The form change and shifts of meaning of multi-word units

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The form change and shifts of meaning of multi-word units

Tetiana Anokhina

This article explores the secondary and post-secondary derived lacunar phenomena of multi words units rearranged by the (partial) substitution in form change or/and semantic shift in terms of their renewed reproducibility. The author points out that the problem of change of multi-words units (MWUs) affect understanding of the modern English MWUs. To eliminate lacunae of understanding one should decode the new meaning by means of wide context applications, corpus analysis and other tools to compare and contrast MWUs phenomena in intra-transfer or inter-shift. The difficulties of interpretation of the semantically changed MWUs have been caused by their cultural uniqueness and vague change, both formal and semantic, performed by the secondary and post-secondary derivation. Thus, lacunarity lies in the first motivation of MWU s and after that in its secondary motivation, semantic and formal shift of MWU s.

Key words: MWUs, modified figurative expressions, semantic shift, secondary meaning, the post-secondary change.

Анохіна Тетяна. Перебудова форми та значення мультикомпонентних одиниць

Когнітивна лінгвістика має широкий спектр підходів до опису значень природної мови. У наших дослідженнях ми покладаємося на підходи сучасної фреймової семантики, яка пропонує лінгвістам по-своєму вивчати зміст слів. Існують специфічні способи опису принципів створення нових слів і фраз, а також механізм включення нового значення. У статті розглядаються секондарні та постсекондарні зміни мультикомпонентних одиниць (МКО) в аспекті переформатування їх зовнішньої форми і значення, описаних в термінах їхніх когнітивних сценаріїв. У статті представлена когнітивна модель, яка включає нові, секондарні та постсекондарні значення. Описуються когнітивні сценарії зміни МКО, їх семантична деривація, зміна зовнішньої форми. МКО є частиною «замороженої фразеології» та корелює з когнітивною ендозоною лакунарністю. Семантичні зрушення розглядаються як секондарні та постсекондарні зміни. Первісне значення фразеологічних МКО може бути частково змінене або видалене. У процесі семантичних зрушень фактичне значення змінюється. Модифіковані МКО демонструють мімікрію, але перетворені МКО виявляються абсолютно новими концептуальними одиницями. Інтерпретація схеми перегрупування МКО була проведена за допомогою емпіричних процедур для виділення секундарних і постсекондарних МКО.

Ключові слова: мультикомпонентні вербальні одиниці (МВО), модифіковані фігуративні вислови, семантичний зсув, вторинне значення, постсекондарні зміни.

Анохина Татьяна. Переформатирование формы и значения мультикомпонентных единиц

Когнитивная лингвистика имеет широкий спектр подходов к описанию значений естественного языка. В наших исследованиях мы полагаемся на подходы современной фреймовой семантики, которая предлагает лингвистам по-своему изучать смысл слов. Существуют свои специальные способы описания принципов создания новых слов и фраз, а также механизм включения нового значения. В статье рассматриваются секондарные и постсекондарные изменения мультикомпонентных единиц (МКО) в аспекте переформатирования их внешней формы и значения, описанных в терминах их когнитивных сценариев. Представлена когнитивная модель, которая включает новое, секондарное и постсекондарное значение. В статье описываются когнитивные сценарии изменения МКО, их семантическая деривация, изменение внешней формы. МКО являются частью “замороженной фразеологии” и коррелирует с когнитивной эндозоной лакунарностью. Семантические сдвиги рассматриваются как секондарные и постсекондарные изменения. Первоначальное значение МКО может быть частично изменено или удалено. В процессе семантических сдвигов фактическое значение меняется. Модифицированные МКО демонстрируют мимикрию, но преобразованные МКО кажутся совершенно новыми концептуальными единицами. Интерпретация схемы перегруппировки МКО была произведена с помощью эмпирических процедур для выделения секондарных и постсекондарных МКО.

Ключевые слова: мультикомпонентные вербальные единицы (МВО), модифицированные фигуративные высказывания, семантический сдвиг, вторичное значение, постсекондарные изменения.

Formulation of a research problem and its significance

Reproducibility of the secondary and post-secondary rearrangement is the new linguistic area for research and analysis of the deviation of MWUs including form shift and change of meaning to be studied. The research problem is correlating with frame senantics, its cognitive scenarios that making the research area especially significant for lacunology studies and cognitive semantics.

