The problem of synonyms in modern English

The phrases they are killed, they are slain, they are made away with may refer to the same event hut they are different ill meaning, in so far as they reveal a different attitude to the subject in question on the part of the speaker.

The study of synonyms is a borderline province between semantics and stylistics on the one hand and semantics arid phraseology on the other because of the synonymic collocations serving as_ a means of emphasis. The following example from “A Taste of Honey”, j remarkable for the truthfulness of its dialogue, shows how they are used in modern speech;

Helen: ...”The devil looks after his own,” - they say.

 

 

1.2 Distribution Features Of The English Synonyms

 

 

Synonymic pairs like wear and tear are very numerous in modern English and often used both in everyday speech and in literature. They show all the typical features of idiomatic phrases that ensure their memorable ness such as rhythm, alliteration, rhyme and the use of archaic words seldom occurring elsewhere.

The examples are numerous: hale and hearty, with might and main, nevertheless and notwithstanding, modes and manners, stress and strain, rack and ruin, really and truly, hue and cry, wane and pale, without let or hindrance, act and deed. There are many others which show neither rhyme nor alliteration, and consist of two words equally modern. They are pleonastic, i. e. they emphasize the idea by just stating it twice, and possess a certain rhythmical quality which probably enhances their unity and makes them easily remembered. These are: by leaps and bounds, to pick and choose, pure and simple, stuff and nonsense, bright and shining, far and away, proud and haughty and many more.

In a great number of cases the semantic difference between two OP more synonyms is supported by the difference in valence. Distributional oppositions between synonyms have never been studied systematically, although the amount of data collected is very impressive. The difference in distribution maybe syntactical, morphological, lexical, and surely deserves more attention than has been so far given to it. It is, for instance, known that bare in reference to persons is used only predicatively while naked occurs both predicatively and attributively. The same is true about alone, which, irrespectively of referent, is used only predicatively, whereas its synonyms solitary and lonely occur in both functions. The function is predicative in the following sentence: you are idle, be not solitary, if you are solitary be not idle.It has been repeatedly mentioned that begin and commence differ stylistically, ft must be noted, however, that their distributional difference is not less important. Begin is generalized in its lexical meaning and becomes a semi-auxiliary when used with an infinitive. It follows naturally that begin and not commence is the right word before an infinitive even in formal style. Seem and appear may be followed by an infinitive or a that-claw. see whereas look which is stylistically equivalent to them is never used in these constructions. Aware and conscious are followed either by an o/-phrase or by a subordinate clause, e. g. to be aware of one’s failure, to be aware that one’s failure is inevitable. Their synonym sensible is preferably used with an o/-phrase.

Very often the distributional difference between synonyms concerns the use of prepositions: e. g. to answer a question, but to reply to a question. The adjectives anxious and uneasy are followed by the preposition about, their synonym concerned permits a choice and is variously combined with about, at, for, with. The misuse of prepositions is one of the most common mistakes not only with foreigners but with native speakers as well.

Lexical difference in distribution is based on the difference in valence. An example of this is offered by the verbs win and gain. Both may be used in combination with the noun victory: to win a victory, to gain a victory. But with the word war only win is possible: to win a war. We are here trespassing on the domain of set expressions, a problem that has already been treated in an earlier chapter. Here it will suffice to point out that the phraseological combining possibilities of words are extremely varied.

It has been repeatedly stated that synonyms cannot be substituted into set expressions; as a general rule each synonym has its own peculiarities of phraseological connections. The statement is only approximately correct. A. V. Koenig has shown that set expressions have special properties as regards synonymy, different from those observed in free phrases. l Some set expressions may vary in their lexical components without changing their meaning, e. g. cast (fling or throw] smth in smb’s. teeth. Moreover, the meaning may remain unchanged even if the interchangeable components are not synonymous: to hang on by one’s eyelashes (eyelids, eyebrows),-to bear or show a resemblance. The nouns glance, look and glimpse are indiscriminately used with the verbs give and have: to give a look (a glance, a glimpse), to have a look (a glance, a glimpse). With (he verbs “cast arid take the word glimpse is not used, so that only the expressions to cast a glance (a look) or to take a glance (a look) are possible. With the verbs steal, shoot, throw the combining possibilities are further restricted, so that only the noun glance will occur in combination with these. It goes without saying that phraseological interchangeability is not frequent.

