Word building parts of speech

Word-building in
English, major means of WB in English:

a) affixation;

b) conversion;

c) composition; types
of compounds.

WB
is the process of creating new words in a language with the help of
its inner sources.

Two
types of WB proper :

• Word derivation when 1 stem undergoes different changes;

• Word composition when 2 or more stems are put together.

The most important means of word derivation are:

a) affixation;

b) conversion;

c) composition; types of compounds.

Affixation,
conversion, composition are the most productive or major means of WB
in modern English.

Shortening
occupies the intermediate position between major & “minor” or
less productive & unproductive means of WB.

Minor
means of word-building are:

• Back formation = reversion;

• Blending = telescoping;

• Reduplication = doubling the stem;

• Sound immitation;

• Sound interchange;

• Shift of stress, etc.

Affixation is the most productive means of word-building in English.
Affixation is the formation of new words by adding a derivational
affix to a derivational base.

Affixation is subdivided into:

• Suffixation

• Prefixation.

The essential differences between suffixes &
preffixes is that preffixes as a rule only modify the lexical meaning
of a word without changing the part of speech to which the word
belongs

e.g. to tie – to untie

However, some preffixes form new words in a
different part of speech:

e.g. friend – N., to be friend-V., adj.- little., V.-
to be little.

Suffixes do not only modify the lexical meaning of a word but also
form a word belonging to a different part of speech.

Suffixes are usually classified according to the part of speech they
form:

• Noun-forming suffixes ( to read – reader, dark – darkness);

• Adjective-forming (power-powerful);

• Verb-forming ( to organize, to purify);

• Adverbal-forming (quick-quickly).

Prefixes are usually classified according to their meaning:

• Negative prefixes (-un; -non; -in; -dis…);

• Reversative = privative (-un; -de; -dis..);

• Pejorative (уничижительные)
  (mis-; mal- (maltreat-дурно
  обращаться); pseudo-);

• Preffixes of time & order (fore-(foretell); pre-(prewar); post-;
  ex-(ex-wife);

• Prefixes of repetition (re- rewrite);

• Locative prefixes (super-; sub-subway; into-; trans –atlantic))

The 2 main criteria, according to which all the affixes are
subdivided are:

1)
origin;

2) productivity.

As to their origin (etymology) affixes are:

• Native;

• Borrowed.

Borrowed affixes may be classified according to the source of
borrowing (Greek, Latin, etc.) According to their productivity, i.e.
the ability to build new words at the present time, English affixes
are:

• Productive or living affixes, used to build new words now;

• Non-productive = unproductive affixes, not used in the word-building
  now, or used very rarely.

Productivity shouldn’t be confused with frequency. What is frequent
may turn out to be non-productive (-some (adj.)-handsome is very
frequent, but not productive).

Some native prefixes still productive in English
are: — fore; -out (grow); over (estimate); -un (able); -up
(bringing); -under, -mis, etc.

Productive foreign prefixes are: -dis (like); -en (close); -re(call);
-super (natural); -pre (war); -non (drinking); -anti (noise).

Native noun-forming suffixes in modern English are: -er (writer);
-ster (youngster), -ness(brightness), etc.

Adjective-forming native suffixes (productive in English) are: -y
(rocky); -ish (Turkish), ful; -ed (cultured); -less (useless), etc.

Foreign productive noun-forming suffixes are: -ee
(employee); -tion (revolution); -ism(Gr., realism); -ist, etc.

Borrowed productive verb-forming suffixes of
Romanic origin are: -ise,ize (organize), -fy, ify (signify).

Prefixation is more typical of adjectives & verbs. Suffixation is
approximately evenly used in all parts of speech.

There are 2 types of semantic relations between affixes:

• Homonymy;

• Synonymy.

Homonymous prefixes are: -in: inactive, to inform.
Homonymous suffixes are: -ful₁
(adjective-forming), -ful₂
(noun-forming-spoonful), -ly₁
(adj.-forming-friendly), -ly₂
(adverb-forming-quickly).

Some affixes make a chain of synonyms: the native
suffix –er denoting an agent, is synonymous to suffix –ist
(Gr.)-socialist & to suffix –eer – also denoting an agent
(engineer) but often having a derrogatory force (`sonneteer-
стихоплёт, profiteer –
спекулянт, etc.)

Some affixes are polysemantic: the noun-forming suffix –er has
several meanings:

• An agent or doer of the action –giver, etc.

• An instrument –boiler, trailer

• A profession, occupation –driver;

• An inhabitant of some place –londoner.

b)
Conversion
is one of the most productive word-building means in English. Words,
formed by means of conversion have identical phonetic & graphic
initial forms but belong to different parts of speech (noun –
doctor; verb –to doctor). Conversion
is a process of coining (создание)
a new word in a different part of speech & with different
distribution characteristic but without adding any derivative
elements, so that the basic form of the original & the basic form
of the derived words are homonymous (identical). (Arnold)

The
main reason for the widespread conversion in English is its
analytical character, absence of scarcity of inflections. Conversion
is treated differently in linguistic literature. Some linguists
define conversion as a non-affixal way of word-building (Marchened
defines conversion as the formation of new words with the help of a
zero morpheme, hence the term zero derivation)

Some
American & English linguists define conversioon as a functional
shift from one part of speech to another, viewing conversion as a
purely syntactical process. Accoding to this point of view, a word
may function as 2 or more different parts of speech at the same time,
which is impossible. Professor Smernitsky treats conversion as a
morphological way of word-building. According to him conversion is
the formation of a new word through the changes in its paradigm.

Some
other linguists regard conversion as a morphological syntactical way
of word-building, as it involves both a change of the paradigm &
the alterration of the syntactic function of the word.

But
we shouldn’t overlook the semantic change, in the process of
conversion. All the morphological & syntactical changes, only
accompany the semantic process in conversion. Thus, conversion may be
treated as a semantico-morphologico-syntactical process.

As a word within the conversion pair is
semantically derived from the other there are certain semantic
relationswithin a conversion pair.

De-nominal words (от
глагола) make up the largest group &
display the following semantic relations with the nouns:

1. action characteristic of the thing: -a butcher; to butcher

2. instrumental use of the thing: -a whip; to wheep

3. acquisition of a thing: a coat; to coat

4. deprivation of a thing: skin – to skin.

Deverbal substantives (отглаг.сущ)they
may denote:

• instance of the action: to move – a move;

• agent of the action: to switch – a switch;

• place of the action: to walk- a walk;

• object or result of the action: to find – a find.

The English vocabulary abounds mostly in verbs,
converted from nouns( or denominal verbs) & nouns, converted from
verbs (deverbal substances): pin –to pin; honeymoon-to honeymoon.
There are also some other cases of conversion: batter-to batter, up –
to up, etc.

c)
Composition is one of the most productive word-building
means in modern English. Composition is the production of a new word
by means of uniting 2 or more stems which occur in the language as
free forms (bluebells, ice-cream).

According
to the type of composition & the linking element, there are
following types of compounds:

• neutral compounds; (1)

• morphological compounds; (2)

• syntactical compounds. (3)

(1)
Compounds built by means of stem junction (juxt – opposition)
without any morpheme as a link, are called neutral compounds. The
subtypes of neutral compounds according to the structure of immediate
constituents:

a)
simple neutral compounds (neutral compounds proper) consisting of 2
elements (2 simple stems): sky –blue;film-star.

b) derived compounds (derivational compounds) –
include at least one derived stem: looking-glass, music-lover,
film-goer, mill-owner derived compounds or derivational should be
distinguished from compound derivatives, formed by means of a suffix,
which reffers to the combination of stems as a whole. Compound
derivatives (сложно-произв.слова)
are the result of 2 acts of word-building composition &
derivation. ( golden-haired, broad-shouldered, honey-mooner,
first-nighter).

c)
contracted compounds which have a shortened stem or a simple stem in
their structure, as “V-day” (victory), G-man (goverment), H-bag
(hand-bag).

d)
compounds, in which at least 1 stem is compound (waterpaper(comp)
–basket(simple))

(2)
Compounds with a specific morpheme as a link (comp-s with a linking
element = morphological compounds). E.g. Anglo-Saxon, Franko-German,
speedometer, statesman, tradespeople, handicraft, handiwork.

(3)
Compounds formed from segments of speech by way of isolating speech
sintagmas are sometimes called syntactic compounds, or compounds with
the linking element(s) represented as a rule by the stems of
form-words (brother-in-law, forget-me-not, good-in-nothing).

II.
Compounds may be classified according to a part of speech they belong
& within each part of speech according to their structural
pattern (structural types of compound-nouns):

• compounds nouns formed of an adjectival stem + a noun stem A+N.

e.g.blackberry, gold fish

• compound nouns formed of a noun-stem +a noun stem N+N

e.g. waterfall, backbone, homestead, calhurd

III.
Semantically compounds may be: idiomatic (non-motivated),
non-idiomatic

(motivated).
The compounds whose meanings can be derived from the meanings of
their component stems, are called non-idiomatic, e.g. classroom,
handcuff, handbag, smoking-car.

The
compounds whose meanings cannot be derived from the meanings of their
component stems are called idiomatic, e.g. lady-bird, man of war,
mother-of-pearls.

The
critiria applied for distinguishing compounds from word combinations
are:

• graphic;

• phonetic;

• grammatical (morphological, syntactic);

• semantic.

The graphic criteria can be relied on when
compounds are spelled either sollidly, or with or with a hyphen, but
it fails when the compound is spelled as 2 separate words,

e.g.
blood(-)vessel
(крово-сосудистый)

The phonetic criterium is applied to comp-s which
have either a high stress on the first component as in “hothead”
(буйная голова),
or a double stress “ `washing-ma`chine”, but it’s useless when
a compound has a level stress on both components, as in “
`arm-chair, `ice-cream” etc.

If we apply morphological & syntactical
criterium, we’ll see that compounds consisting of stems, possess
their structural integrity. The components of a compound are
grammatically invariable. No word can be inserted between the
components, while the components of a word-group, being independant
words, have the opposite features (tall-boy(высокий
комод), tall boy (taller&
cleverer,tallest)).

One of the most reliable criteria is the semantic
one. Compounds generally possess the higher degree of semantic
cohesion (слияние) of its elements
than word-groups. Compounds usually convey (передавать)
1 concep. (compare: a tall boy – 2 concepts, & a tallboy – 1
concept). In most cases only a combination of different criteria can
serve to distinguish a compound word from a word combination.

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Описание презентации по отдельным слайдам:

• 

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  Word-building in Modern English

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  By word-building are understood processes of producing new words from the resources of this particular language. Together with borrowing, word-building provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language.

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  Morpheme is the smallest recurrent unit of language directly related to meaning

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  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-read, mispronounce, unwell) and suffixes which follow the root (as in teach-er, cur-able, diet-ate).

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  We can distinguish words due to a morphological structure

  Words which consist of a root are called root words:
  house, room, book, work, port, street, table, etc.

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  We can distinguish words due to a morphological structure

  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):
  re-read, mis-pronounce, un-well, teach-er.