Lacunology, the modern linguistic discipline dealing with lacunae in speech, writing and cognition, describes the lacunar facts in terms of result and process. As results lacunae are seen as zero elements, empty space, noughts and nothing. As the process lacunae take part in word building, neology constructing, while intra-lingual shift, translation process, or inter-transfer, and the process of decoding of metalese, reconstructing of old or unknown forms and post-functioning when something old is erased and new begins.

The Lacunicon register is growing embracing relating to lacunology endozones: philosophy, translation, comparative linguistic and cultural studies, synergetics and semiotics. The various terms of lacunology denote lacunae of verbal and non-verbal clusters, in writing and speech in the lexical and cognitive endozones of lacunarity demonstrating specific lacunar traces by its corpora: lacunae of reduction, lacunae elimination, compression, zero transfer, difficulties in translation, gaps in the process of decoding, incomprehension in the process of guessing, finding unknown elements in the process of reconstruction, seeing lacunae as void place to be soon eliminated in the process of bifurcation of the new meaning, finding ambiguities and polyfuctional words and terms lacunar, eliminating implicitness or hiding the meaning.

The goal and the specific tasks of the article

This article deals with the cognitive endozone of lacunarity. The Object of the research is MWUs and the subject of the study is functioning of the secondary and the post-secondary MWUs in intra-and inter- environment. The urgency of the topic is objectified by the lack of research on this topic, as well as the growing interest of scientists to semantic changes.

The material of the search is modern and as been extracted from online recourses for many MWUs are not registered in dictionaries. The purpose of the work is to show how semantic changes occur in MWUs, to analyze and interpret phenomena of shift and innovation. It is important to see the derivation process as the MWUs change their form and meaning what is vivid at MWUs secondary and post-secondary rearrangements in the form of reproducibility.

Statement regarding the basic material of the research and the justification of the results obtained

Some characteristics of MWUs can be observed in scientific discourse, corpus data, wide context search engines. The neos of MWUs show the lexical creativity, “concept-theme feedback

loops display remarkable similarities” to the original MWUs in comparison to the post secondary MWUs [9, p. 30].

Analysis of the research into this problem

MWUs transfer into other languages can be implemented by deletions cutting off the unknown or euphemized element causing the informative lacunae, by sense substitutions or formal form shifts forming the partial cognitive or formal lacunae, by innovations eliminating lacunae by creating new word unit, by commentary and other interpretations filling in lacunae by the accompanied explanation [10, p. 207].

When the initial meaning can be modified or partially removed, thus the secondary meaning arising out, so we deal with semantic shift. If the form of the word (nominative unit) or multi-word units (communicative units) change, the lexical and semantic changes occur. Thus, archaic expression like down the pike turned into other more evident etymology changing into down the pipe, the set-expression American Idiot was presupposedly borrowed from the idiomatic expression the American Patriot.

Sometimes it happens when the origin of the word/term is borrowed from Latin or Greek, or from other foreign languages, cf.: Trumpism of the Day, teledildonics. The neologism is exploring mimesis and looks like the old term, but it is completely brand new conceptual unit. Old terms' traces are iterated by the new second-hand users disguised as pseudo-terms.

MWU can be polyfuctional, thus the one meaning has to dominate contextually, Cf.: JFK as Junior Fellowship Kidz, or as Junk Food Kitty, or Jihads For Kerry, John Fitzgerald Kennedy; John F. Kennedy =John F Kennedy International Airport (erasure of the word airport).

The Phraseologic MWUs are secondary units that are in comparison with free expressions have stable indirect meaning, can be described as highly figurative, metaphoric, being stick together in the preserved collocation, e.g.: Early bird catches the worm. Still, these secondary units can be modified, and changed into the post-secondary, tertiary, undergo fourth change and beyond, cf.: There's an early bird buy-one, get-one-free special, to work the early bird on Friday, with early bird discounts, the Early Bird Detective Agency, moderate early bird, with early bird dinner specials, early bird bingo, etc.

In terms of argumentation the phrasological units and felicities are often used in political discourse in terms of argumentation for they are easy-to-understand expressions and demonstrate persuasive argument by able-to-get way with conclusive proof supported by metaphors and popular phraseology, cf.: “Opportunity doesn't come easy", “One man cannot make a movement', “A new politics for the new time” [8, p. 77]. Some set-phrases, collocations and proverbs make politician's speech popular (cf. Obama's proverbial Rhetoric in “Yes, we can” (2009)), other fading away [8, p. 161]. Proverbs like A woman's tongue wags like a lamb ' tail or Spare the rod and spoil the child have disappeared or are on their way out while such proverbs as A woman without a man is like a fish with-out a bicycle or There is no free lunch are steadily gaining in currency [7, p. 209]. Some proverbs are rearranged: “Use it or lose it”, “Pay as you go”, “lipstick on a pig' [7, p. 83].

