LECTURE 3 Word-Building

3.1 Types of word-building

3.2 Derivation
3.3 Conversion
3.4 Composition
3.5 Shortening

3.1 Types of word-building

All morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots (or radicals) and
affixes. The latter, in their turn, fall into prefixes which precede the root in the
structure of the word (as in re-read, mis-pronounce, unwell) and suffixes which
follow the root (as in teach-er, cur-able).
Words which consist of a root and an affix (or several affixes) are called
derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word-building
known as affixation (or derivation).
Derived words are extremely numerous in the English vocabulary. Successfully
competing with this structural type is the so-called root word which has only a root
morpheme in its structure. This type has been greatly enlarged by the type of word-
building called conversion (e.g. to hand, v. formed from the noun hand; to pale, v.
from pale, adj.; a find, n. from to find, v.; etc.).
Another wide-spread word-structure is a compound word consisting of two or
more stems (e.g. dining-room, bluebell, mother-in-law, good-for-nothing). Words
of this structural type are produced by the word-building process called
composition.
The somewhat odd-looking words like pram, lab, M. P., V-day, H-bomb are
called shortenings, contractions or curtailed words which are produced by the
way of word-building called shortening (contraction).
The four types (root words, derived words, compounds, shortenings) represent
the main structural types of Modem English words, and conversion, derivation and
composition the most productive ways of word-building.
3.2 Derivation
The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or
several affixes to some root morpheme. Affixes preceding the root are called
prefixes, those following it – suffixes.
Any affix, which is a type of morpheme, is generally defined as the smallest
indivisible component of the word possessing a meaning of its own. Meanings of
affixes are specific and considerably differ from those of root morphemes. Affixes
have widely generalized meanings and refer the concept conveyed by the whole
word to a certain category, which is vast and all-embracing. So, the noun-forming
suffix -er could be roughly defined as designating persons from the object of their
occupation or labour (painter - the one who paints) or from their place of origin or
abode (southerner - the one living in the South). The adjective-forming suffix -ful
has the meaning of "full of, "characterized by" (beautiful, careful) whereas -ish
may often imply insufficiency of quality (greenish green, but not quite; youngish -
not quite young but looking it).
 From the etymological point of view affixes can be native and borrowed.
Among the former the following frequent morphemes are observed:
noun-forming : -er (painter), -ness (loneliness), -ship (friendship), -dom
(kingdom), -ing (meaning), -hood (childhood), -th (truth);
adjective-forming: -y (sunny), -ish (boyish), -ful (skillful), -less (useless), -en
(golden), -some (tiresome);
verb-forming: -en (shorten), -ate (facilitate), -ize (energize), -ify (terrify);
adverb-forming: -ly (simply);
numeral-forming: -teen (14), -th (14th), -ty (60).
As for affixes of foreign origin they can be regarded as borrowed only after
they have begun an independent and productive life in the recipient language.
Thus, readable has an English root and a suffix derived from Latin (-abilis) and
borrowed through French (eatable, usable). The suffix of an agent –ist derived
from Greek through French and Italian (dentist, fatalist).
Affixes can be classified into productive and non-productive types. By
productive affixes we mean the ones, which take part in deriving new words in a
particular period of language development. E.g., nowadays a new and most
productive affix is the morpheme e- : e-mail, e-letter, e-shopping.
It should be born in mind that frequency does not mean productivity. Such
frequent affixes as –full, -ly (native), -ant, -ent (Latin) are no longer used in word
derivation.
3.3 Conversion
When in a book-review a book is referred to as a splendid read, is read to be
regarded as a verb or a noun? What part of speech is room in the sentence: 1 was to
room with another girl called Jessie.
This type of questions naturally arises when one deals with words produced by
conversion, one of the most productive ways of modem English word-building.
There are several terms to name this word-building process. Modern American
linguists prefer the term functional shift, European scholars use the term
conversion, O.Esperson’s term is zero-derivation.
Conversion consists in making a new word from some existing word by
changing the category of a part speech, the morphemic shape of the original word
remaining unchanged. The new word has a meaning which differs from that of the
original one though it can more or less be easily associated with it. It has also a
new paradigm peculiar to its new category as a part of speech.
Conversion is a type of word-building used mainly to form verbs from nouns
and more rarely from other parts of speech, e.g. from adjectives as in the sentence
He dirtied his coat or from adverbs as in the sentence He downed a glass of orange
juice; and nouns from verbs, e.g. He gave the flat a nice clean and rarely from
other parts of speech, e.g. from conjunctions If ifs and ans were pots and pans. (an
= if, dial., arch.).
 It is of special interest to dwell upon the most typical semantic relations
between the words in conversion pairs. Thus in the group of verbs converted from
nouns the converted verb may denote:

1) an action characteristic of an object denoted by the noun (to dog – to

follow closely as a dog does; to clerk – to do the work of a clerk)

2) instrumental use of an object denoted by the noun (to hand – to give with
the hand; to soap – to rub oneself with soap)

3) acquisition of the object denoted by the noun (to fish – to catch fish, to
mouse – to hunt for or catch a mouse)

4) deprivation of the object or substance denoted by the noun (to dust – to

remove dust by wiping or brushing; to stone – to remove the stones from
fruit)

5) spending the time denoted by the noun ( to vocation – to spend one’s

vocation at some place, to honeymoon – to spend a honeymoon)

6) putting something in a place denoted by the noun (to pocket – to put

something. Into one’s pocket, to bottle – to put something into bottles)

Nouns converted from verbs may denote;

1) an instance of the action ( a knock – a firm sharp sound on a door in order

to attract attention; a laugh – an act , a sound of laughing)
2) the result of the action denoted by the verb (a cut – a wound made by
cutting, a find – a thing that has been found, especially one that is
valuable and useful)
3) the doer of the action denoted by the verb (a help – a person who helps; a
cheat – a person who cheats)
4) the place of the action denoted by the verb (a dump – a place where a lot
of rubbish is dumped,; a drive – a path or road for driving)
The verbs converted from adjectives usually denote the action of imparting
or acquiring the quality denoted by the adjective (to firm – to become or make
something firm; to cool – to make or become cool).

Conversion is a wide-spread and varied source of new vocabulary as well as

one of the highest word producing categories in Modern English. Children produce
innovations with the help of conversion from a very early age. They may say:
”Mummy trousers me” in getting dressed; or “I broomed her” after hitting his baby
sister with a toy broom.
 3.4 Composition
Compounds, though certainly fewer in quantity than derived or root words, still
represent one of the most typical and specific features of English word-structure.
Compounds are not homogeneous in structure. Traditionally three types are
distinguished: neutral, morphological and syntactic.
In neutral compounds, the process of compounding is realized without any
linking elements, by a mere juxtaposition of two stems, as in blackbird, shop-
window, sunflower, bedroom, tallboy, etc.
Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is non-productive. It is
represented by words in which two compounding stems are combined by a linking
vowel or consonant, e.g. Anglo-Saxon, Franko-Prussian, handiwork, handicraft,
craftsmanship, spokesman, statesman.
In syntactic compounds (the term is arbitrary) we once more find a feature of
specifically English word-structure. These words are formed from segments of
speech, preserving in their structure numerous traces of syntagmatic relations
typical of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs, as in the nouns lily-of-the-valley,
Jack-of-all-trades, good-for-nothing, mother-in-law.
Another focus of interest is the semantic aspect of compound words, that is, the
question of correlations of separate meanings of the constituent parts and the actual
meaning of the compound. Or, to put it in easier terms: can the meaning of a
compound word be regarded as the sum of its constituent meanings?
To try and answer this question, let us consider the following groups of
examples.
(1) Classroom, bedroom, working-man, evening-gown, dining-room, sleeping-
car, reading-room, dancing-hall.
This group seems to represent compounds whose meanings can really be
described as the sum of their constituent meanings. Yet, in the last four words we
can distinctly detect a slight shift of meaning. The first component in these words,
if taken as a free form, denotes an action or state of whatever or whoever
characterized by the word. Yet, a sleeping-car is not a car that sleeps (cf. a
sleeping child), nor is a dancing-hall actually dancing (cf. dancing pairs).
The shift of meaning becomes much more pronounced in the second group of
examples.
(2) Blackboard, blackbird, football, lady-killer, pick-pocket, good-for-nothing,
lazybones, chatterbox.
In these compounds one of the components (or both) has changed its meaning:
a blackboard is neither a board nor necessarily black, football is not a ball but a
game, a chatterbox not a box but a person, and a lady-killer kills no one but is
merely a man who fascinates women. It is clear that in all these compounds the
meaning of the whole word cannot be defined as the sum of the constituent
meanings.
(3) In the third group of compounds the process of deducing the meaning of the
whole from those of the constituents is impossible. The key to meaning seems to
have been irretrievably lost: ladybird is not a bird, but an insect, tallboy not a boy
but a piece of furniture, bluestocking, on the contrary, is a person, whereas blue-
bottle may denote both a flower and an insect but never a bottle.
The compounds whose meanings do not correspond to the separate meanings of
their constituent parts (second and third group listed above) are called idiomatic
compounds, in contrast to the first group known as non-idiomatic compounds.

