1. Lexicology is a branch of linguistics, the science of language. Thus, the literal meaning of the term Lexiсolоgу is ‘the science of the word’. The literal meaning, however, gives only a general notion of the aims and the subject-matter of this branch of linguistic science, since all its other branches also take account of words in one way or another approaching them from different angles. Phonetics, for instance, investigating the phonetic structure of language, i.e. its system of phonemes and intonation patterns, is concerned with the study of the outer sound form of the word. Grammar, which is inseparably bound up with Lexicology, is the study of the grammatical structure of language. It is concerned with the various means of expressing grammatical relations between words and with the patterns after which words are combined into word-groups and sentences.

Lexicology as a branch of linguistics has its own aims and methods of scientific research, its basic task being a study and systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use. Lexicology is concerned with words, variable word-groups, phraseological units, and with morphemes which make up words.

Distinction is naturally made between General Lexicology and Special Lexicology. General Lexicology is part of General Linguistics; it is concerned with the study of vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language. Special Lexicology is the Lexicology of a particular language, i.e. the study and description of its vocabulary and vocabulary units, primarily words as the main units of language. Needless to say that every Special Lexicology is based on the principles worked out and laid down by General Lexicology, a general theory of vocabulary.

Modern English Lexicology aims at giving a systematic description of the word stock of Modern English. Words, their component parts — morphemes — and various types of word-groups, are subjected to structural and semantic analysis primarily from the synchronic angle. In other words, Modern English Lexicology investigates the problems of word-structure and word-formation in Modern English, the semantic structure of English words, the main principles underlying the classification of vocabulary units into various groupings the laws governing the replenishment of the vocabulary with new vocabulary units.

It also studies the relations existing between various lexical layers of the English vocabulary and the specific laws and regulations that govern its development at the present time. The source and growth of the English vocabulary, the changes it has undergone in its history are also dwelt upon, as the diachronic approach revealing the vocabulary in the making cannot but contribute to the understanding of its workings at the present time.

2. 1) Language is an objective social phenomenon connected with thinking and with the social life of human society. Language is the basic and the most important means of communication effected though linguistic sings existing in the form of sound-clusters.

2) The word is the principal and basic unit of the language system, the largest on the morphologic and smallest on the syntactic plane of linguistic analysis. The word is a structural and semantic entity within the language system.

3) The word or as far as it goes any linguistic sign is a two-faced unit possessing both form and content that is sound form and meaning. Neither can exist without the other. A word exists in the language not only as a system of all its meanings, but also a system and unity of all its forms that is paradigm.

4) The relationship between language and speech is that between the general and particular. Language exists in speech, through speech and knows no other forms of existence.

5) There are 2 principal approaches to the study of language material, namely synchronic (which is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as it exists at a given time) and diachronic (which deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the course of time). The two approaches should not be contrasted, or set one against the other; in fact, they are interconnected and interdependent.

3. Language is a deeply essentially social phenomenon. It came into existence as a means to support human community, to help it survive as a biological species. It keeps inviting new signs of nomination together with social changes and the growth of needs for communication.

Language manifest itself in 2 spheres: in the brain as knowledge proper, a collection of units of their combinability and speech that is concrete material due to the psychological processes in a human body. In linguistic this duality of language is classified as paradigmatic and syntagmatic. What we know about language through connections and dependences between the units, the differences and analogies make up our knowledge of language that is paradigmatic plane. What we say by choosing names from our knowledge of language constitutes to the syntagmatic plane.

Language is represented as general and particular, common and individual. It is an extremely complicated system, a highly developed type of system and self-adapted system. A system is defined as a complicated body distinguished by 3 characteristics: 1) it is a collection of a large number of units of the same structure; 2) these units are structured in a special way to enable its adequate functioning in reality; 3) language is unique in its functions.

4/5. There are two principal approaches in linguistic science to the study of language material, namely the synchronic and the diachronic approach. With regard to Special Lexicology the synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language as it exists at a given time, for instance, at the present time. It is special Desсriptive Lexicology that deals with the vocabulary and vocabulary units of a particular language at a certain time. A Course in Modern English Lexicology is therefore a course in Special Descriptive Lexicology, its object of study being the English vocabulary as it exists at the present time.

