Morphological structure of English words

WORD FORMATION

Cultural Orientation of Words

1. Culturally neutralwords: form words (articles, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, etc.)

2. Culturally universal words – polyonyms – may be used in reference to any culture.

E.g., house, room, boy, telephone, stove

3. Culturally oriented words (realia):

A. idionyms, internal cultural terms, denoting cultural peculiarities of English-speaking countries and peoples.

E.g., Green Beret (U.S.), the City (Brit.)

B. xenonyms, external cultural terms

E.g., borscht (Russ.), tanka (Japanese)

International words, words of identical originthat occur in several languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source.

E.g., школа (Russ.), school, l’ecole (Fr.), la escuela (Sp.), die Schule (Germ.), kool (Estonian), etc., fr. schōle (Gk)

False friends, words that have the same or similar form in two (or more) languages but different meanings in each.

E.g., …copies of Horse and Hound and Country Life filled a magazine rack to overflowing. (Francis. Longshot)

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Morpheme is the minimum meaningful language unit, which is an association of a given meaningwith a given sound pattern. Morphemes occur in speech as constituentparts of words.

Word is the minimum free form that can constitute a complete utterance. It is an association of a given meaningwith a given sound complex; it is normally uninterruptable in speech, and when written or printed has spaces on either side.

Bound morpheme normally occurs only in combination with other (bound or free) morphemes; not free.

E.g., -s, -ing, -ed; in-, de-; -ly, -ness; -dub- (dubious, indubitable), eu- (eulogy, euphony, euphoria); -man- [hand] (manual, manifest, emancipate, mandatory).

Free morpheme is capable of forming a wordwithout adding other morphemes.

E.g., togetherness – together; barrelful – barrel

According to the role morphemes play in constructing words they are subdivided into roots and affixes.

The rootof a word is commonly a morphemewhich carries the main lexical meaningand cannot be further analyzed, and which underlies related derivatives of the word.

E.g., righteous, rightful, rightly (free morpheme)

synchronize, chronicle, anachronism, chronic (bound morpheme).

Word family is a group of words having a common rootas their basis. (see prec. examples)

Affix is a derivational or functional bound morphemeadded to the rootor stemof the word. Affixes change lexical, lexico-grammaticalor grammatical meaningof the word.

Derivational affixes serve to form new words. Derivational affixes change or modify lexical and/or lexico-grammaticalmeaningof words.

Functional affixes [inflections, outer formatives, endings] serve to convey grammatical meaning.

E.g., write + -s = writes, look + -ed = looked, fine + -est = finest (functional affixes)

write + -ative = writative, look + -er = looker, fine + re- = refine (derivational affixes)

Prefix is a derivational affixstanding before the rootor stemand modifying the wordmeaning.

E.g., build v.– rebuild v.

productive adj. – nonproductive adj.

continue v. – discontinue v.

fire n. – afire adj.

foul adj. – befoul v.

Suffix is a derivational affixfollowing the rootor stemand forming a wordin a different part of speech or a different word-class.

E.g., build v. - builder n.

continue v. - continual adj.

mob n. - mobster n.

Infix(Tmesis) is a form inserted within the main base of a word.

E.g., stand (cf. stood)

to-us-ward (cf. toward us)

I can’t find it any-blooming-where.

Stem is a part of the wordthat remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. A stemcontaining one or more derivational affixes is a derived stem. A stemcontaining two or more rootmorphemes is a compoundstem.

E.g., specify – specifying – specifies – specified (a derived stem) spectrographic (a compoundstem)

According to the number of morphemes in the wordand the relations between them we distinguish the following structural types of words:

1) Root words, containing one free rootmorpheme: car, true, red, go.

2) Derivatives, containing one rootmorphemeand one or more derivational affixes: disCOURagement, FAULTless, PEOPLEhood

3) Compounds, consisting of two or more stems: chalkboard, people- oriented.

4) Compound derivatives, consisting of two or more stems with a derivational affixreferring to the combination as a whole, not to one of its elements: honeymoon +-er, wholeheart + -ed.

Each of the structural wordtypes can result from the following word formation processes (word-building mechanisms): 1) Derivation (affixation); 2) Compounding; 3) Conversion; 4) Abbreviation; 5) Blending; 6) Backformation; 7) Borrowing(calque).

Word-building or morphological analysis helps to see into the word-building pattern of the word. Morphological analysis is based on the Immediate Constituents (IC). An IC is any of the two meaningful parts forming a larger expression. The method is based on the fact that a wordanalyzable into morphemes is involved in certain structural correlations (oppositions). The morphemeboundaries in a word are determined on the basis of comparison with other words. Breaking a word into IC helps to observe in each cut the structural order of constituents which may differ from their actual sequence. The procedure of IC analysis is reduced to the recognition and classification of the same and different morphemes and the same and different word patterns. Such analysis can continue until the ultimate constituents (UC) are reached. IC analysis helps to determine the meaningof the complex words.

E.g., Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee.

1.imperturbable+-ness *im-+perturbableness *imperturb+-ableness	(-ness, abstract noun suffixmeaningstate, quality; added to adjectival stems: kindness, fondness, daintiness. A man…cool and quite English, imperturbable)
2. im-+perturbable *imperturb +- able	(im-, a negative prefixadded to adjectival stems: impossible, impolite, immodest. Perturbable, liable to be disqieted or agitated)
3. perturb +-able	(-able, adjectival suffixmeaningable/worthy to be V-ed, added to verbal stems: readable, forgettable. Highly perturbed, he wondered what was coming next).
*per-+turbable	(per-, meaningthrough, throughout: perfume, perforate, peruse; *turbable)
4. per-+turb	(per-, persist, persecute, perspire; turb-: turbid, turbulate, turbine, disturb; fr. Lat. turba, turmoil, crowd).

íim-+ [(per-+turb)+- able]ý + -ness: calmness

Bathysiderodromorphobia

1. bathysiderodromo + phobia). Phobia is a free rootmorpheme; so the wordunder analysis is a compound. Phobia: fear (phobia, a persistent, morbid or insane fear of a specific thing or group of things: acrophobia – fear of heights, bathophobia – fear of depth, ecophobia – fear of home, theatrophobia – fear of theaters)

2. bathysiderodrom + -o- (-o-, a linking vowel in compounds: speedo-meter, thermometer, drunkometer, Anglo-Russian)

3. bathy + siderodrom. Bathy: deep, in the depth (bathyal, having to do with the deeper levels of the ocean, bathyscaph, an apparatus for deep-sea exploration, bathynaut – a deep-sea explorer, bathygram – a graphic record of water depth obtained from an echo sounder)

4. Sidero+drom. Drom: track, course, a running, road (dromedary, the swift one-humped camel of Arabia fr. Gk Dromos – a running;

Dromos [Archeology], a passage often between rows of columns, leading to a temple fr. Gk Dromos a running, race course, an avenue; hippodrome in ancient Greece and Rome an oval track for horse races; airdrome [Brit. Aerodrome], large tract of open level ground, including all buildings and fixtures for the operation of aircraft).

5. Sider + -o-. Sider-: iron (siderography, the art of engraving on steel; siderolite, a meteorite composed of a mixed mass of iron and stone; siderosis, a chronic inflammatory disease of the lungs caused by inhalation of iron particles; siderurgy, the art of working in iron and steel; -o-, linking vowel)

Bathysiderodromophobia, fear of deep iron roads, i. e. fear of railroads (tracks with parallel steel rails) in the depth (i. e. underground) – fear of subways, undergrounds or metros.

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