Productive Types of Compound Adjectives 1 страница
Table 2
| 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, pleasure-tired | — | n + a | various adverbial relations |
| 2) covered with snow; bound by duty | snow-covered duty-bound | — | n + ven | instrumental (or agentive relations) |
| 3) two days | (a) two-day (beard) (a) seven-year (plan) | — ‘ | num + n | quantitative relations |
| 4) with (having) long legs | — | long-legged | [(a + n) + -ed] | possessive relations |
instrumental, locative and temporal relations between the ICs which are conditioned by the lexical meaning and valency of the verb, e.g. state-owned, 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) two-day (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 2.
The three other types are classed as compound nouns. Verbal-nominal and nominal represent compound nouns proper and verb-adverb derivational compound nouns. All the three types are productive.
II. Verbal-nominal 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’.
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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. Nominal compounds 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. Verb-adverb compounds are all derivational nouns, highly productive and built with the help of conversion according to the
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Productive Types of Compound Nouns
Table 3
| 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) woman-doctor 6) sword-fish | — | [n’ + n1] |
| Verb — Adverb Phrases to break down to cast away to run away | a break-down a castaway a runaway | [(v + adv) + conversion] | |
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.
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The system of productive types of compound nouns is summarised in Table 3.
| § 36. Sources of Compounds |
The actual process of building compound words may take different forms: 1) Compound words as a rule are built spontaneously according to productive distributional formulas of the given period. Formulas productive at one time may lose their productivity at another period. Thus at one time the process of building verbs by compounding adverbial and verbal stems was productive, and numerous compound verbs like, e.g. outgrow, offset, inlay (adv + v), were formed. The structure ceased to be productive and today practically no verbs are built in this way.
2) Compounds may be the result of a gradual process of semantic isolation and structural fusion of free word-groups. Such compounds as forget-me-not — ‘a small plant with blue flowers’; bull’s-eye — ‘the centre of a target; a kind of hard, globular candy’; mainland — ‘a continent’ all go back to free phrases which became semantically and structurally isolated in the course of time. The words that once made up these phrases have lost, within these particular formations, their integrity, the whole phrase has become isolated in form, specialised in meaning and thus turned into an inseparable unit — a word having acquired semantic and morphological unity. Most of the syntactic compound nouns of the (a+n) structure, e.g. bluebell, blackboard, mad-doctor, are the result of such semantic and structural isolation of free word-groups; to give but one more example, highway was once actually a high way for it was raised above the surrounding countryside for better drainage and ease of travel. Now we use highway without any idea Of the original sense of the first element.
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| § 37. Summary and Conclusions |
1. Compound words are made up of two ICs, both of which are derivational bases.
2. The structural and semantic centre of a compound, 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.
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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.
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VI. Etymological Survey of the English Word-Stock
| § 1. Some Basic Assumptions |
The most characteristic feature of English is usually said to be its mixed character. Many linguists consider foreign influence, especially that of French, to be the most important factor in the history of English. This wide-spread viewpoint is supported only by the evidence of the English word-stock, as its grammar and phonetic system are very stable and not easily influenced by other languages. While it is altogether wrong to speak of the mixed character of the language as a whole, the composite nature of the English vocabulary cannot be denied.
To comprehend the nature of the English vocabulary and its historical development it is necessary to examine the etymology of its different layers, the historical causes of their appearance, their volume and role and the comparative importance of native and borrowed elements in replenishing the English vocabulary. Before embarking upon a description of the English word-stock from this point of view we must make special mention of some terms. '
1. In linguistic literature the term native is conventionally used to denote words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles from the continent in the 5th century by the Germanic tribes — the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. Practically, however, the term is often applied to words whose origin cannot be traced to any other language. Thus, the word path is classified as native just because its origin has not yet been established with any degree of certainty. It is possible to conjecture that further progress of linguistic science may throw some light upon its origin and it may prove to have been borrowed at some earlier period. It is for this reason that Professor A. I. Smirnitsky relying on the earliest manuscripts of the English language available suggested another interpretation of the term native — as words which may be presumed to have existed in the English word-stock of the 7th century. This interpretation may have somewhat more reliable criteria behind it, but it seems to have the same drawback — both viewpoints present the native element in English as static.
In this book we shall proceed from a different understanding of the term native as comprising not only the ancient Anglo-Saxon core but also words coined later on their basis by means of various processes operative in English.