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  We can distinguish words due to a morphological structure

  A compound word is made when two words are joined to form a new word:
  dining-room, bluebell (колокольчик), mother-in-law, good-for-nothing(бездельник)

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  We can distinguish words due to a morphological structure
  Сompound-derivatives are words in which the structural integrity of the two free stems is ensured by a suffix referring to the combination as a whole, not to one of its elements:
  kind-hearted, old-timer, schoolboyishness, teenager.

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  There are the following ways of word-building:
  Affixation
  Composition
  Conversion
  Shortening (Contraction)
  Non-productive types of word-building:
  A) Sound-Imitation
  B) Reduplication
  C) Back-Formation (Reversion)

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  10 слайд

  Affixation

  The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme.

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  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.

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• 

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  15 слайд

  An affix of foreign origin can be regarded as borrowed only after it has begun an independent and active life in the recipient language and it is taking part in the word-making processes of that language. This can only occur when the total of words with this affix is so great in the recipient language as to affect the native speakers’ subconscious to the extent that they no longer realize its foreign flavour and accept it as their own.

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  By productive affixes we mean the ones, which take part in deriving new words in this particular period of language development. The best way to identify productive affixes is to look for them among neologisms and so-called nonce-words.
  The adjectives thinnish (жидковатый) and baldish (лысоватый) bring to mind dozens of other adjectives made with the same suffix: oldish (староватый), youngish (моложавый), mannish (мужеподобная), girlish (женоподобный), longish (длинноватый), yellowish (желтоватый), etc.

  The same is well illustrated by the following popular statement: «/ don’t like Sunday evenings: I feel so Mondayish». (Чу́вствующий лень по́сле воскре́сного о́тдыха)

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

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  Some Non-Productive Affixes

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  Composition

  Composition is a type of word-building, in which new words are produced by combining two or more stems

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  Compounds are not homogeneous in structure. Traditionally three types are distinguished:
  neutral
  morphological
  syntactic

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  22 слайд

  Neutral

  In neutral compounds the process of compounding is realised without any linking elements, by a mere juxtaposition of two stems, as in
  blackbird(дрозд)
  shopwindow(витрина) sunflower(подсолнух) bedroom(спальня) etc.

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  23 слайд

  There are three subtypes of neutral compounds depending on the structure of the constituent stems.

  The examples: shopwindow(витрина), sunflower(подсолнух), bedroom(спальня) represent the subtype which may be described as simple neutral compounds: they consist of simple affixless stems.

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  24 слайд

  Compounds which have affixes in their structure are called derived or derivational compounds.

  E.g. blue-eyed(голубоглазый),
  broad-shouldered(широкоплечий)

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  25 слайд

  The third subtype of neutral compounds is called contracted compounds. These words have a shortened (contracted) stem in their structure:
  V-day (день победы) (Victory day), G-man (агент ФБР) (Government man «FBI agent»), H-bag (сумочка) (handbag), T-shirt(футболка), etc.

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  26 слайд

  Morphological

  Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is non-productive. It is represented by words in which two compounding stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant:
  e. g. Anglo-Saxon, Franko-Prussian, handiwork(изделие ручной работы), statesman (политический деятель/политик)

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  27 слайд

  Syntactic

  These words are formed from segments of speech, preserving in their structure numerous traces of syntagmatic relations typical of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs.
  e.g. father-in-law, mother-in-law etc.

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  28 слайд

  Conversion

  Conversion consists in making a new word from some existing word by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged.

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  29 слайд

  It has also a new paradigm peculiar to its new category as a part of speech. Conversion is a convenient and «easy» way of enriching the vocabulary with new words. The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs.

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  30 слайд

  Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous amongst the words produced by conversion:
  e. g. to hand(передавать)
  to back(поддерживать)
  to face(стоять лицом к кому-либо)
  to eye(рассматривать)
  to nose(разнюхивать)
  to dog(выслеживать)

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  31 слайд

  Nouns are frequently made from verbs:
  e.g. make(марка)
  run(бег)
  find(находка)
  walk(прогулка)
  worry(тревога)
  show(демонстрация)
  move(движение)

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  32 слайд

  Verbs can also be made from adjectives:
  e. g. to pale(побледнеть)
  to yellow(желтеть)
  to cool(охлаждать)

  Other parts of speech are not entirely unsusceptible to conversion.

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  33 слайд

  Shortening (Contraction)

  This comparatively new way of word-building has achieved a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English.
  Shortenings (or contracted words) are produced in two different ways.

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  34 слайд

  The first way
  The first is to make a new word from a syllable (rarer, two) of the original word.
  The latter may lose its beginning (as in phone made from telephone, fence from defence), its ending (as in hols from holidays, vac from vacation, props from properties, ad from advertisement) or both the beginning and ending (as in flu from influenza, fridge from refrigerator)

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  35 слайд

  The second way
  The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group:
  U.N.O. from the United Nations Organisation, B.B.C. from the British Broadcasting Corporation, M.P. from Member of Parliament. This type is called initial shortenings.

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  36 слайд

  Both types of shortenings are characteristic of informal speech in general and of uncultivated speech particularly:
  E. g. Movie (from moving-picture), gent (from gentleman), specs (from spectacles), circs (from circumstances, e. g. under the circs), I. O. Y. (from I owe you), lib (from liberty), cert (from certainty), exhibish (from exhibition), posish (from position)

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  37 слайд

  Non-productive types of word-building
  Sound-Imitation
  Words coined by this interesting type of word-building are made by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by
  human beings: to whisper (шептать), to whistle (свистеть), to sneeze (чихать), to giggle (хихикать);

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  38 слайд

  animals, birds, insects: to hiss (шипеть), to buzz (жужжать), to bark (лаять), to moo (мычать);
  inanimate objects: to boom (гудеть), to ding-dong (звенеть), to splash (брызгать);

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  39 слайд

  Reduplication
  In reduplication new words are made by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic changes as in bye-bye (coll, for good-bye)
  or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant as in ping-pong, chit-chat (this second type is called gradational reduplication).

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  40 слайд

  This type of word-building is greatly facilitated in Modern English by the vast number of monosyllables. Stylistically speaking, most words made by reduplication represent informal groups: colloquialisms and slang. E. g. walkie-talkie («a portable radio»), riff-raff («the worthless or disreputable element of society»; «the dregs of society»), chi-chi (sl. for chic as in a chi-chi girl)

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  41 слайд

  In a modern novel an angry father accuses his teenager son of doing nothing but dilly-dallying all over the town. (dilly-dallying — wasting time, doing nothing)

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  42 слайд

  Another example of a word made by reduplication may be found in the following quotation from “The Importance of Being Earnest” by O. Wilde:
  Lady Bracknell: I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. (shilly-shallying — irresolution, indecision)

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  Back-formation

  Forming the allegedly original stem from a supposed derivative on the analogy of the existing pairs, i. e. the singling-out of a stem from a word which is wrongly regarded as a derivative.

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  The earliest examples of this type of word-building are the verb to beg (попрошайничать) that was made from the French borrowing beggar (нищий, бедняк), to burgle (незаконно проникать в помещение) from burglar (вор-домушник).
  In all these cases the verb was made from the noun by subtracting what was mistakenly associated with the English suffix -er.

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  45 слайд

  Later examples of back-formation are to blood-transfuse (делать переливание крови) from blood-transfuing, to force-land (совершать вынужденную посадку) from forced landing, to baby-sit (присматривать за ребенком) from baby-sitter.

