2. Word-building: Reduplication, Back formation.

Reduplication is the way of word-building when new words are formed by repeating one and the same syllable or a whole stem. Reduplication in most cases combined with sound interchange. Reduplication is often combined with alliteration and rhyme , and also with sound imitation. In most cases words formed by reduplication belong to the colloquial style (only a few of such words belong to the neutral style, e.g. ‘murmur’, ‘ping-pong’).

When reduplication is used without sound interchange we have cases of perfect or complete reduplication. E.g:to murmur, pom-pom (a machine-gun, imitation of its sounds, it was made during World War I), ack-ack (anti-aircraft gun), bye-bye, ta-ta, fifty-fifty.

In most cases reduplication is partial, i.e. combined with sound interchange, e.g. tip-top, fiddle-faddle, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, to criss-cross.

In some cases consonants are interchanged, e/g rat-tat, willy-nilly, harum-scarum, helter-skelter.

Sometimes only the initial and the final letters are repeated and the middle is interchanged, e.g: topsy-turvy.

Reduplication is not productive. It’s used mainly in speaking with small children and especially in children’s stories.

Back formation.It is the way of word-building when a word is formed by dropping the

final morpheme to form a new word. It is opposite to suffixation, that iswhy it is called back formation. At first it appeared in the languauge as a result of misunderstanding the structure of a borrowed word . Prof. Yartseva explains this mistake by the influence of the whole system of the language on separate words. E.g. it is typical of English to form nouns

denoting the agent of the action by adding the suffix -er to a verb stem (speak- speaker). So when the French word «beggar» was borrowed into English the final syllable «ar» was pronounced in the same way as the English -er and Englishmen formed the verb «to beg» by dropping the end ofthe noun. Other examples of back formation are : to accreditate (from accreditation), to bach (from bachelor), to collocate (from collocation),

to enthuse (from enthusiasm), to compute (from computer), to emote (from emotion) to reminisce ( from reminiscence) , to televise (from television)

etc.

As we can notice in cases of back formation the part-of-speech meaning

of the primary word is changed, verbs are formed from nouns.

Word-building: Sound imitation.

It is the way of word-building when a word is formed by imitating

different sounds. There are some semantic groups of words formed by means

of sound imitation

a) sounds produced by human beings, such as : to whisper, to giggle, to

mumble, to sneeze, to whistle etc.

b) sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, such as : to hiss, to

buzz, to bark, to moo, to twitter etc.

c) sounds produced by nature and objects, such as : to splash, to rustle,

to clatter, to bubble, to ding-dong, to tinkle etc. The corresponding nouns are formed by means of conversion, e.g. clang (of a bell), chatter (of children) etc.