Ways of enriching and expanding the English lexicon

As has been already mentioned, no vocabulary of any living language is ever stable but is constantly changing, growing and decaying. The changes occurring in the vocabulary are due both to linguistic and non-linguistic causes, but in most cases to the combination of both. Words may drop out altogether as a result of the disappearance of the actual objects they denote some words were ousted¹ as a result of the influence of Scandinavian and French borrowings Sometimes words do not actually drop out but become obsolete, sinking to the level of vocabulary units used in narrow, specialised fields of human intercourse making a group of archaisms: e g. billow — ‘ wave’; welkin — ’sky’; steed — ‘horse’; slay — ‘kill’ are practically never used except in poetry; Yet the number of new words that appear in the language is so much greater than those that drop out or become obsolete, that the development of vocabularies may be described as a process of never-ending growth.² The appearance of a great number of new words and the development of new meanings in the words already available in the language may be largely accounted for by the rapid flow of events, the progress of science and technology and emergence of new concepts in different fields of human activity. It must be mentioned as a noteworthy peculiarity that new vocabulary items in Modern English belong only to the notional parts of speech, to be more exact, only to nouns, verbs and adjectives; of these nouns are most numerous

New vocabulary units are as a rule monosemantic and most of them are marked by peculiar stylistic value — they primarily belong to the specialised vocabulary. Neutral words and phrases are comparatively few. Terms used in various fields of science and technique make the greater part of new words. New vocabulary units are as a rule monosemantic and most of them are marked by peculiar stylistic value — they primarily belong to the specialised vocabulary. Neutral words and phrases are comparatively few. Terms used in various fields of science and technique make the greater part of new words.

Words are a mirror of their times.

40 th appeared words such as: blockbuster, a call-girl, bikini.

50^th: do it yourself, age-bomb

60^th fast-food, pop art, space shuttle

70^th global warming, junk food, chair person

80^th telemarketing, yuppie, website

The end of the 20^th computing, art and music, environment.

Ways of enriching:

Word formation- second to none in the process of voc. replenishment. (pattern and non pattern types).

Pattern types:

c) affixation

d) compounding

1) affixation: abl ism, age ism, workahol ism; rego nomics, globa crat, chap ess, micro- hipo- over-

2) Compounding: home banking, kiss-and-tell, e-mail, e-text, e-money, store-card, meathead.

3) conversion: to box, to cowboy, to greenlight, to office.

4) blending: hoolivan, zootigue, videolog

5) back-formation: goth, teen, hood

6) semantic derivation: returner, answere, antivirus, September people

7) borrowing: French, Japanese, Spanish, Portugese, Russian.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11