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Section 10. Philology and linguistics
References:
1. Резник Р. В., Сорокина Т. С. A History of The English Language. История английского языка - М.: Флинта, Наука, 2001. - 496 с.
2. Швейцер. А.Д Социальная дифференциация английского языка в США. М.: Наука, 1983.
3. Bailey, G. 2001. The relationship between African American and White Vernaculars in the American South. A sociocultural history and some phonological evidence. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 53-92
4. Baugh C., Cable T. History of The English Language. - UK: Routledge; 5 edition, 2002. - 464c.
5. Charity A. H. African - American English: An Overview. Perspectives on Communication Disorders and Sciences in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations. 33-42July 2008.
6. Crystal D. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
7. Leonard F. D. Essays on Language and Usage. N. Y.: Taylor&Francis, 2003.
8. Lisa j. green African American English: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
9. Peterson, E. 2006. Lecture. African American language and culture. Autumn term 2006. (14.9.-7.12.2006).
10. William L. W., Mason T., Leemann A. Principles of Linguistic Change Volume II. N. Y.: Blackwell Publishers, 2006.
Koznova Olga Aleksandrovna, Chistopol branch "Vostok” Kazan National Research Technical University named after A. N. Tupolev-KAI
Ph. D. in Psychology E-mail: [email protected] Garifullina Elvira Ildusovna, Chistopol branch "Vostok” Kazan National Research Technical University named after A. N. Tupolev-KAI
Ph. D. in Philology E-mail: [email protected]
Difficulties of using polysemous lexemes in modern English
Abstract: The authors consider the phenomena of ambiguity and polysemy in modern English language, analyze common mistakes in the use of some lexical units, and pay special attention to the difficulty of ambiguous words translation associated with the mentality and world view of different language speakers, which leads to misunderstanding.
Keywords: ambiguity, polysemy, lexical unit, ingrained casualism, lexical diversity, occasional synonyms.
Ambiguity and polysemy have become the most interesting phenomenon in modern English. They happen when a common and well-known lexical unit acquires a new and very different meaning that can overtake or eventually replace an old one.
A great number of scientific papers in linguistic theory is devoted to the difference between polysemy, ambiguity, and synonyms. According to Anna Zaliznyak’s opinion, semantic theory has been developing greatly for the last three decades, and as a result of this ambiguity is not considered as a deviation from the norm, but as one of the most essential aspects of all significant linguistic units [4, 20].
Occasionally, phrases and clauses create ambiguity because their structure may be interpreted in more than
one way, leading to different meanings for the sentence as a whole. This ambiguity can be shown more distinctly in the following example. The lexical unit ‘awesome’ that initially meant ‘impressive or very difficult and perhaps rather frightening’ now is having the meaning that is completely different from the common one. Usage of this word in a new sense ‘awe-inspiring’, ‘amazing’, ‘impressive’, ‘astonishing’ seems really unexpected and makes non-native speakers get confused.
As these polysemous, ‘deceptive’ lexemes can be frequently met in English language, here the question arises: what is the reason ofthis multifaced lexical diversity? This problem is very thoroughly examined by the Russian linguist Anna Zaliznyak. In her opinion, gradual changes are constantly happening in the historical development
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of every language in the field of phonetics, grammar, and lexical meaning. The specific character of these changes is different in various languages in particular epochs. The speed of these transformations is different too. No living language undergoes changes. Throughout the course of history, the outer form of the word changes greatly, and sometimes beyond recognition [7].
Due to the fact that English has always been renovating not only for new words appearing in the language, but already existing words change their meanings, that is why everlasting and ongoing process of norms and standards breaking in linguistic performance is taking place. In this connection some difficulties concerning word choice not only for language learners but for native speakers may occur.
As a result, there is an evident gap between an original meaning and a new one: what a speaker implies can vary from what the audience understands. Either this new sense will be fresh and expressive, or rasp and throw into confusion. It is sometimes difficult even in your own language to find words that are precise enough to get your exact message across to others.
Some words are confused because they are soundlikes, and even native speakers can mix them up, even though they mean very different things.
Many of the potential pitfalls in English can be found even in mass media. Sometimes we can hear or read of a journalist accusing authorities or a foreign head of state of ‘flaunting resolutions or laws’. If we look up the verb ‘to flaunt’ in a dictionary, we shall see that it has the following meanings: ‘to show off’, ‘to display oneself or one’s possessions arrogantly’ [2, 224]. People often say: ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it’. This phrase implies the following contexts. Firstly, if you have a lot of money, you spend it in a way that leaves no one in any doubt that you are very wealthy or you have a great deal of money, because all your actions seem to say, ‘Look how rich I am’. Secondly, if you have a good body, you wear clothes that reveal it, rather than hide it; so you dress in a way that says, ‘Look how attractive I am!’ Following to this logic we should translate the journalists’ expressions as ‘Look at these wonderful resolutions or conventions!’ Obviously, there has been some mistake here. What journalists really mean is that the authorities or foreign leaders flout resolutions, laws. To prove this, we take into the consideration the next phrase ‘to flout the law’, in which the verb ‘to flout’ means ‘to show contempt and lack of respect for it by ignoring it and behaving as you like’ [3, 492]. The above mentioned explanation shows that foreign leaders or authorities simply disregard
resolutions or laws, acting as if they have never been passed.
