Лексикология английского языка. Учебник

1)Many of the suffixes and prefixes of native origin were originally independent words. In the course of time, they have gradually lost their independence and turned into derivational affixes. For instance, such noun-suffixes as -dom, -hood, -ship may be traced back to words: -dom represents the Old English noun dom which meant ‘judgement’; ’sentence’. The suffix -hood goes back to the OE, noun had, which meant ’state’, ‘condition’; the adjective suffix -ly (e.g., manly, friendly) is also traced back to the OE. noun līc — ‘body’, ’shape’.

2)Some suffixes are known to have originated as a result of secretion. An instance of the case is the suffix -ling occurring in words like duckling, yearling, hireling, etc. The suffix is simply the extended form of the Old English suffix -ing and has sprung from words in which -ing was tacked on to a stem ending in [1] as lỹtling.

3)Many suffixes, however, have always been known as derivational affixes within the history of the English language, for instance -ish, -less-, -ness, etc.

4)In the course of its historical development the English language has adopted a great many suffixes

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and prefixes from foreign languages. This process does not consist in borrowing derivational affixes as such. It is words that the language borrows from a foreign language and the borrowed words bring with them their derivatives formed after word-building patterns of this language. In this way a great many suffixes and prefixes of foreign origin have become an integral part of the system of word-formation in English. Among borrowed derivational affixes we find both suffixes, e.g. -able, -ible, -al, -age, -ance, - ist, -ism, -ess, etc., and prefixes, e.g., dis-, en[em]-, inter-, re-, nonand many others.

5)Quite a number of borrowed derivational affixes are of international currency. For instance, the suffix -ist of Greek origin is used in many European languages to form a noun denoting ‘one who adheres to a given doctrine or system, a political party, an ideology’ or ‘one, who makes a practice of a given action’ (cf. socialist, communist, Marxist; artist, scenarist, realist and their Russian equivalents). Of international currency is also the suffix -ism of Greek

origin used to form abstract nouns denoting

‘philosophical doctrines, political and ’scientific

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theories,’ etc. (e.g., materialism, realism, Darwinism). Such prefixes as anti-, pre-, extra-, ultraare also used to coin new words in many languages, especially in political and scientific terminology (e.g., anti-fascist, pro-German, extraterritorial, transatlantic, ultra-violet).

6)Hybrid words: cases when a foreign stem is combined with a native affix, as in colourless, uncertain, cases when native stems are combined with foreign affixes, such as drinkable, joyous, shepherdess.

Classification of affixes

1)Etymologically:

native (-er, -ness, -less, -ing, -ship, -dom, -hood, -ful, -y, -ish, re-, over-, unetc.)

borrowed especially of Romance origin (dis-, pre-, post, sudo-, en-, archi-, -ment, etc.)

2)According to the ability to make new words:

productive (among neologisms and nonce-words)

non-productive (-th, -hood, -ly, -some, -en, -ous)

dead

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3) Semantics: an affix as the smallest indivisible component of the word has a widely generalized meaning and refers the concept conveyed by the whole word to a certain category which is vast and all-embracing. (-er, -ful, -ish – insufficiency).

The suffix is affected by a root morpheme and undergoes certain semantic changes: womanly and womanish.

e.g., own categorical meaning:

negative: un-, in-, dis-

repetition: un-, re-, dis-

time and space relations: fore-, pre-, post-, over-

diminutiveness: -ish

4)Emotive colouring:

positive

negative

5)Stylistic reference:

stylistically neutral

having some stylistical value

Conversion consists in making a new word from some existing word by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged.

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There are a number of theories concerning the definition of C and

its nature.

1)Morphemic – zero affixation. There’s an imaginable unnoticeable unit.

2)Morphological – exchange of the sets of grammatical paradigms of different parts of speech.

3)Syntactical – a shift of a word from one part of speech to another in a sentence.

4)Functional – a specific feature of the English categories of parts of speech to be able to break through rigid borderlines dividing one category from another, enriching the process of communication through the

flexibility of the syntactic structures.

Most linguists nowadays treat conversion as a way of enriching vocabulary with new words. There are some arguments in favour of this: the semantic change that accompanies each instance of conversion, regularity and completeness in the developing of a paradigm of their new category of part of speech, high productivity. The 2 affected parts of speech are nouns and verbs. Verbs can also be made from adjectives.

