The etymology of English words II

(1) nation + nation = contacts => borrowings

wars foreign words are imposed upon the

invasions conquered nation (oppressed nation rejects

conquests and condemns the language of the oppressor)

trade peaceful interchange

cultural relations (more favourable for stimulating the borrowing process)

 

(2) 2 similar events – different linguistic consequences

Norman Conquest → England Mongol-Tartar Yoke → Russia

long period of cruel oppression

 

level of development of the level of development of the

nation and the language of nation and the language of

the invaders is superior to the invaded is superior to

those of the invaded those of the invaders

↓ ↓

influence on the English influence on the Russian

language is significant language is insignificant

↓

immense number of French words

forced their way into English

vocabulary, but English language

preserved its essential structure

& vastly enriched its expressive

resources with the new borrowings

 

 

(3) Reasons for borrowing

 

to fill a gap in vocabularyto represent the same

Latin → Saxon concept in some new aspect

butter, plum, beet (new shade of meaning or

Spanish → English different emotional colouring)

potato, tomato enlarges groups of synonyms &

enrich the expressive resources

of the vocabulary

Latin cordial → native friendly

admire → like

French adore → love

desire → wish

 

(4) "Do words when they migrate from one language into another behave as people do under similar circumstances? Do they remain alien in appearance, or do they take out citizenship papers?" (Maria Pei)

 

(5) Most borrowings adjust themselves to their new environment and get adapted to the norms of the recipient language by undergoing certain changes → foreign features are erased → they

are assimilated

foreign origin becomes unrecognizable foreign origin is still recognizable

(dinner, cat, take, cup) (distance,development – Fr. Suffixes

skin,sky - Scandinavian initial sk

police,regime – Fr. stress on the lastsyllable)

 

 

(6) main areas borrowings are adjusted in the new language system

the phoneticthe grammaticalthe semantic

Norman French complete change of the adjustment to the

borrowing s table, former paradigm of the system of meanings of

plate, courage, chivalry borrowed word the vocabulary

(no traces of French origin) (noun ← new system of

Parisian borrowings regime, declension

valise, matinee, cafe, ballet verb ← new system of

(still sound French, phonetic conjugation)

adaptation is not completed) earlier Lat. borrowings -

cup, plum, street, wall

(Amer.) - fully adopted

Renaissance borrowings

datum (pl. data)

phenomenon (pl. phenomena)

criterion (pl. criteria)

 

(7) “blind borrowings” – borrowing without any obvious reason

▼

“accidental” borrowings

↓ ↓

soon rejected & forgotten take root by the process of

semantic adaptation

1) Fr. large → Eng. = wide → "big in size"

1) horizontal dimensions

2) = big (any object)

in frequency&meaning

"noble of birth"

 

2) Fr. gay (adj.) → Eng. "bright, shining"

↓ "multi-coloured"

"joyful, high-spirited" = merry

3) Fr. nice → Eng. “silly” → “attractive”

 

(8) If the word is not needed in the vocabulary of a recipient language in its borrowed meaning, the meaning changes to fill the gap in another semantic group.

 

(9) Often words are borrowed by several languages = international words:

1) names of sciences (philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, linguistics, lexicology) (Mostly from Latin & Greek)

2) terms of art (music, theatre, drama, tragedy, comedy, artist, primadonna)

3) political terms (politics, policy, evolution, progress, democracy, communism, anti-militarism)

4) technological terms (atomic, antibiotic, radio, television, sputnik (Russian borrowing = international word (“man-made satellite”) since 1961, after the first space flight by Yury Gagarin))

5) fruits and foodstuffs imported from exotic countries (coffee, cocoa, chocolate, coca-cola, banana, mango, avocado, grapefruit)

English → other languages

1) sports terms (football, volley-ball, baseball, hockey, cricket, rugby, tennis, golf)

 

(10) International words are mainly borrowings

E. son, are not represent the Indo-Euroреаngroup of the

Germ. Sohn, international native element and are cognates (=words of the

R. сын words same etymological root, and not borrowings)

 

(11) shir tskirt

↓ ↓

native sk- =>Skandinavian

same etymological root

different phonemic shape

different meaning, but both = articles of clothing

↓

etymological doublets

(12) Words originating from the same etymological source, but differing in phonemic shape and in meaning are called etymological doublets.

nativeword+borrowed wordborrowed word+borrowed word

(shirt, n. (Eng.) – skirt, n (Scand.); ↑ ↑

shrew, n. (Eng.) — screw, n. (Scand.).) lang 1 lang 2

same root

(senior (Lat.) — sir (Fr.)

shortened word + full word canal (Lat.) — channel (Fr.)

history — story, fantasy — fancy captain (Lat.) — chieftan (Fr.)

fanatic — fan, defence — fence

courtesy — curtsy, shadow — shade

 

borrowedfron the language in different periods

corpse [ko:ps] (Norm. Fr.) — corps [ko:] (Par. Fr.)

travel (Norm. Fr.) — travail (Par. Fr.)

hospital (Lat.) — hostel (Norm. Fr.) — hotel (Par. Fr.)

cavalry (Norm. Fr.) — chivalry (Par. Fr.)

gaol (Norm. Fr.) — jail (Par. Fr.)

