Lecture 7.

SECONDARY WAYS OF WORD-BUILDING

Sound Interchange

It is one of the oldest ways of word-building and is met in all Indo-European languages. This way of word-building is non-productive in Modern English. Sound interchange may be only regarded as a way of forming words diachronically, and nowadays it has turned into a means of distinguishing between words of different parts of speech (e.g. to sing – song) or between different word-forms (e.g. man – men).

Sound interchange (gradation) is divided into three types:

1) change of root vowels;

2) change of root consonants;

3) change of root vowels and root consonants.

Sound interchange may be combined with affixation (e.g. strong – strength) or with affixation and the shift of stress (e.g. 'democrat – de'mocracy).

All cases of sound interchange can only be explained historically (diachronically) as no new words are formed in this way now. The causes of sound interchange are different. In some cases it is the result of ancient ablaut or vowel gradation, which cannot be explained by the phonetic laws of the language during the historical period of its development known to scientists through written works. It is prehistoric from the point of view of Germanic languages and is met in the same words in all languages belonging to the Germanic group, e.g.:

to strike – stroke, to sing – song.

It may also be ancient umlaut or vowel mutation, which is the result of the position of the vowel in the word and is connected with palatalizing vowels, e.g.:

hot – heat (OE 'hotian'), blood – bleed (OE 'blodian').

So, in verbs in Old English there was the sound [i] in the suffix of the verb and thus the root vowel was palatalized in verbs under the influence of this sound (regressive assimilation).

In many cases we have vowel and consonant in change: in nouns we have voiceless consonants, in verbs – the corresponding voiced consonants. It is explained by the fact that in verbs the consonant was in the intervocal position in Old English and in nouns it stood at the end of the word. Modern spelling and pronunciation help to see this, e.g.:

bath – to bathe, life – to live, breath – to breathe, loss – to lose.

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