NEUTRAL, COMMON LITERARY AND COMMON COLLOQUIAL VOCABULARY

e и t r a I words, which form the bulk of the English vocabulary, are used in both literary and colloquial language. Neutral words are the main source of synonymy and polysemy. It is the neutral stock of words that is so prolific in the production of new meanings;

The wealth of the neutral stratum of words is often overlooked. This is due to their inconspicuous character. But their faculty for assuming new meanings and generating new stylistic variants is often quite amazing. This generative power of the neutral words in the English language is multiplied by the very nature of the language itself. It has been estimated that most neutral English words are of monosyllabic character, as, in the process of development from Old English to Modern English, most of the parts of speech lost their distinguishing suffixes. This phenomenon had led to the development of conversion as


the most productive means of word-building. Word compounding is not so productive as conversion or word derivation, where a new word is formed because of a shift in the part of speech in the first case and by the addition of an affix in the second. Unlike all other groups, the neutral group of words cannot be considered as having a special stylistic colouring, whereas both literary and colloquial words have a definite stylistic colouring.

Common literary w о г d s are chiefly used in writing and in polished speech. One can always tell a literary word from a colloquial word. The reason for this lies in certain objective features of the literary layer of words. What these objective features are, is difficult to say because as yet no objective criteria have been worked out. But one of them undoubtedly is that literary units stand in opposition to colloquial units. This is especially apparent when pairs of synonyms, literary and colloquial, can be formed which stand in contrasting relation.

The following synonyms illustrate the relations that exist between the neutral, literary and colloquial words in the English language.

Literary infant parent associate retire proceed youth (maiden) maiden commence |
Neutral child father fellow go away continue boy (girl) young girl ) begin \ start

Colloquial kid daddy chap get out go on teenager flapper /go ahead I get going make a move

It goes without saying that these synonyms are not only stylistic but ideographic as well, i. e. there is a definite, though slight, semantic difference between the words. But this is almost always the case with synonyms. There are very few absolute synonyms in English just as there are in any language. The main distinction between synonyms remains stylistic. But stylistic difference may be of various kinds: it may lie in the emotional tension connoted in a word, or in the sphere of application, or in the degree of the quality denoted. Colloquial words are always more emotionally coloured than literary ones. The neutral stratum of words, as the term itself implies, has no degree of emotiveness, nor have they any distinctions in the sphere of usage.

Both literary and colloquial words have their upper and lower ranges. The lower range of literary words approaches the neutral layer and has a markedly obvious tendency to pass into that layer. The same may be said of the upper range of the colloquial layer: it can very easily pass into the neutral layer. The lines of demarcation between common colloquial and neutral, on the one hand, and common literary and neutral, on the other, are blurred. It is here that the process of inter-penetration of the stylistic strata becomes most apparent.


concrete associations and refer to the concept more or less directly. Synonyms of neutral words, both colloquial and literary, assume a far greater degree of concreteness. They generally present the same notions not abstractly but as a more or less concrete image, that is, in a form perceptible by the senses. This perceptibility by the senses causes subjective evaluations of the notion in question, or a mental image of the concept. Sometimes an impact of a definite kind on the reader or hearer is the aim lying behind the choice of a colloquial or a literary word rather than a neutral one.

In the diagram (p. 7l),Cc о mm о п colloquial vocabulary is represented as overlapping into the standard English vocabulary and is therefore to be considered part of it. It borders both on the neutral vocabulary and on the special colloquial vocabulary which, as we shall see later, falls out of standard English altogethex) Just as common literary words lack homogeneity so do common colloquial words and set expressions. Some of the lexical items belonging to this stratum are close to the non-standard colloquial groups such as jargon-isms, professionalisms, etc. These are on the border-line between the common colloquial vocabulary and the special colloquial or non-standard vocabulary. Other words approach the neutral bulk of the English vocabulary. Thus, the words teenager (a young girl or young man) and hippie (hippy) (a young person who leads an unordered and unconventional life) are colloquial words passing into the neutral vocabulary. They are gradually losing their non-standard character and becoming widely recognized. However, they have not lost their colloquial association and therefore still remain in the colloquial stratum of the English vocabulary. So also are the following words and expressions: take (in 'as I take it'==as I understand); to go for (to be attracted by, like very much, as in "You think she still goes for the guy?"); guy (young man); to be gone on (=to be madly in love with); pro (=a professional, e. g. a professional boxer, tennis-player, etc.).

(The spoken language abounds in set expressions which are colloquial in character, e. g. all sorts of things, just a bit, How is life treating you>, so-so, What time do you make if?, to hob-nob (— to be very friendly with, to drink together), so much the better, to be sick and tired of, to be up to something^

The stylistic function of the different strata of the English vocabulary depends not so much on the inner qualities of each of the groups, as on their interaction when they are opposed to one another. However, the qualities themselves are not unaffected by the function of the words, inasmuch as these qualities have been acquired in certain environments. It is interesting to note that anything written assumes a greater degree of significance than what is only spoken. If the spoken takes the place of the written or vice versa, it means that we are faced with a stylistic device.

Certain set expressions have been coined within literary English and their use in ordinary speech will inevitably make the utterance sound bookish. In other words, it will become literary. The following


words like table and chair by other words."2

CTerms are mostly and predominantly used in special works dealing with the notions of some branch of science. Therefore it may be said that they belong to the style of language of science. But their use is not confined to this style. They may as well appear in other styles—in newspaper style, in publicistic and practically in all other existing styles of language^ But their function in this case changes. They do not always fulfil their basic function, that of bearing exact reference to a given concept. When used in the belles-lettres style, for instance, a term may acquire a stylistic function and consequently become a (sporadical)

1 Ullmann, Stephen. Words and their Use. Frederick Muller, Ldn, 1951, p. 107.

2 Verhaar, John W. M. Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Lin
guists. The Hague, 1966, p. 378.