The written form of the english word is

This article is about the unit of speech and writing. For the computer software, see Microsoft Word. For other uses, see Word (disambiguation).

A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible.^[1] Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial.^[2] Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition.^{[3]: 13:618} Some specific definitions of the term «word» are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations.^[4]: 6

The concept of «word» is distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own.^[1] Words are made out of at least one morpheme. Morphemes can also be joined to create other words in a process of morphological derivation.^[2]: 768 In English and many other languages, the morphemes that make up a word generally include at least one root (such as «rock», «god», «type», «writ», «can», «not») and possibly some affixes («-s», «un-«, «-ly», «-ness»). Words with more than one root («[type][writ]er», «[cow][boy]s», «[tele][graph]ically») are called compound words. In turn, words are combined to form other elements of language, such as phrases («a red rock», «put up with»), clauses («I threw a rock»), and sentences («I threw a rock, but missed»).

In many languages, the notion of what constitutes a «word» may be learned as part of learning the writing system.^[5] This is the case for the English language, and for most languages that are written with alphabets derived from the ancient Latin or Greek alphabets. In English orthography, the letter sequences «rock», «god», «write», «with», «the», and «not» are considered to be single-morpheme words, whereas «rocks», «ungodliness», «typewriter», and «cannot» are words composed of two or more morphemes («rock»+»s», «un»+»god»+»li»+»ness», «type»+»writ»+»er», and «can»+»not»).

Definitions and meanings

Since the beginning of the study of linguistics, numerous attempts at defining what a word is have been made, with many different criteria.^[5] However, no satisfying definition has yet been found to apply to all languages and at all levels of linguistic analysis. It is, however, possible to find consistent definitions of «word» at different levels of description.^[4]: 6 These include definitions on the phonetic and phonological level, that it is the smallest segment of sound that can be theoretically isolated by word accent and boundary markers; on the orthographic level as a segment indicated by blank spaces in writing or print; on the basis of morphology as the basic element of grammatical paradigms like inflection, different from word-forms; within semantics as the smallest and relatively independent carrier of meaning in a lexicon; and syntactically, as the smallest permutable and substitutable unit of a sentence.^[2]: 1285

In some languages, these different types of words coincide and one can analyze, for example, a «phonological word» as essentially the same as «grammatical word». However, in other languages they may correspond to elements of different size.^[4]: 1 Much of the difficulty stems from the eurocentric bias, as languages from outside of Europe may not follow the intuitions of European scholars. Some of the criteria for «word» developed can only be applicable to languages of broadly European synthetic structure.^[4]: 1-3 Because of this unclear status, some linguists propose avoiding the term «word» altogether, instead focusing on better defined terms such as morphemes.^[6]

Dictionaries categorize a language’s lexicon into individually listed forms called lemmas. These can be taken as an indication of what constitutes a «word» in the opinion of the writers of that language. This written form of a word constitutes a lexeme.^{[2]: 670-671} The most appropriate means of measuring the length of a word is by counting its syllables or morphemes.^[7] When a word has multiple definitions or multiple senses, it may result in confusion in a debate or discussion.^[8]

Phonology

One distinguishable meaning of the term «word» can be defined on phonological grounds. It is a unit larger or equal to a syllable, which can be distinguished based on segmental or prosodic features, or through its interactions with phonological rules. In Walmatjari, an Australian language, roots or suffixes may have only one syllable but a phonologic word must have at least two syllables. A disyllabic verb root may take a zero suffix, e.g. luwa-ø ‘hit!’, but a monosyllabic root must take a suffix, e.g. ya-nta ‘go!’, thus conforming to a segmental pattern of Walmatjari words. In the Pitjantjatjara dialect of the Wati language, another language form Australia, a word-medial syllable can end with a consonant but a word-final syllable must end with a vowel.^[4]: 14

In most languages, stress may serve a criterion for a phonological word. In languages with a fixed stress, it is possible to ascertain word boundaries from its location. Although it is impossible to predict word boundaries from stress alone in languages with phonemic stress, there will be just one syllable with primary stress per word, which allows for determining the total number of words in an utterance.^[4]: 16

Many phonological rules operate only within a phonological word or specifically across word boundaries. In Hungarian, dental consonants /d/, /t/, /l/ or /n/ assimilate to a following semi-vowel /j/, yielding the corresponding palatal sound, but only within one word. Conversely, external sandhi rules act across word boundaries. The prototypical example of this rule comes from Sanskrit; however, initial consonant mutation in contemporary Celtic languages or the linking r phenomenon in some non-rhotic English dialects can also be used to illustrate word boundaries.^[4]: 17

It is often the case that a phonological word does not correspond to our intuitive conception of a word. The Finnish compound word pääkaupunki ‘capital’ is phonologically two words (pää ‘head’ and kaupunki ‘city’) because it does not conform to Finnish patterns of vowel harmony within words. Conversely, a single phonological word may be made up of more than one syntactical elements, such as in the English phrase I’ll come, where I’ll forms one phonological word.^{[3]: 13:618}

Lexemes

A word can be thought of as an item in a speaker’s internal lexicon; this is called a lexeme. Nevertheless, it is considered different from a word used in everyday speech, since it is assumed to also include inflected forms. Therefore, the lexeme teapot refers to the singular teapot as well as the plural, teapots. There is also the question to what extent should inflected or compounded words be included in a lexeme, especially in agglutinative languages. For example, there is little doubt that in Turkish the lexeme for house should include nominative singular ev or plural evler. However, it is not clear if it should also encompass the word evlerinizden ‘from your houses’, formed through regular suffixation. There are also lexemes such as «black and white» or «do-it-yourself», which, although consist of multiple words, still form a single collocation with a set meaning.^{[3]: 13:618}

Grammar

Grammatical words are proposed to consist of a number of grammatical elements which occur together (not in separate places within a clause) in a fixed order and have a set meaning. However, there are exceptions to all of these criteria.^[4]: 19

Single grammatical words have a fixed internal structure; when the structure is changed, the meaning of the word also changes. In Dyirbal, which can use many derivational affixes with its nouns, there are the dual suffix -jarran and the suffix -gabun meaning «another». With the noun yibi they can be arranged into yibi-jarran-gabun («another two women») or yibi-gabun-jarran («two other women») but changing the suffix order also changes their meaning. Speakers of a language also usually associate a specific meaning with a word and not a single morpheme. For example, when asked to talk about untruthfulness they rarely focus on the meaning of morphemes such as -th or -ness.^[4]: 19-20

Semantics

Leonard Bloomfield introduced the concept of «Minimal Free Forms» in 1928. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves.^[9]: 11 This correlates phonemes (units of sound) to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written words are not minimal free forms as they make no sense by themselves (for example, the and of).^[10]: 77 Some semanticists have put forward a theory of so-called semantic primitives or semantic primes, indefinable words representing fundamental concepts that are intuitively meaningful. According to this theory, semantic primes serve as the basis for describing the meaning, without circularity, of other words and their associated conceptual denotations.^[11][12]

Features

In the Minimalist school of theoretical syntax, words (also called lexical items in the literature) are construed as «bundles» of linguistic features that are united into a structure with form and meaning.^{[13]: 36–37} For example, the word «koalas» has semantic features (it denotes real-world objects, koalas), category features (it is a noun), number features (it is plural and must agree with verbs, pronouns, and demonstratives in its domain), phonological features (it is pronounced a certain way), etc.

Orthography

In languages with a literary tradition, the question of what is considered a single word is influenced by orthography. Word separators, typically spaces and punctuation marks are common in modern orthography of languages using alphabetic scripts, but these are a relatively modern development in the history of writing. In character encoding, word segmentation depends on which characters are defined as word dividers. In English orthography, compound expressions may contain spaces. For example, ice cream, air raid shelter and get up each are generally considered to consist of more than one word (as each of the components are free forms, with the possible exception of get), and so is no one, but the similarly compounded someone and nobody are considered single words.

