Федеральное агентство по образованию Государственное образовательное учреждение высшего профессионального образования Тульский государственный университет Кафедра лингвистики и перевода Лекции по лексикологии английского языка для студентов, обучающихся по направлению 031100 – лингвистика и перевод по специальности 031202 – перевод и переводоведение Автор: кандидат филологических наук, доцент Гусева Галина Владимировна Тула 2007 Lecture 1 What is Lexicology? I. The Subject of Lexicology The term lexicology is of Greek origin (from lexis – word and logos - science). Lexicology is the part of linguistics which deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features of words and word-groups. The term word denotes the main lexical unit of a language resulting from the association of a group of sounds with a meaning. This unit is used in grammatical functions characteristic of it. It is the smallest unit of a language which can stand alone as a complete utterance. The term word-group denotes a group of words which exists in the language as a ready-made unit, has the unity of meaning, the unity of syntactical function, e.g. the word-group as loose as a goose means clumsy and is used in a sentence as a predicative (He is as loose as a goose). Lexicology can be general and special. General lexicology is the lexicology of any language, part of General Linguistics. It is aimed at establishing language universals – linguistic phenomena and propeties common to all languages. Special lexicology is the lexicology of a particular language (English, German, Russian, etc.). Lexicology can study the development of the vocabulary, the origin of words and word-groups, their semantic relations and the development of their sound form and meaning. In this case it is called historical lexicology. Another branch of lexicology is called descriptive and studies the vocabulary at a definite stage of its development. II. What is a Word? First, the word is a unit of speech which, as such, serves the purposesof human communication. Thus, the word can be defined as a unit of communication. Secondly, the word can be perceived as the total of the sounds which comprise it. Third, the word, viewed structurally, possesses several characteristics. 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. For example, in the word post-impressionists the following morphemes can be distinguished: the prefixes post-, im-, the root press, the noun-forming suffixes – ion, -ist, and the grammatical suffix of plurality –s. The external structure of the word, and also typical word-formation patterns, are studied in the framework of word-building. The internal structure of the word, or its meaning, is nowadays commonly referred to as the word‘s semantic structure. This is the word‘s main aspect. The area of lexicology specialising in the semantic studies of the word is called semantics. One of the main structural features of the word that it possesses both external (formal) unity and semantic unity. A further structural feature of the word is its susceptibility to grammatical employment. In speech most words can be used in different grammatical forms in which their interrelations are realized. Thus, the word is a 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. III. The Problem of Word-Boundaries The difference between words and other two-facet units is not always clear. There are: 1. Form words. On the one hand, they fuse with notional words phonetically and do not function as sentence-members. On the other hand, they are positionally mobile, e.g. a, to, and. 2. Loose compounds, e.g. speech sound, stone wall. On the one hand, theya are built in speech. On the other hand, they have one lexical stress. 3. Phrasal words: his I-love-you‘s. On the one hand, they are built in speech and are not reproducible. On the other, they have one lexical stress. The difference between variants of the same word and different words is also not always clear. Within the language system the word is a lexeme – an abstract unit which unites all its variant: a) lexico-semantic variants – different meanings of the same polysemantic word: to give a pen, to give a smile, to give an answer; b) phonetic variants – different pronouncation of the same word: neither, either, often; c) orthographic variants – different spelling of the same word: jail – gaol; d) morphological variants – different morphemic structure of the same word: learned – learnt, geographic – geographical. IV. Lexicology and its Connection with Other Linguistc Disciplines Lexicology is closely connected with other branches of linguistcs: 1. It is connected with Phonetics because the word‘s sound form is a fixed sequence of phonemes united by a lexical stress. 2. Lexicology is connected with Morphology and Word-Formation as the word‘s structure is a fixed sequence of morphemes. 3. It is connected with Morphology because the word‘s content plane is a unity of lexical and grammatical meanings. 4. The word functions as part of the sentence and performs a certain syntactical function that is why it is also connected with Syntax. 5. The word functions in different situations and spheres of life therefore it is connected with Stylistics, Socio- and Psycholinguistics. But there is also a great difference between lexicology and other linguistc disciplines. Grammatical and phonological systems are relatively stable. Therefore they are mostly studied within the framework of intralinguistics. Lexical system is never stable. It is directly connected with extralinguistic systems. It is constantly growing and decaying. It is immediately reacts to changes in social life, e.g. the intense development of science and technology in the 20th century gave birth to such words as computer, sputnik, spaceship. Therefore lexicology is a sociolinguistic discipline. It studies each particular word, both its intra- and extralingiustic relations. Lexicology is subdivided into a number of autonomous but interdependent disciplines: 1. Lexicological Phonetics. It studies the expression plane of lexical units in isolation and in the flow of speech. 2. Semasiology. It deals with the meaning of words and other linguistic units: morphemes, word-formation types, morphological word classes and morphological categories. 3. Onomasiology or Nomination Theory. It deals with the process of nomination: what name this or that object has and why. 4. Etymology. It studies the origin, the original meaning and form of words. 5. Praseology. It deals with phraseological units. 6. Lexicography. It is a practical science. It describes the vocabulary and each lexical unit in the form of dictionaries. 7. Lexical Morphology. It deals with the morphological stricture of the word. 8. Word-formation. It deals with the patterns which are used in coining new words. Lecture II Meaning. Concept I. Approaches to Lexical Meaning There are two main approaches to lexical meaning: referential and functional. The referential approach studies the connection between words and thins or concepts they denote. Functional approach studies relations between words. The referential model of meaning is the so-called basic semantic triangle. it consists of: 1. The sound-form (Sign) of the word: . 2. The referent (Denotatum) – the object which the word names: the actual bird. 3. The concept (Designatum) – The essential properties of this object which are reflected in human mind: “a feathered anial with wings“. Meaning is closely connected with all parts of the semantic triangle but cannot be equated with any of them. Generally speaking, meaning can be described as a component of the word through which a concept is communicated, in this way endowing the word with the ability of denoting real objects, qualities, actions and absract notions. The functional approach assumes that the meaning of a linguistic unit can be studied only through its relation to other linguistic units and not through its relation to concept or referent, e.g. we know that the meaning of “bird n“ and “bird v“ is different because they function in speech differently. Analysing various contexts in which these words are used we can observe that they have different distribution. As the distribution of the two words is different, their meanings are different too. The same is true of a polysemantic word: Look at me – You look tired. Consequently, semantic investigation is confined to the analysis of the difference or sameness of meaning. the functional approach is a valuable complement to the referential theory. II. Lexical Meaning and Concept Meaning and concept are very closely associated but not identical. Meaning is a linguistic category. Concept is a logical and psychological category, a unit of thinking. Meaning and concept coincide only in scientific terms that have no general meanings (morpheme, phoneme, amoeba) and in terminilogical meanings of polysemantic words, e.g. legal, medical or grammatical usages of the word case. In other aspects meaning and concept do not coincide: 1. Concept is emotionally and stylistically neutral. Meaning may include non-conceptual parts: kid, gorgeous, birdie. 2. One and the same concept can be expressed differently: die – pass away, kick the bucket. 3. The number of concepts does not correspond to the number of words and meanings. One concept may be expressed by several synonymous words: child, kid – infant. One polysemantic word may express several concepts: draw – “move by pulling“ (draw a boat out of the water), “obtain from a source“ (draw water from a well), “make with a pen, pencil or chalk“ (draw a straight line). Some words do not express concepts at all: well, must, perhaps. 4. Concepts are mostly international. Meanings are nationally specific. Words expressing identical concepts may have different meanings and different semantic structures in different languages: house – дом; blue - синий, голубой. III. Types of Lexical Meaning The content plane of words includes denotative and connotative meanings. Denotative or referential meaning, the basic type of lexical meaning, is the word‘s reference to the object. This reference may be individual (The dog is trained) or general (It‘s not a dog). That is why denotative meaning is subdivided into demonstrative and significative. The type of denotative meaning varies in different groups of words. The meaning of situational words is relative – it depends on the situation and context: here, son, my, this, now. Pronominal words do not name the referent, they only point to it: he, she, they. Their meaning in isolation is very general: he – any male. but in speech their reference is always individual: he – this particular male. The referent of proper names is always an individual object or person. They refer to each member of a particular class: London, Paris (cities), John, Bob (men). Specific and generic terms differ in the size of the referent group: rose – flower; flower – plant. General terms have a wider meaning and can substitute for any specific term: dog – English bulldog, French poodle, cocker spaniel. The referent of abstract words can be perceived by the mind and not by the senses: miracle, polite, to manage. Connotative meaning includes various additional meanings: emotional, evaluative intensifying and expressive, e.g. hillock, to devour. As a rule, connotation co-exists with denotation. However, sometimes it comes to the fore and weakens the word‘s denotative meaning. Words also may have a certain stylistic value. It means that they refer to this or that situation or functional style: science, everyday life, business: get – obtain – procure; child – kid – infant. IV. Lexical and Grammatical Meaning The word is a lexical-grammatical unity. Its content plane includes two types of meaning: lexical and grammatical. Lexical meaning is individual, unique. It does not belong to any other word in the same language: bicycle – a vehicle with two wheels, handle-bars to guide it with, a seat, and two pedals to make it go. Grammatical meaning is general, standard. It belongs to a whole class of words and word-forms: bicycle – a noun in the common case, singular. At the same time lexical and grammatical meanings co-exist in the word and are interdependent: 1. Lexical meaning affects grammatical meaning: abstract or mass nouns have no plural form (joy, sugar), relative adjectives have no degrees of comparison (watery), statal verbs are not used in progressive tenses (see, understand). 2. Grammatical meaning affects lexical meaning. Different meanings of the polysemantic word go have their own grammatical peculiarities: He has gone to China – moved (go + adverb of place); They are going to get married soon – are planning (be going + to-infinitive); The children went wild with eycitement – became (go + adjective). 3. Combinability of the word depends both on its lexical and grammatical (part-of-speech) meaning, e.g. the noun tea combines with strong but not with strongly. 4. Grammatical form may be isolated from the paradigm and become lexicalized: works – factory. 5. Lexical meaning may be grammaticalized, e.g. some notional verbs may be used as link-verbs: give a smile, turn red. Lecture III Semantic Changes I. The Causes of Semantic Changes The meaning of a word can change in the course of time. Transfer of the meaning is called lexico-semantic word-building. In such cases the outer aspect of a word does not change. The causes of semantic changes can be extra-linguistic and linguistic: the change of the lexical meaning of the noun pen was due to extra-longuistic causes. Primarily pen comes back to the latin word penna (a feather of a bird). As people wrote with goose pens the name was transferred to steel pens which were later on used for writing. Still later any instrument for writing was called a pen. On the other hand, causes may be linguistic, e.g. the conflict of synonyms when a perfect synonym of a native word is borrowed from some other language one of them may specialize in its meaning. The noun tide in Old English was polysemantic and denoted time, season, hour. When the French words time, season, hour were borrowed into English they ousted the word tide in these meanings. It was specialized and now means regular rise and fall of the sea caused by attraction of the moon. The meaning of a word can also change due to ellipsis: the word-group a train of carriages had the meaning of a row of carriages, later on of carriages was dropped and the noun train changed its meaning, it is used now in the function and with the meaning of the whole word-group. Semantic changes have been classified by different scientists. The most complete classification was suggested by a German scientist Herman Paul. It is based on the logical principle. He distinguishes two main ways where the semantic change is gradual (specialization and generalization), two momentary conscious

