1.The morphemic structure of the word.

1. The word is the main unit of morphology. Linguistics has no definition of the word, suitable for this unit in typologically different languages.

But there are some definitions for inflected languages (флективные), of which the best one is as follows.

“The word is the smallest unit of the language having positional independence”.

This is a rather exact definition which stresses on the one hand the ability of one word to take different positions in different sentences, and on the other hand, it stresses the fact, that the word is the smallest discrete (существующий раздельно) unit of the language. The word is the largest unit of morphology. Some linguists consider this term (the word) to be polysemantic. That’s why it is necessary to point out that the word is the generalized (обобщенно) representative of all word–forms, which it has. Thus, speaking about the word ‘река’ we mean all possible word-forms: реки, рекой, реку, etc. Consequently (следовательно), a word-form is a particular form of a word, and the word represents all possible word-forms.

2. The morpheme.

While the word is the largest unit of morphology, the morpheme is its smallest unit, having both form (sound) and substance (сущность) (meaning). The notion of morpheme was introduced by Beaudouin de Courtenay as a generalized expression of the components of the word – the stem and the affixes.

Different linguists understand it differently. Some include in the notion of morpheme form-words, parts of speech, e.g. prepositions and order of words. The linguists of the Copenhagen school find several morphemes in one and the same element, e.g. in the word-form лесом the ending – ом contains three morphemes, expressing case, number and gender. Morpheme is represented in the language by its variants: allomorphs, having special form, and sounding in differently. E. g. Dreamed-[d] , walked-[t], loaded-[id], sometimes allomorphs sound alike. e.g. speaker, actor.

In traditional grammar the study of the morphemic structure of the word was conducted in the light of the two basic criteria: positional and semantic or functional. Morphemes are divided into root-morphemes (roots) and affixal morphemes (affixes). The roots of notional (смысловая) works are classical lexical morphemes.

The affixal morphemes include prefixes, suffixes and inflexions. Of these, prefixes and lexical suffixes have word-building functions, together with the root they form the stem of the word; inflexions (окончания) (grammatical suffixes) express different morphological categories. The root is obligatory (обязательный) for any word, while affixes are not obligatory. The abstract complete morphemic model of the common English word is the following: prefix + root + lexical suffix + grammatical suffix.

On the basis of the degree of self-dependence free morphemes and bound (связанных) morphemes are distinguished (различают). Bound morphemes cannot form words by themselves, they are identified only as parts of words. Free morphemes can build up words by themselves, i.e. can be used freely. E.g. in the word ‘handful’ the root ‘hand’ is a free morpheme, while the suffix-full is a bound morpheme.

There are very few productive bound morphemes in the morphological system of English:

–(e)s – the plural of nouns, the possessive case of nouns, the 3^rd person singular present of verbs.

–(e)d – the past and past participle of verbs.

–ing – the gerund and present participle.

–er, est – the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives and adverbs.

The auxiliary (вспомогательное) word – morphemes should be interpreted as ‘semi-bound’ morphemes as they form categorial units with their notional stem-words. E.g. has come . It should be remembered that the phonetic interchange (взаимообмен, чередование) is utterly (весьма) unproductive in English as in all the Indo-European languages. This type of grammatical means can be understood as a kind of suppletivity (partial suppletivity). E.g. give - gave. On the basis of linear characteristics, “continuous” and “discontinuous” morphemes are distinguished. By the discontinuous morpheme a two-element grammatical unit is meant which is found in the analytical grammatical form comprising (включает в себя) an auxiliary word and a grammatical suffix.

Be…ing – for the continuous verb forms Have…en – for the perfect verb forms. Be…en – for the passive verb forms.

In Modern linguistics there is the notion of a zero morpheme. It is found in the word-forms having no ending. E.g. the noun ‘стол’in the nominative case has a zero morpheme, and in oblique cases it has real morphemes. The meaning of the zero morpheme becomes evident (очевидный) only in opposition. И.П. Иванова strongly object to this term, because the “zero morpheme” has no form, it doesn’t sound. Another term is suggested instead. It is – “zero exponent”, which indicates that the absence of an ending expresses some grammatical meaning (нулевой показатель).

Borrowing words from other languages is not the only way in which the vocabulary of a language may be expended. A number of linguistics processes may operate to enable speaker to coin new words from those that are already in the vocabulary.

One of the most productive ways in which new words have been coined especially in modern times is processes called compounding, derivation, back formation, conversion, shortening.

Compounding involves combining two or more existing words in order to form a third new word.

E.g. double-glazing is a compound formed from the adjective double and the present participle (verbal noun) glazing.

The noun “motor-way” is formed from two nouns “motor” and “way”.

Most compounds are nouns. They are coined because there is a need to name an object or thing that has not been named before and because the meaning of a compound is usually transparent (i.e. it can be deduced from the meanings of the words from which it is formed). It readily commends itself to acceptance by the speaker of the language. Not all compounds are nouns. Indeed, most word classes may contain compounds. E.g. to over-charge (verb), outside (adverb), into (preposition), yourself (pronoun), snow-white (adjective).

There is another kind of compounding in which the parts of the compound are not themselves independent words. Those are compounds formed from the Latin and Greek loan words. In a word like “bibliography” neither “biblio” nor “graphy” are words in English though they are with suitable inflexions in Latin or Greek with the meaning “book” and “writing” respectively. We refer to these compounds as classical compounds and to their parts as “combining forms”.

Many scientific and academic words continue to be coined using the combining forms borrowed from Latin and Greek, such as: bio- -ology; electro- -phile; tele- -scope.

Another highly productive process by which new words are coined is derivation. Derivation involves adding to an existing word either a suffix (at the end) or a prefix (at the beginning). Suffixes and prefixes known collectively as affixes may not stand alone as words. They occure only in combination with a word.

e.g. the noun vacation is derived from the verb vacate by the addition of the suffix “-ion” and the negative form dislocate (verb) and dislocation (noun) are derived by the addition of the prefix “dis-”.

Frequently as we see this location the function of the affix (particularly suffixes) is to derive a related word in a different word class: suffix “-ion” changes verbs to nouns.

Alternatively there is no change of word class. Sometimes the change is from one kind of word to another kind of word in the same word-class.

e.g. the suffix “-hood” changes concrete noun to an abstract noun as in “childhood”, “brotherhood” or the affix (especially prefixes) adds some variant of meaning to the word, i.e. subject to derivation.

e.g. the negative meaning of “dis-” in dislocation.

Conversion (to convert=превращать) – is highly productive in replenishing (пополнение) the English word-stock with new words. The term “conversion” refers to numerous cases of phonetic identity of two words belonging to different parts of speech. E.g. paper – to paper, work to work.

So conversion is the formation of a new word through changes in its paradigm.

There are 2 main cases of conversion:

Formation of verbs from nouns and rarely from other parts of speech: noun (doctor – to doctor); adjective (thin – to thin).

Formation of nouns from verbs and rarely from other parts of speech: verb (to cut – a cut).

Shortening of words is the way of the formation of new words by means of substituting a part of the word for a whole. This process affects both words and word-groups. Therefore, the term “shortening of words” is to be reguarded as conventional.

Shortening:

Graphical abbreviations (a.m; Oct.; B.C.); Lexical abbreviations (a V.I.P. – a very important person; NATO); Clippings – cutting iff of one of several syllables of a word (sis – sister; doc –doctor; Sam_Samuel); Letters (St – Street; Mr.; Mrs.) etc.