Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine
Sumy State University
3652 METHODOLOGICAL INSTRUCTIONS
on Lexicology
for the students of the speciality 6.0020303 “Philology”
of the full-time course of study
Part 1
Sumy
Sumy State University
2013
Methodological instructions on Lexicology / compiler
G. V. Chulanova. – Sumy : Sumy State University, 2013. – 59 p.
Germanic Philology Department
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CONTENTS
P.
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………..
PART 1. THE OBJECT OF LEXICOLOGY ………………
The connection of lexicology with other branches of
linguistics ……………………………………………………
PART 2. THE DEFINITION OF THE WORD …………...
Mmorphological Structure of English Words ……………..
Word ………………………………………………………...
PART 3. WORD FORMATION …………………………...
Affixation …………………………………………………...
Conversion ………………………………………………….
Compounding (Composition) ………………………………
Shortenings …………………………………………………
Reduplication ……………………………………………….
Sound and Stress Interchange ………………………………
Sound Imitation (Onomatopoeia) …………………………..
Blending …………………………………………………….
Back-Formation …………………………………………….
Phrasal Verbs ……………………………………………….
PART 4. ETYMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN
ENGLISH VOCABULARY ……………………………….
Borrowings ……………………………………………………
Assimilation of Borrowed Words …………………………..
International Words …………………………………………
Pseudo-International Words ………………………………..
Etymological Doublets ……………………………………..
Translation–Loans.……………………..…………………..
BASIC LITERATURE ……………………………………..
SUPPLEMENTARY LITERATURE ……………………...
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INTRODUCTION
“The Course in English and Ukrainian Lexicology” is an
attempt to supply students of English and Ukrainian Lexicology with
a practical appendix to the lecture and seminar course of lexicology
studies. The purpose of this book is to aid the teaching process by
which a student becomes aware of English and Ukrainian
Lexicology. The book is intended to acquaint students with the main
topics treated at seminars in Modern Lexicology (etymology, wordformation, semasiology, phraseology, etc.) and meets the
requirements of the programme in this subject. Some sections of
exercises offer training in comparative practical work which aims at
establishing parallels between English and Ukrainian.
The book is in 8 parts. It includes 8 theoretical chapters,
practical assignments for seminars and independent work. The
practical assignments are preceded by theoretical notes which
contain working definitions of principal concepts. The author lays
stress on the practical aspect of lexicology studies.
In most cases, the practical assignments present English
words in natural contexts of British and American literature of the
20th century. The material of the book may also be used in teaching a
course of the Theory and Practice of Translation.
This book does not try to cover everything. The author will be
much obliged for any criticism.
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PART 1. THE OBJECT OF LEXICOLOGY
Lexicology is the branch of linguistics, it is the study of
words. The term Lexicology is composed of two Greek morphemes:
lexis meaning ‘word, phrase’ and logos which denotes ‘learning, a
department of knowledge’. Thus, the literal meaning of the term
Lexicology is ‘the science of the word’. Lexicology as a branch of
linguistics has its own aims and methods of scientific research, its
basic task being a study and systematic description of vocabulary in
respect to its origin, development and current use. Lexicology is
concerned with words, variable word-groups, phraseological units,
and with morphemes which make up words.
The term word denotes the basic unit of a given language
resulting from the association of a particular meaning with a
particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical
employment. A word therefore is simultaneously a semantic,
grammatical and phonological unit.
The general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of
the specific features of any particular language, is known as general
lexicology. Special lexicology is the lexicology of a particular
language (e.g. English, Russian, etc.), i.e. the study and description
of its vocabulary and vocabulary units. Every special lexicology is
based on the principles of general lexicology.
There are two principal approaches in linguistic science to
the study of language material, namely the synchronic (Gr. syn –
‘together, with’ and chronos – ‘time’) and the diachronic (Gr. dia –
‘through’) approach. With regard to Special Lexicology the
synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language
as it exists at a given time, for instance, at the present time. It is
special Desсriptive Lexicology that deals with the vocabulary and
vocabulary units of a particular language at a certain time. It studies
the functions of words and their specific structure as a characteristic
inherent in the system.
The diachronic approach in terms of Special Lexicology
deals with the changes and the development of vocabulary in the
course of time. It is special Historical Lexicology or etymology that
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deals with the evolution of the vocabulary units of a language as
time goes by. This branch of linguistics discusses the origin of
various words, their change and development.
Lexicology also studies all kinds of semantic grouping and
semantic relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, semantic
fields, etc.
The theoretical value of lexicology becomes obvious if we
realise that it forms the study of one of the three main aspects of
language, i.e. its vocabulary, the other two being its grammar and
sound system.
Lexicology came into being to meet the demands of many
different branches of applied linguistics, namely of lexicography,
standardisation of terminology, information retrieval, literary
criticism and especially of foreign language teaching. It helps to
stimulate a systematic approach to the facts of vocabulary and an
organised comparison of the foreign and native language.
THE CONNECTION OF LEXICOLOGY WITH OTHER
BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS
The treatment of words in lexicology cannot be divorced
from the study of all the other elements in the language system to
which words belong. The word is studied in several branches of
linguistics and not in lexicology only, and the latter is closely
connected with general linguistics, the history of the language,
phonetics, stylistics, grammar and such new branches of our science as
sociolinguistics, paralinguistics (the study of non-verbal means of
communication (gestures, facial expressions, eye-contact, etc.).,
pragmalinguistics (the branch of linguistics concerned with the
relation of speech and its users and the influence of speech upon
listeners) and some others.
The importance of the connection between lexicology and
phonetics can be explained if we remember that a word is an
association of a given group of sounds with a given meaning, so that
top is one word, and tip is another. Word-unity is conditioned by a
number of phonological features. Phonemes follow each other in a
fixed sequence so that [pit] is different from [tip].
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There is also a close relationship between Lexicology and
Stylistics or, to be more exact, Linguo-Stylistics. Linguo-Stylistics is
concerned with the study of the nature, functions and structure of
stylistic devices, on the one hand, and with the investigation of each
style of language, on the other.
A close connection between lexicology and grammar is
conditioned by the manifold ties between the objects of their study.
Grammar is the study of the grammatical structure of language. It is
concerned with the various means of expressing grammatical
relations between words and with the patterns after which words are
combined into word-groups and sentences. Even isolated words as
presented in a dictionary bear a definite relation to the grammatical
system of the language because they belong to some part of speech
and conform to some lexico-grammatical characteristics of the word
class to which they belong. Words seldom occur in isolation. They are
arranged in certain patterns conveying the relations between the
things for which they stand, therefore alongside with their lexical
meaning they possess some grammatical meaning.
The two kinds of meaning are often interdependent. That is to
say, certain grammatical functions and meanings are possible only
for the words whose lexical meaning makes them fit for these
functions, and, on the other hand, some lexical meanings in some
words occur only in definite grammatical functions and forms and in
definite grammatical patterns.
The ties between lexicology and grammar are particularly
strong in the sphere of word-formation which before lexicology
became a separate branch of linguistics had even been considered as
part of grammar. The characteristic features of English word-building,
the morphological structure of the English word are dependent upon
the peculiarity of the English grammatical system. The analytical
character of the language is largely responsible for the wide spread of
conversion and for the remarkable flexibility of the vocabulary
manifest in the ease with which many nonce-words are formed on
the spur of the moment.
Language is the reality of thought, and thought develops
together with the development of society, therefore language and its
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vocabulary must be studied in the light of social history. A word,
through its meaning rendering some notion, is a generalised
reflection of reality. The branch of linguistics, dealing with causal
relations between the way the language works and develops, on the
one hand, and the facts of social life, on the other, is termed
sociolinguistics.
PART 2. THE DEFINITION OF THE WORD
Lexicology studies various lexical units: morphemes, words,
variable word-groups and phraseological units. We proceed from the
assumption that the word is the basic unit of language system, the
largest on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic plane of
linguistic analysis. The word is a structural and semantic entity
within the language system. The modern approach to word studies is
based on distinguishing between the external and the internal
structures of the word. By external structure of the word we mean its
morphological structure (the following morphemes can be
distinguished: the prefixes, the suffixes, the root). The internal
structure of the word, or its meaning, is referred to as the word’s
semantic structure. It is the word’s main aspect.
The definition of every basic notion is a very hard task: the
definition of a word is one of the most difficult in linguistics because
the simplest word has many different aspects. It has a sound form
because it is a certain arrangement of phonemes; it has its
morphological structure, being also a certain arrangement of
morphemes; when used in actual speech, it may occur in different
word forms, different syntactic functions and signal various
meanings.
A few examples will suffice to show that any definition is
conditioned by the aims and interests of its author. Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679), one of the great English philosophers, revealed
a materialistic approach to the problem of nomination. He wrote that
words are not mere sounds but names of matter. Three centuries later
the great Russian physiologist I.P. Pavlov (1849-1936) examined the
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word in connection with his studies of the second signal system, and
defined it as a universal signal that can substitute any other signal
from the environment in evoking a response in a human organism.
One of the latest developments of science and engineering is
machine translation. It also deals with words and requires a rigorous
definition for them. It runs as follows: a word is a sequence of
graphemes which can occur between spaces, or the representation of
such a sequence on morphemic level.
Within the scope of linguistics the word has been defined
syntactically, semantically, phonologically and by combining
various approaches.
It has been syntactically defined for instance as “the
minimum sentence” by H. Sweet and much later by L. Bloomfield as
“a minimum free form”. E. Sapir takes into consideration the
syntactic and semantic aspects when he calls the word “one of the
smallest completely satisfying bits of isolated ‘meaning’, into which
the sentence resolves itself”. The semantic-phonological approach
may be illustrated by A. H. Gardiner’s definition: “A word is an
articulate sound-symbol in its aspect of denoting something which is
spoken about”.
A word is the smallest significant unit of a given language
capable of functioning alone and characterised by positional mobility
within a sentence, morphological uninterruptability and semantic
integrity. All these criteria are necessary because they permit us to
create a basis for the oppositions between the word and the phrase,
the word and the phoneme, and the word and the morpheme.
Summing up our review of different definitions, we come to
the conclusion that they are bound to be strongly dependent upon the
line of approach, the aim the scholar has in view. For a
comprehensive word theory, therefore, a description seems more
appropriate than a definition. The word is the fundamental unit of
language. It is a dialectical unity of form and content. The word may
be described as the basic speech unit used for the purposes of human
communication, materially representing a group of sounds,
possessing a meaning, susceptible to grammatical employment and
characterized by formal and semantic unity.
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The word as well as any linguistic sign is a two-facet unit
possessing both form and content or, to be more exact, soundform
and meaning. Its content or meaning is not identical to notion, but it
may reflect human notions, and in this sense may be considered as
the form of their existence. Concepts fixed in the meaning of words
are formed as generalised and approximately correct reflections of
reality.
When used in actual speech the word undergoes certain
modification and functions in one of its forms. The system showing
a word in all its word-forms is called its paradigm. The lexical
meaning оf а word is the same throughout the paradigm, i.e. all the
word-forms of one and the same word are lexically identical. The
grammatical meaning varies from one form to another (cf. to take,
takes, took, taking or singer, singer’s, singers, singers’). There are
two approaches to the paradigm: (a) as a system of forms of one
word it reveals the differences and relationships between them; (b) in
abstraction from concrete words it is treated as a pattern on which
every word of one part of speech models its forms, thus serving to
distinguish one part of speech from another. Cf. the noun paradigm –
( ), -’s, -s, -s’ as distinct from that of the regular verb – ( ) ,-s, -ed1, ed2, -ing, etc.
