The affixes that are thought to be the most productive are: -ness, -er, mini-, over-:
e.g.: a roomer, well-to-do-ness, thingness, oneness etc.
The most productive patterns of forming new nouns are:
Verb + -er ,
e.g.: brain-washer, double-talker;
Verb + -ing,
e.g.: cracking, phreaking.
The most frequent ways of verb coinage are:
un- + verb,
e.g.: unhook, undo, unbreak;
(adjective/noun + noun) + -ed, e.g.: long-legged, flat-bottomed
The most widely used ways of forming new adjectives are:
verb + -able,
e.g.: attachable, livable-in;
un- + Participle I or II,
e.g.: unguarded, unheard-of;
un- + adverb,
e.g.: unsouled, uncool.
Conversion, or zero- inflection, is a special non-affixal type of transforming a word into another part of speech.»
(Marchand : 293)
The most frequently used patterns of conversion are:
Noun - verb
E.g.: a butcher – to butcher, a boss – to boss
Verb - noun
E.g.: to know how – the know-how, to catch – the catch
Adjective – noun
E.g.: intellectual – the intellectual, progressive – the progressive
Noun – adjective
E.g.: a maiden – maiden, a sidelong - sidelong
Composition of words is compounding a word of smaller words.
E.g.: fish-in, laugh-in etc.
The second component of compound nouns often becomes centers of inventions by analogy. For instance, the component sick in seasick and homesick led to invention of space-sick, airsick, carsick etc. Quake in earthquake led to birthquake (population explosion); scraper in skyscraper led to thighscraper (mini-scirt).
New words may be coined in a non-patterned way. There are two types of non-patterned way of word creation:
Lexicalization as a transformation of a word-form
Shortening which consists in substituting a part for a whole. It involves 1. transformation of a word-group into a word and 2. a change of the word-structure resulting in a new lexical item.
Due to various semantic and syntactic reasons a form that originally expressed grammatical meaning, for example, the plural of nouns, becomes a basis for a new lexical meaning. This process is called lexicalization.
E.g.: the nouns arms, customs lost their grammatical meaning and became isolated from the paradigm of the words arm, custom, and develop a different lexical meaning of «weapons and «import duties».
Occasional lexicalization of phrases is an effective linguistic device used for stylistic purposes.
E.g.: a happy-go-lucky man; these how-do-you-do’s are annoying etc.
Shortening results in new lexical items proper only in written speech.
E.g.: RD for road, St for street, Apt for apartment etc.
However, «in the process of language development many of the graphical abbreviations penetrate into the sphere of oral intercourse, for instance, a.m., p.m., SOS, etc.
Transformation of word-groups into words involve different types of lexical shortening:
Ellipsis or substantivasation;
Initial letter or syllable abbreviations (achronyms);
Blendings.
Substantivisation consists in dropping the final nominal member of a frequently used attributive word-group.
E.g.: the finals from the final examinations; a documentary from a documentary film.
Acronyms and letter abbreviations are lexical abbreviations of a phrase. They are regular vocabulary units spoken as words.
E.g.: BBC – British Broadcasting Corporation; radar – radio detection and ranging; V-day – Victory Day.
Blendings are the result of conscious creation of words by merging irregular fragments of several words.
E.g.: brunch from breakfast and lunch; radiotrician from radio and electrician; mike from microplane.
Borrowings are neologisms borrowed from foreign languages. «The distinction should be made between:
Direct adoption of foreign words. Loan-words of this type can undergo different degrees of accommodation or remain unadopted;
Making new words by derivation or composition, including elements of different origin;
New derivatives or new compounds created by translation of the lexical unit into another languafe.
A lexical unit created by loan-translation is called a calque.»
(Rayevska : 248)
The last decades of the 20-th century characterized by an intensive development of various sciences, technique, culture, and political life, has brought to Modern English a lot of new formations.
1.1.2. Semantic Extention
Semantic extention is the appearance of new meanings of already existing words in the given language. This process is caused by the following reasons:
Changes in social life of a community;
Changes of objects the names of which are retained;
Terminological use of words by people of various professional groups, where words modify their meaning acquiring a new sense;
Adaptation to special purposes
Many scholars have researched change of word meaning. There are various logical and psychological classifications of its types. Traditional classification is the following:
1) extension of meaning (generalization)
E.g.: hard drive (originally meant only heavy traffic on city roads, now also refers to slow work of a computer);
2) narrowing of meaning (specialization)
E.g.: garage (once meant any safe place, now means specifically a building for housing automobiles);
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