Partial lexical homonyms

Ø belong to the same part of speech

Ø identical only in corresponding forms of their paradigms

e.g. to lie (lay, lain), verb

to lie (lied, lied), verb

e.g. to can (canned, canned)

(I) can (could

• 1. Homonyms proper (the sound & the spelling are identical)
• 2. Homophones (the same sound form but different spelling)
• 3. Homographs (the same spelling)

· 1. bat – bat - flying animal (летучая мышь)
- cricket bat (бита)

· 2. flower – flour
sole – soul
rain – reign

· 3. tear [iə] – tear [εə]
lead [i:] – lead [e]

9. Affixation as one of the most productive ways of word-building in English.

Affixation is generally defined as the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to different types of bases. Affixation includes suffixation and prefixation. Distinction between suffixal and prefixal derivates is made according to the last stage of derivation, for example, from the point of view of derivational analysis the word unreasonable – un + (reason- + -able) is qualified as a prefixal derivate, while the word discouragement – (dis- + -courage) + -ment is defined as a suffixal derivative.

Suffixation is the formation of words with the help of suffixes. Suffixes usually modify the lexical meaning of the base and transfer words to a different part of speech.

Suffixes can be classified into different types in accordance with different principles.

According to the lexico-grammatical character suffixes may be: deverbal suffixes, e.d., those added to the verbal base (agreement); denominal (endless); deadjectival (widen, brightness).

According to the part of speech formed suffixes fall into several groups:

noun-forming suffixes (assistance), adjective-forming suffixes (unbearable), numeral-forming suffixes (fourteen), verb-forming suffixes (facilitate), adverb-forming suffixes (quickly, likewise).

Semantically suffixes may be monosemantic, e.g. the suffix –ess has only one meaning “female” – goddess, heiress; polysemantic, e.g. the suffix –hood has two meanings “condition or quality” falsehood and “collection or group” brotherhood.

According to their generalizing denotational meaning suffixes may fall into several groups: the agent of the action (baker, assistant); collectivity (peasantry); appurtenance (Victorian, Chinese); diminutiveness (booklet).

Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes. Two types of prefixes can be distinguished: 1) those not correlated with any independent word (un-, post-, dis-); 2) those correlated with functional words (prepositions or preposition-like adverbs: out-, up-, under-). Diachronically distinction is made between prefixes of native and foreign origin.

Prefixes can be classified according to different principles.

According to the lexico-grammatical character of the base prefixes are usually added to, they may be: deverbal prefixes, e.d., those added to the verbal base (overdo); denominal (unbutton); deadjectival (biannual).

According to the part of speech formed prefixes fall into several groups: noun-forming prefixes (ex-husband), adjective-forming prefixes (unfair), verb-forming prefixes (dethrone), adverb-forming prefixes (uphill).

Semantically prefixes may be monosemantic, e.g. the prefix –ex has only one meaning “former” – ex-boxer; polysemantic, e.g. the prefix –dis has four meanings “not” disadvantage and “removal of” to disbrunch.

According to their generalizing denotational meaning prefixes may fall into several groups: negative prefixes – un, non, dis, a, in (ungrateful, nonpolitical, disloyal, amoral, incorrect); reversative prefixes - un, de, dis (untie, decentralize, disconnect); pejorative prefixes – mis, mal, pseudo (mispronounce, maltreat, pseudo-scientific); prefix of repetition (redo), locative prefixes – super, sub, inter, trans (superstructure, subway, intercontinental, transatlantic).

10. Conversion as one of the productive ways of word-building in English.

Conversion is a process which allows us to create additional lexical terms out of those that already exist, e .g., to saw, to spy, to snoop, to flirt. This process is not limited to one syllable words, e.g., to bottle, to butter, nor is the process limited to the creation of verbs from nouns, e.g., to up the prices. Converted words are extremely colloquial: "I'll microwave the chicken", "Let's flee our dog", "We will of course quiche and perrier you".

