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

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etc., e.g. to have a try, to give a push, to take a swim. [10, 95]frequent but also quite possible is conversion from form words to nouns. e. g. He liked to know the ins and outs. Shant go into the whys and wherefores. He was familiar with ups and downs of life. Use is even made of affixes. Thus, ism is a separate word nowadays meaning a set of ideas or principles, e. g. Freudism, existentialism and all the other -isms.all the above examples the change of paradigm is present and helpful for classifying the newly coined words as cases of conversion. But it is not absolutely necessary, because conversion is not limited to such parts of speech which possess a paradigm. That, for example, may be converted into an adverb in informal speech: I was that hungry I could have eaten a horse. [3,189]speaker realizes the immense potentiality of making a word into another part of speech when the need arises. One should guard against thinking that every case of noun and verb (verb and adjective, adjective and noun, etc.) with the same morphemic shape results from conversion. There are numerous pairs of words (e. g. love, n. - to love, v.; work, n. - to work, v.; drink, n. - to drink, v., etc.) which did, not occur due to conversion but coincided as a result of certain historical processes (dropping of endings, simplification of stems) when before that they had different forms. On the other hand, it is quite true that the first cases of conversion (which were registered n the 14th c.) imitated such pairs of words as love, n. - to love, v. for they were numerous in the vocabulary and were subconsciously accepted by native speakers as one of the typical language patterns [6, 167]

 

1.2.3 Abbreviation

In the process of communication, words and word-groups can be shortened. The causes of shortening can be linguistic and extra-linguistic. By extra- linguistic causes, changes in the life of people are meant. In Modern English many new abbreviations, acronyms, initials, blends are formed because the tempo of life is increasing and it becomes necessary to give more and more information in the shortest possible time. There are also linguistic causes of abbreviating words and word-groups, such as the demand of rhythm, which is satisfied in English by monosyllabic words. When borrowings from other languages are assimilated in English, they are shortened. Here we have modification of form on the basis of analogy, e.g. the Latin borrowing fanaticus is shortened to fan on the analogy with native words: man, pan, tan etc. There are two main types of shortenings: graphical and lexical. [2,209]

. If the abbreviated written form lends itself to be read as though it were an ordinary English word and sounds like an English word, it will be read like one. The words thus formed are called acronyms (from Gr. acros- end +onym - name). This way of forming new words is becoming more and more popular in almost all fields of human activity, and especially in political and technical vocabulary: U.N.O., also UNO - United Nations Organization, NATO - the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, SALT-Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The last example shows that acronyms are often homonymous to ordinary words; sometimes intentionally chosen so as to create certain associations. Thus, for example, the National Organization for Women is called NOW. Typical of acronymic coinages in technical terminology are JATO, laser, maser and radar. JATO or jato means jet-assisted take-off; laser stands for light amplification by stimulated emission radiation; maser- for micro-wave amplification and stimulated emission radiation; radar -for radio detection and ranging, it denotes a system for ascertaining direction and ranging of aircraft, ships, coasts and other objects by means of electro-magnetic waves which they reflect. Acronyms became so popular that their number justified the publication of special dictionaries, such as D.D. Spencers Computer Acronym Handbook. [5,189] Acronyms present a special interest because they exemplify the working of the lexical adaptive system. In meeting the needs of communication and fulfilling the laws of information theory requiring a maximum signal in the minimum time the lexical system undergoes modification in its basic structure: namely it forms new elements not by combining existing morphemes and proceeding from sound forms to their graphic representation but the other way round - coining new words from the initial letters of phrasal terms originating in texts.