Semasiology

Learning objectives: After you have studied the lecture you should able to:

1)define the term semasiology;

2) speak about the problem of defining the term

3) explain the essence of

a) the referential approach to the problem of defining the meaning

b) the functional approach;

4)express your own appreciation of the problem under analysis.

5) give (draw) a basic triangle (E.g.: The shop houses 15-ton crane; A naked conductor ran along the car).

The brunch of lexicology, that is devoted to the study of meaning is known as Semasiology.

Semasiology (from Gr . semasia - "signification") deals not with every kind of linguistic meaning only. This does not mean that we need not pay attention to the grammatical meaning. On the contrary, grammatical meaning must be taken into consideration in so far as it bears a specific influence upon lexical meaning.

The main objects of semasiological study are as follows: semantic development of words,

its causes and classification, relevant distinctive features and types of lexical meaning, polysemy and semantic structure of word, semantic groupings and connections in the vocabulary system, i.e. synonyms, antonyms, etc.

Meaning is one of the most controversial terms in the theory of language. An exact definition of lexical meaning becomes especially difficult due to complexity of the process, by which language and human consequence serve to reflect outward reality. Since there is no universally accepted definition meaning we shall give a brief survey of the problem as it is viewed in modern linguistics. There are 2 approaches to the problem: 1) the referential approach , which formulates the essence of meaning as the interdependence between words and things or concepts they denote; 2) the functional approach, which studies the functions of a word in speech. This approach is (sometimes described as contextual) based on the analysis of various contexts.

The essential feature of the first approach is that in distinguishes between the three components, connected with meaning:

1) the sound form of the linguistic sign (sign or symbol);

2) the concept underlying this sound form ( meaning; thought or reference).

3) the actual referent, i.e. the part or the aspect of reality to which the linguistic sign refers (thing meant).

The best known referential model of meaning is so-called "basic triangle", which may be represent in a simplified form:

Concept (meaning, thought, referent)

Sound form referent (thing meant)

As we can see from the diagram, the sound form of the linguistic sign, for instance is connected with our concept of a small which it denotes, and though it with the referent, i.e. the actual thing. The common feature of the referential approach is the implacation that meaning in some form or other connected with referent.

Let us examine the interrelation between:

1-Meaning and sound form

The sound-form of the word is not identical with, its meaning namely is the sound form, used to denote a bed for a child There are inherent connections between this sound form, used to denote a bed for a child. There are inherent connections between this sound form and the meaning of the word "cot", but they are conventional and arbitrary. We may prove it by comparing the sound-forms of different languages, conveying one and the same meaning, cf. English and Russian . On the contrary, the sound-cluster in the English language is almost identical to the sound form in Russian language possessing the meaning "male-cat".

2-Meaning and concept

When we examine a word, we see that its meaning, though connected with the underlying concept is not identical with it. To begin with, concept is a category of human cognition. Concept is the thought of the object that singles out its essential features. Our concepts abstracts and reflect the most common and typical features of the different objects and phenomena of the world. Being the result of abstraction the concepts are thus almost the same for the whole of humanity. The meanings of worlds, however, are different in different languages. In other words, words expressing identical concepts may have different semantic structures in different languages. The concept of "a building for human habitation” is expressed in English by the word house, in Russian by the word дом, but the meaning of the English word is not identical with that of the Russian as house does not possess the meaning of "fixed residence of family or household", which that of the Russian as house does not possess the meaning of the Russia word дом; it is expressed by another English word, namely home.

The difference between meaning and concept can also be observed by comparing synonymous words and word-groups expressing the same concepts, but possessing linguistic meaning, which is felt as different in each of the units under considerations:

To die - to pass away - kick the bucket - join the majority;

Child - baby-babe-infant;

Daddy - father - governor - etc.

3-Meaning and referent

To distinguish meaning from the referent, i.e. from the thing denoted by the linguistic sign is of the utmost importance. To begin with, meaning is a linguistic phenomenon whereas the denoted object or the referent is beyond the scope of language. We can denote one and the same object by more than one word of a different meaning. For example, an apple can be denoted by the words apple, fruit, smth, this, etc. So far as all these words have the same referent.

Thus meaning is not to be identified with either of the three points of the triangle. It is closely connected, but not identical with sound-form, concept or referent. Yet even the linguists, who accepted this view disagree as to the nature of meaning. Some of them regard meaning as the interrelation of the three points the triangle within the framework of the given language, but not as an objectively exiting part of the linguistic sign. Others and among them the outstanding Russian scholar Smirnitsky A. I. understand the linguistic sign as a two-facet unit. They view meaning as "a certain reflection in our mind of objects, phenomena or relations that makes part of the linguistic sign - its so called inner facet, whereas the sound-form functions as its outer facet" The outer facet of the linguistic sign is indispensable to meaning and intercommunication. Meaning is to be found in all linguistic units and together with their sound-form constitutes by linguistic science. The linguistic signs studied by linguistic science.

The great stumbling block in referential theories of meaning has always been that they operate with subjective and intangible mental processes. The results of the semantic investigation therefore depend to a certain extent on "the feeling of language" and cannot be verified by another investigator analyzing the same linguistic data. So, semasiology has to rely too much on linguistic intuition and unlike other fields of linguistics (phonetics, history of language) does not posses objective methods of investigation.

