I. The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of morphemes.
II. Af fixation. Suffixes and prefixes.
III. Compounds and shortenings.
IV. Ways of word-formation in English.
The lecture studies the morphological structure of a word in Modern English, ways of word-formation in it. It also describes types of morphemes and classifications of affixes, compounds and shortenings as well
I. Word is the principal and basic unit of the language system, the largest on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic plane of linguistic analysis. The four types of words (root words, derived words, compounds, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition being the most productive ways of word-building.
Structurally words consist of smaller units which are called morphemes. Morphemes do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of words. Yet they possess meanings of their own.
Distinction is made of freeand bound morphemes. Free morphemes coincide with word-forms of independently functioning words. It is obvious that free morphemes can be found only among roots, so the morpheme boy- in the word boy is a free morpheme; in the word undesirable there is only one free morpheme desire-; the word pen-holder has two free morphemes pen- and hold. It follows that bound morphemes are those that do not coincide with separate word-forms, consequently all derivational morphemes, such as -ness,
-able, -er are bound. Root-morphemes may be both free and bound. The morphemes theor- in the words theory, theoretical, or horr- in the words horror, horrible, horrify; Angl- in Anglo-Saxon; Afr- in Afro-Asian are all bound roots as there are no identical word-forms.
All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: root morphemes and affixation morphemes, which fall into prefixes preceding the root in the structure of the word re-readand suffixes which follow the root teach-er.
The root-morpheme is a semantic nucleus of the word; it has a very general and abstract lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related words within a family, e.g. (to) teach, teacher, teaching. Besides root-morphemes possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots.
Words which consist of a root and an affix are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word-building known as affixation (or derivation). Derived words are extremely numerous in the English vocabulary. The words which have only a root morpheme in its structure are so-called root word. This type is widely represented by a great number of words belonging to the original English stock or to earlier borrowings (house, room, book, work, port, street, table, etc.).
Affixation morphemes include inflectional affixes or inflections and derivational affixes.
Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms. Derivational affixes are relevant for building various types of words. They are lexically always dependent on the root which they modify. They possess the same types of meaning as found in roots, but unlike root-morphemes most of them have the part-of-speech meaning which makes them structurally important part of the word. Due to this component of their meaning the derivational affixes are classified into affixes building different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs. Roots and derivational affixes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g. in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill, etc., the root-morphemes help, hand, black, London, fill are understood as the lexical centers of the words, and -less, -y, -ness, -er, re- are felt as morphemes dependent on these roots.
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Affixes can also be 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.
II. Affixation morphemes fall into suffixes which follow the root teach-er and prefixes preceding the root in the structure of the word re-read.
The main function of suffixes in Modern English is to form one part of speech from another (e.g. educate is a verb, educatee is a noun).
The secondary function is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech, e.g. educat-or, educat-ee.
There are different classifications of suffixes:
1. Part-of-speech classification. Suffixes which can form different parts of speech:
a) noun-forming suffixes, such as: -er (teacher), -dom (wisdom);
b) adjective-forming suffixes, such as: - less (harmless), -ous (prestigious);
c) verb-forming suffixes, such as: -ize (computerize), -ify (simplify);
d) adverb-forming suffixes, such as: -ly (quickly), -ward (southward);
e) numeral-forming suffixes, such as: -teen (sixteen), -ty (seventy).
2. Semantic classification. Suffixes can change the lexical meaning of the stem:
a) the agent of the action, e.g. -er (experimenter), -ist (pianist), -ent
(student);
b) nationality, e.g. -ian (Russian), -ese (Japanese), -ish (English);
c) collectivity, e.g. ship (readership), -ati (literati);
d) diminutiveness, e.g. -ie (horsie), -let (booklet), -ling (gosling),
-ette (kitchenette);
e) quality, e.g. -ness (happiness), -ity (possibility).
3. Lexico-grammatical character of the stem. Suffixes which can be added to certain groups of stems are subdivided into:
a) suffixes added to verbal stems, such as: -er (commuter), -ing (suffering);
b) suffixes added to noun stems, such as: -less (smogless), ful (roomful), -ism (adventurism), -ster (pollster), -ish (childish);
c) suffixes added to adjective stems, such as: -en (weaken), -ly (pinkly), -ish (longish), -ness (clannishness).
4. Origin of suffixes. Here we can point out the following groups:
a) native (Germanic), such as: -er, -ful, -less, -ly;
b) Romanic, such as: -tion, -ment, -able, -eer;
c) Greek, such as: -ist, -ism, -ize;
d) Russian, such as: -nik.
