Subtheme 4. Word Composition

Word composition in ME and NE was developing towards increase of compound words and rise of new word-building patterns.

The OE pattern Noun stem + Noun stem retained its productivity throughout the whole history. In ME and NE this pattern developed several modifications:

1. Noun + Noun: mousetrap, football, penknife, shopwindow, etc.

2. Noun + Noun in er: householder, fortune-teller, type-writer, etc;

3. Noun + s + Noun: sportsman, craftsman, etc;

Many nouns were built after the patterns which appeared only in ME and later on in NE. The most productive among them were the following:

1. Verb + ing + Noun: looking-glass, working-day, smoking-room, etc;

2. Adjective + Noun: sweetheart, blackboard, redtape, etc;

3. Verb + Adverb: break-down, make-up, fall-out, etc.

Compound adjectives were formed after the following patterns.

1. Noun + Adjective: life-long, country-wide, stone-dead, etc;

2. Noun + Part II: heart-broken, hand-written, moth-eaten;

3. Adjective + Part I: easy-going, good-looking;

The OE pattern Adjective + Noun (mildheort) developed into the pattern Adjective + Noun + ed: mildhearted, gray-haired, black-eyed, etc.

The ME period gave rise to compound pronouns like somebody, something, everybody everything, anybody anything and so on. A Similar pattern was used to build compound adverbs such as: anywhere, somewhere, nowhere.

Rise of Conversion

The word «conversion» is used to denote a way of word-building which consists in transformation of one part of speech into another.

land (n)  land (v)

step (v)  step (n)

Today conversion is one of the most productive world-building means. It is a specifically English way of word formation. Its growth was predetermined by the reduction and the subsequent loss of unstressed endings and by the simplification of the morphological structure of the word.

As a result of these changes a number of English nouns and verbs arrived at the same sound and graphic form and became historical homonyms.

OE		ME		NE
lufian (v)	>	loven	>	love (v)
lufu (n)	>	love	>	love (n)
andswarian (v)	>	answeren	>	answer (v)
andswaru (n)	>	answere	>	answer (n)

Historical homonyms such as love (v) and love (n), or answer (v) and answer (n) gradually came to be understood as transformed from one into the other. Such understanding helped to establish a new word building pattern. Verbs were converted to nouns, and nouns were converted to verbs.

The new way of word formation first appeared in late ME, but it reached the peak of its productivity in the NE period.

A great number of nouns were derived from verbs and a great number of verbs were derived from nouns.

Nouns derived from verbs: break, look, walk, jump, help, drive, want, etc.

Verbs derived from nouns: fish, whip, land, hand, dust, etc.

The English language reflects in its entire development the political, social, and cultural history of the English people.

"For two centuries, the Norman Conquest made English mainly the language of the lower classes, while French was used on almost all occasions by the nobles and their close associates. English had undergone some drastic changes from what it had been in 1066 when it once regained supremacy as the language of the elements of the population."

"Other important influences contributed to make English what it is today; such as, the hundred Years War, the rise of an important middle class during and after the plague, the Renaissance, the development of England as an important maritime power, the expansion of the British Empire, and the growth of commerce and industry, and of science and literature."

The Latin vocabulary which forms so important a part in English words have generally entered the language through the medium of writing. Unlike the Scandinavian influence and to a large extent the French influence after the Norman Conquest, the various Latin influences, except the earliest, have been the work of churchmen and scholars. Even the words borrowed from the Romance languages in the Renaissance period came in through books, and the revivals and new formations from native material were due to the efforts of individual writers and their associates.

English is more international in scope than many other languages because of the contributions of Latin, Greek, and other tongues