Helen A. Kalinovskaya

Donbas State Technical University

CLASSIFICATION OF THE ENGLISH WORDS

The word stock of any given language can be roughly divided into three groups differing from each other by the sphere of its possible use. The biggest division is made up of neutral words, possessing no stylistic connotation and suitable for any communicative situation, they form the bulk of the English vocabulary and are used both in literary and colloquial languages. Neutral words are the main source of synonymy and polysemy. Two smaller ones are literary and colloquial strata respectively.

Let’s us examine in a very general manner the subgroups of each class. Literary words serve to satisfy demands of official, scientific, poetic messages. So, among them the following subgroups are mentioned:

1. Terms. This word class constitutes the actual majority of the lexical units of every modern language serving the needs of a highly developed science and technology. They do not contain any emotional subjective connotations but express an object, phenomenon of science, humanities, technique. A term is always associated with socially prestigious spheres; it expresses an idea which otherwise requires a circumlocutional description in a non-professional sphere; hence it gives us a kind of intellectual satisfaction. In special spheres the term performs no expressive or aesthetic function whatever. In non-professional spheres (imaginative prose, newspaper texts, and everyday oral speech) popular terms are some degree of elevation.

2. Archaisms. These words denote historical phenomena which are no more in use now. For example, “yeoman”, “vassal’, “falconet”. These are historical words. Here also belong the words used in poetry in the XVII –XX centuries.

3. Bookish (learned) words. The words are used in cultivated spheres of speech: in books or in such types of oral communication as public speeches, official negotiations and so on. Bookish words are either formal synonyms of ordinary neutral words or express notions which can only be rendered by means of descriptive word combinations. A special stratum of bookish words is made up of words traditionally used in poetry. Quite a number of such words are never used outside this sphere.

4. Neologisms, or new creations. These are newly coined words that appear in the linguistic community due to the development of science and technique. In the process of time they become terms or just colloquial words. Literary words contribute to the message the tone of solemnity, sophistication, seriousness, gravity, learnedness. They are used in official papers and documents, in scientific communication, in high poetry, in authorial speech of creative prose.

Colloquial words, on the contrary, mark the message as informal, non-official, and conversational. In this group of English words such special subgroups can be singled out:

1. Slang. It is a part of vocabulary consisting of commonly understood and widely used words and expressions of humorous or derogatory character. They are highly emotive and expressive but they often quickly lose their originality and are replaced by newer formations. Here are several instances of words which first appeared as slang, but are quite neutral today: skyscraper, cab, bus, movies, piano, phone, pub, photo, dandy.

2. Jargonisms. These appear in professional or social groups as informal, often humorous replacers of words that already exist in the neutral sphere. The use of jargon implies defiance, a kind of naughtiness in lingual behaviour. Jargon words can be roughly subdivided into two groups. One of them consists of names of objects, phenomena, and processes characteristic of the given profession – not the real denominations, but rather nicknames as opposed to the official terms used in this professional sphere. The other group is made up of terms used in this profession used to denote non-professional objects, phenomena and processes. For example, “driller”, “smeller”, “digger”, “wrencher”.

3. Vulgarisms. This group includes coarse words with a strong emotive meaning, mostly derogatory, normally avoided in polite conversation.

4. Dialectal words are normative and devoid of any stylistic meaning in regional dialects, but used outside of them, carry a strong flavour of locality where they belong. In Great Britain four major dialects are distinguished: Lowland Scotch, Northern, Midland (Central) and Southern. In the USA three major dialectal varieties are distinguished: New England, Southern, and Midwestern. Dialects markedly differ on the phonemic level: one and the same phoneme is differently pronounced in each of them. they differ also on the lexical level, having their own names for locally existing phenomena.

5. Nonce-words. The English language is characterized by a comparatively greater freedom of coining new words on the basis of existing ones than other languages. This circumstance gives rise to the extensive use in English of words invented by the speaker, words for the given occasion, such words do not remain in the language after being created by analogy with “legitimate” words, having served their one-time purpose, disappear completely (if in oral speech) or stay on as curiosities (if in books of fiction). They are called “nonce-words”.

In spite of all the immeasurable richness of the vocabulary the English language cannot be memorized or even understood by an individual native speaker or a person who studies language. Only the most common words are widely used in actual communication. Many English words are never heard, or uttered or written by average people.