5.The main ways of word-building

Word Building (word formation)

1. Affixation as a basic means of forming words. Types of affixes.

2. Conversion.

3. Composition.

4. Other ways of word formation.

Scientists differ in the opinion how many ways of WB there are in English, but all in all they distinguish: affixation,composition,conversion,abbreviation(shortening, clipping, acronymy),back formation (disaffixation),soundinterchangeanddistinctive change,onomatopoeia(sound imitation).

Affixation— the addition of an affix — is a basic means of forming words in English. It has been productive in all periods of the history of English.

Linguists distinguish among three types of affixes. An affix that is attached to the front of its base is called a prefix, whereas an affix that is attached to the end of its base is termed asuffix. Both types of affix occur in English. Far less common than prefixes and suffixes areinfixes— a type of affix that occurs within a base of a word to express such notions as tense, number, or gender. English has no system of infixes, though many languages make great use of infixes.

Affixation is divided into suffixation and prefixation. In Modern English, suffixation is characteristic of noun and adjective formation, while prefixation is typical of verb formation.

As a rule, prefixes modify the lexical meaning of stems to which they are added. The prefixal derivative usually joins the part of speech the unprefixed word belongs to, e.g.usual / un- usual.

In a suffixal derivative the suffix does not only modify the lexical meaning of the stem it is added to, but the word itself is usually transferred to another part of speech, e.g.care (n) / care-less (adj).

Suffixes and prefixes may be classified along different lines. The logical classification of suffixes is according to:

(a) their origin: Romanic (e.g. -age, -ment, -tion), Native(-er, dom, -ship), Greek(-ism, -ize), etc.;

2. meaning, e.g. -er denotes the agent of the action, -ess denotes leminine gender,-ence/ance has abstract meaning,-ie and-let express iliminutiveness,-age, -dom — collectivity,-an, -ese, -ian — appurtenance, etc.;

3. part of speech they form, e.g. noun suffixes -er, -ness, -ment; adjective-forming suffixes-ish, -ful, -less, -y; verb-suffixes-en, -fy, etc.;

4. productivity, i.e. the relative freedom with which they can combine with bases of the appropriate category, e.g. productive suffixes are -er, -ly, -ness, -ie, -let, non-productive(-dom, -th) and semi-productive(-eer, -ward).

Since suffixes determine the part of speech of words, we classify them according to parts of speech. The meanings given for the suffixes are very broad, and often they have little connection with the meaning of the resulting word.

Some linguists distinguish between suffixes and semi-suffixes such as -man(postman); -burger(fishburger); -aholic(workaholic). So words with such suffixes can be classified either as affixed words or compound words.

Some prefixes are treated as root morphemes because they are met as words: afternoon – after school;overhead – over the wall. American lexicographers treat such words as compound words, while British lexicographers regard them as affixed words. There are alsosemi-prefixessuch as -mini(mini-plane); -maxi(maxi-taxi); -aero(aerospace); -eco(eco menu), etc.

The main function of prefixes in English is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. However in ME there are prefixes that form one part of speech from another (endanger, behead – verbs, asleep – statives).

Thus, AFFIXATIONis a way of word formation consisting in adding an affix to the stem of a word:sixteen, friendship, unkindly, heartless, ex-husband, etc.

Conversion

Before we give the definition of this way of WB, let’s consider the following examples:

He was knocked out in the first round.

Round the number off to the nearest tenth.

The neighbours gathered round our barbeque.

The moon was bright and round.

People came from all the country round.

In each sentence roundis used as different part of speech … Lexemes are made without the addition of an affix. This process is called conversion and dates back to the MdE period.

CONVERSIONis a process that assigns an already existing word to a new syntactic category. For this reason it is sometimes called zero-derivation.

Various opinions have been expressed on the nature and character of conversion.

Prof. Smirnitsky A.I. treats conversion as a morphological way of forming words, as the formation of a new word through changes in its paradigm (explain).

Other linguists (H. Marchand, V.N. Yartseva, I.V. Arnold and others) treat conversion as a combined morphological and syntactic way of WB, as it involves both a change of the paradigm and a change of the syntactic function (distribution) of the word.

There is also purely syntactic approach known as a functional approach to conversion.