The diachronic approach in terms of Special Lexicology deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the course of time. It is special Historical Lexicology that deals with the evolution of the vocabulary units of a language as time goes by. An English Historical Lexicology would be concerned, therefore, with the origin of English vocabulary units, their change and development, the linguistic and extra linguistic factors modifying their structure, meaning and usage within the history of the English language.

It should be emphatically stressed that the distinction between the synchronic and the diachronic study is merely a difference of approach separating for the purposes of investigation what in real language is inseparable. The two approaches should not be contrasted, or set one against the other; in fact, they are interconnected and interdependent: every linguistic structure and system actually exists in a state of constant development so that the synchronic state of a language system is a result of a long process of linguistic evolution, of its historical development.

6. The importance of English lexicology is based not on the size of its vocabulary, however big it is, but on the fact that at present it is the world’s most widely used language.

The theoretical value of lexicology becomes obvious if we realise that it forms the study of one of the three main aspects of language, i.e. its vocabulary, the other two being its grammar and sound system. The theory of meaning was originally developed within the limits of philosophical science. The relationship between the name and the thing named has in the course of history constituted one of the key questions in gnostic theories and therefore in the struggle of materialistic and idealistic trends. The idealistic point of view assumes that the earlier forms of words disclose their real correct meaning, and that originally language was created by some superior reason so that later changes of any kind are looked upon as distortions and corruption.

The materialistic approach considers the origin, development and current use of words as depending upon the needs of social communication. The dialectics of its growth is determined by its interaction with the development of human practice and mind. Words serve as names for things, actions, qualities, etc. and by their modification become better adapted to the needs of the speakers.

It helps to stimulate a systematic approach to the facts of vocabulary and an organised comparison of the foreign and native language. It is particularly useful in building up the learner’s vocabulary by an effective selection, grouping and analysis of new words. New words are better remembered if they are given not at random but organised in thematic groups, word-families, synonymic series, etc.

A good knowledge of the system of word-formation furnishes a tool helping the student to guess and retain in his memory the meaning of new words on the basis of their motivation and by comparing and contrasting them with the previously learned elements and patterns.

A working knowledge and understanding of functional styles and stylistic synonyms is indispensable when literary texts are used as a basis for acquiring oral skills, for analytical reading, discussing fiction and translation. Lexicology not only gives a systematic description of the present make-up of the vocabulary, but also helps students to master the literary standards of word usage. The correct use of words is an important counterpart of expressive and effective speech.

An exact knowledge of the vocabulary system is also necessary in connection with technical teaching means.

9. The problem of creating a word theory based upon the materialistic understanding of the relationship between word and thought on the one hand, and language and society, on the other, has been one of the most discussed for many years. The efforts of many eminent scholars such as V.V. Vinogradov, A. I. Smirnitsky, M.D. Stepanova.

The word is the fundamental unit of language. Materialistic understanding of the relationship between thought and ward, language and society formulates that the word is a dialectical unity of form and content. Its content or meaning is not identical to notion, but it may reflect human notions, and in this sense may be considered as the form of their existence.

In the dialectical light both planes of the word ore open to historical changeability (diachronic view) and there is one to one correspondence between these two planes which is best revealed in polysemy and homonymy (synchronic view).

Theory of a word needs to explain and argue the properties of a word. The basic properties of a word summed up by Smirnitsky. They arise from the solution to 2 problems: 1) the size of unit and 2) the identity of unit.

1) The size of unit. Which of the units – a morpheme, a word or a word-group is to be recognized as basic? Neither a morpheme nor a phrase is a minimal unit, only a word is characterized by wholeformedness, which makes it a minimal separable item ready to perform the nominative function.

2) The identity of unit. It originates from the objective variations of words in both planes: expression and content.

7. In oral speech we do not make pauses after every word words get fused together. Some lexical items become small and even disappear altogether. The problem is how do we know what the word is (the boundaries, the separability of a word)- the size- of- unit problem.

The segmentation of the flow of speech into words can be achieved if speech is investigated as 3 levels:

1. the feature level

2. semantic level

3. metasemiotic level

The feature level; in every language there are typical combinations of sounds which occur on word boundaries.

The study of the phoneme clusters is called phonotactics.