Conversion came into being in the early Middle English period as a result of the leveling and further loss of endings.

In Modern English conversion is a highly-productive type of word-building. Conversion is a specifically English type of word formation which is determined by its analytical character, by its scarcity of inflections and abundance of mono-and-de-syllabic words in different parts of speech. Conversion is coining new words in a different part of speech and with a different distribution but without adding any derivative elements, so that the original and the converted words are homonyms.

Structural Characteristics of Conversion: Mostly monosyllabic words are converted, e.g., to horn, to box, to eye. In Modern English there is a marked tendency to convert polysyllabic words of a complex morphological structure, e.g., to e-mail, to X-ray. Most converted words are verbs which may be formed from different parts of speech from nouns, adjectives, adverbs, interjections.

Nouns from verbs - a try, a go, a find, a loss

From adjectives - a daily, a periodical

From adverbs - up and down

From conjunctions - but me no buts

From interjection - to encore

Semantic Associations / Relations of Conversion:

The noun is the name of a tool or implement, the verb denotes an action performed by the tool, e.g., to nail, to pin, to comb, to brush, to pencil;

The noun is the name of an animal, the verb denotes an action or aspect of behavior considered typical of this animal, e.g., to monkey, to rat, to dog, to fox;

When the noun is the name of a part of a human body, the verb denotes an action performed by it, e.g., to hand, to nose, to eye;

When the noun is the name of a profession or occupation, the verbdenotes the activity typical of it, e.g., to cook, to maid, to nurse;

When the noun is the name of a place, the verb will denote the process of occupying the place or by putting something into it, e.g., to room, to house, to cage;

When the word is the name of a container, the verb will denote the act of putting something within the container, e.g., to can, to pocket, to bottle;

When the word is the name of a meal, the verb means the process of taking it, e.g., to lunch, to supper, to dine, to wine;

If an adjective is converted into a verb, the verb may have a generalized meaning "to be in a state", e.g., to yellow;

When nouns are converted from verbs, they denote an act or aprocess, or the result, e.g., a try, a go, a find, a catch.

11. Word composition as one of the productive ways of word-building in English.

Compound words are words consisting of at least two stems which occur in the language as free forms.

Most compounds in English have the primary stress on the first syllable. For example, income tax has the primary stress on the in of income, not on the tax.

Compounds have a rather simple, regular set of properties. First, they are binary in structure. They always consist of two or more constituent lexemes. A compound which has three or more constituents must have them in pairs, e.g., washingmachine manufacturer consists of w ashingmachine and manufacturer, while washingmachine in turn consists of washing and machine. Compound words also usually have a head constituent. By a head constituent we mean one which determines the syntactic properties of the whole lexeme, e.g., the compound lexeme longboat consists of an adjective, long and a noun, boat. The compound lexeme longboat is a noun, and it is а noun because boat is a noun, that is, boat is the head constituent of longboat. Compound words can belong to all the major syntactic categories:

· Nouns: signpost, sunlight, bluebird, redwood, swearword, outhouse;

· Verbs: window shop, stargaze, outlive, undertake;

· Adjectives: ice-cold, hell-bent, undersized;

· Prepositions: into, onto, upon.

From the morphological point of view compound words are classified according to the structure of immediate constituents:

· Compounds consisting of simple stems - heartache, blackbird;

· Compounds where at least one of the constituents is a derived stem - chainsmoker, maid-servant, mill-owner, shop-assistant;

· Compounds where one of the constituents is a clipped stem - V-day, A-bomb, Xmas, H-bag;

· Compounds where one of the constituents is a compound stem - wastes paper basket, postmaster general.

