Exercises

I. Consider your answers to the following.

1. What are the main ways of enriching the English vocabulary?

2. What are the principal productive ways of word-building in English?

3. What do we mean by derivation?

4. What is the difference between frequency and productivity of affixes? Why can't one consider the noun-forming suffix -age, that is commonly met in many words (cabbage, village, marriage, etc.), a pro­ductive one?

5. Give examples of your own to show that affixes have meanings.

6. Look through Chapter 3 and say what languages served as the main sources of borrowed affixes. Illus­trate your answer by examples.

7. Prove that the words a finger and to finger ("to touch or handle with the fingers") are two words and not the one word finger used either as a noun or as a verb.

8. What features of Modern English have produced the high productivity of conversion?

9. Which categories of parts of speech are especially affected by conversion?

10. Prove that the pair of words love, n. and love, v. do not present a case of conversion.

II. The italicized words in the following jokes and extracts are formed by derivation. Write them out in two columns:

A. Those formed with the help of productive affixes.

B. Those formed with the help of non-productive affixes. Explain the etymology of each borrowed affix.

1. Willie was invited to a party, where refreshments were bountifully served.

"Won't you have something more, Willie?" the host­ess said.

"No, thank you," replied Willie, with an expression of great satisfaction. "I'm full."

"Well, then," smiled the hostess, "put some deli­cious fruit and cakes in your pocket to eat on the way home."

"No, thank you," came the rather startling response of Willie, "they're full too."

2. The scene was a tiny wayside railway platform and the sun was going down behind the distant hills. It was a glorious sight. An intending passenger was chat- ting with one of the porters.

"Fine sight, the sun tipping the hills with gold," said the poetic passenger.

"Yes," reported the porter; "and to think that there was a time when I was often as lucky as them 411s."

3. A lady who was a very uncertain driver stopped her car at traffic signals which were against her. As the green flashed on, her engine stalled, and when she restarted it the colour was again red. This flurried her so much that when green returned she again stalled her engine and the cars behind began to hoot. While she was waiting for the green the third time the constable on duty stepped across and with a smile said: "Those are the only colours, showing today, ma'am,"

4. "You have an admirable cook, yet you are always growling about her to your friends."

"Do you suppose I want her lured away?"

5. P a t i e n t: Do you extract teeth painlessly? Dentist: Not always — the other day I nearly

dislocated my wrist.

6. The inspector was paying a hurried visit to a slightly overcrowded school.

"Any abnormal children in your class?" he inquired of one harassed-looking teacher.

"Yes," she replied, with knitted brow, "two of them have good manners."

7. "I'd like you to come right over," a man phoned an undertaker, "and supervise the burial of my poor, departed wife."

"Your wife." gasped the undertaker. "Didn't I bury her two years ago?"

"You don't understand," said the man. "You see I married again."

"Oh," said the undertaker. "Congratulations."

8. Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,

Please forget about that dreadful letter I sent you last week — I was feeling terribly lonely and miserable and sore-throaty the night I wrote. I didn't know it, but I was just coming down with tonsillitis and grippe ...I'm in the infirmary now, and have been for six days. The head nurse is very bossy. She is tall and thinnish with a dark face and the funniest smile. This is the first time they would let me sit up and have a pen or a pencil. Please forgive me for being impertinent and ungrate­ful.

Yours with love. J udy Abbott (From Daddy-Long-Legs by J. Webster)*

¹ The extract is taken from the book "Daddy-Long-Legs" by an American writer Jean Webster. The novel is written in the form of letters. The author of these letters, a young girl, Judy by name, writes them to her guardian, a rich man whom she has never seen.

Judy was brought up in the John Grier Home orphan asylum where her life was hard. She was a very bright girl and when she finished school, her guardian sent her to college. The girl knows almost nothing about him. She knows only that he is a very tall man. That is why she jokingly calls him Daddy-Long-

9. The residence of Mr. Peter Pett, the well-known financier, on Riverside Drive, New York, is one of the leading eyesores of that breezy and expensive boulevard ...Through the rich interior of this mansion Mr. Pett, its nominal proprietor, was wandering like a lost spirit. There was a look of exasperation on his usually patient face. He was afflicted by a sense of the pathos of his po- sition. It was not as if he demanded much from life. At that moment all that he wanted was a quiet spot where he might read his Sunday paper in solitary peace and he could not find one. Intruders lurked behind every door. The place was congested. This sort of thing had been

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growing worse and worse ever since his marriage two years previously. Marriage had certainly complicated • life for Mr. Pett, as it does for the man who waits fifty years before trying it. There was a strong literary virus in Mrs. Pett's system. She not only wrote voluminously herself — but aimed at maintaining a salon... She gave shelter beneath her terra-cotta roof to no fewer than six young unrecognized geniuses. Six brilliant youths, mostly novelists who had not yet started...

