Word-Formation In Modern English

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Lecture 4 Word-Formation In Modern English

  • Irina S.Kirichenko
  • Associate Professor

WORD-FORMATION

1. Class I encompasses the means of building words having one motivating base. To give an English example, the noun catcher is composed of the base catch- and the suffix -er, through the combination of which it is morphologically and semantically motivated.

  • 2. Class II includes the means of building words containing more than one motivating base. They are all based on compounding (cf. the English compounds country-club, door-handle, bottle-opener, etc., all having two bases through which they are motivated).

  • 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 formulae and patterns.
  • driver is formed after the pattern v+-er, i.e. a verbal stem +-the noun-forming suffix -er.
  • compounds resulting from two or more stems joined together are also built according to quite definite structural and semantic patterns and formulae: e.g. adjectives of the snow-white type are built according to the formula n+а, etc.

TWO TYPES OF WORD-FORMATION

  • 1. Words created by WORD-DERIVATION have in terms of word-formation analysis only one derivational base and one derivational affix, e.g. cleanness, to overestimate, chairmanship, openhandedness etc.
  • Some derived words have no derivational affixes, because derivation is achieved through conversion, e.g. to paper (from paper), a fall (from to fall), etc.
  • word derivation includes affixation and conversion

TWO TYPES OF WORD-FORMATION

2. Words created by WORD-COMPOSITION have at least two bases, e.g. lamp-shade, ice-cold, looking- glass, daydream, hotbed, speedometer, etc.

PRODUCTIVE vs NON-PRODUCTIVE WAYS OF WORD-FORMATION

PRODUCTIVE

NON-PRODUCTIVE

  • back-formation
  • onomatopoeia
  • sound and stress interchange

  • affixation
  • word-composition
  • sentence-condensation
  • Conversion
  • shortening

  • productivity of word-building ways is understood as their ability of making new words which all who speak English find no difficulty in understanding, in particular their ability to create what are called осcasional words or nonce-wоrds
  • a speaker coins such words when he needs them; if on another occasion the same word is needed again, he coins it afresh. Nonce-words are built from familiar language material after familiar patterns. Dictionaries do not as a rule record occasional words: e.g. (his) collarless (appearance), a lungful (of smoke), a Dickensish (office), to unlearn (the rules), etc.

AFFIXATION

  • The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme.
  • From the etymological point of view affixes are classified into the same two large groups as words: native and borrowed.

NATIVE AFFIXES

  • -er: worker, miner, teacher, painter,
  • -ness: coldness, loneliness, loveliness,
  • -ing: feeling, meaning, singing, reading,
  • -dom: freedom, wisdom, kingdom,
  • -hood: childhood, manhood, motherhood,
  • -ship: friendship, companionship, master-ship, etc.

  • -th: length, breadth, health, truth, etc.
  • -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.

BORROWED AFFIXES

  • Latin:
  • Suffixes: -ion, -tion, -ate , -ute, -ct, -d(e), -able, -ate [it], -ant, -ent, -or, -al,-ar
  • Prefix: dis- (disable, distract, disown, disagree, etc.)

  • French:
  • Suffixes: -ance, -ence, -ment, -age, -ess, -ous
  • Prefix en- (enable, endear, enact, enfold, enslave, etc.)

HYBRID WORDS

  • 1. A foreign stem is combined with a native affix, as in colourless, uncertain.

2. Native stems are combined with foreign affixes, such as drinkable, joyous, shepherdess.

PRODUCTIVITY OF AFFXIES

  • Affixes are classified into PRODUCTIVE and NON-PRODUCTIVE types.
  • By productive affixes we mean the ones, which take part in deriving new words in this particular period of language development. The best way to identify productive affixes is to look for them among neologisms and so-called nonce-words, i. e. words coined and used only for this particular occasion: e.g. UNputdownABLE thriller.

A derivational affix may become productive in just one meaning because that meaning is specially needed by the community at a particular phase in its history. This may be well illustrated by the prefix de-in the sense of ‘undo what has been done, reverse an action or process’, E.g., deacidify, decasualise, decentralise (government or management), deration

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