Contents introduction chapter I. Word formation in modern englsh

The structure of the investigation. The coursework consists of introduction, chapter I, chapter II, conclusion and reference.


CHAPTER I. WORD FORMATION IN MODERN ENGLISH
1.1. Word Formation As a Branch of Lexicology
There are several branches of lexicology:
1) Semasiology or semantics, including the semantic classification of English words;
2) ) Fundamentals of English lexicography
3) The study of word-equivalents, or idioms and phraseological units;
4) A brief etymological survey of the English word-stock;
5) The study of word-structure and word-formation.
1. Semasiology is the branch of lexicology devoted to the study of meaning. This word came from the Greek "semantikos" which means "significant". In English-speaking countries, this field of linguistic study is also known as semantics which is less precise, since the word "semantics" may also be used as a synonym for "meaning" – we can, for example, speak of the "semantics of a word". Semasiology may use both the synchronic and diachronic approaches to the study of meaning. In the first case, it studies types of meaning found in present-day English, providing a classification of English words according to their meaning; in the second case, it deals with changes that the meanings of words undergo in the course of the development of the language. Semasiology is closely connected with another branch of linguistics, onomasiology (from the Greek "onoma" – "name"), which also studies meaning but from, as it were, the direction opposite to semasiology. While semasiology proceeds from the word to its meaning, onomasiology proceeds from the object of naming to its name, i.e. it studies the ways in which things are named in a language. (Another name for onomasiology, much used by Soviet linguists in the recent past, is the "theory of nomination".) Proper names – i.e. names of people, geographical names – are studied by the branch of onomasiology called onomastics. Both onomasiology and onomastics are highly specialized branches of lexicology and therefore outside the scope of the present course.
2. Word-equivalents in English, i.e. units of language that seem to consist of several words but function as an inseparable unity, are studied by a branch of lexicology called phraseology. To these belong idioms, set expressions, phraseological unities and other traditional units in the vocabulary. The meaning of such a unit is not usually the sum of the meanings of its parts; thus a white elephant need not be either white or an elephant, but is anything hard to keep and harder to get rid of. Neither is a red herring a fish or red, but is something used to deceive, or distract attention from what is really important. For obvious reasons, this aspect of the language gets less attention from native linguists than from foreign learners. Phraseology studies the classification of phraseological units, their structure, origin and use in the language.
3. The origin and history of words in English is studied by a branch of lexicology called etymology (from the Greek "etymon", meaning "the truth"). Originally it set forth to determine the "true" or "original" meanings of words, uncorrupted by later use. At present it mainly deals with motivations of words, tracing their use back to the earliest known forma and meanings. Etymology may be thus compared to archaeology: both try to reconstruct the past by its surviving fragments. Apart from that, etymology investigates borrowing of words (source language, method of borrowing, relation to native words, etc.). The approach it uses is of necessity diachronic.
4. Lexicography (from the Greek "lexicon", meaning "a dictionary", and "grapho" – "to write") is perhaps the most important branch of applied lexicology, dealing with the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries. It studies, among other things, the classification of dictionaries, their structure and general principles of dictionary-making.
5. Word-structure and word-formation in English are studied by a branch of lexicology known as word-building, which studies both the formation of new words and the structure of the existing ones. Word building investigates: how new words are formed; how they are related to the existing ones; what material they are made of (including the typical word-production patterns and components, as well as a study of their productivity). There’s no unity of opinion among linguists whether word-building should be considered under lexicology or grammar (as morphology), since in many cases it is the syntactic properties of the words, not their structure, that determine their functioning in the language. In Chinese, for example, it is very hard to tell a word from a morpheme, as Chinese is an analytical language. In English, which also has analytic tendencies, a word may start functioning as a different part of speech without any apparent changes in its morphological structure, by changing its syntactical distribution alone. This is known as conversion and will be discussed in detail later.
As we have known what is the word-formation in the introduction part, we can conclude the definition of it like this: Word-formation – the process of forming words by combining root and affixal morphemes according to certain patterns specific for the language (affixation, composition), or without any outward means of word formation (conversion, semantic derivation).
Word-formation is a branch of science of the language, which studies the patterns on which a language forms new lexical items (new unities, new words)⁴.
It is clear that word is the main part during the word building processes. Without it forming new words can not be existed. More specifically, the word is not the smallest unit of the language. It consists of morphemes which are defined as the smallest meaningful unit. Morphemes are devided into root and affixational morphemes. The root morpheme is the centre of the word, and the affixational morpheme is the part of the word which comes pre or after of the word. For example, teacher = teach - root morpheme, -er – affixational morpheme. Affixational morphemes are subdivided into inflectional and derivational morphemes:
During the morphemic analysis, we use terms of free and bound morphemes. When morpheme occurs only independently without any affixes, then it is free morpheme. ( say, talk, pen). Morphemes which are not isolatedly used are bound ones: (un-, -ment, -er). There are number of ways to form new words with affixes. For example, word “teacher” is formed by teach+ -er (verb+ -er) which is verbal stem + noun-forming suffix. If we see another example word like beggar - to beg which is the way of creating another word by dropping last part of the beggar as well as the changing the part of speech. Creating new words is not only done by adding or dropping part of the words, but also, it would be changing of the part of speech but without changing word of it’s own: cheat (verb) - cheat (noun). Word formation process also involves various types:

Blending

Conversion



Back-formation

Shortenings


Sound and stress interchange

Word formation


Affixation

Compounding