MORPHOLOGICAL STRUSTURE OF ENGLISH
WORDS
If viewed structurally, words appear to be divisible into
smaller units which are called morphemes. A morpheme i s also
an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. They
are not divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is why the
morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language
unit.
The term morpheme is derived from Gr morphe ‘form’ + eme. The Greek suffix -eme has been adopted by linguists to denote
the smallest significant or distinctive unit (Cf. phoneme, sememe).
Morphemes may be classified: a) from the semantic point of
view; b) from the structural point of view.
a)Semantically morphemes fall into two classes: root12
morphemes and non-root or affixational morphemes. Roots and
affixes make two distinct classes of morphemes due to the different
roles they play in word-structure.
Roots and affixational morphemes 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 centres of the words, as the basic constituent parts
without which the words are inconceivable.
The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of a word. It has an
individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the
language. Mind that the part-of-speech meaning is not found in
roots. The root-morpheme is isolated as the morpheme common to a
set of words making up a word-cluster, for example the morpheme
teach- in to teach, teacher, teaching, theor- in theory, theorist,
theoretical, etc.
Non-root morphemes include inflectional morphemes or
inflections and affixational morphemes or affixes. Inflections carry
only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the
formation of word-forms, whereas affixes are relevant for building
various types of stems. A stem is the part of a word that remains
unchanged throughout its paradigm. Lexicology is concerned only
with affixational morphemes.
Affixes are classified into prefixes and suffixes: a prefix
precedes the root-morpheme, a suffix follows it. Affixes possess the
part-of-speech meaning and a generalised lexical meaning.
The part of a word, which remains unchanged in all the forms
of its paradigm is called a stem: darken in darkens, darkened,
darkening. The stem expresses the lexical and the part of speech
meaning. For the word hearty and for the paradigm heart (sing.) –
hearts (pl.) the stem may be represented as heart- This stem is a
single morpheme, it contains nothing but the root. Stems that
coincide with roots are known as simple stems, e.g. trees, reads, etc.
Stems that contain one or more affixes are called derived
stems, e.g. governments, teacher’s, etc. Binary stems comprising 2
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simple or derived stems are called compound stems, e.g. ex-filmstar, schoolboy, etc.
b) Structurally morphemes fall into three types: free
morphemes, bound morphemes, semi-free (semi- bound)
morphemes.
A free morpheme is defined as one that coincides with the
stem or a word-form. A great many root-morphemes are free
morphemes, for example, the root-morpheme friend — of the noun
friendship is naturally qualified as a free morpheme because it
coincides with one of the forms of the noun friend.
A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a
word. Affixes are, naturally, bound morphemes, for they always
make part of a word, e.g. the suffixes -ness, -ship, -ise (-ize), etc., the
prefixes un-, dis-, de-, etc. (e.g. readiness, comradeship, to activise;
unnatural, to displease, to decipher, etc.).
Bound morphemes can be further classified as derivational or
inflectional. Derivational morphemes, when combined with a root,
change either the semantic meaning or part of speech of the affected
word. For example, in the word happiness, the addition of the bound
morpheme -ness to the root happy changes the word from an
adjective (happy) to a noun (happiness). In the word unkind, unfunctions as a derivational morpheme, for it inverts the meaning of
the word formed by the root kind.
Many root-morphemes also belong to the class of bound
morphemes which always occur in morphemic sequences, i.e. in
combinations with roots or affixes. All unique roots and pseudoroots are-bound morphemes. Such are the root-morphemes theor- in
theory, theoretical, etc., barbar-in barbarism, barbarian, etc., -ceive
in conceive, perceive, etc.
Semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes are morphemes that can
function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free
morpheme. For example, the morpheme well and half on the one
hand occur as free morphemes that coincide with the stem and the
word-form in utterances like sleep well, half an hour, on the other
hand they occur as bound morphemes in words like well-known,
half-eaten, half-done.
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Positional variants of a morpheme are known as allomorphs.
Thus the prefix in- (involuntary) can be represented by allomorph il(illegal), im- (impossible), ir- (irregular).
Exercise 1. Make the morphemic analysis of the following
words.
post-impressionists, workmanship, outstay, eatable, illustrate,
generations, cliff-hangers, courtroom, incredibly, lifelong, obsession,
appreciated, in-depth, research, coastal, wonderful, heartstopper,
back-of-the-neck, bedclothes, brilliant, descriptions, superbly, readin-one-day, pedal-to-the-metal crowd-passer, one-sit thriller, hairraiser, extremely, interesting, exciting, anyone, marvelous,
contemporary, accurate.
Exercise 2. Classify the stems of the words given below into
simple, derived, compound.
playwright, sunflower, shockproof, look, blue-eyed, cup,
dusty, homeless, extremely, music, drumbeat, teenager, fantastic,
table, hilarious, place, grown-up, read, sisterhood, outstanding,
novel, booklist, standard, excellence, science-fiction, footstep,
visionary, homelessness, bittersweet, everywhere, portrait, indelible,
impression, reaffirming, nowadays, horror, convincingly, detailed,
acronym, mile.
Exercise 3. Classify the morphemes from the structural point
of view in the words given in bold type.
1. You and I know that soon Uncle Monty will be dead and
the Baudelaires will be miserable. 2. They tried the gate themselves
and found that it was unloked. 3. If you ever planning a vocation,
you may find if useful to acquire a guidebook. 4. Klaus frowned at
the hand-drown map that was attached to the note with another wad
of gum. 5. Enclosed you will find a map of the Lucky Smells
Lumbermill. 6. During the week that followed, however, the
Baudelaires had a wonderful time in their new home. 7. The window
drawnings somehow made the room even more pathetic, a wovd
which here means “depressing and containing no windows”. 8. But
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in front of the house was what was truly unusual: a vast, well-kept
lawn, dotted with long, thin shrubs in remarkable shapes. 9. Mr. Poe
stepped up to the door and rang a doorbell that was one of the
loudest the children had ever heard. 10. The dormitory is straight
ahead, between the storage shed and the lumbermill itself. 11. And
somebody has to slice an enormous length of rope into small,
workable pices. 12. He was in charge of overseeing the orphans’
affairs, so it was he who decided that the children would be placed in
the care of a unpleasantness with Count Olaf. 13. Full of drama, full
of passion, full of intrigue and heroism. 14. I like it because it is full
of suspense and rather adventureful. 15. Greatest little story of
power, intrigue, ambition, disregard, corruption and horror.
WORDS
English words fall into 4 main structural types:
– Simple words (or root words) have only a root morpheme
in their structure. This type is widely represented by a great number
of words belonging to the original English stock or to earlier
borrowings (house, room, book, street, etc.) and in Modern English
has been greatly enlarged by conversion (e.g. hand – to hand, pale –
to pale, etc.).
– erivatives or derived words consist of a root and one or
more affixes. They are produced by the word-building process
known as affixation or derivation, e.g. joyful, retell, enlarge, etc.
Derived words are extremely numerous in the English vocabulary.
– Compounds – in which two or more stems are combined
into a lexical unit. Classroom, snow-white, forget-me-not.
Derivational compound is a word formed by a simultaneous process
of composition and derivation. The process of word-building in these
seemingly similar words is different: mill-owner is coined by
composition, honey-mooner — by derivation from the compound
honeymoon. Honeymoon being a compound, honeymooner is a
derivative. The ultimate constituents of derivational compounds are:
noun stem+noun stem+ -er. The suffix -er is one of the productive
suffixes in forming derivational compounds. Another frequent type
of derivational compounds are compounds of the type kind-hearted:
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adjective stem+ noun stem+ -ed. The derivational compounds often
become the basis of further derivation.
There are two characteristic features of English compounds:
a) Both components in an English compound are free stems,
that is they can be used as words with a distinctive meaning of their
own.
b) English compounds have a two-stem pattern, with the
exception of compound words which have form-word stems in their
structure.
Compound words in English can be formed not only by
means of composition but also by means of :
a) reduplication, e.g. too-too, and also by means of
reduplicating combined with sound interchange , e.g. rope-ripe;
b) conversion from word-groups, e.g. to micky-mouse,
makeup;
c) back formation from compound nouns or word-groups,
e.g. to fingerprint;
d) analogy, e.g. lie-in, phone-in ( on the analogy with sit-in).
According to their structure compounds are subdivided into:
a) compound words proper which consist of two stems, e.g.
to job-hunt, train-sick;
b) derivational compounds, where besides the stems we have
affixes, e.g. ear-minded, hydro-skimmer;
c) compound words consisting of three or more stems, e.g.
eggshell-thin, singer-songwriter;
d) compound-shortened words, e.g. V-day, motocross.
– There are also some shortenings or contractions, which are
produced by shortening (contraction), e.g. ad, lab, flu, M.P., etc.
There exists a more complicated classification of the
structural types of words. It takes into account the varieties of root
morphemes, the positions of affixes as regards the root.
I. Simple words.
1. R – stop, now, desk;
2. Rfr (root fragment) – lab (laboratory), pop (popular);
II. Derived words.
3. R + S (root + suffix) – realize, dancer;
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4.
5.
6.
III.
7.
8.
Rfr + S – combo (combination);
P + R (prefix + root) – depart, subdivision;
P + R + S – misinterpretation, disagreeable;
Compound words/
R + R – time-table, schoolgirl;
Rfr + Rfr – smog (smoke + fog), brunch (breakfast +
lunch);
9. R + I + R (root + interfix + root) – gasometer, statesman;
10. (R + S) + R – writing – table, safety-belt;
11. R + (R + S) – pen-holder, sky-jumping;
12. R + F + R (root + function word + root) – stay-at-home,
true-to-life;
IV. Derivational compounds.
13. (R + R) + S – snub-nosed, long-legged.
The four types (root words, derived words, compounds and
shortening) represent the main structural types of Modern English
words, and, conversion, derivation and composition the most
productive ways of word-building process. By word-building are
understood processes of producing new words from the resources of
the language. Various types of word formation in modern English
possess different degrees of productivity, some of them are highly
productive such as affixation, compounding, shortening, conversion,
forming phrasal words others are semi-productive, such ass back
formation, reduplication, blending, sound imitation and non
productive – sound interchange and change of stress.
Exercise 4. Comment on the structural types of the following
words.
news-stand, cupboard, sun-bleached, true-to-life, longlegged, inhabit, speedometer, lip-read, sky, strong-willed,
acceptable, hide-and-seek, combo, snow-white, disagreement, votecatching, smog, fridge, gasometer, schoolboy, retell, pop, weddingfinger, misinterpretation, zoo, small, light-minded, price, mags,
unputdownable, unindentified, person, majority, frightening,
generation, neck, ads, gym, Anglo-American, exam.
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Exercise 5. Comment on the structural types of the words
given in bold type.