Sometimes, languages which are close grammatically will consider the same order of words in different ways. For example, reflexive verbs in the French infinitive are separate from their respective particle, e.g. se laver («to wash oneself»), whereas in Portuguese they are hyphenated, e.g. lavar-se, and in Spanish they are joined, e.g. lavarse.^[a]

Not all languages delimit words expressly. Mandarin Chinese is a highly analytic language with few inflectional affixes, making it unnecessary to delimit words orthographically. However, there are many multiple-morpheme compounds in Mandarin, as well as a variety of bound morphemes that make it difficult to clearly determine what constitutes a word.^[14]: 56 Japanese uses orthographic cues to delimit words, such as switching between kanji (characters borrowed from Chinese writing) and the two kana syllabaries. This is a fairly soft rule, because content words can also be written in hiragana for effect, though if done extensively spaces are typically added to maintain legibility. Vietnamese orthography, although using the Latin alphabet, delimits monosyllabic morphemes rather than words.

Word boundaries

The task of defining what constitutes a «word» involves determining where one word ends and another word begins, that is identifying word boundaries. There are several ways to determine where the word boundaries of spoken language should be placed:^[5]

• Potential pause: A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly, allowing for pauses. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries. However, this method is not foolproof: the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words, or fail to separate two or more closely linked words (e.g. «to a» in «He went to a house»).
• Indivisibility: A speaker is told to say a sentence out loud, and then is told to say the sentence again with extra words added to it. Thus, I have lived in this village for ten years might become My family and I have lived in this little village for about ten or so years. These extra words will tend to be added in the word boundaries of the original sentence. However, some languages have infixes, which are put inside a word. Similarly, some have separable affixes: in the German sentence «Ich komme gut zu Hause an«, the verb ankommen is separated.
• Phonetic boundaries: Some languages have particular rules of pronunciation that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be. For example, in a language that regularly stresses the last syllable of a word, a word boundary is likely to fall after each stressed syllable. Another example can be seen in a language that has vowel harmony (like Turkish):^[15]: 9 the vowels within a given word share the same quality, so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. Nevertheless, not all languages have such convenient phonetic rules, and even those that do present the occasional exceptions.
• Orthographic boundaries: Word separators, such as spaces and punctuation marks can be used to distinguish single words. However, this depends on a specific language. East-asian writing systems often do not separate their characters. This is the case with Chinese, Japanese writing, which use logographic characters, as well as Thai and Lao, which are abugidas.

Morphology

Morphology is the study of word formation and structure. Words may undergo different morphological processes which are traditionally classified into two broad groups: derivation and inflection. Derivation is a process in which a new word is created from existing ones, often with a change of meaning. For example, in English the verb to convert may be modified into the noun a convert through stress shift and into the adjective convertible through affixation. Inflection adds grammatical information to a word, such as indicating case, tense, or gender.^[14]: 73

In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example, love) may inflect to have a number of different forms (for example, loves, loving, and loved). However, for some purposes these are not usually considered to be different words, but rather different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes.

In Indo-European languages in particular, the morphemes distinguished are:

• The root.
• Optional suffixes.
• A inflectional suffix.

Thus, the Proto-Indo-European *wr̥dhom would be analyzed as consisting of

1. *wr̥-, the zero grade of the root *wer-.
2. A root-extension *-dh- (diachronically a suffix), resulting in a complex root *wr̥dh-.
3. The thematic suffix *-o-.
4. The neuter gender nominative or accusative singular suffix *-m.

Philosophy

Philosophers have found words to be objects of fascination since at least the 5th century BC, with the foundation of the philosophy of language. Plato analyzed words in terms of their origins and the sounds making them up, concluding that there was some connection between sound and meaning, though words change a great deal over time. John Locke wrote that the use of words «is to be sensible marks of ideas», though they are chosen «not by any natural connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark of such an idea».^[16] Wittgenstein’s thought transitioned from a word as representation of meaning to «the meaning of a word is its use in the language.»^[17]

Classes

Each word belongs to a category, based on shared grammatical properties. Typically, a language’s lexicon may be classified into several such groups of words. The total number of categories as well as their types are not universal and vary among languages. For example, English has a group of words called articles, such as the (the definite article) or a (the indefinite article), which mark definiteness or identifiability. This class is not present in Japanese, which depends on context to indicate this difference. On the other hand, Japanese has a class of words called particles which are used to mark noun phrases according to their grammatical function or thematic relation, which English marks using word order or prosody.^{[18]: 21–24}

It is not clear if any categories other than interjection are universal parts of human language. The basic bipartite division that is ubiquitous in natural languages is that of nouns vs verbs. However, in some Wakashan and Salish languages, all content words may be understood as verbal in nature. In Lushootseed, a Salish language, all words with ‘noun-like’ meanings can be used predicatively, where they function like verb. For example, the word sbiaw can be understood as ‘(is a) coyote’ rather than simply ‘coyote’.^{[19][3]: 13:631} On the other hand, in Eskimo–Aleut languages all content words can be analyzed as nominal, with agentive nouns serving the role closest to verbs. Finally, in some Austronesian languages it is not clear whether the distinction is applicable and all words can be best described as interjections which can perform the roles of other categories.^{[3]: 13:631}

The current classification of words into classes is based on the work of Dionysius Thrax, who, in the 1st century BC, distinguished eight categories of Ancient Greek words: noun, verb, participle, article, pronoun, preposition, adverb, and conjunction. Later Latin authors, Apollonius Dyscolus and Priscian, applied his framework to their own language; since Latin has no articles, they replaced this class with interjection. Adjectives (‘happy’), quantifiers (‘few’), and numerals (‘eleven’) were not made separate in those classifications due to their morphological similarity to nouns in Latin and Ancient Greek. They were recognized as distinct categories only when scholars started studying later European languages.^{[3]: 13:629}

In Indian grammatical tradition, Pāṇini introduced a similar fundamental classification into a nominal (nāma, suP) and a verbal (ākhyāta, tiN) class, based on the set of suffixes taken by the word. Some words can be controversial, such as slang in formal contexts; misnomers, due to them not meaning what they would imply; or polysemous words, due to the potential confusion between their various senses.^[20]

History

In ancient Greek and Roman grammatical tradition, the word was the basic unit of analysis. Different grammatical forms of a given lexeme were studied; however, there was no attempt to decompose them into morphemes. ^[21]: 70 This may have been the result of the synthetic nature of these languages, where the internal structure of words may be harder to decode than in analytic languages. There was also no concept of different kinds of words, such as grammatical or phonological – the word was considered a unitary construct.^[4]: 269 The word (dictiō) was defined as the minimal unit of an utterance (ōrātiō), the expression of a complete thought.^[21]: 70

See also

• Longest words
• Utterance
• Word (computer architecture)
• Word count, the number of words in a document or passage of text
• Wording
• Etymology

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Barton, David (1994). Literacy: an introduction to the ecology of written language. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. p. 96. ISBN 0-631-19089-9. OCLC 28722223.
• The encyclopedia of language & linguistics. E. K. Brown, Anne Anderson (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier. 2006. ISBN 978-0-08-044854-1. OCLC 771916896.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
• Crystal, David (1995). The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-40179-8. OCLC 31518847.
• Plag, Ingo (2003). Word-formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-511-07843-9. OCLC 57545191.
• The Oxford English Dictionary. J. A. Simpson, E. S. C. Weiner, Oxford University Press (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989. ISBN 0-19-861186-2. OCLC 17648714.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

The
outline of the problem discussed

1.
The main types of words in English and their morphological structure.

2.
Affixation (or derivation).

3.
Compounding.

4.
Conversion.

5.
Abbreviation (shortening).

Word-formation
is the process of creating new words from the material

available
in the language.

