Lexicology

1.1 Word, lexeme, word-form

"Word" is ambiguous; the exam expects you to keep three notions apart:

Other useful notions: the orthographic word (separated by spaces — fails for ice cream, in spite of) and Bloomfield's classic definition of the word as the minimal free form (the smallest unit that can stand alone as an utterance). Supporting criteria of wordhood: positional mobility (words can be reordered, morphemes inside them cannot) and internal stability / uninterruptibility (nothing can normally be inserted inside a word — the jocular exception is expletive infixation: abso-bloody-lutely).

A lexical unit / lexical item may be larger than one word (look after, red herring) — this is why lexicology studies "the word-stock", not just words.

1.2 Morpheme — morph — allomorph

• Morpheme = the smallest meaningful unit of language; an abstract pairing of form and meaning (un-, friend, -ly, plural {-s}).
• Morph = the concrete phonological/orthographic realization of a morpheme in a given word.
• Allomorphs = variant realizations of one morpheme; their distribution may be phonological, morphological or lexical. Some forms vary rather than being strictly complementary.

Conditioning of allomorphy:

Special cases worth naming in the exam: portmanteau morph (one morph realizes several morphemes at once: -s in walks = 3rd person + singular + present); zero morph (sheep pl.); replacive morph (foot → feet, historically i-mutation/umlaut); unique (cranberry) morpheme — a bound element with highly restricted distribution and no clear independent contemporary meaning: cran- (cranberry). Such status can change: kempt and couth now also occur independently, so they are not unqualified examples of currently unique bound roots.

1.3 Classifying morphemes

Two independent cross-cutting dimensions:

1. Free vs bound. Free morphemes can stand alone as words (dog, walk, the, of); bound morphemes cannot (all affixes; bound roots such as Latinate -ceive, -mit, -fer, -duce in receive, permit, transfer, produce; cranberry morphemes).
2. Lexical vs grammatical. Lexical (content) morphemes carry full lexical meaning and belong to open classes; grammatical (function) morphemes signal relations and belong to closed sets.

The 2×2 grid gives four types: lexical free (dog), lexical bound (-ceive, cran-), grammatical free (the, of, and), grammatical bound (inflections -s, -ed, -ing). Some traditional classifications call derivational affixes bound lexical morphemes; other frameworks classify them differently. In every case identify them explicitly as bound, derivational, prefix/suffix, with their meaning and input/output class. This is more informative than an unexplained lexical/grammatical label.

Derivational vs inflectional affixes (memorize the contrast):

Note: the genitive 's actually behaves as a clitic — it attaches to whole phrases (the King of Spain's daughter), not just to nouns. English has no inflectional prefixes and, in the strict sense, no infixes (only the marginal expletive type fan-bloody-tastic).

1.4 Root, stem, base

• Root = the irreducible core of a word once all affixes are removed; carries the principal lexical meaning. May be free (touch in untouchables) or bound (-ceive in receive under a Latinate analysis). The level of segmentation must be stated.
• Stem = the unit to which inflectional affixes attach (untouchable in untouchable-s).
• Base = anything to which any affix attaches; the term is relative — in touchable the base is touch; in untouchable the base is touchable.

Worked morpheme analyses (exam-ready format — always give: morph, free/bound, lexical/grammatical or derivational/inflectional, prefix/suffix, and what it does):

• unfriendliness = un- (bound, derivational prefix, negative) + friend (free lexical root) + -ly (bound, derivational suffix, N → Adj) + -ness (bound, derivational suffix, Adj → N). Layered structure: [[un-[[friend]-ly]]-ness].
• unpredictability = un- + predict + -abil-/-able + -ity at the transparent contemporary lexical-base level, matching the morphology guide: predict → predictable → unpredictable → unpredictability. A finer Latinate analysis decomposes predict into pre- + bound root -dict-. State which level you use; the two counts answer different segmentation questions.
• reconsidered = re- (derivational prefix 'again') + consider (free root) + -ed (inflectional suffix, past).
• productivity (from the sample text) = product (free root; historically itself pro- + bound root -duct- 'lead') + -ive (derivational, Adj-forming) + -ity (derivational, N-forming).
• word-formation (sample text) = compound: word (free root) + formation (= free root form + derivational suffix -ation) — a compound whose second base is itself derived.

1.5 The linguistic sign (Saussure)

Ferdinand de Saussure (Cours de linguistique générale, 1916): the linguistic sign is a two-sided psychological unit joining

• signifiant ("signifier") — the acoustic image / form, and
• signifié ("signified") — the concept,

like two sides of one sheet of paper. Its fundamental property is arbitrariness (l'arbitraire du signe): there is no natural, intrinsic connection between form and concept — the link is purely conventional (a social contract among speakers). Evidence: (i) different languages use different forms for the same concept (tree — strom — Baum — arbre); (ii) forms change over time while concepts persist.

Saussure himself distinguished absolute arbitrariness (simple signs: nine, teen) from relative arbitrariness / relative motivation (complex signs whose parts are recognizable: nineteen) — the bridge to the next section.

1.6 Motivation in language — and its loss

A sign is motivated to the degree that its form can be related to its meaning. Ullmann's classic three types:

1. Phonetic (phonological) motivation — form imitates sound: onomatopoeia (buzz, hiss, splash, bang, cuckoo, murmur). Still partly conventional: an English rooster says cock-a-doodle-doo, a Czech one kykyryký. Weaker version: sound symbolism / phonaesthemes — gl- 'light' (gleam, glow, glitter, glimmer), sl- 'slippery, pejorative' (slide, slip, slimy), -ash 'violent impact' (crash, smash, bash).
2. Morphological motivation — the word's formation is transparent: reader 'one who reads', blackboard, unhappy. Fully compositional words are transparent; motivation comes in degrees.
3. Semantic motivation — a figurative sense is motivated by a literal one: metaphor (foot of the mountain, computer mouse, head of department), metonymy (the Crown 'the monarchy', tongue 'language').

Demotivation (loss of motivation). Sound change and semantic drift gradually obscure originally transparent formations; the word becomes an unanalysable simple sign:

• cupboard /ˈkʌbəd/ — sound reduction and meaning change weaken the transparent compound relation, although spelling still reveals its components; similarly breakfast /ˈbrekfəst/ (< break + fast), forehead traditional /ˈfɒrɪd/ (now often re-motivated by spelling pronunciation /ˈfɔːhed/).
• lord < OE hlāfweard 'loaf-keeper'; lady < OE hlǣfdige 'loaf-kneader'; woman < OE wīfmann 'woman-person'; daisy < OE dæges ēage 'day's eye'; window < Old Norse vindauga 'wind-eye'; nostril < OE nosþyrel 'nose-hole'; garlic < OE gārlēac 'spear-leek'; gospel < OE gōdspell 'good tidings'; holiday < holy day; gossip < OE godsibb 'godparent'; sheriff < OE scīrgerēfa 'shire-reeve'.

Folk (popular) etymology = re-motivation: speakers reshape an opaque word to look motivated. sparrowgrass (for asparagus), bridegroom (OE brȳdguma; obsolete guma 'man' replaced by groom), crayfish (< OF crevice — nothing to do with fish), penthouse (< OF apentis), cockroach (< Spanish cucaracha), hangnail (< OE angnægl 'painful nail'), Jerusalem artichoke (< Italian girasole 'sunflower'), female (< OF femelle, respelled after male). Related reanalysis by misdivision: an apron < a napron, an adder < a nadder, an umpire < a noumpere (OF nonper 'not equal'), and in the other direction a nickname < an ekename 'additional name', a newt < an ewt.

Common traps (ch. 1)

• Morpheme ≠ syllable. Crocodile = 3 syllables, 1 morpheme; cats = 1 syllable, 2 morphemes; plural /s/ is a morph with no syllable at all.
• Homonymous affixes: -er comparative (inflectional: older) vs -er agentive (derivational: teacher); -ly adverbial (slowly, Adj → Adv) vs -ly adjectival (friendly, N → Adj); -s plural vs -s 3sg; -ed past vs adjectival -ed (talented, from a noun!).
• Not every bound morpheme is an affix — bound roots (-ceive, cran-) are lexical, not derivational.
• Arbitrariness is not disproved by onomatopoeia — imitative words are still language-specific and conventionalized.
• Don't equate "word" with "lexeme" when counting: go/went = one lexeme, two word-forms.

