THE ENGLISH LEXICON: FROM WORDS TO PHRASEOLOGY unit 4

1. THE ENGLISH LEXICON: FROM WORDS TO PHRASEOLOGYunit 4 MARIA TERESA PRAT

2. TWO PARTS PART 1. Brainstorming on lexis PART 2. The English lexicon: general features

3. SOME OLD AND NEW CONCEPTS AND TERMS WORD/WORD FORM/ LEXEME GRAMMATICAL OR FUNCTIONAL WORD / LEXICAL WORD VOCABULARY/LEXIS/ THE LEXICON ENTRY/HEADWORD/LEMMA LEXICOLOGY/LEXICOGRAPHY PHRASEOLOGY (from proverbs, quotations and slogans to a wide range of multi-word lexical patterns) (LEXICAL) SEMANTICS is the scientific study of (WORD) meaning

4. LEXIS IS DYNAMIC LEXIS IS RENEWED IN THREE MAIN WAYS: 1 The creation of completely new words (COINAGE) e.g. computing terms such as Google 2 The borrowing of words from other languages (LOANWORDS) e.g. anglicisms in Italian 3 WORD FORMATION PROCESSES internal to the language (DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY) , e.g. prefixes, suffixes, compounding, semantic shift. • e.g. • Moral, amoral, immoral, morality • LEXIS IS THE LEVEL OF LANGUAGE MOST RAPIDLY AND DEEPLY AFFECTED BY SOCIAL, HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE

5. MEANING IS COMPLEX THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN “THINGS” AND “WORDS”

6. OBSERVING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN “THINGS” AND “WORDS” • MIAGOLARE TO MEW/TO MIAOW • CHICCHIRICHI COCK-A-DOODLE-DO • ACQUA WATER/WASSER/EAU/…. SOME WORDS IMITATE NATURAL SOUNDS (ONOMATOPOEIC) BUT MOST WORDS HAVE AN ARBITRARY CONNECTION WITH “THINGS”

7. DEFINING WORD MEANING WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS .. • …a famous English playwright of the 16th century • … the greatest playwright of all times • ….the author of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and many other tragedies and comedies • …the father of the British theatre • … a writer of the Modern English period • …my favourite dramatist etc. WORDS REFER TO, OR DENOTE, ENTITIES IN THE WORLD, BUT THIS RELATIONSHIP (REFERENCE) CAN BE EXPRESSED IN DIFFERENT WAYS

8. Defining the adjective “honest” A person who is honest does not tell lies, cheat people or violate the law A person who is honest always tells the truth, respects other people, obeys the law and pays taxes Someone who is honest can always be trusted Someone who is honest does not hide things from you Someone who is honest can be trusted with valuables and money etc. etc. THE MEANING OF WORDS CAN BE CULTURALLY CONDITIONED

9. Defining the noun “bird” A bird is… • An animal with the body covered in/with feathers, with two wings and a beak, which is able to fly. Female birds lay eggs • An animal with feathers, two legs and two wings, which is able to fly. BUT WHAT ABOUT PENGUINS AND OSTRICHS? We conceive a general image, a mental PROTOTYPE based on our experience and containing the most distinctive characteristics of the class. Some members are less central than others.

10. “BUTTERFLY” • Butterflies live only one day • She is a butterfly when she dances • WORDS DENOTE OBJECTS AND CONCEPTS , BUT MAY HAVE EMOTIONAL OR STYLISTIC CONNOTATIONS

11. DIFFERENT TYPES OF LEXEME 1. The computer is an electronic machine which is used for storing, organizing and finding different types of information SOME WORDS HAVE ONLY ONE REFERENT OR MEANING (MONOREFERENTIAL) 2a A violent storm broke out 2b It was only a storm in a tea cup 2c His speech provoked a storm of criticism SOME WORDS HAVE SEVERAL RELATED MEANINGS (POLYSEMOUS) 3a. I was walking along the bank of the river Cam 3b. I used to work at the Royal Bank of Scotland 3c The nearest bank is in Gower street SOME WORDS HAVE DIFFERENT UNRELATED MEANINGS ( HOMONYMS) THE NATURE OF LEXEMES AFFECTS THE ORGANISATION OF LEMMAS IN DICTIONARIES

12. Semantic links between words 1 Freedom and liberty (NEAR)-SYNONYMY • Black or white; fast or slow; brother or sister; married or single ANTONYMY (or COMPLEMENTARITY) 3. flowers, roses, daffodils, violets, tulips, daisies HYPERONYMY (SUPERORDINATES) and HYPONYMY ( SUBORDINATES) 4. To cook, roast, simmer, fry, bake, boil, barbecue… SEMANTIC FIELD

13. Discuss the following examples 1. I would like to win a post-graduate scholarship to do research (not * to make research) 2. How do you do? 3. The ups and downs of life ( not * the downs and ups) 4. The early bird catches the worm ( not * the early cat catches the mouse) 5. Torrential/heavy rain in Bangladesh ( not * strong rain) 6. He has spilled the beans ( not * spilled the peas) “WORDS KEEP COMPANY WITH OTHER WORDS” AND TEND TO CO-OCCUR IN PREFERRED OR FIXED COLLOCATIONS.

