5 Main groups of dialects England and Wales, which include from 2 to 10 dialects: Notheren(3); Midland(10); Eastern(4); Western(2); Southeren(8).

There are also 9 dialects in Scotland & 3 in Ireland. Their sphere of application is confined to the oral speech of population in locality. Local dialects, originated from the dialects of the German tribes now undergo rapid changes under the pressure of standard Eng taught at schools & used by Mass Media. Dialect peculiarities are preserved in the speech of elderly people.

Cockney is the local southeren dialect of London. Cockney is lively & its voc-y is imaginative & colorful. There are some specifically cockney words and expressions: up the pole= drunk. Its specific feature is “the rhyming slang” in which some words are substituted by other words rhyming with them: Boots= daisy roots; Feet= plates of meet; Hat= fit for tat;Drunk= elephant’s trunk; Head= a loaf of bread; A cup of tea= a cup of rosy lea.

Local Eng dialects influence the speech of local educated people, though they use standard Eng, they speak with a local accent. Standard Eng, spoken without any spoken accent, was called “received pronunciation”.

Received Pronunciation is a status symbol, an indicator of social pronunciation. As well as the received pronun-n is the manifestation of standard Eng on the level of phonetics, standard Eng manifests itself through the use of standard Eng voc-ry on the voc-y level. Standard Eng voc-ry includes: stylistically unmarked neutral words, general literary bookish words, and literary colloquial words.

Q-38: Variants of English. Peculiarities of Am Eng

Variants are regional varieties possessing a literary form.

Peculiarities of Am Eng have been brought about by several historical processes:

1) Some words in AmE retain the m-ng now obsolete or dialectal in Britain, e.g. "fair in AmE retains the m-ng "autumn", "to guess" - "to think", the word "thrifty" in AmE retains the sense of "thriving", "prosperous", which is now obsolete in England except in some dialects, "dry" in AmE means "thirsty", "curious" - "fine", "excellent", "fio»iely" - ""ugly", "angry"-"mad". Such words called historical Americanisms. An Americanism is a word or a set expres peculiar to the Eng Lang as spoken in the USA.

2) To name the unfamiliar fauna & flora of America & unknown things, new words & phrases were formed of familiar Eng elements: e.g. sunfish, blue-jack (a small American oak), white pine, white oak; birds were often named from their calls: flicker, whip-poorwill. Such words and set phrases in AmE are sometimes called Americanisms proper.

3) A great number of words were borrowed from the lang-es of Indians, & Spanish to name the unfamiliar flora & fauna of the American continent & other unknown things which were beyond the bounds of Eng experience. the names of animals & plants: raccoon (еhot), scunk (скунс), opossum (onoccyм), hickory (пекан), persimmon (xypмa), squash (кабачок), the names of the items of Native Am culture: wigwam, tomahawk, canoe, moccasin, squaw, succotash. But the chief ling-c legacy from the Native Am-ns is names of towns, rivers & the like: Iowa, Missouri, the rivers: the Penobscot, Kennebec, Merrimac, Connecticut in New England, The Raritan in New Jersey, the Potomac, Rapahannoc, Peedee, Santee, Savannah - farther south.

Spanish borr-gs in AmE are rather numerous: cinch, mustang, ranch, canyon, mesa (literary "table», aflat- top mountain), sierra (jagged mountains), and bonanza (prosperity). From Mexican through Spanish came coyote, mezquite, peccary (pigs). The Mexicans contributed: buckaroo (cowman), sombrero, la reata (the lasso), poncho, bronco, corral, mescal, tequila, calabozo (calaboose - coll). The Spaniards have left their names on the Am map: Nevada, Colorado, El Paso, the Rio Grande, San Antonio and San Angeto in Texas, San Francisco, and San Diego.

Local words brought into the lang through the Negro dialects are not numerous: piccaninny (a Negro child), banjo (a Negro instrument), juba (a kind of dance), hoodoo or voodoo (to bring bad luck, a cause of bad luck).

4) Some words changed their m-ng on the Am soil. Some of them have acquired a more genera m-ng: e.g. to fix in BrE means "to establish", "to make stable", in AmE it can describe any kind of adjustment or repair, you may even "fix coffee or breakfast"; candy - in England means a particular form of sweetmeat. In America candy is a general name for everything included in BrE term "sweets". Some words in America have been narrowed in m-ng, e.g. gun in England denotes almost any kind of firearm except the pistol. In America it is especially the pistol. Some words have come to denote new things. The name for the natives’ main crop plant passed into Eng via Spanish; knew as "maize". The unlearned colonists called it «Indian com" soon it became simply "corn”.

5) Due to the historical and cultural differences (social, political ) Br and Am variants use different words for the same objects and phenomena, e.g.: goods-freight; postman-letter carrier; railway-railroad; timber-lumber. Sometimes words existing in both variants differ in the frequency of usage, e.g. Am-ns prefer to use "apartment" instead of "flat", "schedule" instead of "timetable". A great number of Am-sms appeared in the political sphere, e.g. candidates were "dark horses" or "favorite sons", or mere "wardheelers", picked by a "caucus" of the "machine". The fortunate candidate won by a "landslide", the unlucky one became a "lame duck".

