42927 (Minor Types of Lexical Opposition (Shortened Words)), страница 2

The term blending is used to de-§ 39. Blending signage the method of merging parts of words (not morphemes) into one new word; the result is a blend, also known as a portmanteau word. The noun smog is an example in point. It is composed of the parts of the nouns smoke and fog (smoke-Hog). Thus blending is in fact com­pounding by means of clipped words. The result of blending is an unanalyzed, simple word, for the parts of words blended by the word-coiner (for instance, sin and go in smog) are not morphemes at all in terms of the English language. Therefore a blend is perceived as a simple word unless speakers have re­ceived the extra-linguistic information about its composition. Many blends are short-lived. A fair proportion, however, have become established in the vocabulary, e. g. clash—clap H-crash or dash; flush = flash blush; brunch—breakfast-Ь lunch; 5language=slang-language; amaze smoke haze, etc. In most cases blends belong to the colloquial layer of words sometimes bordering on slang, e. g. amaze, brunch, language, politician pollute politician—грязный политикан, etc. There are numerous blends, however, in the terminological sector of the vocabulary, e.g. recon=radar beacon—радиолокационный маяк; transceiver = transmitter-receive—приемное-передающая станция; transistor=transfer resistor—транзистор, etc.

In considering the diachronic and the formation synchronic approach to language study (see 'Introduction', § 2) reference was made, in particular, to the verb to beg derived from the noun beggar borrowed from Old French. The noun beggar was later presumed to have been derived from a shorter word on the analogy of the derivative correlation of the "speak—speaker" type. This process of word-formation is called backformation (or back-derivation) and has diachronic relevance only. It does not affect the derivative correlation for present-day speakers who do not feel any difference between the relationship "speak— speaker", on the one hand, and "beg—beggar", on the other. Examples of backformation are numerous: to burgle from burglar; to edit from editor; to enthuse from enthusiasm; to sculpt from sculptor, to liaise from liaison, etc. At the present time backformation combined with conversion seems to be active in the formation of verbs from compound nouns mostly of a terminological character, e.g. to blood-transfuse from blood-trans fusion — переливание крови; to rush-develop from rush-development — быстрое проявление пленки; to finger-print from finger-printing — взятие отпечатков пальцев; to baby-sit from baby-sitter= приходящая няня, etc.

Sound-interchange is the gradation of e.g. Sound- and stress- sounded occupying one and the same interchange. Place in the sound-form of one and the same morpheme in various cases of its occurrence. Both sound and stress-interchange may be regarded as ways of forming words only diachronically because in Modern English not a single word can be coined by changing the root-vowel of a word or by shifting the place of the stress. Sound-interchange as well as stress-interchange is absolutely non-productive and in fact has turned into a means of distinguishing between different words, primarily between words of different parts of speech and as such is rather wide-spread in Modern English, e.g. to sing—song, to live—life, to breathe—breath, etc. It also distinguishes between different word-forms, e.g. man—men, wife—wives, to know—knew, to leave—left, etc.

Sound-interchange naturally falls into two groups: vowel-interchange and consonant-interchange.

By means of vowel-interchange we distinguish different parts of speech, e.g. full—to fill, food—to feed, blood-to bleed, etc. In some cases vowel-interchange is combined with affixation, e.g. long—length, strong—strength, broad— breadth; nature—natural, nation—national, etc. Intransi­tive verbs and corresponding transitive ones with a causative meaning also display vowel-interchange, e.g. to rise—to raise, to sit—to set, to He—to lay, to fall—to fell.

The type of consonant-interchange typical of Modern English is the interchange of a voiceless fricative consonant in a noun and the corresponding voiced consonant in the cor­responding verb, e.g.: use—to use, mouth—to mouth, house-to house, advice—to advise, etc.

There are some particular cases of consonant-interchange: [k]—[tj]: to speak—speech; to break—breach; [s]—[dj:] defense—to defend; offence—to offend; [sj—ft]: evidence-evident; importance—important; etc. Consonant-interchange may be combined with vowel-interchange, e.g. bath—to bathe; breath—to breathe; life—to live, etc.