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Lecture 3.
Word-building: affixation, conversion, composition, abbreviation.
THE WORD-BUILDING SYSTEM OF ENGLISH
1.
Word-derivation
2.
Affixation
3.
Conversion
4.
Word-composition
5.
Shortening
6.
Blending
7.
Acronymy
8.
Sound interchange
9.
Sound imitation
10. Distinctive stress
11. Back-formation
Word-formation is a branch of Lexicology which studies the process of building new
words, derivative structures and patterns of existing words. Two principle types of wordformation are distinguished: word-derivation and word-composition. It is evident that wordformation proper can deal only with words which can be analyzed both structurally and
semantically. Simple words are closely connected with word-formation because they serve as the
foundation of derived and compound words. Therefore, words like writer, displease, sugar free,
etc. make the subject matter of study in word-formation, but words like to write, to please, atom,
free are irrelevant to it.
WORD-FORMATION
WORD-DERIVATION
AFFIXATION
WORD-COMPOSITION
CONVERSION
1. Word-derivation.
Speaking about word-derivation we deal with the derivational structure of words which
basic elementary units are derivational bases, derivational affixes and derivational patterns.
A derivational base is the part of the word which establishes connection with the lexical
unit that motivates the derivative and determines its individual lexical meaning describing the
difference between words in one and the same derivative set. For example, the individual lexical
meaning of the words singer, writer, teacher which denote active doers of the action is signaled by
the lexical meaning of the derivational bases: sing-, write-, teach-.
Structurally derivational bases fall into 3 classes:
1. Bases that coincide with morphological stems of different degrees оf complexity, i.e.,
with words functioning independently in modern English e.g., dutiful, day-dreamer. Bases are
functionally and semantically distinct from morphological stems. Functionally the morphological
stem is a part of the word which is the starting point for its forms: heart – hearts; it is the part
which presents the entire grammatical paradigm. The stem remains unchanged throughout all
word-forms; it keeps them together preserving the identity of the word. A derivational base is the
starting point for different words (heart – heartless – hearty) and its derivational potential
outlines the type and scope of existing words and new creations. Semantically the stem stands for
the whole semantic structure of the word; it represents all its lexical meanings. A base represents,
as a rule, only one meaning of the source word.
2. Bases that coincide with word-forms, e.g., unsmiling, unknown. The base is usually
represented by verbal forms: the present and the past participles.
3. Bases that coincide with word-groups of different degrees of stability, e.g., blue-eyed,
empty-handed. Bases of this class allow a rather limited range of collocability, they are most
active with derivational affixes in the class of adjectives and nouns (long-fingered, blue-eyed).
Derivational affixes are Immediate Constituents of derived words in all parts of speech.
Affixation is generally defined as the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to
different types of bases. Affixation is subdivided into suffixation and prefixation. In Modern
English suffixation is mostly characteristic of nouns and adjectives coining, while prefixation is
mostly typical of verb formation.
A derivational pattern is a regular meaningful arrangement, a structure that imposes
rigid rules on the order and the nature of the derivational base and affixes that may be brought
together to make up a word. Derivational patterns are studied with the help of distributional
analysis at different levels. Patterns are usually represented in a generalized way in terms of
conventional symbols: small letters v, n, a, d which stand for the bases coinciding with the stems
of the respective parts of speech: verbs, etc. Derivational patterns may represent derivative
structure at different levels of generalization:
- at the level of structural types. The patterns of this type are known as structural
formulas, all words may be classified into 4 classes: suffixal derivatives (friendship) n + -sf →
N, prefixal derivatives (rewrite), conversions (a cut, to parrot) v → N, compound words (musiclover).
- at the level of structural patterns. Structural patterns specify the base classes and
individual affixes thus indicating the lexical-grammatical and lexical classes of derivatives
within certain structural classes of words. The suffixes refer derivatives to specific parts of
speech and lexical subsets. V + -er = N (a semantic set of active agents, denoting both animate
and inanimate objects - reader, singer); n + -er = N (agents denoting residents or occupations Londoner, gardener). We distinguish a structural semantic derivationa1 pattern.
- at the level of structural-semantic patterns. Derivational patterns may specify semantic
features of bases and individual meaning of affixes: N + -y = A (nominal bases denoting living
beings are collocated with the suffix meaning "resemblance" - birdy, catty; but nominal bases
denoting material, parts of the body attract another meaning "considerable amount" - grassy,
leggy).
The basic ways of forming new words in word-derivation are affixation and conversion.
Affixation is the formation of a new word with the help of affixes (heartless, overdo).
Conversion is the formation of a new word by bringing a stem of this word into a different
paradigm (a fall from to fall).
2. Affixation
Affixation is generally defined as the formation of words by adding derivational affixes
to different types of bases. Affixation includes suffixation and prefixation. Distinction between
suffixal and prefixal derivates is made according to the last stage of derivation, for example,
from the point of view of derivational analysis the word unreasonable – un + (reason- + -able) is
qualified as a prefixal derivate, while the word discouragement – (dis- + -courage) + -ment is
defined as a suffixal derivative.
Suffixation is the formation of words with the help of suffixes. Suffixes usually modify
the lexical meaning of the base and transfer words to a different part of speech.
Suffixes can be classified into different types in accordance with different principles.
According to the lexico-grammatical character suffixes may be: deverbal suffixes, e.d.,
those added to the verbal base (agreement); denominal (endless); deadjectival (widen,
brightness).
According to the part of speech formed suffixes fall into several groups: noun-forming
suffixes (assistance), adjective-forming suffixes (unbearable), numeral-forming suffixes
(fourteen), verb-forming suffixes (facilitate), adverb-forming suffixes (quickly, likewise).
Semantically suffixes may be monosemantic, e.g. the suffix –ess has only one meaning
“female” – goddess, heiress; polysemantic, e.g. the suffix –hood has two meanings “condition or
quality” falsehood and “collection or group” brotherhood.
According to their generalizing denotational meaning suffixes may fall into several
groups: the agent of the action (baker, assistant); collectivity (peasantry); appurtenance
(Victorian, Chinese); diminutiveness (booklet).
Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes. Two types of prefixes can
be distinguished: 1) those not correlated with any independent word (un-, post-, dis-); 2) those
correlated with functional words (prepositions or preposition-like adverbs: out-, up-, under-).
Diachronically distinction is made between prefixes of native and foreign origin.
Prefixes can be classified according to different principles.
According to the lexico-grammatical character of the base prefixes are usually added to,
they may be: deverbal prefixes, e.d., those added to the verbal base (overdo); denominal
(unbutton); deadjectival (biannual).
According to the part of speech formed prefixes fall into several groups: noun-forming
prefixes (ex-husband), adjective-forming prefixes (unfair), verb-forming prefixes (dethrone),
adverb-forming prefixes (uphill).
Semantically prefixes may be monosemantic, e.g. the prefix –ex has only one meaning
“former” – ex-boxer; polysemantic, e.g. the prefix –dis has four meanings “not” disadvantage
and “removal of” to disbrunch.
According to their generalizing denotational meaning prefixes may fall into several
groups: negative prefixes – un, non, dis, a, in (ungrateful, nonpolitical, disloyal, amoral,
incorrect); reversative prefixes - un, de, dis (untie, decentralize, disconnect); pejorative prefixes
– mis, mal, pseudo (mispronounce, maltreat, pseudo-scientific); prefix of repetition (redo),
locative prefixes – super, sub, inter, trans (superstructure, subway, intercontinental,
transatlantic).
3. Conversion
Conversion is a process which allows us to create additional lexical terms out of those
that already exist, e.g., to saw, to spy, to snoop, to flirt. This process is not limited to one syllable
words, e.g., to bottle, to butter, nor is the process limited to the creation of verbs from nouns, e.g.,
to up the prices. Converted words are extremely colloquial: "I'll microwave the chicken", "Let's
flee our dog", "We will of course quiche and perrier you".
Conversion came into being in the early Middle English period as a result of the leveling
and further loss of endings.
In Modern English conversion is a highly-productive type of word-building. Conversion
is a specifically English type of word formation which is determined by its analytical character,
by its scarcity of inflections and abundance of mono-and-de-syllabic words in different parts of
speech. Conversion is coining new words in a different part of speech and with a different
distribution but without adding any derivative elements, so that the original and the converted
words are homonyms.
Structural Characteristics of Conversion: Mostly monosyllabic words are converted,
e.g., to horn, to box, to eye. In Modern English there is a marked tendency to convert
polysyllabic words of a complex morphological structure, e.g., to e-mail, to X-ray. Most converted
words are verbs which may be formed from different parts of speech from nouns, adjectives,
adverbs, interjections.
Nouns from verbs - a try, a go, a find, a loss
From adjectives - a daily, a periodical
From adverbs - up and down
From conjunctions - but me no buts
From interjection - to encore
Semantic Associations / Relations of Conversion:
The noun is the name of a tool or implement, the verb denotes an action performed by the
tool, e.g., to nail, to pin, to comb, to brush, to pencil;
The noun is the name of an animal, the verb denotes an action or aspect of behavior
considered typical of this animal, e.g., to monkey, to rat, to dog, to fox;
When the noun is the name of a part of a human body, the verb denotes an action
performed by it, e.g., to hand, to nose, to eye;
When the noun is the name of a profession or occupation, the verb denotes the activity
typical of it, e.g., to cook, to maid, to nurse;
When the noun is the name of a place, the verb will denote the process of occupying the
place or by putting something into it, e.g., to room, to house, to cage;
When the word is the name of a container, the verb will denote the act of putting
something within the container, e.g., to can, to pocket, to bottle;
When the word is the name of a meal, the verb means the process of taking it, e.g., to
lunch, to supper, to dine, to wine;
If an adjective is converted into a verb, the verb may have a generalized meaning "to be
in a state", e.g., to yellow;
When nouns are converted from verbs, they denote an act or a process, or the result, e.g.,
a try, a go, a find, a catch.
4. Word-composition
Compound words are words consisting of at least two stems which occur in the language
as free forms.
Most compounds in English have the primary stress on the first syllable. For example,
income tax has the primary stress on the in of income, not on the tax.
Compounds have a rather simple, regular set of properties. First, they are binary in
structure. They always consist of two or more constituent lexemes. A compound which has three
or more constituents must have them in pairs, e.g., washingmachine manufacturer consists of
washingmachine and manufacturer, while washingmachine in turn consists of washing and
machine. Compound words also usually have a head constituent. By a head constituent we mean
one which determines the syntactic properties of the whole lexeme, e.g., the compound lexeme
longboat consists of an adjective, long and a noun, boat. The compound lexeme longboat is a
noun, and it is а noun because boat is a noun, that is, boat is the head constituent of longboat.
Compound words can belong to all the major syntactic categories:
• Nouns: signpost, sunlight, bluebird, redwood, swearword, outhouse;
• Verbs: window shop, stargaze, outlive, undertake;
• Adjectives: ice-cold, hell-bent, undersized;
• Prepositions: into, onto, upon.
From the morphological point of view compound words are classified according to the
structure of immediate constituents:
• Compounds consisting of simple stems - heartache, blackbird;
• Compounds where at least one of the constituents is a derived stem -chainsmoker,
maid-servant, mill-owner, shop-assistant;
• Compounds where one of the constituents is a clipped stem - V-day, A-bomb, Xmas,
H-bag;
• Compounds where one of the constituents is a compound stem - wastes paper basket,
postmaster general.
Compounds are the commonest among nouns and adjectives. Compound verbs are few in
number, as they are mostly the result of conversion, e.g., to blackmail, to honeymoon, to
nickname, to safeguard, to whitewash. The 20th century created some more converted verbs, e.g.,
to weekend, to streamline,, to spotlight. Such converted compounds are particularly common in
colloquial speech of American English. Converted verbs can be also the result of backformation.
Among the earliest coinages are to backbite, to browbeat, to illtreat, to housekeep. The 20th
century gave more examples to hitch-hike, to proof-read, to mass-produce, to vacuumclean.
One more structural characteristic of compound words is classification of compounds
according to the type of composition. According to this principle two groups can be singled out:

words which are formed by a mere juxtaposition without any connecting elements,
e.g., classroom, schoolboy, heartbreak, sunshine;

composition with a vowel or a consonant placed between the two stems. e.g.,
salesman, handicraft.
Semantically compounds may be idiomatic and non-idiomatic. Compound words may be
motivated morphologically and in this case they are non-idiomatic. Sunshine - the meaning here
is a mere meaning of the elements of a compound word (the meaning of each component is
retained). When the compound word is not motivated morphologically, it is idiomatic. In
idiomatic compounds the meaning of each component is either lost or weakened. Idiomatic
compounds have a transferred meaning. Chatterbox - is not a box, it is a person who talks a great
deal without saying anything important; the combination is used only figuratively. The same
metaphorical character is observed in the compound slowcoach - a person who acts and thinks
slowly.
The components of compounds may have different semantic relations. From this point of
view we can roughly classify compounds into endocentric and exocentric. In endocentric
compounds the semantic centre is found within the compound and the first element determines
the other as in the words filmstar, bedroom, writing-table. Here the semantic centres are star,
room, table. These stems serve as a generic name of the object and the determinants film, bed,
writing give some specific, additional information about the objects. In exocentric compound
there is no semantic centre. It is placed outside the word and can be found only in the course of
lexical transformation, e.g., pickpocket - a person who picks pockets of other people, scarecrow an object made to look like a person that a farmer puts in a field to frighten birds.
The Criteria of Compounds
As English compounds consist of free forms, it's difficult to distinguish them from
phrases, because there are no reliable criteria for that. There exist three approaches to distinguish
compounds from corresponding phrases:
Formal unity implies the unity of spelling

solid spelling, e.g., headmaster;

with a hyphen, e.g., head-master;