1. Exciting stuff... Brown certainly does have a knack for
spinning a suspenseful yarn. 2. Reading this book is like a holiday –
an interlude of pleasure... 3. Unbelievable! I read this book like a
hungry cat! 4. Crichton’s sci-fi is convincingly detailed. 5. A
madcap mixture of Nord, folk spunk and high elegance and
definitely its own space. 6. Push aside the velvet curtain to give a
glimpse of the glamorous yet barracuda-like world of fashion... 7. A
strikingly accurate depiction of the slightly loony worlds of fashion
and high-stakes glamour magazines. 8. I automatically began indepth research about Garmouth and wartime coastal England. 9. If
you like tough cop/police work/serial killer/courtroom drama, this is
a good one. 10. Life-or-death cliff-hangers, thrilling cat-and-mouse
maneuvers, romance, religion, science, murder, mysticism,
architecture, and action.
Exercise 6. Comment on the structural types of the
compounds given in bold type.
1. When I was a kid, my dad and I could drive from the
historic district near the Cape Fear River to Wrightsville Beach in
ten minutes, but so many stoplights and shopping centers have been
added that it can now take an hour, especially on the weekends,
when the tourists come flooding in. 2. He was most content while
sitting in his den, studying a coin dealer newsletter nicknamed the
Greysheet and trying to figure out the next coin he should add to his
collection. 3. “But I am a little disappointed that you forgot,” she
added, almost as an afterthought. 4. The shrimp shack is in
downtown Wilmington, in the historic area that borders the Cape
Fear River. 5) A broken rowboat sat near the door. 6) Most of the
tables were filled, but I motioned toward one near the jukebox. 7. I
set it up on the back porch and emptied out the charcoal dust before
hosing off the cobwebs and letting it dry in the sun. 8. As we
watched, the rain intensified into a steady downpour, falling
diagonally from the sky. 9. Later I took her to see the battleship, but
we didn’t stay long. 10. Though I wanted to open it immediately, I
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waited until we’d lifted off from the runway. 11) It doesn’t sound so
far-fetched, right? 12. It wasn’t just her slightly gap-toothed smile, it
was the casual way she swiped at a loose strand of hair, the easy way
she held herself. 13. She met my gaze without a hint of selfconsciousness. 14. Common or garden gold-digger. And she knew
her stuff. She’d got her hooks into Jeff all right. 15. “People call her
a scandalmonger”, said Mrs Bantry, “but she isn’t really”. 16. He
and her wife occupy a self-contained flat in Yewtree Lodge, though
they are moving into their own house at Baydon Heath very shortly.
17. Percival is a mealy-mouthed hypocrite. 18. Though, as I say, I do
it with the utmost diffidence because I know I am very old and rather
muddle-headed, and I dare say my idea is of no value at all. 19. The
father was an old country doctor – terrifically pig-headed – the
complete family tyrant. 20) You’ve no idea, Neele, how tired one
gets of the inevitable weed-killer.
PART 3. WORD-FORMATION
Word-formation is the process of creating new words from
the material available in the word-stock according to certain
structural and semantic patterns specific for the given language.
Word-formation is that branch of Lexicology which studies the
derivative structure of existing words and the patterns on which a
language, ‘in this case the English language, builds new words. It is
self-evident that word-formation proper can deal only with words
which are analysable both structurally and semantically. The study
of the simple word as such has no place in it. Simple words however
are very closely connected with word-formation because they serve
as the foundation, the basic source of the parent units motivating all
types of derived and compound words.
Some of the ways of forming words in present-day English
can be resorted to for the creation of new words whenever the
occasion demands – these are called prоduсtive ways of forming
words, other ways of forming words cannot now produce new
words, and these are commonly termed non-productive or
20
unproductive. For instance, affixation has been a productive way of
forming words ever since the Old English period; on the other hand,
sound-interchange must have been at one time a word-building
means but in Modern English its function is actually only to
distinguish between different classes and forms of words.
It follows that productivity of word-building ways, individual
derivational patterns and derivational affixes 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 occasional words. The term suggests that a speaker coins
such words when he needs them; if on another occasion the same
word is needed again, he coins it afresh. The following words may
serve as illustration: (his) collarless (appearance), a lungful (of
smoke), a Dickensish (office), to unlearn (the rules), etc.
Three degrees of productivity are distinguished for
derivational patterns and individual derivational affixes: l) highlyproductive, 2) productive or semi-productive and 3) non-productive.
Productivity is characterised by the ability to make new words.
Most linguists consider as the chief processes of English
word-formation affixation, conversion and compounding. Apart
from these a number of minor ways of forming words such as backformation, reduplication, sound interchange, distinctive stress, sound
imitation, blending, clipping and acronymy are traditionally also
referred to Word-Formation.
We proceed from the understanding of Word-Formation
and the classification of word-formation types as found in A. I.
Smirnitsky’s book on English Lexicology. 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 formulas and patterns. For instance, the noun
driver is formed after the pattern v+-er, i.e. a verbal stem + the
noun-forming suffix -er. The meaning of the derived noun driver is
related to the meaning of the stem drive- ‘to direct the course of a
vehicle’ and the suffix -er meaning ‘an active agent’: a driver is ‘one
who drives’ (a carriage, motorcar, railway engine, etc.). Likewise
compounds resulting from two or more stems joined together to form
21
a new word are also built on quite definite structural and semantic
patterns and formulas, for instance adjectives of the snow-white type
are built according to the formula п+а, etc. It can easily be observed
that the meaning of the whole compound is also related to the
meanings of the component parts.
In conformity with structural types of words described above
the following two types of word-formation may be distinguished,
word-derivation and word-composition (or compounding). Words
created by word-derivation have only one derivational base and one
derivational affix, e.g. cleanness (from clean), to overestimate (from
to estimate), chairmanship (from chairman), 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.
Words created by word-composition have at least two bases, e.g.
lamp-shade, ice-cold, looking-glass, daydream, speedometer, etc.
Within the types, further distinction may be made between
the ways of forming words. The basic ways of forming words in
word-derivatiоn, for instance, are affixation and conversion
AFFIXATION
Affixation is one of the most productive ways of wordbuilding throughout the history of English. It consists in adding an
affix or affixes to the stem. Affixation is divided into suffixation and
prefixation.
Suffixation is the most common type of affixation. In
suffixation, the affix is added to the end of the base. For example,
the suffix-ness is added to the adjective fond to produce the noun
fondness; the suffix -s is added to the noun car to produce the plural
of the noun – cars. In most languages, suffixation is the most
widespread form of affixation. In languages such as Turkish and
Finnish, it is the only type of affixation.
The main function of suffixes in Modern English is to form
one part of speech from another; the secondary function is to change
the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. (e.g. “educate” is a
verb, “education” is a noun, and “music” is a noun, “musicdom” is
also a noun).
22
There are different classifications of suffixes:
1. Part-of-speech classification. Suffixes derive a certain part
of speech, hence one should distinguish noun-forming, adjectiveforming, numeral-forming, verb-forming and adverb-forming
suffixes.
Noun-forming suffixes:
-age (bondage, breakage, mileage, vicarage); -ance/-ence
(assistance, reference); -ant/-ent (disinfectant, student); -dom
(kingdom, freedom, officialdom); -ее (employee); -eer (profiteer);
-er (writer, type-writer); -ess (actress, lioness); -hood (manhood);
-ing (building, meaning, washing); -ion/-sion/-tion/-ation (rebellion,
tension, creation, explanation); -ism/-icism (heroism, criticism); -ist
(novelist, communist); -ment (government, nourishment); -ness
(tenderness); -ship (friendship); -(i)ty (sonority).
Adjective-forming suffixes:
-able/-ible/-uble (unbearable, audible, soluble); -al (formal);
-ic (poetic); -ical (ethical); -ant/-ent (repentant, dependent); -ary
(revolutionary); -ate/-ete (accurate, complete); -ed/-d (wooded); -ful
(delightful); -an/-ian (African, Australian); -ish (Irish, reddish,
childish); -ive (active); -less (useless); -like (lifelike); -ly (manly);
-ous/-ious (tremendous, curious); -some (tiresome); -y (cloudy,
dressy).
Numeral-forming suffixes:
-fold (twofold); -teen (fourteen); -th (seventh); -ty (sixty).
Verb-forming suffixes:
-ate (facilitate); -er (glimmer); -en (shorten); -fy/-ify (terrify,
speechify, solidify); -ise/-ize (equalise); -ish (establish).
Adverb-forming suffixes:
– ly (coldly); -ward/-wards (upward, northwards); -wise
(likewise).
2. Origin of suffixes. From the etymological point of view
suffixes are subdivided into two main classes: native borrowed. By
native suffixes we shall mean those that existed in English in the
Old English period or were formed from Old English words: -dom,
-hood, -lock, -ful, -less, -like, -ship, -some, -teen, -th, -ward, -wise, y, e. g. childhood, boyhood, freedom, wisdom, etc. The suffixes of
23
foreign origin are classified according to their source into Latin (able/-ible, -ant/-ent), French (-age, -ance/-ence, -ancy/-ency, -ard, ate, -sy), Greek (-ist, -ism, -ite), etc. It should be noted that many of
the borrowed suffixes are international and occur not only in English
but in several other European languages as well.
3. Productivity. Suffixes are classified into productive (e.g.
-er, -y, -ize, -ness, -less, etc.) and non-productive (e.g. -th, -hood, en. -ous, etc.).
4. Semantic classification. Certain suffixes can charge stems
with emotional force. They may be derogatory: -ard (drunkard),
-ling (underling); -ster (gangster), -ton (simpleton). These seem to be
more numerous in English than the suffixes of endearment.
Emotionally coloured diminutive suffixes rendering also endearment
differ from the derogatory suffixes. They are used to name not only
persons but things as well. This point may be illustrated by the suffix
-y/-ie/-ey (auntie, cabbie (cabman), daddy), but also: hanky
(handkerchief), nightie (night-gown). Other suffixes that express
smallness are -kin/-kins (mannikin); -let (booklet); -ock (hillock);
-ette (kitchenette).
Prefixation is the formation of words by means of adding a
prefix to the stem. In English it is characteristic for forming verbs.
Prefixes can be classified according to the nature of words in which
they are used: prefixes used in notional words and prefixes used in
functional words. Prefixes used in notional words are proper prefixes
which are bound morphemes, e.g. un-(unhappy). Prefixes used in
functional words are semi-bound morphemes because they are met in
the language as words, e.g. over- (overhead).
Prefixes can be classified according to different principles:
1. Semantic classification: a) prefixes of negative meaning,
such as : in- (invaluable), non- (nonformals), un- (unfree), etc, b)
prefixes denoting repetition or reversal actions, such as: de(decolonize), re- (revegetation), dis- (disconnect), c) prefixes
denoting time, space, degree relations, such as : inter(interplanetary) , hyper- (hypertension), ex- (ex-student), pre- (preelection), over- (overdrugging), etc.
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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.
Exercise 1. Form words with the following affixes. State to
what part of speech they belong.
un-, over-, under-,-tion, -ment, -ance, -th, -hood, -en, -ous,
-er, re-, -y, -ize, -ness, -less, anti-, co-, ex-, extra-, ultra-, -ing, -ion,
-pre-, sub-, mis-, -ful, -able, -ish, -like, -ly, -dom, -ee, -ism, -ist, -ed,
-ate.
Exercise 2. Pick out the words with the affixes, analyse them.