 

 

1.3 Changeability And Substitution Of Meamings

 

 

Since the exact meaning of each synonym is delimited by its interrelatedness with the other elements of the same group, comparison plays an important part in synonymic research. It has already been tentatively examined in the opening paragraph of this chapter; now we offer a slightly different angle of the same problem. The interchangeability and possible neutralization are tested by means of substitution, a procedure also profitably borrowed by semasiology from phonology. 1 The values of words 2 can best be defined by substituting them for one another and observing the resulting changes. When the landlady in John Waif’s “Hurry on down” says to the main personage: And where do you work? I’ve asked you that two or three times, Mr. Lumley, but you’ve never given me any answer, the verb ask has a very general meaning of seeking information. Substituting its synonyms, question or interrogate, will require a change in the structure of the sentence (the omission of that), which shows the distributional opposition between these words, and also ushers in a change in meaning. These words will heighten the implication that the landlady has her doubts about Lumley and confesses that she finds his character suspicious. The verb question would mean that she is constantly asking her lodger searching questions. The substitution of interrogate would suggest systematic and thorough questioning by a person authorized to do so; the landlady could have used it only ironically and irony would have been completely out of keeping with her mentality and habits. Observations of this sort can be supported by statistical data. Most frequent combinations such as teachers question their pupils, fudges interrogate witnesses and the like also throw light on the semantic difference between synonyms.

Synonyms have certain common ground within which they are interchangeable without alteration of meaning or with a very slight loss in effectiveness. Ask and inquire, for instance, may be used indiscriminately when not followed by any object 3 as in the following: “And where do you live now, Mr. Gillespie?” Mrs. Pearson inquired rather archly and with her head on one side.

To this connection some more examples may be cited. The words strange, odd, queer, though different in connotations, are often interchangeable because they can be applied to define the same words or words naming similar notions: strange feeling (glance, business)’, queer feeling (glance, business), odd feeling (glance, business). E. g.: It seems the queerest set-up I ever heard of. Compare also: she agreed to stay : she consented to stay; she seems annoyed : she appears annoyed : she looks annoyed; to discharge an employee : to sack an employee : to fire an employee (a servant, etc.).

It should be borne in mind that substitution in different contexts has for its object not only probing interchangeability but bringing into relief the difference in intellectual, emotional and stylistic value of each word. An additional procedure suggested by Ch. Bally consists in assigning to the words suitable antonyms. The difference between firm and hard, for example, is explained if we point out that firm contrasts with hose and flabby (firm ground: loose ground, firm chin : flabby chin), whereas the opposite of hard is soft (hard ground : soft ground).

The meaning of each word is conditioned the meaning of other words forming part of the same vocabulary system, and especially of those in semantic proximity. High and tall, for instance, could be defined not only from the point of view of their valence (tall is used about people) but also in relation to each other by stating how far they are interchangeable and what their respective antonyms are. A building may be high and it may be (all. High is a relative term signifying ‘greatly raised above the surface or the base’, in comparison with what is usual for objects of the same kind. A table is high if it exceeds 75 cm; a hill of a hundred meters is not high. The same relativity is characteristic of its antonym low. As to the word tall, it is used about objects whose height is greatly in excess of their breadth or diameter and whose actual height is great for an object of its kind: a tall man, a tall tree. The antonym is short.

The area where substitution is possible is very limited and outside it all replacement either destroys the beauty and precision, or, more often, makes the utterance vague, ungrammatical and even unintelligible. This makes the knowledge of where each synonym differs from another of paramount importance for correctness of speech.