14. To sum up, lexis … • is dynamic • refers to the external world • refers to mental concepts • has emotional and stylistic connotations • has one or several referents and meanings • relates to other words in the language • may co-occur with other words in fixed or semi-fixed patterns.

15. WHAT DOES KNOWING A WORD MEAN?

16. Part II THE ENGLISH LEXICON

17. How many words are there in English? It is not easy to count them and there area different ways of doing it : • Dictionaries • Electronic corpora • Speakers’ competence

18. S. JOHNSON’S DICTIONARY (1755), about 42,000 entries LEXICO’GRAPHER. n.s. [? lixicographe, French.] A writer of dictionories; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words. Commentators and lexicographers acquainted with the Syriac language, have given these hints in their writings on scripture. Watt’s Improvement of the Mind.

19. THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY ON HISTORICAL PRINCIPLES, OEDThe 20 volume 1989 edition

20. OED Features • The project started in the second half of the 19th century • It covers English since the 14th century • The second print edition in 20 volumes + 4 additions has 616,500 headwords and derived words and phrases • A CdROM and an online version, which is regularly updated, are also available ( but not in our library!)

21. OED: a selection from the entry for “spaghetti” • [It., pl. of spaghetto thin string, twine.]  • 1. a. A variety of pasta made in long thin strings. Occas., a dish of spaghetti. 1888MRS. BEETONBk. Househ. Managem. §2952 Maccheroni, or Spaghetti, a smaller kind of macaroni,..generally follows the soup. • 2. An Italian: usu. contemptuous. slang. 1931‘D. STIFF’Milk & Honey Route iii. 38 Italian hobos are equally rare. They are the ‘wops’ or ‘spaghettis’. • 3. Complex roadways forming a multi-level junction, esp. on a motorway. colloq • 1966Guardian 4 June 14/2 Details of one of the biggest pieces of motorway spaghetti so far designed in Britain were published...

22. MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S :the American counterpart to OED

23. The Webster’s It covers American English since the 18th century Its 1963 edition contains c. 114,000 word families (a headword accompanied by its inflected and derived forms) It is regularly updated. There are several print editions and an online edition, which is freely available

24. OTHER TYPES OF DICTIONARY in SIZE (college dictionaries, desk dictionaries, pocket dictionaries) in ADDRESSEES for EFL learners (from 60,000 to 80,000 entries), or for native speakers in CONTENTS ( general or specialised, varieties of English) in NUMBER OF LANGUAGES ( monolingual, bilingual, multilingual) In FORMAT ( paper, CD-ROM, online)

25. THE COLLINS COBUILD Learner’s Dictionary Monolingual general Learners’ Dictionaries usually contain: Spelling variants IPA phonetic transcription Grammatical and syntactic information Information on frequency Definitions of various senses Examples of usage Sense relations, e.g. antonymy Register labels (e.g formal, slang) Frequent lexical collocations Usage notes Typical learner errors Use of colours, symbols and figures Special sections

26. ELECTRONIC CORPORA • Corpora are collections of text in electronic form that are meant to represent a language, or a register of it. • Several corpora are available for English that can be analysed though specific software in terms of frequency and use of words in context. e.g. The British National Corpus (BNC)

27. From” The British National Corpus, BNC” the determiner of preposition and conjunction a determiner in preposition to infinitive it pronoun is verb to preposition was verb I pronoun for preposition that conjunction you pronoun he pronoun be verb with preposition on preposition at preposition by preposition GRAMMATICAL WORDS ARE THE MOST FREQUENTLY USED WHAT ARE THE MOST FREQUENTLY USED WORDS IN ENGLISH ?

