English Vocabulary: The Basics

by Michael McCarthy

Overview

English Vocabulary: The Basics offers a clear, non-jargonistic introduction to English vocabulary, the way linguists classify and explain it, and the place of vocabulary in our overall picture of the language, and in society. Introducing a range of terminology for discussing vocabulary, the reader is provided with a coherent, structured description of what we know about words and their meanings.

Key features of this book include:

- Analysis of historical roots of present-day words

- Coverage of the differences between speech and writing and between formality and informality

- Understanding of the social implications of choices that readers make to use standard or non-standard (e.g., regional/dialect) vocabulary

- A focus on British English with reference to a wide range of varieties of English that include North American English, Irish English, Indian English, Malaysian English, Nigerian English and Caribbean English.

Featuring a glossary of key terms, cartoons and illustrations, further reading, reflection points, interesting "factoids" and examples from corpora from around the world, this book is an engaging and thought-provoking read for anyone with an interest in English vocabulary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032256979
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/14/2022
Series:	The Basics
Pages:	198
Sales rank:	1,092,914
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michael McCarthy is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Nottingham, and Adjunct Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Limerick. He has (co-)authored and edited 58 books and was co-founder (with Ronald Carter) of the CANCODE spoken English corpus. He has lectured in 46 countries and has been involved in language teaching and applied linguistics for 57 years.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction to the Reader 1

1 A Word or Two about Words 2

What Do We Mean By 'Vocabulary'? 2

The 'English' in English Vocabulary 3

At Least We Know What Words Are … Don't We? 4

Spaced Out 4

Eyes and Ears 5

It Just Feels Right 5

I See What You Mean 6

Morphemes 6

Taking Words to Pieces 8

Grammar and Lexis 9

Words Stick Together 10

Compounds 10

Multi-Word Units 13

Idioms 16

Collocation 17

Recipes for New Words 18

Words Come and Go 18

Nothing New Under the Sun 19

Half and Half 19

Keep It Short 20

Lending and Borrowing 21

Corpora: Letting the Data Speak 23

Using a Corpus 23

Corpus Example (1): Hard-Working Words 24

Corpus Example (2): Speaking Versus Writing 25

Summing up 28

2 Where Do English Words Come From? 30

The Dim and Distant Past 30

The Beginning of English 31

Anglo-Saxons 31

Beginning to Look Familiar: Chronicles and Monsters 34

More Incomers 35

Vikings 35

A Big Change: The Normans Arrive 36

Putting It in Black and White 38

Telling Tales 38

Piers Plowman 40

Into the Modern Era 42

Language about Language 42

An Expanding Vocabulary 44

Circling the World 45

A Settled Language 47

Spelling It Out 47

New Worlds, New Cultures 48

New Technologies, New Englishes 49

3 What Does It All Mean? 53

From Form to Meaning 53

Wording the World 53

Making Sense of the Lexicon 56

Same or Different? 58

Synonymy 58

Looks the Same, Sounds the Same, But … 60

Something Different 62

Classifying the World 64

The Upside-Down Tree 64

Scientifically Speaking 65

Fuzzy Borders and Stereotypes 66

An Arm and a Leg: Parts and Wholes 68

Making Sense in the Real World 69

Taking Meaning to Pieces 71

Pluses and Minuses to Everything 71

Words, the Mind, and the World 75

Pragmatics: What Do You Mean? 76

4 Beating about the Bush: Figurative Meaning 78

Just Imagine 78

Atoms or Molecules? 79

Bite-Sized Chunks 81

Room for Manoeuvre 83

As Clear as Mud: Idioms 85

Do You See What I Mean? 86

In a Nutshell 88

Idiom-Prone 89

Look at It This Way 92

Metaphors 92

Proverbs and Metaphors 94

Tropes Galore 95

Here Comes the Army: Metonymy 95

No Exaggeration: Hyperbole 99

A Not Uninteresting Trope: Understatement 101

Euphemisms 103

Summary 104

5 Bear This in Mind:The Mental Lexicon 106

A Remarkable Achievement 106

How Did It All Get There? Acquiring Vocabulary 107

Designing a Human 107

One Word at a Time 108

Telegrams from a Child 112

More Than One Way of Saying Things 113

Spell It Out 114

Where Are All Those Words? 115

Mind and Brain: The Mental Lexicon 115

How Does It Work? 117

Faster Than You Can Say jack Robinson 119

What Comes Into Your Head? 121

Just a Slip of the Tongue? 124

In Two Minds Again 126

Conclusion 128

6 Vocabulary in Action 130

Words Out There 130

Language Snapshots 131

Hard Words 131

Not in Front of the Children 132

Letting the Machine Decide: Corpora 133

Quizzing the Data 133

Exchanging a Few Words 134

Let's Not Go into Detail 136

In Theory and in Practice 138

Windows on Culture 140

Words on the Move 141

Naughty But Nice 141

A Noticeable Uptick 141

Showing Your Age 143

Mapping English Vocabulary 144

Varieties 144

Different Voices: Dialects and Sociolects 147

Special Vocabularies 150

Words and the Imagination 151

Flouting Conventions 151

Old Words, New Meanings 152

Food for Thought 153

Having a Laugh 155

Education and Learning 156

Growing Up with Words 156

Second-Language Vocabulary 158

The End of the Beginning 159

Glossary of Key Terms 161

References 171

Index 181

Editorial Reviews

This is a book for all of us who wonder where words in English come from, how they relate to each other, what patterns they occur in, how we store them in our minds, and what choices we make when we use words and why. This highly readable volume draws on multiple sources including many years of Michael McCarthy's excellent scholarship, corpus evidence, examples from varieties of English and a keen interest in language and language learning.

Averil Coxhead, Professor in Applied Linguistics, Victoria University of Wellington

From the Publisher