The distinctions between words similar in meaning are often very fine and elusive, so that some special instruction on the use of synonyms is necessary even for native speakers. This accounts for the great number of books of synonyms that serve as guides for those who aim at good style and precision and wish to choose the most appropriate terms from the varied stock of the English vocabulary. The study of synonyms is especially indispensable for those who learn English as a foreign language because what is the right word in one situation will be wrong in many other, apparently similar, contexts.

It is often convenient to explain the meaning of a new word with the help of its previously learned synonym. This forms additional associations in the student’s mind, and the new word is better remembered. Moreover, it eliminates the necessity of bringing in a native word. And yet the discrimination of synonyms and words which may be confused is more important. -The teacher must show that synonyms are not identical in meaning or use and explain the difference between them by comparing and contrasting them, as well as by showing in what contexts one or the other may be most fitly used.

Translation cannot serve as a criterion of synonymy; there are cases when several English words of different distribution and valence are translated into Russian by one and the same word. Such words as also, too and as well, all translated by the Russian word mooted, are never interchangeable. A teacher of English should always stress the necessity of being on one’s guard against mistakes of this kind.

Contextual synonyms are similar in meaning only under some specific distributional conditions. The verbs bear, suffer and stand are semantically different and not interchangeable except when used in the negative form; can’t stand is equal to can’t bear in the following words of an officer: Gas. I’ve swallowed too much of the beastly stuff: I can’t stand it any longer. I’m going to the dressing-station.

There are some other distinctions to be made with respect to different kinds of semantic similarity. Some authors, for instance, class groups like ask : beg : implore or like : love : adore, gift : talent : genius as synonymous, calling them relative synonyms. This attitude is open to discussion. In fact the difference in denotative meaning is unmistakable: the words name different notions, not various degrees of the same notion, and cannot substitute one another. An entirely different type of opposition is involved. Formerly we had oppositions based on the relationships between the members of the opposition, here we deal with proportional oppositions characterized by their relationship with the whole vocabulary system and based on a different degree of intensity of the relevant distinctive features. We shall not call such words synonymous as they do not fit the definition of synonyms given in the beginning of the chapter.

Total synonymy, i.e. synonymy where the members of a synonymic group can replace each other in any given context, without the slightest alteration in denotative or emotional meaning and connotations, is an extremely rare occurrence. Examples of this type can be found in special literature among technical terms peculiar to this or that branch of knowledge. Thus, in linguistics the terms noun and substantive, functional affix, flections and inflection are identical in meaning. What is not generally realized, however, is that terms are a peculiar type of words, totally devoid of connotations or emotional coloring, and that their stylistic characterization does not vary? That is why this is a very special kind of synonymy: neither ideographic nor stylistic oppositions are possible here. As to the distributional opposition, it is less marked because the great majority of terms are nouns. Their irater change ability is also in a way deceptive. Every writer has to make up his mind right from the start as to which of the possible synonyms he prefers and stick to it throughout his text to avoid ambiguity. Thus, the interchangeability is, as it were, theoretical and cannot be materialized in an actual text.

The same misunderstood conception of interchangeability lies at the bottom of considering different dialect names for the same plant, animal or agricultural implement and the like as total (absolute) synonyms. Thus a perennial plant with long clusters of dotted whitish or purple tubular flowers that the botanists refer to as genus Digitalis has several dialectal names such as foxglove, fairy bell, finger/lower, finger root, dead men’s bells, ladies’ fingers. But the names are not interchangeable in any particular speaker’s idiolect. 1 The same is true about the cornflower (Centauries yeans), so called because it grows in cornfields; some people call it bluebottle according to the shape and color of its petals. Compare also gorse, furze and whim, different names used in different places for the same prickly yellow-flowered shrub.

The distinction between synchronistic and dichromatic treatment is so fundamental that it cannot be overemphasized, but the two aspects are interdependent and cannot be understood without one another. It is therefore essential after the descriptive analysis synonymy in present-day English to take up the historical line of approach and discuss the origin of synonyms and the causes of either abundance in English.

