ENGLISH CANONICAL FORMS AND STYLE LEVELS,
Abstract
In an effort to characterize different levels of style in spoken and written English, one element of style - the lexical material - is examined. There appears to be a general association of borrowed lexical material with formal styles, and of native lexical material with informal styles. Also, there is evidence that, while some proportion of loan forms have been well-naturalized into native English shapes and may be not distinguishable as loans, a large number of loan forms still have shapes which set them off from native forms. Some proper names and verb forms are examined as samples of the lexical material. The relation of variants of some proper names to levels of style is discussed, as well as the relation of native versus loan verbs to levels of style. Both forestressing and syllabic-morphemic matching appear to be characteristic of native canonical forms and familiar style levels, and, conversely post-stressing and nonmatching are characteristic of loan forms and formal styles. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1964
- Accession Number
- AD0607376
Entities
People
- A. F. Brown
Organizations
- Lehigh University