Lecture 3. Productive ways of word-building.

Before turning to the various processes of making words, it would be useful to analyse the related problem of the composition of words, i.e. of their constituent parts.

It 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 and affixes. The latter,in their turn, fall into prefixes which precede the root in the structure of the word and suffixes which follow the root.

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

Affixation is one of the most productive ways of word-building throughout the history of English. It consists in adding an affix to the stem of a definite part of speech. Affixation is divided into suffixation and prefixation.Suffixation. The main function of suffixes in Modern English is to form one part of speech from another, the secondary function is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. (e.g. «educate» is a verb, «educatee» is a noun, and «music» is a noun, «musicdom» is also a noun).There are different classifications of suffixes: 1.Part-of-speech classification. 2.Semantic classification. Suffixes changing the lexical meaning of the stem can be subdivided into groups. 4.Origin of suffixes. 5.Productivity.

Prefixation is the formation of words by means of adding a prefix to the stem. In English it is characteristic for forming verbs. Prefixes can be classified according to the nature of words in which they are used: prefixes used in notional words and prefixes used in functional words. Prefixes used in notional words are proper prefixes which are bound morphemes, e.g. un-(unhappy). Prefixes used in functional words are semi-bound morphemes because they are met in the language as words, e.g. over- (overhead) (cf over the table).

Prefixes can be classified according to different principles: 1. Semantic classification: a) prefixes of negative meaning, such as: in- (invaluable), non- (nonformals), un- (unfree) etc, b) prefixes denoting repetition or reversal actions, such as: de- (decolonize), re- (revegetation), dis- (disconnect), c) prefixes denoting time, space, degree relations, such as: inter- (interplanetary), hyper- (hypertension), ex- (ex-student), pre- (pre-election), over- (overdrugging) etc.

2. Origin of prefixes: a) native (Germanic), such as: un-, over-, under- etc. b) Romanic, such as: in-, de-, ex-, re- etc. c) Greek, such as: sym-, hyper- etc.

Conversion. Conversion is sometimes referred to as an affixless way of word-building or even affixless derivation. 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 through 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 such a phenomena in modern English, when two or more words belong to different part of speech and posses the same form (to smile-a smile, fall-to fall). Conversion may be the result of shading of English endings. This shedding has made it possible to use a great many words in functions of different part of speech without any change of the form. The historical changes may be briefly outlined as follows: in O.E. a verb and a noun of the same root were distinguished by their endings. For ex: the verb ‘to love’ had a form (o.e.) ‘lufian’. This verb had personal conjunctions. The noun ‘love’ had the form ‘lufu’ with different case endings. But in the course of time, the personal and case endings were lost. Then there were some changes with vowels. UA in 17 century (great vowel shift) and as a result of such historical changes we have 1 form for a noun and for a verb.
One should guard against thinking that every case of noun and verb (verb and adjective, adjective and noun, etc.) with the same morphemic shape results from conversion. There are numerous pairs of words (e. g. love, n. — to love, v.; work, n. — to work, v.; drink, n. — to drink, v., etc.) which did, not occur due to conversion but coincided as 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.). On the other hand, it is quite true that the 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.
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).

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