1. Between 7.30 and 8.30 every morning except Sundays,
Johnnie Butt made the round of the village of Chipping Cleghorn on
his bicycle, whistling vociferously through his teeth. 2. He alights at
each house or cottage to shove though the letter box such morning
papers as had been ordered by the occupants of the house in question
from Mr Totman, stationer, of the High Street. 3. When you turn on
your wireless in the evening it will be the Idylls of the King you will
hear and not interminable Trollope. 4. But was there a note of
wariness – or did he imagine it? 5. Rather stupid really, you know,
but full of cupidity and probably extremely credulous. 6. “No-no, I
suppose not”, said Mrs Bantry doubtfully. 7. “I did not dream it”,
said Mrs Bantry firmly. 8. So well ordered was her prim spinster’s
life that unforeseen telephone calls were a source of vivid. 8. Her
herbaceous borders are simply marvelous – they make me green with
envy. 9. She went on hopefully. 10. Worn with pain, and weak from
the prolonged hardship which I had undergone I was removed, with
a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshavan.
11. I was dispatched, accordingly, in the troopship “Orontes”, and
landed a month later on Portsmouth jelly, with my health
irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government
to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it. 12. There
I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a
comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I
had, considerably more freely than I ought. 13. I should prefer a man
25
of studious and quiet habits. 14. I am not strong enough yet to stand
much noise or excitement. 15. That’s why I want you to come and
help me to find out who did it and unravel the mystery and all that.
16. Colonel Bantry was shooed back into the dining-room rather like
a recalcitrant hen. 17. Slack he had never much taken to – an
energetic man who belied his name and who accompanied his
bustling manner with a good deal of disregard for the feelings of
anyone he did not consider important. 18. She stopped, and made a
slight insignificant gesture of helplessness. 19. This statement
received more incredulity than any other. 20. “You wish, Aunt Letty,
to disguise your intelligent anticipation?” – Patrick reassure her. 22.
The only incongruous note was a small silver vase with dead violets
in it on the table. 23. Phillipa Haymes was too wooden for Rosalind,
her fairness and her impassivity were intensely English. 24. But that
may be just prejudice on my part. 25. Worn with pain, and weak
from the prolonged hardship which I had undergone I was removed,
with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at
Peshavan. 26.I was dispatched, accordingly, in the troopship
“Orontes”, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jelly, with my
health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal
government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve
it. 27. It is not easy to express the inexpressible, he answered with
laugh. 28. “You are to be congratulated”, – I remarked. 29.
Sometimes he spent his days at the laboratory, sometimes in the
dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks. 30. He was
extraordinarily generous, spontaneous, rather Quixotish.
Exercise 3. Translate the following words into Ukrainian
paying attention to the difference in their meaning.
Behave – misbehave, calculate – miscalculate, watery –
waterish, inform – misinform, loving – lovely – lovable, lead –
mislead, delightful – delighted, pronounce – mispronounce, pleasant –
pleased, agree – disagree, appear – disappear, appoint – disappoint,
colourful – coloured, tasty – tasteful, shortened – shortish, starry –
starred, bored – boring.
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Exercise 4. Compare the meanings added by the suffixes to
the same stems.
centre: central, centralism, centralize, centralization, centring,
centric, centrical, centricity, centricalness, centrically, centrally;
beauty: beautiful, beautifully, beautify, beautician, beauteous,
beauteously, beauteousness, beautification, beautifier;
man: manful, manfully, manfulness, mandom, manhood,
manlike, manly, mannish, mannishness, manned, manliness;
woman: womanly, womanfully, womanize, womanhood,
womanish, womanishly, womanishness, womanlike, womanliness;
absorb: absorbed, absorbedly, absorbable, absorbency,
absorbent, absorption, absorptive, absorptiveness, absorptivity,
absorbingly, absorbing.
CONVERSION
Conversion is one of the most productive ways of modern
English word-building. Conversion is sometimes referred to as an
affixless way of word-building or zero-affixation. It consists in
making a new word from some existing word by changing the
category of a part of speech. The new word has a meaning which
differs from that of the original one though it can more or less be
easily associated with it. It has also a new paradigm peculiar to its
new category as a part of speech.
Nurse, n
Nurse, v
-s, plural
-s, 3rd person singular
-‘s, possessive case
-ed, past simple, past participle
-s’, possessive case, plural
-ing, present participle, gerund
As soon as a word has crossed the category borderline, the
new word automatically acquires all the properties of the new
category, so that if it has entered the verb category, it is used in all
tense forms, it also develops the forms of the participle and the
gerund. Modern English dictionaries present converted pairs as
homonyms, as two words.
Not every case of noun and verb (or verb and adjective, or
adjective and noun) is the result of conversion. There are numerous
pairs of words, as drink – to drink, love – to love, work – to work
27
which do not occur to conversion but coincide as a result of certain
historical processes (dropping of ending, simplification of stems,
etc.). The first cases of conversion, which were registered in the 14th
c, imitated such pairs as love-to love, for they were numerous in the
vocabulary and were subconsciously accepted by native speakers as
one of the typical language patterns.
The two categories of parts of speech affected by conversion
are nouns and verbs: A hand – to hand, a face - to face. Nouns are
frequently made of verbs, e.g. He has still plenty of go at his age
(go-energy). Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to yellow, to
green, to pale, to cool, etc.
The meanings of the converted word and of the word from
which it was made can be associated. These associations can be
classified:
1. The noun is the name of a tool, the verb denotes an action
performed by this tool. To nail, to hammer, to pin, to comb, to
pencil, to brush.
2. The noun is the name of an animal, the verb denotes an
action or aspect of behavior, considered typical of this animal. To
dog, to rat, to wolf, to monkey.
3. The noun – the name of a part of the human body, the verb
– an action performed by it: to shoulder, to leg, to elbow, to hand.
4. The noun denotes the name of a profession or occupation,
the verb – activity typical of it: to nurse, to cook, to maid.
5. The noun – the name of a place and the verb – the process
of occupying the place or putting smth. or smb. in it: to room, to
place, to cage.
6. The noun – the name of a container, verb –act of putting
smth. within the container. To pocket, to can, to bottle.
7. The noun – the name of a meal, verb – the process of taking
it. To lunch, to supper.
The suggested groups do not include all the great variety of
verbs made from nouns by conversion.
The flexibility of the English vocabulary system makes a
word formed by conversion capable of further derivation. For
example, to view ‘to watch television’ gives viewable, viewer,
28
viewing.
Conversion may be combined with other word-building
processes, such as composition. Attributive phrases like black ball,
black list, pin point, stone wall form the basis of such firmly
established verbs as blackball, blacklist, pinpoint, stonewall. The
same pattern is much used in nonce-words such as to my-dear, to
my-love, to blue-pencil.
Exercise 5. Comment on the examples of converted words in
the sentences below. State to what part of speech they belong.
1. If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to
population there would be! 2. She is more of a hindrance than a help.
3. We’ve had to slim down our holiday plans. 4. Mind you,’ he said,
‘I don't want to keep Negroes out of the hero business, but I'm
damned it I want them to corner the market.’ 5. Blinded by the
steam, he had to fish around for the soap in his bath. 6. The worst of
all University snobs are those unfortunates who go to rack and ruin
from their desire to ape their betters. 7. I have a good mind to nail
down the facts, then hold a press conference of my own and blow the
whistle on the CIA. 8. A search of the attic brought some valuable
antiques to hand. 9. Your letter is to hand. 10. I paper my room every
year. 11. Who will dust all this furniture? 12. We decided to weekend somewhere in the country. 13. Where is the stop here? 14. “If
anybody oranges me again tonight, I’ll knock his face off”. 15. Mrs.
Carmody backed her car. 16. He has nosed out a perfect place for our
camping holiday. 17. There are people from around here who could
make a pretty decent guess. 18. Instead of putting your dime right
in, you get a dial tone and make your call. 19. He reached for her
again and Ollie Weeks said sharply: “Bud! Cool it! 20. His
achievements pale into insignificance by the side of her victory.
21. Ollie agreed, and dropped an empty into the beer cooler. 22. He
bears the rough well. 23. The platforms swarmed with office
workers, and Dave had to shoulder his way through the crowd.
24. Down the road, in twos and threes, more people were gathering
in for the day of marketing. 25. My thoughts have been much
occupied with the ups and downs, the fortunes and misfortunes of
29
married life.
COMPOUNDING (COMPOSITION)
Word-composition is another type of word-building. That is
when new words are produced by combining two or more stems.
This type of word-building is one of the three most productive types
in Modern English; the other two are conversion and affixation.
Composition is the type of word building in which new
words are produced by combining two or more stems. There are at
least 2 aspects of composition that present special interest. The first
is the structural aspect. 3 types of compounds are distinguished here.
Compounds are words produced by combining two or more stems
which occur in the language as free forms. The classification of
compounds according to the structure of their components includes
the following groups:
1. Сompounds consisting of simple stems: bookshelf,
snowwhite;
2. Compounds where at least one of the components is a
derived stem: shoe-maker, chain-smoker;
3. Compounds where at least one of the components is a
clipped stem: T-shirt, TV-set;
4. Compounds where at least one of the components is a
compound stem: wastepaper-basket, newspaper-ownership.
The classification of compounds according to the means of
joining the components together distinguishes between neutral,
morphological and syntactic structural types:
1. In neutral (or juxtapositional) compounds the process of
compounding is realized without any linking elements, by a mere
juxtaposition of two stems, as in blackboard, sunflower, bedroom,
shopwindow.
There are three subtypes of neutral compounds, depending on
the structure of the constituent stems:
a) Simple neutral compounds consist of simple affixless
stems. classroom, scholl-boy.
b) Derivational or derived compounds have affixes in their
structure: music-lover, blue-eyed, film-goer.
30
c) Contracted compounds have a contracted or shortened
stem in their structure: TV-set, V-day, H-bag (hand-bag).
Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is
non-productive. Here two compounding stems are combined by a
linking vowel or consonant: Anglo-Saxon, statesman, craftsman,
handiwork.
In syntactic compounds we see segments of speech such as
articles, prepositions adverbs: good-for-nothing, mother-in-law, sitat-home.
Another interesting question is of correlations of the separate
meanings of the constituent parts and the actual meaning of the
compound. Here we distinguish three groups:
1. Non-idiomatic compounds. Here the meaning can be
described as the sum of their constituent parts: dancing-room,
bedroom, class-room.
2. Idiomatic compounds. Here one of the components or both
has changed its meaning: ablackboard is not necessarily black,
football is not a ball but a game, a chatterbox is not a box but a
person, and a ladykiller kills no one but is a man who fascinates
women.
3. Highly idiomatic compounds whose meaning do not
correspond to the separate meanings of their parts. Here the process
of deducing the meaning is impossible, we must know the translation
of the word: ladybird is not a bird, but an insect, a tallboy is not a
boy but a piece of furniture, a bluestocking is a person.
Exercise 6. Find compounds in the following sentences,
define their structural type and state to what part of speech they
belong.
