Composition. Ways of forming compound words. . Affixation

COMPOSITION

Composition is the way of wordbuilding when a word is formed by joining two or more stems to form one word. The structural unity of a compound word depends upon: a) the unity of stress, b) solid or hyphenated spelling, c) semantic unity, d) unity of morphological and syntactical functioning. These are characteristic features of compound words in all languages. For English compounds some of these factors are not very reliable. As a rule English compounds have one uniting stress (usually on the first component) e. g. hard-cover, best-seller. We can also have a double stress in an English compound, with the main stress on the first component and with a secondary stress on the second component, e. g. blood-vessel. The third pattern of stresses is two level stresses, e. g. snow-white, sky-blue. Spelling in English compounds is not very reliable as well because they can have different spelling even in the same text, e. g. war-ship, blood-vessel can be spelt through a hyphen and also with a break. The semantic unity of a compound word is often very strong. In such cases we have idiomatic compounds where the meaning of the whole is not a sum of meanings of its components, e. g. to ghostwrite, skinhead, brain-drain etc. In nonidiomatic compounds semantic unity is not strong, e. g., airbus, astrodynamics etc.

English compounds have the unity of morphological and syntactical functioning. They are used in sentence as one part of it and only one component changes grammatically, e. g. These girls are chatter-boxes «Chatter-boxes» is a predicative in the sentence and only the second component changes grammatically.

There are two characteristic features of English compounds:

a) Both components in an English compound are free stems, that is they can be used as words with a distinctive meaning of their own. The sound pattern will be the same except for the stresses.

b) English compounds have a two-stem pattern, with the exception of compound words which have form-word stems in their structure, e. g. middle-of-the-road, up-and-doing.

WAYS OF FORMING COMPOUND WORDS.

Compound words in English can be formed not only by means of composition but also by means of:

a) reduplication, e. g. too-too, and also by means of reduplicatin combined with sound interchange, e. g. rope-ripe,

b) conversion from word-groups, e. g. to micky-mouse, can-do, makeup etc,

c) back formation from compound nouns or word-groups, e. g. to bloodtransfuse, to fingerprint etc,

d) analogy, e. g. lie-in ( on the analogy with sit-in) and also phone-in, brawn-drain (on the analogy with brain-drain).

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. Affixes - words which have particles at the beginning or end of the words which modify the meaning of the root in some way. may be: derivational - suff., prefix.; functional - they convey grammatical meaning: -s /verbs of 3 person singul. /, degrees of comparison /er, est/, tenses of verbs /ed, ing/. The newest formation of affixes from independed words are called semi - affixes: she is a postman (s. -a.: -man /postman/, -proof /waterproof, kissproof/, -tight, -wise, -monger /warmonger, gossipmonger/, -like /moonlike/. Classification of aff.: 1) highly - producted, 2) semi - producted, 3) productive, 4) unproductive, 5) dead.; Semi - preffixes: - fellow /fellowstudent/, - ill /ill-breed/, -mini, -maxi, -out /outcome/, -under /underline/. Synonyms: - nationalities: -ish, -ian /Ukrainian, russian, british/; -professions: -ist /botanist/, -er /driver/; - negative meaning: - un, -ill, -im, -ie, -dis, -mis, -in, -let /booklet, cloudlet/. Polysemy: -y /full of smth. bony, stony, bushy/.

Compounding (word-composition)

is one of the productive types of word formation in modern English. Compound words are inseparable vocabulary units. Structurally compound words are characterized by the specific order and arrangement in which bases follow one another. Compound words have three stress patterns: a) a high or unity stress, on the first component as in (honeymoon, doorway); b) a double stress, with a primary stress on the first component and a weaker, secondary stress on the second component (blood - essel, mad - doctor); c) it is not infrequent for compound words to have level stress (arm - chair). Graphically most compounds have two types of spelling - they are spelt either solidly or with a hyphen. It is true that hyphenated spelling by itself may be sometimes misleading, it may be used in word - groups to emphasize their phraseological character as in: (daughter - in - law, man - of - war) or in longer combinations of words to indicate the semantic unity of astring of words used attributively as: )we - are - in - the - know jargon). The two types of spelling typical of compounds are not rigidly observed. The spelling of these compounds varies from author to author and from dictionary to dict. (war - path, war - time - are spelt both with a hyphen and solidly. Compounds are not homogeneous in structure. Taditionally 3 types are distinguished: neutral, morphological, syntactic. In neutral compounds the process of compounding is realized without any linking elements, as in (blackbird, shop - window, bedroom). Compounds which have affixes in their structure are called derived or derivational compounds (blue - eyed, music - lover, newcomer). Contracted compounds have a shortened stem in their structure: TV - set, V - day (victory day), T - shirt. Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is non - productive. Here two compounding stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant: Anglo - Saxon, handiwork. In syntactic compounds words are formed from segments of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs, as in the nouns: lily - of - the - valley, mother - in - law.