Exam-style questions (ch. 1)

1.7 Keep synchronic analysis separate from history

A meaningful recurring contrast is evidence for segmentation; a familiar spelling sequence is not enough. Unclear contrasts with clear and many other un- formations. Uncle does not contain that negative prefix. A root can be bound, and a base can contain several morphemes: formation is a free base in word-formation, not one indivisible morpheme.

Word-formation = the branch of lexicology describing how new lexemes are created from existing resources (as opposed to inflection, borrowing and semantic change). Major processes: derivation (affixation), compounding, conversion. Minor processes: back-formation, clipping, blending, acronyms/initialisms, reduplication, (neoclassical composition,) eponymy, pure coinage.

A process is productive if it is currently used to coin new forms (cf. the Bauer passage in the sample test). Productivity is gradient and constrained — e.g. blocking: established thief competes with a general stealer, but does not ban specialized forms such as scene-stealer. -th has a largely closed inherited set, whereas -ness remains broadly productive, subject to constraints. Frequency of existing words is not proof of current productivity. Reference: Plag, chapter on productivity.

2.1 Derivation (affixation)

Creation of a new lexeme by adding a bound derivational affix to a base. In English: prefixation and suffixation (no productive infixation).

Prefixes typically change meaning but keep the word class (class-maintaining): happy → unhappy, write → rewrite, war → post-war. Classes by meaning (Quirk et al.):

Exceptions — class-changing prefixes: en-/em- (N/Adj → V: enrich, enlarge, endanger, empower — note the allomorphy em- before labials), be- (befriend, belittle), a- (→ predicative Adj: asleep, ablaze, afloat, historically on + noun).

Suffixes typically change the word class (class-changing) and determine the class of the whole word:

Class-maintaining suffixes exist too (mostly N → N): diminutives -let, -ette, -ie/-y (booklet, kitchenette, doggie), feminine -ess (lioness), status/collective -hood, -ship, -dom (brotherhood, membership, officialdom). (Contrast with Czech, which has a far richer diminutive system.)

Link to phonology (recyclable in the stress question): Germanic suffixes are neutral (-ness, -less, -ful, -er, -hood, -ship: no stress shift), many Romance/Latinate suffixes are stress-shifting/stress-fixing (-ity, -ion, -ic, -ical: proˈductive → ˌproducˈtivity, ˈsyntax → synˈtactic).

2.2 Compounding

Compounding combines two (or more) bases, each containing a lexical root that can normally occur as an independent word: toothpaste, blackboard, babysitter. English compounding is highly productive, and many endocentric compounds have a right-hand head: the right-hand member determines word class, core meaning and inflection (a coffee table is a table; blackbirds pluralizes at the right edge; exception: passers-by).

Classification by word class of the whole:

• Compound nouns: N+N (toothpaste, bookshop), Adj+N (blackboard, greenhouse), V+N (pickpocket), V-ing+N (swimming pool, washing machine), N+V-er (dishwasher, lawnmower), N+V-ing (sightseeing, brainstorming), particle types (input, outbreak, downfall; breakdown, takeover, make-up from phrasal verbs).
• Compound adjectives: N+Adj (snow-white, world-famous, duty-free), Adj+Adj (bittersweet), N+V-ing (time-consuming, mouth-watering), Adj/Adv+V-ing (good-looking, hard-working), N+V-ed (handmade, heartbroken), Adv+V-ed (well-known, widespread), Adj+N-ed "possessive" type (blue-eyed, kind-hearted, long-legged), numeral+N(-ed) (three-legged, second-hand).
• Compound verbs: rare as direct compounding; mostly back-formed (babysit < babysitter, proofread, brainwash) or converted from nouns (to snowball).
• Grammatical compounds: into, onto, throughout, without; someone, anything, however.

Classification by semantics:

Note frogman (sample text): formally endocentric (a frogman is a man), but its meaning 'diver with breathing apparatus' is non-compositional — it is lexicalized, exactly Bauer's point.

Spelling: solid (toothpaste), hyphenated (well-known), open (coffee table) — usage is inconsistent, often varying for one item (flower pot / flower-pot / flowerpot), so spelling is not a reliable criterion of compound status.

Stress and the compound-vs-phrase test. Compounds typically carry unity stress on the first element; free phrases have nuclear stress on the last:

• ˈblackbird (species) vs black ˈbird (any bird that is black)
• ˈgreenhouse (glass building) vs green ˈhouse (house painted green)
• ˈdarkroom (photography) vs dark ˈroom
• the ˈWhite House (residence) vs a white ˈhouse
• ˈEnglish teacher (teaches English) vs English ˈteacher (teacher who is English)

Further criteria of compoundhood: semantic unity/lexicalization (a blackboard can be green — the meaning is not the sum of the parts), inseparability (*a black big board), non-modifiability of the first element (a very black bird only as phrase; *a very blackbird), the first element cannot take inflection or comparison (*a blacker-board). Caveat: some open N+N combinations take final stress even when lexicalized, especially material/composition types (apple ˈpie, stone ˈwall, paper ˈbag) — so apply several criteria together, not stress alone.

2.3 Derivation vs compounding — the exam table (sample-test Q10)

2.4 Conversion (zero derivation)

Creation of a new lexeme by transferring a word to another word class without any overt affix: bottle N → to bottle V. Also called functional shift. English's analytic character (bare stems, few endings) makes conversion exceptionally productive.

Main directions:

• N → V (the most productive): to bottle, to butter, to elbow, to chair (a meeting), to google, to email, to text, to ship
• V → N: a walk, a guess, a try, a call, a buy, a read; even a must (modal → noun)
• Adj → V: to empty, to clean, to dry, to calm, to slow
• Adj → N: a daily (newspaper), comparable regulars, finals
• Minor: particle/preposition → V (to down a drink), conjunction → N (ifs and buts), phrase → N (a has-been, a must-see, forget-me-nots)

Full vs partial conversion. Full conversion: the item adopts the entire paradigm of the new class (bottle → bottles, bottled, bottling; a daily → dailies). Partial conversion: the item serves in the new class's function without acquiring its full morphology — the rich, the poor, the unemployed (require the, no plural *riches in this sense, no genitive).

How to determine the direction of conversion (Marchand's criteria): (i) semantic dependence — the verb to hammer is defined via the noun hammer, so N → V; (ii) history/first attestation (OED dates); (iii) frequency (the source item is usually more frequent); (iv) inflectional behaviour — newly converted denominal verbs tend to be regular (grandstanded), but irregular verbs such as input/input prevent treating this as an absolute test.

Conversion accompanied by formal change (treated by many as marginal conversion / separate derivation):

• Stress shift N ˈ__ vs V ˈ: ˈrecord/reˈcord, ˈpermit/perˈmit, ˈimport/imˈport, ˈpresent/preˈsent, ˈprotest/proˈtest, ˈrebel/reˈbel, ˈsuspect/suˈspect, ˈconduct/conˈduct, ˈdesert/deˈsert
• Final-consonant voicing N /f, s, θ/ vs V /v, z, ð/: house/house, use/use, advice/advise, belief/believe, proof/prove, shelf/shelve, bath/bathe, breath/breathe, teeth/teethe, half/halve

2.5 Minor word-formation processes

Back-formation. A (usually shorter) word is created by removing a supposed affix, reversing the normal direction of derivation; definable only historically. Examples: edit < editor, babysit < babysitter, burgle < burglar, enthuse < enthusiasm, liaise < liaison, televise < television, donate < donation, diagnose < diagnosis, legislate < legislation, automate < automation, escalate < escalator, sightsee < sightseeing, window-shop < window-shopping, laze < lazy, sleaze < sleazy, emote < emotion, lase < laser (a back-formation from an acronym!). Inflection-level reanalysis: pea < pease (OE pise, mistaken for a plural), cherry < Anglo-Norman cherise, sherry < sherris (from Spanish Xerez/Jerez).