(13) Etymological triplets = groups of three words of common root) occur rarer, but here are at least two examples: to capture (Lat.) — to catch (Norm. Fr.) — to chase (Par. Fr.).

(14) loan word = borrowed word

translation loans - are not taken into the vocabulary of another language in the same phonemic shape, but undergo the process of translation, they are only compound words (=words of two or more stems), each stem being translated separately (masterpiece (from Germ. Meisterstück), wonder child (from Germ. Wunderkind), first dancer (from Ital. prima-ballerina), collective farm (from R. колхоз), five-year plan (from R. пятилетка); Russian колхоз was borrowed twice, by way of translation-loan (collective farm) and by way of direct borrowing (kolkhoz); German Blitzkrieg was also borrowed into English in two different forms: the translation-loan lightning-war and the direct borrowings blitzkrieg and blitz)

 

(15) basic vocabulary = native words + borrowings (Lat., Fr.)

 

(16) short common words also can be borrowings despite their native appearance & common use (very, air, hour, cry, oil, cat, pay, box, face, poor, dress)

 

(17) foreign element dominates the native

↓ ↓

learned words terminology

 

(18) formal vs. informal = borrowed vs. native

↓

esp. slang & dialect

(19) "The French word is usually more formal, more refined, and has a less strong hold on the emotional side of life." (O. Jespersen)

Eng. Fr.

to begin to commence

to wish to desire

happiness felicity

(20) Eng. Lat.

motherly maternal

(Motherly love seems warmer)(maternal feelings sounds dutiful but cold)

fatherly paternal

childish infantile

(with all the wonder and vivid (quite dry: infantile diseases,

poetry of the earliest human age: infantile mind implies criticism)

childish games, childish charm)

daughterly filial

 

(21) sunny — solar ≠ synonyms, but both pertain to the sun

fine day can be sunny, but can’t be solar

↑

used in highly formal terminological senses (solar energy)

the same is true about: handy — manual,

toothy — dental

(a toothy grin) (term again),

nosy — nasal

(a nosy person) (nasal sounds, voice)

 

WORD-BUILDING I

W ord-building - 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.

(1) Morphemes – units that constitute a word and do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of words, nevertheless they possess meanings of their own.

 

(2) MORPHEMES

roots (radicals) affixes

prefixessuffixes

precede the root follow the root

re read, mis pronounce, unwell teach er, cur able, dict ate

 

(3) root + affix (1 or more) = derived word (derivative) ←affixation (derivation)

↑

extremely numerous

 

(4) 1 morpheme (root) = root-word ← conversion (Mod.E.)

(hand → to hand, can → to can,

pale → to pale, to find → to find)

 

great number of original English stock

or earliest borrowings (house, room,

book, work, port, street, table)

 

(5) 2 or more stems = compound word ← composition

↑

(dining-room, bluebell, mother-in-law, good-for-nothing)

 

(6) short odd-looking words = shortenings ← shortening(contraction)

(contractions, curtailed words)

↑

(flu, pram, lab, M. P., V-day, H-bomb)

(7) Main structural types of Mod.E. words: root words, derived words, compounds, shortenings;

The most productive ways of word-building: conversion, derivation and composition.

 

(8) The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root morpheme. The role of the affix in this procedure is very important.

 

(9) Some Native Suffixes (frequent ones)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noun-forming	-er	worker, miner, teacher, painter, etc.
-ness	coldness, loneliness, loveliness, etc.
-ing	feel ing, mean ing, sing ing, read ing, etc.
-dom	free dom, wis dom, king dom, etc.

-hood child hood, man hood, mother hood, etc.

 

-ship friend ship, companion ship, master- ship, etc.

 

-th leng th, bread th, heal th, tru th, etc. Adjective-forming -ful care ful, joy ful, wonder ful, sin ful, skil ful, etc.

 

-less care less, sleep less, cloud less, sense- less, etc.

 

-y coz y, tid y, merr y, snowy, show y, etc.

