General problems of lexicology. Lexicology as a branch of linguistics

The morphological criterion shows by a number of examples like sometimes the plural forms of such compounds are built in quite non-standard ways. From the course of practical grammar it is known that the plural form of life is lives, but the plural form of the compound still-life is still-lifes. Some connective elements are quite unique in compounds, e.g. Anglo-Saxon, socio-psychological, handiwork, craftsman, etc. However, such examples are quite few in modern English.

The syntactical criterion is traced in the fact that a free combination a black bird may only be used with the element very before it, while with the compound blackbird this can not be done at all. However, in absolutely the same way we cannot modify the first element of such idioms as black market, black list, etc.

The summary is that not a single type of criteria is normally required to establish whether the unit is a compound word or a free phrase. For this purpose all units should first be treated individually and second not less than two of the above said criteria should be applied.

 

Still another problem is that of distinguishing a compound word from a derivative one. Some historical or etymological roots are so frequently used in compounds that they begin to resemble affixes and turn into semi-affixes, although they are used independently in the language. Such elements are: -man, -berry, -land, etc. Within words such elements begin to lose their semantic and formal characteristics. They lose stress and are frequently pronounced as reduced variants. Such words also undergo the process digendering. We can call a man and a woman policeman, but in the modern USA there’s a very strong tendency to separate them, e.g. a businessman and a businesswoman and even a businesslady. One of such semi-affixes is -like: godlike, ladylike, unladylike. Semi-affixes may not only occur in postposition, but in preposition as well, e.g. minibus, miniskirt, etc.

 

There are two more problems of defining compounds in English. Should we consider combinations like a stone wall, a rose garden to be compounds, like a railway, etc.? Besides, should phrasal verbs be treated as compounds or not? Besides, English compounds as compared to the similar words of other languages have two specific features:

1. their elements can almost always function in speech as free forms (compare to Russian руководство, where the second element of the word never functions separately);
2. English compound words are typically two-stem structures with a very small number of exceptions, like mother-in-law, man-o’-war, forget-me-not. The tendency of the 20^th century is to construct larger compound structures from out of sentences, like mister-know-it-all, mister-what’s-your-name, “she gave me a very severe get-out-of-this-room-as-soon-as-possible-look”. we’ve done last-minute changes before .

Classification of compounds

There have been quite a number of attempts to classify the English compounds. The most successful ones were the ones based on the principle of:

1. the type of composition,
2. the linking element,
3. the part of speech.

 

Within the part of speech compounds may be classified according to the definite structural pattern. As for the type of composition, we have:

1. mere juxtaposition without connecting elements (like hearty, heartbroken, hand-made);
2. with a vowel or a consonant sound/letter as a linking element (e.g. electromotive, speed-o-meter, Afro-American, statesman; such examples are few in English);
3. with some linking elements represented by prepositions or conjunctions (e.g. matter-of-fact (adj.), up-to-date, up-and-coming, rock’n’roll, forget-me-not). down-and-out n, matter-of-fact a, son-in-law n, pepper-and-salt a, wall-to-wall a, up-to-date a, on the up-and-up

 

One additional structural classification is that according to the structure of the constituence:

1. simple stems (filmstar);
2. with one element being a derivative stem (chain-smoker);
3. with one element being a clipped stem (X-mas, h-bag, T-shirt whodunit);
4. with one element being a compound stem itself (a wastepaper basket).

 

According to the part of speech, the first class is that of nouns. All compound nouns are split into:

1. endocentric compounds – those in which the referent is named by one of the elements and further characterized by the other one (e.g sunbeam, maid-servant, looking-glass, blackboard);
2. exocentric compounds – the referent is not named at all and only the combination as a whole names the referent; exocentric compounds can be compared to set expressions (e.g. scarecrow, lickspittle (блюдолиз), hangover, makeup, go-between (проныра; посредник));
3. bahuvrihi – its scheme is as follows: adjectival stem + noun stem, metonymically naming someone or something by some striking feature, possessed by the referent (bigwig (большая шишка), blackshirt (устар. фашист), fathead (тупица, ср. air-headed), high-brow (неодобр. интеллектуал), lazybones (лежебока)).

