R e g I o n a l V a r I e t I e s o f t h e

E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E

1. The English-speaking world. American, Canadian, Australian, New-Zealand and Indian variants of the English language.

2. The historical background of the development of the American variant of the English language.

3. Lexical peculiarities of American English:

a) Total divergency of lexical units in BE and AE;

b) Divergency of lexical units in BE and AE for the same denotatum;

c) Difference of semantic structure of partially equivalent words in BE and AE;

d) Lexical units in BE and AE equivalent in form and meaning but different in distribution;

e) Connotational divergencies of the same lexical units in BE and AE

f) Different frequency distribution of identical lexical units in BE and AE.

4. The prospect of linguistic bonds across the Atlantic.

5. Peculiarities of word-building process in AE.

6. The development of American lexicography.

 

R e f e r e n c e b o o k s:

 

1. Arnold I. V. The English Word. M.,1986. P. 262-271

2. Ginzburg R. S. et al. A Course in Modern English Lexicology. M., 1979. P. 200-209.

3. Menchen H.L. The American Language. N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.. 1938. 769 P.

4. Webster’s New World Dictionary of American Language. Second College Edition: N.Y., 1974.

5. Швейцер А.Д. История американского варианта английского языка: дискуссионные проблемы //Вопросы языкознания. 1995. №3 С.77-92.

6. Швейцер А.Д. Литературный английский язык в США и в Англии. М., 1971.

 

Q u e s t i o n s

1. What is the difference between a dialect and a variant of English? Is AE a separate language?

2. In what spheres of the language do we state the most obvious divergencies between British English and American English?

3. What are the main lexical differences between BE and AE?

4. What were the causes of deviations of AE from BE?

 

A s s i g n m e n t s

Assignment 1.

Characterize the Following Americanisms Against Their Socio-cultural Background:

Prohibition, barracoon, sorority, wrangler, barbecue, vietnik, nickel, repeal, watcher, campus, drive-in, dude ranch, the Depression, forty-niner, canvasser.

 

Assignment 2.

Discriminate Between Different Ways of Word-Building in the Following Americanisms:

Baddie, patriotism, ambulance-chaser, draftee, hitch-hiker, bosso, luncheteria, Dallasgate, payola, sleep-in, dopelomate, tryout.

Assignment 3.

Find American Equivalents to Their British Counterparts:

Flat, elevator, corridor, waistcoat, chemist’s shop, season ticket, secondary school, lorry, tin, sweets, pillar-box, autumn, shop, biscuit, think, wireless, trousers.

 

 

LEXICOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT

I. ETYMOLOGY

1. Give examples of native words of the common Indo-European word-stock (cognates in Latin, Greek, German, Russian) and the common Germanic word-stock (cognates in Gothic, German, etc.), characterize their peculiarities.

2. Give examples of borrowings, etymological hybrids and doublets. Characterize them according to their origin (source) and degree of assimilation. Find international words.

 

II. MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF WORDS

 

1. Analyze several words on three levels:

a) on the morthemic level – number of morphemes, their types, free and bound morphemes, root words, derived and compound words;

b) on the derivational level – types of stems, simplified stems, roots equal to stems;

c) on the Immediate Constituents level, revealing the morphological motivation of words.

2. Give examples of historical changeability of word-structure.

 

III. WORD BUILDING

 

1. Give examples of words formed through affixation, characterize prefixes and suffixes according to their origin, meaning, type (convertive or non-convertive), productivity, frequency, stylistic reference, emotive charge, valency, part-of-speech meaning.

2. Give examples of compound words, characterize them according to the type of composition, idiomaticity, the way of joining components.

3. Find examples of words formed through conversion, characterize conversion pairs according to the main points of difference and similarity between the members of a pair; semantic relationship between them; direction of derivation.

4. Characterize examples of other ways of word-building; shortening, blending, back-formation, onomatopoeia, distinctive stress and sound interchange.

 

IV. SEMASIOLOGY

 

1. Find several (5-6) lexical units with different types and degrees of motivation.

2. Point out instances of semantic change (widening, narrowing, degradation, amelioration of meaning). Characterize different cases of semantic transfer (metaphor, metonymy, etc.).

3. Point out polysemantic words, characterize their lexico-semantic variants. Supply some words in the text with homonyms, speak on their source, type, degree.

4. Define the type and source of synonyms to some words in the text.

5. Find homonyms to several words from the text, define their source and types.

 

V. PHRASEOLOGY

Find several phraseological units and classify them according to V.V.Vinogradov’s classification, N.N. Amosova’s classification, A.V. Coonin’s classification. Speak on their source.