Lexicology in theory, practice and tests Study guide Recommended by the Academic Council of Sumy State University Sumy Sumy State University 2015

1. – Is life worth living?

– It depends upon the liver.

2. – How much is my milk bill?

– Excuse me, Madam, but my name is John.

3. A tailor guaranties to give his customers the perfect fit.

4. – Why is it so wet in England?

– Because many kings and queens have reigned there.

5. – Where do you find giant snails?

– On the ends of giants' fingers.

6. – Waiter, what is this?

– It’s bean soup, sir.

– Never mind what it has been. I want to know what it is now.

7. – I got sick last night eating eggs.

– Too bad.

– No, only one.

8. – I spent last summer in a very pretty city in Switzerland.

– Berne ?

– No, I almost froze.

9. – Officer (to driver in parked car): Don’t you see this sign “Fine for parking”?

– Driver: Yes, officer, I see and agree with it.

10. – Boyfriend: What is your favourite music group?

– Girlfriend: I love U2.

– Boyfriend: I love you too, but what is your favourite music group?

11. A woman goes to the doctor complaining of water on the knee. “What should I do?” she asks. “Wear pumps” replies her doctor.

12. “Mine is a long tale!” said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing. “It is a long tail, certainly.”

13. “Of course it is,” said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said: “there's a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is – 'The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.”

14. “You can make doors, windows, and blinds?” “Oh, yes sir!” “How would you make a Venetian blind?”

The man scratched his head and thought deeply for a few seconds. “I should think, sir,” he said finally, “the best way would be to punch him in the eye.”



Exercise 12. Provide homonyms for some words. Classify homonyms according to prof. Smirnitskiy’s classification system.

1. Teacher: Here is a map. Who can show us America?

Nick goes to the map and finds America on it.

Teacher: Now, tell me who found America?

2. Father: I promised you to buy a car if you passed your exam, and you have failed. What were you doing last term?

Son: I was learning to drive a car.

3. a) When I started to strike a match for a light, he stopped me. b) He is not a man to lose the match without your knowing that he has tried and tried everything not to lose.

4. I was arrested at the airport. Just because I was greeting my cousin Jack! All that I said was "Hi Jack", but very loud.

5. a) The sun rose and the children ran into the garden. b) He stands before a rose in bloom; the rose we see is an expression of its inner spirit, a shadow, a representation of spirit in material form.

6. They were too close to the door to close it.

1. a) I saw a football and it was a perfect match. b) Please, give me a match. 2. a) He is to found a huge corporation. b) He found other people's documents at the bus stop. 3. a) These lipsticks rose her lips. b) Level of the economy rose to a maximum. 4. a) This girl is a very serious person because she is a wren (a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service). b) A wren is a very beautiful bird. 5. a) I usually can tomatoes with my mother in August. b) I can go there but I do not want. 6. a) His cottage is located on the opposite bank. b) I went to the bank to withdraw money from their own account. 7. a) I lay on the sofa at home. b) She always lies to her parents. 8. a) The left column is the interference with traffic. b) I left my university when I went abroad. 9. a) A ball is a sphere or any spherical body. b) I went to the ball to France. 10. a) Yesterday I left my book at home. b) This store is left of me. 11. A bass was painted on the head of a bass drum. 12. After many years they found the place where they will found a new town. 13. If you're going to lie to me, you will lie under the ground. 14. The insurance was invalid for the invalid. 15. The soldier decided to desert his desert in the desert. 16. "But they were in the well," Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark. "Of course they were," said the Dormouse: "well in". 17. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend? 18. The driver turned left and left the main road. 19. a) The dog gave me a loud bark. b) The tree bark was oozing sap. 20. a) I beat everyone in the race. b) That song has a fast beat. 21. a) The fly was bussing around the food. b) I don’t like to fly in a helicopter. 22. A lean cat could lean on a skunk! 23. Why don't we toast with a toast? 24. A bear can bear very cold temperatures. 25. a) She wears a sparkly ring. b) Do you hear those bells ring? 26. Looking through the window, I saw an enormous saw on sale at the hardware store. 27. a) I rose up from my seat to sharpen my rose coloured pencil. b) I picked up a rose from my garden for mother’s day. 28. a) I tear my paper because it sounds bad when you hear it. b) My eyes tear when I see my report card. 29. a) The well started to flood because too much water came in. b) “Well done, Max. You finished your math homework.” 30. a) The fan broke down so I didn’t know how to cool myself. b) I am a fan of Owl City, a one man band whose new song “Firefly” is really great.

There are several meanings of the word paronym. The term paronym comes from the Greek para “beside” and onoma “name”. Paronyms are the words that are kindred in origin, sound form and meaning and therefore liable to be mixed but in fact different in meaning and usage and therefore only mistakenly interchanged.