This ‘wrong’ meaning of the verb ‘to flaunt’ becomes so popular among native speakers that sooner or later dictionaries will certainly have to include it as an alternative. True meaning of this lexical unit is reducing and it is the erosion meaning that is taken into the dictionary.
This is far from being a new phenomenon. Here is one more example of so-called misuse of the word. The verb ‘aggravate’ from the Latin firstly meant ‘make heavier’, that is ‘make worse’, ‘exaggerate’, ‘intensify’ and it’s related to grave, gravity, and grieve [2, 11]. So, for the majority of people it simply means ‘to make something that is already bad even worse or more severe’ [3, 24]. ‘The famine, initially caused by draught, has been aggravated by the civil war’. [1, 8].
In the 17th century this verb was first recorded as a synonym for ‘exasperate’, that is, ‘irritate’, ‘annoy’. Since that time ‘aggravate’ has been used in its extended meaning, though many linguists vigorously opposed that usage, saying the verb’s sense should be limited to ‘make worse’, ‘exacerbate’ [9].
The usage of the verb in a new sense apparently began spreading into print and attracting notice, in the 19th century, because many British and American writers, especially novelists reproducing spoken language, used ‘aggravate’ to mean ‘annoy’.
In the 20th century linguists came to the conclusion that it’s better not to denounce vulgar perversion and to endorse tolerance by using the verb in different meanings. The latest edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defends it in a usage note: ‘Some people claim that ‘aggravate’ can only mean ‘to make worse’ and not ‘to irritate’. They ignore not only an English sense in use since the 17th century, but also one of the original Latin ones’ [6, 29].
It’s no wonder that most English speaking usagists will certainly understand this verb in its extended sense in the following context: ‘It’s endless wait for luggage that aggravate me most about air travel’ [9].
We should definitely remember that informal ‘aggravate’ meaning ‘make worse’ always has an inanimate object — you aggravate an injury or problem — while ‘aggravate’ meaning ‘annoy’ applies only to people or animals.
Moreover, ‘aggravate’ in ‘worsen’ sense is still the dominant one in print. At the same time ‘aggravate’ for ‘annoy’ is not suitable for formal writing and that is why it is called an ‘ingrained casualism’. That poses a
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larger question: How often do English mass media use this verb in a proper way?
Recently there has been an article in the New York Times, where this verb had been used in the following context: ‘Mr Obama aggravated powerful players in Congress and the unions that helped elect him, then moved to assuage them’ [9]. In this context we can see the violation of this lexical unit usage, as the ‘Word for Word’book says, ‘aggravate’ means ‘make worse’, ‘not anger or irritate’ [1, 8]. At the same time it is unreasonable to deny that ‘aggravate’ has a meaning that every dictionary records. In case with the American president we speak about morals. That’s why it wouldn’t be unreasonable for the Times to rule that in a news story, the president of the United States shouldn’t be described as ‘aggravating members of Congress. As one Web commenter said: ‘This is plainly a mistake’ [9].
The next group of words that are often mixed up by English speakers is ‘historic’ and ‘historical’. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary explains the difference between these words. According to this dictionary, ‘historic’ is usually used to describe something that is so important that it is likely to be remembered. ‘Today is a historic occasion for our country’ [3, 615]. ‘Historical’, meanwhile, usually describes something that is connected with the past or with the study of history, something that really happened in the past. ‘I have been doing some historical research’ [3, 615].
The following context clearly demonstrates intentional or accidental confusion of these lexemes in different word combinations, thus allowing both words the chance of being variously used to describe one of Hingham’s oldest buildings of the 17th century as the ‘historic building’, ‘historic resource’ surely to be important in history, and as the ‘historical structure’ connected with the past. ‘Historic Hingham building to move 11/2 miles ...The building was most recently owned by John Richardson, who had a knack for collecting the historical, and dedicated much of his life to research into the small South Shore community. Before the town preservationist was thoughtful enough to put demolition delay bylaw into town, this wouldn’t be happening. The house would have been demolished, historic resource would be gone... Yet the delay is only for six month, and historical advocates have been working to move the historic structure by the end ofJune [10].
It should be taken into consideration that lexemes ‘historic’ and ‘historical’ have extended their meanings with the help of occasional synonyms in this context. This kind of synonyms is used as the complement of one another in logical and emotional sense allowing
the journalist to fully outline the problem of the unique building preservation: historical building — unique building — the oldest building; historic building — treasured home.