 

-ish Engli sh, Spani sh, reddi sh, childi sh, etc.

 

-ly lonely, lovely, ugly, likely, lordly, etc.

 

-en wooden, woollen, silken, golden, etc.

 

-some hand some, quarrel some, tire some, etc. Verb-forming -en wid en, redd en, dark en, sadd en, etc. Adverb-forming -ly warm ly, hard ly, simp ly, careful ly, cold ly, etc.

 

(10) Borrowed affixes are numerous (esp. of Romance origin). Affixes are borrowed not in the same way or for the same reasons as words.

 

 

(11) AFFIXES

productive non-productive

take part in deriving new formed on the level of living speech and

words in this particular period reflect the most productive and progressive

of language development patterns in word-building

- neologisms thinnish,baldish, oldish, youngish, mannish,

- nonce-words (coined & used girlish, fattish, longish, yellowish

only for particular occasion) "I don't like Sunday evenings: I feel so

e.g.: unputdownable thriller; Mondayish ".

Professor Pringle was a thinnish, ↑

baldish, dispeptic-lookingish cove is certainly a nonce-word

with an eye like a haddock.

(From Right-Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse)

 

 

(12) productivity ≠ frequency of occurrence: the adjective-forming native suffixes -ful, -ly; the adjective-forming suffixes of Latin origin -ant, -ent, -al which are quite frequent, but are no longer used in word-derivation.

 

(13) Some Productive Affixes

 

Noun-forming suffixes	-er, -ing, -ness, -ism (materialism), -ist (impressionist), -ance (International suffixes)
Adjective-forming suffixes	-y, -ish, -ed (learned), -able, -less
Adverb-forming suffixes	-ly
Verb-forming suffixes	-ize/-ise (realise), -ate
Prefixes	un- (unhappy), re- (reconstruct), dis- (disappoint)

 

 

(14) Some Non-Productive Affixes

 

Noun-forming suffixes	-th, -hood
Adjective-forming suffixes	-ly, -some, -en, -ous
Verb-forming suffix	-en

 

 

(15) morpheme (=> affix being a type of morpheme) is generally defined as the smallest indivisible component of the word possessing a meaning of its own.

Meanings of affixes - specific& considerably differ from those of root morphemes, widely generalised & refer the concept conveyed by the whole word to a certain category, which is vast and all-embracing:

noun-forming -er = 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);

adjective-forming -ful = "full of", "characterised by" (beautiful, careful)

-ish = insufficiency of quality (greenish — green, but not

quite; youngish — not quite young but looking it)

 

(16) un/eat/able = "not fit to eat" where not stands for un- and fit for –able

 

(17) brainy (inform.) — intelligent, intellectual, i. e. characterised by brains

catty — quietly or slyly malicious, spiteful, i. e. characterised by features ascribed to a cat

chatty — given to chat, inclined to chat

dressy (inform.) — showy in dress, i. e. inclined to dress well or to be overdressed

fishy (e. g. in a fishy story, inform.) — improbable, hard to believe (like stories told by fishermen)

foxy — foxlike, cunning or crafty, i. e. characterised by features ascribed to a fox

stagy — theatrical, unnatural, i. e. inclined to affectation, to unnatural theatrical manners

touchy — apt to take offence on slight provocation, i. e. resenting a touch or contact (not at all inclined to be touched)

(18) meaning of the -y suffix by The Random-House Dictionary is "characterised by or inclined to the substance or action of the root to which the affix is attached". (touchy, fishy are not covered by the definition; those which are roughly covered, show a wide variety of subtle shades of meaning)

 

(19) The italicised words roughly convey the meanings of the suffixes in each adjective.

1. eatable (fit or good to eat)
lovable (worthy of loving)
questionable (open to doubt, to question)
imaginable (capable of being imagined)

2. lovely (charming, beautiful, i. e. inspiring love)
lonely (solitary, without company; lone; the meaning of the suffix does not seem to add anything to that of the root)

friendly (characteristic of or befitting a friend) heavenly (resembling or befitting heaven; beautiful, splendid)

3. childish (resembling or befitting a child)

tallish (rather tall, but not quite, i. e. approaching the quality of big size)

girlish (like a girl, but, often, in a bad imitation of one)

bookish (1) given or devoted to reading or study; (2) more acquainted with books than with real life, i. e. possessing the quality of bookish learning)

 

(20) Compare:

1) womanly (used in a complimentary manner about girls and women)

womanish (indicate an effeminate man and implies criticism),

2) flowery (applied to speech or a style (cf. with the R. цветистый))

flowered ("decorated with a pattern of flowers" (e. g. flowered silk or chintz, cf. with the R. цветастый))

flowering (= blossoming (e. g. flowering bushes or shrubs, cf. with the R. цветущий))