1. The girl stared at him, dropping a slice of bread-and-butter
in her emotions. 2. Then he shows his annoyance if he has not got a
fresh handkerchief. 3. Love is only a temporary transient state, which
is lost altogether when the man in love turns into a husband. All this
is very the same as the spring love-singing with blackbirds. 4. We’ve
some plain, blunt things to say and we expect the same kind of
answers, not a lot of double-talk. 5. On the dining-room he found a
31
note from his absent-minded wife: “I have gone out...”. 6. If I was a
pure do- gooder, my ordinary acts would never be wrong. 7. In the
next few days, every time I look at it, the old prayer-book words
sprang into my mind. 8. I had planned a special day for Andrew,
Jamie and Lisa, and my mother-in-law who was visiting us from
England, as she did every day. 9. When they had fallen into a
profound sleep, the good-for-nothing rose up, took the stone, came to
the door, and, when he wished it to open, it began to creak out: “The
guest has stolen the wishing-stone”. 10. It was an experience neverto-be-forgotten; it was a thrill to march in the funeral procession of
our then president. 11. There are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves along
one wall, pretty porcelain lamps grace two tables, skirted in pale
green silk. 12. My father was good-looking, normal, healthy man,
and when he was younger he must have sought out female company.
13. In other words, the states in each bloc do not present, in the eyes
of the other bloc, that peace-loving character which, according to the
Charter, 14 would qualify them for United Nations membership.
14. But he also made the world because he is a music-lover.
15. While staying in the house, I witnessed numerous times how
badly she treated her mother-in-law. 16. Sheet metalworkers make,
install, and maintain many sheet metal components of wind turbines.
17. Thus, the Father and the Son are here with this life-giving Spirit,
who is the consummation of the Triune God and the totality of the
Triune God. 18. “Life-or-death cliff-hangers, thrilling cat-and-mouse
maneuvers, romance, religion, science, murder, mysticism,
architecture, and action. 19. Entirely in its author’s image: direct,
unpretentious, chatty, feet-on-the-ground. Sometimes is shockingly
so. 20. Hoffman is one of the best pens nowadays following in the
bestselling footsteps of Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs and Karin
Slaughter.
Exercise 7. Сomment on the meanings of the compounds.
Discriminate between idiomatic and non-idiomatic compounds.
1. I’ve been made a laughing-stock. 2. You will find your
shorts in the bottom drawer of the tallboy. 3. She was the greatest
chatterbox in the group. 4. He mastered the big new-model tractor32
trailers without difficulty. 5. A couple of city policemen chatted
together by the entrance. They were ill-at-ease with their assignment.
6. He spoke as if he was all by himself, out in the woods, picking
johnny-jump-ups... 7. She stopped shouting for a minute, and then
the waterworks began. 8. He was coming back for the dressrehearsal and the first-night. 10. Ted took a look into the leather
shopping-bag on the dresser. 11. “Let’s have a nightcap at Benno’s”,
he said. 12. Lady Veronica made a bee-line for her daughters to
assure them of her maternal love. 13. A nail-biting, can’t-put-itdown read ... tightly constructed and thoroughly gripping. 14. A
pulse-quickening, brain-teasing adventure. 15. A heart-racing
thriller. 16. A pulse-pounding, edge-of-your-seat thriller... 17. The
reader is assaulted by a rich, down-in-the-dirt, up-in-the skies prose
full of portents, bold metaphors, great beauty. 18. His best thriller yet
... the action unfolds at an adrenaline-draining pace ... 19. A heartthumping, stay-up-late novel... wild, unputdownable and
outrageous... brilliant. 20. Utterly read-in-one-day, forget-whereyou-are-on-the-tube gripping. 21. It’s a one-sit thriller. 22. It is a
huge eye-opener, and will make the reader look at cancer in a whole
new way. 23. A real back-of-the-neck hair-raiser. 24. Billie Letts has
a fresh and engaging voice, and her remarkable heroine, Novalee
Nation, leads the reader on a never-to-be-forgotten journey.
25. Chicago lawyer Turow’s first novel is a genuine, classy, four-star
suspense novel.
SHORTENING
It should be noted that the understanding of word-formation
excludes semantic word-building as well as shortening, sound- and
stress-interchange which traditionally are referred, as has been
mentioned above, to minor ways of word-formation.
The process of shortening consists in clipping a part of word;
as a result we get a new lexical unit. The process оf shortening is not
confined only to words; many word-groups also become shortened in
the process of communication. Therefore, the term “shortening of
words” is to be regarded as conventional, as it involves the
shortening of both words and word-groups. Shortening are produced
33
in two different ways: contraction (clipping) and abbreviation (initial
shortening). The first is to make a new word from a syllable of the
original word. Clipping is shortening or reducing long words. It is
very common in English which can be seen on the following
examples: information is clipped to info, advertisement to advert or
ad, influenza to flu, telephone to phone. The classification of
clipping:
1. Final clipping (apocope). The omitting of the final part of
the word: doc (doctor), mag (magazine), Nick (Nickolas).
2. Initial clipping (apheresis). The omitting of the fore part
of the word. plane (airplane), van (caravan), phone (telephone).
3. Medial clipping (syncope). The omitting of the middle
part of the word: fancy (fantasy), specs (spectacles), maths
(mathematics).
4. Mixed clipping, where the fore and the final parts of the
words are clipped: flu (influenza), tec (detective), fridge
(refrigerator).
The second way of shortenings is to make a new word from
the initial letters of a word group. Abbreviations are subdivided into
five groups:
1. Acronyms which are read in accordance within the
reading rules as though they were ordinary words: NATO (North
Atlantic Treaty Organization), UNO (United Nations Organization).
2. Alphabetic abbreviations in which letters get their full
alphabetic pronunciation and a full stress: USA, BBC, MP.
Alphabetic abbreviation are sometimes used for famous people
names: G.B.S. (George Bernard Shaw), B.B. (Brigitte Bardot).
3. Compound abbreviations in which the first constituent is
a letter and the second part is a complete word: A-bomb (atomicbomb), L-driver (learner - driver). In compound abbreviation also
may be clipped one or both constituents: Interpol (international
police).
4. Graphic abbreviations which are used in texts for
economy of space. They are pronounced as the corresponding
unabbreviated words: Mr., Mrs., m (mile), ltd (limited).
34
5. Latin abbreviations can be read as separate letters or be
substituted by the English equivalents: e.g. (for example), cf.
(compare), i.e. (that is).
Abbreviations are often used in Internet communication:
AFAIK - As far as I know; AFK - away from keyboard; CU - see you;
F2F - face to face (in person); IMO - in my opinion; PM - private
message; POV - point of view, etc.
Distinction should be made between shortening of words in
written speech and in the sphere of oral intercourse. Shortening of
words in written speech results in graphical abbreviations which are,
in fact, signs representing words and word-groups of high frequency
of occurrence in various spheres of human activity.
Shortening doesn’t change the meaning. It produces words
belonging to the same part of speech as original words. Mostly
nouns are affected by shortening. In most cases a shortened word
exists in the vocabulary together with the longer word from which it
is derived and usually has the same lexical meaning differing only in
emotive charge and stylistic reference.
In the process of communication words and word-groups can
be shortened. The causes of shortening can be linguistic and extralinguistic. By extra-linguistic causes changes in the life of people are
meant. In Modern English many new abbreviations, acronyms,
initials, blends are formed because the tempo of life is increasing and
it becomes necessary to give more and more information in the
shortest possible time.
Exercise 8. Comment on the formation of the clipped and
abbreviated words.
1. My job where my boss got on my computer and fiddled
with my DOS execute commands. 2. Walter Winterbottom had spent
the last few years trying to warn the FA’s bigwigs that his team was
falling behind. 3. Martin Peters became one of Ramsey’s most
valuable mids. 4. What we’ll do is send Marla’s mom some choco
and probably some fruitcakes. 5. It was a letter from my new g.f.
from Ohio – just a simple letter. 6. The Intercontinental Cup was
jointly organised with CONMEBOL between the Champions League
35
and the Copa Libertadores winners. 7. Because everyone who
intends to become a lawyer is usually required by a governing body
such a governmental bar licensing agency to pass a bar exam. 8. She
left Brindisi on Saturday at five p.m., so you can wait patiently.
9. Mr. Fogg had to furl his sails and use more steam-power, so as not
to get out of his course. 10. He could easily decide whether England
is going to win or not, but missed this chance – despite the fact that
goalie could make nothing, ball kept his way right to a cross.
11. Killing Floor is the first book in the internationally popular series
about Jack Reacher, hero of the new blockbuster movie starring Tom
Cruise. 12. It presents Reacher for the first time, as the tough exmilitary cop of no fixed abode: a righter of wrongs, the perfect action
hero. 13. Jack Reacher jumps off a bus and walks fourteen miles
down a country road into Margrave, Georgia. 14. Stevenson’s voice
came over the intercom asking for Roscoe. 15. They emerged from
St. Michael’s chester Square. 16. The stereo was still there, the TV
was still there. 17. Her shoes were silly T-straps with four-inch
heels. 18. Of Nicholas and Cara to the Zoo and the Costume
Museum and suitable films by their grandmother. 19. I wrote to the
MP about it, said who was going to get the place cleaned up, he said
it was the responsibility of the County Council. 20. Marked with a
manufacturer’s logo. 21. Then they’re trucking it north and west, up
to the big cities, LA, Chicago, Detroit. 22. Next to the television was
a stereo. 23. He could easily decide whether ham is going to win or
not, but missed this chance – despite the fact that goalkeeper could
make nothing, ball kept his way right to a cross! 24. Martin Peters
became one of Ramsey’s most valuable players when Scholes caught
flu.
REDUPLICATION
Reduplication is a morphological process that involves the
repetition of all or part of a word. These parts of words are referred
to as roots or stems. In full reduplication, the entire word is repeated
without any phonetic changes, for example, ‘So I would say that he
and Mr DeLay are friends, but not friends-friends, if you will’. This
36
group of reduplicated compounds are called reduplicative
compounds proper. Their constituents are identical in their form.
The second type is called gradational or partial reduplication.
Only a segment is duplicated in partial reduplication. Slang words
such as super-duper and razzle-dazzle express extra meaning using
partial reduplication. This is identified as partial because the -s from
super becomes a -d, and the -r from razzle also becomes a -d,
meaning that the whole segment is not copied. The segment that is
duplicated may occur at either the beginning or the end of the word.
Also we can come across a variation of the root vowel or consonant,
e.g. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. This type of
word building is greatly facilitated in modern English by the vast
number of monosyllables: chit-chat, riff-raff, etc. Also one should
distinguish rhyme compounds. Here the constituents are joined to
rhyme, e.g. Ronaldinho beats holie-goalie and ball falls into the net
behind Poland’s devastated goalkeeper. Morphological processes
change the stem of a word in order to adjust its meaning for
communicative purposes. Stylistically speaking, most words made
by reduplication represent informal groups such as slang and
colloquialisms. Some languages utilize the process extensively, some
moderately, and some not at all.
Exercise 8. Pick out reduplicative compounds, comment on
their constituent parts.
1. ‘Uh, no worries. I can handle the Oz Full Monty. I mean,
not handle-candle, like ‘hands to flesh’ handle’. 2. The first rule of
project Mayhem: Don’t ask questions about Project Mayhem. ‘YeahYeah’, he nodded. 3. No, I mean... Do you like him or do you likehim-like-him? 4. Well, between witch work and work-work, I just
don't have any time any more. 5. Is he like a businessmanbusinessman? Or is this like when I used to sell lemonade and call
myself a businessman? 6. Although Luke did this awesome dive off
the high board, which wasn’t really a dive-dive, it was more like
Will Farrell falling out of a plane. 7. There’s a guy who collects fans.
