The productive ways of world-building. Suffixation and prefixation

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, and back formation                                                                                                                                      In word-formation of the English language derivation and compounding are known to occupy a very important place.                                                                                                                         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.

Suffixes may be classified proceeding from different criteria. According to the part of speech classification they fall into:

a) suffixes forming nouns; b) suffixes forming adjectives; c) suffixes forming verbs;

d) and adverb-suffixes

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 [2].

A compound word is a word composed entirely of smaller words.

Blending is a special type of compounding by means of merging parts of words into one new word. This category of word-formation is a development which has linguistic value of its own in various languages. The tendency towards shortness has become most active in recent times, in present-day English, particularly [5].

Conversion is a characteristic feature of the English word-building system. It is also called affixless derivation or zero-suffixation [2].

Rayevska thinks that derivative and compound words, as lexemes, have naturally the properties revealed in their paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. But there are cases when some semantic elements of such words do not find their formal expression and remain in "deep sense word-structure" [5].

Meshkov defines that in English words can be simple, derivative and compound. A simple word consists of a root to which morphological flexions can join: for example “ table ”, “ book ” are simple words. A derivative is a word which is formed by adding some affixes: for example, “ speaker ”, “ government ”, “ to bed ” are derivatives. Thus a verb “ to bed ” on a morphological structure is a simple word, and in this sense does not differ, from a noun, “ a bed ”, however, a verb is the product of the word-formation act (conversion) and, therefore, “ to bed ” is a derivative word. Consequently, morphological and word-formation structure of word can not coincide from the point of view of their divisibility and indivisibility [4].

A compound word is a word which appeared as a result of addition two or more bases: for example: “ blackboard ”, “ handcraft ”, “ weekend ”. Also in linguistic literature it is accepted to determine derivative compound words, these are compound words which have one or more derivative affixes.

The criteria of compounds.

As English compounds consist of free forms, it is difficult to distinguish them from phrases

Composition — (30% of English words) — is a very productive word building means in modern English. The aim of this process is to combine two

stems to produce one word. e.x. bedroom; blackboard                                      Principles (problems) of composition                                                                             How to differentiate compound words from word combinations.                            5 criteria of this distinguish

1) Phonetic – all word-combination bare a primary stress on each of its constitutive parts where is compound word have only one primary stress. Ex. Laughing boys laughing gas (compound word)

But in speech stress may disappear. 2) Morphological – in compound words the ending is placed at the end of this structure. Ex. Weekend (s) 3) Syntactical – strict word order; Ex. Adj + noun = beautiful house But noun + adj. compound word Grass- green bottle 4) Syntactic – in some compound words the meaning of a whole can’t be deduced (исчислять) from the total sum of the meanings of its constitutive parts. Ex. Ladybird – божья коровка  Type – writer – печатная машинка

But – many compound words don’t bare idiomatic character.Ex. Bedroom, classroom, workday