Word-building in Modern English

the resources of this particular language. Together with borrowing, word-building

provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language.

to meaning

radicals) and affixes. The latter, in their turn, fall into

prefixes which precede the root in the structure of the word (as in re-read, mispronounce, unwell) and suffixes which follow the root (as in teach-er, cur-able, diet-ate).

consist of a root are called root words:
house, room,

book, work, port, street, table, etc.

consist of a root and an affix (or several affixes)

are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word-building known as affixation (or derivation):
re-read, mis-pronounce, un-well, teach-er.

word is made when two words are joined to form

a new word:
dining-room, bluebell (колокольчик), mother-in-law, good-for-nothing(бездельник)

words in which the structural integrity of the two free

stems is ensured by a suffix referring to the combination as a whole, not to one of its elements:
kind-hearted, old-timer, schoolboyishness, teenager.

of word-building:
A) Sound-Imitation
B)

Reduplication
C) Back-Formation (Reversion)

word by adding an affix or several affixes to some

root morpheme.

important and therefore it is necessary to consider certain facts

about the main types of affixes. From the etymological point of view affixes are classified into the same two large groups as words: native and borrowed.

as borrowed only after it has begun an independent and

active life in the recipient language and it is taking part in the word-making processes of that language. This can only occur when the total of words with this affix is so great in the recipient language as to affect the native speakers' subconscious to the extent that they no longer realize its foreign flavour and accept it as their own.

in deriving new words in this particular period of language

development. The best way to identify productive affixes is to look for them among neologisms and so-called nonce-words.
The adjectives thinnish (жидковатый) and baldish (лысоватый) bring to mind dozens of other adjectives made with the same suffix: oldish (староватый), youngish (моложавый), mannish (мужеподобная), girlish (женоподобный), longish (длинноватый), yellowish (желтоватый), etc.

The same is well illustrated by the following popular statement: "/ don't like Sunday evenings: I feel so Mondayish". (Чу́вствующий лень по́сле воскре́сного о́тдыха)

frequency of occurrence. There are quite a number of high-frequency

affixes which, nevertheless, are no longer used in word-derivation

e. g. the adjective-forming native suffixes -ful, -ly; the adjective-forming suffixes of Latin origin -ant, -ent, -al which are quite frequent

are produced by combining two or more stems

distinguished:
neutral
morphological
syntactic

In neutral compounds

the process of compounding is realised without any linking elements, by a mere juxtaposition of two stems, as in
blackbird(дрозд)
shopwindow(витрина) sunflower(подсолнух) bedroom(спальня) etc.

structure of the constituent stems.

The examples:

shopwindow(витрина), sunflower(подсолнух), bedroom(спальня) represent the subtype which may be described as simple neutral compounds: they consist of simple affixless stems.

derived or derivational compounds.

E.g. blue-eyed(голубоглазый),
broad-shouldered(широкоплечий)

These words have a shortened (contracted) stem in their structure:

V-day (день победы) (Victory day), G-man (агент ФБР) (Government man "FBI agent"), H-bag (сумочка) (handbag), T-shirt(футболка), etc.

It is represented by words in which two compounding stems

are combined by a linking vowel or consonant:
e. g. Anglo-Saxon, Franko-Prussian, handiwork(изделие ручной работы), statesman (политический деятель/политик)

in their structure numerous traces of syntagmatic relations typical of

speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs.
e.g. father-in-law, mother-in-law etc.

word by changing the category of a part of speech,

the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged.

its new category as a part of speech. Conversion is

a convenient and "easy" way of enriching the vocabulary with new words. The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs.

words produced by conversion:
e. g. to hand(передавать)
to back(поддерживать)

to face(стоять лицом к кому-либо)
to eye(рассматривать)
to nose(разнюхивать)
to dog(выслеживать)

run(бег)
find(находка)
walk(прогулка)
worry(тревога)
show(демонстрация)
move(движение)

pale(побледнеть)
to yellow(желтеть)

to cool(охлаждать)

Other parts of speech are not entirely unsusceptible to conversion.

high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English.
Shortenings

(or contracted words) are produced in two different ways.

from a syllable (rarer, two) of the original word.
The

latter may lose its beginning (as in phone made from telephone, fence from defence), its ending (as in hols from holidays, vac from vacation, props from properties, ad from advertisement) or both the beginning and ending (as in flu from influenza, fridge from refrigerator)

a new word from the initial letters of a word

group:
U.N.O. from the United Nations Organisation, B.B.C. from the British Broadcasting Corporation, M.P. from Member of Parliament. This type is called initial shortenings.

general and of uncultivated speech particularly:
E. g. Movie (from moving-picture),

gent (from gentleman), specs (from spectacles), circs (from circumstances, e. g. under the circs), I. O. Y. (from I owe you), lib (from liberty), cert (from certainty), exhibish (from exhibition), posish (from position)

word-building are made by imitating different kinds of sounds that

may be produced by
human beings: to whisper (шептать), to whistle (свистеть), to sneeze (чихать), to giggle (хихикать);

bark (лаять), to moo (мычать);
inanimate objects: to boom (гудеть), to

ding-dong (звенеть), to splash (брызгать);

either without any phonetic changes as in bye-bye (coll, for

good-bye)
or with a variation of the root-vowel or consonant as in ping-pong, chit-chat (this second type is called gradational reduplication).

by the vast number of monosyllables. Stylistically speaking, most words

made by reduplication represent informal groups: colloquialisms and slang. E. g. walkie-talkie ("a portable radio"), riff-raff ("the worthless or disreputable element of society"; "the dregs of society"), chi-chi (sl. for chic as in a chi-chi girl)

son of doing nothing but dilly-dallying all over the town.

(dilly-dallying — wasting time, doing nothing)

found in the following quotation from “The Importance of Being

Earnest” by O. Wilde:
Lady Bracknell: I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. (shilly-shallying — irresolution, indecision)

the analogy of the existing pairs, i. e. the singling-out

of a stem from a word which is wrongly regarded as a derivative.

verb to beg (попрошайничать) that was made from the French

borrowing beggar (нищий, бедняк), to burgle (незаконно проникать в помещение) from burglar (вор-домушник).
In all these cases the verb was made from the noun by subtracting what was mistakenly associated with the English suffix -er.

from blood-transfuing, to force-land (совершать вынужденную посадку) from forced landing,

to baby-sit (присматривать за ребенком) from baby-sitter.