Word composition of the english words

Word-composition
(compounding)
is the formation of words by morphologically joining two or more
stems.

A
compound
word
is a word consisting of at least two stems which usually occur in the
language as free forms, e.g. university
teaching award committee member.

The
compound inherits
most of its semantic and syntactic information from its head,
i.e. the most important member of a compound word modified by the
other component.

The
structural
pattern
of English compounds

[
X Y]
y

X
= {root, word, phrase},
Y
= {root, word},
y
= grammatical properties inherited from Y

According
to the
type
of the linking element:

compounds
without
a linking element, e.g. toothache,
bedroom, sweet-heart;

compounds
with a
vowel linking element,
e.g. handicraft,
speedometer;

compounds
with a
consonant linking element,
e.g. statesperson,
craftsman;

compounds
with a
preposition linking stem,
e.g. son-in-law,
lady-in-waiting;

compounds
with a
conjunction linking stem,
e.g. bread-and-butter.

According
to the
type
of relationship
between the components

-in
coordinative
(copulative)
compounds neither of the components dominates the other, e.g.
fifty-fifty,
whisky-and-soda, driver-conductor;

-in
subordinative
(determinative)
compounds the components are neither structurally nor semantically
equal in importance but are based on the domination of one component
over the other, e.g. coffeepot,
Oxford-educated, to headhunt,
blue-eyed,
red-haired
etc.

According
to the
type
of relationship
between the components, subordinative compounds are classified into:

-syntactic
compounds
if their components are placed in the order that resembles the order
of words in free phrases made up according to the rules of Modern
English syntax, e.g. a
know-nothing
— to know nothing, a
blackbird
– a black bird;

-asyntactic
compounds
if they do not conform to the grammatical patterns current in
present-day English, e.g. baby-sitting
– to sit with a baby, oil-rich
– to be rich in oil.

According
to the
way of composition:

—compound
proper
is a compound formed after a composition pattern, i.e. by joining
together the stems of words already available in the language, with
or without the help of special linking elements, e.g. seasick,
looking-glass, helicopter-rescued, handicraft;

-derivational
compound is
a compound which is formed by two simultaneous processes of
composition and derivation; in a derivational compound the structural
integrity of two free stems is ensured by a suffix referring to the
combination as a whole, e.g. long-legged,
many-sided, old-timer, left-hander.

According
to the
semantic relations
between the constituents:

non-idiomatic
compounds,
whose meanings can be described as the sum of their constituent
meanings, e.g. a
sleeping-car, an evening-gown, a snowfall;

compounds
one of the components of which has undergone semantic derivation,
i.e. changed its meaning, e.g. a
blackboard,
a
bluebell;

idiomatic
compounds,
the meaning of which cannot be deduced from the meanings of the
constituents, e.g. a
ladybird,
a
tallboy,
horse-marine.
The
bahuvrihi compounds
(Sanskrit ‘much riced’) are idomatic formations in which a
person, animal or thing is metonymically named after some striking
feature (mainly in their appearance) they possess; their
word-building pattern is an
adjectival stem + a noun stem,
e.g.
bigwig,
fathead, highbrow, lowbrow, lazy-bones.

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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS OF WORD-COMPOSITION AS A WAY OF
WORD-FORMATION IN ENGLISH 6
1.1 The means of word-formation in English language 6
1.2 The concept and the essence word-composition 14
CHAPTER 2. STRUCTURAL-SEMANTIC AND FUNCTIONAL FEATURES OF COMPOUND WORDS 19
2.1 The analysis of semantic features of compound words 19
2.2 The analysis of functional features of compound words 24
CHAPTER 3. ANALYTICAL BASES OF USE OF WORD-COMPOSITION 36
3.1 Practical examples of compound words in modern English 36
3.2 New tendencies of use of word-composition as a way of word-formation in
English 38
CONCLUSION 41
LITERATURE 44
APPENDIXES 46
Appendix 1 46
Appendix 2 49
Appendix 3 52
Appendix 4 54

INTRODUCTION

  In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic
change, which is a change in a
single word’s meaning. The line between word formation and semantic
change is sometimes a bit
blurry; what one person views as a new use of an old word, another person might
view as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form.  Word
formation can also be contrasted with the formation of idiomatic expressions, though sometimes words can form from
multi-word phrases.

The
subject-matter of the Course Paper is to investigate the
word – composition in the English system of word – formation.

The
topicality of the problem  results from the necessity to devote 
to description of theoretical bases of allocation of word-composition as way of
word-formation in modern English language.

The
novelty of the problem arises from the necessity to define the
role of word-composition way which is, along with abbreviations, stays one of
the most productive for last decades..

The
main aim of the Course Paper is to summarize and systemize
different  methods of word — composition in English.

The
aim
of the course Paper presupposes the solutions of the following tasks:

·                  
To
expand and update the definition of the term “word — composition”

·                  
to
define the role of word-composition

According the tasks of the Course
Paper its structure is arranged in the following way:

Introduction,
the Main Part, Conclusion, Resume, Literature, test of Reference Material, List
of Electronic References.

In
the Introduction we provide the explanation of the theme choice, state the
topicality of it, establish the main aim, and the practical tasks of the Paper.

In
the main part we analyze
the character features of the modern classification of word – composition in
the English system of word – formation.

In conclusion we
generalize the results achieved.

CHAPTER 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS OF WORD-COMPOSITION AS A
WAY OF WORD-FORMATION IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
1.1 The means of word-composition in English language              The chapter is devoted to
description of theoretical bases of allocation of word-composition as way of
word-formation in modern English language. We try to define the role of
word-composition way which is, along with abbreviations, stays one of the most
productive for last decades. The main way of enrichment of lexicon of any
language is word-formation. All innovations in branches of human knowledge are
fixed in new words and expressions. 

               The
word-formation system of language is in constant development, as it reflects
evolution of the language. At different stages of language development ways of
word-formation become more or less productive. However there are also ways of
the word-formation which stay productive for a very long time. One of such
methods is word-composition.
             Word-composition is a very ancient way of word-formation, and it
serves as powerful tool of the replenishment of language and its grammatical
system perfection for hundred years.
              Many researches are devoted composition studying. So, the
considerable contribution to studying of this problem was brought by V.Guz’s,
G.Marchand’s, S.Ulman’s researches, and also the studies of I.V.Arnold,
N.V.Kosarev, E.S.Kubrjakov, O.D.Meshkova, V.J.Ryazanov, A.I.Smirnitsky,
M.D.Stepanova, M.V.Tsareva. That is the problem is widely studied both in domestic,
and in foreign practice.
However it should be noticed that the majority of word-composition studies
concern 70-80 years of the last century, and during last 20 years no serious
researches appeared.
Besides,
the analysis of researches reveals considerable confrontation in opinions of
different authors both in questions of defying the concept of word-formation,
and in approaches of classification of its kinds. There
are different
opinions in concerning quantity of ways of word-formation. 
        These divergences speak that various ways change the activity and
become more or less productive in a definite period. Anyhow, it is conventional
that modern English has different ways of word-formation: Affixation, suffixation, shortening,  prefixation, conversion and
composition or compound.                     Compounding or word-composition is
one of the productive types of word-formation in Modern English. Composition
like all other ways of deriving words has its own peculiarities as to the means used, the nature of
bases and their distribution, as to the range of application, the scope of
seman­tic classes and the factors conducive to pro­ductivity. Compounding or
word composition  is one of the productive types of
word-formation in Modern English. Composition like all other ways of deriving
words has its own peculiarities as to the means used , the nature of  bases
and  their  distribution , as to  the  range of application  , the scope of 
semantic classes and  the factors  conducive to productivity. Compounds are
made up of  two ICs which are both derivational bases. Compound words are
inseparable vocabulary units. They are formally and semantically dependent on
the constituent bases and the semantic relations between them which mirror the
relations between the motivating units. The ICs of compound words represent
bases of all three structural types.

1.    
The
bases built on stems may be of different degree

2.      Of complexity as,
e.g., week-end,
office-management, postage-stamp, aircraft-carrier, fancy-dress-maker, etc. However, this complexity of
structure of bases is not typical of the bulk of Modern English compounds. In this connection
care should be taken not to confuse compound words with polymorphic words of
secondary derivation, i.e. derivatives built according to an affixal
pattern but on a compound stem for its base such as, e.g., school-mastership ([n+n]+suf), ex—housewife (prf+[n+n]),to weekend, to
spotlight ([n+n]+conversion).