Many English verbs of Latin-French origin are distin­guished from the corresponding nouns by the position of stress. Here are some well-known examples of such pairs of words: 'export «—to export o; 'import n—to import v; 'conduct n—to conduct v; 'present n—to present v; 'contrast n— to contrast u; 'increase n—-to increase v, etc.

Stress-interchange is not restricted to pairs of words con­sisting of a noun and a verb. It may also occur between other parts of speech, for instance, between adjective and verb, cf. 'frequent adj—to frequent v, 'absent ad\— to absent v, etc.

Relationship Sound-interchange in English is often Between sound (stress)- combined with a difference only in the interchange paradigm. Hence the question arises and conversion. Of the relativistic between sound-interchange and conversion. To investigate the problem the following three types of relations should be distinguished:

1) Breath—to breathe

As far as cases of this type are concerned, sound-interchange distinguishes only between words; it does not differentiate word-forms of one and the same word. Consequently it has no relation to the paradigms of the words. Hence, cases of this type cannot be regarded as conversion.

2) Song—to sing

In the given example the vowel in song interchanges with three different vowels, the latter interchanging with one another in the forms of the verb to sing:³

Like the previous type, the words song—to sing is not related by conversion: song differs from to sing (sang, sung) not only in the paradigm, its root-vowel not occurring in the word-forms of the verb and vice versa.

3) House—to house

In such cases the type of sound-interchange used to distinguish the two words (verb and noun) is the same as that which distinguishes the word-forms of the noun, cf. house [haus]—houses [hauziz] and to house [hauz]. Consequently, the only difference between the two words lies in their para­digms, in other words, word-pairs like house—to house are cases of conversion. It is fairly obvious that in such cases as present—to present, accent—-to accent, etc. which differ in the position of stress the latter does not distinguish the word-forms within the paradigm of the two words. Thus, as far as cases of this type are concerned, the difference in stress is similar to the function of sound-interchange in cases like breath—to breathe. Consequently, cases of this type do not belong to conversion.

1. Shortening of words and word summary groups is typical of present-day English a one occurring in various spheres of oral and written intercourse. Graphical abbreviations are restricted in use to written speech. Lexical abbreviations and especially clippings are peculiar to the sphere of oral communi­cation

1. The result of blending which is a compounding of clipped words is always a simple word. In most cases blends belong to the colloquial layer of words. There are, however, numerous blends in the terminological section of the vocabulary.

2. The process of back formation is of diachronic relevance only.

3. The function of sound-interchange and stress-inter change in Modern English is to distinguish between different words and word-forms. Sound-interchange is often accompanied by affixation.

The Main Part

1.2 SHORTENING OF SPOKEN WORDS

As a type of word-building shortening of spoken words, also called clipping or curtailment, is recorded in the English language as far back a& the 15th century.1 It has grown more and more productive ever since. This growth becomes especially marked in many European languages in the 20th century, and it is a matter of common knowledge that this development is particularly intense in English.

Newly shortened words appear continuously; this is testified by numerous neologisms, such as dub v, a cinema term meaning 'to make another recording of sound-track in a film in a different language' (from double); frig or fridge n from refrigerator; mike n from microphone; tellie, telly or T. V. n from television set; vacun from vacuum cleaner, etc.

Many authors are inclined to overemphasize the role of "the strain of modern life" as the mainspring of this development. This is, obviously, only one of the reasons, and the purely linguistic factors should not be overlooked. Among the major forces are the demands of rhythm, which are more readily satisfied when the words are monosyllabic.

When dealing with words of long duration, one will also note that a high percentage of English shortenings are involved into the process of loan word assimilation. Monosyllabic goes farther in English than in any other European language, and that is why shortened words sound more like native ones than their long prototypes. Curtailment may therefore be regarded as caused, partly at least, by analogical extension, i.e. modification of form on the basis of analogy with existing and widely used patterns. Thus, the three homonyms resulting from abbreviation of three different words, van 'a large covered vehicle', 'a railway carriage', the short for caravan (by aphesis1); van 'the front of an army', the short of vanguard which in its turn is a clipping of the French word avant-garde; and van — a lawn tennis term, the short for advantage, all sound quite like English words. Cf. ban n and v, can, fan, man, ran (Past Tense of run), tan, etc.

