§ 5.10 Hybrids

Words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different languages are called hybrids. English contains thousands of hybrid words, the vast majority of which show various combinations of morphemes coming from Latin, French and Greek and those of native origin.

Thus, readable has an English root and a suffix that is derived from the Latin -abilis and borrowed through French. Moreover, it is not an isolated case, but rather an established pattern that could be represented as English stem+-able. Cf. answerable, eatable, likable, usable. Its variant with the native negative prefix un- is also worthy of note: un-+English stem+-able. The examples for this are: unanswerable, unbearable, unforeseeable, unsayable, unbelievable. An even more

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frequent pattern is un-+Romanic stem + -able, which is also a hybrid: unallowable, uncontrollable, unmoveable, unquestionable, unreasonable and many others. A curious example is the word unmistakable, the ultimate constituents of which are: un-(Engl)+mis-(Engl)+-tak-(Scand) +-able (Fr). The very high valency of the suffix -able [эbl] seems to be accounted for by the presence of the homographic adjective able [eibl ] with the same meaning.

The suffix of personal nouns -ist derived from the Greek agent suffix -istes forms part of many hybrids. Sometimes (like in artist, dentist) it was borrowed as a hybrid already (Fr dentiste<Lat dens, dentis ‘a tooth’ + -ist). In other cases the mixing process took place on English soil, as in fatalist (from Lat fatalis) or violinist (from It violino, diminutive of viola), or tobacconist ‘dealer in tobacco’ (an irregular formation from Sp tabaco).

When a borrowed word becomes firmly established in English this creates the possibility of using it as a stem combined with a native affix. The phenomenon may be illustrated by the following series of adjectives with the native suffix -less: blameless, cheerless, colourless, countless, doubtless, faceless, joyless, noiseless, pitiless, senseless. These are built on the pattern that had been established in the English language and even in Old English long before the corresponding French loans were taken up. Prof. B.A. Ilyish mentions the following adjectives formed from noun and verbal stems: slæpleas ‘sleepless’; zeliefleas ‘unbelieving’; arleas ‘dishonest’; recceleas ‘reckless’. It goes without saying that there are many adjectives in which -less is combined with native stems: endless, harmless, hopeless, speechless, thankless.

The same phenomenon occurs in prefixation and inflection. The noun bicycle has a Latin prefix (bi-), a Greek root (cycle<kyklos ‘a wheel’), and it takes an English inflection in the plural: bicycles. There are also many hybrid compounds, such as blackguard (Engl+Fr) or schoolboy (Gr+Engl); сf. aircraft in which the first element came into English through Latin and French about 1600 but is ultimately derived from the Greek word aēr, whereas the second element is Common Germanic.

Observation of the English vocabulary, which is probably richer in hybrids than that of any other European language, shows a great variety of patterns. In some cases it is the borrowed affixes that are used with native stems, or vice versa. A word can simultaneously contain borrowed and native affixes.

Chapter 6 COMPOUND WORDS