3) starry ("resembling stars" (e. g. starry eyes))

starred ("covered or decorated with stars" (e. g. starred skies))

4) reddened (imply the result of an action or process, as in the eyes reddened with weeping)

reddish (point to insufficiency of quality: reddish is not exactly red, but tinged with red)

5) shortened (imply the result of an action or process, as in a shortened version of a story (i. e. a story that has been abridged))

shortish (point to insufficiency of quality: shortish man is probably a little taller than a man described as short)

 

Conversion

One of the most productive ways of modern English word-building

 

(21) a splendid read (verb or noun?)

I was to room with another girl called Jessie. (verb or noun?)

… the one who had to be satisfied with the role of a has-been (verb or noun?)

 

(22) If ifs and ans were pots and pans? (an = if, dial., arch.)

(23) affixless way of word-building / affixless derivation = most compounds, contracted words, sound-imitation words, etc.

 

(24) nurse, n. > to nurse, v

-s, pl. -s, 3^rd p.sg.

Substantive -‘s. poss. c., Verbal –ed, past

paradigm sg. Paradigm indef., past part.

-s’, poss. c., pl. –ing, pres. part., gerund

 

 

(25) controversial question

 

not a word-building act, one of the major ways of enriching

but a mere functional change English vocabulary with new words

(e. g. H. Sweet) (universally accepted)

e.g.: Hand me that book main argument: semantic change that

not a verb but noun used in a verbal regularly accompanies each instance

syntactical function => hand (me) of conversion. Normally a word changes

and hands (in She has small hands) its syntactical function with no change

are not two different words but one in lexical meaning: e.g.:

=> the саsе cannot be treated yellow leaves colour

as one of word-formation for no new The leaves were turning yellow

word appears => conversion is a The leaves yellowed = ‘process of

specific feature of the English categories changing colour’= change in meaning

of parts of speech, which are supposed hand >to hand

to be able to break through the rigid face >to face obvious change

borderlines dividing one category from to go >a go in meaning

another thus enriching the process of to make >a make

communication not by the creation of another argument: regularity and

new words but through the sheer completeness in developing a

flexibility of the syntactic structures paradigm of their new category of part

of speech ← all the properties of the

new category => new words, not

functional variants.

In Modern Dictionaries converted pairs

= homonyms, 2 words, thus =>

conversion is a word-building process

 

(26) Conversion – highly productive & particularly English

↑

encouraged by certain features of Modern English

↑

analytical structure; simplicity of paradigms; many one-syllable words

↑

more mobile and flexible than polysyllables

 

 

(27) Conversion – convenient and "easy" way of enriching the vocabulary

↑

two (or more) words ← one, fixed on the same structural and semantic base

 

(28) high productivity of conversion → speech → occasional cases, due to the

immediate need of the situation,

not reflected in dictionaries, e.g.:

If anybody oranges me again tonight, I'll knock his face off

↑ (O’Henry"Little Speck in Garnered Fruit")

for brevity, expressiveness and humour

 

 

(29) Conversion – vital and developing process.

 

 

(30) Not every case of noun and verb (verb and adjective, adjective and noun, etc.) with the same morphemic shape results from conversion. Some pairs of words (e. g. love, n. — to love, v.; work, n. — to work, v.; drink, n. — to drink, v., etc.) may be a result of certain historical processes (dropping of endings, simplification of stems) when before that they had different forms (e. g. O. E. lufu, n. — lufian, v.) But first cases of conversion (which were registered in the 14th c.) imitated such pairs of words as love, n. — to love, v. for they were numerous in the vocabulary and were subconsciously accepted by native speakers as one of the typical language patterns.

 

 

(31) Verbs and nouns are mainly affected by conversion.

1) The most numerous nouns → verbs: 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.

2) Verb → noun: 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.

3) Adjective → verb: 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.

4) Other: 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).

 

(32) Semantic associations of the converted words:

I. The noun is the name of a tool or implement, the verb denotes an action performed by the tool: to hammer, to nail, to pin, to brush, to comb, to pencil.

 

II. The noun is the name of an animal, the verb denotes an action or aspect of behaviour considered typical of this animal: to dog, to wolf, to monkey, to ape, to fox, to rat.

Yet, to fish does not mean "to behave like a fish" but "to try to catch fish".

The same meaning of hunting activities is conveyed by the verb to whale and one of the meanings of to rat; the other is "to turn in former, squeal" (sl.).