Compounds are the commonest among nouns and adjectives. Compound verbs are few in number, as they are mostly the result of conversion, e.g., to blackmail, to honeymoon, to nickname, to safeguard, to whitewash. The 20^th century created some more converted verbs, e.g., to weekend, to streamline,, to spotlight. Such converted compounds are particularly common in colloquial speech of American English. Converted verbs can be also the result of backformation. Among the earliest coinages are to backbite, to browbeat, to illtreat, to housekeep. The 20^th century gave more examples to hitch-hike, to proof-read, to mass-produce, to vacuumclean.

One more structural characteristic of compound words is classification of compounds according to the type of composition. According to this principle two groups can be singled out:

· words which are formed by a mere juxtaposition without any connecting elements, e.g., classroom, schoolboy, heartbreak, sunshine;

· composition with a vowel or a consonant placed between the two stems. e.g., salesman, handicraft.

Semantically compounds may be idiomatic and non-idiomatic. Compound words may be motivated morphologically and in this case they are non-idiomatic. Sunshine - the meaning here is a mere meaning of the elements of a compound word (the meaning of each component is retained). When the compound word is not motivated morphologically, it is idiomatic. In idiomatic compounds the meaning of each component is either lost or weakened. Idiomatic compounds have a transferred meaning. Chatterbox - is not a box, it is a person who talks a great deal without saying anything important; the combination is used only figuratively. The same metaphorical character is observed in the compound slowcoach - a person who acts and thinks slowly.

The components of compounds may have different semantic relations. From this point of view we can roughly classify compounds into endocentric and exocentric. In endocentric compounds the semantic centre is found with­in the compound and the first element determines the other as in the words filmstar, bedroom, writing-table. Here the semantic centres are star, room, table. These stems serve as a generic name of the object and the determinants film, bed, writing give some specific, additional information about the ob­jects. In exocentric compound there is no semantic centre. It is placed outside the word and can be found only in the course of lexical transformation, e.g., pickpocket - a person who picks pockets of other people, scarecrow - an ob­ject made to look like a person that a farmer puts in a field to frighten birds.

12. Minor ways of word building in English.

· shortening (сокращение)

Shortening is the formation of a word by cutting off a part of the word. They can be coined in two different ways. The first is to cut off the initial/ middle/ final part:

· Aphaeresis – initial part of the word is clipped, e.g., history-story, telephone-phone;

· Syncope – the middle part of the word is clipped, e.g., madam- ma 'am; specs spectacles

· Apocope – the final part of the word is clipped, e.g., professor-prof, editored, vampire-vamp;

· Both initial and final, e.g., influenza-flu, detective-tec.

Polysemantic words are usually clipped in one meaning only, e.g., doc and doctor have the meaning "one who practices medicine", but doctor is also "the highest degree given by a university to a scholar or scientist".

Among shortenings there are homonyms, so that one and the same sound and graphical complex may represent different words, e.g., vac - vacation/vacuum, prep — preparation/preparatory school, vet — veterinary surgeon/veteran.

blending (['blendɪŋ]) (слияние – одно слово проникает в другое

smoke [sməuk] курить + fog [fɔɡ] туман = smog [smɔɡ] густой туман с дымом и копотью; смог)

Blending is a particular type of shortening which combines the features of both clipping and composition, e.g., motel (motor + hotel), brunch (break­fast + lunch), smog (smoke + fog), telethon (television + marathon), modem, (modulator + demodulator), Spanglish (Spanish + English). There are several structural types of blends:

· Initial part of the word + final part of the word, e.g., electrocute (electrici­ty + execute);

· initial part of the word + initial part of the word, e.g., lib-lab (liberal+labour);

· Initial part of the word + full word, e.g., paratroops (parachute+troops);

· Full word + final part of the word, e.g., slimnastics (slim+gymnastics).

sound imitation (звукоподражание)

Sound imitation or (onomatopoeia)

It is the naming of an action or a thing by more or less exact reproduction of the sound associated with it, cf.: cock-a-do-doodle-do – ку-ка-ре-ку.

