Linguistic causes of change

An important linguistic cause is differentiation of synonyms within the language. This differentiation is often based on the assimilation of loanwords. E.g. the words time and tide used to be synonyms in English and later tide began to denote shifting waters, and the word time is still used in its general sense. The word beast was borrowed into English from Latin (bestia) and displaced the English word deer, but it was later in its term displaced by another Latin loanword animal (animus), so as a result of a double-borrowing the two earlier words deer and beast, narrowed their meanings.

Another linguistic phenomenon, responsible for the semantic change, is ellipsis, which takes place in case of the most frequently used phrases: cut-price sale turned into sale, mass media is often used as media, ice may mean icecream. The word starve (compare to German sterben) once meant “to die”, but it is now used in the meaning “to be dying\ of hunger”.

Extra-linguistic causes of change

These causes are much more numerous and versatile than the linguistic ones and they are also better studied. The point here is that any language is powerfully affected by social, political, economic, cultural, and technical changes in people’s lives. The influence of these factors upon linguistic phenomena is studied by sociolinguistics. Life may influence not only the vocabularly, but also the inner language structure. For example, terms being words of science in quite a number of cases behave differently from the words of everyday communication.

The extra-linguistic change of meaning often occurs in the course of history. For example, the OE eorde meant “ground under people’s feet” and “the world of men” as opposed to heaven, inhabited by Gods. But with the progress of science it began to denote “the third planet from the Sun”, and with the discovery of electricity “a connection of a conductor with the earth”. The process of conversion brought forth the verb to earth meaning «заземлять».

Another technical term is chain reaction, in which the word chain is used metaphorically. Sometimes we may face a reverse process, when terms start to be used in everyday life in their non-terminological meaning. E.g. to be going full steam ahead, to be governized into action.

Morphological structure of English words

A morpheme is an association of a definite meaning, at times rather abstract with a definite sound pattern. All morphemes fall under quite a limited number of models, so morphemes are patterned language units. However, the same is true in the description of words. The difference between these two types of units is that a morpheme is never autonomous in speech, while the word is. A morpheme cannot be a sentence, a single word can. A morpheme is never a finished utterance. It can only be used with other morphemes, thus forming words.

There are many cases, when one morpheme can make one word or a word can consist of one morpheme. This happens with root morphemes, but this is a case of coincidence, when one and the same form acquires two different functions. E.g. the word housing consists of two morphemes: “house” + “ing”. The “ing” morpheme can never function separately, but the morpheme “house” can neither function separately. Every time we have the form house in speech, it changes its function, stops being a morpheme and starts being a word. As a result, there are no cases, where morphemes can be confused with words.

From out of all units having meanings, morphemes are the smallest. There have been many attempts to classify morphemes into various functional groups. The first subdivision states, that morphemes may be bound, that is never used in isolation as words, and on the other hand free, that is homonymous to words.

By their essential characteristics morphemes are divided into two large groups: roots and affixes. Affixes in their term are split into prefixes, suffixes and infixes in accordance with their position in the word structure.

Another subdivision of all affixes is functional, and here affixes may be derivational and functional (in English also named endings, don’t mix with Russian term “окончание”).

*** Besides we should single out a stem, which is the part of the word always staying unchanged throughout the whole grammatical word paradigm. So a stem may not be limited to the root. E.g. in the paradigm heart, hearts and heart’s the stem is “heart”, it’s unchangeable. In another case hearty, heartier, the heartiest the stem is “hearty”. An example of a bound stem is in the word cordial, where “cordi-“ cannot be used in isolation (compare to “hearty”, which is a derived stem, able of being used in isolation.

If we view the problem from the standpoint of etymology of words, then we may see that bound stems are especially characteristc of loanwords (заимствованные слова), which have English affixes. E.g. arrogance, where “arrog-“ is a bound stem. Another example is charity, the stem “char-“ is bound. Coward – “cow-“, distort – “tor-“, involve – “volv-“.

A root is the element common for quite a number of words, which all make a word family. Thus, if we take the example of heart, being a root word, we may derive the following from it:

1) to hearten смягчать, to dishearten разочаровывать, heartily, heartless, hearty, heartiness – all these examples show the single process of affixational derivation;

2) sweetheart, heartshaped, heartbroken, etc. – this being the process of word compounding;

3) kind-hearted – the combination of derivation and compounding.

Roots which are capable of producing new words are named productive roots.

A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem (which may include suffixes too).

A prefix is another derivational morpheme, placed before the root and modifying the basic meaning of the word, sometimes turning that meaning into the opposite one.

An infix is placed withing the word structure. This type of affixes shows an extremely low productivity in modern English. E.g. in the word stand the infix is “n” (of course, it’s a historicam morpheme, these days being a root).

The historically viewed process of word building may be schematically shown as follows:

Step 1. Separate words start to be regularly used together with some other words and at fixed positions. In the course of time they become free morphemes, united in one word. E.g. policeman, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, etc. “Man” and “berry” are not roots, they are almost suffixes, or at least semi-affixes.

Step 2. They stop being used autonomously and become morphemes, however, still preserving their initial meaning.

Step 3. They are now never used separately, partially or totally lose their initial meaning and can be determined as morphemes by etymologists only.