IV. Find the dominant synonym in the following synonymic sets. Explain your choice.

1. to glare ? to gaze ? to peep ? to stare ? to look ? to glance. 2. to glimmer ? to glisten ? to blaze ? to shine ? to flash ? to gleam ? to sparkle. 3. to astonish ? to puzzle ? to amaze ? to surprise ? to astound. 4. to saunter ? to wander ? to roam ? to stroll ? to walk. 5. strange ? quaint ? odd ? queer. 6. scent ? perfume ? smell ? odour ? aroma. 7. to brood ? to meditate ? to think, to reflect ? to speculate. 8. to produce ? to make - to fabricate ? to manufacture ? to create. 9. to sob ? to weep ? to cry. 10. furious ? angry ? enraged.

V. Find antonyms for the words given below.

bad, adj.; little, adj.; narrow, adj.; clever, adj.; warm, adj.; clean, v.; short, adj.; strong, adj.; young, adj.; easy, adj.; black, v.; careless, adj.; to love, v.; to take, v.; to lose, v.; to open, v.; to live, v.; joy, n.; slowly, adv.

VI. a) Find the homonyms proper for the following words; give their Russian equivalents.

1. band ? a company of musicians. 2. seal ? a warm-blooded, fish-eating sea-animal, found chiefly in cold regions. 3. ear ? the grain-bearing spike of a cereal plant, as in a corn. 4. to bore ? to make a long round hole, esp. with a pointed tool that is turned round. 5. to draw ? to move by pulling.

B) Find the homophones to the following words, translate them into Russian or explain their meanings in English.

Tale, sea, piece, week, sun, meet, steel, knight, sum, coarse, write, heir, hare.

C) Find the homographs to the following words and transcribe both.

1. row ? a number of persons or things in a line. 2. to bow ? to bend the head or body. 3. to tear ? to pull apart by force. 4. to lead ? to guide or take, esp. by going in front. 5. to wind ? move in a curving, spiral or twisting manner.

D) What homophones can you make from their pronunciation?

1. [sent] Example: sent and scent `

2. [`mo:ni ŋ] 3. [weit] 4. [sti:l] 5. [`beri]

VI. Match the italicized words with the phonetics.

1. a) Her voice will entrance you.

b) Where?s the nearest entrance?

1 [in`tra:ns] 2 [`entrəns] Example: a) 1, b) 2

2. a) A kind nurse bandaged his wound.

b) He wound the scarf round his neck.

1 [waund] 2 [wu:nd]

3. a) The wind is blowing really hard.

b) Can you wind up the window, please?

1 [waind] 2 [wind]

4. a) The Ferrari is in the lead.

b) That joke went down like a lead balloon.

1 [li:d] 2 [led]

5. a) There is a tear in that shirt!

b) Is that a tear I see on your cheek?

1 [teə] 2 [tiə]

6. a) I can?t stand the smell of incense.

b) This scandal is going to incense the public.

1 [`insens] 2 [in`sens]

CHAPTER 4

MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH WORDS

AND WORD FORMATION

1. Morphological and Derivational Structure of Words

Morpheme is the smallest meaningful language unit. Each word consists of one or more morphemes. Such words as house, small, dog, man, green, take, go and the like consist of one morpheme which is a unit of the morphological (morphemic) level but this morpheme coincides with a lexeme, which is a unit of a higher lexical level. Like a word a morpheme is a two-facet language unit, an association of a certain meaning with a certain sound-pattern. Unlike a word a morpheme is not an autonomous unit. Words consisting of one morpheme have a simple morphological structure, they are considered to be morphologically simple non-segmentable, or monomorphic words.

A great number of words in English and other languages consist of more than one morpheme and are considered to be morphologically complex segmentable words or polymorphic, e.g. singer, rewrite, door-bell, fancy-dress-maker, forget-me-not.

The operation of breaking a segmentable word into the constituent morphemes is referred to in linguistic literature as the analysis of word-structure on the morphemic level.