Clipping. Shortening a polysyllabic word without change of meaning or class; changes register (informal). Types:

• Back-clipping (end cut off — the most common): exam(ination), lab(oratory), gym(nasium), ad(vertisement), memo(randum), photo(graph), demo(nstration), pub(lic house), fan(atic), app(lication), uni, prof, doc, deli, limo, piano(forte), zoo(logical garden), pram < perambulator, taxi < taxicab < taximeter cab, cab < cabriolet, mob < Latin mobile vulgus (17th-c. slang famously condemned by Swift)
• Fore-clipping (beginning cut off): phone < telephone, bus < omnibus, plane < aeroplane, chute < parachute, roach < cockroach (AmE), gator < alligator, blog < weblog (re-divided we blog)
• Both ends: flu < influenza, fridge < refrigerator. Back-clipping with retained/reanalysed final -s: specs < spectacles, maths < mathematics (BrE)
• Clipped compounds: sitcom < situation comedy, sci-fi < science fiction, hi-fi < high fidelity, biopic < biographic(al) picture, op-ed < opposite (the) editorial (page), Interpol, Benelux
• Hypocorisms (clipping + -y/-ie, esp. BrE/AusE): telly, footy, brekkie, barbie; names: Liz/Beth < Elizabeth, Bill < William

Some clippings have ousted the full form entirely (bus, piano, taxi, mob, zoo) — full lexicalization.

Blending. Fusing parts of two words (typically the beginning of one + the end of the other), often with overlap; Lewis Carroll's "portmanteau words" (Through the Looking-Glass; his chortle = chuckle + snort and slithy = slimy + lithe are now dictionary words). Examples: smog (smoke + fog), brunch (breakfast + lunch), motel (motor + hotel), Oxbridge, Spanglish/Czenglish, emoticon (emotion + icon), webinar, infotainment, edutainment, docudrama, mockumentary, guesstimate, ginormous (gigantic + enormous), staycation, bromance, hangry, glamping, frenemy, spork, malware (malicious + software), Brexit (Britain + exit), vlog (video + blog), podcast (iPod + broadcast), workaholic (work + alcoholic). Note how blends can release productive splinters (libfixes): -(a)holic (shopaholic, chocoholic), -splain (mansplain), -burger (cheeseburger — from the reanalysis of hamburger, originally 'of Hamburg'), -gate 'scandal' (from Watergate).

Acronyms vs initialisms (alphabetisms). Both are formed from initial letters; the difference is pronunciation:

• Acronyms are pronounced as words: NATO, NASA, UNESCO, AIDS, PIN, NIMBY, AWOL; fully lexicalized lowercase ones: laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), radar (radio detection and ranging), scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), sonar.
• Initialisms are pronounced letter by letter: BBC, USA, EU, UN, DNA, FBI, VIP, ATM, CEO, HTML, OMG, RSVP (from a French sentence!).
• Mixed/either: CD-ROM, JPEG /ˈdʒeɪpeɡ/, VAT (both /ˌviːeɪˈtiː/ and /væt/), ASAP, FAQ. Classify a token by its pronunciation, not capitals alone.

Beware backronyms (false expansions invented after the fact): posh does not come from "port out, starboard home", golf not from "gentlemen only…", and SOS was chosen purely for its simple Morse pattern, not as "save our souls".

Reduplication. Doubling of a base, exact or with change:

• Exact: bye-bye, night-night, no-no, so-so, fifty-fifty, hush-hush, goody-goody
• Ablaut (vowel-change, i–a/o): zigzag, chit-chat, tick-tock, flip-flop, ping-pong, ding-dong, criss-cross, mishmash, sing-song, knick-knack, hip-hop, seesaw, wishy-washy
• Rhyming: helter-skelter, hocus-pocus, super-duper, teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy, hanky-panky, walkie-talkie, willy-nilly (< will he, nill he), razzle-dazzle; Yiddish-pattern shm-: fancy-schmancy
• Modern colloquial contrastive focus reduplication: "Do you LIKE-like him?"

Functions: sound imitation, alternating movement, intensification, informality, child-directed speech.

Neoclassical compounds. Formed from Greek/Latin combining forms — bound roots with full lexical meaning (not affixes!), usually joined by a linking vowel -o- (Greek) or -i- (Latin): bio-logy, geo-graphy, tele-scope, micro-scope, demo-cracy, anthropo-logy, psycho-logy, insect-i-cide, speed-o-meter (hybrid). They sit between derivation and compounding: like compounds, both elements are lexical roots; like derivation, the elements are bound. Some combining forms have been freed by clipping (photo, bio, tech) or have become productive with native words (biodegradable, microwave; new quasi-combining forms e- as in e-mail, cyber-, nano-).

Eponymy and coinage (word manufacture). Proper names → common nouns: sandwich (4th Earl of Sandwich), boycott (Captain Charles Boycott, 1880), wellingtons, cardigan, mackintosh, watt, volt, ohm, hertz, pasteurize (Pasteur), mesmerize (Mesmer), guillotine (Dr Guillotin), silhouette (Étienne de Silhouette), braille, diesel, nicotine (Jean Nicot), saxophone (Adolphe Sax), shrapnel (Henry Shrapnel), maverick (Samuel Maverick's unbranded cattle); place names: denim (serge de Nîmes), jeans (Genoa), champagne, bikini (Bikini Atoll), marathon, tuxedo (Tuxedo Park), hamburger (Hamburg), dollar (< German T(h)aler < Joachimsthaler, from Jáchymov/Joachimsthal in Bohemia!). Literary coinages an English student should recognize: utopia (More), pandemonium (Milton, Paradise Lost — 'place of all demons'), yahoo (Swift), serendipity (Walpole, 1754), chortle, galumph (Carroll), quark (Gell-Mann, after Joyce's Finnegans Wake), catch-22 (Heller), malapropism (Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan's The Rivals), quixotic (Cervantes), gargantuan (Rabelais), mentor (Homer), robot (Karel Čapek's R.U.R., 1920 — suggested by his brother Josef, from Czech robota 'drudgery'). Pure ex-nihilo coinage is rare: googol (→ the Google misspelling), Kodak (arbitrary, Eastman liked K), nylon (arbitrary DuPont coinage — the "NY + London" story is a myth), blurb.

Common traps (ch. 2)

• Sitcom, sci-fi, biopic are clipped compounds, not blends (each element is clipped separately; a blend fuses fragments into one new morph: smog). The boundary is admittedly fuzzy — say so if asked.
• Emoji is not related to emotion — it is a Japanese loan (e 'picture' + moji 'character'); emoticon (emotion + icon) is a blend. Classic false-friend pair.
• Conversion pairs like ˈrecord/reˈcord are only "conversion" loosely — the stress change is a formal marker, so many textbooks call them partial/marginal conversion or stress-derivation. Mention the nuance.
• Babysitter → babysit is back-formation, not compounding of baby + sit — the compound noun (with -er) is attested first.
• Exocentricity is semantic, not formal: pickpocket looks like V+N but denotes a person; frogman has a formal head (man) yet is non-compositional (lexicalized).
• Don't confuse productivity (can still coin: -ness) with frequency (many existing words: -th words are frequent, but -th is dead).

Exam-style questions (ch. 2)

2.6 Productivity, structure and history: three different questions

1. Structure now: What units and relations can speakers recognize?
2. History: Which form was attested first, and by which process did the other arise?
3. Productivity: Can the pattern create a usable new lexeme under present constraints?

A large stock of old -th nouns does not show that speakers freely coin new ones. A single invented -ness form shows an attempted formation, not that it is conventional. Blocking is competition, often sense-specific. Orthographic length alone cannot distinguish clipping from back-formation.

3.1 The big picture: a layered vocabulary

English has a dual (in fact multiple) vocabulary: a small, native Germanic core doing most of the everyday grammatical and communicative work, wrapped in massive Romance and classical layers. The proportions depend strongly on the dictionary, the definition of origin and how intermediate languages are counted; a fixed percentage is not needed for this topic. Frequency changes the picture: in running text the most frequent words are overwhelmingly native — the top of any frequency list (the, be, of, and, a, in, to, have, that, it…) is Anglo-Saxon, with Norse they/them/their and a few French items (very, use, people, just) as the famous exceptions. So: borrowed words dominate the dictionary; native words dominate the discourse.

Key terms: borrowing/loanword; source language; direct vs indirect borrowing (via an intermediary: Greek philosophia → Latin → French → English); loan translation (calque) — the pattern is translated morpheme by morpheme (superman < German Übermensch; it goes without saying < French cela va sans dire); assimilation of loans (phonological, morphological, graphic) — old loans are fully naturalized (wine, cheese), recent ones keep foreign traits (genre, rendezvous).

