Awe and dread; allusions and hints; course and rough; cry and sob; quite and still; kind and gentle; shame and disgrace; to soothe and comfort; etc
Word building. Non productive models
The types of word-building that are non-productive are contamination (blending), back-formation and reduplication.
Back-formation (Reversion)is a way of word-building by which a new word is formed by cutting off a real or supposed suffix: burglar→to burgle, enthusiasm→to enthuse. It is called back-formation, because the process of derivation is opposite to the traditional one. Usually, a derived word is longer (work→worker), in back-formation the derived word is shorter than the one from which it was derived. By way of back-formation verbs may be derived from nouns (beggar→to beg, television→to televise) and adjectives (peevish (сварливый) →to peeve), nouns from adjectives (greedy→greed). A very productive type of back-formation in present-day English is derivation of verbs from compounds in –er and –ing as final elements: to baby-sit (from baby-sitter), to air-condition (from air-conditioner), to house-clean (from house-cleaner).
Blending is a way building words by merging parts of words (not morphemes) into one new word. Thus, the noun smog is composed of the parts of the nouns smoke and fog, the noun brunch – of breakfast and lunch, motel – of motor and hotel. Such words are called blends (сращения), fusions, telescope words.
Blends are built either by merging two clipped stems (dramedy←drama+comedy) or merging one full and one clipped stem (teleplay←television+play). Most blends are nouns, but sometimes verbs and adjectives are formed by blending: flush←flash+blush, fantabulous←fantastic+fabulous.
Blending is either viewed as a separate type of word-building, or as a variety of composition or shortening. It plays an important role in building neologisms in the sphere of advertising, mass media, colloqual speech, trade and marketing: Adidas←Adi+Dassler (основатель компании), slimnastics←slim+gymnastics, pollutician←pollution+politician, cottonopolis (Манчестеркакцентрхлопчатобумажнойпромышленности), Ameringlish←American English, swacket←sweater+jacket, etc.
Reduplication (Repetition) consists in a complete or partial repetition of the stem or of the whole word (bye-bye), often with a variation of the root vowel or consonant (ping-pong)
These words are always colloqual or slang, among them there many nursery words. There exist three types of such words: 1) the words in which the same stem is repeated without any changes (pretty-pretty, goody-goody, never-never (утопия); 2) words with a vowel variation (chit-chat (сплетни), ping-pong, tip-top); 3) words with pseudomorphemes (rhyme combinations) (lovey-dovey, walkie-talkie, willy-nilly); the parts of such words don’t exist as separate words.
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Non-productive ways of word-building are also sound interchange and distinctive stress which are regarded as a means of word-building only diachronically because in Mod. English not a single word is formed by changing the root sound or by shifting the place of stress.
Sound interchange implies vowel-interchange (to sing – song, to live – live) and consonant-interchange (use – to use [z], advice – to advise). Consonant interchange may be combined with vowel interchange: bath – to bathe. Sound interchange only serves to distinguish one long-established word from another.
Distinctive stress is found in groups like `present – pres`ent, `conduct – con`duct, `abstract – abstr’act, etc. These words were French borrowings with the original stress on the last syllable. Verbs retained it, while in nouns and adjectives it was shifted. The place of stress helps to distinguish verbs and nouns or pronouns in speech.
Ways to enlarge the word stock of modern English
1) Development of polysemy
Polysemy – diversity of meanings, existence within one word of several connected meanings as the result of the development and changes of its original meaning.
At a certain stage of language development the production of new words by morphological means becomes limited, and polysemy becomes increasingly important in providing the means for enriching the vocabulary. From this, it should be clear that the process of enriching the vocabulary does not consist merely in adding new words to it, but, also, in the constant development of polysemy.
2)Borrowings
Borrowing – resorting to the word-stock of other languages for words to express new concepts, name new objects, phenomena, etc.
Borrowing has played a vital role in the development of vocabulary, particularly in earlier times. Though still at work now, it can hardly compare with what it did in the past. According to Thomas Pyles and John Algeo (1982), borrowed words constitute merely six to seven percent of all new words. In earlier stages of English, French, Latin, Greek and Scandinavian were the major contributors.
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In modern times, however, the components of borrowings show a difference. A study based on 6000 WORDS and The Barnhart Dictionary of New English indicates that 473 words were borrowed from other languages from 1961 to 1976. Thirty percent of them come from French, eight percent from Latin, seven percent from Japanese and Italian respectively, six percent from Spanish, five percent from German and Greek respectively, four percent from Russian and Yiddish respectively, and the rest from other languages. It can be said that with the change of world situation and the development of economy the role of each foreign contributor will change accordingly.
3)Word-building
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.
Сonversion, derivation and compositionare the most productive ways of word-building.
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