The vocabulary of the Russian language, like any other, is constantly replenished, enriched, and updated. Words disappear and fall out of use, while others, on the contrary, appear and begin to be actively used by native speakers.
The vocabulary of a language can be enriched in different ways. For example, during certain periods of development of a state, a significant amount of borrowed vocabulary appears in its language, which is observed, for example, in the Russian language at the present time. However, the main source of vocabulary replenishment is not borrowing, but the formation of new lexical units based on the native language through the use of different ways word formation.
Words and phrases created to denote new phenomena of reality, new objects or concepts are called neologisms (from the Greek neos - new and logos - word).
Neologisms are new words in the national language. Significant Events public life, scientific and technical discoveries contribute to the generation of entire series of neologisms. So, in the 60s. In connection with the development of astronautics, many new words related to space have appeared: cosmonaut, cosmodrome, rocket launch site, lunar rover, etc. Of course, at present they can no longer be considered neologisms, since they have long entered the language and are widely used in it.
Examples of neologisms of our time: sponsor, series, player, likombez (liquidation of computer illiteracy), programmer, quarks (elementary particles), chromodynamics (section of physics).
It happens that neologisms are created by a specific person who feels the need to name a new reality. Thus, at one time N.M. Karamzin created the word industry, which became so commonly used that it cannot be recognized as the author’s neologism. The writer D. Danin called centauristics a new science, the subject of which is the compatibility of the incompatible, the compatibility of the incompatible.
Quite a lot of original neologisms are created by poets. Their new formations are unusual, fresh, and do not become obsolete, even if they were created a long time ago. These words are not part of the common literary language.
Examples of author's neologisms: The color red will glow from afar. (A. Blok) The sky is turning blue, Narva continues. (I. Severyanin) Her eyes were starry. (K. Fedin) The doctor looked at the baby, and then said: “Influenza, simulenza, pretender, lody-rit.” (S. Marshak) this word meant the free unity of people based on the love of God.
Neologisms sometimes arise on the basis of phrases according to the law of speech economy. For example, hearing the word physics, you might think that we are talking about scientists, but this word is now often used to refer to members of the physical protection department of the Moscow tax police (the word arose from the phrase).
It is believed that a rich language helps journalists, copywriters, editors and translators make a living. In any case, it has a direct bearing on their professionalism. We also talk about expanding the vocabulary when we want to speak publicly and impress listeners. What are the most effective ways to increase your active vocabulary?
The question of increasing vocabulary usually arises when studying foreign languages. When we speak English, Spanish, German or any other non-native language, we regularly encounter the fact that we do not know some words. In this case, dictionaries come to the rescue. It’s easier with Russian: if the right expression has slipped our minds, we can always find a synonym or explain what we mean descriptively.
Lexicon of the Russian language
Conventionally, the lexicon is divided into active, passive and external. The first group includes that part of the vocabulary that a person not only knows, but also actively uses in everyday speech. No additional effort is required to use it.
Passive words include those words that we understand, but do not constantly use. If necessary, they will most likely have to be recalled. External vocabulary includes special, professional and scientific terms, as well as neologisms. It is almost impossible to draw a clear line between these groups.
As you grow older, mental development and expanding your social circle vocabulary the child is growing.
It is believed that a first-grader speaks an average of 2,000 words, and this is enough to explain himself at an everyday level.
During school, this figure increases 5 times or more. The vocabulary begins to include terms that are heard in lessons, as well as words found in works classical literature. At the same time, most of the new knowledge goes into passive storage.
Many teachers of oratory are sure that an educated person needs to enrich his vocabulary as a whole. However, if you need to make your speech more expressive, rich and convincing, you should pay attention first of all to expanding your active vocabulary, as well as transferring some vocabulary from a passive vocabulary to an active one.
Preparatory work
Identifying verbal “garbage” in your speech is not so difficult: just read correspondence with friends and relatives in social networks. You should write down all your findings in a notebook and ask a colleague or friend to correct you every time you say something from the prohibited list. You can even argue with a friend and promise to treat him to coffee or lunch for a certain number of misfires.
