19.Word formation in Modern English

Word-Formation is the system of derivative types of words and the process of creating new words from the material available in the language after certain structural and semantic formulas and patterns. For instance, the noun driver is formed after the pattern v+-er, i.e. a verbal stem +-the noun-forming suffix -er. The meaning of the derived noun driver is related to the meaning of the stem drive- ‘to direct the course of a vehicle’ and the suffix -er meaning ‘an active agent’: a driver is ‘one who drives’ (a carriage, motorcar, railway engine, etc.). Likewise compounds resulting from two or more stems joined together to form a new word are also built on quite definite structural and semantic patterns and formulas, for instance adjectives of the snow-white type are built according to the formula п+а, etc. It can easily be observed that the meaning of the whole compound is also related to the meanings of the component parts. The structural patterns with the semantic relations they signal give rise to regular new creations of derivatives, e.g. sleeper, giver, smiler or soat-blасk, tax-free, etc.

In conformity with structural types of words described above¹ the following two types of word-formation may be distinguished, word-derivation and word-composition (or compounding). Words created by word-derivation have in terms of word-formation analysis only one derivational base and one derivational affix, e.g. cleanness (from clean), to overestimate (from to estimate), chairmanship (from chairman), openhandedness (from openhanded), etc. Some derived words have no derivational affixes, because derivation is achieved through conversion ², e.g. to paper (from paper), a fall (from to fall), etc. Words created by word-composition have at least two bases, e.g. lamp-shade, ice-cold, looking-glass,” daydream, hotbed, speedometer, etc.

Within the types, further distinction may be made between the ways of forming words. The basic ways of forming words in word-derivatiоn, for instance, are affixation and conversion. It should be noted that the understanding of word-formation as expounded here excludes semantic word-building as well as shortening, sound- and stress-interchange which traditionally are referred, as has been mentioned above, to minor ways of word-formation. By semantic word-building some linguists understand any change in word-meaning, e.g. stock — ‘the lower part of the trunk of a tree’; ’something lifeless or stupid’; ‘the part of an instrument that serves as a base’, etc.; bench — ‘a long seat of wood or stone’; ‘a carpenter’s table’, etc. The majority of linguists, however, understand this process only as a change in the meaning ³ of a word that may result in the appearance of homonyms, as is thecase with flower — ‘a blossom’ and flour — ‘the fine meal’, ‘powder made from wheat and used for making bread’; magazine — ‘a publication’ and magazine — ‘the chamber for cartridges in a gun or rifle’, etc

The word is not the smallest unit of the language. It consists of morphemes. The morpheme may be defined as the smallest meaningful unit which has a sound form and meaning and which occurs in speech only as a part of a word.

Word formation is the creation of new words from elements already existing in the language. Every language has its own structural patterns of word formation.

Morphemes are subdivided into root - morphemes and affixational morphemes.

The root morpheme is the lexical center of the word. It is the semantic nucleus of a word with which no grammatical properties of the word are connected, Affixational morphemes include inflections and derivational affixes.

Inflection is an affixal morpheme which carries only grammatical meaning thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms (books, opened, strong-er).

Derivational morpheme is an affixal morpheme which modifies the lexical meaning of the root and forms a new word. In many cases if adds the part-of-speech meaning to the root (manage-ment, en-courage, fruit-ful)

Morphemes which may occur in isolation and function as independent words are called free morphemes (pay, sum, form). Morphemes which are not found in isolation are called bound morphemes (-er, un-, -less)