CHAPTER 2. STRUCTURAL-SEMANTIC AND FUNCTIONAL
FEATURES OF COMPOUND WORDS

2.1 Structural
features

              Compound words like all
other inseparable vocabulary units take shape in a definite system of
grammatical forms, syntactic and semantic features. Compounds, on the one hand,
are generally clearly distinguished from and often opposed to free word-groups,
on the other hand they lie astride the border-line between words and
word-groups and display close ties and correlation with the system of free
word-groups. The structural inseparability of compound words

finds expression in the unity of their specific
distributional pattern and specific

stress
and spelling pattern.

Structurally compound
words are characterized by the specif­ic order and arrangement in which bases
follow one another. The order in which the two bases are placed within a
compound is rigid­ly fixed in
Modern English and it is the second IC that makes the head-member of the word,
i.e. its structural and semantic centre. The head-member is of basic importance
as it preconditions both the lexico-grammatical and semantic features of the
first component. It is of inter­est to note that the difference between stems
(that serve as bases in com­pound words) and word-forms they coincide with is most
obvious in some compounds, especially in compound adjectives. Adjectives
like long, wide,
rich are
characterized by grammatical forms of degrees of comparison longer, wider, richer. The
corresponding stems functioning as bases in compound words lack grammatical
independence and forms proper to the words and retain only the part-of-speech
meaning; thus com­pound adjectives with adjectival stems for their second
components, e. g. age-long, oil-rich, inch-wide, do not form degrees of comparison as the compound
adjective oil-rich does not form
them the way the word rich does, but conforms to the general rule of
polysyllabic adjectives and has analytical forms of degrees of comparison. The
same difference be­tween words and stems is not so noticeable in compound nouns
with the noun-stem for the second component.

Phonetically compounds
are also marked by a specific structure of their own. No phonemic changes of
bases occur in composition but the compound word acquires a new stress pattern,
different from the stress in the motivating words, for example words key and hole or hot and house each possess
their own stress but when the stems of these words are brought together to make
up a new compound word, ‘keyhole — ‘a hole in a lock into which a key fits’, or ‘hothouse — ‘a heated
building for growing delicate plants’, the latter is given a different stress
pattern — a unity stress on the first component in our case. Compound words
have three stress patterns: a high or unity stress on the first component as
in ‘honeymoon,
‘doorway, etc. a double stress, with a primary stress on the first
component and a weaker, secondary stress on the second component, e. g. ‘blood-ֻvessel, ‘mad-ֻdoctor, ‘washing-ֻmachine,
etc. It is not infrequent, however, for both ICs to have level stress as in,
for instance, ‘arm-‘chair,
‘icy-‘cold, ‘grass-‘green, etc.

Graphically most
compounds have two types of spelling — they are spelt either solidly or with a
hyphen. Both types of spelling when accompanied by structural and phonetic
peculiarities serve as a sufficient indication of inseparability of compound
words in contradis­tinction to phrases. It is true that hyphenated spelling by
itself may be sometimes misleading, as it may be used in word-groups to
emphasize their phraseological character as in e. g. daughter-in-law, man-of-war,
brother-in-arms or in longer combinations of words to indicate
the se­mantic unity of a string of words used attributively as, e.g., I-know-what-you’re-going-to-say
expression, we-are-in-the-know jargon, the young-must-be-right attitude. The two types of
spelling typical of com­pounds, however, are not rigidly observed and there are
numerous fluc­tuations between solid or hyphenated spelling on the one hand and
spell­ing with a break between the components on the other, especially in
nominal compounds of then+n type. The spelling of these compounds varies
from author to author and from dictionary to dictionary. For example, the
words war-path,
war-time, money-lender are spelt both with a hy­phen and solidly; blood-poisoning, money-order,
wave-length, war-ship— with a hyphen and with a break; underfoot, insofar, underhand—solidly
and with a break²⁵.
It is noteworthy that new compounds of this type tend to solid or hyphenated
spelling. This inconsistency of spelling in com­pounds, often accompanied by a
level stress pattern (equally typical of word-groups) makes the problem of
distinguishing between compound words (of the n + n type in particular) and word-groups
especially dif­ficult.

           
In
this connection it should be stressed that Modern English nouns (in the Common
Case, Sg.) as has been universally recognized possess an attributive function
in which they are regularly used to form numer­ous nominal phrases as, e.
g. peace years,
stone steps, government office, etc. Such variable nominal phrases are semantically
fully derivable from the meanings of the two nouns and are based on the
homogeneous attributive semantic relations unlike compound words. This system
of nominal phrases exists side by side with the specific and numerous classes
of nominal compounds which as a rule carry an additional semantic com­ponent
not found in phrases.

            
It
is also important to stress that these two classes of vocabulary units —
compound words and free phrases — are not only opposed but also stand in close
correlative relations to each other.

2.2
Semantic features

             
Semantically compound
words are generally motivated units. The mean­ing of the compound is first of
all derived from the combined lexical meanings of its components. The semantic
peculiarity of the derivational bases and the semantic difference between the
base and the stem on which the latter is built is most obvious in compound
words. Compound words with a common second or first component can serve as
illustra­tions. The stem of the word board is polysemantic and its multiple mean­ings serve as
different derivational bases, each with its own selective range for the
semantic features of the other component, each forming a separate set of
compound words, based on specific derivative relations. Thus the base board meaning ‘a flat
piece of wood square or oblong’ makes a set of compounds chess-board, notice-board,
key-board, diving-board, foot-board, sign-board; compounds paste-board, cardboard are built on the
base meaning ‘thick, stiff paper’; the base board– meaning ‘an author­ized body of men’, forms
compounds school-board,
board-room. The
same can be observed in words built on the polysemantic stem of the word foot. For example,
the base foot– in foot-print, foot-pump,
foothold, foot-bath, foot-wear has the meaning of ‘the terminal
part of the leg’, in foot-note, foot-lights, foot-stone the base foot– has the
meaning of ‘the lower part’, and in foot-high, foot-wide, footrule — ‘measure of
length’. It is obvious from the above-given examples that the meanings of the
bases of compound words are interdependent and that the choice of each is
delimited as in variable word-groups by the nature of the other IC of the word.
It thus may well be said that the combination of bases serves as a kind of
minimal inner context distinguishing the particular individual lexical meaning
of each component. In this connection we should also remember the significance
of the differential meaning found in both components which becomes especially
obvious in a set of compounds containing iden­tical bases.

CLASSIFICATION
OF WORD — COMPOSITION

Compound
words can be described from different points of view and consequently may be
classified according to different principles. They may be viewed from the point
of view:

·       
of
general relationship and degree of semantic independence of components;

·       
of
the parts of speech compound words represent;

·       
of
the means of composition used to link the two ICs to­gether;

·       
of
the type of ICs that are brought together to form a compound;

·       
of
the correlative relations with the system of free word-groups.

          
From the point of view of degree of se­mantic independence there are two types
of relationship between the ICs of com­pound words that are generally
recognized in linguistic literature: the relations of coordination and
subordination, and accordingly compound words fall into two classes: coordinative compounds (often
termed copulative or additive) and subordinative (often termed determinative).

In coordinative compounds
the two ICs are semantically equally important as in fighter-bomber, oak-tree,
girl-friend, Anglo-Amer­ican. The constituent bases belong to the
same class and той often to the same
semantic group. Coordinative compounds make up a comparati­vely small group of
words. Coordinative compounds fall into three groups:

1.    
Reduplicative compounds
which are made up by the re­petition of the same base as in goody-goody, fifty-fifty,
hush-hush, pooh-pooh. They are all only partially motivated.

2.    
Compounds
formed by joining the phonically variated rhythmic twin forms which either
alliterate with the same initial consonant but vary the vowels as in chit-chat, zigzag, sing-song, or
rhyme by varying the initial consonants as in clap-trap, a walky-talky, helter-skelter. This subgroup
stands very much apart. It is very of­ten referred to pseudo-compounds and
considered by some linguists irrelevant to productive word-formation owing to
the doubtful morphem­ic status of their components. The constituent members of
compound words of this subgroup are in most cases unique, carry very vague or
no lexical meaning of their own, are not found as stems of independently
functioning words. They are motivated mainly through the rhythmic doubling of
fanciful sound-clusters.

3.    
Coordinative compounds of both subgroups
(a, b) are mostly restrict­ed to the colloquial layer, are marked by a heavy
emotive charge and possess a very small degree of productivity.

