Словобразование в английском и русском языках

КОМИТЕТ ПО ОБРАЗОВАНИЮ
МУНИЦИПАЛЬНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ ГОРОД ДОНСКОЙ
МУНИЦИПАЛЬНОЕ БЮДЖЕТНОЕ ОБЩЕОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ
«СРЕДНЯЯ ОБЩЕОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНАЯ ШКОЛА № 14»

ПРОЕКТ

«СЛОВООБРАЗОВАНИЕ»

Выполнена ученицей 9 Б класса
МБОУ «СОШ № 14»
Яблочкиной Татьяной Геннадьевной
Руководитель -
Учитель английского языка
Лоськова Людмила Витальевна

                                                  Донской
                                                     2013

                                 Content

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………...3

2. Main part:

2.1 Word-building…………………………………………………....4

2.2Conversion…………………………………………………...…5-6

2.3Composition…………………………………………………….7-8

2.4 Change in stress in a word and Affixation................................9-10

3. The vocabulary and word-building means in Old English………20-25

4. Conclusion………………………………………..…………………26

       5. Vocabulary………………………………………………………......27

6. References…………………………………………………………...28

                                                 1. Introduction

There is no doubt that the English language today is the most widely used language for international communication. Words and expressions are born, live for a short time and then die or find their place in English vocabulary according to the temporary or permanent nature of the phenomena they describe. Indeed, if no new words were to appear, it would be a sign that the language was moribund.

Therefore, the vocabulary of the English language like any other is constantly changing. This happens several ways. First, by borrowing from other languages​​ and, second, with the help of word formation.

That’s why the aim of my work is to learn different ways of forming words and compare them with the methods of forming words in Russian and in Old English.

There are various types of word building processes in English. Let us discuss the most important of them.

                                                         2. Main part

                                       2.1 WORD-BUILDING 

Word-building is the process of forming words by combining root and affixal morphemes according to certain patterns specific for the language (affixation, composition), or without any outward means of word formation (conversion, semantic derivation).

In English, there are several ways of word formation:

1) conversion (the formation of new words without changing their spelling and pronunciation)
2) composition (the formation of a new word by adding two words in one word)
3) change in stress in a word (and receive a new word the other part of speech)
4) affixation (the process of forming a new word by the addition of a morpheme or affix to word)

                                            2.2 Conversion

Conversion is transferring a word from one part of speech to another without the use of an affix. This way of building new words is most typical of English as compared with Russian.

There may be various directions of conversion:

• a verb may come from a noun: word  - to word, bicycle - to bicycle, master - to master, house  - to house , water - to water;
• a noun may come from a verb: a try, a drive, a drive-in; that’s a must;
• an adjective may be converted to a noun: a round, a monthly, the bitter;
• an adjective may be changed to a verb: to empty, to better, to calm down;
• adverb to noun: Yesterday was my birthday;
• a structural word may be converted to a noun: too many ifs and buts;

Compound words and phrases may also be converted: to dog’s-ear - загибать уголки страниц; a would-be president – будущий президент; free-for-all - соревнования, дискуссия и т. п., в которых может участвовать любой; situps - приседания.
 Root conversion takes place in Russian too, but it is not as characteristic there as it is in English, and is usually accompanied by other word building processes. For example, круглый (adj) – круг (n) – кругом (adv) – вокруг (prep) – округлять (v). In this case conversion is used along with stem reduction and affixation. Mostly, conversion in Russian is a process of changing noun to adverb: утром, шагом, осенью; adjective to noun (based on ellipsis): столовая, рабочий, учащиеся; participle to noun: раненный – раненый; noun to grammatical word: в связи с, в заключение, etc.

It should be kept in mind that not all the meanings of a word are carried through into the derivative form. Therefore, a translator should be careful about the equivalent. For example, the noun paper has several equivalents: бумага, газета, научная работа. However, the verb to paper refers only to the first of these, which is manifested in its collocation. Lecturers and editors may paper their rooms. – Преподаватели и редакторы могут оклеивать свои комнаты обоями. But they cannot *paper their audiences and readers. The verb to paper has no equivalent correlating with the second and third meanings of the noun.