Vowels- never clusters

Consonants- clusters

- prevocalic

- postvocalic

- intervocalic

The rules of phonotactics can be applied to find the word boundaries.

The semantic level; we deal with syntactic prosody which serves to express syntactic relation between the utterances.

Pauses are used to identity meaningful bits of information.

On the first floor// there is a nursery

The metasemiotic level: speech become rather expressive, separate words give them special emphasize to make them sound more important.

We are friends. Are we not?

We should analyse the relationship between language

All this help to find boundaries.

The division of flow of speech into words is closely connected with syllable division. The singling out of words depends on syllable stereotype of a given language. Type of word stress is also very important.

From the point of view of lexicologist there are 3 types of word stress in English:

1. Unifying: music, future

2. Primary (secondary: gravitation, cooperation, melodrama)

3. Even (ровное): broad- minded, blue-eyed

These factors help us to find the word boundaries.

English is an analytical language. It tends to bring its units into complexes, rather than use morphological combination, which is typical of synthetic of flexion languages.

This tendency is obvious in isolating language, where all words are invariable and syntactic relationships between them are shown by word order.

English in its development goes into direction of isolating langs.

At the lexical level there are lots of multistructural units, which functioning as a single word.

8. The identity-of-unit-problem establishes where one word ends and another begins on the dictionary level.

Custom (обычай) different or one word?

Customs (таможня)

In the Longman dictionary one word despite various.

In the Cambridge dictionary there are free different entries (the case of “custom” is a homonym)

Speaking about different types of relationship between expression and content we should bear in mind one to one correspondence between them is very rare in natural human languages.

For example: polysemy means singleness of form and multiplicity of content.

It’s an instance of the violation the law of the sign which prescribes the direct correspondence of expression of content.

But it’s not typical of the vocabulary of natural language.

Other examples of the violation of the law of the sign.

Homonymy and Synonymy

Identity of expression singleness of content

Difference of context variability of expression

hair-hare

But the law of the sign is not always violated. There are cases of smaller disagreement between expression and content; variants of one and the same word.

The expression plane or content plane of the word may vary. But these variations may not be significant enough to split the word up into different units.

10. Philosophical foundation of etymological study.

Science as a department of culture is governed by certain commonly accepted and proved postulates; it is the dialectic, materialistic treatment of actual facts. According to the dialectical methodology the world develops on the basis of 3 fundamental laws: 1) struggle and unite of the opposites; 2) tradition of quantity into quality; 3) negation of negation. => The idea of continuity of matter, inseparable independence both in space and time.

1. in constant conflicts 2 languages came into contact (contradiction between borrowing and national word-stock). The means to overcome the conflict is for borrowings to get assimilated.

2. finds expression in that numerous borrowings result in the appearance of such systematic facts as synonymic sets of words, pairs of stylistically marked adjectives, etymological doublets and word-building patterns.

3. means that the subsequent quality includes the quality of its ancestor of the preceding form and results from it.

11. The social background of English vocabulary.

The native component.

1) Indo-European contains words which denote elementary concepts without which no human communication would be possible (family relations, parts of body: nose, lip, foot, animals: cow, swine, goose, plants, time of day, numerals from 1 to 100, personal pronoun, heavenly body, verbs: be, stand, sit eat, know, adjectives: red, new, sad)

2) Germanic represents words of roots common to all of most Germanic languages (parts of body: head, hand, arm, finger, animals: bear, fox, natural phenomena, seasons of year, see-going vessel, landscape features: see, land, adjectives: green, grey, blue, small, thick, verbs: speak, give, make)

3) English proper (no earlier than 5^th AD) have no cognates in other languages: boy, girl, lord, woman, daisy, always)

The borrowed component.

