Лексикология английского языка. Учебник

4)Some meanings become more general, others more specialised, etc. The word umbrella, borrowed in the meaning of a ’sunshade’ or ‘parasol’ (from It. ombrella <ombra — ’shade1) came to denote similar protection from the rain as well.

5)Usually the primary meaning of a borrowed word is retained throughout its history, but sometimes it becomes a secondary meaning. Thus the Scandinavian borrowings wing, root, take and many others have retained their primary meanings to the present day, whereas in the OE. fēolaze (MnE. fellow) which was borrowed from the same source in the meaning of ‘comrade, companion’, the primary meaning has receded to the background and was replaced by the meaning that appeared in New

English ‘a man or a boy’.

6)Sometimes change of meaning is the result of associating borrowed words with familiar words which somewhat resemble them in sound, but which are not at all related. This process, which is termed folk etymology, often changes the form of the word in whole or in part, so as to bring it nearer to the word or words with which it is thought to be connected,

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e.g., the French verb sur(o)under had the meaning of

‘overflow’. In English -r(o)under was associated by mistake with round — круглый and the verb was interpreted as meaning ‘enclose on all sides, encircle’

(MnE. surround).

Folk-etymologisation is a slow process; people first attempt to give the foreign borrowing its foreign pronunciation, but gradually popular use evolves a new pronunciation and spelling.

The degree of assimilation depends in the first place upon the time of borrowing. The general principle is the older the borrowing, the more thoroughly it tends to follow normal English habits of accentuation, pronunciation, etc. It is natural that the bulk of early borrowings have acquired full English citizenship and that most English-speaking people are astonished on first hearing, that such everyday words as window, chair, dish, box have not always belonged to their language. Late borrowings often retain their foreign peculiarities.

However mere age is not the sole factor. Words that are rarely used in everyday speech, that are known to a small group of people retain their foreign peculiarities. Thus many the 19th century French borrowings have been completely assimilated

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(e.g. turbine, clinic, exploitation, diplomat), whereas the words adopted much earlier noblesse [no'bles] (ME.), ennui [ã:'nwi:]

(1667), eclat [ei'kla:] (1674) have not been assimilated even in point of pronunciation.

Another factor determining the process of assimilation is the way in which the borrowing was taken over into the language. Words borrowed orally are assimilated more readily, they undergo greater changes, whereas with words adopted through writing the process of assimilation is longer and more laborious.

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Word-building in Modern English

1.The origin of word-building as a means of secondary nomination

2.The notion of a word-building pattern as a two-facet linguistic unit

3.Productivity (pr) of word-building patterns

4.The basic types of word-building in present

day English

a)major types

b)minor types

1.

As man goes on conquering reality, the need for nominating the ever-growing number of objects increases. To grant each separate unit of reality the name of its own was given up by the language ago as irrational and destructive for human memory, because its retentive capacities are limited.

This psychological factor brought into operation the powerful psychologic instrument – thinking which began to look for and finally worked out a wise economical way of naming ever changing reality. For language it meant to make use of the existing language material by combining the old, known and long-established meanings in certain pattered ways. These

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patterns reveal and repeat the subjective relations between real things. The mechanism of associations makes the semantic basis of word-building.

Thus, word-building is a unique linguistic means of reproduction of reality, being a means of secondary nomination. In the first place, historically it followed the creation of individual names, and, in the second place, it names one object through another.

The origin and character of word-building as secondary nomination reveal its dependence on thinking: it became possible no sooner than thinking developed to classify objects, it fixes nothing but the relations between the objects in meanings of word-building patterns.

So, word-building is the process of creating words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic formulas and patterns.

2.

A word-building pattern is a linguistic model which appeared as a reflection of the reacted use of ready units, and which exists objectively in men’s minds. This model serves as

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the basis for creating new vocabulary items on analogy of those already used by speakers. It includes a derivational base (DB) and a derivational affix (DA).

Structurally in a secondary word the root morpheme is called a DB to which an affix is attached. Their semantic roles in the semantic structure of secondary words are just the opposite: it is an affix that is the base as it indicates the generalized name of the class of objects in which the one under nomination is included. A structural DB only names a property by which the object is identified.

e.g., breathless (N + less (a base)),

winddriven (N + Part 2 (a base)).

A DA has double semantics because basically an affix combines 2 types of meaning: its own categorical meaning and a part of speech meaning. Occasionally affixes may be devoid of their own categorical meanings, but the part of speech meaning is obligatory to them all. It makes an affix a unit which not only serves as the semantic basis of any word but also transfers it to a certain part of speech.

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e.g., V + ment, N + tion, V + al, N + ing, Adj + ness,

etc.

Word-building patterns are two-facet linguistic units with the abstracted expression of both planes. As linguistic schemes they contain a semantic component found in and common to all individual words for which the patterns hold true. The meaning of the pattern can be deduced only when analogous words are brought to comparison. It expresses the most typical connection between the base and an affix in a regular way. It is a linguistic way to represent generalized relations between basic and derived words.

3.

The word-building power of derivational units (affixes and patterns) to create new words for nominating new phenomena of reality is termed productivity. It is another mark of the social character of language. Synchronically Productivity is manifested by those units that form open classes of words.

Productive units are employed to coin new words on the spur of the moment: V, N – er, N - less, N – ish, re – V, un – V, N – ize, V – able, dis – V.

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Non-productive units form closed classes of words, they are limited and easily counted: - dom, -ship, -ful, -en, -ate, - hood, -ous, -th, -fore.

Dead affixes can no longer be isolated within the word as a result of fusion with the base: dead, bundle, gift.

We have two main sources to judge about PR of derivational units: dictionaries and examination of modern texts which are rich in nonce-words. Productivity is supported by a powerful linguistic factor: clarity of the structure and meaning of the pattern. The more transparent the type of objective relations between word-building meanings and the meanings of derivational affixes, the more productive is the pattern. The property of a word to be made up and understood on the basis of the meanings of the derivational units is called motivation.

There exist different degrees of motivation:

1.completely motivated are words which can be interpreted through their components and can be predicted or foreseen. The second component is the semantic centre while the first one modifies its meaning.

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2.partial motivation is due to the preservation of the meaning of the constituent morpheme in the semantic result while the semantic relationship between the morphemes is dark: hand-bag, flowerbed, blackboard.

3.lack of motivation or idiomaticity is observed when the components fuse so closely that neither their meanings nor relations between them appear distinct: blackmail, chatter-box, slow-coach. These words synchronically consist of separable morphemes but they are not motivated by real analogues. They are remains of certain derivational processes active in the past.

Motivation makes patterns productive and helps produce occasional words.

e.g., He’s a mere nobody.

At the age of 14 he was orphaned.

It’s better to be a has been than a never was. They are do-gooders and well-wishers.

4a)

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The major types of word-building are affixation, conversion, composition.

Affixation being productive since Old English consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme. Taking into consideration the classification of affixes we may speak of prefixation and suffixation.

- suffixation is characteristic of noun and adjective, prefixation – of verb.

- prefixes may be devoid of their part of speech meaning.

A suffix closely knit together with a stem makes a fusion, a prefix is more independent semantically.

Origin of affixes

While examining the stock of derivational affixes in Modern English from the point of view of their origin distinction should first of all be made between native and foreign affixes, e.g., the suffixes -ness, -ish, -dom and the prefixes be-, mis-, un- are of native origin, whereas such suffixes as -ation, -ment, -able and prefixes like dis-, ex-, re- are of foreign origin.

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