Файл: Базисные категории методики. Дидактические и методические принципы и содержание обучения иностранному языку в школе.docx

Each of them has a property it shares with all the subgroups within the layer.

This common property which unites different groups of words within the layer may be called its aspect.

The aspect of the literary layer is its markedly bookish character that makes it more or less stable.

The aspect of the colloquial layer is its lively spoken character that makes it unstable (fleeting).

The aspect of the neutral layer is its universal character. It can be employed in all styles of human activity. This layer is considered as the most stable of all.

The literary layer consists of the groups of words accepted as the legitimate members of the English vocabulary. They have no local or dialectal character. Literary stratum serves to satisfy communicative demands of official, scientific poetic messages.

The colloquial layer of words as qualified in most English or American dictionaries is not infrequently limited to a definite language community or confined to a special locality where it circulates. This stratum is employed in non-official everyday communication. 

Though there is no immediate correlation between the written and the oral forms of speech on the one hand, and the literary and colloquial words, on the other, yet, for the most part, the first ones are mainly observed un the written form, as most literary messages appear in writing. And vice versa: though there are many examples of colloquialisms in writing (informal letters, diaries, social-net messages), their usage is associated with the oral form of communication. Consequently, taking for analysis printed materials we shall find literary words in authorial speech, descriptions, considerations, while colloquialisms will be observed in the types of discourse, simulating (copying) everyday oral communication – i.e. dialogue (or interior monologue) of a prose work.

The literary vocabulary distinguishes between the following groups of words:

1. 
   Common literary;
   
2. 
   Terms and learned words;
   
3. 
   Poetic words;
   
4. 
   Archaic words;
   
5. 
   Barbarisms and foreign words
   
6. 
   Literary coinages including nonce-words.
   

The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups:

1. 
   Slang;
   
2. 
   Jargonisms;
   
3. 
   Professional words;
   
4. 
   Dialectal words;
   
5. 
   Vulgar words;
   
6. 
   Common colloquial words;
   
7. 
   Colloquial coinages.
   

The common literary, neutral and common colloquial words are grouped under the term – Standard English vocabulary. Other groups in the literary layer are regarded as special vocabulary (or special literary and special non-literary vocabulary).

Neutral words forming the bulk of the English vocabulary are used in both literary and colloquial language. Neutral words are the main source of synonyms and polysemy. Neutral stock is so prolific of new meanings and the wealth of this layer is often overlooked. This is due to their inconspicuous character but their power for generating new stylistic variants is amazing.  

Unlike the other groups, the neutral group of words can’t be considered as having a special stylistic colouring, while both literary and colloquial words have a definite stylistic colouring.

Common literary words are chiefly used in writing and the so-called “polished” speech. One can always feel whether the word is literary or not. The reason lies in certain objective features of the given layer.

The following row of synonyms illustrates the relations existing between the neutral, literary and colloquial words in the English vocabulary.

Colloquial                            Neutral                         Bookish

kid                                      child                             infant

daddy                                  father                           parent

chap                                     fellow                         associate

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get out                                    go away                         retire

go on                                    continue                       proceed

go ahead                                begin                         commence

There is no doubt that these synonyms are not only stylistic but ideographic as well because there is a definite though slight semantic difference between them, but this is almost always the case with synonyms.

There are only a few absolute synonyms in English just in any other language. The main distinction between synonyms remains stylistic. But stylistic difference may be of different kinds: is may lie in the emotional tension connoted in a word, or in the sphere of application or in the degree of the quality denoted.

Colloquial words are always more emotionally coloured than literary ones.The neutral stratum of words, as the term itself implies, has no degree of emotiveness.

Both literary and colloquial words have their upper and lower ranges. The lower range of the literary words approaches the neutral layer and has a tendency to pass into this layer.

The distinctive lines between the common colloquial and neutral on the one hand, and common literary and colloquial on the other hand are blurred. It is here that the process of interpretation of stylistic stratum becomes most apparent.

The neutral vocabulary may be viewed as the invariant of the Standard English Vocabulary. The stock of words forming the neutral stratum should be regarded as an abstraction. The words of this are generally deprived of any associations and refer to the concept more or less directly.

Synonyms of neutral words, both colloquial and literary assume a far greater degree of concreteness. Sometimes an impact of a definite kind on the reader is the aim lying behind the choice of a colloquial or a literary words rather than neutral words.

The difference in the stylistic aspect of words may colour the whole of an utterance. In the following example belonging to the pen of a famous British writer B. Shaw the difference between the common colloquial vocabulary is clearly seen.

DORA: Oh, I’ve let it out! But he is the right sort: I can see that. You won’t let it out downstairs, old man, will you?

JUGGINS: the family can rely on my absolute discretion. (Fanny’s First Play)

The words in Juggin’s answer are on the borderline between common literary and neutral X words used by Dora are clearly common colloquial not bordering neutral.
When classifying some speech/text fragment as literary or colloquial it does not imply that the words constituting it have a corresponding stylistic meaning. More than that: words with a pronounc4ed stylistic connotation are few in any type of discourse. The overwhelming majority of its lexis being neutral.  Academician L.V. Shcherba gave a perfect observation that “a stylistically coloured word is like a drop of paint added to a glass of pure water band colouring the whole of it”. 

26. 
    Grouping of words: word-families, lexico-semantic, fields (LSF); thematic groups
    

Word-families. A group of words that share a common base to which different prefixes and suffixes are added. For example, members of the word family based on the headword work include rework, worker, working, workshop, and workmanship, among others.

Words describing different sides of one and the same general notion are united in a lexico-semantic group if: a) the underlying notion is not too generalized and all-embracing, like the notions of “time”, “life”, “process”; b) the reference to the underlying is not just an implication in the meaning of lexical unit but forms an essential part in its semantics.

Thus, it is possible to single out the lexico-semantic group of names of “colours” (e.g. pink, red, black, green, white); lexico-semantic group of verbs denoting “physical movement” (e.g. to go, to turn, to run) or “destruction” (e.g. to ruin, to destroy, to explode, to kill).

Thematic group.Classification of vocabulary items into thematic groups is based on the co-occurrence of words in certain repeatedly used contexts.

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In linguistic contexts co-occurrence may be observed on different levels. On the level of word-groups the word question, e.g., is often found in collocation with the verbs raise, put forward, discuss, etc., with the adjectives urgent, vital, disputable and so on. The verb accept occurs in numerous contexts together with the nouns proposal, invitation, plan and others.

As a rule, thematic groups deal with contexts on the level of the sentence (or utterance). Words in thematic groups are joined together by common contextual associations within the framework of the sentence and reflect the interlinking words, e.g. tree-grow-green; journey-train-taxi-bags-ticket or sun-shine-brightly-blue-sky, is due to the regular co-occurrence of these words in similar sentences. Unlike members of synonymic sets or semantic fields, words making up a thematic group belong to different parts of speech and do not possess any common denominator of meaning.

Contextual associations formed by the speaker of a language are usually conditioned by the context of situation which necessitates the use of certain words. When watching a play, e.g., we naturally speak of the actors who act the main parts, of good (or bad) staging of the play, of the wonderful scenery and so on. When we go shopping it is usual to speak of the prices, of the goods we buy, of the shops, etc. (In practical language learning thematic groups are often listed under various headings, e.g. At the Theatre, At School, Shopping, and are often found in text-books and courses of conversational English).

26. 
    Homonymy: homonyms, homographs, homophones
    

The words homonym, homophone, and homograph are grammatical terms that are easy to confuse with one another because their meanings are all closely related, so let’s go through each one of them and see what the differences are.

What is a Homonym?

The term homonym is a somewhat ambiguous term if you are looking to contrast it with homographs and homophones. The prefix of the word homo is Greek and means “same,” and the root of the word onym means “name.” The literal translation would be “same name” or “same word.”

The next logical question to ask then is when talking about words, what should be used to define their names? Should it be their spelling or their pronunciation? The answer, of course, is that both should be taken into consideration.

Homonyms, therefore, are defined as two or more words that share the same spelling, or the same pronunciation, or both, but have different meanings. In this sense, homonyms are sort of an overarching umbrella that homographs and homophones both fall under. If you are speaking about homonyms, you are speaking broadly about words with different meanings but similar spellings or sounds. If you are talking about homographs or homophones, you are talking about a more specific word set underneath the homonym label.

What is a Homograph?

A homograph is one of two or more words that are spelled alike but not necessarily pronounced alike and have different meanings. This usually arises from two words having different origins.

We can see many homographs when we compare a word’s noun and verb meanings to each other. For instance, take the words “bear” and “bear.” Bear, when acting as a noun, stands for a large, heavy mammal. When used as a verb, bear can to carry, convey, and endure, among other things.

Homographs are not limited to noun-verb differences, however. A homograph can be any two or more words with the same spelling but different meanings.

Take the noun “bank.” In one instance, “bank” can mean a place where money is kept, but, in another instance, “bank” can also mean a pile of dirt or rocks designs to hold back water (embankment, river bank, etc.).

Or take the adjective “biweekly”. In one instance, “biweekly” means every two weeks. In another instance, it means twice a week.

Another good set of homographs are the two nouns “bow” and “bow.” One refers to the front of a ship, and one refers to a weapon. Or perhaps you had the know that is tied in mind. These words have different meanings and different pronunciations, but they are spelled exactly the same.

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What is a Homophone?

A homophone is one of two or more words that are pronounced the same but differ in their meaning, origin, or spelling. The difference between homographs and homophones is that homophones must be pronounced alike. They don’t need to be spelled alike; in fact, many of them are not. But they need to be pronounced the same.

There are many many examples of homophones. Some are new and knew, carat and caret, complement and compliment, to, too, and two, there, their, and they’re, etc.