These are not sports fans but fans-fans. 8. “I didn’t mean gosomewhere-go-somewhere”, I said, remembering that he surely
37
thought I made a mistake, and after all, last time the two of us had
been alone we’d been all over each other. 9. Ronaldinho’s goal-goal
falls into the net behind England’s devastated goalkeeper. 10. She
either died or divorced you, so it was a fifty-fifty guess. 11. We kept
chasing him, all the way to the end of the block, then into a sort of
never-never land where there were a lot of railroad tracks. 12. Mr.
Sloane murmured something close to her ear. 13. Burke launched
into British social chitchat. 13. He didn’t like me calling him ‘sir’ –
we were supposed to be buddy-buddies. 14. The other chair was
occupied by a lovely creature, a really tip-top Ambrose McEvoy.
15. Already his name was whispered in connection with the All
England ping-pong championship.
SOUND- AND STRESS- INTERCHANGE
Both sound- and stress-interchange may be regarded as ways
of forming words only diachronically, because in Modern English
not a single word can be coined by changing the root-vowel of a
word or by shifting the place of the stress. Sound-interchange as well
as stress-interchange in fact has turned into a means of
distinguishing primarily between words of different parts of speech
and as such is rather wide-spread in Modern English, e.g. to sing –
song, to live – life, strong – strength, etc. It also distinguishes
between different word-forms, e.g. man – men, wife – wives, to know
– knew, to leave – left, etc.
Sound-interchange falls into two groups: vowel-interchange
and consonant-interchange. By means of vowel-interchange we
distinguish different parts of speech, e.g. full – to fill, food – to feed,
blood – to bleed, etc. In some cases vowel-interchange is combined
with affixation, e.g. long – length, strong – strength, etc. Intransitive
verbs and the corresponding transitive ones with a causative meaning
also display vowel-interchange, e. g. to rise – to raise, to sit – to set,
to lie — to lay, to fall — to fell.
The type of consonant-interchange typical of Modern English
is the interchange of a voiceless fricative consonant in a noun and
the corresponding voiced consonant in the corresponding verb, e.g.
use – to use, mouth – to mouth, house – to house, advice – to advise,
38
etc.
There are some particular cases of consonant-interchange: [k]
– [t∫]: to speak – speech, to break – breach; [s] – [d]: defence – to
defend; offence – to offend; [s] – [t]: evidence – evident, importance –
important, etc. Consonant-interchange may be combined with vowelinterchange, e.g. bath – to bathe, breath – to breathe, life – to live,
etc.
Many English verbs of Latin-French origin are distinguished
from the corresponding nouns by the position of stress. Here are
some well-known examples of such pairs of words: ‘export n – to
ex’port v; ‘import n – to im’port v; ‘conduct n – to con’duct v;
‘present n – to pre’sent v; ‘contrast n – to con’trast v; ‘increase n – to
in’crease v, etc.
Exercise 9. Give pairs corresponding to the following nouns,
verbs and adjectives.
Abide, absent, abstract, accent, advice, attribute, bathe,
believe, bite, blood, breathe, breed, broad, calve, choose, clothe,
conduct, contest, contrast, deep, devise, excuse, export, feed, fill,
foot, frequent, gild, glaze, halve, increase, house, knit, live, loose,
lose, practise, present, prove, record, relieve, serve, speak, strike,
strong, use, wide, worthy, wreathe.
SOUND IMITATION (ONOMATOPOEIA)
It is the way of word building when imitating different
sounds forms a word. Sound-imitation is formation of words made
by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by
animals, birds, insects and other human beings or sounds that
resemble those associated with the object or action to be named or
that seem suggestive of its qualities.
It’s interesting that sounds produced by the same kind of
animal are frequently represented by quite different sound groups in
different languages.
For instance, English dogs bark: bow-wow; English cocks
cry cock-a-doodle-doo; ducks quack and frogs croak. It is only
39
English and Russian cats seem capable to mutual understanding
when they meet.
Exercise 10. Pick out all sound-imitative words from the
sentences given below.
1. My phone buzzed. I picked it up. 2. All about him black
metal pots were boiling and bubbling on huge stoves, and kettles
were hissing, and pans were sizzling, and strange iron machines
were clanking and spluttering. 3. The car moved through the city, its
motor humming in the warm afternoon. 4. The carriage was clapping
along in Central Park, being whooshed at by passing cars.
5. Passenger liners tooted their basso horns. 6. Clap-clap came
through the window. 7. Pons puffed reflectively on his pipe.
8. “Peewit,” said a peewit, very remote. 9. He could hear the cheap
clock ticking on her mantelpiece. 10. The German machine-guns
were tat-tat-tatting at them, and there was a ceaseless swish of
bullets. 11. He tip-toed across the porch and gently opened the
screen door, remembering that it screeched when yanked. 12. He
said something and she giggled. 13. Should we clap our hands during
worship? 14. A man had no business to giggle like that and
gesticulate and make grimaces. Mopping and mowing,’ she said
under her breath. 15. ‘...United Metal and Mill is nothing to sneeze
at.’ ‘Going to be the toughest fight yet,’ Shewchuk said. 16. If we
clap after someone is baptized, have we not put the focus on the one
baptized instead of God? 17. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to
School. Tom had struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to
“whistle her down the wind”, but failed. 18. Voltaire had rashly
attacked the whole body of literary critics... This stirred up a hornets'
nest and the hornets began to buzz. 19. So, as for Jem Wilson, she
could whistle him down the wind. 20. Goldsborough girls were
nothing to sneeze at. 21. Who keeps company with the wolf will
learn to howl.
40
BLENDING
Blendings may be defined as formation that combine two
words that include the letters or sounds they have in common as a
connecting element.
A blend may be defined as a new lexeme built from two parts
or two words (or possibly more words) in such a way that the
constituent parts are usually easily identifiable, though in some
instances, only one of the elements may be identifiable.
Depending upon the prototype phrases with which they can
be correlated two types of blends can be distinguished. The first may
be termed additive, the second – restrictive. Both involve the sliding
together not only of sound but of meaning as well. The first, additive
type, is transformable into a phrase consisting of the respective
complete stems combined by the conjunction and, e. g. smog <
smoke and fog; ‘a mixture of smoke and fog’. The elements may be
synonymous, belong to the same semantic field or at least be
members of the same lexico-grammatical class of words:
French+English > Frenglish. Other examples are: brunch <
breakfast and lunch, transceiver < transmitter and receiver, crunch
<crush and munch.
The restrictive type is transformable into an attributive phrase
where the first element serves as modifier of the second: cine
(matographic pano) rama > Cinerama.
BACK-FORMATION
In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a
new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes. The
resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by
James Murray in 1889. “Back-formation is a word actually formed
from, but looking as if it were the base of another word.” Backformation or reversion, by which we mean inferring of short word
from a long one, is a source of short words in the past and an active
derivative process at the present time. The examples are: to edit from
editor, to beg from beggar, peddle from peddler.
It denotes the derivation of new words by subtracting a real
or supposed affix from existing words through misinterpretation of
41
their structure. The earliest examples of this type of word building
are the verb to beg that was made from the French borrowing
beggar, to burgle from burglar, to cobble from cobbler, to peddle
from peddler. In all these cases the verb was made from the noun by
subtracting what was mistakenly associated with the English suffix er. Latest examples of back-formation are to butle from butler, to
baby-sit from baby-sitter, to blood-transfuse from blood-transfusing.
Back-formation is different from clipping – back-formation
may change the part of speech or the word’s meaning, whereas
clipping creates shortened words from longer words, but does not
change the part of speech or the meaning of the word. For example,
the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb
resurrect was then backformed hundreds of years later from it by
removing the ion suffix. This segmentation of resurrection into
resurrect + ion was possible because English had examples of
Latinate words in the form of verb and verb+-ion pairs, such as
opine/opinion. These became the pattern for many more such pairs,
where a verb derived from a Latin supine stem and a noun ending in
ion entered the language together, such as insert/insertion,
project/projection, etc.
Back-formation may be similar to the reanalyses of folk
etymologies when it rests on an erroneous understanding of the
morphology of the longer word. For example, the singular noun
asset is a back-formation from the plural assets. However, assets is
originally not a plural; it is a loan-word from Anglo-Norman asetz
(modern French assez). The -s was reanalyzed as a plural suffix.
The most productive type of back-formation is derivation of
verbs from compounds that have either -er or -ing as their last
element. Some examples of back-formations from compounds are
the verbs beach-comb, house-break, red-bait, tape-record.
Exercise 11. Comment on the origin and structure of the
words formed through back-formation and blending.
1. He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could
see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled,
so I tactfully changed the subject. 2. “Mamma might wake and miss
42
me. What are you going to burgle first?” “You’d better go upstairs”,
he said, rather sulkily. 3. Boy! Don’t beg here! Don’t you known this
is not allowed here. 4. Who follow up the sales of painting and
burgle the houses of those who buy. 5. When Emily and Alice accept
their first babysitting job, they must learn how to care for their
unusual charge, a bulldog jealous of the new human baby in its
household. 6. I want to talk like them, dress like them, handwrite like
them, and think like them. 7. Why do you so lazy? I ask you to hardboil some eggs. 8. The room was to air-condition, I had left the
curtains open to the night sky, moonlight cast a silvery sheen over
everything, bathed the room in a soft radiance. 9. This paper says
how to edit technical documents. 10. Otherwise it was usual for vets
to euthanase animals with a lethal injection. 11. Private practitioners
may euthanize one or two animals a day at most, and some days
none at all. 12. When the next one appeared I slewed out, oversteered, spun the wheel back frantically, dived over the sastruga,
then over-steered again. 13. You must become familiar with the parts
of the syringe and needle and proficient in handling them. 14. Her
hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly
way. 15. While we’re at it, and to save each other mail, let’s look at
the humorous use of couth and kempt, wordplay on uncouth and illkempt. 16. Give me twenty minutes, Harry, and we’ll have brunch.
17. The company badly needed radiotrician. 18. Inside his office
intercom buzzed and he pressed the talk button.
PHRASAL VERBS
A phrasal verb is a verb followed by a preposition or an
adverb; the combination creates a meaning different from the
original verb alone, e.g.:
To get = to obtain: I need to get a new battery for my
camera.
To get together = to meet: Why don’t we all get together for
lunch one day?
Phrasal verbs are part of a large group of verbs called “multipart” or “multi-word” verbs. The preposition or adverb that follows
the verb is sometimes called a particle. Phrasal verbs are an
43
important part of the English language. However, they are mainly
used in spoken English and informal texts. They should be avoided
in academic writing where it is preferable to use a formal verb such
as “to postpone” rather than “to put off”.
Phrasal verbs can be transitive and intransitive. Transitive
phrasal verbs always have an object, e.g.: I made up an excuse.
(‘Excuse’ is the object of the verb.) Intransitive phrasal verbs do not
have an object, e.g.: My car broke down.
We can distinguish separable or inseparable phrasal verbs.
We can put the object between the verb and the preposition, when
we deal with separable phrasal verbs, e.g. I looked the word up in
the dictionary. The object is placed after the preposition in
inseparable ones, e.g.: I will look into the matter as soon as possible.
Some transitive phrasal verbs can take an object in both
places, compare: I picked up the book. I picked the book up.
However, if the object is a pronoun, it must be placed
between the verb and the preposition, e.g.: I picked it up.
