22.Shortening and minor types of word formation

Minor types of word formation mean include reduplication, clipping, blending, sound interchange, distinctive stress, back-formation and others.

CLIPPING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(SHORTENING)

Clipping as one of minor types of word building consists in the reduction of a word to one of its parts, e.g.:

• Laboratory - lab

• Captain - cap

There are three types of clipping:

1. Back clipping is the most common type, in which the beginning is retained. The unclipped original may be either a simple or a composite. Examples are: ad (advertisement), doc (doctor), exam (examination), gas (gasoline).

2. Fore-clipping retains the final part. Examples are: phone (telephone).

3. In middle clipping, the middle of the word is retained. Examples are: flu (influenza), tec (detective).

4. Clipped forms are also used in compounds. One part of the original compound most often remains intact. Examples are: cablegram (cable telegram), op art (optical art). In these cases it is difficult to know whether the resultant formation should be treated as a clipping or as a blend, for the border between the two types is not always clear. According to Bauer (1993), the easiest way to draw the distinction is to say that those forms which retain compound stress are clipped compounds, whereas those that take simple word stress are not.

According to Marchand (1969), clippings are not coined as words belonging to the standard vocabulary of a language. They originate as terms of a special group like schools, army, police, the medical profession, etc. While clipping terms of some influential groups can pass into common usage, becoming part of Standard English, clippings of a socially unimportant class or group will remain group slang.

BLENDING

This type of word building is blending part of two words to form one word e.g.

• Breakfast + lunch = brunch

• Smoke + haze = smaze

• Hurry + bustle = hustle

The beginning of one word is added to the end of the other. For example, brunch is a blend of breakfast and lunch. One of the two may be a whole word if it is short. This is the most common method of blending.

BACK-FORMATION

Back-formations are shortened words created from longer words, thus back-formations may be viewed as a sub-type of clipping.

For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb resurrect was then backformed hundreds of years later from it by removing the -ion suffix.

There is a lot of different examples of back formation in English language:

• air-condition from air conditioning

• blockbust from blockbuster

• claustrophobe from claustrophobia

• darkle from darkling

REDUPLICATION

Sapir observed that nothing is more natural than the prevalence of reduplication (удвоение) - the repetition of the base of a word in part or in its entirety. He observed that, though rare, reduplication is found in English, e.g.:

• goody-goody

• wishy-washy(водянистый)

Rhyme motivated compounds:

• hurly-burly (волненительный)

Ablaut (change of vowel) motivated compounds:

• tick-tock

• tittle-tattle (слухи)

SOUND INTERCHANGE

Sound interchange is the way of word building when some sounds are changed to form a new word. It is non-productive in Modern English; it was productive in Old English and can be met in other Indo-European languages.

In many cases we have vowel and consonant interchange. In nouns we have voiceless consonants and in verbs we have corresponding voiced consonants because in Old English these consonants in nouns were at the end of the word and in verbs in the intervocal position, e.g. bath - to bathe, life - to live, breath - to breathe etc.

STRESS INTERCHANGE

Stress interchange can be mostly met in verbs and nouns of Romanic and French origin: nouns have the stress on the first syllable and verbs on the last syllable, e.g. to con`flict- `conflict, to ex`port -`export.

SOUND IMITATION

It is the way of word building when imitating different sounds forms a word. There are some semantic groups of words formed by means of sound imitation:

• Sounds produced by human beings, such as: to whisper, to giggle, to mumble, to sneeze, to whistle etc.

• Sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, such as: to hiss (шипеть), to buzz, to bark, to moo, to twitter (щебетать) etc.

• Sounds produced by nature and objects, such as: to splash, to rustle (шелестеть), to clatter (грохотать) etc.

MORPHOLOGICAL VARIATIONs

Morphological variation takes place when different derivational morphemes are used without changing the word's meaning.

• Academic, academicals

• Morphologic, morphological

LEXICAL VARIATIONS

Lexical variations are determined by different registers:

• formal / informal

• spoken / written