1) Latin: - 1^st BC (names of fruits and vegetables: cherry, pear, plum, pea, beet, pepper; cup, kitchen, mill, port, wine)

- 7^th AD - period of Christianisation (priest, bishop, monk, nun, candle, school, scholar, magister)

- Renaissance – 18^th – 19^th (abstract words: major, minor, filial, moderate, intelligent, permanent; scientific terms: datum, status, phenomenon, method, atom)

2) Celtic – 5^th AD (bald, down, glen, druid, bard, cradle, names of rivers, hills)

3) Scandinavian – end of the 8^th to the middle of the 11^th (verbs: call, take, cast, die; adjectives: ill, loose, low, weak; nouns: window, law, husband: words begin with SK: sky, skill, skin, ski, skirt)

4) French – 11^th – 13^th (administrative words: state, government, parliament, power; legal terms: court, judge, justice, crime, prison; military terms: army, war, soldier, officer; educated terms: pupil, lesson, library, pen, pencil; terms of everyday life: table, plate, dinner, supper, river, uncle)

5) Italian (piano, violin, opera, alarm, colonel)

7) Spanish (potato, tomato)

12. The most characteristic feature of English is usually said to be its mixed character. Many linguists consider foreign influence especially that of French, to be the most important factor in the history of English. Vocabulary presents a combination of native and borrowed component. They make up etymological structure.

In linguistic literature the term native is conventionally used to denote words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles from the continent in the 5th century by the Germanic tribes — the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. Practically, however, the term is often applied to words whose origin cannot be traced to any other language.

Words of native origin consist for the most part of very ancient elements—Indo-European, Germanic and West Germanic cognates. The bulk of the Old English word-stock has been preserved, although some words have passed out of existence. When speaking about the role of the native element in the English language linguists usually confine themselves to the small Anglo-Saxon stock of words, which is estimated to make 25—30% of the English vocabulary.

The native vocabulary is distinguished by several prominent language characteristics:

1) They are morphemically short (1-2 syllables)

2) They name the vitally important areas of life

3) They possess high polysemy

4) They have an unusually vide derivational potential

5) In speaking they enjoy high and rich collocability and take part in forming phraseological units

6) Stylistically they are unrestricted, neutral, devoiced of emotional conversation.

19. Morphemic Analysis.

The procedure generally employed for the purposes of segmenting words into the constituent morphemes is the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents (ICs). Each IC at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into two smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. In terms of the method employed these are referred to as the Ultimate Constituents (UCs). For example the noun friendliness is first segmented into the IC friendly recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking and friendly and the -ness found in a countless number of nouns, such as happiness, darkness, unselfishness, etc. The IC -ness is at the same time a UC of the noun, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. The IC friendly is next broken into the ICs friend-and -ly recurring in friendship, unfriendly, etc. on the one hand, and wifely, brotherly, etc., on the other. Needless to say that the ICs friend-and -ly are both UCs of the word under analysis.

The procedure of segmenting a word into its Ultimate Constituent morphemes, may be conveniently presented with the help of a box-like diagram

The morphemic analysis according to the IC and UC may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-called root principle and the affix principle. According to the affix principle the segmentation of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of an affixational morpheme within a set of words; for example, the identification of the suffixational morpheme -less leads to the segmentation of words like useless, hopeless, merciless, etc., into the suffixational morpheme -less and the root-morphemes within a word-cluster.

13. The term borrowing is used in linguistics to denote the process of adopting words from other languages and also the result of this process, the language material itself.

In its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Scandinavian. The great influx of borrowings from these sources can be accounted for by a number of historical causes. Due to the great influence of the Roman civilisation Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Scandinavian was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of social and cultural development and who merged rather easily with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th century. French was the language of the other conquerors who brought with them a lot of new notions of a higher social system — developed feudalism, it was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century.

In the study of the borrowed element in English the main emphasis is as a rule placed on the Middle English period. Borrowings of later periods became the object of investigation only in recent years. These investigations have shown that the flow of borrowings has been steady and uninterrupted. The greatest number has come from French. They refer to various fields of social-political, scientific and cultural life. A large portion of borrowings is scientific and technical terms.

The number and character of borrowings do not only depend on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts, but also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of languages concerned. The closer the languages, the deeper and more versatile is the influence. This largely accounts for the well-marked contrast between the French and the Scandinavian influence on the English language. Thus under the influence of the Scandinavian languages, which were closely related to Old English, some classes of words were borrowed that could not have been adopted from non-related or distantly related languages; a number of Scandinavian borrowings were felt as derived from native words; the Scandinavian influence even accelerated to a certain degree the development of the grammatical structure of English.

Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral speech (by immediate contact between the peoples) and through written speech (by indirect contact through books).