                                            2.3 Composition

Composition is a unit of vocabulary which consists of more than one lexical stem functioning as a single item, with its own meaning and grammar.

English compounds are formed mostly in the agglutinative way, that is by joining directly two or more stems: two-year-old, chewing-gum, doorknob, widespread, earthquake. Unfortunately, orthography is not a foolproof criterion to signal a compound.  

The parts of a word may be linked by a hyphen (fire-light), written without a space (moonlight), or stand separately (candle light). Note that American English uses fewer hyphens than does British English: cell yell (loud talking into a cellular telephone), ego wall (wall with framed awards, diplomas, and pictures of a person with famous people).
It is typical of English to make a compound out of a phrase, with subordinate links between the elements: son-in-law, jack-of-all-trades, day-to-day (rare in Russian: сумасшедший); coordinate links: hide-and-seek.        

To translate a new compound, especially one not included in the dictionary, it is necessary to analyze syntactic relations between the compound elements and their meanings. These relations may be as follows:

• subject to verb: earthquake (the earth quakes), headache; землетрясение, снегопад;
• verb to object: scarecrow (scares crows), sightseeing; водомер, бракодел;
• attribute relations: goldfish, postman; чернозём, голубоглазый;
• adverbial relations: much-improved (improved a lot), night-flying (flying at night); вышеупомянутый, долгоиграющий.

When the meaning and grammatical relations of the compound elements are clear, it is possible to look for a proper means of translation. It may be:

• another compound: tax-payer – налогоплательщик; law-abiding – законопослушный;
• analogue: hangman – палач; homesick – ностальгический; childcare – детский сад; air-headed – ветер в голове;
• calque: waterbike – водный мотоцикл; breathtaking – захватывающий дыхание. Compounds with object and adverbial relations between the elements are often translated in the reverted linear order: tax-free – свободный от налогов; far-advanced – продвинутый вперед; home-grown vegetables – овощи, выращенные дома;
• half-calque: pop-star – поп-звезда; surfspeak – язык серфистов;
• explication and extension: flypaper – липкая лента от мух; gravity-challenged – не способный прыгнуть высоко.

In Russian compounds, stems are mostly joined by a linking vowel, -e- or –o-: пароход, дикорастущий, землемер, кораблестроение. An English compound may also have (though not very often) a linking element, mostly the consonant –s- (sportsman, statesman, spokesman), and occasionally vowels –o-, --a-, -i- (washomat, sportsarama, pluridimensional)– though the cases with the linking vowel belong rather to stem reduction than to stem composition.

                        2.4 Change in Stress in a Word and Affixation

Many nouns have the same form with verbs, but differ in emphasis. Usually in nouns emphasis on the first syllable and the relevant verbs - the second: export (экспорт) - to export (экспортировать) present (подарок) - to present (дарить).

There are two major types of word-building affixes in English and Russian:

• prefixes, that is, affixes which occur before the root of a word: re-team, miscommunication, hypermarket;
• suffixes, which occur after the root: rankler, ranklee, shopin, donkey-philes.

A third possible type of affix, infix, occurring within the root, is not used frequently either in English or in Russian. In the Russian language, linguists also single out postfixes, such as affixes after the ending, e.g., -ся (разрастаются).

English does not have affixes in large numbers – only about 50 common prefixes [including international ones, like a- (amoral), pro- (prosocialist), auto- (autobiography), non- (nonfan), etc.], and somewhat fewer suffixes. In Russian, affixation is a predominant way of making new words.

Russian prefixes are most typical of verbs, as they help to specify an aspect modification of the action: вмять, измять, намять, помять, подмять, примять, размять. In English, these verbs mean respectively to dent, rumple, beat, muss, crush, trample down, mash.