3.2 The native (Anglo-Saxon/Germanic) core

Inherited from Old English (before that, Proto-Germanic; some items shared with Latin as common Indo-European inheritance — cognates, not loans!). Characteristics:

• Function words: articles (the, a), pronouns (I, we, you, he, it, this, that), prepositions (in, on, at, by, to, of, with, under, over), conjunctions (and, but, if, as, so), auxiliaries and modals (be, have, do, shall, will, can, may, must), numerals (one–ten, hundred)
• Core content vocabulary: kinship (father, mother, brother, son, daughter, child, wife), body (head, hand, foot, eye, ear, heart, blood), nature (sun, moon, earth, water, fire, tree, oak, land, sea), animals (horse, cow, sheep, swine, hen, hound, fish), basic verbs (go, come, see, hear, eat, drink, sleep, live, love, work, make, do), basic adjectives (good, old, young, long, red, green, cold)
• Formal properties: predominantly monosyllabic (or initial-stressed), phonologically simple, prone to irregular morphology (strong verbs sing–sang–sung; mutation plurals man/men, foot/feet; suppletion go/went, good/better)
• Functional properties: highest frequency; broadest polysemy; widest collocability; serve as bases for word-formation (hand → handful, handy, handle, second-hand) and for phrasal verbs; stylistically neutral or informal; have weak forms in connected speech
• Native word-stock also grows by native processes: compounding and derivation on native bases (understanding, forgiveness, threefold)

Curiosity worth one exam line: a few everyday words are attested in Old English but of unknown ultimate origin (dog — OE docga; also big, boy, girl are of obscure origin) — unknown origin is not proof of inheritance. Nor does attestation in Old English establish Germanic inheritance: early loans were already present then.

The Celtic gap: despite the Celtic substrate, Old English borrowed remarkably few Celtic words (brock 'badger', tor, crag) — mostly place-names survive (Thames, Avon 'river', Dover). Later Celtic loans came from Irish/Scottish Gaelic and Welsh: whisky (< uisge beatha 'water of life'), slogan (< sluagh-ghairm 'war-cry'), clan, loch, bog, galore, banshee, bard, Tory (< Irish tóraidhe 'outlaw').

3.3 Scandinavian (Old Norse) loans

From the Viking settlement (Danelaw, 9th–11th c.); adopted through everyday contact between closely related languages, hence loans of the most basic kind — unique among the layers:

• Grammatical words: they, them, their (replaced OE hīe, him, hira — Chaucer still mixes they with hem/here); also same, till, fro (as in to and fro)
• Everyday nouns: sky (ON ský 'cloud'), skin, skirt, skill, sister (OE sweostor reshaped under ON systir), window (vindauga 'wind-eye'), husband (húsbóndi 'house-dweller/master'), fellow (félagi), law (late OE lagu < ON), leg, egg (Caxton's famous 1490 egges/eyren anecdote shows the ON and OE forms competing), knife, root, wing, anger, dirt, cake, bag
• Everyday verbs and adjectives: take (ousted OE niman), get, give (the hard-/g/ form), call, cast, die, want, hit, seem; ill, ugly, wrong, weak, low, loose, odd, flat; happy (formed in English from hap, ultimately Norse, + native -y — a hybrid, not a whole-word Norse loan)
• Place-names: -by (Derby, Whitby), -thorpe, -thwaite, -toft

Recognition cues: initial /sk/ (native OE sc became /ʃ/: ship, shall, fish; so sky, skill, skin, score, scant are Norse or later loans); hard /k, g/ before front vowels (kid, get, egg; contrast native palatalized church with Norse-flavoured kirk); membership in the everyday core despite being a loan. Norse–English doublets: shirt/skirt, church/kirk, no/nay, whole/hale (cf. wassail < wes hāl / ves heill 'be well!'), rear/raise, ditch/dike.

3.4 French loans

The largest single source. Two medieval waves plus continuing modern borrowing:

(a) Norman French (Anglo-Norman), c. 1066–1250. Language of the conquerors' administration; loans reflect power domains:

• Government: government, parliament, council, country, county, power, authority, reign, court
• Law: justice, judge, jury, attorney, crime, accuse, verdict, prison, evidence, heir
• Military: army, navy, battle, war (Norman werre), soldier, captain, enemy, peace, siege, castle
• Church: religion, saint, sermon, prayer, clergy, parish, charity (note: church, bishop, priest, monk are older Latin-Greek loans via OE — a classic trap)
• Rank and address: noble, duke, count, baron, prince, madam, sir; kinship beyond the core: uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, niece

(b) Central (Parisian) French, after c. 1250. Culture, refinement, everyday upper-class life: art, beauty, colour, image, music, poet, literature, romance, dance, leisure, dinner, supper, feast; cuisine — the famous animal/meat pairs (native animal in the field, French meat on the table, popularized by Scott's Ivanhoe): ox/cow–beef, calf–veal, sheep–mutton, pig/swine–pork, deer–venison; cooking verbs boil, fry, roast, stew, toast (native: bake, brew); fashion: fashion, dress, gown, garment, jewel, button.

Norman vs Central French doublets (same word borrowed twice from two dialects): Norman kept /k/ before a and initial w-, Central French had ch- and gu-: catch/chase, cattle/chattel, warden/guardian, warranty/guarantee, wage/gage, wile/guile (cf. also William/Guillaume, war vs guerre — whence later guerrilla via Spanish).

(c) Later French loans (17th c. onwards) keep French pronunciation and often final stress: machine, police, prestige, garage, ballet, champagne, chauffeur, chef, cliché, genre, régime, rendezvous, bourgeois, connoisseur, silhouette, café.

Dating cue — the ch test: early (medieval) loans have /tʃ/ (chamber, chance, change, chief, charity); late loans have /ʃ/ (machine, champagne, chef, chic, moustache). Hence the doublet chief (medieval) vs chef (modern) — the same French word borrowed twice. Similarly -age: early loans are anglicized /ɪdʒ/ (village, marriage, courage, language), late ones keep /ɑːʒ/ (garage, mirage, massage, sabotage, camouflage).

A diachronic gem: in Chaucer, French loans still rhyme with final stress (licour, corage, nature in the General Prologue); the Germanic initial-stress pattern retracted the stress later — many SZZ stress questions (ˈvillage but maˈchine) are explained by borrowing date.

3.5 Latin loans

Latin fed English in successive waves — dating a Latin loan is a favourite exam justification:

1. Continental/very early wave (borrowed by Germanic tribes before and during settlement, via trade and Roman Britain): fully assimilated, look native: street (via strata), wall (vallum), wine (vinum), cheese (caseus), kitchen (coquina), cook, cup, dish (discus), pepper, pound, inch, mile, mint (coin), chalk
2. Christianization wave (from 597 AD), often ultimately Greek: church (< Greek kyriakón, borrowed early into Germanic), bishop (episcopus < Gk), priest, monk, nun, minster, abbot, altar, mass, candle, school (schola < Gk), master (magister), verse, angel, devil
3. Renaissance learned wave (15th–17th c., the "inkhorn" era — mocked by purists like Thomas Wilson, 1553): borrowed straight from written Latin, weakly assimilated: exit, genius, species, formula, area, radius, series, index, appendix, axis, item, veto, census, medium, curriculum; verbs in -ate (educate, dedicate, investigate); this wave also brought etymological respellings, sometimes false: debt, doubt (silent b restored after Latin debitum, dubitare), receipt, salmon, and hypercorrect island (native OE īegland, respelled after unrelated French isle < Latin insula — the s never belonged!)
4. Modern scientific neo-Latin (continuing): bacterium, vaccine, per cent, plus the whole neoclassical combining-form machinery (ch. 2)

3.6 Greek loans

Mostly learned and scientific, entering (i) indirectly via Latin and French (philosophy, theatre, drama, comedy, tragedy, grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, democracy, politics, ethics), and (ii) directly in modern scholarly usage (phenomenon/phenomena, criterion/criteria, crisis/crises, hypothesis, analysis, diagnosis, syndrome, cosmos, chaos, charisma), plus combining forms (tele-, micro-, psycho-, -logy, -phone, -graph). Hybrid curiosity: television = Greek tele- + Latin visio — a Greek-Latin hybrid, often quoted (originally as a complaint) in lexicology classes.