6) American realias - unique names for unique objects and phenomena of Am nature and culture form a separate group of Am-sms, e.g. "gerrymander" (from Elbridge Gerry (1800) who wanted to redraw electoral districts)

Q-39: Lexicography. Types of dictionary.

Lexicography (from Greek lexicon “voc-ry” & grapho “to write”) is a branch of Lex-gy dealing with compiling & describing dictionaries.

A dictionary is a word-book in which words of a given lang are collected & presented alphabetically with explanations in the same or in some other lang. Lex-phy is based on the achievements of ling-c theory in general & lex-gy in particular.

Types of dictionaries.

They may be divided into 2 groups:

1) non-ling-c or encyclopaedic;

2) ling-c or philological.

Encyclopaedic give information on all branches of knowledge, they deal with facts & concepts. Becides the general encyclopaedic dictionaries there are also reference books confined to definite fields of knowledge, such as The Oxford Companoin to Eng Literature. Numerous dictionaries presenting information about outstanding people are often called Who is Who Dictionaries.

Ling-c or philological describe the voc-ry of a lang-ge, giving definitions of words usually listed alphabetically explaning different m-ngs of words, showing their origin & development, pronunciation & other ling-c information or giving equivalents of words in another lang-ge.

They may be monolingual & bilingual (appeared with the development of international relations, their aim is to give the adequate translation of words from a foreign lang-ge into the native one & vice versa).

Unilingual explanatory dictionaries are those in which every word is explained & defined in the same lang. With regard to time they are divided into diachronic & descriptive dictionaries of current use.

Ling-c dictionaries are also divided into general (contain words of a lang-ge with their m-ngs & some other ling-c data, represent the voc-ry as a whole with a degree of completeness depending upon the scope & bulk of the dict-ry) & specialized (cover only a certain specific part of the voc-ry & are futher divided depending on whether the words are chosen according:

1) To the sphere of human activity in which they are used: terminological dict-ies that register & explain technical terms for various branches of knowledge, art, trade;

2) a) to the type of the words & units themselves: phraseological, dialect, of slang, neologisms, and proverbs; b) to the aspect of the word singled out: pronouncing, orthographic, of frequency;

3) to the relations existing b/w the words : of synonyms, antonyms, homonyms.

Q-40: British & American Lexicography. Main problems of modern Lexicography.

A need for a dict-ry has been felt in the cultural growth of many civilized peoples.

The history of diction­ary-making for the Eng lang goes as far back as the Old Eng­lish period where its first traces are found in the form of glosses of re­ligious books with translation from Latin. Regular bilingual Eng-Latin dict-ries were already in existence in the 15th century. The unilingual dict-ry is a comparatively recent type. The 1^st unilingual Eng dict-ry, explaining words by Eng equivalents, appeared in 1604.

The 1^st attempt at a dictionary including all the words of the lang, not only the difficult ones, was made by Bai­ley who was the 1st to include pronunciation and etymology. Big explanatory dict-ries were created in France and Italy before they appeared for the Eng lang. Learned academies on the continent had been established to preserve the purity of their respective lang-es. This was also the purpose of Dr Samuel Johnson's famous Dictionary. The most important innova­tion of S. Johnson's Dict-ry was the introduction of illustrations of the m-ngs of the words "by examples from the best writers", as had been done before him in the dictionary of the French Academy. Since then such illustrations have become a norm in lex-phy. The dict-ry dealt with separate words only, no SE were entered. Pronuncia­tion was not marked. attention was turned to it later.

A pronouncing dict-ry that must be mentioned first was published in 1780 by Thomas Sheridan, grandfather of the great dramatist. The Golden Age of Eng lex-phy began in the last quarter of the 19th century when the Eng Philological Society started work on compiling what is now known as "The Oxford English Dictionary". The purpose of this work is to trace the development of Eng words from their form in OE, & if they were not found in OE, to show when they were introduced into the lan­g, & also to show the development of each m-ng and its histori­cal relation to other m-ngs of the same word. Its prestige is enormous now.

Another big dict-ry is Joseph Wright's "Eng Dialect Dict-ry. Dialects are of great importance for the historical study of the lang.

The 1^st Am dict-ry of the Eng lan­g was compiled by a man whose name was also Samuel Johnson, schoolmaster, published in 1798 a small book entitled "A School Dict-ry". This book was followed in 1800 by another dict-ry by the same author, which showed already some signs of Americanization. E.g words like tomahawk and wampum, borrowed into from the Indian lan­g.

It was Noah Webster, universally considered to be the father of Am lexi-phy. His great work, "The Am Dict-ry of the Eng Lang". Webster attempted to simplify the spelling and pronunciation that were current in the USA of the period. Devoted his energy to giving the Am Eng the status of an independent lang. Webster's dict-ry enjoyed great popularity from its 1st edi­tions. This popularity was due not only to the accuracy and clarity of definitions but also to the richness of additional information of encyclopaedic character, which had become a tradition in Am lex-phy. As a dictionary N. Webster's book aims to treat the entire vo­c-ry of the lang-ge providing definitions, pronunciation & ety­mology. As an encyclopaedia it gives explanations about things named, including scientific & technical subjects.