead of going into the intricacies of the various aspects of meaning, a concise overview of the most common terms associated with word meaning would be useful. Denotation, reference, sense and connotation will be considered in what follows.

4.4.1. Denotation and reference

The relation of denotation links a lexeme, as it was defined in the introductory chapter, with a whole class of extra-linguistic objects. As Lyons (1977: 207) puts it, the denotation of a lexeme is “the relationship that holds between that lexeme and persons, things, places, properties, processes and activities external to the language system”. He uses the term “denotatum” “for the “class of objects, properties, etc., to which the expression correctly applies” (Lyons 1977: 207).

The linguist characterizes the denotatum of the word cow, for example, as a particular class of animals and adds that the individual animals in this class are its denotata. He further points out that the denotation of a lexeme is independent of the concrete context of an utterance. However, expressions such as the cow, John’s cow, those three cows over there may be used to establish a relationship of reference with individual elements in the class generally denoted by cow as their referents (the reference of the above expressions containing cow is partly determined by the denotation of the lexeme cow in English). Reference is thus defined as “the relationship which holds between an expression and what that expression stands for on particular occasions of its utterance” (Lyons 1977: 174). Since, for Lyons, reference depends on concrete utterances and not on abstract sentences, it follows that single lexemes cannot be related to extralinguistic objects by means of reference, or, to put it in his own words, “reference … is an utterance-dependent notion. Furthermore, … it is not

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generally applicable in English to single word-forms; and it is never applicable to lexemes” (Lyons 1977: 176).

Lyons’ use of the term “reference” is summarized and illustrated by Lipka (2002: 75) as follows:

Fig. 2. Lyon’s use of the term “reference”

4.4.2. Denotation and sense

Denotation having been defined following Lyons, for consistency of approach, I shall introduce the notion of “sense” according to his views as well. Thus, initially, he (1968: 427) defined the sense of a word as “its place in a system of relationships which it contracts with other words in the vocabulary”. Later, still regarding sense from a relational perspective, he redefines it as the relationship which holds between “the words or expressions of a single language independently of the relationship, if any, which holds between those words or expressions and their referents or denotata” (Lyons 1977: 206). What we understand from here is that sense is a language-internal relationship, bearing no connection with the extralinguistic world.

Both individual lexemes and larger expressions have denotation and sense, while only the latter have reference. As Jackson and Amvela (2007: 66) explain, “the sense of an expression is a function of the sense of the lexemes it contains and their occurrences in a particular grammatical construction. The sense of the word table will vary in the following sentences: ‘Don’t put your feet on the table!’ and ‘It will be finalized under the table.’”

A comparison between denotation and sense indicates that the two are equally basic relationships that are dependent on each other. According to Lyons (1977: 210), there are some words which do not have denotation, i.e. they cannot be associated with a class of real objects, but, nevertheless, have sense, i.e. they establish relationships with the other words in the language system. This is the case of the word unicorn, which Lyons (1977: 210) illustrates by suggesting the following pairs of sentences:

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