Identification of International Lexicon Units

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 627.

The units of genuine international lexicon are identified on the basis of their common in different languages lexi­cal meaning and identical or only similar lingual form. Loan internationalisms are identified on the ba­sis of their common sphere of use, their lexical meaning, functional significance and structural form.

The identification of the international meaning becomes more difficult dealing with polysemantic language signs, which are a common feature in present-day English but less common in Ukrainian. E.g. Dramatic: театральний, драматичний, хвилюючий, яскравий, раптовий, непередбачуваний. The second meaning represents internationalism, all the others are pseudo-internationalisms.

«False friends of the translator» (удавані друзі перекладача)have an identi­cal orthographic form but quite different lexical meaning in different languages: accurate точний, intelligenceрозум, data дані, prospect перспектива, replica копія.

The same genuine international lexemes in English and Ukrainian may have a different morphological structure. In Ukrai­nian they usually take derivational and inflexional affixes. As a result, most of genuine international words in Ukrainian are structurally more compli­cated than in English (e.g. dietic-дієтичний, exploit - експлуатувати, economic - економічний).

Some genuine international words, however, may be structur­ally more complicated in English than in Ukrainian. For example, Greek: analy­sis аналіз, diagnosis діагноз, sclerosis склероз; Latin: appendicitis апендицит, tuber­culosis туберкульоз, rheumatismus ревматизм.

On this ground relevant for the identifica­tion, as well as for the translation of any international word, remains its root morpheme. Taking this into ac­count, lexemes like anti-trade, arch-enemy, inventor consisting of international affixes and having common root morphemes are to be treated as non-internationalisms,i.e. pseudointernationalisms.