15. Shortening(clipping, abbreviation, blending)

Shortening is a comparatively new way of word-building, which as high degree of productivity clipping

(the process and the result of curtailing off a word to one or two syllables)

1.Aphaeresis - initial clipping

a word may lose its beginning (as in phone made from telephone, fence from defence):

2.Apocope -final clipping

a word may lose its ending (as in hols from holidays, vac from vacation, props from properties, ad from advertisement)

3.Syncope - medial clipping, e.g. fantasy —fansy

4.Clipping of a combined type - a word may lose both the beginning and ending (as in flu from influenza, fridge from refrigerator);

Abbreviation

the process and the result of forming a word out of the. initial elements of a word combination

1)Acronym - an initial abbreviation that is read as if it were an ordinary English word and sounds like an ordinary English word, e.g. U.N.O. f'ju:neu] from the United Nations Organisation;

2)Initial abbreviation, e.g. B.B.C. from the British Broadcasting Corporation:

3)Word combinations with one element initially abbreviated, e.g. T-shirt;

4)Latin abbreviation, e.g. etc;

Blending- a word-formation means which consists in merging parts of words into one word

The process of formation is also called telescoping, because the words seem to slide into one another like sections of a telescope. Blends may be defined as formations that combine two words and include the letters or sounds they have in common as a connecting element.

Depending upon the prototype phrases with which they can be correlated two types of blends can be distinguished into:

-additive

is transformable into a phrase consisting of the respective complete stems combined by the conjunction and, e. g. smog< smoke and fog ‘a mixture of smoke and fog’. The elements may be synonymous, belong to the same semantic field or at least be members of the same lexico-grammatical class of words: French+English>Frenglish: compare also the coinage smaze <smoke+haze.

Other examples are: brunch<breakfast and lunch, transceiver<transmitier and receiver; Niffles<Niaqara

Falls.

-restrictive

is transformable into an attributive phrase where the first element serves as modifier of the second: cine(matographic pano) rama>cinerama. Other examples are: medicare<medical care; positron<positive electron; telecast<television broadcast.

An interesting variation of the same type is presented by cases of superposition, formed by pairs of words having similar clusters of sounds which seem to provoke blending, e. g. motel<motorists' hotel: the element -ot- is present in both parts of the prototype.

Further examples are: shamboo<sham bamboo (imitation bamboo); atomaniac<atom maniac; slanguage<slang +language; spam<spiced ham.

16. Minor Types of Modern Word-Building.

Sound-imitation (Onomatopoeia) - This type of word-formation is now also called echoism (the term was introduced by O. Jespersen)

Sound imitation (onomatopoeia, echoism)- the naming of an action or thing by more or less exact reproduction of a sound associated with it.

Words coined by this interesting type of word-buildirig are made by imitating different kinds of sounds that may be produced by animals, birds; insects, human beings, and inanimate objects.

It is of some interest that sounds produced by the same kind of animal are. frequently represented by quite different sound groups in different languages. For instance, English dogs bark (cf. the R. лаять) or howl (cf. the R. выть). The English cock cries cock-a-doodle-doo (cf. the R. ку-ка-pe-Ky). In England ducks quack and frogs croak (cf. the R. крякать said about ducks and квакать said about frogs). It is only English and Russian cats who seem capable of mutual understanding when they meet, for English cats mew or miaow (meow). The same can be said about cows: they moo (but also low).

Some names of animals and especially of birds and insects are also produced by sound-imitation: crow, cuckoo, humming-bird, whip-poor-will, cricket.

Reduplication- the formation of a new word by doubling a stem either without any phonetic changes (bye-bye (coll, for good-bye)) or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant (as in ping-pong, chit­chat.(this second type is called gradationalreduplication))

Stylistically speaking, most words made by reduplication represent informal groups: colloquialisms and slang, e.g. walkie-talkie ("a portable radio"), riff-raff ("the worthless or disreputable element of society"; "the dregs or society"). chi-chi (si. for chic as in a chi-chi girl).

Back-derivation (back-formation, reversion)- the derivation of a new word by subtracting a real or supposed affix from existing words through misinterpretation of their structure

The earliest examples of this type of word-building are the verb to beg that was made from the French borrowing beggar, to burgle from burglar, to cobble from cobbler. In all these cases the verb was made from the noun by subtracting what was mistakenly associated with the English suffix -er.

Later examples of back-formation are to butle from butler, to baby-sit from baby-sitter, to force-land from forced landing

Sound and stress interchange- a way of forming a new word by changing a root-vowel or bv

shifting the place of the stress

Sound interchange may be defined as an opposition in which words or word forms are differentiated due to an alternation in the phonemic composition of the root. The change may affect the root vowel, as in food n : : feed v; or root consonant as in speak v : : speech n; or both, as for instance in life n : : live v. It may also be combined with affixation: strong a : : strength n; or with affixation and shift of stress as in 'democrat: : de'mocracy.