 

III. The name of a part of the human body — an action performed by it: to hand, to leg (sl.), to eye, to elbow, to shoulder, to nose, to mouth.

However, to face does not imply doing something by or even with one's face but turning it in a certain direction.

To back means either "to move backwards" or, in the figurative sense, "to support somebody or something".

 

IV. The name of a profession or occupation — an activity typical of it: to nurse, to cook, to maid, to groom.

 

V. The name of a place — the process of occupying
the place or of putting smth./smb. in it (to room, to house, to place, to table, to cage).

 

VI. The name of a container — the act of putting smth. within the container (to can, to bottle, to pocket).

 

VII. The name of a meal — the process of taking it (to lunch, to supper).

 

(33) Difficulties in establishing semantic associations

↑

complex but sometimes perplexing

1) to fox - obviously derived from the associated reputation foxes for cunning:

=> to fox = "to act cunningly or craftily".

2) to wolf -?which of the characteristics of wolves was picked: ferocity, loud and unpleasant howling, the inclination to live in packs?

=> to wolf = "to eat greedily, voraciously": Charlie went on wolfing the chocolate. (R. Dahl)

3) to dog:

And what of Charles? I pity any detective who would have to dog him through those twenty months.

(From The French Lieutenant's Woman by J. Fowles)

=> to dog = to follow or track like a dog, especially with hostile intent.

4) to ape and to monkey seem to mean the same but share b/w themselves certain typical features of the same animal:

=> to ape = to imitate, mimic (e. g. He had always aped the gentleman in his clothes and manners. — J. Fowles);

=> to monkey = to fool, to act or play idly and foolishly.

To monkey can also be used in the meaning “to imitate”, but much rarer than to ape.

(34)

“Mother,” said Johnny, “is it correct to say you ‘water a horse’ when he’s thirsty?”

“Yes, quite correct.”

“Then,” (picking up a saucer) “I’m going to milk the cat.”

The joke is based on the child’s mistaken association of two apparently similar patterns: water, n. – to water, v.; milk, n. – to milk, v. But it turns out that the meanings of the two verbs arose from different associations: to water a horse means “to give him water”, but to milk implies getting milk from an animal (e.g.: to milk a cow).

 

WORD BUILDING II

Composition

(1) Combining two or more stems, one of the most productive → compounds - one of the most typical and specific features of English word-structure.

 

(2) 3 aspects of composition:

1^st aspect - Structural. Not homogeneous in structure. 3 types:

1) Neutral – no linking elements, mere juxtaposition of two stems:

blackbird, shop-window, sunflower, bedroom, tallboy, etc.

3 subtypes depending on the structure of the constituent stems:

a) simple neutral compounds ← simple affixless stems

blackbird, shop-window, sunflower, bedroom, tallboy, etc.

b) derived or derivational compounds ← affixes

absent-mindedness, blue-eyed, golden-haired, broad-shouldered, lady-killer, film-goer, music-lover, honey-mooner, first-nighter, late-comer, newcomer, early-riser, evildoer

Productivity is proved by:

- considerable number of comparatively recent formations:

teenager, babysitter, strap-hanger, fourseater ("car or boat with four seats"), doubledecker ("a ship or bus with two decks")

- numerous nonce-words:

luncher-out ("a person who habitually takes his lunch in restaurants and not at home"), goose-flesher ("murder story") or attention getter in the following fragment:

"Dad," I began... "I'm going to lose my job." That should be an attention getter, I figured.

(From A Five-Colour Buick by P. Anderson Wood)

c) contracted compounds ← shortened (contracted) stem

TV-set (-program, -show, -canal, etc.), V-day (Victory day), G-man (Government man "FBI agent"), H-bag (handbag), T-shirt, etc.

2) Morphological - few in number, non-productive, two compounding stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant:

Anglo-Saxon, Franko-Prussian, handiwork, handicraft, craftsmanship, spokesman, statesman

3) Syntactic - articles, prepositions, adverbs (specifically English):

lily-of-the-valley, Jack-of-all-trades, good-for-nothing, mother-in-law, sit-at-home

Compound nouns showing syntactical relations and grammatical patterns current in present-day English:

pick-me-up, know-all, know-nothing, go-between, get-together, whodunit ("a detective story") ← ungrammatical variant of the word-group who (has) done it.

4) Neologisms:

whodunit

Following fragments make rich use of modern city traffic terms:

Randy managed to weave through a maze of oneway-streets, no-left-turns, and no-stopping-zones...

(From A Five-Colour Buick by P. Anderson Wood)

"... you go down to the Department of Motor Vehicles tomorrow and take your behind-the-wheel test."

