Реферат: English Linguistics Essay Research Paper English Linguistics

drill. Another example is ,toh’, which means to chisel, and ,trnoh’, which means a chisel.

2.6. Coinage

One of the least common word-formation processes in English is coinage, which means the invention of totally new words. The most typical sources are trade names for a company s product which become general terms. Examples are aspirin, nylon, Levi`s, kleenex and teflon. Sometimes there may be a technical origin [e.g. te(tra)-fl(uor)-on] for such terms, but after their first coinage, they tend to become everyday words in the language.

2.7. Blending

Another way of combining two seperate forms in order to produce a new word is called blending. It is achieved by taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word.

Examples: In some parts of the USA, there is a product which is used like gasoline, but it is made from alcohol, so its blended term is gasohol;

To combine the effects of smoke and fog, you talk about smog. Some other examples are bit (binary/digit), brunch (breakfast/lunch), motel (motor/hotel), and the Chunnel (channel/tunnel) which connects England and France.

Our modern life has given many possibilities for blending: someone who is crazy about video is called a videot; Infotainment (information/entertainment) and simulcast (simultaneous/broadcast) are also new blends from life with television.

To describe the mixing of languages , people refer to Franglais (French/English) and Spanglish (Spanish/English). Everyone who has a computer knows the term modem (modulator/demodulator).

2.8. Clipping

Clipping is a process in which the element of reduction is even more apparent than in blending. It occurs when a word of more than one syllable (facsimile) is reduced to a shorter form (fax). This is often used in casual speech. Gasoline is called gas, advertisement is clipped to ad, brassiere to bra, cabriolet to cab and condominium to condo. A fanatic person is a fan. Other common examples are flu, plane, phone and sitcom ( situation comedy ).

English speakers often clip each other s names, as in Al, Ed, Mike, Sam, Sue and Tom. Educational terms seem to encourage clipping because nearly every word gets reduced, as in exam, gym, lab, math, chem, and prof.

2.9. Acronyms

Acronyms are formed from the initial letters of a set of other words, such as CD (compact disk) or VCR (video cassette recorder). A more typical way is to pronounce acronyms as single words, as in NATO, UNESCO, AIDS or NASA. These acronyms have kept their capital letters, but many acronyms lose their capital letters to become everyday terms such as laser (radio detecting and ranging) and zip (zone improvement plan) code. Names for organizations are often designed to have their acronym represent appropriate term, as in Women Against Rape (WAR). The acronyms of recent innovations in banking are regularly used with one of their elements repeated, as in I sometimes forget my PIN (personal identification number) number when I go to the ATM ( automatic teller machine) machine .

2.10. Multiple processes

There are some expressions which have become a new term by the combination of more than one word-formation process.

Examples: deli is a combination between borrowing [delicatessen (from German)] and clipping of the borrowed form. Forms which begin as acronyms can also undergo other processes, as in the use of lase as a verb, the result of backformation from laser. An acronym that never seems to have had capital letters comes from young urban professional plus the -ie suffix, to produce the word yuppie. The formation of this new word was made with a quite different process, known as analogy, whereby words are formed to be similar in some way to existing words.Yuppie was made possible as a new word by the earlier existence of hippie and the other short-lived analogy yippie.

Many of such forms can have a very short life-span. However, they are generally accepted in a language when they appear in a dictionary.

Reference

Yule, George The study of Language , 2nd ed; Cambridge University Press 1997