THE ENGLISH LEXICON: FROM WORDS TO PHRASEOLOGY unit 4

1
THE ENGLISH LEXICON FROM WORDS TO
PHRASEOLOGYunit 4

• MARIA TERESA PRAT

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TWO PARTS

• PART 1. Brainstorming on lexis
• PART 2. The English lexicon general features

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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

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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

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MEANING IS COMPLEX

• THE RELATIONSHIP
• BETWEEN
• THINGS AND WORDS

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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

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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

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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

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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.
  

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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WHAT DOES KNOWING A WORD MEAN?
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Part II

• THE ENGLISH
• LEXICON

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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

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S. JOHNSONS DICTIONARY (1755), about 42,000
entries

• LEXICOGRAPHER. 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. Watts
  Improvement of the Mind.

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THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY ON HISTORICAL
PRINCIPLES, OED The 20 volume 1989 edition
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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!)

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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.
• 1888 MRS. BEETON Bk. 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
• 1966 Guardian 4 June 14/2 Details of one of the
  biggest pieces of motorway spaghetti so far
  designed in Britain were published...

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MERRIAM-WEBSTERS the American counterpart to
OED
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The Websters

• 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

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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)

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THE COLLINS COBUILD Learners 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

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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)

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WHAT ARE THE MOST FREQUENTLY USED WORDS IN
ENGLISH ?

• 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

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FREQUENCY OF LEXICAL WORDS ( based on the BNC)

• 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

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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

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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)

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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 cant 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

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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

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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

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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)

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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 / fall AmE
• 3. Where can I find a gas station?
• AmE /petrol (BrE)
• 4. 11/9/2001
• Br E / 9/11/2001 AmE

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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

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CORE / BASIC VOCABULARY

• Choose the most neutral and general lexeme to
  refer to someone who has very little fat on
  his/her bodyand, with the help of dictionaries,
  identify the differences in meaning
• emaciated, skinny, slender, lean, slim, thin

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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 globallocal
• 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

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SOME OBSERVATIONS ON COMPOUNDS

• 1. a blackbird / a black bird
• un merlo / un uccello nero
• 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

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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

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SOME PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES

• 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

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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

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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. Im dead tired (stanco morto)
• He was dead drunk ( ubriaco fradicio)
• but not I am dead intelligent

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Types of prefabricated language

• SOCIAL ROUTINES ( OR PRAGMATIC IDIOMS)
• e.g. Im 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)

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From more transparent to opaque idiomatic
expressions

1. to see the light at the end of the tunnel
2. to give someone the green light
3. white wine
4. white lie
5. its not cricket
6. to go Dutch

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LEXICAL COLLOCATIONS A PERVASIVE FEATURE OF
ENGLISH AND A MAJOR DIFFICULTY FOR LEARNERS

• 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)

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From fixed (frozen) to restricted lexical
collocations

• 1. He shrugged his shoulders
• He nodded his head (i.e. up and down)
• He shook his head ( i.e. from side to
  side)
• He shook his finger
• ( he shrugged his finger)
• He is growing a beard
• He is growing vegetables
• He is growing his children by himself
• (He is bringing up his children)

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CORPORA AVAILABLE ON THE WEB

• - Sketchengine, http//sketchengine.co.uk
• YOU CAN REGISTER FOR A FREE 30-DAY TRIAL PERIOD
• - Mark Daviss web site http//corpus.byu.edu
  (Brigham Young University, USA)
• FREE

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A lexical collocation is

• when two lexemes belonging to two different
  word classes tend to co-occur for reasons other
  than grammatical ones
• e.g. to take up/start/pursue a career
• to make career

52
Some major open questions

• 1. Eskimos have many words to refer to different
  types of snow. What does it mean?
• 2. Is there a strict link between the character
  of a language and the spirit of a nation
• ( W. von Humboldt 1767-1835)?
• 3. Does a language determine its speakers world
  view (Sapir and Whorfs cultural relativism,
  20th century)?

53
WORDS REFLECT CHANGE IN SOCIETY

• HI-FI, TRANSISTOR, VIEDOTAPE
• (in the 1950s)
• GREEN / GLOBAL WARMING /CHAIRPERSON
• (in the 1970s)
• WEBSITE/ WORLD WIDE WEB
• (in the 1990s)
• SUBPRIME (LOAN)
• (2008)

54
The language of war in the 20th century

• WAR-RELATED EXPRESSIONS
• Genocide
• Nuclear weapons (nuke)
• Ethnic cleansing
• Bloody Tuesday / Nine Eleven/September Eleven
• Ground Zero
• WEAPONS b-52, Patriot Missiles, Tomahawk
  Missiles
• EUPHEMISTIC and BUREAUCRATIC EXPRESSIONS
• Collateral damage
• (Civilian casualties)
• Body bags
• (The bodies of the dead soldiers in the Vietnam
  war)
• Friendly fire
• (Shots fired accidentally)
• KIA
• (Killed in Action)
• MIA
• (Missed in Action)
• WIA

55
Computing a rapidly developing terminology

• 1. program, window, menu, mouse, address, disk,
  bug, spam
• WORDS BORROWED FROM GENERAL LANGUAGE AND
  ACQUIRING A SPECIALISED MEANING
• 2. floppy disk, hard disk, blog (from weblog),
  modem ( from modulatordemodulator), download,
  search engine, to google
• WORD FORMATION PROCESSES
• 3. CD-ROM (Compact Disk Read Only Memory), FAQ (
  Frequently Asked Questions)
• ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

56
Political correctness some taboo areas

• 1. Negro (nigger), black, Afro-American,
  African-American
• 2. Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms
• 3. Chairman, chairwoman, chairperson, chair
• 4. Lawyer, lady lawyer, woman lawyer, my lawyer
  Ms Brown
• 5. Husband and wife, accompanying person, spouse,
  partner
• 6. Disabled, handicapped, differently able
• TO BE POLITICALLY CORRECT MEANS TO REFER TO
  DIFFERENT ETHNIC AND SOCIAL GROUPS IN AN
  ACCEPTED WAY. THE MOST SENSITIVE AREAS ARE RACE,
  GENDER, RELIGION, HUMAN BODY AND DEATH. THE
  DEBATE STARTED IN THE USA IN THE 1970Ss AND
  PEOPLE
• HAVE DIFFERENT REACTIONS TO IT.

57
The future of English lexis

• PDE lexis will accept considerable geographical
  variation (e.g. AmE , BrE, Indian English)
• but
• will be shared by global communities of
  scientists, professional people and Internet
  Users (English as a Lingua Franca)

58
Activity 1

• 1. What is a lexical collocation? Give some
  examples for English and show why lexical
  collocations are difficult for foreign learners
• A lexical collocation is when two lexemes that
  belong to two different word classes tend to
  co-occur for reasons other than grammatical ones.
  They are difficult for foreign learners because
  they may be different from what they
  instinctively do in their mother tongue.
• e.g. fare un favore to do a favour, fare una
  torta to make a cake, fare un errore to make a
  mistake