Reduplication and conversion.

Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The morphological and phonological process of forming a compound word by repeating all or part of it is known as reduplication. The repeated element is called a reduplicant. Reduplicatives are used in a variety of ways. Some simply imitate sounds: ding-dong, bow-wow. Some suggest alternative movements: flip-flop, ping-pong. Some are disparaging: dilly-dally, wishy-washy. And some intensify meaning: teeny-weeny, tip-top. Conversion is the process of forming of new word in a different part of speech with a different distribution without adding any derivational elements. Conversion is a characteristic feature of the English word-building system. It is also called affixless derivation or zero-suffixation. The term conversion first appeared in the book by Henry Sweet New English Grammar in 1891. Conversion is treated differently by different scientists, e.g. prof. A.I. Smirntitsky treats conversion as a morphological way of forming words when one part of speech is formed from another part of speech by changing its paradigm, e.g. to form the verb to dial from the noun dial we change the paradigm of the noun a dial,dials for the paradigm of a regular verb I dial, he dials, dialed, dialing . A. Marchand in his book The Categories and Types of Present-day English treats conversion as a morphological-syntactical word- building because we have not only the change of the paradigm, but also the change of the syntactic function, e.g. I need some good paper for my room. The noun paper is an object in the sentence . I paper my room every year. The verb paper is the predicate in the sentence . Conversion is the main way of forming verbs in Modern English. Verbs can be formed from nouns of different semantic groups and have different meanings because

Change of stress. Sound interchange

SOUND INTERCHANGE Sound interchange is the way of word building when some sounds are changed to form a new word. It is non-productive in Modern English; it was productive in Old English and can be met in other Indo-European languages. The causes of sound interchange can be different. It can be the result of Ancient Ablaut which cannot be explained by the phonetic laws during the period of the language development known to scientists., e.g. to strike - stroke, to sing - song etc. It can be also the result of Ancient Umlaut or vowel mutation which is the result of palatalizing the root vowel because of the front vowel in the syllable coming after the root (regressive assimilation), e.g. hot - to heat (hotian), blood - to bleed (blodian) etc.

In many cases we have vowel and consonant interchange. In nouns we have voiceless consonants and in verbs we have corresponding voiced consonants because in Old English these consonants in nouns were at the end of the word and in verbs in the intervocal position, e.g. bath - to bathe, life - to live, breath - to breathe etc.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 930