Oral borrowing took place chiefly in the early periods of history, whereas in recent times written borrowing gained importance. Words borrowed orally are usually short and they undergo considerable changes in the act of adoption. Written borrowings preserve their spelling and some peculiarities of their sound form; their assimilation is a long and laborious process.

14. The term borrowing is used in linguistics to denote the process of adopting words from other languages and also the result of this process, the language material itself. The following types of borrowings can be distinguished:

- loan words proper – words borrowed from another language and assimilated to this or that extent;

- loan translation – 1) borrowing by means of literally translating words or word combinations, by modelling words after foreign patterns; 2) translation loans – words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the English language but according to patterns taken from another language by way of literal word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme translation.

- semantic borrowings/loans – the term is used to denote the development in an English word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language (e.g. policy).

Classification of borrowings according to the borrowed aspect:

1) Phonetic borrowings. Words are borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and meaning. Then they undergo assimilation, each sound in the borrowed word is substituted by the corresponding sound of the borrowing language. In some cases the spelling is changed.

2) Translation loans. They are word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme) translations of some foreign words or expressions. In such cases the notion is borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical units

3) Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have two relative languages which have common words with different meanings.

4) Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in the language when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from one language into another, so that the morphemic structure of borrowed words becomes familiar to the people speaking the borrowing language.

Classification of borrowings according to the degree of assimilation: completely assimilated, partly assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms).

Classification of borrowings according to the language from which they were borrowed: Latin and Greek borrowings, French borrowings, Italian borrowings, Spanish borrowings, Scandinavian borrowings, German borrowings, Holland borrowings, Russian borrowings.

15. Etymological doublets, adjectival pairs, semantic change, synonyms.

Etymological doublets are two or more words of the same language which were derived by different routes from the same basic word. They differ to a certain degree in form, meaning and current usage. Two words at present slightly differentiated in meaning may have originally been dia¬lectal variants of the same word. Thus, we find in doublets traces of Old English dialects. Examples are whole (in the old sense of 'healthy' or 'free from disease') and hale. The latter has survived in its original meaning and is preserved in the phrase hale and hearty. Both come from OE /id/. Similarly there are the doublets raid and road, their relationship remains clear in the term inroad which means “a hostile incursion”, 'a raid'. The verbs drag and draw both come from OE dragon.

The words shirt, shriek, share, shabby come down from Old English, whereas their respective doublets skirt, screech, scar and scabby are etymologically cognate Scandinavian borrowings. These doublets are characterized by a regular variation of sh and sc.

Another source of doublets may be due to the borrowing of different grammatical forms of the same word. Thus, the comparative of Latin super 'above' was superior 'higher, better', this was borrowed into Eng¬lish as superior 'high or higher in some quality or rank'. The super¬lative degree of the same Latin word was supremus 'highest'. When this was borrowed into English it gave the adjective supreme 'outstanding, prominent, highest in rank'.

The factors accounting for semantic changes may be roughly subdivided into two groups: a) extra-linguistic and b) linguistic causes.

By extra-linguistic causes we mean various changes in the life of the speech community, changes in economic and social structure, changes in ideas, scientific concepts, way of life and other spheres of human activities as reflected in word meanings. Although objects, institutions, concepts, etc. change in the course of time in many cases the soundform of the words which denote them is retained but the meaning of the words is changed. The word car, e.g., ultimately goes back to Latin carrus which meant ‘a four-wheeled wagon’ (ME. carre) but now that other means of transport are used it denotes ‘a motor-car’, ‘a railway carriage’ (in the USA), ‘that portion of an airship, or balloon which is intended to carry personnel, cargo or equipment’.

Some changes of meaning are due to what may be described as purely linguistic causes, i.e. factors acting within the language system. The commonest form which this influence takes is the so-called ellipsis. In a phrase made up of two words one of these is omitted and its meaning is transferred to its partner. The verb to starve, e.g., in Old English (OE. steorfan) had the meaning ‘to die’ and was habitually used in collocation with the word hunger (ME. sterven of hunger). Already in the 16th century the verb itself acquired the meaning ‘to die of hunger’. Similar semantic changes may be observed in Modern English when the meaning of one word is transferred to another because they habitually occur together in speech.

