Лексикология английского языка

Vocabulary

abound in изобиловать

alien иностранный; чужеземный

cognate родственный

conjugate спрягать

contribute передать

conveniently удобно

declension склонение

erase стирать

etymological doublets этимологические дублеты

impose налагать

international words интернациональные слова

paradigm парадигма

recipient language принимающий язык

reluctant сопротивляющийся

take root пустить корни, прижиться

triplets тройки

underlie лежать в основе

Lecture 6

Word-Building

(pp. 78 – 95)

1. 
   The main ways of enriching the English vocabulary.
   
2. 
   Affixation (or Derivation).
   
3. 
   Semantics of affixes.
   
4. 
   Conversion.
   

1. 
   The main ways of enriching the English vocabulary
   

By word-building are understood processes of producing new words from the resources of this particular language. Together with borrowing, word-building provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language.

If viewed structurally, words appear to be divisible into smaller units which are called morphemes. Morphemes do not occur as free forms but only as constituents of words. Yet they possess meanings of their own.

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 (re-read, mis-pronounce) and suffixes which follow the root (teach-er, dict-ate).

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 is widely represented by a great number of words belonging to the original English stock or to the earlier borrowings.(house, room, book, table, etc.), and, in Modern English, has been greatly enlarged by the type of word-building called conversion (e.g. to hand v. formed from the noun hand; to can v. from can n.).

Another wide-spread word-structure is a compound word consisting of two or more stems (stem is part of the word consisting of a root and an affix. In English words “stem” and “root” often coincide). E.g. dining-room, bluebell, mother-in-law, good-for-nothing (негодяй, бездельник). Words of this structural type are produced by the word-building process called composition.

The somewhat odd-looking words like flu (from influenza – грипп), pram (from perambulater – детская коляска), lab (from laboratory), M.P. (from Member of Parliament), H-bomb are called shortenings, contractions or curtailed words and 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 Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition – the most productive ways of word-building.

2.