24. Word-building. Affixation. Conversion. Composition. Shortening. Sound imitation. Reduplication. Back formation.

Word-building is the process of producing new words from the resources of this particular lang. for the purpose of enlarging and enriching its vocabulary. Here are the means of word-building. Affixation is realized by adding affixes to some root morpheme. There are productive (taking part in deriving new words in this particular period of lang. development) and non-productive affixes. Noun forming aff.: -er, -ness, -ing, -dom, -hood, -ship, -th; adjective forming aff.: -ful, -less, -y, -ish, -ly, -en, -some; verb form. aff.: -en, -ize, -afe. Conversion is an affixless way of word building and particularly English one. It consists of making new words from some existing ones by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged. (a work-to work; a fox-to fox; a shoulder-to shoulder; a cook-to cook, a room-to room, a pocket-to pocket, a lunch-to lunch). Composition may be of three aspects. In neutral composition the process of compounding is realized by a mere-juxtaposition of two stems: blackbird, bedroom. Compositions which have affixes in their structures are called derived (golden-hared) and comparatively recent formations: teenager, baby-sitter. Numerous nonce-words are coined on this pattern: luncher-out, goose-fleshier (murder story). The 3^rd subtype is called contracted compositions. They have a shortened stem in their structures: TV-set, G-man, T-shirt. Shortening (Contraction) is a comparatively new kind of word-building, produced in two different ways. The first is to make a new word from a syllable of the original word during of which it can lose its beginning (phone–telephone), ending (vac-vacation) or both of them (fridge-refrigerator). The second way forms the new word from the initial letters of a word group (UNO, BBC, g,f. – girl-friend). These both types of shortening are characteristic for informal speech in general and uncultivated speech particularly. Sound imitation (Onomatopoeia). Words coined by this kind of word-building are made by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, insects, human beings and inanimate objects. (bark-лаять, cock-a-doodle-doo-ку-ка-рe-ку, mew-мяу). In sound imitation through their sound form words may imitate certain special features and qualities (fluffy kitten–пушистый котик). In Reduplication new words are made by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic changes (bye-bye) or with a variation of root-vowel or consonant (ping-pong, chit-chat) – gradational reduplication. Stylistically speaking, most words made by reduplication represent informal groups: colloquialisms and slang (riff-raff- отбросы, хлам, chi-chi girl-шикарная девушка). Back-formation (Reversion). The earliest examples of this type of word-building are the verbs to beg made from French borrowing beggar, to burgle from burglar , to cobble from cobbler . In all these cases the verb was made from the noun by subtracting with what was mistakenly associated with the English suffix –er, which all the nouns denoting professions are supposed to have. But in the above-mentioned verbs the process was reversed: a verb was produced from a noun by subtraction. (to baby-sit from bay-sitter; to force-land from forced landing).