Morphemes may be classified from the semantic point of view and from the structural point of view. Semantically morphemes fall into two classes: root-morphemes and non-root, or affixal morphemes. The root morpheme is the lexical nucleus of a word, it has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme of the language (sing- in the word singer, quick- in the word quickly etc.). A monomorphic word consists of one root morpheme. Polymorphic words may consist of two or more root morphemes, e.g. arm-chair, merry-go-round, besides which affixal morphemes are distinguished in them, which are subdivided into prefixal, e.g. un-, re-, mis- in the words untie, reread, misprint, and suffixal morphemes like-er, -ful, -ly, -able in the words singer, beautiful, quickly, capable. A prefix precedes the root morpheme, a suffix follows it. Affixal morphemes possess a generalized lexical meaning; they (especially suffixes) determine the part-of-speech meaning. For example, -er in the word singer has the meaning ?doer, agent of the action? and it determines the part-of-speech meaning of the word, i.e. the noun; un- in the word uneasy has the meaning of negation.

Structurally morphemes fall into three types: free morphemes, bound morphemes and semi-free (semi-bound) morphemes. A free morpheme coincides with the stem or a word-form, as e.g. in the word quickly quick- is a free morpheme, while -ly is a bound morpheme as it can be used only in combination with a root morpheme. All the affixal morphemes are bound ones, although there are certain ?ontroversial items. It concerns prefixes like over-, under-, up-, out- , in such words as overdo, underestimate, upstairs, outstay. These prefixes coincide in form and to a great degree in meaning with prepositions and adverbs over, under, up, out. Some linguists, e.g. H. Marchand, consider such lexemes to be compound words but not prefixal derivatives, accordingly over, under, up, out are treated as root morphemes [Marchand 1960].

The majority of root morphemes are free morphemes, although there are bound root morphemes. In the words library, librarian, theory, theoretical, theoretician and many others the root morphemes librar-, theor- are bound ones.

Some linguists also distinguish the so-called semi-free/semi-bound morphemes. [Marchand 1960, Arnold 1973, Ginzburg 1979]. These are morphemes that can function in a morphemic sequence both as an affix and as a free morpheme [Ginzburg 1979: 93]. Here belong -man (postman, fisherman, etc.), -berry (gooseberry, cranberry, etc.), -land (Scotland, Finland, etc.), -like (godlike, ladylike, etc.), -proof (waterproof, foolproof, etc.), -worthy (trustworthy, noteworthy, etc.), looking (strange-looking, foreign-looking), -monger (ironmonger, fishmonger, etc.), -wright (playwright, shipwright)and some others. These with the exception of -monger and -wright coincide in form with the words: man, berry, land, like, proof, worthy. However, it is hardly possible to consider them root morphemes unambiguously, and the words like postman cannot be treated as compound words consisting of two root morphemes. First, the meaning of semi-affixes is somewhat weakened, it is not identical to the words man, land, etc. The semi-affix -man has a more generalized meaning than the word man, it is close to the suffix -er. Secondly, like affixes they are unstressed.

To semi-affixes also belong the so-called combining forms [Ginzburg 1979: 93]. The morphemes tele-, -phone, -scope, -graph, etc. in the words microscope telephone, telescope, phonograph, microscope and others are characterized by a definite lexical meaning and peculiar stylistic reference.

Another proof of the idea that it is difficult to draw a sharp and clear borderline between bound and free morphemes is the observation that morphemes traditionally considered to be bound ones may appear as free forms. For instance, the morpheme anti-, taken from Greek, is usually bound, as in anti-aircraft, anti-toxin, etc. But in reply to the question ?What is his attitude to the new plan?? a perfectly acceptable and understandable answer in colloquial language might be, ?Oh, he?s very anti,? i.e. opposed. Here a unit of speech normally not taken by itself is detached and yet understood. Hence, it must have meaning, even in isolation. Another possible answer to the question might have been, ?Oh, he?s very pro,? i.e. favourable. Again, an instance of a bound morpheme understood even in isolation [Schlauch 1967: 62].