The bases of additive compounds such as a queen-bee, an actor-manager,
unlike the compound words of the first two subgroups, are built on stems of the
independently functioning words of the same part of speech. These bases often
semantically stand in the genus-species relations. They denote a person or an
object that is two things at the same time. A secretary-stenographer is thus a person who is
both a stenograph­er and a secretary, a bed-sitting-room (a bed-sitter) is both a bed-room and a sitting-room at
the same time. Among additive compounds there is a specific subgroup of
compound adjectives one of ICs of which is a bound root-morpheme. This group is
limited to the names of nationalities such as Sino-Japanese, Anglo-Saxon, Afro-Asian, etc.

Additive compounds of this group are
mostly fully motivated but have a very limited degree of productivity.

However it must be stressed that though
the distinction between coor­dinative and subordinative compounds is generally
made, it is open to doubt and there is no hard and fast border-line between
them. On the contrary, the border-line is rather vague. It often happens that
one and the same compound may with equal right be interpreted either way — as a
coordinative or a subordinative compound, e. g. a woman-doctor may be
understood as ‘a woman who is at the same time a doctor’ or there can be traced
a difference of importance between the components and it may be primarily felt
to be ‘a doctor who happens to be a woman’ (also a mother-goose, a clock-tower).  In
subordinative compounds the components are neither structurally nor
semantically equal in importance but are based on the domination of the
head-member which is, as a rule, the second IC. The second IC thus is the
semantically and grammatically dominant part of the word, which preconditions
the part-of-speech meaning of the whole compound as in stone-deaf, age-long which
are obviously adjectives, a wrist-watch, road-building, a baby-sitter which
are nouns.

Functionally compounds are viewed as words
of different parts of speech. It is the head-member of the compound, i.e. its
second IC that is indicative of the grammatical and lexical category the
compound word belongs to.

Compound words are found in all parts of
speech, but the bulk of com­pounds are nouns and adjectives. Each part of
speech is characterized by its set of derivational patterns and their semantic
variants. Compound adverbs, pronouns and connectives are represented by an
insignificant number of words, e. g. somewhere, somebody, inside, upright, otherwise moreover,
elsewhere, by means of, etc. No new compounds are coined on this pattern.
Compound pronouns and adverbs built on the repeating first and second IC
like body, ever,
thing make
closed sets of words

SOME	+	BODY
ANY	THING
EVERY	ONE
NO	WHERE

On the whole composition is not productive
either for adverbs, pro­nouns or for connectives. Verbs are of special
interest. There is a small group of compound verbs made up of the combination
of verbal and adverbial stems that language retains from earlier stages, e.
g. to bypass, to
inlay, to offset. This type according to some authors, is no longer
productive and is rarely found in new compounds. There are many polymorphic
verbs that are represented by morphem­ic sequences of two root-morphemes,
like to weekend,
to gooseflesh, to spring-clean, but derivationally they are all words of secondary
deriva­tion in which the existing compound nouns only serve as bases for
derivation. They are often termed pseudo-compound verbs. Such polymorph­ic
verbs are presented by two groups: 1)verbs formed by means of conversion from
the stems of compound nouns as in to spotlight from a spotlight, to sidetrack from a side-track, to
handcuff from handcuffs, to blacklist from a blacklist, to
pinpoint from a pin-point;

2) verbs formed by back-derivation from
the stems of compound nouns, e. g. to baby-sit from a baby-sitter, to playact from play-acting, to
housekeep from house-keeping, to spring-clean from spring-cleaning.

From the point of view of the means by
which the components are joined together, compound words may be classified
into:

Words formed by merely placing one constitu­ent
after another in a definite order which thus is indicative of both
the semantic value and the morphological unity of the compound, e. g. rain-driven, house-dog,
pot-pie (as opposed to dog-house, pie-pot). This means of linking
the components is typical of the majority of Modern English compounds in all
parts of speech.

As to the order of components,
subordinative compounds are often classified as:

Ø asyntactic compounds in which the order of
bases runs counter to the order in which the motivating words can be brought
together under the rules of syntax of the language. For example, in vari­able
phrases adjectives cannot be modified by preceding adjectives and noun
modifiers are not placed before participles or adjectives, yet this kind of
asyntactic arrangement is typical of compounds, e. g. red-hot, bluish-black,
pale-blue, rain-driven, oil-rich. The asyntactic order is
typical of the majority of Modern English compound words;

Ø syntactic compounds whose components are
placed in the order that re­sembles the order of words in free phrases arranged
according to the rules of syntax of Modern English. The order of the components
in compounds like blue-bell, mad-doctor, blacklist ( a + n ) reminds one of the order and
arrangement of the corresponding words in phrases a blue bell, a mad doc­tor, a
black list (
A + N ), the order of compounds of the typedoor-handle, day-time,
spring-lock (
n + n ) resembles the order of words in nominal phrases with
attributive function of the first noun ( N + N ),e. g. spring time, stone steps, peace movement.

Ø Compound words whose ICs are joined
together with a
special linking-element — the linking vowels [ou] and occasionally
[i] and the linking consonant [s/z] — which is indicative of composition as in,
for example, speedometer,
tragicomic, statesman. Compounds of this type can be both nouns and
adjectives, subordinative and additive but are rather few in number since they
are considerably restricted by the nature of their components. The additive
compound adjectives linked with the help of the vowel [ou] are limited to the
names of nationalities and represent a specific group with a bound root for the
first component, e. g. Sino-Japanese, Afro-Asian, Anglo-Saxon.

In subordinative adjectives and nouns the
productive linking element is also [ou] and compound words of the type are most
productive for scientific terms. The main peculiarity of compounds of the type
is that their constituents are non-assimilated bound roots borrowed mainly from
clas­sical languages, e. g. electro-dynamic, filmography, technophobia, video­phone,
sociolinguistics, videodisc.

A small group of compound nouns may also
be joined with the help of linking consonant [s/z], as in sportsman, landsman,
saleswoman, brides­maid.This small group of words is restricted by the second
component which is, as a rule, one of the three bases man–, woman–, people–.
The commonest of them is man–.

Compounds may be also classified according
to the nature of the bases and the interconnection with other ways of
word-formation into the so-called compounds proper and derivational compounds.

Compounds
proper are formed by joining together bases
built on the stems or on the word-forms of independently functioning words with
or without the help of special linking element such as door­step, age-long,
baby-sitter, looking-glass, street-fighting, handiwork, sportsman. Compounds
proper constitute the bulk of English compounds in all parts of speech, they
include both subordinative and coordinative classes, productive and
non-productive patterns.

Derivational
compounds, e. g. long-legged, three-cornered, a
break-down, a pickpocket differ from compounds proper in the nature of bases
and their second IC. The two ICs of the compound long-legged — ‘having long
legs’ — are the suffix –ed meaning ‘having’ and the base built on a free
word-group long
legs whose
member words lose their grammatical independence, and are reduced to a single
component of the word, a derivational base. Any other segmentation of such
words, say into long– and legged– is impossible
because firstly, adjectives like *legged do not exist in Modern English and secondly, because
it would contradict the lexical meaning of these words. The derivational
adjectival suffix –ed converts this newly formed base into a word. It can be
graphically represented as long legs à [ (long–leg) + –ed] à long–legged.
The suffix –ed becomes the grammatically
and semantically dominant component of the word, its head-member. It imparts
its part-of-speech meaning and its lexical meaning thus making an adjective
that may be semantically interpreted as ‘with (or having) what is denoted by
the motivating word-group’. Comparison of the pattern of compounds proper
like baby-sitter,
pen-holder
[ n +
( v + –er ) ] with the pattern of derivational compounds
like long-legged [ (a + n) + –ed ] reveals the
difference: derivational compounds are formed by a derivational means, a suffix
in case if words of the long-legged type, which is applied to a base that each time is
formed anew on a free word-group and is not recurrent in any other type if
words. It follows that strictly speaking words of this type should be treated
as pseudo-compounds or as a special group of derivatives. They are habitually
referred to derivational compounds because of the peculiarity of their
derivational bases which are felt as built by composition, i.e. by bringing
together the stems of the member-words of a phrase which lose their
independence in the process. The word itself, e. g. long-legged, is built by the
application of the suffix, i.e. by derivation and thus may be described as a
suffixal derivative.