The prefixes are attached to the root of the word at the beginning, and the suffixes - at the end. Words formed by prefixes or suffixes, unlike simple words called derivatives.

Prefixes and suffixes can be attached to various parts of speech, changing the basis of the words: happy (счастливый) - unhappy (несчастный) - happiness (счастье) - happily (счастливо); help (помощь) - helper (помощник) - helpful (полезный) - helpless (беспомощный).

The most commonly used prefixes and their meanings:

1. Prefix with value “снова ”,  “вновь”, “пере”:

2. Prefixes that give the opposite meaning to the word:

3. Prefixes that have a negative valure:

4. Prefixes that are relevant “сверх”, “пере”, “чрезмерно”:

5.        Prefixes that are relevant “между”, “взаимно”:

6.        Prefixes that are translated as

 a) “перед”:

b)        “после”:

c)        “недостаточно”, “недо-“:

d)        “под”:

e)        “экс”, “бывший”:

f)        само-, авто-

g)        полу-

h)        через-, транс-

i)        вверх, кверху, наверху

j)        двойной, два, дважды

k)        имеющий дело с книгами

l)        относящийся к жизни

m)        второстепенное значение

n)        много-, мульти-, поли-

o)        второстепенное значение

7. The prefix verb, with a value of “делать”:

Basic suffixes nouns:

1. Suffix denoting membership in the political direction of the profession and the nation:

2. Suffix teaching, theory, the quality of:

3. Suffix denoting a person, his occupation or job title:

 4. Suffix indicating the result of the:

5. Suffixes

а)        state:

b)        action:

c)     quality:

d) occupation or status:

f) occupation, branch of science:

Basic suffixes adjectives:

1. Suffix forming nouns from adjectives and designating national identity or degree of quality:

2. Suffixes to form adjectives and verbs indicating the presence of quality:

3. Suffix forming nouns from adjectives and denoting the presence of quality:

4. Suffixes forming adjectives from different parts speech and denoting

а)        quality:

b)        the ability to do anything:

c)        lack of quality:

The main verb suffixes:

Basic adverb  suffixes:

Adverb forming suffixes of

а) adjectives, sometimes - nouns, ordinal numbers and participles:

b) nouns and adverbs and indicating the direction of :

3. The vocabulary and word-building means in Old English

(OE English)

The OE vocabulary was almost purely Germanic (PG); except for a small number of borrowings, it consisted of native words inherited from PG or formed from native roots and affixes.

Native words

Native OE words can be subdivided into a number of etymological layers from different historical periods. The three main layers in the native OE words are:

a) common Indo-European (IE)  words;

b) common Germanic words;

c) specifically OE words.

Words belonging to the common IE layer constitute the oldest part of the OE vocabulary. Among these words we find names of some natural phenomena, plants and animals, agricultural terms, names of parts of the human body, terms of kinship, etc.; this layer includes personal and demonstrative pronouns and most numerals. Verbs belonging to this layer denote the basic activities of man; adjectives indicate the most essential qualities.

The common Germanic layer includes words which are shared by most Germanic languages, but do not occur outside the group. Being specifically Germanic, these words constitute an important distinctive mark of the Germanic languages at the lexical level. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of common IE words. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with the sea and everyday life.

The third etymological layer of native words can be defined as specifically OE, that is words which do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages. These words are few, if we include here only the words whose roots have not been found outside English: OE clipian ‘call’, OE brid (NE bird) and several others. However, they are far more numerous if we include in this layer OE compounds and derived words formed from Germanic roots in England, e.g. OE wīfman or wimman (NE woman) consists of two roots which occurred as separate words in other OG languages, but formed a compound only in OE.

Foreign elements in the OE vocabulary

Although borrowed words constituted only a small portion of the OE vocabulary – all in all about six hundred words, - they are of great interest for linguistic and historical study. OE borrowings come from two sources: Celtic and Latin.

