BrE AmE

The SynchronicApproach: BrE and AmE Lexico-SemanticAnalog(ue)s

9.1.1 In considering the oppositions comprising lexical-semantic analogues it should be borne in mind that the compared units are the constitutive elements of the single macrosystem. Regrettably, most educational websites and some scholars compare the analogues as if they were dealing with two totally different, unrelated systems, and not the two overlapping microsystems where common elements are prevalent. In the early days of national variation studies (and currently in high school English courses as well as on some educational websites) lexical-semantic analogues are presented as mere word lists:

BrE AmE

noticeboard bulletin board

government administration

perambulator (old-fashioned, BrE = PRAM) ˈ baby carriage

leader editorial

match game

post mail

bill check

The list suggests that the vocabulary units in the left-hand column are Briticisms, and their right-hand counterparts belong exclusively to American English. In reality, as a few glimpses of ‘later Americanisms proper’ show, the actual opposition between the paired items is not between material items (sound and/or graphical shells) but between their particular senses (or their lexical-semantic variants): the nouns ‘post’ and ‘bill’ are widely used in AmE, especially as components in derivatives (cf. AHD 5^th ed. 2012: post office n. 1. Abbr. PO a. The public department responsible for the transportation and delivery of the mails. Also called postal service. b. A local office where mail is received, sorted, and delivered, and where stamps and other postal materials are sold. post office box n. A compartment at a central mailing location in which a patron’s incoming mail is held until picked up by the patron.’ bill n. 5a. A piece of legal paper money: a ten-dollar-bill 6a. a bill of exchange a written order requiring one person to pay another person a specified sum of money at a specified time or on demand; a draft.

As we can see, neither sense 5a nor sense 6a suit the pair ‘bill – check’. In the entry on the headword bill sense 2. is labelled and defined in OALD 9^th ed. as (especially BrE ) (NAmE usually check) a piece of paper that shows how much you have to pay for the food and drinks that you have had in a restaurant. It is worth noting that the entry on the word bill¹ in AHD cites 1. ‘ An itemized list or statement of fees or charges’ and does not label it ‘ British ’. The relations between the terms of the above oppositions are complex and should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

For example, both terms of the opposition ‘pram - ˈ baby carriage’ are marked: ‘pram’ is a Briticism and ‘baby carriage’ an Americanism (another example is ‘noticeboard – bulletin board’). Thus we can call this case a bilaterally marked opposition because its terms are incompatible within one microsystem or national variety. On the other hand, there is a numerous group, exemplified by the pair ‘government – administration’(OALD, 9^th ed.: often Administration). Such cases are treated as unilaterally marked oppositions since their terms are incompatible only in certain contexts whereas in others they coexist functioning as means of stylistic or semantic differentiation: the British speak of the Government, the Americans of the Obama Administration, but reference books published in the USAmay contain sections with information about the U.S Government.

9.2 Some analogues (or analogs) differ only in their frequency. For example, both postman and mailman are used in AmE, the latter occurring more often. This is reflected in the way OALD 9^th ed. and AHD 5^th ed. treat the case: AHD mailman n. a man who carries and delivers mail. Also called postman – the italics refer the reader to the entry on postman n. See mailman. OALD: postman, postwoman noun (also informal postie) (especially BrE) a person whose job is to collect and deliver letters, etc.→ SEE ALSO MAILMAN → NOTE AT GENDER mailman noun (also ˈ mail carrier, ˈ letter carrier)

(all NAmE) a person whose job is to collect and deliver letters, etc. → SEE ALSO POSTMAN→ NOTE AT GENDER. Another case is the opposition OALD 9^th ed. ˌ hire ˈ purchase noun [U] (BrE)(abbr. h.p., HP) (NAmE in ˈ stallment plan) a method of buying an article by making regular payments for it over several months or years. The article only belongs to the person who is buying it when all the payments have been made: a hire purchase agreement ◊ We’re buying a new cooker on hire purchase → COMPARE CREDIT in ˈ stallment plan (NAmE) (BrE ˌ hire ˈ purchase) noun [U, C] (the definition is identical) instalment (especially BrE) (NAmE usually installment) 1 one of a number of payments made regularly over a period of time until sth has been paid for: We paid for the car by/in instalments. ⋄ The final instalment on the loan is due next week. ◊ They were unable to keep up (=continue to pay regularly) the instalments. AHD 5^th ed. labels hire purchase n. Chiefly British and defines it ‘Purchase of an item on an installment plan.’