Such motivation will help in as soon as possible get rid of unnecessary and unnecessary words, and meanwhile your memory itself will give you literary synonyms from the passive stock.
Remember synonyms
The Russian language is so rich that for one word you can find a dozen synonyms for different contexts and styles of speech. IN everyday life we use only a couple of them, which is why so-called universal words appear, making our language primitive and poor.
One of the most popular ways to change this situation is to keep your own dictionary of synonyms or write out new expressions on cards.
The same method is used when learning foreign languages, but it has a big disadvantage: learning words separately is almost pointless, since they will most likely end up in the passive stock and will not be widely used. Therefore, it will be more useful and expedient not to mindlessly memorize, but to immediately put words into practice - to compose sentences with them or entire dialogues.
For training, you can do several exercises. Compose a short text or take a ready-made one and rewrite it several times in other words. At the same time, you need to ensure that, whenever possible, there are different words, try to avoid repetitions. With constant practice of this exercise, expressions will be firmly established in the active vocabulary and will come to mind more often when speaking.
Set aside time every day to write three small notes on social networks about what is happening around you.
The task is that you must use the most atypical vocabulary for you, so that your friends and subscribers will think that your page was hacked and the text was written not by you, but by someone else.
Most sites and blogs that teach how to expand your Russian vocabulary suggest always keeping a dictionary of synonyms on hand and looking at it often. But this rule is rather useful for those who write a lot. A person looks for an alternative at the moment when he really needs it, and immediately uses it. This does not guarantee that the found word will continue to be used in the future. Thus, new words will be passive and will not contribute to the enrichment of the language.
Benefits of reading books
Reading books is an obvious way to increase your vocabulary. But the question arises: what kind of literature should you read and what should you do so that the expressions remain in your memory?
The only problem is that while reading works of art We get carried away by the plot and forget about vocabulary. This can be dealt with by reading slowly and thoughtfully, perhaps even writing out individual words and expressions. You need to use the acquired knowledge as soon as possible so that it does not go into passive storage.
Many people note the particular benefits of memorizing poems for expanding their vocabulary. In this way, you can learn not only vocabulary, but also syntax. In the Russian language there is no strictly fixed word order in sentences, which gives us enormous freedom. True, we rarely use it.
Every person has favorite constructions and expressions that he uses over and over again.
To increase your lexical range, you should take a more creative approach when constructing phrases. It is enough to replace impersonal sentences (“I want”) with personal ones (“I want”). If you use both subject and predicate, then the synonymous row and room for maneuver will be much wider.
Is it possible to replace reading by listening to audiobooks? This way of perceiving information, of course, significantly saves time, because you can turn on the recording in the car or in the kitchen. But in this case, there is a risk of being distracted from the language and perceiving the audio solely as background. In addition, you need to take into account that not everyone perceives information well by ear.
Live communication
The easiest way to increase your vocabulary is to communicate with different people. The main thing is that the interlocutors differ from each other as much as possible: in age, education, profession. This way you can pick up new words for yourself and start using them right away.
In addition, oral practice is considered by many public speaking teachers to be the most effective for replenishing vocabulary. Even if you do not intend to pack the halls and deliver long monologues to large audiences, this experience will be useful. Retell stories and movies often, or simply talk about your life to friends, acquaintances, relatives, or yourself.
Each era enriches the language with new words. During periods of greatest activity in socio-political and cultural life The influx of new words is especially increasing throughout the nation. Our country has created extremely favorable conditions for enriching vocabulary. Turbulent events last decade- camber totalitarian state, the rejection of the command-administrative system, the collapse of the socio-economic and spiritual foundations of public life that had developed over 70 years - brought fundamental changes to all spheres of people’s activities.