The majority of those who studied synonymy in the past have been cultivating both lines of approach without keeping them scrupulously apart, and focused their attention on the prominent part of foreign loan words in English synonymy, e. g. freedom : liberty or heaven : sky, where the first elements arc native and the second, French and Scandinavian respectively. O. Jazzperson and many others used to stress that the English language is peculiarly rich in synonyms because Britons, Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans fighting and settling upon the soil of the British Isles could not but influence each other’s speech. British scholars studied Greek and Latin and for centuries used Latin as a medium for communication on-scholarly topics.

Words borrowed from Latin to interrogate abdomen to collect vacuous to complete to ascend instruction Native English words to ask belly to gather empty to end to raise teaching Synonymy has its characteristic patterns in each language. Its peculiar feature in English is the contrast between simple native words stylistically neutral, literary words borrowed from French and learned words of Greco-Latin origin. This results in a sort of stylistically conditioned triple “keyboard” that can be illustrated by the following: Words borrowed from French to question stomach to assemble devoid to finish to mount guidance English also uses many pairs of synonymous derivatives, the one Hellenic and the other Romance, e. g.: periphery : circumference’, hypothesis : supposition; sympathy : compassion; synthesis :; composition.

The pattern of stylistic relationship represented in the above table, although typical, is by no means universal. For example, the native words dale, deed, fair are the poetic equivalents of their much more frequent borrowed synonyms valley, act or the hybrid beautiful.

This subject of stylistic differentiation has been one of much controversy in recent years. It is universally accepted, however, that semantic and stylistic properties may change and synonyms which at one time formed a stylistic opposition only, may in the course of time become ideographically contrasted as well, and vice versa.

It would be linguistically naive to maintain that borrowing re-silts only in quantitative changes or those qualitative changes are purely stylistically. The introduction of a borrowed word almost invariably starts some alteration both in the newcomer and in the seminary tic structure of existing words that are close to it in meaning. When in the 13th century the word soil (For soil, soil) was hour-rowed into English its meaning was ‘a strip of land’. The upper layer of earth in which plants grow had been denoted since Old English by one of the synonyms: elope, land, folder. All these words had other central meanings so (hat the meaning in question was with (hem secondary. Avow, if two words coincide in meaning and use, the tendency is for one of them to drop out of the language. Folder had the same function and meaning as elope and in the fight for survival the latter won. The polysemantic word land underwent an intense semantic development in a different direction and so dropped out of this synonymic series. In this way it became quite natural for soil to fill the obvious lexical gap, receive its present meaning and become the main name for the corresponding notion, i.e. ‘the mould in which plants grow’. The noun earth retained (his meaning throughout its history, whereas the word ground in which this meaning was formerly absent, developed it. As a result this synonymic group comprises at present soil, earth and ground.

The fate of the word folder is not at all infrequent. Many other words now marked in the dictionaries as “archaic” or “obsolete” have dropped out in the same competition of synonyms: others survived with a meaning more or less removed from the original one. The process is called synonymic differentiation and is so current that M. Boreal regarded it as an inherent law of language development. It must be noted that -synonyms may influence each other semantically in two diametrically opposite ways: one of them is dissimilation, the other the reverse process, i. e. assimi1ation. The assimilation of synonyms consists in parallel development. An example of this is furnished by the sense development of Middle English adverbs meaning ‘swiftly’, and subsequently ‘immediately’. This law was discovered and described by G. Stern. H. A. Treble and G. H. Villains give as examples the pejorative meanings acquired by the nouns wench, knave and churl which originally meant ‘girl’, ‘boy’ and ‘laborer’ respectively, and point out that this loss of old dignity became linguistically possible because there were so many synonymous terms to hand. The important thing to remember is that it is not only borrowings from foreign languages hut, other sources as well that; have made increasing contributions to the stock of English synonyms. There are for instance words that come from dialects, and, in the last hundred years, from American English in particular. As a result speakers of British English may make use of both elements of the following pairs, the first element in each pair coming from the USA: gimmick : trick, dues : subscription, long distance (telephone) call : trunk call, radio : wireless. There are also synonyms that originate in numerous other dialects as, for instance, clover: shamrock, liquor ;: whiskey (from Irish), girl :; lass, lassie or charm : glamour (from Scottish).