with a break between two components, e.g., head master.
Different dictionaries and different authors give different spelling variants.
Phonic principal of stress
Many compounds in English have only one primary stress. All compound nouns are
stressed according to this pattern, e.g., ice-cream, ice cream. The rule doesn't hold with
adjectives. Compound adjectives are double-stressed, e.g., easy-going, new-born, sky-blue.
Stress cannot help to distinguish compounds from phrases because word stress may depend on
phrasal stress or upon the syntactic function of a compound.
Semantic unity
Semantic unity means that a compound word expresses one separate notion and phrases
express more than one notion. Notions in their turn can't be measured. That's why it is hard to
say whether one or more notions are expressed. The problem of distinguishing between
compound words and phrases is still open to discussion.
According to the type of bases that form compounds they can be of :
1.
compounds proper – they are formed by joining together bases built on the stems
or on the ford-forms with or without linking element, e.g., door-step;
2.
derivational compounds – by joining affixes to the bases built on the word-groups
or by converting the bases built on the word-groups into the other parts of speech, e.g., longlegged → (long legs) + -ed, a turnkey → (to turn key) + conversion. More examples: do-gooder,
week-ender, first-nighter, house-keeping, baby-sitting, blue-eyed blond-haired, four-storied. The
suffixes refer to both of the stems combined, but not to the final stem only. Such stems as nighter,
gooder, eyed do not exist.
Compound Neologisms
In the last two decades the role of composition in the word-building system of English has
increased. In the 60th and 70th composition was not so productive as affixation. In the 80th
composition exceeded affixation and comprised 29.5 % of the total number of neologisms in
English vocabulary. Among compound neologisms the two-component units prevail. The main
patterns of coining the two-component neologisms are Noun stem + Noun stem = Noun;
Adjective stem + Noun stem = Noun.
There appeared a tendency to coin compound nouns where:
 The first component is a proper noun, e.g., Kirlian photograph - biological field of
humans.
 The first component is a geographical place, e.g., Afro-rock.
 The two components are joined with the help of the linking vowel –o- e.g.,
bacteriophobia, suggestopedia.
 The number of derivational compounds increases. The main productive suffix to coin
such compound is the suffix -er - e.g., baby-boomer, all nighter.
 Many compound words are formed according to the pattern Participle 2 + Adv =
Adjective, e.g., laid-back, spaced-out, switched-off, tapped-out.
 The examples of verbs formed with the help of a post-positive -in -work-in, die-in,
sleep-in, write-in.
Many compounds formed by the word-building pattern Verb + postpositive are numerous
in colloquial speech or slang, e.g., bliss out, fall about/horse around, pig-out.
ATTENTION: Apart from the principle types there are some minor types of modern wordformation, i.d., shortening, blending, acronymy, sound interchange, sound imitation, distinctive
stress, back-formation, and reduplicaton.
5. Shortening
Shortening is the formation of a word by cutting off a part of the word. They can be
coined in two different ways. The first is to cut off the initial/ middle/ final part:
 Aphaeresis – initial part of the word is clipped, e.g., history-story, telephone-phone;
 Syncope – the middle part of the word is clipped, e.g., madam- ma 'am; specs
spectacles
 Apocope – the final part of the word is clipped, e.g., professor-prof, editored, vampirevamp;
 Both initial and final, e.g., influenza-flu, detective-tec.
Polysemantic words are usually clipped in one meaning only, e.g., doc and doctor have
the meaning "one who practices medicine", but doctor is also "the highest degree given by a
university to a scholar or scientist".
Among shortenings there are homonyms, so that one and the same sound and graphical
complex may represent different words, e.g., vac - vacation/vacuum, prep —
preparation/preparatory school, vet — veterinary surgeon/veteran.
6. Blending
Blending is a particular type of shortening which combines the features of both clipping
and composition, e.g., motel (motor + hotel), brunch (breakfast + lunch), smog (smoke + fog),
telethon (television + marathon), modem , (modulator + demodulator), Spanglish (Spanish +
English). There are several structural types of blends:

Initial part of the word + final part of the word, e.g., electrocute (electricity +
execute);

initial part of the word + initial part of the word, e.g., lib-lab (liberal+labour);

Initial part of the word + full word, e.g., paratroops (parachute+troops);

Full word + final part of the word, e.g., slimnastics (slim+gymnastics).
7. Acronymy
Acronyms are words formed from the initial letters of parts of a word or phrase,
commonly the names of institutions and organizations. No full stops are placed between the
letters. All acronyms are divided into two groups. The first group is composed of the acronyms
which are often pronounced as series of letters: EEC (European Economic Community), ID
(identity or identification card), UN (United Nations), VCR (videocassette recorder), FBI
(Federal Bureau of Investigation), LA (Los Angeles), TV (television), PC (personal computer),
GP (General Practitioner), ТВ (tuberculosis). The second group of acronyms is composed by the
words which are pronounced according to the rules of reading in English: UNESCO (United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome), ASH (Action on Smoking and Health). Some of these pronounceable words are
written without capital letters and therefore are no longer recognized as acronyms: laser (light
amplification by stimulated emissions of radiation), radar (radio detection and ranging).
Some abbreviations have become so common and normal as words that people do not think
of them as abbreviations any longer. They are not written in capital letters, e.g., radar (radio
detection and ranging), laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) yuppie,
gruppie, sinbads, dinkies.
Some abbreviations are only written forms but they are pronounced as full words, e.g.,
Mr, Mrs, Dr. Some abbreviations are from Latin. They are used as part of the language etc. - et
cetera, e.g., (for example) — exampli gratia, that is - id est.
Acromymy is widely used in the press, for the names of institutions, organizations,
movements, countries. It is common to colloquial speech, too. Some acronyms turned into
regular words, e.g., jeep -came from the expression general purpose car.
There are a lot of homonyms among acronyms:
MP - Member of Parliament/Military Police/Municipal Police
PC - Personal Computer/Politically correct
8. Sound-interchange
Sound-interchange is the formation of a new word due to an alteration in the phonemic
composition of its root. Sound-interchange falls into two groups: 1) vowel-interchange, e.g., food
– feed; in some cases vowel-interchange is combined with suffixation, e.g., strong – strength; 2)
consonant-interchange e.g., advice – to advise. Consonant-interchange and vowel-interchange
may be combined together, e.g., life – to live.
This type of word-formation is greatly facilitated in Modern English by the vast number
of monosyllabic words. Most words made by reduplication represent informal groups:
colloquialisms and slang, hurdy-gurdy, walkie-talkie, riff-raff, chi-chi girl. In reduplication new
words are coined by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic changes as in bye-bye or with a
variation of the root-vowel or consonant as in ping-pong, chit-chat.
9. Sound imitation or (onomatopoeia)
It is the naming of an action or a thing by more or less exact reproduction of the sound
associated with it, cf.: cock-a-do-doodle-do – ку-ка-ре-ку.
Semantically, according to the source sound, many onomatopoeic words fall into the
following definitive groups: 1) words denoting sounds produced by human beings in the process of
communication or expressing their feelings, e.g., chatter; 2) words denoting sounds produced by
animals, birds, insects, e.g., moo, buzz; 3) words imitating the sounds of water, the noise of metallic
things, movements, e.g., splash, whip, swing.
10. Distinctive stress
Distinctive stress is the formation of a word by means of the shift of the stress in the
source word, e.g., increase – increase.
11. Back-formation
Backformation is coining new words by subtracting a real or supposed suffix, as a result
of misinterpretation of the structure of the existing word. This type of word-formation is not
highly productive in Modern English and it is built on the analogy, e.g., beggar-to beg, cobbler to cobble, blood transfusion — to blood transfuse, babysitter - to baby-sit.

Lecture 6 Word-structure and Word-formation

Plan: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Word-structure and morphemes. Morphemic types of words. Segmentation of words into morphemes. Types of word segmentability. Derivative structure. Derivational analysis. Major types of word-formation: affixation, conversion, word-composition. Secondary types of word-formation.

1. Word-structure and morphemes. Morphemic types of words

The Morpheme: the smallest ____ indivisible two-facet language unit.

Meaning of word building morphemes: 1. lexical meaning: — ______ (serves a linguistic expression for a concept or a name for an individual object) Especially revealed in root-morphemes. E. g. -girl- -ly, -like, -ish ; – similarity — ______ (an emotional content of the morpheme) E. g. the suffix in piglet has a diminutive meaning.

Word building morphemes do not possess grammatical meaning.

Meaning of word building morphemes: 2. part-of-speech meaning (is proper only to _______) (government, teach-er)

Specific meaning of word building morphemes: n Differential: serves to distinguish words having the same morphemes (over-cook, under cook, precook) n Distributional (the meaning of morpheme arrangement in a word: certain morphemes usually follow or precede the root) (un-effective, speech-less)

Semantic Classification of Morphemes: ______ morpheme (the lexical center of words, has an individual meaning) n non-root or ______ morpheme. n

Affixational Morphemes: 1. form building, or inflectional morphemes (only _____ meaning and only for the formation of word-forms) n smiled, smiles, is smiling

2. derivational morphemes (the smallest meaningful stem building or word building lexical units) n reason-able, un-reason-able

Derivational morphemes: n prefixes n suffixes

Structural classification: 1. ______ morphemes (may function independently. Most roots are free) n friend- in the word friendship 2. ______ morphemes (function only as a constituent part of a word). Affixes are bound morphemes.

3. semi-free (semi-bound) morphemes (can function both as an ______ and as a ______ morpheme). n • • the morpheme well: the stem and the word-form in the utterance like sleep well; a bound morpheme in the word wellknown.

According to the Number of the Morphemes: § monomorphic words § polymorphic

Monomorphic or root -words: only one rootmorpheme. § small, dog.

Polymorphic Words: 1) Monoradical (one-root words) monoradical suffixal (teacher); n monoradical prefixal (overteach); n radical prefixal-suffixal (superteacher, beheaded). n

2) Polyradical (consist of two or more roots): n polyradical proper (headmaster); n polyradical suffixal (head-teacher, boarding-school); n polyradical prefixal (superheadmaster); n polyradical prefixal-suffixal (superheadteacher).

2. Segmentation of words into morphemes. Types of word segmentability

According to the complexity of the morphemic structure: 1. segmentable words (allowing of segmentation into morphemes). n agreement, information, quickly. 2. non-segmentable words. n house, girl, woman.

Levels of the Analysis of the Word Structure: n Morphemic: its aim is to state the number and type of morphemes the word consists of. Basic units: ______ mislead — polymorphic, monoradical, radical-prefixal.

n Derivational: its aim is to establish the correlations between different types of words and to establish a word’s derivational structure. Basic units: derivational bases, derivational affixes, derivational patterns.

The Morphemic Analysis: the operation of breaking a segmentable word into the constituent morphemes.

The method of Immediate and Ultimate constituents (the IC and UC method): to know how many _____ parts are there in a word.

At every stage the word is broken into 2 components (IC-s) unless we achieve units incapable of further division – the so-called ultimate constituents.

Friendliness: 1. is divided into the component friendly-, occurring in such words as friendly, friendly-looking, and the component ness- as in dark-ness, happy-ness. 2. is divided into friend- and -ly which are ultimate constituents.

Types of Morphemic Segmentability of Words: 1. complete 2. conditional 3. defective

Complete Segmentability: one can easily divide a word into morphemes. The constituent morphemes of the word recur with the same meaning in a number of other words. n teacher: teach- — in to teach and teaching. -er – in words like worker, builder, etc.

Conditional Segmentability: when segmentation is doubtful for ____ reasons, as the segments (pseudo-morphemes) regularly occurring in other words can hardly possess any definite lexical meaning.

n retain, detain, contain or receive, conceive, perceive: sound-clusters [rı-], [dı-], [kən-] seem to be singled out quite easily due to their recurrence in a number of words, but they have nothing in common with the phonetically identical morphemes like re-, de- as in words rewrite, re-organize, decode.