The emergence of new concepts also led to an influx of new words into the Russian language. They replenished a variety of thematic groups vocabulary, from the names of states ( Russian Federation, Republic of Sakha, Tuva, CIS), government agencies (Duma, department, municipality, mayor's office, Federal service employment of Russia), officials (manager, prefect, sub-prefect), educational institutions(lyceum, gymnasium), representatives public organizations, movements (Trudorossy, Demorossy), etc. before naming new ones commercial enterprises(LLP [partnership with limited liability], JSC [ joint stock company]) and realities that have become signs of economic restructuring (voucher, privatization, shares, dividends). Many of these words were present in the Russian language as foreign names for concepts from the life of other states (mayor, prefecture), or as historicisms assigned to the era pre-revolutionary Russia(department, lyceum, gymnasium). Now this vocabulary is perceived as new and is becoming very common.
The fate of new words in a language develops differently: some quickly gain recognition, others pass the test of time and are consolidated, but not immediately, and sometimes are not recognized at all and are forgotten. Words that are widely used become part of the active vocabulary. So, in different periods of the 20th century. The words university, educational program, salary, cosmonaut, lunar rover, chewing gum, shuttle business, federals, etc. entered the Russian language. At the end of the 90s, they no longer seem new to us.
In contrast, words not fully mastered by the language retain a connotation of unusualness. Thus, the word foresight, which appeared in the 1930s, has now given way to its synonym - television; in the first name of transmitting an image over a distance, the connotation of novelty and freshness has not yet been erased, since it has not become part of the active vocabulary. Neologisms that appear in a language as names of new objects can remain part of passive vocabulary for a long time if the corresponding concepts do not receive universal recognition. We cannot foresee the fate of such neologisms as pulsar (an electronic ignition device used by motorists), biofidoc (kefir enriched with biofidobacteria that protect against intestinal infections), euro (European currency). But time will pass, and they will declare themselves or be forgotten.
Of stylistic interest are new words that we have not yet gotten used to, that are not yet in dictionaries. Almost all new words remain in this capacity for some time. But over time, some of them lose the stylistic connotation of novelty, others even become archaic (compare the historicisms: Commissars, Stakhanovite, Red Army). Of the latest innovations, this fate is reserved for the notorious vouchers, the financial company MMM, the State Emergency Committee, etc.
Golub I.B. Stylistics of the Russian language - M., 1997
The origin of the vocabulary of the modern Russian language
The vocabulary of the modern Russian language has passed long haul formation: it consists not only of eternal Russian words, and even words taken from other languages. Foreign language sources replenished and enriched Russian language throughout the entire process of its historical development. Some borrowings were made in ancient times, others - comparatively not so long ago.
The Russian vocabulary was expanded on two fronts:
1. New words were created from the word-forming parts existing in the language (roots, suffixes, prefixes). This is how the eternal Russian vocabulary expanded and developed: head, throat, heart, palm, kind, young, dog, squirrel, ladle, ruble, throw, very, currant, necessary.
2. New words poured into the Russian language from other languages as a result of economic, political and cultural ties Russian people with other nations: sandwich(German), pate(German), pavilion(French) pasta(Italian) soprano(Italian).
The composition of Russian vocabulary, based on the beliefs of its origin, can be schematically presented in the table:
Eternally Russian words
Taken words
Latin,
Greek,
Scandinavian,
Germanic,
French,
English and other borrowings
A. Eternal Russian vocabulary
Eternally Russian vocabulary own origin heterogeneous: it consists of several layers that differ in the time of their formation.
1. The most ancient among the eternal Russian words are Indo-Europeanisms- words preserved from the era of Indo-European linguistic unity. According to scientists' guesses, in the V-IV millennia BC. there was an ancient Indo-European civilization that united tribes living over a wide area. So, according to the research of some linguists, it extended from the Volga to the Yenisei, others believe that it was a Balkan-Danube, or South Russian, localization. The Indo-European linguistic community gave rise to European and some Asian languages (for example, Bengali, Sanskrit).