Prefixation is the formation of words by means of adding a prefix to the stem. In English it is characteristic for forming verbs. The main function of prefixes in English is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech (inter-change, down-load). But the recent research showed that about twenty-five prefixes in Modern English form one part of speech from another (over-head, up-ward etc).
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Prefixes can be classified according to different principles:
1. Semantic classification:
a) prefixes of negative meaning, such as: in- (invaluable), non-(nonformals), un- (unfree);
b) prefixes denoting repetition or reversal actions, such as: re- (reread), dis- (disconnect);
c) prefixes denoting time, space, degree, relations, such as: inter-(interplanetary), ex- (ex-student).
2. Origin of prefixes:
a) native (Germanic), such as: un-, over-, under- etc;
b) Romanic, such as: in-, de-, ex-, re- etc;.
c) Greek, such as: sym-, hyper- etc.
III. Composition is the type of word-building in which new words are produced by combining two or more stems.
A. Compounds are not homogeneous in structure. Traditionally three types are distinguished: neutral, morphological and syntactic.
In neutral compounds the process of compounding is realized without any linking elements, as in blackbird, shop-window, sunflower, bedroom, tallboy,etc. There are three subtypes of neutral compounds depending on the structure of the constituent stems:
a) the neutral compounds consisting of simple affixless stems:blackbird;
b) compounds having affixes in their structure which are called derived compounds: absent-mindedness;
c) contracted compounds having a shortened stem in their structure: TV-set.
Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is non-productive. These are words in which two compounding stems are combined by a linking vowel, e.g. Anglo-Saxon, handicraft.
Syntactic compounds are formed from segments of speech: good-for-nothing, mother-in-law, sit-at-home.)
B. Shortenings are produced in two different ways.
The first is to make a new word from a syllable (rarer - two) of the original word. The latter may lose its beginning (as in phonemade from telephone), its ending (asvacfrom vacation,propsfrom properties,ad from advertisement)or both the beginning and ending (as in flu from influenza,fridgefrom refrigerator).
The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group: U.N.O.['ju:neu] from the United Nations Organisation, B.B.C.from the British Broadcasting Corporation, M.P. from Member of Parliament.
Both types of shortenings are characteristic of informal speech.
IV. In English words can be formed not only by means of composition but also by means of:
a) reduplication. In reduplicationnew words are made by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic changes as in bye-bye(colloq, for good-bye)or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonants in ping-pong, chit-chat(this second type is called gradational reduplication);
b) conversion. Conversion is referred to as an affixless way of word-building. It is a morphological way of forming words when one part of speech is formed from another part of speech by changing its paradigm, e.g. to form the verb to dial from the noun dial we change the paradigm of the noun (a dial, dials) for the paradigm of a regular verb (I dial, he dials, dialed, dialing);
c) back formation. In this case the verb is made from the noun by subtracting the last morpheme: burglar to burgle;
d) sound-imitation. It is the way of word-building when a word is formed by imitating different sounds of human beings (to whisper, to giggle), animals, birds, insects (to hiss, to buzz, to bark, to moo), nature and objects (to splash, to rustle).
The four types of words (root words, derived words, compounds, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition being the most productive ways of word-building.
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Structurally words consist of smaller units which are called morphemes. Distinction is made of freeand bound morphemes.
All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: root morphemes and affixation morphemes, which fall into prefixes preceding the root in the structure of the word and suffixes which follow the root.
Suffixes can be classified according to:
1. Part-of-speech classification: noun-forming, adjective-forming, verb-forming, adverb-forming, numeral-forming.
2. Semantic classification: the agent of the action, nationality, collectivity, diminutiveness, quality, feminine gender, abstract notion, derogatory meaning.
3. Lexico-grammatical: suffixes added to verbal stems, suffixes added to noun stems, suffixes added to adjective stems.
4. Origin of suffixes: native, Romanic, Greek, Russian.
5. Productivity: productive, non-productive.
6. Structure: simple, compound
Preffixes can be classified according to:
1. Semantic classificaton: negative meaning; denoting repetition or reversal actions; denoting time, space and degree relations.
2. Origin of prefixes: native, Romanic, Greek.
Traditionally three types of compounds are distinguished: neutral, morphological and syntactic.
There are three subtypes of neutral compounds depending on the structure of the constituent stems: a) the neutral compounds consisting of simple affixless stems; b) compounds having affixes in their structure which are called derived compounds; c) contracted compounds having a shortened stem in their structure.
Shortenings are produced in two different ways: 1) to make a new word from a syllable of the original word; 2) to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group.
Both types of shortenings are characteristic of informal speech.
In English words can be formed not only by means of composition, derivation, conversion, reduplication, back formation, sound imitation.
