Презентация на тему: Aliens to the natural language

Фестиваль исследовательских и творческих работ учащихся «Портфолио» Aliens to the natural language Done by: Sophia Obidko Kaluga region Zhukov districtmunicipal secondary school №2Kremyonki The teacher of English languageоf secondary school №2

‘Twas brilling, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe,All mimsy were the borogroves,And the mome raths outgrabe.L. Carroll “Jabberwocky”

Learning any language starts with the acquaintance with its vocabulary, because a language consists of words as a house consists of bricks. The process of word-building in a language has always interested me. Occasionalisms are one of the most exciting phenomena of this process. They are often considered to be alien to the natural language and almost never enter vocabulary.

This is why it should be interesting to compare occasionalisms with usual neologisms from the point of view:the correlation between the word and its meaningthe use in the contextthe motivationthe word-buildingthe place of a lexical system of a language.

Versions of occasionalisms Unstable - Extremely new, being proposed, or being used only by a very small subculture.Diffused - Having reached a significant audience, but not yet having gained acceptance.Stable - Having gained recognizable and probably lasting acceptance. Words coinage - words, "coined" by combining existing words, or by givingwords new and unique suffixes and/or prefixes.Nonce words - word used only "for the nonce" — to meet a need that is not expected to recur.

Scientific - words or phrases created to describe new scientific discoveries. Example: prion.Political - words or phrases created to make some kind of political or rhetorical point. Example: pro-life.Pop-culture - words or phrases evolved from mass media content or used to describe popular culture phenomena. Imported - words or phrases originating in another language. Example: tycoon.Semantic groups of occasionalisms - words, changing their meanings to denote a new object or phenomenon.Psychological – nonsensical words spontaneously invented by schizophrenics.

Ways of Forming Phonological Morphological Syntactical Phraseological Borrowing Semantic

Phonological way of forming: Phonological occasionalisms are formed by combining unique combinations of sounds, they are called artificial, e.g. rah-rah (a short skirt which is worn by girls during parades, because girls repeat in chorus rah, rah when they are marching), yeck/yuck (interjections used to express repulsion) produced the adjectives yucky/yecky. These are strong occasionalisms .

Syntactical way of forming: Syntactical occasionalisms are divided into morphological (word-building) and phraseological (forming word-groups). Morphological and phraseological occasionalisms are usually built on patterns existing in the language, therefore they do not belong to the group of strong neologisms. Among morphological neologisms there are a lot of compound wоrds of different types. There are also compound-affixed nouns, such as topsy-turvidom, white -collardom, seethrouness etc. Words and phrases are often created, or "coined," by combining existing words, or by giving words new and unique suffixes and/or prefixes. Words which are combined are often shortened or lengthened.

Semantic way of forming It is based on the coexistence of direct and figurative meanings of the same word. For e. g., the word “foot” denotes a part of the human body, but at the same time it can metaphorically signify the bottom or lower part of something, for instance, “the foot of a mountain”.

Borrowing way of forming: These are words usually borrowed from other languages. They can also include strong occasionalisms. Strong occasionalisms include also phonetic borrowings, such as solidarnosc (Polish), Berufsverbot (German), dolce vita (Italian), geige (Chinese perestroika) etc.

Meaning: “A person who will write a kind of music in the distant future where there are no composers.”

Formation of occasionalisms With the help of affixes With the help of semi-affixes

Formation with the help of affixes: All the means of word building are used for the formation of occasionalisms. The most productive and popular way of coining them is affixation (word formation by combining stems and affixes already existing in the language). For e.g., “paddly” (paddle+-y) (A. Milne), “cameelious” (camel+’ious), “scalesome” (scale+some) (R. Kipling).

Formation with the help of semi-affixes: The words can also be formed using semi-affixes (self-; super-; maxi-):“miniseeder”.

Compounding Compounding is a way of word building “by mere juxtaposition of free forms”: “slipperly-slidy” (R. Kipling), “clodkopf” (“clod”+ “kopf”) (J. Wyndham). “homo+rabbit” = hobbit (J. R. R. Tolkien).

Abbreviation Another interesting way of word building is abbreviation (word formation by combining the first sounds of one word and the last sounds of another: “spudge” (“sp-” from “sponge” and “-udge” from “sludge”); “woozle” (from “weasel” and “bamboozle”)) (A. Milne).

Nonce words A nonce word is a word used only "for the nonce" — to meet a need that is not expected to recur. Quark, for example, was a nonce word appearing only in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake until Murray Gell-Mann used it to name a new class of subatomic particle. The use of the term nonce word in this way was apparently the work of James Murray, the influential editor of Oxford English Dictionary.

Examples of nonce words: clopen, in topology, refers to sets which are both open and closed.cromulent - valid and apt, used in an episode of The Simpsons.slithy - a portmanteau of "slimy" and "lithe"; used by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky.unidexter - a one-legged person. Coined by comedian Peter Cook in One Leg Too Few. muggle - term coined by J.K. Rowling for a non-magical person.