Functional approach to Meaning

In recent years a new and entirely different approach to meaning has appeared in structural linguistics. This approach maintains that a linguistic study of meaning is the investigation of the relation of sign to sign only. In other words, they hold the view that the meaning of a linguistic unit may be studied only through its relation to other linguistic units and not through its relation to either concept or referent. Thus, the meaning of the 2 words move and movement is different because they function in speech differently. Really, they occupy different positions in relation to other words. (To) move can be followed by a noun (move the chair), preceded by a pronoun (we move), etc. The position occupied by the word movement is different: it may be followed by a preposition (movement of smth) preceded by an adjective (slow movement) and so on. As the distribution ("the position of a linguistic sign in relation to other linguistic signs) of the 2 words is different they cone to the conclusion that not only they belong to different classes of words, but that that not only meanings are different too.

It follows that in the functional approach meaning may be viewed as the function of distribution: 1) semantic investigation is confined to the analysis of the different or sameness meaning; 2)meaning is understood essentially as the function or the use of linguistic signs.

Relation between the 2 approaches

When comparing the two approaches in terms of methods of linguistic analysis, we may see that the functional approach should not be considered an alternative, but rather a valuable complement to the referential theory. It is only natural that linguistic investigation must start by collecting an adequate number of samples of context. Once this phase had been completed, it seems but logical, to pass on to the referential phase and try to formulate the meaning thus identified. There is absolutely no need to set the two approaches against each other; each handles - its is side of the problem and neither is complete without the other.

The meaning of the word, its components

The word is one of the fundamental units of language. It is a dialectal unity of form and content. Its content or meaning is not identical to notion, but it may reflect human notion, but it may reflect human notion and is considered as the form of their existence. So the definition of a word is one of the most difficult in linguistics, because the simplest word has many different aspects: a sound form, its morphological structure, it may occur in different word-forms and have various meanings.

It is universally recognized that word meaning is not homogeneous, but it is made up of various components, which are described as types of meaning. There are 2 types of meaning to be found in words and word forms:

the grammatical meaning;

the lexical meaning.

Such word forms as “girls”, “writers”, “tables”, etc., though denoting different objects of reality have smth in common, namely the grammatical meaning of plurality, which can be found in all of them. Thus, the grammatical meaning is the component of meaning in the word forms of verbs (asked, thought, walked, etc.) or the case meaning in the word forms of various nouns (girls, boys, nights).

Word forms “speaks”, “reads”, “writers” have one and the same grammatical meaning as they can all be found in identical distributation, only after pronouns “she”, “he”, “they” and before such adverbs and adverbal phrases as “yesterday”, “last years”, “two hours ago”, etc.

The grammatical aspect of the part of speech meaning is conveyed as a rule by individual sets of word forms expressing the grammatical meaning of singularity (e.g. table) plurality (tables) and so on.

A verb is understood to possess sets of forms expressing, for instance, tense meaning (works-worked), mood meaning (work – I work).

The part of speech meaning of the words that possess but one form, e.g. prepositions, some adverbs, etc., is observed only in their disrtibutations (c.f. to come in (here, there) and in (on, under) the table).

Lexical meaning

Besides the grammatical meaning, there is another component of meaning. Unlike the grammatical meaning this component is identical in all the forms of the word. Thus the word-forms “go”, “goes”, “went”, “going” possess different grammatical meanings of tense, person and so on, but in each of these forms we find one and the same semantic component denoting the process of movement. This is the lexical meaning of the word, which may be described as the component of meaning proper to the word as a linguistic unit.

The noun, for instance, “rep”, a kind of fabric, has 4 homonyms:

rep = repertory;

rep = representative;

rep = reputation;

rep = repetition (in school slang smth, need to know by hard)

A further course of homonyms is called split polysemy : 2 or more homonyms can originate different meanings of the same word, when for some reason the semantic structure of the word breaks into several parts. We may illustrate this by the 3 following homonyms of the word “spring”, means:

The act of springing, leap;

A place, where a steam of water comes up out to the sky;

A season of the year.

Historically all three originate from the same verb with meaning to jump, to leap. This is the Old English word “springun” . So that the meaning of the first homonym is the oldest or the most etymological one. The meanings of the 2 nd and the 3 rd examples were originally made in metaphor. As the head of the strim, the water something lips out of the earth, so that metaphorically such a place could be described as a “leap”. On the other hand, the season of the year, following winter, could be poetically defined as a “leap” from the darkness and cold into sunlight and life.

Polysemy, synonymy and homonymy

One of the most complicated problems in semasiology is to define the place of homonyms among other relationships of words. In a simple code each sign has only one meaning and it’s meaning is associated with only one sign. But this ideal is not realized in natural language. When several related meanings are associated with the same form, the word is called polysemantic. When 2 or more unrelated meanings are associated with the same form, these words are homonyms. When 2 or more forms are associated with the same or nearly the same meaning, they are called the synonyms.

Morphological structure of the word

Leaning objectives: After you"ve studied the material you should be able to:

I. 1) define the terms "morpheme", its free and bound forms; 2) define roots and affixes, give their classification;

II. 3) speak on the ways of enriching, the vocabulary

a) Semantic extension

b) Word-formation (productive types and minor ways): Affixation, Compounding, Conversion, Shortening.

Literature for the seminar:

1. Practical Lexicology by Kashcheyeva pp. 91-128, Ex.l,2cl/2

2. English lexicology by Antrushina G.B.

pp. 78-103 (Ex. I, III, V, VI), pp. 104-120 (Ex. I, II)

Morphological structure of the word

Morphemes, free and bound forms. We describe a. word As an autonomous unit of language in which a particular meaning is associated with a particular sound complex and which is capable of a particular grammatical employment and able to form a sentence by itself, we have the possibility to distinguish it from the other fundamental unit, namely the morpheme.

A morpheme is also an association of a given meaning with a given sound pattern. But unlike a word it is not autonomous. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Morphemes are not divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is why morphemes: may be defined as the smallest meaningful units of form.

The term morpheme is derived from Gr. Morphe - "form" + erne. The Greek suffix - eme has been adopted by linguists to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature (phoneme, sememe). The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form, (a form in these cases is recurring discrete unit of speech) (повторяющаяся отдельная самостоятельная единица речи).

A form is said to be free if it may stand alone without changing its meaning; if not, it is a bound form, because it always bound to something else: for example, if we compare the words sportive and elegant and their parts, we see that sport, sportive, elegant may occur alone as utterances, whereas eleg- -ive, -ant are bound forms because they never occur alone. A word is, by Bloomfield"s definition, a minimum free form a morpheme is said to be either bound or free. This statement should be taken with caution. It means that some morphemes are capable of forming words without adding other morphemes: that is, thy are homonymous to free forms.

According to the role they play in constructing words morphemes are subdivided into: ROOTS and AFFIXES. The latter are further subdivided, according to their position, into prefixes, suffixes and infixes, according to their function and meaning, into derivational and functional affixes, the latter are also called ending or outer formatives (словообразующий).

When a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word, what remains is a stem base. The stem expresses the lexical and the part-of-speech meaning. For the word hearty and for the paradigm heart-hearts (pl.) the stem may be represented heart. This stem is a single morpheme, it contains nothing but the root, so it a simple stem. It is also a free stem because it is homonymous to the word heart.

A stem may also be defined as the part of the word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. The stem of the paradigm hearty - heartier - (the) heartiest is hearty. It is a free stem, but as it consists of a root morpheme and an affix, it is not simple but derived. Thus, a stem containing one or more affixes is a derived stem. If after deriving the affix the remaining stem is not homonymous to a separate word of the same root, we call it a bound stem. Thus, in the word cordial (proceeding as if from the heart); the adjective-forming suffix can be separated on the analogy with such words as bronchial radial, social. The remaining stem, however cannot form a separate word by itself: it is bound. In cordial-ly and cordial-ity, on the one hand, the stems are free.

Bound stems are especially characteristic of loan words. The point may be illustrated by the following French borrowings: arrogance, charity, courage , coward, distort, involve; notion; legible and tolerable, to give but a few. After the suffixes of these words are taken away the remaining elements are: arrog-; char-; cour-, cow-, tort-, volve-, nat-, leg-, toler-, which don"t ??????? with any semantically related independent words (p. 31 Arnold).