Shortening of spoken words or curtailment consists in the reduction of a word to one of its parts (whether or not this part has previously been a morpheme), as a result of which the new form acquires some linguistic value of its own.

The part retained does not change phonetically, hence the necessity of spelling changes in some of the examples above (dub:: double, mike :: microphone, etc.).

The change is not only quantitative: a curtailed word 2 is not merely a word that has lost its initial, middle or final part. Nor is it possible to treat shortening as just using a part for the whole as Hackett suggests, because a shortened word is always in some way different from its prototype in meaning and usage. Moreover, every kind of shortening differs’ from derivation, composition and conversion in being not a new arrangement of existing morphemes, but often a source of new ones.

Shortening may be regarded as a type of root creation because the resulting new morphemes are capable of being used as free forms and combine with bound forms. They can take functional suffixes: "Refs Warning Works Magic" (the title of a newspaper article about a football match where the referee called both teams together and lectured them on rough play). Cf. Sing. — bike, bod, 1 PI. — bikes, bodes, Inf. — to vac, 2 Part. I — vacking, Past Tense and Part. II — vacked. They also serve as basis for further word-formation: fancy n (from fantasy), fancy v, fancier n, fanciful adj, fancifully adv, fancifulness n, fancy-ball n, fancy-dress n, fancy-work n, etc.

It is interesting in this connection to compare the morphemes “tele” in television and telecast. They are homonymous but not identical. Tele- in television is derived from “Grtele far”, it is a combining form used to coin many special terms denoting instruments and processes which produce or record results at a distance, such as telecommunication, telemechanics, telepathy, telephone, telescope and television itself. Tele- in telecast does not mean 'far', it is a new development — the shortened variant of television rendering a special new notion. This becomes obvious from the following simple transformations: television - vision at a distance, tele(broad)"cast HO a broadcast at a distance,3 tele (broad) cast a television broadcast. In this new capacity tele- enters many combinations: telefilm, tele-prompter (an electronic device that slowly unrolls the speaker's text, in large print out of sight of the audience), televiewer 'one who uses a television set', telestar (Anglo-American satellite used as television relay station).

The correlation of a curtailed word with its prototype is of great interest. Two possible developments should be noted:

1. The curtailed form may be regarded as a variant or a synonym differing from the full form quantitatively, stylistically and sometimes emotionally, the prototype being stylistically and emotionally neutral, e. g. doc :: doctor; exam :: examination. Also in proper names: Becky:: Rebecca, Frisco :: San Francisco, Japs :: the Japanese. The missing part can at all times be supplied by the listener, so that the connection between the prototype and the short form is not lost. The relationship between the prototype and the curtailment belongs in this case to the present-day vocabulary system and forms a relevant feature for synchronistic analysis. Much yet remains to be done in studying the complex relations between the prototype and the clipping, as it is not clear when one should consider them two separate synonymous words and when they are variants of the same word.

2. In the opposite extreme case the connection can be established only etytnologically. The denotative or lexico-grammatical meaning, or both, may have changed so much that the clipping becomes a separate word. Consequently a pair of etymological doublets1 comes into being. Cf. chap:: chapmen 'a peddlers', fan 'an enthusiastic devotee' :: fanatic, fancy :: fantasy, miss -.-.mistress. A speaker who calls himself a football fan would probably be offended at being called a fanatic. A fanatic is understood to have unreasonable and exaggerated beliefs and opinions that make him socially dangerous, whereas a fan is a harmless devotee of a specified amusement. The relationship between curtailed forms and prototypes in this second group is irrelevant to the present-day vocabulary system, and is a matter of historic, i. e. diachronistic study.

In both types the clipped forms (doc, exam, chap, fan, etc.) exist in the language alongside their respective prototypes. The difference, however, is that whereas words belonging to the first group can be replaced by their prototypes and show in this way a certain degree of interchangeability, the doublets are never equivalent lexically as there are no contexts where the prototype can replace the shortened word without a change of meaning.