I.V. Arnold [] speaks about so-called minor types of lexical oppositions, to which she referred Sound interchange, Distinctive stress, Sound imitation.

Sound interchange is defined as an opposition in which words or word forms are differentiated due to an alternation in the phonemic composition of the root,e.g., food – to feed ; or root consonant as in to speak - speech, life - live. It may be combined with affixa­tion: strong - strength or with affixation and shift of stress as in 'democrat – de`mocracy.

The process is not active in the language at present.

Distinctive stress

Some nouns and verbs of Romanic origin have a distinctive stress pattern: conduct- 'beha­viour' – to conduct - 'to lead or guide (in a formal way); accent, contest, contract (extract), contrast, export), increase .protest, rebel, record, sur­vey, torment.

Historically this is probably explained by the fact that these words were borrowed from French where the original stress was on the last syl­lable.

Sound imitation

Sound imitating or onomatopoeic words are phonetically motivated echoes of natural sounds, e.g: words naming sounds and movement of water: babble, blob, bubble, flush, gurgle, splash, etc. But onomatopoeic words don`t re­flect the real sounds directly, irrespective of the laws of the language, be­cause the same sounds are represented differently in different languages, e.g., the English word cock-a-doodle-do and the Russian ku-kori-ku.

The majority of onomatopoeic words serve to name sounds or move­ments. Most of them are verbs easily turned into nouns: bang, boom, bump, rustle, smack. There is a theory that in language typical sound combination(phonostemes) have a certain meaning. In Russian bilabial sound refer smth. round: бублик, бобы. In English words with sl denote a) verbal or physical attack: slam, slander, slap, slaughter, slay b) a sliding movement: slide, slalom, sledge, slip, slope.

Back-formation

Back-formation is a term which denotes the derivation of new words by subtracting a real or supposed affix from existing words through misinterpretation of their structure.

The process is based on analogy. The words beggar, butler, cobbler or typewriter look very much like agent nouns with the suffix -er-or, such as actor or painter. But their last syllable is subtracted from the word leaving what is understood as a verbal stem, e.g., the verb butle -'to act or serve as a butler' is derived by subtraction of -er from a supposedly verbal stem in the noun butler. The process of back-formation has only diachronic relevance. For synchronic approach butler- butle is equivalent to painter – paint. A modern example of back-formation is to lase — a verb used about the functioning of the apparatus called laser.

The most productive type of back-formation in present-day English is derivation of verbs from compounds that have either -er or -ing as their last element: thought-read<ithought-reader<ithought-reading, to air-condition <air-conditioner <air-conditioning. Other examples of back-formations from compounds are the verbs baby-sit, beachcomb, house-break.