while, whilst
There
is no semantic distinction in the UK between while and whilst: You can use
the house while/whilst we’re on holiday.
but many young speakers regard whilst as archaic or literary:
They strayed
and played and had no cares
Whilst all the world was young.
Whilst is very rare in US English.
While can
function as a noun:
Wait a little while.
and as a
subordinating conjunction meaning
‘during the time that’:
Sit down while I read the instructions.
and ‘although, whereas’:
While sunshine is good for
everyone, too much can be harmful.
See: among,
conjunction.
who, whom
The uses of these pronouns differ
according to syntax and style. Who is
a subject pronoun:
Who is that?
I couldn’t see
who was talking.
and whom an object pronoun, that is, the form which functions as the
object of a verb or which follows a preposition:
Whom did you see?
To whom did you give it?
In theory, therefore, who and whom are variants which reflect case and parallel the usage of they and them:
Who did it? They did it.
Whom did you see? Did you see them?
With whom will you go? Will you go with them?
(It will be noted, however, that
whom is normally fronted.)
In colloquial speech, who is frequently substituted for whom:
Who did you go
with?
but this is still not fully
acceptable in the written medium.
See: case, pronoun, relative clause.
who’s, whose
These forms are sometimes
confused although the rules that control their use are simple:
Who’s is the reduced form of who is:
Who’s that?
Whose can be used as a possessive adjective:
Whose coat is that?
and as a pronoun:
Tell me whose it is.
See: apostrophe.
with
With is a preposition which
has varied uses in English. It can mean ‘in the company of’:
I went there with Bob.
‘in opposition to’:
He often
fights with his brother.
‘in agreement with’:
She’s with us on the subject of pollution.
and ‘in the direction of’:
The visiting
team played with the wind.
With can also be used to indicate the instrument involved in, or
the cause of, an action:
You hit me with a stone.
Jay was numb with grief.
to imply that actions or events
occurred at the same time:
She drove off with the radio blaring.
and to indicate cause:
With the children in school, she
found that she had a lot of free time.
See: case
grammar, preposition.
word
Although most
speakers have an intuitive awareness of what a word is, it is not an easy concept to define. We would all agree
that book and case are words but there might well be disagreement as to whether bookcase is one word or two. And
although a and computer are both words, they function differently in that the
former is unlikely to occur in isolation.
No definition of word is entirely satisfactory but the following subdivisions help:
1 An orthographic word is a
group of letters with a space on either side. Thus, there are fourteen
orthographic words in the previous sentence. Orthographic words can only occur
in writing. The equivalent in speech is a phonological
word, that is, a sound or group of sounds which can be spoken in isolation.
In science fiction films, robots frequently insert pauses between words:
The…task…is…finished.
2 A morphological word relies only on form.
Thus take and takes are two morphological words because they have different
forms. Alternatively, key is one
morphological word, whether it means a ‘metal object for opening a door’ or a
‘solution to a problem’.
3
A lexical
word or lexeme comprehends all
the morphological variants of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Thus:
book books
buy buys
buying bought big bigger biggest
would be regarded as three lexical words.
4
A semantic
word is defined in terms of meaning. Thus ear mean-ing ‘organ of hearing’ and ear meaning ‘segment of grain’ can be regarded as different
semantic words.
The term weasel word implies
the use of a word or words to avoid making a forthright statement about an
issue. Politicians are often adept at using weasel words:
Q. What is
your opinion of the recent massacre in Beirut?
A. That’s a very interesting question. It would appear that the full
evidence is not available. Of course, no one can condone violence, violence
perpetrated for the wrong reasons...
See: doublespeak, euphemism, morpheme.
word formation
Word formation is a collective term for the processes by which new
words are introduced into the language. The main processes (which are described
in separate entries) are:
1 acronyms (SALT<Strategic Arms Limitations
Talks) 2 back formation (gatecrash<gatecrasher)
3 blending (aggrovoke<aggravate+provoke)
4
borrowing (ersatz<German ersatz meaning
‘substitute’) 5 calquing (superman<German Übermensch)
6 clipping (zoo<zoological garden)
7 coining (jabberwocky
created by Lewis Carroll) 8 compounding (bankrate)
9
derivation (unwisely)
10 folk etymology (Welsh rabbit<Welsh rarebit) 11 functional shift (a high)
12 sound symbolism (bang, crash, wallop)
13
toponyms—from place names (cashmere<Kashmir,
nylon< N(ew) Y(ork)+Lon(don)).
word order
Word order implies arranging words into
larger units. In highly inflected languages such as Latin, word order can be
flexible because case endings indicate relationships. Thus, irrespective of the
order of the words nauta, puellam and
amat:
Puellam nauta amat.
Nauta puellam
amat. Amat puellam nauta.
we know that:
The sailor
loves the girl.
In languages which have little or
no inflection, word order is
essential for distinguishing between:
The sailor loves the girl.
and:
The girl loves the sailor.
In English, the normal sentence order is:
(S) P (O) (C) (A)
where the
P(redicate) unit is essential, but S(ubject), O(bject), C(omplement) and
A(djunct) are optional, and where A is the most mobile of the units involved.
Thus we can have such sentences as:
Try!—P
We try.—S P
We try everything.—S P O
We always try
everything.—S
A P O
I made him happy.—S P O C
I made him
happy for a while.—S P O C A
Normal word
order can be changed for stylistic or poetic effect:
Him I made
happy.—O S
P C
We three kings
of orient are.—S
C P
Such changes
often involve a change of focus, emphasising the item which has been moved from
its regular position.
Different word order can often
signal different meanings:
I still don’t drink (implication ‘I never
have’).
I don’t still drink (implication ‘I used to’).
and such differences
are apparent in the following headline:
His mind was strong but his
body weak.
from which the
reader can correctly deduce:
He died.
If the
headline had been:
His body was
weak but his mind strong.
the implication would be:
He lived.
See: foregrounding,
sentence.