Generally speaking, a necessary condition of any semantic change, no matter what its cause, is some connection, some association between the old meaning and the new. There are two kinds of association involved as a rule in various semantic changes namely: a) similarity of meanings, and b) contiguity of meanings.

Similarity of meanings or metaphor may be described as a semantic process of associating two referents, one of which in some way resembles the other. The word hand, e.g., acquired in the 16th century the meaning of ‘a pointer of a clock of a watch’ because of the similarity of one of the functions performed by the hand (to point at something) and the function of the clockpointer. Contiguity of meanings or metonymy may be described as the semantic process of associating two referents one of which makes part of the other or is closely connected with it. , This can be perhaps best illustrated by the use of the word tongue — ‘the organ of speech’ in the meaning of ‘language’ (as in mother tongue; cf. also L. lingua, Russ. язык). Results of semantic change can be generally observed in the changes of the denotational meaning of the word (restriction and extension of meaning) or in the alteration of its connotational component (ame-lioration and deterioration of meaning). Changes in the denotational meaning may result in the restriction of the types or range of referents denoted by the word. Changes in the denotational meaning may also result in the application of the word to a wider variety of referents. This is commonly described as extension of meaning .

Synonyms are the words of the same part of speech expressing one and the same notion of the phenomenon, but differ in the shades of meaning.

Vinogradov:

- Idiographic synonyms (dif. In denot. sem. Components: to ask – to question)

- Stylistic synonyms

- Absolute synonyms

Every group of synonyms has its own structure in which there is a dominant word and a number of co-synonyms. The dominant word:

- has the widest lex. collocability

- can substitute for any co-syn.

- The most frequent word

16. Assimilation of borrowings.

All the changes that borrowed elements undergo may be divided into two large groups.

On the one hand there are changes specific of borrowed words only. These changes aim at adapting words of foreign origin to the norms of the borrowing language, e.g. the consonant combinations [pn], [ps], [pt] in the words pneumatics, psychology, Ptolemy of Greek origin were simplified into [n], [s], [t], since the consonant combinations [ps], [pt], [pn], very frequent at the end of English words (as in sleeps, stopped, etc.), were never used in the initial position. For the same reason the initial [ks] was changed into [z] (as in Gr. xylophone).

The suffixes -ar, -or, -ator in early Latin borrowings were replaced by the highly productive Old English suffix -ere, as in L. Caesar>OE. Casere, L. sutor>OE. sūtere.

By analogy with the great majority of nouns that form their plural in -s, borrowings, even very recent ones, have assumed this inflection instead of their original plural endings. The forms Soviets, bolsheviks, kolkhozes, sputniks illustrate the process.

On the other hand we observe changes that are characteristic of both borrowed and native words. These changes are due to the development of the word according to the laws of the given language. When the highly inflected Old English system of declension changed into the simpler system of Middle English, early borrowings conformed with the general rule. Under the influence of the so-called inflexional levelling borrowings like lазu, (MnE. law), fēōlaza (MnE. fellow), stræt (MnE. street), disc (MnE. dish) that had a number of grammatical forms in Old English acquired only three forms in Middle English: common case and possessive case singular and plural (fellow, fellowes, fellowes).

It is very important to discriminate between the two processes — the adaptation of borrowed material to the norms of the language and the development of these words according to the laws of the language.

This differentiation is not always easily discernible. In most cases we must resort to historical analysis before we can draw any definite conclusions. There is nothing in the form of the words procession and, progression to show that the former was already used in England in the 11th century, the latter not till the 15th century. The history of these words reveals that the word procession has undergone a number of changes alongside with other English words (change in declension, accentuation, structure, sounds), whereas the word progression underwent some changes by analogy with the word procession and other similar words already at the time of its appearance in the language.

17. If viewed structurally, words appear to be divisible into smaller units which are called morphemes. Morphemes do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of words. Yet they possess meanings of their own.

All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots (or radicals) and affixes. The latter, in their turn, fall into pre-fixes which precede the root in the structure of the word (as in re-read, mis-pronounce, unwell) and suffixes which follow the root (as in teach-er, cur-able, diet-ate).

Words which consist of a root and an affix (or several af-fixes) are called derived words or derivatives and are pro-duced by the process of word-building known as affixation (or derivation).