28. The 10 most frequent nouns are: time, year, people, way, man, day, thing, child, Mr, government. The most commonly mentioned animal is the horse, closely followed by dog The 10 most frequent adjectives are: other, good, new, old, great, high, small, different, large, local. The most frequently mentioned colours are black, white, red and green . The order coincides with the hierarchy of colours which scholars have observed in many languages. The top ten frequency adverbs are: never, always, often, ever, sometimes, usually, once, generally, hardly, no longer rarer nouns are: fax, ribbon, ant, colitis, wheat, spelling, holly, monarch, voltage, morale Rarer adjectives ; rude, faithful, ministerial, innovative, controlled, conceptual, unwilling, civic, meaningful disturbing FREQUENCY OF LEXICAL WORDS ( based on the BNC)

29. HOW MANY WORDS DO NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH KNOW? It depends on variables such as age and education and use (receptive or productive): According to research • A two-year old child: very limited vocabulary but growing at great speed • An English university student : 20,000 word families • An adult educated speaker : 50,000 lexemes CHECK YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF ITALIAN: “CERULEO” ,“CETACEI” ,“OTITE” “ILLUMINISMO”

30. The mixed nature of PDE lexis: Germanic versus romance words - a core (c. 40%) of high-frequency Germanic words usually short and used to refer to common “things”, actions and concepts (e.g. man, woman, day, child, bread, to go, to get, phrasal verbs) and - a wider component (c. 60%), of less frequent words of classical or romance origin usually longer and used in specialised or formal contexts (e.g. encyclopaedia, tonsillectomy, parliament, infrastructure)

31. GERMANIC /ROMANCE NEAR-SYNONYMS • Discover e.g. Columbus discovered a new continent • Find out e.g. Her parents found out that she had a boyfriend • Continue e.g. The treatment has to be continued for 4 weeks • Go on e.g. We can’t go on like this any longer • Pig / cow = the living animal • Pork/ beef = the meat you eat • regal, royal e.g. royal family, regal powers • Kingly e.g. kingly manner

32. “GOOD” AND “FALSE FRIENDS” WITH ITALIAN • Similarity may help at times e.g. problem, result, company, million, community • Similarity may be misleading at other times, e.g. actually, eventually, argument, factory, educated, lecture, library, magazine, major, agenda

33. English loans in Italian and other European languages From a “borrowing language” English has become a “donor language”. Why? In present-day Italian there are many different types of anglicisms and people have different attitudes to this phenomenon. What is happening in other languages? Comment on the following anglicisms in Italian. Do they have an Italian counterpart? film, mission, management, welfare, governance, briefing, week-end, pub, scannerizzare /”scannare”, mouse, computer, talk-show, report, devolution, boom, impeachment, ghostwriter

34. Variation in English 1. USER-RELATED VARIATION e.g. geographical area (GB, USA etc), age, education 2. USE-RELATED VARIATION, or REGISTER MODEL 2.1. what is talked about (FIELD or TOPIC) 2.2. the MEDIUM used ( e.g. spoken /written, electronic language) 2.3. the relationship between speakers/writers , e.g. formal, informal (PERSONAL TENOR)

35. Some lexical differences between BrE and AmE 1. He lives in a lovely apartment in New York AmE /flat BrE 2. The autumn term will start in September Br.E / fallAmE 3. Where can I find a gas station? AmE /petrol (BrE) 4. 11/9/2001 Br E / 9/11/2001 AmE

36. Register variation 1.1 Tonsillectomy is needed 1.2. Doctor “ I have to remove/to take your tonsils out 2.1 Influenza A/H1N1 broke out in Mexico last year 2.2. Swine flu broke out in Mexico last year 3.1 These are my children 3.2 These are my kids 3.3. This is my offspring

37. CORE / BASIC VOCABULARY Choose the most neutral and general lexeme to refer to someone “who has very little fat on his/her body”and, with the help of dictionaries, identify the differences in meaning: emaciated, skinny, slender, lean, slim, thin

38. WORD FORMATION PROCESSES 1. COMPOUNDING, or COMPOUNDS two or more free lexemes join to form a new meaning e.g. schoolday, day school ( not a boarding school) 2. AFFIXATION one or more bound derivational lexemes are added to a free morpheme either at the beginning or at the end e.g. e-mail, childish, childhood 3. CONVERSION OR ZERO DERIVATION a change of word class without a change in form e.g. ground (noun)/ to ground (verb) 4. ACRONYM OR INITIALISM the initial letters of a complex expression e.g. AIDS = Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome 5. CLIPPING cutting the beginning and/or the end of a lexeme e.g. Flu/ influenza 6. BLENDING or BLENDS the merging of two long words into one e.g. glocal = global+local 7. SEMANTIC CHANGE or SHIFT the change of meaning of existing lexemes “to zap” from “moving quickly” to “ keeping changing TV programmes with a remote control”

39. SOME OBSERVATIONS ON COMPOUNDS 1. a ‘blackbird / a ‘black ‘bird un merlo / un uccellonero compounds versus noun phrases 2. Bedroom / paperback / African-American endocentric, exocentric , copulative compounds 3. mother-in-law, forget-me-not, state-of –the art, sell-by-date multi-word compounds 4 green tea, a checklist, user-friendly different ways of writing compounds: two words, one word, with a hyphen 5. green card, user-friendly, handout ( v and n) nouns, adjectives, verbs

