American English. Antonyms. Affixation

AMERICAN ENGLISH

American English begins its history at the beginning of the 17-th century when first English-speaking settlers began to settle on the Atlantic coast of the American continent. The language which they brought from England was the language spoken in England during the reign of Elizabeth the First. In the earliest period the task of Englishmen was to find names for places, animals, plants, customs which they came across on the American continent. They took some of names from languages spoken by the local population - Indians, such as: chipmuck/an American squirrel/, igloo /Escimo dome-shaped hut/, squaw / an Indian woman/, wigwam /an American Indian tent made of skins and bark/. The second period of American English history begins in the 19-th century. Immigrants continued to come from Europe to America. When large groups of immigrants from the same country came to America some of their words were borrowed into English. Italians brought with them a style of cooking which became widely spread and such words as: pizza, spaghetti. From the great number of German-speaking settlers the following words were borrowed: delicatessen, hamburger, noodle, schnitzel. During the second period of A. E. history there appeared quite a number of words and word-groups which were formed in the language due to the new political system, liberation of America from the British colonialism, its independence: USA, assembly, congress, Senate, congressman, President, senator. Besides these political terms many other words were coined in American English in the 19-th century: influential, department store, telegram, telephone. Differences of spelling. a) the delition of the letter «u» in words ending in «our», e. g. honor, favor; b) the delition of the second consonant in words with double consonants, e. g. traveler, wagon, c) the replacement of «re» by «er» in words of French origin, e. g. theater, center, d) the delition of unpronounced endings in words of Romanic origin, e. g. catalog, program, e) the replacement of «ce» by «se» in words of Romanic origin, e. g. defense, offense, d) delition of unpronounced endings in native words, e. g. tho, thro.

ANTONYMS

Words belonging to the same part of speech, identical in style, expressing contrary or contradictory notions. (young - old, early - late, good - bad). A. may denote: 1) quality (good - bad), 2) state (clean - dirty, health - illness), 3) manner (quickly - slowly, well - badly), 4) direction (up - down, forward - back), 5) position (top - bottom, here - there), 6) features (tall - short, thick - thin). May be divided: 1) which formed with the help of negative affixes: (unhappy, unimportant, impossible, disappear, misunderstanding, hopeful, hopeless, useful, useless). 2) which are of different roots: (day - light, rich - poor, hot - cold). May also be divided: absolute, phraseological, complex. Absolute: are diametrically opposite in meaning and remain antonyms in any word - combinations. These are mostly found among negative affix - formed antonys: (fruitless - fruitful, happy - unhappy).

AFFIXATION

Is one of the most productive ways of word-building throughout the history of English. It consists in adding an affix to the stem of a definite part of speech. Affixation is divided into suffixation and prefixation.

Suffixation. There are different classifications of suffixes: 1. Part-of-speech classification. Suffixes which can form different parts of speech are given here: a) noun-forming suffixes, such as: -er (criticizer), -dom (officialdom), -ism (ageism), b) adjective-forming suffixes, such as: -able (breathable), less (symptomless), -ous (prestigious), c) verb-forming suffixes, such as -ize (computerize), -ify (micrify), d) adverb-forming suffixes, such as: -ly (singly), -ward (tableward), e) numeral-forming suffixes, such as -teen (sixteen), -ty (seventy).

2. Semantic classification. Suffixes changing the lexical meaning of the stem can be subdivided into groups, e. g. noun-forming suffixes can denote: a) the agent of the action, e. g. -er (experimenter), -ist (taxist), -ent (student), b) nationality, e. g. -ian (Russian), -ese (Japanese), -ish (English), c) collectivity, e. g. -dom (moviedom), -ry (peasantry, -ship (readership), -ati ( literati), d) diminutiveness, e. g. -ie (horsie), -let (booklet), -ling (gooseling), -ette (kitchenette), e) quality, e. g. -ness (copelessness), -ity (answerability).

3. Lexico-grammatical character of the stem. Suffixes which can be added to certain groups of stems are subdivided into:  a) suffixes added to verbal stems, such as: -er (commuter), -ing (suffering), - able (flyable), -ment (involvement), -ation (computerization), b) suffixes added to noun stems, such as: -less (smogless), ful (roomful), -ism (adventurism), -ster (pollster), -nik (filmnik), -ish (childish), c) suffixes added to adjective stems, such as: -en (weaken), -ly (pinkly), -ish (longish), -ness (clannishness).

4. Origin of suffixes. Here we can point out the following groups:  a) native (Germanic), such as -er, -ful, -less, -ly. b) Romanic, such as: -tion, -ment, -able, -eer. c) Greek, such as: -ist, -ism, -ize. d) Russian, such as -nik.

5. Productivity. Here we can point out the following groups:  a) productive, such as: -er, -ize, --ly, -ness. b) semi-productive, such as: -eer, -ette, -ward.  c) non-productive, such as: -ard (drunkard), -th (length).

Prefixation 1. Semantic classification: a) prefixes of negative meaning, such as: in- (invaluable), non- (nonformals), un- (unfree) etc,  b) prefixes denoting repetition or reversal actions, such as: de- (decolonize), re- (revegetation), dis- (disconnect), c) prefixes denoting time, space, degree relations, such as: inter- (interplanetary), hyper- (hypertension), ex- (ex-student), pre- (pre-election), over- (overdrugging) etc.

2. Origin of prefixes: a) native (Germanic), such as: un-, over-, under- etc. b) Romanic, such as: in-, de-, ex-, re- etc. c) Greek, such as: sym-, hyper-.

Polysemy - it is a means of qualitative enrichment of the vocabulary. There are two types of polysemy: 1) radiation, in which the primary meaning is at the centre and secondary meanings come out it like rays (paper - document, wall paper, bills, scientific paper). Secondary meaning may drop out of use and it doesn’t affect the primary meaning. 2) chain in which each secondary meaning depends on the previous one and it intermediate meanings drop out of use, then the first and the last meanings may become homonyms. (game (дичь) - game as an object of huntig - hunting - hunting as entertainment - entertaining game). Each of the meanings of the polysemantic word is called a lexical semantic variant.