Bu betda titul buladi Contents Introduction

2.3. Other types of minor types of word formation
Clipped forms are also used in compounds. One part of the original compound most often remains intact. Examples are: cablegram (cable telegram), op art (optical art), org-man (organization man), linocut (linoleum cut). Sometimes both halves of a compound are clipped as in navicert (navigation certificate). In these cases it is difficult to know whether the resultant formation should be treated as a clipping or as a blend, for the border between the two types is not always clear. According to Bauer, the easiest way to draw the distinction is to say that those forms which retain compound stress are clipped compounds, whereas those that take simple word stress are not. By this criterion bodbiz, Chicom, Comsymp, Intelsat, midcult, pro-am, sci-fi, and sitcom are all compounds made of clippings.
Accepted by the speakers of the language clipping can acquire grammatical categories (used in plural forms).
According to Marchand, clippings are not coined as words belonging to the standard vocabulary of a language. They originate as terms of a special group like schools, army, police, the medical profession, etc., in the intimacy of a milieu where a hint is sufficient to indicate the whole. For example, in school slang originated exam(ination), math(ematic), lab(oratory), and spec(ulation), tick (et = credit) originated in stock-exchange slang, whereas vet(eran), cap(tain) are army slang. While clipping terms of some influential groups can pass into common usage, becoming part of Standard English, clippings of a socially unimportant class or group will remain group slang.
Back-formation refers to the process of creating a new lexeme (less precisely, a new «word») by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation. Back-formations are shortened words created from longer words, thus back-formations may be viewed as a sub-type of clipping.
It is possible to illustrate this type of word building using an example of words beg - beggar. The word beggar was formed from the verb to beg, and on the contrary: the word borrowed from the French language beggard was formed under influence and by analogy to nouns with a suffix - er. The second syllable of the noun beggar was apprehended as a suffix, and the verb was formed by rejection of this suffix.
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 many examples of Latinate words that had verb and verb+-ion pairs - in these pairs the - ion suffix is added to verb forms in order to create nouns (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.
Many words came into English by this route: Pease was once a mass noun but was reinterpreted as a plural, leading to the back-formation pea. The noun statistic was likewise a back-formation from the field of study statistics. In Britain the verb burgle came into use in the 19th century as a back-formation from burglar (which can be compared to the North America verb burglarize formed by suffixation).
Even though many English words are formed this way, new coinages may sound strange, and are often used for humorous effect. For example, gruntled or pervious (from disgruntled and impervious) would be considered mistakes today, and used only in humorous contexts. The comedian George Gobel regularly used original back-formations in his humorous monologues. Bill Bryson mused that the English language would be richer if we could call a tidy-haired person shevelled - as an opposite to dishevelled.
Frequently back-formations begin in colloquial use and only gradually become accepted. For example, enthuse (from enthusiasm) is gaining popularity, though it is still considered substandard by some today.
The immense celebrations in Britain at the news of the relief of the Siege of Mafeking briefly created the verb to maffick, meaning to celebrate both extravagantly and publicly. «Maffick» was a back-formation from Mafeking, a place-name that was treated humorously as a gerund or participle.
There is a lot of different examples of back formation in English:
ablute from ablution aesthete from aesthetic
air-condition from air conditioning alm from alms
arch («to practice archery») from archery attrit from attrition
auto-destruct from auto-destruction (auto-destroy)
automate from automation bicep from biceps (non-standard)
biograph from biography blockbust from blockbuster
book-keep from book-keeping cavitate from cavitation
cherry from Old French cerise choate from inchoate
choreograph from choreography claustrophobe from claustrophobia
darkle from darkling decadent from decadence
deconstruct from deconstruction dedifferentiate from dedifferentiation
emote from emotion enthuse from enthusiasm
ept from inept escalate from escalator
eutrophicate from eutrophication extrapose from extraposition.
Back-formations of borrowed terms generally do not follow the rules of the original language. For example Homo sapiens is Latin for thinking man. As with all Linnaean species names, this is singular in Latin (plural would be hominessapientes) but it is sometimes mistakenly treated as plural in English, with the corresponding singular back-formation Homo sapien.
Some regard such divergence as incorrect, or as a mark of ignorance. Others assert that a language is determined by its usage and that strictly applying such a principle of correctness would render English a highly irregular blend of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, French and every other language from which it had ever borrowed.
Is the way оf wоrd-building: a wоrd is fоrmed by jоining twо оr mоre stems tо fоrm оne wоrd. The structural type оf cоmpоund wоrds and the wоrd-building type оfcоmpоsitiоn have certain advantages fоr cоmmunicat iоn purpоses.