Recognition cues for Greek: spellings ph /f/ (photograph), ch /k/ (character, chemistry, chaos, architect), ps- (psychology), pn- (pneumonia), rh- (rhythm), medial y (system, physics), plurals -on/-a (phenomenon/phenomena), -is/-es (crisis/crises).

3.7 Other sources (supporting examples)

3.8 Etymological doublets, triplets, quadruplets

Doublets = two (or more) words in one language going back to the same ultimate source by different routes or at different times:

• Native × Norse: shirt/skirt, church/kirk, whole/hale, no/nay, rear/raise
• Norman × Central French: catch/chase, cattle/chattel, warden/guardian, warranty/guarantee, wile/guile
• French × Latin (the same Latin word twice): frail/fragile (fragilis), sure/secure (securus), poor/pauper, reason/ration (ratio), treason/tradition (traditio 'handing over'), poison/potion (potio 'drink'), count/compute (computare), chamber/camera, story/history
• Early loan × late loan of the same word: chief/chef, wine/vine, dish/desk/dais/disc (a quadruplet from Latin discus), hospital/hostel/hotel (+ hospice), gentle/genteel/jaunty (+ gentile straight from Latin) — French gentil borrowed repeatedly
• Other routes: zero/cipher (Arabic ṣifr), tea/chai

Near-synonym sets with stylistic layering — related senses, three historical layers (not necessarily three descendants of the same etymon) (native → French → Latin), rising formality:

Related two-member pairs: freedom/liberty, begin/commence, buy/purchase, wish/desire, deep/profound, motherly/maternal, brotherly/fraternal, heavenly/celestial, mouth/oral, eye/ocular. Tendency, not a rule: some native/French/Latin sets contrast in register, but many borrowed words are everyday and neutral. Establish meaning and usage for each item; origin does not determine emotional value.

3.9 Hybrid formations

Words combining morphemes from different source languages — proof that borrowed material is fully naturalized:

• native root + Romance/Latin affix: starvation (famously mocked in the 18th c.), talkative, breakage, shepherdess, forbearance, oddity (Norse root + Latin suffix)
• borrowed root + native affix: beautiful (F beauté + -ful), useful, faithless, courtly, colourless, uncertain, unable, unjust, gentlemanly
• mixed compounds/phrases: grandmother/grandfather (F + native), because (native by + F cause), gentleman, television (Gk + L), speedometer (native + Gk linking pattern)

3.10 How to recognize origin — the justification toolkit (sample-test Q8)

For “decide whether these function words are native and justify”, prioritize historical evidence. The following are clues of unequal strength, not a published marking scheme:

Arguments for native (Anglo-Saxon) origin:

1. Word class: articles, pronouns, demonstratives, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries/modals are closed-class grammatical words; the grammatical core of a language is highly resistant to borrowing → almost all are native. (Sophistication bonus: the exception proving the rule is Norse they/them/their, borrowed under intense language contact.)
2. Attestation: the word existed in Old English (in = OE in; the < OE demonstrative se/sēo/þæt; we = OE wē; that = OE þæt; can = OE cunnan 'know (how)').
3. Germanic cognates: German/Dutch parallels (in/in, das/dat, wir/wij, dass/dat, kann/kan) show common Germanic inheritance. (Careful: Latin in is a cognate — shared Indo-European ancestry — not evidence of borrowing.)
4. Form: monosyllabic, phonologically simple; has weak forms in connected speech (typical of native grammar words).
5. Morphology: irregular/suppletive paradigms (can/could, be/was, go/went) mark the inherited core.
6. Word-initial /ð/ is concentrated in grammatical words such as the, this, that, then, though, they. It cannot prove native English origin: Norse-derived they is a counterexample, even though Norse is another Germanic language.

Cues that a word is borrowed:

• French: non-initial stress in older loans (deˈceive), final stress and /ʒ, ʃ/ in later loans (preˈstige, machine); suffixes -tion, -ment, -age, -ance, -ous, -ity; oi/oy spellings (royal, voyage, choice)
• Latin: prefix + bound root structure (re-ceive, trans-mit, pro-duce, in-ject, con-tain); -ate verbs; unadapted endings (-us, -um, -a: radius, curriculum, formula)
• Greek: ph, ch /k/, ps-, rh-, y, combining forms, plurals -on/-a, -is/-es
• Norse: /sk/ (sky, skill, skin), hard /k, g/ before front vowels (kid, get, egg), everyday meaning despite loan status
• Late French/foreign: unassimilated pronunciation/spelling (genre, rendezvous, tsunami)

Common traps (ch. 3)

• Basic-looking ≠ native: take, get, sky, skin, egg, leg, die, want, wrong, they are Scandinavian; very (< OF verai 'true' — cf. the fossil "the very man" = 'the true man'), use, people, just, face, place, large are French. Conversely, formal-looking understanding, forgiveness, righteousness are native.
• Church words: church, bishop, priest, monk = pre-Conquest Latin/Greek loans, not French (but religion, saint, sermon, clergy are French).
• Cognate vs loan: English in ~ Latin in, mother ~ Latin māter are cognates (common IE descent), not borrowings.
• Etymological myths to avoid: posh, golf, SOS acronym stories are false; nylon ≠ NY + London; island's s is a false Latinization. If you are not sure of an etymology, choose another example.
• Ward/guard-type pairs: Germanic material borrowed into French and re-imported (war/guerre, wardrobe/garde-robe) — describe them as "Germanic word via Norman vs Central French", not as Latin.

Exam-style questions (ch. 3)

3.11 Etymological evidence and adaptation

Separate immediate donor, ultimate source, and formation within English. A word made in English from Greek combining forms is not necessarily a whole word borrowed from Ancient Greek. Conversely a word already attested in Old English may be an early Latin loan. Useful adaptation dimensions are pronunciation/stress, spelling, inflection and integration into new formations.

4.1 The concept

Collocation = the habitual, recurrent co-occurrence of two (or more) lexical items; a syntagmatic partnership that speakers store and expect. J. R. Firth (1957) made it a technical term: "You shall know a word by the company it keeps" — part of a word's meaning is the set of its typical companions (dark collocates with night; meaning "by collocation" is meaning at the syntagmatic level). Corpus linguistics (Sinclair) formalized it: the node word, its collocates, within a span (typically ±4 words); Sinclair's idiom principle (we compose text largely from prefabricated collocational chunks) vs the open-choice principle.

4.2 Collocability, range, restriction

• Collocability (collocational range) = the set of items a word can combine with. General words have wide ranges (good, take, thing); specific words narrow ones.
• Collocational restriction = conventional, often arbitrary limits on combination that are not explainable by meaning alone: strong tea but powerful engine (not *powerful tea, *strong computer — though strong and powerful are near-synonyms); make a decision not *do a decision; heavy rain/smoker/traffic not *strong rain; fast food but a quick meal.
• Extremely narrow ranges shade into bound collocations: rancid (butter, fat, oil), addled (eggs, brains), torrential (rain), auburn (hair), shrug (one's shoulders), curry favour (the idiomatic combination is restricted, although literal curry “groom” also survives — historically "curry Favel", grooming the deceitful horse Fauvel of a medieval allegory).
• Restrictions are language-specific → a minefield for learners (and future teachers): Czech silný kuřák = heavy (not *strong) smoker; udělat fotku = take (not *make) a photo; but silný čaj = strong tea happens to match.

4.3 Lexical vs grammatical collocations

• Lexical collocations = content word + content word: make a decision, bitterly cold, heavy rain.
• Grammatical collocations (colligations) = content word + grammatical word/pattern (Benson, Benson & Ilson's BBI Combinatory Dictionary; "colligation" is Firth's term for co-occurrence with grammatical categories): depend on, interested in, accuse sb of, keen on, good at, by accident, on purpose, in advance, eager to do vs enjoy doing**.

4.4 The main lexical patterns (exam inventory — learn 3+ examples each)

Delexical (light) verbs make/do/take/have/give live almost entirely in collocations: have a shower, take a break, do homework, make progress, give a lecture. Advanced garnish: semantic prosody — some words collocate systematically with evaluative sets: cause takes overwhelmingly negative objects (cause damage/problems/an accident), commit takes offences.