Derivational compounds or pseudo-compounds
are all subordinative and fall into two groups according to the type of variable
phrases that serve as their bases and the derivational means used:

Ø derivational
compound adjectives formed
with the help of the highly-productive adjectival suffix –ed applied to bases
built on attributive phrases of the A + N, Num + N, N + N type, e. g. long legs, three corners, doll
face. Accordingly
the derivational adjectives under discussion are built after the patterns [ (a + n ) + –ed], e.
g. long-legged,
flat-chested, broad-minded; [ ( пит + n) + –ed], e. g. two-sided, three-cornered; [ (n + n ) + –ed], e. g. doll-faced, heart-shaped.

Ø derivational
compound nouns formed
mainly by conversion applied to bases built on three types of variable phrases
— verb-adverb phrase, verbal-nominal and attributive phrases.

The commonest type of phrases that serves
as derivational bases for this group of derivational compounds is the V + Adv type
of word-groups as in, for instance, a breakdown, a breakthrough, a castaway, a layout.
Semantically derivational compound nouns form lexical groups typical of
conversion, such as an act or instance of the action, e. g. a holdup — ‘a delay in
traffic’’ from to
hold up — ‘delay, stop by use of force’; a result of the
action, e. g. a
breakdown —
‘a failure in machinery that causes work to stop’ from to break down — ‘become
disabled’; an active agent orrecipient of the action, e. g. cast-offs — ‘clothes that he
owner will not wear again’ from to cast off — ‘throw away as unwanted’; a show-off —
‘a person who shows off’ from to show off — ‘make a dis­play of one’s abilities
in order to impress people’. Derivational compounds of this group are spelt
generally solidly or with a hyphen and often retain a level stress.
Semantically they are motivated by transparent deriva­tive relations with the
motivating base built on the so-called phrasal verb and are typical of the
colloquial layer of vocabulary. This type of derivational compound nouns is
highly productive due to the productiv­ity of conversion.

The semantic subgroup of derivational
compound nouns denoting agents calls for special mention. There is a group of
such substantives built on an attributive and verbal-nominal type of phrases.
These nouns are semantically only partially motivated and are marked by a heavy
emotive charge or lack of motivation and often belong to terms as, for
example, a
kill-joy, a wet-blanket — ‘one who kills enjoyment’; a turnkey —
‘keeper of the keys in prison’; a sweet-tooth — ‘a person who likes sweet
food’; a
red-breast — ‘a bird called the robin’. The analysis of these
nouns eas­ily proves that they can only be understood as the result of
conversion for their second ICs cannot be understood as their structural or
semantic centres, these compounds belong to a grammatical and lexical groups
different from those their components do. These compounds are all ani­mate
nouns whereas their second ICs belong to inanimate objects. The meaning of the
active agent is not found in either of the components but is imparted as a
result of conversion applied to the word-group which is thus turned into a
derivational base.

These compound nouns are often referred to
in linguistic literature as «bahuvrihi» compounds or exocentric compounds, i.e.
words whose seman­tic head is outside the combination. It seems more correct to
refer them to the same group of derivational or pseudo-compounds as the above
cited groups.

This small group of derivational nouns is
of a restricted productivity, its heavy constraint lies in its idiomaticity and
hence its stylistic and emotive colouring.

The linguistic analysis of extensive lan­guage
data proves that there exists a re­gular correlation between the system of free
phrases and all types of subordinative (and additive) compounds²⁶. Correlation
embraces both the structure and the meaning of compound words, it underlies the
entire system of productive present-day English composition conditioning the
derivational patterns and lexical types of compounds.

 

Compounds are words produced by combining
two or more stems which occur in the language as free forms. They may be classified
proceeding from different criteria:

according to the parts of speech to which
they belong;

according to the means of composition used
to link their ICs together;

according to the structure of their ICs;

according to their semantic characteristics.

3.1 Correlation
types of compounds

The
description of compound words through the correlation with variable word-groups
makes it possible to classify them into four major classes: adjectival-nominal,
verbal-nominal, nominal and verb – adverb compounds.

I. A d j e c t i v a l — n o m i n a l
comprise four subgroups of compound

adjectives, three of them are proper
compounds and one derivational.

All four subgroups are productive and
semantically as a rule motivated.

The main constraint on the productivity in
all the four subgroups is

the lexical-semantic types of the
head-members and the lexical valency of

the head of the correlated word-groups.

Adjectival-nominal compound adjectives
have the following patterns:

1) the polysemantic n+a
pattern
that gives rise to two types:

a) compound adjectives based on semantic
relations of resemblance

with adjectival bases denoting most
frequently colours, size, shape, etc. for

the second IC. The type is correlative
with phrases of comparative type as

A +as + N,
e.g.
snow-white,
skin-deep, age-long, etc.

b) compound adjectives based on a variety
of adverbial relations. The

type is correlative with one of the most
productive adjectival phrases of

the A +
prp
+
N
type
and consequently semantically varied, cf. colourblind,

road-weary, care-free, etc.

2) the monosemantic pattern n+ven
based
mainly on the instrumental, locative and temporal relations between the ICs
which are:

conditioned by the lexical meaning and
valency of the verb, e.g. stateowned,

home-made. The type is highly
productive. Correlative relations

are established with word-groups of the Ven+
with/by
+
N
type.

3) the monosemantic пит
+
п pattern
which gives rise to a small and

peculiar group of adjectives, which are
used only attributively, e.g. (a) twoday

(beard), (a) seven-day
(week),
etc. The type correlates with attributive

phrases with a numeral for their first
member.

4) a highly productive monosemantic
pattern of derivational compound

adjectives based on semantic relations of
possession conveyed by the suffix

-ed. The basic variant is [(a+n)+ -ed],
e.g.
low-ceilinged,
long- legged.

The pattern has two more variants: [(пит
+
n)
+
-ed),
l(n+n)+ -ed], e.g.

one-sided, bell-shaped, doll-faced. The
type correlates accordingly with

phrases with (having) + A+N,
with
(having) + Num +
N,
with
+
N + N

or with +
N + of + N.

The system of productive types of compound
adjectives is summarised

in Table 1. (Appendix)

II. V e r b a l — n o m i n a l compounds
may be described through one derivational structure n+nv,
i.e.
a combination of a noun-base (in most

cases simple) with a deverbal, suffixal
noun-base. The structure includes

four patterns differing in the character
of the deverbal noun- stem and accordingly

in the semantic subgroups of compound
nouns. All the patterns

correlate in the final analysis with V+N
and
V+prp+N
type
which depends

on the lexical nature of the verb:

1) [n+(v+-er)],
e.g.
bottle-opener,
stage-manager, peace-fighter. The

pattern is monosemantic and is based on
agentive relations that can be interpreted

‘one/that/who does smth’.

2) [n+(v+
-ing)],
e.g.
stage-managing,
rocket-flying. The pattern is

monosemantic and may be interpreted as
‘the act of doing smth’. The pattern

has some constraints on its productivity
which largely depends on the

lexical and etymological character of the
verb.

3) [n+(v+ -tion/ment)], e.g.
office-management,
price-reduction. The

pattern is a variant of the above-mentioned
pattern (No 2). It has a heavy

constraint which is embedded in the
lexical and etymological character of

the verb that does not permit
collocability with the suffix -ing or deverbal

nouns.

4) [n+(v +
conversion)],
e.g.
wage-cut,
dog-bite, hand-shake, the pattern

is based on semantic relations of result,
instance, agent, etc.

III. N o m i n a l c o m p o u n d s are
all nouns with the most

polysemantic and highly-productive
derivational pattern n+n; both bases

re generally simple stems, e.g. windmill,
horse-race, pencil-case. The

pattern conveys a variety of semantic
relations, the most frequent are the

relations of purpose, partitive, local and
temporal relations. The pattern

correlates with nominal word-groups of the
N+prp+N
type.

IV. V e r b — a d v e r b compounds are
all derivational nouns, highly

productive and built with the help of
conversion according to the pattern l(v + adv) + conversion].
The
pattern correlates with free phrases

V + Adv
and
with all phrasal verbs of different degree of stability. The pattern

is polysemantic and reflects the manifold
semantic relations typical of

conversion pairs.

The system of productive types of compound
nouns is summarized in

Table
2. (Appendix)

ANALYTICAL BASES
OF USE OF WORD-COMPOSITION 36
3.1 Practical examples of compound words.

Here are the
practical examples of compound words in “Theater” of W. Somerset Maugham.