Cоmpоsitiоn is nоt quite sо flexible a way оf cоining new wоrds as cоnversiоn but flexible enоugh. Amоng cоmpоunds are fоund numerоus expressive and cоlоurful wоrds. They are alsо cоmparatively lacоnic, absоrbing intо оne wоrd an idea that оtherwise wоuld have required a whоle phrase (cf. Thehоtel was full оf week-enders and The hоtel was full оf peоple spending the week-end there).
Bоth the lacоnic and the expressive value оf cоmpоunds can be well illustrated by English cоmpоund adjectives denоting cоlоurs (cf. snоw-white - as white as snоw).
There are twо characteristic features оf English cоmpоunds:
a) Bоth cоmpоnents in an English cоmpоund are free stems, that is they can be used as wоrds with a distinctive meaning оf their оwn. The sоund pattern will be the same except fоr the stresses, e.g. «a green-hоuse» and «a green hоuse».
b) English cоmpоunds have a twо-stem pattern, with the exceptiоn оf cоmpоund wоrds which have fоrm-wоrd stems in their structure, e.g.middle-оf-the-rоad, оff-the-recоrd, up-and-dоing etc.
Edward Sapir observed that nothing is more natural than the prevalence of reduplication - the repetition of the base of a word in part or in its entirety. He observed that, though rare, reduplication is found in English, e.g.:
pooh-pooh goody-goody wishy-washy
sing-song roly-poly harum-scarum
Later on, Thun showed that reduplication is less marginal than is commonly assumed. He listed and examined about 2,000 reduplicative words in standard English and in various dialects.
Reduplicatives (compound words formed by reduplication) are different. The most significant property of these words is that word-formation is driven by phonological factors.
There are two main types of reduplicatives: rhyme motivated compounds and ablaut motivated compounds. Rhyme here means what it means in poetry: the vowels and any consonant(s) that appear after it in the last syllable are identical, while ablaut means a change in the root vowel. Usually ablaut signals a change in grammatical function, e.g. the o e alternation in long (adj.) vs. length (noun) marks a difference in word-class. These labels for the two categories of reduplicative compounds highlight the fact that the repetition of the bases in compounds of this kind involves copying the rhyme in so-called rhyme motivated compounds, and coping the consonants and altering the vowel in ablaut motivated compounds.
Some rhyming compounds are formed by joining bases which are both pre-existing words as in Black-Jack and brain-drain. Probably more common, however, are rhyming compounds where one (or both) bases is not an independent word, as in:
Rhyme motivated compounds:
nitwit helter-skelter namby-pamby
titbit hobnob higgledy-piggledy
nitty-gritty teeny-weeny hurly-burly
Finally, there are ablaut motivated compounds in which one or both bases may not be an independent word:
Ablaut motivated compounds:
tip-top riff-raff ding-dong shilly-shally
tick-tock tittle-tattle wibble-wobble dingle-dangle
ping-pong dilly-dally flip-flop mish-mash
Sound interchange is the way of word building when some sounds are changed to form a new word. It is non-productive in Modern English; it was productive in Old English and can be met in other Indo-European languages.
The causes of sound interchange can be different. It can be the result of Ancient Ablaut which cannot be explained by the phonetic laws during the period of the language development known to scientists, e.g. to strike - stroke, to sing - song etc. It can be also the result of Ancient Umlaut or vowel mutation which is the result of palatalizing the root vowel because of the front vowel in the syllable coming after the root (regressive assimilation), e.g. hot - to heat (hotian), blood - to bleed (blodian) etc.
In many cases we have vowel and consonant interchange. In nouns we have voiceless consonants and in verbs we have corresponding voiced consonants because in Old English these consonants in nouns were at the end of the word and in verbs in the intervocal position, e.g. bath - to bathe, life - to live, breath - to breathe etc.
Stress interchange can be mostly met in verbs and nouns of Romanic origin: nouns have the stress on the first syllable and verbs on the last syllable, e.g. `accent - to ac`cent. This phenomenon is explained in the following way: French verbs and nouns had different structure when they were borrowed into English; verbs had one syllable more than the corresponding nouns. When these borrowings were assimilated in English the stress in them was shifted to the previous syllable (the second from the end). Later on the last unstressed syllable in verbs borrowed from French was dropped (the same as in native verbs) and after that the stress in verbs was on the last syllable while in nouns it was on the first syllable. As a result of it we have such pairs in English as: to af`fix -`affix, to con`flict - `conflict, to ex`port -`export, to ex`tract - `extract etc. As a result of stress interchange we have also vowel interchange in such words because vowels are pronounced differently in stressed and unstressed positions.
