SECONDARY WAYS OF WORDBUILDING
SOUND INTERCHANGE
Sound interchange is the way of word-building when some sounds are
changed to form a new word. It is non-productive in Modern English, it was
productive in Old English and can be met in other Indo-European languages.
The causes of sound interchange can be different. It can be the result of
Ancient Ablaut which cannot be explained by the phonetic laws during the
period of the language development known to scientists., e.g. to strike -
stroke, to sing - song etc. It can be also the result of Ancient Umlaut or
vowel mutation which is the result of palatalizing the root vowel because
of the front vowel in the syllable coming after the root ( regressive
assimilation), e.g. hot - to heat (hotian), blood - to bleed (blodian) etc.
In many cases we have vowel and consonant interchange. In nouns we have
voiceless consonants and in verbs we have corresponding voiced consonants
because in Old English these consonants in nouns were at the end of the
word and in verbs in the intervocal position, e.g. bath - to bathe, life -
to live, breath - to breathe etc.
STRESS INTERCHANGE
Stress interchange can be mostly met in verbs and nouns of Romanic origin
: nouns have the stress on the first syllable and verbs on the last
syllable, e.g. `accent - to ac`cent. This phenomenon is explained in the
following way: French verbs and nouns had different structure when they
were borrowed into English, verbs had one syllable more than the
corresponding nouns. When these borrowings were assimilated in English the
stress in them was shifted to the previous syllable (the second from the
end) . Later on the last unstressed syllable in verbs borrowed from French
was dropped (the same as in native verbs) and after that the stress in
verbs was on the last syllable while in nouns it was on the first syllable.
As a result of it we have such pairs in English as : to af`fix -`affix, to
con`flict- `conflict, to ex`port -`export, to ex`tract - `extract etc. As
a result of stress interchange we have also vowel interchange in such words
because vowels are pronounced differently in stressed and unstressed
positions.
SOUND IMITATION
It is the way of word-building when a word is formed by imitating
different sounds. There are some semantic groups of words formed by means
of sound imitation
a) sounds produced by human beings, such as : to whisper, to giggle, to
mumble, to sneeze, to whistle etc.
b) sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, such as : to hiss, to
buzz, to bark, to moo, to twitter etc.
c) sounds produced by nature and objects, such as : to splash, to rustle,
to clatter, to bubble, to ding-dong, to tinkle etc.
The corresponding nouns are formed by means of conversion, e.g. clang (of
a bell), chatter (of children) etc.
BLENDS
Blends are words formed from a word-group or two synonyms. In blends two
ways of word-building are combined : abbreviation and composition. To form
a blend we clip the end of the first component (apocope) and the beginning
of the second component (apheresis) . As a result we have a compound-
shortened word. One of the first blends in English was the word «smog»
from two synonyms : smoke and fog which means smoke mixed with fog. From
the first component the beginning is taken, from the second one the end,
«o» is common for both of them.
Blends formed from two synonyms are: slanguange, to hustle, gasohol etc.
Mostly blends are formed from a word-group, such as : acromania (acronym
mania), cinemadict (cinema adict), chunnel (channel, canal), dramedy (drama
comedy), detectifiction (detective fiction), faction (fact fiction)
(fiction based on real facts), informecial (information commercial) ,
Medicare ( medical care) , magalog ( magazine catalogue) slimnastics
(slimming gymnastics), sociolite (social elite), slanguist ( slang
linguist) etc.
BACK FORMATION
It is the way of word-building when a word is formed by dropping the
final morpheme to form a new word. It is opposite to suffixation, that is
why it is called back formation. At first it appeared in the languauge as a
result of misunderstanding the structure of a borrowed word . Prof.
Yartseva explains this mistake by the influence of the whole system of the
language on separate words. E.g. it is typical of English to form nouns
denoting the agent of the action by adding the suffix -er to a verb stem
(speak- speaker). So when the French word «beggar» was borrowed into
English the final syllable «ar» was pronounced in the same way as the
English -er and Englishmen formed the verb «to beg» by dropping the end of
the noun. Other examples of back formation are : to accreditate (from
accreditation), to bach (from bachelor), to collocate (from collocation),
to enthuse (from enthusiasm), to compute (from computer), to emote (from
emotion) to reminisce ( from reminiscence) , to televise (from television)
etc.
