Лексичні та синтактико-стилістичні зміни в сучасній англійській мові: вплив комп’ютерних технологій

Borrowings are neologisms borrowed from foreign languages. «The distinction should be made between:

Direct adoption of foreign words. Loan-words of this type can undergo different degrees of accommodation or remain unadopted;

Making new words by derivation or composition, including elements of different origin;New derivatives or new compounds created by translation of the lexical unit into another languafe.

A lexical unit created by loan-translation is called a calque.»

(Rayevska : 248)

The last decades of the 20-th century characterized by an intensive development of various sciences, technique, culture, and political life, has brought to Modern English a lot of new formations.

1.1.2.Semantic Extention

Semantic extention is the appearance of new meanings of already existing words in the given language. This process is caused by the following reasons:

Changes in social life of a community;

Changes of objects the names of which are retained;

Terminological use of words by people of various professional groups, where words modify their meaning acquiring a new sense;

Adaptation to special purposes

Many scholars have researched change of word meaning. There are various logical and psychological classifications of its types. Traditional classification is the following:

1)extension of meaning (generalization)

E.g.: hard drive (originally meant only heavy traffic on city roads, now also refers to slow work of a computer);

2)narrowing of meaning (specialization)

E.g.: garage (once meant any safe place, now means specifically a building for housing automobiles);

3)transference of meaning (metaphor and metonymy)

E.g.: He is such a bear ; Black coats walked along the street.

4)Elevation of meaning (amelioration)

E.g.: «minister (now means an important public official, but in earlier times meant merely servant)

(Rayevska : 149)

5)Degradation of meaning (perjoration)

E.g.: vulgar (originally meant happy)

Semantic extension is one of the most important ways of enlarging the vocabulary.