Roots are main morphemic vehicles of a given idea in a given language at a given stage of its development. A root may be also regarded as the ultimate constituent element which remains after removal of all functional and derivational affixes and don"t admit any further analysis. It i the common element of words within a word - family. Thus heart- is the common root of the following series of words; heart, hearten, dishearten, heartily, heartless, hearty, heartiness, sweetheart, heart-broken, kind-hearted, whole­heartedly, etc. In some of this, as, for example, in hearten, there is only one root; in others the word the root -heart- is combined with some other root, thus forming a compound like sweetheart.

The root in English is very often homonymous with the word, which is one of the most specific features of the English language arising from its general grammatical system on the one hand, and from its phonetic system on the other. The influence of the analytical structure of the language is obvious. The second point, however, calls for some explanation. Actually the usual phonetic shape is one single stressed syllable: bear, find, jump, land, man, sing, etc. This doesn"t give much space for a second morpheme to add classifying lexico-grammatical meaning to the lexical meaning already present in root stem, so the lexico-grammatical meaning must be signalled bу distribution.

In the phrases a morning "s drive, a morning "s ride, a morning "s walk the words drive, ride, walk receive the lexico-grammatical meaning of a noun not due to the structure of their stem, but because they are preceded by a noun in the Possessive case.

An English word does not necessarily contain formulates indicating to what part of speech it belongs. This holds true even with respect to inflectable parts of speech, i.e. nouns, verbs, adjective.

Not all roots are free forms, but productive roots (roots capable of the producing new words) usually are.

The semantic realization of an English, word is therefore very specific. Its dependence on distribution is further enhanced by the widespread occurrence of homonymy both among root morphemes ad affixes. Note how many words in this sentence might be ambiguous if taken in isolation: "A change of work is as good as a rest".

Unlike roots, affixes are always bound forms. The difference between affixes and prefixes is not confined to their respective position, suffixes being "fixed after" and

prefixes "fixed before" the stem. It also concerns their function and meaning. A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivative

(производное слово) in a different part of speech or different word-class, if-en, -y, -less in hearten, hearty, heartless. When both the initial underlying and the resultant forms belong to the same part of speech, the suffix serve to differentiate between lexico-grammatical classes by rendering some very general lexico-grammatical meaning. For instance, both -ify and -er are verb suffixes, but the first characterizes causative verbs, such as horrify, purify, whereas the second is mostly typical of frequentative verbs: flicker, shimmer, turttle and the like.

A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying meaning: if to hearten - to dishearten. It is only the verbs and statives that a prefix may serve to distinguish one part of speech from another, like in earth n - unearth v, sleep n -asleep (Stative). Preceding a verb stem, some prefixes express the difference between a transitive and an intransitive verbs: stay v. and outstay (smb.) v. with a few exceptions prefixes modify the stem for time (pre-, post-) for example, pre-war, post-war, or express negation (un-, dis-) i.e. undress, disarm, etc. and remain rather independent of the stem.

An infix is an affix placed within the world, like -n- stand. The type isn"t productive. An affix should not be confused with a combining form which can be distinguish from the affix historically; it is always borrowed from Latin or Greek in which it existed as a free form i.e. a separate word, or also as a combining form. Thus, cyclo- or its variant cyd- are derived from Greek word kuklos "circle" giving the English word cyclic.

Synonymy in English

Learning objectives: after you have studied the material you should be able to:

1. Define the notion of "synonymy", give the definition of the term "synonyms" by Russian and foreign linguists.

2. Speak on the criteria of synonymy, the sources of synonymy and the main synonymic patterns.

3. Give the classification of synonyms (ideographic, stylistic, absolute).

4. Analyze the entry (article) from a dictionary of synonyms.

Literature to be studied:

"English Word" by Arnold p. 177-197.

"A course in Modern English Lexicology" by Ginsburg.

"English Lexicology" by Antrushina.

"Practical Lexicology" by Kasheeva pp.70-73, ex. 1, 2; pp.76-77.

"English Synonyms" by Potapova LA.

"Webster"s Dictionary of Synonyms". Springfield. Mass. USA. 1942.

Потапова И.А. Краткий словарь синонимов английского языка. Пособие для учителя. Л, 1957.

A characteristic feature of a vocabulary of any language is the existence of synonyms, which is closely connected with the problem of meaning of the word.

The most complicated problem is the definition of the term "synonyms". There are a great many definitions of the term, but there is no universally accepted one. Traditionally the synonyms are defined as words different in sound-form, but identical or similar in meaning. But this definition has been severely criticized on many points.

The problem of synonymy is treated differently by Russian and foreign scientists. Among numerous definitions of the term in our linguistics the most comprehensive and full one is suggested by I.V. Arnold: "Synonyms - are two or more words of the same meaning, belonging to the same part of speech, possessing one or more identical meaning, interchangeable at least in some contexts without any considerable alteration in denotational meaning, but differing in morphemic composition, phonemic shape , shades of meaning, connotation, affective value, style, emotional coloring and valence peculiar to one of the elements in a synonymic group."

This definition describes the notion "synonymy", gives some criteria of synonymy (identity of meaning, interchangeability), shows some difference in connotation, emotive coloring, style, etc. But this descriptive definition as well as many others has the main drawbacks - there are no objective criteria of "identity" or "similarity" or sameness of meaning. They all are based on the linguistic intuitions of the scholars.

From the definition follows, that the members of the synonymic group in a dictionary should have their common denotational meaning and consequently it should be explained in the same words; they may have some differences in implication connotation, shades of meaning, idiomatic usage, etc.

Hope, expectation, anticipation are considered to be synonymous because they all mean "having smth in mind which is likely to happen..." But expectation may be either of good or of evil. Anticipation is as a rule an expectation of smth good. Hope is not only a belief but a desire that some event would happen. The stylistic difference is also quite marked. The Romance words anticipation and expectation are formal literary words used only by educated speakers, whereas the native monosyllabic hope is stylistically neutral. Moreover, they differ in idiomatic usage. Only hope is possible in such set expressions as to hope against hope, to lose hope, to pin one"shopes on smth. Neither expectation nor anticipation could be substituted into the following quotation from T.Eliot: "You don"t know what hope is until you have lost it".

Criteria of Synonymy

Not a single definition of the term synonym provides for any objective criterion of similarity or sameness of meaning as far as it is based on the linguistic intuition of the scholars.

Many scholars defined synonyms as words conveying the same notion but differing either in shades of meaning or in stylistic characteristics. In "Webster"s Dictionary of Synonyms" its authors used the semantic criterion along with the criterion of interchangeability , which we may see from the definition.

A synonym is one of two or more words which have the same or nearly the same essential (denotational) meaning. It is not a matter of mere likeness in meaning, but a likeness in denotation which may be expressed in its definition. The definition must indicate the part of speech and the relations of the ideas involved in a term"s meaning.

Synonyms, therefore, are only such words as may be defined wholly or almost wholly in the same terms. Usually, they are distinguished from one another by an added implication or connotation, or may differ in their idiomatic use or in their implication .

They usually are interchangeable within limits, but interchangeability is not the final test, since idiomatic usage is often a preventive of that. The only satisfactory test of synonyms is their agreement in connotation.

Classification of Synonyms

The outstanding Russian philologist A.I. Smirnitsky suggested the classification of synonyms

1. Ideographic synonyms - words conveying the same notion but differing in shades of

meaning: to understand - to realize

to expect - to anticipate

to look - glance - stare - peep - gaze healthy - wholesome - sound - sane

2. Stylistic - words differing only in stylistic characteristics:

to begin - to commence - to high

to think - to deem

enemy - opponent - foe - adversary

to help - to aid - to assist

courage - valour - dauntlessness - grit - guts

3. Absolute (perfect, complete) - words coinciding in all their shades of meaning and in

all their stylistic characteristics. Absolute synonyms are rare in a language. In Russian, f.e.: лётчик - пилот – авиатор; языкознание – языковедение; стерня – пожня.

In English: pilot - airman - flyer – flyingman; screenwriter - scriptwriter - scripter - сценарист semasiology – semantics.

Synonymic Patterns

The English word-stock is extremely rich in synonyms, which can be largely accounted for by abundant borrowing. The synonymic resources of a language tend to form certain characteristic and fairly consistent patterns. Synonyms in English are organized according to 2 basic principles. One of them involves double, the other a triple scale. In English there are countless pairs of synonyms where a native term is opposed to one borrowed from French, Latin, and Greek. In most cases the native word is more spontaneous, more informal and unpretentious whereas the foreign one often has a learned, abstract air. They may also have emotive differences: the Saxon word is apt to be wanner and homelier than its foreign counterpart. The native words are usually colloquial. We quote a few examples of synonymic patterns double scale.