Business – like [n+(v
+
conversion)],
is
based on semantic relations of result, – довольно по
деловому
(ch.1 p 3)

well – known
(ch
1 p
4) [a+v]
– хорошо известный

ink – stand (ch 1 p 4) [n+v] —
чернильница

heavily – painted lips  (ch 1 p 5)
[a+v+ed] ярко- накрашенные губы

dressing – table (ch 1 p [n+ ing + n] –
туалетный
столик

eyebrow — (ch 1 p [n+  n] – бровь

satinwood — (ch 1 p [n+  n] –
атласное дерево

CONCLUSION

1. Compound words are made up of two ICs,
both of which are derivational bases.

2. The structural and semantic centre of
acompound, i.e. its head-member, is its second IC, which preconditions the part
of speech the compound belongs to and its lexical class.

3. Phonetically compound words are marked
by three stress patterns

— a unity stress, a double stress and a
level stress. The first two are the

commonest stress patterns in compounds.

4. Graphically as a rule compounds are
marked by two types of spelling

— solid spelling and hyphenated spelling.
Some types of compound

words are characterised by fluctuations
between hyphenated spelling and

spelling with a space between the components.

5. Derivational patterns in compound words
may be mono- and

polysemantic, in which case they are based
on different semantic relations

between the components.

6. The meaning of compound words is
derived from the combined

lexical meanings of the components and the
meaning of the derivational

pattern.

7. Compound words may be described from
different points of view:

a) According to the degree of semantic
independence of components

compounds are classified into coordinative
and subordinative. The bulk of

present-day English compounds are
subordinative.

b) According to different parts of speech.
Composition is typical in

Modern English mostly of nouns and
adjectives.

c) According to the means by which
components are joined together

they are classified into compounds formed
with the help of a linking element

and without. As to the order of ICs it may
be asyntactic and syntactic.

d) According to the type of bases
compounds are classified into compounds

proper and derivational compounds.

e) According to the structural semantic
correlation with free phrases

compounds are subdivided into
adjectival-nominal compound adjectives,

verbal-nominal, verb-adverb and nominal
compound nouns.

8. Structural and semantic correlation is
understood as a regular interdependence

between compound words and variable
phrases. A potential

possibility of certain types of phrases
presupposes a possibility of compound

words
conditioning their structure and semantic type.

APPENDIX

TABLE 1. Productive Types of
Compound Adjectives

Free Phrases	Compound Adjectives
Compounds Proper	Derivational Compounds	Pattern	Semantic Relations
1) (a). as white as snow —	snow-white	—	n + a	relations of resemblance
(b). free from care; rich in oil; greedy for power; tired of pleasure care-free,	oil-rich, power-greedy, pleasuretired	—	— n + a	various adverbial relations
2.c o v e r e d w i t h snow; bound by duty	snow-covered duty-bound		n + ven	instrumental (or agentive relations
3. two days	(a) two-day (beard) (b) seven-year (plan)	— ‘	num + n	quantitative relations
wi t h ( h a v i n g ) long legs		long-legged	[(a + n) + -ed]	possessive relations

APENDIX 2.

TABLE 2. Productive Types of Compound Nouns

Free Phrases	Compound Nouns
Compounds Proper	Derivational Compounds	Pattern
Verbal — Nominal Phrases 1. the reducer of prices to reduce 2. the reducing of prices prices 3. the reduction of prices to shake 4. the shake of hands hands	1) price-reducer 2) price-reducing 3) price-reduction 4) hand-shake	—	— [n + (v + -er)] [n + (v + -ing)] [n + (v + -tion/- ment)] [n + (v + conversion)]
Nominal Phrases 1) a tray for ashes 2) the neck of the bottle 3) a house in the country 4) a ship run by steam 5) the doctor is a woman 6) a fish resembling a sword	1) ash-tray 2) bottle- neck 3) country- house 4) steamship 5) womandoctor 6) swordfish	—	— [n’ + n1]
Verb — Adverb Phrases to break down to cast away to run away		a break-down a castaway a runaway	[(v + adv) + conversion]

WORD STRUCTURE IN MODERN ENGLISH

  I.   The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of morphemes. Allomorphs.

II.   Structural types of words.

III.   Principles of morphemic analysis.

  IV.   Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of stems. Derivational types of words.

I.   The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of Morphemes.  Allomorphs.

There are two levels of approach to the study of word- structure: the level of morphemic analysis and the level of derivational or word-formation analysis.

Word is the principal and basic unit of the language system, the largest on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic plane of linguistic analysis.

It has been universally acknowledged that a great many words have a composite nature and are made up of morphemes, the basic units on the morphemic level, which are defined as the smallest indivisible two-facet language units.

The term morpheme is derived from Greek morphe “form ”+ -eme. The Greek suffix –eme has been adopted by linguistic to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. A form in these cases a recurring discrete unit of speech. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of single morpheme. Even a cursory examination of the morphemic structure of English words reveals that they are composed of morphemes of different types: root-morphemes and affixational morphemes. Words that consist of a root and an affix are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word building known as affixation (or derivation).

The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of the word; it has a very general and abstract lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related words constituting one word-cluster, e.g. (to) teach, teacher, teaching. Besides the lexical meaning root-morphemes possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots.

Affixational morphemes include inflectional affixes or inflections and derivational affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms. Derivational affixes are relevant for building various types of words. They are lexically always dependent on the root which they modify. They possess the same types of meaning as found in roots, but unlike root-morphemes most of them have the part-of-speech meaning which makes them structurally the important part of the word as they condition the lexico-grammatical class the word belongs to. Due to this component of their meaning the derivational affixes are classified into affixes building different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs.

Roots and derivational affixes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g., in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill, etc.: the root-morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, fill-, are understood as the lexical centers of the words, and –less, -y,      -ness, -er, re- are felt as morphemes dependent on these roots.

 Distinction is also made of free and bound morphemes.

Free morphemes coincide with word-forms of independently functioning words. It is obvious that free morphemes can be found only among roots, so the morpheme boy- in the word boy is a free morpheme; in the word undesirable there is only one free morpheme desire-; the word pen-holder has two free morphemes  pen- and hold-. It follows that bound morphemes are those that do not coincide with separate word- forms, consequently all derivational morphemes, such as –ness, -able, -er are bound. Root-morphemes may be both free and bound. The morphemes theor- in the words theory, theoretical, or horr- in the words horror, horrible, horrify; Angl- in  Anglo-Saxon; Afr- in Afro-Asian are all bound roots as there are no identical word-forms.

It should also be noted that morphemes may have different phonemic shapes. In the word-cluster please , pleasing , pleasure , pleasant the phonemic shapes of the word stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other. All the representations of the given morpheme, that manifest alternation are called allomorphs/or morphemic variants/ of that morpheme.

The combining form allo- from Greek allos “other” is used in linguistic terminology to denote elements of a group whose members together consistute a structural unit of the language (allophones, allomorphs). Thus, for example, -ion/ -tion/ -sion/ -ation are the positional variants of the same suffix, they do not differ in meaning or function but show a slight difference in sound form depending on the final phoneme of the preceding stem. They are considered as variants of one and the same morpheme and called its allomorphs.

Allomorph is defined as a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environment and so characterized by complementary description.

Complementary distribution is said to take place, when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment.

Different morphemes are characterized by contrastive distribution, i.e. if they occur in the same environment they signal different meanings. The suffixes –able and –ed, for instance, are different morphemes, not allomorphs, because adjectives in –able mean “ capable of beings”.

Allomorphs will also occur among prefixes. Their form then depends on the initials of the stem with which they will assimilate.

Two or more sound forms of a stem existing under conditions of complementary distribution may also be regarded as allomorphs, as, for instance, in long a: length n.

II. Structural types of words.

The morphological analysis of word- structure on the morphemic level aims at splitting the word into its constituent morphemes – the basic units at this level of analysis – and at determining their number and types. The four types (root words, derived words, compound, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition the most productive ways of word building.

According to the number of morphemes words can be classified into monomorphic and polymorphic. Monomorphic or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small, dog, make, give, etc. All polymorphic word fall into two subgroups:  derived words and compound words – according to the number of root-morphemes they have. Derived words are composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes, e.g. acceptable, outdo, disagreeable, etc. Compound words are those which contain at least two root-morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant. There can be both root- and derivational morphemes in compounds as in pen-holder, light-mindedness, or only root-morphemes as in lamp-shade, eye-ball, etc.