2. The term borrowing is used in linguistics to denote the process of adopting words from other languages and also the result of this process, the language material itself. It has already been stated that not only words, but also word-building affixes were borrowed into English (as is the case with -able, -ment, -ity, etc.).1 Itmust be mentioned that
1 See ‘Word-Formation’, § 14, p. 125. 160
some word-groups, too, were borrowed in their foreign form (e.g. coup d' é tat, vis- á -vis).
In its second meaning the term borrowing is sometimes used in a wider sense. It is extended onto the so-called translation-loans (or loan-translations) and semantic borrowing. Translation-loans are words and expressions formed from the material available in the language after the patterns characteristic of the given language, but under the influence of some foreign words and expressions (e. g. mother tongue<L. lingua materna; it goes without saying < Fr. cela va sans dire; wall newspaper < Russ. стенгазета). Semantic borrowing is the appearance of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language (e.g. the word propaganda and reaction acquired their political meanings under the influence of French, deviation and bureau entered political vocabulary, as in right and left deviations, Political bureau, under the influence of Russian).
Further on we shall use the term bоrrоwing in its second meaning, as a borrowing proper or a word taken over in its material form.
Distinction should be made between true borrowings and words formed out of morphemes borrowed from Latin and Greek, e.g. telephone, phonogram. Such words were never part of Latin or Greek and they do not reflect any contacts with the peoples speaking those languages.
It is of importance to note that the term borrowing belongs to diachronic description of the word-stock. Thus the words wine, cheap, pound introduced by the Romans into all Germanic dialects long before the Angles and the Saxons settled on the British Isles, and such late Latin loans as alibi, memorandum, stratum may all be referred to borrowings from the same language in describing their origin, though in modern English they constitute distinctly different groups of words.
3. There is also certain confusion between the terms source of borrowings and origin of the word. This confusion may be seen in contradictory marking of one and the same word as, say, a French borrowing in one dictionary and Latin borrowing in another. It is suggested here that the term source of borrowing should be applied to the language from which this or that particular word was taken into English. So when describing words as Latin, French or Scandinavian borrowings we point out their source but not their origin. The term origin оf the word should be applied to the language the word may be traced to. Thus, the French borrowing table is Latin by origin (L. tabula), the Latin borrowing school came into Latin from the Greek language (Gr. schole), so it may be described as Greek by origin.
It should be remembered, however, that whereas the immediate source of borrowing is as a rule known and can be stated with some certainty, the actual origin of the word may be rather doubtful. For example, the word ink was borrowed from Old French, but it may be traced back to Latin and still further to Greek (cf. Gr. kaio-), and it is quite possible that it was borrowed into Greek from some other language.
The immediate source of borrowing is naturally of greater importance for language students because it reveals the extra-linguistic factors
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responsible for the act of borrowing, and also because the borrowed words bear, as a rule, the imprint of the sound and graphic form, the morphological and semantic structure characteristic of the language they were borrowed from.
WORDS OF NATIVE ORIGIN
Words of native origin consist for the most part of very ancient elements—Indo-European, Germanic and West Germanic cognates. The bulk of the Old English word-stock has been preserved, although some words have passed out of existence. When speaking about the role of the native element in the English language linguists usually confine themselves to the small Anglo-Saxon stock of words, which is estimated to make 25—30% of the English vocabulary.
To assign the native element its true place it is not so important to count the number of Anglo-Saxon words that have survived up to our days, as to study their semantic and stylistic character, their word-building ability, frequency value, collocability.
| § 2. Semantic Characteristics and Collocability |
Almost all words of Anglo-Saxon origin belong to very important semantic groups. They include most of the auxiliary and modal verbs (shall, will, must, can, may, etc.), pronouns (I, you, he, my, his, who, etc.), prepositions (in, out, on, under, etc.), numerals (one, two, three, four, etc.) and conjunctions (and, but, till, as, etc.). Notional words of Anglo-Saxon origin include such groups as words denoting parts of the body (head, hand, arm, back, etc.), members of the family and closest relatives (farther, mother, brother, son, wife), natural phenomena and planets (snow, rain, wind, sun, moon, star, etc.), animals (horse, cow, sheep, cat), qualities and properties (old, young, cold, hot, light, dark, long), common actions (do, make, go, come, see, hear, eat, etc.), etc.
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