(From Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse. Abridged)

3. Write out from any five pages of the book you are reading examples which illustrate borrowed and native af­fixes in the tables in Ch. 3 and 5. Comment on their pro­ductivity.

4. Explain the etymology and productivity of the affixes given below. Say what parts of speech can be formed with their help.

-ness, -ous, -ly, -y, -dom, -ish, -tion, -ed, -en, -ess, -or, -er, -hood, -less, -ate, -ing, -al, -ful, un-, re-, im (in)-, dis-, over-, ab-

V. Write out from the book you are reading all the words with the adjective-forming suffix -ly and not less than 20 words with the homonymous adverb-forming suffix. Say what these suffixes have in common and in what way they are differentiated.

VI. Deduce the meanings of the following derivatives from the meanings of their constituents. Explain your deduc- tion. What are the meanings of the affixes in the words un- der examination?

Reddish, adj.; overwrite, v.; irregular, adj.; illegal, adj.; retype, v.; old-womanish, adj.; disrespectable, adj.; inexpensive, adj.; unladylike, adj.; disorganize, v.; renew, v.; eatable, adj.; overdress, v.; disinfec­tion, п.; snobbish, adj.; handful, п.; tallish, ad}.; sandy, adj.; breakable, adj.; underfed, adj.

VII. In the following examples the italicized words are formed from the same root by means of different affixes. Translate these derivatives into Russian and explain the difference in meaning.

1. a) Sallie is the most amusing person in the world — and Julia Pendleton the least so. b) Ann was wary, but amused. 2. a) He had a charming smile, al­most womanish in sweetness, b) I have kept up with you through Miss Pittypat but she gave me no information that you had developed womanly sweetness. 3. a) I have been having a delightful and entertaining conversation with my old chum, Lord Wisbeach. b) Thanks for your invitation. I'd be delighted to come. 4. a) Sally thinks everything is funny — even flunking — and Julia is bored at everything. She never makes the slightest ef­fort to be pleasant, b) — Why are you going to America? — To make my fortune, I hope. — How pleased your father will be if you do. 5. a) Long before he reached the brownstone house... the first fine care­less rapture of his mad outbreak had passed from Jerry Mitchell, leaving nervous apprehension in its place, b) If your nephew has really succeeded in his experi­ments you should be awfully careful. 6. a) The trouble with college is that you are expected to know such a lot of things you've never learned. It's very confusing at times, b) That platform was a confused mass of travel­lers, porters, baggage, trucks, boys with magazines, friends, relatives. 7. a) At last I decided that even this rather mannish efficient woman could do with a little help, b) He was only a boy not a man yet, but he spoke in a manly way. 8. a) The boy's respectful manner changed noticeably, b) It may be a respectable occupation, but it sounds rather criminal to me. 9. a) "Who is leading in the pennant race?" said this strange butler in a feverish whisper, b) It was an idea peculiarly suited to her tem­perament, an idea that she might have suggested her­self if she had thought of it ...this idea of his fevered imagination. 10. Dear Daddy-Long-Legs. You only wanted to hear from me once a month, didn't you? And I've been peppering you with letters every few daysl But I've been so excited about all these new adventures that I must talk to somebody... Speaking of classics, have you ever read Hamlet? If you haven't, do it right off. It's perfectly exciting. I've been hearing about Shakespeare all my life but I had no idea he really wrote so well, I always suspected him of going largerly on his reputation. (J. Webster)¹

VIII. Explain the difference between the meanings of the following words produced from the same root by means of different affixes. Translate the words into Russian.

Watery — waterish, embarrassed — embarrassing, manly — mannish, colourful — coloured, distressed — distressing, respected — respectful — respectable, exhaustive — exhausting — exhausted, bored — bor­ing, touchy — touched — touching.

IX. Find cases of conversion in the following sentences.