6. Word-building I

Word-building- processes of producing new words from the resources of this particular language. Together with borrowing, word-building provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language.

(1) Morphemes – units that constitute a word and do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of words, nevertheless they possess meanings of their own.

( 2) MORPHEMES

roots (radicals) affixes

prefixes suffixes

precede the root follow the root

reread, mispronounce, unwell teacher, curable, dictate

(3)root + affix (1 or more) = derived word (derivative) ←affixation (derivation)

↑

extremely numerous

( 4) 1 morpheme (root) = root-word ← conversion (Mod.E.)

(hand → to hand, can → to can,

pale → to pale, to find → to find)

great number of original English stock

or earliest borrowings (house, room,

book, work, port, street, table)

(5) 2 or more stems = compound word ← composition

↑

(dining-room, bluebell, mother-in-law, good-for-nothing)

(6)short odd-looking words = shortenings ← shortening(contraction)

(contractions, curtailed words)

↑

(flu, pram, lab, M. P., V-day, H-bomb)

(7) Main structural types of Mod.E. words: root words, derived words, compounds, shortenings;

The most productive ways of word-building: conversion, derivation and composition.

(8) The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme. The role of the affix in this procedure is very important.

(9) Some Native Suffixes (frequent ones)

Noun-forming	-er	worker, miner, teacher, painter, etc.
	-ness	coldness, loneliness, loveliness, etc.
	-ing	feeling, meaning, singing, reading, etc.
	-dom	freedom, wisdom, kingdom, etc.
	-hood	childhood, manhood, motherhood, etc.
	-ship	friendship, companionship, master-ship, etc.
	-th	length, breadth, health, truth, etc.
Adjective-forming	-ful	careful, joyful, wonderful, sinful, skilful, etc.
	-less	careless, sleepless, cloudless, sense-less, etc.
	-y	cozy, tidy, merry, snowy, showy, etc.
	-ish	English, Spanish, reddish, childish, etc.
	-ly	lonely, lovely, ugly, likely, lordly, etc.
	-en	wooden, woollen, silken, golden, etc.
	-some	handsome, quarrelsome, tiresome, etc.
Verb-forming	-en	widen, redden, darken, sadden, etc.
Adverb-forming	-ly	warmly, hardly, simply, carefully, coldly, etc.

(10) Borrowed affixes are numerous (esp. of Romance origin). Affixes are borrowed not in the same way or for the same reasons as words.

( 11) AFFIXES

productive non-productive

take part in deriving new formed on the level of living speech and

words in this particular period reflect the most productive and progressive

of language development patterns in word-building

- neologisms thinnish,baldish, oldish, youngish, mannish,

- nonce-words (coined & used girlish, fattish, longish, yellowish

only for particular occasion) "I don't like Sunday evenings: I feel so

e.g.: unputdownable thriller; Mondayish".

Professor Pringle was a thinnish, ↑

baldish, dispeptic-lookingish cove is certainly a nonce-word

with an eye like a haddock.

(From Right-Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse)

(12)productivity ≠ frequency of occurrence: the adjective-forming native suffixes -ful, -ly; the adjective-forming suffixes of Latin origin -ant, -ent, -al which are quite frequent, but are no longer used in word-derivation.

(13) Some Productive Affixes

Noun-forming suffixes	-er, -ing, -ness, -ism (materialism), -ist(impressionist), -ance (International suffixes)
Adjective-forming suffixes	-y, -ish, -ed(learned), -able, -less
Adverb-forming suffixes	-ly
Verb-forming suffixes	-ize/-ise(realise), -ate
Prefixes	un- (unhappy), re- (reconstruct), dis- (disappoint)

(14) Some Non-Productive Affixes

Noun-forming suffixes	-th, -hood
Adjective-forming suffixes	-ly, -some, -en, -ous
Verb-forming suffix	-en

(15) morpheme(=> affix being a type of morpheme) is generally defined as the smallest indivisible component of the word possessing a meaning of its own.

