Comparative Analysis of Word Building in Prose and Poetry on the basis of E.A. Poe's works

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n-pale, about their starry circles. [19.279]

Moon-pale (n + adj. = adj.)love which shall be passion-free… [19.382]

Passion-free (n + adj. = adj.)patent-black line (business), perhaps an error for patten-blacking [20.285]

Patent-black (n + adj. = adj.)

…by the sable-draperied, by the corporate Night. [19.74]

Sable-draperied (n + adj. = adj.)

 

All these examples of compounds which are built by means of adding a noun to a adjective and have the words structure and they are coined by E. A. Poe. The compounds listed above play mostly stylistical function in his prose and their meaning may be incomprehensible without the contest of the literal work but they brightly characterize the compositional tendencies in E. Poes prose.) Adjective-Noun Composition

Another major type of word formation is the compounding of Adjectives and nouns:

 

Adjective + Noun = Nounexamples from E.A. Poes poetry

 

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the sidemy darling- my darling- my life and my bride [19, 56]

tide (adj. + n = n) the flow that occurs at night. In this case, the adjective defines or describes the character of the noun. It is also possible, however, to link the two segments and end up with a totally new word.

 

Too coldly- or the stars- however it wasdream was as that night-wind- let it pass. [19, 96]

 

Night-wind (adj. + n = n) night + wind = night-wind. Neutral compound. Compound words proper, with indirect order of the words. In this case, the nature of the compound is self-explanatory, and their meanings are quite comprehensible even for those who encounter them for the first time.

 

Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride-the young Eulalie with yellow-hair became my smiling bride [19, 55]

hair (adj. + n = n) yellow + hair = yellow-hair. Neutral compound. Derivational compounds, where besides the stems we have affix -ed.

 

With all thy train, athwart the moony sky-like red-flies in Sicilian night. [19, 104]

 

Red-fly (adj. + n = n) nouns, such as: baby-moon, globe-trotter Neutral, which are formed by joining together two stems without any joining morpheme, e.g. ball-point, to window-shop, Compound words proper which consist of two stems.examples from E. A. Poes poetry

 

Those which came from the larboard being what are called backwater seas. [19, 73]

 

Backwater (adj. + n = n) back + water = Backwater.

 

the burn of blue-fire melodramaticism. [21.188]

 

Blue-fire (adj. + n = n) blue+ fire= Blue-fire.

 

He has broken Fair-law. [20, 176]

 

Fair-law (adj. + n = n) fair+ law= Fair-law.

 

…a pile of ratlin-stuff and old sails [21, 208]

 

Ratlin-stuff (adj. + n = n) ratlin+ stuff= Ratlin-stuff.

 

There were the Philadelphia picturesque-hunters. [19,128]

 

Picturesque-hunter (adj. + n = n) Picturesque + hunter= Picturesque-hunter.

 

lunar-lunatic theories in St. Pierre [20,182]

 

Lunar-lunatic (adj. + n = n) Lunar + lunatic = Lunar-lunatic

 

Frog Pond munching of peanuts and pumpkins and buried in big-wigs [21.394]

Big-wig big + wig = big-wig

 

All these examples of compounds which are built by means of adding a adjective to a noun and have the words structure and they are coined by E.A. Poe. The compounds listed above play mostly stylistical function in his prose and their meaning may be incomprehensible without the contest of the literal work but they brightly characterize the compositional tendencies in E. Poes prose.are very often used in E. Poes literally works because of their brevity and vividness, which were necessary for his humorous and grotesque works. For example a schoolboy is more concise than a boy attending school, up-to-the-minute information is more vivid than the latest information. The old man would sit for hours, thinking sadly of all the might-have-been is more compact and expressive than …thinking sadly of the desirable things that could have happened in the past. Adjective compounds like coffee-pot-fresh, dew-bright and lemon-fragrant, often seen in advertising, are particularly vivid.is a phenomenon that needs more study than it has received, especially for its influence upon literary figures. Such a study would require a careful examination of the magazines and newspapers of the day and the reading habits and scope of references, interests, and author assignments of figures such as Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne. Among Poes words are many almost flippant coinages of this sort, often compounds but also single words, especially for the proper noun derivatives. These coinages indicate, to my mind, a power of satire attached to a gay and merry spirit that too few readers impute to the poet of "The Raven" and the writer of Tales of the Grotesque []tendencies, in his coinages, which tell us much more about his personality than there is time to indicate here. He used "looking" as a sort of enclitic at the end of thirty-eight compounds, such as "cosy-looking," "ivory-looking," "square-looking," and light-house-looking. "Like," added to a noun, provided twenty-four words, from the useful "chasm-like" to the humorous "forlorn-hope-like." His use of "soul" as the first element in eight compounds is probably symptomatic of his belief. Finally, perhaps appropriately for the first-person narrator par excellence, he started thirteen compounds with "self."

 

 

Conclusions

 

The practical part of our work deals with the major processes of word building in E.A. Poes creative works in prose and poetry. Having chosen and analysed more than 300 examples and their usage in Poes prose and poetry we wanted to face the problem that neither a traditional morphological nor a syntactic interpretation sufficiently explains the unique function of word-formation and to make a comparative analysis of these word building ways.can conclude, according to the examples of suffixation and prefixation, which are shown in Chapter Two, that the process of affixation is the most productive in E.A. Poes prose and poetry. Affixation consists in adding derivational affixes (prefixes and suffixes) to roots and stems to form new words. Affixation is a very common and productive process of word building in E.A. Poes prose and poetry. Affixation is divided into suffixation and prefixation, they both are presented above in examples according to the context of our investigation..A. Poe used Prefixation to form the words by means of adding a prefix to the stem. It is mostly characteristic for forming verbs in his works. If we analyze the examples according to the Semantic classification of prefixes- Prefixes of negative meaning are frequently used (de-, dis-,in-im-, il-, ir-) Prefixes denoting repetition or reversal actions and Prefixes denoting time, space, degree relations rarely occur in E. Poes prose and poetry and have small number in comparison with the other types of prefixation. From the point of view of etymology the using of the borrowed affixes (Romanic, such as: in-, de-,ex-, re-and Greek, such as: sym-, hyper-) play an important role in E. Poes literally works.analyzed the total amount of the cases (from E. Poes prose and poetry) in which the processes of affixation take place, we can draw a conclusion that the role of the suffixation in his works is dominative. The rest of the examples are presented in Appendix 1.process of Conversion is mostly peculiar to E.A. Poes poetry because of the necessity to state a poetical thought in a limited number of syllables. Due to Conversion he can contain the sense of a whole phrase into a single word. In the most of the cases to distinguish the type of conversion which was used is obviously impossible because of the basic form of nouns and verbs are identical in many cases. Conversion from verb to noun is the most typical aspect of this word formational process in the case of E.A. Poes prose and poetry. The others are not frequently occur in his literally works due to the period of time when they were created (Conversion is more peculiar to the Modern Literature.)

Abbreviations are very rarely used in formal writing of E. Poe. Almost the only ones, which are frequently used, are the abbreviations for certain common titles, abbreviations b.c. and a.dasbeforeorafterthebirthofChrist.">., for marking dates as before or after the birth of Christ.

Another dominant among the processes of word building in E.A. Poes prose and poetry is Composition. Compounds are very often used in E. Poes literally works because of their brevity and vividness, which were necessary for his humorous and grotesque works. For example a schoolboy is more concise than a boy attending school, up-to-the-minute information is more vivid than the latest information. The old man would sit for hours, thinking sadly of all the might-have-been is more compact and expressive than …thinking sadly of the desirable things that could have happ