 

 

Compound words may be classified in different ways, so, in spite of all the arguments among scholars, there are generally three types of compounds in modern English:

1. To outgrow, to overflow, to look for, to stand up, etc. – concerning these verbs, the opinions may be different. Some consider them compounds (e.g. Henry Marchant), others treat as phrases.
2. To blackmail, to honeymoon, to nickname – in fact, these are nothing but cases of typical conversion from endocentric nominal compounds.
3. To stage-manage, to house-keep, to proof(-)read, to hijack – these have been formed from compound nouns stage-manager, house-keeper, proof-reader, hijacker.

Derivational compounds

This type of words, also named compound derivatives, is distinguished as a separate group of compounds due to their second element which is never a free stem. E.g. long-legged. The presence of a suffix at the end emphasizes the structural integration of the whole unit. Several types distinguished within this group are as follows:

1. any stem + any stem + -er (honeymooner, lefthander, latecomer, etc.);
2. adjectival stem + noun stem + -ed (longhaired, absent-minded, blue-eyed, ill-mannered);
3. noun stem + noun stem + -ed (bow-legged);
4. numeral stem + noun stem + -ed (three-colored).

 

Often derivational compounds become the basis for further derivation, e.g. absent-mindedness, do-it-yourselfism, schoolboyishness, Romeo-and-Julietness.

Reduplications in English

There is a special highly productive process of word-building in almost every modern language, which results in a large number of words based on the principle of repetition or reduplication of sounds and the appropriate letters. Reduplications are mentioned among compound words, because some scholars consider them as a special type of compounds. However it may be easily seen, that at least one element in the words of this kind has no independent meaning, cannot be used in isolation and should be called a free morpheme.

The reduplicative principle may be different in such words. As a result they may be based on full (complete) reduplication or, on the other hand, they may contain definite alterations of sounds. Depending on this or that type of repitition, all reduplications may be subdivided into:

1. full reduplication: reduplicative compounds proper, consisting of repeated sound-imitative elements (e.g. a hush-hush (a secret), murmur (шепот), bla-bla, pooh-pooh (expression of contempt), quack-quack, choo-choo (a two-way train)), but those also may be simple repeated words (never-never, goody-goody, row-row);
2. combinations with altered reduplication:

1. ablaut combinations

1. i-a sounds (chit-chat, riff-raff (отбросы общества), to shilly-shally (колебаться)),
2. i-o sounds (ding-dong, sing-song (монотонный), tip-top, ping-pong);
2. rhyme combinations, where altered are the two initial consonants (hurdy-gurdy (шарманка), helter-skelter (беспорядок), lovey-dovey (влюбленный), willy-nilly (волей-неволей), hokus-pokus);

 

Reduplicative compouinds belong to different styles of speech, but most commonly occur in colloquial discourses. Their expressive character is mainly due to the effect of rhythm, rhyme and sound suggestingness. Like other words, reduplications may take suffixes y, sie, ty, etc.

The important semantic feature which unites all reduplicative words is the sem of plurality that is expressed in an iconical way.

The historical development of English compounds

Compounding is among the oldest methods of wordbulding, occurring in practically all the European languages. However, compounding is especially well-developed in modern Germanic languages.

English has built compound words during all periods and stages of its development. The two most productive types of English compounds have been the following:

1. noun stem + noun stem (rainbow, snowflake, headache), derived from free combinations of words,
2. adjectival stem + noun stem (holiday, sweetmeat).

 

One interesting historical example is manslaughter (человекоубийство), derived from old English mann slæht with the diverbal noun stem as its second element.

Some of the older historical compounds preserve this type in present-day English. Others have undergone significant phonetic changes, so that their compound nature is not perceived anymore, because they long turned into root words.

Russian linguists call this latter process simplification of stem (опрощение основы), while English grammarians name these words disguised compounds. E.g. daisy (derived from old English dagas eye meaning “day’s eye”), woman (from OE wifman meaning “woman person”), gossip (from OE God siepbe).

Demotivation of compounds is in many cases connected with simplification but not identical to it. Demotivation may be viewed as etymological isolation, when the word loses its former ties with other words with which it was originally connected and associated, e.g. to kidnap originally meant “to cease a yeanling (козленок)”.

The word lady originated from hlefdige with hlef meaning “bread” and dige “to knead”; lord from hleflord (“breadkeeper”).

