11. Norman-French element in the English vocabulary system. Periods of borrowings from French.

The largest group of borrowings are French borrowings. Most of them came into English during the Norman conquest. French influenced not only the vocabulary of English but also its spelling, because documents were written by French scribes as the local population was mainly illiterate, and the ruling class was French.

“v” was introduced for the voiced consonant /v/ instead of “f” in the intervocal position /lufian-love/, the digraph “ch” was introduced to denote the sound /ch/ instead of the letter “c” (chest), The digraph “qu” substituted the combination “cw” to denote the combination of sounds /kw/ (queen) etc.

Borrowing of French words. There following semantic groups of French borrowings:

a) words relating to government: administer, empire, state, government:

b) words relating to military affairs: army, war, banner, soldier, battle;

c) words relating to jury: advocate, petition, inquest, sentence, barrister;

d) words relating to fashion: luxury, coat, collar, lace, pleat, embroidery;

e) words relating to jewelry: topaz, emerald, ruby, pearl;

f) words relating to food and cooking: lunch, dinner, appetite, to roast, to stew.

Words were borrowed from French into English after 1650, mainly through French literature, but they were not as numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated. There are the following semantic groups of these borrowings:

a) words relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatorie, brochure, pirouette, vaudeville;

b) words relating to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage, manouvre;

c) words relating to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau;

d) words relating to food and cooking: ragout, cuisine.

12. Morpheme. Meaning in morphemes.

Morpheme – is the smallest meaningful unit having a sound form and occurring in speech only as a part of the word. (roots, affixes)

Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Nor are they divisible into smaller meaningful language units.

morphemes are subdivided into roots and affixes. The latter are further subdivided, according to their position, into prefixes, suffixes and infixes, and according to their function and meaning, into derivational and functional affixes.

Lexical meaning of morphemes may be analysed into denotational and connotational components. The denotational meaning in affixes is more generalized than in root-morphemes, e.g. –er carries the meaning the doer of the action: reader, teacher, singer.

All suffixes and some prefixes possess grammatical (part-of-speech) meaning: -ness (emptiness) carries the nominal meaning of thigness. Rootmorphemes do not possess any grammatical meaning.

In all polymorphemic words their constituent morphemes possess two more types of meaning: differential and distributional. Differential meaning distinguishes a word from all others containig identical morphemes: in the word teacher the root teach- differentiates it from other words beginning in teach (teaching). Distributional meaning is the meaning of the order and arrangement of the constituent morphemes: ring-finger, singer.

13. Morpheme, IC and UC analysis, derivation, stem.

The definition of IC analysis - The approach to divide a sentence up into its immediate constituents by using binary cutting until obtaining its ultimate constituents is called immediate constituent analysis.

IC analysis is a hierarchical analysis showing the different constituents at different structural levels based on the distribution of linguistic forms.

The first divisions or cuts of a sentence or a smaller construction such as a phrase are immediate constituents (ICs).

UC - The final divisions or cuts of a phrase are the ultimate constituents (UCs).

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Derivational morphemes can change the grammatical category (or part of speech) of a word. For example, adding -ful to beauty changes the word from a noun to an adjective(beautiful). The form that results from the addition of a derivational morpheme is called aderived word or a derivative.

In linguistics, a stem is a part of a word. In one usage, a stem is a form to which affixes can be attached.^[1] Thus, in this usage, the English wordfriendships contains the stem friend, to which the derivational suffix -ship is attached to form a new stemfriendship, to which the inflectional suffix -s is attached. In a variant of this usage, the root of the word (in the example, friend) is not counted as a stem.

In a slightly different usage, which is adopted in the remainder of this article, a word has a single stem, namely the part of the word that is common to all its inflected variants.^[2] Thus, in this usage, all derivational affixes are part of the stem. For example, the stem of friendships is friendship, to which the inflectional suffix -s is attached.

Stems may be root e.g. run, or they may be morphologically complex, as in compound words (cf. the compound nouns meat ball or bottle opener) or words with derivational morphemes (cf. the derived verbsblack-en or standard-ize).

The stem of the verb wait is wait: it is the part that is common to all its inflected variants.

1. wait (infinitive)

2. wait (imperative)

3. waits (present, 3rd person, singular)

4. wait (present, other persons and/or plural)

5. waited (simple past)

6. waited (past participle)

7. waiting (progressive)

14. Types of morphemes

By the degree of their independence morphemes are classified into free and bound. Free morphemes may occur alone and coincide with word-forms or immutable words: at, by, water- (water, watery). Bound morphemes occur only in combination with other morphemes: dis- (dislike), -y (watery). Most roots are free but some are bound: cran- (cranberry). Affixes are always bound.

By their frequency morphemes are classified into recurrent and unique. Recurrent morphemes are found in a number of words: sing-ing = sing- (singer, sing-song) + -ing (walking, drawing). Unique morphemes are found only in a given word: pock (pocket). By their activity in the language affixes are subduvided into productive and non-productive. Productive affixes are used to build new words: -ism (escapism), - ize (nationalize). Non-productive affixes do not build new words: -th (growth), - ous (monotonous).

By their position in the word affixes are subdivided into prefixes and suffixes. A prefix stands before the root and modifies its lexical meaning: kind – unkind. In some cases it changes the word‘s grammatical or lexico-grammatical meaning: sleep (noun) – asleep (stative). A suffix follows the root, modifying its lexical meaning and changing the word‘s grammatical or lexico-grammatical meaning: appear (verb) – appearance (noun). The suffix renders a very general meaning and is often fused with the root semantically.

Inflection – is an morpheme, carrying just grammatical meaning (forming word form).

(Morpheme can be: lexical (the root of word), lexico-grammatical, free (can stand as individual words), bound.)

15. Affixes and their types.

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may beseparable affixes. Affixation is, thus, the linguistic process speakers use to form different words by adding morphemes (affixes) at the beginning (prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words.

A prefix is an element placed at the beginning of a word to adjust or qualify its meaning, for example de-, non-, and re-.

A suffix is an element placed at the end of a word to form a derivative, such as -ation, -fy, -ing, frequently one that converts the stem into another part of speech.

A combining form can be either a prefix or a suffix; the difference is that the combining form adds a layer of extra meaning to the word. For example, bio- adds the idea of life or living things to words, as in biochemistry, the study of the chemical processes which occur within living organisms; -cide adds the idea of killing or a killing agent, as in pesticide. Compare these examples with a prefix such as ex- or a suffix such as -ic, neither of which add meaning, but only modify an existing meaning.

Combining forms only appear as elements in a compound. If it can stand alone as a word it is not a combining form. For example, carbo- only appears in compounds to indicate carbon, but there are many related words that begin withcarbon-; these are considered to be compound words and carbon- is not listed on this site as a combining form. Having said that, in some cases a combining form has at some point in its life taken on the status of a free-standing word (cyber- is an example), but if its primary function is as a combining form, it appears in its place in the text.