cyclotron, synchrophasotron, etc.
5) Suffixes are also classified as to the degree of their productivity.
Distinction is usually made between dead and living affixes. Dead affixes
are described as those which are no longer felt in Modern English as
component parts of words; they have so fused with the base of the word as
to lose their independence completely. It is only by special etymological
analysis that they may be singled out, e. g. –d in dead, seed, –le, –l,
–el in bundle, sail, hovel; –ock in hillock; –lock in wedlock; –t in
flight, gift, height. It is quite clear that dead suffixes are irrelevant
to present-day English word-formation, they belong in its diachronic
study.
Living affixes may be easily singled out from a word, e. g. the noun-
forming suffixes –ness, –dom, –hood, –age, –ance, as in darkness,
freedom, childhood, marriage, assistance, etc. or the adjective-forming
suffixes –en, –ous, –ive, –ful, –y as in wooden, poisonous, active,
hopeful, stony, etc.
However, not all living derivational affixes of Modern English possess
the ability to coin new words. Some of them may be employed to coin new
words on the spur of the moment, others cannot, so that they are
different from the point of view of their productivity. Accordingly they
fall into two basic classes — productive and non-productive word-building
affixes.
It has been pointed out that linguists disagree as to what is meant by
the productivity of derivational affixes.
Following the first approach all living affixes should be considered
productive in varying degrees from highly-productive (e. g. –er, –ish,
–less, re–, etc.) to non-productive (e. g. –ard, –cy, –ive, etc.).
Consequently it becomes important to describe the constraints imposed on
and the factors favouring the productivity of affixational patterns and
individual affixes. The degree of productivity of affixational patterns
very much depends on the structural, lexico-grammatical and semantic
nature of bases and the meaning of the affix. For instance, the analysis
of the bases from which the suffix –ize can derive verbs reveals that it
is most productive with noun-stems, adjective-stems also favour ifs
productivity, whereas verb-stems and adverb-stems do not, e. g. criticize
(critic), organize (organ), itemize (item), mobilize (mobile), localize
(local), etc. Comparison of the semantic structure of a verb in –ize with
that of the base it is built on shows that the number of meanings of the
stem usually exceeds that of the verb and that its basic meaning favours
the productivity of the suffix –ize to a greater degree than its marginal
meanings, e. g. to characterize — character, to moralize — moral, to
dramatize — drama, etc.
The treatment of certain affixes as non-productive naturally also depends
on the concept of productivity. The current definition of non-productive
derivational affixes as those which cannot hg used in Modern English for
the coining of new words is rather vague and maybe interpreted in
different ways. Following the definition the term non-productive refers
only to the affixes unlikely to be used for the formation of new words,
e. g. –ous, –th, fore– and some others (famous, depth, foresee).
If one accepts the other concept of productivity mentioned above, then
non-productive affixes must be defined as those that cannot be used for
the formation of occasional words and, consequently, such affixes as
–dom, –ship, –ful, –en, –ify, –ate and many others are to be regarded as
non-productive.
The theory of relative productivity of derivational affixes is also
corroborated by some other observations made on English word-formation.
For instance, different productive affixes are found in different periods
of the history of the language. It is extremely significant, for example,
that out of the seven verb-forming suffixes of the Old English period
only one has survived up to the present time with a very low degree of
productivity, namely the suffix –en (e. g. to soften, to darken, to
whiten).
A derivational affix may become productive in just one meaning because
that meaning is specially needed by the community at a particular phase
in its history. This may be well illustrated by the prefix de– in the
sense of ‘undo what has been done, reverse an action or process’, e. g.
deacidify (paint spray), decasualize (dock labour), decentralize
(government or management), deration (eggs and butter), de-reserve
(medical students), desegregate (coloured children), and so on.
Furthermore, there are cases when a derivational affix being
nonproductive in the non-specialized section of the vocabulary is used to
coin scientific or technical terms. This is the case, for instance, with
the suffix –ance which has been used to form some terms in Electrical
Engineering, e. g. capacitance, impedance, reactance. The same is true of
the suffix –ity which has been used to form terms in physics, and
chemistry such as alkalinity, luminosity, emissivity and some others.
Conversion, one of the principal ways of forming words in Modern English
is highly productive in replenishing the English word-stock with new
words. The term conversion, which some linguists find inadequate, refers
to the numerous cases of phonetic identity of word-forms, primarily the
so-called initial forms, of two words belonging to different parts of
speech. This may be illustrated by the following cases: work — to work;
love — to love; paper — to paper; brief — to brief, etc. As a rule we
deal with simple words, although there are a few exceptions, e.g.
wireless — to wireless.
It will be recalled that, although inflectional categories have been
greatly reduced in English in the last eight or nine centuries, there is
a certain difference on the morphological level between various parts of
speech, primarily between nouns and verbs. For instance, there is a clear-
cut difference in Modern English between the noun doctor and the verb to
doctor — each exists in the language as a unity of its word-forms and
variants, not as one form doctor. It is true that some of the forms are
identical in sound, i.e. homonymous, but there is a great distinction
between them, as they are both grammatically and semantically different.
If we regard such word-pairs as doctor — to doctor, water — to water,
brief — to brief from the angle of their morphemic structure, we see that
they are all root-words. On the derivational level, however, one of them
should be referred to derived words, as it belongs to a different part of
speech and is understood through semantic and structural relations with
the other, i.e. is motivated by it. Consequently, the question arises:
what serves as a word-building means in these cases? It would appear that
the noun is formed from the verb (or vice versa) without any
morphological change, but if we probe deeper into the matter, we
inevitably come to the conclusion that the two words differ in the
paradigm. Thus it is the paradigm that is used as a word-building means.
Hence, we may define conversion as the formation of a new word through
changes in its paradigm.
It is necessary to call attention to the fact that the paradigm plays a
significant role in the process of word-formation in general and not only
in the case of conversion. Thus, the noun cooker (in gas-cooker) is
formed from the word to cook not only by the addition of the suffix –er,
but also by the change in its paradigm. However, in this case, the role
played by the paradigm as a word-building means is less obvious, as the
word-building suffix –er comes to the fore. Therefore, conversion is
characterized not simply by the use of the paradigm as a word-building
means, but by the formation of a new word solely by means of changing its
paradigm. Hence, the change of paradigm is the only word-building means
of conversion. As a paradigm is a morphological category conversion can
be described as a morphological way of forming words.
Compounding or word-composition is one of the productive types of word-
formation in Modern English. Composition like all other ways of deriving
words has its own peculiarities as to the means used, the nature of bases
and their distribution, as to the range of application, the scope of
semantic classes and the factors conducive to productivity.
Compounds, as has been mentioned elsewhere, are made up of two ICs which
are both derivational bases. Compound words are inseparable vocabulary
units. They are formally and semantically dependent on the constituent
bases and the semantic relations between them which mirror the relations
between the motivating units. The ICs of compound words represent bases
of all three structural types. The bases built on stems may be of
different degree of complexity as, for example, week-end, office-
management, postage-stamp, aircraft-carrier, fancy-dress-maker, etc.
However, this complexity of structure of bases is not typical of the bulk
of Modern English compounds.
In this connection care should be taken not to confuse compound words
with polymorphic words of secondary derivation, i.e. derivatives built
according to an affixal pattern but on a compound stem for its base such