Phrasal verbs may be either non-idiomatic or idiomatic. Nonidiomatic phrasal verbs retain their primary local meaning, while in
idiomatic phrasal verbs meanings cannot be derived from their
constituent parts.
Exercise 12. Set off idiomatic and non-idiomatic phrasal
verbs. Give their Ukrainian equivalents
1. How can you account for your absence at the meeting?
2. He was accused of murder. 3. He acted on the tip received from an
insider and made a lot of money. 4. These figures don’t add up. 5.
They agree about everything. 6. They don’t always agree on the way
children should be raised. 7. He applied for the position of tour
guide. 8. He arrived at the airport two hours before the flight. 9. Here
I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about
the wards, and even to bask a little upon the verandah, when I was
struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions.
10. For month my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to
myself and become convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that
a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending
44
me back to England. 11. I asked him to lunch with me at the
Holborn, and we started off together in a hansom. 12. You mustn’t
blame me if you don’t get on with him. 13. She reluctantly decided
that to go on was the only thing to be done. 14. “Go on,” she cried.
“You’re daft. I can never make you out.” 15. I’m thinking of giving
up the shop soon. 16. Elliott called me up one morning. 16. I must be
getting along. 17. I peeped out – he was putting on his hat with a
hasty and uneasy air. 18. They took their seats in the plane and set
off.
PART 4. ETYMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN
ENGLISH VOCABULARY
The modern English vocabulary falls into two main sets:
native words and borrowings. Native words belong to the original
English word-stock and are known from the earliest Old English
manuscripts. It is customary to subdivide native words into those of
the Indo-European stock and those of the common Germanic origin.
The former have cognates in the vocabulary of all or most IndoEuropean languages, whereas the latter have cognates only in
Germanic languages. Up to 70% of the English vocabulary are
borrowings from various foreign languages.
BORROWINGS
Language contact over time can result in an important source
of new words – borrowing. Borrowing is a word or phrase which has
been borrowed by one language from another. Partially the words are
borrowed because of the historical circumstances which stimulate
the borrowing process. Each time two nations come into close
contact, certain borrowings are a natural consequence. The nature of
the contact may be different. It may be wars, invasions or trade and
international cultural and sports relations.
In its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts
the English language happened to come in long and close contact
with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse
45
(or Scandinavian). The great influx of borrowings from these sources
can be accounted for by a number of historical causes. Due to the
great influence of the Roman civilisation Latin was for a long time
used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse
was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of
social and cultural development and who merged rather easily with
the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th
century. French (to be more exact its Norman dialect) was the
language of the other conquerors who brought with them a lot of
new notions of a higher social system – developed feudalism, it was
the language of upper classes, of official documents and school
instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th
century.
In the study of the borrowed element in English the main
emphasis is as a rule placed on the Middle English period.
Borrowings of later periods became the object of investigation only
in recent years. These investigations have shown that the flow of
borrowings has been steady and uninterrupted. The greatest number
has come from French. They refer to various fields of socialpolitical, scientific and cultural life. A large portion of borrowings
(41%) is scientific and technical terms.
The number and character of borrowed words tell us of the
relations between the peoples, the level of their culture, etc. It is for
this reason that borrowings have often been called the milestones of
history. Thus if we go through the lists of borrowings in English and
arrange them in groups according to their meaning, we shall be able
to obtain much valuable information with regard to England’s
contacts with many nations. Some borrowings, however, cannot be
explained by the direct influence of certain historical conditions,
they do not come along with any new objects or ideas. Such were for
instance the words air, place, brave, gay borrowed from French.
The number and character of borrowings do not only depend
on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts,
but also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of
languages concerned. The closer the languages, the deeper and more
versatile is the influence. This largely accounts for the well-marked
46
contrast between the French and the Scandinavian influence on the
English language. Thus under the influence of the Scandinavian
languages, which were closely related to Old English, some classes
of words were borrowed that could not have been adopted from nonrelated or distantly related languages (the pronouns they, their, them,
for instance); a number of Scandinavian borrowings were felt as
derived from native words (they were of the same root and the
connection between them was easily seen), e.g. drop (AS.) – drip
(Scand.), true (AS.)-tryst (Scand.); the Scandinavian influence even
accelerated to a certain degree the development of the grammatical
structure of English.
Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral
speech (by immediate contact between the peoples) and through
written speech (by indirect contact through books, etc.). Oral
borrowing took place chiefly in the early periods of history, whereas
in recent times written borrowing gained importance. Words
borrowed orally (e.g. L. inch, mill, street) are usually short and they
undergo considerable changes in the act of adoption. Written
borrowings (e.g. Fr. communiqué, belles-lettres, naïveté) preserve
their spelling and some peculiarities of their sound-form, their
assimilation is a long process.
Though borrowed words undergo changes in the adopting
language they preserve some of their former peculiarities for a
comparatively long period. This makes it possible to work out some
criteria for determining whether the word belongs to the borrowed
element.
In some cases the pronunciation of the word (strange sounds,
sound combinations, position of stress, etc.), its spelling and the
correlation between sounds and letters are an indication of the
foreign origin of the word. This is the case with waltz (G.),
psychology (Gr.), soufflé (Fr.), etc. The initial position of the
sounds [v], [dз], [з] or of the letters x, j, z is a sure sign that the word
has been borrowed, e.g. volcano (It.), vase (Fr.), jungle (Hindi),
gesture (L.), giant (OFr.), zeal (L.), zero (Fr.), zinc (G.), etc.
The morphological structure of the word and its grammatical
forms may also bear witness to the word being adopted from another
47
language. Thus the suffixes in the words neurosis (Gr.) and
violoncello (It.) betray the foreign origin of the words. The same is
true of the irregular plural forms papyra (from papyrus, Gr.),
pastorali (from pastorale, It.), beaux (from beau, Fr.), bacteria,
(from bacterium, L.) and the like.
But some early borrowings have become so thoroughly
assimilated that they are unrecognisable without a historical analysis,
e.g. chalk, mile (L.), ill, ugly (Scand.), enemy, car (Fr.), etc.
It is essential to analyse the changes that borrowings have
undergone in the English language and how they have adapted
themselves to its peculiarities.
All the changes that borrowed elements undergo may be
divided into two large groups. On the one hand there are changes
specific of borrowed words only. These changes aim at adapting
words of foreign origin to the norms of the borrowing language, e.g.
the consonant combinations [pn], [ps], [pt] in the words pneumatics,
psychology, Ptolemy of Greek origin were simplified into [n], [s],
[t]. The initial [ks] was changed into [z] (as in Gr. xylophone).
By analogy with the great majority of nouns that form their
plural in -s, borrowings, even very recent ones, have assumed this
inflection instead of their original plural endings. The forms Soviets,
bolsheviks, kolkhozes, sputniks illustrate the process.
When speakers imitate a word from a foreign language and,
at least partly, adapt it in sound or grammar to their native language,
the process is called borrowing, and the word thus borrowed is called
a loanword or borrowing. More than two thirds of the English
vocabulary are borrowings. Mostly they are words of Romanic,
French, Italian, Spanish origin. Borrowings can be classified
according to different criteria: according to the aspect which is
borrowed, according to the degree of assimilation, according to the
language from which the word was borrowed.
Degree of assimilation depends on the time of the borrowing.
The general principle is: the older the borrowing, the more
thoroughly it tends to follow normal English habits of accentuation,
pronunciation, etc. It is but natural that the majority of early
borrowings have acquired full English citizenship and that most
48
English speaking people are astonished on first hearing, that such
everyday words as window, chair, dish and so on have not always
belonged to their language. Late borrowings often retain their
foreign peculiarities.
Exercise 1. Explain the etymology of the words in bold type.
1. His anger poured over me like lava. 2. I finished my
chops, leaned back in my chair, and lit a cigarette. 3. He took out a
long cigar and placed it in his mouth. 4. The robot looked at him
impassively out of its faceted eye. 5. On the tray there was a pot of
coffee and two cups. 6. “Here’s Len Minogue, he’ll play a polka for
us,” he roared, dragging a little man with an accordion, over to the
piano. 7. She was dressed in a heavy silk kimono of authentic
manufacture. 8. She went into the kitchen and filled a glass with
equal portions of vodka and orange juice. 9. I’ve been taking
karate lessons, and I gave him a sample. 10. A horde of
mosquitoes gathered immediately in the lee of the car. 11. Then
they dined at a tiny seafood restaurant. 12. Everyone had to get
used to handling dog teams and building igloo shelters. 13. She had
left the flat to buy some sandwiches at a delicatessen near Sloane
Square. 14. Myra had potato chips and a dish of tiny pieces of
herring and some tomatoes.
ASSIMILATION OF THE BORROWED WORDS
Most of the borrowed words adjust themselves to their new
environment and get adapted to the norms of the recipient language.
They undergo certain changes which gradually erase their proper
features and finally they are assimilated. Borrowed words are
adjusted in three main areas of the new language system: the
phonetic, the grammatical and the semantic.
The nature of phonetic adaptation is best shown by
comparing Norman French borrowings. The Norman borrowings
have for a long time been fully adapted to the phonetic system of the
English language. Such words as table, plate, courage bear no
phonetic traces of their French origin. Some of the later borrowings
49
sound surprisingly French: matinee, ballet, cafe. In these cases
phonetic adaptation is not completed.
Grammatical adaptation consists in a complete change of the
former paradigm of the borrowed word. Yet, this is also a lasting
process. For example, words phenomenon (pl. phenomena), criterion
(pl. criteria) are not fully adopted. Other borrowings have two plural
forms – the native and the foreign, e.g. vacuum (L.) – vacua,
vacuums, virtuoso (It.) – virtuosi, virtuosos.
By semantic adaptation is meant adjustment to the system of
meanings of the vocabulary. When a word is taken over into another
language, its semantic structure as a rule undergoes great changes.
Polysemantic words are usually adopted only in one or two of their
meanings. Thus the word timbre that had a number of meanings in
French was borrowed into English as a musical term only. The
words cargo and cask, highly polysemantic in Spanish, were adopted
only in one of their meanings – ‘the goods carried in a ship’, ‘a
barrel for holding liquids’ respectively.
In the process of its historical development a borrowing
sometimes acquired new meanings that were not to be found in its
former semantic structure. For instance, the verb move in Modern
English has developed the meanings of ‘propose’, ‘change one’s
flat’, ‘mix with people’ and others that the French mouvoir does not
possess. As a rule the development of new meanings takes place 50 –
100 years after the word is borrowed.
The semantic structure of borrowings changes in other ways
as well. Some meanings become more general, others more
specialised, etc. For instance, the word umbrella, borrowed in the
meaning of a ’sunshade’ or ‘parasol’ (from It. ombrella <ombra –
’shade’) came to denote similar protection from the rain as well.
Loan words or borrowed words according to the degree of
assimilation fall into three groups:
а) completely assimilated loan words,
b) partially assimilated loan words,
c) unassimilated loan words or barbarisms.
Completely assimilated borrowings are found in all layers of
older borrowings. They are also called denizens. They follow all
50
morphological, phonetic and orthographic standards e.g. husband,
table, street, take. Being very frequent and stylistically neutral, they
may occur as dominant words in synonymic groups. They take an
active part in word -formation.