Morphemes like phonemes are subject to positional variability. One and the same morpheme may have different positional variants called allomorphs. Allomorphs somewhat differ in their phonemic shapes as in the word-cluster please, pleasing, pleasure, pleasant where the root morpheme is represented by the following allomorphs: [pli:z] in please, pleasing, [plež] in pleasure, [plez] in pleasant. The root morphemes in the word-clusters duke, ducal, duchess, duchy or poor, poverty also represent allomorphs of one morpheme. It is said that in such cases the phonemic shapes of the word stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other.

The morphemic structure of the word is determined by the procedure known as the Immediate and Ultimate constituents analysis (IC and UC analysis). This method presupposes gradual breaking of a polymorphic word into constituent morphemes (Immediate Constituents ? ICs) with the purpose of determining the word?s Ultimate Constituents (UCs), i.e. constituents (morphemes) incapable of further subdivision.L.Bloomfield, the famous American linguists who suggested this analysis illustrates it by the example of the word ungentlemanly [Bloomfield 1935]. The analysis of the word presupposes several stages. It is based on a binary principle, because at each stage the word is broken into two parts, its ICs:

1. The word ungentlemanly breaks into the ICs un- + -gentlemanly because un- as a prefix with the negative meaning is found in other words and the word gentlemanly exists in the English language. Thus, un- and -gentlemanly are Immediate Constituents of the word ungentlemanly.

2. The next stage is breaking the constituent gentlemanly into ICs gentleman- + -ly, because there are other lexemes formed by an analogous pattern: soldierly, scholarly, masterly, etc. Breaking into gent- and -lemanly is impossible as there are no such patterns in English.

3. The constituent gentleman is further segmented into gentle- + -man, by analogy with nobleman, sportsman, chairman, etc.

4. Segmentability of the word gentle into gent- + -le is open to discussion. Nevertheless, the bound root gent- might be singled out if we compare gentle with gently, gentry, genteel, and if we compare gentle with noble, subtle, brittle, we can distinguish the suffix -le.

So, at each stage of the word?s segmentation we break it into two Immediate Constituents. The analysis is carried out by way of comparison the lexeme under analysis with existing patterns and lexical items of the English language. Finally we arrive at the Ultimate Constituents which make up the morphological structure of the word. In case of the lexeme ungentlemanly these are:

un- +gent- +-le+-man + -ly.

Not all the polymorphic words can be easily segmented into constituent morphemes. Certain difficulties emerge if we take, for instance, words retain, contain, detain or receive, perceive, conceive, deceive. Segmentability of such words is doubtful for semantic reasons. On the one hand, the morphemes re-, con-, de-, per- are easily singled out by analogy with prefixes in the words like rewrite, decode, etc. However, the constituents of the words retain, contain, deceive etc. don?t have any definite lexical meaning, though they possess differential and distributional meanings [Ginzburg 1979: 90]. They possess differential meaning because the morphemes re-, con-, de- serve to differentiate the words retain, contain, detain as well as the morphemes -ceive, -tain differentiate the words retain, receive and the like. The distributional meaning is the meaning of the order and arrangement of the morphemes making up the word (A different arrangement of the same morphemes , e.g. *ceivere would make the word meaningless. Such morphemic segmentability is called conditional and the morphemes are pseudo- morphemes.

There are also unique morphemes. The first components of such words as cranberry, gooseberry, strawberry, hamlet serve as examples of unique morphemes because these constituents either are not found in other words (cran-), or have different meanings (goose-, straw-, ham-), while the second constituents are found in many words (streamlet, leaflet, booklet, etc.) in the same meanings, for example, the diminutive meaning of -let is found in many words.

The IC and UC analysis helps to determine the morphemic structure of words and morphemic types of words which is the objective of Morphemics. The morphemic (morphological) structure of words presents the morphemic composition of words (the ultimate constituents), the patterns of the morphemes? sequence and arrangement. Morphemics is closely linked with the theory of Word Formation which is also called Derivation. The objective of this branch of lexicology is investigation of derivative structure of words, i.e. the hierarchy of morphemes making up a word, the way words are formed.