Paronym is a word similar to another in sound; the partial coincidence in outward form occurs simply by chance and is not conditioned by semantic or word-formation processes. Some scholars regard as paronyms words with the same root that are similar in structure or sound and are the same part of speech or have common grammatical features. But the definition that shows up most often is that “paronyms are words pronounced alike, but have different meanings”, or in other words, words that have the same root. Another word for paronym is cognate.

This is the case with the adjectives ingenious and ingenuous. The first of these means “clever” and may be used both of man and of his inventions and doings, e. g. an ingenious craftsman, an ingenious device. Ingenuous means “frank”, “artless”, as an ingenuous smile.

The likeness may be accidental as in the verbs affect and effect. The first means “to influence”, the second – “to produce”. These come from different Latin verbs. The similarity may be also due to a common source. It is etymologically justified in alternate “succeeding each other” and alternative “providing a choice”, or consequent “resulting” and consequential “important”, or continuance “an uninterrupted succession” and continuation which has two distinct meanings “beginning again” and “sequel” as the continuation of a novel.

Paronyms can be categorized in several ways. There are two different types of paronyms: those that look like they’re related and those that don’t. Coming from the same root doesn’t mean that words came into English at the same time or in the same way. So, while paronyms beauty and beauteous share the first five letters, paronyms dubious and doubtful look far less alike, though they both have the letters d, u, and b in the first syllable.

Another way to categorize paronyms is by whether or not they sound alike. Paronyms may be differentiated by having different prefixes or suffixes and added word syllables can change stress and other elements of pronunciation. Paronyms beauty and beautiful sound identical for the first syllable. Paronyms legal and legislate sound quite different, with the pronunciation of both ‘e’ and ‘g’ changing when the suffix is applied, even though the spelling of the first three letters is identical.

A third way to categorize paronyms is the ones that are words in the same language and the ones include words in more than one language. English, with words from so many languages, also has paronyms with many different languages, although Spanish, French, and German are three that often are referred to.

Antonyms are words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or contradictory notions. Also antonyms may be defined as two or more words of the same language belonging to the same semantic field, identical in style and nearly identical in distribution, associated and often used together so that their denotative meanings render contradictory or contrary notions. Antonyms are also called opposites. For example: good – bad, badly, badness, evil, evilness, ill, malevolent, malicious, poorly, wicked.

It is more or less universally recognized that among the cases that are traditionally described as antonyms there are at least the following three groups.

1. Contradictories which represent the type of semantic relations that exist between pairs like dead and alive, single and married, perfect and imperfect, etc. To use one of the terms is to contradict the other and to use not before one of them is to make it semantically equivalent to the other, cf. not dead=alive, not single=married.

2. Contraries differ from contradictories mainly because contradictories admit of no possibility between them. One is either single or married, either dead or alive, etc. whereas contraries admit such possibilities. This may be observed in cold – hot and cool and warm which seem to be intermediate members. Thus we may regard as antonyms not only cold and hot but also cold and warm. Contrary antonyms are also mutually opposed but they are gradable, e. g. old and young are the most distant elements of a series like: old : middle-aged : young.

3. Incompatibles. Semantic relations of incompatibility exist among the antonyms with the common component of meaning and may be described as the reverse of hyponymy, i. e. as the relations of exclusion but not of contradiction. To say morning is to say not afternoon, not evening, and not night. The negation of one member of this set however does not imply semantic equivalence with the other but excludes the possibility of the other words of this set. A relation of incompatibility may be observed between colour terms since the choice of red, e. g., entails the exclusion of black, blue, yellow and so on. Naturally not all colour terms are incompatible. Semantic relations between scarlet and red are those of hyponymy.

V. N. Comissarov in his dictionary of antonyms classified them into two groups: absolute or root antonyms and derivational antonyms (see Table 12).

1. Absolute (root) antonyms (those which have different root), e. g. long – short, up – down, to start – to finish, etc.

2. 
   Derivational (affixal) antonyms (in which special affixes or their absence express semantic opposition). The presence or absence of negative affixes creates derivational antonyms e. g. hopeful – hopeless, happy – unhappy, appear – disappear, etc.
   

derivational (affixal)

absolute or root

By the nature of the relationship between the opposed meanings we can figure out three categories of antonyms:

1. A gradable antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings where the two meanings lie on a continuous spectrum. For example: young, old; early, late; empty, full; dull, interesting.

2. A complementary antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings, where the two meanings do not lie on a continuous spectrum, e. g. dead, alive; off, on; day, night; exit, entrance; exhale, inhale; occupied, vacant; identical, different. Leonard Lipka in the book “Outline of English Lexicology” describes complementarity in the following way: the denial of the one implies the assertion of the other, and vice versa. John is not married implies that John is single. The type of oppositeness is based on yes/no decision.