Borrowings from Celtic        

There are very few Celtic loan-words in the OE vocabulary, for there must have been little intermixture between the Germanic settlers and the Celtic in Britain. Though in some parts of the island the Celts population was not exterminated during the WG invasion, linguistic evidence of Celtic influence is meager. Abundant borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names. The OE kingdoms Kent, Deira and Bernicia derive their names from the names of Celtic tribes. The name of York, the Downs and perhaps London have been traced to Celtic sources. Various Celtic designations of ‘river’ and ‘water’ were understood by the Germanic invaders as proper names: Ouse, Esk, Exe, Avon; Thames, Stour, Dover also come from Celtic. Many place-names with Celtic elements are hybrids; the Celtic component, combined with a Latin or a Germanic component, makes a compound place-name, e.g.: Celtic plus Latin: Man-chester, Win-chester, Lan-caster; Celtic plus Germanic: York-shire, Corn-wall, Devon-shire, Canter-bury.

Latin influence on the OE vocabulary

Latin words entered the English language at different stages of OE history. Chronologically they can be devided into several layers.

The earliest layer comprises words which the WG tribes brought from the continent when they came to settle in Britain. Contact with the Roman civilization began along time before the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Early OE borrowings from Latin indicate the new things and concepts which the Teutons had learnt from the Romans. They pertain to war, trade, agriculture, building and home life. Among the Latin loan-words adopted in Britain were some place-names made of Latin and Germanic components, e.g. Portsmouth, Greenport, Greenwich. The next period of Latin influence on the OE vocabulary began with the introduction of Christianity in the late 6th c. and lasted to the end of OE. Numerous Latin words which found their way into the English language during these five hundred years clearly fall into two main groups:

1) words pertaining to religion

2) words connected with learning.

The Latin impact on the OE vocabulary was not restricted to borrowing of words. There were also other aspects of influence. The most important of them is the appearance of the so-called “translation-loans” – words and phrases created on the pattern of Latin words as their literal translations. The earliest instances of translation-loans are names of the days of the week found not only in OE but also in other Old Germanic languages. OE Mōnan-dæз (Monday) ‘day of the moon’, L Lunae dies.

Word-building means in Old English

Word Structure

According to their morphological structure OE words fell into three main types:

1) simple words (“root-words”) containing a root-morpheme and no derivational affixes, e.g. land, зōd.

2) derived words consisting of one root-morpheme and one or more affixes, e.g. be-зinnan.

3) compound words, whose stems were made up of more than one root-morpheme, e.g. mann-cynn.

Ways of word-formation

OE employed two ways of word-formation: derivation and word-composition.

Word-derivation

Derived words in OE were built with the help of affixes: prefixes and suffixes; in addition to these principal means of derivation, words were distinguished with the help of sound interchanges and word stress.

Sound interchanges

The earliest source of root-vowel interchanges employed in OE word-building was ablaut or vowel gradation inherited from PG and IE. Ablaut was used in OE as a distinctive feature between verbs and nouns and also between verbs derived from a single root. The gradation series were similar to those employed in the strong verbs: rīdan v – rād n [i:~a:], NE ride, raid. Many vowel interchanges arose due to palatal mutation; the element [i/j] in the derivational suffix caused the mutation of the root-vowel; the same root without the suffix retained the original non-mutated vowel, e.g.:

a) nouns and verbs: fōd – fēdan (NE food – feed)

b) adjectives and verbs: full – fyllan (NE full – fill)

c) nouns and adjectives: long – lenзþu (NE long, length).

Word stress

The role of word accentuation in OE word-building was not great. Like sound interchanges, the shifting of word stress helped to differentiate between some parts of speech being used together with other means. The verb had unaccented prefixes while the corresponding nouns had stressed prefixes, so that the position of stress served as an additional distinctive feature between them.