Clichés = overworked fixed collocational strings (at the end of the day, in this day and age, at this moment in time) — stylistically stale but linguistically just strong collocation.

4.5 The cline: free combination → collocation → idiom

The boundaries are gradual — that is the expected exam formulation: collocation occupies the middle of a cline of fixedness between free syntax and phraseology (ch. 5).

Common traps (ch. 4)

• Collocation is not defined by grammar (that is colligation) nor by fixed idiomatic meaning (that is idiom) — it is conventional co-occurrence of lexical items.
• Collocational restriction includes convention as well as semantic preferences. Powerful tea is unusual for beverage strength, but is interpretable in a creative context; mark it “unusual for this sense”, rather than universally ungrammatical.
• In "find a pattern in the text" tasks, check the word classes carefully: in usually assumed, usually modifies a verb form (Adv + V-ed), not an adjective; totally productive is the true Adv + Adj example in the Bauer text.
• Same node, different collocates across languages — never argue from Czech.

Exam-style questions (ch. 4)

4.6 A collocation claim needs recurrence

Finding two words together once proves an occurrence, not habitual association. For a new claim, specify the sense/register, look for the pairing across independent corpus contexts, compare plausible alternatives, and check a collocation dictionary. This is separate from identifying an adjective+noun or verb+noun pattern in the supplied exam passage.

Set (fixed) expressions / phrasemes / multi-word lexical units = word combinations that behave as single vocabulary items. Defining features:

1. Polylexicality — more than one word;
2. Fixedness (stability) — lexical (kick the bucket, not *kick the pail) and grammatical (*the bucket was kicked loses the idiomatic reading; but fixedness is gradient — spill the beans passivizes: the beans were spilled);
3. Institutionalization/conventionalization — accepted and expected by the speech community;
4. Reproducibility — available as conventional patterns in memory; speakers can also analyse and adapt their internal structure;
5. For idioms proper: non-compositionality (semantic opacity).

Cowie's cline: free combination → restricted collocation → figurative idiom → pure idiom.

5.1 Idioms and degrees of opacity

Idiom = a set expression whose overall meaning cannot be derived from the meanings of its parts (non-compositional).

Some idioms preserve fossil words or constructions found nowhere else — a nice link to unique morphemes: to and fro (Norse frá), kith and kin (OE cȳþþ 'acquaintance'), spick and span (< span-new, ON 'chip-new'), short shrift (< shrive 'hear confession'; used in Richard III), hue and cry (Anglo-Norman legal formula), moot point (OE gemōt 'assembly'), run amok (Malay), at bay (Old French).

Structural classification: verbal (spill the beans, get on someone's nerves), nominal (a red herring, the last straw, a white elephant), adjectival (long in the tooth, high and dry, fit as a fiddle), adverbial (once in a blue moon, by hook or by crook, in a nutshell, off the record), sentence idioms (The coast is clear; The cat is out of the bag).

Variation and exploitation. Institutionalized variants exist (a skeleton in the cupboard BrE / closet AmE; not touch sth with a barge pole BrE / a ten-foot pole AmE; flog/beat a dead horse); many idioms have open slots (give sb the cold shoulder); journalism and advertising exploit idioms by creative modification (puns on headlines) — evidence that "fixed" means "conventionally anchored", not "frozen solid".

5.2 Multi-word verbs: phrasal, prepositional, phrasal-prepositional

Phrasal verb = verb + adverbial particle (up, out, off, down, on, away): give up, turn down, put off, find out, carry out, break down (intr.), show up (intr.). Meanings range from literal (go out) through aspectual/completive (eat up, drink up) to fully idiomatic (give up 'surrender'). Prepositional verb = verb + preposition with its object: look after, depend on, come across 'find by chance', deal with, listen to, believe in. Phrasal-prepositional verb = verb + particle + preposition: put up with, look forward to, get away with, run out of, come up with, look down on.

The syntactic tests (memorize — a favourite question):

(Passivization does not distinguish them — both types allow it: the offer was turned down, the children were looked after.)

5.3 Binomials, similes, proverbs, routine formulae

Binomials = coordinated pairs; the conventionalized “irreversible” subtype has a strongly preferred order: odds and ends, bits and pieces, safe and sound, part and parcel, kith and kin, spick and span, bread and butter, salt and pepper, black and white, law and order, ups and downs, pros and cons, wear and tear, give and take, sooner or later, to and fro. Ordering principles: shorter before longer, "me-first" (here and there, this and that), positive first (more or less). Legal doublets pair a native and a French/Latin synonym for clarity in bilingual medieval courts: null and void, aid and abet, last will and testament, goods and chattels, cease and desist. Trinomials: hook, line and sinker; lock, stock and barrel; morning, noon and night.

Similes (as + Adj + as + N; V + like + N): as cool as a cucumber, as blind as a bat, as fit as a fiddle, as good as gold, as old as the hills, as white as a sheet, as mad as a hatter (mercury poisoning among hatters; cf. Carroll), as dead as a doornail (already in Middle English; used by Shakespeare and famously by Dickens); sleep like a log, eat like a horse, drink like a fish, spread like wildfire. Function: conventionalized intensification — the second element is fixed (*as cool as a melon), often alliterative.

Proverbs = complete sentences expressing traditional wisdom, often metaphorical, didactic, syntactically archaic: The early bird catches the worm; A stitch in time saves nine; Don't count your chickens before they hatch; Too many cooks spoil the broth; All that glitters is not gold (popularized in this form via Shakespeare's "glisters", The Merchant of Venice); Every cloud has a silver lining (image traceable to Milton's Comus). Often used truncated as allusions (When in Rome…). Distinguish sayings/quotations ("winged words"): To be or not to be; Big Brother is watching you.

Routine formulae (pragmatic idioms) = situation-bound conversational fixtures: How do you do? (no literal answer expected), You're welcome; Don't mention it; Break a leg! (theatre), Bless you (sneezing), Cheers; Long time no see (probably a calque from Chinese Pidgin English); note collocational fixedness even here: Merry Christmas but Happy Birthday/New Year. Discourse organizers: you know, I mean, by the way, so to speak, as it were.

Common traps (ch. 5)

• Idiom ≠ collocation: strong tea is compositional (collocation); not my cup of tea is not (idiom). Fixedness alone is not the test — non-compositionality is.
• Phrasal vs prepositional: apply the pronoun test first (turn it down × look after it); do not rely on passivization.
• Many multi-word verbs are polysemous across categories: get over the wall (V + free PP), get over an illness (prepositional verb, idiomatic).
• Proverbs are sentences; idioms are (usually) phrases that must be inserted into a sentence.
• Not every fixed string is opaque: binomials and routine formulae are often fully transparent yet still set expressions (fixedness + institutionalization suffice).

Exam-style questions (ch. 5)

5.4 Distinguish fixedness from opacity

Compare take a seat (conventional but transparent), spill the beans (idiomatic), and Good morning (routine greeting). A conventional expression need not be opaque, and an idiom need not prohibit every grammatical variation. Test the intended sense: literal kick the bucket has ordinary composition, while its “die” reading is idiomatic.

Paradigmatic vs syntagmatic (Saussure): syntagmatic relations hold in praesentia, between items combined in a string (→ collocation, ch. 4); paradigmatic relations hold in absentia, between an item and the items that could replace it at the same slot (→ synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy). Words also organize into lexical (semantic) fields (Trier) — e.g. cooking verbs boil/fry/roast/grill/bake dividing one conceptual domain; componential analysis describes such contrasts with features: man [+HUMAN +ADULT +MALE], woman [+HUMAN +ADULT −MALE], boy [+HUMAN −ADULT +MALE]; bachelor [+HUMAN +ADULT +MALE −MARRIED] (with famous limits — the Pope?).