In many cases the morphemic and derivative structures coincide in the morphemic composition of words on the surface level. Such are words like rewrite, untie, writer, kindness and many other similar affixal derivatives. However, in many cases the morphemic and derivative structures do not coincide. If we compare the words unmanly and discouragement [Ginzburg 1979: 96] the IC and UC analysis shows that the morphemic structures of these words are identical, their UCs being: prefix ? root ? suffix (un|man|ly, dis|courage|ment). So the morphemic structure of words is determined by the UCs of the word. But the derivative structure is determined by the ICs, because in case of affixation a new word is coined by adding a derivational affix to a derivational base. The IC and UC analysis shows that the word unmanly is a prefixal derivative because its ICs are un- and -manly (?not manly?), while discouragement is a suffixal derivative, its ICs being discourage-, -ment. It follows that these words have different derivative structures.

The difference between the morphemic and derivative structures can be also illustrated by the example of words coined by conversion (see section 3 below). The following verbs: to leaf, to nurse, to water and nouns: a cut, a run, a make are unsegmentable monomorphic words, they have a simple morphemic structure. But from the point of view of word-formation these words are derivatives.

So, according to their derivative structure words are subdivided into simple, or simplexes and derivatives, or complexes. Simplexes are words which derivationally cannot be segmented into ICs. The stem of simple words is semantically non-motivated and independent of other words. Morphemically they may be monomorphic as black, go, head and polymorphic making up a sequence of bound morphemes as in theory, library, anxious.

Derivatives are words formed from derivational bases with the help of certain rules or patterns of word-formation. Certain word-building elements, such as derivational affixes, might be used in the act of word-formation. The derivative word is a secondary, motivated unit formally and semantically dependent on the derivational base (the source word). The meaning and the structure of the derivative is interpreted through the comparison with the meaning and the structure of the source word. If the meanings of the constituents of a newly-formed word as well as the meaning of the word-building pattern are known, decoding of the meaning of a newly-formed word does not present any difficulty. For example, if one knows the meaning of the verb to do, the meaning of the noun good ?that which is good, morally right? and the meaning of the suffix -er ?the doer of the action? one can guess the meaning of the derivative do-gooder ?one who does good to people?.

Word-formation is the system of derivative types of words and the process of creating new words from the means available in the language after certain structural and semantic formulas and patterns [Ginzburg 1979: 109]. Its objective is investigation of the types, means and patterns of word derivation. Word-formation is closely linked with theory of nomination as the former is one of the most important manifestations of the nominative function of the language and linguistic creativity. New words appear in the language in two ways: 1) borrowing words from other languages, 2) coining new words from the linguistic means available in the given language, i.e. word-formation. The need for new words is fulfilled in a far greater degree by means of word-formation than borrowing and even the so-called semantic word-formation (emergence of new meanings). Derived words (complexes) make up 70% of lexical units.

Word-formation as a part of the lexico-semantic system of the language makes up a system of its own. Along with regular patterns of word-formation one of the manifestations of the systematic character of derivation are word-clusters (word chains, word-building paradigms). To a word-cluster belong all the words derived from one root morpheme. For instance, hand n., to hand, handy, handful, handbag, hand-barrow, handbill, handbook, handbrake, handcart, handclap, handcuff, hand-gun, hand-hold, handicraft, handiwork, handkerchief, handloom, hand-luggage, hand-made, hand-me-down, hand-organ, hand-picked, handrail, handshake, handstand, handwork, handwriting. The word-cluster hand has a large volume (the number of lexical units), and it includes lexical units formed by different means.

Every language is characterized by its own word-formation system including various types of word-formation. The types of word-formation in English include the so-called major and minor types of word-formation. To major types belong affixation, conversion and compounding (word composition) because they play a greater part in word derivation. To minor types belong shortening, blending, back formation, sound imitation. The next sections of this chapter are devoted to the types and means of word-formation.

