4) Sound-interchange

Sound-interchange (or sound gradation, or root inflexion) is one of the two non-productive types of word-building in Modern English. The other one is stress-interchange (or change of stress).

It is a matter of common knowledge that sound-interchange is to be found in all the Indo-European languages. In English lexical sound-interchange, i.e. the change of a root vowel or a root consonant, or both, used to play a certain role in word-building in the past though it is no longer active now. In fact, sound-gradation and change of stress which is sometimes combined with it, are absolutely unproductive in Modern English.

Among the words formed with the help of sound-interchange we can distinguish 3 groups of words.

1) Words formed by means of vowel interchange, e.g. food > to feed, blood > to bleed, gold > to gild; to shoot > shot, to sing> song, to write > writ (уст. писание);

2) Words formed by means of both vowel and consonantal interchange, e.g. bath > to bathe, grass > to graze (пастись, щипать траву), breath > to breathe, cloth > to clothe, loss > to lose, life > to live, choice > to choose, etc.

3) Words formed by means of consonantal interchange often accompanied by changes in spelling, e.g. grease [ ] – сало, жир > to grease [ ] – смазывать (жиром); house [ ] > to house [ ] – 1. поселить; 2. жить (в доме) 3. вмещать; price [ ] – цена > to prize [ ] – 1. высоко ценить; 2. оценивать; advice [ ] > to advise [ ]; practice [ ] > to practise [ ], use [ ] > to use [ ] etc.

It should be mentioned that sometimes sound-interchange is accompanied by affixation, cf. deep > depth, wide > width, broad > breadth, long > length, strong > strength, where vowel gradation is accompanied by the addition of the -th suffix.

5) Stress-interchange

Stress-interchange (or change of stress, or semantic stress, or morphological stress) is another non-productive type of word-building in Modern English.

Change of stress is mostly observed in verb-noun pairs (e.g. ´transport – to trans´port; ´accent – to ac´cent; ´attribute – to att´ribute; ´compound – to com´pound; ´conflict – to con´flict; ´contest – to con´test; ´contrast – to con´trast; ´ export – to ex´port; ´object – to ob´ject; ´perfume – to per´fume) and much more seldom – in verb-adjective pairs (e.g. to pro´strate – ´prostrate = падать ниц – лежащий ничком; to ab´sent – ´absent; to abs´tract – ´abstract = отнимать; суммировать – абстрактный, отвлеченный; to fre´quent – ´frequent = часто посещать – частый).

The difference in stress often appeared after the verb was formed and was not therefore connected with the formation of the new word. It could be brought about by analogy or purely phonetical reasons. Change of stress mostly accompanied either the formation or the borrowing of the word.

Thus, the noun August [ ] (Lat. Augustus)] was borrowed in the 11-th century and the adjective august [ ] = величественный; августейший) in the 17-th century through French, retaining the typical final stress of the French. In other cases it is the analogy of verbs of the same root having the stress on the last syllable while the nominal root has it in the first, e.g. to abs´tract (formed in the 16-th century from an adjective ´abstract that dates from the 14-th century), to ´concert = сговариваться, договариваться (formed in the 17-th century from a noun dating in English from the 16-th century), etc. [Kuznetsova, 1966: 118].