Before
turning to various processes of word-building in English, it would be

useful
to analyze the main types of English words and their morphological
structure.

If
viewed structurally, words appear to be divisible into smaller units
which are

called
morphemes.
Morphemes
do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of

words.
Yet they possess meanings of their own.

All
morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots
(or
radicals)
and

affixes.
The
latter, in their turn, fall into prefixes
which
precede the root in the

structure
of the word (as in re-real,
mis-pronounce, un-well) and
suffixes
which

follow
the root (as in teach-er,
cur-able, dict-ate).

Words
which consist of a root and an affix (or several affixes) are called

derived
words or
derivatives
and
are produced by the process of word-building

known
as affixation
(or
derivation).

Derived
words are extremely numerous in the English vocabulary.

Successfully
competing with this structural type is the so-called root
word which
has

only
a root morpheme in its structure. This type is widely represented by
a great

number
of words belonging to the original English stock or to earlier
borrowings

(house,
room, book, work, port, street, table, etc.), and,
in Modern English, has been

greatly
enlarged by the type of word-building called conversion
(e.g.
to
hand, v.

formed
from the noun hand;
to can, v.
from can,
n.;
to
pale,
v. from pale,
adj.;
a
find,

n.
from to
find, v.;
etc.).

Another
wide-spread word-structure is a compound
word consisting
of two or

more
stems (e.g. dining-room,
bluebell, mother-in-law, good-for-nothing).
Words of

this
structural type are produced by the word-building process called
composition.

The
somewhat odd-looking words like flu,
lab, M.P., V-day, H-bomb are
called

curtailed
words and
are produced by the way of word-building called shortening

(abbreviation).

The
four types (root words, derived words, compounds, shortenings)
represent

the
main structural types of Modern English words, and affixation
(derivation),

conversion,
composition and shortening (abbreviation) — the most productive ways
of

word-building.

83

The
process of affixation
consists
in coining a new word by adding an affix or

several
affixes to some root morpheme. The role of the affix in this
procedure is very

important
and therefore it is necessary to consider certain facts about the
main types

of
affixes.

From
the etymological point of view affixes are classified into the same
two

large
groups as words: native and borrowed.

Some
Native Suffixes

-er
worker,
miner,
teacher,
painter,
etc.

-ness
coldness,
loneliness,
loveliness,
etc.

-ing
feeling,
meaning,
singing,
reading,
etc.

-dom
freedom,
wisdom,
kingdom,
etc.

-hood
childhood,
manhood,
motherhood,
etc.

-ship
friendship,
companionship,
mastership,
etc.

Noun-forming

-th
length,
breadth,
health,
truth,
etc.

-ful
careful,
joyful,
wonderful,
sinful,
skilful,
etc.

-less
careless,
sleepless,
cloudless,
senseless,
etc.

-y
cozy,
tidy,
merry,
snowy,
showy,
etc.

-ish
English,
Spanish,
reddish,
childish,
etc.

-ly
lonely,
lovely,
ugly,
likely,
lordly,
etc.

-en
wooden,
woollen,
silken,
golden,
etc.

Adjective-forming

-some
handsome, quarrelsome, tiresome, etc.

Verb-

forming

-en

widen,
redden,
darken,
sadden,
etc.

Adverb-

forming

-ly

warmly,
hardly,
simply,
carefully,
coldly,
etc.

Borrowed
affixes, especially of Romance origin are numerous in the English

vocabulary.
We can recognize words of Latin and French origin by certain suffixes
or

prefixes;
e. g. Latin
affixes:
-ion,
-tion, -ate,
-ute
,
-ct,
-d(e), dis-, -able, -ate,
-ant,
—

ent,
-or, -al, -ar in
such words as opinion,
union, relation, revolution, appreciate,

congratulate,
attribute, contribute, , act, collect, applaud, divide, disable,
disagree,

detestable,
curable, accurate, desperate, arrogant, constant, absent, convenient,

major,
minor, cordial, familiar;
French
affixes –ance,
—ewe,
-ment, -age, -ess, -ous,

en-
in
such words as arrogance,
intelligence, appointment, development, courage,

marriage,
tigress, actress, curious, dangerous, enable, enslaver.

Affixation
includes a) prefixation
–
derivation of words by adding a prefix to

full
words and b) suffixation
–
derivation of words by adding suffixes to bound

stems.

Prefixes
and suffixes have their own valency, that is they may be added not to

any
stem at random, but only to a particular type of stems:

84

Prefix
un-
is
prefixed to adjectives (as: unequal,
unhealthy), or
to adjectives

derived
from verb stems and the suffix -able
(as:
unachievable,
unadvisable), or
to

participial
adjectives (as: unbecoming,
unending, unstressed, unbound); the
suffix —

er
is
added to verbal stems (as: worker,
singer, or
cutter,
lighter), and
to substantive

stems
(as: glover,
needler); the
suffix -able
is
usually tacked on to verb stems (as:

eatable,
acceptable); the
suffix -ity
in
its turn is usually added to adjective stems

with
a passive meaning (as: saleability,
workability), but
the suffix —ness
is
tacked on

to
other adjectives, having the suffix -able
(as:
agreeableness.
profitableness).

Prefixes
and suffixes are semantically distinctive, they have their own

meaning,
while the root morpheme forms the semantic centre of a word. Affixes
play

a
dependent role in the meaning of the word. Suffixes have a
grammatical meaning,

they
indicate or derive a certain part of speech, hence we distinguish:
noun-forming

suffixes,
adjective-forming suffixes, verb-forming suffixes and adverb-forming

suffixes.
Prefixes change or concretize the meaning of the word, as: to
overdo (to
do

too
much),
to underdo (to
do less than one can or is proper),
to outdo (to
do more or

better
than),
to undo (to
unfasten, loosen, destroy the result, ruin),
to misdo (to
do

wrongly
or unproperly).

A
suffix indicates to what semantic group the word belongs. The suffix
-er

shows
that the word is a noun bearing the meaning of a doer of an action,
and the

action
is denoted by the root morpheme or morphemes, as: writer,
sleeper, dancer,

wood-pecker,
bomb-thrower, the
suffix -ion/-tion,
indicates
that it is a noun

signifying
an action or the result of an action, as: translation
‘a
rendering from one

language
into another’ (an
act, process) and
translation
‘the
product of such

rendering’;
nouns with the suffix -ism
signify
a system, doctrine, theory, adherence to

a
system, as: communism,
realism; coinages
from the stem of proper names are

common,.
as Darwinism.

Affixes
can also be classified into productive
and
non-productive
types.
By

productive
affixes we
mean the ones, which take part in deriving new words in a

particular
period of language development. The best way to identify productive

affixes
is to look for them among neologisms
and
so-called nonce-words,
i.e.
words

coined
and used only for this particular occasion. The latter are usually
formed on the

level
of living speech and reflect the most productive and progressive
patterns in

word-building.
When a literary critic writes about a certain book that it is an

unputdownable
thriller, we
will seek in vain this strange and impressive adjective in

dictionaries,
for it is a nonce-word coined on the current pattern of Modern
English

and
is evidence of the high productivity of the adjective-forming
borrowed suffix –

able
and
the native prefix un-,
e.g.: Professor Pringle was a thinnish, baldish,

dyspeptic-lookingish
cove with an eye like a haddock.(From
Right-Ho, Jeeves by P.G.

Wodehouse)

The
adjectives thinnish
and
baldish
bring
to mind dozens of other adjectives

made
with the same suffix: oldish,
youngish, mannish, girlish, fattish, longish,

yellowish,
etc. But
dyspeptic-lookingish
is
the author’s creation aimed at a humorous

effect,
and, at the same time, providing beyond doubt that the suffix –ish
is
a live and

active
one.

85

The
same is well illustrated by the following popular statement: “I
don’t like

Sunday
evenings: I feel so Mondayish”. (Mondayish is
certainly a nonce-word.)