6.1 Synonymy

Synonyms = lexemes with the same or very similar denotation. Absolute synonymy (identity of denotation, connotation and distribution in all contexts) is virtually non-existent — complete interchangeability is a very demanding criterion; near-candidates occur, including technical pairs. Everything else is partial synonymy, differing in at least one dimension:

• Ideographic synonyms — denotational nuance: mist/fog/haze (density), big/large, kill/murder/assassinate (manner, intention, target), look/stare/gaze/glare/peer/glance (manner of looking)
• Stylistic synonyms — register/formality: buy/purchase, ask/inquire, begin/commence, dad/father, cop/policeman, horse/steed (poetic), die/pass away (euphemistic) /kick the bucket (slang)
• Regional: BrE/AmE autumn/fall, lift/elevator, flat/apartment, lorry/truck, biscuit/cookie, pavement/sidewalk, holiday/vacation
• Connotative/emotive: slim/thin/skinny (see 6.6)
• Collocationally distinct: rancid/sour/stale/addled all mean 'spoiled' but select different nouns (butter/milk/bread/eggs) — synonymy tested by interchangeability breaks down (ties to ch. 4)

A synonymic row (series) is headed by the dominant — the most general, stylistically neutral member with the widest range, substitutable for the others in most contexts: look (for stare, gaze, glance…), shake (for tremble, shiver, shudder, quiver), get (for obtain, acquire, procure). Sources of synonymy: borrowing layers (native/French/Latin: ask/question/interrogate — ch. 3), word-formation (motherly/maternal), euphemism, dialect contact.

6.2 Antonymy (oppositeness of meaning)

Standard typology (Lyons, Cruse):

Morphological (derivational) antonyms are formed by negative affixes: happy/unhappy, agree/disagree, legal/illegal, honest/dishonest, careful/careless, harmful/harmless; lexical (root) antonyms use distinct roots: good/bad, love/hate, buy/sell. Multiple incompatibility (sets like colours or days of the week) is opposition within a taxonomy, not antonymy proper.

Fun but real garnish: auto-antonyms (contronyms) — one form, opposite senses: cleave 'split'/'cling' (two merged OE verbs), sanction 'permit'/'penalize', dust 'remove dust'/'sprinkle', let 'allow' / archaic 'hinder' (without let or hindrance; tennis let).

6.3 Hyponymy / hyperonymy

Hyponymy = relation of inclusion ("kind of"): the hyponym's meaning includes all features of the hyperonym (superordinate) plus at least one more. Rose, tulip, daffodil are co-hyponyms of flower; flower is their hyperonym. Test: unilateral entailment — This is a rose entails This is a flower, not vice versa; "An X is a kind of Y". Hyponymy builds taxonomies (animal > dog > spaniel); co-hyponyms are mutually incompatible (a tulip is not a rose). Notes: autohyponymy — a word is its own hyponym in a narrowed sense (dog 'canine' vs 'male dog'; drink 'consume liquid' vs 'drink alcohol'); lexical gaps — a taxonomy slot with no everyday word (English has no everyday superordinate for clock/watch, unlike German Uhr — and sibling is formal, unlike Czech sourozenec); folk vs scientific taxonomies diverge (is a tomato a vegetable?).

6.4 Meronymy

Meronymy = part–whole relation: finger–hand, wheel–car, page–book, branch–tree, roof–house; the part is the meronym, the whole the holonym. Test: "X is part of Y" (contrast hyponymy's "kind of"). Subtypes worth naming: component–object (wheel–car), member–collection (tree–forest, ship–fleet, player–team — cf. collective collocations a flock of sheep), portion–mass (slice–loaf). Transitivity often fails across levels (handle is part of door, door part of house, but ?handle is part of the house).

★ Sample-test Q6 worked answer: the relation between lexicon and word — a word is a member/part of the lexicon (the text says "the lexicon of English contains many words"), i.e. meronymy (member–collection), not hyponymy (a word is not a kind of lexicon). Another pair of the same broad part–whole relation in the Bauer text: eyes–person or tongue–person — body parts of a person ("a person who happens to have bulging eyes or a long tongue"); language–lexicon also qualifies (the lexicon is part of the language).

6.5 Polysemy vs homonymy

• Polysemy: one lexeme with several related senses. Head: body part → top part (head of the page/stairs), front (head of the queue), chief (head of department), intellect (use your head), individual (per head), foam (a head on beer). One dictionary entry, numbered senses.
• Homonymy: two (or more) distinct lexemes that accidentally share a form. Ear 'organ of hearing' (OE ēare) × ear 'seed-head of corn' (OE ēar) — historically unrelated; bat 'club' × bat 'flying mammal'; seal 'sea animal' × seal 'wax stamp'; match 'contest' × match 'fire stick'; fair 'just; light-coloured' (OE fæger) × fair 'market' (OF feire < Latin feria) — borrowing is a frequent source of homonymic clashes. Separate dictionary entries.

Subtypes by form:

• Full homonyms: identical in sound and spelling (bank, ear, match)
• Homophones: same sound, different spelling: meat/meet, sea/see, right/write/rite, son/sun, flour/flower, knight/night, piece/peace, threw/through
• Homographs: same spelling, different sound: lead /liːd/ v /led/ metal, tear /tɪə/ eye vs /teə/ rip, wind, bow, row, live, minute /ˈmɪnɪt/ vs /maɪˈnjuːt/

Criteria for distinguishing polysemy from homonymy (state at least two):

1. Etymology — different historical sources → homonymy (fair/fair); one source → polysemy. But history and intuition can conflict: flour and flower were originally the same word (OF flour; 'flour' = the "flower", i.e. finest part, of the meal), and pupil 'student' / 'part of the eye' share a Latin source — synchronically they are felt as distinct (homonymy through divergence of polysemy). State both criteria and explain the conflict; a historical connection need not establish one contemporary lexeme.
2. Semantic relatedness — can the senses be connected by a metaphoric/metonymic bridge or a shared core? Yes → polysemy.
3. Dictionary practice — one entry vs separate entries (a practical reflex of criterion 2).
4. Supporting formal signals — different paradigms for different senses: hang – hung/hanged, brothers/brethren; the zeugma test exposes sense distinctness by punning coordination (She took her hat and her leave).

How polysemy grows (structure of a polysemous lexeme):

• Radiation: senses develop independently from one centre like spokes — head (all figurative senses point back to 'body part').
• Concatenation: senses develop chain-wise, each from the previous; the ends may no longer be directly connected — board: 'plank' → 'table' → 'meals' (room and board, boarding school) → 'council at the table' (board of directors); also 'ship's side' → on board, boarding pass.

Sources of homonymy: (i) phonetic convergence of originally distinct words (meal 'flour' OE melu × meal 'repast' OE mǣl); (ii) divergence of polysemous senses (flour/flower, metal/mettle, person/parson); (iii) borrowing (fair/fair, bark 'of a tree' ON × bark 'of a dog' OE × barque 'ship' French).

6.6 Denotation vs connotation (sample-test Q9)

• Denotation = the core, conceptual, referential meaning shared by all speakers — what the word points to.
• Connotation = the additional associated meaning: emotive (affection, contempt), evaluative (approval/disapproval), stylistic (register: formal/informal/slang), expressive/intensity. Connotations are partly community- and culture-dependent and change over time; they drive euphemism and advertising.

Classic example triples (same denotation, different connotations) — memorize two:

Also childlike (positive innocence) vs childish (negative immaturity) — related descriptive content and contrasting evaluation, without assuming identical truth conditions in every context. The euphemism treadmill shows connotation at work diachronically: neutral terms absorb negative connotations and are replaced (toilet → lavatory → bathroom → restroom).