These structural types are not of equal importance. The clue to the correct understanding of their comparative value lies in a careful consideration of: 1)the importance of each type in the existing wordstock, and 2) their frequency value in actual speech. Frequency is by far the most important factor. According to the available word counts made in different parts of speech, we find that derived words numerically constitute the largest class of words in the existing wordstock; derived nouns comprise approximately 67% of the total number, adjectives about 86%, whereas compound nouns make about 15% and adjectives about 4%. Root words come to 18% in nouns, i.e. a trifle more than the number of compound words; adjectives root words come to approximately 12%.

But we cannot fail to perceive that root-words occupy a predominant place. In English, according to the recent frequency counts, about 60% of the total number of nouns and 62% of the total number of adjectives in current use are root-words. Of the total number of adjectives and nouns, derived words comprise about 38% and 37% respectively while compound words comprise an insignificant 2% in nouns and 0.2% in adjectives. Thus it is the root-words that constitute the foundation and the backbone of the vocabulary and that are of paramount importance in speech. It should also be mentioned that root words are characterized by a high degree of collocability and a complex variety of meanings in contrast with words of other structural types whose semantic structures are much poorer. Root- words also serve as parent forms for all types of derived and compound words.

III. Principles of morphemic analysis.

In most cases the morphemic structure of words is transparent enough and individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word. The segmentation of words is generally carried out according to the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on the binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents. Each Immediate Constituent at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. These are referred to Ultimate Constituents.

A synchronic morphological analysis is most effectively accomplished by the procedure known as the analysis into Immediate Constituents. ICs are the two meaningful parts forming a large linguistic unity.

The method is based on the fact that a word characterized by morphological divisibility is involved in certain structural correlations. To sum up: as we break the word we obtain at any level only ICs one of which is the stem of the given word. All the time the analysis is based on the patterns characteristic of the English vocabulary. As a pattern showing the interdependence of all the constituents segregated at various stages, we obtain the following formula:

un+ { [ ( gent- + -le ) + -man ] + -ly}

Breaking a word into its Immediate Constituents we observe in each cut the structural order of the constituents.

A  diagram presenting the four cuts described looks as follows:

1. un- / gentlemanly

2.   un- / gentleman / — ly

3.   un- / gentle / — man / — ly

4.   un- / gentl / — e / — man / — ly

A similar analysis on the word-formation level showing not only the morphemic constituents of the word but also the structural pattern on which it is built.

The analysis of word-structure at the morphemic level must proceed to the stage of Ultimate Constituents. For example, the noun friendliness is first segmented into the ICs: [frendlı-] recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking and friendly and [-nıs] found in a countless number  of nouns, such as unhappiness, blackness, sameness, etc. the IC [-nıs] is at the same time an UC of the word, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. Any further division of –ness would give individual speech-sounds which denote nothing by themselves. The IC [frendlı-] is next broken into the ICs [-lı] and [frend-] which are both UCs of the word.

Morphemic analysis under the method of Ultimate Constituents may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-called root-principle and affix principle.

According to the affix principle the splitting of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of the affix within a set of words, e.g. the identification of the suffix –er leads to the segmentation of words singer, teacher, swimmer into the derivational morpheme – er  and the roots teach- , sing-, drive-.

According to the root-principle, the segmentation of the word is based on the identification of the root-morpheme in a word-cluster, for example the identification of the root-morpheme agree-  in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree.

As a rule, the application of these principles is sufficient for the morphemic segmentation of words.

However, the morphemic structure of words in a number of cases defies such analysis, as it is not always so transparent and simple as in the cases mentioned above. Sometimes not only the segmentation of words into morphemes, but the recognition of certain sound-clusters as morphemes become doubtful which naturally affects the classification of words. In words like retain, detain, contain or  receive, deceive, conceive, perceive the sound-clusters [rı-], [dı-] seem to be singled quite easily, on the other hand, they undoubtedly have nothing in common with the phonetically identical prefixes  re-, de- as found in words re-write, re-organize, de-organize, de-code. Moreover, neither the sound-cluster [rı-] or [dı-], nor the [-teın] or [-sı:v] possess any lexical or functional meaning of their own. Yet, these sound-clusters are felt as having a certain meaning because [rı-] distinguishes retain from detain and [-teın] distinguishes retain from receive.

It follows that all these sound-clusters have a differential and a certain distributional meaning as their order arrangement point to the affixal status of re-, de-, con-, per- and makes one understand —tain and –ceive as roots. The differential and distributional meanings seem to give sufficient ground to recognize these sound-clusters as morphemes, but as they lack lexical meaning of their own, they are set apart from all other types of morphemes and are known in linguistic literature as pseudo- morphemes. Pseudo- morphemes of the same kind  are also encountered in words like rusty-fusty.

IV.   Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of Stems. Derivational types of word.

The morphemic analysis of words only defines the constituent morphemes, determining their types and their meaning but does not reveal the hierarchy of the morphemes comprising the word. Words are no mere sum totals of morpheme, the latter reveal a definite, sometimes very complex interrelation. Morphemes are arranged according to certain rules, the arrangement differing in various types of words and particular groups within the same types. The pattern of morpheme arrangement underlies the classification of words into different types and enables one to understand how new words appear in the language. These relations within the word and the interrelations between different types and classes of words are known as derivative or word- formation relations.

The analysis of derivative relations aims at establishing a correlation between different types and the structural patterns words are built on. The basic unit at the derivational level is the stem.

The stem is defined as that part of the word which remains unchanged throughout its paradigm, thus the stem which appears in the paradigm (to) ask ( ), asks, asked, asking is ask-; thestem of the word singer ( ), singer’s, singers, singers’ is singer-. It is the stem of the word that takes the inflections which shape the word grammatically as one or another part of speech.

The structure of stems should be described in terms of IC’s analysis, which at this level aims at establishing the patterns of typical derivative relations within the stem and the derivative correlation between stems of different types.

There are three types of stems: simple, derived and compound.

Simple stems are semantically non-motivated and do not constitute a pattern on analogy with which new stems may be modeled. Simple stems are generally monomorphic and phonetically identical with the root morpheme. The derivational structure of stems does not always coincide with the result of morphemic analysis. Comparison proves that not all morphemes relevant at the morphemic level are relevant at the derivational level of analysis. It follows that bound morphemes and all types of pseudo- morphemes are irrelevant to the derivational structure of stems as they do not meet requirements of double opposition and derivative interrelations. So the stem of such words as retain, receive, horrible, pocket, motion, etc. should be regarded as simple, non- motivated stems.

Derived stems are built on stems of various structures though which they are motivated, i.e. derived stems are understood on the basis  of the derivative relations between their IC’s and the correlated stems. The derived stems are mostly polymorphic in which case the segmentation results only in one IC that is itself a stem, the other IC being necessarily a derivational affix.

Derived stems are not necessarily polymorphic.

Compound stems are made up of two IC’s, both of which are themselves stems, for example match-box, driving-suit, pen-holder, etc. It is built by joining of two stems, one of which is simple, the other derived.

In more complex cases the result of the analysis at the two levels sometimes seems even to contracted one another.

The derivational types of words are classified according to the structure of their stems into simple, derived and compound words.

Derived words are those composed of one root- morpheme and one or more derivational morpheme.

Compound words contain at least two root- morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant.

Derivational compound is a word formed by a simultaneous process of composition and derivational.

Compound words proper are formed by joining together stems of word already available in the language.

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A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme.^[1] The English language, like many others, uses compounds frequently. English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of their components.

History[edit]

English inherits the ability to form compounds from its parent the Proto-Indo-European language and expands on it.^[2] Close to two-thirds of the words in the Old English poem Beowulf are found to be compounds.^[3] Of all the types of word-formation in English, compounding is said to be the most productive.^[4]

Compound nouns[edit]

Most English compound nouns are noun phrases (i.e. nominal phrases) that include a noun modified by adjectives or noun adjuncts. Due to the English tendency toward conversion, the two classes are not always easily distinguished. Most English compound nouns that consist of more than two words can be constructed recursively by combining two words at a time. Combining «science» and «fiction», and then combining the resulting compound with «writer», for example, can construct the compound «science-fiction writer». Some compounds, such as salt and pepper or mother-of-pearl, cannot be constructed in this way, however.

