Word building. Productive models
Начало - излекций, потомАнтрушина
Word-building is the branch of lexicology, which studies the derivative structure of existing words and the patterns on which a language builds new words. There are 2 ways of studying the language material:
Synchronic
Diachronic
Synchronic approach (gr, "syn"- together, "chronos"- time) is concerned with relation between its constituents at one period of time, for example, at present time.
Ex: words to beg- beggar (beggar n was formed out of the verb to beg with the suffix- ar)
Diachronic approach (gr, "dia"- through, "chronos"- time) deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the coarse of time.
Ex: beggar was borrowed from OF , the verb to beg was derived from the noun beggar (всевышеизлекций).
By word-building are understood processes of producing new words from the resources of this particular language. Together with borrowing, word-building provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language.
Before turning to the various processes of making words, it would be useful to analyse the related problem of the composition of words, i. e. of their constituent parts.
Morpheme is a language unit, an association of certain meaning with a certain sound-pattern, which an occur in speech only as a constituent part of the word and can not be segmented into smaller units.
All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots (or radicals) and affixes. The latter, in their turn, fall into prefixes which precede the root in the structure of the word (as in re-read, mis-pronounce, unwell) and suffixes which follow the root (as in teach-er, cur-able, diet-ate).
Words which consist of a root and an affix (or several affixes) are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word-building known as affixation (or derivation).
Derived words are extremely numerous in the English vocabulary. Successfully competing with this structural type is the so-calledroot word which has only a root morpheme in its structure. This type is widely represented by a great number of words belonging to the original English stock or to earlier borrowings (house, room, book, work, port, street, table, etc.), and, in Modern English, has been greatly enlarged by the type of word-building called conversion (e. g. to hand, v. formed from the noun hand; to can, v. from can, п.; to pale, v. frompale, adj.; a find, n. from to find, v.; etc.).
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Another wide-spread word-structure is a compound word consisting of two or more stems (e. g. dining-room, bluebell, mother-in-law, good-for-nothing). Words of this structural type are produced by the word-building process called composition.
The somewhat odd-looking words like flu, pram, lab, M. P., V-day, H-bomb are called shortenings, contractions or curtailed wordsand are produced by the way of word-building called shortening (contraction).
The four types (root words, derived words, compounds, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition the most productive ways of word-building.
To return to the question posed by the title of this chapter, of how words are made, let us try and get a more detailed picture of each of the major types of Modern English word-building and, also, of some minor types.
The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme. The role of the affix in this procedure is very important and therefore it is necessary to consider certain facts about the main types of affixes. From the etymological point of view affixes are classified into the same two large groups as words: native and borrowed.
Some Native Suffixes
| Noun-forming | -er | worker, miner, teacher, painter, etc. | |
| -ness | coldness, loneliness, loveliness, etc. | ||
| -ing | feeling, meaning, singing, reading, etc. | ||
| -dom | freedom, wisdom, kingdom, etc. | ||
| -hood | childhood, manhood, motherhood, etc. | ||
| -ship | friendship, companionship, master-ship, etc. | ||
| -th | length, breadth, health, truth, etc. | ||
| Adjective-forming | -ful | careful, joyful, wonderful, sinful, skilful, etc. | |
| -less | careless, sleepless, cloudless, sense-less, etc. | ||
| -y | cozy, tidy, merry, snowy, showy, etc. | ||
| -ish | English, Spanish, reddish, childish, etc. | ||
| -ly | lonely, lovely, ugly, likely, lordly, etc. | ||
| -en | wooden, woollen, silken, golden, etc. | ||
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Borrowed affixes, especially of Romance origin are numerous in the English vocabulary.
Affixes can also be classified into productive and non-productive types. By productive affixes we mean the ones, which take part in deriving new words in this particular period of language development. The best way to identify productive affixes is to look for them among neologisms and so-called nonce words(occasionalism), i. e. words coined and used only for this particular occasion. The latter are usually formed on the level of living speech and reflect the most productive and progressive patterns in word-building. When a literary critic writes about a certain book that it is an unputdownable thriller, we will seek in vain this strange and impressive adjective in dictionaries, for it is a nonce-word coined on the current pattern of Modern English and is evidence of the high productivity of the adjective-forming borrowed suffix -able and the native prefix un-.
One should not confuse the productivity of affixes with their frequency of occurrence. There are quite a number of high-frequency affixes which, nevertheless, are no longer used in word-derivation (e. g. the adjective-forming native suffixes -ful, -ly;the adjective-forming suffixes of Latin origin -ant, -ent, -al which are quite frequent).