Meanings of affixes - specific& considerably differ from those of root morphemes, widely generalised & refer the concept conveyed by the whole word to a certain category, which is vast and all-embracing:

noun-forming-er = designating persons from the object of their occupation or labour (painter — the one who paints) or from their place of origin or abode (southerner — the one living in the South);

adjective-forming-ful= "full of", "characterised by" (beautiful, careful)

-ish = insufficiency of quality (greenish — green, but not

quite; youngish — not quite young but looking it)

(16) un/eat/able = "not fit to eat" where not stands for un- and fit for –able

(17)brainy(inform.) — intelligent, intellectual, i. e. characterised by brains

catty— quietly or slyly malicious, spiteful, i. e. characterised by features ascribed to a cat

chatty— given to chat, inclined to chat

dressy(inform.) — showy in dress, i. e. inclined to dress well or to be overdressed

fishy(e. g. in a fishy story, inform.) — improbable, hard to believe (like stories told by fishermen)

foxy— foxlike, cunning or crafty, i. e. characterised by features ascribed to a fox

stagy— theatrical, unnatural, i. e. inclined to affectation, to unnatural theatrical manners

touchy— apt to take offence on slight provocation, i. e. resenting a touch or contact (not at all inclined to be touched)

(18) meaning of the -y suffix by The Random-House Dictionary is "characterised by or inclined to the substance or action of the root to which the affix is attached". (touchy, fishy are not covered by the definition; those which are roughly covered, show a wide variety of subtle shades of meaning)

(19) The italicised words roughly convey the meanings of the suffixes in each adjective.

1. eatable (fit or good to eat) lovable (worthy of loving) questionable (open to doubt, to question) imaginable (capable of being imagined)

2. lovely (charming, beautiful, i. e. inspiring love) lonely (solitary, without company; lone; the meaning of the suffix does not seem to add anything to that of the root)

friendly (characteristic of or befitting a friend) heavenly (resembling or befitting heaven; beautiful, splendid)

3. childish (resembling or befitting a child)

tallish(rather tall, but not quite, i. e. approaching the quality of big size)

girlish (like a girl, but, often, in a bad imitation of one)

bookish(1) given or devoted to reading or study; (2) more acquainted with books than with real life, i. e. possessing the quality of bookish learning)

(20) Compare:

1) womanly(used in a complimentary manner about girls and women)

womanish(indicate an effeminate man and implies criticism),

2) flowery(applied to speech or a style (cf. with the R. цветистый))

flowered("decorated with a pattern of flowers" (e. g. flowered silk or chintz, cf. with the R. цветастый))

flowering(= blossoming (e. g. flowering bushes or shrubs, cf. with the R. цветущий))

3) starry("resembling stars" (e. g. starry eyes))

starred("covered or decorated with stars" (e. g. starred skies))

4) reddened(imply the result of an action or process, as in the eyes reddened with weeping)

reddish(point to insufficiency of quality: reddish is not exactly red, but tinged with red)

5) shortened(imply the result of an action or process, as in a shortened version of a story (i. e. a story that has been abridged))

shortish(point to insufficiency of quality:shortish man is probably a little taller than a man described as short)

Conversion

One of the most productive ways of modern English word-building

(21) a splendid read (verb or noun?)

I was to room with another girl called Jessie. (verb or noun?)

… the one who had to be satisfied with the role of a has-been(verb or noun?)

(22) If ifs and ans were pots and pans? (an = if, dial., arch.)

(23) affixless way of word-building / affixless derivation = most compounds, contracted words, sound-imitation words, etc.

(24) nurse, n. >to nurse, v

-s, pl. -s, 3^rd p.sg.

Substantive -‘s. poss. c., Verbal –ed, past

paradigm sg. Paradigm indef., past part.

-s’, poss. c., pl. –ing, pres. part., gerund

( 25) controversial question

not a word-building act, one of the major ways of enriching

but a mere functional change English vocabulary with new words

(e. g. H. Sweet) (universally accepted)

e.g.: Hand me that book main argument: semantic change that

not a verb but noun used in a verbal regularly accompanies each instance

syntactical function =>hand (me) of conversion. Normally a word changes

andhands (in She has small hands) its syntactical function with no change

are not two different words but one in lexical meaning: e.g.:

= > the саsе cannot be treated yellow leaves colour

as one of word-formation for no new The leaves were turning yellow

word appears => conversion is a The leaves yellowed = ‘process of

specific feature of the English categories changing colour’= change in meaning

o f parts of speech, which are supposed hand >to hand

to be able to break through the rigid face >to face obvious change

borderlines dividing one category from to go >a go in meaning

another thus enriching the process of to make >a make

communication not by the creation of another argument: regularity and

new words but through the sheer completeness in developing a

flexibility of the syntactic structures paradigm of their new category of part

of speech ← all the properties of the

new category => new words, not

functional variants.