Types of compound nouns[edit]

Native English compound[edit]

Since English is a mostly analytic language, unlike most other Germanic languages, it creates compounds by concatenating words without case markers. As in other Germanic languages, the compounds may be arbitrarily long.^[a] However, this is obscured by the fact that the written representation of long compounds always contains spaces. Short compounds may be written in three different forms, which do not correspond to different pronunciations, though:

• The spaced or open form consisting of newer combinations of usually longer words, such as «distance learning», «player piano», «ice cream».
• The hyphenated form in which two or more words are connected by a hyphen. Are often hyphenated:
  • Compounds that contain affixes: «house-build(er)» and «single-mind(ed)(ness)»,
  • Adjective–adjective compounds: «blue-green»,
  • Verb–verb compounds: «freeze-dried»,
  • Compounds that contain articles, prepositions or conjunctions: «rent-a-cop», «mother-of-pearl» and «salt-and-pepper».
• The solid or closed form in which two usually moderately short words appear together as one. Solid compounds most likely consist of short (monosyllabic) units that often have been established in the language for a long time. Examples are «housewife», «lawsuit», «wallpaper», «basketball».

Usage in the US and in the UK differs and often depends on the individual choice of the writer rather than on a hard-and-fast rule; therefore, spaced, hyphenated, and solid forms may be encountered for the same compound noun, such as the triplets place name/place-name/placename and particle board/particle-board/particleboard.

Examples by word class

Modifier	Head	Compound
noun	noun	football
adjective	noun	blackboard
verb	noun	breakwater
preposition	noun	underworld
noun	adjective	snow white
adjective	adjective	blue-green
verb	adverb	tumbledown
preposition	adjective	over-ripe
noun	verb	browbeat
adjective	verb	highlight
verb	verb	freeze-dry
preposition	verb	undercut
noun	preposition	love-in
adverb	preposition	forthwith
verb	adverb	takeout
preposition	adverb	without

Neo-classical compound[edit]

In addition to this native English compounding, there is the neo-classical type, which consists of words derived from Classical Latin, as horticulture, and those of Ancient Greek origin, such as photography, the components of which are in bound form (connected by connecting vowels, which are most often -i- and -o- in Classical Latin and Ancient Greek respectively) and cannot stand alone.^[5]

Analyzability (transparency)[edit]

In general, the meaning of a compound noun is a specialization of the meaning of its head. The modifier limits the meaning of the head. This is most obvious in descriptive compounds (known as karmadharaya compounds in the Sanskrit tradition), in which the modifier is used in an attributive or appositional manner. A blackboard is a particular kind of board, which is (generally) black, for instance.

In determinative compounds, however, the relationship is not attributive. For example, a footstool is not a particular type of stool that is like a foot. Rather, it is a stool for one’s foot or feet. (It can be used for sitting on, but that is not its primary purpose.) In a similar manner, an office manager is the manager of an office, an armchair is a chair with arms, and a raincoat is a coat against the rain. These relationships, which are expressed by prepositions in English, would be expressed by grammatical case in other languages. (Compounds of this type are known as tatpurusha in the Sanskrit tradition.)

Both of the above types of compounds are called endocentric compounds because the semantic head is contained within the compound itself—a blackboard is a type of board, for example, and a footstool is a type of stool.

However, in another common type of compound, the exocentric (known as a bahuvrihi compound in the Sanskrit tradition), the semantic head is not explicitly expressed. A redhead, for example, is not a kind of head, but is a person with red hair. Similarly, a blockhead is also not a head, but a person with a head that is as hard and unreceptive as a block (i.e. stupid). And a lionheart is not a type of heart, but a person with a heart like a lion (in its bravery, courage, fearlessness, etc.).

There is a general way to tell the two apart. In a compound «[X . Y]»:

• Can one substitute Y with a noun that is a Y, or a verb that does Y? This is an endocentric compound.
• Can one substitute Y with a noun that is with Y? This is an exocentric compound.

Exocentric compounds occur more often in adjectives than nouns. A V-8 car is a car with a V-8 engine rather than a car that is a V-8, and a twenty-five-dollar car is a car with a worth of $25, not a car that is $25. The compounds shown here are bare, but more commonly, a suffixal morpheme is added, such as -ed: a two-legged person is a person with two legs, and this is exocentric.

On the other hand, endocentric adjectives are also frequently formed, using the suffixal morphemes -ing or -er/or. A people-carrier is a clear endocentric determinative compound: it is a thing that is a carrier of people. The related adjective, car-carrying, is also endocentric: it refers to an object which is a carrying-thing (or equivalently, which does carry).

These types account for most compound nouns, but there are other, rarer types as well. Coordinative, copulative or dvandva compounds combine elements with a similar meaning, and the compound meaning may be a generalization instead of a specialization. Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, is the combined area of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but a fighter-bomber is an aircraft that is both a fighter and a bomber. Iterative or amredita compounds repeat a single element, to express repetition or as an emphasis. Day by day and go-go are examples of this type of compound, which has more than one head.

Analyzability may be further limited by cranberry morphemes and semantic changes. For instance, the word butterfly, commonly thought to be a metathesis for flutter by, which the bugs do, is actually based on an old wives’ tale that butterflies are small witches that steal butter from window sills. Cranberry is a part translation from Low German, which is why we cannot recognize the element cran (from the Low German kraan or kroon, «crane»). The ladybird or ladybug was named after the Christian expression «our Lady, the Virgin Mary».

In the case of verb+noun compounds, the noun may be either the subject or the object of the verb. In playboy, for example, the noun is the subject of the verb (the boy plays), whereas it is the object in callgirl (someone calls the girl).

Sound patterns[edit]

Stress patterns may distinguish a compound word from a noun phrase consisting of the same component words. For example, a black board, adjective plus noun, is any board that is black, and has equal stress on both elements.^[b] The compound blackboard, on the other hand, though it may have started out historically as black board, now is stressed on only the first element, black.^[c] Thus a compound such as the White House normally has a falling intonation which a phrase such as a white house does not.^[d]

Compound modifiers[edit]

English compound modifiers are constructed in a very similar way to the compound noun. Blackboard Jungle, leftover ingredients, gunmetal sheen, and green monkey disease are only a few examples.

A compound modifier is a sequence of modifiers of a noun that function as a single unit. It consists of two or more words (adjectives, gerunds, or nouns) of which the left-hand component modifies the right-hand one, as in «the dark-green dress»: dark modifies the green that modifies dress.

Solid compound modifiers[edit]

There are some well-established permanent compound modifiers that have become solid over a longer period, especially in American usage: earsplitting, eyecatching, and downtown.

However, in British usage, these, apart from downtown, are more likely written with a hyphen: ear-splitting, eye-catching.

Other solid compound modifiers are for example:

• Numbers that are spelled out and have the suffix -fold added: «fifteenfold», «sixfold».
• Points of the compass: northwest, northwestern, northwesterly, northwestwards. In British usage, the hyphenated and open versions are more common: north-western, north-westerly, north west, north-westwards.

Hyphenated compound modifiers[edit]

Major style guides advise consulting a dictionary to determine whether a compound modifier should be hyphenated; the dictionary’s hyphenation should be followed even when the compound modifier follows a noun (that is, regardless of whether in attributive or predicative position), because they are permanent compounds^[6][7] (whereas the general rule with temporary compounds is that hyphens are omitted in the predicative position because they are used only when necessary to prevent misreading, which is usually only in the attributive position, and even there, only on a case-by-case basis).^[8][9]

Generally, a compound modifier is hyphenated if the hyphen helps the reader differentiate a compound modifier from two adjacent modifiers that modify the noun independently. Compare the following examples:

• «small appliance industry»: a small industry producing appliances
• «small-appliance industry»: an industry producing small appliances^[e]

The hyphen is unneeded when capitalization or italicization makes grouping clear:

• «old English scholar»: an old person who is English and a scholar, or an old scholar who studies English
• «Old English scholar»: a scholar of Old English.
• «De facto proceedings» (not «de-facto«)

If, however, there is no risk of ambiguities, it may be written without a hyphen: Sunday morning walk (a «walk on Sunday morning» is practically the same as a «morning walk on Sunday»).

Hyphenated compound modifiers may have been formed originally by an adjective preceding a noun, when this phrase in turn precedes another noun:

• «Round table» → «round-table discussion»
• «Blue sky» → «blue-sky law»
• «Red light» → «red-light district»
• «Four wheels» → «four-wheel drive» (historically, the singular or root is used, not the plural)

Others may have originated with a verb preceding an adjective or adverb:

• «Feel good» → «feel-good factor»
• «Buy now, pay later» → «buy-now pay-later purchase»

Yet others are created with an original verb preceding a preposition.