Adjectives: bodily - corporal, brotherly - fraternal, heavenly - celestial, inner - internal, learned - erudite, sharp - acute.

Nouns: fiddle - violin, friendship - amity, help - aid, wire - telegram, world - universe.

Verbs: answer - reply, read - peruse, buy - purchase.

Side-by-side with this main pattern there exists in English a pattern based on a triple scale of synonyms:

NATIVE FROM FRENCH FROM LATIN

to ask to question to interrogate belly stomach abdomen

to end finish complete

to gather to assemble collect

to rise to mount to ascent

teaching guidance instruction

The infiltration of British English by Americanisms also results in the formation of synonyms pairs, one being a traditional Briticism and the other - a new American loan: Leader - editorial; autumn - fall; government - administration; luggage - baggage; wireless -radio; lorry - truck; tin - can; long distance (telephone) call - trunk call; stone - rock; team -squad.

As a rule the Americanisms have a lower frequency index than the British counterparts. Thus, tin is more common than can, team - than squad. But luggage - baggage, lorry - truck, leader -editorial are used sometimes interchangeably.

In a few cases the American synonym has a higher frequency than its British counterpart as in the pair: commuter - a season ticket holder (Br.). Very often 2 synonyms differ stylistically. Br. Synonym is stylistically neutral while the Americanism is stylistically marked (usually as colloquial or slang): intellectual - egghead excuse - alibi angry - mad averse - allergic.

English also used many pairs of synonymous derivatives, the one Hellenic and the other Romance: hypotheses - supposition periphery - circumference sympathy - compassion synthesis - composition.

Another source of synonymy is the so-called euphemism, when a harsh word indelicate or unpleasant or least inoffensive connotation. Thus the denotational meaning of drunk and merry may be the same. The euphemistic expression merry coincides in denotation with the word it substituted but the connotation of the latter faded out and so the utterance on the whole is milder and less offensive.

Very often a learned word which sounds less familiar and less offensive or derogative: for example “drunkenness” – “intoxication”, “sweat” – “perspiration” (cf. Russian terms “экспроприация”, “раскулачивание”). The effect is achieved because the periphrastic expression is not so harsh, sometimes jocular: poor - underprivileged; pregnant - in the family way; lodger - paying guest.

Set expressions consisting of a verb with a postpositive are widely used in present day English: to choose - pick out, abandon - give up, postpone - put off, return - come back, quarrel - fall out.

Even more frequent are, for instance, such set expressions which differ from simple verbs in aspect or emphasis: to laugh - to give a laugh, to sign - to give a sign, to smoke - to have a smoke, to love - to fall in love.

Smell, scent, odor, aroma all denote a property of a thing that makes it perceptible to the olfactory sense. Smell not only is the most general of these terms but tends to be the most colorless. It is the appropriate word when merely a sensation is indicated and no hint or its source, quality or character is necessary.

Scent tends to call attention to the physical basis of the sense of smell and is particularly appropriate when the emphasis is on emanations or explanations from an external object which reach the olfactory receptors rather than impression produced in the olfactory center of the brain. Odor is oftentimes indistinguishable from scent for it too can be thought of as smth. diffused and as smth. by means of which external objects are identified by the sense of smell. But the words are not always interchangeable, for odor usually implies abundance of effluvia and therefore does not suggest, as scent often does, the need of a delicate or highly sensitive sense of smell.

Aroma usually adds to odor the implication of a penetrating, pervasive or sometimes a pungent quality; it need not imply delicacy or fragrance, but it seldom connotes unpleasantness, and it often suggests smth. to be savored.

Understand, comprehend, appreciate are synonyms when they mean to have a clear and true idea or conception, or full and exact knowledge, of smth. They (especially the first two) are often used interchangeably and seemingly without loss; nevertheless, they are distinguishable by fine sharp differences in meaning in precise use. In general, it may be said that understand refers to the result of a mental process, comprehend to the mental process of arriving at such a result; thus , one may come to understand a person although one has had difficulty in comprehending his motives and his peculiarities; one may be unable to comprehend a poem, no matter how clearly one understands every sentence in it. "You begin to comprehend me, do you" cried he, turning towards her. "Oh! Yes - I understand you perfectly." Sometimes the difference is more subtle; comprehend implies the mental act of grasping or seizing clearly and fully; understand, the power to receive and register a clear and true impression. "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, length, depth, height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge". "Some men can think of thousands of dollars, others have to think of hundreds. It"s all their minds are big enough to comprehend." "And the piece of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus". "Charters is so crowded that one must be content to fell what one can, and let the rest go. Understand, we cannot." Appreciate, as here considered, implies a just judgment or the estimation of a thing"s true or exact value; therefore, the word is used in reference to persons or things which may be undervaluing or overvaluing. "You are of an age now to appreciate his character." "We do not reproach him for preffering, apparently, Euripides to Aeschylus. But he should at least appreciate Euripides". "The public opinion which thus magnifies patriotism into a religion is a force of which it is difficult to appreciate the strength." "To appreciate the gulf between the ideal and the fact, we have only to contrast such a scheme as that set forth in the "Republic" of Plato with the following description of the state of Greece during the Peloponnesian War".

Differences Between Synonyms

Very often words are completely synonyms in the sense of being interchangeable in any content without the slightest alteration in objective meaning, feeling-tone or evocative meaning. But majority of them may have some distinctive features, which are listed below. These differences are the following:

1. Between general and specific;

Преподаватель Беляева Е.П.

ПГУ 3 курс

Lexocology it’s subject and brunches. Word and it’s meaning.

L. is a branch of linguistic which deals with analysis of words.

Task is a systematic description of the vocabulary in respect to it’s origin. Development and use.

Plato’s work: words are names or labels for things.

Aristotle: the smallest significant unit of speech.

Modern linguists: Reference

Symbol Referent

The model is the result of attempts to find relations between words and things.

C.Ogden and I.Richards (this triangle)

Is represented by

meaning: an animal

kept as a pet

Name:”dog” is named by Referent: a real dog

Reference- meaning

We’re able to use a word when this triangle is formed in our brain, when we know what object (concept) this word denotes.

Выготский: “a word is a microcosm of human conscienceness”

Words are different.

H. Sweet distinguished between full words (words with an independent meaning and form words which are grammatical elements. (the sane Aristotel)

Gently and

The words in 1-st column

Second- has no independent meaning proper. They are of structural function (they contribute to the meaning of the whole phrase when they are used in conjunction with other words)/ This division is not strict enough. Sometimes form words can receive full semantic status even if they are used in complete isolation.

Sometimes it’s easy to understand the meaning of a words and it’s parts.

S. Ullman distinguishes between transparent and opaque words.

washable transparent

glove opaque

T.words are always motivated.

O. words are conventional words.

This distinguish goes back to the Greeks.

Motivation is the relationship existing between the phonemes or morphemic composition ans structural pattern of a word on the one hand and it’s meaning oh the other hand.

3 types of M.: 1.phonetical

When there us a certain similarity between the sounds of a word and the sounds referred to by the meaning of a word – phonetical.

Звукоподражательные слова:

Ding-dong …etc.

Morphological- it’s possible to guess the meaning of a word from it’s parts.

(in newly coined words)

Semantic motivation is based on the coexistence of direct and figurative meaning of the same word.

Foot- a lower part of smth; part of a body

The foot of the mountain.

Each word has a hard core of meaning which stable, but can’t be modified by the context within certain limits.

2 types of context: linguistic (verbal)

L. the environment in which the word occurs as for the extra L. It consists of the entire cultural background against which we said this or that event.

The meaning of a word can change depending on the environment .

Instead of the term “word” some linguists prefer the terms “lexical unit”, “lexical item” or “lexeme”

“Word” causes much confusion because it’s used orthographically, grammatically and lexically.

No agreement between the scholars in terminology.

Lexicology presents a wide area of knowledge.

Historical lex-y deals with the historic change of words in the course of lang. development.

Comparative l. Studies closely relative languages from the point of view of their identity and differentiation.

Contrastive- both relative and unrelative lang-s. establishes differences and similarity.

Applied lex-y- translation, lexicography, pragmatics of speech.

Lexicology investigates various meaning relations existing in the lang., how the lexicon words to provide and support meaningfull communication.

Each word is a part of entire system land. vocabulary. Every item of a language stands closely with 2 other items. - the sintagmatic level

the paradygmatic level.