One
should not confuse the productivity of affixes with their frequency
of

occurrence
(use). There are quite a number of high-frequency affixes which,

nevertheless,
are no longer used in word-derivation (e.g. the adjective-forming
native

suffixes
–ful,
-ly; the
adjective-forming suffixes of Latin origin –ant,
-ent, -al which

are
quite frequent).

Some
Productive Affixes

Some
Non-Productive Affixes

Noun-forming

suffixes

-th,
-hood

Adjective-forming

suffixes

—ly,
-some, -en, -ous

Verb-forming
suffix -en

Compound
words are
words derived from two or more stems. It is a very old

word-formation
type and goes back to Old English. In Modern English compounds

are
coined by joining one stem to another by mere juxtaposition, as
raincoat,
keyhole,

pickpocket,
red-hot, writing-table. Each
component of a compound coincides

with
the word. Compounds are the commonest among nouns and adjectives.

Compound
verbs are few in number, as they are mostly the result of conversion
(as,

to
weekend) and
of back-formation (as, to
stagemanage).

From
the point of view of word-structure compounds consist of free stems
and

may
be of different structure: noun stems + noun stem (raincoat);
adjective
stem +

noun
stem (bluebell);
adjective
stem + adjective stem (dark-blue);
gerundial
stem +

noun
stem (writing-table);
verb
stem + post-positive stem (make-up);
adverb
stem +

adjective
stem (out-right);
two
noun stems connected by a preposition (man-of-war)

and
others. There are compounds that have a connecting vowel (as,
speedometer,

handicraft),
but
it is not characteristic of English compounds.

Compounds
may be idiomatic
and
non-idiomatic.
In idiomatic compounds the

meaning
of each component is either lost or weakened, as buttercup
(лютик),

chatter-box
(болтун).

These
are entirely
demotivated compounds. There
are also motivated

compounds,
as lifeboat
(спасательная
лодка). In non-idiomatic compounds the

Noun-forming

suffixes

—er,
-ing,
—ness,
-ism (materialism),
-ist

(impressionist),
-ance

Adjective-forming

suffixes

—y,
-ish, -ed (learned),
—able,
—less

Adverb-forming

suffix

—ly

Verb-forming

suffixes

—ize/-ise
(realize),

—ate

Prefixes
un-
(unhappy),re-
(reconstruct),
dis-
(disappoint)

86

meaning
of each component is retained, as apple-tree,
bedroom, sunlight. There
are

also
many border-line cases.

The
components of compounds may have different semantic relations; from

this
point of view we can roughly classify compounds into endocentric
and

exocentric
compounds.
In endocentric compounds the semantic centre is found

within
the compound and the first element determines the other, as
film-star,
bedroom,

writing-table.
In
exocentric compounds there is no semantic centre, as

scarecrow.
In
Modern English, however, linguists find it difficult to give criteria
for

compound
nouns; it is still a question of hot dispute. The following criteria
may be

offered.
A compound noun is characterized by a) one word or hyphenated
spelling, b)

one
stress, and by c) semantic integrity. These are the so-called
“classical

compounds”.

It
is possible that a compound has only two of these criteria, for
instance, the

compound
words headache,
railway have
one stress and hyphenated or one-word

spelling,
but do not present a semantic unity, whereas the compounds
motor-bike,

clasp-knife
have
hyphenated spelling and idiomatic meaning, but two even stresses

(‘motor-‘bike,
‘clasp-‘knife).
The word apple-tree
is
also a compound; it is spelt either

as
one word or is hyphenated, has one stress (‘apple-tree),
but it is not idiomatic. The

difficulty
of defining a compound lies in spelling which might be misleading, as
there

are
no hard and fast rules of spelling the compounds: three ways of
spelling are

possible:
(‘dockyard,
‘dock yard and
dock-yard).
The
same holds true for the stress

that
may differ from one reference-book to another.

Since
compounds may have two stresses and the stems may be written

separately,
it is difficult to draw the line between compounds proper and nominal

word-combinations
or syntactical combinations. In a combination of words each

element
is stressed and written separately. Compare the attributive
combination

‘black
‘board, a
board which is black (each element has its own meaning; the first

element
modifies the second) and the compound ‘blackboard’,
a
board or a sheet of

slate
used in schools for teaching purposes (the word has one stress and
presents a

semantic
unit). But it is not always easy as that to draw a distinction, as
there are

word-combinations
that may present a semantic unity, take for instance: green
room

(a
room in a theatre for actors and actresses).

Compound
derivatives are
words, usually nouns and adjectives, consisting of

a
compound stem and a suffix, the commonest type being such nouns as:
firstnighter,

type-writer,
bed-sitter, week-ender, house-keeping, well-wisher, threewheeler,

old-timer,
and
the adjectives: blue-eyed,
blond-haired, four-storied, mildhearted,

high-heeled.
The
structure of these nouns is the following: a compound stem

+
the suffix -er,
or
the suffix -ing.

Adjectives
have the structure: a compound stem, containing an adjective (noun,

numeral)
stem and a noun stem + the suffix -ed.
In
Modern English it is an extremely

productive
type of adjectives, e.g.: big-eyed,
long-legged, golden-haired.

In
Modern English it is common practice to distinguish also
semi-suffixes, that

is
word-formative elements that correspond to full words as to their
lexical meaning

and
spelling, as -man,
-proof, -like: seaman, railroadman, waterproof, kiss-proof,

ladylike,
businesslike. The
pronunciation may be the same (cp. proof
[pru:f]
and

87

waterproof
[‘wL:tq
pru:f],
or differ, as is the case with the morpheme -man
(cp.
man

[mxn]
and seaman
[‘si:mqn].

The
commonest is the semi-suffix -man
which
has a more general meaning —

‘a
person of trade or profession or carrying on some work’, as: airman,
radioman,

torpedoman,
postman, cameramen, chairman and
others. Many of them have

synonyms
of a different word structure, as seaman
— sailor, airman — flyer,

workman
— worker; if
not a man but a woman
of
the trade or profession, or a person

carrying
on some work is denoted by the word, the second element is woman,
as

chairwoman,
air-craftwoman, congresswoman, workwoman, airwoman.

Conversion
is
a very productive way of forming new words in English, chiefly

verbs
and not so often — nouns. This type of word formation presents one
of the

characteristic
features of Modern English. By conversion we mean derivation of a

new
word from the stem of a different part of speech without the addition
of any

formatives.
As a result the two words are homonymous, having the same

morphological
structure and belonging to different parts of speech.

Verbs
may be derived from the stem of almost any part of speech, but the

commonest
is the derivation from noun stems as: (a)
tube — (to) tube; (a) doctor —

(to)
doctor, (a) face—(to) face; (a) waltz—(to) waltz; (a) star—(to)
star; from

compound
noun stems as: (a)
buttonhole — (to) buttonhole; week-end — (to) weekend.

Derivations
from the stems of other parts of speech are less common: wrong—

(to)
wrong; up — (to) up; down — (to) down; encore — (to) encore.
Nouns
are

usually
derived from verb stems and may be instanced by such nouns as: (to)
make—

a
make; (to) cut—(a) cut; to bite — (a) bite, (to) drive — (a)
drive; to smoke — (a)

smoke;
(to) walk — (a) walk. Such
formations frequently make part of verb — noun

combinations
as: to
take a walk, to have a smoke, to have a drink, to take a drive, to

take
a bite, to give a smile and
others.

Nouns
may be also derived from verb-postpositive phrases. Such formations

are
very common in Modern English, as for instance: (to)
make up — (a) make-up;

(to)
call up — (a) call-up; (to) pull over — (a) pullover.

New
formations by conversion from simple or root stems are quite usual;

derivatives
from suffixed stems are rare. No verbal derivation from prefixed
stems is

found.