Some Productive Affixes
Noun-forming suffixes
-er, -ing, -ness, -ism (materialism),-ist(impressionist),-ance
Adjective-forming suffixes
-y, -ish, -ed (learned), -able, -less
Adverb-forming suffixes
-ly
Verb-forming suffixes
-ize/-ise (realise), -ate
Prefixes
un- (unhappy), re- (reconstruct), dis- (disappoint)
Some Non-Productive Affixes
Noun-forming suffixes
-th, -hood
Adjective-forming suffixes
-ly, -some, -en, -ous
Verb-forming suffix
-en
Composition
This type of word-building, in which new words are produced by combining two or more stems, is one of the three most productive types in Modern English, the other two are conversion and affixation. Compounds, though certainly fewer in quantity than derived or root words, still represent one of the most typical and specific features of English word-structure.
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There are at least three aspects of composition that present special interest.
The first is the structural aspect. Compounds are not homogeneous(однородный) in structure. Traditionally three types are distinguished: neutral, morphological and syntactic.
In neutral compounds the process of compounding is realised without any linking elements, by a mere juxtaposition (соприкосновение)of two stems, as in blackbird, shop-window, sunflower, bedroom, tallboy(бокал на высокой ножке), etc. There are three subtypes of neutral compounds depending on the structure of the constituent stems.
The examples above represent the subtype which may be described as simple neutral compounds: they consist of simple affixless stems.
Compounds which have affixes in their structure are called derived or derivational compounds. E. g. absent-mindedness(рассеянность), blue-eyed, golden-haired, broad-shouldered, lady-killer(сердцеед), film-goer(киноман), music-lover, honey-moon-er, first-nighter(постоянный посетитель театральных премьер), late-comer, newcomer, early-riser, evildoer. The productivity of this type is confirmed by a considerable number of comparatively recent formations, such as teenager, babysitter, strap-hanger, fourseater ("car or boat with four seats"), doubledecker ("a ship or bus with two decks").
The third subtype of neutral compounds is called contracted compounds. These words have a shortened (contracted) stem in their structure: TV-set (-program, -show, -canal, etc.), V-day (Victory day), G-man (Government man "FBI agent", агентФедеральногобюрорасследований), H-bag (handbag), T-shirt, etc.
Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is non-productive. It is represented by words in which two compounding stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant, e. g. Anglo-Saxon, Franko-Prussian, handiwork, handicraft, craftsmanship, spokesman(представитель, делегат), statesman(государственный деятель).
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In syntactic compounds we once more find a feature of specifically English word-structure. These words are formed from segments of speech, preserving in their structure numerous traces of syntagmatic( синтагматический) relations typical of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs, as in the nouns lily-of-the-valley(ландыш), Jack-of-all-trades(на все руки масте), good-for-nothing(бездельник), mother-in-law(свекровь), sit-at-home(сидеть сложа руки).Syntactical relations and grammatical patterns current in present-day English can be clearly traced in the structures of such compound nouns as pick-me-up(тонизирующее средство (медицинский препарат, алкогольный напиток или еда)), know-all(всезнайка), know-nothing, go-between(сводник), get-together(встреча), whodunit(детективный роман, фильм). The last word (meaning "a detective story") was obviously coined from the ungrammatical variant of the word-group who (has) done it.
Conversion
Conversion consists in making a new word from some existing word by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged. The new word has a meaning which differs from that of the original one though it can more or less be easily associated with it. It has also a new paradigm peculiar to its new category as a part of speech.
The question of conversion has, for a long time, been a controversial one in several aspects. The very essence of this process has been treated by a number of scholars (e. g. H. Sweet), not as a word-building act, but as a mere functional change. From this point of view the word hand in Hand me that book is not a verb, but a noun used in a verbal syntactical function, that is, hand (me) and hands (in She has small hands) are not two different words but one. According to this functional approach, conversion may be regarded as a specific feature of the English categories of parts of speech, which are supposed to be able to break through the rigid borderlines dividing one category from another thus enriching the process of communication not by the creation of new words but through the sheer flexibility of the syntactic structures.
Nowadays this theory finds increasingly fewer supporters, and conversion is universally accepted as one of the major ways of enriching English vocabulary with new words. One of the major arguments for this approach to conversion is the semantic change that regularly accompanies each instance of conversion. Normally, a word changes its syntactic function without any shift in lexical meaning. E. g. both in yellow leaves and in The leaves were turning yellow the adjective denotes colour. Yet, in The leaves yellowed the converted unit no longer denotes colour, but the process of changing colour, so that there is an essential change in meaning.
The change of meaning is even more obvious in such pairs as hand > to hand, face > to face, to go > a go, to make > a make, etc.
