Colloquial Neutral Literary

kid child infant

daddy father parent

chap fellow associate

Common colloquial vocabulary is represented as overlapping into the standard English vocabulary and is therefore to be considered part of it. It borders both on the neutral vocabulary and on the special colloquial vocabulary which falls out of standard English altogether.

Special literary vocabulary:

a) Terms.

Terms are generally associated with a definite branch of science and therefore with a series of other terms belonging to that particular branch of science. Terms are characterized by a tendency to be monosemantic. They are mostly and predominantly used in special works dealing with the notions of some branch of science. Therefore it may be said that they belong to the scientific style. But their use is not confined to this style. They may as well appear in other styles - in newspaper style, in publicistic style, in the belles-lettres style and practically in all other existing styles. But their function in this case changes. They no longer fulfil their basic function, that of bearing an exact reference to a given notion or concept. The function of terms, if encountered in other styles, is either to indicate the technical peculiarities of the subject with, or to make some reference to the

occupation of a character whose language would naturally contain special words and expressions.

There is an interesting process going on in the development of any language. With the increase of general education and the expantion of technique to satisfy the ever-growing needs and desires of mankind, many words that were once terms have gradually lost their qualities as terms and have passed into the common literary vocabulary. This process may be called "de-terminization" (radio, television).

A term has a stylistic function when it is used to create an atmosphere or to characterize a person through his calling and his consequent mode of expression. Sometimes terms are used with a satirical function.

b) Poetic and Highly Literary Words

Poetic words are used primarily in poetry. Poetic language has special means of communication, i.e. rhythmical arrangement, some syntactical peculiarities and a certain number of special words.

Poetic words in an ordinary environment may also have a satirical function.

Poetical words and set expressions make the utterance understandable only to a limited number of readers.

c) Archaic Words

Words change their meaning and sometimes drop out of the language altogether. New words spring up and replace the old ones. Some words stay in the language a very long time and do not lose their faculty of gaining new meanings and becoming richer and richer polysemantically. Other words live but a short time and disappear.

There are three stages in the aging process of words:

The beginning of the aging process when the word becomes rarely used. Such words are called obsolescent, i.e., they are in the stage of gradually passing out of general use. To this category first of all belong morphological forms belonging to the earlier stages in the development of the language. In the,English language these are the pronouns той and its forms thee, thy and itiirie; the corresponding verbal ending -est; the ending - (e) th instead of - (e) s and the pronoun ye.

The second group of archaic words are those that have already gone completely out of use but are still recognized by the English speaking community: e.g. nay (- 'no'). These words are called obsolete, і^ч**-*^

The third group, which may be called archaic proper, are words which are no longer recognizable in modern English, words that were in use in Old English and which have either dropped out of the language entirely or have changed in their appearance so much that they have become unrecognizable, e.g. troth (='faith').

Archaic words are primarily used in the creation of a realistic background to historical novels. The function of archaic words and constructions in official documents is terminological in character. They are used here because they help to

maintain that exactness of expression so necessary in this style. Archaic words and particularly archaic forms of words are sometimes used for satirical purposes.

d) Barbarisms and Foreign Words

In the vocabulary of the English language there is a considerable layer of words called barbarisms. These are words of foreign origin which have not entirely been assimilated into the English language. Most of them have corresponding English synonyms; e.g. chic = 'stylish '.

e) Literary Coinages (Including Nonce-words)

Every period in the development of a language produces an enormous number of new words or new meanings of established words. Most of them do not live long. They are not meant to live long. They are coined for use at the moment of speech, and therefore possess a peculiar property - that of temporariness. The given word or meaning holds only in the given context and is meant only to "serve the occasion".

The first type of newly coined words, i.e. those which designate new-born concepts, may be named terminological coinages or terminological neologisms. The second type, i.e. words coined because their creators seek expressive utterance may be named stylistic coinages or stylistic neologisms.

Many new coinages disappear entirely from the language, leaving no mark of their even brief existence. Other literary neologisms leave traces in the vocabulary because they are fixed in the literature of their time. This is not the case with colloquial coinages. These are spontaneous, and due to their linguistic nature, cannot be fixed.

Most of the literary-bookish coinages are built by means of affixation and word compounding.

Another type of neologism is the nonce-word, i.e. a word coined to suit one particular occasion. (/ am wived in Texas, and mother-in-lawed, and uncled, and aunted, and cousined within an inch of my life.).

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23