Origin of conversion is quite unique as it arose as a result of certain global and fundamental changes within the entire system

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of English language as a system comprises a hierarchical structure of certain levels (phonetic, morphemic, vocabulary, phrasal, sentence, text) which means that a change in any of them causes an operation in others as language is a self-adapting system.

In Middle English there started a basic transformation of English from synthetical to analytical type. The whole process began with a change in the phonetic system. As a result of fixing word stress on a root morpheme ending found themselves in unstressed position and gradually became reduced and finally dropped.

This phonetic simplification of a word structure caused a serious change in English morphology: disintegration of many grammatical categories in the English noun, adjective and pronoun. As a result, the initial forms of the 3 notional parts of speech came to be identical, but the semantic relations between the words of different parts of speech remained and the English consciousness continued to associate them as the basic unit and the derived word.

e.g., weorg (работа) – weorgian (работать)

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In syntax the loss of grammatical identity resulted in establishment of direct word order.

Thus conversion is a reflection of the fundamental transformation of E from a synthetical type to analytical.

Composition is a type of word-building, in which new words are produced by combining two or more stems.

There are at least three aspects of composition that present special interest.

I structural aspect. Compounds are not homogeneous in structure. Traditionally three types are distinguished.

1) In neutral compounds the process of compounding is realised without any linking elements, by a mere juxtaposition of two stems, as in blackbird, shopwindow, sunflower, bedroom, tallboy, etc.

There are three subtypes of neutral compounds depending on the structure of the constituent stems.

a)simple neutral compounds: they consist of simple affixless stems.

b)Compounds which have affixes in their structure are

called derived or derivational compounds. E. g. absent-

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mindedness, blue-eyed, golden-haired, broad-shouldered, ladykiller, filmgoer, music-lover.

c) contracted compounds have a shortened (contracted) stem in their structure: TV set (-program, -show, -canal, etc.), V- day (Victory Day), G-man (Government man "FBI agent"), H- bag (handbag), T-shirt, etc.

2) Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is non-productive. It is represented by words in which two compounding stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant, e. g. Anglo-Saxon, Franko-Prussian, handiwork, handicraft, craftsmanship,

spokesman, statesman.

3) Syntactic compounds (the term is arbitrary) are formed from segments of speech, preserving in their structure numerous traces of syntagmatic relations typical of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs, as in the nouns lily-of-the-valley, Jack-of- all-trades, good-for-nothing, mother-in-law, sit-at-home. Syntactical relations and grammatical patterns current in presentday English can be clearly traced in the structures of such compound nouns as pick-me-up, know-all, know-nothing, gobetween, get-together, who-dunit.

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II semantic aspect: can the meaning of a compound word be regarded as the sum of its constituent meanings? (see question 3 of the lecture)

III theoretical aspect of composition is the criteria for distinguishing between a compound and a word-combination. Criteria:

-graphic (spelling),

-semantic (single concept or not)

-phonetic (a single stress)

-morphological (each of the constituents in a word combination is independently open to grammatical changes peculiar to its own category as a part of speech)

-syntactic (between the constituent parts of the word-group other words can be inserted)

4b)

Shortening (Contraction)

This comparatively new way of word-building has achieved a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in

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American English. It consists in substituting a whole for a part. We may speak of graphical abbreviations and lexical shortenings.

Graphical abbreviations occur in written speech only: i.e., etc., e.g.

Lexical shortenings are produced in two different ways. The first is to make a new word from a syllable (rarer, two) of the original word. The latter may lose its beginning (as in phone made from telephone, fence from defence), its ending (as in hols from holidays, vac from vacation, props from properties, ad from advertisement), both the beginning and ending (as in flu from influenza, fridge from refrigerator) or a syllable may be omitted from the middle (maths.)

The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group: U.N.O. ['ju:neu] from the United Nations Organisation, B.B.C. from the British Broadcasting Corporation, M.P. from Member of Parliament. This type is called initial shortenings. They can be read as a succession of the alphabetic readings of the constituent letters

(BBC) or as a succession of sounds denoted by the constituent

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