. The other subgroup consists of initial abbreviation with the alphabetical reading retained, i.e. pronounced as a series of letters. They also retain correlation with prototypes. The examples are well known: B.B.C. - the British Broadcasting Corporation; G.I. - for Government Issue, a widely spread metonymical name for American soldiers on the items of whose uniforms these letters are stamped. The last abbreviation was originally an Americanism but has been firmly established in British English as well. M.P is mostly used as an initial abbreviation for Member of Parliament, also military police, whereas P.M. stands for Prime Minister.are freely used in colloquial speech as seen from the following extract, in which СР. Snow describes the House of Commons gossip: They were swapping promises to speak for one another: one was bragging how two senior Ministers were in the bag to speak for him. Roger was safe, someone said, hed give a hand. What has the P.M. got in mind for Roger when we come back? The familiar colloquial quality of the context is very definitely marked by the set expressions: in the bag, give a hand, get in mind, etc. [12, 34]

. The term abbreviation may be also used for a shortened form of a written word or phrase used in a text in place of the whole for economy of space and effort. Abbreviation is achieved by omission of letters from one or more parts of the whole, as for instance abbr for abbreviation, bldg- for building, govt- for government, wd- for word, doz or dz for dozen, ltd for limited, B.A.- for Bachelor of Arts, N.Y.- for New York State. Sometimes the part or parts retained show some alteration, thus, oz denotes ounce and Xmas denotes Christmas. [15, 34]

. An interesting feature of present-day English is the use of initial abbreviations for famous persons names and surnames. Thus, George Bernard Shaw is often alluded to as G.B.S., Herbert George Wells as H.G. The usage is clear from the following example: Oh, yes... where was I? With H.G.s Martians, [7,137]is no uniformity in semantic relationships between the elements: Z-bar is a metallic bar with a cross section shaped like the letter Z, while Z-hour is an abbreviation of zero-hour meaning the time set for the beginning of the attack, U is standing for upper classes in such combinations as U-pronunciation, U-language. Cf. U-boat (a submarine). Non-U is its opposite.will have been noted that all kinds of shortening are very productive in present-day English. They are especially numerous in colloquial speech, both familiar colloquial and professional slang. They display great combining activity and form bases for further word-formation and inflection.of words consists in clipping a part of a word. As a result we get a new lexical unit where either the lexical meaning or the style is different from the full form of the word. In such cases as fantasy and fancy, fence and defence we have different lexical meanings. In such cases as laboratory and lab, we have different styles. [2,112]does not change the part-of-speech meaning, as we have it in the case of conversion or affixation, it produces words belonging to the same part of speech as the primary word, e.g. prof is a noun and professor is also a noun. Mostly nouns undergo abbreviation, but we can also meet abbreviation of verbs, such as to rev from to revolve, to tab from to tabulate etc. But mostly abbreviated forms of verbs are formed by means of conversion from abbreviated nouns, e.g. to taxi, to vac etc. Adjectives can be abbreviated but they are mostly used in school slang and are combined with suffixation, e.g. comfy, dilly, mizzy etc. As rule pronouns, numerals, interjections, conjunctions are not abbreviated. The exceptions are: fif (fifteen), teenager, in ones teens [7,189]abbreviations are classified according to the part of the word which is clipped. Mostly the end of the word is clipped, because the beginning of the word in most cases is the root and expresses the lexical meaning of the word.type of abbreviation is called deflexion orapocope. Here we can mention a group of words ending in o, such as disco (dicotheque), expo (exposition), intro (introduction) and many others. On the analogy with these words there developed in Modern English a number of words where o is added as a kind of a suffix to the shortened form of the word, e.g. combo (combination), Afro (African) etc. In other cases the beginning of the word is clipped. In such cases we have apheresis, e.g. chute (parachute), varsity (university), copter (helicopter), thuse (enthuse) etc. Sometimes the middle of the word is clipped, e.g. mart (market), fanzine (fan magazine) maths (mathematics). Such abbreviations are called syncope. Sometimes we have a combination of apocope with apheresis,when the beginning and the end of the word are clipped, e.g. tec (detective), van (avanguard) etc. [8,176] Sometimes shortening influences the spelling of the word, e.g. c can be substituted by k before e to preserve pronunciation, e.g. mike (microphone), Coke (coca-cola) etc. The same rule is observed in the following cases: fax (facsimile), teck (technical college), trank (tranquilizer) etc. The final consonants in the shortened forms are substituted by letters characteristic of nativ