There three most common types of conversion in English are verbs (from nouns), nouns (from verbs), and verbs (from adjectives). Less common are nouns (from adjectives, phrases, affixes) and verbs (from prepositions). Examples!

Verbs can be converted

from nouns: This wine is bottled in Spain;

from adjectives: I’m in charge of cleaning the first floor;

from adverbs: The train neared the station;

from pronouns:Don’t what me, a little nobody;

from conjunctions: Stop butting!

from interjections: to blah-blah; to ha-ha; to pooh-pooh, etc.

There are also nouns formed from pronouns (the impossible she), adverbs (ups and downs), prepositions (a between), conjunctions (Forget your ifs), and articles (If ifs and ans were pots and pans!) or even from affixes (How much I hate all those isms!). As a matter of fact, any part of speech can be formed from any part of speech by conversion.

Opinions differ on the possibility of creating adjectives from nouns through conversion (the so-called “stone-wall” complexes – дать задание). We shall consider the indisputable cases, i.e. deverbal substantives (nouns converted from verbs) and denominal verbs (verbs converted from nouns).

There are different semantic groups of converted words that are characterized by different semantic relations.

1. Verbs converted from nouns (denominal verbs) may denote: instrumental use of the object (); action characteristic of the object (to vacate); acquisition (); deprivation of the object ().

2. Nouns converted from verbs (deverbal substantives) may denote: instance of an action (); agent of an action (); place of an action (); result of an action ().

Conversion is a very productive way of forming words in English.

COMPOSITION(the combination of two or more existing words to create a new word) is one of the most common and important word-building processes in English. Sometimes it is called compounding.

A compound is a unit of vocabulary that consists of more than one lexical stem ().With very few exceptions, it is a noun, a verb or an adjective. In most compounds the rightmost morpheme determines the category of the entire word ().

There is a certain problem of distinguishing between compounds and word combinations.

Compounds in English can be written differently: as single words, with a hyphen and as separate words.

In terms of pronunciation, however, there is an important generalization to be made. Adjective-noun compounds are characterized by a more prominent stress on their first component: ice cream (замороженные сливки) – ice cream (мороженное); or a tall boy (высокий мальчик) – a tall-boy (бельевой шкаф).

Tense and plural markers cannot typically be attached to the 1stelement, although they can be added to the compound as a whole (exceptionspassers-byparks supervisor).

So, several criteria should be taken into account:

solid spelling–nickname; underdog, whitewash;

stress– `blue collar – `blue `collar; `green house – `green `house;

connecting elements–handicraft, speedometer, spokesperson;

impossibility for members of a compound to be modified – a blackbird (дрозд); a very black bird (очень черная птица);

semantic unity (compounds always express a single idea) –baby-sit, home town, sweetheart.

The last criterion is regarded to be the most reliable of all.

There are different classifications of compounds.

According to their part of speech characteristic, compounds are subdivided into nouns (globe-trotter, waterfall), verbs (to honeymoon, to outgrow), adjectives (free-for-all, hard-working), adverbs (downstairs, lip-deep), prepositions (within, into) and numerals (thirty-seven).

According to the way components are joined together, compounds are subdivided into neutral (formed by juxtaposition) (sunflower, tallboy, bestseller), morphological (joined by a linking element) (handicraft, Franko-Prussian, microchip) and syntactical (joined by means of form-word stems) (whodunit, face-to-face, lily-of-the-valley).

According to their structure, compounds are subdivided into compounds proper (earthquake, to window-shop, sky-blue), compound-derived (affixed) words (blue-eyed, video-player, absent-mindedness), compound words consisting of 3 or more stems (with 1 constituent as a compound stem) (mother-in-law, good-for-nothing, wastepaper basket), compound-shortened words (h-bag, V-day).

According to the degree of semantic independence of components, compounds are subdivided into

a) subordinative compounds (with 1 component as a semantic centre) – love-sick, nanny-goat, silverware; добавить в схему!!!

b) coordinative compounds (with both semantically equal components) – Anglo-Saxon, walkie-talkie, go-go.

According to the order of components (immediate constituents), compounds are subdivided into syntactic (direct order) (to frontpage, giver-away, fair-haired) and asyntactic (indirect order) (to book-hunt, blood-thirsty, theatre-goer).