• «Stick on» → «stick-on label»
• «Walk on» → «walk-on part»
• «Stand by» → «stand-by fare»
• «Roll on, roll off» → «roll-on roll-off ferry»

The following compound modifiers are always hyphenated when they are not written as one word:

• An adjective preceding a noun to which —d or —ed has been added as a past-participle construction, used before a noun:
  • «loud-mouthed hooligan»
  • «middle-aged lady»
  • «rose-tinted glasses»
• A noun, adjective, or adverb preceding a present participle:
  • «an awe-inspiring personality»
  • «a long-lasting affair»
  • «a far-reaching decision»
• Numbers, whether or not spelled out, that precede a noun:^[e]
  • «seven-year itch»
  • «five-sided polygon»
  • «20th-century poem»
  • «30-piece band»
  • «tenth-storey window»
  • «a 20-year-old man» (as a compound modifier) and «the 20-year-old» (as a compound noun)—but «a man, who is 20 years old»
• A numeral with the affix -fold has a hyphen (15-fold), but when spelled out takes a solid construction (fifteenfold).
• Numbers, spelled out or not, with added -odd: sixteen-odd, 70-odd.
• Compound modifiers with high- or low-: «high-level discussion», «low-price markup».
• Colours in compounds:
  • «a dark-blue sweater»
  • «a reddish-orange dress».
• Fractions as modifiers are hyphenated: «two-thirds majority», but if numerator or denominator are already hyphenated, the fraction itself does not take a hyphen: «a thirty-three thousandth part». (Fractions used as nouns have no hyphens: «I ate two thirds of the pie.»)
• Comparatives and superlatives in compound adjectives also take hyphens:
  • «the highest-placed competitor»
  • «a shorter-term loan»
• However, a construction with most is not hyphenated:
  • «the most respected member».
• Compounds including two geographical modifiers:

• «Anglo-Indian»

But not

• «Central American», which refers to people from a specific geographical region
• «African American», as a hyphen is seen to disparage minority populations as a hyphenated ethnicity^[10]

The following compound modifiers are not normally hyphenated:

• Compound modifiers that are not hyphenated in the relevant dictionary^[6][7][9] or that are unambiguous without a hyphen.^[8]
• Where there is no risk of ambiguity:
  • «a Sunday morning walk»
• Left-hand components of a compound modifier that end in -ly and that modify right-hand components that are past participles (ending in —ed):
  • «a hotly disputed subject»
  • «a greatly improved scheme»
  • «a distantly related celebrity»
• Compound modifiers that include comparatives and superlatives with more, most, less or least:
  • «a more recent development»
  • «the most respected member»
  • «a less opportune moment»
  • «the least expected event»
• Ordinarily hyphenated compounds with intensive adverbs in front of adjectives:
  • «very much admired classicist»
  • «really well accepted proposal»

Using a group of compound nouns containing the same «head»[edit]

Special rules apply when multiple compound nouns with the same «head» are used together, often with a conjunction (and with hyphens and commas if they are needed).

• The third- and fourth-grade teachers met with the parents.
• Both full- and part-time employees will get raises this year.
• We don’t see many 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children around here.

Compound verbs[edit]

modifier	head	examples
adverb	verb	overrate, underline, outrun
adverb	verb	downsize, upgrade
adjective	verb	whitewash, blacklist
adjective	noun	badmouth
noun	verb	browbeat, sidestep, manhandle
preposition	noun	out-Herod, outfox

A compound verb is usually composed of an adverb and a verb, although other combinations also exist. The term compound verb was first used in publication in Grattan and Gurrey’s Our Living Language (1925).

Some compound verbs are difficult to analyze morphologically because several derivations are plausible. Blacklist, for instance, might be analyzed as an adjective+verb compound, or as an adjective+noun compound that becomes a verb through zero derivation. Most compound verbs originally have the collective meaning of both components, but some of them later gain additional meanings that may supersede the original, emergent sense. Therefore, sometimes the resultant meanings are seemingly barely related to the original contributors.

Compound verbs composed of a noun and verb are comparatively rare, and the noun is generally not the direct object of the verb.

Examples of compound verbs following the pattern of indirect-object+verb include «hand wash» (e.g. «you wash it by hand» ~> «you handwash it«), and «breastfeed» (e.g. «she feeds the baby with/by/from her breast» ~> «she breastfeeds the baby«).

Examples of non-existent direct-object+verb compound verbs would be *»bread-bake» (e.g. «they bake bread» ~> *»they bread-bake«) and *»car-drive» (e.g. «they drive a car» ~> *»they car-drive«).

Note the example of a compound like «foxhunt«: although this matches the direct-object+verb pattern, it is not grammatically used in a sentence as a verb, but rather as a noun (e.g. «they’re hunting foxes tomorrow» ~> «they’re going on a foxhunt tomorrow«, but «not» *»they’re foxhunting tomorrow«).

Hyphenation[edit]

Compound verbs with single-syllable modifiers are often solid, or unhyphenated. Those with longer modifiers may originally be hyphenated, but as they became established, they became solid, e.g.

• overhang (English origin)
• counterattack (Latin origin)

There was a tendency in the 18th century to use hyphens excessively, that is, to hyphenate all previously established solid compound verbs. American English, however, has diminished the use of hyphens, while British English is more conservative.

Phrasal verbs[edit]

English syntax distinguishes between phrasal verbs and adverbial adjuncts. Consider the following sentences:

I held up my hand implies that I raised my hand.

I held up the negotiations implies that I delayed the negotiations.

I held up the bank to the highest standard implies that I demanded model behavior regarding the bank.

I held up the bank implies either (a) that I robbed the bank or (b) that I lifted upward a bank [either literally, as for a toy bank, or figuratively, as in putting a bank forward as an example of something (although usually then the sentence would end with … as an exemplar. or similar)].

Each of the foregoing sentences implies a contextually distinguishable meaning of the word, «up,» but the fourth sentence may differ syntactically, depending on whether it intends meaning (a) or (b). Specifically, the first three sentences render held up as a phrasal verb that expresses an idiomatic, figurative, or metaphorical sense that depends on the contextual meaning of the particle, «up.» The fourth sentence, however, ambiguously renders up either as (a) a particle that complements «held,» or as (b) an adverb that modifies «held.» The ambiguity is minimized by rewording and providing more context to the sentences under discussion:

I held my hand up implies that I raised my hand.

I held the negotiations up implies that I delayed the negotiations.

I held the bank up to the highest standard implies that I expect model behavior regarding the bank.

I held the bank up upstairs implies that I robbed the upstairs bank.

I held the bank up the stairs implies that I lifted a (toy) bank along an upstairs route.

Thus, the fifth sentence renders «up» as the head word of an adverbial prepositional phrase that modifies, the verb, held. The first four sentences remain phrasal verbs.

The Oxford English Grammar (ISBN 0-19-861250-8) distinguishes seven types of phrasal verbs in English:

• intransitive phrasal verbs (e.g. give in)
• transitive phrasal verbs (e.g. find out [discover])
• monotransitive prepositional verbs (e.g. look after [care for])
• doubly transitive prepositional verbs (e.g. blame [something] on [someone])
• copular prepositional verbs. (e.g. serve as)
• monotransitive phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. look up to [respect])
• doubly transitive phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. put [something] down to [someone] [attribute to])

English has a number of other kinds of compound verb idioms. There are compound verbs with two verbs (e.g. make do). These too can take idiomatic prepositions (e.g. get rid of). There are also idiomatic combinations of verb and adjective (e.g. come true, run amok) and verb and adverb (make sure), verb and fixed noun (e.g. go ape); and these, too, may have fixed idiomatic prepositions (e.g. take place on).

Misuses of the term[edit]

«Compound verb» is often confused with:

1. «verb phrase»/»verbal phrase»—Headed by a verb, many verbal phrases are multi-word but some are one-word: a verb (which could be a compound verb).
2. «phrasal verb»—A sub-type of verb phrase, which has a particle before or after the verb, often having a more or less idiomatic meaning.
3. «complex verb»—A type of complex phrase: In linguistics, while both «compound» and «complex» contrast with «simple», they are not synonymous (simple involves a single element, compound involves multiple similar elements, complex involves multiple dissimilar elements).

See also[edit]

• Metaphor
• Phrasal verb
• Portmanteau
• Syllabic abbreviations
• Morphology

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

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.

23

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.