3. The third group includes converses, expressing reciprocity. The pairs above/below, before/after, precede/follow, buy/sell, and lend/borrow exemplify this category. Converses are sometimes called relational opposites. They all express relationships between two (or more) people or things. Take, for instance, the pair buy/sell: Brian sold the car to Michael and Michael bought the car from Brian. Both indicate that a particular transaction has taken place. But the first sentence highlights Brian's role in the proceedings, while the second focuses on Michael. Converseness is mirror-image relations. A relational antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings, where opposite makes sense only in the context of the relationship between the two meanings: come/go, teach/learn, husband/wife, doctor/patient, predator/prey, servant/master, parent/child, before/after, etc.

L. Lipka also gives the type which he calls directional opposition up/down, consequence opposition learn/know, antipodal opposition North/South, East/West. L. Lipka also points out non-binary contrast or many-member lexical sets. Here he points out serially ordered sets, such as scales: hot, warm, tepid, cool, cold; colour words: black, grey, white; ranks: marshal, general, colonel, major, captain, etc. There are gradable examination marks: excellent, good, average, fair, poor. He also points out cycles, such as units of time: spring, summer, autumn, winter.

Side by side with classifying words into lexico-grammatical classes known as parts of speech, modern scholars make attempts to work out the classification of words into functional semantic classes. Here it is limited to considering two functional semantic classes which can be clearly distinguished: those of qualifiers and responsives.

Qualifiers (degree modifiers) are words used for qualifying properties, states, etc. as to the degree of their manifestation. The degree modifiers are adverbs that normally modify and emphasize gradable words and answer the question “How?”, “How far?”, “To what degree?”, “How much?” Qualifiers provide readers with specific details. In other words, they change how absolute or generalized a sentence can be. For instance, ‘this sum is very large’ or ‘this sum is a great deal bigger than I expected’, where the words ‘very’ and ‘great deal’ are the qualifiers.

Qualifiers are used only with adjectives and adverbs preceding them to indicate the degree to which these gradable words apply. More specifically, they derive from a group of words called adverbs of degree, also known as degree adverbs. However, when used grammatically as degree modifiers, these words cease to be degree adverbs, because they no longer quantify the idea they modify. Instead, they emphasize it emotionally.

Qualifiers are subdivided into three groups:

1. 
   intensifiers;
   
2. 
   moderators;
   
3. 
   limiters.
   

Moderators are degree words used to emphasize the moderate degree of gradable adjectives and adverbs (almost, rather, quite, kind of, enough, half, equally, mildly, somewhat, reasonably, etc.).

Limiters are degree words used to emphasize the low degree of gradable adjectives and adverbs (a little, a bit, hardly, faintly, scarcely, slightly, less, least, etc.).

One should bear in mind that degree modifiers are adverbs which lack the primary characteristic of adverbs: the ability to modify verbs. They modify exclusively adjectives and adverbs.

1. The entire defence was extremely well marshalled and few attackers got through to fire off a shot. 2. His performance in the final against West Germany was equally assured, by a rasping shot from Haller after a mistake by Wilson and a late equalizer that appeared to be helped along by a German hand before finding its way into net. 3. Probably the most instantly recognizable player on the planet, David trained with Spurs as a youngster but set his heart on signing for MU. 4. Real have overtaken MU as the most popular club side in the world, even if achievements on it still leave a lot to be desired. 5. The most charismatic player ever to grace a football field, George Best was the player who had it all and seemingly threw it all away. 6. Although no doubt traumatized by the experience, Bobby picked up the pieces of his career almost immediately, collecting his first full cap for England the month after the disaster. 7. All that was to change with the acquisition of Di Stefano in 1953, perhaps the player who became most responsible for the elevation to becoming the biggest in the world. 8. Real was able to buy the player for $70,000, a very small price to pay for the glories Alfredo was bring. 9. No matter who was in charge of Real, the one thing they could never replace or repeat was the ability of Alfredo Di Stefano, a player many consider at least the equal of Pele in his prime. 10. His legend and status enough to earn him a standing ovation more than thirty years after he left the stage he most certainly graced. 11. That match had seen Tom play at right wing, a position that had been the almost exclusive preserve of Stan Matthews. 12. One of the most talented of player on the field, Garrincha established an equally formidable reputation of it. 13. I had a really bad feeling. Thinking ahead to whatever hell brought the chief out of his comfy home in Oakland on a Saturday. 14. I went after him – but I lost him. It really hit me then. 15. Their somewhat absolutely lack-lustre performance in Switzerland had the media and public alike calling for changes to the side and Garrincha was handed an international debut in 1954. 16. This was the start of the 4-4-2 line-up that was to so enthral the world with Garrincha linking especially well with Pele. 17. Yet despite this, he was largely ignored and forgotten when he retired. 18. It is very rare in the modern game to have a striker as a captain, but Thierries awareness of what is happening in all areas of the field made him an ideal candidate. 19. Kevin Keegan may not have been the most naturally gifted player. 20. He settled in almost immediately at the club and, although they were unable to topple Real from the top of the league. 21. Spurs were desperately trying to sell both key players. 22. Like many of his peers, Maradona found it extremely difficult to make the transition from player to coach.