?ffixation

?ffixation is the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to different types of derivational bases. Affixal derivatives in the English language are coined by derivational prefixes and suffixes, that is why affixation is subdivided into prefixation and suffixation. Prefixes are the derivational morphemes preceding the root of the word, suffixes follow the root. Both prefixes and suffixes change the lexical meaning of the word and in many cases they change the part-of-speech meaning, e.g. case ? encase, truth ? truthful, etc.

There are distinguished different degrees of derivation depending on the number of applications of a word-formation rule. Simple words have a zero degree of derivation: atom, haste, devote. Derived words formed by application of one derivational affix have the first degree of derivation: atomic, hasty, devotion. Derived words formed by two consecutive stages of word-formation possess the second degree of derivation: atomical, hastily, devotional [Ginzburg 1979: 114].

In many cases subdivision of a word into a prefixal or suffixal derivative presents no difficulty. It is evident that untrue, discount, decode are prefixal derivatives; friendly, booklet, childhood are suffixal derivatives. But in case of three-morpheme words as unreasonable, discouragement and the like one should determine the arrangement and the nature of the ICs constituting these words, i.e. its derivative structure. Morphemically the words unreasonable, discouragement are identical, they are prefixal-radical-suffixal (consisting of a prefix, a root and a suffix), but according to their derivative structure the word unreasonable is a prefixal derivative: its ICs are un- and -reasonable (?not reasonable?), and discouragement is a suffixal derivative, its ICs being discourage- and -ment (?sth. that discourages?).

Suffixes may be affixed straight to the root morpheme (read - reader), or make up chains of suffixes occurring in the derived words having two and more suffixal morphemes: faith ? faith|ful ? faith|ful|ness). Suffixes of these kind are often referred to as compound suffixes. However, compound suffixes do not always present a mere succession of two or more suffixes arising out of consecutive stages of derivation. Some of them acquire a new quality operating as a whole unit [Ginzburg 1979: 119]. If we compare, on the one hand, such words as fascination (fascinate- + -ion), translation (translate- + -ion)with information (inform- + -ation), adaptation (adapt- + -ation), we see that they have different derivative structures.The words fascination and translation are the first-degree derivatives built with the suffix -ion, the words information and adaptation are the first-degree derivatives formed from the bases inform- and adapt- as there are no such bases as *informate-, *adaptate-. Thus the suffix -ation is a specific suffix of composite nature consisting of two suffixes -ate and -ion, but in many cases it functions as a single unit in first-degree derivatives. It is referred to in linguistic literature as a coalescent or a group suffix.

Suffixes might be added both to derivational bases made up of free roots (post- + -age) and bound roots (dam- + -age).

A prefix may be confined to one part of speech as in decode, encircle, etc. or may function in more than one part of speech: overcautious adj., overdo v., overpayment n. Suffixes as a rule function in any one part of speech: beautiful adj., darken v., connection n.The part-of-speech meaning is more prominent in suffixes. It was revealed that suffixation is mostly characteristic of noun (kindness, friendship, childhood, etc.) and adjective formation (beautiful, capable etc.) while prefixation is mostly typical of verb formation (to overcome, to disregard, to mispronounce, etc.) [Ginzburg 1979: 115]. Of course there are many cases of suffixal verbs: to darken, to realize, prefixal nouns income, underwear, etc. and adjectives uneasy, disloyal, etc. Suffixes to a greater extent than prefixes are used for converting words from one part of speech to another: care n. > careful a., good a. > goodness n., suit v. > suitable a., swim v. - swimmer n., etc. More often than not the part-of-speech meaning is determined by the suffix e.g. -ness, -ship, -ess, -hood etc. are noun suffixes; -able, -al, -less, etc. are adjective suffixes; -en, -ize ?verb suffixes.

It is also noteworthy that suffixes are more closely knit with the bases than prefixes which are semantically less dependent on the base. As it was pointed above, some of the prefixes coincide in form and partially in meaning with the form words like out-, over-, up-, under-.

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 680