(Ibid.)

 

(3) The structure of most compounds is transparent ≠ word-combinations

The fragments below illustrate the very process of coining nonce-words after the productive patterns of composition:

"Is all this really true?" he asked. "Or are you pulling my leg?"

... Charlie looked slowly around at each of the four old faces... They were quite serious. There was no sign of joking or leg-pulling on any of them.

(From Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by R. Dahl)

leg-pulling← neutral derivational compounds

 

"I have decided that you are up to no good. I am well aware that that is your natural condition. But I prefer you to be up to no good in London. Which is more used to up-to-no-gooders. "

(From The French Lieutenant's Woman by J. Fowles)

up-to-no-gooders ← a segment of speech which is held together by the -er suffix = combination of syntactic and derivational types

= nonce-word breakfast-in-the-bedder ("a person who prefers to have his breakfast in bed")

 

"What if they capture us?" said Mrs. Bucket. "What if they shoot us?" said Grandma Georgina. "What if my beard were made of green spinach?" cried Mr.Wonka. "Bunkum and tommyrot! You'll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that....We want no what-iffers around, right, Charlie?"

(From Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by R. Dahl)

what-iffing & what-iffers = syntactic compounds

what - if -nucleus = frequent pattern of living speech

(4) 2^nd aspect – Semantic = can the meaning of a compound word be regarded as the sum of its constituent meanings?

 

(5) 1) Classroom, bedroom, working-man, evening-gown;

dining-room, sleeping-car, reading-room, dancing-hall- slight shift of meaning

↓

sleeping-car ≠ car that sleeps

denotes an action or state (cf. a sleeping child)

dancing-hall ≠ hall that dances

(cf. dancing pairs)

 

 

2) one of the components (or both) has changed its meaning:

blackboard - neither a board nor necessarily black

football - not a ball but a game

chatterbox - not a box but a person

lady-killer - kills no one but is merely a man who fascinates women

blackbird, pick, pocket, good-for-nothing, lazybones.

=>meaning of the whole word ≠sum of the constituent meanings

a white blackbird, pink bluebells accepted as normal

Blackberries are red when they are green

Still the meaning is transparent: blackbird = some kind of bird;

good-for-nothing = not meant as a compliment.

 

3) process of deducing the meaning of the whole from those of the constituents is impossible; the key to meaning seems to be lost:

ladybird ≠ bird, = insect,

tallboy ≠ boy, = a piece of furniture,

bluestocking = a person,

bluebottle = a flower & = an insect ≠ a bottle.

man-of-war ("warship"),

merry-to-round ("carousel"),

mother-of-pearl ("irridescent substance forming the inner layer of certain shells"),

horse-marine ("a person who is unsuitable for his job or position"),

butter-fingers ("clumsy person; one who is apt to drop things"),

wall-flower ("a girl who is not invited to dance at a party"),

whodunit ("detective story"),

straphanger (1. "a passenger who stands in a crowded bus or underground train and holds onto a strap or other support suspended from above"; 2. "a book of light genre, trash; the kind of book one is likely to read when travelling in buses or trains").

 

(6) The following joke rather vividly shows what happens if an idiomatic compound is misunderstood as non-idiomatic.

Patient: They tell me, doctor, you are a perfect lady-killer.

Doctor: Oh, no, no! I assure you, my dear madam, I make no distinction between the sexes.

In this joke, while the woman patient means to compliment the doctor on his being a handsome and irresistible man, he takes or pretends to take the word lady-killer literally, as a sum of the direct meanings of its constituents.

 

(7) Advantages of structural type of compound words and the word-building type of composition:

1) Flexible enough

2) Expressive &colourful(cf. snow-white — as white as snow)

3) Laconic (cf. The hotel was full of week-enders and The hotel was full of people spending the week-end there; snow-white — as white as snow)

 

(8) In the following extract a family are discussing which colour to paint their new car.

"Hey," Sally yelled, "could you paint it canary yellow, Fred?"

"Turtle green," shouted my mother, quickly getting into the spirit of the thing.

"Mouse grey," Randy suggested.

"Dove white, maybe?" my mother asked.

"Rattlesnake brown," my father said with a deadpan look...

"Forget it, all of you," I announced. "My Buick is going to be peacock blue."

(From A Five-Colour Buick by P. Anderson Wood)

Rattlesnake brown = "цвета гремучей змеи". The father of the family is absolutely against the idea of buying the car, and the choice of this word reflects his mood of resentment

 

(9) This is well shown in the fragment given above. If canary yellow, peacock blue, dove white are quite "normal" in the language and registered by dictionaries, turtle green and rattlesnake brown¹ are certainly typical nonce-words, amusing inventions of the author aimed at a humorous effect.

