Учебное пособие: Lectures in Contrastive Lexicology of the English and Ukrainian Languages
Back formation may be also based on the analogy of inflectional forms as testified by the singular nouns pea and cherry. Pea (Plural peas) is from ME pese < OE pise< Lat. pisa, Plural pesum. The ending s being the most frequent mark of the plural in English, English speakers thought that sweet peas(e) was a plural and turned peas(e)(soup into pea soup. Cherry is from OFr. cherise and the se was dropped for exactly the same reason.
At the present time back formation is applied intentionally. At the beginning of the 19th century to diddle appeared by means of back formation from the surname Jeremy Diddler (the character in J.Kenney’s work “Raising the Wind”. At the beginning of the 20th century the verb to maffick appeared under the influence of the spirit which was in London during Anglo-boerish war after the town Mafeking yielded.
Back formation is held due to the rules of the development of the English language. It is not by chance that such words as to beg, to peeve, to resurrect were formed on the analogy of the existing word-building pattern.
8. Blending
The term blending is used to designate the method of merging parts of words (not morphemes) into one new word. The result of it is a blend, also known as a portmanteau word. It was Lewis Carroll , the author of the well-known book “Alice in Wonderland”, who called such creations portmanteau words and described them as words into which two meanings are packed like in a portmanteau.
We always look for a way of saving time. This explains the growing popularity of blends. Why use two words if one will do? If, for example, you get up too late for breakfast and too early for lunch you can have brunch. If a state decides to execute a criminal with the aid of electricity it electrocutes him. A telegram sent by cable is a cablegram. The astronaut has a tool, a space hammer, which is known as spammer. News that is broadcast is a newscast.If фрукт is added to йогурт you will getфругурт.
Many blends are short-lived. A fair proportion has become established in the vocabulary. In most cases blends belong to the colloquial layer of the vocabulary sometimes bordering on slang: slanguage = slang + language, pollutician = pollute + politician.
The process when the final part of one word and the initial part of another coincide is called telescoping because the words seem to slide into one another like sections of a telescope: infanticipate = infant + anticipate.
9. Sound Interchange
Another term for sound interchange is gradation. It is the feature that is characteristic of all Indo-European languages. In English sound interchange used to play a certain role in word-building: sit – sat, fall – fell. Vowel interchange is the most widespread case: food – feed, tooth – teeth, стіл – стола. Consonant interchange is a more rare case: advice – advise, сів - сіла. In other cases both vowel and consonant interchange takes place: bath – to bathe, grass – to graze, сидіти - село. Sometimessoundinterchange is accompaniedbyaffixation:deep – depth, long – length.
10. Stress Interchange
Many English verbs of Latin-French origin are distinguished from the corresponding nouns by the position of the stress: 'conduct – to con'duct, 'present – to pre'sent, 'export – to ex'port, 'import – to im'port. Stress interchange is not restricted to pairs of words consisting of a noun and a verb. Adjectives and adverbs can undergo this process: 'frequent - to fre'quent, 'absent – to ab'sent. Stress distinction is, however, neither productive nor regular. There are many denominal verbs that are forestressed and thus homonymous with the corresponding nouns: 'figure – to 'figure, 'programme – to'programme. There is a large group of disyllabic loan words that retain the stress on the second syllable both in nouns and verbs: ac'count – to ac'count, de'feat – to de'feat.
In the Ukrainian language homonyms can also be formed by means of stress interchange:до'рога – доро'га, дере'вина – дереви'на.
It is worth noting that stress alone, unaccompanied by any other differentiating factor, does not seem to provide a very effective means of distinguishing words and that is, probably, the reason why oppositions of this kind are neither regular nor productive.
11 . Sound Imitation
Other terms for sound imitation are onomatopoeia and echoism. Words coined by this type of word building are made by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds, human beings and inanimate objects.
Dogs bark, cocks cock-a-doodle-doo, ducks quack, frogs croak, cats mew (miaow, meow), cows moo (low). Гав-гав, кукуріку, кря-кря, ква-ква, мяу: промовляють українські тварини та птахи.
There is a hypothesis that sound imitation as a way of word building should be viewed as something much wider than just the production of words by the imitation of purely acoustic phenomena. Some scholars suggest that words may imitate through their sound form certain acoustic features and qualities of inanimate objects, actions or that the meaning of the word can be regarded as the immediate relation of the sound group to the object. If a young chicken or kitten is described as fluffy there seems to be something in the sound of the adjective that conveys softness. To glance, to glide, to slide, to slip convey the meaning of an easy movement over a slippery surface. To rush, to dash, to flash render the meaning of brevity, swiftness.
Some scholars have given serious consideration to this theory. However, it has not yet been properly developed.
THE SEMANTIC STRUCTURE OF WORDS
1. Semasiology as a branch of Linguistics.
2. The word and its meaning.
3. Types of meaning.
4. Polysemy of English and Ukrainian words.
5. The main semantic processes.
1. Semasiology as a Branch of Linguistics
The branch of the study of language concerned with the meaning of words and word equivalents is called semasiology. The name comes from the Greek word semasia meaning signification. As semasiology deals not with every kind of meaning but with the lexical meaning only, it may be regarded as a branch of Lexicology.
This does not mean that a semasiologist need not pay attention to the grammatical meaning. On the contrary, the grammatical meaning must be taken into consideration in so far as it bears a specific influence upon the lexical meaning.
If treated diachronically, semasiology studies the change in meaning which words undergo. Descriptive synchronic approach demands a study not of individual words but of semantic structures typical of the language studied and of its general semantic system.
Sometimes the words semasiology and semantics are used indiscriminately. They are really synonyms but the word semasiology has one meaning, the word semantics has several meanings.