Defective Segmentability: when segmentation is doubtful for ______ reasons because one of the components (a unique morpheme) has a specific lexical meaning but seldom or never occurs in other words.

n streamlet, ringlet, leaflet: the morpheme -let has the denotational meaning of diminutiveness and is combined with the morphemes stream-, ring-, leaf-, each having a clear denotational meaning. n hamlet – the morpheme -let retains the same meaning of diminutiveness, but the soundcluster [hæm] does not occur in any English word with the meaning it has in the word hamlet.

Morphological analysis: + reveals the number of meaningful constituents in a word and their usual sequence. — does not reveal the way the word is constructed.

3. Derivative structure. Derivational analysis

Words having the same morphological structure may be derived in completely different ways. n do-gooder: (do good) + -er (suffixation). n dress-maker: dress + (make + -er) (word -composition)

Derivatives: nare words depending on some other lexical items that motivate them structurally and semantically.

The basic elements of a derivative structure of a word: n a derivational base n a derivational affix n derivational pattern

A derivational base: n a unit to which derivational affixes are added. It is always monosemantic.

Derivational bases are built on the following language units: a) stems of various structure, b) word-forms (unknown: un + Ved –>A) c) word-groups or phrases (longlegged: (A + N) + ed –> A)

The derivational base a stem (an unchangeable part of the word throughout its paradigm) n unknown – derivational base n know – stem

A derivational affix is added to a derivational base.

They have lexical, functional, distributional, and differential meaning and are characterized by 2 functions: n stem-building (public, curious) n word-building (economic = economy + ic, courageous = courage + ous)

A derivational pattern: a scheme of order and arrangement of the IC-s of the word. n v + -er =N (teach-teacher, build- builder) n re + v = V (re + write — rewrite)

4. Major types of wordformation: affixation, conversion, wordcomposition

In English there are three major types of word-formation: affixation, n zero derivation (conversion), n composition (compounding). n

Affixation. Prefixation. Classifications of prefixes. Suffixation. Classifications of suffixes. Productivity of suffixes.

Affixation has been one of the most productive ways of word-building throughout the history of English.

Affixation: n formation of new words by adding _____ affixes to different types of derivational bases.

Affixes: n ______ (take part in deriving new words in the particular period of language development. To identify productive affixes one should look for them among neologisms). E. g. -er, -able. n ______. E. g. -hood, -ous.

The productivity of affixes their frequency of occurrence: there are some high-frequency affixes which are no longer used in word derivation (the adjective-forming suffixes -ful, -ly, etc. ).

Derived words formed by affixation may be the result of one or more applications of word-formation rule. Degrees of derivation: zero degree (found in simple words whose stem coincides with a word morpheme) (cat, table) n first degree (found in words with one derivational affix) (teach-er, re-write) n second degree (found in words formed by adding 2 derivational affixes in consequence) (teach-er head-teacher) n

Affixation: n suffixation n prefixation

Prefixation is the formation of words by means of adding a ______ to the stem. There about 51 prefixes in the system of Modern English word-formation.

The main function of prefixes: n to change the lexical meaning of the ______ part of speech. But the recent research showed that there about 25 prefixes which can transfer words to different parts of speech. to begulf, to debus, etc.

In Modern English suffixation is mostly characteristic of ______ and ______ formation, while prefixation is mostly typical of ______ formation.

The main function of suffixes: n to form one ______ from another (to work – a worker), n to change the ______ meaning of the ______ part of speech (to educate, educatee).

Main differences between suffixes and prefixes: suffixes functional meaning is significant prefixes functional meaning is not that important the same prefix may function in different parts of speech the main function of prefixes is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech usually function in one part of speech the main function of suffixes in Modern English is to form one part of speech from another (to work – a worker), the secondary function is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech (to educate, educatee) a characteristic of noun and typical of verb formation adjective formation

Prefixes may be classified on different principles: 1) origin of prefixes: native (Germanic) (un-, over-, under-, etc. ); n Romanic (in-, de-, re-, ex-, etc. ); n Greek (sym- sympathy, hyper- hypertension, etc. ). n 2) the lexico-grammatical type of the stem: deverbal (overdo, rewrite); n denominal (unbutton, ex-president); n deadjectival (uneasy). n

Prefixes may be classified on different principles: 3) meaning: negation (ungrateful, incorrect, disadvantage, etc. ); n time and order (foretell, foreknowledge, pre-war, post-war, etc. ); n repetition (rebuild, re-write, etc. ); n location (subway, inter-continental, etc. ), n quantity and intensity (bilingual, polytechnical), etc. n 4) stylistic reference: neutral stylistic reference (over-, re-, under-, etc. ); n with stylistic value (super-, ultra-, pseudo-, bi-, etc. ). n

Disputable cases: n words with a disputable structure, such as contain, retain, detain and conceive, receive, deceive, where we can see that re-, de-, con- act as prefixes and -tain, -ceive can be understood as roots. But in English these combinations of sounds have no lexical meaning and are called pseudo-morphemes. Some scientists treat such words as simple words, others as derived ones.

Suffixes may be classified according to: 1) the part of speech formed: a) noun-forming suffixes (-er, -dom, -ation, etc. ) (teacher, Londoner, freedom, justification, etc. ); b) adjective-forming suffixes (-able, -less, -ful, -ic, -ous, etc. ) (agreeable, careless, doubtful, poetic, courageous, etc. ); c) verb-forming suffixes (-en, -fy, -ize) (darken, satisfy, harmonize, etc. ); d) adverb-forming suffixes (-ly, -ward) (quickly, eastward, etc. ); e) numeral-forming suffixes (-teen, -ty ) (sixteen, seventy).

Suffixes may be classified according to: 2) lexico-grammatical character of the base the affix is usually added to: n deverbal (those added to the verbal base), e. g. -er, -ing, -ment, -able, etc. (speaker, reading, agreement, suitable, etc. ); n denominal (those added to the noun base), e. g. less, -ish, -ful, -ist, -some, etc. (handless, childish, mouthful, violinist, troublesome, etc. ); n deadjectival (those affixed to the adjective base), e. g. -en, -ly, -ish, -ness, etc. (blacken, slowly, reddish, brightness, etc. ).

Suffixes may be classified according to: 3) meaning. For instance, noun-suffixes fall into those denoting: a) the agent of an action, e. g. -er, -ant (baker, dancer, defendant, etc. ); b) nationality, e. g. -an, -ian, -ese, etc. (Arabian, Elizabethan, Russian, Chinese, etc. ); c) collectivity, e. g. -dom, -ry, -ship, etc. (moviedom, readership, peasantry, etc. ); d) diminutiveness, e. g. -ie, -let, -ling, etc. (birdie, piglet, wolfling, etc. ) e) quality, e. g. -ness, -ity (helplessness, answerability).

Suffixes may be classified according to: 4) the origin of suffixes: a) native (Germanic), such as -er, -ful, less, -ly; b) Romanic, such as : -tion, -ment, -able, eer; c) Greek, such as : -ist, -ism, -ize; d) Russian, such as -nik.

Suffixes may be classified according to: 5) productivity: a) productive, such as -er, -ize, -ly, ness; b) semi-productive, such as -eer, ette, -ward; c) non-productive, such as -ard (drunkard), -th (length).

Disputable cases: whether we have a suffix or a root morpheme in the structure of a word. In such cases we call such morphemes semi-suffixes, and words with such suffixes can be classified either as derived words or as compound words, e. g. -burger (cheeseburger), -aholic (workaholic).

Conversion. Typical semantic relations. Productivity of conversion.

The term conversion was first mentioned by H. _______ in 1891.

Conversion: n a morphological way of forming words when one part of speech is formed from another part of speech by changing its ______ The morphological paradigms of the word eye n as a noun: eye — eyes n as a verb: to eye, eyes, eyed, will eye

The clearest cases of conversion are observed between verbs and nouns, and this term is now mostly used in this narrow sense.

Conversion is very active both in nouns for verb formation: doctor to doctor, shop to shop in verbs to form nouns: to smile a smite, to offer an offer).

Typical semantic relations (verbs converted from nouns): a) names of _______ of a human body and _______ , _______ – verbs have instrumental meaning (to hammer, to rifle, to nail), b) verbs denote an action characteristic of the _______ denoted by the noun from which they have been converted (to crowd, to wolf, to ape),

Typical semantic relations (verbs converted from nouns): c) verbs denote acquisition, addition or deprivation if they are formed from nouns denoting an object (to fish, to dust, to paper), d) the name of a _______ – verbs denote the process of occupying the place or of putting smth. /smb. in it (to room, to house, to cage), e) the _______ denoted by the noun – verbs denote an action performed at the time (to winter, to week-end),

Typical semantic relations (verbs converted from nouns): f) the name of a _______ or occupation – verbs denote an activity typical of it (to nurse, to cook, to maid, to groom), g) the name of a _______ – verbs denote the act of putting smth. within the container (to can, to bottle, to pocket). h) the name of a _______ – verbs denote the process of taking it (to lunch, to supper).

Nouns converted from verbs can denote: a) instant of an action, e. g. a jump, a move, b) process or state, e. g. sleep, walk, c) agent of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e. g. a help, a flirt, a scold,

Nouns converted from verbs can denote: d) object or result of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e. g. a burn, a find, a purchase, e) place of the action, e. g. a drive, a stop, a walk.

The main reason that conversion pairs are so widely spread in present-day English: a limited number of inflexions the word-formation based on changing the paradigm is very economical and productive.

Word-composition. Features of compoundwords. Classifications of compound-words.

Composition nthe way of word building when a word is formed by joining two or more _______ to form one word.

As English compounds consist of free forms, it is difficult to distinguish them from phrases.

Criteria of distinguishing compound words: 1) _______ (solid or hyphenated spelling), e. g. phrase-book, Sunday. 2) _______ (based on the position of stress). There is a tendency to put heavy stress on the 1 -st element (‘blackboard, ‘ice-cream). But this rule does not hold in some cases: with adjectives (new-‘born, easy-‘going) etc.

3) _______ (a compound is a combination forming a unit that expresses a single idea and that is not identical in meaning to the sum of the meanings of its components in a free phrase). 4) the unity of _____ and _____ functioning. Compounds are used in a sentence as one part of it and only one component changes grammatically, e. g. These girls are chatterboxes. «Chatter-boxes» is a predicative in the sentence and only the second component changes grammatically.

Borderline cases (present the greatest difficulty in determining their status as compounds): n String compounds (sit-on-the-fenceattitude, once-in-a-time-opportunity). n «Stone Wall» constructions. n Bound stems/semi-affixes (seaman, homophobia).

Characteristic features of English compounds: n Both components in an English compound are free stems: they can be used as words with a distinctive meaning of their own. n English compounds have a two-stem pattern, with the exception of compound words which have form-word stems in their structure, e. g. middle-of-the-road, off-therecord, up-and-doing etc.

Compounds may be classified according to: 1. The way components are joined together: a) _______ (by joining together two stems without any joining morpheme), e. g. ball-point, to windowshop, b) _______ (components are joined by a linking element: vowels «o» or «i» or the consonant «s» ), e. g. handicraft, sportsman, c) _______ (components are joined by means of form-word stems), e. g. here-and-now, free-for-all.