In the classification of compounds according to the parts of speech to which

they belong we may find compound words almost in all parts of speech, but the
bulk of compounds are nouns and adjectives.

Within each part of speech there are compounds built on different patterns,
e.g., noun stem + noun stem gives a noun (an apple-tree), Adj + N =N (a bluebell),
V + N =N (a pickpocket), Ger + N = N (a looking-glass), and so on.

According to the type of immediate constituents all compounds fall into two
classes:

1. compounds proper
2. derivational compounds.
Compounds proper are made by combining stems which occur in the language
as free forms. The immediate constituents of compounds proper can be of four
different types:

1. both ICs are simple stems (raincoat);

2. one of the ICs is a derived stem (cinema-goer);

3. one of the ICs is a clipped stem (math-mistress, A-bomb);

4. one of the ICs is a compound stem (wall-newspaper).
Derivational compounds differ from compounds proper in the nature of their
second element which is never a free stem. For example, the words car-owner
and first-nighter may seem similar only from the first sight. The IC-analysis
shows that the ICs of the first word are two noun stems: the simple stem car
and the derived stem owner. The word first-nighter is derived in a different
way, since no such noun as nighter can be found as free form in the language.
The ICs of this word are first-night- and the suffix –er.

The most frequently met type of derivational compounds are words of the
following kind: grey-haired, blue-eyed, kind-hearted, and so on. Their first IC
is a word-group grey hair, blue eye, kind heart and their second IC is the
adjective forming suffix –ed. Derivational compounds often become the basis
for further derivation: kind-heartedness, absent-mindedly.
 3.5 Shortening
Shortenings (or contracted/curtailed words) are produced in two different ways.
The first is to make a new word from a syllable (rarer, two) of the original word.
The latter may lose its beginning (as in phone made from telephone, fence from
defence), its ending (as in hols from holidays, vac from vacation, props from
properties, ad from advertisement) or both the beginning and ending (as in flu
from influenza, fridge from refrigerator).
The second way of shortening – abbreviation - is to make a new word from the
initial letters of a word group: U.N.O ['ju:nәu] from the United Nations
Organization, B.B.C from the British Broadcast Corporation, M.P. from Member
of Parliament. This type is also called initial shortenings. They are found not only
among formal words, such as the once above, but also among colloquialisms and
slang. So, g.f. is a shortened word made from the compound girl-friend.
We should distinguish two types of abbreviations:
 with alphabetical reading (S.O.S)
 acronyms – read like common English words (NATO).
Both types of shortenings are often used in informal speech and uncultivated
speech particularly. The history of American okay seems to be rather typical.
Originally this initial shortening was spelled O.K. and was supposed to stand for
all correct. The purely oral manner in which sounds were recorded, for letters
resulted in O.K. whereas it should have been AC. or ay see. Indeed, the ways of
words are full of surprises.

Sound imitation (onomatopoeia, echoism) is the naming of an action or

thing by a more or less exact reproduction of a sound associated with it, echoes of
natural sounds (to moo, to bark, to bang, a cuckoo).