The categorical features of responsives are as follows: their non-nominating character, the communicative function of response to the interlocutor’s utterance or a certain situation, invariability and semantic intonational arrangement.

The bulk of the functional semantic class of responsives is constituted by interjections (ah!, oh!, alas!, etc.). However, this class includes a lot of words which descended from other parts of speech (my!, boy!, hell!, swell!, come!, rubbish! etc.). The interjection is a part of speech which expresses various emotions without naming them.

According to their meaning, interjections fall under two main groups, namely emotional interjections and imperative ones. Emotional interjections express the feelings of the speaker. They are: ah, oh, eh, uuuhhh, bravo, alas, huh, hell, my God, okay, Jesus, etc. Imperative interjections show the will of the speaker, his order or appeal to the hearer. They are: here, hush, sh-sh, ssshhh, well, come, hey, now, etc.

Interjections may be also primary and secondary. Primary interjections are not derived from other parts of speech. Most of them are simple words: ah, oh, eh, ooh, pooh, fie, bravo, hush, okay, hey, ow, uuuhhh, etc. Only a few interjections are composite: heigh-ho!, hei-ho!, holla-ho!, gee-ho!, uh huh, etc. Secondary interjections are derived from other parts of speech. They are homonymous with the words they are derived from. They are simple or composite: well, now, so, here, there, come, why, hell, Christ, gosh, Jesus Christ, my God, trailer trash, Goddamn, oh god, etc.

Interjections are used as independent sentence-words or independent elements of the sentence. One should also bear in mind that formulas of courtesy, greetings, etc. should not be regarded as interjections. Thus, good-bye, thank you are not interjections because they do not express emotion or will.

1. Ah, to hell with what’s right and what’s not. You want something, you take it baby. 2. “Ssshhh,” he whispered. “Quiet now…don’t you want to be wasting what little breath you have left there, Daniel”. 3. Whaddaya figure huh? Ain’t some folk prejudiced or what? 4. “Hell, Danny, take it easy,” Linny told me. 5. “Don’t bite!” she hollered. “Ow, ow, ow…” 6. “Okay,” I said. “So I’m standing here in the room and I hear someone screaming who I think is Linny Goldbourne”. 7. “Got your date eh?” West went on. 8. My knees were weak, my insides churning, and I anticipated the sound of his voice, the Hey you! That would come any second. 9. Christ, Linny, he’s my friend. 10. Hey, Danny, hold up there! 11. “My God, Nathan,” she shouted. “When did you get back?” 12. “Okay, just tell me what happened with Nathan and you after Linny came back”. 13. Get up, go to work, mow and lawn, read the paper… Jesus, could you imagine having a life like that? 14. “Ooh, ooh, Danny, that hurt,” I replied. 15. “Danny?” – “Uh huh?” – “Tell me,” Father John repeated. 16. Hell, you know what, guys? A couple of heavies came down and saw me at Eve Chantry’s place. 17. And then he said it too. “Nigger! Damned nigger!” 18. “Trailer trash,” Nathan went on. 19. I could hear myself crying, and then making that sound once more…Uuuhhh… 20. Hell, it was Christmas Eve. We relaxed; we had a drink and a smoke. 21. When I opened my eyes I could see his half-lit face right there above me through the bars. “Jesus Christ!” I started. 22. I thought this was it. This was the moment I die. This is when it goes really ugly and they kick the living crap out of me, and Oh Lord Jesus Christ Almighty, Mary Mother of God… 23. I felt a sound escaping from my lips. Uuuhhh… 24. “So?” he prompted, and I leaned back and looked at him, feeling strangely awkward. 25.…when she said Well thank you, Frank, and thank you to all our listeners today. It certainly has been a day of revelation, hasn’t it? 26. Goddamn. He said Goddamn. So unlike Nathan. 27. Oh God, oh God, oh God…not like this…not like this…any other way than this. 28. “Wow!” said Gary, impressed. 29. “Oh! Don’t be stupid, Neil,” Alice said more brutally than she intended. 30. “Bloody hell! Richard said spitefully. 31. “Jesus!” I was wrong. 32. “Sh-sh,”she said. She came over and took his hand.