Table Of ContentCollection: Language, Culture & Creativity
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Acquiring knowledge about the words of a language involves understanding
how words are created, how they have evolved over time, how they relate in
meaning to each other, and how they are dealt with in dictionaries. These
are the main goals that this textbook, designed for undergraduate students of
English as a foreign language, aims to accomplish. Drawing on insights
from the linguistic research that has been carried out lately, it covers those
areas of language study, which normally fall under the headings of lexical
morphology, etymology and lexical semantics. Special attention is paid to
word-building processes, word history and word meaning, with a view to
clarifying terminology and putting it to practice in the empirical analysis of
language facts.
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English words: structure, origin and meaning. A linguistic introduction. 2
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English words:
structure, origin and meaning
A linguistic introduction
Camelia Bejan
ADDLETON ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS • NEW YORK
English words: structure, origin and meaning. A linguistic introduction. 4
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Addleton Academic Publishers
www.addletonacademicpublishers.com
[email protected]
30-18 50th Street, Woodside, New York, 11377
ISBN 978-1-942585-36-7
eISBN 978-1-942585-37-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943351
This book has undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor
screening and anonymized refereeing by two international scholars.
© Addleton Academic Publishers 2017
Addleton Academic Publishers is an imprint of RIOTS, New York.
Addleton Academic Publishers have no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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Addleton Academic Publishers, at the address above. You must not circulate
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condition on any acquirer.
Contents
Foreword ........................................................................................................ 9
1. Word-formation ....................................................................................... 11
1.1. Affixation .......................................................................................... 15
1.1.1. The distinction between affixes and inflections ......................... 16
1.1.2. Criteria for the classification of affixes ...................................... 19
1.2. Compounding .................................................................................... 39
1.2.1. The meaning of compounds........................................................ 40
1.2.2. Synthetic vs. root compounds ..................................................... 40
1.2.3. Endocentric vs. exocentric compounds. ..................................... 42
1.2.4. Compounds vs. phrases .............................................................. 45
1.2.5. An inventory of compounding patterns ...................................... 50
1.2.6. Neo-classical compounds ........................................................... 53
1.3. Clipping ............................................................................................. 56
1.3.1. Types of clippings ....................................................................... 56
1.3.2. Ellipsis ........................................................................................ 57
1.3.3. Truncation ................................................................................... 57
1.3.4. Abbreviation ............................................................................... 59
1.4. Conversion......................................................................................... 62
1.5. Phonological modification ................................................................ 65
1.6. Blending ............................................................................................ 67
1.7. Back derivation.................................................................................. 69
1.8. Eponymy ........................................................................................... 71
1.9. Reanalysis .......................................................................................... 73
1.10. Reduplication................................................................................... 74
2. Word origin .............................................................................................. 79
2.1. The native stock of words ................................................................. 79
2.1.1. Etymology and onomastics ......................................................... 80
2.1.2. Semantic change ......................................................................... 81
2.2. The borrowed stock of words ............................................................ 84
2.2.1. Major periods of borrowing ........................................................ 85
English words: structure, origin and meaning. A linguistic introduction. 6
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Italian ................................................................................................ 89
2.2.2. Loan shifts and loan-translations ................................................ 90
2.3. Neologisms ........................................................................................ 93
2.3.1. Neologisms and nonce-words ..................................................... 93
2.3.2. Neologisms and word-formation ................................................ 95
3. Word meaning .......................................................................................... 99
3.1. Denotation and connotation............................................................... 99
3.2. Syntagmatic sense relations............................................................. 101
3.2.1. Collocations .............................................................................. 101
3.2.2. Idioms ....................................................................................... 109
3.3. Paradigmatic sense relations ........................................................... 122
3.3.1. Hyponymy ................................................................................ 122
3.3.2. Meronymy ................................................................................. 126
3.3.3. Synonymy ................................................................................. 128
3.3.4. Antonymy ................................................................................. 148
3.4. Formal identity vs. multiplicity of senses ....................................... 155
3.4.1. Homonymy ............................................................................... 156
3.4.2. Polysemy................................................................................... 160
3.4.3. Paronymy .................................................................................. 164
3.5. Lexical fields and the components of meaning ............................... 166
3.5.1. Lexical fields ............................................................................ 167
3.5.2. The componential analysis of meaning .................................... 169
3.6. Dictionary meaning ......................................................................... 174
3.6.1. Dictionary definition ................................................................. 174
3.6.2. Types of dictionaries ................................................................. 176
Answers to self-assessed tests .................................................................... 185
Glossary of linguistic terms ....................................................................... 209
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................... 219
List of abbreviations
Languages
AmE American English
AusE Australian English
BrE British English
NZE New Zealand English
Gmc Germanic languages
L Latin
OE Old English
ME Middle English
ModE Modern English
Lexical categories
A adjective
Adv adverb
N noun
Num numeral
P preposition
V verb
Syntactic phrases
NP noun phrase
VP verb phrase
AP adjective phrase
AdvP adverb phrase
PP preposition phrase
Other notational conventions
/ / slashes identify spoken sounds using the symbols of
the International Phonetic Alphabet
[ ] square brackets identify components in the structure
of the word or syntactic phrases
> yields or produces
* an asterisk indicates an ungrammatical example
§ section in a chapter
English words: structure, origin and meaning. A linguistic introduction. 8
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Foreword
The areas of language study covered in this book are those which
conventionally fall under the headings of lexical morphology, etymology
and lexical semantics. Special attention is paid to three main topics related
to the study of words: word-building processes, word history and word
meaning.
This textbook is based on a survey of the main descriptive linguistic
research that has been done over the past 40 years or so. It is not written in
the perspective of a particular theoretical framework, but draws on insights
from various research traditions, with a view to clarifying terminology and
putting it to practice in the empirical analysis of language facts. We rely
both on introductory sources, such as introductions to linguistics, textbooks,
linguistic encyclopaedias and dictionaries of linguistic terms, as well as, on
more advanced studies, such as handbooks, monographs and articles. The
book is structured as follows.
The first chapter covers both major and minor word-formation processes
in English. It gives an overview of affixational and compounding patterns,
as well as an insight into the more peripheral word-formation types, such as:
clipping, blending, conversion, back-derivation, change of stress, and so on.
The second chapter deals with the main issues related to the origins of
words, the wide range of lexical borrowings into the English language, as
well as the creation of short-lived, trendy neologisms, all viewed as essential
stages in the moulding of the English word-stock. The diachronic view on
the vocabulary of the language provides answers to questions related to the
etymological diversity of the present-day English lexicon.
The third chapter is concerned with different approaches to the analysis
of word meaning and with the semantic relations which a lexical item
contracts with other lexical items. Priority is given to the syntagmatic sense
relationships established in collocational patterns and in idiomatic
expressions. The focus is then on the multifaceted paradigmatic sense
relationships of hyponymy, synonymy, antonymy, homonymy, polysemy,
etc. Finally, we take a brief look at dictionaries, as the ultimate word-books
that supply the readership with essential information concerning word
meaning and usage.