New wordforming patterns in composition

During the last several decades new patterns appeared in ME as a result of influence of some extra-linguistic reasons. E.g. the civil rights movement of the 1960s which took place in the USA produced such words as ride-in meaning “to ride in prohibited places”, kneel-in meaning “to kneel and pray in segregated churches”, swim-in meaing “to visit segregated swimming pools”, teach-in meaning “to give lectures in segregated schools”. A lot of such \structures appeared during the years of the hippy generation, e.g. lie-in (block the traffic by lying on the road), love-in (show your affection towards someone in the street to show the protest), bed-in.

 

VII. Shortening in Modern English word-building

By the example of compound words, we have seen that the word-building process involves not only qualitative, but also quantitative changes. For example, derivation and compounding represent addition in word-building. Shortening is another process manifested as a quantitative change, though it means subtraction of words. The same as with compounding, shortening also has its own patterns. There are several forms, by which this process is named in linguistics and these are: shortening clippment and curtailment.

Shortening was first fixed in the English language as far back as in the 15^th century, but today and especially after the I World War, this process is considered to be especially intensive.

Authors name such an extra-linguistical course of shortening as the strain of modern life. The factor, belonging to pure linguistics is the demand of rhythm in speech, stipulated by the predominantly mono-syllabic nature of the English language. The phenomenon of the mono-syllabic character is best of all traced by the example of those loan words, which are assimilated in Modern English.

Example: “van”:

1. a large covered vehicle, and later a railway carriage, shortened “caravan”.
2. the front of the army, shortened French “avangard”.
3. a lawn tennis term, shortened for “advantage”.

 

All the 3 homonyms sound like the majority of English words, compare to man, ban, tan, etc.

Shortening – is a reduction of an existing full word to one of its parts. The part remaining typically does not change its pronunciation. Yet, it has to change the spelling.

Example: to dub –  means “to double”

                mike –microphone

                trank –tranquillizer

However, we may find here some exclusions like: bike – bicycle.

But such cases are few. In the process of shortening the word may use its initial or middle, or final part. Shortening may also be regarded a kind of good creation, because originally, shortened words begin to behave in sentence as though they were full-forms or root-stems: bike – bikes, fancy – fantasy, to fancy, a fancier, etc.

There are 2 types of correlation between the curtailed word and its full prototype:

1. the curtailed form is a variant or synonym of the full-form differing from its prototype quantitatively, stylistically, sometimes emotionally: doc – doctor, Japs – Japanese. The connection between the shortened and full form in such cases is not yet entirely lost.
2. the above said connection is mainly lost and can only be established through the etymological analysis: a fan – a fanatic, miss – mistress, chap – chapman (syn: peddler; странствующий торговец)

In most cases, the curtailed words represent only one meaning of their full prototypes, at least, during the initial stage of the shortened word’s existence. For example, to double has at least 3 meanings: 1) to multiply by two; 2) to increase twofold; 3) to amount to twice as much. To dub means to make a film or a soundtrack in a different language.

Unlike conversion, shortening produces new words in the same part of speech. The structural classification of shortened words is as follows:

1) final clipping or apocope [ə'pɔkə(u)pɪ] (апокопа):

ad – advert – advertisement, ed – editor, fab – fabulous, vegs – vegetables, mac – mackintosh.

2) initial clipping or aphesis ['afisis]:

puter – computer, cute – acute, fend – to defend, mend – to amend, cello – violoncello, phone – telephone.

Sometimes we can come across the combination of 1st and 2nd, that is apocopy+aphesis: flu – influenza, fridge – refrigerator, tec – detective.

3) medial clipping or syncope: maths – mathematics, specs – spectacles, ma’am – madam.

Clippings mainly arise in colloquial speech and initially have a vivid stylistic covering, but when their links with their prototypes are lost, the shortened words become stylistically neutral: exam, challow, cab, etc.

Many shortened words are characteristic of slang and the only varieties of clipping which belong to strictly bookish language are forms like: ne’er – never, e’en – even, o’er – over.