It is the way of word building when imitating different sounds forms a word. There are some semantic groups of words formed by means of sound imitation:
a) Sounds produced by human beings, such as: to whisper, to giggle, to mumble, to sneeze, to whistle etc.
b) Sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, such as: to hiss, to buzz, to bark, to moo, to twitter etc.
c) Sounds produced by nature and objects, such as: to splash, to rustle, to clatter, to bubble, to ding-dong, to tinkle etc.
The corresponding nouns are formed by means of conversion, e.g. clang (of a bell), chatter (of children) etc.
There are three cases of such variations:
1. Modifications of the pronunciation of a word depending on the context or its position. Utterance and the conjunction are reduced in these combinations.
now and then
King and Queen
The conjunction is reduced in these combinations.
2. Accentual variation - different coexisting stress patterns of one and the same word.
Br. territory Am. territory
Br. dictionary Am. dictionary
3. Emic variation - multiple pronunciation of one and the same word.
explain [i] [e]
begin [i] [e]
ceramic [si`ramic] [ki`ramic]
drastic [a:] [a]
Morphological variation takes place when different derivational morphemes are used without changing the word's meaning.
Academic, academicals
Morphologic, morphological
But not: historic and historical - they are not morphological variants, but synonyms. Historic - memorable in history associated with past time:
a historic event.
Historical - belonging to history (real not imaginative) or dealing with real events in history:
a historical novel
historical events (real events)
This is a historic and historical place.
Lexical variations are determined by different registers, e.g.:
formal / informal
spoken / written
laboratory / lab
examination / exam
television / tele
often / oft (poetic)
Semantic variations
The majority of words in any language have more than one meaning.
Topology (philological term) - the term from the domain of mathematics, refers to the study of continuity and variability, invariant and its variants, identity and differentiation. Lexicology studies the problems of synonymy, polysemy, homonymy, identity-of-unit problem. The key point here is to try and strike the balance in interaction of the invariant and the variants, always remembering that in philology it is invariant that comes first focuses on different types of variation in lexis.
Allo-emic theory - treatment of all elements in language as being sets of variants ('allo'-terms) of some invariants ('eme'-terms). Invariants are morphemes, phonemes, lexemes, which belong to the systemic level (language) while allomorphs, allophones, allolexes are their positional variants respectively and belong to the level of actualization (speech).
Allonymic variation - realized in contextual pairs semantically co-ordinated like slow and careful; quick and impatient.
'Emic' variation - a) a type of phonetic variation which occurs when there are multiple pronunciations for a single word: begin [bi'gin], [b 'gin]; explain [ik'splein], [ek'splein]; direct [dai'rekt], [di'rekt]; b) morphological variation with allomorphs of the same morpheme involved: irregular, innavigable, immovable, illegal.
Morphological theory provides the tools for analyzing `real' words like shopkeeper and conversations which are listed in dictionaries and which probably most competent, adult speakers of English know. But, if it stopped at that, it would be failing in its task of characterizing the nature of speakers' lexical knowledge. The true English vocabulary goes far beyond the institutionalized words listed in dictionaries. Obviously, a very considerable number of words must simply be memorized, e.g. words made up of a single morpheme - zebra, tree, saddle - there is no way one can work out their meaning. Word formation can be faddish. A word, especially one that captures the spirit of the times, may spawn numerous imitations. Take the 1980s word yuppie, which was formed by adding the suffix spelled as - y or - ie to the initial letters of either `Young Urban Professional Person' or `Young Upwardly Mobile Professional Person'. It spawned imitations like yuppify, yuppidom, yuppette, buppie (`black yuppie'), guppie (`gay yuppie'), etc.
Many of the nonce, non-institionalised words are compounds. If a speaker wants to express an idea which would normally be expressed by a syntactic phrase in a manner that heightens its concreteness and salience, it is possible as a one-off, hyphenated compound. The newspaper columnist Melanie Philips manufactured the word `anything-goes-as-long-as-you-can-get-away-with-it-culture' which is an excellent example of this phenomenon:
`Public life has fallen into disrepute and the cynicism of the people knows no bounds. It's the anything-goes-as-long-as-you-can-get-away-with-it-culture, and it is a prevalent in the corridors of Whitehall as in the joyriders' ghettos'.
At the other end of the spectrum old words go out of use, e.g. wone meaning `home, abode' is now obsolete. We can see that wone is opsolete while porret survives in the dialectal use but it is very rare. The line between `dialectal and very rare' and `obsolete' is a fine one.