A course In Modern English Lexicology

part I/II -> A), e.g. unguarded, unheard-of, unbinding, etc., 2) (un- + a -> A), e.g. unsound, uncool, especially 1 See ‘Word-Formation’, § 21, p. 138. 2 See
‘Word-Structure’, § 8, p. 97,
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with deverbal adjectival bases as in unthinkable, unquantifiable, unavoidable, unanswerable, etc.; prefixal verbs of repetitive meaning (re- +
+ v -> V), e.g. rearrange, re-train, remap, etc.; prefixal verbs of reversative meaning (un- + v -> V), e.g. uncap, unbundle, unhook, undock, etc.; derivational compound adjectives denoting possession [(a/n + n) + +
-ed -> A], e.g. flat-bottomed, long-handled, heavy-lidded, etc. The greater part of new compound nouns are formed after n + n -> N pattern, e.g. wave-length, sound-track, etc.
The bidirectional nature of productive derivational patterns is of special interest in connection with back-derivation as a source of new verbs. The pattern of semantic relationship of the action and its active doer, the action and the name of the process of this action are regularly represented in Modern English by highly productive nominal patterns with suffixes -er and -ing (v + -er -> N, v + -ing -> N). Hence the noun whose structure contains this suffix or may be interpreted as having it is understood as a secondary unit motivated by a verb even if the verb does not actually exist.
This was the case with editor, baby-sitter, housekeeping, a new “simpler” verb was formed to fill the gap. The noun was felt as derived and the
“corresponding” verb was formed by taking the suffix or the suffix-like sound-cluster away. The following verbs, e.g. to beg, to edit, to stage-manage, to babysit, to dress-make are the results of back-formation.
Back-derivation as a re-interpretation of the derivational structure is now growing in productivity but it functions only within the framework of highly productive patterns with regular and transparent derivative relations associated formally with a certain suffix. Many new backderived verbs are often stylistically marked as colloquial, e.g. enthuse from enthusiasm, playact from play-acting, tongue-tie from tongue-tied, sight-see from sight-seeing.
The correct appraisal of the role of productive word-formation and its power to give analogic creations would be incomplete if one does not take into account the so-called o c c a s i o n a l or p o t e n t i a l w о r d s . Built on analogy with the most productive types of derived and compound words, easily understood and never striking one as “un-
"usual” or “new” they are so numerous that it is virtually impossible to make conversation to-day, to hear a speech or to read a newspaper without coming across a number of words which are new to the language.
Occasional words are especially connected with the force of analogous creations based on productive word-formation patterns. It often happens that one or another word becomes, sometimes due to social and political reasons, especially prominent and frequent. One of its components acquires an additional derivative force and becomes the centre of a series of lexical items. It can be best illustrated by new words formed on analogy with the compound noun sit-in which according to A Dictionary of New English gave three sets of analogic units. The noun sit-in is traced back to 1960 when it was formed from the verb sit-in introduced by the Negro civil-rights movement. In the first series of analogic creations the -in was associated with a public protest demonstration and gave rise to sit-in and sit-inner, kneel-in, ride-in, all motivated by the underlying verbal units. The original meaning was soon extended to 186
the staging of any kind of public demonstration and resulted in a new series of nouns like a teach-in, study-in, talk-in, read-in, etc. which became independent of the existence of the corresponding phrasal verbs. A third development was the weakening of the earlier meanings to cover any kind of social gathering by a group, e.g. think-in, sing-in, fish-in, laughin, etc.
The second components of compound nouns often become such centres of creations by analogy as for instance the component -sick- in seasick and homesick gave on analogy car-sick, air-sick, space-sick. The compound noun earthquake led to birthquake (= population explosion), youth-quake (= a world-wide agitation caused by student uprisings), starquake (= a series of rapid changes in the shape of the star). The noun teenager led to golden-ager, skyscraper to thighscraper (= a mini-skirt), housewife to house-husband. The derivative component -proof gave sound-proof, bullet-proof, fool-proof, kiss-proof, love-proof, etc.
Productive word-formation has a specific distribution in relation to different spheres of communication, thematic and lexical stylistic groups of new words. New terminological vocabulary units appear mainly as a result of composition making extensive use of borrowed root-morphemes, and affixation with sets of affixes of peculiar stylistic reference,1 often of Latin-Greek origin which are scarcely ever used outside this group of words, for example suffixes -ite, -ine- -tron, etc. The suffixes -in, -gen, -
ogen are productive in the field of chemistry and biochemistry, e.g. citrin, penicillin, carcinogen; -ics in the naming of sciences as in radionics, bi-onics; the prefixes non-, pan-, suffixes -ism, -ist are most productive in political vocabulary, e.g. Nixonomics, Nixonomist, etc.
In comparison with specialised vocabulary items, lexical units of standard-colloquial layer are more often created by affixes of neutral stylistic reference, by conversion and composition.
New words in different notional classes ap-