To sum up,

1. 
   Homonyms can refer to both homographs and homophones.
   
2. 
   Homographs are words that are spelled alike but not always pronounced the same.
   
3. 
   Homophones are words that are pronounced alike but not always spelled the same.
   

26. 
    Lexicology. The branches of Lexicology
    

Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that analyzes the lexicon of a specific language. A word is the smallest meaningful unit of a language that can stand on its own, and is made up of small components called morphemes and even smaller elements known as phonemes, or distinguishing sounds. Lexicology examines every feature of a word – including formation, spelling, origin, usage, and definition.

Lexicology also considers the relationships that exist between words. In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is composed of lexemes, which are abstract units of meaning that correspond to a set of related forms of a word. Lexicology looks at how words can be broken down as well as identifies common patterns they follow.

Lexical semantics studies meanings of words, in other words, the content, information rendered by lexical units.

Semasiology is a branch of semantics that is concerned with the meaning of words and phrases, used in nomination, studies the types of meaning, the change of meaning, the semantic structure of words, semantic groupings, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, etc. So semasiology studies what it is the name points out. For instance, the word star has two meanings ‘celestial object’ & ‘celebrity’.

Terminologically semasiology is opposed to onomasiology which studies nomination, or means and ways of naming the elements.The theory of nomination has to show how the objects receive their names and what features are chosen to represent them. Onomasiology is a branch of semantics which studies the process of naming and lexical objectification of notions. For example, some extralinguistic properties of the phenomenon led to the onomatopoeic nomination to sizzle.

Word formation studies all possible ways of the formation of new words and models according to which new words are built. For example, nowadays suffixation is a highly productive way of word formation: singlehood, nationhood, leaflet, flatlet, stardom, fandom, oldster, bankster.

Phraseology studies set-expressions with transferred meaning or phraseological units such as a bull in a china shop, a lame duck, stick and carrot policy, a pipe dream.

Etymology studies the origin of words. For example, the noun beggar was borrowed from Old French and the verb to beg appeared in the English language as a result of back derivation by analogy with worker and work.

Lexicography – an applied branch – deals with science of compiling dictionaries.

There are two principal approaches to the study of language material in linguistic science, namely the synchronic (or descriptive) and the diachronic (or historical) approach. The study of a language at a certain period of its development is called a synchronicone. The study of historical development of language elements is called 

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diachronic. According to the synchrony/ diachrony criteria English lexicology correspondingly falls into historical lexicology which studies the origin and development of the English vocabulary, and descriptive lexicology of Modern English, which studies the vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development.

Contrastive and comparative lexicology study the correlation between the lexical units of two or more languages. The aim of such studies is to find out the correspondences between the vocabulary units of the languages under comparison. The difference between the comparative and contrastive studies is as follows:

- the comparative lexicology aims to find both similarity and difference in two or more languages, while the contrastive lexicology aims at finding differences in the native and foreign languages;

- the comparative lexicology compares the lexical subsystems of the languages under study, while the contrastive lexicology compares one language unit of the native language with all possible ways of its expression in the foreign language, or vice versa.

Contrastive lexicology establishes how many lingual units of language B are equivalent to the lingual unit of language A. For example, one lingual unit of language A corresponds to two lingual units of language B: рука – hand, arm; girl – девочка,девушка.

Let’s compare the word книгаand its English equivalent book.Only one collocation of the English word book is equivalent to Russianкнига, which is a book on/about birds – книгаожизниптиц. The rest of the meanings of the word book correlate with words other than книга, cf. a reference book – справочник, a ration book – карточки, to do the books – вестисчета, our order books are full – мыбольшенепринимаемзаказов, to be in smb’s good/bad books – бытьнахорошем/плохомсчету, I can read her like a book – явижуеёнасквозь, we must stick to/go by the book – надодействоватьпоправилам, I’ll take a leaf out of your book – япоследуютвоемупримеру, Не was brought to book for that – заэтоегопривлекликответу. The same concerns Russian-English word pairs: закрытый – closed, закрытоезаседание – private meeting, закрытоеголосование – secret ballot, закрытоепомещение – indoors.

Knowledge of lexicology promotes systemic and successive comprehension of the peculiarities of foreign language words as compared with the native words. One can indicate discrepancies in the semantic structure, take into consideration peculiarities of collocation, morphological structure, show specific features of synonymic usage, provide for the stylistic characteristics. All mentioned things help to avoid literal translation and employ the deliberate language acquisition.

26. 
    Linguistics. General Linguistics. Branches of Linguistics
    

What is linguistics?

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguistics aims to understand how the language faculty of the mind works and to describe how language itself works. Linguists observe patterns within a language and across languages to try to understand what principles drive our brains’ comprehension and production of language.

There’s a quote by Lynne Murphy that “asking a linguist how many languages s/he speaks is like asking a doctor how many diseases s/he has had”. As linguists, languages (and language) are our objects of study. We learn to look at languages as data and recognize their patterns, just as doctors learn to recognize signs and symptoms of diseases. Whether they have had the disease before or not is irrelevant. Many people come to linguistics from other areas: math, computer science, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science, just to name a few popular related fields.

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