Territorial variants of English in the lexicological aspect.

All lexical units may be divided into General English (those common to all the variants) and Logically-marked, those specific to present-day usage in one of the variants and not found in the others (i.e. Briticisms, Americanisms, etc.). Philologists note the fact that differ­ent variants of English use different words for the same objects: flat-apartment, underground-subway, post-mail. There are also some full Briticisms, Americanisms, etc., i.e. lexical units specific to the British, American, etc. variant in all their mean­ings. For example, the words fortnight, pillar-box are full Briticisms, campus, mailboy are full Americanisms, outback, backblocks are full Australianisms.

The numerous locally-marked slangisms, professionalisms and dialectisms cannot be considered distinguishing features either, since they do not belong to the literary language. Lexical peculiarities in different parts of the English-speaking world are not only those in vocabulary, they also concern the very fashion of using words. For instance, the grammatical valency of the verb to push is much narrower in AuE, than in BE and AE. As to word-formation in different variants, the word-buildingmeans employed are the same and most of them are equally productive. The dif­ference lies only in the varying degree of productivity of some of them in this or that variant. As compared with the British variant, for exam­ple, in the American variant the affixes -ette, -ee, super-, as in kitchen­ette, draftee, super-market, are used more extensively.

Thus, the lexical distinctions between different variants of English are intricate and varied, but they do not make a system. For the most part they are partial divergences in the semantic structure and usage of some words.