In Modern Dictionaries converted pairs

= homonyms, 2 words, thus =>

conversion is a word-building process

(26) Conversion – highly productive & particularly English

↑

encouraged by certain features of Modern English

↑

analytical structure; simplicity of paradigms; many one-syllable words

↑

more mobile and flexible than polysyllables

(27)Conversion – convenient and "easy" way of enriching the vocabulary

↑

two (or more) words ← one, fixed on the same structural and semantic base

(28) high productivity of conversion → speech → occasional cases, due to the

immediate need of the situation,

not reflected in dictionaries, e.g.:

If anybody oranges me again tonight, I'll knock his face off

↑ (O’Henry"Little Speck in Garnered Fruit")

for brevity, expressiveness and humour

(29) Conversion – vital and developing process.

(30) Not every case of noun and verb (verb and adjective, adjective and noun, etc.) with the same morphemic shape results from conversion. Some pairs of words (e. g. love, n. — to love, v.; work, n. — to work, v.; drink, n. — to drink, v., etc.) may be a result of certain historical processes (dropping of endings, simplification of stems) when before that they had different forms (e. g. O. E. lufu, n. — lufian, v.) But first cases of conversion (which were registered in the 14th c.) imitated such pairs of words as love, n. — to love, v. for they were numerous in the vocabulary and were subconsciously accepted by native speakers as one of the typical language patterns.

(31) Verbs and nouns are mainly affected by conversion.

1) The most numerous nouns → verbs: e. g. to hand, to back, to face, to eye, to mouth, to nose, to dog, to wolf, to monkey, to can, to coal, to stage, to screen, to room, to floor, to blackmail, to blacklist, to honeymoon.

2) Verb → noun: do (e. g. This is the queerest do I've ever come across. Do — event, incident), go (e. g. He has still plenty of go at his age. Go — energy), make, run, find, catch, cut, walk, worry, show, move.

3) Adjective → verb: to pale, to yellow, to cool, to grey, to rough (e. g. We decided to rough it in the tents as the weather was warm), etc.

4) Other: to down, to out (as in a newspaper heading Diplomatist Outed from Budapest), the ups and downs, the ins and outs, like, n, (as in the like of me and the like of you).

(32) Semantic associations of the converted words:

I. The noun is the name of a tool or implement, the verb denotes an action performed by the tool: to hammer, to nail, to pin, to brush, to comb, to pencil.

II. The noun is the name of an animal, the verb denotes an action or aspect of behaviour considered typical of this animal: to dog, to wolf, to monkey, to ape, to fox, to rat.

Yet, to fish does not mean "to behave like a fish" but "to try to catch fish".

The same meaning of hunting activities is conveyed by the verb to whale and one of the meanings of to rat; the other is "to turn in former, squeal" (sl.).

III. The name of a part of the human body — an action performed by it: to hand, to leg (sl.), to eye, to elbow, to shoulder, to nose, to mouth.

However, to face does not imply doing something by or even with one's face but turning it in a certain direction.

To back means either "to move backwards" or, in the figurative sense, "to support somebody or something".

IV. The name of a profession or occupation — an activity typical of it: to nurse, to cook, to maid, to groom.

V. The name of a place — the process of occupying the place or of putting smth./smb. in it (to room, to house, to place, to table, to cage).

VI. The name of a container — the act of putting smth. within the container (to can, to bottle, to pocket).

VII. The name of a meal — the process of taking it (to lunch, to supper).

(33) Difficulties in establishing semantic associations

↑

complex but sometimes perplexing

1) to fox - obviously derived from the associated reputation foxes for cunning:

=>to fox = "to act cunningly or craftily".

2) to wolf - ?which of the characteristics of wolves was picked: ferocity, loud and unpleasant howling, the inclination to live in packs?

=>to wolf = "to eat greedily, voraciously": Charlie went on wolfing the chocolate. (R. Dahl)

3) to dog:

And what of Charles? I pity any detective who would have to dog him through those twenty months.

(From The French Lieutenant's Woman by J. Fowles)

=>to dog =to follow or track like a dog, especially with hostile intent.

4) to ape and to monkey seem to mean the same but share b/w themselves certain typical features of the same animal:

=>to ape =to imitate, mimic (e. g. He had always aped the gentleman in his clothes and manners. — J. Fowles);

=>to monkey = to fool, to act or play idly and foolishly.

To monkey can also be used in the meaning “to imitate”, but much rarer than to ape.

(34)

“Mother,” said Johnny, “is it correct to say you ‘water a horse’ when he’s thirsty?”

“Yes, quite correct.”

“Then,” (picking up a saucer) “I’m going to milk the cat.”

The joke is based on the child’s mistaken association of two apparently similar patterns: water, n. – to water, v.; milk, n. – to milk, v. But it turns out that the meanings of the two verbs arose from different associations: to water a horse means “to give him water”, but to milk implies getting milk from an animal (e.g.: to milk a cow).