Reduplication

In reduplication new words are made by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic changes as in bye-bye (coll, for good-bye) or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant as in ping-pong, chit-chat (болтовня). This second type is called gradational reduplication.

Stylistically speaking, most words made by reduplication represent informal groups: colloquialisms and slang. E.g. walkie-talkie (a portable radio), riff-raff (the dregs of society – подонки, сброд), chi-chi (slang for chic (шик) as in chi-chi girl)).

Back-Formation (Reversion)

The earliest examples of this type of word-building are the verb to beg that was made from the French borrowing beggar, to burgle from burglar, to cobble from cobbler. In all these cases the verb was made from the noun by subtracting what was mistakenly associated with the English suffix - er. The pattern of the type to work – worker was firmly established in the subconscious of English-speaking people at the time when these formations appeared, and it was taken for granted that any noun denoting profession or occupation is certain to have a corresponding verb of the same root. So, in the case of the verbs to beg, to burgle, to cobble (чинить обувь) the process was reversed: instead of the noun made from a verb by affixation (as in painter from to paint), a verb was produced from a noun by subtraction. That is why this type of word-building received the name of back-formation or reversion.

Answer these questions.

1. What is understood by composition? What do we call words made by this type of word-building?

2. Into what groups and subgroups can compounds be subdivided structurally? Illustrate your answer with examples.

3. Which types of composition are productive in Modern English?

4. What are the interrelationships between the meaning of a compound word and the meanings of its constituent parts?

5. What are the criteria for distinguishing between a compound and a word-combination?

6. What are the italicized elements in the words given below? What makes them different from affixes? from stems?

states man, water proof, cat- like.

7. What are the two processes of making shortenings? Explain the productivity of this way of word-building and stylistic characteristics of shortened words. Give examples.

8. What minor processes of word-building do you know? Describe them and illustrate your answer with examples.

Vocabulary

ambiguous двусмысленный

arbitrary произвольный

back-formation, reversion обратное словообразование

blend сочетаться

cohesion сцепление

contribute способствовать

correlation соотношение

enigmatic загадочный

homogeneous однородный

hyphenated дефисный, через дефис

misleading вводящий в заблуждение

onomatopoeia ономатопея, звукоподражание

overabundance избыток

preserve сохранять

reduplication удвоение

gradational reduplication частичное повторение

semi-affixes полуаффиксы

subconscious подсознание

subtraction вычитание

trace след, отпечаток

Lecture 8

What is “Meaning”?

(pp. 129-142)

Meaning.

2. Semantics.

3. Polysemy.

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