Transference of meaning.

Metaphor is the transference of name based on the association of similarity between two referents and thus is actually a hidden comparison. Models of metaphorical transference:

-similarity of shape, e.g. the head of a cabbage, the nose of a plane etc;

- similarity of colour, e.g. orange for colour and fruit, black despair etc.;

-similarity of function, e.g. the wing of a plane, the hand of a clock etc.;

-similarity of age, e.g. a green man etc.;

-similarity of position, e.g. the leg of the table, the foot of a hill etc.;

- similarity of behaviouror qualities of animals, e.g. a bookworm, a pig, a rat etc.;

-similarity in temperature, e.g. cold reason, warm heart etc.;

-transition of proper names into common nouns, e.g. a Rockefeller, a Cinderella, a Judas, a Don Juan, an Adonis etc.

Metonymy is the transference of name based on the association of contiguity (суміжність). Models of metonymical transference:

-the part the whole (synecdoche), e.g. to be all ears;

-the place people occupying it, e.g. The White House, The Pentagon;

-the material the object made from it, e.g. a glass, an iron;

-the container the thing contained, e.g. the kettle is boiling;

-a geographical name a common noun, e.g. madeira, bourbon, champagne, sardine, labrador;

-the instrument the agent, e.g. the best pens of the day;

-the sign the thing signified, e.g. gray hair ‘old age’;

-the symbol the thing symbolised, e.g. the crown ‘the monarchy’.

25. Traditional lexicological groupings of words: thematic and ideographic groups, lexicosemantic groups, semantic fields.

A word-family is a set of words that all share a common root, e.g. graceful, ungraceful, gracefulness, to disgrace, disgracefully, disgraceful, disgrace, disgracefulness, gracelessly, graceless etc.

A thematic group is a subsystem of the vocabulary for which the basis of grouping is not only linguistic but also extralinguistic: the words are associated because the things they name occur together and are closely connected in reality, e.g.:

-terms of kinship: father, cousin, mother-in-law, uncle;

-names for parts of the human body: head, neck, arm, foot, thumb;

-colour terms: blue, green, yellow, red / scarlet, crimson, coral;

-military terms: lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, general.

An ideographic group unites thematically related words of different parts of speech; here words and expressions are classed not according to their lexico-grammatical meaning but strictly according to their signification, i.e. to the system of logical notions, e.g.: ‘Trade’: to buy, to sell, to pay, to cost, a price, money, cash, a receipt, expensive etc.

As a rule, ideographic groups deal with contexts on the level of the sentence. Words in ideographic groups are joined together by common contextual associations within the framework of the sentence and reflect the interlinking of things or events, e.g.:

‘Going by train’: railway, a journey, a train, a train station, timetable, a platform, a passenger, a single ticket, a return ticket, luggage, a smoking carriage, a non-smoking carriage, a dining-car, to enquire, to catch the train, to miss the train etc.

A semantic field is the extensive organisation of related words and expressions into a system which shows their relations to one another.

The significance of each unit is determined by its neighbours, with the units’ semantic areas reciprocally limiting each other.

The members of the semantic fields are joined together by some common semantic component known as the common denominator of meaning.

‘Human Mind’: mind, reason, cognition, idea, concept, judgment, analysis, conclusion;

A lexico-semantic group is singled out on purely linguistic principles: words are united if they have one or more semantic components in common, but differ in some other semantic components constituting their semantic structures. The

This type of groupings is mostly applied to verbs, e.g.

-verbs of sense perception: to see, to hear, to feel, to taste;

-verbs denoting speech acts: to speak, to talk, to chat, to natter, to mumble, to ramble, to stammer, to converse;

-verbs of motion: to walk, to run, to tiptoe, to stroll, to stagger, to stomp, to swagger, to wander.

26. Dynamics of the English vocabulary. Neologisms: their sources and formation.

Language is never stationary. New words are constantly being formed; living words are constantly changing their meanings, expanding, contracting, gaining or losing caste, taking on mental, moral, or spiritual significance; and old words, though long sanctioned by custom, sometimes wither and die.

An archaism (Gr. archáios ‘ancient’) is a word that was once common but is now replaced by a synonym; it remains in the language, but mostly belong to the poetic style and are used for creating a stylistic effect, e.g.

betwixt, prep. ‘between’;

A historism is a word which denotes a thing that is no longer used; unlike archaisms, they are not replaced by synonyms. Historisms are very numerous as names for social relations, institutions, objects of material culture of the past, e.g. transport means:

brougham /'bru:(ə)m/, n. ‘a horse-drawn carriage with a roof, four wheels, and an open driver's seat in front ’;

A neologism (Gr néos ‘new’ and logos ‘word, study’) is a new lexical unit introduced into a language to denote a new object or phenomenon. The term is first attested in English in 1772, borrowed from French néologisme. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event.

In January 2002 Collins Gem English Pocket Dictionary editorial boardhave registered 140 neologisms.

Collins Essential English Dictionary (2003) contains 5,500 new words.

The Oxford Dictionary of New Words (1999) includes articles on 2,000 new words and phrases prominent in the media or public eye in the 80s -90s.

While the typical lexical growth areas of the 1980s were the media, computers, finance, money, environment, political correctness, youth culture and music, the 1990s saw significant lexical expansion in the areas of politics, the media and the Internet.

Nonce words (occasional words) (an ellipsis of the phrase for the nonce ‘for the once’) are lexical units created by the speaker on the spur of the moment, for a given occasion only, and may be considered as ‘potentially’ existing in the English vocabulary, e.g. what-d’you-call-him /-her/-it/-them, n. is used instead of a name that one cannot remember.

A lot of neologisms resulted from nonce words, e.g. yuppie, n. ‘a well-paid young middle-class professional who works in a city job and has a luxurious lifestyle’; coach potato, soap opera, generation X, thirty-something, glass ceiling ‘an unacknowledged barrier to advancement in a profession, especially affecting women and members of minorities’; gerrymander /'dʒɛrɪ‚mandə/, v. ‘manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favour one party or class’.

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