The second group containing partially assimilated borrowings
can be subdivided into 4 groups. Such words are also called aliens.
1. Borrowings that are not assimilated semantically, because
they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from which
they come: sherbet, toreador
2. Borrowings that are not assimilated grammatically, for
example nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek which keep their
original plural forms crisis – crises, phenomenon-phenomena.
3. Borrowings that are not assimilated phonetically. For
example, some of the French words borrowed after 1650 keep the
accent on the final syllable. Some words contain sounds or
combinations of sounds that are not standard for the English
language: boulevard, foyer.
4. Borrowings that are not assimilated graphically. This
group is very large. As a rule such words are from the French origin.
In these words the final consonant is not pronounced and they keep a
diacritic mark. Some of them have variant spelling: Cliché, naïve.
The third group is unassimilated borrowed words. They are
also called barbarisms. They are words from other languages used by
English people in conversation or in writing but not assimilated in
any way, and for which there are corresponding English equivalents:
e.g. coup d’etat [kudei’ta:] – державний переворот, eureka,
persona grata, etc.
Exercise 2. Classify the borrowings in bold type according to
the degree of their assimilation. State from what languages they are
borrowed.
1. The walls had been panelled (at cost price) by a good
decorator and on them hung engravings of theatrical pictures by
Zoffany and de Wilde. 2. That rate literary phenomenon, a Southern
novel with no mildew on its magnolia leaves. Funny, happy, and
written with unspectacular precision. 3. When Mike Noonan's wife
51
dies unexpectedly, the bestselling author suffers from writer's block.
Until he is drawn to his summer home, the beautiful lakeside retreat
called Sara Laughs. 4. The pair are the epitome of chic, living a
glamorous lifestyle and entertaining friends at their house. 5. Henry
VIII's invasion of France has gone badly wrong, and a massive
French fleet is preparing to sail across the Channel. 6. In the hot and
dusty main street the cars were parked nose to the kerb. 7. The
breath of an inquisitive dog blew warm and nervous on her neck; she
could feel her skin broiling a little in the heat and hear the small
exhausted wa-waa of the expiring waves. 8. Stradlater was a
goddamn genius next to Ackley. 9. When its finally gets too much,
she can always simply die. 10. This innocent passion for the persons
whose photographs appear in the illustrated papers made him seem
incredibly naïve, and she looked at him with tender eyes. 11. She’s a
dancer. А ballet and all. She used to practice about two hours every
day, right in the middle of the hottest weather and all. 12. If she went
into the café on her own, she had to give way to any white person
who walked in and let them be served first. 13. I left a message on
her answering machine. 14. He was a big, hulking Indian clad in
approved white-man style, with an Eldorado king’s sombrero on his
head. 15. She had bought “Le Temps” and “The Saturday Evening
Post” for her mother, and as she drank her citronade she opened the
latter at the memoirs of a Russian princess, finding the dim
conventions of the nineties realer and nearer than the headlines of the
French paper. 16. He still had at fifty-two a very good figure. 17. He
kept saying they were too new and bourgeois. 18. It was dark as hell
in the foyer, naturally, and naturally I couldn't turn on any lights. 19.
“Who are you?” “Battle police,” another officer said. 20. He woke
when he heard me in the room and sat up. “Ciao!” –, he said. 21. I
arranged with the concierge to make my coffee in the morning. 22.
The modest, well-bred, etcetera, English gentleman. 23. “How many
corridas you had this year?” Renata asked.
INTERNATIONAL WORDS
As the process of borrowing is mostly connected with the
appearance of new notions which the loan words serve to express, it
52
is natural that the borrowing is seldom limited to one language.
Words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result
of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source
are called international words.
The etymological sources of this vocabulary reflect the
history of world culture. Expanding global contacts result in the
considerable growth of international vocabulary. All languages
depend on their changes upon the cultural and social matrix in which
they operate and various contacts between nations are part of this
matrix reflected in vocabulary.
Such words usually convey concepts which are significant in
the field of communication (cf. Eng. Telephone, organization,
inauguration, industry, Ukr. телефон, організація, інаугурація,
індустрія). If it is a noun, it is certain to adopt, sooner or later, a
new system of declension; if it is a verb, it will conjugated according
to the rules of the recipient language.
International words play an especially prominent part in
various terminological systems including the vocabulary of science,
industry and art. Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin. Most
names of science are international, e.g. philosophy, mathematics,
physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, linguistics, lexicology. There
are also numerous terms of art in this group: music, theatre, drama,
tragedy, comedy, artist, primadonna. The etymological sources of
this vocabulary reflect the history of the world culture. Thus, for
example, the mankind’s cultural debt to Italy is reflected in the great
number of Italian words connected with architecture, painting and
especially music that are borrowed into most European languages:
allegro, andante, aria, arioso, barcarole, baritone (and others names
of voices), concert, duet, opera (and others names of pieces of
music), piano and many more.
It is quite natural that political terms frequently occur in the
international group of borrowings: politics, policy, revolution,
progress, democracy, communism, anti-militarism.
The English language also contributed a considerable number
of international words to world languages. Among them the sport
53
terms occupy a prominent position: football, volley-ball, baseball,
hockey, cricket, rugby, tennis, golf, etc.
Fruits and foodstuff imported from exotic countries often
transport their names too and, being simultaneously imported to
many countries, become international: coffee, cocoa, chocolate,
coca-cola, banana, mango, avocado, grapefruit.
The rate of change in technology, political, social and artistic
life has been greatly accelerated in the 20th century and so has the
rate of growth of international wordstock. A few examples of
comparatively new words due to the progress of science will suffice
to illustrate the importance of international vocabulary: algorithm,
antenna, antibiotic, automation, bionics, cybernetics, entropy, gene,
genetic code, graph, microelectronics, microminiaturisation, quant,
quasars, pulsars, ribosome, etc. All these show sufficient likeness in
English, French, Russian and several other languages.
The international wordstock is also growing due to the influx
of exotic borrowed words like anaconda, bungalow, kraal, orangoutang, sari, etc. These come from many different sources.
At least some of the Russian words borrowed into English
and many other languages and thus international should also be
mentioned: balalaika, bolshevik, cosmonaut, czar, intelligentsia,
Kremlin, mammoth, sambo, soviet, sputnik, steppe, vodka.
Exercise 3. In the sentences given below identify
international words and state to what sphere of human activity they
belong.
1. But I still lacked the confidence to try to take charge when
Vadim seemed particularly out of control. 2. ‘The injection should
take effect soon, love,’ he called in. and the doctor said it would
make you sleepy.’ 3. The Moroccan frontier is about three miles
away and clearly we are here in case the hordes of fellagha sitting on
the other side think the coming referendum heralds a return home to
Algeria. 4. He is a sadist and delights in the discomfort of others. 5.
He didn’t even know if he was going to college. 6. I hold out a
ziplock bag containing banana muffins. Becki hesitates, then accept
one. 7. The horse remained amazingly calm during what looked a
54
painful procedure. 8. But just like on a battlefield, where the sergeant
knew more than the grunt, and the lieutenant more than the sergeant,
and so on, the trick of gathering intelligence was to capture higher
ranking officers from the other side, debrief them, and then launch a
counterstrike. 9. Five dozen fiascos of oxygen he’s had all together,
yesterday and to-day, the soak! 10. He came into the barracks like a
tornado.
PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL WORDS
International words should not be confused with pseudointernational words (false cognates, “translator’s false friends”)
which have the same origin different semantic structures.
Exercise 4. Translate the following sentences into Ukrainian
paying attention to pseudo-international words.
1. “All right, from that perspective, I can buy it. We’ll call
social services”. 2. These then are the three men who will have
principal control over us during the coming weeks. 3. “I think this
could be my salvation from a lunatic asylum which is the alternative
if I have to go on publishing wheelbarrow”. 4. We returned to Sully
and the two prisoners were paraded in front of Captain Glasser in his
office. 5. That left two pages on four-year-old Tika, who’d been shot
on a dog bed, and one paragraph on five-month-old ViVi, who’d
been suffocated in her crib. 6. Liz laughed, intrigued by the prospect.
7. Phil rattled off a geographic profile of the Harringtons’ known
activities and organizations. 8. I wondered what we left behind – a
watch or two, a few cents photograph or a magazine and some
ammunition. 9. “The only thing he didn’t like was the wine list”.
10. Selfishness runs in the family, Liz thought drily.
ETYMOLOGICAL DOUBLETS
The words shirt and skirt are of the same root. Shirt is a
native word, and skirt is a Scandinavian borrowing. Their phonemic
shape is different and yet there is a certain resemblance which
reflects their common origin. Their meanings are also different but
easily associated. They both denote articles of clothing.
55
Such words as these two originating from the same
etymological source, but differing in phonetic shape and meaning are
called etymological doublets.
They may enter the vocabulary by different roots. Some of
these pairs (like shirt and skirt) consist of a native word and a
borrowed one. Others are represented by two borrowings from
different languages which are historically originated from the same
root: canal (Latin) – channel (French), captain (Latin) – chieftan
(French).
Still others were borrowed from the same language twice in
different periods of time: travel (Norman. Fr.) – travail (Parisian
Fr.), cavalry (Norman. Fr.) – chivalry (Parisian Fr.).
A doublet may also consist of a shortened word and the one
from which it was derived: history – story, fanatic – fan, shadow –
shade.
Etymological hybrids are words whose elements are derived
from different languages, e.g. eatable (native root + Romanic suffix),
distrust (native root + Romanic prefix), beautiful (Romanic root +
native suffix), etc.
Etymological triplets are groups of three words of common
origin: hospital (lat) – hostel (Norm. Fr.) – hotel (Par. Fr.), to
capture (Lat.) – to catch (Norm. Fr.) – to chase (Par. Fr.).
Exercise 5. Compare the meaning of the following
etymological doublets or triplets. State their origin.
major – mayor, captain – chieftan, shirt – skirt, shriek –
screech, canal – channel, corpus – corpse – corps, dike – ditch, travel
– travail, shrew – screw, cart – chart, shadow – shade, naked – nude,
lapel – label, ward – guard, hale – hail, shabby – scabby, pauper –
poor, vast – waste, wine – vine, zealous – jealously, basis – base,
deacon – dean, papyrus – paper, chief – chef, hospital – hostel –
hotel, saloon – salon, suit – suite, camp – campus, street – stratum,
catch – chase, cavalry – chivalry, dragon – dragoon – drake, plan –
plane – plain, gentle – genteel – gentile, stack – stake – steak.
56
TRANSLATION–LOANS
The term “loan word” is equivalent to borrowing. By
translation – loans we indicate borrowings which are not taken into
the vocabulary of another language more or less in the same
phonemic shape in which they have been functioning in their own
language, but undergo the process of translation. They are only
compound words, because they can be subjected to such an operation
when each stem is being translated separately: e. g. 5 year-plan
(from Russian пятилетка), first dancer (from Italian primaballerina), collective farm (from Russian колхоз), wonder child
(from German wunderkind), etc.
Exercise 6. Translate the following translation-loans into
Ukrainian.
Fatherland, fellow-traveller, first dancer, lightning way,
milky way, local colouring, the moment of truth, mother tongue, pen
name, self-criticism, Sisyphean labour, a slip of the tongue, a slip of
the pen, swan song, sword of Damocles, thing-in-itself, word
combination, world-famous.
57
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58
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