9.3 In most cases, though, the analogues are used as means of semantic and stylistic differentiation: flat – apartment. Both nouns have the following sense or sememe /ˈ si:.mi: m ‖ ˈ sem.i: m/ OALD 9^th ed. flat noun 1 [C] (BrE) a set of rooms for living in, including a kitchen, usually on one floor of a building: Do you live in a flat or a house? ◊ They’re renting a furnished flat on the third floor. ◊ a ground-floor flat ◊ a new block of flats ◊ Many large old houses have been converted into flats. ◊ Children from the flats (= the block of flats) across the street were playing outside. → COMPARE APARTMENT apartment noun 1 (especially NAmE) a set of rooms for living in, especially on one floor of a building Both the RHD (Random House Dictionary 1966-1973) and AHD 5^th ed. define ‘flat’ as “an apartment on one floor of a building. ” AHD 5^th ed. apartment n. 1. a room or suite of rooms designed as a residence and generally located in a building occupied by more than one household 2. An apartment building: a row of high-rise apartments 3. a room 4. Chiefly British a suite of rooms within a larger building set aside for a particular purpose or person. For a present-day native speaker of AmE the noun ‘flat’ stands first and foremost for something quite different: OALD 9^th ed. flat noun 6 (especially NAmE) a tyre that has lost air, usually because of a hole: We got a flat on the way home.

to leave school – to graduate from school (in AmE ‘leave school’ means ‘drop out’);

railway – ralroad: ‘Railroad’ is held to be prevalent in American usage. Nevertheless, it is the context that has the last say in the matter. In some recurrent word combinations there is semantic or grammatical constraint on the use of either word. For example, ‘railway’ is defined in WTNID (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary) as 2: often: a railroad operating with light equipment or within a small area – compare STREET RAILWAY 3: a line of track providing a runway for wheels < a cash or parcel ~ in a department store> < the ~ of a traveling crane>. street railway n: a line operating streetcars or buses. AHD 5^th ed. has a similar definition: railway n. 1. A railroad, especially one operated over a limited area: a commuter railway. 2. A track providing a runway for wheeled equipment – attributive.. Thus the two words are not just opposed as a Briticism and an Americanism, they mainly differ in their distribution.

autumn – fall: If we look up ‘autumn’ in OALD, we’ll find that it is labelled (especially BrE) (NamE usually fall). Sense 5 of ‘fall’, in its turn, is labelled (NAmE) = AUTUMN. AHD 5^th ed. ‘defines ‘autumn’ as 1. The season of the year between summer and winter, during which the weather becomes cooler and many plants become dormant, extending in the Northern Hemisphere from the autumnal equinox to the winter solstice and popularly considered to include the months of September, October and November; fall 2. A period of maturity verging on decline. adj. 1. Relating to or occurring in autumn: autumn foliage; autumn harvests 2. Grown during the season of autumn: autumn crops. Thus, in a way similar to the previous opposition, ‘autumn’ and ‘fall’ differ in their distribution, i.e. in their stylistic and collocational properties, ‘fall’ being a stylistic dominant in the US and the western counties in Britain.

9.4 In many cases AmE analogues are euphemisms /ˈ ju:.fə.mɪ zmz/ for BrE words and word combinations: toilet noun 1 [C] a large bowl attached to a pipe that you sit on or stand over when you get rid of waste matter from your body: Have you finished the toilet? ◊ (BrE) I need to go to the toilet (= use the toilet). ◊ a toilet seat ◊ toilet facilities ◊ Do you need the toilet? 2 (BrE)(NAmE bathroom)aroom containing a toilet: Every flat has its own bathroom and toilet. ◊ Who’s in the toilet? 3 (BrE) (also toilets [pl.]) [C] a room or small building containing a several toilets, each in a separate smaller room: public toilets ◊ Could you tell me where the ladies’ toilet is, please? – bathroom, restroom. N.W. Schur in his book ‘British English, A to Zed’ (1991, pp.216-217. See also the 3^rd ed. p.210) has this to say on the matter: The term toilet is “usually avoided by U-Britons (U stands for ‘upper class’ here – N.E.) as too euphemistic and by most Americans as indelicate. In public notices in Britain toilet is the usual term, perhaps because toilet or a recognizably similar term is thus used in many foreign countries whose nationals often come to Britain. The present position in Britain is that the educated and literary say lavatory or W.C…; the middle class (and almost everyone) says loo; the lower middle class and the genteel say toilet. The common American euphemism is bathroom, and its use is pushed to ridiculous lengths. The children are heard to say The doggie went to the bathroom on the rug, or, I’m sorry, I went to the bathroom in my pants, or, Kitty’s going to the bathroom on the flower bed. Bathroom is not so used in Britain, where in so many homes, especially the older ones, the bathroom proper, i.e., the room containing the bathtub (and usually a wash-basin) and the smaller room containing only the – shall we say – toilet, are quite separate, so that one would go to the bathroom only for a bath or to wash one’s hands…Americans, within the memory of the author, have gone to extremes to avoid it (the word toilet – N.E.)”.