The role of borrowings should not be overestimated. Synonyms are also created by means of all word-forming processes productive in the language at a given time of its history. The words already existing in the language develop new meanings. New words may be formed by affixation, or loss of affixes, conversion, compounding, shortening and so on, and being coined, form synonyms to those already in use.

Of special importance for those who are interested in the present-day trends and characteristic peculiarities of the English vocabulary are the synonymic oppositions due to shift of meaning, new combinations of verbs with postpositive and compound nouns formed from them, shortenings, set expressions and conversion.

Set expressions consisting of a verb with a postpositive are widely used in present-day English and may be called one of its characteristic features. l Many verbal synonymic groups contain such combinations as one of their elements. A few examples will illustrate this statement: to choose : to pick out; to abandon : to give up; to continue : to go on; to enter : to come in; to lift : to pick up; to postpone : to put off; to quarrel : to fall out; to return : to bring back. E.g. By the way, Toby has quite given up the idea of doing those animal cartoons.

The vitality of these expressions is proved by the fact that they really supply material for further word-formation. Very many compound nouns denoting abstract notions, persons and events are correlated with them, also giving ways of expressing notions hitherto named by somewhat lengthy borrowed terms. There are, for instance, such synonymic pairs as arrangement : layout; conscription : call-up; precipitation : fall-out; regeneration : feedback; reproduction : playback; resistance : fight-back; treachery : sell-out.

An even more frequent type of new formations is that in which a noun with a verbal stem is combined with a verb of generic meaning (have, give, take, get, make] into a set expression which differs from the simple verb in aspect or emphasis: to laugh: to give a laugh; to sigh: lo give a sigh; to walk: to take a walk; to smoke: to have a smoke; to love: to fall in love. E.g. now we can all have a good read with our coffee. (SIMPSON)

N. N. Amosova stresses the patterned character of the phrases in question, the regularity of connection between the structure of the phrase and the resulting semantic effect. She also points out that there may be cases when phrases of this pattern have undergone a shift of meaning and turned into phraseological units quite different in meaning from, and not synonymical with, the verbs of the same root. This is the case with to give a lift, to give somebody quite a turn, etc.

Quite frequently synonyms, mostly stylistically, hut sometimes ideographic as well, are due to shortening, e. g. memorandum : memo; vegetables : vegs; margarine : merge; microphone : mike; popular (song] : pop (song).

One should not overlook the fact that conversion may also be a source of synonymy; it accounts for such pairs as commandment: ceriman, laughter : laugh. The problem in this connection is whether such cases should be regarded as synonyms or as lexical variants of one arid the same word. It seems more logical to consider them, as lexical variants. Cf. also cases of different affixation: anxiety : anxiousness, effectively ;: effectiveness, and loss of affixes: amongst :; among or await : wait.

Essence of synonymy, synonymous relations between words yore attracted and still attracts the attention of linguists, who develop the problems of semasiology, since decision of the problems of synonymy is closely connected with antonym and polysemy and the studying of synonyms is important not only for semasiology, but as well as for lexicography, literature studying, methodic of teaching the English language, etc.

In spite of the existence of relatively large numbers of the studies, denoted to the opening of the different sides to synonymy, hitherto there is no a unity glance in respect to determinations of the synonyms, methods of their study, principles of the separation and categorizations of the synonyms, and borders of the synonymous row.

The majority of scholars share the opinion that synonymy presents by itself the “microcircuit” of the language, which is characterized by their own relations and that it falls into quality of the component part in lexical system of the language as a whole.

As it concerns the determinations of synonymy, there is no existence of the unity among the scholars’ opinions: one researchers come from the generality of the meaning of synonyms, while the others - from the correlation of semantic and subject - logical begin in a word, while the thirds try to prove that synonyms are defined on the base of generality of the structured model of the use and alike combinability of the words.