Most linguists in special chapters and manuals devoted to English word-formation consider as the chief processes af English word formation affixation, conversion and compounding. Apart from these a number of minor ways of forming words such as back-fomation, sound interchange, distinctive stress, sound imitation, blending, clipping and acronymy are traditionally referred to Word-formation. (26, p. 108)
Some minor types of word-formation can not belong neither to word derivation nor to compounding, as some words while shortening, for example, can have two bases, e.g. V-day, some can have one, e.g. lab. The same reason can be applied to other minor types. We will not be strict and consider them as minor word building means.
Shortenings are produced in two different ways. The first is to make a new word form a syllable (rarer two) of the original word. The latter may lose its beginning (as in phone made from telephone), its ending (as in hols – holydays, ad –advertisement) or both the beginning and ending (as in flu-influenza). The second way of shortening is to make a new word form the initial letters (similar to acronimy) of a word group: U.N.O. from the United Nations Organization. This type is called initial shortenings and found not only among colloquialisms and slang. So, g.f. is a shortened word made from the compound girlfriend.
As a type of word-building shortening of spoken words, also called clipping orcurtailment, is recorded in the English language as far back as the 15 century. 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.
Shortenings 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.
Newly shortened words appear continuously: this is testified by numerous neologisms, such as demo form demonstration: frog or fridge from refrigerator; trank from tranquilizer. 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 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 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.
The other word building means can be called: blends, blendings, fusions or portmanteauwords. The process of formation is 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.
The analysis into immediate constituents is helpful 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 prototype phrases with which they can be correlate two types of blends can be distinguished. One may be termed additive, the second, restrictive. (17, p. 76) The respective 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, telecast – television broadcast.
Both types involve the sliding together not only of sound but of meaning as well. Yet the semantic relations, which are at work are different. The additive type is transformable into a phrase consisting of the respective complete stems combined with 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.
Blends, although not very numerous altogether, seem to be on the rise, especially in terminology and also in trade advertisements.
Another way of forming new words is acronymization, as for this process, we can say, that, because of ever closer connection between the oral and the written forms of the language it is sometimes difficult to differentiate clippings formed in oral speech from graphical abbreviations. They are becoming more employed in oral speech and widely used in conversation.
During World War I and after it the custom became very popular not only in English-speaking countries, but in other parts of the world as well, to call countries, governmental, social, military, industrial and trade organizations and officials not only by their full titles but by initial abbreviations derived from writing. Later the trend became even more pronounced; e.g. the USSR, the U.N.O., MP. The tendency was to omit fullstops between the letters: GPO (General Post Organization). Some abbreviations nevertheless appear in both forms: EPA and E.P.A. (Environmental Protection Agency). Such words formed from the initial letter of each of the successive parts of a phrasal term have two possible types of orthoepic correlation between written and spoken forms.
Ifthe abbreviated written form lends itself to be read as though it were an ordinary English word and sounds like an English word, it will be read like one. The words thus formed are calledacronyms (from GREEK acros – ‘end’ +onym ‘name’). This way of forming new words is becoming more and more popular in almost all fields of human activity, and especially in political and technical vocabulary: U.N.O., also UNO (ju:nou) – United Nations Organization, NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, SALT – Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The last example shows that acronyms are often homonymous to ordinary words: sometimes intentionally chosen so as to create certain associations. Thus, for example, the National organization for Women is called NOW. Typical of acronymic coinages in technical terminology are JATO, laser, radar.
Acronyms present a special interest because they exemplify the working of the lexical adaptive system. (17, p. 143)
As for semantic word – building, we can say, that it is any change in word – meaning, for instance the word bench – ‘a long seat of wood or stone’; ‘a carpenter table’. The majority of the linguists, however, understand this process only as a change in the meaning of a word that may result in the appearance of homonyms, as is the case with flower – «a blossom» and flour– : the fine meal», «powder made form wheat and used for making bread», etc. The application of the term word-formation to the appearance of homonyms due to the development of polysemy seems to be debatable for the following reasons:
As semantic change does not, as a rule, lead to the inroduction of a new word into the vocabulary, it can scarcely be regarded as a word-building means (neither can we consider the process a word-building means even when an actual enlargment), the vocabulary does come about through the appearance of a pair of homonyms. Actually, the appearance of homonyms is not a means of creating new words, but it is the final result of a long and laborious process of sense-development. Furthermore, there are no patterns after which homonyms can be made in the language. Finally, diverging sense-development results in a semantic isolation of two or more meanings of a word, whereas the process of word-formation proper is characterized by a certain semantic connection between the new word and the source lexical unit. For these reasons diverging sense-development leading to the appearance of two or more homonyms should be regarded as a specific channel through which the vocabulary of a language is replenished with new words and should not be treated on a par with the processes of word-formation, such as affixation, conversion and composition.
2.2 Productivity of Word-building means
Some of the ways of forming new words in present – day English can be resorted to for the creation of new words whenever the occasion demands – these are called productive ways of forming words. Other ways of forming words cannot produce new words as readily and these are commonly termed non-productive or unproductive. For instance, affixation has been a productive way of forming new words ever since the Old English period, whereas, sound-interchange must have been at one time a productive word-building means but in Modern English its function is actually only to distinguish between different classes and forms of words.
The high productivity of conversion finds its reflection in speech where numerous occasional cases of conversion can be found, which are not registered in dictionaries and which occur momentarily, through the immediate need of situation. (16, p. 90) Conversion is universally accepted as one of the major ways of enriching English vocabulary with new words.
It follows that productivity of word-building ways, individual derivational patterns and derivational affixes is understood as their ability of making new words which all who speak English find no difficulty in understanding, in particular their ability to create what is called occasional words or nonce-words (more unstable, serve theimmediate purpose as compared to neologisms, but the border is very slight). The term means that the speaker coins such words when he needs them, if on another occasion the same word is needed again, he coins it afresh. Needless to say dictionaries do not as a rule record occasonal words. The following words may serve as illustration: collarless (appearance), a Dickensish (office), to unlearn (the rules), etc.
Recent investigations seem to prove however that productivity of derivational means is relative in many respects. Moreover there are no absolutely productive means, derivational patterns and derivational affixes have different degrees of productivity. Each part of speech is characterized by a set of productive derivational patterns, peculiar to it. Three degrees of productivity are distinguished for derivational patterns and individual derivational affixes: 1) highly-productive, 2) productive or semi – productive and 3) non-productive. (26, p. 112)By productive affixes we mean the ones, which take part in deriveng new words at this particular period of language development. The best way to indentify productive affixes is to look for them among nonce words. They are usually formed on the level of living speech and reflect the most productive and progressive patterns in word building. One should not mix the productivity of affixes with their frequency of occurrence. There are quite a number of high-frequency affixes which, nevertheless, are no longer used in word derivation (the adjective-foming native suffixes – ful, – ly; the adjective-forming suffixes of Latin origin – ant, – al which are quite frequent).
As for compounding, we can say that the structural type of compound words and the word-building type of composition have certain advantages for communication purposes. Composition is not quite so flexible (productive) a way of coining new as conversion but flexible enough to create numerous nonce words. These words are comparatively laconic, absorbing into one word an idea that otherwise would have required a whole phrase (cf. The hotel was full of week-enders and The hotel was full of people spending the week-end there). (16, p. 20)
We should also mention the reason why such word building ways as shortening, acronyms and blendings are so productive. It can be explained by their brevity and it is due to the ever-increasing tempo of modern life. In meeting the needs of communication and fulfilling the laws of information theory requiring a maximum signal in the minimum time the lexical system undergoes modification in its basic structure: namely it forms new elements not by their combining existing morphemes and proceeding from sound forms to their graphic representation but the other way round – coining new words form the initial letters of phrasal terms originating in texts. (17, p. 144)
2.3 The overview of the sources of neologisms
In our work, we are determined to define the word-building means of the new word and the sphere of its use, we have presented the major types of word forming way and have mentioned some spheres where they can be used and their cultural acceptance. The top 50 neologisms were taken from the WORDSPY site.
We think it necessary to present the overview of the sources, where the information on neologisms can be taken. As it was said by – Andrew Lloyd James, (Welsh linguist, The Broadcast Word, 1935): «A language is never in a state of fixation, but is always changing; we are not looking at a lantern-slide but at a moving picture.» As English is a growing language new words and phrases emerge everyday at a pace that the Oxford English Dictionary and the Webster's cannot keep up with. While these dictionaries wait for years before they consider words 'fit to publish', the Web is working faster to bring these new terms to light.
Wordspy.com is one of the largest sites keeping track of emerging vocabulary of the English language. It is maintained by Paul McFedries, author of many computer and English language books. New terms are added to the site regularly.
Back in 1996, Wordspy began as a mailing list where each day McFedries would send out an interesting word to a few friends and readers. «After I'd accumulated a few dozen words, I created the site to give people a record of what had been posted and make it possible for other people to join the list,» says McFedries.
Many new words may become household terms in a few years. Some of them are here only for a short while. McFedries describes language as volcanic mountain constantly spewing out new words and phrases. «Some of them are blown away by the winds and others are linguistic lava that slides down the volcano and eventually hardens as a permanent part of the language. Both types of ejecta are inherently creative, so I'm interested in them equally,» he explains.
He finds most of these words through his own reading. For the citations, he uses Lexis-Nexis, Dow Jones News Retrieval and Electric Library. He also uses Google and his local library.
According to him, new words are a reflection of what's going on in the culture. «For example, if the culture is generating new terms such as 'work-life balance', 'joy-to-stuff ratio', and 'affluenza', to me it's an indication that a significant number of people are looking to slow down and live simpler, less materialistic lives.»
Wordspy has given emerging words a new life. It even provides an updated list of words and expressions that's not yet in the Oxford English Dictionary.
'Dellionaire' is a nounand means 'a rich person whose wealth is based on the stocks he owns at Dell Computer Corporation'. An 'Internot' (noun) is a person who refuses to use the Internet.
McFedries calls Wordspy 'lexpionage' (a word he coined himself), the sleuthing of new words and of old words used in new ways. His favorite word is obviously 'logophilia', the love of words.
There are nearly 2000 words and expressions in this collection. Every term has a page dedicated to it. This page has all the information of the word or expression: the figure of speech, what the word means, its usage, citations and a backgrounder. Earliest known usage of some words is also included. In some cases, history about the entry is also provided.
2.4 The top 50 neolosisms and their analysis
We present the top 50 neologisms in the following table, the data is collected on the 5th of February, 2004 on Wordspy site.