New wordforming patterns in composition

During the last several decades new patterns appeared in ME as a result of influence of some extra-linguistic reasons. E.g. the civil rights movement of the 1960s which took place in the USA produced such words as ride-in meaning “to ride in prohibited places”, kneel-in meaning “to kneel and pray in segregated churches”, swim-in meaing “to visit segregated swimming pools”, teach-in meaning “to give lectures in segregated schools”. A lot of such \structures appeared during the years of the hippy generation, e.g. lie-in (block the traffic by lying on the road), love-in (show your affection towards someone in the street to show the protest), bed-in.

VII. Shortening in Modern English word-building

By the example of compound words, we have seen that the word-building process involves not only qualitative, but also quantitative changes. For example, derivation and compounding represent addition in word-building. Shortening is another process manifested as a quantitative change, though it means subtraction of words. The same as with compounding, shortening also has its own patterns. There are several forms, by which this process is named in linguistics and these are: shortening clippment and curtailment.

Shortening was first fixed in the English language as far back as in the 15^th century, but today and especially after the I World War, this process is considered to be especially intensive.

Authors name such an extra-linguistical course of shortening as the strain of modern life. The factor, belonging to pure linguistics is the demand of rhythm in speech, stipulated by the predominantly mono-syllabic nature of the English language. The phenomenon of the mono-syllabic character is best of all traced by the example of those loan words, which are assimilated in Modern English.

Example: “van”:

1. a large covered vehicle, and later a railway carriage, shortened “caravan”.

2. the front of the army, shortened French “avangard”.

3. a lawn tennis term, shortened for “advantage”.

All the 3 homonyms sound like the majority of English words, compare to man, ban, tan, etc.

Shortening – is a reduction of an existing full word to one of its parts. The part remaining typically does not change its pronunciation. Yet, it has to change the spelling.

Example: to dub – means “to double”

mike –microphone

trank –tranquillizer

However, we may find here some exclusions like: bike – bicycle.

But such cases are few. In the process of shortening the word may use its initial or middle, or final part. Shortening may also be regarded a kind of good creation, because originally, shortened words begin to behave in sentence as though they were full-forms or root-stems: bike – bikes, fancy – fantasy, to fancy, a fancier, etc.

There are 2 types of correlation between the curtailed word and its full prototype:

1. the curtailed form is a variant or synonym of the full-form differing from its prototype quantitatively, stylistically, sometimes emotionally: doc – doctor, Japs – Japanese. The connection between the shortened and full form in such cases is not yet entirely lost.

2. the above said connection is mainly lost and can only be established through the etymological analysis: a fan – a fanatic, miss – mistress, chap – chapman (syn: peddler; странствующий торговец)

In most cases, the curtailed words represent only one meaning of their full prototypes, at least, during the initial stage of the shortened word’s existence. For example, to double has at least 3 meanings: 1) to multiply by two; 2) to increase twofold; 3) to amount to twice as much. To dub means to make a film or a soundtrack in a different language.

Unlike conversion, shortening produces new words in the same part of speech. The structural classification of shortened words is as follows:

1) final clipping or apocope [ə'pɔkə(u)pɪ] (апокопа):

ad – advert – advertisement, ed – editor, fab – fabulous, vegs – vegetables, mac – mackintosh.

2) initial clipping or aphesis ['afisis]:

puter – computer, cute – acute, fend – to defend, mend – to amend, cello – violoncello, phone – telephone.

Sometimes we can come across the combination of 1st and 2nd, that is apocopy+aphesis: flu – influenza, fridge – refrigerator, tec – detective.

3) medial clipping or syncope: maths – mathematics, specs – spectacles, ma’am – madam.

Clippings mainly arise in colloquial speech and initially have a vivid stylistic covering, but when their links with their prototypes are lost, the shortened words become stylistically neutral: exam, challow, cab, etc.

Many shortened words are characteristic of slang and the only varieties of clipping which belong to strictly bookish language are forms like: ne’er – never, e’en – even, o’er – over.

Blending

Blending in Modern English is manifested by some special cases, where both curtailment and compounding are combined together. The resulting words are named blends or blendings or fusions or, according to the word invented by Louis Carrol, portmanteau [pɔːt'mæntəu] words: sheepau – sheep-like people, to chortle – to chuckle (to snort, at the same time), frenglish – French+English, Oxbridge. An interesting example here is the word snob presumably originated from the Latin phrase: sine nobilitate, written after the name in the registry of fashionable English school to indicate that the bearer of the name did not belong to nobility. The recent examples of blends are bloodalyzer and breathalyzer denoting devices making special medical test.

Sometimes the second or right constituent of such a blend may turn into a traditional suffix: nylon – нейлон, sylon, rayon – вискоза. All these words denote fabrics. The constituent -on coming from the word cotton.

The 2 basic types of blends are:

1. `additive words – consisting of the elements once making a combination of 2 complete stems with a conjunction “and” between them: smog – smoke and fog, frenglish – French and English, Pakistan – Punjab, Aphgania, Cashmere, sing+Baluchistan. Tanzania – Tanganyika + Zanzibar. Other examples are: dancathon – dancing marathon, camcorder – camera recorder, cellphone (cellophone) – cellular telephone.

2. restrictive type – represented by the words originating from attributive phrases in which the 1^st element is the modifier of the 2^nd one: cinerama – cinematographic panorama, tellycast – television broadcast, slanguage – slang+language, motel – motorists’ hotel.

Graphical abbreviations

Due to the extremely close connection between the oral and written speech it may sometimes be difficult to differentiate the clippings, formed in oral speech, from graphical abbreviations. The latter are often first introduced in writing and only after that penetrate into the oral speech. This process intensively begun during I World War and in the years after it became especially popular in the English-speaking countries. Such words formed from the initial letter or letters have 3 possible types of relations between the written and spoken forms:

1. acronyms – are abbreviations, landing themselves to be read as ordinary words:

SALT – Strategic Arms Limitation Talks,

NOW – National Organization for Women,

WHO – World Health Organization,

JATO – Jet-Assisted Take Off (взлёт на реактивном двигателе),

UFO – Unidentified Flying Object,

SARS – Severe Acture Respiratory Arrest.

2. initial abbreviation with an alphabetical reading retained:

BBC – British Broadcasting Cooperation,

M.P. – Member of Parliament (Br.), Military Police (Am.),

P.M. – Prime Minister

A.S.A.P.

FBI, CIA

Types 1 and 2 may also be combined in such abbreviations as:

POSSLQ ['pɔs(ə)l,kju:] – Partner of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters.

3. shortened forms typically used in specialized texts to economize space, but always pronounced in full:

abbr – abbreviation

bldg – building

LTD – limited

B.A. – Bachelor of Arts

NY – New York

LA – Los Angeles

4) a specific English type of abbreviations having no analogues in Russian, are Latin shortenings in many cases read in English:

e.g. – for example (exempli gratia)

pm – post meridiem

et al. – and others (et alii)

etc. – et cetera

i.e. – id est