Proverbs are as traditional signs of cultural values, cultural and social historians, folklorisls, linguists have expended much energy in studying proverbs both as expressions of national wisdom [7, p. 205]. The new proverbs illustrate new emergent values. Cf.: Nothing but money is sweeter than honey, Banks have no hearts, Money makes the mare go but not the nightmare. Old shoes and old friends are best. Mud thrown is ground lost. Friendship can't stand on one leg alone. You have to summer and winter together before you know each other [7, p. 228].

The secondary units or all rearranged units on the one hand have some similar traces, demonstrating mimesis; on the other hand they have some vivid formal replacements or semantic change or multiple semantic or other changes as in artifact rearrangements, cf.: Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend introduced by Carol Channing, relived in other tributes.

The term “law of Hobson-Jobson” is sometimes used in linguistics to refer to the process of phonological change by which loanwords are adapted to the phonology of the new language, as in the archetypal example of “Hobson-Jobson” itself (OLD entry OED entry for “Hobson-Jobson”). Webster's Third International Dictionary gives as examples of “Hobson-Johnson”: Spanish cucaracha becoming English “cockroach”, and English “riding coat” becoming French redingote.

The secondary term that derived Hobson-Johnson is Hanklyn-Janklin denoting the contemporary glossary of Indian English terms and Indian-derived words in mainstream English by Nigel Hankin, named as a tribute to its 1886 forebear Hobson-Jobson.

Multi-word units (MWUs) correspond to one grammatical phrase constituted by several lexemes separated by a blank [3, p. 9]. They differ from free combinations, whose constituents keep their syntactic and semantic independence, and from compounds, which are morphologically made up of two elements which have independent status outside these word combinations.

Often MWUs alter their sense while entering other linguistic area. Thus, the set expressions borrowed from other language and culture are changing their appearance. This is discussed before Hobson Jobson phenomenon showing replicas as very near to “two peas in a pod” in different areas: translations (retranslations), film industry (remakes), arts (repetitive copies, recopies, similar replicas), in internet (related videos), in marketing (mimetism representations as celebrity imitation in appearance, clothes or manners, twin-sumers, etc.).

When MWUs are also terms from two languages differ considerably or when a term exists in one language only, there are three basic techniques for reproducing the term in another language: borrowing, creating new term and creating equivalenting paraphrase [2, p. 15].

The use of a loan word, i.e. the direct coining of a term from another language, is indicated when the content of the term is especially typical for the area in which the source language is spoken and is therefore difficult to translate (e.g. drugstore in North America and ombudsman in Sweden). That this language usage is by no means restricted to the case shown by word Engl. Know-how, укр. ноу хау and very many others which were taken over into Ukrainian unchanged. A loan translation (e.g. Engl. contact lenses, укр. контактні лінзи) can facilitate the comprehension of a term which is unknown in the area in which the targct language is spoken: however, this requires a motivated term in the source.

Coining a term in the target language with possible adding of extra information, e.g. Engl. nonproliferation treaty, укр. договір про нерозповсюдження ядерної зброї.

To eliminate difficulties in translation of multi word unit or lacunar compound one may create the equivalent paraphrase. It is the possible way out, for English terms may be MWUs or similar to them compounds which are succinct, e.g.: Engl. brinkmanship, балансування на межі війни; політика балансування на межі війни; балансування на грані можливого; балансування на межі допустимого; доктрина балансування на межі війни; амер. англ. тактика балансування на грані фолу; доведення небезпечної ситуації до межі; дип. політика конфронтації.

The other important issue of MWUs transfer and words' migration from one language into other, from one sphere into another: e.g. terms reproducibility from biology migrates to linguistics, the term nonlinear dynamics used by linguistics in synergetic approaches.

Among the most important factors of MWUs transfer and reproducibility are creativity and mimesis [9, p. 30]. Among the current best new words (hybrid compounds) in American English are there challenges to translation: Engl. masterdating (going out alone to a movie or a restauraunt), dudevorce (when two bros officially end their relationship), nonversation (a completely worthless conversation, small talk), cellfish (an individual who continues talking on their phone so as to be rude or inconsiderate of other people), errorist (someone who repeatedly makes mistakes, or is always wrong), askhole (someone, who asks many stupid, pointless or obnoxious qustions), bedgasm (a feeling of euphoria experienced when climbing into bed at the end of a very long day), internest (the cocoon of blankets and pillows you gather around yourself whilst spending long periods of time on the internet), chairdrobe (piling clothes on a chair in place of a closet or dresser; similar to floordrobe), unlightening (learning something that makes you dumber), hiberdating (when a person ignores their friends in favour of a boyfriend/girlfriend), destinesia (when you get to where you were intending to go, but forget why you were going there in the first place), textpectation (the anticipation felt when waiting for a response to a text), columbusing (when white people claim to have discovered something that has been around for years, decades, or centuries), youniverse (used to indicate that a person has knowledge only of him or herself; their universe consists only of them), carcolepsy (a condition where a passenger falls asleep as soon as the car starts moving), ambitchous (striving to be more of a bitch than the average bitch), unkeyboardinated (when you're unable to type without repeatedly making mistakes), afterclap (the last person who claps after everyone has stopped), juggersnot (a huge impending sneeze you can't prevent), beerboarding (extracting secret information from a colleague by getting them drunk), nerdjacking (filling a conversation with unnecessary detail about one's passion to an otherwise uninitiated, uninterested layperson), chiptease (when you buy a bag of papato chips thinking that it will be full but it turns out it's just air), doppelbanger (a person who has sexual intercourse with someone that looks identical to them but is not related) (New Modern random words).

There are computer-oriented new fixed words and phrases, such as hashtags (function code for social interaction #ifyoulikethatkindofthing, scunthorpe problems (algorithms' censorious tendencies), memes (from shortening of the Ancient Greek term mimeme (“an imitated thing”) gene-pool for thoughts and beliefs as memes of translation as popular topics), LOLs (Laugh out loud).

The words are so new that are not searched by WordNet Search Key where both semantic and lexical relations are given with accompanying illustrations, Cf: S: (n) juggernaut, steamroller (a massive inexorable force that seems to crush everything in its way) is given by the derivative juggersnot (a huge impending sneeze you can't prevent) is not given.

reformatting multicomponent units

Conclusions and prospects for further research

The analysis of corpus data and concordance illustrations showed how phraseological units (PUs) were slightly changed and modified by means of the secondary (subsequent) semantic derivation. Many MWUs in Spoken and Magazine, News endozones were high-frequency collocations of deviant nature in the modern English comparing with their nondeviant source MWUs. This is the reason why neology and phraseology are better learned and taught at the university level, where the self-education and corpus analysis are engaged.

The detailed study has revealed that most errors concerned the misuse of MUWs are explained not by out-date recourses language learners use, but due to the rapid semantic change of MWUs making neology or rethought winged phrases or idioms in the real time regime, what is affirmed by corpora data from the current spoken, academic and magazine discourses. Some other questions concerning MWUs change, modification and transfer remain open to debate.

Bibliography

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References

1. Altenberg, B. 1998. “On the phraseology of spoken English: The evidence of recurrent word-combinations”. Phraseology: Theory, Analysis, and Applications, edited by A. P. Cowie, 101-122.

2. Arntz, Reiner. 1993. “Terminological equivalence and Translation”. Terminology: Applications in interdisciplinary communication, edited by Helmi B. Sonneveld, L. Kurt, 5-21.

3. Bolly, Catherine. 2009. “The acquisition of phraseological units by advanced learners of French as an L2: High-frequency verbs and learner corpora”. Emmanuelle Labeau, Florence Myles, The advanced learner variety: The case of French, Peter Lang, 1-24. Bern; Berlin. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/83340

4. Burt, G. 2003. “Epigenetic change: new from the seeds of the old”. Strategic Change, 12: 381-393.

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6. Granger S. 2007. “Integrating learner corpora and natural language processing: A crucial step towards reconciling technological sophistication and pedagogical effectiveness”. ReCALL, 19(3): 252-268.

7. Mieder, Wolfgang. 1993. Yankee wisdom: American proverbs and the worldview of New England. Phraseology and Culture in English, edited by Paul Skandera, 205-235.

8. Mieder, Wolfgang. 2009. “Yes We Can ”: Barack Obama's Proverbial Rhetoric, New York: Peter Lang.

9. Pavel, Silvia. 1993. “Neology and Phraseology as Terminology-in-the-Making”. Terminology: Applications in interdisciplinary communication, edited by B. Sonneveld Helmi, L Kurt, 21-33.

10. Szerszunowicz, Joanna. 2013. “Phraseological Gaps as a Translation Problem”. Research on Phraseology Across Continents, 2: 299-319.

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