The
derived word and the deriving word are connected semantically. The

semantic
relations between the derived and the deriving word are varied and

sometimes
complicated. To mention only some of them: a) the verb signifies the
act

accomplished
by or by means of the thing denoted by the noun, as: to
finger means

‘to
touch with the finger, turn about in fingers’; to
hand means
‘to give or help with

the
hand, to deliver, transfer by hand’; b) the verb may have the meaning
‘to act as the

person
denoted by the noun does’, as: to
dog means
‘to follow closely’, to
cook — ‘to

prepare
food for the table, to do the work of a cook’; c) the derived verbs
may have

the
meaning ‘to go by’ or ‘to travel by the thing denoted by the noun’,
as, to
train

means
‘to go by train’, to
bus — ‘to
go by bus’, to
tube — ‘to
travel by tube’; d) ‘to

spend,
pass the time denoted by the noun’, as, to
winter ‘to pass
the winter’, to

weekend
— ‘to
spend the week-end’.

88

Derived
nouns denote: a) the act, as a
knock, a hiss, a smoke; or
b) the result of

an
action, as a
cut, a find, a call, a sip, a run.

A
characteristic feature of Modern English is the growing frequency of
new

formations
by conversion, especially among verbs.

Note.
A grammatical homonymy of two words of different parts of speech —
a

verb
and a noun, however, does not necessarily indicate conversion. It may
be the

result
of the loss of endings as well. For instance, if we take the
homonymic pair love

— to
love and
trace it back, we see that the noun love
comes
from Old English lufu,

whereas
the verb to
love—from
Old English lufian,
and
the noun answer
is
traced

back
to the Old English andswaru,
but
the verb to
answer to
Old English

andswarian;
so
that it is the loss of endings that gave rise to homonymy. In the
pair

bus
— (to) bus, weekend — (to) weekend homonymy
is the result of derivation by

conversion.

Shortenings
(abbreviations)
are words produced either by means of clipping

full
word or by shortening word combinations, but having the meaning of
the full

word
or combination. A distinction is to be observed between graphical
and
lexical

shortenings;
graphical abbreviations are signs or symbols that stand for the full

words
or combination of words only in written speech. The commonest form is
an

initial
letter or letters that stand for a word or combination of words. But
to prevent

ambiguity
one or two other letters may be added. For instance: p.
(page),
s.
(see),
b.

b.
(ball-bearing).
Mr
(mister),
Mrs
(missis),
MS
(manuscript),
fig.
(figure). In oral

speech
graphical abbreviations have the pronunciation of full words. To
indicate a

plural
or a superlative letters are often doubled, as: pp.
(pages). It is common practice

in
English to use graphical abbreviations of Latin words, and word
combinations, as:

e.
g. (exampli
gratia), etc.
(et cetera), i.
e. (id
est). In oral speech they are replaced by

their
English equivalents, ‘for
example’,
‘and
so on’,
‘namely‘,
‘that
is’,
‘respectively’.

Graphical
abbreviations are not words but signs or symbols that stand for the

corresponding
words. As for lexical
shortenings,
two main types of lexical

shortenings
may be distinguished: 1) abbreviations
or
clipped
words (clippings)

and
2) initial
words (initialisms).

Abbreviation
or
clipping
is
the result of reduction of a word to one of its

parts:
the meaning of the abbreviated word is that of the full word. There
are different

types
of clipping: 1) back-clipping—the
final part of the word is clipped, as: doc
—

from
doctor,
lab — from
laboratory,
mag — from
magazine,
math — from

mathematics,
prefab —
from prefabricated;
2) fore-clipping
—
the first part of the

word
is clipped as: plane
— from
aeroplane,
phone — from
telephone,
drome —

from
aerodrome.
Fore-clippings
are less numerous in Modern English; 3) the
fore

and
the back parts of the word are clipped and the middle of the word is

retained,
as: tec
— from
detective,
flu — from
influenza.
Words
of this type are few

in
Modern English. Back-clippings are most numerous in Modern English
and are

characterized
by the growing frequency. The original may be a simple word (as,

grad—from
graduate),
a
derivative (as, prep—from
preparation),
a
compound, (as,

foots
— from
footlights,
tails — from
tailcoat),
a
combination of words (as pub —

from
public
house, medico — from
medical
student). As
a result of clipping usually

nouns
are produced, as pram
— from
perambulator,
varsity — for
university.
In
some

89

rare
cases adjectives are abbreviated (as, imposs
—from
impossible,
pi — from

pious),
but
these are infrequent. Abbreviations or clippings are words of one
syllable

or
of two syllables, the final sound being a consonant or a vowel
(represented by the

letter
o), as, trig
(for
trigonometry),
Jap (for
Japanese),
demob (for
demobilized),
lino

(for
linoleum),
mo (for
moment).
Abbreviations
are made regardless of whether the

remaining
syllable bore the stress in the full word or not (cp. doc
from
doctor,
ad

from
advertisement).
The
pronunciation of abbreviations usually coincides with the

corresponding
syllable in the full word, if the syllable is stressed: as, doc
[‘dOk]
from

doctor
[‘dOktq];
if it is an unstressed syllable in the full word the pronunciation

differs,
as the abbreviation has a full pronunciation: as, ad
[xd],
but advertisement

[qd’vq:tismqnt].
There may be some differences in spelling connected with the

pronunciation
or with the rules of English orthoepy, as mike
— from
microphone,

bike
— from
bicycle,
phiz —
from physiognomy,
lube — from
lubrication.
The
plural

form
of the full word or combinations of words is retained in the
abbreviated word,

as,
pants
— from
pantaloons,
digs — from
diggings.

Abbreviations
do not differ from full words in functioning; they take the plural

ending
and that of the possessive case and make any part of a sentence.

New
words may be derived from the stems of abbreviated words by
conversion

(as
to
demob, to taxi, to perm) or
by affixation, chiefly by adding the suffix —y,
-ie,

deriving
diminutives and petnames (as, hanky
— from
handkerchief,
nighty (nightie)

— from
nightgown,
unkie — from
uncle,
baccy — from
tobacco,
aussie — from

Australians,
granny (ie)
— from grandmother).
In
this way adjectives also may be

derived
(as: comfy
— from
comfortable,
mizzy — from
miserable).
Adjectives
may be

derived
also by adding the suffix -ee,
as:
Portugee
— for
Portuguese,
Chinee — for

Chinese.

Abbreviations
do not always coincide in meaning with the original word, for

instance:
doc
and
doctor
have
the meaning ‘one who practises medicine’, but doctor
is

also
‘the highest degree given by a university to a scholar or scientist
and ‘a person

who
has received such a degree’ whereas doc
is
not used in these meanings. Among

abbreviations
there are homonyms, so that one and the same sound and graphical

complex
may represent different words, as vac
(vacation), vac (vacuum cleaner);

prep
(preparation), prep (preparatory school). Abbreviations
usually have synonyms

in
literary English, the latter being the corresponding full words. But
they are not

interchangeable,
as they are words of different styles of speech. Abbreviations are

highly
colloquial; in most cases they belong to slang. The moment the longer
word

disappears
from the language, the abbreviation loses its colloquial or slangy
character

and
becomes a literary word, for instance, the word taxi
is
the abbreviation of the

taxicab
which,
in its turn, goes back to taximeter
cab; both
words went out of use,

and
the word taxi
lost
its stylistic colouring.

Initial
abbreviations (initialisms)
are words — nouns — produced by

shortening
nominal combinations; each component of the nominal combination is

shortened
up to the initial letter and the initial letters of all the words of
the

combination
make a word, as: YCL — Young
Communist League, MP
—

Member
of Parliament. Initial
words are distinguished by their spelling in capital

letters
(often separated by full stops) and by their pronunciation — each
letter gets

90

its
full alphabetic pronunciation and a full stress, thus making a new
word as R.