On the sintagmatic level the semantic structure of a word is analysed in it’s linear relationships with neighbouring words.

On the paradigmatic level- relationship with other words in the vocabulary system: synonims

Данная работа имеет теоретическую и практическую часть. В теоретической части рассматриваются основные способы словообразования разных частей речи при помощи приставок и суффиксов. В практической части приведены примеры типовых заданий из учебно-методических комплектов на отработку и развитие навыков и умений данного вида деятельности. Работа является актуальной, так как данный аспект языка выносится на контроль ГИА (ОГЭ,ЕГЭ) в разделе Use of English.

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Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation

Moscow University of Open Education

Section : Lexicology

Topic : Word-formation

Done by:

Teacher of English, state

secondary school 1055

Mayorova Svetlana Rudolfovna

________________________

Approved by:

Senior teacher, associate professor,

foreign languages department

Melchina Oksana Pavlovna

________________________

Moscow

2014

Contents

1. Introduction…………………………….3

2. Affixation 4

3.Conversion 7

4.Composition 8

5. Contraction 13

6. Exercises 14

7. Conclusion 22

8. Sources 23

1.Introduction. How English Words Are Made. Word-Building

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

If viewed structurally, words appear to be divisible into smaller units which are called morphemes. Morphemes do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of words. Yet they possess meanings of their own.

All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots (or radicals) and affixes . The latter, in their turn, fall into prefixes which precede the root in the structure of the word (as in re-read, mis-pronounce, unwell) and suffixes which follow the root (as in teach-er, cur-able, diet-ate).

Words which consist of a root and an affix (or several affixes) are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word-building known as affixation (or derivation).

Derived words are extremely numerous in the English vocabulary. Successfully competing with this structural type is the so-called root word which has only a root morpheme in its structure.

Another wide-spread word-structure is a compound word consisting of two or more stems. Stem is part of the word consisting of root and affix. Words of this structural type are produced by the word-building process called composition .

Shortenings, contractions or curtailed words a are produced by the way of word-building called shortening (contraction).

The four types (root words, derived words, compounds, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition the most productive ways of word-building.

Let us try and get a more detailed picture of each of the major types of Modern English word-building and, also, of some minor types.

2.Affixation

The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme.

From the etymological point of view affixes are classified into the same two large groups as words: native and borrowed.

Some Native Suffixes

Noun-forming		worker, miner, teacher, painter, etc.
	Ness	coldness, loneliness, loveliness, etc.
		feel ing , mean ing , sing ing , read ing , etc.
		free dom, wis dom, king dom, etc.
	Hood	child hood , man hood , mother hood , etc.
	Ship	friend ship , companion ship , master- ship , etc.
		leng th , bread th , heal th, tru th, etc.
Adjective-forming		care ful, joy ful, wonder ful, sin ful, skil ful, etc.
	Less	care less , sleep less , cloud less , sense- less, etc.
		coz y, tid y, merr y, snowy, show y, etc.
		Engli sh , Spani sh , reddi sh , childi sh , etc.
		lonely, lovely, ugly, likely, lordly, etc.
		wooden, woollen, silken, golden, etc.
	Some	hand some, quarrel some , tire some , etc.
Verb-forming		wid en , redd en , dark en , sadd en , etc.
Adverb-forming		warm ly, hard ly , simp ly , careful ly , cold ly, etc.

Borrowed affixes , especially of Romance origin are numerous in the English vocabulary. An affix of foreign origin can be regarded as borrowed only after it has begun an independent and active life in the recipient language, that is, is taking part in the word-making processes of that language.

Affixes can also be classified into productive and non-productive types . By productive affixes we mean the ones, which take part in deriving new words in this particular period of language development. The best way to identify productive affixes is to look for them among neologisms and so-called nonce-words. One should not confuse the productivity of affixes with their frequency of occurrence. There are quite a number of high-frequency affixes which, nevertheless, are no longer used in word-derivation (e. g. the adjective-forming native suffixes -ful, -ly; the adjective-forming suffixes of Latin origin -ant, -ent, -al which are quite frequent).

Some Productive Affixes

Noun-forming suffixes	Er, -ing, -ness, -ism 1 (materialism), -ist 1 (impressionist), -ance
Adjective-forming suffixes	Y, -ish, -ed (learned), -able, -less
Adverb-forming suffixes
Verb-forming suffixes	Ize/-ise (realise), -ate
Prefixes	un- (unhappy), re- (reconstruct), dis- (disappoint)

Some Non-Productive Affixes

Noun-forming suffixes	Th, -hood
Adjective-forming suffixes	Ly, -some, -en, -ous
Verb-forming suffix

Semantics of Affixes

Meanings of affixes are specific and considerably differ from those of root morphemes. Affixes have widely generalised meanings and refer the concept conveyed by the whole word to a certain category, which is vast and all-embracing. So, the noun-forming suffix -er could be roughly defined as designating persons from the object of their occupation or labour (painter - the one who paints) or from their place of origin or abode (southerner - the one living in the South). The adjective-forming suffix -ful has the meaning of "full of", "characterised by" (beautiful, careful) whereas -ish may often imply insufficiency of quality (greenish - green, but not quite; youngish - not quite young but looking it).

Such examples might lead one to the somewhat hasty conclusion that the meaning of a derived word is always a sum of the meanings of its morphemes: un/eat/able = "not fit to eat" where not stands for un- and fit for –able but the constituent morphemes within derivatives do not always preserve their current meanings and are open to subtle and complicated semantic shifts.

3.Conversion

Conversion is sometimes referred to as an affixless way of word-building or even affixless derivation. Saying that, however, is saying very little because there are other types of word-building in which new words are also formed without affixes (most compounds, contracted words, sound-imitation words, etc.).

Conversion consists in making a new word from some existing word by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged. 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.

Conversion is both a highly productive and a particularly English way of word-building. Its immense productivity is considerably encouraged by certain features of the English language in its modern stage of development. The analytical structure of Modern English greatly facilitates processes of making words of one category of parts of speech from words of another. So does the simplicity of paradigms of English parts of speech. A great number of one-syllable words is another factor in favour of conversion, for such words are naturally more mobile and flexible than polysyllables.

Conversion is a convenient and "easy" way of enriching the vocabulary with new words. It is certainly an advantage to have two (or more) words where there was one, all of them fixed on the same structural and semantic base.

The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous amongst the words produced by conversion: e. g. to hand, to back, to face, to eye, to mouth, to nose, to dog, to wolf, to monkey, to can, to coal, to stage, to screen, to room, to floor, to blackmail, to blacklist, to honeymoon, and very many others.

Nouns are frequently made from verbs: do (e. g. This is the queerest do I"ve ever come across. Do - event, incident), go (e. g. He has still plenty of go at his age. Go - energy), make, run, find, catch, cut, walk, worry, show, move, etc.

Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to pale, to yellow, to cool, to grey, to rough (e. g. We decided to rough it in the tents as the weather was warm), etc.

Other parts of speech are not entirely unsusceptible to conversion as the following examples show: to down, to out (as in a newspaper heading Diplomatist Outed from Budapest), the ups and downs, the ins and outs, like, n, (as in the like of me and the like of you).

4. Composition

In this type of word-building new words are produced by combining two or more stems. It is one of the three most productive types in Modern English, the other two are conversion and affixation. Compounds, though certainly fewer in quantity than derived or root words, still represent one of the most typical and specific features of English word-structure.

There are at least three aspects of composition that present special interest.

The first is the structural aspect. Compounds are not homogeneous in structure. Traditionally three types are distinguished : neutral, morphological and syntactic.

In neutral compounds the process of compounding is realised without any linking elements, by a mere juxtaposition of two stems, as in blackbird, shop-window, sunflower, bedroom, tallboy, etc. There are three subtypes of neutral compounds depending on the structure of the constituent stems.

The examples above represent the subtype which may be described as simple neutral compounds: they consist of simple affixless stems.

Compounds which have affixes in their structure are called derived or derivational compounds . E. g. absent-mindedness, blue-eyed, golden-haired, broad-shouldered, lady-killer, film-goer, music-lover, honey-mooner, first-nighter, late-comer, newcomer, early-riser, evildoer.

The third subtype of neutral compounds is called contracted compounds. These words have a shortened (contracted) stem in their structure: TV-set (-program, -show, -canal, etc.), V-day (Victory day), G-man (Government man "FBI agent"), H-bag (handbag), T-shirt, etc.

Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is non-productive. It is represented by words in which two compounding stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant, e. g. Anglo-Saxon, Franko-Prussian, handiwork, handicraft, craftsmanship, spokesman, statesman (see also p. 115).

Syntactic compounds are formed from segments of speech, preserving in their structure numerous traces of syntagmatic relations typical of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs, as in the nouns lily-of-the-valley, Jack-of-all-trades, good-for-nothing, mother-in-law, sit-at-home. Syntactical relations and grammatical patterns current in present-day English can be clearly traced in the structures of such compound nouns as

pick-me-up, know-all, know-nothing, go-between, get-together, whodunit. The last word (meaning "a detective story") was obviously coined from the ungrammatical variant of the word-group who (has) done it.

In this group of compounds, once more, we find a great number of neologisms, and whodunit is one of them. Consider, also, the two following fragments which make rich use of modern city traffic terms.

Another focus of interest is the semantic aspect of compound words, that is, the question of correlations of the separate meanings of the constituent parts and the actual meaning of the compound. Or, to put it in easier terms: can the meaning of a compound word be regarded as the sum of its constituent meanings?

To try and answer this question, let us consider the following groups of examples.

(1) Classroom, bedroom, working-man, evening-gown, dining-room, sleeping-car, reading-room, dancing-hall.

This group seems to represent compounds whose meanings can really be described as the sum of their constituent meanings. Yet, in the last four words we can distinctly detect a slight shift of meaning. The first component in these words, if taken as a free form, denotes an action or state of whatever or whoever is characterised by the word. Yet, a sleeping-car is not a car that sleeps (cf. a sleeping child), nor is a dancing-hall actually dancing (cf. dancing pairs).

The shift of meaning becomes much more pronounced in the second group of examples.

(2) Blackboard, blackbird, football, lady-killer, pick
pocket, good-for-nothing, lazybones, chatterbox.

In these compounds one of the components (or both) has changed its meaning: a blackboard is neither a board nor necessarily black, football is not a ball but a game, a chatterbox not a box but a person, and a lady-killer kills no one but is merely a man who fascinates women. It is clear that in all these compounds the meaning of the whole word cannot be defined as the sum of the constituent meanings. The process of change of meaning in some such words has gone so far that the meaning of one or both constituents is no longer in the least associated with the current meaning of the corresponding free form.

The compounds whose meanings do not correspond to the separate meanings of their constituent parts are called idiomatic compounds, in contrast to the first group known as non-idiomatic compounds.

A further theoretical aspect of composition is the criteria for distinguishing between a compound and a word-combination .

This question has a direct bearing on the specific feature of the structure of most English compounds which has already been mentioned: with the exception

of the rare morphological type, they originate directly from word-combinations and are often homonymous to them: cf. a tall boy - a tallboy.

In this case the graphic criterion of distinguishing between a word and a word-group seems to be sufficiently convincing, yet in many cases it cannot wholly be relied on. The spelling of many compounds, tallboy among them, can be varied even within the same book. In the case of tallboy the semantic criterion seems more reliable, for the striking difference in the meanings of the word and the word-group certainly points to the highest degree of semantic cohesion in the word: tallboy does not even denote a person, but a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers supported by a low stand.

Moreover, the word-group a tall boy conveys two concepts (1. a young male person; 2. big in size), whereas the word tallboy expresses one concept.

Yet the semantic criterion alone cannot prove anything as phraseological units also convey a single concept and some of them are characterised by a high degree of semantic cohesion (see Ch. 12).

The phonetic criterion for compounds may be treated as that of a single stress. The criterion is convincingly applicable to many compound nouns, yet does not work with compound adjectives:

cf. "slowcoach, blackbird, "tallboy,

but: blие-"eyed, "absent-"minded, "ill-"mannered.

Still, it is true that the morphological structure of these adjectives and their hyphenated spelling leave no doubt about their status as words and not word-groups.

Morphological and syntactic criteria can also be applied to compound words in order to distinguish them from word-groups.

In the word-group a tall boy each of the constituents is independently open to grammatical changes peculiar to its own category as a part of speech: They were the tallest boys in their form.

Between the constituent parts of the word-group other words can be inserted: a tall handsome boy.

The compound tallboy - and, in actual fact, any other compound - is not subject to such changes. The first component is grammatically invariable; the plural form ending is added to the whole unit: tallboys. No word can be inserted between the components, even with the compounds which have a traditional separate graphic form.

All this leads us to the conclusion that, in most cases, only several criteria (semantic, morphological, syntactic, phonetic, graphic) can convincingly classify a lexical unit as either a compound word or a wordgroup.

5. Shortening (Contraction)

This comparatively new way of word-building has achieved a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English.

Shortenings (or contracted/curtailed words) are produced in two different ways. The first is to make a new word from a syllable (rarer, two) of the original word. The latter may lose its beginning (as in phone made from telephone, fence from defence), its ending (as in hols from holidays, vac from vacation, props from properties, ad from advertisement) or both the beginning and ending (as in flu from influenza, fridge from refrigerator).

The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group: U.N.O. ["ju:neu] from the United Nations Organisation, B.B.C. from the British Broadcasting Corporation, M.P. from Member of Parliament. This type is called initial shortenings. They are found not only among formal words, such as the ones above, but also among colloquialisms and slang. So, g. f. is a shortened word made from the compound girl-friend.

6. Exercises on Word-Building

In my work I use student’ books and workbooks “Enjoy English” by Biboletova M.Z.. Here are some exercises on this topic.

Ex.1. Fill in the gaps in the text with the correct forms of the words in CAPITAL LETTERS.

Finding his own way .

Though he is only twelve years old, Peter James Donnelly has already

tasted the rewards of finding his own way when it comes to (O) expressing himself. (1)... and record company Fatt Boy Records has just released his first record, Too Young, on (2)... to prove it. By day, Peter goes about his lessons like any other school (3) ... in Corby, Northamptonshire. By night he becomes PJ the DJ, spinning speed garage, drum and bass and hip hop at clubs such as Laposte in Corby, Generation X in Manchester and as far as Magalus on Majorca.

“I don’t get (4) ..., just a bit excited,” he says. “When I’m mixing at a club,

I have five or ten minutes to get used to the (5)... . I try a few tunes to see what the club’s like, see whether people are dancing and know the tunes. Then I play some older ones, then the (6) .... I love music.”

As an afterthought, he mentions that he’s the youngest DJ in the land to mix vocals.

1. EXPRESS 1. MUSIC 2. PROMOTE 3.STUDY 4. NURVE 5. EQUIP 6.FAVOUR

Answers: 1. MUSIC 2. PROMOTION 3. STUDENT 4.NURVOUS 5. EQUIPMENT 6.FAVOURITES

Ex.2 Complete the table with the correct form of the words.

noun	verb	adjective / participle
	argue
		related
suggestion		suggested
	change
provision
		employed
competition
		anxious
		concluding
belief

Answers: argument, argumentative; relative/relationship, relate; suggest; change, changeable/changing; provide, provided; employment/unemployment/employer/employee, employ; compete, competitive; anxiety; conclusion ,conclude; believe, believable

Ex.3 WORD FOCUS: WORD FORMATION: NOUN SUFFIXES -ENCE, -ANCE, -ITY, -TY

Complete the following table with the missing word forms. Consult the dictionary if necessary.
noun	verb	adjective
		active
	depend
		reliable
humanity

Answers: activity, act; dependency, dependent; reliance, rely; humanise, humane

Ex.4 Fill in the gaps in the text with the correct forms of the words in CAPITAL LETTERS at the end of each line.

Without my computer I would not have the pleasure of the getting to my favourite sites, I would have difficulty (1) ... with friends, and I would not be able to do my work for school. I often wonder how we all managed before computers were a common place in the home. I just don’t have the time to be always running to the post box to send letters. E-mail is very 2)...when you have a tough schedule. Most of my (3) ... time is spent at the computer as by the time I finish doing homework I am too tired and it is often too late to go out. It is a (4) ... reference aid and (5) ... tool. If all else fails, you can play cards on it, although my own (6) ... is for action games!

1. COMMUNICATE 2. IMPORTANCE 3. RELAX 4. WONDER 5. EDUCATION 6.PREFER

ANSWERS: 1. COMMUNICATING 2.IMPORTANT 3.RELEXATION 4.WONDERFUL 5.EDUCATIONAL 6.PREFERENCE

Ex.5 Fill in the gaps in the text with the correct forms of the words in CAPITAL LETTERS.