According to the meaning of the whole, compounds are subdivided into idiomatic (night-cap, butterfingers) and non-idiomatic (homeland, swimming-pool, speedometer).

To idiomatic compounds we can refer a group of compounds called bahuvrihi (the term comes from India). They denote an object after its striking feature: blue-bell (колокольчик); cut-throat (головорез); Brown Berets (спецподразделение армии США); skinhead, etc.

Thus, compositionis the way of word-building consisting in joining 2 or more stems to form one word:football, sky-blue, off-the-record, touch-me-not. It should be noted that such words can be written solidly (underfoot), with a hyphen (war-ship) or a break (in so far).

There is an interesting group of compounds called pseudo compounds. They are composed of meaningless root morphemes but when put together present an idea: chit-chat – cплетни; helter-skelter – как попало; razzle-dazzle – кутерьма.

Affixation, compounding and conversion are regarded as the three major types of WB. Apart from these a number of other ways of forming words are referred to WF, such as:

• Back-formation or disaffixation (baby-sitter — to baby-sit). Back-formation is a process that creates a new word by removing a real or supposed affix from another word in the language.Resurrect was originally formed in this way fromresurrection, enthuse fromenthusiasm, donate fromdonation, orient ororientate fromorientation, andself-destruct from self-destruction. Words that end in -or or -erhave proven susceptible to back-formation in English. Because hundreds of such words are the result of affixation(runner, walker, singer, etc.), any word with this shape is likely to be perceived as a verb +er combination. The wordseditor, peddler, andswindler were misanalyzed. The result was the creation of the verbsedit, peddle, andswindle. Back-formation continues to produce new words in modern English, for instance, the formattrit was formed fromattrition, the verblase fromlaser, liposuct fromliposuction;

Sound-interchange (speak — speech, blood — bleed), andsound imitation (walkie-talkie, brag rags, to giggle);

Distinctive change ('conduct —to con 'duct, 'increase —to in 'crease, 'subject — to subject);

Blending: these are words that are created from parts of two already existing items, usually the first part of one and the final part of the other: brunch frombreakfast and lunch,smog fromsmoke andfog, spam fromspiced andham, chunnel (for the underwater link between Britain and the continent) fromchannel andtunnel, andinfomercial frominformation andcommercial.

Blends(fusions, telescopic words) are words formed from a word group or two synonyms:bit ← binary digit; chunnel ← channel + tunnel; slanguage ← slang + language.

Some blends have become so integrated into the standard vocabulary of English that speakers are unaware of their status, for example, motel from motor andhotel, bit (in computer jargon) frombinary anddigit, modem frommodulator anddemodulator. Sometimes a word is formed by a process that is on the borderline between compounding and blending. It combines all of one word with part of another, e.g.workaholic, medicare, Eurotunnel, slanguage, guesstimate

According to other opinion, in blends two ways of word-building are combined: abbreviation and composition. It means putting together shortened words: Adidas ← Adi + Dassler; acromania ← acronym + mania, shimmer ← shine + glimmer.

Ellipsis represents a way of word formation consisting in omission of the second element of a word combination:a documentary ← a documentary film.

Clipping is a process that shortens a polysyllabic word by deleting one or more syllables: profforprofessor, burger fox hamburger. The wordzoo, for instance, was formed fromzoological gar­den; fax was formed fromfacsimile (meaning "exact copy or reproduction"). Some of the most common products of clipping are names —Liz, Bob, Sue, and so on. Many clipped forms have been accepted in general usage:bike, phone, specs, fancy, doc, ad, auto, lab, sub, deli, condo;

Acronymy NATO, NASA, WAC, UNESCO. Acronyms are formed by taking the initial letters of the words in a phrase and pronouncing them as a word. This type of word formation is especially common in names of organizations and in terminology.NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration,NA TO — North Atlantic Treaty Organization,NOAA — National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admini­stration.AIDS stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Such commonly used words asradar (from radio detecting and ranging), andlaser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) originated as acronyms;

Onomatopoeia i.e. formations of words from sounds that resemble those associated with the object or action to be named, or that seem suggestive of its qualities. Examples of such onomatopoeic words in English include hiss, buzz, meow, cock-a-doodle-doo, and cuckoo.