6.7 Semantic change (supporting material)

Changes of range:

• Extension (widening/generalization): holiday 'holy day' → any day off; bird (OE bridd 'young bird') → any bird; dog (OE docga, one breed) → the whole species; thing (OE 'assembly, court' — cf. Icelandic Alþingi) → 'anything'
• Narrowing (specialization): meat (OE mete 'food' — fossil in sweetmeats) → 'flesh food'; deer (OE dēor 'animal', cf. German Tier; Shakespeare's "mice and rats and such small deer") → one family; hound (cf. German Hund 'dog') → hunting dog; wife (OE wīf 'woman' — fossils midwife, old wives' tale) → married woman; fowl (cf. Vogel) → domestic birds; starve (OE steorfan 'die', cf. sterben) → die of hunger; girl (ME 'young person of either sex') → female child; corn 'grain' → BrE 'wheat', AmE 'maize'

Changes of evaluation:

• Amelioration: nice (Latin nescius 'ignorant' → ME 'foolish' → 'precise' — still in a nice distinction → 'pleasant'); knight (OE cniht 'boy, servant', cf. German Knecht) → noble warrior; marshal ('horse-servant') and constable ('count of the stable') → high officers; steward (OE stigweard 'hall-keeper') → royal official (→ the Stuart dynasty); pretty (OE prættig 'crafty') → 'attractive'; fond (ME fonned 'foolish') → 'affectionate'
• Pejoration: silly (OE sǣlig 'blessed, happy', cf. German selig → 'innocent' → 'foolish'); knave (OE cnafa 'boy', cf. Knabe) → 'rogue'; villain (OF 'farm labourer') → 'scoundrel'; churl (OE ceorl 'freeman') → 'boor'; lewd (OE 'lay, non-clerical') → 'obscene'; notorious ('well-known') → 'infamous'; hussy (< housewife); gossip (< 'godparent'); note the gendered asymmetry master/mistress, bachelor/spinster — the female term pejorates

Changes by transfer (the mechanisms that create polysemy):

• Metaphor (similarity): body → object (foot of the mountain, mouth of the river, leg of the table, eye of the needle); animal → person (fox 'cunning person'); concrete → abstract (grasp/catch/get 'understand'); object → device (mouse, crane — bird → lifting machine)
• Metonymy (contiguity): the Crown 'monarchy', the White House / Downing Street 'the executive', hand 'worker' (farmhand, all hands on deck), tongue 'language' (mother tongue — exactly like Czech jazyk), the press 'journalists' (from the printing press), bench 'judges', dish 'course of food', china 'porcelain', a glass 'vessel'; producer for product (read Shakespeare, a Picasso); container for content (drink a glass, the whole hall applauded)
• Synecdoche (part–whole metonymy): wheels 'car', new face 'person', per head, a roof over one's head, boots on the ground
• Minor: hyperbole (starving 'hungry', ages 'a long time'), litotes (not bad 'good'), semantic bleaching of intensifiers (very < 'true' — cf. the very man; awfully/terribly good; literally as mere emphasis; soon OE 'immediately' → 'before long'), euphemistic shift (undertaker 'one who undertakes' → 'funeral director'; cemetery < Greek 'sleeping place')

Common traps (ch. 6)

• Synonymy claims: never say two words are "absolute synonyms" — demonstrate a stylistic, regional, connotative, or collocational difference instead.
• Antonym typing: apply the negation test — not dead = alive (complementaries) but not hot ≠ cold (gradables); buy/sell are converses, not complementaries.
• -less/-ful pairs deceive: priceless ≠ opposite of worthless (both extremes!); invaluable = 'extremely valuable'; shameful ≠ mirror of shameless; flammable = inflammable (Latin in- here is intensive, not negative!).
• Hyponymy vs meronymy: spaniel–dog = kind-of; paw–dog = part-of. Don't mix the tests.
• Polysemy/homonymy: name both criteria (etymology + semantic relatedness) and admit borderline cases (flour/flower) — one-criterion answers look naive.
• Connotation vs denotation: skinny and slim overlap in describing thinness, but can also differ in degree and descriptive nuance. A connotation example does not require absolute denotational identity.
• Czech false friends worth avoiding in your own exam English: actual ≠ aktuální ('current'), eventually ≠ eventuálně ('possibly'), sympathetic ≠ sympatický ('likeable'), control ≠ kontrolovat ('check').

Exam-style questions (ch. 6)

6.8 Test relations between senses, not spellings alone

Hard contrasts with soft for material, but with easy for a task. This is why a word list without contexts cannot fix every relation. A propositional synonym preserves truth conditions in a specified context; a near synonym may alter intensity or manner. Homophony of forms also does not itself establish two lexemes: past and present read are forms of one lexeme, even though their pronunciation differs.

Tick each item only if you can produce the definition plus one safe example without notes:

Words and morphemes

• [ ] lexeme vs word-form vs grammatical word (WRITE: wrote; put ×3)
• [ ] morpheme / morph / allomorph; phonological vs lexical conditioning (plural /s, z, ɪz/; oxen, feet, sheep-Ø)
• [ ] free/bound × lexical/grammatical grid; bound roots (-ceive), cranberry morphemes (cran-, luke-, -kempt)
• [ ] root vs stem vs base (un-touch-able-s)
• [ ] derivational vs inflectional affixes (8 inflectional suffixes; genitive 's = clitic; no infixes)
• [ ] Saussure: signifiant/signifié; arbitrariness; conventionality
• [ ] motivation: phonetic (buzz), morphological (reader), semantic (mouse); demotivation (cupboard, lord, daisy); folk etymology (sparrowgrass, bridegroom)

Word-formation

• [ ] derivation: class-changing vs class-maintaining; 5 prefixes by meaning, 5 suffixes by output class; neutral vs stress-shifting suffixes
• [ ] compounding: endocentric/exocentric/copulative; right-hand head; stress test ˈblackbird vs black ˈbird + two more criteria; spelling unreliable
• [ ] derivation vs compounding table (morphemic status!) with productivity and word-formation/frogman — sample-test Q10
• [ ] conversion: full vs partial (the rich); directions N→V, V→N, Adj→V; direction criteria; stress-shift (ˈrecord/reˈcord) and voicing (use/use) pairs
• [ ] back-formation (edit, babysit, burgle, enthuse); clipping types (exam, phone, flu, sitcom); blends (smog, brunch, motel); acronyms (NATO, laser) vs initialisms (BBC); reduplication (zigzag ablaut, helter-skelter rhyme); neoclassical compounds (bio-logy: bound lexical combining forms)

Word-stock

• [ ] dictionary vs frequency asymmetry (loans dominate entries; native words dominate usage)
• [ ] native layer: function words, monosyllabicity, irregularity, word-formation bases, weak forms
• [ ] Scandinavian: they/them/their, sky, skin, skirt, law, window, take, die, egg; /sk/ cue; shirt/skirt
• [ ] French: Norman vs Central (catch/chase, warden/guardian); domains (law, cuisine — cow/beef, fashion); early /tʃ/ vs late /ʃ/ (chief/chef); late loans final stress
• [ ] Latin waves (street/wine → bishop/school → exit/species); Greek cues (ph, ps-, ch /k/, -on/-a)
• [ ] doublets (shirt/skirt, sure/secure, poison/potion), triplets (kingly/royal/regal, rise/mount/ascend); hybrids (beautiful, starvation, because)
• [ ] the Q8 justification battery: closed class + OE attestation + Germanic cognates + monosyllable/weak form (+ they caveat)

Collocation and set expressions

• [ ] Firth quote; node/collocate/span; collocational range and arbitrary restriction (strong tea/*powerful tea)
• [ ] lexical vs grammatical collocation (make a decision vs depend on)
• [ ] one example each: V+N, Adj+N, Adv+Adj, V+Adv, N+V, N+of+N — and the Bauer-text trio (lexical exceptions, have an effect, totally productive)
• [ ] cline free combination → collocation → idiom (substitutability, compositionality)
• [ ] idiom opacity degrees (make ends meet → foot the bill → kick the bucket); fixedness + institutionalization; variation (cupboard/closet)
• [ ] phrasal vs prepositional verbs: pronoun test, movement, pied-piping, stress; phrasal-prepositional (put up with)
• [ ] binomials (odds and ends; legal null and void), similes (as cool as a cucumber), proverbs vs sayings, routine formulae (How do you do?)

Sense relations

• [ ] paradigmatic vs syntagmatic axis
• [ ] synonymy: why absolute synonymy is rare; ideographic vs stylistic; synonymic row + dominant (look); BrE/AmE pairs
• [ ] antonymy 4 types + tests (not hot ≠ cold; not alive = dead within a living-organism/alive–dead domain); unmarked member; morphological vs lexical antonyms; priceless/worthless trap
• [ ] hyponymy (kind-of; unilateral entailment; co-hyponyms; autohyponymy dog, drink) vs meronymy (part-of; member–collection word–lexicon — sample-test Q6)
• [ ] polysemy vs homonymy: two criteria + problem case (flour/flower); homophones/homographs; radiation (head) vs concatenation (board)
• [ ] denotation vs connotation with a memorized triple (thin/slim/skinny; child/kid/brat) — sample-test Q9
• [ ] semantic change: widening (holiday, bird), narrowing (meat, deer, starve), amelioration (nice, knight), pejoration (silly, villain), metaphor (foot of the mountain), metonymy (the Crown, mother tongue)

Good luck — and remember the mantra: define → exemplify → justify.