 

(10) Eng.: blue = Rus.: синий,голубой, but:

Built on comparison: navy blue, cornflower blue, peacock blue, chicory blue, sapphire blue, china blue, sky-blue, turquoise blue, forget-me-not blue, heliotrope blue, powder-blue

Built not on comparison: dark blue, light blue, pale blue, electric blue, Oxford blue, Cambridge blue

 

(11) the 3^rd aspect - criteria for distinguishing b/w a compound and a word-combination

Compounds (except rare morphological type) originate directly from word-combinations and are often homonymous to them: cf. a tall boy — a tallboy.

graphic criterion is sufficiently convincing but cannot wholly be relied on (tallboy) → semanticcriterion:

tallboy ≠ a person, = a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers supported by a low stand (1 concept);

a tall boy =1. a young male person; 2. big in size (2 concepts)

still not enough (phraseological units) → phoneticcriterion = single stress (doesn’t work with compound adjectives):

cf. 'slowcoach, blackbird, 'tallboy,

but: blие-'eyed, 'absent-'minded, 'ill-'mannered

still morphological structure & hyphenated spelling => words, not word-groups.

 

(12) Morphological & syntactic criteria:

a tall boy = word-group

- each of the constituents can be grammatically changed: They were the tallest boys in their form.

- other words can be inserted: a tall handsome boy.

tallboy = compound

- the 1^st component is grammatically invariable; plural form ending is added to the whole unit: tallboys

- no word can be inserted b/w the components, even with traditional separate graphic form

=> Only several criteria (semantic, morphological, syntactic, phonetic, graphic) can convincingly classify a lexical unit as either a compound word or a word group.

 

Semi-Affixes

(13) "... The Great Glass Elevator is shockproof, waterproof, bombproof, bulletproof, and Knidproof¹..."

(From Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by R. Dahl)

¹ Knids — fantastic monsters supposed to inhabit the Cosmos and invented by the author of this book for children.

 

Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can't do that sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.

(From Carry on, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse)

 

 

(14) kiss proof (lipstick)

compounds fire proof (building materials) derived words

fool proof (technical devices)

↑

bear all the features of a stem & preserves certain semantic associations with the free form proof; but has generalised meaning = suffix => semi-affix

↓

productive; creates nonce-words: look-proof, Knid proof

↑

non-existent stem

 

(15) semi-affix –man: sportsman, gentleman, nobleman, salesman, seaman, fisherman, countryman, statesman, policeman, chairman, etc.

–man = -er, -or, -ist (e. g. artist), -ite (e. g. hypocrite)

(16) other semi-affixes:

–land:Ire land, Scotland, fatherland, wonderland

-like: ladylike, unladylike, businesslike, unbusiness like, starlike, flowerlike, etc.

-worthy:seaworthy, trustworthy, praiseworthy

Shortening (Contraction)

Comparatively new, nowadays highly productive, esp. in American English.

 

(17) Produced in 2 different ways:

1) new word ← a syllable (rarer, two) of the original word

↑

looses its beginning

(phone ← telephone, fence ← defence)

its ending

(hols ← holidays, vac ← vacation, props ← properties, ad ← advertisement)

or both the beginning and ending

(flu ← influenza, fridge ← refrigerator)

 

2) new word ← the initial letters of a word group (= initial shortenings):

U.N.O. ['ju:neu] ← the United Nations Organisation,

B.B.C. ← the British Broadcasting Corporation,

M.P. ← Member of Parliament

g. f. (slang) ← girl-friend:

(18) - Who's the letter from?

- My g. f.

- Didn't know you had girl-friends. A nice girl?

- Idiot! It's from my grandfather!

 

(19) Both types → informal speech (esp. uncultivated).

e.g.: okay (Amer.)← O.K. (= all correct) → AC. → aysee.

(20) Movie ← moving-picture,

gent ← gentleman,

specs ← spectacles,

circs ← circumstances (under the circs),

I. O. Y. (a written acknowledgement of debt) ← Iowe you,

lib ← liberty(May I take the lib of saying something to you?),

cert ← certainty(This enterprise is a cert if you have a bit of capital),

metrop ← metropoly (Paris is a gay metrop),

exhibish ← exhibition,

posish ← position.

exam, lab, prof, vac, hol, co-ed (a girl student at a coeducational school or college).

 

Some of the Minor Types of Modern Word-Building. Sound-Imitation Onomatopoeia¹)

(21) Onomatopoeia [onemaete'pie]. This type of word-formation is now also called echoism (the term was introduced by O. Jespersen).

= imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, insects, human beings and inanimate objects.

 

(22) Different languages – different sound groups:

English dogs bark (cf. the R. лаять) or howl (cf. the R. выть).

English cock cries cock-a-doodle-doo (cf. the R. ку-ка-ре-ку).

English ducks quack (cf. R. крякать)

English frogs croak (cf. R. квакать).

Exception: English cats mew or miaow (meow) (= Russian).

English cows moo (= Russian)

but also low.

 

(23) Some names of animals, insects and birds:

crow, cuckoo, humming-bird, whip-poor-will, cricket.

 

(24) The Baltimore &Ohio R. R. Co.,

Pittsburg, Pa.

Gentlemen:

Why is it that your switch engine has to ding and fizz and spit and pant and grate and grind and puff and bump and chug and hoot and toot and whistle and wheeze and howl and clang and growl and thump and clash and boom and jolt and screech and snarl and snort and slam and throb and soar and rattle and hiss and yell and smoke and shriek all night long when I come home from a hard day at the boiler works and have to keep the dog quiet and the baby quiet so my wife can squawk at me for snoring in my sleep?

Yours

(From Language and Humour by G. G. Pocheptsov.)

 

(25) a hypothesis -imitation of not only acoustic phenomena, but also certain unacoustic features, qualities of inanimate objects, actions and processes or that the meaning of the word can be regarded as the immediate relation of the sound group to the object.

e.g. fluffy (young chicken) ← softness and the downy quality of its plumage or its fur in the sound;

to glance, to glide, to slide, to slip convey by their sound the nature of the smooth, easy movement over a slippery surface;

shimmer, glimmer, glitter reproduce the wavering, tremulous nature of the faint light;

to rush, to dash, to flash reflect the brevity, swiftness and energetic nature of their corresponding actions;

thrill conveys the tremulous, tingling sensation it expresses.

However, this theory has not yet been properly developed.

 

Reduplication

(26) = doubling a stem:

1) without phonetic changes (bye-bye, coll. = good-bye)

2) with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant (ping-pong, chit-chat) = gradational reduplication.

(27) most words → informal groups: colloquialisms and slang:

walkie-talkie ("a portable radio");

riff-raff ("the worthless or disreputable element of society"; "the dregs of society");

chi-chi (sl. for chic as in a chi-chi girl);

In a modern novel an angry father accuses his teenager son of doing nothing but dilly-dallying all over the town.

(dilly-dallying — wasting time, doing nothing, loitering)

Another example:

Lady Bracknell. I think it is high time that Mr.Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd.

(shilly-shallying — irresolution, indecision)

(From The Importance of Being Earnest by O. Wilde)

 

Back-Formation (Reversion)

(28) The earliest examples:

to beg ← Fr. borrowing beggar, V ← N

to burgle ← burglar, reverse process

to cobble ← cobbler of N ← V (painter ← to paint)

↑ ↑

subtraction affixation

↑

back-formation or reversion

 

 

(29) tobutle ← butler,

to baby-sit ← baby-sitter,

to force-land ← forced landing,

to blood-transfuse ← blood-transfusion,

to fingerprint ← finger printings,

to straphang ← straphanger.

 

MEANING

(1) The linguistic science at present is not able to put forward a conclusive definition of meaning.

 

(2) word = unit of communication

↑

it has meaning = the most important characteristic

 

(3) Meaning – 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 abstract notions.

 

(4)Thought or Reference ← concept

no immediate relation between word and referent:

it is established only through the concept

Symbol Referent

↑

the word

 

(5) a hypothesis: concepts can only find their realisation through words.

=> thought is dormant till the word wakens it up; only when we hear a spoken word or read a printed word the corresponding concept springs into mind.

 

(6) concepts ↔ words

(mental phenomena) (linguistic phenomena)

↑

mechanism is not yet understood or described

 

 

(7) Semantics -branch of linguistics which specialises in the study of meaning

 

for for the meaning of one

expressive particular word in all

aspect of its varied aspects and

language nuances (i.e. the semantics

in general of a word =the meaning(s) of a word)

 

(8) "Semantics is 'language' in its broadest, most inclusive aspect. Sounds, words, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions are the tools oflanguage. Semantics is language's avowed purpose" (Mario Pei, The Study of Language)

 

(9) The meanings of all the utterances of a speech community ← the total experience of that community; arts, science, practical occupations, amusements, personal and family life.

 

(10)modern approach - inner form of the word (= meaning) presents semantic structure of the word