A.
F. [‘a:r’ei’ef] — Royal
Air Force; TUC.
[‘ti:’ju:’si:] — Trades
Union Congress.

Some
of initial words may be pronounced in accordance with the’ rules of

orthoepy,
as N. A. T. O. [‘neitou], U. N. O. [‘ju:nou], with the stress on the
first

syllable.

The
meaning of the initial word is that of the nominal combination. In

speech
initial words function like nouns; they take the plural suffix, as
MPs, and

the
suffix of the possessive case, as MP’s, POW’s.

In
Modern English the commonest practice is to use a full combination
either

in
the heading or in the text and then quote this combination by giving
the first initial

of
each word. For instance, «Jack Bruce is giving UCS concert»
(the heading). «Jack

Bruce,
one of Britain’s leading rock-jazz musicians, will give a benefit
concert in

London
next week to raise money for the Upper Clyde shop stewards’ campaign»

(Morning
Star).

New
words may be derived from initial words by means of adding affixes,
as

YCL-er,
ex-PM, ex-POW; MP’ess, or adding the semi-suffix —man,
as
GI-man.
As

soon
as the corresponding combination goes out of use the initial word
takes its place

and
becomes fully established in the language and its spelling is in
small letters, as

radar
[‘reidq]
— radio detecting and ranging, laser
[‘leizq]
— light amplification by

stimulated
emission of radiation; maser
[‘meizq]
— microwave amplification by

stimulated
emission of radiation. There are also semi-shortenings, as, A-bomb
(atom

bomb),
H-bomber
(hydrogen
bomber), U-boat
(Untersee
boat) — German submarine.

The
first component of the nominal combination is shortened up to the
initial letter,

the
other component (or components) being full words.

4.7.
ENGLISH PHRASEOLOGY: STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC

PECULIARITIES
OF PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS, THEIR CLASSIFICATION

The
outline of the problem discussed

1.
Main approaches to the definition of a phraseological unit in
linguistics.

2.
Different classifications of phraseological units.

3.
Grammatical and lexical modifications of phraseological units in
speech.

In
linguistics there are two main theoretical schools treating the
problems of

English
phraseology — that of N.N.Amosova and that of A. V. Kunin. We shall
not

dwell
upon these theories in detail, but we shall try to give the guiding
principles of

each
of the authors. According to the theory of N.N. Amosova. A
phraseological unit

is
a unit of constant context. It is a stable combination of words in
which either one of

the
components has a phraseologically bound meaning — a phraseme: white
lie –

невинная
ложь, husband
tea —
жидкий чай), or the meaning of each component is

weakened,
or entirely lost – (an idiom: red
tape —
бюрократия, mare’s
nest —

абсурд).
A. V. Kunin’s theory is based on the concept of specific stability at
the

phraseological
level; phraseological units are crtaracterized by a certain minimum
of

phraseological
stability. A.V. Kunin distinguishes stability of usage, structural
and

semantic
stability, stability of meaning and lexical constituents,
morphological

stability
and syntactical stability. The degree of stability may vary so that
there are

91

several
‘limits’ of stability. But whatever the degree of stability might
be, it is the

idiomatic
meaning that makes the characteristic feature of a phraseological
unit.

There
is one trend more worth mentioning in the theory of English
phraseology

that
of A. I. Smirnitsky. A.I. Smirnitsky takes as his guiding principle
the equivalence

of
a phraseological unit to a word. There are two characteristic
features that make a

phraseological
unit equivalent to a word, namely, the integrity of meaning and the

fact
that both the word and the phraseological unit are ready-made units
which are

reproduced
in speech and are not organized at the speaker’s will.

Whatever
the theory the term phraseology is applied to stable combinations of

words
characterized by the integrity of meaning which is completely or
partially

transferred,
e. g.: to
lead the dance проявлять
инициативу; to
take the cake

одержать
победу. Phraseological units are not to be mixed up with stable

combinations
of words that have their literal meaning, and are of non
phraseological

character,
e.g. the
back of the head, to come to an end.

Among
the phraseological units N.N.Amosova distinguishes idioms,
i.e.

phraseological
units characterized by the integral meaning of the whole, with the

meaning
of each component weakened or entirely lost. Hence, there are
motivated

and
demotivated
idioms.
In a motivated idiom the meaning of each component is

dependent
upon the transferred meaning of the whole idiom, e. g. to
look through

one’s
fingers (смотреть
сквозь пальцы); to
show one’s cards (раскрыть
свои

карты).
Phraseological units like these are homonymous to free syntactical

combinations.
Demotivated idioms are characterized by the integrity of meaning as a

whole,
with the meaning of each of the components entirely lost, e. g. white
elephant

(обременительное
или разорительное имущество), or to
show the white feather

(cтpycить).
But there are no hard and fast boundaries between them and there may
be

many
borderline cases. The second type of phraseological units in N.N.
Amosova’s

classification
is a phraseme.
It is a combination of words one element of which has a

phraseologically
bound meaning, e. g. small
years (детские
годы); small
beer

(слабое
пиво).

According
to A.I. Smirnitsky phraseological units may be classified in respect

to
their structure into one-summit
and
many-summit
phraseological units.
Onesummit

phraseological
units are composed of a notional and a form word, as, in
the

soup
—
быть в затруднительном положении, at
hand —
рядом, under
a cloud –
в

плохом
настроении, by
heart —
наизусть,
in the pink –
в расцвете. Many-summit

phraseological
units are composed of two or more notional words and form words as,

to
take the bull by the horns —
взять быка зарога,
to wear one’s heart on one’s

sleeve
—
выставлять свои чувства на показ, to
kill the goose that laid the golden

eggs
—
уничтожить источник благосостояния;
to
know on which side one’s bread

is
buttered —
быть себе на уме.

Academician
V.V.Vinogradov’s classification is based on the degree of

idiomaticity
and distinguishes three groups of phraseological units:
phraseological

fusions,
phraseological unities, phraseological collocations.

Phraseological
fusions are
completely non-motivated word-groups, e.g.: red

tape
– ‘bureaucratic
methods’; kick
the bucket – die,
etc. Phraseological
unities are

92

partially
non-motivated as their meaning can usually be understood through the

metaphoric
meaning of the whole phraseological unit, e.g.: to
show one’s teeth –

‘take
a threatening tone’; to
wash one’s dirty linen in public – ‘discuss
or make public

one’s
quarrels’.
Phraseological
collocations are
motivated but they are made up of

words
possessing specific lexical combinability which accounts for a
strictly limited

combinability
of member-words, e.g.: to
take a liking (fancy) but
not to
take hatred

(disgust).

There
are synonyms among phraseological units, as, through
thick and thin, by

hook
or by crook, for love or money —
во что бы то ни стало; to
pull one’s leg, to

make
a fool of somebody —
дурачить;
to hit the right nail on the head, to get the

right
sow by the ear —
попасть в точку.

Some
idioms have a variable component, though this variability is.
strictly

limited
as to the number and as to words themselves. The interchangeable

components
may be either synonymous, as
to fling (or throw) one’s (or the) cap over

the
mill (or windmill), to put (or set) one’s (or the) best foot first
(foremost, foreward)

or
different words, not connected semantically,
as to be (or sound, or read) like a

fairy
tale.

Some
of the idioms are polysemantic, as, at
large —
1) на свободе, 2) в

открытом
море, на большом пространстве, 3) без
определенной цели, 4) не

попавший
в цель, 5) свободный, без определенных
занятий, 6) имеющий

широкие
полномочия, 7) подробно, во всем объеме,
в целом, 9) вообще, не

конкретно.

It
is the context or speech situation that individualizes the meaning of
the

idiom
in each case.

When
functioning in speech, phraseological units form part of a sentence
and

consequently
may undergo grammatical and lexical changes. Grammatical changes

are
connected with the grammatical system of the language as a whole,
e.g.: He
didn’t

work,
and he spent a great deal of money, and he
painted the town red.
(W. S.

