40 What is the type of word-building:Sound and Stress Interchange? Give the full analysis

Sound interchange is the way of word-building when some sounds are changed to form new words which are differentiated due to alternation in the phonemic composition of the root. This process is not active in Modern English but it was productive in Old English.

In many cases we have vowel and consonant interchange. By means of vowel interchange we distinguish different parts of speech: full – to fill, food – to feed, blood – to bleed. In some cases vowel interchange is combined with affixation: long – length, strong – strength, nature – natural.

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 which made it voiced. It has made the distinctive feature of a noun and a verb. There is a long series of verbs and nouns and also some adjectives differing in this way. Observe for example, the opposition of voiced and unvoiced consonants in the following: to advise – advice, to prove – proof. In some cases we observe both vowel and consonant interchange: to bathe – bath, to live – life, to breathe – breath, to lose – loss etc.

There are some particular cases of consonant interchange:

[k] – [tj] – to speak – speech, to break –breach;

[s ]–[d] – defence – to defend, offence – to offend;

[s ]-[t] – evidence – evident, importance – important.

Stress interchange can be mostly met in verbs and nouns. Many English verbs of Latin, French origin are distinguished from the corresponding nouns by the position of stress: nouns have the stress on the first syllable and verbs on the last syllable, e.g. `accent - to ac`cent, `conflict - to con`flict, `export - to ex`port, `extract - to ex`tract, `present – to pre`sent, `content – to con`tent etc. As a result of stress interchange we have also vowel interchange in such words because vowels are pronounced differently in stressed and unstressed positions.

41. What is Blending or Blends? What are the main ways of forming blends?

Blends deal with the action of abridging and then combining various lexemes to form a new word. However, the process of defining which words are true blends and which are not is more complicated. The difficulty comes in determining which parts of a new word are "recoverable" (have roots which can be distinguished. There are many types of blends, based on how they are formed. Algeo, a linguist, proposed dividing blends into three groups.

1. Phonemic Overlap: a syllable or part of a syllable is shared between two words

2. Clipping: the shortening of two words and then compounding them

3. Phonemic Overlap and Clipping: shortening of two words to a shared syllable and then compounding

Formation

Most blends are formed by one of the following methods:

1. The beginning of one word is added to the end of the other (see portmanteau). For example, brunch is a blend of breakfast and lunch.

   • simultaneous (5) + broadcast (2) → simulcast (3, exception)

   • smoke (1) + fog (1) → smog (1)

   • spoon (1) + fork (1) → spork (1)

2. The beginnings of two words are combined. For example, cyborg is a blend of cybernetic and organism.

3. Two words are blended around a common sequence of sounds. For example, the word Californication, from a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is a blend of Californiaand fornication, and the word motel is a blend of motor and hotel

4. Multiple sounds from two component words are blended, while mostly preserving the sounds' order. Poet Lewis Carroll was well known for these kinds of blends. An example of this is the word slithy, a blend of lithe and slimy.

A blended word may undergo further modification in form or meaning over time, and the meanings of its parts can become obsolete. Malinger may have developed from a blend in old French of malade (ill), maigre (meager) and haingre (haggard).^[2] When two words are combined in their entirety, the result is considered a compound word rather than a blend. For example, bagpipe is a compound, not a blend, of bag and pipe.

Blending of two roots

Blending can also apply to roots rather than words, for instance in Israeli Hebrew:

• "Israeli דחפור dakhpór ‘bulldozer’ hybridizes (Mishnaic Hebrew>>)Israeli דחפ √dħp ‘push’ and (Biblical Hebrew>>)Israeli חפר √ħpr ‘dig’[...]

• Israeli שלטוט shiltút ‘zapping, surfing the channels, flipping through the channels’ derives from

  • (i) (Hebrew>)Israeli שלט shalát ‘remote control’, an ellipsis – like English remote (but using the noun instead) – of the (widely known) compound שלט רחוק shalát rakhók – cf. the Academy of the Hebrew Language’s שלט רחק shalát rákhak; and

  • (ii) (Hebrew>)Israeli שטוט shitút ‘wandering, vagrancy’. Israeli שלטוט shiltút was introduced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in [...] 1996. Synchronically, it might appear to result from reduplication of the final consonant of shalát ‘remote control’.

• Another example of blending which has also been explained as mere reduplication is Israeli גחלילית gakhlilít ‘fire-fly, glow-fly, Lampyris'. This coinage by Hayyim Nahman Bialikblends (Hebrew>)Israeli גחלת gakhélet ‘burning coal’ with (Hebrew>)Israeli לילה láyla ‘night’. Compare this with the unblended חכלילית khakhlilít ‘(black) redstart, Phœnicurus’ (<<Biblical Hebrew חכליל ‘dull red, reddish’). Synchronically speaking though, most native Israeli-speakers feel that gakhlilít includes a reduplication of the third radical of גחל √għl. This is incidentally how Ernest Klein explains gakhlilít. Since he is attempting to provide etymology, his description might be misleading if one agrees that Hayyim Nahman Bialik had blending in mind."

"There are two possible etymological analyses for Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár ‘bank clerk, teller’. The first is that it consists of (Hebrew>)Israeli כסף késef ‘money’ and the (International/Hebrew>)Israeli agentive suffix ר- -ár. The second is that it is a quasi-portmanteau word which blends כסף késef ‘money’ and (Hebrew>)Israeli ספר √spr ‘count’. Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár started as a brand name but soon entered the common language. Even if the second analysis is the correct one, the final syllable ר- -ár apparently facilitated nativization since it was regarded as the Hebrew suffix ר- -år (probably of Persian pedigree), which usually refers to craftsmen and professionals, for instance as inMendele Mocher Sforim’s coinage סמרטוטר smartutár ‘rag-dealer’.