2. Another layer of eternal Russian vocabulary consists of words Pan-Slavic, inherited by our language from the common Slavic (proto-Slavic) language, which served as the source for all Slavic languages. This base language existed in the prehistoric era in the area between the Dnieper, Bug and Vistula rivers, inhabited by ancient Slavic tribes. By the VI-VII centuries. AD The common Slavic language collapsed, opening the way for the development of Slavic languages, including Old Russian. Common Slavic words simply stand out in all Slavic languages, the common origin of which is obvious in our time.
Among common Slavic words there are words various parts speeches:
The common Slavic vocabulary contains about 2 thousand words, however, this is the core of the Russian dictionary; it includes more common, stylistically neutral words used both in oral and written speech.
3. The 3rd layer of eternal Russian words consists of East Slavic(Old Russian) vocabulary, which developed on the basis of the language Eastern Slavs, one of 3 groups of ancient Slavic languages (Slavic languages, which had their source in the ancient Common Slavic (Proto-Slavic) language, were separated into three groups according to sound, grammatical and lexical features: southern, western and eastern).
The East Slavic linguistic community developed by the 7th-9th centuries. AD on the ground Eastern Europe. The Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalities are joining the tribal unions that lived here. Therefore, the words remaining in our language from this period are known, most often, in the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages, but are absent in the languages of the Western and Southern Slavs.
As part of the East Slavic vocabulary it is possible to distinguish:
as well as other lexical-semantic groups.
4. The 4th layer of eternal Russian words is actually Russian vocabulary, formed after the 14th century, i.e. in the era of independent development of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. The language of this period already has its own words that actually belong to the Russian vocabulary.
In fact, Russian words are distinguished, most often, by their derivative basis: bricklayer, leaflet, locker room, community, intervention and under.
In fact, the Russian vocabulary also contains words with foreign roots that have gone through Russian word formation and are “overgrown” with Russian suffixes and prefixes: partisanship, non-partisanship, anger; ruler, glass, teapot; words with a complex base: radio center, locomotive, Also huge amount complex abbreviated words that replenished the language in the 20th century: Moscow Art Theater, timber industry enterprise, wall newspaper etc.
Eternally Russian vocabulary and at the moment continues to be replenished with words that are created on the basis of word-formation resources of the language, ultimately the most various processes, corresponding to Russian word formation.
B. Borrowings from Slavic languages
1. A special place in the Russian vocabulary in the middle Slavic borrowings occupy Old Church Slavonic words, or Old Slavonicisms(Church Slavonicisms). These are the words of the ancient Slavic language, well known in Rus' since the spread of Christianity (988).
Being the language of liturgical books, the Old Church Slavonic language was at first far from colloquial speech, but over time he experienced a noticeable influence of the East Slavic language and himself, in turn, left an imprint on the language of the people. Russian chronicles reflect countless cases of mixing of these similar languages.
The influence of the Old Church Slavonic language was very fruitful; it enriched the Russian language, making it more expressive and flexible. Namely, Old Church Slavonicisms began to be used in Russian vocabulary, denoting abstract concepts for which there were no proper names yet.
As part of the Old Church Slavonicisms that have replenished the Russian vocabulary, it is possible to distinguish a few groups:
Old Slavonic borrowings have corresponding phonetic, word-formation and semantic features.
The phonetic features of Old Church Slavonicisms include:
Old Church Slavonicisms retain Old Church Slavonic prefixes, suffixes, and a complex base corresponding to Old Church Slavonic word formation:
Systematization of Old Church Slavonicisms is also probable, based on their semantic and stylistic differences from Russian words:
Old Church Slavonicisms of the 2nd and 3rd groups are not perceived by speakers of the modern Russian language as alien - they have become so Russified that they actually do not differ from the eternal Russian words. Unlike similar, genetic, Old Church Slavonicisms, the words of the first group retain connections with the Old Church Slavonic, book language; many of them in the past century were an integral part poetic vocabulary: Percy, cheeks, mouth, sweet, voice, hair, golden, young and under. Now they are perceived as poeticism, and linguist G.O. Vinokur called them stylistic Slavicisms.