Maugham)
(to
paint the town red —
предаваться веселью). Here
the infinitive is

changed
into the Past Indefinite. Components of an idiom can be used in
different

clauses,
e.g.: …I
had to put up with, the
bricks they
dropped,
and their embarassment

when
they realized what they’d done.
(W. S. Maugham) (to
drop a brick —

допустить
бестактность).

Possessive
pronouns or nouns in the possessive case may be also added, as:

…the
apple of his uncle’s eye…(A.
Christie) (the
apple of one’s eye —
зеница ока).

But
there are phraseological units that do not undergo any changes, e.
g.: She

was
the friend in adversity; other people’s business was meat
and drink to her. (W.

S.
Maugham) (be)
meat and drink (to somebody)
— необходимо как воздух.

Thus,
we distinguish changeable and unchangeable phraseological units.

Lexical
changes are much more complicated and much more various. Lexical

modifications
of idioms achieve a stylistic and expressive effect. It is an
expressive

device
at the disposal of the writer or of the speaker. It is the integrity
of meaning that

makes
any modifications in idioms possible. Whatever modifications or
changes an

idiom
might’ undergo, the integrity of meaning is never broken. Idioms may
undergo

93

various
modifications. To take only some of them: a word or more may be
inserted to

intensify
and concretize the meaning, making it applicable to this particular
situation:

I
hate the idea of Larry making such
a mess of
his life.
(W. S. Maugham) Here the

word
such
intensifies
the meaning of the idiom. I
wasn’t keen on washing
this kind of

dirty
linen in
public. (C.
P. Snow) In this case the inserted this
kind makes
the

situation
concrete.

To
make the utterance more expressive one of the components of the idiom

may
be replaced by some other. Compare: You’re
a
dog in the manger,
aren’t you,

dear?
and: It was true enough: indeed she was a
bitch in the manger.
(A.
Christie)

The
word bitch
has
its own lexical meaning, which, however, makes part of the

meaning
of the whole idiom.

One
or more components of the idiom may be left out, but the integrity of

meaning
of the whole idiom is retained, e.g.: «I’ve
never spoken to you or anyone else

about
the last election. I suppose I’ve got to now. It’s better to
let it lie,»
said Brown.

(C.
P. Snow) In the idiom let
sleeping dogs lie two
of the elements are missing and it

refers
to the preceding text.

In
the following text the idiom to
have a card up one’s sleeve is
modified:

Bundle
wondered vaguely what it was that Bill had
or thought he had-up in his

sleeve.
(A, Christie) The component card
is
dropped and the word have
realizes
its

lexical
meaning. As a result an, allusive metaphor is achieved.

The
following text presents an interesting instance of modification: She
does

not
seem to think you are a
snake in the grass,
though she sees a good deal of grass

for
a snake to be in. (E.
Bowen) In the first part of the sentence the idiom a
snake in

the
grass is
used, and in the second part the words snake
and
grass
have
their own

lexical
meanings, which are, however, connected with the integral meaning of
the

idiom.

Lexical
modifications are made for stylistic purposes so as to create an

expressive
allusive metaphor.

LITERATURE

1.
Arnold I.V. The English Word. – М., 1986.

2.
Antrushina G.B. English Lexicology. – М., 1999.

3.
Ginzburg R.Z., Khidekel S.S. A Course in Modern English
Lexicology. – М.,

1975.

4.
Kashcheyeva M.A. Potapova I.A. Practical English lexicology. – L.,
1974.

5.
Raevskaya N.N. English Lexicology. – К., 1971.

Definition of a Word

A word is a speech sound or a combination of sound having a particular meaning for an idea, object or thought and has a spoken or written form. In English language word is composed by an individual letter (e.g., ‘I’), I am a boy, or by combination of letters (e.g., Jam, name of a person) Jam is a boy. Morphology, a branch of linguistics, deals with the structure of words where we learn under which rules new words are formed, how we assigned a meaning to a word? how a word functions in a proper context? how to spell a word? etc.

Examples of word: All sentences are formed by a series of words. A sentence starts with a word, consists on words and ends with a word. Therefore, there is nothing else in a sentence than a word. 

Some different examples are: Boy, kite, fox, mobile phone, nature, etc.

Different Types of Word

There are many types of word; abbreviation, acronym, antonym, back formation, Clipped words (clipping), collocation, compound words, Content words, contractions, derivation, diminutive, function word, homograph, homonym, homophone, legalism, linker, conjunct, borrowed, metonym, monosyllable, polysyllable, rhyme, synonym, etc. Read below for short introduction to each type of word.

Abbreviation

An abbreviation is a word that is a short form of a long word.

Example: Dr for doctor, gym for gymnasium

Acronym

Acronym is one of the commonly used types of word formed from the first letter or letters of a compound word/ term and used as a single word.

Example: PIA for Pakistan International Airline

Antonym

An antonym is a word that has opposite meaning of an another word

Example: Forward is an antonym of word backward or open is an antonym of word close.

Back formation

Back formation word is a new word that is produced by removing a part of another word.

Example: In English, ‘tweeze’ (pluck) is a back formation from ‘tweezers’.

Clipped words

Clipped word is a word that has been clipped from an already existing long word for ease of use.

Example: ad for advertisement

Collocation

Collocation is a use of certain words that are frequently used together in form of a phrase or a short sentence.

Example: Make the bed,

Compound words

Compound words are created by placing two or more words together. When compound word is formed the individual words lose their meaning and form a new meaning collectively. Both words are joined by a hyphen, a space or sometime can be written together. 

Example: Ink-pot, ice cream,

Content word

A content word is a word that carries some information or has meaning in speech and writing.

Example:  Energy, goal, idea.

Contraction

A Contraction is a word that is formed by shortening two or more  words and  joining them by an apostrophe.

Example:  ‘Don’t’ is a contraction of the word ‘do not’.

Derivation

Derivation is a word that is derived from within a language or from another language.

Example: Strategize (to make a plan) from strategy (a plan).

Diminutive

Diminutive is a word that is formed by adding a diminutive suffix with a word.

Example: Duckling by adding suffix link with word duck.

Function word

Function word is a word that is mainly used for expressing some grammatical relationships between other words in a sentence.

Example: (Such as preposition, or auxiliary verb) but, with, into etc.

Homograph

Homograph is a word that is same in written form (spelled alike) as another word but with a different meaning, origin, and occasionally pronounced with a different pronunciation

Example:  Bow for ship and same word bow for shooting arrows.

Homonym

Homonyms are the words that are spelled alike and have same pronunciation as another word but have a different meaning.

Example: Lead (noun) a material and lead (verb) to guide or direct.

Homophone

Homophones are the words that have same pronunciation as another word but differ in spelling, meaning, and origin.

Example: To, two, and too are homophones.

Hyponym

Hyponym is a word that has more specific meaning than another more general word of which it is an example.

Example: ‘Parrot’ is a hyponym of ‘birds’.

Legalism

Legalism is a type of word that is used in law terminology.

Example: Summon, confess, judiciary

Linker/ conjuncts

Linker or conjuncts are the words or phrase like ‘however’ or ‘what’s more’ that links what has already been written or said to what is following.

Example: however, whereas, moreover.

Loanword/ borrowed

A loanword or borrowed word is a word taken from one language to use it in another language without any change.

Example: The word pizza is taken from Italian language and used in English language

Metonym

Metonym is a word which we use to refer to something else that it is directly related to that.

Example: ‘Islamabad’ is frequently used as a metonym for the Pakistan government.

Monosyllable

Monosyllable is a word that has only one syllable.

Example: Come, go, in, yes, or no are monosyllables.

Polysyllable

Polysyllable is a word that has two or more than two syllables.

Example: Interwoven, something or language are polysyllables.