As we can notice in cases of back formation the part-of-speech meaning
of the primary word is changed, verbs are formed from nouns.
SEMANTIC CHANGES
The meaning of a word can change in the course of time. Changes of
lexical meanings can be proved by comparing contexts of different times.
Transfer of the meaning is called lexico-semantic word-building. In such
cases the outer aspect of a word does not change.
The causes of semantic changes can be extra-linguistic and linguistic,
e.g. the change of the lexical meaning of the noun «pen» was due to extra-
linguistic causes. Primarily « pen» comes back to the Latin word «penna» (a
feather of a bird). As people wrote with goose pens the name was
transferred to steel pens which were later on used for writing. Still later
any instrument for writing was called « a pen».
On the other hand causes can be linguistic, e.g. the conflict of synonyms
when a perfect synonym of a native word is borrowed from some other
language one of them may specialize in its meaning, e.g. the noun «tide» in
Old English was polisemantic and denoted «time», «season», «hour». When the
French words «time», «season», «hour» were borrowed into English they
ousted the word «tide» in these meanings. It was specialized and now means
«regular rise and fall of the sea caused by attraction of the moon». The
meaning of a word can also change due to ellipsis, e.g. the word-group «a
train of carriages» had the meaning of «a row of carriages», later on «of
carriages» was dropped and the noun «train» changed its meaning, it is used
now in the function and with the meaning of the whole word-group.
Semantic changes have been classified by different scientists. The most
complete classification was suggested by a German scientist Herman Paul in
his work «Prinzipien des Sprachgeschichte». It is based on the logical
principle. He distiguishes two main ways where the semantic change is
gradual ( specialization and generalization), two momentary conscious
semantic changes (metaphor and metonymy) and also secondary ways: gradual
(elevation and degradation), momentary (hyperbole and litote).
SPECIALIZATION
It is a gradual process when a word passes from a general sphere to some
special sphere of communication, e.g. «case» has a general meaning
«circumstances in which a person or a thing is». It is specialized in its
meaning when used in law (a law suit), in grammar (a form in the paradigm
of a noun), in medicine (a patient, an illness). The difference between
these meanings is revealed in the context.
The meaning of a word can specialize when it remains in the general
usage. It happens in the case of the conflict between two absolute synonyms
when one of them must specialize in its meaning to remain in the language,
e.g. the native word «meat» had the meaning «food», this meaning is
preserved in the compound «sweetmeats». The meaning «edible flesh» was
formed when the word «food», its absolute synonym, won in the conflict of
absolute synonyms (both words are native). The English verb «starve» was
specialized in its meaning after the Scandinavian verb «die» was borrowed
into English. «Die» became the general verb with this meaning because in
English there were the noun «death» and the adjective «dead». «Starve» got
the meaning «to die of hunger» .
The third way of specialization is the formation of Proper names from
common nouns, it is often used in toponimics, e.g. the City - the business
part of London, Oxford - university town in England, the Tower -originally
a fortress and palace, later -a prison, now - a museum.
The fourth way of specialization is ellipsis. In such cases primaraly we
have a word-group of the type «attribute + noun», which is used constantly
in a definite situation. Due to it the attribute can be dropped and the
noun can get the meaning of the whole word-group, e.g. «room» originally
meant «space», this meaning is retained in the adjective «roomy» and word
combinations: «no room for», «to take room», «to take no room». The
meaning of the word «room « was specialized because it was often used in
the combinations: «dining room», «sleeping room» which meant «space for
dining» , «space for sleeping».
GENERALIZATION
It is a process contrary to specializaton, in such cases the meaning of a
word becomes more general in the course of time.
The transfer from a concrete meaning to an abstract one is most frequent,
e.g. «ready» (a derivative from the verb «ridan» - «ride») meant «prepared
for a ride», now its meaning is «prepared for anything». «Journey» was
borrowed from French with the meaning «one day trip», now it means «a trip
of any duration».
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