Bowing

The tradition of bowing is so (0) complex that Asians attend special classes to learn how to do it (1).... It’s unlikely that any (2) ... visitor would be able to appropriately carry out the formal bow, doing it to the right (3) ... and with the correct duration. However, a polite attempt to bow in (4) ... will be appreciated by your Asian (5) ... .If you want to express some special respect in the (6) ..., bow lower. Be sure to learn an appropriate verbal greeting to accompany the bow.

0.COMPLEXITY 1.PROPER 2.NATION 3.DEEP 4.GREET 5. ACQUAINT 6.RALATION

ANSWERS: 1. PROPERLY 2.INTERNATIONAL 3.DEPTH 4.GREETING 5.ACCUAINTANCE (S) 6.RELATIONSHIP

Ex.6 Fill in the gaps in the text with the correct forms of the words in CAPITAL LETTERS.

Origins of writing in China

Most linguists believe that writing was (0 ) invented in China during the latter half of the 2nd millennium BC.

Chinese is written with characters. Each character represents a syllable of (1) ... Chinese and also has a SPEAK meaning. The characters were originally pictures of people, animals or other things but over the centuries they have become (2) ... stylised and no longer look like INCREASE the things they represent.

The Chinese writing system is (3) ... . The largest LIMIT Chinese dictionaries include about 56,000 characters, but most of them are archaic, obscure or rare variant forms.

Knowledge of about 3,000 characters (4) ... you to read ABLE about 99% of the characters in Chinese newspapers and magazines. To read Chinese literature, technical writings or Classical Chinese, though, you need to be familiar with about 6,000 characters.

There are currently two systems for Chinese characters. The (5)... system, still used in Hong Kong and TRADITIO. Taiwan, comes from standardised character forms dating back to the late Han Dynasty. The Simplified Chinese Character System, (6)... in 1954 to promote mass literacy,

(7) ... most complex traditional characters to fewer strokes.

0. INVENT 1.SPEAK 2.INCREASE 3.LIMIT 4.ABLE 5. TRADITION 6.DEVELOP 7.SIMPLE

ANSWERS: 1. SPOKEN 2.INCREASINGLY 3. UNLIMITED 4. ENABLES 5. TRADITIONAL 6. DEVELOPED 7. SIMPLIFIES Ex.7 Fill in the table with the correct form of the words.

noun	adjective	verb
	imaginative
	professional
	creative
	competent
	enthusiastic
	responsible
	competitive
	persistent
	inspirational

ANSWERS: IMAGINATION, IMAGINE

PROFESSION

CREATION/CREATIVITY/CREATOR/CREATURE, CREATE

COMPETENCE

ENTHUSIAST/ENTHUSIASM,ENTHUSE

RESPONSIBILITY

COMPETITION/COMPETOR, COMPETE

PERSISTANCE, PERSIST

INSPIRATION, INSPIRE

Ex.8 Fill in the gaps in the text with the correct forms of the words in CAPITAL LETTERS.

Career choice

Making a career choice is one of the most difficult and most important (0) decisions we will ever make in our lives. It has to be made with much (1) ... and deliberation. Moreover, career choices cannot be made based on just a few criteria alone. Your job may carry great monetary (2) ... and perks, but if you do not enjoy what you do then you are (3) ... wasting a large part of your life. At the same time, remember that money is also important for you need it to survive. So, if a job is all (4) ... but no pay, things can get difficult.

Before you start choosing a perfect career, you need to know yourself first. But sometimes all this self-analysis leads to (5) ... . We end up more (6) ... than we were at the beginning. Then, the best way to deal with the dilemma is to think about (7) ... a career counselor.

A career development professional will use various tools to help you evaluate your interests, personality, (8) ... and values. He or she will then show you how all these things, combined, play a role in choosing a career. You can also learn about a career by interviewing people who are already in that profession.

Once you have all the information you need, list out all the pros and cons of that particular job. Look at the various (9) ... . Check to see if the job gives you what you want from a career. Passion is the key word in selecting a career. Select something because you feel passionate about it, not because it is the latest thing in the job market.

1. DECIDE 1.THINK 2. BENEFICIAL 3. FOOL 4. SATISFY 5.WHERE 6. CONFUSION 7. CONSULT 8.SKILLFULL 9.ALTER

ANSWERS: 0.DECISION 1. THOUGHT 2. BENEFITS 3. FOOLISHLY 4. SATISFACTION 5. NOWHERE 6.CONFUSED 7.CONSULTING 8.SKILLS 9.ALTERNATIVES

Ex. 9 Complete the sentences with the correct forms of the words at the end of the text.

Earth-friendly fabrics

Shopping for clothes involves tricky decisions about fit, colour, style, and price. And if a (1) ... number of companies have their way, you’ll soon start checking labels for another key detail: (2) ... impact.

Earth-friendly fabrics are in. It’s already (3) ... to buy shirts made from bamboo and socks made from corn. Shopping malls of the future might also carry clothes made from chicken feathers or rice straw.

The companies that make such fabrics are interested in (4) ... development. This means trying to (5) ... things that people need while protecting natural resources and preserving biodiversity.

“A fully sustainable business would be one that (6) ., negative impact on the environment,” says Gordon Rands, an environmental business expert at Western Illinois University in Macomb. “I don’t think such a business exists yet, but (7) ... it’s very possible. And companies are moving in this (8) ... .” So, (9) ... are now looking for new ways to make fabrics for clothes that are good both for your (10) ... and for the Earth.

1.GROW 2.ENVIRONMENT 3.POSSIBILITY 4. SUSTAIN 5.PROVIDER 6.CREATIVE 7.THEORY 8.DIRECT 9.SCIENCE 10.IMAGINE

ANSWERS: 1.GROWING 2.ENVIRONMENTAL 3.POSSIBLE 4. SUSTAINABLE 5. PROVIDE 6. CREATED 7. THEORETICALLY 8. DERECTION 9.SCIENTISTS 10.IMAGE

Ex.10 Fill in the gaps in the text with the correct forms of the words in CAPITAL LETTERS at the end of the text.

The dragon dance

The dragon dance was started by the Chinese who had shown great (0 ) belief and respect towards the dragon. The dragon is an important symbol of Chinese culture and tradition. The dragon dance has spread beyond China to the whole world. It has become a special (1) ... of arts in Chinese physical activities. It symbolises good luck and (2) ... in the year to come for all the human beings on Earth. According to ancient history, during the period of Chun Chiu, the learning of Chinese Martial Arts was very popular and in students’ spare time, the dragon dance was also being (3) ... to provide more (4) ... . From its origins in combining stylised depictions of natural animals, the Chinese dragon evolved to become a mythical (5)... in Chinese culture. Its physical form is a (6) ... of many animals, including the horns of a stag, ears of a bull, eyes of a rabbit, claws of a tiger and the scales of a fish, all on a long serpent’s body. With these traits, it was believed that dragons were amphibious with the (7) ... to move on land, fly through the air and swim in the sea. The emperors of ancient China considered themselves to be dragons. The dragon is also the emblem of Imperial Authority. It symbolises (8) ... power, goodness, fertility, and dignity.

0.BELIEVE 1. PERFORM 2. PROSPER 3. TEACH 4.ENCOURAGE 5. CREATE 6. COMBINE 7. ABLE 8. NATURE

ANSWERS: 0. BELIEF 1. PERFORMANCE 2. PROSPERITY 3. TAUGHT 4. ENCOURAGEMENT 5. CREATURE 6. COMBINATION 7. ABILITY 8. NATURAL/SUPERNATURAL

7.Conclusion

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of word-formation in the English language. Knowing the rules of word-building and understanding the meanings of affixes simplify the process of learning English and enrich students’ vocabulary. Word-formation is a part in the section” Use of English” in Single State Exam in English, so teachers should pay a lot of attention to it and spend some time drilling students on this aspect.

8. Sources

1. Антрушина Г.Б. Лексикология английского языка. М., 2001

2. Биболетова М.З. Английский с удовольствием. Учебник и рабочая тетрадь для 10 класса. М., 2010

3. Биболетова М.З. Английский с удовольствием. Учебник и рабочая тетрадь для 11 класса. М., 2010

4. Смирницкий А.И. Лексикология английского языка. М.,1956

5 .Koonin A. English Lexicology. M., 1940