Rhyme

Rhyme is a type of word used in poetry that ends with similar sound as the other words in stanza.

Example; good, wood, should, could.

Synonym

Synonym is a word that has similar meaning as another word.

Example: ‘happiness’ is a synonym for ‘joy’.

A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic value. Typically a word will consist of a root or stem and zero or more affixes. Words can be combined to create phrases, clauses, and sentences. A word consisting of two or more stems joined together form a compound. A word combined with another word or part of a word form a portmanteau.

Etymology

English ‘ is directly from Old English «word», and has cognates in all branches of Germanic (Old High German «wort», Old Norse «orð», Gothic «waurd»), deriving from Proto-Germanic «*wurđa», continuing a virtual PIE «PIE|*wr̥dhom«. Cognates outside Germanic include Baltic (Old Prussian «wīrds» «word», and with different ablaut Lithuanian » var̃das» «name», Latvian «vàrds» «word, name») and Latin ‘. The PIE stem «PIE|*werdh-» is also found in Greek ερθει (φθεγγεται «speaks, utters» Hes. ). The PIE root is «PIE|*ŭer-, ŭrē-» «say, speak» (also found in Greek ειρω, ρητωρ). [Jacob Grimm, «Deutsches Wörterbuch»]

The original meaning of «word» is «utterance, speech, verbal expression». [OED, sub I. 1-11.] Until Early Modern English, it could more specifically refer to a name or title. [OED, sub II. 12 b. (a)]

The technical meaning of «an element of speech» first arises in discussion of grammar (particularly Latin grammar), as in the prologue to Wyclif’s Bible (ca. 1400)::»This word «autem», either «vero», mai stonde for «forsothe», either for «but».» [OED meaning II. 12 a.]

Definitions

Depending on the language, words can be difficult to identify or delimit. Dictionaries take upon themselves the task of categorizing a language’s lexicon into lemmas. These can be taken as an indication of what constitutes a «word» in the opinion of the authors.

Word boundaries

In spoken language, the distinction of individual words is usually given by rhythm or accent, but short words are often run together. See clitic for phonologically dependent words. Spoken French has some of the features of a polysynthetic language: «il y est allé» («He went there») is pronounced /IPA|i.ljɛ.ta.le/. As the majority of the world’s languages are not written, the scientific determination of word boundaries becomes important.

There are five ways to determine where the word boundaries of spoken language should be placed:;Potential pause:A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly, allowing for pauses. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries. However, this method is not foolproof: the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words.;Indivisibility:A speaker is told to say a sentence out loud, and then is told to say the sentence again with extra words added to it. Thus, «I have lived in this village for ten years» might become «I and my family have lived in this little village for about ten or so years». These extra words will tend to be added in the word boundaries of the original sentence. However, some languages have infixes, which are put inside a word. Similarly, some have separable affixes; in the German sentence «Ich komme gut zu Hause an,» the noun «ankommen» is separated.;Minimal free forms:This concept was proposed by Leonard Bloomfield. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves. This correlates phonemes (units of sound) to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written words are not minimal free forms, as they make no sense by themselves (for example, «the» and «of»).;Phonetic boundaries:Some languages have particular rules of pronunciation that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be. For example, in a language that regularly stresses the last syllable of a word, a word boundary is likely to fall after each stressed syllable. Another example can be seen in a language that has vowel harmony (like Turkish): the vowels within a given word share the same «quality», so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. However, not all languages have such convenient phonetic rules, and even those that do present the occasional exceptions.;Semantic units:Much like the above mentioned minimal free forms, this method breaks down a sentence into its smallest semantic units. However, language often contains words that have little semantic value (and often play a more grammatical role), or semantic units that are compound words.

;A further criterion. Pragmatics. As Plag suggests, the idea of a lexical item being considered a word should also adjust to pragmatic criteria. The word «hello, for example, does not exist outside of the realm of greetings being difficult to assign a meaning out of it. This is a little more complex if we consider «how do you do?»: is it a word, a phrase, or an idiom? In practice, linguists apply a mixture of all these methods to determine the word boundaries of any given sentence. Even with the careful application of these methods, the exact definition of a word is often still very elusive.

There are some words that seem very general but may truly have a technical definition, such as the word «soon,» usually meaning within a week.

Orthography

In languages with a literary tradition, there is interrelation between orthography and the question of what is considered a single word.
Word separators (typically space marks) are common in modern orthography of languages using alphabetic scripts,but these are (excepting isolated precedents) a modern development (see also history of writing).

In English orthography, words may contain spaces if they are compounds or proper nouns such as «ice cream» or «air raid shelter».

Vietnamese orthography, although using the Latin alphabet, delimits monosyllabic morphemes, not words. Conversely, synthetic languages often combine many lexical morphemes into single words, making it difficult to boil them down to the traditional sense of words found more easily in analytic languages; this is especially difficult for polysynthetic languages such as Inuktitut and Ubykh, where entire sentences may consist of single such words.

Logographic scripts use single signs (characters) to express a word. Most «de facto» existing scripts are however partly logographic, and combine logographic with phonetic signs. The most widespreadlogographic script in modern use is the Chinese script. While the Chinese script has some true logographs, the largest class of characters used in modern Chinese (some 90%) are so-called pictophonetic compounds ( _zh. 形声字, _pn. Xíngshēngzì). Characters of this sort are composed of two parts: a pictograph, which suggests the general meaning of the character, and a phonetic part, which is derived from a character pronounced in the same way as the word the new character represents. In this sense, the character for most Chinese words consists of a determiner and a syllabogram, similar to the approach used by cuneiform script and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

There is a tendency informed by orthography to identify a single Chinese character as corresponding to a single word in the Chinese language, parallel to the tendency to identify the letters between two space marks as a single word in the English language. In both cases, this leads to the identification of compound members as individual words, while e.g. in German orthography, compound members are not separated by space marks and the tendency is thus to identify the entire compound as a single word. Compare e.g. English «capital city» with German «Hauptstadt» and Chinese 首都 (lit. ): all three are equivalent compounds, in the English case consisting of «two words» separated by a space mark, in the German case written as a «single word» without space mark, and in the Chinese case consisting of two logographic characters.

Morphology

In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example, «love») may have a number of different forms (for example, «loves», «loving», and «loved»). However, these are not usually considered to be different words, but different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes.In Indo-European languages in particular, the morphemes distinguished are
*the root
*optional suffixes
*a desinence.Thus, the Proto-Indo-European «PIE|*wr̥dhom» would be analysed as consisting of
#»PIE|*wr̥-«, the zero grade of the root «PIE|*wer-»
#a root-extension «PIE|*-dh-» (diachronically a suffix), resulting in a complex root «PIE|*wr̥dh-«
#The thematic suffix «PIE|*-o-«
#the neuter gender nominative or accusative singular desinence «PIE|*-m«.

Classes

Grammar classifies a language’s lexicon into several groups of words. The basic bipartite division possible for virtually every natural language is that of nouns vs. verbs.

The classification into such classes is in the tradition of Dionysius Thrax, who distinguished eight categories: noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, preposition, adverb, conjunction and interjection.

In Indian grammatical tradition, Panini introduced a similar fundamental classification into a nominal (nāma, suP) and a verbal (ākhyāta, tiN) class, based on the set of desinences taken by the word.

References

*Bauer, L. (1983) English Word Formation. Cambridge. CUP.
*Brown, Keith R. (Ed.) (2005) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.). Elsevier. 14 vols.
*Crystal, D. (1995) The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP, 1995.
*Plag, Ingo.(2003) Word formation in English. CUP

ee also

*Grammar
*Utterance
*Morphology
*Lexeme
*Lexicon
*Lexis (linguistics)
*Lexical item

External links

* [http://www.sussex.ac.uk/linguistics/documents/essay_-_what_is_a_word.pdf What Is a Word?] — a working paper by Larry Trask, Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Sussex.