Compounds may be classified according to: 2. Their _____: n compound proper (formed by joining two stems), e. g. to job-hunt, train-sick, n compound-derived compounds (besides the stems they have affixes), e. g. ear-minded, hydro-skimmer, n compound-shortened words, e. g. Eurodollar, H-bomb.

Compounds may be classified according to: 3. Semantic relations: 1) _______ (the meaning of the whole is the sum total of the meanings of the components), e. g. music-lover, flower-bed 2) _______ , e. g. hotdog, wet-blanket

5. Secondary types of word-formation

_____ types of wordformation: n lexicalization, n sound-imitation, n reduplication, n back-formation, n sound and stress interchange, n shortening (abbreviation, acronymy, blends, clipping).

Besides major types of word-formation (affixation, composition and conversion) in English, there are some other types, which are less important for replenishment of vocabulary. Some of them (sound-interchange, stress shift and back-formation) were acting in the past and are more important for diachronic research of vocabulary. Such types as clipping, blending, and acronymy are very common in modern English.

Lexicalization: the process, when due to some semantic and syntactic reasons, the grammatical flexion in some word forms loses its _____ meaning and becomes isolated from the paradigm e. g. the plural of nouns like arms, colours of the words arm and colours. As the result these word forms (arms, colours) develop a different lexical meaning (arms = weapons and colours = flag) and become independent words. n

Sound-imitation: n the way of word-building when a word is formed by _______ different sounds. E. g. to whisper, to sneeze, to whistle, to buzz, to bark, to bubble.

Reduplication: n the way of word-formation within which new words are formed by _____ a stem, either without any phonetic changes or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant. E. g. bye-bye, gee- gee, hush-hush, ping-pong, dilly-dally.

Back-formation: n the creation of new words by losing a _______ morpheme (babysitter to baby-sit, editor to edit, beggar to beg). It is opposite to suffixation, that is why it is called back-formation.

Sound-interchange n the creation of new words by changing the _____ (to breathe – breath, food – feed)

Stress-shift: n the process of forming new words by replacement of _______ from one syllable to another (‘import – to im’port, ‘record – to re’cord).

Types of Shortening: n substantivisation n acronyms and letter abbreviations n blends (сращения) n clippings (усечения)

Substantivisation: n is dropping of the final nominal member of a frequently used attributive word-group. The remaining adjective takes on the meaning and all syntactic functions of the noun and, in this way, develops into a new word. A number of nouns in English appeared in this way (documentary – a doc. film; finals – final examination; an editorial – an editorial article).

Abbreviation: na _____ form of a _____ word or a phrase used in a text in place of the whole for economy of space and effort.

Main types of shortenings: n _______ abbreviations (the result of shortening of words and word-groups only in written speech while orally the corresponding full forms are used. They are used for the economy of space and effort in writing), e. g. Mon — Monday, April, Mr. , Dr. n _______ abbreviations

Acronyms and letter abbreviations: Though the border-line between them is rather vague scholars make distinction between these 2 notions.

Letter abbreviations: n are mere replacements of longer phrases including names of well-known organizations, agencies, institutions, political parties, official offices. They are pronounced ______ and, as a rule, possess no linguistic forms proper to words (ITV = Independent Television; SST = Supersonic Transport)

Acronyms n are regular vocabulary units spoken as _______ (CLASS, yuppie). All acronyms, unlike letter abbreviations, perform the syntactic functions of ordinary words and can have grammatical inflexions. n Eg. : MP-MP’s-MPs

Acronyms may be formed in different ways: n from the initial letters or syllables of a phrase (NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization; UNO = United Nations Organization) n from the initial syllables of each word of a phrase (Interpol = international police)

Blends: n are words created when _______ and _______ segments of two words are joined together (smog = smoke + fog; brunch = breakfast + lunch).

Clipping: n is creation of new words by shortening a word of 2 or more _______ without changing its class membership (van = caravan, advantage (in tennis); dub = double; mike = microphone).

As a rule, lexical meanings of the clipped and the original word do not coincide. E. g. : Doc refers only to «sb. who practises medicine», while doctor denotes also «the higher degree given by a University, and a person who has received it» – Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Law).

Clippings fall into: n initial (van = advantage) n medial (specs = spectacles, maths = mathematics) n final (fan = fanatic)

Lecture №3. Productive and Non-productive Ways of Word-formation in Modern English

Productivity is the ability to form new words after existing patterns which are readily understood by the speakers of language. The most important and the most productive ways of word-formation are affixation, conversion, word-composition and abbreviation (contraction). In the course of time the productivity of this or that way of word-formation may change. Sound interchange or gradation (blood-to bleed, to abide-abode, to strike-stroke) was a productive way of word building in old English and is important for a diachronic study of the English language. It has lost its productivity in Modern English and no new word can be coined by means of sound gradation. Affixation on the contrary was productive in Old English and is still one of the most productive ways of word building in Modern English.

WORDBUILDING

Word-building is one of the main ways of enriching vocabulary. There are four main ways of word-building in modern English: affixation, composition, conversion, abbreviation. There are also secondary ways of word-building: sound interchange, stress interchange, sound imitation, blends, back formation.

AFFIXATION

Affixation is one of the most productive ways of word-building throughout the history of English. It consists in adding an affix to the stem of a definite part of speech. Affixation is divided into suffixation and prefixation.

Suffixation

The main function of suffixes in Modern English is to form one part of speech from another, the secondary function is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. (e.g. «educate» is a verb, «educator» is a noun, and music» is a noun, «musical» is also a noun or an adjective). There are different classifications of suffixes :

1. Part-of-speech classification. Suffixes which can form different parts of speech are given here :

a) noun-forming suffixes, such as: —er (criticizer), —dom (officialdom), —ism (ageism),

b) adjective-forming suffixes, such as: —able (breathable), less (symptomless), —ous (prestigious),

c) verb-forming suffixes, such as —ize (computerize) , —ify (minify),

d) adverb-forming suffixes , such as : —ly (singly), —ward (tableward),

e) numeral-forming suffixes, such as —teen (sixteen), —ty (seventy).

2. Semantic classification. Suffixes changing the lexical meaning of the stem can be subdivided into groups, e.g. noun-forming suffixes can denote:

a) the agent of the action, e.g. —er (experimenter), —ist (taxist), -ent (student),

b) nationality, e.g. —ian (Russian), —ese (Japanese), —ish (English),

c) collectivity, e.g. —dom (moviedom), —ry (peasantry, —ship (readership), —ati (literati),

d) diminutiveness, e.g. —ie (horsie), —let (booklet), —ling (gooseling), —ette (kitchenette),

e) quality, e.g. —ness (copelessness), —ity (answerability).

3. Lexico—grammatical character of the stem. Suffixes which can be added to certain groups of stems are subdivided into:

a) suffixes added to verbal stems, such as: —er (commuter), —ing (suffering), — able (flyable), —ment (involvement), —ation (computerization),

b) suffixes added to noun stems, such as: —less (smogless), —ful (roomful), —ism (adventurism), —ster (pollster), —nik (filmnik), —ish (childish),

c) suffixes added to adjective stems, such as: —en (weaken), —ly (pinkly), —ish (longish), —ness (clannishness).

4. Origin of suffixes. Here we can point out the following groups:

a) native (Germanic), such as —er,-ful, —less, —ly.

b) Romanic, such as : —tion, —ment, —able, —eer.

c) Greek, such as : —ist, —ism, -ize.

d) Russian, such as —nik.

5. Productivity. Here we can point out the following groups:

a) productive, such as: —er, —ize, —ly, —ness.

b) semi-productive, such as: —eer, —ette, —ward.

c) non-productive , such as: —ard (drunkard), —th (length).

Suffixes can be polysemantic, such as: —er can form nouns with the following meanings: agent, doer of the action expressed by the stem (speaker), profession, occupation (teacher), a device, a tool (transmitter). While speaking about suffixes we should also mention compound suffixes which are added to the stem at the same time, such as —ably, —ibly, (terribly, reasonably), —ation (adaptation from adapt). There are also disputable cases whether we have a suffix or a root morpheme in the structure of a word, in such cases we call such morphemes semi-suffixes, and words with such suffixes can be classified either as derived words or as compound words, e.g. —gate (Irangate), —burger (cheeseburger), —aholic (workaholic) etc.

Prefixation

Prefixation is the formation of words by means of adding a prefix to the stem. In English it is characteristic for forming verbs. Prefixes are more independent than suffixes. Prefixes can be classified according to the nature of words in which they are used: prefixes used in notional words and prefixes used in functional words. Prefixes used in notional words are proper prefixes which are bound morphemes, e.g. un— (unhappy). Prefixes used in functional words are semi-bound morphemes because they are met in the language as words, e.g. over— (overhead) (cf. over the table). The main function of prefixes in English is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. But the recent research showed that about twenty-five prefixes in Modern English form one part of speech from another (bebutton, interfamily, postcollege etc).

Prefixes can be classified according to different principles:

1. Semantic classification:

a) prefixes of negative meaning, such as: in— (invaluable), non— (nonformals), un— (unfree) etc,

b) prefixes denoting repetition or reversal actions, such as: de— (decolonize), re— (revegetation), dis— (disconnect),

c) prefixes denoting time, space, degree relations, such as: inter— (interplanetary) , hyper— (hypertension), ex— (ex-student), pre— (pre-election), over— (overdrugging) etc.

2. Origin of prefixes:

a) native (Germanic), such as: un-, over-, under— etc.

b) Romanic, such as: in-, de-, ex-, re— etc.

c) Greek, such as: sym-, hyper— etc.

When we analyze such words as adverb, accompany where we can find the root of the word (verb, company) we may treat ad-, ac— as prefixes though they were never used as prefixes to form new words in English and were borrowed from Romanic languages together with words. In such cases we can treat them as derived words. But some scientists treat them as simple words. Another group of words with a disputable structure are such as: contain, retain, detain and conceive, receive, deceive where we can see that re-, de-, con— act as prefixes and —tain, —ceive can be understood as roots. But in English these combinations of sounds have no lexical meaning and are called pseudo-morphemes. Some scientists treat such words as simple words, others as derived ones. There are some prefixes which can be treated as root morphemes by some scientists, e.g. after— in the word afternoon. American lexicographers working on Webster dictionaries treat such words as compound words. British lexicographers treat such words as derived ones.

COMPOSITION

Composition is the way of word building when a word is formed by joining two or more stems to form one word. The structural unity of a compound word depends upon: a) the unity of stress, b) solid or hyphеnated spelling, c) semantic unity, d) unity of morphological and syntactical functioning. These are characteristic features of compound words in all languages. For English compounds some of these factors are not very reliable. As a rule English compounds have one uniting stress (usually on the first component), e.g. hard-cover, best—seller. We can also have a double stress in an English compound, with the main stress on the first component and with a secondary stress on the second component, e.g. blood—vessel. The third pattern of stresses is two level stresses, e.g. snow—white, sky—blue. The third pattern is easily mixed up with word-groups unless they have solid or hyphеnated spelling.