Derived words are extremely numerous in the English vo-cabulary. Successfully competing with this structural type is the so-called root word which has only a root morpheme in its structure.

By word-building are understood processes of producing new words from the resources of this particular language. Together with borrowing, word-building provides for enlarg-ing and enriching the vocabulary of the language.

widely represented by a great number of words belonging to the original English stock or to earlier borrowings (house, room, book, work, port, street, table, etc.), and, in Modern English, has been greatly enlarged by the type of word-building called conversion (e. g. to hand, v. formed from the noun hand; to can, v. from can, п.; to pale, v. from pale, adj.; a find, n. from to find, v.; etc.).

Another wide-spread word-structure is a compound word consisting of two or more stems1 (e. g. dining-room, bluebell, mother-in-law, good-for-nothing). Words of this structural type are produced by the word-building process called com-position.

The somewhat odd-looking words like flu, pram, lab, M. P., V-day, H-bomb are called shortenings, contractions or curtailed words and are produced by the way of word-building called shortening (contraction).

The four types (root words, derived words, compounds, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition the most productive ways of word-building.

To return to the question posed by the title of this chapter, of how words are made, let us try and get a more detailed picture of each of the major types of Modern English word-building and, also, of some minor types.

29. Comparison of a prefix and a suffix as derivational units.

A careful study of a great many suffixal and preffixal derivatives has revealed an essential difference between them. In modern English suffixation is characteristic of noun and adjective formation, while prefixation is typical of verb formation. As a general rule, prefixes modify the L.M. of stems to which they are added. A preffixal derivative usually joins the part of speech. Th unpreffixed word belongs to e.g.un-usual – cf. usual; discomfort – comfort. In a suffixal derivative the suffix doesn’t only modify the LM of the stem it is affixed to, but the word itself is usually transferred to another part of speech, e.g. careless – care, goodness – good. It is necessary point out that a suffix closely unit together with a stem forms a fusion retaining less of its independence than a prefix which is as a general rule more independent semantically: reading – the act of one who reads, ability to read and to “re-read” means “to read again”.

18. A morpheme as a two-facet unit, types.

Morpheme is the smallest indivisible two-facet language unit. Morphemes, though they are as a rule easily singled out in words, are not independent and are found only as parts of the word. Like a word a morpheme is a two-facet language unit, an association of a certain meaning with a certain sound-pattern. Unlike a word a morpheme is not an autonomous unit and can occur in speech only as a constituent part of the word. Morphemes cannot be segmented into smaller units without losing their constitutive essence, i.e. two-facetedness, association of a certain meaning with a given sound-pattern, cf. the morpheme lace- denoting 'a string or cord put through small holes in shoes', etc.; 'to draw edges together' and the constituent phonemes [l], [ei], [s] entirely without meaning. Identification of morphemes in various texts shows that morphemes may have different phonemic shapes. In the word-cluster please, pleasing, pleasure, pleasant the root-morpheme is represented by phonemic shapes: [pli:z] in please, pleasing, [plez] in pleasure and [plez] in pleasant. In such cases we say that the phonemic shapes of the word stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other. All the representations of the given morpheme that manifest alteration are called allomorphs of that morpheme or morpheme variants. Thus [pli:z, plez] and [рlез] are allomorphs of оде and the same morpheme. The root-morphemes in the word-cluster duke, ducal, duchess, duchy or poor, poverty may also serve as examples of the allomorphs of one morpheme.

Morphemes come in different varieties, depending on whether they are free or bound and

Inflectional or derivational.

Free morphemes can stand by themselves (i.e. they are what what we conventionally call words) and either tell us something about the world (free lexical morphemes) or play a role in grammar (free grammatical morphemes). Man, pizza, run and happy are instances of free lexical morphemes, while and, but, the and to are examples for free grammatical morphemes. It is important to note the difference between morphemes and phonemes: morphemes are the minimal meaning-bearing elements that a word consists of and are principally independent from sound. For example, the word zebra (ˈziːbrə) consists of six phones and two syllables, but it contains only a single morpheme. Ze- and -bra are not independent meaning-bearing components of the word zebra, making it monomorphemic.