Another example of this kind of analogue opposition is the pair coffin – casket: the latter is defined in WTNED as ‘ 3: a usu. ornamented and lined rectangular box or chest for a corpse to be buried in – compare COFFIN’. The word ‘coffin’, in its turn, is defined as ‘a box or chest for a corpse to be buried in…’. Learner’s dictionaries, such as OALD 9^th ed, LDOCE 6^th ed. and even LDELC 2^nd ed. omit the connotations of ‘casket’ defining it as AmE for ‘coffin’. EFL/ESL students may have the impression that the word ‘coffin’ is not used in AmE or that’casket’ is identical with ‘coffin’, which is not the case.

9.5.1 Often the differences between the BrE and AmE analogues are determined by the size of their word-building paradigms (PDL paradigm: ‘a set of grammatically conditioned forms all derived from a single root or stem’); in this case ‘paradigm’ is taken to mean a totality of words formed by affixation, composition and conversion. Let us consider, e.g., the pair of analogues timber – lumber. The greater proportional value or valency of ‘lumber’in AmE compared to ‘timber’is evidenced by the former’s extensive word-building paradigm (as registered in WTNID 1991 and AHD 5^th ed. 2012} and other dictionaries mentioned above): AHD to lumber 1a to cut down (trees) and prepare as marketable timber; lumberjack 1. One who fells trees and transports the timber to a mill (the place where timber is sawed or processed – N.E.); lumberman 1. a person who trades in lumber 2. a lumberjack or logger lumberyard: an establishment that sells lumber and other building marerials from a yard. The word-building paradigm of the word timber in AmE is much smaller.

Another representative pair of analogues is maize – corn. The locally marked corn constitutes the root word for the extensive word-building paradigm in AmE. Here are some of its components as registered in AHD 5^th ed.: Corn Belt An agricultural region of the central United States primarily in Iowa and Illinois but also including parts of Indiana, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and Ohio. The chief products of the area are corn and corn-fed livestock.” corn bread or cornbread bread made from cornmeal (the ground corn seeds, esp. when coarsely ground); corncob the hard thick cylindrical central core on which are borne the grains or kernels of an ear of corn, usually in rows. cornfield; cornflakes; corn flour; cornmeal; cornland; corn snow snow that has melted and refroze into a rough, granular surface; cornstalk The stalk or stem of a corn plant; corny adj. trite, dated, melodramatic, or mawkishly sentimental.”

Analogues with adverbial particles as distinctive elements make up a special group:

fill in – fill out to complete a form, etc. by writing information on it; dry off – dry out to become dry; etc.

9.5.2 Analogues may be conventionally divided into the following classes:

9.5.2.1 BrE and AmE use two different lexical items with no common structural elements (morphemes) to denote the same object, phenomenon or event: accelerator – gas pedal; aubergine – eggplant; fringe – bangs OALD 9^th ed.: fringe noun 1 the front part of sb’s hair that is cut so that it hangs over their forehead; veranda – porch; wing – fender OALD 9^th ed.a part of a car that is above a wheel.

9.5.2.2 the two lexical items designate the same notion, have the same root as their common element but different attributive words: ˈ beauty salon (parlor) – ˈ beauty shop; ˈ court card -ˈ face card OALD 9^th ed.: a playing card with a picture of a king, queen, or jack on it; nail varnish – nail polish; sleeping partner – silent partner a person who has put money into a business company but who is not actually involved in running it; ˈ witness box – ˈ witness stand; long- ˈ sighted – far -ˈ sighted not able to see things that are close to you clearly.

9.5.2.3 the two lexical items designating the same notion have the same root but different affixes:

antenatal – prenatal OALD 9^th ed.relating to the medical care given to a pregnant woman; parting – part a line on a person’s head where the hair is divided with a comb; speciality – specialty;

9.5.3.4 compound words as lexico-semantic analogues: barman – bartender; brickfield – brickyard OALD 9^th ed.a place where bricks are made; cloakroom 1 a room in a public building where people can leave coats, bags, etc. for a time – checkroom (coat check, coatroom); cloakroom 2 a room in a public building where there are toilets – washroom; ladybird – ladybug a small flying insect, usually red with black spots.

Questions and Tasks

1. What should be borne in mind concerning the oppositions of BrE and AmE lexico-semantic

analogues?

2. How do the systems of BrE and AmE actually relate?

3. What is the difference between a unilaterally marked opposition and a bilaterally marked one?

4. What are BrE and AmE analogues used for in most cases?

5. What factors determine the use of BrE and AmE analogues in some recurrent word combinations?

6. What linguostylistic or rhetorical function do many AmE analogues perform in relation to their BrE

counterparts?

7. What are the differences between BrE and AmE often determined by?

8. How can BrE and AmE analogues be classified?