Spelling in English compounds is not very reliable as well because they can have different spelling even in the same text, e.g. war—ship, blood—vessel can be spelt through a hyphen and also with a break, insofar, underfoot can be spelt solidly and with a break. All the more so that there has appeared in Modern English a special type of compound words which are called block compounds, they have one uniting stress but are spelt with a break, e.g. air piracy, cargo module, coin change, penguin suit etc. The semantic unity of a compound word is often very strong. In such cases we have idiomatic compounds where the meaning of the whole is not a sum of meanings of its components, e.g. to ghostwrite, skinhead, brain—drain etc. In nonidiomatic compounds semantic unity is not strong, e. g., airbus, to bloodtransfuse, astrodynamics etc.

English compounds have the unity of morphological and syntactical functioning. They are used in a sentence as one part of it and only one component changes grammatically, e.g. These girls are chatter-boxes. «Chatter-boxes» is a predicative in the sentence and only the second component changes grammatically. There are two characteristic features of English compounds:

a) Both components in an English compound are free stems, that is they can be used as words with a distinctive meaning of their own. The sound pattern will be the same except for the stresses, e.g. «a green-house» and «a green house». Whereas for example in Russian compounds the stems are bound morphemes, as a rule.

b) English compounds have a two-stem pattern, with the exception of compound words which have form-word stems in their structure, e.g. middle-of-the-road, off—the—record, up—and—doing etc. The two-stem pattern distinguishes English compounds from German ones.

WAYS OF FORMING COMPOUND WORDS

Compound words in English can be formed not only by means of composition but also by means of:

a) reduplication, e.g. too—too, and also by means of reduplication combined with sound interchange , e.g. rope-ripe,

b) conversion from word-groups, e.g. to micky—mouse, can—do, makeup etc,

c) back formation from compound nouns or word-groups, e.g. to bloodtransfuse, to fingerprint etc ,

d) analogy, e.g. lie—in (on the analogy with sit-in) and also phone—in, brawn—drain (on the analogy with brain—drain) etc.

CLASSIFICATIONS OF ENGLISH COMPOUNDS

1. According to the parts of speech compounds are subdivided into:

a) nouns, such as: baby-moon, globe-trotter,

b) adjectives, such as : free-for-all, power-happy,

c) verbs, such as : to honey-moon, to baby-sit, to henpeck,

d) adverbs, such as: downdeep, headfirst,

e) prepositions, such as: into, within,

f) numerals, such as : fifty—five.

2. According to the way components are joined together compounds are divided into: a) neutral, which are formed by joining together two stems without any joining morpheme, e.g. ball—point, to windowshop,

b) morphological where components are joined by a linking element: vowels «o» or «i» or the consonant «s», e.g. («astrospace», «handicraft», «sportsman»),

c) syntactical where the components are joined by means of form-word stems, e.g. here-and-now, free-for-all, do-or-die.

3. According to their structure compounds are subdivided into:

a) compound words proper which consist of two stems, e.g. to job-hunt, train-sick, go-go, tip-top,

b) derivational compounds, where besides the stems we have affixes, e.g. ear—minded, hydro-skimmer,

c) compound words consisting of three or more stems, e.g. cornflower—blue, eggshell—thin, singer—songwriter,

d) compound-shortened words, e.g. boatel, VJ—day, motocross, intervision, Eurodollar, Camford.

4. According to the relations between the components compound words are subdivided into:

a) subordinative compounds where one of the components is the semantic and the structural centre and the second component is subordinate; these subordinative relations can be different: with comparative relations, e.g. honey—sweet, eggshell—thin, with limiting relations, e.g. breast—high, knee—deep, with emphatic relations, e.g. dog—cheap, with objective relations, e.g. gold—rich, with cause relations, e.g. love—sick, with space relations, e.g. top—heavy, with time relations, e.g. spring—fresh, with subjective relations, e.g. foot—sore etc

b) coordinative compounds where both components are semantically independent. Here belong such compounds when one person (object) has two functions, e.g. secretary-stenographer, woman-doctor, Oxbridge etc. Such compounds are called additive. This group includes also compounds formed by means of reduplication, e.g. fifty-fifty, no-no, and also compounds formed with the help of rhythmic stems (reduplication combined with sound interchange) e.g. criss-cross, walkie-talkie.

5. According to the order of the components compounds are divided into compounds with direct order, e.g. kill—joy, and compounds with indirect order, e.g. nuclear—free, rope—ripe.

CONVERSION

Conversion is a characteristic feature of the English word-building system. It is also called affixless derivation or zero-suffixation. The term «conversion» first appeared in the book by Henry Sweet «New English Grammar» in 1891. Conversion is treated differently by different scientists, e.g. prof. A.I. Smirntitsky treats conversion as a morphological way of forming words when one part of speech is formed from another part of speech by changing its paradigm, e.g. to form the verb «to dial» from the noun «dial» we change the paradigm of the noun (a dial, dials) for the paradigm of a regular verb (I dial, he dials, dialed, dialing). A. Marchand in his book «The Categories and Types of Present-day English» treats conversion as a morphological-syntactical word-building because we have not only the change of the paradigm, but also the change of the syntactic function, e.g. I need some good paper for my room. (The noun «paper» is an object in the sentence). I paper my room every year. (The verb «paper» is the predicate in the sentence). Conversion is the main way of forming verbs in Modern English. Verbs can be formed from nouns of different semantic groups and have different meanings because of that, e.g.:

a) verbs have instrumental meaning if they are formed from nouns denoting parts of a human body e.g. to eye, to finger, to elbow, to shoulder etc. They have instrumental meaning if they are formed from nouns denoting tools, machines, instruments, weapons, e.g. to hammer, to machine-gun, to rifle, to nail,

b) verbs can denote an action characteristic of the living being denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to crowd, to wolf, to ape,

c) verbs can denote acquisition, addition or deprivation if they are formed from nouns denoting an object, e.g. to fish, to dust, to peel, to paper,

d) verbs can denote an action performed at the place denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to park, to garage, to bottle, to corner, to pocket,

e) verbs can denote an action performed at the time denoted by the noun from which they have been converted e.g. to winter, to week-end.

Verbs can be also converted from adjectives, in such cases they denote the change of the state, e.g. to tame (to become or make tame), to clean, to slim etc.

Nouns can also be formed by means of conversion from verbs. Converted nouns can denote: a) instant of an action e.g. a jump, a move,

b) process or state e.g. sleep, walk,

c) agent of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a help, a flirt, a scold,

d) object or result of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a burn, a find, a purchase,

e) place of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a drive, a stop, a walk.

Many nouns converted from verbs can be used only in the Singular form and denote momentaneous actions. In such cases we have partial conversion. Such deverbal nouns are often used with such verbs as: to have, to get, to take etc., e.g. to have a try, to give a push, to take a swim.

CRITERIA OF SEMANTIC DERIVATION

In cases of conversion the problem of criteria of semantic derivation arises: which of the converted pair is primary and which is converted from it. The problem was first analized by prof. A.I. Smirnitsky. Later on P.A. Soboleva developed his idea and worked out the following criteria:

1. If the lexical meaning of the root morpheme and the lexico-grammatical meaning of the stem coincide the word is primary, e.g. in cases pen — to pen, father — to father the nouns are names of an object and a living being. Therefore in the nouns «pen» and «father» the lexical meaning of the root and the lexico-grammatical meaning of the stem coincide. The verbs «to pen» and «to father» denote an action, a process therefore the lexico-grammatical meanings of the stems do not coincide with the lexical meanings of the roots. The verbs have a complex semantic structure and they were converted from nouns.

2. If we compare a converted pair with a synonymic word pair which was formed by means of suffixation we can find out which of the pair is primary. This criterion can be applied only to nouns converted from verbs, e.g. «chat» n. and «chat» v. can be compared with «conversation» – «converse».

3. The criterion based on derivational relations is of more universal character. In this case we must take a word-cluster of relative words to which the converted pair belongs. If the root stem of the word-cluster has suffixes added to a noun stem the noun is primary in the converted pair and vica versa, e.g. in the word-cluster: hand n., hand v., handy, handful the derived words have suffixes added to a noun stem, that is why the noun is primary and the verb is converted from it. In the word-cluster: dance n., dance v., dancer, dancing we see that the primary word is a verb and the noun is converted from it.

SUBSTANTIVIZATION OF ADJECTIVES

Some scientists (Yespersen, Kruisinga) refer substantivization of adjectives to conversion. But most scientists disagree with them because in cases of substantivization of adjectives we have quite different changes in the language. Substantivization is the result of ellipsis (syntactical shortening) when a word combination with a semantically strong attribute loses its semantically weak noun (man, person etc), e.g. «a grown-up person» is shortened to «a grown-up». In cases of perfect substantivization the attribute takes the paradigm of a countable noun, e.g. a criminal, criminals, a criminal’s (mistake), criminals’ (mistakes). Such words are used in a sentence in the same function as nouns, e.g. I am fond of musicals. (musical comedies). There are also two types of partly substantivized adjectives: 1) those which have only the plural form and have the meaning of collective nouns, such as: sweets, news, finals, greens; 2) those which have only the singular form and are used with the definite article. They also have the meaning of collective nouns and denote a class, a nationality, a group of people, e.g. the rich, the English, the dead.

«STONE WALL» COMBINATIONS

The problem whether adjectives can be formed by means of conversion from nouns is the subject of many discussions. In Modern English there are a lot of word combinations of the type, e.g. price rise, wage freeze, steel helmet, sand castle etc. If the first component of such units is an adjective converted from a noun, combinations of this type are free word-groups typical of English (adjective + noun). This point of view is proved by O. Yespersen by the following facts:

1. «Stone» denotes some quality of the noun «wall».

2. «Stone» stands before the word it modifies, as adjectives in the function of an attribute do in English.

3. «Stone» is used in the Singular though its meaning in most cases is plural, and adjectives in English have no plural form.

4. There are some cases when the first component is used in the Comparative or the Superlative degree, e.g. the bottomest end of the scale.

5. The first component can have an adverb which characterizes it, and adjectives are characterized by adverbs, e.g. a purely family gathering.

6. The first component can be used in the same syntactical function with a proper adjective to characterize the same noun, e.g. lonely bare stone houses.

7. After the first component the pronoun «one» can be used instead of a noun, e.g. I shall not put on a silk dress, I shall put on a cotton one.

However Henry Sweet and some other scientists say that these criteria are not characteristic of the majority of such units. They consider the first component of such units to be a noun in the function of an attribute because in Modern English almost all parts of speech and even word-groups and sentences can be used in the function of an attribute, e.g. the then president (an adverb), out-of-the-way villages (a word-group), a devil-may-care speed (a sentence). There are different semantic relations between the components of «stone wall» combinations. E.I. Chapnik classified them into the following groups:

1. time relations, e.g. evening paper,

2. space relations, e.g. top floor,

3. relations between the object and the material of which it is made, e.g. steel helmet,

4. cause relations, e.g. war orphan,

5. relations between a part and the whole, e.g. a crew member,

6. relations between the object and an action, e.g. arms production,

7. relations between the agent and an action e.g. government threat, price rise,

8. relations between the object and its designation, e.g. reception hall,

9. the first component denotes the head, organizer of the characterized object, e.g. Clinton government, Forsyte family,

10. the first component denotes the field of activity of the second component, e.g. language teacher, psychiatry doctor,

11. comparative relations, e.g. moon face,

12. qualitative relations, e.g. winter apples.

