Реферат: English Linguistics Essay Research Paper English Linguistics

English Linguistics Essay, Research Paper

English Linguistics

Words and word-formation processes in the English Language

1. Introduction

In our daily use of language we often are not aware of word-formation processes

which create, invent, produce or form new words in a language. Most of the times we have no problems with understanding these new words (=neologism). Furthermore we know immediately the various forms of that new word and include them all in our vocabulary. Sometimes we even may build them ourselves.This ability to adopt, understand, and use such a new word results from the fact that these word-formation processes are based on certain rules and regulations. Some of them are mentioned and explained at the following pages and examples are given of how the results of those processes are used in the English language.

2. Word-Formation Processes

These processes have been at work for some time, and many words in daily use today were, at one time, considered to be misuses of the language. Nowadays it is quite difficult to understand why in the early nineteenth century a word like handbook was called a tasteless innovation . Yet many terms we create cause similar outcries. But nevertheless, these processes are very important for a language and ist users, because the constant creation of new terms and new uses of old terms are a sign of vitality, flexibility, and creativeness. They shape and change a language by strengthen ist ability to express things.

2.1. Borrowing

One of the most common ways to produce new words is the process called borrowing, which is the taking over of words from other languages. The English language has always been adopting so-called loanwords from other languages. Some examples are alcohol (Arabic origin), croissant (French origin), yogurt (Turkish origin), pretzel and kindergarten (both German origin). Vice versa it is just the same. The Japanese use the word suupaamaaketto ( supermarket ) and rajio ( radio ). In Hungaria people talk about sport, klub and futbal, and the French discuss problems of le stress, over a glass of le whiky, during le weekend. The Germans really love to adopt foreign words, especially English ones, in their language. Words like Bungee-jumping , Rollerskates , Playstation , Skate-board , Mountainbike and Walkman have become more and more a part of the German vocabulary.

A special kind of borrowing is called loan-translation, or calque, which means that each individual meaningful part (morpheme) of a word is translated literally and put together as a new word. A very good example is un gratteciel, a French term, whose literal in comparison to its exact translation skyscraper would be a scrape-sky’. Furthermore the English term superman is a loan-translation of the German word xbermensch. Not at least the expression loan-word itself is probably derived from the German term Lehnwort. Nowadays, some Spanish speakers eat perros calientes (literally dogs hot ), or hot dogs.

2.2. Compounding

In some examples we have just considered, that the joining of two separate words often produces a neologism with a single form. In German, as we have seen, the words Lehn and Wort are combined to produce Lehnwort. This process of combining or joining, technically known as compounding, is in contrast to languages like French and Spanish frequently used in languages like German and English. Furthermore it can be found in languages like Hmong, which is spoken in South East Asia.

English examples would be bookcase, doorknob, waterbed, birdbath, handsaw, textbook, and football. The German equivalences would be B cherregal, T rklinke, Wasserbett, Vogelbad, Hands ge, Textbuch und Fuxball. An example from Hmong would be hwj (meaning pot ) and kais (meaning spout ) which are joined to create hwjkais (meaning kettle’). The forms pajkws ( flower + corn = popcorn ) and hnabloojtes ( bag + cover + hand = glove ) are recent creations.

2.3. Backformation

A very specialized kind of word-formation process is called backformation. Normally one type of a word is changed to produce a different type of the same word. Usually a noun is reduced to a verb. For example the verb to televise’ was produced from the noun television. Moreover to donate was created out of donation, to babysitt from babysitting and so on.

One rule of backformation seems to be first to take a noun with the ending -er or a similar ending like -or, second to take this last syllable away and third to create the correspondending verb like e.g. painter – paint or editor – edit. In Ausralian and British English a particular process known as hypocorisms is very popular. lt means that a word is reduced to one syllable and after that -v or -ie is added to its end. Terms such as movie (originally running moving pictures), telly (originally running television), and hankie (meaning handkerchief) have been formed by this way.

2.4. Conversion

A relatively new and therefore mainly productive process in modern English is known as conversion., category change or functional shift. In contrast to backformation a word changes its grammatical form without being altered at all. Nouns as e.g. paper, butter and vacation are used as a verb. According to this rule you can paper a wall, have buttered your slice of bread and vacationed in Norway. Furthermore verbs including phrasal verbs can be used as nouns (a guess, a must, a printout, a takeover) or become adjectives (a see-through material), and adjectives can work as verbs or nouns (to dirty, to empty, a crazy, a nasty). Not to forget words like up and down can be used as nouns, too, e.g. to up the prices.

Most of the conversions are accepted by all kinds of people immediately without any difficulties. One exception is the new creation to impact, resulting from the noun impact. Last of all it must be mentioned that some converted forms change essentially in their meaning. In some contexts the verb to doctor e.g. has a negative meaning, like for examle to falsify or to adulterate. The same is with to total, which may mean to wreck, and with the expression to give sb a runaround, which means to pull the wool over sb’s eyes.

2.5. Derivation

The most frequent word-formation process is known as derivation, which is achieved by adding affixes to any kind of word. Affixes, which are bound morphemes, can be divided into prefixes, suffixes and infixes. In the English language only the first and the second type of affixes appears. The third one is rather common in several other languages like e.g. Kamhmu, which is spoken in South Asia.

2.5.1. Prefixes

Affixes which are added to the beginning of a word are called prefixes. Some very common examples arc con-, in-, dis-, mis-, and pre-. Thus words like confident, confuse, information, indifference, disgust, disharmony, miscalculation, mistake, prediction, and preparation are coming to existence.

2.5.2. Suffixes

Suffixes are affixes which are added to the end of a word. Some very popular examples are

-able, -al, -dom, -ful, -ness, and -ous. Those words like comparable, durable, criminal, portrayal, freedom, wisdom, kindness, greatness, dangerous, and mysterious are created.

2.5.3. Infixes

If an affix is inserted into another word it is called an infix. As already mentioned above it normally doesn’t occur in English, but there are some exceptions in spoken English. If ,,someone is very ,much annoyed it may happen that he utters an oath such as Absogoddamlutely or ,,Unfuckingbelievable”

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