40. Observe the differences between English and Italian compounds 1. Green tea Tè verde 2. Trademark Marchio di fabbrica 3. Zero tolerance Tolleranza zero 4. Coffee break Pausa caffè

41. Unhappy, incomplete Immorality, non-morality Maltreat, miscalculate Pro-Obama, antiwar Postmodern, recycle Bilingual, polyglot Multitask, multifunctional… PREFIXES ARE USUALLY CLASS-MAINTAINING AND AFFECT MEANING IN MANY WAYS ( e.g. opposite, pejorative, attitude, time). THEY CANBE MORE OR LESS PRODUCTIVE Trainer, reader (nouns) Trainee, absentee Formation, pollution Socialism, liberalism Kindness, happiness Reliable, eligible (adjectives) Faithful, beautiful Useless, careless Specialize/se, advertise (verbs) Honestly, carefully (adverbs) ….. SUFFIXES FORM NOUNS, ADJECTIVES, VERBS AND ADVERBS, AND ARE USUALLY CLASS-CHANGING. THEY CANBE MORE OR LESS PRODUCTIVE SOME PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES

42. SOME OLD AND NEW AFFIXES Ecology, Psychology, morphology, biology… Europhile, Europhobe, Eurocrats… MANY PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES ARE OF CLASSICAL ORIGIN (NEO-CLASSICAL AFFIXES) Cartergate, Camillagate, Katrinagate, Sexgate -GATE from the Watergate scandal involving the American president R. Nixon in the 1970s SOME NEW SUFFIXES ARE LINKED TO RECENT TRENDS AND EVENTS

43. CONVERSION, OR ZERO DERIVATION Bottle (noun) /to bottle (verb) To download (verb) / download (noun) Dry (adjective) to dry (verb) Round: adjective, preposition, adverb, noun, verb VERY COMMON PROCESS IN PDE BECAUSE OF THE REDUCTION OF MORPHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA

44. READ AND RECOGNIZE THE FOLLOWING ACRONYMS OR INITIALISMS IT Information Technology WWW World Wide Web BBC British Broadcasting Corporation IRA Irish Republican Army VIP Very Important Person RAM Random Access Memory NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization ACRONYMS ARE READ AS WORDS. IN INITIALISMS EACH LETTER IS READ INDEPENDENTLY

45. PHRASEOLOGICAL PHENOMENA According to the linguist John Sinclair, there are two different principles in language • the OPEN-CHOICE PRINCIPLE refers to predictable grammatical rules e.g. John loves Mary the IDIOM PRINCIPLE refers to fixed or semi-fixed expressions that are made of more than one word but constitute a semantic unit e.g. I’m dead tired (stancomorto) He was dead drunk ( ubriacofradicio) but not *I am dead intelligent

46. Types of “prefabricated language” SOCIAL ROUTINES ( OR PRAGMATIC IDIOMS) e.g. I’m looking forward to hearing from you, Can I help you? DISCOURSE ORGANISERS e.g. in other words, to sum up, for example, e.g.( exempli gratia), .i.e (id est) IDIOMS e.g. to beat about the bush, too many coooks spoil the broth BINOMIALS e.g. to and fro, pros and cons, bed and breakfast, bag and baggage PROVERBS e.g A friend in need is a friend indeed, Garbage in. garbage out SIMILE e.g. As ugly as sin, as happy as a lark, SLOGANS AND FAMOUS QUOTATIONS e.g Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country ( J. F. Kennedy) Yes, we can (B. Obama)

47. From more transparent to opaque idiomatic expressions • to see the light at the end of the tunnel • to give someone the green light • white wine • white lie • it’s not cricket • to go Dutch

48. Fammi un favore! Do me a favour Fammi una torta Make me a cake Un edificio umido A damp building Un clima molto caldo e umido A hot and humid climate Occhi umidi Moist eyes (see concordances p. 215-217) LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS: A PERVASIVE FEATURE OF ENGLISH AND A MAJOR DIFFICULTY FOR LEARNERS

49. From fixed (“frozen”) to restricted lexical collocations 1. He shruggedhisshoulders He noddedhis head (i.e. up and down) He shookhis head ( i.e. from side to side) He shookhis finger (* he shruggedhis finger) • He isgrowing a beard He isgrowingvegetables *He isgrowinghischildren by himself (He isbringing up hischildren)

50. CORPORA AVAILABLE ON THE WEB - Sketchengine, http://sketchengine.co.uk YOU CAN REGISTER FOR A FREE 30-DAY TRIAL PERIOD - Mark Davis’s web site http://corpus.byu.edu (Brigham Young University, USA) FREE