 

                                           Blending

 

Blending in Modern English is manifested by some special cases, where both curtailment and compounding are combined together. The resulting words are named blends or blendings or fusions or, according to the word invented by Louis Carrol, portmanteau [pɔːt'mæntəu] words: sheepau – sheep-like people, to chortle – to chuckle (to snort, at the same time), frenglish – French+English, Oxbridge. An interesting example here is the word snob presumably originated from the Latin phrase: sine nobilitate, written after the name in the registry of fashionable English school to indicate that the bearer of the name did not belong to nobility. The recent examples of blends are bloodalyzer and breathalyzer denoting devices making special medical test.

Sometimes the second or right constituent of such a blend may turn into a traditional suffix: nylon – нейлон, sylon, rayon – вискоза. All these words denote fabrics. The constituent -on coming from the word cotton.

 

The 2 basic types of blends are:

1. `additive words – consisting of the elements once making a combination of 2 complete stems with a conjunction “and” between them: smog – smoke and fog, frenglish – French and English, Pakistan – Punjab, Aphgania, Cashmere, sing+Baluchistan. Tanzania – Tanganyika + Zanzibar. Other examples are: dancathon – dancing marathon, camcorder – camera recorder, cellphone (cellophone) – cellular telephone.
2. restrictive type – represented by the words originating from attributive phrases in which the 1^st element is the modifier of the 2^nd one: cinerama – cinematographic panorama, tellycast – television broadcast, slanguage – slang+language, motel – motorists’ hotel.

 

                                Graphical abbreviations

Due to the extremely close connection between the oral and written speech it may sometimes be difficult to differentiate the clippings, formed in oral speech, from graphical abbreviations. The latter are often first introduced in writing and only after that penetrate into the oral speech. This process intensively begun during I World War and in the years after it became especially popular in the English-speaking countries. Such words formed from the initial letter or letters have 3 possible types of relations between the written and spoken forms:

1. acronyms – are abbreviations, landing themselves to be read as ordinary words:

SALT – Strategic Arms Limitation Talks,

NOW – National Organization for Women,

WHO – World Health Organization,

JATO – Jet-Assisted Take Off (взлёт на реактивном  двигателе),

UFO – Unidentified Flying Object,

SARS – Severe Acture Respiratory Arrest.

2. initial abbreviation with an alphabetical reading retained:

BBC – British Broadcasting Cooperation,

M.P. – Member of Parliament (Br.), Military Police (Am.),

P.M. – Prime Minister

A.S.A.P.

FBI, CIA

   Types 1 and 2 may also be combined in such abbreviations as:

POSSLQ ['pɔs(ə)l,kju:] – Partner of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters.

3. shortened forms typically used in specialized texts to economize space, but always pronounced in full:

abbr – abbreviation

bldg – building

LTD – limited

B.A. – Bachelor of Arts

NY – New York

LA –  Los Angeles

     4) a specific English type of abbreviations having no analogues in Russian, are Latin shortenings in many cases read in English:

e.g. – for example (exempli gratia)

pm – post meridiem

et al. – and others (et alii)

etc. – et cetera

i.e. – id est

 

VIII. Conversion in Modern English word-building

• Are you training for a race?
• No, I’m racing for a train.

The process of coining a new word in a different part of speech and with a different set of characteristics, but without adding any derivative elements is named conversion. However, one should always bear in mind that these are only the basic forms of the original and derived words, which coincide and are homonymous.

The basic form of the word is the one that expresses the notion in the most abstract way. For nouns it’s the common case singular, for adjectives – the positive form, for verbs – the infinitive, etc.

Being a special type of word formation, conversion exists in many languages, but in Modern English it develops with special intensity.

The main reason here is the absence of morphological elements which could serve as classifying signals or formal signs, denoting the part of speech to which the word belongs. Here are some examples:

back (noun-спина, verb-обратный процесс, adj-задний, adv-снова, заново)

home (noun, verb, adj, adv)

silence (noun, verb)

round (noun, verb, adj, adv)

Apart from this, many affixes are homonymous in English. So, the general sound pattern doesn’t contain any information on the possible part of speech.

whiten – verb

maiden – noun

wooden – adj.

often – adv.

 

             The historical development of conversion in English

The causes that make conversion widely-spread in English, as Otto Jesperson stated, are to be approached diachronically. Nouns and verbs became identical in their form firstly due to the loss of their endings.

Old English                                                                         Modern English

caria(n)-verb                                                                       care(verb, noun)

caru-noun