Semantically, according to the source sound, many onomatopoeic words fall into the following definitive groups: 1) words denoting sounds produced by human beings in the process of communication or expressing their feelings, e.g., chatter; 2) words denoting sounds produced by animals, birds, insects, e.g., moo, buzz; 3) words imitating the sounds of water, the noise of metallic things, movements, e.g., splash, whip, swing.

sound interchange (замена, чередование звука)

Sound- interchange is the formation of a new word due to an alteration in the phonemic composition of its root. Sound-interchange falls into two groups: 1) vowel-interchange, e.g., food – feed; in some cases vowel-interchange is combined with suffixation, e.g., strong – strength; 2) consonant-interchange e.g., advice – to advise. Consonant-interchange and vowel-interchange may be combined together, e.g., life – to live.

This type of word-formation is greatly facilitated in Modern English by the vast number of monosyllabic words. Most words made by reduplication represent informal groups: colloquialisms and slang, hurdy-gurdy, walkie - talkie, riff-raff, chi-chi girl. In reduplication new words are coined by doubling a stem, either without any phonetic changes as in bye-bye or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant as in ping-pong, chit-chat.

stress interchange (замена ударного звука)

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.

backformation (babysitter (noun) → to babysit (verb))

Backformation is coining new words by subtracting a real or supposed suffix, as a result of misinterpretation of the structure of the existing word. This type of word-formation is not highly productive in Modern English and it is built on the analogy, e.g., beggar-to beg, cobbler - to cobble, blood transfusion — to blood transfuse, ba­bysitter - to baby-sit.

abbreviation

In writing, an abbreviation is any shortened form of a word or phrase.

Note, however, that there are types of abbreviations; the most common being acronyms and intialisms.

acronym - (a type of abbreviation) ЭТО СЛОВО (ВУЗ. НАТО)
A word formed from the initial parts (letters OR syllables OR arbitrary parts) of a name.
Examples: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation)

initialism - (a type of abbreviation) ЭТО БУКВЫ. НЕ СЛОВО! ЭТО ДАЖЕ ПРОСТО АББРЕВИАТУРОЙ НАЗЫВАЮТ.
A group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter being pronounced separately.
For example, "BBC" (British Broadcasting Corporation), or "PBS" (Public Broadcasting System).
The key difference – acronym forms a new word, while an initalism does not.

13. Different types of lexical shortening.

Word-building processes involve not only qualitative but also quantitative changes. Thus, derivation and compounding represent addition as suffixes and free stems respectively are added to the underlying form. S h o r t e n i n g, on the other hand, may be represented as subtraction, in which part of the original word is taken away. The types of shortening are: clipping, blending, abbreviation and acronyms.

C l i p p i n g is a type of word-building shortening of spoken words. Shortening consists in the reduction of a word to one of its parts, as a result of which the new form acquires some linguistic value of its own. The part retained does not change phonetically, hence the necessity of spelling changes, e.g., double:: dub, microphone:: mike, tranquilizer:: trank.

The generally accepted classification of shortened words is based on the position of the clipped part. According to whether it is the final, initial or middle part of the word that is cut off we distinguish:

1) i n i t i a l clipping (or a p h e s i s, i.e. a p h e r e s i s, from Greek "aphairesis" - a taking away), e.g., cap (captain), phone (telephone), story (history), chute (parachute);

2) f i n a l clipping (or a p o c o p e, from Greek "apokoptein" - cut off), e.g., cap (captain), gym (gymnasium, gymnastics), lab (laboratory), ed (editor);

3) m e d i a l clipping (or s y n c o p e, from Greek "syncope" a cutting up), e.g., fancy (fantasy), ma'am (madam).

Final and initial clipping may be combined and result in the curtailed words with the middle part of the prototype retained, e.g., flu (influenza), frig (refrigerator), tec (detective).