2. From other closely related Slavic languages, individual words came into the Russian language, which actually do not stand out among the eternal Russian vocabulary. From Ukrainian and Belarusian languages names of household items were borrowed, for example, Ukrainianisms: borscht, dumplings, dumplings, hopak. Many words came to us from Polish language: place, monogram, harness, zrazy, gentry. Borrowed through the Polish language Czech and other Slavic words: ensign, cheeky, corner etc.
Source - chapters from the manual by Rosenthal D.E., Golub I.B., Telenkova M.A. "Modern Russian language":
Additionally on the site:
Lyudmila Matveevna Peresypkina
teacher of Russian language and literature
MBOU "Kustovskaya Secondary School"
Yakovlevsky district
Belgorod region"
The vocabulary of a language, its lexical-semantic system, are in a state of constant change, and much more new words and new meanings of words appear than words and their meanings fall out of use. The constant enrichment of the vocabulary of a language, its lexical-semantic system is one of the laws of the historical development of language as a social phenomenon.
There are three main ways to replenish the vocabulary of a language - its words and meanings:
- semantic path;
- borrowing;
- morphological word formation.
The semantic path and borrowing are characteristic of all languages without exception; morphological word formation as a way to enrich the vocabulary of a language and individual speech characteristic only of inflectional and agglutinative languages. However, if stem formation is considered a morphological way of forming words, then it can also be found in affix-free languages, where the addition of roots forms a nominative unit reminiscent of ours compound word and compound name.
A semantic way to enrich the vocabulary of a language
The semantic way of enriching the vocabulary consists not so much in the formation of new lexemes, but in the formation of new meanings of already existing words. Therefore, the semantic method of enriching vocabulary covers the rules for the formation of new meanings and the rules for the formation of new words (this is a lexical-semantic method).
The lexical-semantic way of word formation is that, based on different meanings words, different words are formed. If with the morphological method new meanings of words develop in a new lexeme, then with the semantic method a new word arises as a result of the collapse of polysemy.
There are three types of this lexical-semantic process:
- formation of homonyms
- distribution of word meanings by different periods language development - belly (stomach and part of the body where it is located) and belly (obsolete) - animal world (fauna); shame - dishonor and disgrace (obsolete) - spectacle;
- relationship between proper names and common nouns: Love - love. When the meaning expands, a proper name turns into a common noun (this is how the words breeches, hertz, donquixote and many others arose). It is known that proper names arose on the basis of common nouns - by narrowing their meaning and oblivion internal form. So, the name Victor goes back to Lat. victor - winner, name of the city Novgorod - to the combination of new city ( new city, Wed Belgorod).
A special type of semantic-grammatical word formation is the transition of one part of speech to another - conversion.
Conversion is the formation of words by changing the composition of the forms of a word, i.e. its paradigm: the word passes into another part of speech and changes its grammatical and lexical meaning. The main types of conversion are substantivization, adjectivation and adverbialization, i.e. the formation of nouns, adjectives and adverbs based on the forms of other parts of speech.
The basis for conversion is the use of a word in a secondary function. Thus, the adjective is used in the syntactic function of subject and object, the prepositional case form - in the function of adverbial circumstances. However, conversion is observed only when the grammatical and lexical meaning of a word changes, the word form breaks away from the previous paradigm, losing it or acquiring a new one.
For example, dining room and dining room are both forms of an adjective (dining room furniture, table knife), these are two words: the adjective dining room and the noun dining room. Although the noun dining room retains the form of an adjective feminine, it does not change by gender, has the meaning of objectivity and a new lexical meaning, receives a colloquial version in the form of the noun canteen, and changes, like a noun, by cases and numbers. Consequently, a conversion has occurred.
Borrowings.
The second way to expand the vocabulary of a language is by borrowing words from other languages.
Borrowing vocabulary is a consequence of the rapprochement of peoples on the basis of economic, political, scientific and cultural ties.
In most cases, borrowed words enter the language as a means of naming new things and expressing previously unknown concepts. Borrowed words can also be secondary names for already known objects and phenomena. This happens if the borrowed word somehow characterizes the subject differently, if it is a generally accepted international term, or if it is introduced into the language by force (during military occupation).
Polysemantic words are usually borrowed in one of their meanings, and the scope of the meaning is usually narrowed.
A major role in the development of vocabulary English language borrowings from Latin and French played a role. The Scandinavian languages also had some influence on the English vocabulary.
Borrowing Latin vocabulary:
- I-V centuries AD - Roman domination: kettle, wine, cheese, butter, cheap
- VI-VII centuries - introduction of Christianity in England: angel, candle, priest, school, church
- XV-XVI centuries - development of culture during the Renaissance.
French vocabulary borrowings:
- XI-XV centuries - 1066g. - Norman conquest: French domination in the country, fr. Language - the official language in England; there was bilingualism in the country.
Borrowing Scandinavian vocabulary:
- 9th century - Scandinavian conquest, England enters the realm of the Danish king. From the Scandinavian dialects, commonly used words of broad semantics have entered the English language: they, their, take, give, call, get, raise, want.
It is believed that the Scandinavian influence contributed to the disappearance of endings in English words, and, ultimately, to the formation of the analytical system of the English language.
Periods in the history of the English language:
- Old English - 5th-11th centuries. (from the moment of resettlement of the Germanic tribes of the Angles, Saxons and others to the British Isles and until the beginning of intensive influence French and the establishment of bilingualism in the country).
- Middle English - 11th-15th centuries. (until the end of bilingualism and the formation of a national English language)
- New English - from the 15th century.
Morphological word formation
The most productive way to enrich the vocabulary of the modern Russian language is morphological word formation, that is, the creation of new words based on what is existing in the language building material through a regular combination of morphemes in a word. The main types of morphological word formation operating in the modern Russian language are addition, affix-free word formation and affixation.
Addition is a method of morphological word formation in which a new word is formed by combining two or more stems, for example: cinema, aircraft construction, state farm, motor ship, etc.
The affix-free method of word formation, that is, devoid of word-forming elements, is the least common. This method is used only when forming nouns (from some verbs) and adjectives. In this case, the base of the adjective from which the noun is formed undergoes a change (the final consonant changes, the place of stress), but the base of the verb usually does not change (cf.: deep - depth, quiet - quiet, run - run, etc.).
Affixation is the most productive way word formation, in which a new word is created by adding one or another word-forming element to the stem. There are three possible types of affixation - suffixal, prefixal and suffixal-prefixal. A type of suffixal is the postfixal method (Latin post - after and fixus - attached).
Different types of affixation also have different productivity in the formation of parts of speech: nouns and adjectives are more often formed through suffixes, and verbs - through prefixes; The suffix-prefix method of word formation is more productive in the area of verbs and less productive in the area of names.
Suffixes and prefixes act in the process of word formation in different ways: suffixes form a new word from a generating stem, and prefixes form a whole word; With the suffix-prefix method of word formation, words are formed both from the stem of words (nouns and adjectives) and from the whole word (verbs).
The word-forming possibilities of affixes also differ from a grammatical point of view. Prefixes form words only of the lexical-grammatical category to which the generating word belongs; suffixes can form words of another lexico-grammatical category; with the suffix-prefix method, words of the same lexical-grammatical category and others are formed, for example: nouns, adjectives, and words related to other parts of speech are formed from names, and exclusively verbs are formed from verbs.
REFERENCES
- Berezin F.M. , Golovin B.N. General linguistics: Textbook. manual for universities. M.: Education, 1979.
- Vinogradov V.A. Word and meaning as a subject of historical and lexicological research. / Questions of linguistics, No. 1, 1995.
- Nemchenko V.N. Modern Russian language. Word formation: Textbook. manual for philol. specialist. univ. - M.: Higher. school., 1984.
- Reformatsky A.A. Introduction to Linguistics / Ed. V.A. Vinogradova. M.: Aspect Press, 1996.
- Shcherba L.V. Language system and speech activity. L.: 1974.