Word formation in modern English (affixation, compounding, conversion, blending, shortening, sound gradation, semantic stress).

Now let us consider the basic ways of forming words in the English language.

Affixation. Classification of affixes. Productivity of affixes.

Af, is forming a word by combining a stem and derivational af.: luck-lucky-unlucky. As a rule prefixes change only the meaning of the word, the part of speech remains the same. As for suffixes, they only make up a new word which belongs to a different part of speech. Derivational aff. are classified according to the following principle: etymological, lexico-grammatical (parts-of-speech principle), semantic.

According to the 1st one aff. are divided into native and borrowed ones: helpful – native, revolution – comes from French. If a word consists of a native and a borrowed M. called a hybrid: beautiful (Romanic (borrowed) + Germanic (native)

According to the 2nd principle aff. can be noun, adj., verb, adv.-forming. –ish is a productive, native, adj.-forming suff.

According to 3rd every aff. has its own lexical meaning. F.ex.: Everyone took part in decoration of the hall. The decoration was beautiful. In the 1st the meaning is that of process. In the 2nd the suff. denotes to the result of the process.

Productivity is a historical category. Word-building means change with the historical development of the language. Productive aff. are those which are able to form new words at a certain historical period. –tion, -ful are productive while –en (shorten) was productive in O.E. Productivity must not be mixed up with frequency of usage: some aff. can be non-productive now but frequently used. Toothsome=tasty.

Word-composition (compounding)

Compounding or word-composition is one of the productive means of word-formation in Modern English. Compounds are words that are made up of two immediate constituents which are both derivative bases. Derivative bases in compounds can have different degrees of complexity:

1. both bases are simple (weekend, girlfriend).

2. one base is simple, the other is derivative (a shoemaker).

3. one base is compound and the other is either simple or derivative (fancy-dress -> fancydress-ball, маскарад; fancydress-maker).

Conversion.

- 1) hand-handful, 2)hand-to hand. In 1 a new word was formed by aff., in 2 by means of conversion (zero derivation). Conversion is a special type of derivation in which the word-forming means is the paradigm of the word. In our ex. The paradigms of the word are different. So a verb is formed from the noun by conversion. This approach was worked out by professor Смирнитский. It is called morphological approach to conversion.

- «If you are lucky, you’ll have a good buy». Ther’s another approach to conversion, which is worked out by prof. Арнольд. She treats C. as a morphologo-syntactical way of forming word. The word «buy» is a noun, formed from the verb to buy and the proof may be found in the syntactical characteristics of the word. If function in the sentence is that as a direct object. Besides it has a descriptive attribute and the article a. All these characteristics are typical for the Eng.noun. Cases of C. are accompanied by syntactic change. For ex. when a verb is made from the noun then may be the following changes: 1)nose-to nise, hammer-to hammer – The noun is the name of a tool and the verb is the name of an action performed by this tool. 2)dog-to dog (следовать по пятам), monkey-to monkey (гримасничать) – the noun is the name of an animal and the verb denotes behavior typical of for that animal. Love-to love – it is no always easy to say which of the pair is the original word and which was made by conversion. For ex. if we look at the pair synchronically in M.E. to love is formed by conversion. Diachronically, these words are not linked by conversion. Their identity is the result of historical development. In O.E. there was a noun “lufu” and a verb “lufian”. Due to the dropping of the ending and other processes we have homonyms today.

C. is productive in M.E. because of the character of the language. Root words are typical for its structure and they easily enter conversion pairs. Russian words have flections so we don’t speak about C. in Rus.

Shortening.

S. – is the process of substituting a part for a whole. S. may be dif. Kinds: 1) Clipping is cutting off a part of a word to one or two syllables. The beg. Of the word is shortened: phone<-telephone, the middle of the word shortened: mart<-market, the end is shortened: ed(editor), ad(advertisement). 2)abbreviation is forming a word out of the initial elements of a word combination: MP (member of parliament), UNO, FBI, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), USA. Often met in newspaper style.

Minor types of word building are important as aff. and conversion: 1)blending is combining parts of 2 words to form one word: brunch<->breakfast+lunch, smog<->smoke+fog, magalog<->magazine+catalog. Sound and stress interchange is a way of making words by changing the phonetic shape of the root. It was production in O.E.: full-fill, blood-bleed, sing-song, ‘present-pre’sent, ‘conflict-con’flict, ‘con’duct, abstract (a.):: ab'stract. Sound-imitative (onomatopoeic) words are made by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, in­sects, human beings and inanimate objects, e.g.: babble, bang, buzz, crash, giggle, hiss, moo, purr, rustle, etc.