Plan: What does lexical mean in stylistic devices? 2

2. Neutral, Common Literary and Common Colloquial Vocabulary
a) Neutral Words
Neutral words, which form the bulk of the English vocabulary, are used in both literary and colloquial layers. Neutral words are the main source of synonymy and poly­semy. Most neutral English words are of monosemanti'c character.
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.
b) Common Literary Words
Common literary words are chiefly used in writing and polished speech. Literary units stand in opposition to colloquial units.
The following synonyms illustrate the relations that exist between the neutral, literary and colloquial words in the English language.

Colloquial Neutral Literary
Kid Child Infant
Daddy Father Parent
Chap Fellow Associate
Teenager Boy (girl) Youth (maiden)
These synonyms are not only stylistic but ideographic as well, i.e. there is slight semantic difference between the words.
There are very few absolute synonyms in any langu­age. The main distinction between synonyms remains sty­listic.
Colloquial words are always more emotionally colou­red than literary ones. The neutral words have no degree of emotiveness. •
The lines of demarcation between common colloquial and the neutral on the one hand, and common literary and neutral, on the other, are blurred.
The neutral vocabulary may be viewed as the invari­ant of the Standard English vocabulary. Synonyms of neu­tral words, both colloquial and literary, have a great deg­ree of concreteness.

c) Common Colloquial Words
The essential part of common colloquial words cons­titutes common neutral vocabulary which is in every day usage and is the part of Standard English. They may be di­vided into several groups.
In the first group we have words which change their phonetic form. Eg. a) word combinations are shor­tened. E.g. s4ong (so long), lemme (let me), gimme (give me), gonna (going to); b) certain sounds may be omitted: '/m (him), *cos (because), *ud (would), ^yave (have), *eaven (heaven), yeh (yes).
Here we meet the speech of an uneducated person. Instead of "can" one uses "kin", you (yuh), get (git), your (yer), to (tuh).
The violation of grammar rules is also observed: yuh gotta lawyers? (have you got a lawyer?), hain^t yuh? (haven't you?), there hain^t no rules (there aren't any ru­les).
While we speak about the peculiarities of oral speech special attention should be paid to the children's speech in which we have a lot of contracted forms of words. E.g. Doc (doctor), telly (television), fridge (refrigerator); words with diminutive suffixes: beastie (beast), milkie (milk), kissy (cat), titter (sister).
In the second group we have words which change their form and meaning. New words (neologisms) may be formed with the help of suffixes which have negative mea­ning: noddy - a stupid person, wordling - a person who talks much, giglet - a girl who laughs in a silly manner.
Nouns may be formed with the help of suffixes which have positive meaning: dolly - an attractive, fashionably dressed girl or a young woman, nestling - a bird too yo­ung to leave the nest.
The following words constitute the third group of colloquial vocabulary, where words change their meaning in certain contexts. E.g. He was getting along in years - (he was growing old), I like his get up - (I like his way and manner), Let me know have you come out (let me know the results).
Here the words "get", "come" are not used in their dictionary meanings, but have changed the meanings and acquired new (contextual) meanings.