Shortening

There are two main ways of shortening: contraction (clipping) and abbreviation (initial shortening). Contraction (clipping) is to make a new word from a syllable (rare two) of the original word. There are four types of contraction:

1) Final clipping (apocope) - omission of the final part of the word e.g. doc> doctor, lab>laboratory, vac>vacation, ad>advertisement

2) Initial clipping (apheresis) - omission of the fore part of the word e.g. phone>telephone, plane>airplane, story>history, Fred>Alfred

3) Medial clipping (syncope) - omission of the middle part of the word e.g. maths>mathematics, fansy>fantasy, specs>spectacles

4) Mixed clipping - omission of the fore and the final parts of the word e.g. tec>detective, flu>influenza, fridgOrefrigerator, Liz>Elizabeth

The second way of shortening is to- make a new word from the initial letters of a word group and called abbreviation (initial shortening). They are subdivided into 5 groups:

1) Acronyms. These words are read inaccordance with the rules of orthoepy,

e.g. UNO (United Nation Organization), UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

2) Alphabetic abbreviations. In this case letters get their full alphabetic pronunciation and a full stress,

e.g. the USA (the United States of America), B.B.C. (British Broadcasting Corporation), M.P. (Member of Parliament), F.B.I. (Federal Bureau of Investigation), CV (Curriculum vitae), EU (European Unity).

3) Compound abbreviations. The first immediate constituent is a letter and the second - a complete word,

e.g. A-bomb (Atomic bomb), V-day (Victory day), Z-hour (Zero hour)

4) Graphic abbreviations. They are used intexts for economy of space and are pronounced as the corresponding unabbreviated words,

e.g. Mr. (mister), m.(mile), ft. (foot), v. (verb), pp. (pages), etc.

5) Latin abbreviations. They areread as separate letters or are substituted by their English equivalents,

e.g. i.e. (that is), a.m. (in the morning), Id (insome place), ef (compare), p.a. (Lat. per annum)

1.6. Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs are combinations of a verb and adverb or a verb and preposition (or verb with both adverb and preposition). They divided into two groups: non-idiomatic (retain their primary local meaning), e.g. come in, come out, take off, put down, drink up, etc. and idiomatic (cannotbe derived from their immediate constituents), e.g. bring up, bear out, give in, fall out, etc.

2. Semi-productiveways of word-formation

Back-Formation is a derivation of new words (mostly verbs) by means of subtracting a suffix or other element resembling it. An example of back-formation in English is the verb to beg derived from the noun beggar, to baby sit from the noun baby-sitter, to sculpt from sculptor,etc.

Blending is the formation ofnew lexical units by means of margin fragments of words into one new word, or combining the elements of one word with a notional word, e.g. smog (smoke+fog), drunch (drinks+Iunch).

Reduplication compounds are made by doubling a stem. It falls into 3 main groups: reduplicative compounds proper (immediate constituents are identical in their form without any phonetic changes), e.g. bye-bye, flash-flash, goody-goody; ablaut (gradalional)compounds (variation of a root vowel), e.g. riff-raff, dilly-dJly, ping-pong; rhyme compounds (immediate constituents are joined to rhyme), e.g. willy-nilly, namby-pamby.

Lexicalization of the plural of nouns. There are cases when the grammatical form of the plural of nouns becomes . isolated from the paradigm and acquires a new lexical meaning, e.g. look (погляд) :: looks (зовжшшеть).

Sound imitation (onomatopoeia) is the process in which words are made by imitating sounds produced by living beings and inanimate objects. It is of some interest that sounds produced by the same kind of animal are represented by quitedifferent sound groups in different languages. For instance, English dogs bark or howl, English cock cries cock-a-doodle-doo, ducks quack and frogs croak..

3. Non-productive ways of word-building

Sound interchange (gradation) is the process in which word belonging to different parts of speech may be Differentiateddue to the sound interchangein the root, e.g. food (n):: feed (v), gold (n):: gild (v), sing (v):: song (n).Change of stress is mostly observed in verb-noun pairs, e.g. transport > to transport and much more seldom inverb-adjective pairs, to prostrate > prostrate. The difference in stress often appeared after the verb was formed and was not therefore connected with the formation of the new word.

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