Analytical features ofword-building

Word-building leads to the generation of a new lexical meaning and in the majority of cases it also results in the generation of a new part of speech. A peculiar feature E. word-building is influenced by such a characteristic of many E. words as mono-syllabism.

Old E. was a synthetic language and like in modern Russian notional parts of speech had their own their ending here which ascribe them to the definite classes. But in the course of the times unstressed endings were reduced, they were weakly pronounced and lately dropped completely. As a result a great number of E. words belonging to the Anglo-Saxon stock of words were shortened and retained only the root syllable. This is the phenomenon of mono-syllabism. Due to the conversion is very popular in modern language. So no suffix or prefix is used, a word or certain part of speech is just placed into the syntactic position of a word of anothe r p.s. and as result it gets its grammatical features.

Convertives can be of 2 kinds: synchronic and diachronic. Diachronic ones were originally 2 different words and coincided only in the course of time. Synchronic ones appear on the spot, ‘Don’t finger at things’.

3) Phrasal verbs: E. verbs belonging to the oldest layer of the voc. combine with preposition-like-verbs which are called post-positives (послелоги). To put on – to dress; to put up with something; put up at a hotel (зарегистрироваться); make out – understand; make up for something – compensate.

Many of these combinations, which formally look like phrases but function as a single lexical unit, have synonyms among single verbs. Foreigner most usually prefer single verbs especially if these roots represented in their languages.

4) Analytical verbs:

V+N (to have a smoke, make a decision, etc.) These combinations have a single verb related to the noun (to have a smoke = to smoke). There’s a slight aspectual difference between them: a momentary action, limited in time – process without any limits in time.

Adj. + N – make the meaning of the action more precise (to take a long glance; to make the final decision).

5) Relation of compounds: In E. three word groups are easily involved into the process of compound derivation (to watch a bird – watching a bird – a bird-watcher). In the same way the phrase ‘to sit for a baby’ serves as the basis of the compound word ‘to baby-sit’ and ‘’baby-sitter’.

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