Occasionalisms in literature Many neologisms have come from popular literature, and tend to appear in different forms. Most commonly, they are simply taken from a word used in the narrative of a book; for instance, McJob from Douglas Coupland's Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and cyberspace from William Gibson's Neuromancer.

Sometimes the title of the book will become the neologism. For instance, Catch-22 (from the title of Joseph Heller's novel) and Generation X (from the title of Coupland's novel) have become part of the vocabulary of many English-speakers. Also worthy of note is the case in which the author's name becomes the neologism, although the term is sometimes based on only one work of that author.

This includes such words as Orwellian (from George Orwell, referring to his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four) and Ballardesque (from J.G. Ballard, author of Crash). Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle was the container of the Bokononism family of Nonce words.

Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" has been called "the king of neologistic poems" as it incorporated some dozens of invented words. The early modern English prose writings of Sir Thomas Browne 1605-1682 are the source of many neologisms as recorded by the OED.

The best-known literature containing occasionalisms:

Lewis Carrol- Alice's adventure in Wonderland The real name of Lewis Carroll, the author of the Alice stories, was Charles Lutwidge Dobson. He corresponded widely and had many friends in the literary and academic world. Published in 1865 the book quickly became a classic. Critics, academics and intellectuals have often battled to understand the meaning of the story, searching for a single solution to the book, but genius of Lewis Carroll is his ability to keep the reader guessing. The book represents the themes of anger, alienation, of frustration and intolerance, malice and violence. The story is absurd and plays on the absurdity of language. No doubt, Carroll is the first of creating occasionalisms.

Rudyard Kipling- Just so stories Rudyard Kipling was very popular among ordinary people as well as by well- known writers such as Oscar Wilde, Somerset Maugham and many others. Kipling was a born storyteller. He knows how to keep the story moving, how to bring it to culmination and give it point. His book Just So Stories (1902) has become the second book for the wide usage of occasionalisms. Kipling used so called “childish” vocabulary and a lot of occasionalisms. The most of them are adjectives, such as mixy, crackly, buttony, hurty, twisty and etc. To make stories more emotional he compounded adjectives- twirly-whirly,snarly-yarly, slippery-slidy.

J. R. R. Tolkien- The Lord of The Rings Few films and books have been so eagerly awaited as The Lord of the Rings—except perhaps Star Wars and Harry Potter. No wonder—the book it is based on is considered to be the champion of fantasy novels. Sometimes it is called the greatest book of the 20th century.

The author of the book, John Roland Ruel Tolkien was born in 1892 in South Africa and grew up in a village near Birmingham. He took part in the First World War. Then he became a professor of English at Oxford University.It was while he was correcting exam papers that Tolkien wrote down a strange sentence that started: “in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit…”

Hobbits are Tolkien’s own invention. The word is an invention of Homo (man) and rabbit. Hobbits are rather short (about 1-meter) creatures with furry legs. They are a peaceful, home-loving race, fond of their gardens and their cosy underground homes. Hobbit - a member of an imaginary race similar to humans of small size and with hairy feet. Origin: invented by the British writer J. R. R. Tolkien and said by him to mean “hole-dweller”.

Goblin - a mischievous, ugly, dwarf-like creature of folklore. Origin: old French Gobelin possibly related to German Kobold (the noting a spirit who haunts houses or lives underground) or to Greek Kobalos “a mischievous goblin”. Orc - a member of an imaginary race of ugly, aggressive human-like creatures. Origin: perhaps from Latin orcus “hell” or Italian orco “monster”.

J. K. Rowling- Harry Potter Who has the most recognized face in Britain at the moment? No, it’s not the Queen, not the Prime Minister, Tony Blaire, it’s not even Robbie Williams! The most recognized face belongs to a young man called Daniel Radcliffe. In fact, some people don’t even know that his name is Daniel Radcliffe, they only know his face as being that of his alter ego, Harry Potter.

Daniel Radcliffe is the actor who plays Harry Potter on film and whose face looks out from a thousand posters across the nation. The image of Harry Potter is so familiar that even people who haven’t read any of the books or seen any of the films know exactly who he is and exactly what he looks like. The occasionalisms that occur in the book are used by a lot of youngsters.

How could Aristotle have developed the logic of syllogisms or Newton the theory of dynamics without new vocabularies and definitions?They were occasionalists, and everybody wanting to contribute new knowledge must be.For new knowledge there is no way around the creation of new terms and concepts.Occasionalisms tend to occur more often in cultures which are rapidly changing, and also in situations where there is easy and fast propagation of information.Occasionalisms often become popular by way of mass media, the Internet, or word of mouth. To reject occasionalisms, often despicably, is to reject scientific development.