20.Morphological structure of a word. Productive and non-productive ways of word formation. Words are divisible into smaller meaningful units which are called morphemes. All morphemes fall into two large classes: roots and affixes. Affixes, in their turn, are subdivided into prefixes, which precede the root (as in re-read), and suffixes, which follow the root (as in teach-er). There also exist infixes (as n in stand), but they are not productive in English. Root morphemes carry the lexical meaning of the word. Affixational morphemes fall into derivational morphemes, which carry the lexico-grammatical meaning and serve to form new words, and functional morphemes having grammatical meaning (inflexions). Lexicology deals only with roots and derivational affixes, while inflexions are studied by grammar. Root and derivational morphemes constitute the stem of the word.Roots are usually free morphemes: they often coincide with independently functioning words: pen, walk, good. Some roots may be bound as well: they may not coincide with separate word-forms as in possible, forty. All affixes are bound morphem-es. There are also semi-affixes which stand between roots and derivational morphemes: fireproof, waterproof, kissproof, ladylike, businesslike, starlike, etc.; -worthy, -man, -ful, etc.).Morphemes may have different phonemic shapes. For example, he root morpheme in the words please, pleasant, pleasure is [pli:z], [plez], [plež]. Different phonemic representations of one morpheme are called allomorphs.As far as the morphemic composition of words is concerned, words are classified into monomorphic and polymorphic. Monomorphic words consist of one morpheme – the root morpheme only. These words are called simple: dog, cat, boy, girl, etc. Polymorphic words consist of a root and one or several affixes or of two or several root morphemes. Accordingly, polymorphic words fall into three subgroups: 1) derived words, which contain a root and one or several affixes: hardship, unbelievable. 2) compound words, which consist of at least two root morphemes: handbag, merry-go-round. 3) compound derivatives, or derivational compounds, which are constituted by two or more roots modified by an affix: old-maidish, long-nosed. Simple words are the most frequent lexical units in English. The most widely used words, such as pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, are simple words. The least frequent in usage are compound words, though their number is steadily growing. Some words that were compound in Old English are known as simple words in Modern English: woman – OE wif+man, window – OE wind+eage, etc. This process is named the simplification of the stem (опрощение морфологической структуры слова). There are three levels of analysis of the morphological structure of the word. 1. Morphemic analysis, which states the number of morphemes in a word and their types. At this level, the word friendliness, for instance, is characterized as a word containing three morphemes: one root morpheme (friend) and two derivational morphemes (ly, ness). 2. Derivational analysis, which reveals the pattern according to which the word is built. Thus, the word friendliness is built by adding to the stem friendly the suffix ness (not friend + liness as there is no suffix liness in English). Derivational analysis shows the structural correlation of the word with other words: friendly vs friendliness = happy vs happiness = easy vs easiness, etc. 3. Analysis into Immediate Constituents (непосредственные составляющие), which reveals the history of the word, the stages of the process of its formation. The analysis is binary: at each stage we split the word into two constituents. Thus, the word friendliness is first divided into friendly and ness, then the part friendly is further subdivided into friend and ly. So, the Ultimate Constituents (конечные составляющие) look this way: friend+ly+ness. The results of the analysis coincide with the result of the morphemic analysis of the same word.Some of the ways of forming words in present-day English can be resorted to for the creation of new words whenever the occasion demands — these are called prоduсtive ways of forming words, other ways of forming words cannot now produce new words, and these are commonly termed non-productive or unproductive. For instance, affixation has been a productive way of forming words ever since the Old English period; on the other hand, sound-interchange must have been at one time a word-building means but in Modern English, as has been mentioned above, its function is actually only to distinguish between different classes and forms of words. Productive Ways of Word-Formation

Affixation (progressive derivation) is the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to stems.Conversion (zero derivation, affixless derivation) is the formation of words without using specific word-building affixes.

Word-composition (compounding) is the formation of words by morphologically joining two or more stems

Shortening is the process of substracting phonemes and / or morhemes from words and word-groups without changing their lexico-grammatical meaning.Blending (telescoping) is the process of merging parts of words into one new word, e.g. Bollywood < Bombay + Hollywood, antiégé < anti + protégé, brunch < breakfast + lunch, Mathlete < Mathematics+ athlete.

Non-Productive Ways of Word-FormationBack-formation (regressive derivation) is the derivation of new words by subtracting a real or supposed affix from existing words (often through misinterpretation of their structure), e.g. an editor > to edit, enthusiasm > to enthuse etc.Onomatopeia (Gr. onoma ‘name, word’ and poiein ‘the make’) (sound imitation, echoisms) is the formation of words by a more or less exact reproduction of a sound associated with an object producing this sound.Sound-interchange is the gradation of sounds occupying one and the same place in the sound form of one and same morpheme in various cases of its occurrence.