The other argument is the regularity and completeness with which converted units develop a paradigm of their new category of part of speech. As soon as it has crossed the category borderline, the new word automatically acquires all the properties of the new category, so that if it has entered the verb category, it is now regularly used in all the forms of tense and it also develops the forms of the participle and the gerund. Such regularity can hardly be regarded as indicating a mere functional change which might be expected to bear more occasional characteristics. The completeness of the paradigms in new conversion formations seems to be a decisive argument proving that here we are dealing with new words and not with mere functional variants. The data of the more reputable modern English dictionaries confirm this point of view: they all present converted pairs as homonyms, i. e. as two words, thus supporting the thesis that conversion is a word-building process.
Conversion is not only a highly productive but also a particularly English way of word-building. Its immense productivity is considerably encouraged by certain features of the English language in its modern stage of development. The analytical structure of Modern English greatly facilitates processes of making words of one category of parts of speech from words of another. So does the simplicity of paradigms of English parts of speech. A great number of one-syllable words is another factor in favour of conversion, for such words are naturally more mobile and flexible than polysyllables.
Conversion is a convenient and "easy" way of enriching the vocabulary with new words. It is certainly an advantage to have two (or more) words where there was one, all of them fixed on the same structural and semantic base.
The high productivity of conversion finds its reflection in speech where numerous occasional cases of conversion can be found, which are not registered by dictionaries and which occur momentarily, through the immediate need of the situation.
"If anybody oranges me again tonight, I'll knock his face off”, says the annoyed hero of a story by O'Henry when a shop-assistant offers him oranges (for the tenth time in one night) instead of peaches for which he is looking ("Little Speck in Garnered Fruit"). One is not likely to find the verb to orange in any dictionary, but in this situation it answers the need for brevity, expressiveness and humour.
The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous amongst the words produced by conversion: e. g. to hand(вести за руку; помогать, протягивать руку), to back, to face, to eye, to mouth, to nose, to dog(выслеживать), to wolf(пожирать с жадностью), to monkey, to can, to coal, to stage, to screen, to room, to floor, to blackmail, to blacklist, to honeymoon, and very many others.
Nouns are frequently made from verbs: do (e. g. This is the queerest do I've ever come across. Do — event, incident), go (e. g. He has still plenty of go at his age. Go — energy), make, run, find, catch, cut, walk, worry, show, move, etc.
Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to pale, to yellow, to cool, to grey, to rough (e. g. We decided to rough it in the tents as the weather was warm), etc.
Other parts of speech are not entirely unsusceptible to conversion as the following examples show: to down, to out(раскрыться), the ups and downs, the ins and outs(ходыивыходы), like(подобный человек), n, (as in the like of me and the like of you).
Shortening (Contraction)
This comparatively new way of word-building has achieved a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English.
Shortenings (or contracted/curtailed words) are produced in two different ways. The first is to make a new word from a syllable (rarer, two) of the original word. The latter may lose its beginning (as in phone made from telephone, fence fromdefence), its ending (as in hols from holidays, vac from vacation, props from properties, ad from advertisement) or both the beginning and ending (as in flu from influenza, fridge from refrigerator).
The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group: U.N.O. ['ju:neu] from theUnited Nations Organisation, B.B.C. from the British Broadcasting Corporation, M.P. from Member of Parliament. This type is called initial shortenings. They are found not only among formal words, such as the ones above, but also among colloquialisms and slang. So, g. f. is a shortened word made from the compound girl-friend.
Both types of shortenings are characteristic of informal speech in general and of uncultivated speech particularly. The history of the American okay seems to be rather typical. Originally this initial shortening was spelt O.K. and was supposed to stand for all correct. The purely oral manner in which sounds were recorded for letters resulted in O.K. whereas it should have been AC. or aysee. Indeed, the ways of words are full of surprises.
Here are some more examples of informal shortenings. Movie (from moving-picture), gent (from gentleman), specs (fromspectacles), circs (from circumstances, e. g. under the circs), I. O. Y. (a written acknowledgement of debt, made from I owe you), lib (from liberty, as in May I take the lib of saying something to you?), cert (from certainty, as in This enterprise is a cert if you have a bit of capital), metrop (from metropoly, e. g. Paris is a gay metrop), exhibish (from exhibition), posish (from position).
Shortening is a further type of word-building which increases the number of homonyms(омонимы). E.g. fan, n. in the sense of "an enthusiastic admirer of some kind of sport or of an actor, singer, etc." is a shortening produced from fanatic. Its homonym is a Latin borrowing fan, n. which denotes an implement for waving lightly to produce a cool current of air. The noun rep, n. denoting a kind of fabric has three homonyms made by shortening: rep, n. (< repertory), rep, n. (< representative), rep, n. (< reputation), all the three are informal words.
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