NEW WORD-FORMING PATTERNS IN COMPOSITION

An interesting pattern revealing the influence of extra-linguisticfactors on word-formation and vocabulary development are such compounds as camp-in, ride-in, teach-in, work-in and the like. “The Barn-hart Dictionary of New English” treats the second element as a combining form of the adverb in and connects the original appearance of this morpho-semantic pattern with the civil-rights movement of the 60s. It was used to nominate such public demonstrations of protest as riding in segregated buses (ride-in), praying in segregated churches (kneel-in), bathing in segregated swimming pools (swim-in).

The pattern is structurally similar to an older type of compounds, such as breakdown, feedback or lockout but differs from them semantically including as its semantic invariant the meaning of public protest.

Somewhat later the word teach-in appeared. The name was used for long meetings, seminars or sessions held at universities for the purpose of expressing criticism on important political issues and discussing them. Then any form of seminar patterned on the university teach-ins was also called by this term. And similar terms were coined for other cases of staging public protest. E. g. lie-in and die-in when blocking traffic.

The third stage in the development of this pattern proved to be an extension to any kind of gathering of hippies, flower children and other groups of young people: laugh-ins, love-ins, sing-ins. A still further generalisation of meaning may be observed in the compound call-in and its American version phone-in ‘period of time on radio or television programme during which questions, statements, etc. from the public are broadcast’, big sitdown planned for September 17 (" Daily Worker" ), where sitdown stands for sitdown demonstration.

Chapter 7

SHORTENED WORDS AND MINOR TYPES OF LEXICAL OPPOSITIONS

Word-building processes involve not only qualitative but also quan­titative changes. Thus, derivation and compounding represent addi­tion, as affixes and free stems, respectively, are added to the underly­ing form. Shortening, on the other hand, may be represented as significant subtraction, in which part of the original word or word group is taken away. 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.

The spoken and the written forms of the English language have each their own patterns of shortening, but as the! re is a constant exchange between both spheres, it is sometimes difficult to tell where a given shortening really originated.

§ 7.1 SHORTENING OF SPOKEN WORDS AND ITS CAUSES

As a type of word-building shortening of spoken words, also called clipping or curtailment, is recorded in the English language as far back as 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 demo n from demonstration; frig or fridge n from refrigerator; mike n from microphone; telly or TV n from televi­sion set; trank n from tranquilizer; trannie n from transistor; vac n 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 is involved into the process of

¹ To prove this an example from Shakespeare might be quoted: Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib I Such dear concernings hide? (" Hamlet", Act III, Sc. 4.) Gib (contracted from Gilbert) 'a male cat*. Hamlet uses these derogatory epithets about King Claudius.

loan word assimilation. Monosyllabism 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 ve­hicle¹, 'a railway carriage', the short for caravan] van 'the front of an army', the short for 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. C f. ban n and v, can, fan, man, ran (Past Indefinite Tense of run), tan and the obsolete van 'wing' — a variant of fan.

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, trank : : tranquilizer, etc.).

The change is not only quantitative: a curtailed word¹ 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 Ch. Hock-ett² suggests, because a shortened word is always in some way dif­ferent from its prototype in meaning and usage.

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: " Ref's 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). C f. sing. — bike, bod, ³ pi. — bikes, bods, Inf. — to vac, ⁴ Part. I — vacking, Past Indefinite tense and Part. II — vacked. Most of these by conversion produce verbs: to phone, to vac, to vet, etc., in which the semantic relationship with the prototype remains quite clear. They also serve as basis for further word-formation by derivation or composition: fancy n (from fantasy), fancy v, fancier n, fanciful a, fancifully adv, fancifulness n, fancy-ball n, fancy-dress n, fcuicy-work n, etc.; or fantasmo 'supremely fantastic' from fa/itastic-\—mo on the anal­ogy with supremo 'a chief.

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 Gr tele 'far', it is a combining form used to coin many special terms denoting instruments and processes

¹ O. Jespersen also suggests the terms stump words, elliptical
words or curtailments. R. Quirk calls them clippings.

² See: Hockett Ch. A Course in Modern Linguistics. N.Y., 1958. P. 313.

³ Bod — probably from body 'fellow'.

* Conversion from vac n clipped from vacuum cleaner.

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 concept. This becomes obvious from the following simple transformations: television —> vision at a distance, tele{broad)cast ^ a broadcast at a distance, ¹ tele(broad)cast —> a television broadcast. In this new capacity tele- en­ters combinations: telefilm, telemedicine, teleprompter (an electronic device that slowly unrolls the speaker's text, in large print out of sight of the audience), teletext, televiewer 'one who uses a television set', Tel-star (Anglo-American satellite system used as television relay station). E. g. It was broadcast via Telstar. Note the capital letter and the absence of article. Similarly para- from parachute (Fr para- ' protecting'+ chute *a fall') gives paraflare, paradrop, paradropper, paratroops, paratrooper.

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, st> listicaily 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 synch- ronic 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 etymologically. The denotative or lexico-grammatical meaning or both may have changed so much that the clipping becomes a sepa­ rate word. Consequently a pair of etymological doublets (see p. 259) comes into being. C f. chap : : chapman 'a pedlar'; 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 only a devotee of a specified amusement. The relationship between curtailed forms and prototypes in this second group is irrele­ vant to the present-day vocabulary system, and is a matter of historic, i.e. diachronic study.

In both types the clipped forms (doc, exam, chap, fan, etc.) exist in the language alongside their respective prototypes. The difference, how-

 

¹ Broadcast and the elliptical form cast convey by themselves the idea of distance.

ever, is that whereas words belonging to the first group can be replaced by their prototypes and show in this way a certain degree of inter-changeability, the doublets are never equivalent lexically as there are no contexts where the prototype can replace the shortened word without a change of meaning.

The possibility of substitution in case of variants may be shown by the following example of a brief newspaper note about the prescription of eyeglasses for racing horses in Chicago. It runs as follows: " Race­horses Are Fitted with Specs". The substitution of spectacles for specs would make the headline a little less lively but not unacceptable.

This substitution, as a rule, can go only one way. It would be, for instance, impossible to use mag for magazine in a passage of literan crit­icism. The specific stylistic character of the clipped form greatly li­mits the possibilities of usage.

The semantic status of the group of variants (or synonyms) and that of the group of doublets is also different. Curtailed words of the first group (variants) render one of the possible meanings of the prototype creating by this very novelty a greater expressiveness, a colloquial or slangy shade and often emotional colouring as well. The following ex­tract will illustrate this colouring: " Still, I suppose you want to find your room. I wonder where they've put you. Half a mo — /'// come down and look on the board. You go and make the coff, Con, " she called back as she came downstairs, " I shan't be a jiff-" Everything with her was an abbreviation. Striking a match by the notice board, she searched for the num­ber of my room. " Presuming the Ass Mat's remembered." " The who? " " Assistant Matron, old Fanny Harriman,.." (M. Dickens)

It is typical of the curtailed words to render only one of the secon­dary meanings of a polysemantic word. For instance the verb double may mean 'to multiply by two', 'to increase t\vo-fold\ 'to amount to twice as much'; when used by musicians it means 'to add the same note in a higher or a lower octave'. In a military context the meaning is 'to move in double time or run'. As a nautical term it is synonymous to the expression 'to get round headland', etc. Dub, on the contrary, renders only one of the specific meanings — 'to make another sound recording in a cinema film in a different language'.

The curtailed words belonging to this type are mostly monosemantic as, for example, lab, exam, fan. Also they are often homonymous: com­pare van and vac as treated above, also gym for gymnastics and gym for gymnasium, or vet for veteran and veterinary.

Between the two groups of well-defined extreme cases, namely va­riants or synonyms and doublets, there exist numerous intermediate cases, where the classification is difficult. The appearance of a more complex semantic structure in a word is a step towards its acquiring great­er independence and thus becoming not a variant but a doublet of the prototype.

The second extreme group, the etymological doublets, may devel­op semantic structures of their own. Very complex semantic cases like fancy with its many meanings and high valency are nevertheless rare.

137
It has been specified in the definition of the process that the clipped part is not always a complete morpheme, so that the division is only occasionally.correlated with the, division into immediate constituents. For instance, in phone for telephone and photo for photograph the remain­ing parts are complete morphemes occurring in other words. On the other hand in ec or eco (from economics) or trannie (transistor) the morpho­logical structure of the prototype is disregarded. All linguists agree that most often it is either the first or the stressed part of the word that re­mains to represent the whole. An interesting and convincing explana­tion for this is offered by M.M. Segal, who quotes the results of several experimental investigations dealing with informativeness of parts of words. These experiments carried out by psychologists have proved very definitely that the initial components of words are imprinted in the mind and memory more readily than the final parts. The signalling value of the first stressed syllable, especially when it is at the same time the root syllable, is naturally much higher than that of the unstressed final syl­lables with their reduced vowel sounds.

As a rule, but not necessarily, clipping follows the syllabic prin­ciple of word division, e. g. pep (si.) 'vigour', 'spirit¹ from pepper, or plane from aeroplane. In other instances it may be quite an arbitrary part of the prototype, e. g. prep (school si.) 'homework' from prepara­tion.

Unlike conversion, shortening produces new words in the same part of speech. The bulk of curtailed words is constituted by nouns. Verbs are hardly ever shortened in present-day English. Rev from revolve and tab from tabulate may be considered exceptions. Such clipped verbs as do occur are in fact converted nouns. Consequently the verbs to perm, to phone, to taxi, to vac, to vet and many others are not curtailed words diachronically but may be regarded as such by right of structure, from the synchronic point of view. As to the verbs to pend, to mend, to tend and a few others, they were actually coined as curtailed words but not at the present stage of language development.

Shortened adjectives are very few and mostly reveal a combined ef­fect of shortening and suffixation, e. g. comfy : : comfortable, dilly : : delightful, imposs : : impossible, mizzy :: miserable, which occur in school­girl slang.

As an example of a shortened interjection Shunl: : attention, the word of command may be mentioned.

Various classifications of shortened words have been or may be of­fered. The generally accepted one is that based on the position of the clipped part. According to whether it is the final, initial or middle part of the word that is cut off we distinguish: 1) f i n a 1 clipping (or apocope), from Greek apokoptein 'cut off, 2) initial clip­ping (or a p h e s i s, i.e. a p h e r e s i s), from Greek aphaire-sis *a taking away' and 3) m e d i a 1 clipping (or syncope), from Greek syncope 'a cutting up'.

1. Final clipping in which the beginning of the prototype is retained is practically the rule, and forms the bulk of the class, e. g. ad, advert : : advertisement; coke: : coca-cola; ed: : editor; fab : : fabulous; gym

: : gymnastics or gymnasium; lab : : laboratory; mac : : mackintosh; ref : : referee; vegs: : veggies or vegies, vegetables, and many others.¹

2. Initial-clipped words retaining the final part of the prototype are less numerous but much more firmly established as separate lexical units with a meaning very different from that of the prototype and stylisti­ cally neutral doublets, e. g. cute a, n (Am): : acute; fend v: : defend; mend v: : amend; story n: : history; sport n: : disport; tend v: : attend. Cases like cello: : violoncello and phone : : telephone where the curtailed words are stylistical synonyms or even variants of their respective pro­ totypes are very rare. Neologisms are few, e. g. chute : : parachute. It is in this group that the process of assimilation of loan words is espec­ ially frequent.

Final and initial clipping may be combined and result in curtailed words with the middle part of the prototype retained. These are few and definitely colloquial, e. g. flu: : influenza; frig or fridge: : refrigera­tor; tec : : detective. It is worthy of note that what is retained is the stressed syllable of the prototype.

3. Curtailed words with the middle part of the word left out are equally few. They may be further subdivided into two groups: (a) words with a final-clipped stem retaining the functional morpheme: maths : : math­ ematics, specs: : spectacles; (b) contractions due to a gradual process of elision under the influence of rhythm and context. Thus, fancy: : fan­ tasy, ma'am : : madam may be regarded as accelerated forms.

It is also possible to approach shortened words on the basis of the structure characterizing the prototype. Then the two mutually exclu­sive groups are cases correlated with words and those correlated with phrases. The length of the word giving rise to a shortening might result from its being a derivative, a compound or a borrowing. The observa­tion of language material, however, can furnish hardly any examples of the second type (compounds), all the word prototypes being deriva­tives, either native or borrowed, as is shown by all the examples quoted in the above paragraphs.

The few exceptions are exemplified by tarmac, a technical term for tar-macadam (a road surface of crushed stone and tar originally named after the inventor J.L. McAdam); also cabbie for cabman. But then -man in such cases is most often a semi-affix, not a free form, and, besides, the process oF shortening is here combined with derivation as in nightie for nightdress or teeny for teenager.

The group we have opposed to the curtailed forms of words is based on clipped phrases, chiefly set expressions. These differ considerably from word clippings as they result from a combined effect of curtailment, ellipsis and substantivation.

Ellipsis is defined as the omission of a word or words considered essential for grammatical completeness but not for the conveyance of the intended lexical meaning, as in the following example: the

¹ There seem, however, to be different degrees of colloquialism. Flu, for instance, would be normal in newspaper and broadcasting, whereas fridge would only occur in familiar colloquial, and tec would be substandard.

139
St. Ullmann follows M. Bré al in emphasising the social causes for these. Professional and other communities with a specialised ‘sphere of common interests are the ideal setting for ellipsis. Open on for open fire on, and put to sea for put ship to sea are of wartime and navy origin, and bill for bill of exchange comes from business circles; in a newspaper office daily paper and weekly paper were quite naturally shortened to daily and weekly.¹ It is clear from the above examples that unlike other types of shortening, ellipsis always results in a change of lexico-grammatical meaning, and therefore the new word belongs to a different part of speech. Various other processes are often interwoven with ellipsis. For instance: finals for final examinations is a case of ellipsis combined with substantivation of the first element, whereas prelims for preliminary examinations results from ellipsis, substantivation and clipping. Other examples of the same complex type are perm: : permanent wave; pop : : popular music; ² prom: : promenade concert, i.e. ‘a concert at which at least part of the audience is not seated and can walk about’; pub: : public house ‘an inn or tavern’; taxi : : taxicab, itself formed from taximeter-cab. Inside this group a subgroup with prefixed derivatives as first elements of prototype phrases can be distinguished, e. g. coed ‘a girl student at a coeducational institution’, prefab ‘a prefabricated house or structure’ (to prefabricate means ‘to manufacture component parts of buildings prior to their assembly on a site’).

Curtailed words arise in various types of colloquial speech and have for the most part a pronounced stylistic colouring as long as their connection with the prototype is alive, so that they remain synonyms. E. g.: They present the tops in pops. When the connection with the prototype is lost, the curtailed word may become stylistically neutral, e. g. brig, cab, cello, pram. Stylistically coloured shortened words may belong to any variety of colloquial style. They are especially numerous in various branches of slang: school slang, service slang, sport slang, newspaper slang, etc. Familiar colloquial style gives such examples as bobby, cabbie, mac, maxi, mini, movies. Nursery words are often clipped: gran, granny; hanky from handkerchief; ma from mama; nightie from nightdress; pinnie from pinafore. Stylistic peculiarity often goes hand in hand with emotional colouring as is revealed in the above diminutives. School and college slang, on the other hand, reveal some sort of reckless if not ironical attitude to the things named: caf from cafeteria ‘self-service restaurant’, digs from diggings ‘lodgings’, ec, eco from economics, home ecs, lab, maths, prelims, prep, prof, trig, undergrad, vac, varsity. Service slang is very rich in clipped words, some of them penetrate the familiar colloquial style. A few examples are: demob v from demobilise; civvy n from civilian, op n from operator; non-com n from non-combatant; corp n from corporal; sarge n from sergeant.

 

 

_____________________

¹ See: Ullmann St. The Principles of Semantics, p.p. 116, 239.

² Often used in such combinations as pop art, pop singer, pop song.

 

The only type of clippings that belong to bookish style are the poetical contractions such as e'en, e'er, ne'er, o'er.

BLENDING

It has already been mentioned that curtailed words from compounds are few; cases of curtailment combined with composition set off against phrasal prototypes are slightly more numerous, e. g. ad-lib v ‘to speak without notes or preparation’ from the Latin phrase ad libitum meaning ‘at pleasure’; subchaser n from submarine chaser. A curious derivational compound with a clipping for one of its stems is the word teen-ager (see p. 35). The jocular and ironical name Lib-Labs (Liberal Labour MP’s, i.e. a particular group) illustrates clipping, composition and ellipsis and imitation of reduplication all in one word.

Among these formations there is a specific group that has attracted special attention of several authors and was even given several different names: blends, blendings, fusions or portmanteau words. The last term is due to Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”. One of the most linguistically conscious writers, he made a special technique of using blends coined by himself, such as chortle v < chuckle+snort; mimsy a< miserable+flimsy; galumph v< gallop+triumph; slithy a< slimy+lithe.¹ Humpty Dumpty explaining these words to Alice says “You see it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up 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.

Compare also snob which may have been originally an abbreviation for sine nobilitate, written after a name in the registry of fashionable English schools to indicate that the bearer of the name did not belong to nobility. One of the most recent examples is bit, the fundamental unit of information, which is short for binary digit. Other examples are: the already mentioned paratroops and the words bloodalyser and breathalyser for apparatuses making blood and breath tests, slimnastics (blend of slim and gymnastics).

The analysis into immediate constituents is helpful in so far as it permits the definition of a blend as a word with the first constituent represented by a stem whose final part may be missing, and the second constituent by a stem of which the initial part is missing. The second constituent when used in a series of similar blends may turn into a suffix. A new suffix -on is, for instance, well under way in such terms as nylon, rayon, -silon, formed from the final element of cotton.

Depending upon the prototype phrases with which they can be

 

 

_____________________

¹ Most of the coinages referred to occur in the poem called “Jabberwocky": “O frabjous day! Calloch! Callay! ” He chortled in his joy.

 

correlated two types of blends can be distinguished. One may be termed additive, the second restrictive. Both involve the sliding together not only of sound but of meaning as well. Yet the semantic relations which are at work are different. The first, i.e. additive type, 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. The word Pakistan was made up of elements taken from the names of the five western provinces: the initials of the words Panjab, Afghania, Kashmir and Singh, and the final part of Baluchistan. Other examples are: brunch< breakfast and lunch’, transceiver< transmitter and receiver; Niffles< Niagara Falls.

The restrictive type 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. Blends, although not very numerous altogether, seem to be on the rise, especially in terminology and also in trade advertisements.

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1. Analyze the etymological composition of the following lexemes. Can we consider them hybrids? Why?
2. BOUNDARY CASES BETWEEN DERIVATION, INFLECTION AND COMPOSITION
3. Exercise 32, p. 91: Study the following patterns.1
4. Exercise 33, p. 91: Complete the following sentences, using the Past Perfect Tense (see the patterns above).
5. THE VALENCY OF AFFIXES AND STEMS. WORD-BUILDING PATTERNS AND THEIR MEANING