Not all morphemes can be used independently, however. Some need to be bound to a free morpheme. In English the information “plural number” is attached to a word that refers to some person, creature, concept or other nameable entity (in other words, to a noun) when encoded in a morpheme and cannot stand alone. Similarly the morpheme -er, used to describe “someone who performs a certain activity” (e.g. a dancer, a teacher or a baker) cannot stand on its own, but needs to be attached to a free morpheme (a verb in this case). Bound morphemes come in two varieties, derivational and inflectional, the core difference between the two being that the addition of derivational morphemes creates new words while the addition of inflectional words merely changes word form.

The signature quality of derivational morphemes is that they derive new words. In the following examples, derivational morphemes are added to produce new words which are derived from the parent word. happy – happiness – unhappiness; examine – examination – reexamination.

In all cases the derived word means something different than the parent and the word class may change with each derivation. As demonstrated in the examples above, sometimes derivation will not cause the world class to change, but in such a case the meaning will usually be significantly different from that of the parent word, often expressing opposition or reversal.

Inflection (the process by which inflectional morphemes are attached to words) allows speakers to morphologically encode grammatical information. That may sound much more complicated than it really is – recall the example we started out with.

The word girls consists of two morphemes

the free lexical morpheme girl that describes a young female human being and

the bound inflectional morpheme -s that denotes plural number

20. Derivational Analysis.

We can study a particular word from the point of morphological and derivational analyses. While doing derivational analysis we find how the word was constructed, which is its derivative and what means have been used to build up the word. So, the process of affixation should be explored within derivational analysis, not morphological.

Word-Formation is the system of derivative types of words and the process of creating new words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic formulas and patterns. For instance, the noun driver is formed after the pattern v+-er, i.e. a verbal stem +-the noun-forming suffix -er. The meaning of the derived noun driver is related to the meaning of the stem drive- ‘to direct the course of a vehicle’ and the suffix -er meaning ‘an active agent’: a driver is ‘one who drives’ (a carriage, motorcar, railway engine, etc.). Likewise compounds resulting from two or more stems joined together to form a new word are also built on quite definite structural and semantic patterns and formulas, for instance adjectives of the snow-white type are built according to the formula п+а, etc. It can easily be observed that the meaning of the whole compound is also related to the meanings of the component parts. The structural patterns with the semantic relations they signal give rise to regular new creations of derivatives, e.g. sleeper, giver, smiler or soat-blасk, tax-free, etc.

In conformity with structural types of words described above1 the following two types of word-formation may be distinguished, word-derivation and word-composition (or compounding). Words created by word-derivation have in terms of word-formation analysis only one derivational base and one derivational affix, e.g. cleanness (from clean), to overestimate (from to estimate), chairmanship (from chairman), openhandedness (from openhanded), etc. Some derived words have no derivational affixes, because derivation is achieved through conversion 2, e.g. to paper (from paper), a fall (from to fall), etc. Words created by word-composition have at least two bases, e.g. lamp-shade, ice-cold, looking-glass,” daydream, hotbed, speedometer, etc.

21. The notion of a W.-B. pattern as a two-facet unit.

As result of the process of naming of one object through another they are emerges a definite morphological struction. The connection between the morphemes within it is a projector of those links between the real things which are perceived by man. W-B models generalize the human experience of characterizing, comparing and classifying objects in a linguistic form to fix the results of the man’s observation of the ways in which objects counteract.

A W-B pattern is a linguistic model which is a reflection of the repeated use of ready-made units and which exist objectively in man’s mind. It serves as the basis to create new vocabulary items on the analogy of those already recognized and employed by speakers.

The origin and the mechanism of WB may be seemed up in the definition: a W-B pattern is a generalized regular and meaningful arrangement of the base and affix, which indicates their order, structure and the semantic nature.

All its components are called Immediate Constituents (IC). According to their structural and semantic role in the production of a new word, they are discriminated as a derivational base and a derivational affix (the affix names a generalized notion of the class of objects and the base names the property by which this class is identified).

W-B patterns are two-facet ling.units with the generalized abstract expression of both plains. It means that being meaningful schemes they contain a semantic component common to all individual words of the same pattern. The meaning of the pattern even through it makes the part and parcel of every word can’t be immediately perceived and isolated in each word. It only can be deduced as a highly-generalized common meaning when analogues words are brought to comparison.