Recently linguists everywhere have had great sadness or disappointment about the widespread misuse of the word ‘literally’. Originally, this lexical unit had only one fundamental meaning ‘in a literal or strict sense, as opposed to a non-literal or exaggerated sense’. This explanation can be illustrated by an example in the ‘Word for word’ book: ‘I asked him to work on the project night and day, but unfortunately he took it literally’ [1, 124]. Stewart Clark points out that it is considered substandard by some to use ‘literally’ in formal English as an intensifier, proving his point with the example: ‘our staff are working themselves to death’, not ‘... literally working themselves to death’ [1, 124].
The reality is that he was right, as recently it has become in vogue to use ‘literally’ for emphasis in precisely the non-literal sense, as in ‘We were literally killing ourselves laughing’. This lexical unit has wrongly got one more meaning ‘figuratively, in a metaphorical sense’ which is more and more frequently used by modern native speakers. As Boston University psycholinguistJean Berko Gleason said; ‘My impression is that many people don’t have any idea of what ‘literally’ means — or used to mean. So they say things like ‘he was literally insane with jealousy’. If in response you asked them if this person had been institutionalized, they’d look at you as if you were the crazy one’ [8].
Unfortunately, it turns out that this informal and completely incorrect use of lexeme ‘literally’ has been added to some established dictionaries with the label ‘informal’. For example, Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Current English added the informal usage of the word as ‘used to emphasize a word or phrase that is being used in a figurative way’ [3, 751]. Oxford Dictionaries, however, also noted that ‘in recent years an extended use of ‘literally’ has become very common, where ‘literally’ is used deliberately in non-literal contexts, for added effect, as in ‘they bought the car and literally ran it into the ground’ [8]. However, even though this word is widely and actively used, its intentional overuse can result in unpredictable humorous effect that is unacceptable in a formal style.
Semantic shifts and appearance of new lexical units are noticeable in modern English in different spheres of public life: spoken language, youth language, mass media language. Once appeared, they are sneaking into advertising, business, social and political life.
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It’s not a secret that performance of polysemous words mainly depends on social and professional speaker’s mentality, on his educational level, ethnic background, and age. Moreover, social, cultural, ethnic, and psychological factors should be taken into account because they also make great influence on the appearance of lexical ambiguity. That’s why it’s very crucial to know not only the language itself, but its culture, so that one could understand and translate perfectly. Which lexical units are used by the native speakers mostly depend on their language, and hence, their world perception.
No doubt, innovations in any languages reflect not only pure linguistic changes, but everything that is going on in all spheres of public life, that helps new words formation.
Decoding of foreign culture is the most difficult process, because a non-native speaker can face the problem of finding a suitable contextual meaning of a polysemous word. This choice can be hard enough while communicating with a representative of an alien
culture, as there might not be neither cultural nor linguistic equivalents for a number of different notions and expressions.
Especially it’s really significant in case of newly formed lexical units’ interpretation, which requires cultural knowledge of at least two languages — native and foreign. This fact is perfectly proved by a Russian linguist Aleksey Shmelev. The idea that different languages have diverse world conceptualization is self-evident in modern semantics. Because of this, the concept of speech culture modification is necessary: it should be dynamic and comprise the notion of logical changes of language conceptualization of the world and interrelations between social, cultural, and language processes [5, 58].
In conclusion, it should be mentioned that usage of any language innovation mostly depends on a specific stylistic context. The misuse of English lexemes can result in miscommunication and even confused situations. So, one should be very attentive socializing with native speakers.
References:
1. Clark St., Pointon G. Word for Word//Oxford University Press, 2003. 250p.
2. Collins English Dictionary. Harper Collins Publishers, 2012. 692p.
3. Hornby A. S. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary ofCurrent English. Sixth Ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. 1540p.
4. Zaliznyak A. A. Mnogoznachnost v yazyke i sposoby yeyo predstavleniya//Yazyki slavyanskikh kultur. M.: Studia Philologica, 2006. 461p.
5. Shmelev A. D. Evolutsia yazykovoy kartiny mira i kultura rechi//Russian Language Journal. 2008. Vol. 58. 246p.
6. The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language. Third Edition. N. Y.: BARTLEBY. COM, 1991. 8652p.
7. http://lingvofreaks.narod.ru/zaliznyak.htm (date of application: 27.05.2013)
8. http://theweek.com/article/index/241002/how-the-wrong-definition-of-literally-snuck-into-the-dictionary (date of application: 08.06.2013)
9. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/07/05 (date of application: 05.07.2009)
10. http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/hingham/2013/05 (date of application: 30.05.2013)
Panteleev Audrey Feliksovitch, Southern Federal University, PhD in linguistics, associate Professor, Department of the Language theory and the Russian language
E-mail: [email protected] Kuleshova Nina Alekseevna, Southern Federal University,
Master's degree in linguistics, Department of the Language theory and the Russian language
E-mail: [email protected]
Grammatical metaphor in the language of Olga Arefieva’s poetry
Abstract: This article is devoted to the study of grammatical phenomena of transposition in the works of Olga Arefieva, who is a representative of Russian postmodernism literature. Grammatical metaphor is one of the character features of Arefieva’s idiostyle, a bright devise of expressiveness, imagery.
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