This multi-part study continues an inquiry earlier initiated in these pages into words listed in Oxford English dictionary as still without satisfactory etymologies. Loans from a variety of source languages are reviewed, accompanied by commentary on earlier lexicographical praxis as it relates to various popular registers of English.

This article concludes a study initiated under the same title in volume 136, issue 1 (2019) of this journal. The present group of words to be examined is drawn from the vocabulary for the harvesting of natural resources

Bearing in mind the importance of attitude in sociolinguistic research and its huge theoretical potential for accounting for various language behaviours, it is surprising to see numerous misconceptions concerning this construct and its conceptualization as well as criticism as to its role in predicting and explaining speech behaviour (cf., for instance, Cargile, Giles 1997: 195; Edwards 1999: 109; Ladegaard 2000: 229–230; Garrett 2001: 630; Soukup 2012; Taylor, Marsden 2014). The author claims that attitude research can still prove very insightful and helpful in sociolinguistic theory building, but to do so, one needs to reconceptualize attitude along the reasoned action approach on the foundations of which the theory of planned behaviour rests. The theory posits that attitude is one of the three general predictors having a sufficient explanatory and predictive power in the case of most human behaviours. The major goal of the present article  is to report on a study attempting to apply the theory of planned behaviour to explain why students of English being given an alternative to choose either an English or American accent as a target model to learn opt for one and not the other. The second goal of the article is to discuss the role of language attitudes in determining students’ decisions. Part 2 of the article elaborates on the main study as well as includes a brief discussion followed by suggestions for further research. 

The present article deals with the Tajik language used in modern public inscriptions (sign-boards, sign-posts, billboard advertisements, political banners, etc.) documented in about 400 photographs taken in Tajikistan by various individuals in recent years. Some sociolinguistic problems are discussed (especially in the case of multilingual inscriptions) as well as morphology, vocabulary, word-formation and syntax of the texts in question.

In the following paper selected Greek words with initial zd- or h-, which could have developed from Proto-Indo-European initial Hi̭ or i̭-, are analyzed. In the first part the position of the Greek language within the Indo-European family, the Laryngeal Theory and the history of research on the development of initial glide (H)i̭-- in Greek are commented on. In the main segment, divided between the two parts of the paper, the criteria of the selection of the Greek words are put forward and the selected thirteen words analyzed in the light of the development of their initial segments. In the second part, the conclusions made on the basis of the analysis are confronted with theories on scenarios of relative chronology of the sound changes. Finally, typological data is adduced to favour one of the possible scenarios of changes.

Section 1 provides a very brief introduction to Lydgate, who was probably the most prolific English poet. He was also fond of rhetoric and frequently employed binomials. A short definition of binomials is given in section 2. Section 3 looks at the relation of binomials and multinomials, section 4 at the density and function of binomials, section 5 at previous research, and section 6 sketches formal features of binomials (especially structure, word-classes, alliteration). Section 7 discusses the etymological structure of binomials (native word + native word, loan-word + loan-word, native word + loan-word, loan-word + native word), and the so-called translation theory. Section 8 deals with the semantic structure of binomials, i.e. the semantic relation between the two words that make up a binomial. The main relations are synonymy, antonymy, and complementarity – the latter has many subgroups.