ABBREVIATION

In the process of communication words and word-groups can be shortened. The causes of shortening can be linguistic and extra-linguistic. By extra-linguistic causes changes in the life of people are meant. In Modern English many new abbreviations, acronyms, initials, blends are formed because the tempo of life is increasing and it becomes necessary to give more and more information in the shortest possible time. There are also linguistic causes of abbreviating words and word-groups, such as the demand of rhythm, which is satisfied in English by monosyllabic words. When borrowings from other languages are assimilated in English they are shortened. Here we have modification of form on the basis of analogy, e.g. the Latin borrowing «fanaticus» is shortened to «fan» on the analogy with native words: man, pan, tan etc. There are two main types of shortenings: graphical and lexical.

Graphical abbreviations

Graphical abbreviations are the result of shortening of words and word-groups only in written speech while orally the corresponding full forms are used. They are used for the economy of space and effort in writing. The oldest group of graphical abbreviations in English is of Latin origin. In Russian this type of abbreviation is not typical. In these abbreviations in the spelling Latin words are shortened, while orally the corresponding English equivalents are pronounced in the full form, e.g. for example (Latin exampli gratia), a.m. – in the morning (ante meridiem), No – number (numero), p.a. – a year (per annum), d – penny (dinarius), lb – pound (libra), i. e. – that is (id est) etc.

Some graphical abbreviations of Latin origin have different English equivalents in different contexts, e.g. p.m. can be pronounced «in the afternoon» (post meridiem) and «after death» (post mortem). There are also graphical abbreviations of native origin, where in the spelling we have abbreviations of words and word-groups of the corresponding English equivalents in the full form. We have several semantic groups of them: a) days of the week, e.g. Mon – Monday, Tue – Tuesday etc

b) names of months, e.g. Apr – April, Aug – August etc.

c) names of counties in UK, e.g. Yorks – Yorkshire, Berks – Berkshire etc

d) names of states in USA, e.g. Ala – Alabama, Alas – Alaska etc.

e) names of address, e.g. Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr. etc.

f) military ranks, e.g. capt. – captain, col. – colonel, sgt – sergeant etc.

g) scientific degrees, e.g. B.A. – Bachelor of Arts, D.M. – Doctor of Medicine. (Sometimes in scientific degrees we have abbreviations of Latin origin, e.g., M.B. – Medicinae Baccalaurus).

h) units of time, length, weight, e.g. f./ft – foot/feet, sec. – second, in. – inch, mg. – milligram etc.

The reading of some graphical abbreviations depends on the context, e.g. «m» can be read as: male, married, masculine, metre, mile, million, minute, «l.p.» can be read as long-playing, low pressure.

Initial abbreviations

Initialisms are the bordering case between graphical and lexical abbreviations. When they appear in the language, as a rule, to denote some new offices they are closer to graphical abbreviations because orally full forms are used, e.g. J.V. – joint venture. When they are used for some duration of time they acquire the shortened form of pronouncing and become closer to lexical abbreviations, e.g. BBC is as a rule pronounced in the shortened form. In some cases the translation of initialisms is next to impossible without using special dictionaries. Initialisms are denoted in different ways. Very often they are expressed in the way they are pronounced in the language of their origin, e.g. ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States) is given in Russian as АНЗУС, SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) was for a long time used in Russian as СОЛТ, now a translation variant is used (ОСВ – Договор об ограничении стратегических вооружений). This type of initialisms borrowed into other languages is preferable, e.g. UFO – НЛО, CП – JV etc. There are three types of initialisms in English:

a) initialisms with alphabetical reading, such as UK, BUP, CND etc

b) initialisms which are read as if they are words, e.g. UNESCO, UNO, NATO etc.

c) initialisms which coincide with English words in their sound form, such initialisms are called acronyms, e.g. CLASS (Computor-based Laboratory for Automated School System). Some scientists unite groups b) and c) into one group which they call acronyms. Some initialisms can form new words in which they act as root morphemes by different ways of wordbuilding:

a) affixation, e.g. AVALism, ex- POW, AIDSophobia etc.

b) conversion, e.g. to raff, to fly IFR (Instrument Flight Rules),

c) composition, e.g. STOLport, USAFman etc.

d) there are also compound-shortened words where the first component is an initial abbreviation with the alphabetical reading and the second one is a complete word, e.g. A-bomb, U-pronunciation, V -day etc. In some cases the first component is a complete word and the second component is an initial abbreviation with the alphabetical pronunciation, e.g. Three -Ds (Three dimensions) – стереофильм.

Abbreviations of words

Abbreviation of words consists in clipping a part of a word. As a result we get a new lexical unit where either the lexical meaning or the style is different form the full form of the word. In such cases as «fantasy» and «fancy», «fence» and «defence» we have different lexical meanings. In such cases as «laboratory» and «lab», we have different styles. Abbreviation does not change the part-of-speech meaning, as we have it in the case of conversion or affixation, it produces words belonging to the same part of speech as the primary word, e.g. prof. is a noun and professor is also a noun. Mostly nouns undergo abbreviation, but we can also meet abbreviation of verbs, such as to rev. from to revolve, to tab from to tabulate etc. But mostly abbreviated forms of verbs are formed by means of conversion from abbreviated nouns, e.g. to taxi, to vac etc. Adjectives can be abbreviated but they are mostly used in school slang and are combined with suffixation, e.g. comfy, dilly etc. As a rule pronouns, numerals, interjections. conjunctions are not abbreviated. The exceptions are: fif (fifteen), teen-ager, in one’s teens (apheresis from numerals from 13 to 19). Lexical abbreviations are classified according to the part of the word which is clipped. Mostly the end of the word is clipped, because the beginning of the word in most cases is the root and expresses the lexical meaning of the word. This type of abbreviation is called apocope. Here we can mention a group of words ending in «o», such as disco (dicotheque), expo (exposition), intro (introduction) and many others. On the analogy with these words there developed in Modern English a number of words where «o» is added as a kind of a suffix to the shortened form of the word, e.g. combo (combination) – небольшой эстрадный ансамбль, Afro (African) – прическа под африканца etc. In other cases the beginning of the word is clipped. In such cases we have apheresis, e.g. chute (parachute), varsity (university), copter (helicopter), thuse (enthuse) etc. Sometimes the middle of the word is clipped, e.g. mart (market), fanzine (fan magazine) maths (mathematics). Such abbreviations are called syncope. Sometimes we have a combination of apocope with apheresis, when the beginning and the end of the word are clipped, e.g. tec (detective), van (vanguard) etc. Sometimes shortening influences the spelling of the word, e.g. «c» can be substituted by «k» before «e» to preserve pronunciation, e.g. mike (microphone), Coke (coca-cola) etc. The same rule is observed in the following cases: fax (facsimile), teck (technical college), trank (tranquilizer) etc. The final consonants in the shortened forms are substituded by letters characteristic of native English words.

NON-PRODUCTIVE WAYS OF WORDBUILDING

SOUND INTERCHANGE

Sound interchange is the way of word-building when some sounds are changed to form a new word. It is non-productive in Modern English, it was productive in Old English and can be met in other Indo-European languages. The causes of sound interchange can be different. It can be the result of Ancient Ablaut which cannot be explained by the phonetic laws during the period of the language development known to scientists, e.g. to strike – stroke, to sing – song etc. It can be also the result of Ancient Umlaut or vowel mutation which is the result of palatalizing the root vowel because of the front vowel in the syllable coming after the root (regressive assimilation), e.g. hot — to heat (hotian), blood — to bleed (blodian) etc. In many cases we have vowel and consonant interchange. In nouns we have voiceless consonants and in verbs we have corresponding voiced consonants because in Old English these consonants in nouns were at the end of the word and in verbs in the intervocalic position, e.g. bath – to bathe, life – to live, breath – to breathe etc.

STRESS INTERCHANGE

Stress interchange can be mostly met in verbs and nouns of Romanic origin: nouns have the stress on the first syllable and verbs on the last syllable, e.g. `accent — to ac`cent. This phenomenon is explained in the following way: French verbs and nouns had different structure when they were borrowed into English, verbs had one syllable more than the corresponding nouns. When these borrowings were assimilated in English the stress in them was shifted to the previous syllable (the second from the end). Later on the last unstressed syllable in verbs borrowed from French was dropped (the same as in native verbs) and after that the stress in verbs was on the last syllable while in nouns it was on the first syllable. As a result of it we have such pairs in English as: to af«fix -`affix, to con`flict- `conflict, to ex`port -`export, to ex`tract — `extract etc. As a result of stress interchange we have also vowel interchange in such words because vowels are pronounced differently in stressed and unstressed positions.

SOUND IMITATION

It is the way of word-building when a word is formed by imitating different sounds. There are some semantic groups of words formed by means of sound imitation:

a) sounds produced by human beings, such as : to whisper, to giggle, to mumble, to sneeze, to whistle etc.

b) sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, such as: to hiss, to buzz, to bark, to moo, to twitter etc.

c) sounds produced by nature and objects, such as: to splash, to rustle, to clatter, to bubble, to ding-dong, to tinkle etc.

The corresponding nouns are formed by means of conversion, e.g. clang (of a bell), chatter (of children) etc.

BLENDS

Blends are words formed from a word-group or two synonyms. In blends two ways of word-building are combined: abbreviation and composition. To form a blend we clip the end of the first component (apocope) and the beginning of the second component (apheresis) . As a result we have a compound- shortened word. One of the first blends in English was the word «smog» from two synonyms: smoke and fog which means smoke mixed with fog. From the first component the beginning is taken, from the second one the end, «o» is common for both of them. Blends formed from two synonyms are: slanguage, to hustle, gasohol etc. Mostly blends are formed from a word-group, such as: acromania (acronym mania), cinemaddict (cinema adict), chunnel (channel, canal), dramedy (drama comedy), detectifiction (detective fiction), faction (fact fiction) (fiction based on real facts), informecial (information commercial), Medicare (medical care), magalog (magazine catalogue) slimnastics (slimming gymnastics), sociolite (social elite), slanguist (slang linguist) etc.

BACK FORMATION

It is the way of word-building when a word is formed by dropping the final morpheme to form a new word. It is opposite to suffixation, that is why it is called back formation. At first it appeared in the language as a result of misunderstanding the structure of a borrowed word. Prof. Yartseva explains this mistake by the influence of the whole system of the language on separate words. E.g. it is typical of English to form nouns denoting the agent of the action by adding the suffix -er to a verb stem (speak- speaker). So when the French word «beggar» was borrowed into English the final syllable «ar» was pronounced in the same way as the English —er and Englishmen formed the verb «to beg» by dropping the end of the noun. Other examples of back formation are: to accreditate (from accreditation), to bach (from bachelor), to collocate (from collocation), to enthuse (from enthusiasm), to compute (from computer), to emote (from emotion), to televise (from television) etc.

As we can notice in cases of back formation the part-of-speech meaning of the primary word is changed, verbs are formed from nouns.

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