Prefixation

Genetically, some OE prefixes go back to IE prototypes, e.g. OE un-, a negative prefix. Many more prefixes sprang in PG and OE from prepositions and adverbs, e.g. mis-, be-, ofer-. Prefixes were widely used with verbs but were far less productive with other parts of speech. The most frequent and probably the most productive OE prefixes were: ā-, be-, for-, fore-, зe-, ofer-, un-. The prefix modified the lexical meaning of the word, usually without changing its reference to a part of speech, e.g. spēdiз – unspēdiз. Some prefixes, both verbal and nominal, gave a more special sense to the word and changed its meaning very considerably, e.g.: weorðan – for-weorðan v, forwyrð n (become, perish, destruction). Some prefixes had a very weak of general meaning bordering on grammatical, e.g. зe-, the commonest verb orefix, conveyed the meaning of result or completion and was therefore often used as a marker of the Past Participle – sittan - зe-sett.

Suffixation

Suffixation was by far the most productive means of word derivation in OE. Suffixes not only modified the lexical meaning of the word but could refer it to another part of speech. Suffixes were mostly applied in forming nouns and adjectives, seldom – in forming verbs. Etymologically OE suffixes can be traced to several sources: old stem-suffixes, which had lost their productivity, but could still be distinguished in some words as dead or non-productive suffixes; derivational suffixes proper inherited from PIE and PG; new suffixes which developed from root-morphemes in Late PG and OE in the course of morphological simplification of the word. The old stem-suffixes cannot be regarded as means of derivation in OE. Their application in word derivation can be best shown in reconstructed, pre-written forms of weak verbs.

Noun suffixes are divided into suffixes of “agent nouns” (“nomina agentis”) and those of abstract nouns. Among the suffixes of “agent nouns” there were some dead, unproductive suffixes, e.g.: -a, as in the Masc. a-stem hunta; -end, originally the suffix of the Present Participle, e.g. OE fīend. Later it was replaced by -ere. OE agent nouns in -ere were derived from nouns and verbs: bōcere, fiscere. The nouns in -ere were Masc.; the corresponding suffix of Fem. nouns -estre was less common: spinnestre. Among suffixes of abstract nouns we can trace a productive suffix –nes/-nis: blindnis, beorhtnes. Another productive suffix, -ung/-ing, was used to build abstract nouns from verbs, e.g. earnian – earnung (NE earn, earning). A most important feature of OE suffixation is the growth of new suffixes from root-morphemes. To this group belong OE -dōm, -hād, -lāc and some others, e.g. frēodōm (NE freedom), cīldhād (NE childhood), wedlāc (NE wedlock). Adjectives were usually derived from nouns, rarely from verb stems or other adjectives. The most productive suffixes were -iз, an -isc, e.g. mōdiз ‘proud’(from mōd NE mood); mennisc ‘human’ (from man with the root-vowel [a]).

Word-composition

Word-composition was a highly productive way of developing the vocabulary in OE. As in other OG languages, word-composition in OE was more productive in nominal parts of speech than in verbs.

The pattern “noun plus noun” was probably the most efficient type of all: mann-cynn (NE mankind). Compound nouns with adjective-stems as the first components were less productive, e.g. wīd-sǽ ‘ocean’ (wide sea). Compound adjectives were formed by joining a noun-stem to an adjective: dōm-зeorn (“eager for glory”). The most peculiar pattern of compound adjectives was the so-called “bahuvruhi type” – adjective plus noun stem as the second component of an adjective, e.g. mild-heort ‘merciful’.

                                   4.  Conclusion

In my work I have learnt that English language like any other language has different types of word building.

• The most widespread is affixation.
• The least used is change in stress.
• There is no conversion and change in stress in Russian.
• There is affixation and word building like in Russian.
• There are less ways of affixation in English than in Russian.
• Russian prefix “не”has several variants in English.
• Some prefixes in English have several meanings in Russian.
• Compound words in English have differences from Russian ones.
• Modern ways of word building preserve the old forms.

                                       Vocabulary

                                        References

1. http://www.ranez.ru
2. http://www.translationjournal.net/journal/
3. rushkolnik.ru