15. Word building. Non productive models

The types of word-building that are non-productive are contamination (blending), back-formation and reduplication. Back-formation (Reversion) is a way of word-building by which a new word is formed by cutting off a real or supposed suffix: burglar→to burgle, enthusiasm→to enthuse. It is called back-formation, because the process of derivation is opposite to the traditional one. Usually, a derived word is longer (work→worker), in back-formation the derived word is shorter than the one from which it was derived. By way of back-formation verbs may be derived from nouns (beggar→to beg, television→to televise) and adjectives (peevish (сварливый) →to peeve), nouns from adjectives (greedy→greed). A very productive type of back-formation in present-day English is derivation of verbs from compounds in –er and –ing as final elements: to baby-sit (from baby-sitter), to air-condition (from air-conditioner), to house-clean (from house-cleaner).  Blending is a way building words by merging parts of words (not morphemes) into one new word. Thus, the noun smog is composed of the parts of the nouns smoke and fog, the noun brunch – of breakfast and lunch, motel – of motor and hotel. Such words are called blends (сращения), fusions, telescope words. Blends are built either by merging two clipped stems (dramedy←drama+comedy) or merging one full and one clipped stem (teleplay←television+play). Most blends are nouns, but sometimes verbs and adjectives are formed by blending: flush←flash+blush, fantabulous←fantastic+fabulous.  Blending is either viewed as a separate type of word-building, or as a variety of composition or shortening. It plays an important role in building neologisms in the sphere of advertising, mass media, colloqual speech, trade and marketing: Adidas←Adi+Dassler (основатель компании), slimnastics←slim+gymnastics, pollutician←pollution+politician, cottonopolis (Манчестеркакцентрхлопчатобумажнойпромышленности), Ameringlish←American English, swacket←sweater+jacket, etc.

Reduplication (Repetition) consists in a complete or partial repetition of the stem or of the whole word (bye-bye), often with a variation of the root vowel or consonant (ping-pong)

These words are always colloqual or slang, among them there many nursery words. There exist three types of such words: 1) the words in which the same stem is repeated without any changes (pretty-pretty, goody-goody, never-never (утопия); 2) words with a vowel variation (chit-chat (сплетни), ping-pong, tip-top); 3) words with pseudomorphemes (rhyme combinations) (lovey-dovey, walkie-talkie, willy-nilly); the parts of such words don’t exist as separate words. Non-productive ways of word-building are also sound interchange and distinctive stress which are regarded as a means of word-building only diachronically because in Mod. English not a single word is formed by changing the root sound or by shifting the place of stress.  Sound interchange implies vowel-interchange (to sing – song, to live – live) and consonant-interchange (use – to use [z], advice – to advise). Consonant interchange may be combined with vowel interchange: bath – to bathe. Sound interchange only serves to distinguish one long-established word from another. Distinctive stress is found in groups like `present – pres`ent, `conduct – con`duct, `abstract – abstr’act, etc. These words were French borrowings with the original stress on the last syllable. Verbs retained it, while in nouns and adjectives it was shifted. The place of stress helps to distinguish verbs and nouns or pronouns in speech.