If we approach the shortened word from the point of view of the structure of the prototype we distinguish two groups:

1) shortened words correlated with w o r d s, e.g., cabbie (cabman), nightie (nightdress), teeny (teenager);

2) shortened words correlated with p h r a s e a, e.g., finals (final examinations), perm (permanent wave), pop (popular music), pub (public house), taxi (taximeter-cab).

Unlike conversion, shortening produces new words in the same part of speech. The bulk of shortened words are nouns. Verbs are rarely shortened, e.g., rev (revolve), tab (tabulate). To phone, to taxi, to vac and others are converted nouns. Clipped adjectives are also very few, e.g., comfy (comfortable), awk (awkward), impos (impossible), mizzy (miserable).

B l e n d i n g is a type of compounding by means of merging parts of words into new one word. The process of formation is also called t e l e s c o p i n g, because the words seem to slide into one another like sections of a telescope. E.g., brunch (breakfast + lunch), smog(smoke + fog), smaze (smoke + haze), slimnastics (slim + gymnastics). It seems practical to distinguish the following groups of blends:

1) coining a new word from the initial elements of one word and the final elements of another, e.g., drunch (drink + lunch), skort (skirt + short);

2) coining a new word by combining one notional word arid the final element of another word, e.g., manglish (man + English),radiotrician (radio + electrician);

3) combining the initial elements of one word with a notional word, e.g., mobus (motors + bus), legislady (legislative lady).

Such coinages are often formed with a playful or humorous intent and have a stylistic status. They can convey various shades of emotive colouring (irony or mockery), which makes them most active in different types of slang: dopelomat (dope + diplomat), Yanigan (Yankee + hooligan), nixonomics (Nixon + economics).

Blends, although not very numerous altogether, seem to be on the rise, especially in terminology and also in trade advertisements.

A b b r e v i a t i o n is a type of shortening when words are formed from the initial letters of each part of a phrasal term. Abbreviations are pronounced as a series of letters, i.e. the alphabetical reading of the letters is retained. E.g., B.B.C. (The British Broadcasting Corporation), M.P. (Member of Parliament), P.M. (Prime Minister), T.V. (Television), Y.C.L. (The Young Communist League).

A specific type of abbreviations having no parallel in Ukrainian is represented by Latin abbreviations, which are not read as Latin words but substituted by their English equivalents, e.g., a.m. (ante meridium) – in the morning; p.m. (post meridiem) – in the afternoon; i.e.(id est) – that is; cp. (comparare) – compare; e.g., (exempli gratia) – for example.

A c r o n y m s (from Greek "acros" end + "onym" name) are abbreviated words formed from the initial letters of word-combination; the abbreviated written form lends itself to be read as though, it were an ordinary English word and sounds like an English word. E.g.,NATO /neitou/ - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, UNO /ju:nou/ - United Nations Organization, SALT /solt/ - Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, radar – radio detecting and ranging; laser – light amplification stimulated emission radio; maser – microwave amplification stimulated emission radio.

Christian names in acronyms:

Fred – fast reading electric device;

Oscar – orbiting satellite;

Eva – electronic velocity analyzer.

14. Free phrases and idioms.

(ИДИОМА К НИМ ОТНОСИТСЯ) Phraseological units are defined as non-motivated word-groups that cannot be freely made up in speech, but reproduced as a ready-made units. The essential features of phraseological units are (1 ) lack of motivation, (2) stability of the lexical components. (nuts and bolts, one’s cup of tea etc). Free word groups are formed in the process of speech according to the standards of language, while phraseological units exist in the language side by side with separate words.(СКОРЕЕ ВСЕГО РАЗНИЦА МЕЖДУ ТЕМ И ТЕМ)

Idiom are distinguished by the idiomaticity of the whole word-group. They are semantically and grammatically inseparable units, r ed tape – “bureaucratic methods”. The new meaning, the meaning of the idiom, is created by the unit as a whole: a mare’s nest – a false discovery (“ a mare”,a female horse has no nest), to let the cat out of the bag – to divulge a secret.

Кунин Classification: