The subject-matter of syntax сторінка 6

51. American English

American English has a number of regional accents, including such well-known accents as the Midwestern accent, the Southern accent, the speech of New England. On the whole, regional American accents share enough common features in pronunciation and speech patterns so that the spoken language in the United States can be clearly distinguished from the language spoken in Great Britain or from other varieties of spoken English.

Common characteristics of regional American accents include such clearly noticeable features as the sound [r] pronounced in all positions in words (e.g., hard [ha:rd], more [mo:r], first [fərst]); the sound [æ] in words like "ask, last, class, demand, dance" (whereas British English has [a:] in such cases); the sound [o] that sounds like [a:] in words like "hot, off, rob, gone, sorry, bother, want"; the sound [yu:] pronounced as [u:] after the letters "d, n, s, t" (duplicate, news, sue, student, tune).

In writing the letter U is missed, e.g. our – or, colour – color.

52. The Morpheme as the Basic Unit of Word-Formation, its Types

Structurally, words are divisible into smaller units which are called morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest indivisible two-facet (significant) units. A morpheme exists only as a constituent part of the word.

One morpheme may have different phonemic shapes, i.e. it is represented by allomorphs (its variants), e.g. in please, pleasure, pleasant [pli:z] , [ple3-], [plez-] are allomorphs of one morpheme.

Semantically, all morphemes are classified into roots and affixes. The root is the lexical centre of the word, its basic part; it has an individual lexical meaning, e.g. in help, helper, helpful, helpless, helping, unhelpful - help- is the root.

Affixes are used to build stems; they are classified into prefixes and suffixes; there are also infixes. A prefix precedes the root, a suffix follows it; an infix is inserted in the body of the word,e.g. prefixes: re-think, mis-take, dis-cover, over-eat, ex-wife; suffixes: danger-ous, familiar-ize, kind-ness, swea-ty etc.

Structurally, morphemes fall into: free morphemes, bound morphemes, semi-bound (semi-free) morphemes.

A free morpheme is one that coincides with a stem or a word-form. A great many root-morphemes are free, e.g. in friendship the root -friend- is free as it coincides with a word-form of the noun friend.

A bound morpheme occurs only as a part of a word. All affixes are bound morphemes because they always make part of a word, e.g. in friendship the suffix -ship is a bound morpheme.

Some root morphemes are also bound as they always occur in combination with other roots and/or affixes, e.g. in conceive, receive, perceive -ceive- is a bound root.

To this group belong so-called combining forms, root morphemes of Greek and Latin origin, e.g. tele-, mega, -logy, micro-, -phone: telephone, microphone, telegraph, etc.

Semi-bound morphemes are those that can function both as a free root morpheme and as an affix (sometimes with a change of sound form and/or meaning), e.g. proof, a. "giving or having protection against smth harmful or unwanted" (a free root morpheme): proof against weather;-proof (in adjectives) "treated or made so as not to be harmed by or so as to give protection against" (a semi-bound morpheme): bulletproof, ovenproof, dustproof, etc.

53. Classification of morphemes

According to their role in constructing words all morphemes are subdivided into two large classes: roots and affixes. The roots - a primary element of the word, its basic part conveys its fundamental lexical meaning. There are a great number of root morphemes which can stand alone as words, such as: act, fact, man, sun, etc. At the same time not all roots are free forms, but productive roots (capable of producing new words). According of the function and meaning affixesare divided into derivational and functional ones, the latter also called endings or outer formatives. They are usually bound forms.

A suffix is a derivational morpheme following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class, e.g. -en, -y, -less, in hearten, hearty, heartless. It is always important to distinguish between inflection and derivation. Inflections (also called inflectional suffixes) are morphemes conveying the grammatical meaning. Derivational suffixes are lexical morphemes, e.g. love - loves - loved - inflectional paradigm

love - lovely - loveliness - illustrate a derivational (lexical) paradigm and the words lovely, loveliness are derivatives of the word love.

A prefix is a derivational morpheme standing before the root and modifying the meaning of the word, e.g. hearten - to dishearten.

Word without their grammatical morphemes (mostly inflectional suffixes, often called endings or inflections) are known as stems. A stem may consist of the root alone (child, room) or it may contain one or more affixes. This stem is called derived stem (childish, return).

Thus we distinguish:

a) lexical morphemes conveying the basic lexical meaning of the word (root morphemes);

b) grammatical morphemes having grammatical meaning;

c) lexico-grammatical morphemes (morphemes of dual nature), e.g. derivational affixes in word-making or postpositions in such verbs as to drink up, eat up, fall out, etc.

54. The Meaning of Affixes. Classification of Prefixes and Suffixes

A letter or group of letters added to the beginning or end of a word to make a new word: The affixes un- and -less are often used to make negative words, such as "unhappy" and "careless".

Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes. Prefixes modify the lexical meaning of the base. They seldom shift words from one part of speech into another and therefore both the source word and its prefixed derivative mostly belong to the same part of speech, e.g. to rewrite < to write.

Prefixes can be classified according to different principles.

1. According to the lexico-grammatical character of the base prefixes are usually added to, they may be:

deverbal (those added to the verbal base), e.g. re- (rewrite); over-overdo); out- (outstay);

denominal (those added to the nominal base), e.g. un- (unbutton); de- (detrain); ex- (ex-president);

deadjectival (those added to the adjectival base), e.g. un-(uneasy); bi- (biannual).

2. According to the class of words they preferably form prefixes are divided into:

verb-forming prefixes, e.g. en-/em (embed, enclose); be-(befriend); de- (dethrone);

noun-forming prefixes, e.g. поп- (non-smoker); sub- (subcommittee); ex- (ex-husband);

adjective-forming prefixes, e.g. un- (unfair); il- (illiterate); ir-(irregular).

d) adverb-forming prefixes, e.g. un- (unfortunately); up- (uphill). It should be specially mentioned that the majority of prefixes function in more than one part of speech.

3. Semantically prefixes fall into:

monosemantic, e.g. the prefix ex- has only one meaning 'former' — ex-boxer;

polysemantic, e.g. the prefix dis- has four meanings: 1) 'not' (disadvantage); 2) 'reversal or absence of an action or state' (diseconomy, disaffirm); 3) 'removal of (to disbranch); 4) 'completeness or intensification of an unpleasant action' (disgruntled).

Suffixation is the formation of words with the help of suffixes. Suffixes usually modify the lexical meaning of the base and transfer words to a different part of speech. There are suffixes, however, which do not shift words from one part of speech into another. They can transfer a word into a different semantic group, e.g. a concrete noun becomes an abstract one: friend — friendship.

Suffixes can be classified into different types in accordance with different principles.

1. According to the lexico-grammatical character of the base suffixes are usually added to, they may be:

deverbal suffixes (those added to the verbal base), e.g. -er (speaker); -ing (reading); -ment (agreement); -able (suitable);
denominal suffixes (those added to the nominal base), e.g. -less (endless); -ful (armful); -ist (novelist); -some (troublesome);
deadjectival suffixes (those added to the adjectival base), e.g. -en (widen); -ly (rapidly); -ish (whitish); -ness (brightness).

2. According to the part of speech formed suffixes fall into several groups:

noun-forming suffixes: -age (breakage, bondage); -ance/-ence (assistance, reference); -dom (freedom, kingdom); -er (teacher, baker); -ess (lioness, actress); -ing (building,washing); -hood (manhood, childhood); -ness (tenderness, prettiness); -ship (relationship, partnership);
adjective-forming suffixes: -able/-ible/-uble (unbearable, audible, soluble); -al (formal, official); -ic (poetic); -ant/-ent (repentant, dependent); -ed (wooded, shaped); -ful (delightful, doubtful); -ish (reddish, bookish); -ive (active); -ous (courageous, curious);
numeral-forming suffixes: -fold (twofold); -teen (fourteen); -th (seventh); -ty (sixty);
verb-forming suffixes: -ate (facilitate); -er (glimmer); -fy/-ify (terrify, speechify); -ize (equalize, harminize); -ish (establish);
adverb-forming suffixes: -ly (quickly, coldly); -ward/-wards (upward, northwards); -wise (likewise).

55. The Method of IC.

In linguistics, immediate constituent analysis or IC analysis is a method of sentence analysis that was first mentioned by Leonard Bloomfield and developed further by Rulon Wells. The process reached a full-blown strategy for analyzing sentence structure in the early works of Noam Chomsky. The practice is now widespread. Most tree structures employed to represent the syntactic structure of sentences are products of some form of IC-analysis. The process and result of IC-analysis can, however, vary greatly based upon whether one chooses the constituency relation of phrase structure grammars or the dependency relation of dependency grammars as the underlying principle that organizes constituents into hierarchical structures.

Given a phrase structure grammar, IC-analysis divides up a sentence into major parts or immediate constituents, and these constituents are in turn divided into further immediate constituents. The process continues until irreducible constituents are reached, i.e., until each constituent consists of only a word or a meaningful part of a word. The end result of IC-analysis is often presented in a visual diagrammatic form that reveals the hierarchical immediate constituent structure of the sentence at hand. These diagrams are usually trees.
56. Word –Building Patterns.

Word-formation is the process of creating words from the material available after certain structural and semantic patterns. There two types of word-formation in Modern English: word-derivation (includes affixation and conversion) andword-composition (compounding).

Affixation (prefixation and suffixation) is the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to bases. Suffixal and prefixal derivatives are different as suffixation is mostly characteristic of the noun (whiteness, singer) and adjective formation while prefixation is typical of the verb-formation (to re-read).

Classifications of derivational affixes are based on different principles such as: the part of speech formed; the lexico-grammatical character of the stem the affix is added to; its meaning; its stylistic reference; the degree of productivity; the origin of the affix.

The part of speech formed (noun-prefixes and suffixes - swimmer, freedom, happiness, justification); adjective - agreeable, helpless, helpful, poetic; verb - enable, unbutton; darken, satisfy, harmonize; adverb -quickly, eastward).

The lexico-grammatical character of the stem the affix is added to (deverbal - speaker, reading, agreement, suitable; re-write, overdo, outstay; denominal - unbutton, ex-president).

Affixational meaning (prefixes:negative - ungrateful, non-political, disadvantage, amoral; prefixes of time - pre-war,post-war, ex-president;repetition - re-write; suffixes: the agent of the action - baker, defendant; appurtenance - Arabian, Chinese; collectivity - peasantry, kingdom; diminitiveness - girlie, cloudlet, wolfling).

57. Compounding in English. Patterns & Types.

In English grammar, compounding is the process of combining two words (free morphemes) to create a new word (commonly a noun, verb, or adjective). Also called composition, it is from the Latin for "put together".

Compounds are written sometimes as one word (sunglasses), sometimes as two hyphenated words (life-threatening), and sometimes as two separate words (football stadium). Compounding is the most common type of word-formation in English.